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grrgoylTime again for some movie reviews.
The opening act: Paranormal Entity I spent the first ten minutes of this movie trying to figure out if it was a spoof of Paranormal Activity. It still might be.
Tommy and Samantha live with their mom despite being in their twenties. Tommy plays the part of Micah the cameraman, so we barely get a glimpse of him -- unfortunately we hear plenty, as he is a relentless mouth breather and seems to be perpetually out of breath.
Cameras are being set up due to complaints from the women of some odd activity. Tommy is skeptical, which is the only reason I can come up with to explain why Sam spends the entire movie (and I do mean ENTIRE) glaring resentfully at him. Seriously, apart from lots of screaming off-camera, the girl has about six lines to deliver. Lots of staring and pouting though.
Which might be for the best. Mom has plenty of lines, all of which only call attention to what a painfully bad actor she is. Absolutely excruciating. You really don't appreciate a good actor until you watch a bad one, and start to think maybe it's not as easy as it looks.
She provides the back story, that they recently lost dad in a car accident. Mom tried to contact him by writing him letters, and might have woken something else.
So anyway, cameras are positioned in the women's bedrooms and the living room (?), even though most if not all the activity is centered on Sam. Cue lots of boring footage of people sleeping in night vision, very similar to PA.
The first event is mom sleepwalking into the living room and scrawling a word on a piece of paper, "Maron." Tommy doesn't know what to make of it. Sam glares resentfully. It never occurs to anyone to maybe Google it.
(At first I thought there wasn't even a computer in the house -- it's pretty sparsely furnished, looking like the set designer maxed out the Pier One card. There's a TV that's only ever turned on by the entity. Hell, there aren't even any clothes in Samantha's closet (props master? No woman on this planet has an empty closet in her bedroom unless she's in the process of moving out or moving in). But then in one pivotal scene (bit of sarcasm there) Tommy is shown tapping on a laptop, so no excuse.)
The next excitement comes when they are awoken and discover footprints on the ceiling and walls. Okay, a bit creepy that. Despite the ladies' pleading weeping, Tommy insists on following them to their source, which turns out to be down to the basement where he discovers dad's urn on the floor and his ashes trampled all to hell. My thought was, what was their beloved father's urn doing squirreled away in the basement in the first place? It looks like it came off of a card table with a single framed photo serving as a shrine. WTF, set designer? Couldn't possibly work it into the Pier One decor upstairs?
Finally Tommy makes a sensible suggestion and sends mom and sis to a hotel. He stays behind and lays a clever trap for the entity, stringing bells on fishing line across the threshold of every doorway. Um, Einstein, did you miss the part where it evidently walks on the ceiling?
However, he's awoken by a bell being tripped, shortly after which he receives a panicked call from mom about being attacked at the hotel room. "Get back here as fast as you can!" he tells her. Back to the house where you're freaking out because there's something going on? Great advice.
Tommy tries to get the story out of them as mom comforts Sam, who at last has something to do besides glare resentfully; close her eyes and whimper in mom's lap. Mom describes a horrific scene of Sam being dragged out of bed right in front of her eyes, something I can picture well because PA actually showed it on camera. Low, low budget.
Anyway, mom is dispatched the next night when the entity possesses her and slits her wrists. She's sent to the hospital and will survive, but thankfully that's the last of her appearance in this movie.
The next night Tommy discovers Sam missing from her bedroom. Rather than doing what anyone else on the planet would have, namely turn on some lights and run around frantically searching, he instead tiptoes from room to room, whispering her name loudly. Mom is gone, who are you afraid of disturbing? He goes outside, back inside, finally up into the attic, which is as empty as the closets. Did the family just move in? Maybe I missed a crucial piece of dialogue.
Rather than do a quick sweep of the whole attic, Tommy pans around slowly, lovingly taking in every inch of the empty space, before finally finding her standing in the far corner, her back to him, in a bra and panties (her sleepwear. I can't imagine wanting to sleep in your bra, but maybe I haven't found the right bra). When he approaches her she seems to be in a trance. She snaps out of it and has no idea how she got up there.
Next day the doctor they had been trying to reach this whole time comes calling. I thought mom was a bad actor -- oy vey, this guy made her look like Emma Thompson, or at least Hilary Swank.
