After.Life is the first feature by Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo. It centers around the push and pull relationship between a (possibly) dead woman (Anna, played by Christina Ricci) and the mortician preparing her for her funeral (Eliot, played by Liam Neeson). The majority of the film involves Anna’s belief that she’s not actually dead and Eliot’s insisting that she is, which brings about the question of whether or not she actually IS dead and Eliot has some kind of Haley Joel Osmont gift for communicating with the dead, or if Anna’s right and Eliot is some kind of psychopath who is keeping her hostage and methodically trying to convince her that she’s dead just so he can kill her.

Christina Ricci is pretty typical as Anna. She’s managed to carve out a place for herself in Hollywood as a relatively unremarkable actress, but interesting enough to keep around. Not bad by any stretch, but she’s yet to find a role that can define her in terms that draw people in. She’s just kind of there. It helps that she’s willing to get naked when a lot of actresses aren’t. More on Christina later though.

Liam Neeson is, as usual, a fine actor. He’s really grown on me lately. I’ve come to really like Liam Neeson over the last year or two. Which seems like a silly thing to say, because really, who doesn’t like Liam Neeson? Terrorists maybe.

I’ve always liked him, but lately I’ve found myself really, I don’t know, appreciating him more I guess. I’m noticing him more and acknowledging to myself that he’s a really good actor. I think a big part of it is that I feel like he’s taking over the role that Harrison Ford used to play in Hollywood. I think he’s a better actor that Ford, but I also think he’s becoming that kind of everyman, working man sort of actor. The guy who says “I’m actor. That’s my job. I get up in the morning and to go work at my job, which is acting”. He doesn’t seem to take it, or himself, too seriously, but he also respects the craft and is good at it.

I like him and I’m finding myself looking forward to seeing him in more things.

Anyway. Justin Long does what he does in the confused innocent bystander boyfriend role that seems to be his specialty. I have yet to form an opinion on Justin Long, as I’ve yet to see him do anything beyond this really. Oh, and the whole I’m a Mac/I’m a PC thing.

The strength of this movie lies mostly in it’s aesthetic. It’s a very interesting looking movie. The director manages to make a very small number of locations look interesting and stylish. The image of Christina Ricci in her little red dress against this very stark white and blue environment is nice to look at and compelling enough. It’s just a shame that the quality of storytelling couldn’t match the visual style.

The story is a cobbled together mess of half baked philosophical ideas mostly aped from other, better movies about dead people thinking they’re alive, and half-assed, unrealized morality messages. Honestly, I really could have done without either. I’m a big fan of ghost movies, and I’ve really enjoyed some of the interesting things that people have done with the subject over the last decade or so. This movie just can’t compete on that level. There’s nothing here that can hold a candle to The Sixth Sense or The Others or Jacob’s Ladder. While I’m never one to encourage someone to not try, I feel like the visuals in this movie could have been better served on a different premise.

But whatever. I’m trying very hard to teach myself to not hang the entirety of a movie’s quality on its story. Intellectually, I understand that there’s more to filmmaking than telling a story. I mean, honestly, at it’s core, filmmaking is just photography and can be as abstract and without form as any other art form. That said, I do feel like that if you’re going to make a point to write a story, then it should at least be the best possibly story. In this case, I felt like we had a very attractive movie hanging on a very half-assed, frankly somewhat obnoxious story. The script felt rushed and like something that was written in one draft and then never shown to anyone before production. There were so many things that needed serious work that just seemed so obvious to me. The big question of whether or not she’s actually dead is never really resolved, and I never became invested enough in it to consider the answer afterwards.

Also, I’m just gonna say it… Christina Ricci is naked a lot in this movie. She’s naked often in movies. It’s becoming her thing. Quite honestly, I feel weird about it. I don’t object by any means, but I do feel kind of weird about it.

Here’s the thing. Like many people my age, I first came to know Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams in the first two Addams Family movies.

And also, like many people my age, I developed something of a crush on her as that character. Even then though I felt weird about it. I felt creepy and lecherous. I mean, shit, she was only eleven in the first movie. I thirteen. I was practically a man. Like, I was in eighth grade and she was in sixth. That’s not right.

Of course, in retrospect, an age difference of two years really isn’t an issue, but at the time it felt weird. And it stayed weird as she grew and continued being cute and attractive (in her strange way) but still looking pretty much the same as she did when she was eleven.

Now that she’s thirty… it’s still weird. Especially since she’s gone back to being skinny again. There was a while when she had a bit of softness to her and it changed the structure of her face slightly and I was able to disassociate Christina Ricci the adult from Christina Ricci the child actress.

But now that she’s tiny again it’s awkward. Especially since with the pale corpse makeup and scenes where she’s got dark hair (she goes back and forth between black and red hair in this movie) she really looks like Wednesday Addams again. But, you know, with her tits out. It’s strange. I like it, but it’s strange.

It wouldn’t be as strange if she didn’t look so much like Wednesday in this movie. I mean, I was fine with running around Black Snake Moan with her boobies out. It honestly never even occurred to me that I was looking at my childhood crush, because she was all blonde and drunk looking.

People have made a bit of a stink about the movie’s sexualization of Christina Ricci’s character, who is at times visibly a dead body. The movie has been called “necrophiliac porn” on a number of occasions. People need to friggin relax though. So what? Necrophiliac porn, whatever.

Here’s the thing. There are some things that are considered taboo and forbidden. Incest, sex with children, bestiality, and, of course, necrophilia. These are things that can upset people simply at merely mentioning them, much less participating in them. So it’s not uncommon for horror movies to deliberately poke these subjects with a stick. It’s healthy. It’s a way to explore our feelings about these issues, and to even indulge them in a safe way. Or, at least, indulge the fantasy of it in a safe way.

It’s like… okay, it’s like this. A woman can wear her hair in pig tails and suck on a lollipop and shave her pubic hair and wear a little schoolgirl outfit, and it wouldn’t be considered disturbing for a man to be attracted to that. Even though she is CLEARLY dressing up like a small child. Now, does that mean that the guy who finds that attractive is a pedophile? No. I don’t think that many rational people would suggest that. I certainly wouldn’t.

But there’s no denying that it’s the dressing up like a child that is sexy in that scenario. Clearly, the woman in the outfit is an adult, and that’s what makes it okay and safe, but we’re still exploring a fairly dark, disturbing idea. And that’s okay. We should do that. Just like Christina Ricci clearly isn’t actually dead, but we are sexualizing the idea of a dead body. Calling that necrophilia porn is like calling the woman in the pigtails kiddie porn. It’s just simply not so. That woman isn’t a child and Christina Ricci isn’t dead, so shut up.

Besides, I’ve seen actual necrophilia porn and it was far more disturbing than anything in this movie. The internet is a very dark, disturbing place. There are things lurking here that I wish I could unsee.

So, ultimately, what are we left with here?

We’ve got a competently acted (thanks to our friend Mr. Neeson), poorly written, interesting looking movie. I’d say it’s worth watching just to look at it, but it’s not something I feel the need to ever watch again.

PS: I think that whole rant about necrophilia porn/pseudo-kiddie porn is just a way to justify my desire to meet Christina Ricci and then have sexual intercourse with her while she’s wearing pigtails and a black baby-doll dress like Wednesday Addams. Don’t judge me.

In 1981, Stephen King published a nonfiction book called Danse Macabre. It was an in-depth, extensive analysis of modern horror (as of the late 70s/early 80s) by one of the foremost minds on the subject. It’s a fascinating read if you can get past Kings sometimes cocky, sometimes slightly pretentious attitude. (I’m willing to forgive him on that aspect, simply because his status as the best selling fiction writer in the world was new to him, and he was at the height of his alcoholism and cocaine addiction) I often mentally refer back to things I read in that book when I’m doing my own critical thinking about modern horror and it’s place in our culture.

Specifically, I most often think about the notion King puts forward that there are really only three kinds of monsters. These monsters (as described by King) are The Vampire, The Werewolf and The Thing Without a Name and he names three definitive tales that encompass those three ideas. The Vampire is Dracula (naturally), the Werewolf is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Thing Without a Name is Frankenstein’s monster.

Frequently when I watch horror movies (especially monster movies) I mentally categorize the antagonist into one of these three archetypes.

The monster in Splice is very much The Thing Without a Name. In fact, so much so that it’s basically a retelling of Frankenstein, if Frankenstein and the Monster were chicks and the Monster wanted to bone Frankenstein’s husband. Oh, and if there wasn’t all that boring shit in the middle of the book where the monster learns how to speak french and boring stuff at the end when they go to the south pole and pretty much the entire friggin book. If you leave out all of the boring stuff and look at the core idea of the book, you’ve got Splice. The relationship between father and son, creator and creation, and man’s desire to conquer God.

If you’ve watched more than, say, two science fiction movies ever, you probably know that when man tries to play God, it never works out. Not in fiction anyway. God has a real hard-on for copyright infringement. Anyone in a horror or science fiction story who tries to copy (or, even worse, improve upon) one of God’s original works is in for one hell of an asswhuppin.

In this case, our Dr. Frankenstein comes in the form of a brilliant biological engineer named Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) and her partner Clive (Adrien Brody), who are a pair of scientists working on building freaky hybrid animals by splicing together genes from various sources. The idea is that through this work they will be able to create new medicines and medical advances. Anyway, bla bla bla, eventually they end up breaking their strict code of ethics and splicing a set of human genes with some of the animal genes they’ve been working with, just to see if they CAN do it.

And you know what Ian Malcolm has to say about THAT.

What they end up with is this freaky looking half animal/half hot French chick with goofy eyes, kangaroo feet and some kind of weird scorpion tail thing that has a poison nail thing that pops out to kill people. Here’s where Splice starts to get interesting. Like I said, the story itself isn’t anything groundbreaking. It’s a really straight forward Frankenstein kind of tale about people trying to manipulate nature and it biting them in the ass. It’s a typical cautionary tale about not fucking with God. When you have a story like that, a story that’s relatively predictable and expected, you need to bring something else to the table to supplement. In this case, it’s a really fucking crazy looking monster named Dren.

Dren is played by French actress Delphine Chanéac and her look was designed by artist Dan Ouellette, who does these kind of Geiger-esque, Hans Bellmer-esque demented sexually charged images and sculptures in his regular life. Clearly he gave them what they were looking for in his design, because it suits the character of Dren pretty damned well.

You see, unlike the emo, crybaby monster in Mary Shelly’s novel, Dren is a hot (well, hot in a mutant sort of way) chick that wants to fuck. Personally, I prefer the hot, horny monster.

Though I have to admit that it IS somewhat awkward and uncomfortable watching Dren do sexy things when she’s also kind of like a little kid. She can’t talk (only makes these weird chirpy sounds and screeching, and she can spell words out with Scabble pieces, which I never really quite bought) and she’s got a rapid aging process, so she’s really only a few weeks old or something, so I dunno. Either way, my point is that sexuality is a major component of this character. And it’s a major component of the movie as a whole. Sexual repression is a theme and sex as violence is a theme. Gender issues and rape and incest and child abuse and pretty much every dark, family related drama that can be squeezed into one Frankenstein story is present here, to some degree.

These two doctors are about to lose their funding for genetic splicing and they desperately want to add human DNA to their experiments, because they think it will allow them to cure any number of genetics based illnesses. So they secretly create Dren, and like any good Frankenstein’s monster, she quickly becomes too big to contain, and like our friend Dr. Malcolm suggests, “nature… finds a way”.

They take her to a barn up in the country, and that’s when shit starts to get real. First of all, we find out that Sarah Polley’s character had some kind of fucked up, demented asshole mom that apparently abused the shit out of her when she was a kid. That becomes important as her relationship with Dren develops. You see, because even though both doctors are involved in creating Dren, it’s really Elsa who is the driving force behind it. Clive repeatedly expresses his reservations about the experiment and tries to end it a few times before it’s too far gone to stop. In fact, Adrien Brody’s character does very little in the story other than get dragged along with Elsa’s self destructive bullshit, and have creepy sexual encounters with this hot naked little girl monster.

The sexuality in this movie is not really a fun sexuality. This thing isn’t cute little Leeloo in The Fifth Element. She’s not some over sexualized furry fantasy from Avatar. She’s very much a monster. A sexy monster, but a monster none-the-less. Even worse, she’s the product of a lot of very bad decisions that come from a very dark place. It’s clear from the get go that she is not a force of good. It’s not even ambivalent or vague morality. Pretty much right away we know that she is very much a dangerous, wild animal and not to be fucked with or treated like a baby.

But, of course, that’s what ends up happening. And because these two doctors become mother and father to this monster, the dark, evil shit in Elsa’s past starts to rise to the surface and we’re treated with one of the more disturbing scenes of sexual child abuse that I’ve seen in a while. Even though the actress playing Dren is clearly an adult, the character is a child, and watching the darkness wash over Sarah Polley’s face as she transitions from mother to abuser is pretty fucking intense.

I don’t want to get too much into specific story elements, but there’s an idea put forth that Elsa wanted Dren so that she could have a disposable child. That’s some fucked up shit.

So we’ve got Sarah Polley the monster abuser, we’ve got Dren the abomination, and we’ve got Adrien Brody, the almost simple minded idiot along for the ride.

