Sometimes, things that are wildly popular are actually pretty good. I went into The Hunger Games a few years ago not expecting much—not expecting anything but a tame PG-13 sanitized version of a similar movie, Battle Royale. What I got was much more than that—the central concept of Battle Royale—"Put a bunch of kids out in the wild and then film them killing each other," is obviously a key point of inspiration for The Hunger Games... but that's not all The Hunger Games is about. The competition is about 1/2 of the movie—with the setup being just as important to the evolving mythos of the world. In Catching Fire, that mythos expands, and whereas the first part was a pretty self-contained movie, this one is anything but. It's an over two-hour-long preamble for the REAL movie that's yet to come—an epic saga of revolution against an overwhelming government. And I'm really looking forward to seeing that movie. Quite a lot.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire has great actors, a compelling script, some impressive special effects, and all the rest that makes a great movie, but as entertaining as it is... it really isn't a full movie. It's the first act of a three act arc, and if the next two movies fall flat, then all the work put in to this one will have been wasted. I certainly hope they don't mess up what they've set up, because it's a compelling storyline. Don't go in to see it expecting resolutions is all I'm saying!
So... yeah, went to the bathroom at what I foolishly took to be a slow part, and when I returned... MONKEYS!
My dad always had a low opinion of amusement park rides. He is fond of saying things like, "Why would I pay to ride around on a roller coaster when I can go out on the ocean and do it for real?" I've been out on the ocean on pretty rough days—not as rough as some of the days he's seen, but rough enough to get what he's talking about. With a roller coaster, the thrills are manufactured, and there's the notion that as frightening as they might be, they're designed to thrill and not hurt. The ocean doesn't have that psychological safety net. It doesn't want to kill you or save you or hurt you. It just is what it is, and when humans get in its path, they must respect it or they will suffer. And even respect isn't always enough.
All Is Lost gets this idea across better than any movie I've seen. This movie is already something of a miracle and a wonder, in that it's got barely any dialogue in it, because it's only got one actor in the entire thing. The movie starts with Robert Redford's character waking on his sailboat somewhere in the Indian Ocean with water rushing into his cabin–his boat struck a container that fell off a ship, and now there's a hole at the waterline. The captain doesn't panic or freak out—he knows that won't solve the problem. He just goes to work, doing his best to fix the situation. A situation that spirals out of control despite the fact that he increasingly does every thing he can do to survive.
Because the ocean doesn't care if you survive or not.
Grabbers belongs to the same category of horror-comedy as Tremors—a small town beset upon by a strange sort of weird monster that has a quirky sense of humor about all that's going on. Unlike Tremors, though, Grabbers is pretty much a mediocre movie in every way that Tremors was exceptional, from the acting to the story to the creature design to the special effects (more on that later) to the humor. Especially the humor. There were a few funny parts in Grabbers, but nothing on par with Earl's elephant gun or the aftermath of blowing up a Graboid or Kevin Bacon's discovery of the "ass end." In fact, even though I haven't seen Tremors in many, many years, the fact that I can recall lots of funny scenes from it and can't recall any specific ones that were that funny from Grabbers (which I saw just a week ago) is pretty damning.
And special effects. The fact that CGI is so affordable these days is great. There are a lot of low-budget movies out there that make great use of CGI, such as Monsters or Lovely Molly, but it's SO easy to overstep the capability of your effects with CGI it seems. At least with practical effects, even if it's fake looking, the actors are still interacting with something, and that really helps to sell the scene. The effects in Grabbers were actually quite good, but they weren't themselves enough to elevate the movie out of mediocrity.
Which is too bad, because the monster itself is pretty cool. Too bad they went with a boring "space alien" source and didn't just embrace the Lovecraftian vibe full on!
... a little too enamored with its central idea of "the aliens drink blood and alcohol is poison to them, so being drunk saves us!"
... disapointingly mediocre, as far as monster movies go.
... filled with beautiful scenery—the shots of Ireland's coastlines were enough to make me want to visit! Preferably when tentacle monsters aren't flopping around!
It's one thing to cast Elijah Wood, best known of course for his portrayal of Frodo Baggins, as a stone-cold evil maniac of a serial killer. This movie, aptly titled Maniac, goes one step further. Nearly the entire movie is filmed from the point of view of the killer as he stalks his victims one by one to collect their scalps for his collection of mannequins in an attempt to replace the loss of his horrific and horrible but recently-deceased mother. There's some really impressive camera work here, to be sure, especially in the shots where you see direct-on views of the killer's reflections in mirrors and windows and the like, and the few points where the camera pans away from the killer's POV are really effective in giving you a moment to observe what's going on in a more standard way. They're like gasps for air, in a way, these opportunities to step out of a killer's body, especially since these tend to occur at the more violent or creepy points in the movie.