He does a sweep of her bedroom, sits them down and delivers the line, "Let me assure you there is an incredible presence in this house. A very negative one." Thanks, doc, that IS assuring. All he can say is mom inadvertently invited it in with her letters to dad, and that it was extremely attracted to Sam. More and more comforting.
He does explain that "Maron" is Germanic for "nightmare." This information comes up as maybe the seventh or eighth hit on a Google search. All the early pages say it's the name of a saint.
Suddenly we cut to Sam screaming bloody murder off camera. Tommy rushes in to find doc dead on the floor and Sam naked, appearing to be raped by an invisible entity (or something. This was on Chiller so there was a lot blurred out here). She dies suddenly. The closing credits tell us she was found in Tommy's arms and he was tried for her rape and murder. The end.
An unpleasant waste of an afternoon. The cable access version of Paranormal Activity. These are the nicest things I can say about it.
~*~
Headliner:
While in California, I did break a 6-month drought of theater-going to catch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (or, as a geeky fanboy requested when he bought his ticket, "Harry Potter Seven Part One," enunciating clearly so as not to be mistakenly sold a ticket for Part Two, which will be released next July); yes, money is tight, but there's always room in my budget for Harry.
Of course, I ended up also paying for Nancy, which happened without her even asking. It's just always the assumption that Nancy has no money, and she makes no effort to dispel that assumption. Frankly, I would rather have spent that money on a second theater outing for myself.
Amy had confessed to me before the trip that she had only read and seen the movies up to Order of the Phoenix, and that she couldn't remember most of it, maybe should brush up a bit. "Well, you've got a week," I told her. "Put the kid in daycare and get to work."
She didn't, and it wasn't until the lights went down that I hurriedly thought to fill her in on some of what she missed. I only got as far as "Snape killed Dumbledore and we don't know why" (OMG SPOILER SORRY). Then halfway through the first scene it occurred to me she might need to know what a Horcrux was, but when I tried to whisper it to her she shushed me. Fine. Enjoy this movie where you'll have no idea what's going on.
I myself had already re-read the entire series in preparation for the movie, so I could make an informed judgment.
We were off to a great start with a thrilling scene of Snape marching purposefully to Malfoy Manor, robes a'billowing grandly behind him, silky soft hair (:/) floating in the breeze. Then a brief bit of him talking to Voldemort (someone in the Alan Rickman comm pointed out that this is actually the first time we ever see them together), and he vanishes for the remainder of the film. *sigh* I wish I could pretend to be surprised.
Actually the standout in the scene was Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), looking like a man on the edge and hanging by a thread, visibly shaking with the Dark Lord in his home. I've loved Lucius ever since seeing a featurette that mentioned how stoked Isaacs was about the franchise, always suggesting little things to try to improve scenes and just throwing himself into the role. With his red-rimmed eyes and straggly hair, I just wanted to give him a big old hug.
I'm not going to cover it scene by scene, mostly because now it's a few weeks later and I've forgotten most of it. I do know that they seemed to hit most of the high points of the book very well: Like the multi-Harry bait-and-switch, the trio Polyjuicing to infiltrate the Ministry (extremely well done, except for the omission of Harry rescuing Mad Eye's eye from Umbridge's door), and of course Dobby's death (oh god, I cried just as much as I did in the book). I was especially impressed with the shadow puppet sequence illustrating the tale of the Three Brothers (Nancy let me read "Beedle the Bard" afterwards and I loved how it was kept almost verbatim in the movie).
Also, Bill Weasley? Unexpectedly HAWT.
Lastly, Rhys Ifans plays Xenophilius Lovegood. He has become the next "what else have I seen him in??" chameleon actor. If the name doesn't ring a bell, he was Spike the wacky roomie in Notting Hill, the rock god DJ in The Boat that Rocked, and the diabolical villain that ruined Hannibal Lecter's childhood in Hannibal Rising. I hope one day soon to be able to recognize him on sight rather than waiting until I can get to IMDb.