Well, not JUST along for the ride. He’s got his share of problems too.

Most of the sexual attraction element of this story centers around Clive and Dren. In an example of the Electra complex, we’ve got a animalistic, primal female monster who wants to fuck her father. The problem is that the father isn’t really all that morally grounded himself. It’s starts pretty much at the beginning during a somewhat disturbing scene where Elsa and Clive are fucking on a couch and Clive notices that Dren is watching them through a curtain, and then he doesn’t really do anything about it and just looks at her watching them. It’s not a sexy scene at all. It’s actually pretty gross. After that, you know shit is going to get demented.

And it does. Of course. The question is whether or not it works.

It does work, but just barely. Honestly, it’s almost funny. There was one part in particular that wasn’t supposed to be funny (it was actually quite an intense, dramatic scene) but the audience I saw the movie with exploded into laughter, myself included. Sometimes the ridiculousness of it all is just a little too much to bear.

It’s these moral questions that save the movie. Luckily the movie has the balls to ask other questions in addition to the standard Frankenstein cautionary tale. Questions about gender and abuse and sex. If it had simply been about “SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PLAY GOD!” then I probably would have hated this movie. But it saves itself with some interesting philosophical ideas. And even though it couldn’t really escape a mostly cliche final confrontation scene, they managed to even rescue that by adding another couple of demented elements to the mix at the last minute.

Because, honestly, I have no interest in cautionary tales about playing God. I just don’t buy. I don’t believe it. I find them to be the paranoid, pathetic fears of cavemen, afraid of lightning and fire. I don’t believe that man CAN play god. It implies that man somehow exists outside of or above nature, and I don’t believe that’s true. If man creates a new animal or reanimates life, then that’s natural and that’s okay. That’s not to say that people aren’t going to be stupid about it. I just don’t fear it out of some kind of inane fear of retaliation from a higher power. So I need more than that in my cautionary tales. Splice provides more than that, and I appreciate it.

In the end, Splice is a decent flick. Yes, it’s quite corny in parts, but it’s also an interesting story and nice and demented. I’m hesitant to call it a horror movie really, but it’s scarier than your average science fiction movie. I suppose it’s as much a horror story as Frankenstein ever was.

Most importantly, this is a movie for all those fanboys out there boohoohooing on the internet and shaking their bruised and krovvy rookers at unfair bog in heaven for Hollywood’s obsession with remakes and sequels. Here’s a good, solid original horror movie. Get your asses into the theater and support it or you don’t have a right to bitch about your perceived lack of originality in Hollywood.

The last thing I’m going to mention is that this is the second Canadian movie I’ve seen this year that was actually pretty decent (the other being Defendor, which I’ve been working on a review of but forgot to finish for about a month) so yeah, good job Canada.

OH, one more thing.

This movie is “presented” by Guillermo del Toro (who serves as a producer as well). I’m really digging this trend. It seems to have been mostly started by Quentin Tarantino, but Peter Jackson and Eli Roth and a bunch of other filmmakers have been doing it to, and I think it’s great. Basically established filmmakers find projects that they believe in and want to support, and they lend their name to the marketing campaign to generate interest. I think that’s amazing. Sometimes it’s just a name, and sometimes (like with Peter Jackson and District 9) it’s a full on producer roll, but I like it. I like seeing good filmmakers supporting up-and-coming talent in a public way. I hope it continues.

PS: I also think it’s goofy that she has no hair anywhere on her body, but she has eyebrows and eyelashes. Just sayin.

(This post was written over the course of about a week. I had a hard time formulating exactly what it was that bugged me about this movie)

So I just back from watching Kick Ass. I had planned on going tomorrow, but when I realized that the movie times tomorrow would conflict with watching Lost, I had to made a sudden and drastic decision. That lead to me running out and hauling ass to the 10pm showing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should let you know that I know absolutely nothing about the comic book that this movie was based on. I’ve never read it and, in fact, had never even heard of it before the opening credits told me that it was based on a comic book.

While I’m not familiar with this comic book, but I am quite familiar with comic books in general. Specifically the superhero comics that this movie is centered around.

The basic premise of Kick Ass isn’t an overly new one. It’s been done before. Kick Ass centers around a geeky kid who up and decides to take the plunge and become a costumed crime fighter. Since he exists in a world that is mostly like our own, he has to approach this with most of the limitations you or I might have if we attempted the same thing. As we’ve come to learn through this genre, one costumed hero begats another and soon we’re dealing with a whole slew of amateur superheroes. That’s about all you really need to know as far as the story goes.

While Kick Ass is certainly entertaining and fun, I feel that there are a couple of major issues with it. Possible irreparable issues.

In a lot of ways I felt like I was watching a Jody Hill movie. If you’re unfamiliar with Jody Hill, you should really get to know his work. He created a TV series called Eastbound and Down that was possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on television. He wrote and directed the movie The Foot Fist Way as well as Observe and Report. Basically Jody Hill makes movies about delusional, hopeless, awful people under the impression that they’re destined for greatness, and then we watch as they try and achieve that greatness through any means necessary. The characters in Jody Hill’s stories are typically intensely disturbed people. People that really should be in jail. Ronnie Barnhardt, the paranoid schizophrenic sociopathic mall cop in Observe and Report is not far off from a character we could have seen in Kick Ass. While Kick Ass reminds me of Jody Hill’s entire body of work in one way or another, it’s Observe and Report that really stands out as a parallel to me.

One theme in Jody Hill’s work is that it fucks with your perception of the hero. We’re set up to cheer for a character who is completely morally reprehensible. Hill leaves you feeling like you’re not really sure what exactly you’re supposed to be cheering for. In Observe and Report, you don’t really want Ronnie to achieve his dream of becoming a real cop, because he’s clearly mentally unbalanced and routinely does horrible, awful things to people. He’s a stupid, demented, psychotic, morally corrupt character that you want to see fail for the betterment of mankind. But at the same time, the structure of these kind of movies kind of demands that you cheer for him. It’s what we’re trained to do. So while the story chugs along at the pace and rhythm it’s genre demands, we keep getting dragged into supporting this awful person as he eventually gets what he wants.

I know I’m not here to review Observe and Report, but I am working towards a point. Hang with me for a few more minutes.

People like to suggest that Jody Hill’s stories have no moral center, but I disagree. There are these little brief moments where we’re shown just how these characters actions affect the world around them. There are moments where we’re allowed to step back and be disturbed by what we’re seeing. These moments are key, I believe, in understanding Jody Hill’s movies. Yes, these characters are awful, but we’re supposed to ultimately acknowledge that they’re awful. The end result is not an endorsement of these characters or the way they behave. We’re allowed (I think expected) to be disgusted with these characters. It’s part of the experience. The difference is that we don’t expect to see characters in the “hero” role behaving in this way. It makes us uncomfortable, and that’s the point. It puts us off balance, so when the jokes come, it’s a relief.

Or, sometimes, the jokes themselves are what makes us uncomfortable, but because these jokes that we might not laugh at coming from a family member or coworker, are coming from these characters who are already so awful, it’s okay. It’s funny. We’ve given a license to laugh at things we normally might not find funny.

But it’s those brief moments of clarity that make Jody Hill’s movies brilliant and not just nihilistic experiments in bad taste.

Kick Ass didn’t really have any of those moments. It needed some, desperately.

Without those moments of clarity that allow us to actually reflect on what we’re watching and how we feel about it, we’re left with just an exercise in bad taste. While bad taste isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes it’s just a massive waste of time.

There has been a lot of chatter about the Hit Girl character. This isn’t surprising. We’ve got an eleven year old girl calling people cunts, chopping up a hooker with a sword and shooting people in the face. It’s a startling image. I had no real problem with that aspect of it. I thought it was funny and entertaining. There a lot in this movie that was funny and entertaining.

My problem is that nothing in this movie had any real consequence. We’ve got characters doing horrible, vile things and then no real repercussion for it.

I’ll get to back to that in a minute.

Deconstructing the superhero genre is pretty much impossible without directly referencing the established superhero archetypes. Two major characters they seemed to draw from were Spider-Man and Batman. Kick Ass, while without any superpowers, frequently references and draws parallels in his experience to Spider-Man. Another character is Big Daddy (played by the increasingly frustrating Nicolas Cage) who is clearly based heavily on Batman. Characters in the movie even specifically say that he’s dressed up like Batman. It’s no secret.

Both the costuming and the style of Big Daddy and Hit Girl are clearly meant to evoke a correlation to Batman and Robin.

But then these characters are murdering people. They’re shooting and stabbing and dismembering and burning people. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, as a comic book fan, to see someone dressed as Batman carrying pistols and gunning people down. Batman doesn’t do that. In fact, most superheroes don’t do that. I mean, I’m not naive. My comic book heyday was the late 80s/early 90s, which was when Wolverine and The Punisher were king. The armed vigilante is a time honored tradition in comic books. The difference is though that very few people would call The Punisher a “superhero”. The guns put the character into a whole other league. Superheroes just don’t typically use guns. Hell, even Wolverine, who routine kills the shit out of people with his claws, is generally above using guns.

Sure, there are gray areas, and there are even established superhero characters that do use guns and do kill people. But very rarely do mainstream superheroes go down that road. It’s not heroic.

So yeah. seeing a “hero” essentially wearing a Batman costume, murdering people with guns doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel good. It feels really wrong and dirty and uncomfortable in fact. It’s a feeling that I don’t enjoy experiencing.

Now, the center of the story is the idea that these people are doing this in a reality much closer to our own than that of a comic book. They’re dealing with the same limitations that we would deal with in that situation. I think that if they had managed to keep that up, it could have worked a lot better than it did. As it happens, the movie became sillier and more over the top as it went on, which took it out of the realm of our world and eventually it just became another comic book movie. Maybe that was their intention, I dunno. If they had left it entirely grounded in reality, I think it would have been far more interesting and potentially worth watching. The consequence of doing the things these characters do in the movie could have hit home. The way it ended up though, we’re just left with another set of poorly conceived, poorly written comic book characters in a comic book world.

Back to Batman.

The thing about comic book characters, and specifically Batman, is that they’re all just a little bit crazy. Batman is the ultimate nut-job vigilante. He’s a guy who dresses up in a costume and goes out at night beating people up because he’s sad his parents died thirty years ago. If you were to put Batman in our world and made him cope with the physical, legal and social limitations of the inner city, he wouldn’t last one night. He probably WOULD have to use guns and have to be much more dangerous and even crazier than he already is. And, ultimately, he would be a bad guy. A fucked up, demented psychopath killing people in the night. That’s what Batman would be in our world. That’s what THIS guy is, Big Daddy. Yet I couldn’t tell if we were supposed to be thinking of him as a hero. The wires were crossed. We’ve got a guy dressed up like Batman but acting like The Punisher. It just didn’t work for me.

In Jody Hill’s movies, our expectations and personal investment in the characters are toyed with, but ultimately it’s fairly clear that pretty much everyone in the movie is some kind of an asshole and we’re not really supposed to cheer for anyone.

But here we don’t get that. I feel like we’re supposed to be invested in and endorsing these characters who are clearly not good people.

I’m not saying I wanted less violence in the movie. I’m the last person who’s going to say that. I love violence in movies. I wanted a lot more violence in the Wolverine movie. Violence often makes a movie better in my opinion. What I’m saying is that the violence in the movie only really works if we’ve got some sort of investment in it. I need to know WHY the violence is happening and that someone is coming out on top. Watching two terrible, demented people kill each other doesn’t do a whole lot for me. If I’m watching a good guy kill a bad guy, then I need to know why they’re doing it. It has to be more than just “Because they’re bad guys”. Good people do do that. Heroes don’t do that. They don’t just go out and fucking kill people that they don’t approve of. That’s not heroic. That’s fucking fascist.

There are a couple of scenes where the “heroes” are faced with some pretty intense violence, and it does indeed come across as quite brutal. But nothing really comes of it (well, one character dies, but that just serves as inspiration for another character to kill more people) and it apparently has no real effect on our hero, as he’s up and kicking ass again within a few minutes. The intense violence didn’t really result in anything. It didn’t change his motivation. He didn’t learn anything. It didn’t hinder him from progressing in the story. It was just there to be violent.

I feel weird bitching about violence without consequence, considering that so many movies that I enjoy are loaded with just that. I don’t need a moral or repercussions for violence in horror movies or in mindless action movies. I don’t need to feel like Jason or Freddy are going to deal with the consequences of their actions. But that’s a different kind of movie. The problem here is that we’re dealing with superheroes. There are certain things that make a superhero a superhero. Certain guidelines and ideals. When we start operating outside of those guidelines, it just stops being what it’s trying to be and becomes something else. In this case, these characters stop being superheroes and just become psychotic vigilantes. I like psychotic vigilantes, but I don’t like like being told that this psychotic vigilante is a superhero.