There's not an awful lot in the way of plot in this movie—it's pretty much all about the killer's methodical collection of victims while he tries to juggle a growing for-real relationship with a woman who wants to use his mannequins for her photography (the ones he restores, not the ones he keeps secret in his bedroom with scalps stapled to their heads). Of course, as one might expect, keeping your serial killing separate from your love life is a recipe for disaster, and eventually these two worlds collide in a relatively spectacular chase sequence. The two main characters—the serial killer and his would-be girlfriend—are relatively interesting, and the special effects are realistic and horrific and well done, but in the end it's the unique POV of the camerawork that is Maniac's real star.
Lord of the Rings would have been a very different movie had this been Frodo...
... yet another excellent example of how creepy mannequins are.
... a remake, but I've not seen the original so I can't say if this is better or worse.
... proves that as violent as a movie can be, filming the violence from the POV of the perpetrator makes it all the more disturbing. It's pretty hard to watch at times.
... has a lengthy scene that features the song "Good-Bye Horses," that, much like its use in The Silence of the Lambs, does an unsettling job of making an already creepy scene even more so.
... will change how you see Elijah Wood as an actor... he pulls off the serial killer really, really well!
So. Thor: The Dark Worldis a really well-made movie, with incredible special effects, really cool characters, some fun dialog, and the way it fits into the expanding cinematic Marvel universe is really cool.
It's also the first of the various Marvel comic book movies where I started feeling like things were starting to feel a bit repetitive. I mean... how many times can the world and/or universe ALMOST get destroyed only to be saved at the last minute by a superhero before the bad guys give up? Especially since this time, the bad guys just seem like a downgrade in menace from all that's come before.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm eager to see some of these superheros get into a smaller plot. Something that allows for character growth rather than just excuses for special effects. And know what else? I'm kinda ready for there to be a big-budget superhero movie about a non-white guy superhero. They exist. I know they do. And movies about them have been made before. I just want to see one done that is done to the level of quality of many of Marvel's latest movies.
Enough with Thor. Let's get a Sif movie! Hey... they could show it at SIFF!
... reminds me of how important it is for a superhero movie to have a really awesome and memorable soundtrack. DC's comic book movies seem to get this. Why doesn't Marvel?
... has a DELIGHTFUL cameo by Captain America.
... left the Asian guy out of the movie for no real reason, which was disappointing.
... should have given Ray Stevenson more to do.
... made me want to see Rene Russo in more swordfighting scenes!
So, Netflix seems to be pretty good at guessing what sorts of movies I'll like, and so I'm always delighted to see it suggest a movie I haven't heard of before. All I knew about Sound of My Voice going in was that it had something to do with a couple who decided to infiltrate a cult in order to get proof that said cult was up to no good. Of course... things don't quite go as planned, and that's all I'm going to say about this movie so as to not spoil the surprise! Actually, since the trailer and the fact that I tagged this post as "science fiction" is already a spoiler, I'll say this much. The leader of the cult the investigators infiltrate claims to be from the future. And that's the rub. How do you PROVE you're from the future if you really are? Or how do you make people BELIEVE you're from the future if you really aren't? And... why would you do either?
The movie is not particularly gory or violent or even profanity-filled... but it IS pretty dang thought provoking and intriguing!
What's going on here? Has something to do with apples. I'm not gonna spoil it!
... is a quiet, slow-moving movie that really draws you in by expanding what's going on in steps that seem tiny at first but are really huge leaps.
... makes you think that something is going on, then reverses things to make you think something else is going on, then goes back to what you thought was going on, again and again.
... feels like the tip of the iceberg; it's supposedly the first in a trilogy. Here's hoping the next two get made!
I've felt that the story of the Kon-Tiki would make a great movie for a long time. And while this movie was not great... it was still pretty good. The story of Thor Heyerdal and the journey he and his crew made across the Pacific Ocean is pretty awesome, one fraught with peril and adventure and beauty. It's not one that needs to be "amped up," and had this been a full-on Hollywood-style production, I'm sure it would have had gunfights and car chases.
It wasn't a Hollywood-style production, but the scenes I'd been most interested in seeing were either "actioned up" or cut altogether, and some scenes that didn't exist at all were put in there just to liven up the pace. That, and some shots of sharks and stuff not really behaving the way sharks behave were a bit unfortunate.
Still a well-made and entertaining movie. Just didn't manage to meet the expectations I'd built up for the movie over the past, oh, three decades or so. I'm not sure anything could, though.
Awww! Poor little guy got left on the cutting room floor! Just because he's ugly!
So, I've helped fund 3 movies so far on Kickstarter. I'll get to reviews of the first two once they're out, but it IS kind of amusing that the one I helped fund most recently is the first one that I've seen. Now, Lord of Tears had a leg up on the others since it was already done and the Kickstarter campaign was mostly to secure distribution and marketing for the movie, but still.