Of course, the movie wasn't perfect. There was a scene that I liked just fine where the Horcrux shows Ron his deepest fear, Harry and Hermione entwined naked in an intimate embrace; the important bits are tastefully blurred, which I'm sure did little to comfort![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kavieshana, who thinks DanRad is one of the least attractive men on the planet. She probably also didn't much enjoy the scene previously, where Harry shucks his kit to jump into the icy pond for the Sword of Gryffindor (all the schoolgirls in the theater collectively gasped and started tittering).
It was this scene that bugged me the most: Harry is pulled from the water wearing only his underpants by Ron, who jumped fully clothed into ice water. However, they're both recovered and ready to destroy the Horcrux seemingly a few short minutes later. When I voiced this complaint in the car, Amy said, "Did you really want to watch them drying off in real time? Wasn't the movie slow enough already?" Point.
The scene I was looking forward to the most was when they find Bathilda Bagshot, who is actually Nagini in disguise. This scene was REALLY creepy in the book. The movie didn't quite do it justice, though it could have been worse I suppose. It was actually a little confusing, even to me and especially to Amy, because Hermione discovers the real Bathilda dead but all we see are some blood stains on the wall. We can see all the naked Harry we can stand, but a dead body is too much? (Hang on, usually the reverse is true: nudity is verboten but gratuitous violence is doled out in spades).
What I did like is that we saw lots of footage of Voldemort in the previews that's obviously from Part Two, which left me guessing where they would leave off.
The movie IS sort of slow, compared to the others. It very much feels like a transition, a placeholder before the real finale. I loved it, but I can see where lesser fans (or casual viewers, like Ryan who hasn't read a single book) might be left feeling a bit WTF??
However, I got a solid reminder of why I hate going to the theater anymore. Bad enough there was a row of teenagers way in the back, one of whom evidently could only follow every plot progression by announcing it loudly to the rest of us. But halfway through, I became aware of a full-fledged conversation going on behind me. I turned in my seat to see two teenage girls cupping a cellphone between them and talking at great length to the caller. I stared and stared and stared. Finally one of them noticed me and asked haughtily, "Can I help you?" I just kept staring coldly, didn't even blink. They slowly ended the call and put the phone away, with a disbelieving "Sheesh...."
Yes. I'm the rude one. I spent the rest of the movie ready for a confrontation at the end, but they either decided against it or, more likely, their tiny attention spans had forgotten the incident entirely.
~*~
Not sure what the third act is called:
Finally, a movie that I almost went to jail for downloading online: Catfish. Everyone will probably remember that it was released shortly before The Social Network with the promotion "Everyone who uses the internet must see this movie." No?
Well, it's a shame, because I've seen them both and think Catfish is better.
Simple story: Yaniv "Nev" Schulman is a New York photographer whose pictures inspire Abby, an 8-year-old in Michigan, to start painting them and strike up a friendship through Facebook with him.
SPOILER ALERT: "Abby" is not all she seems to be. When Nev and his friends start to suspect, they drive to Michigan to track her down and learn a truth that only comes as a surprise if you've just started using the web recently.
That's right: Abby's mom, Angela, has created 15 different Facebook profiles and an elaborate fantasy world to suck Nev in. She's actually a sad 40-year-old married woman raising a pair of severely mentally handicapped twins, Abby (not remotely interested in painting) and a 19-year-old daughter Megan who no one's seen in a few years (who Nev thought he was falling in love with). It's little wonder she's desperate to escape from her real life, but does it justify her deception?
It's really hard to tell if the movie is real or not. Obviously some parts don't fit with the timeline, but I guess the film makers admitted to re-enacting them. What doesn't help is the fact that there seems to be an online presence confirming the people in the movie exist -- except it wouldn't be the first time red herrings were put up in cyberspace to promote a movie.
My favorite part of the movie is the story told by Angela's husband (seemingly apropos of nothing) that gives the film its name, about how fisherman used to ship vats of cod fish off to China, only the fish would arrive with their skin mushy and tasteless from sitting in vats for so long. One day someone had the idea of sticking a catfish in with them to keep them moving, nipping at their fins so they didn't atrophy. Angela's husband thanked god for the catfish among us (like Angela, presumably), nipping at us and keeping us guessing.
So, is the whole movie also a catfish? At the very least it illustrates how, given enough clues, anyone with access to the internet and basic powers of deduction can track someone down. A little scary.
