But there’s a twist this week: instead of picking the film out myself, my lovely wife Kristena made the selection. Not only does she run her own craft-tacular website called Thimbly Things, which is cuteness incarnate, she also is quite the witty writer (I know, I’m biased, so sue me). We sparred back and forth over email on the film, and our interaction forms the article this week. My words in black, hers in red.

So your favorite genre in the whole wide world is horror films. Oh, wait, it isn’t. Which is why I thought it odd that you brought back The Tattooist, an obvious horror film, when you could have picked out anything your little heart felt like seeing.

This is what happens when you’ve been up since 7 am with babies and then decide to go to the grocery store at 10:30 in the pm. By the time I was at the Redbox, it was nearly midnight, I had a cart full of food, and I had no idea what I was doing.

Okay. Do I slide my card first? Am I supposed to press a button on the box? Oh, it’s a touchscreen. Alright. Not exactly like a Coke machine. Got it.

It was all downhill from there.

So on to the movie itself. But you weren’t really paying attention to the first half, were you? Sure you were there, at least physically, but you were quite wrapped up in your own little project. And horror movies, if nothing else, are based on mood. We had to keep rewinding the DVD because you kept missing the shadowy figure that flitted through the mirror, and that kind of ruins said mood. Not that there was much mood to ruin or anything, but it’s the principle of the matter.

I was totally there. I just happened to also be cutting out pictures from Emily’s (our 22-month old daughter) decimated Maisy book. It has the cutest little refrigerator full of food in it…

Anyway, we only rewound like 3 times. It wasn’t that bad. I understood more of what was happening than you did, if I remember correctly. Remember when I explained to you that the main dude was part of some sort of traveling tattoo thingy and not just a stalker?

Or maybe he was a stalker… Huh. The more I think about it…

This is what happens when you don't use protection, kids. Not a pretty sight.

True, true, you did grasp some of the finer plot points better than I. Therefore, I think you should synopsize the film for all our good readers out there. I know, difficult, just pretend they’re all waiting with baited breath for your description of the cinematic masterpiece otherwise known as The Tatooist.

So there’s this guy named Jake who tattoos people. And then they die.

Yup, details are so overrated. That pretty much sums it up.

I will say that after dragging itself through a textbook example of how not to engage audiences for the first 2/3, the final act of the movie became surprisingly compelling. It evolved into a mystery/thriller/whodunit that would have made a perfectly acceptable episode of Cold Case, although that’s kind of a backhanded compliment. It’s odd how the first two acts give no indication that the film is going to spontaneously become interesting at the 50 minute mark. Movies usually start out with a bang and then fizzle by the end. This one decided to go the other route. It might actually be brilliant in a postmodern sense.

Another exciting episode of "When Tattoos Attack!"

Unfortunately, it’s marketed as a “horror/thriller,” and there’s nothing particularly scary about it. And believe me, I know scary when I run from it and try not to see it. It had so many missed opportunities where folks were more or less literally bursting at the seams with ink. If that sounds ludicrous, well, it totally is.

So the suspense at the end was engaging, but all the creepy stuff leading up to it left a new “are you serious?” wrinkle in my brow. I venture to say that finding a bad tattoo blog would be more interesting.

And look! I found you one!

So the scares don’t quite fall on the memorable side of the fence. And the writer needed to read Robert McKee’s “Story” about 30 more times. And the main actor (Jason Behr) probably isn’t going to be breaking out any time soon. In the films defense, the supporting cast was quite good and managed to save the ship from completely sinking, even as Behr kept poking holes in the hull. And you can’t deny that the cultural history of Samoan tattoo technique that the film managed to delve into wasn’t at least a teensy bit fascinating, right?

The many faces of Jason Behr. Is that a future Oscar nomination I smell?

