Vagrancy in Jerkwater U.S.A.

Paranormal Activity

2010-01-05T15:32:00.004-07:00

I posted this quick review of Paranormal Activity on another website but decided to post it here as well to increase my content and to draw multitudes of readers to my blog. That's my intent. Readership. Numbers. Vagina.

I finally watched Paranormal Activity. It was pretty bad. It was probably designed to work best in a theatre full of god-fearing teens. I watched it at home which is good because it only cost me $1 to rent from the Redbox. Sure, I lost out on the screaming, jumping, throbbing mass of assholes by not going to the theatre, but that's a good thing.

A couple parts made me think that it could be scary, but the terrible acting and horrible dialogue were so distracting that the tension couldn't hold up. The arguments between the couple on whether or not to keep the camera rolling were shallow and illogical. I wasn't buying any of their reasoning. The boyfriend doesn't believe in psychics but he thinks he can contact the dead using magic Ouija board techniques? Super. I think the movie would have been much more effective if the filmmakers pursued the possibility that the female protagonist (can't remember her name) was suffering from mental illness rather than some invisible "demon". That would allow those of us that don't believe in all the supernatural nonsense to still enjoy the film on a somewhat rational level. And they could leave out the part about the demon leaving its hoofprints in baby powder.

As it stands, I hope this trend of single-camera, found-footage filmmaking is finished. Blair Witch was innovative, Cloverfield was unique (and nauseating), and Rec (and it's remake, Quarantine) was intense. But that's enough. I want to feel like I'm watching a regular movie again, not someone's crappy wedding video gone awry.

Coming Soon: Favorite Films of 2009

2010-01-05T14:15:00.003-07:00

I'm currently compiling a list of my favorite films of 2009. There are still a couple of movies that come out on DVD in the next few weeks that I want to watch before I finalize my list. I don't think my top three favorites will change, but the order of the list after that is still up in the air. I'm also hoping to see The White Ribbon soon if I can find a theatre that's showing it. Peace.

Favorite Albums of 2009

2010-01-04T11:42:00.005-07:00

Here is a list of my favorite albums from the year 2009 in descending order from 11 to 1. 1 is the best. 11 is the least best. There are 11 albums because 10 are too few. 12 are too many. May your list not be as cool as mine. While I respect The Dirty Projectors' valiant effort called Bitte Orca, it's really not my thing so it didn't make my list but it made everyone else's instead. That's good.

11. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix--Phoenix

A good friend turned me onto Phoenix this year. I wasn't as hip as you as I didn't run out and buy their album after I watched Lost in Translation. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is extremely catchy and fun. I haven't gotten bored of it yet.

10. Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey--Cracker

This new Cracker album is my favorite since The Golden Age. All the songs are great. Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out With Me is as good as anything Lowery has ever written.

9. There Is No Enemy--Built to Spill

It's probably unfair to the many new bands making so-called waves this year, but Built to Spill is always guaranteed a space on my list. Hindsight is my favorite song of the year and the entire album is consistently great.

8. 3 Rounds and a Sound--Blind Pilot

Blind Pilot's album is the only debut album on my list. See...I like new stuff too. It's a mellow, folky outing, kind of like Vetiver or something. I hope these guys continue to make good music and don't end up being part of a "supergroup" like Monsters of Folk or Chickenfoot.

7. Welcome Joy--The Cave Singers

Pure dark-folk goodness. Welcome Joy is a welcome joy to behold or some such shit. I really dig it.

6. White Water, White Bloom--Sea Wolf

A perfect album for teenage girls who like moody, romantic lyrics full of natural imagery. Pitchfork hates this album because it comes from a band that is part of the Silverlake music scene. "Love the music/hate the scene" is my motto. Fuck pretension. Fuck Pitchfork.

5. Tight Knit--Vetiver

One of the most relaxing listening experiences I had this year. The lead singer looks like he's retarded, but his songwriting ability proves otherwise. I wish Wishing Well made the album, but it's a pretty great exclusive 7" that assholes like me can show off.

4. It's Frightening--White Rabbits

Yes, they sound like Spoon. That's a great thing. Britt Daniel produced this album and it really compliments the White Rabbits musical sensibilities. If the first two tracks don't blow your mind, perhaps some Dirty Projectors will.

3. Wilco (the album)--Wilco

I don't know what it is about the new Wilco album that I like so much. I just love it. I've listened to it more than anything else on my list and in my iTunes library by far. Everything comes together like it's supposed to. Wilco making great music.

2. Embryonic--The Flaming Lips

Wow. The Flaming Lips completely shredded my expectations with this record. They abandoned the ELO tendencies of their last two albums and released a dirty, dark, dreary, distorted mess of music that perfectly compliments the Silver Trembling Fetus Christmas tree ornament I recently bought from their website. To top it all off, they just released an amazing cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. Genius. Absolutely genius.

1. Crack the Skye--Mastodon

A perfect concept album. A perfect metal album. A perfect rock album. An amazing live show. Mastodon rules.

Final Destination 3

2009-08-20T16:11:00.008-06:00

I watched Final Destination 3 last night on DVD. I saw it when it initially came out, put the DVD in a box, and revisited it to get psyched for the new film, The Final Destination. I enjoy all the Final Destination movies. They're a nice twist on the dead teenager movie genre. They all feature a set-up disaster where some teens are going to die but one of them has a premonition and a few of them are saved from their fates while their friends die. But death doesn't like to be cheated, so It comes for them in creative ways, piling up bodies by the end of the 90 minute runtime. I made my parents watch the first film and while they hate horror movies, they had a good time with it. I think the second movie is the funniest and most over-the-top of the series, each death scene more outlandish than the one before it. The third installment combines the serious tone of the first film and some of the comedy of the second to make a great sequel. I actually liked this movie a lot better on my second viewing.

The opening sequence of Final Destination 3 is my favorite of the three movies. I mean, who hasn't dreamed of dying on a roller-coaster? That's what makes them so fun to ride, such adrenaline-pumping experiences. Once you're strapped in (double check that the harness is locked, maybe even pulling it a bit tighter to your chest), you can't do anything as the cars climb the steep hill overlooking the entire park for the first, giant stomach-lifting drop and then you scream as you plummet through corkscrews, loops, and hairpin turns. After some bone-jarring bumps and screeching brakes, you arrive where you started. I remember, as a kid, claiming to have "conquered" certain rides. I conquered The Demon, The Big Dipper, The Colossus, The Ninja, The Viper, etc. I yielded and I overcame. But what would happen if the roller-coaster train came off the tracks or got stuck upside-down at the top of a loop? That would suck. And Final Destination 3 does a great job of showing you why it would suck so bad.

The surviving high school seniors, the ones who got off the ride after the main girl had a premonition of their collective demise, are now haunted by their having "cheated" death (and main girl is really sad that her boyfriend remained on the ride and was brutally killed). Death will come for them and in this film, It comes for them based on images in a series of pictures the main girl took of them at the amusement park before the ride. The pictures show how they will meet their ends. And their ends are bloody (by ends, I don't mean rear ends or butts or buttholes because that would be disgusting; I mean their deaths). I don't want to give away the circumstances of their deaths because that's the point of the movie.* The characters exist only in reference to how they will die. Some of the sequences are pretty funny. All are extremely gory. One scene in particular made me want to vomit. A fun family popcorn flick.

I hope the new film, The Final Destination (3-D in select theatres), is as good as any of the previous films. I'm not expecting much based on the previews, but maybe the 3-D approach will work. I've never seen a movie in the theatre in 3-D, so this will be the first. It will be the last if I leave with a migraine. Go Team.

*I put this at the end because it's a spoiler: There is a major flaw in the logic of the film. One of the characters (a punk kid named Ass Cheeks with a video camera) who dies in the premonition sequence is partly responsible for the crash. His video camera gets smacked out of his hands during a loop and lands on the track, and becomes part of the chain of events that causes the cars to derail. If he isn't on the ride, his camera doesn't fall on the tracks. The cars don't derail. No accident. So I'm still wondering how the ride crashed and killed all those innocent dickwads without him on it. I'm trying to find logical explanations in a movie where an operatorless fork lift drives itself through a wall because some hammers fell on its gear shift and acceleration pedal.

Drop Zone

2009-08-04T15:41:00.004-06:00

When Gary Busey shows up wearing a pair of Zebra Pants, you realize that the amazing movie you are watching on Encore is going to grab your balls tightly and twist them slightly. After all, what wouldn’t be amazing about a bunch of criminal skydivers who hack into government computer systems to find out the undercover identities of DEA agents so they can sell the information to drug kingpins for bucks? Wesley Snipes joins the fun as a Federal Agent in charge of transporting the skydiving crew’s computer specialist by plane to prison. He doesn’t know that those skydivers are going to hijack the plane, kill his brother, scream maniacally at a little girl while making menacing faces, and “break out” their hacker. Luckily they have parachutes and guns. A daring prison escape at 35,000 feet. A little bit of exposition in the aftermath tells us how badass and impossible this feat truly is. Now Wesley Snipes has to infiltrate the underground world of competitive skydiving to find the sonofabitches that killed his brother. He loses his badge, of course, so he has to go all maverick and lone wolf. Wesley is the Lone Wolf. He goes to a skydiving school and learns to skydive by screaming like a goddamn chimpanzee while plummeting towards the earth. Or maybe a rhesus monkey. After a few jumps, he is ready to join an elite team of divers that will jump over the White House on the 4th of July during a dazzling fireworks display. It’s the only way to get at the bad guys because they can't pass up the adrenaline-pumping experience and they’ll use the jump as an opportunity to break into another government building. In skydiver world, jumpers hang out in bars and speak their own language of blue skies and burn ins. If you look out of place, four big dudes in green Adidas track suits will approach you, intimidate you, and fight you. But if you have an “in” with a hot skydiving instructor, she’ll help you out. She has friends. One of them is a dude named Swoop and he’s the hero of the story, not Snipes. Swoop is an unemployed bum (or hobo, if you prefer) who lives only to skydive. He doesn’t sleep on the streets like normal hobos (or bums, if you prefer); he sleeps on those window washer platforms among dirty rags and Snickers wrappers. Patrick Chewing. The Statchew of Liberty. Dickers. He wears his jumpsuit and his parachute everywhere he goes so he can make instant escapes. He pulls crazy moves during competitions like releasing his main chute so it wraps around an asshole skydiver while he parachutes through the sky. This is called “gift-wrapping”. Back-slapping and overly enthusiastic gestures and yelling and guffawing typify the average skydiver. So do colorful, thin jumpsuits unzipped to the belly button and spread open to reveal layers of thick, manly chest hair. (I didn’t realize that skydiving had its own unique culture until I watched this movie. It’s kind of like how I learned about the underground surfing movement from Point Break.) There are a bunch of fights between Wesley's crew and Busey's crew, including a bathroom brawl and a cat fight between our heroic female Instructor and the Evil Whore from the Badguy Team. The Instructor bashes the Whore’s head with the lid of a copy machine while the machine makes Xeroxes. I don’t remember how it all ends, but it has something to do with Gary Busey’s huge teeth and huge hair and a parachute and a Mack truck's windshield. It’s pretty fucking great. See it. It’s called Drop Zone.

Clutch: 50,000 Unstoppable Watts

2009-07-14T11:22:00.004-06:00

So, the new Clutch album, Strange Cousins From The West, comes out today. I'm excited. I'll pick it up at lunch. Here's the video for the song 50,000 Unstoppable Watts. Enjoy.

Clutch - New Music - More Music Videos

Terminator 4

2009-06-17T11:36:00.009-06:00

So there are these amazing movies about time traveling robots and explosions and wars brought about by machines that become self-aware and decide to destroy humanity because it is fun so on Judgment Day they blow shit up and the few humans that survive start a resistance movement and they are led by John Connor who the terminators have been trying to destroy in the past so he can't battle against them in the future. You might have seen The Terminator which was a 1980s movie starring Arnold as an evil menacing invincible robot terminator sent back in time from the future after Judgment Day to kill John Connor's mom who hasn't even gotten pregnant with John Connor but she will during a brief sex scene in a hotel with a hazy filter lens on the camera. Arnold rides motorcycles and blows up semi trucks but fails in his mission, so he has to protect the young John Connor in Terminator 2 from a liquid metal terminator played by the Filter guy’s brother who was also in the X-Files when Mulder wasn't. The young John Connor is an irritating asshole who you wish would die so there wouldn’t need to be another terminator movie, just terminator pinball machines with red robot eyes that light up. But he doesn’t die so there’s a Terminator 3 with lots of great effects but no story. That brings us to the incredible Terminator 4: Terminator Salvation which is J.D. Salinger’s favorite movie* of all time. I will endorse anything that the writer of Frannie and Zooey claims is a work of genius. In Terminator Salvation we finally get to see the future battles of the robots versus the human resistance with the grown up John Connor leading the way, yelling, and shooting. This film has amazing time travel implications as well. John Connor has to find his father who is only a teenager and make sure he doesn’t die so John Connor can lead the resistance and find him again to protect him so he doesn’t die so he can go back in time and fuck John Connor’s mom so John Connor will be born and run from the Terminators in Terminator 2 and 3 and eventually lead the resistance of humans against robots after Judgment Day occurs. But then he has to find his father so that his father can go back in time to fuck his mother again in this endless circle of time traveling brilliance. The director McG does a great job in making the most exciting and explosive terminator movie in the series. The one shot camera move that follows the helicopter crash at the beginning of the film is a work of sheer cinematic artistry. Only McG could pull this off. Or Tarsem. This movie has it all including underwater terminators and giant terminators with motorcycle terminators attached to their legs and terminators that look like Arnold, T-800’s or something. Arnold is a digital creation of his younger self when his balls weren’t so old because no one wants to see Arnold’s old testicles and saggy ass. When terminators die, their red eyes turn off. That’s how you know you’re safe from their relentless attacks. The big twist in this movie is that it is PG-13 rather than R like the previous 3 movies. This is so the kids can see it, even though they’re not old enough to see the preceding movies so they don’t understand what is going on and they can instead sit and text their friends about the awesome explosions or about the last episode of the life of the secret American teenager who got pregnant in high school or about Kobe Bryant. The other big twist in the movie is about a murderer who got capitally punished by lethal injection but before he goes under the needle he agrees to have his body donated to cancer science but instead of being used for cancer science it is turned into a cyborg that believes it is human because it has a human heart but the rest of it is robotic. It poses an ethical dilemma about the future of evil science and just how far will it go to fuck shit up.

*see here

Things That Suck And/Or Piss Me Off

2009-05-05T17:11:00.003-06:00

Returning DVD's To Redbox:
I love the idea of Redbox: rent a DVD from a vending machine for $1.00 a night. The machines are usually easy to access. There is one at the McDonald's and one at the Albertsons near where I live. The selection isn't great, but they usually have recent releases and assorted cheesy horror films. It sounds almost too good to be true until you have to return a movie. The return movie slot is the same as the check out movie slot. It's a single slot. A vertical slice. So, you have your movie in hand, ready to return it, only to have to wait behind some clueless, retarded assholes who are trying to figure how to work the machine. They have their kids with them. They are talking on their cell phones and aimlessly tapping at the touch screen. It literally takes them 15 minutes to figure their shit out. I would be pissed enough if I were waiting to rent a movie, but I'm fucking losing it because I just want to return a movie. These all too typical members of the retarded class of Americans commonly found at grocery stores and McDonald's don't have the ability to work simple machines. It's amazing. They can text with their cell phones but they can't figure out the proper way to swipe their card through the credit card reader. They don't even know their zip codes. I wish that Redbox would do the sensible thing and make a separate return slot for the DVD's or at least equip their machines with lasers that will melt all the stupid people in the world. I'll step in their ooze as I rent Eye See You.

Things That Suck And/Or Piss Me Off

2009-05-04T16:38:00.004-06:00

Doug Collins:
Doug Collins is a TV announcer for NBA games. He gets paid to blather on about keys to winning and statistics and percentages and how much the NBA cares and players’ stupid personal triumphs and stuff. To Doug, every play is amazing and every game is the best game ever. He is the true master of boring, cliche hyperbole. He’s a huge fan of Kobe Bryant, to the point that he would gladly let Kobe take it to his hole. That’s right, he’d enjoy The Black Mamba's back door penetration. Mr. Collins talks way too much during the game. I know that’s his job, but he takes his job too seriously. He needs to shut up once in a while. Just look at his fucking face. Thanks to Douglas Collins, I now watch all the games where he is commentating on mute.

Top 9 Movies Of 2008

2009-03-31T16:10:00.002-06:00

I forgot to make a Best Movies of 2008 list at the end of 2008. I’ve been on lots of medication, so I forget lots of stuff. It’s April now, and I still haven’t seen any of the movies that were nominated for Best Picture. Slumdog Millionaire comes out today, but I don’t feel like watching it. I hate feel good movies, even if they are directed by Danny Boyle, unless those feel good movies are called Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade. Here is my list, with explanations:

9. Iron Man—Robert Downey Jr. is the best actor working today. I enjoyed Iron Man, but mainly for his performance. If anyone else played the part, this movie wouldn’t be on my list.

8. Burn After Reading—A lesser Coen Brothers work, but still a great movie. I love George Clooney’s performance and the awesome chair he builds.

7. Quantum of Solace—Not as good as Casino Royale, but it didn’t have to be. It’s best when viewed as the third act in one really long movie rather than a sequel. The action and stunts are great. Daniel Craig is the best Bond.

6. Appaloosa—I really liked this Western. The violence is quick and harsh. The dialogue is witty and funny. The scenery is amazing, especially on BluRay.

5. The Dark Knight—It’s a shame that Christopher Nolan didn’t win a Best Director Oscar for the Batman sequel. The IMAX shots, especially during the action sequences, are unparalleled. Heath Ledger’s performance is iconic. Sure, this movie is a bit long and has some problems, but it’s damn entertaining.

4. Rambo—John Rambo returns, this time to fight the oppressive Myanmar soldiers in Burma. It features tons of violence and great one-liners. A fun, family film.

3. Tropic Thunder—Easily the funniest movie of the year. I’ll be quoting this film for years. Great stuff.

2. Body of Lies—Ridley Scott makes a topical, extremely entertaining action movie that nobody sees. It features one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s best performances as well as a pretty fine performance by Russell Crowe. The action sequences are amazing and the ending is intense.

1. In Bruges—Not just my favorite film of 2008, but one of my favorite films of the decade. The script is perfect. The acting is superb. If you haven’t seen it, don’t. It’ll remain an undiscovered gem.

Hitman

2009-03-30T16:42:00.003-06:00

Man, my cinematic quality measuring stick must be knee-deep in colon debris lately. Every movie that I’ve recommended to my friends and foes and acquaintances has been in vain; they tell me they hate the movies and that they fall asleep during them and that I have terrible taste. I told one of my co-workers to watch Body of Lies, which I thought was brilliant. He thought it was boring and didn’t finish it. I’ve recommended In Bruges to nearly everyone, none of whom ever watched it. But who gives a fuck. Vagrancy in Jerkwater USA is all about awesomeness, not a bunch of pussy loving artistic bullshit with meaning. Take my latest favorite movie, Hitman, for example. People think it sucks, but it doesn't.

Hitman is a movie based on a stupid videogame called Hitman where you don’t get to kill too many people because every time you try, alarms go off and you have to hide in a closet or a bathroom stall or beat up some poor minimum wage janitor and steal his clothes so you can wander around in disguise, totally undetected even though you have a barcode tattooed on the back of your bald head. I suck at the game. When a videogame gives me guns, I want to use them, not sneak around and try to strangle people when I have an H&K MP5 under my sweetass custom-made leather bomber jacket. I’m not reviewing the game here though, I’m reviewing the movie. Hitman is directed by a retarded monkey looking dude named Xavier Gens. He has a great eye for cinematic artistry. He implements cool angles and lighting (lots of blue which is the latest trend in cool movies) and awesome poses. He got the Sheriff of Deadwood, Timothy Olyphant, to play the character of the Agent Number Forty-seven of the secret clone hitman squad. Some people said that Timothy doesn’t look good bald, but I disagree. His baldness is menacing. As are his tattoo and his assortment of awesome guns and swords. Olga Kurylenko is in this movie too. You’ll remember her from the beginning of Max Payne and as the Bolivian chick in James Bond and the Quantum of Solace. Her role in Hitman is my favorite of the three; she spends a good portion of the movie bandying her boobies about and her ass and stuff. She is hot. She has a cute little dragon tattoo on her cheek and this is why the Hitman has compassion on her and gets to see her naked. But he’s not super compassionate because he makes her ride around in the trunk of his car alongside a dead body and then he takes her to dinner and tells her to pick up the check even though she’s not finished eating so he can go in the bathroom and shoot some badguy brains all over the walls and stalls and mirror and tile floor. My favorite part of the movie is where the Hitman is fighting a bunch of his super-assassin clone buddies on a train car. They all have their guns pointed at each other in a circle you know where no one can shoot so it’s this crazy standoff. Hitman says something like, “what do you say we die with some dignity?” They all agree and proceed to unload the ammo from their guns and then drop their guns to the floor and then they each pull out two awesome fighting swords from under their shirts and have a kickass swordfight with lots of punching and stabbing. Fucking amazing. My other favorite part of this movie is that it has tons of blood exploding across the screen when people get shot, not like those stupid PG-13 action movies where no one bleeds when they get shot. In Hitman, when a sniper shoots someone in the head, their head explodes. Their blood sprays all over the people next to them. Machine gun bullets tear flesh. I’m glad that Xavier Gens brought some carnage back to the action film. The Bourne trend is getting old. I hate Paul Greengrass. I’m also glad to see a video game adaptation that is enjoyable. So, go rent Hitman and then come back and tell me it sucks because you like Cynicdouchebag, New York.

Blindness

2009-02-25T15:40:00.010-07:00

Beginning in a near future time, in a nondescript, multicultural city, people will catch the disease of blindness. A blindness causing pathogen will spread through the tiers of society and drive people to commit unspeakable cruelties and atrocities due to their evil, blind nature. The uncaring government will turn a blind eye and the faceless, money-grubbing health industry will turn away the newly diseased masses like stinky asses. The movie Blindness chronicles this horrible future event. It’s a scary, apocalyptic prophecy from Fernando Meirelles, the director of City of God and The Constant Gardener. It’s based on a book of the same name by an author named Jose Saramago. It stars Julianne Moore, Danny “frequently lisping” Glover, Mark Ruffalo, and Gael Garcia Bernal. There are also a bunch of actors I don't know featured in its multicultural cast. You see, the disease of blindness affects everyone equally. It’s how you deal with this unspeakable horror that matters.

Blindness will cause you to act like a mental retard. You’ll lose any coordination or athletic ability you once possessed and stumble around like Kevin James in a mall. Or like Steve Martin. You’ll wave your hands out in front of you as you constantly run into polls, crush your nuts or vaginas on cement planters, and trip over shopping carts. You’ll moan a lot. The evil government will quarantine your sorry ass in an old building and ignore you. Sure, they’ll give you a little bit of food, but you’ll have to fight over it with the other blind assholes that are imprisoned with you. You’ll throw your trash on the floor and you’ll stop wearing clothes and wander around naked, cockandballs swaying from side to side. You won’t bathe or brush your teeth or wipe your own ass. In fact, you’ll completely forget how to use a toilet, so you’ll piss and shit on the floor in the hallway and then you’ll fuck like animals in the piss and shit. The hardfuck. Grunting like pigs. You’ll fuck strangers for food and pity. You’ll even smile and dance to shitty music played on a portable AM radio by an African-American with a pirate eye-patch and a milky eye (2%, I think). All of the sudden, the sound of some out of tune piano gives you peace. If it rains, you’ll dance outside in the downpour, raising your hands in jubilatory gestures. You'll sing a Stevie Wonder tune while mocking his familiar head bobbing, cause it's funny. You’ll cheat on your wife and fuck a prostitute. You’ll bite and murder and scream and tell stories to cute little blind kids. Fucking blindness, man…it’s a travesty.

This is a terrible movie. It’s easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time because it tries so hard to be good (with its "indie cred" actors and its hot new foreign director), to be meaningful, to make a statement about our current world and where it might be going, and it fails completely. The direction is uninspired, nearly every new scene beginning with a fade from white and every scene ending in a fade to white. I get it. Blindness. The director tries to give the film a rough, documentary-like look but it doesn’t mix well with the over-the-top stage style acting and cheesy dialogue. I know people will say that I didn’t get the allegory or the layered meanings or whatever, but fuck that, this movie just doesn’t work on any level. And it's really boring. The actors act like they're retarded, not like they're blind. It's sad that this director can't tell the difference. I haven’t read the book and I never will. I read Saramago’s All The Names and felt it was a sorry attempt at Kafka. Maybe I didn’t get that either (after all, he got a Nobel Prize for Literature).

Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans

2009-02-04T12:25:00.004-07:00

Dear Chad,

I watched Underworld 3 the other day. I figured you would want me to write you and tell you about it because you like good movies (remember Cold Creek Manor…that was awesome). This is a good movie. It’s a prequel to the other two Underworld movies. As such, it doesn’t feature Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight black leather. Sorry. Instead, it has a different hot actress name Rhona Mitra in skin-tight black leather. It’s not directed by Len Wiseman. He’s too busy trying to get more Die Hard sequels in the works. Therefore, Rise of the Lycans is directed by Patrick Tatopoulos, a Frenchy. The French are good movie directors, guys like Godard and Truffaut, and now you can add Tatopoulos to the list.

There are two things about Underword: Rise of the Lycans that really stand out: the color blue and Viktor’s eyes. Viktor (Bill Nighy) is the main bad guy (or good guy if you’re rooting for the vampires but no one roots for the vampires, they root for the lycans) vampire who’s selfishness and bad decision-making skills are the catalyst for the war between the vampires and the lycans. We learn all about this from flashback scenes in the first Underworld movie. Rise of the Lycans is all about those flashbacks in full-length feature-film time and epic battles. This prequel is necessary to understand the complicated backstory of the Underworld franchise. Without it, you really wouldn’t comprehend the Shakespearean implications of it all.

So anyways, I was talking about the color blue and Viktor’s eyes. This movie is very dark and very blue. It’s like it’s supposed to be in the future, but it’s not. It’s in a blue, midevil sort of undetermined past. I think the director either had access to a blue camera lens filter or they added the blue color during editing. It doesn’t matter. Either way, it works and it works well. It adds a great atmosphere to the film. It’s like everything is cold, but without the snow. You really feel like the vampires are dark and evil. Viktor’s eyes are blue, too. But they’re a penetrating blue, like they’re looking into the depths of your hollow, evil soul (not your soul specifically, Chad, but the soul in general). Viktor never blinks and he stares a lot. There were times when I found myself hypnotized by his glare, to the extent that I missed some of the action going on around him. Very effective, in my opinion.

Well, this wouldn’t be an Underworld movie without some awesome battles between the vampires and the lycans. Lots of blood and shredding skin and biting and swordsmanship and ninja stars. Nothing beats a good Death Dealer/Lycan battle. Remember that really awesome lycan from Underworld 1? The black guy with the really deep voice (Kevin Grevioux)? This movie features his origin story and really gets to the heart of his character. His name is Raze. He was a human slave of the vampires that gets turned into a lycan and then joins up with Lucian (Michael Sheen), the lycan leader, to overthrow Viktor and end the subjugation of the lycans. Lucian has a love affair with Viktor’s hot daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra). This really pisses off Viktor and the battles begin, but not before Lucian gets a whipping worthy of The Passion of the Christ. Man, it’s brutal. Whipping scenes make me cringe, especially when the whip has a bunch of metal knives at the tip.

Okay, so that’s it. Give me a call when you see it so we can discuss the philosophical implications and themes of non-conformity, slavery, forbidden love, and death. Until then, you should probably re-watch the first two Underworld films because they are awesome.

Talk to you soon,

Jared

PS: In case you didn’t know, lycans are lycanthropes i.e. werewolves.

Bruce...Cleanup On Aisle Two

2009-01-30T15:13:00.010-07:00

I picked up Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Working on a Dream, the other day. I imported it into iTunes and have tried getting through it a few times on my iPod...to no avail. I can’t get past the over-the-top cheesiness of the thing. To start, the album art is atrocious. Really, really terrible. Who okayed it? Then there’s Bruce’s dick broom. Shave that shit…who do you think you are, Phil Jackson? Nothing screams "I’m getting old and not enjoying it" more than a dirty dick duster. Then there’s the Wal-Mart exclusive Greatest Hits CD and the upcoming Super Bowl Halftime show. Good lord. I used to love this guy. One of the first cassettes I ever owned was Born in the USA. I still go back to that album; it’s genius. Some of his recent stuff is pretty good too. Check out Reno on Devils and Dust. That’s good writing. The thing that really depresses me about Working on a Dream is the quality (or lack thereof) of the songs. It seems as if Mr. Springsteen has lost or turned off is lyric quality control filter. His discernment is shot to hell. He needs to get some outside input and he needs to listen to that input. There is no way that a song like Queen of the Supermarket should be on a Bruce Springsteen album. It shouldn’t even qualify as a b-side. It’s absolutely terrible. Don’t believe me? Here are the lyrics (I’ve bolded the funniest parts):

There's a wonderful world where all you desire
And everything you've longed for is at your fingertips
Where the bittersweet taste of life is at your lips
Where aisles and aisles of dreams await you
And the cool promise of ecstasy fills the air
At the end of each working day she's waiting there

I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
As the evening sky turns blue
A dream awaits in aisle number two

With my shopping cart I move through the heart
Of a sea of fools so blissfully unaware
That they're in the presence of something wonderful and rare
The way she moves behind the counter
Beneath her white apron her secret remains hers
As she bags the groceries her eyes so bored
And sure she's unobserved

I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
There's nothing I can say
Each night I take my groceries and I drift away
And I drift away

Guidance from the gods above
At night I pray for the strength to tell her
When I love I love I love I love her so
Take my place in the check-out line
For one moment her eyes meet mine
I'm lifted up, lifted up, lifted up, lifted up

I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
Though her company cap covers her hair
Nothing can hide the beauty waiting there
The beauty waiting there

I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket

As I lift my groceries in to my car
I turn back for a moment and catch a smile
That blows this whole fucking place apart

I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket

Man, that is some trash there. I should've just bolded the whole thing. C’mon Bruce…you’re better than this. Or are you? Maybe it’s my lyric quality control filter that needs changing. Fuck. I guess I'll have to listen to Neon Bible and Sam's Town to get my fix.

The Nods, 2009

2009-01-22T11:06:00.010-07:00

So, the Oscar nominations came out today. The Nods. The first thing I noticed is that I haven't seen any of the movies in the Best Picture category. Never happened to me before. The second (and most awesome) thing I noticed is that Robert Downey Jr. is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Tropic Thunder. He'll lose to Heath Ledger, but it's still great that he got some recognition for his amazing role. The third thing I noticed is that Martin McDonagh is nominated for his brilliant original screenplay, In Bruges. At least my favorite film of 2008 got one Nod. Also, good luck to Danny Boyle. I hope he brings home a statue. I won't publish the full list or link to it here because I am lazy. You can find it with Google or something if you want to see all the details.