So! As you can see from the pictures, Lord of Tears is about the owlman. But there's quite a bit more going on here than that, and despite how creepy the owlman looks... by the time the movie's over, you realize that it wasn't really about the owlman at all. The movie itself has a pretty simple plot, and it's not going to impress with a huge cast, and the monster doesn't do a lot more than stand around and watch... but as it turns out, when you've got such an incredibly haunting and scenic location to shoot in like the highlands of Scotland, things like plot and cast and super-dynamic monsters aren't all that necessary. Especially when you couple that with an incredibly dream-like style of shooting and then edit the movie so that the whole thing increasingly feels like a strange nightmare.
There's some cool twists to the story as well, one of which I saw coming early (and enjoyed nonetheless) and one of which kinda surprised me in a good way. I'll be somewhat vague about those. The movie's plot, as I mentioned, is pretty simple. A man inherits a house after his mother's suicide—but in her will, she says words to the effect of, "Something at that house drove you crazy and made you almost drown yourself—don't go back there today!"
And so, of course, he goes back there to find out, if he can, what caused him to repress a year or so of memories as a child. Because after that setup, what self-respecting horror movie character WOULDN'T go? (To be fair, the character comments on this in the movie, noting, more or less, "Why would Mom tell me to stay away like that, when she should know a warning like that would only intrigue me all the more?") Of course, once he arrives, he starts having strange dreams and seeing visions of a frightening creature watching him from the the surrounding hills and woods—was an encounter with the owlman what terrified him so as a child?
Or was it something far worse?
A very good reason to turn around and find your way down a different, less horror-filled hallway...
... is relatively slow paced and deliberate in getting where it wants to go, but it's never once boring to look at. The movie made me want to go visit Scotland!
... gets a lot of mileage out of the owlman suit. It doesn't need to do much but stand there to send chills up the spine, and the scenes where you don't realize immediately that the owlman is in there, watching you, blending in to the background, are pretty effective. Makes you start imagining owlmen in scenes where there aren't any.
... feels like being trapped in a nightmare. Not every part of it makes logical sense, and a fair amount of the imagery is there only for symbolism and because it just looks creepy.
... uses a large number of public-domain or free sound effects, many of which I've heard a LOT in video games. That's always distracting to me, since those sound effects tend to be overheard a LOT in video games over and over... kinda took me out of the nightmare-induced fugue the movie was putting me in now and then.
... arrived in the best packaging ever—wrapped in black crepe paper, with an owl feather affixed to the front and no other indication as to what was inside. Owlman doesn't need to sign his name to leave his mark!
... incorporates themes of Slenderman and the tones of Lovecraft. No wonder it felt like a nightmare!
... is a refreshing throwback to older British horror movies where mood and tone rule all. Fittingly, the director dedicated the movie to Christopher Lee.
Back in Elementary School I checked a book out of the school library. This book was an anthology of short stories called Creepies, Creepies, Creepies. It ended up being one of the most important books I've ever read, for in the pages of this formative anthology I would read, for the first time, stories by Bram Stoker, William Hope Hodgson, Robert Bloch, and H. P. Lovecraft. After reading these stories, I began to devour other horror stories, both old and new, but this anthology has always remained one of my favorites, for in my memories, it's the first adult horror anthology I'd ever read.
One of the other stories in the book was a short one called "The Animators," by Sydney J. Bounds. I'd never read anything by him before this book, and unlike the four authors I've mentioned above... I never read anything by him since. But "The Animators" stuck in my mind as surely as did any story from the book; a grim, depressing, dark, and rather frightening story about a crew of scientists on Mars who discover a form of life that, when it infects a dead body, animates the body into something akin to a violent zombie! One of the most horrifying aspects of the story was that the hero was being pursued by relentless zombies across the Martian landscape. The hero was running low on oxygen... but the zombies, of course, were not... he was faster, but the faster he ran, the more oxygen he used... and if he died before the rescue ship arrived and he could warn them... then the animators would reach Earth!
So it shouldn't surprise you that when I'd heard "The Animators" was being adapted into a movie, I was hopeful and wary.
The Last Days on Mars just debuted on Halloween on numerous streaming sites online—it's going to have a theatrical release in December, but I was done waiting. I fired up the old Xbox and paid the 10 bucks to rent it... and I'm happy to say I was NOT disappointed! It's an independent and relatively low-budget movie, but it looks really good! Not only are the effects well done, and not only is the acting and writing also excellent... but this is the first movie set on Mars that looks like it could have actually been set there. The outdoor scenes look like what we're seeing from NASA, in other words, not deserts filmed through red filters. When things go bad, they stay bad and quickly escalate, but there's plenty of moments for character development that enhances the story as we go. The end is slightly different in the movie from the book... but only physically—as far as themes go, it nails it.
Whew... I'm relieved!
Wonder how many actual missions to Mars will, ultimately, come down to this in the end?
... managed the nearly impossible task of not disappointing me after over 3 decades of fond memories of the original story first making an impression on me.
... follows in the footsteps of this year's Europa Report and Gravity in presenting some impressive and mature and disturbingly believable outer-space thrills.
