Movies, movies, movies, movies, movies
Nov. 16th, 2009 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grrgoylNow, as promised, a buttload of movies no one cares about.
Cutting just in case somebody does, and yes for spoilers.
Drag Me to Hell:
I thought this looked properly scary in the ads. The thing is, I forgot I hate about Sam Raimi what probably Sam Raimi fans love about Sam Raimi: his gore is so over the top it crosses clear over to cartoons. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? without the animations spliced in.
Lindsay Lohan (I know it isn't Lindsey Lohan, but that's who she reminds me of -- ummm, pre-skankazoid, pre-lesbian, pre-rehab Lindsay -- and I'm too lazy to go look up the actual actress)...where was I? Lindsay Lohan is a young, fresh-faced loan officer at a bank, eager to rise in the ranks. She's in fierce competition with a creepy, slimy, ass-kissing guy, who just started at the bank but is "very aggressive." Serves her right for working at Bank of Good Ol' Boys America.
The next case on her desk is an ancient gypsy woman, and just so we're clear that she's evil there's a whole completely unnecessary and stomach-turning scene of her removing her chewing tobacco-stained dentures and resting them on Lindsay's desk blotter. Thanks, Sam Raimi.
She's there to beg for an extension on her mortgage for the third time. Lindsay could do the compassionate thing and grant it (ending the movie right there), or do the Good Ol' Boy thing and deny it. I don't think I need to mention which way she goes. The old woman doesn't take it well, and in fact ambushes Lindsay later in the deserted parking garage in a quite exciting fight sequence that takes place almost entirely inside Lindsay's car; at the end of which the woman manages to rip a button off her coat, proclaiming triumphantly, "Lamia" (well, she said it more like "Laaaaaameeeeeaaaaaaaa," no doubt exhaling a cloud of stank while doing so, because she's totz evil) and tossing it back to her.
Oh yes, and Lindsay's boyfriend/husband is Justin "Hi, I'm a Mac" Long, leading me to wonder if it was a coincidence that the entire movie is littered with Apple products. No really, it's almost comical. The day after her assault (or maybe it was before....makes more sense for it to be before) she presents him with an apparently rare collector's coin that she found in normal circulation -- a "standing liberty" coin. He makes a big show of sealing it in an envelope. Probably to keep it from getting shuffled in with other coins in his bag, I figured.
On the way home after the assault Lindsay insists they drop in on a psychic, who doesn't have good news. He can tell she's been cursed and hustles her out of his shop in fear (kind of like the psychic in Paranormal Activity -- why is it the guys who are supposed to be helpful and knowledgeable are always the first ones running for the hills?)
Then Lindsay starts being stalked by something with cloven hooves (seen in silhouette from under a door) that can raise a punishing tornado in her bedroom and pummel her about effortlessly.
Skipping, skipping, skipping... lots more scary stuff happens. Lindsay goes back to the psychic, who reveals that the Lamia (def 1. A monster represented as a serpent with the head and breasts of a woman that ate children and sucked the blood from men. 2. A female vampire) is a very bad-ass demon who in three days will come to drag the owner of the cursed object to hell (he doesn't actually say "drag them to hell," the title phrase is never actually used in the movie. Sorry,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mmmrorschach).
Lindsay goes back to the gypsy woman to beg forgiveness and get her to lift the curse, except bummer, she died. Making the whole dispute somewhat ironic because now she no longer needs the house that started it all.
From this point the movie gets kind of ludicrous. The psychic decides to take the least efficient route -- lure the demon in and trap him in the body of a goat. As if demons are really that stupid. They stage a very elaborate seance with a renowned medium, which is ultimately unsuccessful. The demon ends up in the goat and speaks through it, but then escapes again (it turns out the goat had to be CGI even before it started talking because it was acting so goofy, laying its head on people's laps and on the table and generally looking adorable when it was supposed to be terrified because it was going to be sacrificed. As if goats are really that smart).
Then (same night, you understand) the psychic says she can simply give the cursed object (the button, if you haven't sussed that out already) as a gift, passing along the curse to someone else. And makes a big show of sealing it in an envelope (can you see the end coming? Somehow I didn't). She makes what would be the obvious choice for me, slimy competitor guy at the bank -- who in the interim had stolen her big, career-making account, so he truly deserved no mercy. Except she shows him mercy and chickens out at the last minute.