My Comcast Experience

2009-01-20T13:25:00.003-07:00

I recently upgraded my home theatre set-up. I bought a 40" Sony Bravia LCD TV with 1080p resolution. It replaced my old 30" Sony Wega tube set. The Wega weighs 150 pounds and I didn't want to carry it up the three flights of stairs to my new apartment. I also retired my 10 year-old Kenwood receiver. My new Denon reciever has 3 HDMI inputs and one HDMI out (to the TV). HDMI carries both video and audio signals with one cable. Awesome. I have a PS3 and an Xbox 360 that both use HDMI. My Comcast cable box, however, uses only component video. It doesn't have an HDMI port. So I called Comcast to see if I could get one of the newer HDMI boxes. The first person I talked to said that they were out of the HDMI boxes and that I should call back in a week. When I called again about 10 days later, the second person I spoke with told me that some Comcast centers had them and that some didn't. The ones that had them only had a few and they were "spoken for". He told me he'd call me back the next day with more information. He didn't. I called again and the third person told me that they didn't have any HDMI boxes. I asked if I could be put on a waiting list or something and she said no. I told her I'd look at other options. I called Dish Network and within two days was switched over. My Dish box has HDMI and a huge capacity DVR. Dish also has more HD channels than Comcast (who likes to brag about their HD "programming" which includes their OnDemand service that sucks my balls with its crappy free movies...see my Cliffhanger rant in my review of Red). So, I called Comcast to cancel my cable and return their equipment. The guy I spoke with asked why I was cancelling. I told him about my problems with trying to get an HDMI box. He told me it would be no problem to get one. Pissed me off. The only way I can get anyone at Comcast to work with me is if I threaten to cancel my service? Nice business model, douchebags. I've been a Comcast customer since 2002 and this is how they treat me. What they do is they give the new HDMI boxes to new customers ("spoken for") and don't upgrade their existing customers until they threaten to cancel. Well, I canceled. And I won't be going back. Take your OnDemand HD Cliffhangers and shove them up your component port-holes, bastards.

Quarantine

2008-10-22T16:04:00.003-06:00

Dexter’s sister (Deborah Morgan) is in this new movie called Quarantine. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads for it; they appear as screen-filling pop-ups with no visible close button. You can’t get out of them because you’re fucking quarantined. A bunch of readers over on Chud got pissed and complained about it a lot. They must not understand the meaning of the word quarantine. When you’re quarantined you can complain all you want but no one is going to give a shit, no one will hear you, no one will let you out of the sealed-off situation, so you might as well shut your fucking puckered butthole of a mouth and deal with it, pussy.

I know you dirty little pricks really enjoyed that Danny Boyle movie, 28 Days Later. You would. Quarantine is kind of like that, but with less of Cillian Murphy’s wiener. Some weird rage-inducing virus infects people and causes them to beat the living shit out of each other and eat each other and kill and maim and bite and froth at the mouth and shriek and run. But you like that kind of stuff, don’t you, you filthy ballsack-toucher. It fits your M.O.. All the gory action takes place in a four story apartment complex somewhere in Los Angeles. Dexter’s sister plays a TV personality for a show that follows workers around on their nighttime jobs, kind of like that old Dave Attell show but without all the drinking. On the night portrayed, she is tailing the fire department. But you already know this. You’ve seen the trailer.

All of the action in the movie is filmed on one handheld camera. Remember Blair Witch, Cloverfield, and Diary of the Dead? Of course you do, you pinched rectum. Quarantine has that same shaky, in the middle of the action, blurry, quick moving, vomit inducing camera work, though not as bad as The Bourne Ultimatum. The cameraman’s name is Scott; I only mention this because he deserves an award for being the most perseverant cameraman in the history of everything. This guy doesn’t miss a beat. At one point in the movie, he’s at the top of the stairs filming a group of people descending in front of him. A quick cut later, he’s at the bottom of the stairs filming that same group of people as they come down the last few steps. Scott can teleport. That’s an essential skill for a lone cameraman. Another necessary skill: Scott continues shooting even when it would make more sense to drop the camera and run for his fucking life because he’s about to be eaten by a nearly naked freak in stained tighty-whiteys. But you like those tighty-whiteys, don’t you? You want to see that.

So, this group of people gets quarantined in the building by the CDC. CDC agents shoot at any of the people who try to get out. They blockade the doors and windows. They act like real assholes. This makes me think that they’re probably not the CDC, but some black-ops government agency that wants to obtain this virus for nefarious purposes or some shit but the movie doesn’t really get into that so maybe there’ll be a sequel. It’ll be DTV. Quarantine 2: Was the Dog’s Name Max? It’ll star Michael Madsen, Shannyn Sossamon, and Redman. They’ll probably use two cameras instead of one, just to up the ante. You’ll rent it in hopes of seeing Shannyn’s boobs because that’s the type of person you are, someone who would rent a Michael Madsen DTV movie just for the prospect of viewing a pair of naked jugs. Pathetic. Hell Ride.

******Spoiler Part*******
Do you want to know how Quarantine ends? Guess what, you already do. You saw the trailer, remember? You saw the camera in night vision mode, all greens and reflective eyes, Dexter’s sister being dragged away while screaming. That’s it. That’s how it ends. The people who came up with the trailer and marketing campaign for this movie failed epically (as the kids on the net like to say, you know…EPIC FAIL). They give away the ending. I’m sitting there in the theatre, completely alone…yes, I’m the only fucking person in the theatre, I’m not lying, no one else came in at any point during the movie, first time this has ever happened to me and I’m anticipating the famous scene from the trailer that I saw about fifty times, and it hasn’t happened yet, not yet, and I know the movie is getting close to the end and all of the sudden the camera goes into night vision mode and all the tension drains out of the empty theatre and out of my amazingly sculpted body and I’m left with a serene sense of awareness because I realize that I’ve already seen the ending and then the ending happens and I smile, I smile for those assholes who made the trailer and put that specific image all over the internet and on the movie poster and ruined my movie experience because of it. I’m not dumb; all the other single-camera movies I mentioned at the beginning of this review have the same ending, i.e. the found tape that explains what happened because no one was left alive to tell the story. You can thank Cannibal Holocaust for that. I just like to be surprised when that final moment happens. The Quarantine trailer makes that impossible.

You know what’s weird? Even with all my complaining and bitching and stuff, I still thought this was a pretty cool movie. The single camera isn’t too shaky or annoying, only in a couple of short parts. It creates a sense of isolation and claustrophobia that is essential to the story. There are some good jump scares and an intense scene that is reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. I really enjoyed Jennifer Carpenter’s (Dexter’s sister) performance; she plays her part with enthusiasm and conviction. She really seems scared. Jay Hernandez, who plays one of the firefighters, literally kicks the shit out of everything. It’s pretty awesome. Finally, the gore effects are top notch. I recommend Quarantine to sick, disturbed individuals like you with your spastic colons and your tiny little chiclet teeth.

Appaloosa

2008-10-20T18:09:00.008-06:00

This Sunday last, I caught one of them moving pictures, and a darn fine one at that if I do say so myself. This here picture is called Appaloosa, after the breed of horse that them injuns done shown a preference for. But this ain’t no story about no horse, it’s a tale about two hired guns, two real tough sonsabitches* that take over as lawmen in a town called Appaloosa. That’s where the title comes from I reckon. Or it could be the horse like I said previous because the town could be named after a horse. It don’t really matter none. These two here lawmen former mentioned are acted out by Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. Ed is the weatherworn leader type who’s been through some real tough circunstances in his time on this here rough earth. He’s a dern quick draw with that there Colt revolver and he’s dead-eye ackurate. The other guy with the eyetalian name passes his time as Ed’s silent-type pardner being as he doesn’t talk much but he’s a mighty fine shot with his 8-gauge shotgun and that’s a hell of a gun if I do say so myself which I just done. The required female part that these pictures always got is acted by that woman named Renee Z-whatever and when she done got to the town I couldn’t reckon if she was the same woman who was in that Bridget Jones picture that my whore of a wife is always begging me to sit through. Renee’s face appears to be more pinched up and puckered and squinty-eyed than I recall from times past. And kinda puffy. No matter, I’d ride with her in the hard gallop any old time, heh. The bad guy is this fella named Bragg who is a civilized, high falutin’ type that speaks all them intalectualistic words from books and such. By hell, I wanted to slap his educated mouth or at least force him to eat some road apples to get him to shuddup for once, godammit. Anyways, this here’s a cowboy picture so there’s some gunfights and horse riding and plenty of drinkin of the devil water (the missus won’t let me get near the stuff after the last time I pissed on the goddamn cat to keep it from turding behind the sofa, the filthy demon). There’s even some whores if you’re into that kind of thing and who ain’t? But mostly it’s a story about two men and the cowboy ideals they live by, including concepts such as loyalty and pride and being a man instead of being a pussy. If you’ve got a hankerin for a good quality cowboy movie that ain’t directed by that pansyass Clint**, give a thought to watching Appaloosa. I reckon you just might like it some.

*It done come to my attention that I might could have spelt sonsabitches wrong. The correct spelling and plural grammar of the word is sonofabitches.

**Now listen here. The old Clint of them great Westerns such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Unforgiven, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and that one about them two mules is a goddamn American icon. The pansyass Clint that I'm speaking about here in this here review is the guy who directed that Midnite Garden movie and the one about the girly boxer.

The Walkmen: You & Me

2008-09-05T16:57:00.005-06:00

When I hijacked the indie credibility train to New York Town, I made sure to tighten my jeans and shrink my t-shirts. My skinny fucking arms and my patchy beard. After all, I was listening to Camper Van Morrison long before you bought your first DeCrotchKa cassette. Back then, there was this little band called The Walkmen, releasing album after album of pure sonic sustenance, Hawaiian reverb-soaked wedding ballad guitar vibrations and tinkering toy piano tones as fleeting as a cantankerous seaman’s cancerous semen-scented Hollywood afterthought. These Walkmen are all about the middle. Sure, highs and lows exist in their sonicsphere, but their albums revel in midrangey guitars and Leonard Cohen Brothers vocals that penetrate tympanic membranes and send synaptic signals bouncing around your bulbous brain until you want to bash it, ba shit against a wall, bleeding into your bro’s brew, bro-ham. It’s Dillonesque and I’m feeling a bit Gassian. Hamilton and company’s latest excursion into your hollow, opiate-caked heart is called You & Me, an apt title in a year when we have Hymn and Her and She & Him. Mysterious pronouns catch me off guard, like a contortionist with post-infectious IBS or a dangling disciple. But it’s the songs, man, the songs that matter. They meld together like a delicious swampy porridge in a crusty wooden bowl. It’s the subtleties that impress—the natural clicks of the keys and the scrapes of the strings, the nuance underlying an obscene October memory. Did you know that these former Jonathon Fire*Eaters and Recoys rockers received the inspiration for the chorus of their hit track “In the New Year” from Ridley Scott’s 2006 film A Good Year which stars Russell Crowe as a scrotum flicking neo-romantic? Break out your small sweaters boys ‘cause Autumn is upon us.

Editors Note: All misspellings, poor grammar, shoddy references, and unverifiable assertions are intentional. May Jesus bless this mess.

Red

2008-07-24T14:58:00.002-06:00

I have Comcast Digital Cable. I’ve been a customer for a long time, so I no longer qualify for any of those nice introductory offers that make cable affordable. I’m beyond that. I pay twice as much as the newcomers for the same service. This is the world in which we live—a confused place where companies treat new customers like kings while shitting on their established base. The established base is established, so no need to reward those loyal bastards. Marketing in America. Capitalism. I guess I could play the switching game, where you go from DISH to Direct TV to cable and back again, making the rounds every six months or so, but I’m too goddamned lazy. Or I could call Comcast, tell them their service is too expensive for me right now, threaten to switch, and see if they offer me some kind of deal. But that would entail talking to one of their customer service representatives; I’d rather watch soccer. Comcast isn’t entirely bad. I enjoy the OnDemand service to some extent, even though every free movie they offer is Cliffhanger. If you have HBO or one of the other premium channels you can catch up on old episodes of The Wire or Dexter on OnDemand. That’s pretty cool. If you don’t have any premium channels, you can watch Cliffhanger. Or you can pay outrageous prices to watch movies that have been recently released on DVD. If you prefer your movies in HD, you can pay an extra dollar for them. So, the other night, I was searching the OnDemand menu for something to watch. I was in the HD section of the New Releases when I came across a movie that I’ve been excited about seeing: Cliffhanger (just kidding, the movie was Red). Red is the third film based on a Jack Ketchum novel. If you’ve read my reviews, you know that I’m a big Jack Ketchum fan and that I enjoyed both previous adaptations of his work, The Girl Next Door and The Lost. I was surprised to see Red offered on Pay-Per-View because it’s not out on DVD yet. It played at Sundance last January and is supposed to have a small theatrical run in August. But there it was, with a price tag of $8.99. That’s about the same amount I’d pay if I waited to see it in the theatre, but who knows if it will even come to Denver? And if it does come to Denver, it’ll probably play in some low-rent “indie” theatre with broken chairs and broken audio in a part of town where I’d have to pay to park. I have a nice widescreen TV and a pretty good surround sound system in my apartment. The decision was easy. I ordered the fucking movie. In HD.

Red is a story about an old man and his old, mangy dog named Red who is his best friend and a loving companion but in a totally platonic way, like they go fishing together and play catch and then some asshole teenagers kill the old guy’s dog and they don’t show any remorse or apologize about it, it’s just a senseless act of violence and immaturity and they lie to their parents about it and all that the old man wants is an apology, is for the kids to man-up and take responsibility for their actions, but they don’t, so Tom Sizemore gets involved and it turns out that he’s a big asshole too (which we already know because of his crazy eyes and the role he played in Scorcese’s Bringing Out The Dead) with big guns and a big truck, one of those Ford F-350 type trucks with huge tires and patriotic bumper stickers that tiny little penis dudes drive at 85 miles an hour in the fast lane when it’s snowing and icy and shit, spraying your car with road grime and slush, while listening to Toby Keith sing about some hottie with a smoking little body (even though he’s 47 and she’s 16) and things get a little crazy, in the movie I mean, not in real life, things get crazy in the movie adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s Red and the dog’s name becomes a metaphor for rage and anger and violence and then literally becomes the color of the blood that gets spilled when pointless actions and stubborn sensibilities mix and fester and boil in a cauldron of human shit. Read the book. Watch the movie.

Brian Cox, who has been in every movie released during this millennium, plays Avery Ludlow, the protagonist of the story. He carries the film, playing Ludlow as a totally sympathetic character who is pushed to the brink of insanity by actions beyond his control. Watch Red to see why the original Hannibal Lecter is one of the greatest actors working today. Kim Dickens (Joanie Stubbs from Deadwood) plays a reporter that becomes interested in Ludlow’s story and tries to help him get some justice. Other notable actors include Robert Englund, Amanda Plummer, and Richard Riehle (that guy from Office Space who invented the “Jump to Conclusions” mat). Red was directed by two people. When I first heard that this adaptation was going to be made, it always had Lucky McKee’s name attached to it. McKee previously directed the cult hit May and The Woods. I like both those movies, so I was excited about his involvement in this one. Then, for some reason that I’m too lazy to research at the moment, he was replaced by a Norwegian director named Trygve Allister Diesen. Whatever happened didn’t seem to affect the movie too much, as I was happy with how it turned out and how it remained true to the book. Thanks to Comcast for making this movie available to me at this time. I appreciate it. Back to Cliffhanger.

Inside (A l'interieur)

2008-07-22T16:16:00.003-06:00

I’m tired. I sleep too much. But in between my time spent sleeping and my time spent working, I watch an occasional movie or flick or film. I’m back on Netflix and they haven’t throttled me yet (which was the reason I quit them in the first place), so I get to review some obscure shit again. It turns out there’s this new dimension to Dimension Films, a sub-dimension of the Weinstein Co., called Dimension Extreme. For those of you not in the know, Dimension is a studio that released mostly horror films during the 90’s (the decade when the word extreme was used to describe anything and everything that was fucking cool). They brought us some extreme movies like Scream and From Dusk Till Dawn. Now we’re nearing the end of the 00’s and Dimension is still around, though their films have gotten considerably less extreme, unless you consider the potent extremeness of Mr. 3000 and Who’s Your Caddy?. That’s where Dimension Extreme comes in. If you want to see some crazy, cutting-edge horror, the most eXtreme horror available to human eyes, you rent movies that have the words Dimension Extreme emblazoned in white across a blood-red strip on the upper left corner of the DVD box. At least that’s what the marketing department for Dimension Extreme would have you think. BTW, I drive a Nissan Xterra, so I can validate any claims of extremeness, extremity, and extremepolation.

I’ve watched three Dimension Extreme films in the past few weeks: Diary of the Dead, Black Sheep, and Inside. I hated Diary of the Dead, which makes me sad, because I usually love zombie movies, especially zombie movies directed by George Romero. Diary is complete ass. I also hated Black Sheep. It is one of those horror-comedies that isn’t funny, isn’t scary, and is gory for the sake of gore (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing unless it involves sheep zombies). That brings me to Inside, the movie I am reviewing here. Inside is a French film which means that the actors speak French and the English translation of their words appears in sentences across the bottom of the screen. Or you can watch the dubbed version but dubbing hurts my epididymis. I don’t mind reading subtitles if there aren’t too many to distract me from the picture; there aren’t a lot of subtitles in this movie because there is a lot of screaming and crying and utterances of pain that don’t require translation. So…you shouldn’t avoid this movie just because it has subtitles. I’ll give you other reasons to avoid it.

Inside is about this pregnant girl who survives a car crash that kills her boyfriend. Her baby is okay. This presents a dilemma. She’s so sad about her boyfriend’s death that she doesn’t want to have the baby. She’s reluctantly going through with it. Oh, if you want to know who the actors or directors of this movie are, go to imdb and look them up. I don’t feel like incorporating their names into my review. I’m not sure why, I just don’t. Shut up about it. So the girl goes home to get some rest the night before she is going to be induced into labor. Her doctor agrees to pick her up the next morning at 6 am. She lives alone. It’s Christmas and it’s cold and raining. She knits. I felt a little sad for her. Then some creepy person knocks on her door, asking to use the phone. The person won’t go away and tries to get into the house. The pregnant woman calls the police. The shadowy intruder intrudes. Then the scissors and knitting needles and fireplace pokers come out, fucking stabbing and slicing and poking, blood spraying everywhere, gushing from neck wounds in arterial pulses, blood-painted walls, fucking eyeball-gouging bullshit, hands getting stabbed and nailed to walls (Blood Simple), heads exploding, aerosol flame-throwers to the face, fucking hair on fire, melting skin, fucking bullets and brain matter and gaping wounds, glass shards and CGI babies and shit, without the camera cutting away. Inside wins the award for the goriest movie of the year if there is a category for that shit. Holy fucking balls this movie is gory. It’s so gory that you may be desensitized by the time the absolutely disgusting finale arrives because you’re so used to all the blood and guts and carnage. The Frenchies at the helm of this ship probably sat around a table and decided to make the sickest movie they could possibly make. They outlined all the disgusting kills. The plot would be irrelevant. They said, “Let’s make a movie even bloodier than Haute Tension” (though they said it in French). They said, “What’s grosser than gross?” Good job…you succeeded. High fives all around. Go team.

Disclaimer: I made up the stuff about the intentions of the filmmakers. I watched part of the making-of featurette and they said they were making a “horror thriller”. They wanted to make something visually disturbing and they got this script and they went for it. Good for them.

I’ve seen some people on the internet compare this movie to Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. Please don’t ever do that. Irreversible is disturbing; Inside is disgusting. There are some genuinely tense moments in this movie, but those happen before all the blood-letting. I didn’t care much about the characters or the plot, so the entire movie became a showcase for the gore effects team. They performed admirably (except for the torched head scene, I laughed at that). Give those kids a raise. Surprisingly, there are no exposed breasts in this, so if you thought that there’d be a lot of nudity in this just because it’s a French film, you are wrong. Besides, French films like to show the Cock’nBalls more than boobs anyway (I know you watch the IFC late at night).

Moral of this story: Don’t crash into pregnant ladies; their hormones will get out of whack.

Freedom's Fury

2008-07-15T16:25:00.003-06:00

I’m not a big documentary watcher. I’ve seen a few documentaries that I really enjoy, but I don’t usually go looking for them when I’m deciding on something to watch. For some reason, I prefer fiction over non-fiction for my escapism (this includes books as well as movies and TV). So why did I decide to watch a documentary about the 1956 Hungarian Olympic water polo team called Freedom’s Fury? I have a personal attachment to this film. My childhood experience is wrapped up in it.

I was born with severe asthma. As a kid, I spent countless hours in doctor offices and hospital rooms. I took every type of asthma medication available at the time. Asthma affected every aspect of my youth. I couldn’t go on school field trips without parental supervision. I couldn’t spend the night at friends’ houses without my inhalers and nebulizers. I couldn’t run the mile during PE. My doctor told me that I needed to strengthen my lungs and he suggested swimming as the means. I joined a summer league team (the North Lake Dolphins) when I was eight and my swimming career took off.

When I was 9 years old, a coach of the local United States Swimming club saw me swim and wanted me to join his team. USS (now called USA Swimming) is a competitive, year-round program designed to produce Olympic caliber swimmers. I swam for a program in Stockton, CA called Delta Valley Aquatics (DVA). I ended up competing in numerous swim meets, including Far Westerns, a short course and long course championship meet for Pacific area swimmers. I swam numerous events at PRT times and was considered one of the best swimmers in my age group (10 and under). So, what does any of this have to do with the documentary I am supposed to be reviewing? What is my personal tie to this film? It turns out that one of the subjects of the documentary is my old coach, a crazy Hungarian dude named Ervin Zador. Ervin taught me everything I know about swimming and was a huge influence on my character during my pre-teen years.

In the fall of 1956, the country of Hungary was in turmoil. Ever since the conclusion of WWII, Hungary had been occupied by the Soviet Army. Numerous puppet regimes had been put in place to keep the Hungarian people under Soviet influence. In 1956, students and journalists led a political demonstration march through the city of Budapest. The Soviet Union seemed willing to negotiate with the Hungarians at first, but soon went back on their word, leading to a violent conflict that left over 2,500 Hungarians and 722 Soviet soldiers dead. For more details, read about the revolution here. During this time, the Hungarian water polo team was preparing for the summer Olympics in Australia.

Ervin Zador, my old swim coach, was a key member of the 1956 Hungarian water polo team. He was a young, largely untested player that was called up from the club leagues to be a part of the team for the Olympics. Hungary has always had a reputation for great water polo, having won numerous Olympic medals in the past. The 1956 team would be no exception. During the semi-finals of Olympic play, they faced a team that they had trained just a few months earlier, the Soviets--a Soviet team that represented the country that had recently invaded Hungary and killed many its people. Anticipation of the match grew at a feverous pitch with spectators and media packing the venue. The game was one of the most violent water polo games of all time, featuring numerous fouls and cheap shots. Ervin Zador scored 2 of Hungary’s 4 unanswered goals. Near the end of the match, after much verbal taunting, a Russian player named Prokopov sucker punched Zador, opening a bloody gash on his face. Blood pooled in the water and the match was stopped. The zealous media snapped pictures of the bloodied Zador, declaring the contest the Blood in the Water Match. Zador’s injury prevented him from playing in the gold medal match, which Hungary won over Yugoslavia, 2-1. Following the Olympics, Ervin Zador was one of many Hungarian athletes to defect.

I remember hearing about this story as a kid, but I didn’t ever know the details. I knew Ervin had won a gold medal and I had seen the famous picture of him, bloodied at poolside. He didn’t talk about the game. He didn’t talk about that time at all. I remember seeing his gold medal once, at a party we had at his ranch house in Linden, CA. I don’t remember if he showed it to us or if one of his kids got it out (I suspect the latter). This documentary showed me a side of my coach that I didn’t get to see when I was swimming for him. It also reminded of his great personality, his always-positive attitude, and his genuine sense of humor. Ervin is featured in many of the interviews in the documentary and in my opinion is the star of the show. Freedom’s Fury is a well-made documentary that tells one of the greatest Olympic stories of all time. Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino produced it, so it has to be great, right? Check it out…with the 2008 Summer Olympics starting in a few weeks, now is a perfect time.

Vantage Point

2008-07-11T18:01:00.004-06:00

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a decent action movie. That’s a lie. I recently watched Seagal’s latest DTV movie, Pistol Whipped, which whipped my ass and my pistol simultaneously. It is an amazing tour-de-force of pure genius. But I’m not reviewing it here. I’m instead reviewing another amazing action film that I just watched. Top notch filmmaking. It’s called Vantage Point and it stars my three favorite actors of all time: Forest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, and Matthew Fox. You may have seen the trailer for this movie when it was in theatres; it played on every TV channel during every commercial break for weeks. You may have seen a befuddled Forest Whitaker with a camcorder in a crowd, recording the assassination of the President of the United States. You may have seen Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox running and jumping and shooting and driving and crashing through the streets of Spain to catch the assassins. You may have wet your pants in anticipation of the film’s greatness.

Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox play Secret Service agents on Presidential detail. The President, or as I will refer to him from now as POTUS, is about to deliver a groundbreaking speech about terrorism in Salamanca, Spain. I went to Salamanca, Spain last January. It’s a cool city. I bought a red t-shirt that says Universidad Salamanca. That means Salamanca University in English. The location where POTUS is set to deliver his momentous speech is Plaza Mayor. I visited Plaza Mayor. I can vouch for the authenticity of this location in the film. As POTUS is getting ready to deliver his world-changing remarks, someone shoots him. Then a bomb goes off somewhere outside of the Plaza. Then a bomb goes off inside the plaza. Boom, boom, boom. Luckily, Forest Whitaker is nearby, filming his experience like a well-trained tourist. The look of shock on his face, the pure terror of violent, unexpected acts is a beautiful thing to behold. Forest has come a long way from his role as Balldozer in Vision Quest. His emotive facial contortions deliver more truth and power than any line of spoken dialogue. The man positively exudes greatness.

Once the assassination and its brief aftermath have taken place, we get to experience it all over again and again through the differing vantage points (this is where they got the idea for the movie’s title) of key onlookers. Each different point of view (i.e. standpoint) provides us, the viewers, with new insights, details, and clues as to what actually transpired. Did POTUS actually get shot? What was the cause of the explosion outside of the plaza? Why did the little girl drop her ice cream? Who are the terrorists? Why is Forest Whitaker so sad and confused? How does Dennis Quaid’s past experience inform his present decision making process? Where did Matthew Fox go and could he possibly have something to do with the assassination attempt? I enjoy how all the characters’ paths are perfectly entwined and how their miniscule actions are a requisite part of everything resolving the only way it can and should resolve. We are the USA. We love our POTUS.

Vantage Point features some truly amazing action sequences and special effects. The explosions are jarring, blunt, and brutal. The filmmakers do a great job of not showing blood during all of the violence. This is especially important to viewers who don’t like blood. Many of the children that watch PG-13 movies aren’t ready for that kind of adult material. They shouldn’t have to see mangled body parts and gore after an explosion or a gunfight…that kind of realism is just plain gratuitous. There is a car chase sequence in this film that rivals the greatest chase scenes of all time, including Bullitt, Ronin, and The Bourne Supremacy. It features some of the best sped-up camera work I have ever witnessed. The chase ends with Dennis Quaid kicking out the windshield of his car and climbing through the vacated space--a moment of untainted cinematic perfection and my favorite scene in the movie. Dennis elevates his acting to Nick Nolte levels of brilliance.

I recommend Vantage Point to anyone who likes hardcore, kickass action movies of the highest tier. I’m looking forward to the sequel, Vantage Point II: 2 Points of View. I sincerely hope that Forest Whitaker and Dennis Quaid reprise their influential roles and that the entire movie is filmed from their vantage points and shown in split-screen. I’d like to see Matthew Fox come back as well, but that would be a difficult casting situation seeing as he died in this one (spoiler).

The Happening

2008-07-03T11:19:00.003-06:00

Am I allowed to review a movie that I didn’t finish watching, a movie that pushed me out of the theatre 30 minutes after it started, a movie so amazingly boring that I was willing to eat the $7.50 I paid for admittance? Yes, I am. My $7.50 investment entitles me to review said movie. Said move = The Happening. The Happening = poop. I paid $7.50 for poop. I can drop my own dumpage for free. I can find poop on the lawn outside my apartment and step in it and smear it on my carpet and I don’t have to pay a penny.

I was pretty excited to see The Happening after I watched the red band trailer on the internet. M. Night Shyamalan makes an R-rated movie with lots of gore starring Marky Mark and Bones’ sister (the TV show Bones, not the Snoop Dogg movie) who I used to think was kind of cute but now I’m not so sure. The trailer shows people falling off of buildings, people stabbing themselves in the neck, people getting run over by riding lawnmowers, etc. Color me stoked. Then I got to the theatre. When the movie started, I was the only person there. After a few minutes, a couple of other people wandered in. I quickly noticed that there was something wrong with the sound. The supposedly pristine Dolby Digital soundtrack was oscillating from side to side accompanied by a low level hiss that sounded like wind in a tunnel. I don’t think this was the fault of the film; there was something wrong with the AMC theatre equipment. Good sound is as important as a good picture. I paid decent money for this movie. I expect better sound than I can get on my home theatre set-up. I left the theatre (after about 30 minutes into the movie) to tell the service desk about the problem but instead of returning to finish the movie, I went home. I had no interest in discovering what else happened in The Happening because nothing had happened up to the point when I bailed. That’s not totally true. Some stuff had happened. I got to see lots of extreme close-ups of John Leguizamo’s face and nasty, crooked yellow teeth. He wore a constant expression of sadness and befuddlement. I got to see Marky Mark play the worst impersonation of a biology teacher ever put to film. Completely unbelievable. I like Mark Wahlberg; he’s great in Shooter and The Departed and Fear and Four Brothers and such. He’s terrible in this (at least in the first half-hour). I got to see extreme close-ups of Zooey Deschanel’s face, her close-set, nearly crossed eyes and her I-have-no-idea-where-the-fuck-I-am expression. I was privileged to witness a discussion about the merits of the hot dog and questions concerning the availability of mustard. The hot dog dialogue was my breaking point. I stood up and promptly exited the theatre, walked to the service desk where I notified the 16 year-old of the sound issues, and left the AMC 24 complex. I got in my car and drove home. I put my new Gangs of New York BluRay in my Sony PlayStation 3 and cleansed my mind of all things M. Night. Goodnight M. Night. See you on DTV soon.

Spiritualized: Songs in A&E

2008-06-18T13:15:00.005-06:00

Let’s do some music reviews. Not really reviews, per se, but me telling you what albums you should buy and the reasons you should buy them. I guess that’s a review, but you won’t read any negative music reviews from me because I won’t take the time to write them. All my music reviews will be recommendations. Let’s call them music recommendations for simplicity’s sake.

My friend Chad told me about an album I should listen to. It’s the new CD by Spiritualized, entitled Songs in A&E. He said I’d appreciate the lyrics and the spacey textures, especially considering my on-going medical condition and reliance on pain meds. He was right (he usually is). I love this album. I’ve never listened to Spiritualized before, so you true-blue Spiritualized fans can mock me now. The album artwork is simple and effective: green ink on a white background. I’m glad that they list the song titles on the back cover. A lot of hip “indie” bands are getting away from that for some reason (i.e. Bright Eyes) or they print the titles really small near the spine (i.e. the new Wolf Parade) so I can’t read them. I like to see how many tracks are on an album and I like to be able to refer to the album cover to see the name of the song as I’m listening to the CD so I don’t have to call the song Track 3 or Track 7 or whatever.

The songs on A&E range from sparse, nearly acoustic numbers like Death Take Your Fiddle (with an eerie breathing track) to grandiose, orchestral pieces like Borrowed Your Gun. Death Take Your Fiddle sounds surprisingly similar to Townes Van Zandt's Waiting Around to Die. There are some great intermittent instrumental pieces that tie things together nicely. The album has an overall cohesive feel; it’s a concept album in an era of singles. My friend told me that the lead singer/songwriter went through a period where he lived in the hospital on the brink of death for a while. Most of the songs on the album reflect that theme—a closeness to death, overmedication, hallucination, etc. Some of the lyrics are incredible. Here are a few examples:

I think I’ll drink myself into a coma
And I’ll take any pill that I can find
But morphine, codeine, whisky they won’t alter
The way I feel now death is not around

And

I got a hurricane inside my veins
And I want to stay forever

And

Daddy I’m sorry
I borrowed your gun again
Shot up my mother
My beautiful mother

This album is dark but it’s amazing. If you haven’t listened to Spiritualized before, take a chance on it. If you have, you already know how good it can be.