... features "zombies" more akin to the maniacs from 28 Days Later than the truly undead monsters from Dawn of the Dead.
... captures the sense of dread in the story that arises from the knowledge that you have limited air and resources that don't bother the things that are increasingly trying to get you.
... convinced me that if I'm ever a scientist on a Martian laboratory that I shouldn't leave the power drill just lying around.
... is thankfully free of people doing stupid things just to advance the plot—when the captain orders someone to "stay out of the creepy hole in the Martian landscape," they do. It doesn't matter in the end, of course!
OBSERVATION: Between 1914 and 1919 war and influenza have claimed more than a million lives in Britain alone.
CONCLUSION: This is a time for ghosts.
So claims the opening scene of The Awakening, in the form of plain white text on a grainy black background while low, ominous music builds. It's a powerful way to start a movie, and for the first 60 minutes or so, the movie keeps that power in a slow burn buildup of tension and creepiness. The plot centers on a woman named Florence Cathcart, a woman desperate to find proof of the afterlife and ghosts in order to take the edge off of some of her own personal losses, yet in investigation after investigation she reveals so-called hauntings to be misunderstandings or hoaxes. She's called upon to investigate a possible haunting at a boarding school that may just have resulted in a student's death, and so begins a classic plotline that would fit well in any era.
But by setting the movie in the direct shadow of World War I in 1921 Britain, the movie becomes something more—it seems infected with the hopelessness and despair that must have gripped the world after a decade of some of the most horrifying mass deaths modern civilization has ever endured. Indeed... if any time is a time for ghosts, it is after the planet's been seized by war and disease for nearly a decade.
Unfortunately, the movie can't keep its momentum going. I've come to really appreciate ghost movies these days that simply tell a spooky tale that unfolds gradually, allowing us to learn the mysterious and macabre background that caused the haunting as the film progresses... WITHOUT feeling the need to add in a third-act surprise that turns everything that's come before into something else entirely. I blame The Sixth Sense, of course, for the popularity of this type of movie. For a while, I was hoping that The Awakening would be something more like The Innkeepers or The Devil's Backbone, but no... it couldn't resist the twist ending.
Yeah. Old timey ghost photos. The easiest way to creep me out.
And no... Comparing it to the Sixth Sense doesn't reveal the surprise twist—it's actually a pretty creative twist, but it wasn't NEAR enough to live up to the film's opening thesis. Still... pretty creepy ride getting there, and once the surprise was out in the open, I was able to continue enjoying the movie... just not at the same level as I had when it started.
... loses sight of its intriguing story in its attempt to provide a twist ending.
... is never not spooky to look at, even when there's nothing particularly supernatural going on.
... actually has a second twist to the storyline once the primary twist is revealed; this second one is a lot more spooky and disturbing, and I kind of wish they'd just abandoned the first twist and kept the second one.
... gets a lot of mileage out of its time period and setting. It's rare to see a horror movie take place in a non-contemporary setting, it seems.
These Fast & Furious movies are an example of a movie knowing exactly how to do what it needs to do to work. They're over the top, loud, and filled with tough guys and tough gals and fast cars and improbable stunts, and of late they've added a new element to the mix–the "during the end credits super plot twist to set up the next movie."
I won't lie. I enjoy these movies. But I'll be the first to admit they're illogical, ridiculous, and ludicrous.
But they also have a surprising amount of continuity between movies, even if it didn't seem that way to begin with. The fact that they're up to part 6 is, perhaps the most ludicrous part of it all, and damn if that final teaser at the end of the movie a minute after the credits began to roll doesn't have me eagerly anticipating the next one more than any that have come before. Adding Dwayne Johnson to the franchise was a stroke of genius... but they may have outdone themselves with who's on board to be the villain for the next one!
This is, in a nutshell, what the Fast & Furious movies are all about.
... has fewer explosions than Star Trek Into Darkness. Which is also kind of ridiculous.
... had me waiting for the surprise cameo the entire movie—if you don't know who it is, don't seek out the information, because you'll spend the entire time wondering if you risk going to the bathroom to miss the introduction of the character.
... had a trailer for the new Riddick movie in front of it, which paid for the trip to the movie in and of itself.
... doesn't have time to mourn the loss of countless tank-crushed drivers.
... has a lot more cars being used as anchors than I've seen recently—none of which are used to anchor boats, because that's boring.
Now I think I have a better idea what folks were objecting to in Prometheus. And that objection has a name: Damon Lindelof. He was one of the writers for both Prometheus and Star Trek Into Darkness, and while I'm a huge fan of Star Trek, that fandom pales in comparison to Alien. As such, I was able to put up with more plot holes and problems in Prometheus than I could here. Now... I'm not saying that Damon Lindelof is without a doubt the reason why I didn't like Star Trek Into Darkness... actually, wait. I think that's exactly what I'm saying.
