The Promotion stars very much like a normal civil competition between two same level employees working for a major supermarket chain, but inevitably ends up becoming a comedic war. What's great about The Promotion is it's a comedy style war that is actually funny. What makes the movie work is that it takes issues that might occur in real life and then pushes the envelope ever so slightly, you're laughing because you can actually envisage the things happening on screen happening in real life. You have overblown scenarios where political correctness has gone way to far, or the unpredictability of a customer who you feel you have bent over backwards for. Added to this you have situations with people that don't ever remember your name, obviously because you're in what they consider to be too menial a job to have anything of any significance to say. As I watched The Promotion I saw so many things that I could relate to through my life, or of the lives of others that surround me.

Sean William Scott best known as Stifler from the original American Pie movies gives us another silly performance, though this time just the right side of reality. Nowhere near as cocky as his American Pie character, Stauber is the sort of person that when he gets upset would literally throw his toys from the pram or go and have a damn good cry. Stauber has just that much humanness about him that you can really relate too. I find myself for the fourth time being pleased with this actors performance, I just wish that someone would offer him some more serious work.

Frizzy haired Reilly, a well known face in the movie industry this year is cementing his career in both comedy and serious roles. As Wahlner though, he is the character you love to hate, doing all the things wrong, yet treated like he has done everything right. But this is not a one sided piece, it's not all about Stauber being right and Wahlner being wrong, director and writer of the movie Steve Conrad makes very sure you see this as a two sided coin, showing the human side of Wahlner by giving him a loving family, and pressures that from the offset you do not expect.

Where I think The Promotion fails is in the abysmal casting of Lili Taylor as Reilly's wife Lori; and I must say that on a normal day I love Lili Taylor, I cannot get enough of this underused actress but... there needs to be a line drawn somewhere. For reasons best unknown it has been decided that Lori is from Scotland, this accent is so bad that it needs to be explained to the viewer too many times. When this movie hits Scottish cinemas I can foresee absolute outrage (that's if it makes it to Scottish cinemas). Taylor's accent is as much Pakistani as it is French, as much South African as it is Irish, biut one thing it clearly is not is Scottish, when the awards ceremonies come round Taylor will be their to receive the worst accent award. I cannot emphasise enough how bad this accent is, each time she opens her mouth you want to plant a fist in it, what on earth were the producers of this movie thinking of? Had they ever met someone from Scotland? Did they think it would be hip to make them sound like a mongrel race that nobody would want to EVER be associated with?

Each time Taylor came on screen, we covered our ears (quite literally) her involvement has little to do with this film, and if you can get passed this accent then The Promotion makes for one of the best comedies of the year. This is a movie you can really laugh at, it's well paced, it's real, and at the same time it's very silly. If you wish for the comedy of the first few Will Ferrell movies then it's here, only without Ferrell.

Reeker was a highly successful low budget movie, released in the UK under a stream of big hype, while I absolutely hated the movie, I do have to hand it to both Dave and Tina Illman (AKA Tina Payne) they pulled an amazing con trick, and must have achieved high profits from this movie. I guess with this in mind it was with no surprise that Dave and Tina would try to to replicate their success and this leads us on to...

No Mans Land: The Rise Of The Reeker

Beginning in 1978, the movie shows us the roots of the killer known as The Reeker, and allows us some insight into why the character smells so bad. And I have to commend the director here, this is rather like the original Reeker a fantastic opening, to what promises to be a good movie.

Promise however is a deceitful thing, and I did think to myself at one point that I really was going to enjoy this movie. But suddenly after much promise things went bad, I would go so far as to say worse than the original, now I appreciate that a sequel is rarely as good as the original, when the original is so bad where on earth is the story to go?

The cast are far better picked this time round, for me the most notable being Desmond Askew who I grew up watching in British kids school drama Grange Hill, here Askew delivers the best performance of the movie as a cocky casino robber, who meets with a rather unfortunate accident in his car, leaving him... Shall we say a little lacking upstairs? The movies Deputy Sherriff Harris is played by Michael Muhney who is probably best known as Sherriff Don Lamb in Veronica Mars. With star of television for 40 years Robert Pine the main cast is iced off. What is amazing, and I'm utterly thrilled about is that David has not tried to chuck the awful Tina into the mix again as is often the case with these sort of movies, instead she manages to stay on the right side of the camera, behind it.

Effects are pretty good; the make-up department really earned their cash here, with some fantastic scenes of gore; there are really good signs that this is not quite as low budget as the predecessor. While the CGI department do fantastic justice to Askew's head.