The opening act: Paranormal Entity I spent the first ten minutes of this movie trying to figure out if it was a spoof of Paranormal Activity. It still might be.
Tommy and Samantha live with their mom despite being in their twenties. Tommy plays the part of Micah the cameraman, so we barely get a glimpse of him -- unfortunately we hear plenty, as he is a relentless mouth breather and seems to be perpetually out of breath.
Cameras are being set up due to complaints from the women of some odd activity. Tommy is skeptical, which is the only reason I can come up with to explain why Sam spends the entire movie (and I do mean ENTIRE) glaring resentfully at him. Seriously, apart from lots of screaming off-camera, the girl has about six lines to deliver. Lots of staring and pouting though.
Which might be for the best. Mom has plenty of lines, all of which only call attention to what a painfully bad actor she is. Absolutely excruciating. You really don't appreciate a good actor until you watch a bad one, and start to think maybe it's not as easy as it looks.
She provides the back story, that they recently lost dad in a car accident. Mom tried to contact him by writing him letters, and might have woken something else.
So anyway, cameras are positioned in the women's bedrooms and the living room (?), even though most if not all the activity is centered on Sam. Cue lots of boring footage of people sleeping in night vision, very similar to PA.
The first event is mom sleepwalking into the living room and scrawling a word on a piece of paper, "Maron." Tommy doesn't know what to make of it. Sam glares resentfully. It never occurs to anyone to maybe Google it.
(At first I thought there wasn't even a computer in the house -- it's pretty sparsely furnished, looking like the set designer maxed out the Pier One card. There's a TV that's only ever turned on by the entity. Hell, there aren't even any clothes in Samantha's closet (props master? No woman on this planet has an empty closet in her bedroom unless she's in the process of moving out or moving in). But then in one pivotal scene (bit of sarcasm there) Tommy is shown tapping on a laptop, so no excuse.)
The next excitement comes when they are awoken and discover footprints on the ceiling and walls. Okay, a bit creepy that. Despite the ladies' pleading weeping, Tommy insists on following them to their source, which turns out to be down to the basement where he discovers dad's urn on the floor and his ashes trampled all to hell. My thought was, what was their beloved father's urn doing squirreled away in the basement in the first place? It looks like it came off of a card table with a single framed photo serving as a shrine. WTF, set designer? Couldn't possibly work it into the Pier One decor upstairs?
Finally Tommy makes a sensible suggestion and sends mom and sis to a hotel. He stays behind and lays a clever trap for the entity, stringing bells on fishing line across the threshold of every doorway. Um, Einstein, did you miss the part where it evidently walks on the ceiling?
However, he's awoken by a bell being tripped, shortly after which he receives a panicked call from mom about being attacked at the hotel room. "Get back here as fast as you can!" he tells her. Back to the house where you're freaking out because there's something going on? Great advice.
Tommy tries to get the story out of them as mom comforts Sam, who at last has something to do besides glare resentfully; close her eyes and whimper in mom's lap. Mom describes a horrific scene of Sam being dragged out of bed right in front of her eyes, something I can picture well because PA actually showed it on camera. Low, low budget.
Anyway, mom is dispatched the next night when the entity possesses her and slits her wrists. She's sent to the hospital and will survive, but thankfully that's the last of her appearance in this movie.
The next night Tommy discovers Sam missing from her bedroom. Rather than doing what anyone else on the planet would have, namely turn on some lights and run around frantically searching, he instead tiptoes from room to room, whispering her name loudly. Mom is gone, who are you afraid of disturbing? He goes outside, back inside, finally up into the attic, which is as empty as the closets. Did the family just move in? Maybe I missed a crucial piece of dialogue.
Rather than do a quick sweep of the whole attic, Tommy pans around slowly, lovingly taking in every inch of the empty space, before finally finding her standing in the far corner, her back to him, in a bra and panties (her sleepwear. I can't imagine wanting to sleep in your bra, but maybe I haven't found the right bra). When he approaches her she seems to be in a trance. She snaps out of it and has no idea how she got up there.
Next day the doctor they had been trying to reach this whole time comes calling. I thought mom was a bad actor -- oy vey, this guy made her look like Emma Thompson, or at least Hilary Swank.