Yep. The Samoan men “hand down” their tattoos to their sons as a sort of heirloom, and the process is superly-duperly important to becoming a man and bringing honor to your family. This tidbit was indeed interesting. And I think that was probably the inspiration for the entire film. In the Writers’ Room, Guy #1 says, “So I was reading the latest issue of Tattoo Magazine, and you won’t believe the cool [insert expletive or two] I saw!” Later in the same meeting, Guy #6 says, “Okay, so we’ve decided the main guy needs to pretend to have special healing powers. Because that’s irony, and we definitely want some irony.” Oh, yeah, did I mention that? Jake’s a lying snake in the beginning of the movie (rhyme intended). We’re talking deep layers here.

How dare you sic a vengeful tattoo spirt on me! I thought we were BFFs!

And let’s not forget the scene of pure unintentional hilarity that was meant to pull at our heart strings. Jake has tattooed his lover, who is now doomed because his tattoos are all, like, evil and stuff. He tells her that she has hours to live, and she slaps him and says, “I trusted you!”, the implication being “I trusted you not to give me a demon tattoo which will slowly kill me in an orgy of blood and ink!” Man, if only they would have established that up front like all healthy couples do! Take us, for example. Remember when we said our vows to one another, and I finished mine by saying, “And I promise not give you demon tattoos because I know that’s something you’re worried about.”? Whew! That sure was a load off both of our minds!

Note: There was quite a delay before Kristena got back to me again.

Sorry- would have gotten back to you sooner had I not just walked in on our toddler finger-painting with poopy.

That is by far my favorite moment in the entire movie. It had me near tears in my glee.

One other thing that deserves mentioning is that the majority of the story is set in New Zealand. So, of course, all I could think about was Flight of the Conchords. Is it true that Bret’s mom only got 4 channels on her tellie back in New Zealand? And do New Zealanders really despise Australia? Will there be a second season of their HBO show?

But I digress. Yeah, I’m so glad I can trust you not to infect me with demon ink. I have enough stuff to take care of and honestly don’t have time to fight vengeful tattoo spirits. Like poopy smeared on baby board books and crib sheets.

The supporting cast is actually quite talented. Like this guy. Why wasn't the movie about him?

Which is infinitely more terrifying than demon tattoos could ever be. Rogue bits of poopy haunt my dreams. Vindictive tattoo spirits have nothing on our daughter.

This was a definite misfire for me, despite some of the film’s better elements. The only bright spot is that since they didn’t manage to land a bigger name in the title role (Paul Walker/Keanu Reeves/Dane Cook would have been ‘perfect’ choices) we weren’t subjected to this on a national scale.

And if you’re done cleaning feces off the wall, I’ll let you have the final word, honey.

Thanks, Dear. So here are the 5 things we learned today:

1) Take your time at the Redbox… at least enough time to know what genre film you just rented.
2) Go ahead! Work on another project while watching your random flick. Just fill in the blanks with your own finer plot points, and don’t worry about why that crazy old dude murdered some young kid instead of tattooing him and no one found the teen’s stinky body in the back shed for 15 years or whatever.
3) Invest in a video monitor for your toddler’s bedroom immediately.
4) Ladies: Never begin a relationship with a guy who could tattoo a demon spirit onto you that will later try to kill you. He needs to at least be up front with you about these matters.
5) Finally, instead of seeing The Tattooist, go watch LA Ink or, better yet, learn how tattoo yourself by embroidering your clothes. That’s what I would do, anyway.

So there are some wicked cool tattoos in the movie. We'll give it that.

This NOT clip art. These were the ACTUAL RINGS!!! (Just in case you thought I was lazy.)

It all started when my brother got married. My lovely wife and I drove up from Tulsa, OK to Kansas City in order to take part in the festivities. And festivities there were. Most of them involved me standing at the front of a church in a moderately ugly tuxedo. Man, were my feet sore. But alas, this is the price we pay to get rid of our loved ones. (Note to my bro: I keed! I keed!)

Anyway, the whole thing went off without a hitch. Or, with a hitch, as it were. Vows were exchanged, pretty dresses were worn, unnecessary photographs were taken, dances that were popular ten years ago were danced, and an enormous cake was cut and duly shoved into the couple’s faces. The whole nine yards. And also there was a chocolate fountain. Those things are awesome.