Sleuth

2008-06-13T15:53:00.004-06:00

Sleuth. Say the word a few times. Sleuth, sleuth, sleuth. It sounds kind of ridiculous when uttered aloud. I’m not sure why. It’s just one of those words. And one of those movies. A ridiculous one. I saw the trailer for Sleuth a few months ago and decided to give it a shot. After all, it stars Jude Law and Michael Caine, two pretty okay actors. It’s a remake of an older film of the same name that stars Michael Caine as well (only in the original, which I haven’t seen, Caine plays Jude Law’s character). It’s directed by actor Kenneth Branagh, whose previous directorial efforts mostly include Shakespeare adaptations.

Michael Caine plays an old mystery/thriller writer named Andrew whose wife is cheating on him with an out-of-work actor with really bad hair named Milo (Jude Law). Andrew invites Milo to his home to discuss the affair. Andrew lives in this ridiculous house that has lots of moving walls, weird lights, an elevator, and surveillance equipment that is all controlled by one of those little Apple remotes. My little Apple remote only controls the volume on my computer and enables me to skip past songs that I don’t want to hear. It doesn’t control my security cameras. I got ripped off. I want a remote that controls lighting to paint my apartment in teals and fuchsias. The prop department obviously didn’t watch Bruce Willis’ Hostage to see what a real multi-purpose remote should look like. Instead, they relied on the general stupidity of their intended audience (50+ year-old Michael Caine fans) to not notice their glaring technical mistake. Little did they know, a 32 year-old Jude Law fan (well, I liked him in GATTACA) and proud owner of an Apple computer would watch this film and call them out on their inaccuracies. Bastards.

The entire movie takes place in Andrew’s house. There are only two characters (spoiler). There is a part when you think there might be a third character, but that character is played so poorly and has such bad make-up that you know it’s Jude Law playing Milo trying to trick Andrew. Did I mention how bad Jude Law’s hair is in this? A greasy, stringy, unwashed mop. I think his monstrous coiffure is intentional, as Andrew insists that Milo is a hair stylist by occupation, much to Milo’s chagrin (another weird word, like sleuth, that I just had to work into this review). I think it’s supposed to be a joke but I wasn’t laughing. His hair nearly distracted my attention from the trite, “aren’t we clever”, stage dialogue (if I were British, I would refer to this film’s dialogue as utter drivel; I would also spell behavior as behaviour) and the blatantly terrible overacting. The characters recite some of the lamest lines in the history of bad Michael Caine movies. I’d reproduce some of those lines here but I didn’t take any notes while watching the movie and even if I had, they’d be incomprehensible because I was in the midst of an amazing vicodin buzz (legally prescribed for my recurring intestinal issues), which was a good thing because the pills enabled me to make it through this cinematic mess.

Warning: there are no hot chicks in this movie. Not one. It’s just Michael Caine and Jude Law, enveloped in some sort of bizarre sexual tension. We don’t even get to meet the woman they are fighting over. Also, there isn’t much sleuthing going on…just a bunch of psychological game playing and play acting. Maybe the title is in reference to the scene where Milo dresses up as a detective, but that part of the movie sucks balls (spoiler). Other apt titles for this movie might be: An 86 Minute Conversation Between Two People, Michael Caine is Gay, Shooting Blanks, Incredibly Bad Breath, etc. I can’t really think of anything positive to say about this movie. I would recommend it to all Michael Caine fans, people who like totally unrealistic, overwrought dialogue, and people who say trousers instead of pants or use words like ballyhoo. Cheers.

Rambo

2008-06-01T16:19:00.002-06:00

Te vau bou no tre mon koo sop BOOM va keunbow lo se RATATATATATATAT ming how loon kon sing mong BANG aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! SPLAT. Live for nothing or die for something, mumble, Burma, mumble, it’s a war zone, blah, blah, something unintelligible…RATATATATATAT, pop, pop, SWOOSH, BOOM!!! Yep, I’m reviewing Rambo.

Rambo, the fourth film in the series, not to be confused with Rambo: First Blood Part II, was originally going to be called John Rambo. I’m not sure why Stallone changed the title. I’m just not willing to do the research on that one. This film is not a remake of the other Rambo; it’s a new, frenetic and brutal beast of a movie that features an aged, yet competent Sylvester Stallone in the acting, writing, and directing roles. I missed Rambo when it hit theatres this last winter. I was too busy not watching movies in theatres but instead watching movies on DVD in my apartment. It’s become a rare occurrence when I courageously venture to that fabled land of talkative, texting teens and their blue cell-phone glows. After watching it, I’m kind of bummed that I missed out on the possible community experience that would have made this movie that much more special. You know what I’m talking about. Getting hammered and seeing this movie in a theatre full of other hammered dudes (and the few awesome chicks that support this kind of mayhem), laughing at the lame one liners and useless dialogue and cheering and yelling and fist-pumping as John motherfucking Rambo mans the 50-caliber and shreds through wave after wave of Burmese soldiers. I watched it alone with the surround cranked up. And still loved it.

Rambo IV begins in Thailand. Rambo is a snake hunter; he catches cobras and sells them to retards that put on snake charming or see-how-pissed-off-you-can-make-the-snake type shows. He owns, maintains, and lives on a shitty old boat. He’s depressed and grumpy and dirty and can barely speak coherent sentences. Some Christian missionaries from Colorado (props) show up and ask Rambo if he’ll take them into Burma so they can deliver supplies and medical aid to oppressed civilians. Rambo tells the leader of the group, “no way, pal.” He doesn’t really say that but he tells them that their efforts won’t change anything because nothing ever changes which is the message of this film and the theme of Rambo’s life. Nothing ever changes. One of the women in the group, a missionary named Sarah (played by Dexter’s girlfriend), tries to convince Rambo to take them and he says no to her a few times before finally giving in to her wily, womanly ways. Rambo takes the group into Burma and shit happens and Rambo has to save them, along with a motley group of mercenaries. That’s the plot. It’s just an excuse to get Rambo out of his quiet, isolated shell and behind the armor shield of a jeep-mounted 50-caliber machine gun.

I’ve never before seen so many detached limbs, exploding heads, and severed bodies in a single film. This movie is Violent (with a capital V, twice). Rambo rips through the badguys on his quest to save Dexter’s girlfriend and the Christians. He crafts his own knife from hot metal to do so. He is relentless; he gets shit done. There’s a scene in this movie (to which I’ve alluded twice in this review already) that rivals the violence of the opening sequence in Saving Private Ryan. Real-life soldiers who have seen the film confirm that the effects of the gun in said scene are completely realistic. Wow. I watched the special features to get some background info on this stuff. You can too.

Now comes the requisite point of the review where I compare Rambo to the previous films in the series. That’s easy. This is the second best film in the series, following the unbeatable First Blood. This movie greatly surpasses the slick 80’s violence of Rambo: First Blood Part II and the steaming pile of poop that is Rambo III. I love the direction that Stallone employs…a shaky, stalking camera movement that he claims is what the film would look like if Rambo himself directed it. Stallone brings John Rambo back to the people and the people rejoice. Yea, the people weep with joy.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-05-28T14:54:00.003-06:00

One of my earliest movie theatre memories involves Raiders of the Lost Ark. My mom, my sister, and I were planning on seeing some Disney movie. The show we were going to see was sold out. So my mom took us to Raiders instead. I was 5 years old. Raiders was already playing, so we missed a good portion of it. I remember the scene where Marion is hiding in the baskets in India or somewhere while Indy is being chased by sword-wielding henchmen. That must have been the point when we walked in. I remember being scared by the creepy looking German with the coat hanger, the one who burned his hand on the medallion. I remember the ending, the scene where Indy says something like, “whatever you do, don’t look”. My mom took that to heart and told me to cover my eyes. I peeked. My sister didn’t (she’s a wuss). Ghosts flew out of The Ark of the Covenant and burned holes in people, melted some faces, and even blew one guys head apart. I was amazed. Pure face-melting brilliance. This has to be the reason why I like to watch gory horror movies. It’s my mom’s fault.

I love Raiders. It’s one of the best action films of all time. I’ve watched it numerous times. There are some genuinely tense scenes and some great humorous moments. I love the fight with the big, bald German badass who gets cut up by the airplane propeller. I love the snake in the cockpit. I love the car chase where Indy ends up on the grill of the truck and has to slide under it while it’s driving. I love the shootout in Marion’s bar. It’s over-the-top action that retains a sense of reality. Great stuff.

Then came the sequels: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade (not really…yes, it really exists, but it’s not a true sequel, it’s a tangential storyline), and the latest mouthful, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If I remember correctly, the original movie was simply called Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t think it had the “Indiana Jones and the…” attached to the title. I might be wrong. I don’t care. I think that when the producer/director/whoever put the Indiana Jones part at the beginning of the title, the films went downhill. Too much focus on Indy; not enough focus on the rest of the raiders. Just kidding, but not really. I enjoyed the dark and gory Temple of Doom, but could have done without the stupid side-kick and the annoying love interest character. Nothing beats a good heart-ripping scene. I also liked The Last Crusade. Sean Connery did a great job playing off of Harrison Ford. It wasn’t as gory as the earlier two films and relied a little more on humor than on action sequences. The part where the one dude drank from the wrong cup and got old really fast was kind of cool, but nowhere reached the level of awesomeness as the face melting of Raiders. I do give The Last Crusade props for severed heads, though.

Now, 19 years after The LAST Crusade, we get Indiana Jones and the whatever, whatever. It’s a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. They completely ignored The Temple of Doom in this one, while constantly referencing the other films. Going in, I wanted to give The Castle of Crystalskull the benefit of the doubt. I avoided reading any reviews or criticisms of it before watching it. I still haven’t read anything about it; I don’t want to flavor my reviews with the opinions of others. If I wrote for Chud or AICN, I would have already seen an early screening and this review would be called Jared’s Take. It would accompany Devin’s Take and Nick’s Take and Jeremy’s Take and Russ’ Take and Harry’s Take and Moriarty’s Take but not Vern’s Take cause Vern didn’t review it. He reviewed The Class of 1984 which I just watched and it is awesome. I watched the new Indy Jones Jr. flick on Memorial Day. I didn’t take any notes or anything, so if I get something wrong in my review, fuck you.

The movie begins with the Paramount fade-in on the mountain, only this mountain is a pile of dirt. A computer generated gopher pops up. Shit. I should have left at this point but I decided to stick it out. Indy looks old. That’s fine, but he runs like Sam Cassell. Sean Connery was old in The Last Crusade but he didn’t seem old. Harrison Ford looks tired and beaten. It must be the earring and the booze. The story is set during the Eisenhower presidency. The Nazis are no longer the bad guys. Now it’s the communists, the fucking red bastards. The opening takes place in a warehouse at Area 51, where the government stores all its secrets like the Ark of the Covenant and other powerful, supernatural artifacts like aliens from Roswell and the faked moon landing stage and staplers and Sharpies and stuff. The main badguy (in this case, badgirl) is played by Cate Blanchett. She has short black hair and a bad accent and she thinks she can read minds. She’s part of the KGB’s brainwashing unit or something. She carries around a long saber, like the kind you see in those Marines commercials where it looks like the guy is going to cut off his ear (I wish that would happen, just once). Indy has a friend named Mac who is a turncoat (spoiler) and a greaser motorcycle kid named Mutt who follows him around. Mutt is played by Shia LaBoofer and his character is actually Indy’s son (spoiler, but everyone saw it coming). Indy must have had sex with Marion on the submarine in Raiders of the Lost Ark (putting two and two together) and Mutt is their spawn. Indy doesn’t realize that Mutt is his son for most of the movie. We know this going in because we aren’t that dumb. Well, the people sitting in front of me probably didn’t figure it out until the reveal because they were retarded. And they smelled like one of those pine air-freshener thingies that you hang in your car.

The rest of the movie is about a crystal skull that has magical powers. The skull is shaped like an alien head, but not like an E.T. alien because E.T.’s head looks like old Indy’s scrotum. Kids don’t need to see that on the big screen. This is a sleek, 21st century alien head. Whoever first returns the magical, mystical skull to its rightful resting place gets the skull’s power. Hence the car chases. Hundreds of car chases. Indoor car chases, outdoor car chases, chases along cliffs and through jungles. Indy is constantly crawling through windows and over hoods and over roofs and punching drivers and jumping from one car to another. Then Mutt is swinging from vines like fucking Tarzan and sword fighting while straddling two cars and being hit in the nuts by plants. Funny. And then there are a bunch of monkeys. And human-eating fire ants. And quicksand that isn’t quicksand. And aliens from another dimension (spoiler). This movie quickly devolves into The Mummy Returns. Even the ending is similar (all the shit spinning around in the air). Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a rip-off of The Mummy Returns which is a rip-off of the earlier Indiana Jones films. I’m at that nexus in the universe that Lewis Black spoke of…the one where you walk out of one Starbucks and right across the street, directly in front of you, is another Starbucks. It’s all the same. This film’s greatest flaw is that it presents nothing new. It rehashes nearly every scene from the previous films. It tries desperately to be funny, but the jokes fall flat. Karen Allen’s reprisal of her Marion role is a joke, and not a funny one. John Hurt’s Oxley character was obviously written for Sean Connery. When Connery decided not to do the film, they wrote him out with a photograph and a line of dialogue. Then, instead of re-writing his part, they just put in a different character name. Lazy.

The action sequences are computer generated blurs, sapped of any tension they could have had. If you want to see how an intense chase sequence should play out, watch Ronin or the second Bourne movie. Practical effects, people. Green screen magic should only be used for things that can’t be done with practical effects. If you can’t have Shia LaBoofer swinging from vines and straddling two cars while fencing in real life, toss the scene. Think up something else. He’s not a fucking superhero; he’s a greaser with a switchblade. It’s like the scene from Die Another Day where James Bond surfs an iceberg. Throw it out. The Scorpion King at the end of The Mummy Returns is laughable, but the new Hulk looks just as terrible. Stick an epee in it and call it done. Stop writing movies based on the fact that you can shoot all the action scenes and characters in CGI; write them as if you didn’t have that luxury and use it only when necessary. Goddamn. Spielberg is Michael Bay on Quaaludes.

Back to Indy 4: Why in the hell was there a wedding in this movie? Who wants to see a wedding in a movie? For that matter, who wants to see one in real life? Weddings are boring and have no place in action films. Same goes for funerals. If a character dies, we don’t need to see a bunch of extras mourning his/her death at graveside. Move past it. Take the unnecessary human elements out. Save stuff like that for right before the credits. Do that cheesy thing where you tell the audience what happens to the characters in the future in bold, declarative sentences: Indy and Marion settle down and get married. Oxley gets lost in the Amazon on an expedition in search of his balls. Mutt Jones rapes a gopher. The end.

Update: My friend asked me if I thought this movie was really as big a disaster as I painted it to be. This is my response that I posted on his website:

I don't know man. Vern liked it. I was bored with it. I laughed a couple of times and enjoyed some of the action, but a lot of it seemed forced. It does a good job playing on the paranoia of the 50's. I'll give it that. I was really upset that they went the whole CGI route with it, to the extreme. I think I'm getting old. I'm not willing to change with the times. This movie is like the Die Another Day of the series. I wanted a Casino Royale. Oh well. Go see it and review it. I'd like to read your take on it.

Untraceable

2008-05-14T16:07:00.004-06:00

Add another really dumb movie to the pile of dumb movies I’ve seen this year. This one is called Untraceable. It stars Diane Lane and it’s really dumb. The plot is dumb, the acting is dumb, the writing is dumb, the quote on the cover of the DVD box proclaiming it to be “the Silence of the Lambs of the internet age” is dumb, the guy who made the quote is a dumbass and deserves to be fired from his dumb job, and I’m dumb for having watched it.

Diane Lane plays an FBI computer forensic expert. She spends a lot of time busting 13 year-olds for pirating DVD’s and music. This movie is an 88-minute version of those anti-piracy commercials. There is a dumb scene where a kid gets busted for stealing credit card information from people who torrent his pirated media. He uses some sort of Backdoor Trojan approach that doesn’t involve a butthole and a condom. Hey all you stupid people who use torrent sites, don’t you know that all your personal information is getting ripped off just because you’re too cheap and lazy to buy the actual crappy DVD version of Beowulf that you are stealing or borrowing or whatever you call it? The FBI is watching you and people like Diane Lane and her retarded assistants will find you and fine your ass or put you in jail because we all know how much our jails need to be populated with pre-pubescent teenage boys.

The dumb plot of the movie (other than the anti-piracy part) involves a killer who kidnaps people and kills them using intricate devices like heat lamps and acid baths and heparin IV injections and posts video of them struggling and suffering and dying on the internet. The more people that log on to the site to watch the torture, the faster the victim dies. It’s all live, with people commenting on what they’re seeing, typing things like omg, lol, fry dude fry, this is teh suk, u pwnd him, etc. The website is called killwithme.com. The front page features an image of a skull wearing child-molester glasses. Kill With Me is written in red over a black background. Black + red = evil. You are an accomplice to the murder if you log on to the site just as you’re an accomplice to dumbness if you watch this movie. I thought the killer would turn out to be one of the FBI assistants but it wasn’t. I’m dumb. It was just some random kid with a retarded back-story that gave him motive.

Untraceable also attempts to address other complex issues such as what it’s like to be a single, working mother. Diane Lane’s character has a daughter who she constantly has to leave with her mother when the shit hits the fan. This happens a lot. Tons of shit. She has to read her daughter bedtime stories after long hours at work to make up for it. The shit inconveniently hits the fan during the daughter’s roller-rink birthday party and mother and daughter shoot Diane some discouraging looks when she leaves. I’d have bolted first chance I got cause that party looked lame. Roller-skating sucks. There’s also the issue of the single mother still getting over the death of her recently deceased husband while being attracted to a cop. No relationship develops. This is a red herring. The cop has small balls.

Watch for the awesome OnStar advertisement at the beginning of the movie. It’s so out of place that you know they’re going to use that product in some clever way later on in the movie. Thanks GM.

Untraceable makes Feardotcom look like The Net.

Updated to add: My friend posted a blog the other day about Morse Code and the effect it would have on certain popular songs. This movie uses Morse Code in a creative way as well. While one of the characters is being tortured, he's trying to communicate with the FBI by blinking out messages in Morse Code. One of the FBI dudes says something like, "I think his right eye is the dots and his left is the dashes." Amazing.

I Know Who Killed Me

2008-05-06T17:29:00.005-06:00

I Think I Know Who Might’ve Killed Me If I Hadn’t Been So Stoned is a movie about a serial killer and Lindsay Lohan. I'm going to make a bunch of funny Lindsay-Lohan-is-so-screwed-up jokes in this review. Those are hilarious. She’s a drug addict. Get it? LOL! Sometimes she shows off her vag in public. Ha Ha Ha, no panties. Did you hear that Lindsay is in rehab again? Ho Ho Haw Haw Har-de-Har. What a skank. She should be named Lindsay Ho-han. Giggle, giggle. Look…I don’t give a bastard’s beanbag about an actor’s personal life. I don’t. They get drunk, they say stupid shit, they fart in a club, they show a nipple, big deal. I don’t care that Tom Cruise believes in Scientology and I don’t care that Katherine Heigl is a Mormon. I watch movies because they are sometimes entertaining. The real-life personality problems of Hollywood stars don’t entertain me (unless a real-life Michelle Monaghan wants to come to my house and entertain me personally).

I Know Who Killed Me is Chris Siverston’s (The Lost) attempt at directing an entire film about the colors blue and red. That’s all you need to know about it. The symbolism of the colors. Their meaning. The psychology of pigmentation. This shit is getting deep, so put on your wading boots. We’re going to catch us some Redside Shiners and some Bluegills. Red is hot and sexy and pole-dances; blue is calm and cool and plays the piano. Red is trailer-trash; blue is affluent and cultured. Blue is first place; red is second. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Red Lindsay and Blue Lindsay and a killer with blue, nitrile gloves (he must be allergic to latex) and some blue roses and some red blood and some severed appendages. Fingers falling off. Have you figured out who killed her yet? Oh, I didn’t list the suspects: naïve boyfriend, sexy gardener, creepy piano teacher, concerned father, banal biology teacher. It doesn’t really matter. The whole point of the movie is trying to figure out how Lindsay can know who killed her if she’s already dead.

I kind of liked this movie. The acting is pretty crappy and the writing is mediocre but the direction is interesting and unique, at times. The plot twist is stupid and I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. Yet, I was entertained. I laughed a lot. I like Lindsay Lohan’s freckles. This movie should have been released direct-to-video or direct-to-cable or as part of that After Dark Horrorfest thing. But I guess since Captivity got a theatrical release, this deserved one too. I’m looking forward to the DTV sequel starring Tara Reid and Edward Norton (who will be unfairly relegated to the DTV industry after Hulk 2 fails).

In conclusion, I’m bewildered by the trend of having actresses act as strippers in movies where they never actually strip (i.e. Jessica Alba in Sin City and Natalie Portman in Closer and Rose McGowan in Planet Terror). What does that say about our society? Do we live in a red and blue world with no shades of purple? Is it too much to ask for some basic honesty in storytelling?

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

2008-04-23T15:42:00.009-06:00

Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is the most recent movie from famed octogenarian filmmaker, Sidney Lumet. He’s directed some classics like Network and Dog Day Afternoon. He’s also directed a bunch of movies I haven’t seen, nor really care to see. I like to watch movies that have either the word devil (Oh, God! You Devil) or the word dead (House of the Dead) in their titles. This one has both.

BTDKYD (you’re supposed to abbreviate long movie titles with awkward acronyms) stars Ethan Hawk and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The play brothers (Hank and Andy) who have problems like heroin addiction, infidelity, spastic behavior, needing money, etc. Stuff we’ve seen before. Their dad (Albert Finney) is a grumpy old man who always favored Hank over Andy when they were growing up. This becomes an important plot element, along with the heroin addiction, infidelity, spastic behavior, lack of money, etc. A robbery goes wrong and it affects a lot of people, leading to much crying and yelling and death. This movie is okay--a watch-it-one-night-when-it's-free-on-cable-and-you-have-some-vicodin-handy type of film. I really like both lead actors, but feel they have been better in other films like Training Day and that movie where Hoffman huffs gasoline. Just kidding about the PSH one. He’s really good in Magnolia and The Big Lebowski and that new movie I haven’t seen where he plays a CIA guy opposite Tom Hanks. I probably won’t watch that movie because I hate Julia Roberts’ fake southern accent. It makes me sleepy. He's not as creepy as he is in Happiness but you do have to endure viewing his pasty ass during a doggy-style humping scene. I have a few questions about BTDKYDMFer (Spoiler Warning):

1. Does everybody own a handgun except me?

2. Why are Marisa Tomei’s breasts so perfect?

3. Do hospitals still use those sticky chest sensors to detect heart-rate? I thought they had all switched to that finger-clamp thingy.

4. Should I sleep with my brother’s wife?

5. Does smothering someone with a pillow really work?

Juno

2008-04-21T14:50:00.003-06:00

Hey. I reviewed Juno. It's a movie about a pregnant teenage girl and a kid that runs track and the witty way in which teenagers interact in our hip society. You already know about it because there were a bunch of ads for it on myspace. People find a lot of joy in this movie. I find pain. By the way, it won an academy award.

Ah…the “indie darling” film. The hip mainstream film for people who don’t like mainstream film. The character dramedy. The movie that depicts the real-life troubles of our disenchanted youth. Only it doesn’t. It tries to pass itself off as being “in touch” with reality. That’s its biggest failure. That’s my biggest complaint against it. It’s a façade. Take the sonogram scene…the interaction between the mom and the nosy technician. That dialogue never happens in normal, everyday life (go here to read it). That scene is as phony as the computer generated scorpion king in The Mummy Returns. Juno is no more relevant than Harold and Kumar Go To Wherever. The characters say things that are supposed to sound clever, but when the consonants, vowels, and syllables reach my ears and proceed to be processed by my brain, my brain tells my head to shake in embarrassment and directs my eyes to stare at the floor between my feet. Bad blog dialogue. I count the crumbs on the carpet. I look back up at the TV and I feel sorry for future generations. I feel sorry for their taste in music, if the music in this movie is any representation of what they listen to. It’s terribly cute, unbearably so. These songs are the pseudo-intellectual teenage girl anthems of the 2000’s.

Spoiler:
I’m glad that precocious Juno, at age 16, found her life’s true love. Go team.

I can’t believe this film was nominated for best picture. I’m astounded that it won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. The Graduate didn’t even win for Best Screenplay. Remember when all the internet movie critic snobs were up in arms about Crash’s Academy recognition. Crash kicks this movie’s ass all over the place and Crash is a terrible film. Thank you, Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, for making me hate movies all over again. I can wait for your next project. Go to hell.

The Lost

2008-04-14T16:20:00.003-06:00

I’ve been waiting a long time for The Lost to get a DVD release. I’m a huge fan of Jack Ketchum (if you didn’t glean that from my The Girl Next Door review) and The Lost is one of his great books. I remember reading about the film adaptation a couple of years ago on various websites. IMDB lists it as a 2005 release. It played a few festivals in 2006. I eagerly anticipated a theatrical release, but films like these are rarely released theatrically (I’m still waiting for Ed Lee’s Header). I was surprised to see it in the horror DVD section at a big, evil, corporate store. Obedient consumer that I am, I bought it. Thanks, Anchor Bay.

The Lost is directed by Chris Siverston (I Know Who Killed Me). It adheres closely to the plot of Ketchum’s excellent novel. It opens in a brutal fashion, introducing us to the complicated character of Ray Pye. Marc Senter plays this difficult character extremely well. You hate him, you laugh at him, you feel sorry for him, and then you hate him some more. Ray puts crushed beer cans in his boots to make him appear taller. His mom owns a motel where he works as a maintenance manager. He unclogs plugged toilets. Shitter’s full! He wears black eye-liner and draws a fake mole on his face. He is the emo posterboy, the My Chemical Romance devotee. He stares at himself in the mirror too much. He hits on every girl he comes in contact with. He treats his girlfriend like shit. He is a pathetic narcissist. Watch him snap.

I really enjoyed this film. At its heart, it’s a character drama. It focuses mostly on Ray Pye and his damaged psyche, but it also relates the stories of those affected by Ray’s decisions. It juggles a lot of characters, but they all find their place. Had I not read the book, I might have been confused a little cause I’m dumb like that. I really like the actors that portrayed the supporting cast. Michael “Buck” Bowen plays Detective Schilling with an obsessive’s intensity. Robin Sydney plays Ray’s unattainable attraction Katherine, a sort of femme fatale. She is alluring, mysterious, and sexy. Ray’s girlfriend Jennifer, an emotional wreck, is played admirably by Shay Astar.

Chris Silverston’s direction is interesting. Some scenes are shot in 8mm (Lucky McKee, director of May and The Woods, is credited for this) and interspliced with the regular footage. The drug scenes feature sped up footage and superimposed images to achieve a psychedelic effect. Some of the footage, especially the outdoor shots, looks raw and bleak like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Last House on the Left. One sex scene (there are a few) reminds me of A Clockwork Orange (the one that follows a trip to the record shop). Good, creative stuff.

This movie is unrelentingly violent, especially during the climax. It is eXtremely unsettling (notice the capital x I used, it’s that extreme). I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and that’s saying a lot, considering I had read the book and knew what to expect. It’s not for the squeamish. The violence in the movie, while graphic, is not gratuitous. It feels like the violence in Irreversible or Funny Games. To put it pretentiously, it teaches us a lesson about the ills and dangers of our image-first society. The final scene is abrupt and perfect. The credits roll over Red Red Meat’s There’s A Star Above The Manger Tonight: “Turn down the lighthouse low, let the lost keep staying lost.”

*Disclaimer: This is not a perfect film. It’s a low-budget film made by a young director. It has flaws. I didn’t choose to dwell on those in my review.

**Watch for Jack Ketchum’s cameo at the beginning of the movie; he’s the bartender.

Beowulf

2008-03-28T17:12:00.003-06:00

So, I haven’t posted a movie review in a while. It’s not that I haven’t seen any movies lately, it’s just that I don’t feel that compelled to write about them. One movie that has broken this recent stint of apathy is Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. I watched it on DVD the other night. I rented it from one of those Red Box DVD vending machines. It cost me $1.07 with tax. I made sure I returned it on time so I wouldn’t be charged another dollar.

Beowulf is a laughably terrible movie. It uses that weird animation technique that Zemeckis first introduced with his creepy Christmas movie, The Polar Express. I thought he would have improved the technique for Beowulf. I was wrong. All of the characters look like they are on the nod—heroin addicts with empty eyes. The funniest example of this is Robin Wright Penn’s character, Wealthow. She looks totally stoned. The runner-up award goes to John Malkovich’s greasy haired Unferth. Also, everyone has this really smooth, rubbery, completely unreal looking skin. When Beowulf fights Grendel, he does so naked, and we are privileged to witness one of the smoothest asses ever seen on the big screen or the little screen, in 3-D or 2-D, depending on where you may have watched this piece of refuse.

Since most of you already know the plot and I don’t feel like analyzing it, I’m pretty much done with my review. I’ll end with a rant about the rating. This ultra-violent, limb-rending, blood-splattering, head-decapitating, eye-gouging, ass-showing, nippleless breast-exposing, donkey-punching masterful work of cinematic art is rated PG-13. Way to go, MPAA. I’m not a big fan of the rating system and this movie will stand as a classic example of what is wrong with it. This is an R-rated movie that flew under the radar due to the Spielberg Exception*. Let’s get kids into the seats. The bottom dollar. I know, I know…Beowulf is an adaptation of classic literature and its animated and those are just make-believe monsters that are getting slaughtered and kids play violent video games all the time and this movie looks like a video game or a cartoon and the writing is terrible (shame on you, Neil Gaiman) and I should have seen it in 3-D at an IMAX theatre so I could have really understood the director’s true intentions even though it would have made me cross-eyed and horribly motion sick and I’m being too hard on it but fuck. This movie sucks.

*There has to be a Spielberg Exception, I’m sure of it.

Joshua

2008-02-14T17:05:00.003-07:00

This movie is about a creepy kid. Not those creepy kids that you see in Japanese horror films or the American remakes of Japanese horror films. This kid is creepy like the kid in the original version of The Omen. I haven’t seen The Bad Seed, but I have seen The Good Son and this kid is way creepier than Macaulay Caulkin (in the movie, not in real life where Macaulay wins the weirdo trophy). This kid is so creepy that at certain points in the movie, I wanted to punch him in the face, but then I realized that he’s a kid and I would never punch a kid in the face even though this kid is truly an asshole. This kid’s name is Joshua. I’ll refer to him as Joshua or as kid from now on. Joshua (played by Jacob Kogan) is a youngster with an amazing hair helmet and a penchant for asking awkward questions and staring. He stares a lot. His parents, Brad and Abby Cairn, are played by Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga (two actors I will watch in any movie). Joshua is written and directed by George Ratliff, a documentary filmmaker (Hell House). George is also directing End Zone, which I believe is an adaptation of the Don DeLillo book of the same name. You get points for that, George.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Joshua is weird. He doesn’t like sports, he’s way too intelligent for his age, and he plays classical songs (I’m lumping Baroque and Romantic and all that under classical) on the piano. He doesn’t like rock music or country music or rap. I guess this makes him abnormal. He doesn’t have asthma or glasses, though. His dad wants him to be a normal kid, but to no avail. This creates an emotional distance between father and son. Joshua’s mother has just given birth to a baby girl and devotes her love and attention to the new arrival. This probably makes Joshua a little jealous and sad and leaves him feeling left out. Plus, his mother is bi-polar. Both his parents are either agnostic or atheist. His grandma is a pushy Evangelical Christian. This creates some familial tension. The entire movie is tense. Tense and uncomfortable and pretty damn creepy. I haven’t felt this creeped out watching a movie since Rosemary’s Baby. This movie’s tone feels a lot like the Satan Baby movie, but without the supernatural element. This film is all about naturalism. And creepiness (have I used that word enough yet?). I wanted to turn it off a few times because I was starting to feel sick…not sick because of blood or gore (there isn’t much), but emotionally sick. There's this cool dynamic where Joshua brings out the worst in the parents and the parents bring out the worst in Joshua. Vera Farmiga’s character is an emotional wreck and she sells the part beautifully. Sam Rockwell’s character goes through an incredible transformation as well. And the kid…damn that kid.

