Like many people, I am fascinated by history and I am not ashamed to admit it. As a true believer in the notion that the more we know about what happened in our past, the less mistakes we will make in our future, I can still remember my time in archaeology class when I could not put down the text books, because it held so much value to me, that and they are expensive. As the history of human life can be something people can bond over, it is also important that we all learn from our mistakes because if we don’t, we are destined to repeat them, for better or worse.
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Walking in the commons area after class, Alabama ‘Ally’ Channing gets greeted by her favorite fellow teachers and they all sit down for lunch. Talking about how difficult it is for a woman to attain a doctorate from the university, the group is interrupted by a stranger who has something near and dear to Ally’s heart, her mother’s journal. Telling Ally about a dig in China being funded by Tim Parker and that he needs her on the team, Ally is a bit hesitant, but with her colleagues at her side, she will be able to accomplish anything. 

Arriving in China and meeting with Tim Parker, Ally is shocked to see that there is another archaeologist on site, one who is not very well respected in the community. Nathan has turned finding ancient treasures into a profiteering game and while it doesn’t sit well with Ally that she has to work with him, she is ready to put her knowledge to good use. Trying to initially skate away from what they are really looking for, the recluse millionaire Tim finally comes clean about what he is trying to find in the birthplace of civilization, the Heart of the Dragon, the last relic to unify people in generations. With finding the Heart of the Dragon being the pinnacle to Ally’s Mother’s life’s work, she is more than happy to join the expedition, but little does she know what troubles may be in store for her and her team.

Waking up in the middle of the night to an attack on the camp, the group sees one of their own meet her end and Nathan get kidnapped. Tracking the unknown raiders, Ally quickly finds out that they are keeping an eye on her group as well and she starts to tread slowly. Being able to locate Nathan and free him from whatever his fate would be, the group is surrounded by Jian and his crew who are looking to take full advantage of the search party. With the leader being honest about his past, i.e., once being a friend to Ally’s mother, Ally is forced to believe that he should be the rightful owner of the Heart when she finds it, but others in the group may have an alternative motive for the ancient relic and will do anything within their power to sell it off to the highest bidder.

This is an interesting little flick that came out before the reboot of Tomb Raider, but it was not that bad overall. Feeling a little more like an Indiana Jones movie, the subtle jokes and great interaction between the characters were what really kept me drawn in. I liked really liked all of the booby traps all around, and while you get one person being taken out by them, I would have liked to see more, because the ancients were keen on protecting their treasure and should be rewarded with blood. With a journal, some friends, some enemies, some spears, traps and an ancient relic that wants to be found, this is just an entertaining movie all around. While I do like the idea of checking out some ancient sites from time to time, I will always remember that only special people were granted access back in the day and that was for a reason. Happy Viewing.

If there’s one thing that fans of cinema love to do on a regular basis, is celebrate the men and women that have left their mark upon this industry by way of their incredible work. Sometimes the celebration comes about at home with a marathon among friends, and other times, some people set out to document their respective careers with beautiful documentaries that reflect upon their finest works and how those particular films have impacted the landscape of cinema for years to come.
 
However, there is one inherent problem when it comes to that more mainstream style of celebration in that…documentarians tend to focus heavily upon the bigger names out there. While that’s not a bad thing by any means, because I love Spielberg’s work as much as the next guy, there are countless other names out there that have done incredible things for the motion picture industry, revolutionary things in fact, and because their work didn’t raise $200 million at the box office on the regular, their names don’t come up that often. But sometimes, you stumble upon a documentary that does bother to recognize the mavericks of the industry and I recently had the pleasure of watching one that celebrated the work of a true American filmmaking genius in King Cohen.
 
Now this documentary takes the time to explore the life and career of filmmaker Larry Cohen, a name that may or may not sound familiar and if it doesn’t, well then, you’re either missing out, or have watched his work and never realized it. Because this magnificent tale touches upon every single corner of Larry’s rich career in the industry and really, that’s the first unique thing I noticed about this documentary, the sheer fact that it doesn’t try and tell us some stylized story about Larry, it highlights every single moment of his career in honest fashion, including all the highs and the lows, with much of the stories coming straight from Mister Cohen himself. 

​Yet, while Larry’s stories are amazing in their own right, what truly blew me away about his career, is how diverse it turned out to be. I literally had no clue that Larry had a hand in giving life to the Blaxploitation genre of films by helming the revolutionary King Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem, or that the man spent a lot of time writing for television in his younger years before he turned to film and really, it was just fascinating to learn how much Larry has yearned to make phenomenal films that entertain the audience through and through and his diverse resumé truly speaks to this fact. 
 