Hey, where are you going? I promise, I’ll say something about a movie soon. Real soon. Keep reading, you’re just getting to the good part.

Missouri loves company.

So anyway, the party ended eventually, and then we had to drive back. We were driving along, and we ran into a detour. An unexpected detour that took us into the heart of Missouri. It was Missouri, right? I can never tell that place from Kansas. Or Iowa. Or Illinois.

Lost in the middle of nowhere, nearly out of gas, and starving for a bite to eat, we came upon a backwater town. I think it was called “Some Backwater Town in the Middle of Missouri (Population 20, Incorporated 1894).” Like all backwater towns in the middle of Missouri, it had nothing but a gas station and a McDonald’s. And like three Starbucks.

Starving and exhausted, we stumbled into the McDonald’s, wolfed down our respective Big Macs, and walked out the door, only to see it…

I heard there's a little gnome that lives inside.

That’s right. That kinetoscope of the modern age, that Big Brother of bread and circuses, that opiate of the masses, Redbox. Burger King has its frozen Coke dispensers, Pizza Hut has its gumball machines, and McDonald’s has that most joyous of all colored boxes, the Redbox. (Can I have some money now, McDonald’s Corp.?)

Maybe it was the massive quantities of grease I’d just ingested that were talking. Who knows? But as we shall see, chemicals can impair decision-making. As we all know, the rules of this column stipulate that I had to choose a film that I’d never heard of. At this particular Redbox, the choice was obvious: Empty Case.

No, just kidding. But I swear that this machine had an empty case for rent. Not that renting an empty Redbox case for a dollar would be a waste of money, or anything. Every grace that Redbox chooses to visit upon us mortals is okay with me. But I wasn’t quite that knocked out, so I chose the next best thing: a little stoner comedy called Smiley Face. Directed by “New Queer Cinema” icon Gregg Araki, and starring Anna Faris (Scary Movie, My Super Ex-Girlfriend) as a Marxist pothead, this one was bound to be a winner. Or at least, to be less of a travesty than Swept Away. Actually, what I’m trying to say is…

This is...like...my photo caption. Whoa.

So, like, the good thing about stoner films, man, is like, y’know, no matter how, like—bad—they are, they’re still, like, um, good, y’know? It’s like, when you’re high, everything’s messed up, like, maybe, like a bad movie is—and then—wait—so, like, a—bad—movie becomes, like, a—good—movie, because it’s…like…being…high…or something.

Whoa.

I need to write this down, man. Where’s some paper? Oh, maybe under that pizza box…on the floor. No man!!! Don’t touch it…there could be, like, things under it.

Terrible things.

I’m so scared.

Sklfgjhwsdf;glkfjgsdfgsf

Wait, where was I?

Right, Smiley Face, starring Anna Faris.

Let me just say this: Anna Faris is hilarious.

And like, Faris, and hilarious, like rhyme, y’know? Kind of.

Whoa. I’m like a poet.

It opens with our friend Jane (Faris) talking to the narrator, played by Roscoe Lee Brown (whom you may remember as Mr. Arrow from Treasure Planet—um, or not).

Is that...a coffee table? Dude...

Whoa. Treasure Planet. Now that movie was trippy. It’s like an ocean…of the mind.

Anyway, Jane is a B.A. in economics. She’s also an aspiring actress. But most of all, she’s the world’s biggest pothead. It’s only 9:30 in the morning, and she’s already sucking on a bong. Soon, she gets the munchies. And what does she find in the fridge, but some cupcakes that her roommate (Danny Masterson) baked for his friends. Guess what said cupcakes are laced with.

So now, stoned out of her mind, Jane is faced with three problems: She has an audition in an hour. She has to pay the electricity bill. And she has to bake her roommate some more pot cupcakes. I think this is what Shakespeare called “conflict.”

Dude, that guy's tattoos? Freakin' me outtt...

Bummer.