Then she talks to the psychic again (it doesn't seem possible that this happened on the same night, but it must have because this is definitely the sequence of events) who confirms that she can also give the button to a dead person. She gets in the car with Justin to race off to a graveyard. On the way Justin brakes suddenly and all his mail and paperwork and whatnot slides onto the floor of the car. Lindsay frantically looks for her button in the envelope in the mess. Can you see the end coming? Somehow I still didn't.
At the graveyard Justin disappears (I must have blacked out. Either that or I'm really confusing the timeline here) and she digs the gypsy woman up, by hand (shovel), alone, in the pouring rain (naturally). It's still the same night despite the hole being six feet deep and perfectly rectangular -- is there a movie where someone digs up a grave and the hole isn't nice and neat on all four sides? Never mind that. The gypsy woman must be buried in Alaska during winter, because IT'S STILL THE SAME DAMN NIGHT. They would have had to start the seance the second the sun disappeared for this kind of time to go by and it still be night.
She finally gets to the coffin and vindictively shoves the still unopened envelope into the woman's mouth, screaming "CHOKE ON IT, BITCH!" as the floodwaters overtake her. She finally does something sensible and lets them float her to the top of the hole and out.
Can you see the end coming? Because I STILL didn't.
The next day, believing the nightmare to be over, Lindsay and Justin meet at the train station for a romantic getaway. He glowingly presents her with her button that he found in his car, asking if maybe she has his coin because they must have got switched. Well, why the hell didn't she open the damn envelope before cramming it in the gypsy's mouth? And why didn't he ever take his coin home if it was so great?
She backs onto the train tracks in horror, which open up into Hell's gaping maw and she's dragged down by grasping arms attached to unseen demons, but not before becoming a very, very bad CGI effect herself.
I know it's supposed to be a rollercoaster ride of comedy and terror (which is what I disliked about the Evil Dead series too -- sorry Sam Raimi fans), but mostly I was really disappointed we didn't even get to see the Lamia after all that cool foreshadowing. Couldn't they have spent the money on that instead of the really, really, really bad CGI Lindsay?
In summary, Sam Raimi is a taste I never really acquired. Far be it from me to diss a cult favorite, but his movies are supposed to be funny yet terrifying and succeed at neither for me.
~*~
Year One:
I won't bother to cut this one because it will be short and non-spoilery. Jack Black and Michael Cera are cavemen who somehow wander into Biblical times with a goal common to all men ever since: to not be seen as complete losers and maybe get laid.
I thought this was HI-LA-RIOUS. But I also laughed mightily when I subversively ordered Paul Blart: Mall Cop on Blu-ray (I thought that movie was funny, but not nearly as funny as ordering it on Blu-ray when the rest of civilization apparently loathed it so deeply). I recommend Kevin James in high def if you have the means.
So yeah, this went straight to my Amazon Christmas wishlist. But while I was over there I couldn't resist checking out some reviews. Some people agreed with me, the ones who went in with low expectations and just wanting something silly after a hard day at work. The vast majority, however, covered the spectrum from disgusted to outraged. Puzzling were the people quibbling over the complete lack of historical accuracy -- were they hoping for a Cliff notes version of a history class for their kids? Still more perplexing were the people who claimed to be lifelong Jack Black fans (wait, I'm not done) who felt this was far beneath him and a complete betrayal of his fans. They talked like he was coming from a stint in Shakespearean theater or something. Like how I imagine I would feel if Rickman suddenly decided to star in Jackass: The Movie. I wanted to smack every last one of them.
The most offensive was a guy speculating on Michael Cera's sexuality because of his tendency to play awkward geekboys who find it so hard to get with girls. I guess by his reasoning all nerds must be gay. Him I wanted to smack hardest of all.
But yeah, this one is worth at least a rental. Just be warned, it's no Twelfth Night.
~*~
Another winner is Zombieland. Tery and I both called this America's answer to Shaun of the Dead, only a "buddy road trip movie...with zombies." Funny, action-packed, romantic (or dare I say bro-mantic?) with a kick-ass soundtrack. In fact, the only way it could have been better was if Michael Cera had starred instead of Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland...some sort of witty comment should go here), but what can you do? Not particularly scary per se (until you get to the very malevolent-looking zombie clown at the end that was pictured in every single article about the movie ever written)
Just in case you missed it
but the "Rules of Zombieland" devised by our hero popping up in 3D throughout the movie were very Stranger Than Fiction, very Fight Club. Me likey. Sadly, this won't be out on DVD until February 2010, as I learned when I rushed to add it to my wishlist.