For instance, I love Taxi Driver. I think Travis Bickle is a fascinating character, and as far as psychotic vigilantes in movies go, you can’t really do much better than Travis. But if he were to put on a mask and suddenly we’re supposed to buy that he’s a superhero? I just couldn’t get behind that. It’s one of those lines that you don’t cross when dealing with superheroes. Like I said, I know that there are superheroes that use guns, but no good ones. None that really count. We’ve got The Punisher, but honestly, he’s not a superhero. The Punisher is just an asshole nutcase in a skull shirt who has a big collection of guns. Yeah, Wolverine kills people (and god bless him for it) but he doesn’t do it out of some sort of judge/jury/executioner mentality. Wolverine kills people who are trying to kill him. He doesn’t kill people to punish them.

I know I’m prattling on for a long time about this, but I’m a having a hard time saying exactly what it was about the killing in this movie that bothered me.

It kind of ties into another thing that bugged me.

I wasn’t surprised at all to find out that the guy who wrote the Kick Ass comic was the same guy who wrote the comic Wanted was based on, because I fucking hated the movie Wanted and one of the things I hated about that movie also pissed me off in this movie.

Both movies had this kind of pent up, pissed off, sarcastic, arrogant, nihilistic, condescending, never gets laid, idiotic teenage anger about them that really rubbed me the wrong way. Both stories are like stories that a teenager would write between fantasies about shooting up his school. I say “fantasies” about shooting up his school because the teenager I picture in my head isn’t nearly smart enough, ballsy enough or focused enough to actually pull something like that off.

I would have eaten this movie up when I was fifteen. I was a pissed off, angst ridden and sexually repressed teenager myself. I was also an idiot, and if I met fifteen year old me now, I would fucking hate me. I would immediately cut me off from this kind of shit to save me from years of wasted life watching moronic, pissed off, ultraviolent spank fantasies like this fucking movie.

(BTW, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’ve come back to this post in the last couple of paragraphs after a few more days of thinking about how I feel about this movie. You may have noticed that I like the movie quite a bit less after a few days of stewing on it)

The story is barely comprehendible and the acting is boring. The cinematography is scattershot, occasionally looking like they were maybe trying to capture a comic book aesthetic with lots of primary colors and some kind of soft focus (almost cell shaded) post production processing, but then sometimes it’s like they just didn’t give a shit. I’m not gonna bother pretending that the sexualization of the twelve year old girl bothered me, because honestly I don’t really give a shit. Nobody got hurt. I also don’t care that she’s viciously killing people or talking about cocks and calling people cunts. All that controversy surrounding the Hit Girl character was entirely overblown, especially considering that she was honestly the only truly entertaining thing about that movie. Without Hit Girl, Kick Ass would have been borderline unwatchable.

I am glad to see that McLovin kid from Superbad getting consistent work. I don’t know why, but something about that makes me happy.

I’m completely through with giving Nicolas Cage my money. We’re done professionally. I don’t know what that guy’s problem is, because he used to be good. But yeah, fuck him in face.

ALTHOUGH, I did think it was pretty funny that his character had a mustache, and when he was in costume he disguised himself by putting on a fake bigger mustache. That was pretty funny.

In closing, this movie can suck a bag of dicks.

I’ve watched a few DVDs that I’ve been meaning to get to over the last week or so. I thought I’d share a few quick reviews.

Pathology

FYI, there are spoilers in this Pathology review. The spoilers are pretty damned obvious once you’re fifteen minutes into the movie, and honestly, I don’t think that knowing these spoilers will hurt your experience of watching the movie… but if you haven’t seen it and want to remain spoiler free, I’d recommend skipping to the next segment.

This is the one that I just finished watching. It stars Jess from the Gilmore Girls as a med student working in a Washington DC morgue. (I’ve always been confused by the whole doctor/medical school thing. I mean, they’re doctors, but they’re still in school. I don’t get how that works. But whatever. Sandra just explained it to me. Nevermind.)

So Jess is the new kid (though I think he’s supposed to be in his late twenties) in this class of forensic pathologists. Of course, as expected, there’s a group of “cool kids” that are both cool and dangerous. We learn via his wise and fair instructor that he’s a very promising doctor with lots of potential to be the best in his field. Of course.

Oh, btw, there’s a scene where Jess is attending a lecture by said instructor and I almost crapped my pants because HOLY SHIT IT’S “Q” FROM STAR TREK!

Man I miss that show. The last time we saw John de Lancie playing a doctor, he was molesting that chick in The Hand the Rocks the Cradle. Good times.

Anyway.

So Jess ends up getting roped in with the cool, dangerous kids, and comes to find out that they play a “game” where they take turns killing someone and then collectively try and figure out how the person was killed. They use the old Dexter justification of “We only kill bad people”, but of course it gets out of hand.

The main cool/dangerous kid is the PI that House hires to follow Wilson around last season on House MD, who is now occasionally on the show as the guy who’s boning Cuddy.

Things spiral out of control and there’s lots of crazy shit that happens, the end.

Over all, it’s a pretty decent movie. I was surprised. It didn’t look that great, but honestly, I couldn’t find a whole lot to complain about. It wasn’t amazing but it wasn’t bad either. It was just pretty decent. I found that Jess’ acting wasn’t that great, honestly, but I’ve never particularly liked that guy. (btw, Sandra thinks it’s funny that I think of him as “Jess from the Gilmore Girls” instead of “That guy from Heroes” but I don’t watch Heroes, so whatever) The PI guy from House was sufficiently creepy and played the part of a psycho dick pretty well.

Alyssa Milano plays Jess’ law student fiancé who is waiting until she passes the bar exam to join him in the big city so they can start their life together. As you can probably figure out pretty much from the beginning of the movie, things don’t end well for her. If I have a complaint, it’s that the story isn’t entirely unpredictable. I imagine it’s hard to work against conventions of it’s genre, but honestly, I’d still like to see them try. What saves it from being obnoxiously predictable is that basic concept of the movie is interesting and relatively unique. The predictable portions of the story are the trappings of the genre, not the story itself. This kind of mystery based horror story tends to need someone you’re emotionally invested in, but who isn’t the lead character to kill off. In this case, poor Samantha Micelli was the unlucky candidate.

One thing I found interesting about this movie was it’s flagrant mixing of sex and death. A lot of horror movies kind of dance around this potent mixture, but Pathology just went for it. There’s a LOT of fucking in this movie, and a lot of killing, and of fucking among mutilated corpses. I’m a big fan of blurring the line between sex and violence/death in art. I think it’s something that human beings, on a core level, connect with and I find that when these two animal instincts are thrown together, it causes a visceral reaction in the audience that’s easily exploited for the sake of entertainment. Exploited in a good way.

Some of it is kind of corny. I rolled my eyes when during Jess’ first encounter with the little group and their “game” they have a crank fueled mini-orgy around the body they’re supposed to be examining. It was a little too much too soon and felt forced. But all through the movie, in almost random places, there are these intense sex scenes, generally with a dead body in the immediate vicinity.

All that was kind of cool.

Another way they use sex to manipulate the audience that I found interesting was that they made a point not to get Alyssa Milano naked until the end of the movie. At first, watching the movie, it’s easy to assume that she just simply didn’t want to get naked. She’s a big star (well… sort of) and it’s not unexpected that she might make that choice. Maybe it bumped her fee up or the director felt that there was enough of the hot redhead chick getting naked to meet the titty quota.

Maybe they wanted to keep her character “pure” so that it’s that much sadder when she eats it later on. Either way, they seemed to be making an effort to keep Alyssa Milano clothed, even in sex scenes.

So it was that much more of a surprise and unnerving when, at the end of the movie, she’s getting her own autopsy and she’s completely naked. Like, fully, harsh lighting, nothing covered, free labin nakers. It’s almost like they teased us (or, at least, me) with some hot naked Sam from Who’s the Boss action, but when they finally delivered, they delivered in a big way, but with the unfortunate side effect of her being really really dead. It was tricky, what they did.

We’ve got full on nakers Alyssa Milano but we’ve also got full on dead Alyssa Milano, getting the old autopsy Y incision and her organs being removed and weighed and hypodermic needles in her eyes. Again we’ve got that blurring of the line between sex and death. Very crafty. I loved it.

So yeah, it was an interesting movie. It maybe tried a little too hard at times, and was a little silly in parts, but over all, it was certainly worth checking out. Plus, the gore effects were particularly nice.

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Pontypool

Ugh.

I can probably count on one hand the great Canadian films I’ve seen. The really solid movies. I’ll give them The Changeling (the George C. Scott one, not the Angelina Jolie one), Fido was pretty decent, I liked Hard Core Logo, though had it not ended the way it did, I probably would have forgotten it. And maybe Videodrome? Sure, I’ll give them Videodrome, though it was the last movie Cronenberg did before he said “Fuck Canada” and shipped off to the States to make The Dead Zone. I’ll even give them the first Ginger Snaps, even though really, it’s a pretty average movie.

Pontypool is a Canadian zombie movie(sort of), and I think this movie kind of sums up the entire Canadian film industry as a whole. Or, at least, my perception of it.

I’ll get to that in a minute.

Pontypool is about a recently fired radio talk show host named Grant Mazzy who has been forced to take a shitty news and weatherman job at a tiny little radio station in a middle of nowhere Ontario town called Pontypool. He’s a big fish trying to adjust to a small pond. Good so far. The bulk of the movie consists of a Grant in his radio booth, reporting on information he’s getting over the course of a day as a zombie virus takes over the small town.

It’s a really interesting, potentially brilliant premise. Kind of like Talk Radio meets Night of the Living Dead. Unfortunately, nothing ever really comes from it. Director Bruce McDonald seemed either unwilling or unable to pull the trigger on the horror aspect of the movie. It just simply wasn’t scary in the slightest. I don’t know if the premise was flawed or if the creative team handling the premise weren’t able to handle it, but regardless, the movie never delivers on any kind of horror. Or really, on anything even remotely interesting.

A big problem is that the source of the “zombie” outbreak is absolutely ludicrous. The idea is that there’s a virus that is spread through the English language. Simply hearing and comprehending certain words transmits the virus. That idea in and of itself is completely and utterly retarded. Unfortunately, the last half of the movie relies heavily on accepting that idea and the characters carry forth based on that idea. They completely lost me when that element of the story comes into play, and the fact that in order to take the story seriously you have to accept that idea, makes the story pretty much useless to me.

I probably could have gotten past that if the movie had at least been scary, but it just wasn’t. The idea of hearing about these zombie like events via the radio could, theoretically, be quite scary in an Orson Welles/War of the Worlds kind of way, so it’s an even bigger disappointment when this movie fails so miserably to even do that. The threat of the “zombies” (and I put the word “zombies” in quotations because the filmmakers themselves have said that they aren’t zombies, even though they basically are) isn’t felt in the movie because we never really see the zombies do anything scary. We hear about them piling onto cars and eating people, but once the zombies actually show up on screen, they don’t DO anything. They just wander around being zombie like. We’ve got one zombie who shows up earlier than the others, but all she does is beat herself up running into a shatter proof glass wall until she ultimately expires.

Not scary. At all. In fact, there’s really only one on screen zombie confrontation, and that doesn’t even actually happen on screen. They run into a small child zombie in the studio and Mazzy and another chick dispatch that zombie off camera. The camera pans away from the violence. I don’t know if it was meant to be an “off screen violence is more intense than on screen violence” like in the ear cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs, but it didn’t play out that way at all. What it actually felt like was that they felt we just couldn’t deal with seeing something so horrific, so we’re just going to look at the wall instead. In other words, it was a pussy ass thing to do. If they’d managed to properly build the fear and suspense up enough so that when we actually get a zombie attack, it’s a culmination of all that tension, then maybe, sure, that might have worked. But given that at this point I just wanted SOMETHING to fuckin’ happen in the movie, I felt more ripped off than anything.

Once the characters figure out that the virus is transmitted via language (which is a pretty goddamned unrealistic jump in logic for our characters to make) they also figure out that it’s specific to the English language, so they start speaking French to each other. You know, since it’s Canada. This is where the obliquity social/political message most zombies movies have comes into play. The problem is that any political message about French/Canadian relations is completely lost in this idiotic premise of a language virus. Also, the fact that I couldn’t possibly care less about French/Canadian relations doesn’t help any.

It’s not all bad. Just mostly bad. Stephen McHattie is quite entertaining as the shamed shock jock, and had the movie not sucked so hard, he probably could have carried it through a few small flaws.

I was far more interested in his character and his experience being ostracized from the big city radio world into this small town than I was with any of the zombie outbreak parts of the story. I would have liked to have seen just an entire movie about that. Like I said, the idea of a group of isolated people experiencing a zombie outbreak via second hand information is a very interesting idea. It’s just such a shame that the movie failed so hard in delivering on that idea. There was one interesting scene where Mazzy figures out that he can reverse the effects of the language virus by disassociating the definition of certain words. So when a main character becomes infected, he’s able to reverse the infection by convincing her that the word “kill” means “kiss”, which prompts the formally infected woman to say “Kill me” when she meant “kiss me”. Again, that mixture of sex and violence I talked about in the Pathology review. Just an incredibly pussified version of it.

In the end though, Pontypool was a huge waist of an interesting premise. The solid performance by Stephen McHattie wasn’t nearly enough to save this movie from total sucktitude. 