My two favorite scenes in the movie: the recital and when Brad watches the videotape. And hide and seek with Abby. I guess that’s my third favorite scene. There’s some good humor buried in this film, under the layers of darkness. In one part, Joshua goes to a church meeting with his grandma. He starts reading the bible, specifically the book of Joshua. He talks about Jesus. When his dad gets fed up with some of his behavior, he tells Joshua, “So you love Jesus, huh? Go to bed.” His abrupt tone and delivery are hilarious.

I love this film. There hasn’t been a great psychological thriller like this since Jacob’s Ladder. Granted, I haven't seen Mr. Brooks yet but I feel safe with my assertion. I highly recommend it. Watch it, please. And don’t cut your feet.

Glen Phillips at the Fox

2008-02-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hey kids, remember that band Toad the Wet Sprocket? I do, too. They had a bunch of songs on the radio during the early to mid 90’s. My sister introduced me to their music when I was a lowly high school sophomore (“walk on the water, step on the stones”). I remember eagerly anticipating the release of Dulcinea. It became one of my favorite albums during that period of my life and I consider it to be one of the best albums of the 1990’s. Windmills, Nanci, and Fly From Heaven are amazing songs. Glen Phillips’ voice is unique, expressive, and pitch-perfect. When Toad disbanded in the late 90’s, Glen continued his songwriting as a solo artist. He released Abulum in 2001, followed by Winter Pays For Summer in 2005, and Mr. Lemons in 2006. He also has a live album and two EP’s. The newest EP (and his latest work) is called Secrets of the New Explorers. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Glen played a concert at the beautiful Fox Theater in Boulder, Colorado on Sunday night. Since I don’t have any friends, I went by myself. I needed to get out of my apartment, and what better opportunity to do that than to attend a Glen Phillips concert (I was also hoping to meet some Boulder chicks, but to no avail). There were probably about 200 people in attendance. A musician named jonathan Kingham opened the show. I spell his name with a lower case j here because he told us that’s how he likes it spelled. He played some of his own songs and a cover of Bobby Brown’s Every Little Step, during which he performed a hilarious freestyle rap about Suburus, sushi, and such. He is a very entertaining performer and a great songwriter. His between song banter was witty and humorous. He joined Glen on stage for a few songs during Glen’s set; his backup vocals and guitar playing really complemented the tunes.

Glen’s set was awesome. Just vocals and acoustic guitar. I’m not going to go into a song by song synopsis; I’ll just provide a few of my observations. He opened with a really depressing but beautiful song entitled Marigolds. As he continued through his set, a few people in the crowd kept shouting out requests for Toad songs. Glen finally (and rightfully) told them that if they wanted to only hear Toad songs, they were at the wrong concert. He explained that the more that people request Toad songs, the less he wants to play them and that he has written hundreds of fucking songs since the Toad days. I couldn’t agree more. I really like his post-Toad solo albums. I think he has improved as a songwriter. He did play a few Toad songs including Windmills, Walk on the Water, Nanci, and All I Want. They were great. But my favorite songs of the set were Everything But You and Marigolds from Mr. Lemons, Duck and Cover from Winter Pays For Summer, Fred Meyers and Train Wreck (my all-time favorite Glen Phillips song) from Abulum, and Solar Flare from Secrets of the New Explorers. He also played a couple of songs from an upcoming project that he said might be called The Scrolls (featuring members from Nickel Creek and Benmont Tench of The Heartbreakers). I’m really looking forward to the new material. The entire show was recorded and made available for purchase a few minutes after the last song. I bought a copy and am very impressed with how good it sounds.

Back to the new EP. Secrets of the New Explorers is comprised of six tracks based on the theme of privatized space travel. It deals with alienation, commercialism, murder, love, and death. This is one of my favorite records of the year (it's still early, but I'm sure it'll be there at the end of the year). Solar Flare begins with the verse, “Goodnight moon, goodnight air, goodnight captain in the captain’s chair, goodbye teeth and goodbye hair, you were taken by the solar flare” and continues in a catchy, sing-along fashion. I love it. The only thing about this album that I hate is that it so closely resembles the project I’ve been working on for the past five years. I wrote a concept album, an entire album based around the idea of a lone spaceman that everyone forgets about, whom no one cares about, who ends up drifting through space while thinking about his wasted opportunities and what he would do over again if he could. One of the songs, To Disengage At Last, is posted on my myspace page. I’ve posted others in the past and hope to finalize the album soon. Who knows…maybe Glen Phillips will listen to it, like it, and help make me famous? Maybe not.

If you get a chance to see Glen Phillips, forget about your perceived indie credibility and go. “Get undressed in the mesosphere, get hot in the thermosphere.”

Waitress

2008-02-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone is having a great time watching movies. I love movies. I'll watch just about anything. To prove it to you, I watched and reviewed Waitress. I usually stick to action movies and horror movies and thrillers. Waitress doesn't fit in any of those categories. I didn't even watch it with a girl or with my mom. I made a sacrifice for you.

I’ve had this movie sitting on my coffee table for almost two months. I watched it last night. It’s about small town life, pies, waitresses, infidelity, and babies. Felicity is in it. She’s a waitress (hence the title of the movie) and a master pie maker. Keri Russell probably hates it when people still refer to her as Felicity. One of my favorite B-movie actors turned Law and Order superstar Jeremy Sisto is in it. He plays the typical small town abusive husband. That dude from Firefly and Slither plays the town doctor/love interest of Felicity. He is known IRL as Nathan Fillion. This movie has a lot of parts that are supposed to be cute and/or funny. Like when Felicity names her pies things like “I Hate My Husband Pie” or “Bad Baby Pie” or “I Just Took A Dump In Your Pie Pie” or “Shut Your Fuckin’ Pie-Hole Pie”, etc. I made up those last two. The director/writer of the film, Adrienne Shelly, also plays the role of Dawn, one of the waitresses. See, there’s not just one waitress (as the title suggests), there are three. Dawn is the lovelorn, shy, low self-esteem character. She’s pretty cool. Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) plays the third waitress. She’s the witty, older sister type. There isn’t a lot of action in this movie, no big fights or shootouts. No dismemberments and no axes to the chest. No arterial blood spray. I don’t remember seeing any guns or grenades in it, either. There is some face slapping, which makes me uncomfortable. But that scene persuades you hate one of the characters that you’re supposed to hate so you won’t feel bad when the other character does what she does. Infidelity. I usually hate movies with infidelity because infidelity pisses me off. I can’t get one girl to like me, let alone two at the same time. The infidelity in this movie didn’t piss me off as much as it does in other films, though. I’m not sure why. I must be getting cynical. However, I did want to punch Nathan Fillion’s character in the face at the end of the movie. Maybe you’ll want to as well.

PS: Adrienne Shelly was murdered shortly before the release of the film. Her writing and directing talent will be missed.

My Favorite Albums of 2007

2008-01-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

I decided to compile a list of my favorite albums of 2007. Sorry that this is almost a month late. I’ve loosely categorized my selections. Enjoy.

Best Camaro Rock Album
Year Long Disaster—Year Long Disaster
I saw these guys open for Clutch at a show in Boulder. They kind of remind me last year’s Best Camaro Rock Album winner, Priestess. The lead singer/guitarist is amazing. The album artwork is pretty cool too. If you want some dirty, Z-28 rock, this is what you need.

Best World Music Album
Iron & Wine—The Shepherd’s Dog
Usually this category is reserved for Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Sting, and Seal. We have a surprise winner this year: Iron & Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog. There is some amazing bongo/conga work on this one. Lots of percussion. Sam Beam wins the Rusted Root Golden Bongo Award for this effort.

Best Adult Contemporary/Mid-tempo Rock Album
Wilco—Sky Blue Sky

I love this album. It continues Wilco’s progression away from “indie” credibility and brings them closer to being the Fleetwood Mac of our generation (unless Midlake claims that title first). The title track of the album is one of Jeff Tweedy’s best songs since Far, Far Away.

Best Hip-Hop or Rap Album
Lifesavas—Gutterfly
If it’s Quannum, it’s usually great. These Portland wordsmiths have created an amazing concept album. I love it. Much better than Kanye or Jay-Z or DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. Almost as good as Lyrics Born.

Best “Indie” Rock Album
Spoon-Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
I guess Spoon is still considered “indie” rock. I’m not sure. I really enjoy this record, from beginning to end. The Underdog is great enough to be my current cellphone ringtone. Blitzen Trapper’s Wild Mountain Nation ran a close second.

Best Metal Album
Orange Goblin—Healing Through Fire
This category was a close call. I really like High on Fire’s Death is this Communion, but the pure rock riffage of Healing Through Fire is amazing. The songs Ballad of Solomon Eagle and Hound’s Ditch are pummeling.

Best Overall Album
Sea Wolf—Leaves in the River
This category is for the album I liked best, regardless of genre. It’s the album that gets the most play on my iPod. Sea Wolf is the big winner; high fives all around. The song You’re A Wolf is genius. Thanks for being cool you LA dudes.

That’s it. I’m sorry if I offended anyone with my picks. I apologize if I left off your favorite album of 2007. Be well.

The Girl Next Door

2008-01-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

No, this isn’t a review of that Elisha Cuthbert movie where she is the ex-pornstar neighbor of some horny kid and she never shows off her breasts even though she was a pornstar and everyone knows that pornstars walk around topless all the time and the movie turns out to be a major suckfest because she doesn’t even give a glimpse of boobage; this is a review of the film adaptation of a book of the same name written by Jack Ketchum in the 1980’s. Again, Elisha Cuthbert is not in this…she’s in that terrible movie Captivity that I reviewed here a while back. Don’t see that one. Go away, Elisha. The film that I am reviewing here is serious business.

“You think you know about pain?” I read Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door a couple of years ago when it was finally re-released by Leisure Books. Leisure has been re-releasing all of Ketchum’s work in mass-market paperback. I love Leisure (check them out here). Ketchum is my favorite horror author. His books are intense, scary, morbid, and depressing. The Girl Next Door is easily his most disturbing work and is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. It follows the story of a young boy named David Moran who lives in a small suburban community in the 1950’s. He meets a teenage girl and her younger sister who have been placed in the care of his neighbors (the Chandlers) following the death of the girls’ parents. He develops a friendship with (and a crush on) the older of the two girls, Meg Laughlin. Meg’s younger sister, Susan, was seriously injured in the car accident that killed her parents; she has to wear those leg brace things that were commonly used for polio patients.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that the family that is taking care of the girls is not very nice (understatement). The single mother, Ruth Chandler (played brilliantly by Blanche Baker), takes out her frustrations on the girls. Her three sons and some other neighborhood kids start playing games with Meg, which escalate in their perversion and cruelty. Ruth allows and encourages the brutal behavior. She even offers suggestions for the types of punishment that the girls “deserve”. All of this goes on in the quiet suburban neighborhood and none of the other residents take notice. David witnesses the atrocious acts but remains silent about them, not sure if he should report Ruth to the police, not sure if he should step in and try to prevent further harm to the girls. He’s trapped in a difficult situation.

The movie adaptation of the book remains true to the text. It’s a harsh viewing experience. I watched it having already read the book; I knew what to expect and I was still shocked. That’s a testament to the strength of the story. This is an extremely low-budget film. Sometimes the acting is corny (towards the beginning of the film), sometimes the lighting is bad, but when the poo-poo hits the proverbial fan, you forget about all of that and are transported into this nightmarish world. You feel sympathy for the girls and hate for Ruth and her sons and her sons’ friends and anger and frustration that what you are watching is something that could happen and it turns out that it’s something that did happen, that it’s loosely based on a true story, the story of Sylvia Marie Likens (which you can read about here but I’d suggest doing so only after seeing the movie or reading the book).

The Girl Next Door is a horror film that is actually horrific. It makes you want to turn away. It’s scary without jump scares and audio cues. It’s violent without buckets of blood. I recommend reading the book first because it does a better job of letting you get inside David’s head, to understand why he makes certain decisions or behaves in certain ways. In a story like this, the characters thoughts are as important as their actions; it’s too bad that the film medium can’t accomplish this as easily as the written word. That’s not to take anything away from the script writers; they did a great job with the adaptation.

Supposedly there are a couple more film adaptations of Jack Ketchum’s novels out there. The Lost has been done for a while. It played a few small film festivals but has yet to be released on DVD. Red just played at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I’ve heard good things about The Lost; we’ll see about Red. Both books are definitely worth reading. It’s a good time to jump on the Jack Ketchum bandwagon.

PS: A movie based on the actual crime was also released last year…it’s called An American Crime and has some big name actors in it (including the Juno girl). It played at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. I haven’t heard anything about it. I’ll watch for a theatrical or DVD release date.

Top 8 Movies of 2007

2007-12-20T17:57:00.001-07:00

It’s the end of the year. It’s time for the "Best Of" lists. I made a Top 8 Movies of the Year list. I only picked 8 movies. I think there’s an unwritten rule that end of the year lists either need to have 5, 10, 25, or 100 choices, depending on the topic. I chose 8. I'm a bastard.

8. Grindhouse—This is the most fun I had at the theatre this year. I loved the fake trailers (especially Machete) and the experience of seeing a double feature again; the last double feature I remember going to was The Black Cauldron/The Goonies in 1985. I actually prefer Rodriguez’s Planet Terror to Tarantino’s talky Death Proof. I’m still pissed that the Weinsteins didn’t release the DVD as a single package…I guess they’re waiting for the double dip when they finally decide on a hi-def format.

7. American Gangster—Great performances by Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington (I’ll forgive his stereotypical Pacino-esque yelling scene). Ridley Scott’s direction is perfect. This is the 2nd best gangster film of 2007.

6. Eastern Promises—Another Cronenberg masterpiece. Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, and Vincent Cassel play their roles perfectly. Dark, moody and intense. The best, most brutal fight scene in a movie in a long time. This is my favorite gangster film of 2007.

5. The Kingdom—The last 20 minutes of The Kingdom are as intense as any action movie I’ve seen since Black Hawk Down.

4. Knocked Up—Seth Rogan is a genius. Of all the Judd Apatow films, this is my favorite. Yes, I liked it better than Superbad. Pure amazing awesomeness.

3. Zodiac—Fincher’s best film since Fight Club. I really enjoyed the way this movie educates as well as entertains. Robert Downey Jr. deserves a best supporting actor nomination for this, but since Zodiac was released in March, the Academy will ignore it.

2. Shooter—I love this movie. Sure, Danny Glover’s lispy voice is irritating, but the action is great. I’m disappointed that Shooter didn’t get as much exposure or recognition as the inferior Bourne Ultimatum. I remain confident that Mark Wahlberg can kick Matt Damon’s ass. I’m also confident that this movie didn’t make anyone else’s top whatever lists.

1. No Country For Old Men—The best picture of the year. Perfect direction, perfect writing, perfect cinematography, perfect music (or lack thereof), perfect acting, and a perfect ending (no matter what everyone says). The Coens deserve Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

PS: You'll notice that I didn't include There Will Be Blood on my list. That's because I haven't seen it (though, by the previews, I'm sure it would have made my list). I'm sick of distribution companies releasing a movie in limited release (i.e. New York and L.A.) before the year ends so it will be in contention for the Academy Awards. I won't get to see it until January. That means that it might go on my Top 8 Movies of 2008 list. Fuck Hollywood.

Drive Thru (Hellaburger)

2007-12-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid (elementary school and junior high years) certain words or phrases were popular among my peers: dude, dudical (yes, dudical), rad, radical, “dude, that is so brutal (a synonym for rad)”, face (as in you just got totally shown up), moted (see face), etc. I grew up in northern California, so some of these may be regional examples. One of our favorite words was hella, a contraction of “hell of” or a reduction of hellacious or a substitution for the imprecatory modifier fuckin’ or something. I don’t know; I’m no linguist. We’d say things like, “that was hella cool.” Replace cool with rad or awesome or brutal and you get a feel for our lexicon. The reason I bring this up is that I just watched a movie called Drive Thru that uses the word hella. Brutal, dude.

First off, I didn’t rent this movie. I experienced this genius piece of cinema free of cost. Well, actually it’s not free; it’s part of my exorbitant monthly cable bill. I didn’t have to pay extra for it, though. It can be found, if you’re a Comcast subscriber, on FEARnet On Demand. I had never heard of this movie, so I decided to give it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised. It’s pretty competent filmmaking for the DTV horror genre. I made it through the entire movie and enjoyed it in the process. That’s more than can be said for my last attempt at a DTV horror film, Unholy. I only made it a half hour into that chingado pedazo de mierda.

Drive Thru is written and directed by Brendan Cowles and Shane Kuhn. I couldn’t find much about these guys on imdb. Shane has an earlier directing credit for a movie called Redneck. This appears to be Brendan Cowles writing and directing debut. Lionsgate picked up the distribution rights. The premise of the movie is simple; a sadistic killer wearing a clown costume stalks and kills a bunch of teenagers. The identity and motive of the killer are a mystery. This is a by the numbers slasher flick (I don’t mind conventions—I find comfort in them, like a Law and Order episode) that follows the Friday the 13th formula pretty closely. What sets this movie apart from the hundreds of other teen slasher films is its sense of humor. The killer is the mascot of a fast food chain called Hellaburger. He wears a clown/satan mask and a black nylon jumpsuit with flames. He wields a wicked looking axe. He goes by the name Horny. When he kills, the camera speeds up and the action gets frenetic. Sweet heavy metal music accompanies his unfettered rage. He often delivers cheesy one-liners while splitting skulls or severing torsos. It’s totally not scary…but it’s awesome. Watch out for the french fry cooker.

The teen victims that Horny stalks are typical of this kind of movie; you’ve got stoners and jocks and sluts and the nice boyfriend and his chaste girlfriend (the hero girl). The other necessary characters are here as well: the concerned parents, the creepy janitor, the bungling detectives. Each character is well-acted. Most of the actors in this film come from TV. The hero girl (Mackenzie Carpenter) is played by Leighton Meester from the short-lived series, Surface. [She also played a character named Heather Crowley in an episode of the amazing CSI: Miami. Heather Crowley is my cousin’s name. Crowley is my last name. Therefore, I feel tangentially related to Leighton Meester. That’s hella rad.] Her boyfriend (Fisher Kent) is played by Nicholas D’Agostino of Heroes. One of the detectives (Crockers) is some guy (Larry Joe Campbell) from the sitcom According to Jim and the other detective (Brenda Chase) is some lady (Lola Glaudini) from Criminal Minds, NYPD Blue, and a few episodes of The Sopranos. Campbell is pretty damn funny in this; no, I’m not kidding. Glaudini plays off of him well. Morgan Spurlock, that dude who made Super Size Me, has a nice cameo as a manager at Hellaburger. (I apologize for all the parentheses in the above paragraph; I hope I didn’t confuse you too much. I’ll try to use them less in the future (maybe not)).

The best thing about Drive Thru is the writing. The dialogue is great, which is extremely rare in this kind of movie. I usually end up groaning at the poorly written and poorly delivered lines of most DTV horror films. Most of the stuff I laugh at wasn’t intended to be funny. This movie is different. It’s meant to be funny and it actually is. The concept of the Hellaburger restaurant is great. They have awesome names for all the food items and combos on the menu. The fake commercials and slogans work really well: “Hellaburger is hella good.” This is the first time I’ve heard “hella” used in a movie (that I can think of). It caught me off guard. I love it. The opening scene of the movie is priceless. It involves some white wannabe gangsters at the Hellaburger drive thru. At least watch that part. Pretty much every scene that involves Detective Crockers is great, especially his conversation with the Hellaburger owner. I also really enjoyed the flashback scene with Chuck Taylor and the scene where the teens get yelled at for playing in the ball pit.

Things I would have liked to see:
--more gore (there’s a lot, but they could have gone crazy with it)
--boobs (c’mon guys, this is low budget horror…boobs are a requirement)
--the title should have been Hellaburger instead of the generic Drive Thru

Note: This film can be watched as a social commentary on the health risks posed by fast food. It would probably be fun to watch this movie while stoned. Also, don’t light people on fire. Also, axes and heavy metal music belong together like franks and beans. Also, the Japanese title for this movie, Death Burger, is ace.

Driftwood

2007-11-29T17:13:00.001-07:00

So there’s this “Attitude Adjustment Camp” in Florida like those ones in Utah where parents send their troubled kids to hang out with each other under the supervision of ex-marine survivalist types. One of these troubled kids is David Forrester who is not related to the Forrester kid from Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester. David (played by some Disney channel kid named Ricky Ullman) gets sent to the camp after his parents read his journal or his blog where he writes a lot of stuff about death. He’s emo or goth or whatever. His older, rock star brother recently died of an overdose and David wasn’t coping with it very well. Instead of having him see a psychiatrist/therapist, his parents decide to spend an inordinate amount of money to send him to Diamond Dallas Page’s hell camp. The name of the camp is Driftwood which is also conveniently the title of the movie.

When David gets to the camp, he meets the headmaster (DDP) who wears a cowboy hat and who goes by the name “Captain”. Captain is a mean dude; he’s intimidating and he yells a lot. He makes the troubled teens rake up piles of twigs and throw them in dumpsters. I guess this is what passes for hard labor at Driftwood. David shares a room with some other bad attitude type kids. They try to act tough and hardcore but it’s obvious that they are a bunch of actors trying to portray a stereotype. The two Hispanic teens are laughably terrible, especially in a scene where they almost get into a fight; they actually “front” each other.

The meat of the story revolves around the mystery of some kid that was killed at the camp prior to David’s arrival. David keeps seeing the kid’s clown-faced looking ghost walking the halls at night. The explanation for how David can see ghosts is that ever since his brother died, he can see ghosts. Cool. I got no problem with that. Keep it simple. David gets in trouble for following the ghost around at night. He has to run the gauntlet, an obstacle course that involves running between some logs and climbing a short wall, while his camp-mates hit him with sticks. I’m getting bored thinking about it while writing this review. Here are a few words for you: guns, father/daughter relationship, accusations of homosexuality, beer drinking, raking, record collection liaison, betrayal, solitary confinement, chapel fire, ghost karate, basement brick wall, guns again.

I wouldn’t classify this movie as horror; I’d classify it as bung rot. Actually, it’s not that bad. It’s mediocre. Mediocrity. It’s directed by Tim Sullivan. He previously directed the sequel to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1964 film, Two Thousand Maniacs. Sullivan’s sequel is called 2001 Maniacs and was released in 2005 by Eli Roth’s now defunct Raw Nerve production company. 2001 Maniacs has lots of gore, cheesy humor, and boobs. Driftwood has none of these attributes. It instead tries to be a moody, supernatural type film. The problem with this approach is that this film is not scary or intense or eerie or creepy. I never felt uneasy or uncomfortable during the movie. This type of film needs to create a sense of dread in order to be effective (see Lucky McKee’s The Woods or Nick Hamm’s The Hole). On a positive note, I like how the director exposes some of the problems with these “Attitude Adjustment Camps”. I wish he would have spent more time on that.

PS: This is the second movie I’ve seen recently that stars DDP, the other being Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror. I’m not sure what that means.

John Carpenter's Pro-Life

2007-11-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

Here comes another Masters of Horror review. This time it’s John Carpenter’s Pro-Life. This is Old Carpenter Balls’ second attempt at a Masters of Horror film. Some dude from AICN and one of his friends wrote the script. It involves a pregnant teenage girl, an abortion clinic, some doctors, a religious nut and his three mentally-deficient sons, a man in a demon suit, and a lobster with a baby head. It stars Ron Perlman, everyone’s favorite Hellboy. What more could you want? This is John Carpenter, folks…the iconic director who brought us Halloween, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York, and the incredible flashback within a flashback within a flashback Ice Cube vehicle, Ghosts of Mars. He now gets credit for bringing to light one of the worst episodes in the Masters of Horror oeuvre, and that’s quite an achievement.

The overall story for the Pro-Life episode is actually a cool horror movie concept. The daughter of a pro-life religious nut job (Ron Perlman) gets impregnated by a demon. She wanders through the woods and stumbles out onto the highway in front of a car driven by two workers from the local abortion clinic. They take her to the clinic where she insists that they abort her demon spawn. Meanwhile, the girl’s father shows up in an ominous red van. A voice tells him to protect the baby. He thinks it’s God doing the talking; what a fool. He and his sons storm the clinic, shotguns blazing. Heads explode. Pulsating pregnant bellies and spewing, acidic amniotic fluid. The clinic director receives a taint abortion. The demon father makes an entrance. Rad stuff.

Given the above scenario, you’d think you have a great horror/siege film. So, why doesn’t it work? I’ll give you a few clues: terrible dialogue, atrocious acting, and poor pacing. The AICN dude and his friend wrote some pretty shitty lines. The worst lines are delivered by Ron Perlman’s teenage sons. Nearly every line is prefaced with an annoying “but daddy” whine. Daddy this, daddy that. A couple of these kids look old enough to be in their twenties. Ron Perlman tries to be menacing, I think. I’m not sure. Whatever he’s trying to pull off doesn’t work. The actor who plays the director of the clinic is terrible. There is another group of people in the clinic (an angry father, his wife, and their pregnant daughter) whose side story/innocent bystander bullshit is totally unnecessary. It must have been inserted as padding. Who needs padding in a 57 minute film? The pacing of the film is slow, slow, slow. I think the intention of the abysmally slow pacing is to heighten tension. It doesn’t work. It just makes the movie funnier. Why does this father, who is concerned about his daughter and her lobster baby, take so much time away from his goal so he can torture the clinic director? I’m not sure, but it’s hilarious. The shootout scenes are like nothing I’ve ever seen; glacially slow, botched, bungled, retarded, and laughably ridiculous. When one of the sons gets killed, it’s like “too bad, let’s move on”. The best parts of the movie involve the guy in the demon suit and the lobster baby. Absolute genius.

When I watched the behind the scenes garbage on the DVD I was hoping for some explanation as to why this movie didn’t work. Amazingly, John Carpenter and the writers stood by this trash. John Carpenter actually likes this movie, so no excuses about him phoning it in. After watching the special features, you would think you had been treated to an amazing sequel of The Thing or They Live or something. All I was expecting was an apology. Oh well.

The Darjeeling Limited

2007-11-12T16:09:00.000-07:00

The Darjeeling Limited is the story of an Indian (as in the country of India) train called the Darjeeling Limited and three brothers and a man-eating tiger and drugs and a cobra and an expensive belt and peacock feathers. It’s also about screwed up family relationships, finding one’s spiritual path, and life versus death. Defining events. It’s a Wes Anderson film. Expect vibrant colors and perfect framing. Lots of blues and yellows. Kumar is in this. So is Bill Murray. Neither has a speaking role. The main speaking roles go to the three brothers: Adrien “I’m sad and sensitive and my nose is as jacked up as Owen’s” Brody as Peter, Owen “bandages” Wilson as Francis, and Jason “greasy mustache” Schwartzman as Jack(ass). Peter is a whiny bitch. Francis is a controlling, unsympathetic bastard. Jack is an unlikable hole in the butt. They talk a lot: a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. This whole movie is dialogue-driven. Lots of arguments and insults and awkward moments. They speak in that unnatural Wes Anderson dialogue sort of way. This movie is co-written by Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, so they had some dialogue in there as well. Owen Wilson probably made up a few lines too, but he doesn’t get a writing credit.

Darjeeling is not as funny as Wes’ earlier films. I didn’t LOL (just keeping it real) as much during this movie as I did in Rushmore or Bottle Rocket. I snickered a few times. This film tries to focus on poignant moments; I like that word poignant. Many of these poignant moments arrive in slow-motion, panning shots accompanied by Kinks songs. Wes likes to use pop/rock songs to extract emotion from certain scenes. I like the technique (Scorcese is the master of it; you can’t beat the use of Atlantis in Goodfellas) but it is overused in this film. My favorite part of the entire movie is an abrupt transition between a funny moment and a brutally dramatic scene (for those who have seen the film, it’s the part where Francis proclaims, “check out those assholes”). I also really enjoy the scene where Francis removes his bandages; it reminds me of the scene in The Royal Tenenbaums where Richie is shaving, but without the Elliot Smith song. Wes Anderson is a master at visually expressing the fine line between comedy and tragedy. I could write an essay about it but I won’t.

While nearly every character in a Wes Anderson film is both sympathetic and unlikable, I feel that the leads in this movie lean significantly more towards unlikable. No, I can’t determine the exact degree of significance but I am pretty sure that the p-value is less than .05. It’s difficult to empathize with any of the brothers; I want to punch them in their collective face. I think most of my disdain for these characters stems from the fact that they don’t work and they have all this free time to travel around and they have seemingly unlimited funds and all they do is whine about their shitty lives and take drugs. Their mommy didn’t love them. Oh, Jack is a writer, so that excuses him from the not-having-a-job part of my rant. I find the idiosyncrasies of characters from previous Wes Anderson efforts (i.e. Max from Rushmore and Dignan from Bottle Rocket) endearing. You may not necessarily like the characters, but you root for them. Bill Murray’s character from The Life Aquatic and the brothers in this film possess quirky traits, but they’re not endearing; they’re annoying. I root for them to fail.

I saw Darjeeling with the Hotel Chevalier preface. Jack (Schwartzman) is living in a room in the hotel. The length of his stay is undetermined. He orders a grilled cheese sandwich in French. He gets a call from a woman. He plays around with his iPod, selecting a song to play when the woman visits. He draws a bath. The woman shows up. She is Jack’s ex-lover, played by Natalie Portman. She's dressed like a 12 year-old boy. They exchange some pretentious dialogue (the most famous line of which is given away in the trailer) and then get to fucking. Natalie Portman in the nude…no New Slang. I think that people who like cute things will like Hotel Chevalier.

The last issue I have with The Darjeeling Limited is that it doesn’t know where to end. It didn’t end when I expected it to. It didn’t end the second or third time I expected it to, either. I don’t want to spoil the ending, so suffice it to say that I feel the whole Anjelica Huston segment is unnecessary to the story; it seems tacked on. It would mean more if this group of misfits failed in its goal or realized that the goal no longer mattered. And those damned peacock feathers. And that damned belt. I think a more natural ending for the film would be after the single, tracking shot of the train showing all the secondary characters in their elements.

In conclusion, I’m disappointed by my experience with The Darjeeling Limited. I know people who will love this film. I thought I’d really enjoy it. I didn’t. I found a few things to like, but overall I was bored. I’ll always find Wes Anderson’s visual style appealing, but a great film is more than just cinematography and attention to subtle details. I enjoy the Cheever and Salinger themes and characterizations, but I’m ready for something new. I’d really like to see Wes try to make a different kind of film, maybe a horror film or an action film. Maybe a wrestling picture (points for Barton Fink reference).

The Reaping

2007-11-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

Question: What do you get when you mix two-time Academy Award winning actress Hilary Swank, zero-time Academy Award nominee David Morrissey (Basic Instinct 2), and Stephen Hopkins, the acclaimed director of Predator 2, Lost in Space, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5?

Answer: The Reaping

Remember the trailer where Hilary Swank opens a door and everything in sight is covered in locusts? The one where a lady asks, “Are you going to kill my baby?” and Hilary responds, “No” and the lady says, “Why not?” That trailer tells you everything you need to know about The Reaping. Bad effects, lame dialogue, pointless story. Hilary Swank plays a supposed skeptic; she’s a scientist that travels the world debunking miracles and magical happenings and such. Before she was a scientist/skeptic, she was a religious woman. Her daughter died and she turned her back on god but god didn’t turn his back on her. No, no, no. Skeptics beware. God is watching you and doesn’t appreciate your evil faith-debunking behavior.