So, like, this chick Jane, first she calls her dealer, and she, like, buys a bunch of pot, and she starts trying to make more cupcakes, but—dude, she is so stoned—she just starts a fire, and then, she’s all whoa! and so she grabs her secret stash of government pot, and runs to her audition, and she tries to sell the pot to the people there, ‘cause she’s got no money or something, so then the cops are all chasing her and stuff. Which sucks.

So it’s around this point where we meet her wannabe boyfriend Brevin (John Krasinski, whom you probably know as Jim from The Office), who shows up to drive her to Venice, CA, where she has to find her dealer at a hemp festival and pay off her tab. Or something. That set-up doesn’t last long, but she does manage to steal a first edition of The Communist Manifesto from a former professor of hers. Desperately in need of cash, she starts scheming to sell it.

It's like...Napoleon Halpert, right?

Dude…selling The Communist Manifesto? That’s, like, meta-ironic.

So anyway, I think, like, after that…she, like, jumps on a sausage truck…and then there’s this scene where she totally tells this dude off. He’s, like, the head of the sausage factory, and…I think…she goes all Communist on him…and then she gets to Venice, but the hemp festival’s over, and she’s like, dude! But people are, like, chasing her, and then she gets arrested for stealing.

The movie ends with her serving 1500 hours of community service.

So there is that.

A stoner comedy where actions have consequences? Yeah.

Huh.

Now I’m kind of puzzled.

Whooooooooaaaa...busted.

I mean, whoa…I never thought about how…I could, like—steal—something—and then I’d like, go to jail, and—

Don’t…touch…that, man…it might, like, be someone’s.

I know it looks like mine, but how do you know, man? How do you know…?

Aslekjhg.vm

Sdlfkgj

So sdfij high aslkfjd/////////////////

Editor’s Note: Smiley Face is currently showing at your local Redbox. It has been rated R for “intense scenes of people that are, like, so totally high, and also for lowering the I.Q. of everyone near it.” The MPAA adds, “We also, like, laughed our butts off, but then we all got really scared. NORML roXXXors!” Luke gives the film five (5) stars because “The DVD was shiny.”

After previous comments by Redbox apologists, I chose to sample the box’s online capabilities. For some reason I’ve been unable to get The Deaths of Ian Stone out of my head (which I was denied my first time around), so I set the internets to work on finding me a copy. Redbox.com is surprisingly robust, and it quickly found every box in the area that had a copy of the film. The closest one was at a Sam’s Club across town, so I purchased the rental online and hopped in my sweet pimp-mobile (i.e., a dull grey Hyundai Elantra with too much bird poop on the windshield).

Seeing as my car ride probably cost twice as much as the actual DVD rental, I might have been a bit more patient, but “patience” and “practical” are not two words I would use to describe my filmwatching habits. When I want to see a film, dadgummit I’m going to see that film no matter how much ludicrously priced fuel it takes. My enthusiasm, however, is usually based on critical reception or premise or a director’s previous work, but in this case it was based on nothing more than a marginally interesting DVD cover. Ah common sense, I know thee not.

Again, whoever designed the Redbox was a genius. I pressed one button on the screen, swiped my credit card, and received the movie. No receipts, no security questions asking me the name of my first stuffed animal, no lines of impatient Redboxees breathing down my neck because they’re in a hurry to get their copy of The Hottie and the Nottie, nothing. And all in the span of 30 seconds. Genius.

Ian Stone dies. Ooops, was that a spolier?

So was it worth it? Is The Deaths of Ian Stone the diamond in the rough that I had been dreaming it could be? Hmmmm… “diamond in the rough” might be stretching it. “Slightly-tarnished-quarter in the mud” might even be pushing it. But you know what? It’s not bad. In fact, I might even suggest it for a slow Friday night when your Rock Band pals are all out, you know, having lives.

The best way to describe The Deaths of Ian Stone would be to call it “Groundhog Day via Clive Barker on a slow day.” Mr. Stone (played by Mike Vogel, who you might recognize as the brother who becomes tentacle bait on the bridge in Cloverfield) leads a charmed life, complete with rugged good looks, hockey stardom, and Jenny, a beautiful girlfriend with a cute Australian accent. Everything seems perfect. Perhaps too perfect. Wouldn’t you know it, on the way home from dropping his girl off, some cranky smoke goblin yanks him out of his car and chucks him into the path of an oncoming train. So not cool.