This film, to me, also completely epitomizes what’s wrong with Canadian movies in general. To say that the Canadian film industry is weak would be understated. I’m talking about Canadian films specifically. I mean, there are a lot of talented people working on films in Canada, but they’re working on American films that choose to shoot in Canada for cost effectiveness. Most anyone skilled enough at their trade in the film industry in Canada ultimately makes their way to America to make their movies. There have been plenty of great Canadian filmmakers… but they don’t make Canadian films. David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman, James Cameron, Paul Haggis, Ivan Reitman’s son, Jason Reitman. They all started off in Canada and came to America to make careers for themselves.

Of course, there are Canadian filmmakers who choose (or aren’t good enough to do anything else) to stay in Canada to make Canadian films for Canadian audiences. Bruce McDonald is one of those directors. Previously, he directed a film I actually liked (Hard Core Logo) and one I didn’t bother seeing (The Tracy Fragments, starring Ellen Page). It’s a shame that he wasn’t able to pull this particular film off because the mockumentary style direction he gave to Hard Core Logo would have been perfectly suited to a story like this.

But like so many other Canadian films, this movie was so mired in it’s own attempts to be distinctly Canadian that it lost sight of the ultimate goal of making a good movie. I don’t know if this is a product of the stipulations of government funding (which is ample in Canada) that insist on a certain degree of “Canadian content” in it’s films or if it’s just an attempt by the filmmaker simply trying desperately to make a specifically Canadian film. Either way, it’s distracting and takes away from the quality of the movie.

Another problem is that Canada has very little in the way of cultural identity. There isn’t much about Canada that is uniquely Canadian. Hell, I’ve lived in Canada for the last ten years or so and I don’t think I’ve learned much in those ten years that I can call distinctly Canadian. Pretty much everything that I knew about Canada and everything that I thought of as being distinctly Canadian is pretty much the same now as it was before I moved here. Canada’s got hockey, maple syrup, Mounties, curling and politeness. And the aforementioned French Canadian separatist drama. Other than that, Canada is basically like a more relaxed, easier to digest version of the United States. That’s not a whole lot to work with. It’s not like England or Australia or Ireland or Scotland or America or any of the other European founded countries. All of these countries have easily defined and recognized cultural identities. Canada just simply doesn’t have that.

So when you see these half-assed movies that are trying so desperately to celebrate things that are uniquely Canadian, it’s just kind of sad. There’s so little there to work with that it’s pointless to even bother, honestly. Pontypool was a last ditch effort by me to try and take a Canadian movie seriously. But, as I kind of expected (based on Canada’s track record) it failed miserably. In it’s effort to wedge a Canadian political theme into the movie, it lost sight of the more important goal of making a good movie. The idea of a language based virus is a great way to establish a catalyst for some kind of Canadian political commentary… unfortunately, it’s a horrendously shitty idea to base an entire zombie movie on.

Now, I understand there’s an American movie that takes a very similar premise (radio DJ experiencing a zombie outbreak via secondhand information) that came out last year called Dead Air. It stars horror movie icon Bill Mosely as the DJ and was directed by Corbin Bernsen of all people. I’ll definitely check this movie out when I get a chance. Hopefully they had better luck with the premise than Pontypool did.

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Zombie Strippers

I’m not really sure why I expected more from Zombie Strippers than what I got, but I did. It’s clear from the title alone that we’re not dealing with a serious movie, but yeah, I guess I wanted it to be at least a little bit serious. Or at least funny if it’s not going to be serious.

Zombie Strippers stars temporarily retired porn icon Jenna Jameson as a stripper named Kat. She works in an illegal strip club owned by the great Robert Englund. A group of mercenaries are brought in to deal with a nearby laboratory full of zombies and one of the infected mercs escapes and ends up in the strip club. Kat is bitten and killed by said infected merc but quickly comes back from the dead as a zombie. It’s then discovered that being a zombie makes you an exceptionally good stripper. So Robert Englund’s character, being the slimy business guy he is, decides to keep the zombie Jenna Jameson on and eventually she starts infecting the other strippers. Naturally, all hell breaks loose and zombies start killing everyone and bla bla bla.

The story is, obviously, completely idiotic. That’s fine. It doesn’t need to be anything special. The movie delivers on what it promises, which is lots of gore and lots of zombie tits flying around. I wanted just a little bit more than that.

There’s a certain subgenre of horror movies that revel their own shittiness. This is where Troma movies live. I know these movies have their audience, and that’s fine. I enjoy these kind of movies from time to time. There’s also part of me that feels like it’s all so tedious. It feels like a waste of time when a filmmaker is deliberately making the choice to make silly, cheesy movies. I suppose that just makes me the wrong audience for them, but at the same time, so what? I love horror movies. I love zombie movies. I love boobs. I get  a little bit insulted when I’m watching a movie and it feels like they just simply aren’t trying as hard as they could to make the best movie possible. Maybe it’s the aspiring filmmaker in me that gets resentful seeing people getting paid to cinematically jerk off.

There are a lot of shitty horror movies out there. Low budgets and poorly executed films are a consistent reality in the horror genre. It just comes with the territory. As horror fans, we’ve had to lower our standards, simply because there just aren’t enough quality movies out there to fulfill our needs. I understand that and I’m okay with that. It’s just the way it is.

But at the same time, even when I’m watching a movie that by other genre’s standards is crap, when I feel like the filmmakers are trying their hardest within their means to make the best film they can make, I respect that. Here it feels like we’re dealing with a filmmaker who is using that lowering of standards as a crutch. This idea that they’re making a deliberately bad movie for the entertainment value that bad movies can bring is a waste of my goddamned time, and leaves me feeling like we’re just dealing with a shitty filmmaker.

For instance, Robert Rodreguiz and Quentin Tarantino made Grindhouse, which was a deliberately silly movie made by two guys who clearly take what they do very seriously. The end result was, while silly as hell, still a pretty solid movie (or couple of movies, depending on how you look at it). You can tell that they did their best to make the greatest silly movie they could possibly make. And, for me, it worked.

Here though, I feel like we’ve got a subpar filmmaker who is able to make movies simply because of this excuse that people will pay to watch shitty movies because they’re shitty movies.

I just don’t like that.

Zombie Strippers could have been a solid, well made cheesy movie. They could have taken this ridiculous premise and given it their all. Could’ve made the best damned shitty movie they could make. What we’re left with is an unfortunate waste of time.

Now, what they should have done is simply made an actual porno movie out of it. Why beat around the bush? There’s certainly a market in the porn industry for hardcore horror movies. Joanna Angel did The XXXorcist and Re-Penetrator . Belladonna has made a whole pile of horror themed porno movies. Hell, Jenna Jameson herself has made at least one that I’ve seen (Bella Loves Jenna). It’s not uncommon.

I’m not sure why they didn’t just go for it. It couldn’t have been for financial reasons, because there are plenty of porno movies that have bigger budgets and are more successful than this movie ever could have expected to be. It seems like, to me, that if you’re going to make a movie whose sole purpose is to be a vehicle for naked zombie chicks to strip, forgoing quality filmmaking, acting and directing, then you may as well just go ahead and make an actual porno. Why fuck around with pretending you’re making a real movie if you don’t particularly give a shit about making a good real movie? Make a really good porno movie and save us the trouble of trying to pretend like you give a shit.

To be fair, I thought that Jenna Jameson did a fine job in the capacity that she was used. She clearly has the stripping skills required, and the familiarity both with the abilities of her own body as well as interacting with the camera. She has a decent sense of comedic timing and isn’t a terrible actress. I’ve never been a particularly huge Jenna Jameson fan, as far as her porn work goes, but I did enjoy her in this. She seems to have an enthusiasm for horror (both here and in other things I’ve seen her do) which I appreciate, and she was willing to give it her all in this role.

Robert Englund was… well, Robert Englund. He was fine in the role he was given, which seems to be the default non-Freddy horror movie role people like to give Robert Englund these days. It was basically the same character he played in 2001 Maniacs. The low rent spastic Jack Nicholson kind of character. It was also interesting that he was playing essentially the same guy (description wise) he played in the episode of Masters of Horror called Dance of the Dead, which had a very similar premise as Zombie Strippers. In that episode, he played a strip club owner in a post zombie world who puts on a show where they take female zombies, strip them down and then shock them with cattle prods to get them to move. The difference is that Dance of the Dead (based on a story by Richard Matheson, written for the screen by his son Richard Christian Matheson and directed by Tobe Hooper) was actually really interesting and a solid piece of work, where as this was just silly and pointless.

I guess Zombie Strippers is worth checking if only for the actual zombie stripping. There isn’t nearly enough of that in the world. But honestly, as a movie, it’s a waste of time.

Like I said, I really shouldn’t have been disappointed, given that it was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. I guess I just hoped they’d try a little harder.

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Surveillance

I’ve been looking at the dvd box for this movie pretty much since it came out. People kept telling me that it’s this amazingly twisted and fascinating movie and I kept blowing them off. The name David Lynch carries a certain amount of baggage with it. Some of the baggage is good, but a lot of it is cumbersome and annoying.

Plus, the premise of the movie just didn’t interest me. Looking at the box, all I could see were Mulder and Scully knockoffs. The idea of a movie centered male/female FBI team just seemed tedious to me. Plus, for some reason, I got it into my head that this was the pilot for a failed TV show. I was completely wrong about that, but somehow that bit of false information wedged into my brain. Also, the idea that David Lynch is producing his daughter’s movie just seemed kind of suspect. Like, really, what are the chances that it’s going to be good?

At this point, I had no idea who Jennifer Lynch was other than that she had the same last name as David Lynch was was probably related to him somehow. I didn’t know that she had written and directed the decidedly fucked up movie Boxing Helena some fifteen odd years ago.

Anyway, I finally broke down and watched it last week.

IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

Really, really great.

The story centers around a brutal highway murder outside of a small Kansas town. Two FBI agents (played by Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) show up at the local police station to interrogate the remaining witnesses, a cop (played by Kent Harper, who also co-wrote and co-produced the movie), a coked up chick fresh from robbing a drug dealer (Pell James) and a little girl whose entire family was murdered at the scene. He interrogates them by putting them each in separate rooms and setting up cameras and a microphone in each room. He questions them over an intercom. The FBI is in town to investigate another murder that took place and they believe that the highway murder may have been done by the same masked spree killers who committed the first murder.

The real meat of the story is the way they illustrate each witnesses take on the events, eventually building to something like a complete picture. The cop and the coked up chick both have reasons to lie about what exactly brought them to the scene and we’re treated to a kind of movie example of the axiom “There’s my side, your side and the truth”. The truth, it turns out, is far crazier and more fucked up than anything these people are trying to cover up. The joy of the movie is figuring out, along with the characters in the movie, just what the fuck is going on.

Also in the movie are Michael Ironside (see you at the party, Richter!) as a beaten down Police chief, former SNL cast member Cheri Oteri (who is becoming something of an indi-darling herself) as the little girl’s doomed mother and French fucking Stewart as the partner of the cop witness.

Okay, here’s a collection of words that I never expected to articulate into a sentence, but here it goes… French Stewart was fucking amazing. If I hadn’t seen his name in the opening credits, I never would have recognized him. He plays this crooked, demented asshole cop and is downright sinister and creepy, but in a pathetic sort of way. I had no idea he had this in him. Bravo French Stewart, bravo.

Given that Jennifer Lynch has only directed two films in the last twenty years, I really hope she steps it up a bit and starts doing more work. There simply aren’t enough kickass female directors out there. Especially not in this genre. While Surveillance isn’t exactly a horror movie, it’s not really close enough to any other genre to call it anything BUT a horror movie. It does very much fit into whatever genre most David Lynch movies fit into. Mystery I guess? I dunno. She’s certainly got a lot of her father’s influence in her work, but honestly, I prefer this movie to pretty much anything David Lynch has done. It’s like David Lynch, hold the pretentiousness.

I’d say that, of all these movies I’ve reviewed in this post, Surveillance is by far the best. It’s a fascinating movie that’s hard to look away from, because you don’t want to miss any crucial bit of information. You don’t know what’s relevant, who’s telling the truth, who’s lying and really, what the fuck is going on. Because everyone is lying, it’s incredibly riveting.

My last observation about this movie is that Bill Pullman is turning into Dennis Hopper, which is good since Dennis Hopper seems to be not long for this earth unfortunately.

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The Fourth Kind

Meh. This movie sucked. That’s about it.

After however many years it’s been since it first came out on video and I thought to myself “Maybe I should watch that movie” I finally got around to watching that movie. It only took twenty something years of hemming and hawing. I was fascinated by the cover of the video when I was a kid, but there was always something slightly more intriguing or gruesome looking to watch. Also, of the three big slasher names, Michael Myers was the one I found least interesting. Later I found out that Michael Myers isn’t even in that movie, but by then I’d pretty much lost interest. So I never really got around to it. Until today.

Here’s the run down:

The movie opens in classic John Carpenter style. Bad 80s computer graphics and an even worse original score by Carpenter, apparently composed on his Casio keyboard. Like all of his other scores. We then find a crazy man running from some stoic guys in business suits. He narrowly gets away.

