Chaos is such a waste of cast, script, film, and money.  The writer and director Tony Giglio has little previous directorial experience and his IMDb resume provides associations with mostly B-movies in general for his career.

In this horrible movie we are presented with a bank robbery in Seattle led by Lorenz (Wesley Snipes) and a crew of loyal men organized as smartly as an accountant’s records, who hold the contents and people of a bank hostage and demand to negotiate only with recently-suspended Det. Quentin Conners (Jason Statham).  Conners has been suspended and his partner fired for their involvement in a bad shooting in another hostage situation in the recent past, referred to as the Pearl Street shooting.

With their premiere film writer/director team Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine gives us a pulse-pounding adrenaline-fueled action thriller starring Jason Statham and Amy Smart that starts with a rush and doesn’t stop that rush until the credits roll in Crank.

Statham plays Chev Chelios, a hitman for a local organized crime gang, who awakens to find that he has been poisoned and the only way for him to live long enough to exact his revenge upon the people who poisoned him is to keep his adrenaline at high levels by ways including fighting, cocaine, sex, injections of epinephrine, energy drinks, high-speed police chases, and more.  Basically, if he slows down, he’ll die and he doesn’t want to do that until he can kill Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) the man who poisoned him.

The movie is action packed and so filled with intensity that the viewer finds themselves feeling some of the same adrenal effects Chelios is trying to achieve.  It is a fantastic film from a team with zero Hollywood experience, but who are now building upon the success of their first film.  Statham is perfect in his performance as Chelios and Amy Smart performs as his slightly ditzy, slow-witted, pot-smoking girlfriend magnificently.  If it isn’t already clear where I’m going with this: see this movie.

IMDb reports that three new movies will be released to cinemas this Friday:
1. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Directed by Uwe Boll, this movie is really pre-destined to be terrible.  Seemingly every movie he attaches himself to becomes so ridiculously awful as to actually make them unreviewable.  What’s most surprising is the cast he’s been able to assemble to make this!  They include Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Jason Statham, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, and even Ray Liotta.

The plot outline given by the IMDb is that “a man named Farmer sets out to rescue his kidnapped wife and avenge the death of his son — two acts committed by the Krugs, a race of animal-warriors who are controlled by the evil Gallian.”
2.  First Sunday
I am not at all familiar with David E. Talbert‘s earlier work, but this film’s plot is reported to be: “Durell and LeeJohn are best friends and bumbling petty criminals. When told they have one week to pay a $17,000 debt or Durell will lose his son, they come up with a desperate scheme to rob their neighborhood church. Instead, they end up spending the night in the presence of the Lord and are forced to deal with much more than they bargained for. ”

It stars Tracy Morgan, and Ice Cube.  It’s hard to expect much, even from them, with that kind of plot, but I suppose we’ll see after it starts screening.
3. The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
Mike Nawrocki directs this title having come from a long career of work related almost exclusively to VeggieTales.  It’s animated and doesn’t seem to feature any terribly memorable actors to point out.

The plot summary given is: “Three lazy misfits – very timid Elliot (Larry the Cucumber), lazy Sedgewick (Mr. Lunt) and no self-confident George (Pa Grape) – dream of the day of putting on a show about pirates. With their own problems of might not having this dream come true, they soon find themselves traveling back in time into the 17th century and begin a quest to rescue a royal family from an evil tyrant, and learn about being pirates. ”

Based on the plot summary I guess I just hope it’s a limited rather than a wide release.

That’s all for this week, so unless you’re planning on seeing something released last week, you might not even bother going to the theatre.  It looks like nothing especially interesting is coming until the following Friday.

Let me begin by saying that yes, there are many additional indie movies which were great in the 1990s. This is a list of what I consider to be the best ten of the decade, ranked according to their greatness. You’re welcome to disagree with titles on this list, omissions, rankings, or anything else, but choices and rankings had to be made and I made them. That said, here they are….