Verizon's controversial new method to make sure you can really "hear them now."

ZAP! Ian wakes up in an Office Space-ish cubicle, pushing papers and compiling TPS reports. Was it a dream? Was it a nightmare? And why is Jenny a fellow office worker now? And who is this new girl he’s dating? And why isn’t he on the hockey team in any of his yearbooks? And what the heck is that cranky smoke goblin doing with that nasty looking thing-a-ma-jig? You could really put someone’s eye out with that thing, you know…

Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?

ZAP! You can see where this is going. Each time Ian wakes up in a new life with little to no memory of his previous one, and each time the same people are present albeit in different roles, and those smoke goblin dudes are always chasing him down and killing him in different ways. Why so cranky, smoke goblin dudes? Still pissed that Lost’s casting director passed you guys up? (ooooh, ZING! Thankyou, thankyou, I’ll be here all week)

Be honest...does this dress make me look fat?

The intriguing premise does not, however, result in an equally intriguing conclusion. The explanation behind all this smoke goblin business is as uninteresting as the explanation at the end of Dark City was fascinating. The Deaths of Ian Stone takes a number of pages directly out of the sci-fi-horror-noir masterpiece’s playbook, but does nothing new with them (I think there is a word for that…what is it…starts with a ‘p’…come on, right on the tip of my tongue…oh yeah, ‘plagiarism’). They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but here it’s just shameful.

In an interview with DreadCentral.com, Italian director Dario Piana said, “In the film you’ll see Stan Winston creations based on my vision, and Stan’s team did it pretty well despite the budget! In the movie there are also some weird hospital torture machines that came out of one of my nightmares, not on the screen for a long time, but enough to be disturbing…” Sigh. Not to impugn Mr. Piana’s ‘vision,’ but if you’re going to rip off Stanley Kubrick, and do it badly at that, you need to at least man up to it.

Spot the differences! I found -3 differences! How many can you find?

Ok, I’m picking on this one a bit much. Perhaps because the premise was so promising, or perhaps because the script and acting were quite good, I was disappointed with the end result. Mysteries are best left not fully solved (writer Neil Gaiman understands this well), because when full disclosure is made, you’re often left with an eye-rolling mess that must have looked much better on paper. Add Piana’s ‘loving homages’ to Dark City, A Clockwork Orange, and The Matrix and that bad taste in your mouth might not be due to the slightly expired gallon of milk you just finished off (expiration dates are the cranky smoke goblins of my life).

I’m coming to the realization that I haven’t heard of these films for good reason. However, I still believe that lurking somewhere within the Redbox is an unheralded gem just waiting for me to discover it. Perhaps three times is a charm, or perhaps ignorance is bliss. Yeah, one of those two.

Sing with me now! "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things..."

I have a confession to make: I’d never used a Redbox before this. The very idea of renting a movie from a machine seemed bizarre to me, if not downright scary. Machines are there to sell you things—candy bars, life insurance, used panties—not rent things to you. The very thought is absurd—I can’t rent a car or a tuxedo from a machine; why should I rent a movie from one? Entering into such a transaction means that eventually, I’ll have to return the item to the box—which, of course, makes me beholden to a machine. Is there any denying that these things are yet another step towards the looming robot dictatorship? One moment I’m pulling 2 Fast 2 Furious out of a little slot; the next, Laurence Fishburne will be handing me a little red pill.

And yet—they have such pretty colors…

Gaze with awe on the majesty of Redbox, friends. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I had just paid for my groceries. The only thing left to do was take them to my car and drive home—and yet—there was a Redbox, glistening in the fluorescent lights.

It was calling to me.

“Luke…come rent a movie…surrender to your robot overlords…”

Okay, I thought. It’ll be another column for MovieZeal. Maybe Evan will even stop beating me. In any case, the frozen popcorn chicken in my cart was rapidly defrosting, and there were two people lined up behind me already, so I had to make a decision fast.