What I give to Dave is the fact that as a director he does have an incredibly good eye, his scenes are almost perfectly framed, some of the scenes in this low budget horror offering are as good as any big budget blockbuster. With cinematographer Mike Mickens close at hand the capturing of effects, action, and the desolation of Reeker's location is captured fantastically. What Dave cannot do however is work a script to his advantage, rather than let the characters develop as the movie progresses often their opening lines contain a nasty TV movie dialogue that gives the characters life story away, sometimes less is most definitely more. As for the story itself it's a little bit jumbled, Payne struggles to keep the movie franchise fresh by adding new bits, as well as trying to justify just how the Reeker appears, simply through a couple of explosions. There are also a number of "unexplained" incidents that no doubt if Payne was given an open mic on the subject he might imply that maybe "You just didn't get it!" Sadly for Payne this is not The Matrix, or anywhere near that quality. Payne's ultimate and I feel disrespectful final strike involving a child talking about his babysitter not only effectively defecates on Payne's work but gives sad promise that maybe Payne will ridicule us all again by returning to the franchise for a third instalment.

If by some freak incident you happened to enjoy the original Reeker, then I'm sure you will get a certain degree of satisfaction from this sequel, if however you enjoy life then head off out for a walk instead, there are better ways to spend your life than to watch this.

As for Dave, and I know that you'll be reading this, I take my hat off to you; in the previous movie it was pretty much all-round awful, whereas despite the deficits of the storyline you have grown and progressed far more as a director, obviously learning a lot since your last encounter with the Reeker. And while I criticise your work harshly you're a far cleverer man than me, and I commend your devotion to your trade. I sincerely hope that I'll be able to enjoy your next movie.

No Man's Land: The Rise Of The Reeker I suspect will greet European audiences in the form of a straight to DVD product.

It's hard to know where to start with this movie because to be honest with you it's all kind of a blur. Following the story of Martel "Too Sweet" Cardone (Leon Isaac Kennedy), from the outside world into prison; once inside Too Sweet through bullying decides it's important to fight in the prison boxing team, from here on out it's all kind of....Yawn.

I try never to write off a movie too soon, and in doing so watched Penitentiary until the very end, what I sadly was doing was not giving a movie a chance, but literally throwing away a hundred minutes of my life. Watching this movie is rather like spending 20 years doing a job you hate, it's offensive and almost painful. The story itself staggers between bad storytelling to bad editing; this is the reason why I find trying to tell the movie in a review so much of a blur.

The movie is pretty much an opportunity to display black people in the worst possible light stereotyping them into the category of rapists, drug addicts, murderers and crazy folks. From the first ten minutes of the movie you really get the feeling that this is a piece of racist paraphernalia. What is most sad about the movie is that is written and directed by a black filmmaker known as Jamaa Fanaka, committing the offence of selling his own race down the river.

After thirty minutes of stumbled storytelling the movie moves onto the fighting, which seems to dominate the following forty minutes. While Too Sweet fights in the ring, some of his fellow inmates use the opportunity to subdue some visiting women from the nearby women's prison, when i say subdue they have a choice have sex, or be raped; used as a tool of pleasure, obviously this is all women are worth. While having to endure the unending series of systematic sexual activity you are forced to hear the sound of the boxing match over the top of the lovemaking, further annoyance is that this sound is on a loop, so every few seconds you here the same shrieks and chants along with some wailing noises that you could only associate with a hippo standing on a spear.

All the way through the movie you feel you're not watching a serious piece of cult cinema, but a spoof; it resembles in some ways the Scary Movie films, with black people with over the top afro's smoking cigarettes through their ears. While another individual runs round with foam pouring from his mouth and covering his face while holding a monkey, demanding to see the naked rear end of whomever he finds offensive. I spent a great proportion of the movie laughing my socks off, but not at the great humour playing out on screen, but because of the sheer absurdity of the piece.

Further annoyance is delivered in the fact that when the cast are not talking in a as yet unchartered "negro slang", they are more often than not inaudible due to poor care of the print over the 30 years since the movie was made, in bringing the movie to DVD no time or effort has been spent trying to improve the sound, or the incredibly grainy images on screen.

What started out mildly amusing because of the overall "badness" of the piece soon turned to annoyance, I was annoyed that I was watching a movie that literally stood as a piece of intolerable racism at a time in American history where all cultures were supposedly being embraced after years of inequality.

 

Before I start, I feel as though I should mention that there is one kind of sequel that is the exception to this rule of "Sucky Sequels" and sometimes can even be better than its first. And that is the middle part of a trilogy. The second Spider-man, The Empire Strikes Back and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 were all shinning examples of this. Of course having a sequel that isn't an insult to the film industry does come with its price. Yes, if you achieve this the movie god will even things out by making sure you create a third part that will more than likely resemble something heinous, that will no doubt have audiences everywhere loosing their lunch over the cinematic filth you have infected the world with... or Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

Anyway the fact is that more often than not sequels are poor. This is a widely accepted rule (a very similar rule exists for Michael Bay films). So the part that confuses me is that despite this fact, the studios keep pumping out sequel after sequel like there simply aren't any original ideas left (Which I can assure you is NOT the case). I mean, look at the list of last year's summer releases for example. We had, Spider-man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates 3, Bourne 3, Nightwatch 2, Ocean's 13, Hostel 2, Fantastic 4 2, Bruce Almighty 2, Die Hard 4, Resident Evil 3, Harry Potter 5 and the ever disastrous Rush Hour 3. Oh and Transformers, which won't be gracing us with a sequel until NEXT year.

