We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Horror, action, and comedy sequels.
SUBSPECIES V: BLOODRISE (2023)
Up to this point, the Subspecies franchise was entirely contained within the 1990s. That’s when all four Subspecies films and the spin-off Vampire Journals were released... but it wasn’t meant to be a ‘90s-exclusive franchise for as long as it did. Soon after sending Subspecies 4 out into the world, Ted Nicolaou – the mastermind behind this series – wrote a screenplay for a fifth film that would serve as a prequel to everything we had seen before. Problem was, Subspecies’ home studio Full Moon had hit a financial rough patch. Producer and company founder Charles Band didn’t want to make a Subspecies movie that couldn’t live up to the other movies Nicolaou had made, so the decision was made to hold off on making Subspecies V: Bloodrise until Full Moon could access the sort of budget a Subspecies movie deserved. It took twenty years, but they finally got the funding.
With this film, Nicolaou fills out the back story of the evil vampire Radu, who has been played throughout this series by Anders Hove. It goes as far back into Radu’s life as possible – the first scene shows his birth, the offspring of a vampire and the sorceress Circe (Yulia Grant). But as it turns out, he wasn’t raised by his Mummy. Instead, the infant was stolen by crusaders, passed off as human, and raised to join the Knights of the Dragon, where he becomes a demon slayer, wielding the enchanted Sword of Laertes. His life as a knight goes off track when it’s sent to the castle inhabited by his father, Kevin Spirtas (who played Mel in Subspecies II and III) taking on the role of the vampire Vladislas. Radu is meant to kill Vladislas and take the Bloodstone, a magical item that drips the blood of the saints. Instead, Vladislas escapes, he’s informed of his bloodline, and he meets a woman named Helena, who is played by Denice Duff (who was Michelle in the Subspecies sequels).
Radu initially protects Helena as an innocent, but soon discovers that she has been turned into a vampire by Vladislas – and was forced to have a child with him, her son (and Radu’s half-brother) Stefan, played by Jakov Marjanovic. From his first encounter with Vladislas, we follow Radu over the course of several centuries, with him spending a lot of that time pining for his father’s consort Helena. We see him embrace his vampirism, learn sorcery from his mother, and seek companionship from the siblings Ariel (Stasa Nikolic) and Jonathan Ash (Marko Filipovic) – Jonathan Ash, known as Ash, being a character from Vampire Journals and Subspecies 4. We even get to see an early version of the place that will eventually become Ash’s nightclub. And we see when Radu turned Ash into a vampire.
Vladislas, Circe, Stefan, these are all characters we’ve seen in other Subspecies movies, and it’s very interesting to go back in time and see how Radu originally interacted with them, compared to how he’ll interact with them in the future. At first, it seems that Nicolaou casting Kevin Spirtas and Denice Duff in this film was just a nice show of loyalty, as the only returning actor really required for Subspecies V was Anders Hove, since Radu is front and center throughout. But there is a reason for Duff to be present, and it turns out that her playing Helena actually adds more depth to Radu’s fascination with the Michelle character in the other films.
Nicolaou always proved capable of crafting intriguing vampire stories with the Subspecies films and Vampire Journals, and Subspecies V is no different. I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of watching a Radu origin story when I first heard of the plans for this one, but I shouldn’t have questioned it. This is a great, epic vampire tale that works reasonably well with the other films and actually enhances their stories in some ways. If you’ve been keeping track of Full Moon’s output over the decades, you may even be shocked at the production value on display in Subspecies V: Bloodrise. The wait for funding was worth it, because this movie looks leagues better than many of Full Moon’s movies have looked in years. This movie is a step up from the production value of Subspecies 4 and almost feels like a return to the Full Moon glory days, when they had Paramount money to work with.
THE EQUALIZER 3 (2023)
We are in an age of bloated running times. Many movies these days are longer than they needed to be. So it’s refreshing to see that The Equalizer is one franchise where each movie is shorter than the previous one. It’s usually the opposite way around. The first Equalizer was overly long at 132 minutes. The Equalizer 2 didn’t have the greatest pacing or structure, but at least it was 121 minutes. Now we’ve reached The Equalizer 3, and it’s the shortest and quickest moving installment yet at 109 minutes. Speaking of refreshment, it was also nice to see that Queen Latifah starring in her own CBS TV series version of The Equalizer, a show that started airing a couple years after the release of The Equalizer 2, didn’t stop Equalizer film franchise star Denzel Washington, director Antoine Fuqua, and writer Richard Wenk from reteaming to make one more movie.
Both the Washington and Latifah Equalizer projects are reboots of an ‘80s TV show that was created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. The original series, which ran for four seasons, starred Edward Woodward as former covert operative Robert McCall, who after leaving the mysterious agency he worked for decides to use his skills to help out people in need. He puts an ad in a newspaper: "Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer." I don’t know how Latifah does it, I haven’t seen that show yet, but in these films McCall works as a Lyft driver in Boston and occasionally hears that one of his passengers has an issue he needs to resolve. That’s how he ends up in Sicily at the start of this movie, trying to track down a man’s money that was stolen in a cyber heist. This leads him to a winery that’s actually a cover for a drug-running operation that raises funds to support acts of terrorism. The bad guys set up there are no problem for him, he has committed a massacre in this winery by the time the movie begins, but then he makes the mistake of trusting a young boy who happens to be in this location. And this young boy shoots him in the back.