Hmm…too depressing…not depressing enough…too many action figure tie-ins…

Ah! There it was. Blonde and Blonder, starring Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards as two unemployed bimbos who get mistaken for international assassins. It couldn’t possibly disappoint me, since my expectations were already so low. I mean, heck—there was even questionable spelling (and a rather desperate Farrelly brothers reference) in the title. How could I be let down by this one?

You have no idea…

As 'Striperella' proved, Pam has always looked better as a cartoon.

The film opens the most promising way a film can: as a cartoon. We see animated versions of blondes Dee (Anderson) and Dawn (Richards) doing stupid things like forgetting to run when on an operational treadmill and walking under a low ceiling fan. Then the opening credits are over, though, and we find out the two blondes are even stupider in person.

They meet at a flying lesson. Why? Because someone thought it would be funny to open the film with them crashing a plane. But of course, they didn’t have the budget to actually show them crashing the plane, so the camera looks away, we hear a thunk, and we see them emerging from what could be the wreckage of a plane crash (but is probably just some cardboard painted white). Of course, no one who owned the plane bothers to press charges, and the movie proceeds onward.

Look at us...we can still get an acting job! ...sort of.

We’re then introduced to a cacophony of characters: a mob boss and his minions, a couple of dumb cops, and two lesbian assassins: “The Cat” and her protégé “Kit.” The assassins—who are so good, no one knows what they look like!—have been hired by the mob to whack the owner of a strip club known as the Beaver Patch Lounge. Coincidentally, Dee and Dawn are auditioning there at the same moment—but, of course, they both think it’s a wildlife preserve that’s presenting a musical. Riiiiiiight. Some sample inanity:

Dee: So what’s this show about? What’s the driving force?
Another Auditioner: Um…producing erections.
Dee: It’s a musical about architecture?

Needless to say, The Cat shows up and kills the owner; then Dee and Dawn (not realizing he’s dead) accidentally set fire to his head (in a surprisingly grisly scene—I guess they’re reaching out to the Saw crowd).

So now everyone thinks Dee and Dawn are The Cat and her new partner. The mob sends them to Niagara Falls to “take out” a hotel tycoon (guess what they think that means); the cops follow them there; and the mob decides they can’t trust them and follows them there as well. Strangely, everyone decides to go by car. Go figure.

Um...yeah. This one speaks for itself.

So about this time, I (understandably) check my watch and realize that I’m an hour into a 90-minute high-concept film, and they’re just now, finally, getting to the aforementioned high concept. I can’t help but imagine that this one was originally planned as a nine-hour, DeMille-esque opus, but the budget was slashed repeatedly.

This becomes abundantly clear when we reach the climax, which is a boat chase—a slow boat chase—through a harbor. That’s right, a harbor. The movie is set at freaking Niagara Falls, and the climax takes place in a harbor. On a cloudy day. Actually, the only time we get to see Niagara is in some stock footage they use as an establishing shot. So, one wonders, why even bother to set the action at Niagara? Perhaps this is just a cheap travelogue masquerading as a Pam Anderson comedy? Hmmm.

Nothing screams 'action' like a tiny motorboat and a flare gun.

Anyway, the bad guys get caught, the good guys get off, and everyone lives happily ever after—except for myself, since I just spent money on this tripe. Truth be told, though, this one really isn’t that awful of a film. I mean, it’s bad, but it’s not bad bad. It’s true that it’s insanely low-budget, and that it’s cribbed from nearly every comedy of the last ten years (obviously mentions include Zoolander, The Man Who Knew Too Little, and, of course, Dumb and Dumber), but if you’re in the mood for a comedy that aims unbelievably low—and often still fails to hit its target—this one’s really not a bad choice. Word to the wise: it’s at its funniest when it’s not trying to be funny. (Also, if you’re dying to see a flatulent turtle, this is probably a good option for you.)

Virgil the flatulent turtle, exuding charisma.