However, while this film could have just documented his career and left it at that, it does take things one step further by giving us some beautiful interviews with the people that worked with Larry or admired his work through the course of his illustrious career and well, this part of the story is what elevates this documentary to a whole new level. Because everyone that speaks about Larry and their experiences with him do so with a giant smile on their face and it’s inherently obvious that Larry’s passion for filmmaking was infectious to say the least and he brought joy to everyone he worked with and that’s just rare and refreshing to see.
 
But you don’t just watch a documentary without having some kind of personal interest in the topic at hand and for me, this was a beautiful nostalgic ride because my experiences with Larry’s work come from my love of horror and I am a huge fan of The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent, so to learn more about Larry and his career was an outright treat and I have to admit I’m curious to see more of his work thanks to this documentary and when all is said and done, if you’re fan of Larry’s work, or the horror genre or film as a whole, see this documentary as fast as you can. Because it’s charming, heartwarming and honest, and quite frankly, inspirational as well. But what matters most about King Cohen, is that it doesn’t put Larry Cohen on a pedestal, and offer up all kinds of strange labels about his genius. It merely presents him as a man, one that loves cinema and believes in nothing more than making fun and impactful movies and that…is something that is definitely worth celebrating. 

When we think of the cinema, we think of…escape. Escape from the everyday world and our everyday lives, where we can just settle in and enjoy the wonder of a beautiful story that carries us away to incredible places before we return to the real world and go about our business once again. It’s something that rings true about cinema since we’ve all seen incredible wonders on the silver screen throughout the years, but sometimes, we forget that this medium can tell any story that it wants and sometimes…those stories aren’t pretty.
 
Granted, there are plenty of genres that come to mind when you think about the ‘dark side’ of cinema, such as the horror genre for instance, since awful things lurk in the shadows on a regular basis in that universe, but that doesn’t quite apply here. Because there are movies out there that are about sour people and sour places where everything isn’t sunshine and rainbows and these are the films that quite frankly, we tend to avoid since they remove the wonder of the cinema and plunk us down in the dark parts of our world we’d like to forget about and recently, I had the opportunity to watch a movie that fits that darker mold in Euthanizer.
 
Now in this motion picture, we are introduced to a man named Viejo who lives quite the simple life, one away from the rest of the people in his town and he’s just fine with that. But, despite his proclivity to avoid humanity when possible, he does serve an important role to the community. For Viejo is fine with euthanizing any suffering animal for far cheaper than the vet can provide, since it gives him an opportunity to size up and point out a few key things about life to the owner of the unfortunate animal. But a woman that admires him and a man who rolls with some unsavory people are now intertwined in his simple existence and their arrival, will change his life forever…

​So, let’s start off with a fair warning when it comes to this film, it features some unsettling scenes involving animals and violence and I want to get that out in the open right now, because I know that’s a red flag/deal breaker for some folks and I don’t ever want to misrepresent a film or put someone in an uncomfortable place by not pointing out something as important as that. But, with all that aside, while that is disturbing in its own right, and it definitely unsettled this viewer, I was able to look past that to see why a film would make something such as that an important part of its plot and that’s simply due to the fact that this is a story about miserable and ugly people.
 
Which quite frankly, I found fascinating. Because normally, characters in film have some kind of redeeming qualities or they’re on a road to redemption, but that’s simply not the case here. It’s bad people all around, who are desperate to find something good to hold onto in this world and well, there’s a morbid curiosity surrounding them and that’s why I was unable to turn away. I was quite curious as to whether or not they would turn their darkness around or find what they were looking for and by sticking with the sour air surrounding this story, I was able to see that this movie is in essence, an exploration on how anger and sorrow can turn us into bitter people who demand more ugly from the world in order to give us a sense of justice.
 
Much of that is of course accomplished by way of Viejo’s story and actions, and his downward spiral in this tale is both fascinating and heartbreaking when he is robbed of his ability to enjoy that aforementioned justice and well, if anything, this is just a dark character study. One that puts people who haven’t enjoyed much of anything in life squarely in the spotlight and well, that makes this film art in its own right since it’s fearless in telling its tale and while I can’t say I walked away from this motion picture with a smile on my face, it did what any good story is supposed to do, it evoked a reaction and it caught my attention. So, if by chance you’re curious on checking out this release, do so with an open mind and do your best to detach yourself from this rough slice of life, because there’s no joy to be found in this one, just the tough parts of our world we tend to forget about sometimes…