~*~
The Fourth Kind. I usually try not to let reviews influence me, but in this case I agreed with them 100%. Specifically the director took what might have been a halfway decent alien abduction film and bent so far over backwards trying to convince us it was based on "actual events" that it's virtually unwatchable. I mean by using split screens through probably 75% of the film, one half the "actual footage" of interviews and therapy sessions, the other half the actors re-enacting them simultaneously line for line. You just want to scream at the screen, "WE BELIEVE YOU. IT REALLY HAPPENED. PLEASE JUST LET THE ACTORS DO THEIR JOBS."
Only it was hard to know what to believe. As one reviewer pointed out, they go to such lengths to protect the identities of the people involved, yet "Dr. Tyler" herself (played by Milla) appears in extreme closeup quite frequently. Isn't it possible SOMEONE would recognize her if she was a real person and these were real events, especially in such a miniscule town as Nome, Alaska? You'd think.
All the "video documentation" of any real alien activity is conveniently distorted and fuzzed out too badly to see, leaving us with a lot of scenes of hypnotized people screaming on her couch and her own increasingly frazzled testimony. Lots of people being unable to describe exactly what they saw but terrified nevertheless. It seems the abduction theory is the first thing that pops up and no effort whatsoever is wasted in exploring any other possibilities. By the end of the film, it looks like Dr. Tyler (the "real" one and Milla) is just a raving lunatic.
When Tery asked how I liked the movie, my only comment was, "Well, I'm 6 bucks poorer" (thank god for matinees). Don't waste your money on this. Rent instead Fire in the Sky if you want a truly terrifying alien abduction film.
~*~
Since it was Halloween I was reminded of the After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films To Die For, that I've had such a love/hate relationship with in the past. My Netflix queue was looking kind of...empty, so I decided to take the series back one last time.
From Within: I don't remember much about this movie, which isn't to say I didn't like it.
People start dying mysteriously in a tiny God-fearing 'burb. Before they die they see their own doppelgänger, that appears to have already gone through the death they will shortly experience. Creepy. What's kind of cool is the doppelgänger doesn't actually kill them, just scares them into doing something stupid, that more often than not looks like suicide when the body is found (and whoever finds the body becomes the next to die).
The town is full of Evangelicals except for one outcast family of Wiccans, who are all emo and gorgeous. I swear the brother was supposed to be this movie's answer to Edward Cullen, he was so dreamy. And emo. No sparkles though.
The heroine turns to him for help when she appears to be the next to die, and learns it was his family that initiated the curse on the whole town in revenge for their mother being persecuted as a witch and burned "accidentally" (but everyone knows it was no accident).
Over the short course of the film the brother has developed feelings for the heroine and doesn't want her to die, but he has to sacrifice himself to break the curse his brother started (he killed himself in the first scene to get things rolling). The heroine's jealous Jesusfreak boyfriend shows up and kills him before he can though, so the curse continues, resulting in the most unique credit crawl I've ever seen over scenes of everyone in the town in various tableaus of death. Nice.
As Horrorfest films go, I've certainly seen far, far worse. It reminded me strongly of the Buffy episode "Gingerbread," where the self-righteous and bloodthirsty Christians are scarier than the monsters. I like movies that do this, it reinforces my already established opinion of religious fanatics.
~*~
Autopsy: A group of kids are partying down at Mardi Gras. On the way home the screen goes blank and we hear a car crash (low budget). As they slowly realize their situation, they realize they've hit a pedestrian as well as he crawls from under the car.
Suddenly an ambulance appears (they're in the middle of nowhere and no one called them. They don't think this is at all odd). At this point my medical training kicked in, making it very hard to suspend my disbelief: the EMTs scurry over to the guy under the car, yanking him out without any regard for spinal injuries. They recommend all the kids jump into the ambulance to get checked out at the hospital -- usually ambulances don't have room for more than one passenger. Except this one does, because there isn't any equipment at all in the back, something else the kids don't notice. Once at the hospital, they have to deal with a Southern belle of a triage nurse, who insists they have to wait to be seen one at a time because they're so overwhelmed since Katrina -- yet there's no evidence of a single other patient there.
Also you know you shouldn't trust at least one of the EMTs, because he's Michael Bowen who played one of The Others in "Lost" and in general is very good at not looking quite right.
I had to close my eyes and repeat the advice of my horror fan, Frank: "If people did sensible things in horror movies, they'd be very, very short."