Hilary Swank’s character, Katherine Winter (she’s cold because she gave up the warm glow of the Christian God), is called upon to investigate some strange happenings that have been occurring in a middle-of-nowhere Louisiana town. The river near town has turned to blood. All the fish have died; I guess they didn’t like swimming in blood. Katherine and her assistant Ben (played by Idris Elba from The Wire) travel to the swampy, backwoods town. They test the bloody water. They meet the weird townsfolk. They experience all manner of biblical plagues re-enacted in terrible computer generated effects: frogs falling from the sky, lice, locusts, a scary little girl, boils, fire from heaven. Will Katherine rediscover her faith in the face of such obviously unexplainable events? Will the scary little girl be scary? Will Ben die? Are the townsfolk involved in a satanic cult?

This is a terrible movie. It’s the worst movie I have seen in the last ten years, maybe fifteen, maybe in my life. I’ve seen tons of bad movies and reviewed many of them here. I think the thing that makes this movie so incredibly bad (besides the reasons I’ll go into in below) is that it thinks it’s good. It should be good. It has a great actress (Swank) and a great supporting actor (Elba, not Morrissey). It has a big budget. It has the backing of a major studio (Warner Brothers). It is a colossal mess, a stinking trash-heap of a film.

The direction and editing are incompetent. The story jumps all over the place; one minute the actors are in one location and seconds later they are miles away. There is little to no continuity. In one scene, Hilary Swank is wearing waders while tromping through a river of blood. In the next scene she’s investigating some ruins; the waders have disappeared. Then she’s back in the river, again with the waders (I fly fish. I’ve worn waders. They don’t magically disappear when you get on dry land). The director attempts to wring jump scares out of every suspenseful moment. It's not scary. It's distracting.

The dialogue is hilariously bad. The characters explain everything they are doing and then they explain it again, saying things like, “so you are saying” or “what you mean is” for those of us who may have an extra chromosome or two. This is an R-rated movie; it’s written for an audience of five year-olds. Sloppy pseudoscience babble. Biblical myth mumbo-jumbo.

I don’t think there’s one scene in the movie where practical effects are used. Every effect is rendered in some of the worst CGI imaginable. Everything looks fake and green-screened. The locust scene is laughable. The climatic fire from heaven scene is a total joke. Nothing looks worse than CG fire effects. I get the feeling that the entire effects budget for this movie went to the locust scene. Locusts flying in waves and killing rednecks. A father/son moment.

The Reaping should be taught in film classes across the country as an example of how not to make a movie. It is a travesty of filmmaking, a catastrophe. Its anti-science message is appalling. In one scene, Hilary’s character asks the little girl, “How do I know what’s real?” to which the girl responds, “Faith.” Yep, lesson learned. I felt like I was watching a born-again Christian propaganda film—one of those Left Behind movies. Even though I consider myself a skeptic, I’m all for suspension of disbelief in films; I love The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and Poltergeist even though I don’t believe in the irrational claims of those films. That’s not the point of this movie; it wants you to discard your empirical/rational ways of knowing in favor of a faith-based, biblical literalism. This film makes Darkness Falls and Cold Creek Manor seem like masterpieces of modern horror.

The Reaping is ass.

Captivity

2007-11-01T16:56:00.001-06:00

Halloween ’07 has come and gone. I spent my Halloween evening playing Guitar Hero 3 while I waited for trick-or-treaters to pound at my door and plead for selections from my bowl of delicious, delectable delights: Snickers, Milky Way Midnights, 3 Musketeers, and Sour Starburst. My candle-lit, skull-face pumpkin illuminated my porch. I passed a bunch of songs on hard (some four stars, some five). I beat Tom Morello. I played some Sabbath. I waited for the knock-knock-knock. I waited. Played some Priestess. Waited some more. Waited…waited………………….waited. No knock-knock. No trick-or-treaters. No one came. I switched off Guitar Hero and turned on the Nuggets/Sonics game. I blew out my pumpkin’s candle. I shut off my lights. 9:15pm. Knock-knock. Two trick-or-treaters--little draculas--at my door. I held out the bowl and said, “take as much as you want…big handfuls.” That was it. Two kids. Then I watched Captivity.

Captivity is directed by Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, Super Mario Bros.) and stars some TV actress named Elisha Cuthbert. She’s the girl from 24. That’s how everyone refers to her: the girl from 24. I don’t watch 24. Kiefer Sutherland sucks. Your Kiefer Sutherland is my Al Pacino (okay, that doesn’t make any sense but I’m going with it). Miss Cuthbert plays a magazine model named Jennifer Tree. Tree as in tree. I’m not sure if there’s a metaphor there. She has an annoying little dog that she take’s everywhere. She’s lonely. You can tell she’s lonely because she goes to a club by herself (well, she takes her dog, but that doesn’t count). She does some texting*. She sits alone. She orders an apple martini. Someone is stalking her and videotaping her. This someone puts some kind of sedative in her appletini. She deserves it for drinking an appletini**. A little while later, she wakes up…..IN CAPTIVITY***.

The abducted Tree is locked in some sadistic fucker’s basement. She gets really pissed when she realizes she’s a captive; she throws stuff around the room, tips her bed over, and raises quite a ruckus****. The kidnapper gives her keys and clues and clothes and none of it makes any sense. There are some numbered lockers in her room (1,2,3,4) and the keys correspond to the lockers like some kind of game is being played. The kidnapper comes in the room once in a while and drugs Jennifer. The screen goes black. She wakes up strapped to a gurney and awful shit happens. She gets to watch a video of a previous captive receiving an acid shower while she (Jennifer) lies under the dripping shower head. The killer forces Jennifer to drink a smoothie made from fingers, ears, and spleens (he doesn’t even have the common decency to add some vodka). This scene is very unsettling. In fact, the first one-third of this movie is pretty sick. But it’s Halloween, right? Go for it.

A little while later (time is completely irrelevant in this film), Jennifer wakes up from another drugged stupor and finds out that she’s not alone in the basement. Some dude named Gary is being held captive in the room next door. They can see each other through a glass wall. They converse. They try to escape. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for each other’s safety. A human hourglass*****. A molar torn out with a pair of pliers. They kiss. They fall in love. They…

The rest of the movie involves a lame twist that I figured out the moment it was set up. Right away. No doubt in my mind. A killer’s identity****** is revealed and his motivation is explained: mommy issues, of course. Jealousy, brothers, knives, a shotgun, and a couple of cops. The final scene is totally unconvincing.

I’m trying to think of something positive to say about this movie. Some of the shots are kind of cool. The entire movie was filmed in Russia and I like the Russian people. The torture scenes are intense and uncomfortable to watch but that’s simply because they’re torture scenes. I’ll always find them disturbing. They’re not as bad as the scene at the end of Audition or the blood bath scene in Hostel 2, but they’re still sick. My final recommendation is that if you want to see a torture movie (and who doesn’t?), rent one of the Saw movies or Hostel or a Miike film.

*It is my personal theory that text messaging will become more prominent in film as smoking becomes less prominent.

**Just kidding. I don’t condone drugging people. It’s not cool. It’s illegal.

***Captivity is the title of the movie.

****The only words that I can think of that rhyme with ruckus are suckus and fuckus and neither one of them is a real word. Maybe Dick Butkus.

*****This is a method of torture that probably sounded cool on paper, but upon execution turned out to be totally retarded.

******It’s that dude with the weird eyes from that movie, Identity. Don’t worry, this isn’t really a spoiler. He looks good in a bath robe. Nice abs.

Radiohead Rant, Vol. 1

2007-10-29T15:52:00.000-06:00

The following is an essay/rant that I wrote about Radiohead. If you don’t like Radiohead, this probably won’t mean much to you. Get back to playing World of Warcraft or watching anime or reading comics or whatever it is you kids do these days. Go see Saw 4. Radiohead has played a big part in my appreciation of contemporary rock music. I hope that point comes across in the thoughts I have expressed here. This is basically one long, disjointed paragraph. Expect fragments and odd punctuation and a negative review of In Rainbows.

I bought Radiohead’s first album, Pablo Honey, after hearing the song Creep on the radio in 1993. I liked the song a lot. Chug Chug…Chug Chug. That amazing distortion. It’s probably not cool to admit that now, but that’s the truth. The album had the radio version and the fuck version. I was living in the dorms at BYU when I got it and I loved to blast the fuck version of Creep on my CD boombox, much to the annoyance of my prudish, profanity-allergic neighbors. I was an asshole like that. I remember listening to the entire album non-stop and never tiring of it. My favorite songs were Stop Whispering and Vegetable. I still love those songs. When the single for My Iron Lung was released, I recall going to this little record store just south of campus (called Sonic Garden, IIRC) and listening to it at one of their listening stations. I was blown away. It was a lot different than any of the songs on Pablo Honey; it was edgier and darker. I loved it. I didn’t get a chance to buy The Bends when it was released because I went on a two-year mission for the coalition of Joseph Smith/Jesus Christ/Gordon B. Hinckley. I missed out on a lot of music during those two years (our rules for being holy forbade it), but I sought it out whenever possible. I remember hearing Street Spirit on the radio in El Paso and thinking that it was one of the coolest songs I had ever heard. When I got home from my religious sojourn, the first two CD’s I purchased were The Bends and the then just-released OK Computer. The Bends is a great album through and through. Everyone knows that. Everyone agrees. How about OK Computer? That album changed the way I listened to music. It changed my perception of song-writing. Paranoid Android blew me away. It still does. It is one of the greatest songs ever written. OK Computer is the perfect album. I remember critics claiming that it succeeded where U2’s Pop failed; it was the album that would usher in the new millennium. A sense of artificiality and alienation. When I listen to it, I have to listen to the whole thing in its entirety, usually with the lights out and no other distractions. If I smoked pot (I don’t), I’d smoke it while listening to OK Computer. It made me stop listening to Dave Matthews Band (which may be ironic if Radiohead signs with Dave’s ATO records). I went into a Radiohead frenzy. I bought all their singles just for the b-sides. I bought the Airbag EP. Palo Alto and Polyethylene. The prospect of a new album…anxiously awaiting. Kid A arrives. I hated it. I felt like gluing black felt to its surface and turning it into a coaster. It could keep the water rings off my coffee table. Beeps and clicks and repetitive tones. Incoherent vocals and garbled melodies. It made no sense. This couldn’t be the Radiohead I had spent significant portions of my time listening to. I decided to give it a chance. I listened to it and listened to it and listened to it and I still listen to it and I still hate it. It’s boring. I like a couple of tracks, but nothing even comes close to my adoration for any of the songs on OK Computer or The Bends. Less than a year later, we get Amnesiac. I liked it a little better than Kid A, but it’s more of the same. The only standout track is Pyramid Song. It sounds like it could have been a b-side to an OK Computer song. Disappointment dawned. Was this the new musical direction in which Mr. Yorke had decided to take his band? Experimentation for experimentation’s sake? Sonic burps and backwards beats? Unintelligible phrases? Where did the twin telecasters go? I felt abandoned. A few years later and Hail to the Thief. 2+2=5. This feels like Radiohead. I can actually understand the vocals. At the 1:53 mark the song kicks in. At 2:26 Radiohead is back. Then the album moves on with a lot of the Kid A/Amnesiac type droney material, but the vocals are better, the song structure is tighter, and there’s more natural instrumentation to accompany the beeps and pops; I like it. Go To Sleep is a moment of genius. There There begins with that rhythmic, primitive Tom Tom march. It builds and builds and builds; the layering is perfect. Unlike the songs on Hail to the Thief’s two predecessors, these songs stand out from one another. I can get them stuck in my head. The semi-funk bass-line of A Punch Up at a Wedding. The synth-driven Myxomatosis. The three-four Wolf at the Door. While Hail to the Thief is not my favorite Radiohead album, it has great moments. And that is the major fault I find with Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows. It lacks great moments. The first track, 15 Step, is my favorite song on the record, until it hits the part with the kids yelling. Is this Yoshimi? Is it Another Brick in the Wall? It doesn’t fit. I don’t need the gimmicks. The second song, Bodysnatchers, tries to rock, but it never reaches the pure energy of songs like Paranoid Android, My Iron Lung, and 2+2=5. The rest of the songs are a boring blur. Back to the artificial beats, the blips, the crackles and snaps, the mumbled vocals, all awash in a sea of strings and synths. Not enough guitars; too many violins and cellos. Enough already with melodramatic orchestration. If the songs are good, they don’t need the padding. Some of the lyrics are downright trite: “I don’t want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover” and “your eyes, they turn me.” I was hoping this would be a great Radiohead album. It’s better than Kid A. It’s not quite as good as Amnesiac. Maybe I’ll get a better feeling for it after a few more listens. Maybe they put a bunch of great songs on that bonus disc that you only get if you order the expensive box-set with the vinyl edition of the album. Maybe I’m pining for a Radiohead that no longer exists. Stop whispering, start shouting.

A technical issue:
The first thing I noticed when I put the disc in my car (mp3’s converted to .wav) was how quiet the songs were. I listen to most of my CD’s in my car at a volume level of 15 (I know this is arbitrary, but play along). I had to turn In Rainbows up to at least 18 to get it to sound good. Even at 18, the bass frequencies are too quiet. I’m wondering if the album hasn’t been properly mastered quite yet, given the quick release. Will it be mastered at a higher level on the subsequent CD release early next year (if anyone has any info on this, please let me know)? If so, I feel bad for anyone who paid a significant sum for an unfinished product.

Appendix 1/31/08:
After listening to the CD version of In Rainbows multiple times, I've grown more fond of it. It sounds much better than the original mp3's I listened to. I'm still upset that they didn't fill it out with the songs from the exclusive second disc. A few of those songs (Last Flowers, Bangers + Mash, and 4 Minute Warning), in my opinion, are better than most of the songs on the first disc. Go Radiohead.

Dear Red Sox Nation People

2007-10-25T14:44:00.000-06:00

Hi Red Sox Nation. How're you doing? Still pretty annoying, I see. I have a few favors to ask of you. I was hoping you could use your influence and tenacity to pull some of these off:

1. Get Manny Ramirez to clean the poop off of his batting helmet.

2. Don't hold up signs that say, "Manny Ramirez is the next American Idol". That doesn't make any sense. It's not clever. It's not funny. Try harder, please.

3. Tell Josh Beckett to shave his dick duster and his landing strip.

4. Tell Kevin Youkilis to not look so much like the dwarf from Lord of the Rings (I think his name is Gimli).

5. If you know someone in Red Sox Nation that has no direct connection with the city of Boston (i.e. wasn't born there, hasn't ever lived there, doesn't have family from there, etc.) please kick him/her out of Red Sox Nation and tell him/her to cheer for his/her respective hometown team.

Thanks.

Trashcan Candy: My Halloween DVD Recommendations

2007-10-22T18:31:00.000-06:00

It’s almost Halloween. My favorite time of year. The smells of autumn and decay and muddy, grass-stained footballs. Piles of leaves and pumpkins, some carved, some painted. Costumes: ninjas, pirates, soldiers, draculas, ghosts, princesses, transformers, yodas, pokemons, cowboys, and assorted creativity. Plastic bags and pillow cases. Night arrives earlier. I eat candy, those mini Snickers and Twix and Kit Kat and Hershey’s dark chocolate. I avoid the disgusting Mounds and Almond Joys. Fuck those; trade ‘em for something tasty. I don’t like caramel apples. I don’t want fruit with my candy, just candy. I savor the hard candies like Sweet Tarts and Nerds and Jolly Ranchers. Give me some chewy, teeth sticking stuff too. Real cavity creators. Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish. Laffy Taffy. No lemon or orange flavored Starburst, please; I like the cherry and the strawberry ones. Same goes with Skittles, Blo-Pops and Dum Dums. Mmmmm…Tootsie Rolls and Charleston Chew. I absolutely loathe those sickass, sugar-covered orange jelly things. Candy corns are nasty too; Lewis Black told me so. Throw those in the trash. Trashcan candy. I munch candy and watch movies. I watch horror movies into the late hours.

I’ve decided to compile a list of horror movies that I’ve seen in the past year. Some of them are pretty obscure. I’m not going to include any of the traditional horror films in this list; you’ve probably already seen those and I didn’t want to make this into a best-of competition. Many of you will be content with watching Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Alien, The Exorcist, Scream, The Shining, Poltergeist, etc. This list is for those who are looking for something new and different. Some of these films are great; some are awful. It’s all about personal taste. I have attempted to categorize these films to facilitate your selection process.

1. Creature Features:

--Evil Aliens: I’ve already posted a review of this movie here. If you don’t want to read the review, the title of this movie says it all. Crazy-ass evil aliens come to earth and do some crazy-ass evil things. This movie is gory, crude, and crass. It’s only for those who relish abundant gore. Watch it with the kids.

--Cemetery Gates: A movie about a mutant Tasmanian devil. Seriously. This devil rips and shreds everything in its path. Lots of blood and severed limbs. The guys from KNB provide the gore effects and even have a small cameo. If you like gory horror/comedies, check this out. Amazing stuff.

--Abominable: An interesting take on the Bigfoot legend. I think this played on the Sci-Fi channel, but if you only saw it there, you need to rent the R-rated version. The plot is loosely based on Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Watch it for the best face-bite scene ever. Boobies included with rental.

2. Ghost Stories/Supernatural:

--Dead End: A family is on its way to visit the relatives for Christmas. The husband/father decides to take a shortcut. Things go wrong. This stretch of road and the woods beyond seem haunted. Dead End is a scary, atmospheric flick that relies on creating tension with subtlety.

--The Abandoned: One of those low-budget, After Dark Horrorfest movies. This is the best-directed one of the bunch. It’s a haunted house story with great visuals and some legitimately scary moments.

--Master’s of Horror: The Black Cat: I reviewed this a while ago here. Stuart Gordon directs this installment of the Master’s of Horror series. The story revolves around Edgar Allan Poe (played perfectly by Jeffery Combs) as he tries desperately to pen his famous tale, The Black Cat. This is my favorite episode from both seasons of Master’s of Horror.

3. Werewolves:

--Ginger Snaps: I wish more people would see this film. It’s an amazing, low-budget werewolf movie with a great story. Two sisters with macabre sensibilities face some difficult times when one of them is bitten by a werewolf. The dialog is crisp and hilarious. The direction is great. The acting (especially of the two leads) is perfect. Highly recommended. Rent it, dammit.

--Big Bad Wolf: This movie features a wiseass, shit-talking werewolf. He’s mean and vulgar and hungry. The werewolf costume is pretty funny; you can totally tell it’s a guy in a suit. His face looks hilarious. This film lags in the middle section but delivers the gore.

4. Crazy Killers:

--Satan’s Little Helper: This is the craziest, most twisted movie on this list. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. There’s this really annoying kid that plays the lead part. He has a video game he constantly plays called Satan’s Little Helper. On Halloween, the kid encounters a costumed killer who he believes is Satan. The kid follows this dude around and helps him out. Bizarre and creepy.

--Penny Dreadful: Another After Dark Horrorfest film. The plot consists of a girl named Penny who has a fear of cars (she was in a traumatic auto accident when she was a kid). As part of her therapy, her psychiatrist takes her on a road trip. They pick up a hitchhiker. All goes to shit. This is a pretty intense little film. I liked it a lot.

--The Breed: In this movie, the crazy killers are dogs. A bunch of kids go to an island to party. The island used to have some government facility that did some sort of genetic engineering testing (you know the drill). A bunch of angry dogs that live on the island attack the kids. Michelle Rodriguez is in this. Real dogs are used…no CGI.

5. Vampires:

--The Insatiable: Another film that I reviewed here. This is a vampire movie, but not in the traditional sense. It’s a character driven piece that features decent acting and writing. There’s not a lot of gore here and it’s not all that scary, but it’s worth taking a look at if you like this kind of stuff.

--The Thirst: This movie kind of reminds me of Near Dark. It centers on a group of vampires that hang out together and party in that bloody vampire way; they go clubbing. Tits and blood and Jeremy Sisto. The vampire’s addiction to blood is portrayed like an addict’s addiction to heroin. There’s a lot of dark humor here; some plays well, some doesn’t.

So, that’s it…my long-ass (think of butts from 80’s T&A films, like Porky’s or Up The Creek) list. I hope some of you take a little time out of your busy Halloween schedule to enjoy one or two of these films. I apologize in advance if you have a bad experience. Remember, these are horror movies, and low-budget ones at that. Keep your expectations low. Watch with alcohol. Keep your pants on.

2007-10-17T12:17:00.000-06:00

I’ve never read any Philip K. Dick stories, but I’ve seen a lot of movie adaptations of his work (Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, etc.). I enjoy watching sci-fi movies but can’t really get into the books; I’d rather read Cormac McCarthy or Don DeLillo. I recently watched another adaptation of a Dick story, The Golden Man. This one is directed by everyone’s favorite James Bond director Lee Tamahori. It stars Nicholas Cage (The Wicker Man) and Jessica Biel (Stealth). It’s called Next.

Lee Tamahori gets a lot of shit for having directed one of the worst installments in the James Bond oeuvre, Die Another Day. I kind of enjoyed Die Another Day until the absolutely atrocious CGI iceberg windsurfing scene. I think the pre-credit sequence is one of the better openings to a James Bond film. Following his experience with Pierce Brosnan, Tamahori directed Ice Cube in the sequel to XXX, xXx: State of the Union. [Tangent: I think the big X in between the two small x’s signifies that it is the second movie in the franchise. When XXX 3 comes out it’ll be called xxX: Super-Spies Like Us. The new triple-X will be a chick.] I really like State of the Union. It’s a pretty great, brainless action film that succeeds where the Vin Diesel film fails.

Enough about XXX. This review concerns Tamahori’s latest film, Next. I didn’t see this in theatres. The trailer made it look pretty bad. Also, it came on the heels of that Denzel Washington/Tony Scott film Déjà Vu. I can only handle one time-bending adventure at a time. I had to wait for this one on DVD.

Nick Cage plays a sleazy, Las Vegas magician stage-named Frank Cadillac (total porn name). His real name is Chris Johnson (remember those Big Johnson t-shirts?). He works in a low-class casino on Fremont Street, entertaining small audiences of drunks and geriatrics. He uses his magic act as a cover for his unique psychic ability; he can see anything that directly affects his life a few minutes before it happens. He uses this ability to win at gambling and to test out his favorite pick-up lines. An FBI agent, played by Julianne Moore (The Big Lebowski), discovers Frank’s talent and decides that he would be helpful in the FBI’s search for a nuclear device that has been planted somewhere in the Southwest. Chris doesn’t want to get involved, so he does what any good citizen would do; he evades them. He’d rather find a woman he’s been seeing in his future visions. Introduce Jessica Biel. He meets her in a diner where he knew she’d show up at a specific time. You see, he can see things regarding her life much further into the future than his own. They have an awkward encounter and soon take off together in her car (I wish that I possessed Nick Cage’s lady-slaying skills; he’s a real charmer). The FBI chases after them. The movie becomes a big chase sequence, an excuse for action sets and explosions.

This movie revels in its ridiculousness. The action sequences are beyond absurd. There’s a scene that you probably remember from the preview, which involves Nick Cage running down a hill and ducking at the last moment as an SUV crashes and flips over him. That SUV belongs to Jessica Biel. She sacrifices it in honor of a love that is only a few hours old. That’s dedication. It’s also a weak plot point. The relationship between Biel and Cage is strained, awkward, forced, and totally unrealistic. Its sole purpose is to push the action forward and I’m cool with that. Give me the action. I’m a slobbering, blathering, action-is-my-heroin junkie. There are some pretty crazy gunfights, none of which expose a drop of blood (gotta ensure that PG-13 rating). Terrorist plots. Anonymous vans. Rata-tat-tat-tat. Jessica Biel wheelchair bombs and Nick Cage clones. A twist ending that didn’t piss me off. Simon says, “Stop. Go.” Fragments, fragments, I write in fragments.

I enjoyed this movie. It’s retarded, but fun…kinda like your girlfriend. I learned a few things from this movie, as well. Las Vegas has railroad crossings that don’t have those descending, flashing gates. Also, if you work for the FBI and don’t agree with your superior, you should always preface your disagreement with the phrase, “with all due respect, sir.” Dialogue for Action Films 101. The end is imminent.

PS: If you think this movie requires a second viewing to understand the plot-twist, you don't get a second chance at not being a retard.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

2007-10-16T13:58:00.000-06:00

Do you like Henry Rollins? Are you a fan of old Black Flag songs? I’m not. Henry Rollins annoys me. I hate his spoken word addition to the song Bottom on Tool’s Undertow album (“In order to survive you, I must first survive myself”…lame). I think the guy is a jackass. So, why am I ranting about Henry Rollins? It turns out that he’s in the sequel to everyone’s favorite hillbilly cannibal movie, Wrong Turn. I saw Wrong Turn in the theatre and actually enjoyed it. It was decently directed and featured some pretty intense moments and some clever kills. I guess it didn’t make enough money to warrant a theatrical sequel; instead, we are treated to a direct to DVD sequel entitled Wrong Turn 2: Dead End.

Wrong Turn 2 is helmed by first-time director Joe Lynch. I don’t know anything about this guy, but he comes across as a douchebag in the special features stuff on the DVD. Oh well. The plot for Wrong Turn 2 is basically the same as the plot for Wrong Turn. A politically correct (i.e. racially diverse) sampling of young, attractive losers gets chased, mutilated, killed, and eaten by a bunch of mutated, inbred, retarded, hillbilly cannibals. The setting is rural West Virginia. Henry Rollins stars in this movie. Eliza Dushku does not. Damn.

The film begins with some annoying, spoiled, wannabe actress driving a red, convertible Mustang down some winding mountain road. She’s talking on the cell phone to her agent, asking why she has to take part in this reality show she is currently traveling to. This actress is Kimberly Caldwell, playing herself. I didn’t know who she was until I watched the behind the scenes stuff. I guess she was one of those American Idols or something. I don’t watch that shit; I watch this shit instead. She ends up losing her cell phone connection and takes a wrong turn, hence the title of the movie. The post-colon, Dead End part of the title is there because people die when they make this wrong turn. There are no Dead End road signs in this movie. As Kimberly is driving down the wrong turn road, some dude goes bouncing off her windshield and flies over her car, landing on his back on the pavement. Kim stops her car, gets out, and stoops over him to see if he’s alive. The fucker suddenly leans up and bites off her lips. Then his hillbilly cohorts come along and chop her in half, vertically, with an axe. Half her body falls to the right, half falls to the left, and her innards splat to the ground directly beneath her. The two cannibals each take a half of her and drag her off into the woods. Whoa…that’s some hardcore craziness. Could this be the direct to DVD sequel I’ve been waiting for?

Nope. Enter the rest of the actors, the feculent dialogue, and the moronic set-up. A film crew is shooting a new TV reality game show (think Survivor) in the woods of West Virginia. The show is called Apocalypse and is hosted by Henry Rollins. He plays a combat experienced veteran named Dale Murphy. No kidding. [Tangent: My friend’s dad is Dale Murphy, the two-time National League MVP who played for the Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies. His name has now been immortalized in a DTV movie that I’m reviewing. That can’t be a coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences; I believe in God.] The goal of the game is to get the players separated from each other so that each can more easily die a grisly death (not really, but it sure makes the director’s job easier). The players are supposedly trapped in a post-apocalyptic world where they have to find food and avoid imaginary radiation leaks and mutants and shit. Ironically, real mutants live in these woods and the reality show becomes reality but it’s just a movie so it’s not really reality but it seems like reality for the characters in the movie. Postmodernism and stuff. This reality show formula is not new to horror films; it is also used in the unwarranted Busta Rhymes Halloween sequel.

The inevitable comparisons between Wrong Turn and Wrong Turn 2: Revenge of the Inbred Mutant Hillbilly Cannibal Retards:

The first film is much better. It is competently directed. Its characters are interesting and somewhat likeable. It is a survival horror picture where you actually care if the protagonist lives. The tension in certain scenes, especially the scene where Eliza Dushku is hiding under the bed in the hillbilly cabin, is palpable. Stan Winston’s creature effects and make-up are amazing; the hillbillies look disgustingly great. The sequel features a few cool directorial flourishes (a camera-attached-to-the-actor scene where a character gets an axe to the head and the opening scene) but is mostly a bland, run-of-the-mill DTV production. This movie tries to imitate the survival horror feel of the first film but fails miserably. The characters are so lame that I didn’t care if any survived; I ended up rooting for them all to die. This strips the movie of any tension it strives to create. I found myself apathetically anticipating each successive kill (what’ll it be next…meat-grinder, arrow, axe, dynamite…?). The hillbilly make-up in this film consists entirely of lumpy heads and bad teeth. I didn’t find these inbreds nearly as compelling or terrifying as those in the first film.

From my review so far, you’re probably thinking that this film is totally worthless (or you’re thinking why is this review so goddamned long and why doesn’t this reviewer have a life?); it’s not. If you like to watch horror movies for creative kills and tons of gore, this is your cup of ass. Blood and guts aplenty. One arrow, two heads. Look out, there’s a stick of lit dynamite in your belt. Boom. Splat. Finger binky. Meat-grinder massage. Hillbilly sex and a BJ. Lunchtime. Shit ghost. PS: If you like boobs, you’ll be happy to know that Crystal Lowe (Elena) shows off a nice pair.

Odds and Ends:

Henry Rollins turns into Dutch from Predator.

A dinner scene in this movie pays homage to TCM (that’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the uninitiated).

Daniella Alonso is in this movie. She is also in two other movies I have reviewed: The Hills Have Eyes 2 and Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror. Is this a coincidence (see my above comment about coincidences)?

This may be the first movie to use the line, “This is so effed in the A.”

Ramba is the feminine form of Rambo (think Spanish 101, folks).

Evil Aliens

2007-10-10T15:55:00.001-06:00

I just watched one of the weirdest, greatest, stupidest, funniest, lamest, most original/unoriginal movies I have ever seen. This movie is a conundrum, an oxymoron of extreme proportions. Sure, there are movies that are so bad, they’re great. This is not one of those. This movie is terrible and great at the same time. I’m not sure how to write this review. I’m not sure how to rate the film; is it one star or five stars? I’m leaning towards five, but I love this stuff. I need some help on this one, but I can’t recommend it to everyone. I can barely recommend it to anyone. It’s gory, crude, and crass. It’s unrated for a reason. It’s Jake West’s Evil Aliens.

Who the hell is Jake West? Is he a famous director? Why is his name so prominently attached to the title of the movie? Is it kind of like Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator or John Carpenter’s Vampires? Is this Jake's tongue-in-cheek attempt to mimic that trend? I think so. After a brief excursion to the land of imdb, I found that Jake West directed a movie called Razor Blade Smile (1998) that I recall having seen on the shelves in the horror section at Blockbuster. He has mainly directed those behind the scenes featurettes you get in the special features section on DVD releases. He did one for Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep and a couple for Evil Dead and a piece about Bruce Campbell. This makes sense. He pays homage to those films, among others, in Evil Aliens.

Evil Aliens is a sci-fi/horror/comedy/parody/action film. The plot is simple. Some aliens harboring evil intentions come to earth, landing somewhere in the Welsh countryside. They encounter a humping couple in the midst of a field of upright stones (like Stonehenge, but smaller). At first I thought, “oh shit, is this a porno?” Don’t worry, it’s not. The aliens abduct the couple and take them into their spaceship. They impregnate the girl (I won’t tell you how, but believe me, it’s disgusting) and torture the guy. The torture involves a sadistic take on the anal-probe myth. The newly pregnant girl contacts a British television show called Weird Worlde (yes, that’s how they spell it). The producer decides to send his crew to check out the girl’s story and to film a re-enactment of the event. The TV film crew a nerdy dude who specializes in alien sightings arrive at the Welsh farm where the girl lives with her three crazy, inbred farmer brothers (I’m not completely sure of their relation; they could be uncles or cousins or something). The three farmers only speak Welsh and there is some inside joke here that I didn’t quite understand.