He does a sweep of her bedroom, sits them down and delivers the line, "Let me assure you there is an incredible presence in this house. A very negative one." Thanks, doc, that IS assuring. All he can say is mom inadvertently invited it in with her letters to dad, and that it was extremely attracted to Sam. More and more comforting.
He does explain that "Maron" is Germanic for "nightmare." This information comes up as maybe the seventh or eighth hit on a Google search. All the early pages say it's the name of a saint.
Suddenly we cut to Sam screaming bloody murder off camera. Tommy rushes in to find doc dead on the floor and Sam naked, appearing to be raped by an invisible entity (or something. This was on Chiller so there was a lot blurred out here). She dies suddenly. The closing credits tell us she was found in Tommy's arms and he was tried for her rape and murder. The end.
An unpleasant waste of an afternoon. The cable access version of Paranormal Activity. These are the nicest things I can say about it.
~*~
Headliner:
While in California, I did break a 6-month drought of theater-going to catch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (or, as a geeky fanboy requested when he bought his ticket, "Harry Potter Seven Part One," enunciating clearly so as not to be mistakenly sold a ticket for Part Two, which will be released next July); yes, money is tight, but there's always room in my budget for Harry.
Of course, I ended up also paying for Nancy, which happened without her even asking. It's just always the assumption that Nancy has no money, and she makes no effort to dispel that assumption. Frankly, I would rather have spent that money on a second theater outing for myself.
Amy had confessed to me before the trip that she had only read and seen the movies up to Order of the Phoenix, and that she couldn't remember most of it, maybe should brush up a bit. "Well, you've got a week," I told her. "Put the kid in daycare and get to work."
She didn't, and it wasn't until the lights went down that I hurriedly thought to fill her in on some of what she missed. I only got as far as "Snape killed Dumbledore and we don't know why" (OMG SPOILER SORRY). Then halfway through the first scene it occurred to me she might need to know what a Horcrux was, but when I tried to whisper it to her she shushed me. Fine. Enjoy this movie where you'll have no idea what's going on.
I myself had already re-read the entire series in preparation for the movie, so I could make an informed judgment.
We were off to a great start with a thrilling scene of Snape marching purposefully to Malfoy Manor, robes a'billowing grandly behind him, silky soft hair (:/) floating in the breeze. Then a brief bit of him talking to Voldemort (someone in the Alan Rickman comm pointed out that this is actually the first time we ever see them together), and he vanishes for the remainder of the film. *sigh* I wish I could pretend to be surprised.
Actually the standout in the scene was Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), looking like a man on the edge and hanging by a thread, visibly shaking with the Dark Lord in his home. I've loved Lucius ever since seeing a featurette that mentioned how stoked Isaacs was about the franchise, always suggesting little things to try to improve scenes and just throwing himself into the role. With his red-rimmed eyes and straggly hair, I just wanted to give him a big old hug.
I'm not going to cover it scene by scene, mostly because now it's a few weeks later and I've forgotten most of it. I do know that they seemed to hit most of the high points of the book very well: Like the multi-Harry bait-and-switch, the trio Polyjuicing to infiltrate the Ministry (extremely well done, except for the omission of Harry rescuing Mad Eye's eye from Umbridge's door), and of course Dobby's death (oh god, I cried just as much as I did in the book). I was especially impressed with the shadow puppet sequence illustrating the tale of the Three Brothers (Nancy let me read "Beedle the Bard" afterwards and I loved how it was kept almost verbatim in the movie).
Also, Bill Weasley? Unexpectedly HAWT.
Lastly, Rhys Ifans plays Xenophilius Lovegood. He has become the next "what else have I seen him in??" chameleon actor. If the name doesn't ring a bell, he was Spike the wacky roomie in Notting Hill, the rock god DJ in The Boat that Rocked, and the diabolical villain that ruined Hannibal Lecter's childhood in Hannibal Rising. I hope one day soon to be able to recognize him on sight rather than waiting until I can get to IMDb.