One by one the kids get taken, though for what nefarious purpose we don't know until we meet Robert Patrick, head surgeon and T-1000 (who, incidentally, was also in "Lost" AND Fire in the Sky) (also incidentally I suspect this is where the car crash budget went. Robert "T-1000" Patrick is at least a B-list celebrity, isn't he?). It turns out he's a brilliant but insane transplant doctor who's conducting radical experiments in live organ harvesting (on not completely willing donors) to save his wife's life. (Robert comments humorously on the bonus featurette that his character is just misunderstood....his motivation isn't at all evil but done out of love).
There's one gripping scene where the heroine is sneaking up on the other EMT (heavily tattooed, very inappropriate for his line of work) to steal his cell phone while he's....polishing human hands. The scene goes on long enough for us to wonder what the hell he's doing. I at first thought maybe he was buffing off the fingerprints to erase the victims' identities, but he's clearly focusing his energy on the palms. Bizarre.
A cop shows up in response to her call and for one second I was afraid this was one of those "everyone in the town is in on it" stories, but I was wrong, fortunately.
After all of her companions are dead our heroine soldiers on because she wants to find her boyfriend, who was taken first. She finally succeeds, revealing a pretty gruesome scene that I won't forget soon: he's barely alive on a gurney and all of his organs are suspended in the air above him in a big daisy-chain circle, presumably each individually hooked up to Mrs. T-1000 (in the next room). That was pretty awesome, actually, if perhaps not the most logical way to use organs in a transplant.
The movie has two endings, and as usual I preferred the deleted one. They went with the heroine being victorious and getting the doctor on a gurney at her mercy. The one I liked she (and her organs) ended up replacing her boyfriend. When will Hollywood start asking for my opinion?
Apart from the name Autopsy making really little or no sense, this was also a surprisingly good offering from the Horrorfest. Gory but not cartoon gory like Sam Raimi. Violent but not excessively torture killer violent like Hostel (well, apart from one scene).
~*~
The Broken: Speaking of B-list celebrities, this movie boasts Lena Yummy.....errrr, Headey (300, Brothers Grimm) and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Burn After Reading plus many, many, many others).
It was easy to see how they could afford two big names, because the movie is very minimalist. Lots and lots and lots of flyover shots of London (the Gherkin should practically get first billing), and lots of scenes of Lena looking introspective and disturbed, and not a whole lot else going on.
Gina (Headey) is a radiologist who gets in a terrible head-on car collision. Afterwards she sees what looks like her doppelgänger about town. This frightens her, but not as much as the fact that her boyfriend Stefan has suddenly started staring at her resentfully and silently, and in her dreams he's transformed into a slavering beast that salivates all over her during rough sex.
Quit it, Horrorfest, you're scaring me
There are also lots of mirrors breaking everywhere that no one seems to find odd.
I won't make my review as drawn out as the movie. Essentially behind the mirrors (all mirrors) live our evil, body-snatching doppelgängers, waiting for a chance to burst through the wall and hijack our lives from us. I say "body-snatching" because this reminded me most acutely of that classic horror Invasion of the Body Snatchers that remains chilling to this day, with those already snatched watching silently and conspiratorially after the still-human leaves the scene.
It was very slow to get started, but once it did the creep factor was very, very high in this one. The only thing I didn't like was the ending, and I'll tell you why: ***SPOILER! SPOILER!*** Ultimately Gina puts the pieces together, only to realize that she's already been killed and SHE is the doppelgänger -- which didn't make a whole lot of sense, as the other doppelgängers are all emotionless hive mind creatures that seem to be on-board from the get-go, so why was Gina acting human all this time? In fact, when she finds her dead body she weeps and weeps, but then in the next scene she's suddenly joined her fellow body snatchers in evil, sending her still-human brother running in terror. Made no sense, I tell you. But I'll forgive it in light of Lena's sheer sexiness.
Again, this movie continues the trend of slowly, tentatively restoring my faith in this series. Of course, there are still five more that could easily shatter it again. We're not out of the woods yet.
~*~
Haven't seen the movie yet, but after seeing this trailer twice I've decided it might be worth a look-see. But I'm also a sucker for a really awesome song in a trailer, in this case Placebo's redo of "Running Up That Hill." Of course, it works a lot better with that throbbing bass pumping on movie theater speakers.
C'mon, it can't be sillier than Twilight.
Cutting just in case somebody does, and yes for spoilers.
Drag Me to Hell:
I thought this looked properly scary in the ads. The thing is, I forgot I hate about Sam Raimi what probably Sam Raimi fans love about Sam Raimi: his gore is so over the top it crosses clear over to cartoons. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? without the animations spliced in.