We’re just a few minutes into The Equalizer 3 and it looks like our hero is on his way out. He’d be dead in his car on the Amalfi Coast if he weren’t found by police officer Gio Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea) and taken to the Altamonte office of doctor Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone). Trusting that McCall is a good man, even though he’s not sure of this himself, Enzo gives him shelter. As he recovers from his wound, he starts to make his way around Altamonte, meeting and getting to know members of the community. He falls in love with the place and starts to think this is where he needs to be. This is where he can finally find peace.
Problem is, the peace keeps being disrupted by members of a criminal organization that wants to take over Altamonte. There are a bunch of young bikers led by Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero) who intimidate locals, terrorize Gio and his family (his wife is played by Sonia Ammar of the 2022 Scream), firebomb businesses... Things McCall can’t let slide. So he confronts Marco and humiliates him. In the average action movie, this would set off a horrific chain of events, as the confrontation would just inspire Marco to go after the people McCall has come to care about. But that’s not the direction The Equalizer 3 chooses to go in. McCall anticipates what we would usually see in an action movie and takes his confrontation a step further. And what he does really pisses off Marco’s criminal kingpin brother Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio), so then McCall has more cleaning up to do.
While McCall is dealing with these criminal elements, he’s also in contact with CIA agent Emma Collins, played by Washington’s Man on Fire co-star Dakota Fanning, reuniting them nineteen years after their previous movie together. Emma’s role in the story is small but interesting, and it’s nice to see Washington and Fanning share the screen again.
My favorite parts of both previous Equalizer movies were the climactic sequences, when McCall basically switches into slasher mode, becoming the action hero equivalent of Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. The Equalizer 3 doesn’t disappoint in that area, as there are a few wonderfully violent sequences where we get to see McCall lay waste to some very bad people. Slashers are my favorite type of movie to watch, so I love to see that style get blended into action thrillers like this.
The Equalizer 3 has been marketed as the “final chapter” of the film series in some territories, and if this is the end of Washington and Fuqua’s time with the franchise, they take it out on a high note. This is a really cool movie, and while I haven’t revisited either of the other two movies since I first watched them, I think 3 might be my favorite of the trilogy.
IT’S A WONDERFUL BINGE (2022)
Back in 2020, director Jeremy Garelick and screenwriter Jordan VanDina teamed up for a fun, Hulu-released comedy called The Binge, which was clearly inspired by the horror thriller franchise The Purge. Whereas The Purge is about an annual twelve hour period during which all crime is legalized in the United States, The Binge was set in a not-too-distant future in which the United States is once again under prohibition, with a zero tolerance policy for all drugs and alcohol... except during an annual twelve hour period during which all drugs and alcohol are legalized. The Binge did well enough to get a sequel greenlit – and for this one, which VanDina wrote and directed (and crafting the story with Garelick), the timing of the annual Binge has been moved to Christmas Eve. Because the powers-that-be have come to realize that dealing with family gatherings while sober can be too much for some Americans.
The first film centered on a trio of friends - Griffin (Skyler Gisondo), Hags (Dexter Darden), and Andrew (Eduardo Franco) - but that trio has been cut down to a duo for the sequel. Never has Skyler Gisondo been so missed by someone watching a movie than by me when I was watching It’s a Wonderful Binge, because I had no idea he hadn’t returned for this one. I spent the first fifteen or twenty minutes of this movie waiting for Gisondo to show up. Then eventually came to the disappointing realization that he wasn’t go to.
So this time we’re just hanging out with Hags and Andrew. Hags has chosen Christmas Eve as the day when he’s going to propose to his girlfriend Sarah (Zainne Saleh), so while everyone around him is on a binge, he’s trying to impress Sarah’s dad Keegan (a hilarious Tim Meadows), getting a ring from her grandma (Karen Maruyama), and living out a comedy of errors. It’s Andrew’s side of the story that gives It’s a Wonderful Binge to have a title that’s a tribute to It’s a Wonderful Life: after a disastrous family dinner, he goes to a bridge and wishes he had never been born. Then he’s attacked by a drugged-up owl, falls off the bridge, and is taken under the wing of a homeless man named Angel, played by Danny Trejo. With Angel as his guide, Andrew gets a glimpse into a world where he never existed.
Andrew and his girlfriend Kimmi (Marta Piekarz) has had a conscious uncoupling, so Kimmi’s off in her own subplot dealing with her mom (Kaitlin Olson as Mayor Spengler), who is throwing a drug-free Christmas party while seeking re-election, and her uncle Kris (Nick Swardson), who has just escaped from prison.
As all of the characters go on their separate, and eventually intersecting, adventures, we also get to witness some funny performances from the likes of Steve Little as Andrew’s mom’s new boyfriend, Tony Cavalero as his drugged-up The Binge character Pompano Mike, and Patty Guggenheim as Mike’s partner Delray Donna.
It’s a Wonderful Binge has a wild, over-the-top, at times bizarre sense of humor that might work perfectly for some viewers while being completely off-putting to others. I would fall somewhere in the middle. The movie didn’t always work for me, but there were enough funny characters and actors packed into it that I had a good time watching it overall. I didn’t like it as much as the first Binge, but it’s a decent sequel. I just wish Skyler Gisondo had made it back to the set.
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