Then we cut to our hero, who is a guy with a mustache that is apparently some kind of doctor. We meet him as he’s arriving at his bitch ass girlfriend’s house. For reasons completely alien to me, he duckwalks into the room with his jacket pulled up over his head. My first thought was that maybe he was trying to keep covered from the rain, but considering that he’s completely dry, I’m left confused.

So anyway, he gives the bitch ass girlfriend’s ungrateful dickhead kids a couple of cheap ass Halloween masks. The kids are disappointed though, because they wanted Silver Shamrock Halloween masks, not shitty ones from the dollar store.

Bitch ass girlfriend bitches (as bitch ass girlfriends are prone to do) the entire time until he’s called back to the hospital for an emergency. Bitch ass girlfriend bitches about this.

The emergency is that the crazy man from earlier has stumbled into the hospital, babbling about “THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU ALL!!”. He is then murdered by one of the very stoic men in business suits. Stoic business suit man then goes in the parking lot and lights himself on fire. Mustache doctor guy finds this a little strange.

Later (we know it’s later because of a series of Shining-esque title cards telling us what day it is) we meet the crazy man’s daughter. Crazy man’s sexy daughter has traveled all the way up from Los Angeles (oh, and this movie takes place in  “northern California” which is  only slightly vague) to identify the body of her father. She is sad. Mustache doctor guy is puzzled.

Cut to a few days later and we establish that mustache doctor guy has something of a drinking problem. He’s sitting around in a bar (a bar that apparently plays cartoons all day) when the crazy guy’s sexy daughter comes into the bar (because the nurses said that she could find him there… hmmm. What kind of fucking doctor is this guy? Is this Jack’s dad from Lost?) to do some investigating into her father’s death.

Then, very abruptly, mustached doctor guy decides to help crazy guy’s sexy daughter get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding her father’s murder. Through some very quick, crack investigation, they figure out that her father went to some weird Irish town in the middle of Northern California. Because, you know, Northern California has quite a few Irish towns scattered around. In the town is the Silver Shamrock factory.

OH.

Did I mention the commercial? The company that makes the kickass Halloween masks that the kids wanted more than the shitty dollar store masks was called Silver Shamrock. And they have a commercial. Here, enjoy their commercial.

They play that commercial about, oh, I don’t know… eighty five times or so. It’s so not annoying at all.

Anyway…

So doctor mustache calls up his bitch ass girlfriend to explain that he has to go out of town for “boring doctor stuff” but he can’t tell her where he’s going or what hotel he’s going to be at. PHEW! Off the hook! Oh, and apparently he had to buy a six pack for the road as well. This guy has a serious problem.

They get to the weird Irish town and start their investigation. Mustache doctor guy comes up with the not at all shady idea that they should pose as a husband and wife who are in town to buy Halloween masks for their store. Oh, and that they should also get a cheap motel room together. And that they should probably get shitfaced drunk.

At the motel, we meet the most annoying characters in the movie. I don’t remember their names, but I’m pretty sure it was The Asshole Family. It consists of Mr. Asshole, his lovely wife Mrs. Asshole and their kid, Asshole Jr.

They’re in town because Mr. Asshole is the #1 salesman of Silver Shamrock Halloween Masks, and he’s there to pick up an order(?). Apparently Silver Shamrock doesn’t actually ship any of their products out. They require store owners from around the world to travel to somewhere in “Northern California” to pick up their orders. Anyway.

We also meet this angry saleslady, who is also in town to pick up her order of masks, and she’s none to happy about it. In fact, she’s acting like a raging twat. But really, I probably would too if I had to drive all the way out to weird Irish town in “northern California” to pick up my shipments.

They figure out (again, though their crack detective work. The old “look at the hotel registration book” gag) that the girl’s crazy dad ALSO stayed at that motel. The daughter is understandably excited to get to work finding out why her father was murdered. But Dr. Mustache tells her to slow her roll, because it’s been almost an hour since he got shitfaced, and he needs a drink. So they decide to put off looking for clues about her father and stay in for the night, drinking and fucking.

Oh yeah, apparently Dr. Mustache is also a cheating man whore.

After some good fucking, Dr. Mustache decides he needs another drink, so he heads out to pick up a bottle.

Oh, and there are cameras all over town and a loud speaker that announces that the curfew is six pm, so everyone better get the fuck back inside or… something… will happen. This is never explained.

So Dr. Mustache gets his bottle and then runs into a disgusting wino who was hiding around the corner in an ally, waiting to ambush him and ask him for a drink of his delicious booze.

After letting the disgusting wino drink directly from the bottle (HELLO THERE, HEP C!) Dr. Mustache then quizzes him about the strange town. He finds out pretty much nothing other than that the town is run by the owner of Silver Shamrock, some Eurotrash millionaire guy. The wino then tells Dr. Mustache that he wants to burn the factory down with a “case and a half of Molotov cocktails”. I wasn’t aware that they sold Molotov cocktails by the case, but hey, you learn something new every day.

Back at the motel, crazy dude’s sexy daughter meets up with the pissed off mask buying woman from earlier, who makes a point to show her (us) that the plastic Silver Shamrock from the back of the masks tend to fall off.

You know I love me some good old fashioned unjustified exposition. Please, just tell me what’s happening. Don’t bother making it relevant to the story. I hate working for shit. I HAVE A FEELING THAT MAY BE IMPORTANT INFORMATION LATER. WINK WINK.

Before long, it’s imperative that the crazy dude’s sexy daughter have a shower. I has to be done at some point, because that’s the way things go in 80s movies. Back then, a movie wasn’t complete until there was a “hot girl in the shower” scene. I miss those days.

After some more fucking (two times even) between Dr. Mustache and the grieving daughter (who is clearly very bereaved, as well as sexy) we cut to the angry business lady next door (who we find out has a store in San Francisco, which explains her obnoxious New York accent). Angry business lady is getting all snuggled up for bed in her weird bedazzled kimono thing when she realizes that the little plastic logo do-hicky that fell off of the mask has a mysterious computer component embedded in the back of it. She’s all like “wtf is this shit?” so she pulls a bobby-pin out of her hair and starts fucking with it. That’s when a crazy blue laser shoots out of the thing and busts her face open and makes her eyes go all fucked up.

Okay, I’ll admit, that was kind of friggin cool. Even if a goddamned bug crawled out of her mouth afterwards, which makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

The sound of the angry business lady’s face getting busted open interrupts doctor mustache and the crazy guy’s sexy daughter. They were busy fucking. Again. They quickly get dressed and run outside to find out what happened. That’s when a bunch of vans from Silver Shamrock show up and they take the now very dead angry business lady away.

The next day Dr. Mustache and the crazy dude’s sexy daughter decide to go to the factory to investigate. While they’re at the factory, they run into the Asshole family who have been invited to take the tour by the Eurotrash Millionaire. It’s all very boring and bla bla bla until the crazy dude’s sexy daughter notices her father’s car half covered in the factory. She runs up to investigate, but is stopped by stoic dudes in business suits.

They return to the motel and decide to GTFO. They’ve had enough of this silliness. Dr. Mustache has to go make a phone call (this was before motels had phones in the rooms apparently) and runs to the front desk, deliberately leaving the door open for some reason. Like, he makes a point to leave it open. I don’t get it.

While he’s gone, of course the stoic business suit guys come and abduct the crazy dude’s sexy daughter. I’m not sure WHY they abduct her. Everyone else they’ve run into they’ve killed mercilessly. The crazy dude and the wino at least. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, the stoic business suit guys killed the wino. They pulled his head off. It was stupid.

We then get about 45 minutes of Dr. Mustache running around in the town, diving behind bushes and trash cans, trying not to be seen by the patrolling Silver Shamrock cars.

Eventually, he gets back to the factory.

He’s very quickly caught and carted off to the Eurotrash Millionaire, who is in some kind of control room getting ready to reveal his evil master plan. He shows Dr. Mustache a TV monitor where he can watch as the Asshole family (who have apparently been on this factory tour for ten hours or so) are being escorted to this pretend living room where they’re going to get some test screenings of the awesome Silver Shamrock commercial. Remember the commercial? Oh yes.

The commercial instructs Asshole Jr. to put on his mask, which he obediently does, because kids always do whatever the TV tells them to. We’re then subjected to this seizure inducing flashing pumpkin image.

The commercial triggers the little plastic logo thing on the back of the mask, which then makes Asshole Jr.’s head turn into a bunch of bugs and poisonous snakes.

Wait, what?

Yes. That’s what happens.

It’s fucking ridiculous.

And Dr. Mustache finds it very upsetting indeed.

As you can tell, he’s clearly not coping well with watching the murder of a small child.

Now that we know what happens to kids who are wearing the masks when that see that awesome commercial, we get a montage of kids buying and wearing their Silver Shamrock masks all over the country. We also find out that the commercial is instructing all kids with Silver Shamrock masks to stop trick-or-treating and go home at a specific time and watch TV because there is going to be a BIG GIVE AWAY. You know, on the TV. It’s pretty vague, but as we’ve established, kids are clearly mindless automatons who do whatever the TV tells them to.

In classic bad horror movie form, the hero is strapped to a chair and forced to listen as the big bad guy (in this case, Mr. Eurotrash Millionaire) explains his master plan.

The unfortunate thing is that even after he explains his master plan, it still doesn’t make any fucking sense.

What Mr. Eurotrash Millionaire explains is that he knows the REAL meaning behind Halloween, which is that witches used to sacrifice animals and children at Stone Henge on the pagan high holiday Samhain and the rivers ran red with their blood. He then said something about the planets aligning and how the time has come again to sacrifice children to his evil pagan god. Oh, and he also STOLE one of the big Stone Henge rocks and, apparently, had it shipped to “Northern California”. The rocks are full of powerful energy, you see, that when focused with vague computer parts, can make blue lasers that can bust your face open and turn your head into bugs and snakes. So they’ve been putting little tiny fragments of the Stone Henge rock into the logos on the masks, and watching the the flashing pumpkin graphic triggers the energy and turns your head into snakes and bugs.

That’s his master plan. To use fragments of Stone Henge, embedded in Halloween masks, to turn the children of America’s heads into bugs and snakes.

I still don’t really understand what he’s accomplishing with this plan. I guess he’s counting the whole masks turning kids heads into bugs and snakes thing as mass sacrifice, but I never really understood what that sacrifice accomplished. Also, he talked like he was there, three thousand years ago, when the last mass sacrifice happened. So I guess Mr. Eurotrash Millionaire is three thousand years old as well? I dunno.

OH! I forgot to tell you something.

Remember those stoic guys in business suits? Androids. Yep. They’re fucking robots. Robots filled with orange yogurt.

Also, you can apparently disable them by punching them in the stomach. Good to know.

So yeah, remember that they’re androids, because that shit is important later.

Anyway, so Dr. Mustache is strapped into a chair in a holding cell in front of a TV. Dr. Eurotrash has left him there with a mask on, apparently alone for the next hour and a half or so until the commercial is supposed to air and kill anyone wearing a mask. Because, you see, before the stoic business suit/android guys just crushed the skull of anyone who happens to get in their way, but for Dr. Mustache and his new girlfriend, they get strapped to chairs and left alone for hours on end.

Oh yeah, the crazy dude’s sexy daughter is strapped to a table in another cell.

So, left alone, Dr. Mustache kicks the glass of the TV in (I think someone behind the camera has a beef with television and consumerism, but doesn’t quite have the George Romero/Dawn of the Dead skills to properly execute a social commentary/satire via horror movie) and uses a shard of glass to cut himself free of the straps. He then (of course) escapes by crawling through the massive ventilation duct in the room.

We then get another half hour of Dr. Mustache evading Silver Shamrock employees (androids) by diving and ducking and slinking through shadows Sam Fisher style. He frees crazy dude’s sexy daughter and then figures out his big escape plan. What he does is sneak back into the control room (using the old “hide behind a rolling cart of Halloween masks” gag. I’m surprised they didn’t have them carrying a friggin bush).

The androids are very busy and distracted by their work of looking at clip boards and moving around sliders and dials on control boxes to notice them. They’re able to sneak in. He turns the commercial on (because he knows exactly which buttons do that) and it plays on a bunch of TVs in the room. He then climbs up to some kind of catwalk scaffolding thing and drops a box of those logo disk things with the computer component and piece of Stone Henge over top of the androids. The commercial triggers the blue lasers in the chips, killing everyone in the room (but conveniently missing both of our two heroes, as well as eurotrash millionaire guy). Then the Stone Henge rock in the middle of the room turns blue and shoots a laser at the eurotrash millionaire guy, which makes him turn blue and then makes him disappear.

So that was the end of the three thousand year old pagan eurotrash halloween mask making dude, as well as his army of orange yogurt filled androids.

OH, and then the factory blew up. Luckily, it waited for Dr. Mustache and the crazy dude’s daughter to escape and get in front of a blue screen where they could be superimposed over the explosion.

PHEW! The end, right?

WRONG, FUCKER! Not even CLOSE.

Dr. Mustache and the crazy dude’s daughter are driving home. Crazy dude’s daughter is being suspiciously quiet and uncommunicative. She then abruptly grabs Dr. Mustache’s face and makes him crash into a tree.