Lindsay Lohan (I know it isn't Lindsey Lohan, but that's who she reminds me of -- ummm, pre-skankazoid, pre-lesbian, pre-rehab Lindsay -- and I'm too lazy to go look up the actual actress)...where was I? Lindsay Lohan is a young, fresh-faced loan officer at a bank, eager to rise in the ranks. She's in fierce competition with a creepy, slimy, ass-kissing guy, who just started at the bank but is "very aggressive." Serves her right for working at Bank of Good Ol' Boys America.
The next case on her desk is an ancient gypsy woman, and just so we're clear that she's evil there's a whole completely unnecessary and stomach-turning scene of her removing her chewing tobacco-stained dentures and resting them on Lindsay's desk blotter. Thanks, Sam Raimi.
She's there to beg for an extension on her mortgage for the third time. Lindsay could do the compassionate thing and grant it (ending the movie right there), or do the Good Ol' Boy thing and deny it. I don't think I need to mention which way she goes. The old woman doesn't take it well, and in fact ambushes Lindsay later in the deserted parking garage in a quite exciting fight sequence that takes place almost entirely inside Lindsay's car; at the end of which the woman manages to rip a button off her coat, proclaiming triumphantly, "Lamia" (well, she said it more like "Laaaaaameeeeeaaaaaaaa," no doubt exhaling a cloud of stank while doing so, because she's totz evil) and tossing it back to her.
Oh yes, and Lindsay's boyfriend/husband is Justin "Hi, I'm a Mac" Long, leading me to wonder if it was a coincidence that the entire movie is littered with Apple products. No really, it's almost comical. The day after her assault (or maybe it was before....makes more sense for it to be before) she presents him with an apparently rare collector's coin that she found in normal circulation -- a "standing liberty" coin. He makes a big show of sealing it in an envelope. Probably to keep it from getting shuffled in with other coins in his bag, I figured.
On the way home after the assault Lindsay insists they drop in on a psychic, who doesn't have good news. He can tell she's been cursed and hustles her out of his shop in fear (kind of like the psychic in Paranormal Activity -- why is it the guys who are supposed to be helpful and knowledgeable are always the first ones running for the hills?)
Then Lindsay starts being stalked by something with cloven hooves (seen in silhouette from under a door) that can raise a punishing tornado in her bedroom and pummel her about effortlessly.
Skipping, skipping, skipping... lots more scary stuff happens. Lindsay goes back to the psychic, who reveals that the Lamia (def 1. A monster represented as a serpent with the head and breasts of a woman that ate children and sucked the blood from men. 2. A female vampire) is a very bad-ass demon who in three days will come to drag the owner of the cursed object to hell (he doesn't actually say "drag them to hell," the title phrase is never actually used in the movie. Sorry,
mmmrorschach). Lindsay goes back to the gypsy woman to beg forgiveness and get her to lift the curse, except bummer, she died. Making the whole dispute somewhat ironic because now she no longer needs the house that started it all.
From this point the movie gets kind of ludicrous. The psychic decides to take the least efficient route -- lure the demon in and trap him in the body of a goat. As if demons are really that stupid. They stage a very elaborate seance with a renowned medium, which is ultimately unsuccessful. The demon ends up in the goat and speaks through it, but then escapes again (it turns out the goat had to be CGI even before it started talking because it was acting so goofy, laying its head on people's laps and on the table and generally looking adorable when it was supposed to be terrified because it was going to be sacrificed. As if goats are really that smart).
Then (same night, you understand) the psychic says she can simply give the cursed object (the button, if you haven't sussed that out already) as a gift, passing along the curse to someone else. And makes a big show of sealing it in an envelope (can you see the end coming? Somehow I didn't). She makes what would be the obvious choice for me, slimy competitor guy at the bank -- who in the interim had stolen her big, career-making account, so he truly deserved no mercy. Except she shows him mercy and chickens out at the last minute.
Then she talks to the psychic again (it doesn't seem possible that this happened on the same night, but it must have because this is definitely the sequence of events) who confirms that she can also give the button to a dead person. She gets in the car with Justin to race off to a graveyard. On the way Justin brakes suddenly and all his mail and paperwork and whatnot slides onto the floor of the car. Lindsay frantically looks for her button in the envelope in the mess. Can you see the end coming? Somehow I still didn't.
At the graveyard Justin disappears (I must have blacked out. Either that or I'm really confusing the timeline here) and she digs the gypsy woman up, by hand (shovel), alone, in the pouring rain (naturally). It's still the same night despite the hole being six feet deep and perfectly rectangular -- is there a movie where someone digs up a grave and the hole isn't nice and neat on all four sides? Never mind that. The gypsy woman must be buried in Alaska during winter, because IT'S STILL THE SAME DAMN NIGHT. They would have had to start the seance the second the sun disappeared for this kind of time to go by and it still be night.