That’s the set-up for the slaughter and mayhem. Our group of protagonists (I hesitate to use the term “heroes” because they are all unlikable) soon encounters the aliens and body parts fly. Carnage ensues. Blood spews. Entrails are exposed. Legs and arms are ripped from bodies. Heads are severed and kicked around like soccer balls. Cattle are mutilated and their meaty pieces are thrown about. The gore effects in this movie are amazing. There is an impaling scene that is an obvious homage to Cannibal Holocaust. There is a scene where a guy gets his eyes poked out from behind and the eyes fly across the screen (Evil Dead 2). There are these flying metal spheres that resemble the orbs from Phantasm. There’s even a three-breasted alien (remember Total Recall?). The humans use shotguns, chainsaws, and even a weed-whacker to mutilate the aliens. Oh, and a combine...can't forget the combine. The result is gore-filled chaos. I had a blast. You have to see it to believe it. The ending features a nifty little twist that I won’t spoil here.

The flaws of Evil Aliens are definitely related to its low budget (estimated at under $2 million). At times, I felt like I was watching a movie that some friends had shot on video in their back yard. Some of the acting is pretty bad. The dialogue is decent for this type of film, but there are a few too many jokes that fall flat. The special effects that don’t involve the gore are pretty cheesy…especially the flying spaceship. That's okay for the most part; this film revels in its campiness.

Jake West directs the film with enthusiasm. The scenes are fast-paced with lots of cool zooms and angles reminiscent of Sam Raimi. The set pieces and costumes are great. The action sequences are well choreographed and the tension is palpable. I’d really like to see what this guy can do with a bigger budget. He obviously loves the genre. Evil Aliens resembles Re-Animator in its style and outright craziness. Its campy humor and parody remind me of Evil Dead 2.

Tagline: Evil Aliens is the bastard child of Re-Animator and Evil Dead 2.

PS: I warned you. This movie is not for the uninitiated horror fan. If you haven’t seen the other films I’ve mentioned in this review (except, of course, Cannibal Holocaust; no one needs to see that) then don’t watch this movie. Watch the others first. Do your homework. No crying.

Down In Downtown Denver

2007-10-10T09:28:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while, I need a good dose of heavy music. My friend and I went to the Ogden Theatre in downtown Denver on Monday night to see Down. I got my dose, plus some (can you say "hot box"). Down is from New Orleans and features members Phil Anselmo (Pantera) and Pepper Keenan (Corrosion of Conformity). Anselmo handles all the vocals while Keenan supplies the relentless riffage. There was no opening act for the show...a trend that more bands need to follow, especially for Monday night shows. A white sheet was draped in front of the stage where old concert footage of 70's metal bands (Skynyrd, Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC) was projected. When the videos ended, a series of shots of the band and album artwork were displayed to the sound of live feedback and then the sheet dropped and the place went nuts and Down launched into their first song. Since I'm in my 30's, I decided to wear earplugs and enjoy the show from the upper tier of the theatre, away from the shaved-head, goateed, tatted up angry motherfuckers. Everyone fired up their joints and the place quickly became enshrouded in a thick fog of stinky leaf smoke. The dude next to me lit up and promptly had a bunch of white-trash bitches begging at his side. This guy would scream "Yeah....Fuck Yeah" in a perfect Macho Man Randy Savage imitation between every song. It was always that way: Yeah, pause-pause-pause, Fuck Yeah. He did this at least fifty times. I totally remembered this dude from the Clutch show I went to at the Gothic last Spring. A fat, fiftyish bald dude with child-molester glasses a few seats over was totally laughing at the macho man. Awesome. Down rocked. I especially liked the songs they played from the new album, which in my opionion is their best. My favorite moments were On March the Saints, Ghosts Along the Mississippi, N.O.D., and Three Suns and One Star. The only songs I didn't know were the ones they played off their first album. I don't own that one. I must not be a true Down fan because all true fans own the first record. I heard that Anselmo wanted to remix it and re-release it, so I'm waiting. Down played for about two hours including the encore.

Now for the negatives. Some kind of melee ensued in the crowd near the stage, forcing the band to stop mid-song and kick some dumbasses out of the show. Note to dumbasses: This is a concert. You should be having fun. If you drink too much and smoke too much weed you are an asshole and deserve to be kicked out of any show if you are ruining the experience for those around you. I hate you. The other thing that bothered me about the show was Phil Anselmo's lame banter between songs. He was definitely stoned and it showed. He kept preaching about how meaningful his lyrics were and how we all needed to read them and "study that shit". Cool, dude. Pot-head philosophy drives me crazy. Just because you smoke weed, you are not some ultra-intelligent bastard living on a higher intellectual plane. You are a pot-smoker. Your lyrics aren't deep. They fit the songs and I enjoy them, but they aren't going to change my life. Thanks for trying, though.

Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror

2007-10-03T15:31:00.000-06:00

Ahhh, the Snizzoop Doggy Dizzogg. Everyone’s favorite pimp rapper delivers a horror anthology called Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror. This film premiered as part of the 8 Films To Die For After Dark Horrorfest that played in theatres last November. I just watched it on DVD. Do you want to see some true, ghetto sickness? Are you ready for some muthafuckin’ urban mayhem, nephew? Then read on, beeeyatch.

Hood of Horror (directed by someone named Stacy Title) is comprised of three short films held together by some animated sequences (cartoons). The muthafuckin’ Snizzle (fo shizzle) plays the part of narrator. The opening cartoon explains that Snoop was a gang banger who got his little sister killed. He makes a deal with the devil so that she can live again. His trade-off is that he has to go to hell and become “The Crib Keeper”. His job is to see that the evildoers in the hood receive their proper comeuppance. The producers and writers (including Tim Sullivan) of this anthology admit that they were going for an urban take on the old EC Comics stories (including Tales From The Crypt). So, this movie is not a rip-off; it’s a re-imagining with a hip-hop twist.

The first episode tells the story of an artist named Posie (Daniella Alonso) who lives in a really shitty part of town. She witnesses a couple of punks spray-painting over one of her graffiti tags. She yells at the wannabees, but they run her off. Later, she meets a creepy derelict played by Danny Trejo. He gives her a sweet arm tattoo that has magical powers. She learns that if she paints over the tags of other taggers, they will die grisly deaths. One of these deaths is one of the funniest kills I have ever seen in a horror movie. Spoiler: A dude trips while running with a 40 ounce malt liquor in his hand. He ends up falling face first on the bottle. The bottle doesn’t break. It goes through his face and ends up with the top sticking out the back of his head. Priceless.

The second episode is the longest and the best of the three. It’s about this redneck asshole named Tex Jr. (Anson Mount) who has to live in a building occupied by his dead father’s old Vietnam war buddies. Junior is required to do this in order to receive his inheritance. This was his late father’s last effort to straighten out his son. You see, Tex Jr. is a racist prick and the veterans are all African American men. Tex Jr. moves into the building with his hot wife Tiffany (Brande Roderick) and her annoying little rat-dog. They kick one of the vets out of his upper-floor bedroom and convert it into a suite. They proceed to offend and take advantage of the vets. Things get ugly. The vets get revenge. A stomach explodes. This episode is hilarious. Anson Mount is a genius.

The third episode is the weakest of the three. It’s about an up-and-coming rapper and his DJ. When they meet, their aspirations and intentions are pure. They get famous and the rapper turns into a spoiled, self-centered prick. The DJ gets murdered. Pretty soon, the rapper is seeing ghosts and learning lessons and whatnot. There is one good gore sequence where Diamond Dallas Page gets his eyes poked out. Watch this episode to see a cameo by Jason Alexander as a record company executive with a terrible British accent.

I have one last thing to mention. In the behind the scenes featurette, Daniella Alonso discusses her reasons for accepting the role of Posie in this movie. She said that she loved the character because Posie was so layered, so interesting, so deep. Give me a break. This is a fucking low-budget horror film. Just say you accepted the role because you needed work and Snizzle’s name was attached to the picture. Chuch.

The Insatiable

2007-10-01T11:44:00.000-06:00

Most vampire movies suck (pun only intended if it makes the statement funny; otherwise, disregard the pun). I like Blade 2, but that’s about it. I walked out of the theatre while watching Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Those Dracula 2000 movies are terrible. IWAV is boring (that’s Interview With A Vampire for those that like to abbreviate the titles of every damn movie so I never know what they’re talking about). So why did I watch a DTV movie called The Insatiable? I’m not sure.

Harry Balbo (Sean Patrick Flanery) is a normal, everyday nobody. He works for a company that sells metal materials and gaskets and flanges. One of his co-workers constantly makes fun of him. Harry never retaliates. He is a genuinely nice guy. He lives alone and acts as the superintendent of his building to supplement his income. His neighbors call him when their garbage disposals break or when their toilets clog.

One night, on his way home, Harry is approached by a homeless guy. The guy is hungry and asks Harry for some money so he can get something to eat. Harry goes to a convenience store and buys the guy a hotdog and a liter of cola. When he returns to the spot where he met the guy, he can’t find him. He calls out to him but receives no reply. Then Harry witnesses an event which will forever change his mundane existence; he sees an extremely hot chick (Charlotte Ayanna) biting the homeless dude’s neck. She proceeds to rip off his head and jumps upward three stories and crashes through a building window. Awesome. Apparently, this wasn’t the first murder in Harry’s neighborhood. The cops tell him that they are investigating other killings with similar MO’s. Harry learns that one of his friends (the clerk at the convenience store) may be one of the vampire’s lovers. He pulls a Shia LeBoofer (Disturbia reference) and spies on his friend one night. The vampire chick sees Harry and scratches him, drawing blood. Now Harry is scared shitless.

Harry does what anyone would do after experiencing a vampiric event; he consults the World Wide Internet. He eventually makes contact with an expert on all things vampire that goes by the screen name Nightstalker. It turns out that Nightstalker (played by Michael Biehn) lives in Harry’s building and Harry meets him when he gets a call to unclog the guy’s shitter. Nightstalker is a crazy vampire-hunting bastard with a vendetta that goes back to his years spent as a soldier in Vietnam. He tells Harry that now that the vampire has smelled Harry’s blood, she will stalk him everywhere he goes until she kills him.

That’s the setup. I won’t spoil the rest of the movie in case you’re interested in seeing it. The Insatiable is written and directed by Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon. This is their first movie, though they have written other projects for TV. The strong point of this film is definitely the writing. The dialogue is funny and realistic and sometimes cheesy (in a good way). Most of the actors, especially Sean Patrick Flanery (why the three names, dude?) are great. The guy who plays the convenience store clerk is kind of annoying, but oh well. Because this is a direct-to-video low-budget feature, the special effects are lacking. The directors compensate for this by using as little CGI as possible. I hate it when low-budget movies use lots of terrible looking CGI (i.e. sci-fi channel movies) when it’s not even necessary or when practical effects would suffice. The Insatiable avoids this pitfall.

My favorite scene in the movie is a foot-chase sequence involving Harry and the vampire. Some of the film is sped up to make it look like they are running really fast. Harry is definitely not a runner; he runs like Johnny Knoxville imitating retards in that movie The Ringer. The vampire runs like the evil terminator from Terminator 2. She rips a door off its hinges. Hilarious.

My main complaint about this movie is the noticeable lack of gore. The kill-shots cut away too quickly. The best gore effect is a dude’s arm getting ripped off (even though the vampire is biting near the elbow and the arm comes off at the shoulder). The scene is great, but it could have used some blood spray to make it really effective. I also would have liked to see some boobage. This is a vampire movie; boobage should be a requirement, especially when said boobage belongs to Charlotte Ayanna.

Hannibal Rising

2007-09-24T16:49:00.000-06:00

Hannibal Rising (directed by Peter Webber) is the fifth entry in the Hannibal the Cannibal series of films. It is a prequel to the prequel of the Silence of the Lambs. That means it is set before the events of Red Dragon, which was released after Hannibal but was a remake of Michael Mann’s Manhunter, the events of which take place before Silence of the Lambs. Confused? Good. Hannibal Rising is an origin story. It reveals the motives of America’s favorite fictional serial killer. It is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I’m not exaggerating.

I’m just going to throw my thoughts about this movie at this computer screen and see what happens. SPLAT! Hannibal Lecter is an eight year-old boy, living with his rich parents and his younger sister (Misha) in Lithuania during the German invasion of Russia during World War II. The evil Germans, expressing massive under-bites, invade the town where The Lecters live and proceed to kill the Jews and gypsies and enlist some of the local Lithuanians to help them continue their slaughter. The Lecter family moves to a secluded farm house to wait out the invasion. After a while, a big tank rumbles toward their house, knocking down all the trees in its path. We witness this from what I believe is the first ever Tank-Cam shot. It’s hilarious. The tank parks in front of their house and some German planes fly over and shooting commences and shit blows up and Hannibal’s parents die and he and his sister are left to fend for themselves in the wintry desolation with no food. A group of converted Lithuanian Nazi bastards shows up at the house and taunts little Hannibal and little Misha. These guys are evil. The leader bites a pheasant’s head off and eats it, feathers and all. He’s a fucking loon. When these assholes realize that they are going to run out of food, they decide to eat the kids. Misha gets grubbed first, but we don’t see it. That would be way too rough for an R-rated movie. Little Hanny escapes. We learn about his sister’s death and his escape through his music-video-edited nightmares. Spoiler: This is why Hannibal is a cannibal. Hannibal grows up in an orphanage which is ironically located in his parents’ old mansion. Now he’s older. Some kid makes fun of him and pays the price. Hanny turns him into a scarecrow. He takes off for Paris in search of his aunt and uncle. His aunt is Japanese and his uncle is dead. The Hannister moves in with his aunt and begins to study medicine so he can become a doctor like he is in the other movies. His aunt teaches him some cool Japanese shit. He learns samurai sword-fighting techniques. He finds a cool mask (more on that later). He kills some butcher guy that makes fun of his aunt (he remarks that Japanese women have horizontal you-know-whats). The local detective, played by the guy who plays Jimmy McNulty on HBO’s The Wire, investigates the murder and suspects The Hannister but old Hanny-balls gets away with it. The detective pops up at other random moments in the movie but nothing ever comes of his investigation and, consequently, his part is worthless. We soon learn that Hanny’s ultimate goal in life is to avenge the death of his sister by killing all the dudes who ate her. He goes back to the secluded, burned-out home and salvages some dog tags that identify the men. He hunts them down and kills them, one by one. This movie is two hours long.

First off: The kid who plays Hannibal is a terrible, sucky actor. I tried to find his name on imdb, but it wasn’t listed and I wasn’t going to spend any more time on it than that. His line delivery is cringe-inducing. He has this dimple/scar thing on left side of face that I found myself constantly staring at. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted to punch it. His pouty-mouth pissed me off. The only good actor in this movie is Jimmy McNulty, but his part doesn’t matter.

Second off: There is no sense of tension or suspense in the movie. We already know that Hannibal has to survive because he has to be in Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Red Dragon. We already understand everything about him from the other four movies. The story strives to be relevant by providing answers to the following questions: Why does Hanny eat people? Why is he so civilized? Why is he so evil? Why does he wear that weird mouth-covering mask in Silence of the Lambs? The problem is that these questions have already been answered in the previous books and films, except for the last one. (Sarcasm on) We learn that Hannibal isn’t forced to wear the mask as a safety precaution to his psychiatric handlers; he wears the mask because his aunt has one that looks just like it, only cooler. See, he grew up with the mask; the mask is part of him just like Michael Myers’ Shatner disguise or Jason’s hockey mask lend to their identities.

Third off: The gore in this movie is weak. Most of the kills are shot from a distance, or in the dark, or they cut away completely…and I watched the unrated version. Killings occur in the following ways: decapitation, drowning, stabbing, a guy tied to a tree with rope which is also attached to a horse that pulls the rope taut by walking away and the guy’s head explodes off (but it doesn’t show it…just a little blood spray on Han’s face). The final kill consists of Hannibal cutting the letter M into the chest of the main bad guy while saying, “M for Misha”. Then he probably eats his cheeks or something. This movie is all about cheeks.

Fourth off: All of the dialogue in the film is completely unnecessary. It’s just like the dialogue in a cartoon. Everyone explains everything they are doing and why they are doing it. Thomas Harris, the author of the book, is billed as the screenwriter for the film. It is embarrassing to think that a once-decent author could pen something this terrible. Here is an example of a line that jumped right off the screen and imbedded itself in my unwitting brain: “What he is now, there’s no word for it…except monster.” Read that again. And again. That line has to be straight out of Writing Dialogue for Scooby-Doo 101. Many scenes consist entirely of grunting and yelling: “Hannibal!” “Misha!” “Mama!” “Papa!”. In one scene at the beginning of the movie, a guy deployed on a tank’s machine gun turret yells “RUUAAAWRGH!!!” as he fires at an incoming plane. A genuine Matrix Revolutions moment. Some of the lines are so mumbled and garbled you can’t discern what’s being said. It doesn’t matter. You could watch this movie on mute and still understand everything that’s happening.

Last off: I hope Peter Webber never directs another movie. I hope he gets demoted to shooting Viva Viagra commercials. I pray that Thomas Harris never sets pen to paper again for the rest of his life. Too harsh? Fuck it, they deserve it.

The Washingtonians

2007-09-21T15:43:00.000-06:00

Today I’m reviewing Peter Medak’s entry into the Masters of Horror series, The Washingtonians. Medak is best known for directing The Changeling, Species II, and a bunch of TV episodes. Species II shows lots of boobs. I was excited when I heard about the premise for this episode. It’s based on a short story by one of my favorite horror authors, Bentley Little. I think the future of horror rests on the shoulders of horror writers, not on remaking shitty movies from the 1970’s.

The basic premise of The Washingtonians involves a family (husband, wife, and 10 year-old daughter) that travels to Virginia to settle the estate of their recently deceased grandmother or some such inconsequential relative. She has lots of cool historical shit in her basement. The husband/father finds a note behind a painting of George Washington. This note contains information that will forever taint (yes, I said taint) the image of our nation’s founding father. Certain individuals, called The Washingtonians, will do anything to keep this information secret. They dress in colonial garb, wear powdered wigs, and paint their faces a ghostly white. They ride around at night on horseback, baring their wooden dentures. They are determined to keep the father from exposing their evil traditions.

The best attribute of this episode is the absurd nature of the story. Bentley Little came up with a great idea; what if everything you thought you knew about an historical figure was made-up propaganda? The film opens with our family in a car, listening to a talk-radio host who is claiming that the media is controlled by the government and we only get a filtered version of the news. The story continues this premise by claiming that the telling of history is altered to leave out the ugly details and that historians are complicit in perpetuating the lies. I like it. I remember reading A People’s History of the United States for the first time my junior year in high school. After reading about the atrocities committed by Columbus and his people on the Native Americans during their arrival to the new world, I felt like I had been lied to about history for most of my school life. After learning that Joseph Smith had over 30 wives, many of whom were teenagers while he was in his thirties, my perception of him changed dramatically.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a serious movie. The premise is absurd, the acting is terrible and over-the-top, the dialogue is cheesy, and it’s not one bit scary (except for the scene with the old people at the funeral; those bastards creep me out). It is meant to be campy and humerous. There is a great, gory sequence near the end of the film that you have to see to believe. The KNB guys did an outstanding job with the effects. Medak’s direction is decent. The little girl’s screams are terribly unconvincing. Also, for some unknown reason, most of the scenes at the beginning of the film conclude with the husband kissing his wife or his daughter. Lots of kissing goes on.

(Spoiler…read the short story or watch the movie first.)

So, what is George Washington’s ugly secret. He was a cannibal that preferred to eat the flesh of young virgin girls. He carved eating utensils from their bones. He learned to be a cannibal during the harsh winter at Valley Forge. Once he discovered the taste of human flesh, he never went back to burgers and french fries--unless, of course, they were ground-up human meat burgers and the fries were fried in human fat. The Washingtonians continue his secret tradition of cannibalism today. If you like cannibal movies, check out Guy Pearce’s Ravenous or that pedophile guy’s movie, Jeepers Creepers. Don’t check out Cannibal Holocaust because that movie sucks ballsack. Thanks.

Disturbia

2007-09-12T15:03:00.000-06:00

I watched Disturbia last night. It’s not as good as Suburbia but its not as bad as that band, Disturbed. This film, helmed by D.J. Caruso (I like how he uses initials instead of a first name…I had a friend in elementary school who went by B.J.—he’s probably changed that by now), is supposedly a modern re-telling of the Hitchcock classic, Rear Window. I won’t make any attempt in my review to compare the two films. Disturbia does not deserve the comparison.

Basic Plot: The film opens with 17 year-old Kale (Shia LaBeouf) fly-fishing with his dad. They bond. On their way home, they get in a horrific car accident. Kale’s dad dies at the scene. Jump ahead a few months. Kale is in Spanish class. He’s sleeping during lecture; his father’s death has him in the grips of depression. Consequently, he lacks motivation. The teacher calls him on his behavior and says something about how Kale’s dad would be disappointed. Ergo, Kale punches his teacher in the face. A judge sentences Kale to three months of house-arrest for assault. He has to wear an ankle transmitter that notifies the police anytime he leaves the boundaries of his property.

It’s summer vacation and Kale is a bored, spoiled kid. Enter the product placement: He has an Xbox 360 and Xbox Live and an iPod and iTunes and a Playstation Portable. His mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) disconnects his Xbox Live and his iTunes account, so he suddenly claims that has nothing to do (he can’t read a book or something…pop culture wouldn’t allow it). He decides to do what any teenage kid would do in this situation; he spies on his neighbors using some binoculars. He owns lots of cool pairs of binoculars and some video cameras and tons of monitors and computers and TV’s and stuff. He becomes a Peeping Tom.

A new family moves in next door. They have a hot daughter named Ashley (Sarah Roemer) who likes to take her clothes off with the window shades open and likes to wear bikinis and enjoys sitting on her roof and reading (she reads, but she’s a girl, so it’s acceptable). Kale spies on her a lot, but he’s sincere about it. See, he’s not a stalker because he’s in love with her. This movie teaches that it’s okay to be a Peeping Tom if you’re under house-arrest and you’re bored of playing Xbox. I’m surprised there wasn’t a sub-plot where Kale finds Ashley’s myspace page and stalks her there, as well. This would have worked because you know she has a myspace page and posts pictures of herself in her bikini and blogs about how unfair it is that her parents made the family move from the city to the suburbs to put a damper on her dad’s infidelities. Pretty soon, Ashley intuits Kale’s voyeuristic behavior and goes over to his house to meet him. Kale and his best friend, annoying friend/sidekick boy (I don’t care who this actor is or what his character’s name is…that would give him too much credit for this role), awkwardly interact with her and she joins them in their nerdy fun. They end up spying on the neighbors together. They believe that their neighbor, Mr. Turner (David Morse), is a serial killer. They conclude this based on a few news reports about some missing girls and a dented Ford Mustang. It’s not like this is a big secret in the film. His fucking earring gives him away.

Our heroes spy on Turner and videotape his nightly activities and try to break into his car and sneak into his garage and they think they are being sly, but he knows…he knows, and he starts messing with them and he befriends Kale’s mom and he sneaks up on Ashley who has been following him around a store and he gets in her car and tells her in a whispery voice, while touching her hand and brushing up against her breast, that he likes his privacy and that he is watching them and meanwhile sidekick boy breaks into his car to get his garage door code so they can investigate a plastic garbage bag that they think contains human remains but it's only a deer and the retard accidentally leaves his cell phone in the car and later gets trapped in Turner's garage when he tries to retrieve his phone and Kale’s mom gets abducted and locked somewhere in Turner's house and Kale goes inside to find her and things start to get really intense and the editing gets choppier and choppier and the music gets louder and louder and the scenes get darker and darker until I can’t tell who is stalking whom and who is stabbing whom and who is falling in the water underneath the basement of the secret room of Mr. Turner’s house or who gets killed or who lives and why...and then things slow down again and it turns out that evil is vanquished and true love reigns, yes, the love between a boy stalker and his stalkee and all is well in Disturbia as annoying-sidekick boy videotapes the new lovers kissing and proclaims that the video will be the most popular youtube download in history.

It’s difficult for me to say that this is a bad movie. I didn’t like it, but I can understand its appeal. It fits quite nicely into the teen horror-thriller category. It performed well at the box-office because it brought in its target audience. I would have preferred an R-rated version of the film; one that wasn’t afraid to show a little gore or some boobies. It seemed to me that the climax of this film was edited to remove shots that might have warranted an R-rating. Maybe that’s why it was so difficult to follow the action. Director Caruso’s three previous movies, Two For The Money, Taking Lives, and The Salton Sea, are all R-rated films. Maybe he had a hard time shooting for a PG-13 audience. Whatever the reason, the poor editing of the climax is inexcusable. That’s all.

Judd Apatow and Another Reason To Hate Moby

2007-09-08T10:24:00.000-06:00

I recently finished watching the series Undeclared on DVD. Before that, I watched Freaks and Geeks (thanks Molly), also on DVD. Both of these amazing shows are Judd Apatow productions. They each sadly lasted only one season on network television. I remember seeing one episode of Freaks and Geeks during its network run. It was the final episode and it stood out because they used two Grateful Dead songs, Ripple and Box of Rain, in a couple of scenes. I thought that was cool. Since that was the last episode, I didn’t see the others and soon forgot about the show. A year later I remember seeing the previews for a new Fox series about college freshmen called Undeclared. I was in my second year of grad school at BYU and I remember thinking that the show looked like it was only going to be about kids getting drunk and having sex. Those activities were taboo to me at the time because I believed everything I was taught by a bunch of octogenarians in conservative business suits. LDS theology proclaims that drinking alcohol and having sex outside of marriage are big no-no’s. That’s my reason for not watching Undeclared when it initially ran. I’m saddened that I used to be so closed-minded. If you liked The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked-Up, and Superbad, you should definitely check these out (if you haven’t already seen them). Don’t rent them or burn them; go to your favorite store or online retailer and buy them. You will want to watch them more than once and share them with everyone you know.

The following is a quote from Rodney Rothman, one of the writers on Undeclared. It is the introduction to the Parents’ Weekend episode taken from the booklet included with the DVD set. I think it’s hilarious. It’s about Moby.

“John Hamburg and I really wanted Marshall to have a poster on his dorm wall of Moby. And when Marshall’s dad saw the poster of Moby, we wanted Marshall to tell his dad how much he loved Moby and for Marshall’s dad to tell his son that he thought Moby looked like a “fetus”. But then Moby wouldn’t clear the poster for use in the show, and we couldn’t do the joke. How much does that suck, because that joke would have been so funny, and my guess is it would have saved the whole show and we’d still be on the air now. Well, guess what, Moby? I don’t have to ask your permission to say you look like a fetus in this episode introduction.”

The Lookout

2007-09-05T15:08:00.000-06:00

I think The Lookout was in theatres, but I’m not sure. It was probably one of those limited releases that requires me to drive all the way downtown to sit in some shitty “indie” art house theatre with a bunch of foreign film fanatics sipping lattes and bemoaning mainstream cinema. This movie is not a foreign film and it’s not particularly artsy. It is boring and seemingly self-important, though, so it would fit perfectly in the above described scenario.

After looking at the DVD cover and reading the synopsis of the film, I thought I was in for some kind of noir-ish crime thriller. I usually like crime thrillers. I read a lot of Michael Connelly novels. I watch Law and Order and CSI and Bones and Cold Case and Without A Trace. This movie is not a crime thriller. It’s a story about retards doing retarded things. Please don’t be offended by my use of the word retard. I’m not referring to mentally challenged individuals, or individuals with an extra chromosome or other genetic aberrations; I’m referring to people who do stupid things even though they know better, or should know better.

The Lookout is directed by Scott Frank. This is Mr. Frank’s directorial debut. He wrote the screenplays for a couple of good movies, Get Shorty and Out Of Sight. He also wrote the screenplays for a couple of not-so-good movies, Flight Of The Phoenix and The Interpreter. This movie is one of the not-so-good ones. That’s just a little background information to let you know what we’re dealing with here.

Spoilers…but it’s funny, so read on.

The main character of The Lookout (Chris Pratt) is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I’m glad he chose to keep his maiden name. This is the kid that was in that terrible movie, Brick. I won’t go on a tangent about Brick…suffice it to say that I hated it. So, Chris Pratt is this really popular high-school kid. He plays hockey and scores chicks. He has a really hot girlfriend. One night, Chris, his girlfriend, and two other friends are cruising down a dark, rural road in Chris’ convertible. He wants to show them some fireflies (it’s firefly mating season). While still driving, he turns off his headlights so they can see the brilliant display. He and his girlfriend reach into the air and try to grab some of the light. Are you getting what I said earlier about retards? Chris is speeding down an unlit road without headlights and with no hands on the wheel so he can impress his girlfriend. He smashes his car into a combine that is parked in the middle of the road. Retarded.

We are introduced to Chris a few years later. He has problems. The accident left him in a coma for a while. He suffers from irreparable frontal lobe brain damage. He is impulsive and has trouble sequencing events in his life. He lives with a blind guy named Lewis (Jeff Daniels). Lewis and Chris are pals. They cook dinner for each other and dream of the day when they can open a restaurant in an old gas station. Lewis wants to name the place, “Lew’s Your Food”. Ha ha ha…retarded. Chris is supported financially by his parents. His dad is a dick. He won’t loan Chris any money to start the restaurant.

An old high school acquaintance approaches Chris at a local bar and befriends him. This guy, Gary Spargo (played by Matthew Goode), looks like a chick but he’s supposed to be a tough guy. When the bartender tries to rip off Chris, Gary calls him on it. Gary introduces Chris to his friends. They have names like Cork, Bone, and Luvlee Lemons (Isla Fisher). It turns out that these playas are trying to get Chris to help them in a bank robbery. They choose Chris because he works as a night janitor at a small bank and he’s an easy mark due to his mental deficiencies. Chris hooks up with Luvlee but we don’t get to see her lemons.

Because all of the characters in this movie are retarded, the bank robbery attempt goes south. Chris is supposed to be the lookout but he decides at the last minute that he doesn’t want to help. A cop shows up and sees that something is wrong in the bank. Instead of calling for backup, he charges in firing his shotgun. Retarded. Cork dies, Gary gets shot, the cop dies, and Chris escapes in the getaway car with the money. Bone is pissed (he always wears sunglasses, so you know he’s hardcore). Gary and Bone kidnap Lewis to get the money back from Chris. Chris saves the day with some skillful plotting. He hides a shotgun in one of the money bags. Bone doesn’t check the bags when the exchange is being made because Bone is retarded. So, Bone gets blasted. Chris gets away with his part in the robbery attempt because Gary’s crew didn’t cut the security camera feeds. They thought they cut the video but they only cut the audio…retards. The video showed that Chris wasn’t helping them. In conclusion: restaurants get built and lessons are learned.

Perfect Stranger

2007-08-29T15:54:00.000-06:00

Sorry, this review doesn’t contain any Balki Bartokomous jokes. I heard Perfect Stranger sucked, but I watched Fracture the other night and figured this couldn’t be as bad as that. I'm not sure why I broke down and watched this (no life). I must have been lured in by Bruce Willis’ receding hairline, Giovanni Ribisi’s creepy charisma, or Halle Berry’s berries (Spoiler: it doesn’t show her berries). Perfect Stranger is directed by James Foley, the guy who brought us Glengarry Glen Ross (a pretty good film), Fear (an awesome film), and The Corruptor (a shit film). This guy is kind of a nobody director, but he still gets movies made. Perfect Stranger may be his last.