When Dr. Mustache gets out of the car, he finds her arm still holding onto the door handle. AND IT’S A MOTHERFUCKING ROBOT ARM! DUN DUNT DAA!!!!!

So then the one armed android crazy dude’s sexy daughter starts attacking Dr. Mustache. Her only means of attacking is choking and grabbing his face though, which makes her not a very affective killer android. Luckily for Dr. Mustache, the trunk of the car popped open in the crash and he was able to grab a tire iron and knock her head off with it. If this movie had any kind of balls, it would have knocked her shirt off too and we could have gotten another look at those sexy tattays! But oh well.

That should have been the end of it, but we go through about fifteen more jump scares of various parts of her body grabbing onto him. FINALLY he’s able to take off running and escapes.

So I’m not entirely sure if we’re supposed believe that the crazy dude’s daughter was an android the entire time, or if she was somehow replaced by an android at some point. Maybe it was some kind of Blade Runner/She-doesn’t-know-she’s-a-robot-kind of thing? I don’t really care either way to tell you the truth. I’m done trying to make sense of this fucking movie.

Eventually Dr. Mustache ends up at a gas station, where he starts calling the TV to tell it not to play the commercial. I couldn’t really get a sense of who exactly he was calling, but whoever it was apparently had the power to change the programming of paid advertisers, and was also willing to do so just because a crazy doctor with a mustache calls in screaming about how they have to take the commercial off but he can’t tell them why but it’s because WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

So they take the commercial off of one channel. Then these kids, who are also in the gas station and watching the TV, change the channel and the commercial is on THAT channel too. So Dr. Mustache says “It’s on the other channel! TAKE IT OFF THE OTHER CHANNEL!! WHY?! BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!” so they take the commercial off of the second channel as well. Then the kids change the channel again, and the commercial is on THAT channel too. So Dr. Mustache starts screaming about “YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE COMMERCIAL OFF OF THE THIRD CHANNEL OR WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!! BECAUSE I SAID SO!!”

But then, apparently the guy on the other end of the phone (who has the power to change the programming of not only one television station, but apparently at least three) finally grows a pair and puts his foot down. He was willing to be bullied by an anonymous dick on the phone to take down two commercials, but not three. No way. That’s going to far. Nobody bullies that guy into taking down THREE commercials. Not today, motherfucker.

And that’s how the movie ends. Apparently the three thousand year old pagan eurotrash mask maker’s plan still went off without a hitch. And, apparently, millions of kids all over America got to experience their heads turning into bugs and snakes. The sad thing is that nobody on the east coast bothered to warn the people in the other time zones not to watch the commercial. I mean, shouldn’t the people on the west coast have figured out by then that something fishy was going on, given that it was three or four hours later or whatever?

Anyway. That was Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Final thoughts?

That movie was fucking retarded. I wish I hadn’t watched it.

After my rage filled ranting about Harry Knowels’ refusal to see Wolverine because he wasn’t invited to the screening, I was worried about actually watching the movie with an open mind. Part of me wanted very badly to like the movie, more so than I already did, just to spite Harry. Not that he’d read this, but just as a counter balance to disprove Harry’s incredibly petty and pathetic tantrum.

But I think I managed to keep a relatively open mind, and here’s what I thought.

It was alright. It certainly wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horribly bad either. It was just pretty okay. It was far better than much of the comic book movies that have been made in the past, and it wasn’t nearly as good as some of the other ones. It was a very middle of the road, entertaining movie with some noticeable problems.

Jackman, as always, was highly entertaining as Wolverine. Aside from being a likable, charismatic (and devastatingly attractive) actor, he also perfectly embodies what I want in a movie version of Wolverine. He’s nailed it since the beginning and he continues to nail it. I have no problem with his performance or his contribution to the movie as an actor. He just IS Wolverine.

The movie was highly entertaining, on a very base level. The fights were fun, the movie moves at a decent pace and most of the actors did their jobs quite well. There were a few people in there who were a little out of place (Will I. Am or whatever that dude’s name is, springs to mind) but overall, I had no complaints in that department. Liev Schreiber was a good villain as Victor Creed/Sabertooth. The performances were all perfectly acceptable. Some better than others.

I should say, for the record, I honestly couldn’t give two shits about “staying true to the comics”. I’m familiar with the comics, and I know Wolverine’s back story, but really, I’m not so arrogant that I demand movies be made to fit my preconceived notion of what they’re supposed to be. The way I see it, movies are movies and comics are comics. They’re completely different mediums and the way they tell stories is completely different. It’s ridiculous to ask or expect a film to constrain itself to boundaries established in another medium. That being said, I do ask that if they’re going to make it their own (which I would hope that they do) then they should justify those deviations from the source material. Basically, make it work. To change things simply for the sake of changing them seems silly to me, if they worked already. But if they need to make changes to the story or characters to allow them to fit better into the reality of the movie, then please, change it.

So when I see fanboys pissing and moaning because they dicked around with Wolverine’s back story, I just want to choke a bitch. Especially when you consider that Wolverine didn’t even HAVE a back story until a few years ago. That was the big mystery for like, thirty years: what’s Wolverine’s story? Well, a few years ago Marvel comics finally spelled out his history and how he became Wolverine and what his relationship to Sabertooth was. That just happened fairly recently. And it was somewhat anticlimactic if you ask me. I read that Wolverine Origin series and when it was over it just felt like “Okay, sure. Whatever”.

So whoopty fucking shit if they changed it around a little. Who cares?!

Yes, they simplified and added and subtracted from it. Yes, a lot of it was (to my knowledge) made up for the movie. Good. I’m glad they did that. The Wolverine in the movies is a different character than the Wolverine in the comic books. It’s not like he’s a real guy or a  historical figure. It’s not like they’re doing a movie about FDR or something. He’s fictional, and hundreds of writers have contributed to his story over the years. Many of whom have contradicted each other. There’s no “set in stone” Wolverine story that has to be honored like some kind of bible.

Anyway.

All of THAT being said, the story WAS pretty damned hokey and sloppy. And a good bit of it felt fairly forced. And it definitely fell a bit into the problem that so many other comic book based movie franchises fall into. Which is trying to cram as many character cameos into the movie as possible. Luckily, it wasn’t nearly as offensive as it was in the later part of the 90s Batman movies, or the third X-Men movie. The characters at least had a reason to be there. And what also worked is that many of the characters I didn’t even know. I have no idea who Will I. Am was supposed to be. And Charlie from Lost. Bolt? Who the fuck is Bolt? So it’s not like I was there wishing that we had more of these secondary (or third…dary…) characters, because honestly they were just warm bodies. They were there to fill out this team that Wolverine and Sabertooth were a part of.

There were some characters in there that I was familiar with though, and some of them worked and some of them didn’t. I thought they handled Blob fairly well, which surprised me, because from watching the trailer I was certain he was going to be one of the things that dragged this movie down. But he served his purpose well (even though there was a fairly ridiculous boxing scene between Blob and Wolverine that made very little sense) and he was played well (by that asshole freighter guy from Lost that killed Alex).

One character that really seemed out of place and just stuck in there to appease fanboys was Gambit.

I’ve never liked Gambit. Never. Since the beginning. He showed up around the time I really started getting into comic books seriously. I always saw him as too smartassed and sassy. He seemed like what people thought comic book fans wanted to see. And apparently they were right, because he’s hugely popular. But it never worked for me. To me, Gambit was the X-Men equivalent of Poochie the Dog on The Simpsons.

I felt like he was trying just a little too hard.

And I felt the same way about him in the movie. He was out of place, served no real purpose, and seemed to only be there because someone thought the kids would think he was cool. It’s not that I wanted his character to be more crucial to the story line or more relevant. I just didn’t want him to be completely irrelevant.

In a way, Wolverine goes through the movie kind of like if Forest Gump were in the Marvel Universe. He’s meeting all of these key X-Men characters as he goes about his quest to find and kill Sabertooth. It’s a little silly, and I wish they’d been content to just tell a Wolverine story rather than trying to fit half of the X-Men universe into it as well.

But whatever. They needed characters to do things in the movie, and I guess it makes sense to use characters that are already established than simply making up new ones.

Another major bit of contention people have with this movie in regards to other non-Wolverine characters is Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool.

Again, like Gambit, I never really gave a shit about Deadpool. I think I’ve maybe read one comic book ever that featured him. I remember when he came out, and I checked him out and felt like he was just kind of a cross between Spider-Man and the Punisher. He was a smartassed, wise cracking mercenary. Whatever.

I’m not hating on Deadpool, I’m just saying that I have nothing invested in his movie success, as far as the character goes. What I am invested in though, is Ryan Reynolds. I like Ryan Reynolds, and I especially like him in that kind of role. Deadpool is a perfect match for him, and I think that if he were given the chance, he could pull of an entire Deadpool solo movie.

So I can definitely sympathize with the fanboy sobbing and raging that’s been going on in regards to the way his character was handled in the movie. Fortunately, there’s a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s thanks to two of the three “alternate” after credit endings.

You see, they filmed three different short clips to play at the end of the Wolverine movie, each one on a different print of the movie. So depending on which theater you go see the movie, you’ll get one of three possible alternate clips, provided you stay for the end of the credits. All three provide a glimmer of hope for an interesting sequel, depending on how well this movie does.

Without spoiling TOO much, two of the three clips should make the sobbing Deadpool fanboys cork their cry-holes. One in particular, more than others. There IS hope, and it’s not as bad as it could have been. There’s a little bit of justification there and even more hope for a Deadpool solo movie.

And what little we saw of Ryan Reynolds Deadpool was plenty entertaining, and leaves me wanting to see that Deadpool solo movie.

But anyway, back to Wolverine.

One of the real problems with the movie was that it seemed to be arguing with itself about who the movie was actually for. You can tell that there was some serious push and pull action going on when it came to whether or not it was going to have an R, PG-13 or PG rating. And ultimately, there was enough savage violence and swearing and other adult stuff that they should have just gone for it and done an R rated movie. I mean, you can’t have Sabertooth almost rape a chick in one scene, and then go through the entire movie with Wolverine stabbing people and no blood coming out. That was distracting. We’ve got Wolverine running people through with his claws left and right, and no blood.

One of the many things I really loved about X-Men 2 was this one shot when Wolverine was flashing back to when he escaped from the Weapon X facility, and he’s standing there with his claws sticking out of his hands and he’s screaming like “WTF IS THIS SHIT?!” and there’s all of this blood running down his arms. It was a badass shot and it completely encapsulated the horror of what had been done to him. Unfortunately, a lot of that impact was lost when they showed essentially a twenty minute long version of that one shot, and there wasn’t that shocking, disturbing, confused horror of “what’s happening to me!?”. It needed that blood and that screaming fear. That, to me, is the core of Wolverine. He’s lost and he’s confused and he’s angry about what’s happened to him.

So yeah, no blood. In fact, the only time I can remember seeing ANY blood in the movie was in a shot where it wasn’t actually coming out of a person, but out of a hospital blood bag.

It seems very silly to me to have a movie that features all of this killing and disturbing shit and grown up themes, but then at the same time it’s trying to be a kids movie as well.

One of the things that worked about the first two X-Men movies was that they managed to find that perfect middle ground between a kids movie and an adult movie. It was a kids movie that was enjoyable for adults, and it was an adult movie that was enjoyable for kids.

This movie didn’t achieve that at all. This movie was constantly at battle with itself. It was a tug-of-war between a kids movie and an adult movie, and that didn’t really work. It can’t work. Because you end up potentially losing both audiences. If adults are watching it, enjoying it as an adult movie, and then all of a sudden Wolverine is boxing The Blob for no reason other than it’s funny to watch, that’s a turn off. If kids are watching it and enjoying themselves and suddenly Sabertooth is in Vietnam and throwing a crying woman onto a bed, clearly about to rape her, parents aren’t going to be too happy about that.

So I really wish they could have sorted that shit out before they started filming.

I’m hoping that that’s what some of these “reshoots” were that went on right before the movie was released. I’m also hoping that there’s going to be some kind of “unrated” directors cut. Usually I hate that shit. I really hate it. I hate it when every horror movie and raunchy comedy has to have a “TOO EXTREME FOR THREATERS!!!” unrated version. It’s all marketing and it’s all bullshit. But this is one of those rare cases when I actually do want to see whatever they cut out to make it a PG-13 movie.

My last two complaints about the movie aren’t particularly major, but they’re definitely there.

The first is that, for some reason, these X-Men movies seem to want to put their villain bases on historical monuments and places. I don’t get that. I remember watching the first X-Men movie and asking myself “Why the fuck are they fighting on the Statue of Liberty?” It’s kind of silly. One time I could forgive. The second time, in X-Men 3, the villain base was on Alcatraz. That was just obnoxious. And Magneto moved the Golden Gate Bridge so he could just walk over to Alcatraz. Jesus Christ that was stupid. Now, in the Wolverine movie, the villain base is Three Mile Island, and again, like Forest Gump, we’ve got Wolverine and his villains responsible for the nuclear meltdown that occurred there in the late seventies. That was goofy.