She finally gets to the coffin and vindictively shoves the still unopened envelope into the woman's mouth, screaming "CHOKE ON IT, BITCH!" as the floodwaters overtake her. She finally does something sensible and lets them float her to the top of the hole and out.
Can you see the end coming? Because I STILL didn't.
The next day, believing the nightmare to be over, Lindsay and Justin meet at the train station for a romantic getaway. He glowingly presents her with her button that he found in his car, asking if maybe she has his coin because they must have got switched. Well, why the hell didn't she open the damn envelope before cramming it in the gypsy's mouth? And why didn't he ever take his coin home if it was so great?
She backs onto the train tracks in horror, which open up into Hell's gaping maw and she's dragged down by grasping arms attached to unseen demons, but not before becoming a very, very bad CGI effect herself.
I know it's supposed to be a rollercoaster ride of comedy and terror (which is what I disliked about the Evil Dead series too -- sorry Sam Raimi fans), but mostly I was really disappointed we didn't even get to see the Lamia after all that cool foreshadowing. Couldn't they have spent the money on that instead of the really, really, really bad CGI Lindsay?
In summary, Sam Raimi is a taste I never really acquired. Far be it from me to diss a cult favorite, but his movies are supposed to be funny yet terrifying and succeed at neither for me.
~*~
Year One:
I won't bother to cut this one because it will be short and non-spoilery. Jack Black and Michael Cera are cavemen who somehow wander into Biblical times with a goal common to all men ever since: to not be seen as complete losers and maybe get laid.
I thought this was HI-LA-RIOUS. But I also laughed mightily when I subversively ordered Paul Blart: Mall Cop on Blu-ray (I thought that movie was funny, but not nearly as funny as ordering it on Blu-ray when the rest of civilization apparently loathed it so deeply). I recommend Kevin James in high def if you have the means.
So yeah, this went straight to my Amazon Christmas wishlist. But while I was over there I couldn't resist checking out some reviews. Some people agreed with me, the ones who went in with low expectations and just wanting something silly after a hard day at work. The vast majority, however, covered the spectrum from disgusted to outraged. Puzzling were the people quibbling over the complete lack of historical accuracy -- were they hoping for a Cliff notes version of a history class for their kids? Still more perplexing were the people who claimed to be lifelong Jack Black fans (wait, I'm not done) who felt this was far beneath him and a complete betrayal of his fans. They talked like he was coming from a stint in Shakespearean theater or something. Like how I imagine I would feel if Rickman suddenly decided to star in Jackass: The Movie. I wanted to smack every last one of them.
The most offensive was a guy speculating on Michael Cera's sexuality because of his tendency to play awkward geekboys who find it so hard to get with girls. I guess by his reasoning all nerds must be gay. Him I wanted to smack hardest of all.
But yeah, this one is worth at least a rental. Just be warned, it's no Twelfth Night.
~*~
Another winner is Zombieland. Tery and I both called this America's answer to Shaun of the Dead, only a "buddy road trip movie...with zombies." Funny, action-packed, romantic (or dare I say bro-mantic?) with a kick-ass soundtrack. In fact, the only way it could have been better was if Michael Cera had starred instead of Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland...some sort of witty comment should go here), but what can you do? Not particularly scary per se (until you get to the very malevolent-looking zombie clown at the end that was pictured in every single article about the movie ever written)
Just in case you missed it
but the "Rules of Zombieland" devised by our hero popping up in 3D throughout the movie were very Stranger Than Fiction, very Fight Club. Me likey. Sadly, this won't be out on DVD until February 2010, as I learned when I rushed to add it to my wishlist.
~*~
The Fourth Kind. I usually try not to let reviews influence me, but in this case I agreed with them 100%. Specifically the director took what might have been a halfway decent alien abduction film and bent so far over backwards trying to convince us it was based on "actual events" that it's virtually unwatchable. I mean by using split screens through probably 75% of the film, one half the "actual footage" of interviews and therapy sessions, the other half the actors re-enacting them simultaneously line for line. You just want to scream at the screen, "WE BELIEVE YOU. IT REALLY HAPPENED. PLEASE JUST LET THE ACTORS DO THEIR JOBS."