The plot involves Halle Berry’s character (Rowena Price…referred to as “Ro” by her friends and associates) chatting online with Bruce Willis’ character (Harrison Hill) in an attempt to find out if he’s involved in the murder of her childhood friend, Grace. Ro works for a newspaper and is trying to get a Pulitzer. Giovanni Ribisi’s character (Miles) is the “tech guy”. He helps Ro set up her online accounts (IOL instead of AOL…not sure what the I stands for…maybe it’s Iranian Online or Internet Online or something) and guides her through her attempts at computer espionage. He’s also secretly, stalkerishly in love with Ro. She likes him as a “friend”. Go figure. Harrison Hill is an adulterous, narcissistic prick. He is the head of an advertising agency that has accounts with Victoria’s Secret (yay) and Reebok (gay). Harrison balls all the women he employs. His wife disapproves of his philandering, so he has a lesbian assistant who is supposed to keep tabs on him. The assistant’s name is Josie, but one of her co-workers (in a pitifully, unfunny scene) refers to her as Cujo-sie. Get it, like the dog? This movie also stars one of the crime techs from CSI. His part is meaningless. He should have used some of his forensic skills to solve the crime. So, all these unlikable characters are wrapped up in this overly complicated plot. I think the intent of the writers was to keep the viewer guessing--you know…a whodunit. The result of this strategy is that this viewer (me) didn’t care who did it. He (I) just wanted everyone to die and didn’t care about the resolution of the goddamned film. Note: The resolution of this goddamned film is a Scooby-Do “this is how it all went down” explanation, using flashbacks to remind you of all the boring shit you had to sit through.

If you decide to watch this movie, be sure to check out the making-of featurette. It’s hilarious. Each actor tells us how great it was working with the other amazing actors. They tell us that James Foley is the greatest director in history since Jesus (not really, but it seems like it). The set designer talks about hot fudge. Very little of the featurette actually deals with the making of the movie. It’s mostly ego-stroking. I think you can correlate how shitty a film is by how much ego-stroking occurs in the making-of documentaries. I’d perform a statistical analysis (probably a logistical regression) and give you r-values and p-values and all that, but I’m too lazy.

Poster tagline: Perfect Stranger is a perfect mix of inane plotting, bad acting, lame thrills, and doo-doo.

Vacancy

2007-08-28T15:01:00.000-06:00

I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch this movie after seeing the previews. It looked like your typical, overproduced Hollywood horror film. It came out at the same time as Disturbia (which I haven’t seen but have heard is laugh-out-loud funny) and was overwhelmed by Shia Lebouf’s teenage popularity. I caught Vacancy during the last week of its theatrical run. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

The film’s premise is pretty straight-forward. A bickering couple, David and Amy Fox (played by Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale), is driving down a dark, desolate highway in the middle of the night. They experience some car troubles and are forced to spend the night at a roadside motel. Creepy stuff happens. The couple is forced to fight for their lives. It’s a simple story, but as is often the case in the realm of horror films, the simpler the story, the better the movie. It all comes down to convincing acting and a sense of direction that creates tension. This movie succeeds in both aspects.

Hungarian filmmaker Nimrod Antal competently directs this film using interesting angles and lighting to create a sense of unease. His technique evokes Hitchcock. In the opening scene of the movie, where Amy and David are driving, he films their reflections off of the car’s review and sideview mirrors. He uses similar camera tricks throughout the movie. I also really enjoyed the design of the opening credits and the film score.

My favorite character in this movie is Mason, the motel desk clerk. Frank Whaley plays this part perfectly. He’s creepy, but not overbearingly so. He’s the type of guy that doesn’t get out much because he’s too busy watching porn and/or anime and/or playing World of Warcraft. The child-molester glasses he wears complement his strangeness. Luke Wilson does a good job playing the husband. He still comes across as himself, but when he’s supposed to be scared, he seems scared. Kate Beckinsale does a great job playing the disgruntled, depressed wife. Plus, she is hot. Ethan Embry does an admirable job playing the friendly mechanic. That’s it for the main actors. This movie has a small cast and keeps it simple.

My favorite scene in this movie involves door-knocking. I’m not going to say much more than that. It is startling and unsettling. There are some good “scares” and some intense moments. I think the best section of the movie is the set-up…the introduction to the Pinewood Motel and the first few scenes in the room where Amy and David are watching the videos. The stalking scenes are pretty good, as well. My only complaint about the film is the third act. Once the movie becomes a cat and mouse chase, the tension is gone, and the resolution is not as good as I hoped.

Some dumbass reviewer (Larry Carroll of MTV) said that this movie is like Psycho meets Saw. I don't think he watched Vacancy. I can understand the Psycho reference, but nothing in this movie could be even remotely compared to Saw. If you hate the Saw movies, that is no reason to avoid this film. I think Larry just wanted his name and quote on the movie poster. Here is my tagline for the film: Vacancy is so intense it’ll make you vacate your bowels into your trousers. Put that on the DVD box.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

2007-08-26T19:53:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, when I get a movie from Netflix, it sits near my TV for a couple of weeks, unwatched. I think I want to watch it when I order it, but I lose interest before it arrives in my mailbox. I’ll get a couple other movies (I have the three at-a-time service), watch them, and return them before I get around to watching the one I originally wanted. Last night I finally watched one of those movies and that movie was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Warning: I recount the story in detail, so spoilers abound. If you plan on watching the movie, do it first, and then read my review.

Tom Tykwer (be sure to pronounce that W like a V; he’s German) directs Perfume. It’s the story of a French perfumer/serial killer set in 18th century Paris. It’s a period piece: strike one. It’s about making perfume: strike two. It stars Dustin Hoffman as an Italian perfumer; strike three. Dustin Hoffman is not the main character…he’s the mentor of the main character. His accent is terrible. His powdered wig and make-up make him look like an older version of Jason Schwartzman from Marie Antoinette. I’m getting ahead of myself--on to the story.

The movie begins with some voice-over narration by John Hurt. We are introduced to the dirty, dingy world of Paris, France circa 1760. The place smells like ass. You can tell this because all the residents of France have bad teeth, filthy skin, and greasy hair. The camera zooms in on the stinkiest part of Paris, the fish market. A pregnant lady is vending fish. Her face gets tight and she proceeds to hide under the table (where all the fish heads and fish spleens are discarded) and gives birth to a baby boy. She thinks he’s stillborn. Then he starts to cry. The mother runs away and the child is given to a local orphanage.

Because this baby was born in the stinkiest part of Paris during the stinkiest time in history, he is cursed with a superpower that no one would wish upon himself or herself. He has an extraordinary sense of smell. We learn this via montage and voice-over. This kid (hereafter referred to as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille) can smell rocks and frogs and water and stuff. He doesn’t distinguish between good and bad smells. That’s fortuitous, because most of his world smells like ass and garlic. He has a rough childhood in the orphanage and works as a tanner during his teens. He walks awkwardly, but the movie never explains why. He’s always sniffing things. He is The Sniffer.

One night, on his way home from work, The Sniffer smells a sublime scent (sorry). The scent emanates from an attractive, redheaded peasant girl. Grenouille stalks her, sneaks up close to her, and sniffs her. He is driven insane by her fragrant beauty. He wants to own her scent…to bottle it up. So, he kills her and smells her naked body, greedily cupping her odor to his nose. Grenouille quickly learns that scent is fleeting, so he searches for a way to make it permanent. He goes to a few perfume shops and learns about the art of perfume making. He doesn’t really want to make perfume from flowers and oils; he wants to make perfume from the bodies of dead women. He wants to distill the scent of beauty. He finds work for an Italian perfumer played by Dustin Hoffman (as himself…not really).

The Sniffer learns from his mentor that the only place where he can learn to capture the scent of things is in Grasse (Southern France). Off he goes. He walks the whole way, spending some time in the mountains meditating, growing a beard, and looking like Jesus. He almost dies, but then he has an epiphany. He gets a job at a place that extracts the scent from flowers using some sort of distillation technology. The Sniffer uses this technology to make his own, special perfume. He hunts the attractive women in the town, clubs them over the head, smears them in animal fat, wraps them in cloths, cuts their hair, removes the cloths that have somehow trapped their scent, distills the stuff, and obtains a couple of ounces of perfume, which he stores in a wooden box. He then places the naked bodies in various locations in the town to be found by the locals. People get pissed and form lynch mobs. In fact, there are quite a few angry mobs in this movie, as there must be, because this is a period piece.

One really hot redhead, played by Rachel Hurd-Wood, lives in this town (I think this director has something for redheads…remember Run Lola Run?). She is The Sniffer’s ultimate prize. Her dad is that Snape guy from the Harry Potter movies (Alan Rickman). Redheads must smell better than blondes and brunettes because they really get The Sniffer by the olfactory nerves. When Snape finds out there is madman loose, stalking the pretty ladies of his town, he flees with his daughter in tow. There is a subplot about an arranged marriage that the girl doesn’t want to be involved in. The Sniffer sets out after them, following their scents to a castle-like home on the ocean. He sneaks in at night and robs the beauty of her lovely fragrance.

Snape finds his bald daughter’s lifeless body the next morning. He sends out a search party to find the killer. They apprehend The Sniffer rather easily, but not before he mixes together all the dead girls’ perfumes into one ultimate perfume…the most potent perfume the world has ever witnessed. As he is lead toward the gallows, he puts some of the stuff on himself and people fall before him and worship him like Jesus. When the angry lynch mob gets a whiff of his beautiful stink, they drop to their knees in adulation. The Sniffer puts some of the perfume on a handkerchief and lets it float out over the crowd, spawning one of the most ridiculous orgy scenes ever captured on film (kind of like Eyes Wide Shut and Caligula). Dirty, naked bodies writhe and twist and hump and squirm and groan and sigh. There are boobs and butts, but no balls or wieners. I guess they wanted to keep this one in the R rating zone.

That’s about it. The Sniffer overcomes a world that stinks like ass and garlic and creates a perfume that makes people fuck ravenously upon smelling it. With his goal accomplished, he returns to his place of birth (the fish market), covers himself in his perfume, and gets eaten by passerby. Awesome. Roger Ebert really liked this movie. You can read his review here.

I, on the other hand, didn’t like this movie. It tries too hard to make the murderer seem sympathetic (if you want to see something that accomplishes this much more effectively, watch Showtime’s Dexter). In the making-of documentary, one of the producers says the movie is amoral (portrayed in the film by the idea that The Sniffer doesn’t distinguish between pleasant and foul scents). I don’t agree. A murderer is a murderer, except in the case of Dexter; he's cool. The director says that the movie is an examination of our celebrity-infatuated culture. The Sniffer, a nobody, becomes a somebody by putting on some perfume (a façade). I think that’s an interesting way to view the material, but it doesn’t make the film any more entertaining.

Poster Tagline: This Perfume smells like ass and garlic.

Transformers

2007-08-24T11:53:00.000-06:00

I told my friends and family that I wouldn’t see the Transformers movie. I lied. Here is my excuse for going back on my word. I wanted to kill some time after an appointment to avoid rush hour traffic. I went to the nearby theatre, hoping to see Sunshine. It wasn’t playing on any of the 24 screens. I didn’t watch Superbad or The Invasion because I already promised my brother and parents that I’d see those movies with them. That left me with an excruciating decision to make: Transformers or Bratz. I chose the mechanical robots over the human ones.

Since this movie has already been reviewed by many others, I’m just going to list some of my observations:

Product Placement

1. GM cars
2. Nokia cell phones
3. Mountain Dew
4. Panasonic
5. Xbox 360

I like the beater late-70’s Camaro better than the new one. The big rims on the new model look ridiculous.

My favorite action sequence is the scene in the desert when the A-10 Warthogs trash that burrowing robot.

Megatron has crooked, sharp teeth.

Optimus Prime is gay.

We are a young species compared to the transformers.

Michael Bay narcissistically references his own movie, Armageddon, in this film.

The F-22 Raptors are awesome. I love movies with jets, especially Stealth. These jets are a lot faster than the F-16’s from Iron Eagle.

Shia Labeouf is annoying. Bernie Mac is not funny. Megan Fox is hot, especially in the gratuitous checking-the-car-engine scene (see above).

How does Michael Bay get actors like John Turturro and Steve Buscemi to participate in his films (it must have something to do with $$, hot chicks, and cocaine)?

This is Michael Bay’s third least worse movie, after The Island and The Rock.

This would have been my favorite movie if it was made when I was ten years old.

The song that plays over the closing credits is terrible. I hope no one buys that CD.

We All Scream For Ice Cream

2007-08-18T16:47:00.001-06:00

Are you scared of clowns? Are you scared of ice cream? Are you scared of retards? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, you might be interested in We All Scream For Ice Cream. Ice Cream is Tom Holland’s (Child’s Play) entry in the Masters of Horror series. It is considered by many to be one of the worst episodes of the bunch. I kind of enjoyed it.

Layne (Lee Tergesen) has recently returned to the town where he grew up, hoping to have a nice, comfortable life. He is a family man; he has a wife, two kids, and a dark, childhood secret. He soon meets up with a couple of his childhood friends and finds out quickly that his move may have been a bad decision. His dark, childhood secret is coming back to haunt him. His friends start disappearing.

When Layne was a kid, he and his friends formed a neighborhood gang. They would go around doing kid stuff, like playing baseball, riding bikes, and eating candy. They probably also did some mischievous things, like farting and blowing shit up (I say probably because the movie doesn’t get into it). One of the kids in the group, Virgil, is a sociopathic little prick (the actor who plays this kid is hilariously over-the-top and annoying). With a name like Virgil, he would have to be an asshole; otherwise he’d be getting beat up all the time. So, Virgil decides to play a prank on the local ice cream man. This is sad because the ice cream man is a mentally challenged guy named Buster (William Forsythe). He dresses up like a clown and drives around town in a Cheery Tyme ice cream truck, delivering frozen treats to the neighborhood kids. He performs magic tricks and proclaims, “It’s Ch..Ch..Ch..Cheery Tyme” (he has a stuttering problem) and all the kids love him, except for Virgil. I think Virgil makes fun of Bu…Bu…Buster because it makes Virgil feel better about himself…you know, that whole putting other people down to improve your self-esteem thing. Virgil concocts a plan, enlists his friends’ help (Layne doesn’t want to play along, but is too much of a pussy to say no to Virgil), and plays a not-so-funny practical joke on Buster.

To make an already short movie plot-line shorter, Buster gets run over by his own ice cream truck and dies. Virgil and his pals run off. The end.

Wait…no…it keeps going. Buster is now a pissed-off, retarded, ice-cream-man-dressed-as-a-clown ghost, avenging his own death. He only drives around at night. Wherever he goes, the temperature drops below freezing and his truck is enshrouded in fog. The kids sleepwalk towards his eerie intonations of, “It’s Ch…Ch…Ch…Cheery Tyme”. He gives the children of the pranksters ice cream treats that look like people. When the kiddies eat the ice cream, their parents die. They melt like an ice cream cone in the hand of a simpleton on a hot summer day.

The best scene in the film involves the adult Layne’s confrontation with the adult Virgil (Colin Cunningham). Virgil is relaxing in a hot tub in an old shack. He comes up from underwater in a manner reminiscent of the famous scene in Apocalypse Now. He’s a greasy bastard with nasty teeth. He tells Layne about how he “corn-holed” one of their friends when they were little. He claims that he is exempt from Buster’s curse because he doesn’t have any kids. It turns out that he does. One of the women he raped had a child. That child eats some human-shaped ice cream. Virgil melts in a gooey mess. Great job, KNB.

This movie was not scary. I think it was supposed to be somewhat serious, but it wasn’t. I enjoyed the effects work and the cheesy story. The acting was pretty bad, but funny in some instances. I don’t suffer from coulrophobia (the fear of clowns), but even if I did, this movie wouldn’t have scared me. The clown in Poltergeist scared me when I was a kid. Buster has nothing on that fucker.

The Box Office Biznuts

2007-08-13T17:53:00.000-06:00

I was looking at the Box Office top 10 for last weekend. I wasn't too surprised by what I observed. Part of being cynical is accepting the bad with the worse. The only light I see at the end of this colon is that the summer movie season is nearly over. Here are the results:

1. Rush Hour 3
2. The Bourne Ultimatum
3. The Simpsons Movie
4. Stardust
5. Underdog
6. Hairspray
7. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
8. Harry Potter 5
9. No Reservations
10. Transformers

Can you guess what I'm upset about? All of these movies are rated PG-13 or PG. Where are my R-rated movies? I want some movies that can say the fuckword and actually show blood when people get shot and killed. I want some movies that aren’t scared to show Ashley’s Judds or Kevin’s Bacon. I want some movies where my peer-group can sit and enjoy a film without being interrupted by the bright-blue beacons of our nation’s demise.

Fact: Of the top 100 grossing films of all time, only 10 are R-rated (source = imdb).
Inference: If Hollywood wants to produce movies that make money, they want movies that are not rated R.

I don’t want to have to wait for DVD to get the R-rated version of Die Hard 4. That’s the version I wanted to see in the theatre, not some watered-down PG-13 marketing tool. Die Hard 1, 2, and 3 were all rated R. Who demanded a PG-13 Die Hard movie? A few years ago, the movie-going public was treated to the execrable Alien vs. Predator. All four Alien movies are rated R. The two Predator movies are both rated R. This unwarranted sequel gets a PG-13. Why?

The summer movie marketing strategy is to entice teens to the theatre so they can buy Axe Body Spray and Coca-Cola and make-out and text their friends on their cell phones while not watching the shitty movies that Hollywood thinks they want to see. I think Hollywood's goal is to make all theatrical releases PG-13. It has been trending that way for years. Most parents don't care about the age-13 admonition. I see kids younger than 13 in these movies all the time. It's okay for junior to see someone get shot just as long as no blood is shown. That way, when he grows up, he'll know that it's okay to shoot people because they don't really bleed. It's okay for kids to watch John Tucker try to have sex with every girl in his high school before he graduates. It's good for your daughter's self-esteem. At least when I go to an R-rated movie, I know what I'm getting. No, I'm not advocating taking your children to R-rated movies. I just don't think the PG-13 dumping ground is a better solution. The ratings system needs to be revamped and the consumers need to demand a better product. But, all is in vain. America has spoken. America wants more Chuck and Larry.

Side Note: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry just broke $100 million. How the fuck did that happen? Who actually saw that movie? Please don’t admit it if you did (just tell me if you like NASCAR…I’ll figure out the rest). Rush Hour 3 opened to $50 million. Didn’t we already see this movie twice?!? When does Shanghai Whatever come out? I can’t wait for that one. I hope it’s rated R so I can see Owen’s Wilson.

The Bourne Ultimatum

2007-08-12T13:11:00.000-06:00

The Bourne Ultimatum appears to be one of the best reviewed films of the summer. This is surprising because it is (1) an action movie and (2) a sequel (neither of which tend to do well by critical standards). It is currently rocking a 93% on the old Tomatometer. That’s impressive. I decided to see if this movie truly is the “be all, end all” action experience. I’m stepping out of my comfort zone here, dear readers. This is the first movie I’ve reviewed that is still in theatres.

This is not really a review of Jason Bourne 3 in the same sense as my other reviews. I’m not going to give any point-by-point critique. I will give my opinion of the film. I don’t think that this is one of the greatest action movies ever made. I don’t even consider it to be the best action movie of 2007 (that honor goes to Shooter). I think The Bourne Ultimatum is a good action film and fits nicely into the Bourne series.

Plot = find Jason Bourne before he finds you.

If you’ve seen the previous two movies in the Bourne series you have an idea of what to expect from this installment. The CIA/NSA guys need to find Bourne before he exposes their evil “make a bunch of assassins by brainwashing techniques” program. They need their information on his whereabouts now, people. Seriously…David Strathairn’s character says, “I need this information (GPS coordinates, cell-phone traces, video feeds, pizza orders, etc.) now, people” too many times in the movie. I’d hate to be one of his employees. He’s a real cattle-driver. The government sucks.

Action Sequences = tight quarters karate-type fights, foot chase scenes, surveillance evasion, obligatory car chase/crash scene, explosions, gunshots, etc.

The action sequences in this movie are awesome, hectic, spastic, headache/nausea inducing spectacles. I knew going into this film (from my experience with part 2) that I would need to sit in the very back row of the theatre to be able cope with the constantly moving camera and quick-cut editing. I also knew that I needed to take a Xanax before it started. Many people can deal with this type of filmmaking and suffer no physical trauma (i.e. 93% of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes). I can’t. My brain has seizures. I suffer from a condition called Sensory Integration Disorder. All the flashing, cutting, and zooming effects make me insane. I killed the fat lady sitting next to me during the car chase scene. I ate her children.

I understand why Paul Greengrass insists on using this technique in his film. He wants to create a sense of constant motion, tension, anxiety, and so forth. I just think it’s overkill when he uses this technique for scenes that don’t warrant it. For example: There is a scene where Matt Damon is walking down the sidewalk. Nothing happens—he’s just walking down the sidewalk. There are 5 quick-cuts and 3 quick-zooms, all from different angles on shaking cameras. There should be other ways of convincing me that Jason Bourne is dangerous or “on edge”.

I like the scenes in this film that reference the first movie. A scene where Jason Bourne is in the water looks exactly like the opening scene from The Bourne Identity. A scene where Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) is coloring and cutting her hair mimics another scene in the first film. Is it just me, or is Julia Stiles face really puffy? She looks kind of weird. I wonder if she’s on steroids like Barry Bonds. That would explain the puffiness.

Spoiler: Jason Bourne's real name is David Webb.

In conclusion, I liked this film, just not as much as everyone else. I don’t really care if they make a part 4. I’ll probably watch it again on DVD to see if it works better for me on a small screen. I will end my review with a letter to Paul Greengrass.

Dear Director Paul Greengrass,

If you make another Bourne movie, could you please tone down the quick-cut, flashing scenes? At moments during your latest film, The Bourne Ultimatum, I felt like someone tied me to a chair, taped my eyelids open, and forced me to stare at a strobe light. He/she also put a pair of big headphones on my ears with a pulsating, percussion-based soundtrack (drums, bongos, congas, piccolo snares, didgeridoos, rain-sticks, etc.) cranked to full volume. The experience left me feeling like I had undergone one of the brainwashing techniques that Jason Bourne had to undergo to become the ultimate assassin.

Thanks,

Silentkid

Edited to add: Thanks to floatingboy for the heads up on a great Onion parody about Ben Affleck's idea for Bourne 4. Check it out here.

Apocalypto

2007-08-10T13:33:00.000-06:00

I didn’t see this movie when it was in theatres. I wanted to; I just didn’t get around to it. When it first came out on DVD, I put it in my Netflix cue. It sat there in the number one position for a long time, with the “very long wait” qualifier attached. I finally received it yesterday (nearly two and a half months later). Thanks Netflix. Part of the wait was probably due to the fact that I wanted it on Blu-Ray. If any movie is a candidate for a high-definition viewing experience, this is it.

Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is quite an experience. I was amazed at how I felt transported into a foreign time and place to witness a brutal tale of survival and conquest. The only other movie to achieve this feat in a similar matter is Terrence Malick’s The New World. Apocalypto tells the story of the Mayan civilization near the end of its existence in the 16th century. The story begins with a group of hunters stalking a tapir in the jungles of its homeland. They set up some traps that eventually ensnare their prey (it gets impaled on some rather large spikes). One of the members of the hunting party, Jaguar Paw, doles out various parts of the animal to the group. One guy gets the heart, another gets the liver, and one gets the balls. The guy who gets the balls is told that if he eats them, he will finally be able to conceive a child (he has been having difficulty with this, to the amusement of his tribesmen and the ire of his mother-in-law). Are you wondering if it actually shows him eating the balls? Of course it does. After all, this is Mel Gibson’s movie and from your previous experience with his films, you know that he never shortchanges his audience when it comes to gore (i.e. Braveheart and Passion of the Christ). This scene made me not hungry. I stayed that way for the rest of the film.

Another group of Mayans comes across the hunters. This group looks worn-out and terrified. They are carrying some big fish. They claim that their village has recently been attacked and that they are moving on to begin their lives again somewhere else. This idea of “starting anew” becomes the major theme of the movie. Our group of hunters soon returns to its own village. They reunite with their wives and families. They play practical jokes on each other and dance and have an all-around good time. They are a peaceful, fun-loving tribe. Jaguar Paw meets up with his pregnant wife and young son. We sense their impending doom.

The next morning, a group of marauding Mayan warriors attacks the village, beating the men and women, tying most of them up, and killing those who resist. Jaguar Paw sees them coming and takes his wife and child to a deep well, where he lowers them to safety. He goes back to help his tribesmen in the fight, but is quickly captured. The Mayan attackers are well armed with obsidian clubs, spears, and arrows and are covered in tattoos, scarification, and facial adornments. They are fucking scary. This scene, along with other fight scenes in the film, is extremely brutal.

The captives are tied together on long poles and forced to march through the jungles and across a river, their destination unknown to them. The situation starts to get really bizarre as they approach a Mayan city. A diseased girl makes some dire predictions for the attackers, using a creepy, whispery voice. These predictions involve jaguars, day as night, death, etc. A group of slaves is working a mine or quarry of some sort--all of them covered from head to toe in white dust, some throwing up blood. There are women adorned in jade and colorful clothing. The women-captives are auctioned off to the highest bidder. The men-captives are painted blue and led toward a large Mayan pyramid, where heads are bouncing down the steep, stone steps. Their fate is to be sacrificed to the Mayan gods in supplication for rain and wealth by priests who wear ceremonial masks, feathered headdresses, and jade jewelry.

As the movie continues, the scenes get tenser and more violent. Our hero, Jaguar Paw, needs to get back to his wife and child. This is his only desire, his only goal. But, he is on-deck, awaiting his turn to have his still-beating heart ripped out of his chest…

I really enjoyed this movie. Some of it was difficult to watch (even for me, a horror movie aficionado) due to the violence. The entire movie is subtitled, which adds to its believability. The set design is astonishing—they actually built the Mayan temples you see in the film. The costumes and make-up are convincing. The few flaws I found in this movie are a couple of attempts at humor that I didn’t find funny and a scene where a group of Mayans are gathered at the foot of the pyramid and one of them is crowd-surfing. I don’t think I’d be crowd-surfing to a spectacle of decapitated heads. That’s a little too X-treme for me.

Regardless of Mel Gibson’s personal faults, he is one crazy-ass, visionary director. I hope he remains sane and sober long enough to give us more movies like Apocalypto.

PS: There is a scene in this movie where (spoiler) a guy gets his face eaten by a jaguar. It is an intense, face-biting scene. For another really cool and hilarious face-biting scene, see the movie Abominable.

Addendum: Correlations Between the Book of Mormon and Apocalypto—Just For Fun

There are none. The Mayans in Apocalypto don’t have horses, chariots, or steel swords. The Lamanites in the Book of Mormon ride horses (some Mormon apologists claim that the horse described in the Book of Mormon is really a tapir and that the tapirs were ridden like horses…no one rides tapirs in Apocalypto), use chariots in warfare, and wield steel swords. To be fair, this movie takes place in the 16th century and the Book of Mormon only covers events up to around the 5th century. Maybe these Mayan descendants of the Lamanites killed all their horses and forgot how to build chariots and make steel. Maybe Mel Gibson didn’t get his history right. Maybe the Book of Mormon’s history isn’t right. Who knows? God knows (if God exists). But that’s an issue for a different movie, like Passion of the Christ or something.

Blood and Chocolate

2007-08-07T16:19:00.000-06:00

Today, I am going to be talking about another movie that you haven’t seen, Blood and Chocolate. I think this movie may go down as having possibly the worst title in movie history. That may be one reason it performed so poorly at the box office (another may be that it’s not very good). I can’t imagine what the marketing people were thinking when they tried to come up with a way to advertise this film. Its title sounds like some sort of fetish porn film featuring goth freaks and…I don’t want to go there. The movie is based on a young-adult book of the same name, written by Annette Curtis Klause.

The main character, Vivian (played by Agnes Bruckner), is a werewolf-type individual. I say werewolf-type because she is not really a werewolf in the sense of The Howling or American Werewolf in London or those Underworld movies. She is a member of the Loup-garoux, which is a shape-shifting group of people that change from humans into wolves. When they’ve transformed, they just look like your regular, everyday wolf. They don’t follow any of the typical werewolf rules (like changing during a full moon) except for the rule about silver. For some reason, silver is a poison to them.

At the beginning of the film, Vivian and her family are living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado (pretty close to where I live). Vivian goes out for a hunt and upon her return, witnesses the murder of her family. The movie then shifts time and place. We now find Vivian as a nineteen year-old living in Romania (where all cool hybrid human creatures live). She meets some graphic novel writing boy named Aiden. She falls for this guy, but it is a “forbidden love” (enter Romeo and Juliet plot-line) because she is a shape-shifter and is betrothed to the leader of the group, Gabriel. Her crazy cousin--I think his name is Rafe (they all have these stupid names)--doesn’t approve of her romance with Aiden. I didn’t approve of her romance with Aiden either, because Aiden is a douchebag. Oh…the chocolate part of the title comes from the fact that Vivian works in a cute little chocolate shoppe.

A bunch of running and jumping off of walls (for no reason) happens in this movie. In fact, the first time we see Vivian in Romania, she is running down alleys and jumping off of walls. These shape-shifters are great jumpers. They’re constantly leaping off of roofs and ledges. The effect of the Loup-garoux changing from human to wolf is kind of lame. They run and jump forward, and when they are horizontal in the air, they get blindingly bright and land on the ground as wolves. Also, before the transition, all the males take off their shirts and the females take off their coats, but nothing else, to ensure the PG-13 rating. I expected the wolves to still be wearing pants and bras and stuff after the transition, but the clothing items must have magically disappeared or been incorporated into the wolf fur. For all the hunting and eating, there is not much gore in this film. A few wolf-people get shot with silver bullets, which results in a wispy smoke effect emanating from the wound. If a Loup-garoux gets silver poisoning, he/she can be treated with a substance called Antigen-Ag (educational hint: Ag is the periodic symbol for silver).

That’s about it. This movie is pretty slow-paced. The direction is decent, with the exception of a few cheesy, slow-motion music video type scenes. A lot of scenes have that blue tinting that is so prevalent in the Underworld movies. I like the fact that this film was shot on location in Romania. The writing is okay, but some of the actors are pretty bad (especially the cousin guy). Agnes Bruckner did a really good job convincing me that she was torn between her Loup-garoux lifestyle and a normal, human existence. If you want to see her in a better movie, check out The Woods.

This movie will appeal to fans of the TV show Supernatural and people who really like werewolf mythology. A better title for this movie would be The Loup-garoux: We’re Kind Of Like Werewolves. Maybe they can use that for the imminent DTV sequel.

Pathfinder

2007-08-06T15:17:00.000-06:00

I don’t know why I subjected myself to the torture of the Ghost Warrior. I saw the trailer when it came out on the heels of 300. I heard this movie was actually completed before 300 and shelved. I guess Fox decided to release it when it saw that a sword-fighting movie could make some money. This movie didn’t make much money. Read on for a spoiler-filled fun time.

“I trust in this.”—Ghost, referring to his sword

Pathfinder: The Legend of the Ghost Warrior is directed by Marcus Nispel, the man who brought us the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When I got the DVD in the mail from Netflix, I discovered that the title was shortened to just Pathfinder. That probably helped a little with the DVD printing costs. I wonder if Nissan got mad that the title for this movie is derived from one of their SUV models. Regardless, the title is somewhat misleading because there aren’t too many paths being found in this movie, and the Pathfinder is not the main character. The main character is Ghost.

The movie begins with a native-American woman wandering through the woods, somewhere in Newfoundland (I think). She stumbles upon a smashed up Viking ship with a 10 year-old Viking boy hiding inside. Everyone else that was aboard the ship is dead. The movie never explains how this happened. The woman takes Viking-boy (hereafter referred to as Ghost) to her tribal leaders and a debate ensues on what to do with him. It is decided that the woman and her husband shall be the boy’s adoptive parents.

15 years later: Ghost (played by Karl Urban (Ghost Ship...I sense a theme))is now a part of the tribe. He is a nice, soft-spoken gentleman with long hair and firm pectoral muscles. He seems to get along well with his adopted people. He isn’t fully assimilated into this society, though, as we soon discover. A bunch of the warriors in the tribe (the Braves) are going to go off on some sort of proving mission and Ghost is rejected the opportunity because of his ghostness or blue eyes or something. He proclaims that he will find his own goddamned path. Side note: All the Indians in this movie speak perfect English. There isn’t much dialogue in the film (and the dialogue that is present is pretty useless) so I’m not sure why they didn’t go for realism and use subtitles. Maybe they were trying to make things easier for the viewer. But that doesn’t make sense because the Viking dialogue is spoken in Icelandic and is subtitled. They only speak in single sentences and grunt a lot. Ghost speaks both languages, so none of this is a problem for him.