The other thing, and a little more major, were the special effects. They were just god-awful in parts. I don’t know if it was a budget thing or what, but Jesus, it was distracting at times. Especially Wolverine’s claws. I don’t know what happened, but there were scenes where I felt like I was watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit. They were so cartoony and fake looking. I seem to remember, in the first three movies, Hugh Jackman wore prosthetic claws that they digitally melded with his knuckles. Those looked good. These things looked like cartoons floating around his hands.

And some of the green screen shots were absolutely abysmal. Really, really bad work. I wish I knew what happened there, because it was embarrassing. I’m going to make a guess and say that when all of the bad set reports about people fighting and disagreeing while filming the movie came out, and it started getting such negative buzz, that maybe the studio pulled back and cut funding for the effects. I gotta hope it was something like that. Because I’d hate to think that what we got was the best they could come up with. It was pathetic.

Then again, looking on Wikipedia, X-3 had 90 million more dollars in their budget. X-3 had a $210 million budget and Wolverine had $120 million. That’s a pretty sizable difference. So I guess I can’t give them too much shit.

When it’s all said and done though, honestly, it’s a fun movie. That’s all it really is. And that’s okay.

My buddy Andrew pointed out that he thinks people are setting it to The Dark Knight standards, and that’s not really fair. It’s not that kind of movie.

I think something that people need to understand is the difference between styles here. Really, it comes down to the difference between Marvel Comics (X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man) and DC Comics (Batman and Superman). DC comic writers seem to really want you to intellectualize their stories and characters. DC comics are much more philosophical. So when The Dark Knight is this dark, in-depth meditation on the nature of evil in humanity, it makes sense. And it’s great. Marvel comics never ask for that much. Marvel comic book stories tend to be much more social. They’re about how people deal with each other. DC comics are introspective and self exploratory. Marvel comics are extroverted and deal with how people interact with people. That’s why X-Men is about racism and prejudice and Superman is about alienation and fitting in. That’s why Tony Stark is an alcoholic womanizer and Bruce Wayne is a psychopath tormented by personal guilt and vengeance. Marvel deals with how people are affected by the world around them and how they affect the world around them. DC comics are about how people FEEL about themselves and the world.

Which is why when you watch The Dark Knight, you get a story about about insanity and personal codes of ethics and morals. And when you watch X-Men it’s about fighting the government and Hitler-esque fascist groups. So no, they’re not the same. They’re completely different kinds of stories, with completely different standards.

When held to the standards established by other recent Marvel movies, I’d say X-Men Origins: Wolverine falls somewhere just below the first X-Men movie and the first Spider-Man movie, but a good deal above the third in both of those series. Like in the first X-Men movie, there were some very silly, out of place characters and some story issues and some cheesy special effects. But it was no where near as bad as the abomination that was the third X-Men movie. It wasn’t a mess of studio meddling and attempts to please everyone (while eventually pleasing no one). It was a decent action movie that had some flaws, but over all delivered on what it promised to deliver.

One thing that I think is kind of silly and isn’t a problem for me, but makes me chuckle is that Sabertooth was IN the first X-Men movie. He was played by Tyler Mane and was pretty damned ridiculous.

They’re just kind of strolling past that little fact, whistling and hoping nobody remembers. It’s like someone might say

“Hey, wasn’t Saberto-“

WHAT?

“I was saying that in the first X-Men movie, Saber-”

WHAT?! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

“I SAID THAT TYLER MANE PLAYED SAB-” 

SORRY STILL CAN’T HEAR YOU!

“He looked completely dif-”

LA DA DEE DEE DA! I’M NOT LISTENING!

“GODAMNIT!”

It’s just kind of funny.

I think that people might have forgotten that the first X-Men movie WAS pretty silly. I’m inclined to say that the Wolverine movie was at least almost as good, if not better, than that movie. It’s not nearly as good as X-2, but I think it’s somewhere between the first one and the second in terms of quality over all.

I really hope they do another one, and I hope they do that Deadpool movie. It was certainly worth seeing, and it was worth spending money on. I’m frustrated with the bad press it’s getting. While it has problems, it’s not nearly as bad as people are painting it.

Sandra and I rewatched Casino Royale earlier this week to prepare ourselves for the new James Bond movie. In fact, I went in and bought the three disk special edition, just because I love that movie so much. It was ever so much fun.

We went to see Quantum of Solace today and I left the theater feeling like I wasn’t even sure if I’d watched a movie or not. I don’t know how to exactly explain it, but it felt like the movie never really started.

It picks up pretty much where Casino Royale left off (a first for James Bond movies… a direct sequel to a previous installment) with Bond delivering the mysterious man responsible for Vesper’s death in the previous movie to MI6.

Then it keeps steadily building and building to… I don’t know what. There was very little down time. It starts off with this crazy awesome car chase and just keeps going from there. It was like listening to someone talk and talk and talk without taking a breath. I mean, there were brief breaks where they gave us a little story and tried to catch us up on what was going on, but then it would immediately jump back into some kind of crazy fight sequence or a car chase or a gun fight or whatever.

—-

I just went out for a smoke and really tried to pin down what was wrong with Quantum of Solace. It wasn’t a stand alone story. It was a movie that started halfway into the story. Yes, it finishes, which was nice. But it wasn’t a movie that you could sit down and watch and enjoy as a James Bond movie. It was the less entertaining half of a bigger story.

I don’t want to go and watch one chapter from a bigger James Bond novel. I want to leave the movie feeling like I’d watched a complete movie. Of course, it helped that I’d just rewatched Casino Royale, but that’s beside the point. If I hadn’t, I’d have felt really lost.

There was something fresh and exciting about watching Casino Royale that was missing from this movie. Casino Royale was a fresh start, but retained enough of what I loved about the previous movies to make it a real James Bond experience. Daniel Craig was amazingly cool as 007. And it was fun to watch him as an unseasoned and untested MI6 agent. Seeing him fumble and fail occasionally gave the movie a sense of humanity and relatability that was missing in all of the previous Bond movies. I also liked understanding why he is the way he is. James Bond is a borderline sociopath, killing people without thought or consideration. He has a mission and he accomplishes that mission by whatever means necessary, and doesn’t think twice about killing anyone who gets in his way. He uses and manipulates people to get what he needs, and those people usually end up dead as well. Casino Royale did a fantastic job explaining how he was able to get to that place. It gave him a reason for his lack of conscience and moral compass.

When Casino Royale ended, with that fabulous shot of Bond standing over the man responsible for his woman’s death, finally saying the classic “Bond… James Bond” line (which isn’t used in this movie at all…WTF?!) it felt like the end of the story. It was a good way to end it. It said “That was the movie, this is why James Bond is the way he is, and Daniel Craig IS motherfucking James Bond. Deal with it. Roll credits”. The story was done. Sure, we didn’t know who that guy was or who he worked for or why Vesper really died, but whatever. I didn’t really care. The credits rolled, the movie was over, and I felt really good about how that particular James Bond movie played out. And I was ready for a NEW James Bond story with this new, awesome James Bond.

But this wasn’t a new James Bond story. It was a long epilogue to the James Bond story I’d already seen. It was “Now that you’ve watched Casino Royale, we’re going to explain all of the boring intricacies about the evil organization behind one aspect of a movie you’ve already seen. Enjoy!”. And when it was over, it was like “Okay. Now I know. Thanks. Can I have a movie now?”

Daniel Craig is still awesome as James Bond. He’s definitely a different kind of James Bond than the ones we’ve seen so far in movies. He’s a lot closer to the Bond in the three or four Ian Flemming books I read as a kid. He’s a human Bond. He’s cool, but not so cool that he walks around thinking he’s King Shit of the Universe, like Roger Moore and Sean Connery did. He’s flawed and a little tortured. In fact, in this one he’s a LOT tortured, which got kind of tedious to tell you the truth. Yeah, okay, his girlfriend died. I understand he’s tortured and that all of that just happened within a couple of weeks from when this movie started. Which is one of the reasons WHY I didn’t want this movie to be a direct sequel to Casino Royale. All of that shit should have been worked out between movies. That’s behind the scenes stuff. I don’t need to watch James Bond work through his sad feelings. I was content to believe, when Casino Royale finished, that by the time the next movie rolled around he’d have buried all of that anger and sadness and would be ready to start a new story.

But yeah, that wasn’t the case.

There was also a lot of extraneous shit tacked onto this movie for the sake of making it more James Bond-ish. I honestly can’t tell you who was chasing Bond in the opening car chase. I really don’t remember. I know where he was going and what he was doing, but I have no idea who was chasing him. They were just BAD GUYS. There’s a chick. Not really a “Bond girl” in the traditional sense (though they do call her that) because she doesn’t really do anything to move our story along. She’s got her own completely uninteresting story of revenge and pain. And we’re forced to watch HER story play out, even though it’s pretty irrelevant. She’s there to be someone that James Bond can open up to and tell how sad and pissed off he is that Vesper died. That’s her entire purpose in the movie. She’s James Bond’s sounding board. There was another “Bond Girl” named Mrs. Fields. She was in the movie for about three minutes. Long enough for James Bond to fuck her and then she disappeared. Again, I couldn’t even tell you who she was or what her character did in the movie. She was there to be a hot chick for Bond to bone and say witty, suggestive things to, then go away. For some reason there was a scene where Bond has to sneak into this opera, and he steals clothes from a locker to blend in, and amazingly he finds a snazzy James Bond suit with a bow-tie that he can wear for a few minutes just so they can say that they at least tried to make him look like the traditional James Bond. I was fine with him not running around killing bad guys in a bow-tie. They didn’t need to patronize me by coming up with some lame brain excuse to get him in a suit. Just tell the story. Don’t unnecessarily manipulate it to appease traditionalists.

I know it sounds like I’m saying this is a horrible movie. I’m not. It was an okay movie. It just wasn’t a GREAT movie. I wanted a great movie. Casino Royale was a great movie. This was far from it. It was just okay. I don’t regret having gone to the theater and watched it. I enjoy Daniel Craig as James Bond very much. I like watching Bond’s progression into a heartless killing machine. I like seeing him as a flawed, troubled character. Judy Dench was, as always, fucking bad ass. The villain was appropriately villainous (and, as required by James Bond tradition, white and creepy looking and with a weird mouth) and the action WAS pretty actiony. I just think this movie missed the mark in a lot of ways. And I would have much preferred to see a new James Bond story, with this new, more interesting iteration of the character, than seeing them drag the previous story so thin that it almost hits the breaking point.

Not quite the breaking point though. If they do another one with Daniel Craig, I’ll be first in line to watch it. I just hope they start a new book, rather than a new chapter.

Currently Listening: The Monkees – Porpoise Song (Theme From “Head”)

About five years ago I watched a movie called Audition. It was directed by controversial Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike. I’d seen only one of his movies previously, the ultra violent Ichi the Killer.

Ichi the Killer made an impression on me, though I don’t know if it was necessarily a good impression. It was just an impression. I finished that movie thinking "well… that was different" and that was about it.

This was relatively early in my exploration of various forms of Asian cinema. Being something of a horror fan, but not overly experienced with "foreign films" it seemed like the obvious place to start.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve come all that far in expanding my library. I’ve watched many of the staples. The obvious shit like the Ring movies and Ju-On movies and Suicide Club and Battle Royale and The Eye and Old Boy and Lady Vengeance. Other stuff too, but my point is that I stick fairly close to the surface. I’m far from knowledgeable on the subject.

I do know what I like and what I don’t like.

I know that I’m burned out on Japanese ghosts. Specifically, ghosts of chicks with their hair hanging in their face and who move like they exist only in stop motion photography.

I also know that I’ll still watch all those Japanese ghost movies because they scare the ever loving shit out of me.

I’ve seen a few Miike movies. Ichi the Killer, it turns out, was the silliest of his movies that I’ve seen so far. Audition kind of stands at the other end of the spectrum.

The first time I watched Audition (again, about five years ago) I enjoyed it a bit, but honestly found it kind of boring. I guess I was geared up for another awesome splatter fest and wasn’t expecting what I got, which was essentially a drama.

Also, I should note, I was somewhat baked at the time, which may help explain my displeasure at the lack of visual stimulation. I sat there going "BORING! SOMEONE KILL SOMETHING!" because nothing was really happening.

I watched it again last night, sober this time. I felt the urge to watch a movie but, because it was one in the morning, I knew it had to be something I could watch with the volume fairly low. So I browsed through my foreign movies, knowing that the subtitles would allow me to keep the noise to a minimum, and settled on Audition. I picked it up used at Blockbuster for six bucks a while back and had been planning on watching it again.

I’m sure glad I did.

I didn’t fully appreciate how this movie worked the first time through. I think I was half expecting the boombastic gore festival that was Ichi, and didn’t really know what to do with it.

Audition is essentially a drama about a lonely guy trying to fill the hole left in his life by the death of his wife. It’s notorious for it’s gory and disturbing imagery, but this is pretty small aspect of the over all movie.

It centers around a guy named Aoyama, a middle aged guy trying to get his life together. His wife died from an unnamed illness seven years earlier and he lives along with his teenaged son.