Only it was hard to know what to believe. As one reviewer pointed out, they go to such lengths to protect the identities of the people involved, yet "Dr. Tyler" herself (played by Milla) appears in extreme closeup quite frequently. Isn't it possible SOMEONE would recognize her if she was a real person and these were real events, especially in such a miniscule town as Nome, Alaska? You'd think.
All the "video documentation" of any real alien activity is conveniently distorted and fuzzed out too badly to see, leaving us with a lot of scenes of hypnotized people screaming on her couch and her own increasingly frazzled testimony. Lots of people being unable to describe exactly what they saw but terrified nevertheless. It seems the abduction theory is the first thing that pops up and no effort whatsoever is wasted in exploring any other possibilities. By the end of the film, it looks like Dr. Tyler (the "real" one and Milla) is just a raving lunatic.
When Tery asked how I liked the movie, my only comment was, "Well, I'm 6 bucks poorer" (thank god for matinees). Don't waste your money on this. Rent instead Fire in the Sky if you want a truly terrifying alien abduction film.
~*~
Since it was Halloween I was reminded of the After Dark Horrorfest: 8 Films To Die For, that I've had such a love/hate relationship with in the past. My Netflix queue was looking kind of...empty, so I decided to take the series back one last time.
From Within: I don't remember much about this movie, which isn't to say I didn't like it.
People start dying mysteriously in a tiny God-fearing 'burb. Before they die they see their own doppelgänger, that appears to have already gone through the death they will shortly experience. Creepy. What's kind of cool is the doppelgänger doesn't actually kill them, just scares them into doing something stupid, that more often than not looks like suicide when the body is found (and whoever finds the body becomes the next to die).
The town is full of Evangelicals except for one outcast family of Wiccans, who are all emo and gorgeous. I swear the brother was supposed to be this movie's answer to Edward Cullen, he was so dreamy. And emo. No sparkles though.
The heroine turns to him for help when she appears to be the next to die, and learns it was his family that initiated the curse on the whole town in revenge for their mother being persecuted as a witch and burned "accidentally" (but everyone knows it was no accident).
Over the short course of the film the brother has developed feelings for the heroine and doesn't want her to die, but he has to sacrifice himself to break the curse his brother started (he killed himself in the first scene to get things rolling). The heroine's jealous Jesusfreak boyfriend shows up and kills him before he can though, so the curse continues, resulting in the most unique credit crawl I've ever seen over scenes of everyone in the town in various tableaus of death. Nice.
As Horrorfest films go, I've certainly seen far, far worse. It reminded me strongly of the Buffy episode "Gingerbread," where the self-righteous and bloodthirsty Christians are scarier than the monsters. I like movies that do this, it reinforces my already established opinion of religious fanatics.
~*~
Autopsy: A group of kids are partying down at Mardi Gras. On the way home the screen goes blank and we hear a car crash (low budget). As they slowly realize their situation, they realize they've hit a pedestrian as well as he crawls from under the car.
Suddenly an ambulance appears (they're in the middle of nowhere and no one called them. They don't think this is at all odd). At this point my medical training kicked in, making it very hard to suspend my disbelief: the EMTs scurry over to the guy under the car, yanking him out without any regard for spinal injuries. They recommend all the kids jump into the ambulance to get checked out at the hospital -- usually ambulances don't have room for more than one passenger. Except this one does, because there isn't any equipment at all in the back, something else the kids don't notice. Once at the hospital, they have to deal with a Southern belle of a triage nurse, who insists they have to wait to be seen one at a time because they're so overwhelmed since Katrina -- yet there's no evidence of a single other patient there.
Also you know you shouldn't trust at least one of the EMTs, because he's Michael Bowen who played one of The Others in "Lost" and in general is very good at not looking quite right.
I had to close my eyes and repeat the advice of my horror fan, Frank: "If people did sensible things in horror movies, they'd be very, very short."
One by one the kids get taken, though for what nefarious purpose we don't know until we meet Robert Patrick, head surgeon and T-1000 (who, incidentally, was also in "Lost" AND Fire in the Sky) (also incidentally I suspect this is where the car crash budget went. Robert "T-1000" Patrick is at least a B-list celebrity, isn't he?). It turns out he's a brilliant but insane transplant doctor who's conducting radical experiments in live organ harvesting (on not completely willing donors) to save his wife's life. (Robert comments humorously on the bonus featurette that his character is just misunderstood....his motivation isn't at all evil but done out of love).