I was willing to let go of all my preconceived notions about Star Trek and established canon. After all, the previous movie made it pretty clear that J. J. Abrams is going in some new directions with the series, and he did a great job with that movie, I thought. And the cast is more or less spot on perfect for their roles—Chekov was a bit underused and forgettable, but everyone else had at least one great scene. Zachary Quinto as Spock is probably my favorite role, but Zoe Saldana as Uhura is pretty awesome too.
The effects are incredible. The villain is memorable. The acting is great. The explosions blow up real good. The writing, though... there's a number of unfortunate plot holes in here, as well as some unexplained goofiness. It's a well-done action movie, but I think that's the crux of my problem. The Star Trek stories that I feel are the strongest, be they movies or the shows, are the ones where they embrace character growth or tackle actual science fiction plots. Preferably both.
Why can't I get that "Bilbo Baggins" song Leonard sang out of my head?
Star Trek Into Darkness doesn't have much time for sci-fi—nor does it have a lot of time for new character growth... mostly because what it DOES have it more or less borrows liberally from a previous Star Trek movie.
I'm eager for the series to continue under J. J. Abrams' direction, but only if it goes somewhere new... soemwhere no director has gone before. At least, in the canon of Star Trek plots.
... has a monster in it. Not in a big part, but looking at all my favorite Star Trek episodes and movies... they almost all have monsters or killer robots in them.
... has a pretty big reveal in it that the trailers have teased but haven't revealed. Somehow I managed to go 5 days without having the reveal spoiled, and I was pretty delighted with it as a result.
... also seems like it gives away a big scene in the trailers, but for me at least, it only misdirected my expectations, which ALSO delighted me.
... thinks it knows about the Prime Directive, but doesn't really.
... frustrated me with how little the transporters were used, and how often the movie had to invent reasons for them not to work. It was like how horror movies have to invent reasons for cell phones not to work. The best horror movies know that they should find ways to let those phones work but STILL put their characters into peril. Hopefully future Star Trek movies figure out how to let the transporters work while still having a plot.
... is, despite my disappointment, still one of the better Star Trek movies. It's easy to forget how many of them are really really terrible.
This is a weird year for me and the Seattle International Film Festival. Normally, there's about 15 to 20 movies I want to see, and I know I won't have time to see that many, so I'll pare it down to 6 to 10 movies and still end up having to miss at least one for some reason, because the festival always seems to time itself for the Gen Con rush and Paizocon, and deadlines wait for no film festival.
So I was pretty excited this year that our Gen Con rush hit a month early, and when Paizocon was a month later than I expected it to be, because that more or less left me with a pretty open schedule to see movies at SIFF.
And then, the schedule came out, and something strange happened. There was only one movie I really wanted to see. It was the least interesting SIFF I've seen. Usually there were a lot of cool horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action movies to choose from, and then in wading through those options I'd find other cool movies outside of my favorite genres to see as well. This year... no luck.
I saw the first VHS last year at SIFF and was quite delighted; it was my favorite movie of the festival. This year, I saw VHS2, and it was my favorite movie of the festival THIS year. And not only because it's the only movie I'll be seeing at SIFF. It's actually as good as the original. Better in some ways, worse in others, but overall a delightful entry in the found footage category.
As with the first one, the framing story has some investigators discovering a strange situation in an apparently abandoned home revolving around a creepy stack of VHS tapes, and it's the contents of those tapes that make the movie. It's a found-footage anthology movie, and one thing that always seems to happen with anthology movies is that there's one good or really good segment, but the others are varying degrees of mediocre or outright bad. Creepshow dodged this problem, and so did both VHS movies.
Sometimes you can tell when a scene in a movie is about to get pretty violent.
Whereas the 1st one had 5 shorts, this one only has 4, but each one is better than the worst one from VHS. Here, we've got victims dealing with a state-of-the-art cybernetic eye that lets you see more than you probably should or certainly want to see, a mountain biker out on a trail eager to try out his new cameras and who rides smack into the midst of a zombie apocalypse, a team of documentary filmmakers investigating a creepy cult compound on what's destined to be the most important day in said cult's history, and a group of kids fooling around while the parents are out of town but a singularly spooky set of visitors from far, far away happen to be IN town.
I liked the third one the best—the idea of having a film crew on-site when a cult prepares for the end of days and things suddenly spiral out of control is in and of itself fascinating... especially when it turns out the cult leader might actually be on to something!
... never quite equals the greatness of the first film of the first movie, but it's good all the way through.
... does some things with the zombie movie genre I've not yet seen done before, and that kind of surprised me in a pleasant way.
... isn't the goriest or most violent found-footage movie I've seen (that award ties for Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox), but it's a lot more entertaining than the goriest or most violent found-footage movie I've seen.
... has me ready to see VHS 3 next year at SIFF. Hopefully I'll be seeing more than that though!
The first Iron Man movie was an unexpected surprise for me, because I had pretty much no expectations going in. The second one, as a result of how much I enjoyed the first one, was an unexpected disappointment, due to a combination of a mediocre script and my high expectations.