Of course, the movie wasn't perfect. There was a scene that I liked just fine where the Horcrux shows Ron his deepest fear, Harry and Hermione entwined naked in an intimate embrace; the important bits are tastefully blurred, which I'm sure did little to comfort
kavieshana, who thinks DanRad is one of the least attractive men on the planet. She probably also didn't much enjoy the scene previously, where Harry shucks his kit to jump into the icy pond for the Sword of Gryffindor (all the schoolgirls in the theater collectively gasped and started tittering).It was this scene that bugged me the most: Harry is pulled from the water wearing only his underpants by Ron, who jumped fully clothed into ice water. However, they're both recovered and ready to destroy the Horcrux seemingly a few short minutes later. When I voiced this complaint in the car, Amy said, "Did you really want to watch them drying off in real time? Wasn't the movie slow enough already?" Point.
The scene I was looking forward to the most was when they find Bathilda Bagshot, who is actually Nagini in disguise. This scene was REALLY creepy in the book. The movie didn't quite do it justice, though it could have been worse I suppose. It was actually a little confusing, even to me and especially to Amy, because Hermione discovers the real Bathilda dead but all we see are some blood stains on the wall. We can see all the naked Harry we can stand, but a dead body is too much? (Hang on, usually the reverse is true: nudity is verboten but gratuitous violence is doled out in spades).
What I did like is that we saw lots of footage of Voldemort in the previews that's obviously from Part Two, which left me guessing where they would leave off.
The movie IS sort of slow, compared to the others. It very much feels like a transition, a placeholder before the real finale. I loved it, but I can see where lesser fans (or casual viewers, like Ryan who hasn't read a single book) might be left feeling a bit WTF??
However, I got a solid reminder of why I hate going to the theater anymore. Bad enough there was a row of teenagers way in the back, one of whom evidently could only follow every plot progression by announcing it loudly to the rest of us. But halfway through, I became aware of a full-fledged conversation going on behind me. I turned in my seat to see two teenage girls cupping a cellphone between them and talking at great length to the caller. I stared and stared and stared. Finally one of them noticed me and asked haughtily, "Can I help you?" I just kept staring coldly, didn't even blink. They slowly ended the call and put the phone away, with a disbelieving "Sheesh...."
Yes. I'm the rude one. I spent the rest of the movie ready for a confrontation at the end, but they either decided against it or, more likely, their tiny attention spans had forgotten the incident entirely.
~*~
Not sure what the third act is called:
Finally, a movie that I almost went to jail for downloading online: Catfish. Everyone will probably remember that it was released shortly before The Social Network with the promotion "Everyone who uses the internet must see this movie." No?
Well, it's a shame, because I've seen them both and think Catfish is better.
Simple story: Yaniv "Nev" Schulman is a New York photographer whose pictures inspire Abby, an 8-year-old in Michigan, to start painting them and strike up a friendship through Facebook with him.
SPOILER ALERT: "Abby" is not all she seems to be. When Nev and his friends start to suspect, they drive to Michigan to track her down and learn a truth that only comes as a surprise if you've just started using the web recently.
That's right: Abby's mom, Angela, has created 15 different Facebook profiles and an elaborate fantasy world to suck Nev in. She's actually a sad 40-year-old married woman raising a pair of severely mentally handicapped twins, Abby (not remotely interested in painting) and a 19-year-old daughter Megan who no one's seen in a few years (who Nev thought he was falling in love with). It's little wonder she's desperate to escape from her real life, but does it justify her deception?
It's really hard to tell if the movie is real or not. Obviously some parts don't fit with the timeline, but I guess the film makers admitted to re-enacting them. What doesn't help is the fact that there seems to be an online presence confirming the people in the movie exist -- except it wouldn't be the first time red herrings were put up in cyberspace to promote a movie.
My favorite part of the movie is the story told by Angela's husband (seemingly apropos of nothing) that gives the film its name, about how fisherman used to ship vats of cod fish off to China, only the fish would arrive with their skin mushy and tasteless from sitting in vats for so long. One day someone had the idea of sticking a catfish in with them to keep them moving, nipping at their fins so they didn't atrophy. Angela's husband thanked god for the catfish among us (like Angela, presumably), nipping at us and keeping us guessing.
So, is the whole movie also a catfish? At the very least it illustrates how, given enough clues, anyone with access to the internet and basic powers of deduction can track someone down. A little scary.