There's one gripping scene where the heroine is sneaking up on the other EMT (heavily tattooed, very inappropriate for his line of work) to steal his cell phone while he's....polishing human hands. The scene goes on long enough for us to wonder what the hell he's doing. I at first thought maybe he was buffing off the fingerprints to erase the victims' identities, but he's clearly focusing his energy on the palms. Bizarre.
A cop shows up in response to her call and for one second I was afraid this was one of those "everyone in the town is in on it" stories, but I was wrong, fortunately.
After all of her companions are dead our heroine soldiers on because she wants to find her boyfriend, who was taken first. She finally succeeds, revealing a pretty gruesome scene that I won't forget soon: he's barely alive on a gurney and all of his organs are suspended in the air above him in a big daisy-chain circle, presumably each individually hooked up to Mrs. T-1000 (in the next room). That was pretty awesome, actually, if perhaps not the most logical way to use organs in a transplant.
The movie has two endings, and as usual I preferred the deleted one. They went with the heroine being victorious and getting the doctor on a gurney at her mercy. The one I liked she (and her organs) ended up replacing her boyfriend. When will Hollywood start asking for my opinion?
Apart from the name Autopsy making really little or no sense, this was also a surprisingly good offering from the Horrorfest. Gory but not cartoon gory like Sam Raimi. Violent but not excessively torture killer violent like Hostel (well, apart from one scene).
~*~
The Broken: Speaking of B-list celebrities, this movie boasts Lena Yummy.....errrr, Headey (300, Brothers Grimm) and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Burn After Reading plus many, many, many others).
It was easy to see how they could afford two big names, because the movie is very minimalist. Lots and lots and lots of flyover shots of London (the Gherkin should practically get first billing), and lots of scenes of Lena looking introspective and disturbed, and not a whole lot else going on.
Gina (Headey) is a radiologist who gets in a terrible head-on car collision. Afterwards she sees what looks like her doppelgänger about town. This frightens her, but not as much as the fact that her boyfriend Stefan has suddenly started staring at her resentfully and silently, and in her dreams he's transformed into a slavering beast that salivates all over her during rough sex.
Quit it, Horrorfest, you're scaring me
There are also lots of mirrors breaking everywhere that no one seems to find odd.
I won't make my review as drawn out as the movie. Essentially behind the mirrors (all mirrors) live our evil, body-snatching doppelgängers, waiting for a chance to burst through the wall and hijack our lives from us. I say "body-snatching" because this reminded me most acutely of that classic horror Invasion of the Body Snatchers that remains chilling to this day, with those already snatched watching silently and conspiratorially after the still-human leaves the scene.
It was very slow to get started, but once it did the creep factor was very, very high in this one. The only thing I didn't like was the ending, and I'll tell you why: ***SPOILER! SPOILER!*** Ultimately Gina puts the pieces together, only to realize that she's already been killed and SHE is the doppelgänger -- which didn't make a whole lot of sense, as the other doppelgängers are all emotionless hive mind creatures that seem to be on-board from the get-go, so why was Gina acting human all this time? In fact, when she finds her dead body she weeps and weeps, but then in the next scene she's suddenly joined her fellow body snatchers in evil, sending her still-human brother running in terror. Made no sense, I tell you. But I'll forgive it in light of Lena's sheer sexiness.
Again, this movie continues the trend of slowly, tentatively restoring my faith in this series. Of course, there are still five more that could easily shatter it again. We're not out of the woods yet.
~*~
Haven't seen the movie yet, but after seeing this trailer twice I've decided it might be worth a look-see. But I'm also a sucker for a really awesome song in a trailer, in this case Placebo's redo of "Running Up That Hill." Of course, it works a lot better with that throbbing bass pumping on movie theater speakers.
C'mon, it can't be sillier than Twilight.
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Re: More than you ever needed to know about my relationship with horror
Date: 2009-11-20 03:11 am (UTC)I used to be absolutely terrified of scary movies when I was young, and then I went through the whole severe OCD episode, and after that I think I felt like nothing on screen could ever be as scary as what went on in my head, and how it made me feel. But it could also be a subconscious desire not to suspend disbelief because of that.
See, what I don't get about that is if zombies don't have the muscle power to run or even walk, how can they grab someone or use their jaws effectively? If the muscle was that deteriorated or weak, it seems that the only threat would be from them accidentally getting their teeth stuck in you and getting infected from that or something. A lot of the time they're depicted being able to bite quite hard, or sometimes being able to tear a person apart (even if it's a mob, that would require some strength). If that strength is caused by the infection or some crazy magic, it seems plausible that it could be diverted towards speed as well.
Ohhhhhh fictional science.