Both of these movies worked together to prime things perfectly for Iron Man 3. I didn't have particularly high expectations, and the movie wasn't nearly as good as the first one but it was better than the second one. The two best parts of the movie are Robert Downey Jr., who really means it when he says "I am Iron Man." He's pretty much perfection in the role. The other best part is Gwyneth Paltrow, who gives the movie a bit of class while also getting a chance to be a superheroine herself. Strike that; there are three good parts. The third one is Ben Kinglsey. But he's always fun to watch. Even if he's in the worst movie of the year. It's happened before. Let's hope it never does again.
Overall... a fun movie! But not for the special effects, really, as well-done as they are. It's a fun-to-watch action movie for the dialogue. Weird.
Of all the unexpected technologies in the movie, the fact that Tony Stark found a pay phone ranks up there pretty high.
... has a stinger after the credits finish. It's not setting up anything new, as did all the pre-Avengers Marvel movies, but it's fun nonetheless.
... has a pretty crippling plot hole. If you've seen the movie, you know the ace in the sleeve that Iron Man reveals in the final act... an ace that he could have played at any time during the movie but he didn't because then the plot wouldn't work.
... has some great ties to Avengers. Nothing direct, but let's just say that even Tony Stark can't look in the eye of things that make deities frightened and not come out unscathed.
... makes a pretty significant change from the comics to a major character. I've never read the comics, but I was still looking forward to seeing this character on screen, and when said character ended up being pretty different I was a little disappointed. But in and of itself, within the movie on its own, it's a pretty cool plot twist.
Found footage movies aren't my only cinematic weakness. Another such vulnerability would be the good old-fashioned monster movie. These can run the gamut from incredibly excellent (such as The Host or Alien) to excellently terrible (C.H.U.D. anyone?).
Storage 24 is somewhere right down the middle. It's a pretty modest movie that starts with a bang. A serious one. I thought for a moment that I'd broken my speakers when the movie gets going! The movie itself is standard monster movie plot #1—a group of people are stranded in an enclosed location with a monster on the loose. In this case, the enclosed location is a vast storage unit facility, and the monster is a semi-humanoid semi-reptilian semi-insect all-brute creature that's actually really quite well-designed and realized on screen, with a fair amount of actual practical effects and puppetry at work. The monster even has a personality beyond RARRRRGH KILL THEM ALL and makes a few mistakes along the road to eating all humans. Or if not eating them, ripping out their hearts and then letting the poor victim watch while the monster crushes said heart in its big hand like it was an empty beer can. Can't fix that! You're done.
Not what you want to see when you open that mysterious storage locker!
... is what happens when you mix Super-8, Alien, and Storage Wars up in a blender.
... has some REALLY refreshing developments along the lines of a certain
obnoxious movie cliche. You know the one—the token minority is the first
to die. Not so much the case in this movie. It's refreshing to see a
horror movie avoid that cliche.
... is another one of those movies I actually kinda liked that got a lower than I'd expect rating on IMDB.
... makes me wonder how many people actually DO live inside their storage units.
... has the standard "our cell phones don't have a signal and so we're cut off from help!" element... but there's a pretty dang good reason for it!
It always kinda weirds me out when I see a movie that I actually quite enjoy, then head on over to IMDB for my post-viewing "would you like to know more" surfing, and then see that the movie's gotten terrible reviews. That happened recently with The Frankenstein Theory.
Now, granted, it's a found footage movie, and that means that it's super-effective against me. And on top of that... some of the acting is a bit dodgy. But some of the acting is really quite good (particularly Timothy V. Murphy as rugged local guide Karl), and the landscapes of the deep wild of northern Canada are never anything less than beautiful.
The movie itself has a pretty interesting plot—what if Frankenstein, the original story, wasn't fiction... what if it was based on a series of real-world experiments, and what if the real monster was really created and is still up there, lurking in the arctic wastes? It's a pretty cool concept. The movie even flirts with shifting from found footage over to mockumentary (an equally compelling style of movie making), but never quite decides to make that shift entirely.
In the end, there IS a lot of people walking around in the dark or the wilds continuing to film things even as they fall apart. People who don't like found footage will certainly find no shortage of things to be annoyed by in the movie. But if you like the genre, and you like movies about isolation and arctic survival, check it out!
... isn't nearly as bad as the internet thinks it is.
...would have been better had it embraced the mockumentary angle instead of the found footage angle, I think.
... would also have been better had Karl been in the entire movie from the start.
... kinda spoils the end of the movie in the trailer, so be warned if you watch the following link! Or if you DO watch and want to avoid the spoiler, stop watching at about 1 minute and 20 seconds in. You'll get the idea for the movie by then anyway.
Whew... been a busy month! With the Gen Con crunch taking over pretty much everything over the past several weeks, I've not really had a chance to see many movies or read much aside from what's gonna be published by Paizo between now and August. And then there was a week of recovery.
