Movie Review—Grabbers

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!

Throw it back! Throw it back!

Grabbers is...

• ... 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!

Grade: C+

Movie Review—Carnage

Sometimes, movies are fun because they have cool special effects. Other times, they're fun because of a fun unexpected plot twist. And then there are movies like "Carnage," which are fun purely and solely because of the actors and actresses involved.

This is by no means a big movie—it's not even 90 minutes long and, with the exception of 2 shots outside (one during the opening credits and one during the closing credits), the entire movie takes place in a single apartment. There's plenty of cuts, but the movie proceeds in real time.

The plot is pretty simple. Two kids got in a fight in the park. One kid may or may not call the other kid a name, they start pushing each other, then the other kid wheels around and hits the first kid in the face with a stick. It's all shot in a long shot, and then we cut to the apartment, where the parents of the two children have gotten together to talk about the incident and agree on a statement about what happened. One thing leads to another, and in a series of events involving fruit cobbler, tulips, a pesky cell phone, some art books, an upset stomach, some really good scotch, and a possibly murdered hamster... things go from relatively awkward and tense to almost unbearably awkward and tense. It's a quietly hilarious movie about two couples who don't really like each other learning just how much they don't like each other or, indeed, their own spouses.

Oh... and by the way... the couples? Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz VS John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster.

Roman Polanski's recipe for mayhem.

I could have watched these four talk for another ten hours easy.

Carnage...

• ... made me want to make sure my favorite books are not out on the coffee table when I have guests over.
• ... has a much better French movie poster than the American one.
• ... made me worry about that poor hamster.
• ... taught me the secret about making apple and pear cobbler.
• ... also taught me that it's important to keep a bucket and a bottle of cologne handy for accidents.

Grade: A–