For a while I though the reason sequels sucked was deeply connected to the lack of story left to tell after the first. This is because movies are generally made and designed to be standalones to cover the unfortunate event of not getting a sequel (although this particular fate is becoming very rare). They are usually a single story that begins and ends within its 2 hour time frame making it very difficult to beat any more story out of the dead horse that is your movie. As history has taught us beating a dead horse mostly produces nothing more than a twitch of a story, the one thread you didn't tie up in the first that you couldn't possibly fill 2 hours of screen time with unless you are stupid enough to think you can tell the same basic story again but with a different, almost identical, central character who will mysteriously be portrayed by a much cheaper actor than the first time. (See: Triple X: 2)

But of course this can't be the reason why sequels leave me dead inside. Because the studios are so determined to flood the world with 7 movies for each single idea, that alot of big movies get signed for multi-movie deals before they even make the first, leaving no excuses for poor storytelling. They should have plenty of chance to develop and could purposely leave alot of story to tell. And on top of that many modern day movies are based on already existing products with ongoing storys, such as books, TV shows, comics or old movies they are remaking. So the above theory of lack of story can't possibly explain the percentage of sequels that I would rather eat frame by frame with a side order of cod-liver oil than watch.

So, is it the budget? Do sequels have lower quality due to a lack of money and therefore a lack of talent involved in the production? Well, let me nip this one in the bud in a more quick and concise way. No. That is NOT the problem. A high percentage of these sequels have similar or higher budgets than the originals. Unless of course you referring to the dreaded straight to DVD sequel, a technique invented by Disney and whored out by the American Pie franchise which I believe is on its 23rd sequel. Maybe the repetitiveness of the central characters and themes are what cause the huge loss of quality? No, no and nope. TV series and comic books rehash the same themes and characters all the time are very popular and never seem to drop in quality (Well, not never, but mostly). This is the same for other forms of ongoing series. So this can't be the explanation I was looking for.

Maybe it's because with a sequel you have nothing to loose. Let's do some role play. Imagine you directed a film that EVERYONE loved. The studio, desperate to cash in on the success of the first, step into your office and offer you more money for another dose of movie magic. So you sit there, inflated head and all, behind a desk build from the wads of cash the last film made you with a copy of "Empire" lay open at the page where they call your film a masterpiece, considering the offer regarding the sequel. What would you do? Oh stop wasting my time; you're going to say yes. And besides, you did always want that money chair to go with you desk. That ego trip is certainly going to convince you of your genius and make you feel as though you can pull it off twice. And you know what, it will make millions despite your overconfidence. Why? Because you're first one was so good people trusted you to produce quality again and lined up at the box office only to be disappointed at your half arsed attempt at a film. A film you barely remember filming because you spent most of the time on set looking through the most recent issue of the "Overpriced Crap" catalogue, considering which piece of furniture you will get if you go for a trilogy.

Ok, enough with the fantasy, I feel Iike I'm yelling at you and I don't want any of you loosing your grasp on reality and living under the delusion your film makers with ton's of money and the worlds most ominously titled catalogue. So anyway, is this ignorance the reason? Is this overconfidence on the part of staff what leads too overlooked quality? No. I can't think of ANY film maker who is so far up his own backside that his films suffer because of his arrogance, except for maybe Tim Burton. (Who of course hasn't made any sequels but thinks so highly of himself that he makes every single idea he has EVER had into a movie because of course he has no bad ideas. To the point where he thought his poetry needed portraying on the big screen.)

It could be the studios fault that sequels tend to be lacking. Maybe they put no effort into the projects because it is an endeavour that always guarantees profit. People will always pay to see more no matter how bad it is. I mean, come on, did you see how much money "Dumb and Dumber 2" made? You don't even have to advertise it because there is already an awareness of the product. But I doubt this is the reason myself because as a rule, the studios putting less input into a film usually benefits the movie. As long as they hire the right people for the job and supply the money they shouldn't have to do anything else because the quality of the film is the filmmaker's job. Their meddling, market research and ideas of what will and won't sell will produce nothing more than crap. (See: Daredevil/Electra)

So, now the big question, what can I conclude from all of this? Well I am sorry to disappoint but I have to say that after all my rambling I honestly can't give you the answer. Maybe it's a combination of all of the above or maybe it's just that our expectations are too high for sequels these days. To be honest, we should have learnt by now. Or maybe there is a separate and different reason for every single sequel out there to be awful. But saying that, I keeping thinking that the correlation between bad movies and sequels isn't a coincidence. I keep thinking that there has to be a explanation out there somewhere. Well, if there is I can't think of it and believe me. I have tried. So I guess you will have to put together your own conclusion. And for those of you too lazy to do so, here's something generic I put together earlier.

We should REALLY stop paying to go see them, and maybe the industry will take the hint and stop making them. (And if we are REALLY lucky, we might just achieve this before the release of Cloverfield 2.)

Thanks for reading.