That said, I did see a few movies and read a few books, so I'm gonna post pretty short reviews of them so I can get all caught up!
First off? Oblivion!
This was never a boring movie to look at; the effects and the cinematography and the art design was really excellent. It doesn't hurt that I'm a sucker for postapocalyptic movies, of course... but what DID hurt were all the logic flaws and plot holes in the script (for example... if a thing can control the atmosphere in an enclosed area, why does it need to wait for flying robots to come kill intruders... why can't said thing simply turn the atmosphere back off to deal with the pesky human interlopers?), and even worse, the fact that the best parts of the movie... in fact... MOST parts of the movie... were more or less lifted from other movies.
If you've never seen a science fiction movie before, you might be blown away by Oblivion.
Huh... you're right! I can see like 11 other movies from here!
... has obviously seen The Matrix, 2001, Planet of the Apes, Wall-E, Star Wars, I Am Legend, A.I., Independance Day, Lifeforce, Inception, War of the Worlds, and more. It hopes YOU haven't seen them, though!
... has also obviously HEARD Inception. I wonder what movie trailers would sound like today without having had Inception's awesome and easily mimicked low bass thrums?
... has some unsettling undercurrents of misogyny.
... has laser weaponry that turns bit actors into ashes but only makes main characters apparently lose their breath.
... is nonetheless never honestly dull, but neither is it a movie one ever needs to see more than once.
... is a MUCH better video game than it is a movie.
I remember the first time I saw The Evil Dead quite clearly. My dad, my best friend, and I were at the Point Arena General Store back in the mid-80s. It was a Friday afternoon, and we were looking for a movie to pick out and rent and watch that night; my dad told my friend and I to pick out one. I wanted to rent Movie A, while my friend wanted to rent Movie B. We argued about which one to get long enough that my dad was getting frustrated, and then one of us (I like to think it was me) saw a third movie. Something called "The Evil Dead" that had a blurb from Stephen King on the cover and showed a half-naked woman being pulled into the ground by a zombie hand. We decided to rent that one.
Later that night, after the movie finished, I was thunderstruck. I'd seen plenty of horror movies already, but I'd never seen one quite like The Evil Dead. Its over the top gore combined with its over the top energy made me an instant fan... even if my dad hated it. He likes movies where the good guys win.
A few years later, I was at a DIFFERENT store (Rollerville Junction, near the Point Arena Lighthouse) looking for a movie to rent, and I saw something that I couldn't believe. A sequel? To Evil Dead? Yes please! And then in college, I remember seeing Evil Dead 2 in the theater despite being sick as a dog, and seeing Army of Darkness in the theater where no one but my friends and I seemed to realize it was a comedy.
So yeah. I'm one of those Evil Dead fans who's been waiting for decades for a new installment in the series, and who was watching nervously as word of the remake became confirmed. It wasn't until the red-band trailer that I started to let myself hope.
Evil Dead is not the same movie as "The Evil Dead" or "Evil Dead 2." It is not better than those two movies.
That said, it probably comes as close as possible to being as good as those two movies as you can get.
Breaking Bad is no longer the holder of the "Most Horrifying Box Cutter Scene" trophy.
In fact, in some areas, it exceeds the original. The music's better. The effects are better. And I frankly think that the setup for the storyline is better. But it's lacking the final magic spark of Sam Raimi directing and Bruce Campbell acting.
That said, it's also a drop-dead serious movie. There's no comedy in Evil Dead, just as there wasn't any in the original. The movie knows you've seen the original, and while it throws in some delightful touchstones (a necklace making a skull shape on the ground... a line of dialogue here and there... a chainsaw in a woodshed...), there's quite a few significant changes from the original's plot that are actually quite welcome and cool.
The effects, in particular, are worth mentioning. I can't remember the last time I saw a horror movie where pretty much every single gore effect was done practically—there's no CGI gore in this movie. There's barely any CGI in the movie at all, in fact. And with the physical effects done so well... it's kind of like a wake up slap-in-the-face as to how visceral and powerful movie magic can be. CGI is well and good, but you know how they do it. There's some effects in this movie that I simply do not know how they pulled them off without killing some people.
And one last thing. While I kind of wish they'd gone a bit farther and a bit more over the top with some of the effects and story elements... I have to admit. I'm flabbergasted that this movie ONLY got an R-rating. It's easily one of the goriest movies I've seen in theaters in a long, long time. Evil Dead...
... has the best soundtrack of the year so far, and it's gonna be a hard one to beat.
... is, apparently, not a remake or reboot as much as it is an actual sequel. They're working on Evil Dead 2 already, as well as Army of Darkness 2, and plan to do Evil Dead 3... and supposedly Evil Dead 4 will bridge the remakes and the original into a single storyline!
... had one day where they used 50,000 gallons of blood in one scene. It's pretty obvious which scene that is when it happens, trust me.
... has real vomit in it.
... features Sam Raimi's car, so you KNOW it's legit!