There’s of course no comparison, but it reminded me somewhat of the first time I watched Yahoo Serious’s magnum opus Young Einstein. My initial reaction was something along the lines of, “What the crud is this?”—but later on, I realized that Serious is Australian, and that knowledge somehow made the whole thing hilarious. Blonde and Blonder was just stupid and annoying—until I remembered that Pam (and pretty much everyone else involved) is Canadian. Suddenly I was filled with nothing but goodwill toward this movie, and all was right with the world.

And now, if you’ll excuse me…my robot wants a foot rub.

Redbox Roulette will be a new, semi-regular column where we dive into the world of the scarlet container, boldly going where no rational film lover would go, and delivering our discoveries (the good, the bad, and the ugly) to you. These columns will be more like personal essays than critical reviews, delineating our experiences plumbing the murky abyss of the Redbox. There is only one rule: the film we choose must be completely foreign to us. It doesn’t matter how we reach the decision (instinct, blindfold, darts, cage match to the death), but the chosen flick must be one we’ve never heard of.

No Redbox is complete without a procrastinating customer.

With this in mind, I approached our local Neighborhood Wal-Mart cautiously. There in the foyer, next to one of those change-counting machines (seriously, do people really have buckets of pennies lying around, enough pennies to make something like that profitable?) was our local vermilion receptacle with a healthy line behind it. I joined the queue and waited my turn. The lady in front had apparently never visited the Redbox before and she was taking her precious time perusing the selections. The pressure must have been too much, for she laughed nervously and walked away without even renting anything.

The Redbox has a marquee on the outside advertising new selections, and I browsed it with my eyes while I waited, looking for something obscure. It appeared to have the standard new releases, but there were a few I was unfamiliar with. One caught my eye, The Deaths of Ian Stone, and I decided that it was as good a choice as any.

I have to admit that whoever designed the Redbox was an engineering and marketing genius. The thing is completely self-explanatory (the name is pure simplicity) and a breeze to operate. Steve Jobs would be proud. However, at the front of the line I quickly encountered the bloody vessel’s major design flaw, the one that the previous lady had fled from. As only one person can use it at a time, whenever a line forms behind you (which it already had behind me), the pressure to make a selection is enormous. Either you A) become a total prick and disregard the foot stomping behind you or B) cave and select the first thing available, no matter how idiotic the choice.

I quickly rushed through the touch screen looking for the movie I had pre-chosen, but I couldn’t find it. Where was it? Apparently the marquee isn’t a guarantee of availability. As a virginal Redbox customer I wanted my first time to be something special, to leisurely take in the experience, but I could practically feel the gazes of the other patrons melting the skin off of my neck. Too…much…pressure!!! With a sheepish grin I quickly strode away, determining to come back once the line disappeared.

So I whiled away the time by buying diapers for my kids. I still have trouble believing the sheer amount of defecation they are both capable of. I never thought I would look forward to potty training as a financial windfall.

The plastic case even has instructions on how to clean grime off of the DVD.

Back at the ruby barrel, the line was gone. Ah! Now I could leisurely browse through the touchscreen menu. Surprisingly, there were a number of decent looking arthouse numbers that I had never heard of, alongside the (expected) legions of direct-to-video IQ killers. Being a film buff, critic, and blogger, I tend to be “in the know” on every film that comes out weekly, and it is a rare event to watch a film I have heard nothing about. My brain is at full saturation on all things film, and it retains miniscule cinematic data like nobody’s business. So, I was surprised to find myself genuinely excited to randomly pick a film and go into it completely blind, regardless of whether I had chosen a gem or a turd. That is one of the drawbacks to being so immersed in cinema – you miss out on the joy of discovering hidden treasures you knew nothing about. Part of the fun of antiquing is rummaging through dusty corners and hidden niches, but too often my cinematic consumption resembles an antiquer with a detailed map of the store – sure there are treasures he hasn’t uncovered, but he knows exactly where all of them are, and more than likely he’s read extensively about each one before he even picks them up.

Prime example of movie poster being way cooler than said movie.