So…Ghost is off on a hunt by himself. The Vikings show up and proceed to slaughter his entire village. They brutally hack up his friends, including his adoptive mother. Ghost goes running back to the village but gets there too late. He sees his dead mom. There is one of those circle fight scenes (you know, where a bunch of guys form a circle around the big tough bad guy who shows off by killing everyone that is sent against him) going on a little ways away. Ghost shows up in time to see a huge Viking kill his adoptive father. Ghost is thrown in the circle next. He grabs a sword, cuts out the Viking’s eyeball, slashes a few other dudes, and escapes. This prompts the Viking leader to opine, “This guy knows our ways” or something like that. The Vikings wear these crazy metal helmets with horns and have huge shields and axes. Their horses have metal armor, too. They mean business and their business is carnage.

The Vikings chase Ghost through a forest, where he chops one guy with a sword and “Captain America-izes” another with a shield. The pursuit continues all the way up a really high mountain. The Vikings corner him at the peak and shoot him with an arrow. Ghost grabs a shield and uses it as a sled to escape. The Vikings, who are well-schooled in tobogganing, give chase. This scene is kind of slow and really dumb (I was expecting them to sled faster like Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation…they could have used some of his Teflon based cereal varnish). Ghost kicks a few of his pursuers off of their sleds and ends up flying off a cliff and landing in a waterfall.

Ghost hikes around for a bit and finally ends up in a cave, still wounded, where he is discovered by the Braves. He tells the Braves to get lost because the Vikings are here and they want to find the next village to destroy. There is a scene in the cave where a Grizzly Bear attacks the Pathfinder (the old guy leader of the Braves). This is the funniest scene in the movie. The footage is so choppy, dark, and poorly edited that you can’t tell what the hell is going on. This seems to be the main tool employed by the filmmakers. They processed the movie in a washed-out sepia tone…nearly no color comes through (except for instances of CGI blood splatter). The action sequences are shot in the dark and are quick-cut edited so you can’t tell who is fighting whom, who is bleeding, or who dies.

Ghost receives some much-needed medical attention from some girl he loves and her father, the Pathfinder. They perform some Indian magic and smoke a lot of herbs from a pipe. The magic works quickly and Ghost is healed. He leaves his friends and tells them to make for the coast, while he leads the Vikings in a different direction. This one flute-playing Brave insists on following him. Ghost is mad at first, then gives in to the flute-player’s charms. They make their way to a place called “the canyon where all paths converge”. This is where they will set up traps and face the Vikings. Ghost’s girlfriend shows up pretty soon…she followed him as well. He’s not very sneaky.

The Vikings show up, get caught in a lot of the traps, and a lot more fighting ensues. Things are going well for the hero Ghost until the Braves show up and fall into one of Ghost’s traps, ruining his plans. What a bunch of dumbasses. Ghost, flute-boy, girlfriend, and the remaining braves retreat to the caves. At this point in the movie I really couldn’t tell what was going on. It was too dark to see anything. One of the Vikings even says, “I can’t see anything”. I empathized with him. During the cave fight the rest of the Braves are killed, along with flute-boy and Pathfinder. Ghost and girlfriend are quickly captured and the Vikings demand them to lead the way to the next village.

The final battle of the movie takes place on an extremely narrow path along the face of a cliff. I won’t tell you what happens during this climatic scene. I will tell you that there is some pretty bad stock footage of an avalanche. The questions you should be asking yourselves are: Does Ghost kill the Vikings? Does girlfriend live? Is the next village safe? Does Ghost become the next Pathfinder? Do Ghost and girlfriend make a lot of little Pathfinder babies to carry on the Pathfinder legacy and pave the way for a sequel, Pathfinder, Jr.?

This movie was awful. I wasn't expecting it to be good. I was expecting to be entertained. I wasn't. I wouldn’t include it in the “so bad it’s funny” category of films. I would include it in the “so bad it sucks balls” category. It’s difficult to watch. It took me 4 hours to get through it. I had to keep putting it on pause to do other things like play on the computer, talk on the phone, and wander around my apartment aimlessly. I’m not sure how I finished it. Chalk one up to perseverance. I didn’t watch any of the special features because I didn’t care. I did, however, search on imdb to see how much money the movie made. It grossed barely over $10 million domestic. Some idiot reviewer said that this wasn’t a bad B-movie. Hey reviewer--this movie cost $26 million to make. That doesn’t seem like a B-movie budget to me. It seems like a waste of money.

Shooter

2007-08-03T17:21:00.000-06:00

Today I'm reviewing one of my favorite movies of 2007--Shooter. A lot of readers may think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not. I saw it with my dad in the theatre and watched it again the other night on Blu-Ray. Read on if you'd like to know why I like this movie so much (if this picture of Kate Mara hasn't already enticed you to do so).

I remember the first time I met Bob Lee Swagger. I was a freshman in college and was perusing the bookstore, searching for a book to read. The cover of a particular book caught my attention, so I read the summary on the back. It sounded interesting. It said the book was about snipers and shit. The cover depicted a silhouette enclosed by a reticle from a rifle scope. The book was called Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. I remember it being gritty, intense, and fun to read. I don’t remember all the plot elements, but the basic outline includes the main character (Bob Lee Swagger) being used by some subversive government group to scout a possible presidential assassination. It turns out the group was setting him up to be the fall guy for their nefarious plans. That isn’t a good idea, because Bob Lee is a kick-ass, true-American hero. With the help of an FBI agent named Nick Memphis, Swagger enacts his revenge against those who set him up. I read the book in 1993 when it was published. I have since read all of Hunter’s novels. The subsequent books jump back and forth between Bob Lee Swagger’s exploits and those of his father, Earl Swagger. My favorites include Black Light, Hot Springs, and a non-Swagger novel, Dirty White Boys.

The film Shooter is directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and is based on the novel Point of Impact. I’m not sure why they changed the title. Maybe Point of Impact sounds too much like a Seagal or Van Damme movie. I still like it better than the title they ultimately chose; Shooter sounds like some kind of stupid nickname or a dog’s name. The character names are retained from the novel, and that’s what’s most important. Bob Lee Swagger is a name that conjures images of some tough dude breaking tables and balls in some southern honky-tonk. He needs to get his swagger back, like the Lakers.

The opening sequence of the film introduces us to Bob Lee (played by Mark Wahlberg) and his spotter (who’s character name is Donnie…no kidding), covered in ghillie suits on a hillside somewhere in Somalia. We get to witness Bob Lee’s sniper skills right off the bat. He takes out a bunch of militiamen, quickly dispatching them as his spotter calls out distances and targets. Soon, the bad guys call in a helicopter that attacks Bob’s position. Donnie is killed and Bob turns his anger toward the helicopter, taking it out with a well-placed shot. You are not a true action movie hero until you have shot down a helicopter. In all the commotion, Bob tried to get help from his unit via radio, but his commander has abandoned him and pulled out of the operation.

A few years later we find Bob Lee living a secluded life in a cabin in the mountains of Wyoming. He has a dog. It’s just him and his beer-fetching dog and some computers and guns and stuff. He also has a pony-tail. He is ex-military. He is cynical about the government. After a couple of minutes, a few obvious government types (sunglasses and Suburbans) invade Bob Lee’s privacy to offer him a job. These guys include Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) and Jack Payne (Elias Koteas). [Permit me to go on a tangent here. Is there something wrong with Danny Glover that I don’t know about? Every line he utters in the film is nearly unbearable to listen to. He has this weird lisp thing going on. It’s like he’s wearing those Invisalign braces or something. He whisper-speaks nearly every bit of dialogue. Any ideas would be helpful. Oh, and Elias Koteas plays the creepy guy again.] They need someone with his skills to help them scout out a possible assassination attempt on the President of the United States. They need Bob to tell them the best place for this attempt to occur so they can prevent it. They try to appeal to his sense of patriotism. They succeed. Bob Lee cuts off his pony-tail (it doesn’t actually show this but you see him rubbing his short hair moments later) and catches a flight to Washington, DC.

Bob Lee scouts out three locations where he thinks the assassin might strike. He ends up settling on Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He gives all this info to Colonel Johnson and is talked into sticking around for the moment of the attack. Because all of this was a set-up, it turns out that Bob Lee is the one getting shot (along with the Archbishop of Somewhere). Swagger takes a bullet to the shoulder, falls out a window, and runs. He ends up stealing a car and a gun from a nearby FBI agent (Nick Memphis played impeccably by Michael Pena) and escapes, but not before telling Memphis that this is all a setup.

There is a pretty cool First Blood type survival scene where Swagger has to give himself an IV so he doesn’t die. He goes into a market to buy all the stuff he needs and administers the IV to himself in the cab of a pickup truck. That’s way more hardcore than just giving yourself stitches. Bob ends up driving to see the only person he thinks he can trust in this situation: the widow (Sarah Fenn, played by the absolutely gorgeous Kate Mara) of his old spotter. He shows up at Sarah’s door begging for help and little do-it-yourself surgery. Later on, Sarah gets kidnapped (of course) by Jack Payne (obviously) and ends up being used as a bargaining chip.

Upon his recovery, Bob Lee is ready to enact his revenge. He ends up getting help from Nick Memphis and a series of amazing action sequences follow. My favorite part of the movie involves a shootout at a farmhouse where the real sniper from the setup lives. Antoine Fuqua directs this sequence perfectly. The action is compelling and highly realistic. This scene alone redeems Fuqua from the atrocity that was Tears of the Sun. The scene that takes place on a glacier is pretty damn cool, too. Knowing they actually shot the scene on location (no green screen) makes it even more impressive. This is no PG-13 action movie…when people get shot (lots of head-shots), there are plenty of squibs exploding and body parts flying (no A-Team violence here).

The climax of the movie is pretty clever. I remembered it from the book and won’t spoil it here (seeing as I spoiled everything else). The movie actually follows the plot of the book pretty closely. Some things have been changed and updated (Bob Lee is from Arkansas in the book and is a veteran of the Vietnam War).

I loved this movie. The action was great, the acting was great, the writing was great, and the direction was great. I wish that more people went to see it when it was in theatres. It has received some comparisons to the Bourne movies, which I think are unfair, for the following reasons: Bob Lee never forgets who he is. He knows his own fucking name. Sure, there is the conspiracy angle, but Swagger could kick Jason Bourne’s ass (Marky Mark Wahlberg could kick Matt Damon’s ass in real life, too). Swagger is a way better sniper than Bourne. He makes a shot that’s over a mile away. I also like the fact that this movie doesn’t rely on the quick-cut editing style that is so overused in the Bourne films. I might change my mind after I see Bourne 3, but I’m not betting on it. I’d like to see more Bob Lee Swagger or Earl Swagger movies. The disappointing thing is that it doesn’t look like this movie even grossed its filming budget. There probably won’t be any sequels. I bought it on Blu-Ray. I hope that helps out a bit.

The Number 23

2007-08-02T21:10:00.001-06:00

I’m drinking a Mountain Dew right now. Mountain has 8 letters. Dew has 3 letters. The can has 12 ounces of deliciousness. 8 + 3 + 12 = 23. TWENTY-THREE!!!!!! Can you guess what movie I’m going to review for you today? Hint: it’s not 28 Weeks Later…I haven’t seen that yet.

The Number 23 is a critically maligned film that came out a few months ago. It achieved a score of 8% on Rotten Tomatoes famed (and flawed) tomatometer. It has, as of today, received only 14 “fresh” reviews out of 175 total reviews. In other words, this movie is feculent mess. So why, you may ask, did I waste 95 minutes of my life watching it? That’s the way I roll, beeeyatch! I like bad movies. And, as it sometimes turns out, this movie was not as bad as the critics made it out to be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s terrible. It’s just not that terrible.

The film is set up in a basic thriller format with a few twists. There are some flashbacks and some voiceover narrative. Joel Schumacher has a great eye for the material, using interesting lighting techniques, shadows, and flourishes of color to set a dark mood for the story. Most of the scenes in the movie had an interesting, directorial touch. A lot of people give Schumacher grief for ruining the Batman series. His entries (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin) are universally derided by fans of the latex man-bat. Personally, I think he was a good match for the series…after all, he is gay and so is Batman.

Jim Carrey plays an animal control officer named Walter Sparrow. He is a family man, married to Agatha (Virginia Madsen) and has a son named Robin. Robin Sparrow. That’s fucking ridiculous. Walter constantly refers to Agatha as “Ag” which too often sounds like “Egg”. Sparrows, robins, eggs, another character named Kyle Finch, one named Dr. Phoenix…I’m going crazy. It must be the number 23. I’m seeing it everywhere. So is Walter Sparrow, after his wife introduces him to a book called The Number 23 written by some dumbass with the name Topsy Kretts. Yes, that’s a ridiculous name; it kind of sounds like top secrets if you say it right. That’s part of the plot. Walter starts seeing a lot of similarities in the story to his own life (stuff about a neighbor’s dog and a dead woman). The main character in the book is some dude named Fingerling. Fingerling thinks he’s a detective. He meets and has sex with lots of hot chicks with names like Suicide Blonde (INXS), the Lady in Red (that other song), and Fabrizia. He has a rad tribal tattoo. He wears eye shadow. In one scene, I swear he looks like Keith Richards. In real life, Walter is on a downward spiral due to his obsession with the number 23. In the book, Fingerling is involved in some kind of murder mystery. The movie’s plot gets pretty confusing at this point so I won’t go into any more details.

Overall, the film is well-acted except for a couple of embarrassingly bad Jim Carrey-in-anguish moments. Virginia Madsen is solid, as usual. As I said before, the direction and style are pretty impressive. The film has a definite artsy quality. The writing is decent. I checked out the making-of featurette and the writer seems like a nice guy with some cool ideas. I’m just not sure all of them translated well to the screen. I wasn’t too bored while watching this movie, and that’s a good sign for me. The plot kept me interested enough to want to find out how the thing ended. I wasn’t a big fan of the ending, but it worked.

Now it’s time for some fun with the number twentyfuckingthree. Jim Carrey has 9 letters in his name. Joel Schumacher has 14 letters in his name. 9 + 14 = 23. Virginia Madsen has 14 letters in her name. Jim Carrey has 9 letters in his name. 9 + 14 = 23. I will be 32 this year. The year is 2007. 32 – (2 + 0 + 0 + 7) = 23. 32 is also 23 reversed. I’m doubly screwed. I am 6’5” tall. There are seven members in my immediate family. (6 X 5) – 7 = 23. My favorite band is Wilco. Wilco is the military call-name for the letter W. W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet.

If you’re interested in more information about the number 23 phenomenon, go here. Also, check out the Wiki article here. If, after checking out those links, you think this type of crap has any significance, you should read Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer. Thank you.

The Dead Pool

2007-08-02T21:09:00.001-06:00

Over the past few months, I watched all the Dirty Harry sequels. I decided to review one of them. I hope you have time to read this review in between your repeated viewings of 300. Dirty Harry is no Spartan, but he has a big gun.

Warning: Spoilers. This movie came out in 1988 so of course there are spoilers.

The fifth and final Dirty Harry film is called The Dead Pool. When I first saw the title, I thought the movie was going to have something to do with a bunch of bodies found in a swimming pool (that's a different Dirty Harry sequel), or a climatic fight/chase scene in a pool hall. This is not the case. The Dead Pool is actually a betting pool. Players place bets on what celebrity will die next. That’s pretty cool. There was an episode of CSI: Miami that ripped off this plot. The betting took place off-shore, on a really nice yacht. Don’t get me started on CSI: Miami and Horatio (known simply as H to us fans). The dead pool in the Dirty Harry movie doesn’t take place on a yacht, it takes place on a film set for a movie called Hotel Satan. When I saw the title of that movie, I realized that that was what I really wanted to be watching. Fucking Hotel Satan. I want one of the jackets worn by the film crew members.

Okay…back to the review. The movie (The Dead Pool) begins with a crazy-ass Satanist (played by Jim Carrey) singing along to GnFnR’s Welcome To The Jungle. A woman is tied to the bed in preparation for some sort of satanic ritual/sacrifice. Scary stuff. I wish the bad guys in action movies were still Satanists and bikers (for kickass biker bad guys, check out Stone Cold and Cobra). It turns out that this frightening opening sequence is really just a scene being shot for the movie Hotel Satan. Jim Carrey is a drug-addicted musician-turned-actor named Johnny Squares (some sort of play on Johnny Rotten, I think). The director of this amazing film is Peter Swan, played by Liam Neeson with a pre-Star Wars Jedi pony-tail. When Johnny Squares retreats to his trailer to do some drugs between set breaks, a killer sneaks in and murders him. It turns out Johnny’s name was in the dead pool. Peter Swan and his crew are involved in betting on the dead pool.

At the other beginning of the movie, Dirty Harry has just apprehended Lou Janero—a mob boss. Some members of the mob are pissed off about this and try to take Harry out one night after he gets off work. Harry was probably pretty tired and wanted to get home to kick back on the couch and watch some TV. No such luck. Two cars follow Harry into an alley and cut him off, causing his car to crash and flip on its side. A bunch of crazy goons jump out of their cars and start firing Uzis. Harry calmly dispatches all of them with single shots from his .44 magnum. Why do bad guys in 80’s action films always have Uzis? I think Uzis and cocaine go together nicely. What Harry doesn’t realize is that his name is also in the dead pool. This becomes somewhat important later on when he thinks Janero’s mob buddies are still trying to kill him and it turns out it’s the dead pool killer guy. Harry confronts Janero in prison and threatens him to call back his mob goons or this big, buffed, inmate pal of his will introduce Janero to Dirty Sanchez (I made some of that up). I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Harry’s partner this time around is a Chinese-American karate expert. His skills come in handy during an action sequence that takes place at a Chinese Restaurant. For some inane reason, a bunch of machinegun-toting assholes decide to hold up this restaurant. This place must make lots of money, given these guys’ effort in obtaining it. Harry sees them enter, sneaks in, and sits at a table. When the assholes start screaming their demands, Harry calmly cracks open a fortune cookie and reads the bad guy leader his fortune—“You’re shit out of luck.” Bullets start flying. One of the bad guys gets shot and ends up crashing through the aquarium that you find in all fine Chinese restaurants. Meanwhile, Harry’s partner is outside, demonstrating his karate know-how to onlookers as he kicks the gonads off of another thug (I took some literary license here). This scene was utter shit. It has nothing to do with the mob/dead pool killer plot. The movie gets worse from here.

So…many more people are murdered. Harry finds out about the dead pool connection to Swan and his film crew. It turns out that the people on the list are being killed in re-enactments of scenes from Swan’s movies. It must be Swan committing the murders, right? Not so quick there, pal. I’m not going to tell you who the killer is (hint: the killer is a disgruntled, obsessed, former employee of Swan).

There is a scene where the killer uses a remote control car, armed with a bomb, to kill one of his victims. He drives it under the victim’s Mercedes and detonates it. This must be a good method to kill someone, because he later tries to do the same thing to Harry and his partner. Harry is onto his plan, though. When Harry sees the little remote control Corvette coming, he accelerates away, spawning one of the worst chase scenes in the history of action cinema. Harry’s car is chased by the remote control car, which is followed by the bad guy in his own car controlling the remote control car (see, he has to stay in range so the RC car will still work). They’re flying down empty streets, jumping over hills, skidding around turns…no tension whatsoever. I’ve heard that this scene is supposed to pay homage to the chase scene in Bullitt. It failed.

Patricia Clarkson plays a TV reporter named Samantha Walker that becomes involved in the Dead Pool case. She’s hot in that 1980’s fuzzy filter-lens sort of way. Harry doesn’t like her at first, but they soon warm to each other’s company (a scene where a dude sets himself on fire and a shootout in an outside elevator help speed up their relationship) and become pretty good pals by the end of the movie. She gets kidnapped by the killer but Dirty Harry saves her. He chases down the killer and sets up the final confrontation. Do you remember how the killer likes to murder his victims based on scenes from director Swan’s movies. Well, earlier in the film there was a scene where a harpoon was used to kill someone in the fake movie, Hotel Satan (or it may have been a different movie, like The Dead Sea or something, I can’t remember). The final confrontation ends up in the same location as that scene, and in an ironic turn of events, the killer is killed in the same way that he would have killed a future victim if given the chance. He is impaled by a giant harpoon. But not before Harry gets to recite some pretty amazing dialogue while emerging from a cloud of steam—“You’re out of bullets. And you know what that means…you’re shit out of luck.” The writers must have thought that shit out of luck line was pure genius. They used it twice. It’s kind of like the way they used the “do you feel lucky punk” phrase twice in the first move and the “go ahead, make my day” phrase twice in Sudden Impact. You gotta stick to the formula. Awesome.

The moral of this movie is that some people can become obsessed with violence in film. This obsession may turn those people into violent murderers. If they decide to kill someone, they shouldn’t chase them around San Francisco with a remote control car. It’s not too effective. Also, one big bullet (.44 caliber) is way more effective than lots of small bullets (9mm).

The Black Cat

2007-08-02T21:08:00.001-06:00

In my recent review of The Hills Have Eyes 2, I pointed out a ridiculous horror cliche that appears in the film. It has to do with bats. This review has nothing to do with bats...it has to do with cats, specifically a black cat that torments the mind of Edgar Allan Poe.

Yes, I’ll admit it. I’m a Masters of Horror fan. I own all the season 1 DVDs and bought a subscription for Showtime last fall just to watch Season 2 in its entirety (in HD…I’m gay like that). I have enjoyed watching each episode, even the really bad ones like John Carpenter’s Pro-Life and Norio Tsuruta’s Dream Cruise (both from season 2). A few of the episodes really stand out as great filmmaking (one of which I will discuss in this review). I like the hour-long format, and the extras on the DVD’s are insightful. I enjoy being able to see what the directors can come up with on a limited budget. I also love KNB’s effects work. I really hope that this series gets picked up for a third season. Rumor is that George Romero (Monkey Shines) is willing to do one.

The best episode from the first two seasons of Master’s of Horror is The Black Cat by Stuart Gordon. Nothing else comes close. Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli have written an exceptional script that interweaves Poe’s life with some of his most famous stories. Jeffrey “Re-Animator” Combs plays Poe perfectly, even resembling the famous writer in appearance. The film begins with Poe suffering from writer’s block, drinking heavily, and taking care of his young, cousin-wife Virginia (Elyse Levesque…she’s hot), who is beginning to show signs of tuberculosis. Poe presents a poem to an editor who publishes his work in order to get some much needed money. The editor offers Poe a miniscule sum for his poetry and asks for another macabre story instead.

I don’t want to give away any further plot details or specific scenes. Suffice it to say that this film delivers in its horror elements—it is dark, eerie, creepy, tense, and surprisingly gory (including a scene with a cat that is reminiscent of a scene in Re-Animator…sorry for going back on my word. I tried to be vague.). Poe’s disturbed mind and intellectual genius are explored in detail. We, the viewers, are given a believable glimpse, however fictional it may be, into Poe’s creative process. The set design, period costumes, and acting are fantastic. Gordon’s direction is top-notch. I highly recommend this to any horror aficionado or fan of Poe’s stories.

If you haven’t kept up with Stuart Gordon’s work recently, allow me to recommend a couple other films to add to your soft-core porn filled Netflix queue. Edmond, which stars William H. Macy (Fargo) and was written by David Mamet, is a disturbing gem. If you’re really in the mood for an uncomfortable film-watching experience, check out King Of The Ants.

The Hills Have Eyes 2

2007-08-02T21:07:00.000-06:00

I did it. I watched The Hills Have Eyes 2 and survived. I bring you now, dear readers, an in-depth review of its not-so-greatness. If this picture doesn't scare you, my review surely will.

Let me preface this review by saying that I really enjoyed Alexandre Aja’s remake of The Hills Have Eyes. It was tense, gory, and best of all, it actually cared enough about its characters to make them somewhat sympathetic. None of this (except the gore) can be said for The Hills Have Mutant Cannibals 2.

Warning…Spoilers (but you know you’re not going to watch this movie anyway, so read on).

The film begins with a group of scientists who are setting up surveillance equipment in the army research base in the middle of the desert in New Mexico somewhere where the first film concludes. There are a few army dudes around to keep them safe, but they are pretty inept. They thought they had wiped out all the mutants (at some point between the first Hills and this movie…maybe they’re leaving that part open for a part 3 which is really a prequel to part 2 and the true sequel to part 1…who gives a shit) but the remaining mutants have retreated to the underground mines. Soon, the mutants kill off the scientists and the remaining army dudes.

Switch to what appears to be some soldiers fighting in Kandahar, Afghanistan (a sign with the word Kandahar clues the viewer in to this fact, but it is a ruse). This is no ordinary group of U.S. Army soldiers. This is a group of retarded, shit-talking wannabees. The writers (Wes and Jonathan Craven) and director made sure they had their bases covered with this group…we have the angry chicano guy, the nerdy peacenik dude, the cool and controlled black guy, the token hot white chick, the token hot latin chick, the sweetbro white dude who is trying to score with the chicks, the big retarded, lisping oaf whose call-name is Spitter (I couldn’t make this shit up), and a couple of throwaways. It turns out that this group of soldiers is not really in Kandahar and they’re only National Guardsmen. They are performing a training exercise and fail miserably. Their sergeant gives them a good, verbal reaming. Other than this brief training exercise, we are given no back-story on these characters (with the exception of the token hot latin chick…she keeps watching a video of her son on her cell phone. She must love him very much.) The only insight we get into these characters is provided by their constant, annoying, totally useless banter. Soon, this group of misfits are called in to investigate the army research area in New Mexico. In due time, they will be dispatched by a bunch of angry, inbred motherfuckers.

I’ll dispense with discussing any further plot elements or character development at this point. My reason: no more plot or character development occurs in the rest of the film. Because no one will watch this film for insights into human behavior, I will only tell you about the good parts. The only bit of nudity in this film occurs during the opening credits and it’s not the type of nudity you want to see (hint: it has to do with having a baby). The violent deaths occur in the following ways: axe to the head, wallet to the head (yes, a wallet), one guy gets speared, lifted up into the air on the spear, and thrown, a couple of guys fall from high rock ledges to their splattering deaths below, an arm gets chopped off and later thrown at someone, heads get smashed with rocks, eyes get gouged out, brains get picked, rifle barrels get jammed in mouths, a woman gets raped, a groin gets smashed with a mallet, people get shot (lame!), one dude blows himself up with dynamite, etc. There is a room where there are a lot of arms hanging from hooks, bodies cut in half, heads in buckets, stuff in jars. The mutants in this film aren't quite as cool as those in the first remake. One of the mutants has a rock-like growth on his back that helps him blend into the environment. One looks like a little old deformed man with glasses. Another is friendly and sensitive and mentally handicapped (aren't they all?) and helps out our heroes a little. The Big Daddy mutant looks kind of like John Travolta in a fat suit...wait, that's Hairspray. Who wins? Who loses? Who lives? Who dies? Who cares?

Upon the conclusion of the film, I decided to watch the making-of featurette to better understand the intentions of the director and the writers. The director had very little to say, except that this movie was bigger and better and more action-packed than the first remake (which it wasn’t). The best part of the featurette was the discussion with the writers. Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan, admitted to throwing together the script for the film in one month. Let me guess, no rewrites. Permit me to go on a tangent about Wes Craven. In my opinion, this guy has made two good films: A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. That’s it. The original Hills Have Eyes and its sequel are not good. Last House on the Left is shoddy film-making, released during a time when it could be shocking and somewhat meaningful. The rest of his output is crap. There is a point in his interview when Wes says that when he sees a “horror cliché” he avoids it or turns it on its head. Okay smart guy…how about this for a horror cliché. There is a point in the film where one of the soldiers goes to investigate a cave. Guess what happens? A bunch of bats fly out accompanied by a loud noise. I don’t know which is the more overused, lame-ass jump scare: bats or cats.

That’s about all. If you’re looking for a mediocre, gore-filled horror film to pass 90 minutes of your time, check this shit out. Some of the dialogue is unintentionally funny. The effects are pretty good. The acting is worse than swamp ass.

An Open Letter To Best Buy

2007-08-02T20:23:00.000-06:00

I would like to register a complaint with Best Buy. I am too lazy to call them, email them, or talk to one of the managers at my local store. I also think any attempts by those means would be fruitless. I would rather type and post this open letter so that my friends may read it and perhaps share the agony of my recent shopping experiences (not really all that recent, this has been going on for at least the past two years). They might even commiserate.

I shop at Best Buy at least once a week. I know that sounds like a lot. Sometimes, I go there more than once a week. I am what some would term a “media whore”. I love CD’s, DVD’s, videogames, and other assorted electronic appurtenances. I am a Tuesday Shopper (if you don’t know what that means, you don’t feel my pain). I spend a lot of my well-earned money at Best Buy. I am a legit customer.

Here’s my complaint. Every time I take my purchases to the register, dig for my wallet, and prepare to check-out, a certain anxiety hits me. A knowledge of the forthcoming. A fear of the imminent. I retrieve my debit card to pay for my goods, and without fail, the lovely check-out employee (associate, team-member, whatever they are calling them these days) asks me if I have a Best Buy Rewards card. I say no. “Would you like to hear about the benefits of having one?” I reply, no. “Oh, since you are purchasing your items today with a debit/credit card, you are entitled to eight free issues of one of these magazines (check-out dude/chick holds up pamphlet with magazine descriptions).” Sweat breaks out on my brow. My heart rate spikes. I need a Xanax. I wave my hand in a no-gesture while mumbling something about thanks, but no thanks (like I should be the one thankful for the offer), blah, blah, blah. I take my newly-purchased items and receipt and run for the exit. This happens every goddamned time. It’s always the same, except for the running part. Sometimes I just walk.

I have been shopping at the same Best Buy store for the past two years. I understand that there is probably a high employee turnover rate and I don’t expect any employees to remember my inconsequential face. I’m just really tired of them pushing the Rewards Card and the magazine subscriptions on me. I’d probably be less irritated if they only pushed the Rewards Card. The magazine thing really, really, really pisses me off. If I wanted a subscription for magazines, I’d answer my door when the monthly, formerly meth-addicted magazine salespeople come-a-knocking in my apartment complex. Fuck. I don’t want you’re eight free issues. Your magazines suck. I don’t want your magazine people to have my debit/credit card number so they can harass me when my eight free issues have expired and can begin charging me for full subscriptions to magazines that I don’t give a rat’s puckered butthole about. Stop asking me about the damn magazines. The worst part is when I get stuck in line behind some septuagenarians who get confused by this break in their normal shopping routine. “What…free magazines? I’m not sure, what do you think, dear? Do we have to pay? What magazines are those? Hmm…I kind of like Time and Entertainment Weekly. Do we already get Time, honey?” Et cetera. Here I am in line, scratching my balls, waiting to buy my DVD copy of Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. Anything you can do, as a store, to shorten my time in line would be much appreciated.

I have a solution. I figure that most of your shoppers who are old enough to own a debit/credit card are also literate enough to read a sign (those who can’t read wouldn’t want them anyways). Get a big sign that proclaims the virtues of the “eight free magazine issue promotion” and hang it above the registers. Make it fucking blinding, hot pink for all I care: huge-ass block letters, 3-D, with a Spanish translation. That way, if people are interested in your free magazines, they can ask you about it. I’m not placing any blame on the check-out kids. They have a shitty job. They have to push what their managers tell them to push. I’m sure that they hate having to ask every customer if they want in on this great magazine deal. This goes all the way up to the corporate level. Come up with a new corporate marketing strategy on this issue. Please. I’m sick of it. Leave me alone. I’m off to watch Howie Long in Firestorm.

Yours truly,

Silentkid