... is not "The Most Terrifying Film I Will Ever Experience." That honor probably goes to Martyrs or Paranormal Activity or The Blair Witch Project or Frontier(s) for me... probably Martyrs, since the fear has faded for the other three for me somewhat.
... has a cute little stinger at the very end of the credits, so make sure you stay to see it!
Grade: A
(And if the above trailer wasn't gory enough... check out the red band trailer below, but don't say I didn't warn you!)
Hot on the tail of my fish person post, here comes a movie about... you guessed it... a fish person! Hypothermia showed up out of the blue on Netflix, a movie that I hadn't heard about (and I like to think I'm pretty good about keeping an ear to the ground about upcoming horror movies, be they big releases or indie releases.
Hypothermia is a strange movie. Not strange in that it's a weird plot—it's got a pretty normal plot as far as monster movies go. A family goes out for some ice fishing, is frustrated to find they have to share the remote frozen lake with an obnoxious man and his obnoxious son, then they all get trapped on the ice by something monstrous that lives in the freezing waters below.
No, the weird part is the fact that the movie's got some really well done camerawork and directing when it comes to establishing mood. The shots of the monster swimming under the ice are actually pretty effective and spooky, and there's some pretty good gore effects, and the music is nice and spooky.
That said... the acting's all over the board. The main family's dad is played by Michael Rooker, and seeing him play a pretty decent guy when what I know him best as is Henry from "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and Merle from "The Walking Dead" was a bit disconcerting. He does a great job in the movie... and his acting is made all the more excellent by the fact that everyone else in the movie is various shades of mediocre to terrible. Especially the other father and son.
But that's not the worst. Because, eventually, the monster comes out of the ice.
I've seen some pretty unconvincing monster suits in my time on this blue and green rock hurtling through the cold vastness of space, but I really don't know if I've seen one more ridiculous and unfortunate than this one. The fact that the monster's shown in full daylight makes things worse, even if the director tries to hide the shame by using jerky camera moves, quick edits, and lens flare type effects.
We can still see it's a guy in wetsuit with a rubber mask on his head.
This.
This is a perfect example of less being more. Had they left the creature in the shadows, I might have been frustrated by the lack of a good look at it... but I'd rather be frustrated by that lack than boggled by the worst monster costume of the century.
... would have us believe that fish see in "lava vision," where everything is seen through an orange filter. And if you get slashed by its spines... YOU see in "lava vision" too.
... was executive produced by Larry Fessenden, who also apparently has a cameo as a fishing show host. I didn't recognize him, which kinda startles me. He's a bit memorable looking, after all.
... one ups its crappy fishperson costume by capping the movie with what may just be the goofiest and silliest ending a monster movie's had in years. I'm tempted to spoil it, but it kinda has to be seen to be believed.
... still avoids getting an "F" grade because despite its failings... has some good qualities in there... if you're charitable enough to notice them and not forget them when the fish person shows up for the first time in hard, unforgiving focus.
I've been going to see the vast majority of my theatrical movies at a local theater called iPic Theaters lately in the Redmond Town Center. The tickets are quite a bit more expensive than normal—they can get close to 30 bucks for a single ticket depending on the time and other circumstances—but what do you get for that? You get reclining seats, in-theater food and beverage service (including beer and cocktails if you're so minded), a pillow and a blanket, complimentary popcorn and soda, and most important to me... fellow moviegoers who are there to see a movie, not to chatter or be chuckleheads. The fact that it's a 21 and over only theater (due to the booze availability) helps to limit the chucklehead factor as does the price.
The problem is that now and then, they don't get the movies I want to see. So when they didn't get Dark Skies... I decided it was time to test the waters of a normal theater again. And I'm happy to report that spending 30 bucks on a movie ticket is still worth it!
I went to see Dark Skies with 2 friends at 7:30 PM on a Tuesday night a week after its release. There were only four other people in the theater... and of those four, half of them were chuckleheads who talked during the movie.
Heavy sigh.
Anyway! The movie itself? It's not completely disappointing. In fact, it was relatively entertaining. The central concept is a family being tormented by greys—you know the ones; the aliens who supposedly abduct people to do experiments on them. The greys in Dark Skies are actually really well presented and SUPER creepy; the first appearance of one of them in the film is easily the best part of the movie and is in and of itself a great reason to see the movie. The rest of the movie is competently done, yet brings pretty much nothing new to the genre save for the fact that it's really pretty interesting to see a movie about greys that's paced and edited and presented as if it were a haunted house movie. Also? It's a slow burn horror movie, and I appreciate those. Give me time to get to know the characters, and build up the horror slow so that by the end of the movie it's super intense. Good times. Dark Skies doesn't do the slow burn nearly as well as The Innkeepers, House of the Devil, Paranormal Activity, Lake Mungo, Sinister, or the like... but it does good enough.
And that first shot of the alien doing its thing... yikes!
If Cave Johnson can't cope with the aliens... what hope do the rest of us have?