It was, literally, about 2 minutes before the line had formed again behind me. A large man was standing uncomfortably close (some people, either from too much alcohol consumption or genetics, lack the internal mechanism that tells them when they are invading someone else’s personal space…this guy was the posterboy for it) and making helpful suggestions, like “Push the button that says ‘RENT’”. With the unrelenting pressure back, I made an instinctual from-the-hip choice, having noticed Katee Sackhoff’s face on the front a pretty decent sci-fi movie poster advertising The Last Sentinel. Hey, I love Battlestar Galactica, Starbuck is top notch, and there is no way she could be slumming it, right?

Hmmm….not so much. Apparently David Eick and Ron Moore aren’t paying the thespians who flesh out their hit show as well as one might think.

So the world has been engulfed in a nuclear apocalypse (helpfully illustrated at the beginning for us by archival footage of atomic detonations – nothing screams “no budget” more than the cinematic equivalent of clip art). Somebody developed these robotic super-cops to police the remains of the human race, but as robotic super-cops are wont to do, they ran amuck and started wiping out their charges all Borg-like. So humanity launched one last attack, which failed, and some dude is the only one left of the resistance, the “last sentinel” of the title. He hooks up with Sackhoff and together they save the world, or something. I think that is the plot, but I may have made some of that up, seeing as writer/director Jesse Johnson isn’t the most coherent of storytellers.

Nothing screams apocalyptic sci-fi like an abaonded oil refinery and a crappy backlot.

Art Direction FAIL!

The Last Sentinel quickly illustrates why Hollywood spends oodles of money on things like production and set design. There are exactly two different locations here, which are used ad nauseum. They try showing them from different angles and the characters make conspicuous observations about how this abandoned oil refinery is really different from the other five abandoned oil refineries we’ve already seen, but its all so much Titanic brass polishing. Also, when your high tech operations center (the cyberbrain of your unstoppable drone army) is comprised of what appear to be Commodore 64s, it might be time for an art director upgrade.

Then there are the drones or droids or whatever they’re called. We are told they are bad mo foes who are virtually unstoppable, but this becomes a hard sell when their battle tactics consist solely of marching towards their opponents in a straight line—slowly. I’m no military strategist, but I’m pretty sure that method went out of style around the time of the American Revolution. In addition, they also seem to lack a few basic skills, like peripheral vision and shooting targets closer than 4 feet away.

17th century military tactics FTW!

I swear, the next time someone puts PBR in my Camelbak I'm gonna kill them.

I will say that the film achieves a brief moment of poetry when one of the drones removes his helmet. It’s a blatant Darth Vader/Borg rip-off, but with the rain streaming down and the DP pulling off some nice depth of field (you know you’re struggling when the presences of depth of field becomes a high point), the scene almost approaches artistry. The effect is only slightly ruined when the actor’s lip makeup starts running and he’s forced to read lines from the script, but you take what you can get.

Why, Katee, why?

In all fairness to her, Sackhoff is the best part of The Last Sentinel, although it’s hard to understand why she ever signed on for this gig in the first place. While Battlestar hasn’t convinced me she is an actress with significant depth, she merits better material than what amounts to scrubbing linoleum in a doublewide with a used toothbrush. I’m going to go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt by assuming she fired the mentally challenged chimpanzee who had been masquerading as her agent afterwards.

You would not believe the looks I got when I took this picture.

When Hollywood churns out crap and sells it by slapping a big name star to the marquee, they pretend it’s in service to the director’s “vision” and in pursuit of “art.” Direct-to-video churns out crap, slaps a C-grade name on it (Sackhoff was undoubtedly the entire reason for this film’s existence), and proceeds to proudly flaunt its total lack of vision and spit in the face of art. You can at least respect them for their lack of pretension. It’s similar to the difference between dumpster diving reality television (ala Rock of Love and A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila) and porn: at least one of them is being honest about retarding the human race.

While the first pull of the trigger wasn’t a success by even the most generous of definitions, future editions of Redbox Roulette will hopefully unearth films actually worth watching. Till next time, and remember: the crimson enclosure is always watching.