Alien vs. Predator (2004)

AKA: AVP

Riffing off an Easter egg featured in Predator 2, the monsters do battle with one another. Paul 'Wack Shit' Anderson picks up the slack. Here's a tip: if the title of your movie is AVP, don't revolve half the screen time around humans. Unfortunately, this venture wasn't as fun as the other legendary villain battle, although it succeeds in inextricably linking these two franchises forever.

1 ugly motherfucker out of 5

In the Lost Lands (2025)

It's been about a decade since I've seen the last of Paul W. S. Anderson (the lesser of the Paul Andersons), but here he is back again flaunting his wife Milla Jovovich in a painfully generic action fantasy flick that stretches George R. R. Martin's source material way past the point of credulity. It contains all the charm and intelligence of an empty video game cutscene. As I sat there for the duration of the 101 minutes (feeling every second pass), I contemplated the composition of the shots and all the ugly, murky, washed out CGI and cheesy blue screen effects. The color palette literally looks like shit; all browns and yellows. When is Paul W.S Anderson going to get his director's card revoked? It goes without saying that I did not care about a single thing that was happening on the screen and I breathed a sigh of relief when it was finally over. Honestly, I can't even complain; this one was completely on me.

This piece of shit made Werewolves look like absolute cinema by comparison.

0 full moons out of 5

Event Horizon (1997)

A lone recovery ship travels to the deep, murky edges of known space to investigate the reappearance of a vessel that was previously lost. When they get there they don’t find powdered milk and space cookies.
It’s a solid science fiction/horror premise that has a decent build-up, thanks in part to some of the cast, but ultimately fails to deliver anything worthwhile. The final third in particular is lacklustre and overly-formulaic, leaving even the bigger questions unanswered.
There seemed to be no practical reason why the ship interiors would look like they do, but they’re certainly the most visually interesting and memorable part of the whole thing. The fake bulkheads are the star of the show.

2 bespoke terrors out of 5

POMPEII [2014]

When it came to Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii, I wanted to watch pretty people run through exploding buildings as the earth opened up and swallowed them whole, without ever having to use my brain thingy.
I got exactly what I wanted but every so often my brain would turn on and would ask me why I was still watching it.   The real life disaster/love story film worked with Titanic and fell flat on it's face with Pearl Harbor.  Pompeii leans in closer to the Michael Bay shitfest with it's painfully predictable dialogue, horrible casting choices and lack of enthusiasm that all misses the mark to be a guilty pleasure shitfest.  It performed it's meaningless duties for a single viewing and I won't be needing it services again.

2 missing gods out of 5

DEATH RACE [2008]

Paul W.S. Anderson serves up a ladle of vehicular carnage crap with a prequel to the Roger Corman cult classic Death Race 2000.
Taking itself way too seriously and void of any sort of campy wit, Anderson's flick seems to completely miss what made the original film such a great guilty pleasure.  Instead it's nothing more than a headache inducing bore that resorts to uninspired juvenile video-game violence and characters so dull it makes Bayformers seem appetizing.

1 tombstone out of 5

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Burly men, dry Ice, flaming skulls, bad acting and shit music? It must be Mortal Kombat. A shameless Enter the Dragon (1973) rip off/homage gets the characters to where they need to be, but they have nothing noteworthy to do when they get there. The film falls head first into a Paul W. S. Anderson sized hole. If not for Goro (unintentionally hilarious) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa I’d have died a slow death.

1 enfeebled mind out of 5