Legion: A Gift from God or the Devil?

"Legion" is sacrilegious, cheesy, melodramatic and absurd. 

The movie follows the fallen angel Michael as he tries to save a baby from unknown forces that are trying to keep it from being birthed. 

This is where the major sacrilage comes in.  The unknown forces are actually the holy army of heaven.  The movie claims that like Noah and the flood in the Bible, God is once again upset with humanity and trying to wipe them out of existance.  So basically, God wants an abortion. 

Michael ends up fighting some other angel (who cares which one).  He's killed and sent to heaven which is depicted as some shiny, flourecent eight-year-old's idea of heaven and not that of an intelligent, logical adult.

Legion's idea of Heaven

God then decides he was wrong about humanity and sends Michael to kill the angels that God had originally sent to kill the baby and it's never explained why in the name of God almighty the baby is the key to salvation.

As you can tell, the plot gets a little convuluted. 

Sacrilege aside, this movie tries extremely hard to be a good mainstream action movie. 

There's the usual action movie arch-types, inchluding the underdog protagonist who seems to be the nicest guy in the world yet still gets the short straw in life, the racial and social stereotypes that at first seem to be true, but are then undermined following some act of heroism, and  the badass action hero who arrives out of nowhere and speaks in cryptic messages.

The movie stars the guy from "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" as Jeep, the protagonist and protector of the baby.  Jeep is given most of the dramatic work including a fake and completely noiticable country accent. 

Excuse my little tyrade, but do the writers and director of this film think that country folk love automobiles so much they'd resort to naming their children after them.  And what's worse is that Jeep is named after the most dangerous and flippable of the automobiles -- no safety-minded parent would even consider naming their child Jeep. 

The movie's most ridiculousy cheesy moments come in the numerous self-aware, social commentating character soliloquoys as they wait for God to smite them.

"I've seen some people...who realize that the being lost is so close to being found."  Michael spouts that philosophical nugget as he is explaining to Jeep why he hasn't lost faith in humanity. 

Please, can someone tell me what that means?    

I don't know, but if you want more nonsense click on this link.

Legion tries too hard to provide some sort of religous and philosophical insight instead of actually focusing on being an entertaining action movie.

I guess when you try too hard to be a source of inspiration, you actually become a source of discouragement.  Words to live by.

The Last House on the Left: the last movie I want to see again

I am not an avid horror movie fan, but I expected more from West Craven. 

The premise: two girls (Mari and her friend) try to buy weed from a group of strangers, the strangers turn out to be escaped criminals, the criminals kidnap and rape the girls, and then unknowingly as they are trying to flee, the criminal's car breaks down outside of Mari's parent's house.

The parents then exact their revenge.

It sounds like a good plot that any current fan of the Saw movies or Hostel would enjoy, but the movie spends too much time focusing on the girls pre-kidnapping.  This is especially a problem when the movie is only around 80 minutes long.

I'm not entirely sure you could call this a bad movie.  I would define it as an odd experience that I am neither grateful I saw nor plan to ever see again. 

The movie features a number of violent rape scenes and mutilations, but it is the odd, non-rape, sex acts that are the most disturbing.  While the two kidnapped girls struggle and bang on the inside of a cars trunk, two of the kidnappers have sex.

This may seem chilling, but it is the fact that the male doesn't betray a single sign of emotion during this entire scene.

This all pales in comparison, however, to the infamous fellatio scene.

The mother of the now deceased Mari seductively lures the kidnapper outside.  She then performs fellatio on the (dare I say it?) poor guy for a solid 15 seconds before biting off his penis.  It is then assumed that the rapist/criminal bleeds to death from his injury.

I can't think of a more painful way to go.

Unless it's sticking numerous toothpicks in one's eyes while their skin is slowly carved off and then lemon juice is tossed on to their exposed areas.

This particular scene does have a bit of poetic justice however, being as the man was a rapist and he was relieved of his baby-makin' weapon. 

The movie ends with Mari's father slicing the last of the kidnappers/rapists up with a chainsaw.  And then, as the credits roll, all of the actors are shown smiling while soothing music plays.

Forget that the first 30 minutes of the movies played as some kind of anti-drug McGruff the crime dog movie.  Forget that the next 50 minutes featured an excruciating amount of hard-to-watch, violent rape scenes.  It is the last 5 minutes of credits that have me the most worked up.

Was this an easy affair?  Am I carefree and happy after spending 80 minutes of my life watching this? 

No. 

To Wes Craven: though I did not enjoy watching your movie, I would not even wish a mutilated stub of a sex organ upon you.