A movie producer friend of his comes up with a plan. He advertises an audition for a fictitious acting role, which brings in hundreds of resumes for attractive women, all ready to line up and meet Aoyama. They hold the audition and interview the women, asking personal questions that would reveal various flaws and highlight interesting aspects of each woman.

Aoyama becomes entranced by a woman by the name of Asami, who comes across as kind of strange but cute in a weird girl sort of way. He calls her up and they have dinner and the movie starts rolling.

The next hour or so is spent showing Aoyama struggling with the morality of manipulating this woman by implying that there was a role to be won. He eventually tells her that the financing on the movie fell through and that it won’t be made, but that he’d still like to keep seeing her. By this point he’s totally in love with her.

His movie producer friend comes in and is like "dude, this chick is loco" and, of course, Aoyama blows him off.

Weird shit starts to happen and yada yada yada, big climactic gory ending.

I don’t want to tell anymore, because if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s one of those things you should really go into fresh.

What I missed the first time around was the incredible build up. The ending is so shocking and disturbing because the entire film has built up to it. It’s not a roller coaster. It’s more like a free-fall ride. You spend the majority of the ride sitting in the car, listening to the track click click click as it drags you up and up and up and when the drop finally happens, you’re so tense from the ride up that it’s that much more intense.

Weird shit happens all through the movie. There’s a section where Aoyama has decided not to call her anymore and wait to see if she calls him. I believe it went on for two weeks. When he finally does call her, we see that she’s just sitting on her knees on the floor of her apartment, staring absently at the phone, a mysterious bag of something sitting off in the distance. The phone rings and she smiles ominously.

It’s creepy as shit.

There’s another scene where Aoyama is trying to track Asami down and he finds this dude with his feet sewn into these wooden planks and some kind of weird stitching thing going on with his shins that I can’t entirely explain. It’s only on screen for maybe two seconds but it’s enough to tweak your mind.

Where as Ichi the Killer was a bombardment whose philosophy seemed to be "show EVERYTHING" Audition is pretty much the polar opposite. The horror in Audition is almost entirely in it’s tone and the performances of the actors. Specifically, of Eihi Shiina, who plays Asami. She’s someone you somehow fall in love with even though you KNOW she’s completely insane. And you, like Aoyama, are punished for it.

I think what really drives the horror home is that the tone of the majority of the movie is very uncomfortable. The movie is centered around this bullshit audition that these two guys hold. It feels creepy and lecherous. Watching the movie, you’re sympathetic towards Aoyama, but at the same time, you also kind of feel like he crossed a line by participating in the scheme. It’s exploitative and he’s using these women. Just as he is ultimately used.

Naturally, the punishment doesn’t exactly fit the crime. But, when does it ever, really?

Also, in contrast to Ichi the Killer (which I’m just using as an example of an entirely different sort of style by the same director) much of the gore is off screen. Sure, there are some pretty gory shots. But they only linger long enough for you to say "is that what I think it is?" and then it’s gone.

What makes it disturbing and hard to watch is everything around the gore. There’s a part where Asami is pushing acupuncture needles into a man’s chest, stomach and eyes. You don’t see much of the actual penitration of these needles. What you see is her face, smiling, almost giggling, as she’s slowly sliding them in. She says something that sounds like "kitty kitty kitty" which is a quite pretty and somehow musical thing for her to say, and which translates (according to the subtitles on my DVD) to "deeper, deeper, deeper". It’s both cute and terrifying at the same time.

While it’s hard to really even classify Audition as a horror movie, it’s hard to find anywhere else it fits. It’s like a drama/horror movie. The majority of the movie is an exploration of guilt and loneliness. It’s just that ending that really pushes it into horror territory. But that the rest of the film is essentially build up to that horror ending almost makes the entire thing a horror movie.

I don’t know. I suppose it’s beyond classification, and that’s okay too. It is what it is. And what it is is awesome.

I probably should have reviewed this right after I watched it, but Christmas and laziness and work got in the way. So here I am now, ready to discuss I Am Legend, the third adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel of the same name.

I should start off by saying that I haven’t read the book, nor have I seen The Omega Man (the second film adaptation) or the Vincent Price movie The Last Man on Earth (the first.) I knew pretty much nothing about the story before I saw the trailer for this incarnation.

So I was a clean slate going in.

I suppose one could argue that pretty much any zombie movie that takes place after the world has succumbed to “infection” could count as an adaptation of this story. 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead both share many story elements. But technically, yeah, there’s been three full on film versions.

BTW, I’m a little bit drunk as I’m writing this, so if I ramble, that’s why. Rum + Coke = tasty. Rum + Egg Nog = not so much.

I’ve always kind of liked Will Smith. I never thought he was amazing, but he’s charming and a decent actor generally delivers on whatever he promises. His cheesy movies are cheesy but fun and his dramatic turns are well acted and interesting. This was a case of one of his more dramatic turns.

One thing that concerned me going into this film was that Will has a tendency to be funny and entertaining. A kind of a class clown, without the negative connotations. I was worried that what could potentially be a very interesting and serious look at a man going insane with loneliness could lose it’s impact if it’s stretched around one liners and sassy jokes. Luckily, Smith approached this role with very little humor. Sure, there was the odd joke here and there, but it was always coupled with enough sadness to carry it through.

I’m jumping ahead too much. Hold up.

The setting of I Am Legend is what has become a kind of cliche in zombie movies. It’s set in New York after everyone has either died or been “infected” by a new strain of disease has ravaged the earth. What was initially intended as a cure for cancer became a cure for, well, not being a zombie/vampire. Will Smith plays Dr. Awesome. I mean, Dr. Robert Neville. It’s three years since the virus killed everyone and he lives, for all intents and purposes, alone in New York City. His only company is his dog and a shitload of monsters who come out at night and feed on… I don’t know what, since everyone else is dead. I guess squirrels and pigeons and such.

So these monsters are a kind of cross between zombies and vampires. They’re like zombies in that they’re all fucked up looking and act like mindless animals and want to eat you. They’re like vampires in that they’re pale and can’t come out in the sun and… want to eat you.

Because Will Smith is the scientist doctor guy who was apparently involved in some way in engineering (or trying to) the cure for this infection before it killed everyone, he’s taken it upon himself to set up a lab in the basement of his sweet town house and continues his work. He captures the zombie/vampire people and studies them and does tests on them, trying to find the cure.

By the point we come into the story, he’s been at it for three years and has a decent routine going. He gathers food and supplies (and dvds) hunts deer and captures monsters for his tests.

And, slowly but surely he’s going insane.

That’s the fun part of this movie. He’s going nuts all by himself much like Tom Hanks in Castaway. In fact, there’s a lot of Castaway in this movie.

Like in Castaway, there was a very obvious problem in making a movie where a character is alone for an hour and a half. He has to have someone to talk to. In Castaway, they created Wilson, the volleyball and Tom Hanks’ best friend. In I Am Legend, we have Will Smith talking to his trusty German Shepherd, as well as a series of mannequins he’s set up to be his friend. This aspect of the film was incredibly interesting and fun to watch. I have to give Smith credit, because there aren’t many actors who could not only be interesting enough to watch exclusively for an hour and a half or so but also convincingly play that slow spiral into emotional and mental breakdown.

Will pulls it off seemingly with ease and it works fabulously. Kudos to him for that. It helps that the writing and direction were both interesting enough to carry us through what could have been an incredibly boring and silly film.

With all that being said, I’d like to get to a couple of things I didn’t like about this movie.

The first thing is the monsters themselves. People have harped on the CG actors playing these monsters. And they’re right. It didn’t work.

Here’s the thing.

I rewatched Jurassic Park not to long ago. Maybe six or seven months ago. As I sat down to watch it, I gave myself a brief little talk about how far computer generated special effect have come since Spielberg and ILM blew our minds eleven years ago. Then, as I watched the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the special effect hold up. They’re still pretty much as good as anything I’ve seen recently. At least in regards to computer generated creatures interacting with real environments and people. It was really damned good.

I think part of the reason it was so good was that we have no frame of reference. Nothing to compare dinosaurs to, other than lesser interpretations of them. It worked because we had no REAL dinosaurs to compare them to. And, also, because ILM fucking rules.

But with I Am Legend, they were using computer graphics to create people. Yeah, they were fucked up looking people, but they were essentially just people. Cartoon people interacting with REAL people. It really pulled me out of the movie because it was so easy to spot the animation. It was frustrating.

It’s also kind of sad that we (or, at least I) have been spoiled by special effects. So many movies have seamlessly integrated computer generated special effects into movies. It wasn’t THAT long ago that I happily watched Clash of the Titans and didn’t rally care that the monsters Perseus was fighting was stop motion animation by Ray Harryhausen. Now things like that can seriously damage a movie for me.

I don’t mind CG effects in movies, as long as it’s done well. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s not and it bugs the shit out of me. I recently watched the movie Shoot ‘em Up. It was a completely mindless exorcise in violence and adrenaline and it was loads of fun, for what it was. It would have been a million times better though if they hadn’t decided on using computers to generate almost all of the blood in the movie. It seems like it’s next to impossible to recreate a realistic splatter of blood with a computer. Either that, or way too many film makers simply aren’t trying hard enough. It’s a problem I’ve seen in a lot of movies recently and I really, really hate it. It’s cartoony looking and simply doesn’t look real. I hate sitting in a movie and watching something that is obviously computer generating when the real thing is so easily accessible. It feels like a cheat and even worse, it feels lazy. Especially considering that the technology for spraying actual, realistic looking fake blood has been around forever. I believe this is a perfect example of “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” and I wish people would either figure out how to do it as well as the old way, or simply stick to the old way.

Which is what I had such a problem with when I was watching I Am Legend. They used computers to create monsters that looked like people, when they could have simply used actual PEOPLE to play the people. From what I’ve read, apparently they actually filmed scenes with real people wearing special effects make up and playing the “infected” but then ended up scrapping that for the CG people.

Here, this is from Wikipedia:

Lawrence explained, “They needed to have an abandon in their performance that you just can’t get out of people in the middle of the night when they’re barefoot. And their metabolisms are really spiked, so they’re constantly hyperventilating, which you can’t really get actors to do for a long time or they pass out.”^[14] While the infected become vampires in the novel, the film depicts them as “dark seekers” (Anna’s term for them)^[17] who consume living flesh, with a design inspired by the concept of their adrenal glands being open all the time. The actors remained on set to provide motion capture.^[20]

So yeah, he wasn’t getting what he wanted from actual actors so he decided to go CG. That, in theory, is an acceptable reason to turn to CG. Unfortunately, that only works if the CG is as believable as real actors would have been. The CG didn’t work (didn’t work for me at least) so the whole thing didn’t work. That aspect of it at least. They were not only cartoony looking, but simply not particularly scary. I felt the threat of them in Will Smith’s acting, and the  way the scenes were shot, but not in the creatures themselves.

There was even a scene when Smith has one of them captured and she’s strapped down to a table like Frankenstein’s Monster and completely sedated (by dilaudid… sweet sweet delicious dilaudid) and she’s just laying there, breathing but otherwise still… and it was STILL CG. I mean, it could have easily been an actor laying there, but instead we had this cartoony looking person laying there looking like it was pulled out of an Xbox game. It was an entirely unnecessary use of CGI, but they did it anyway, and it still didn’t work.

The other problem I had with this movie was the last half hour or so. The first two thirds of the movie were fantastic (except for the CG monsters of course) and interesting and held my attention. Then it just kind of fell apart. It was like they realized that they had established a really great setting and beginning of a story but then were left scratching their heads not really sure what to do next. I don’t want to get into specifics, because there’s some seriously spoiler potential if I go down that road.

What I can say is that it felt like they had maybe three or four potential endings and then got in a fight with the studio about which one to pick. And then the studio won, because it suddenly felt like I was watching a retread of a couple different movies. Specifically Signs and 28 Days Later.

The actual ending was the worst. Like I said, I won’t say what happened, but I will say that it felt like someone said “You know, I liked 28 Days Later, but I wish it had been happier!” and then tacked that on at the end. It was weak and obnoxious.

Okay, fuck it, I’m gonna talk about the ending. If you haven’t seen it yet, please stop reading now. Your part of the review is over. The rest is just for us what have seen the movie. Stop reading.

Now.

Seriously…

Now…

Stop reading.

…

Still here?

GO AWAY! SERIOUSLY!

….

Okay, so there should just be people who’ve seen the movie reading this part. Are we good?

Good.

So like, when that chick and her kid go to Vermont and knock on the door of that military base/sanctuary, didn’t you expect those skeezy army dudes from 28 Days Later to open the door and be like “Oh yeah, it’s rape time!”

I did. It was lame.

Currently Listening: ZZ Top – 99th Floor (Moving Sidewalks)

There’s a few things you should know before I go into what I thought about The Mist. They’re all things that pushed my expectations in drastically different directions.

First of all, this is the third Stephen King adaptation for writer/director Frank Darabont. The first two are a couple of the very VERY rare examples of a good film being adapted from a King book or story. The majority of these movies just tend to suck. People either don’t understand what worked in the book or they don’t know how to convey it through film. Those two movies were The Shawshank Redemption (based on King’s story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption) and The Green Mile (based on King’s serial novel thing of the same name) and they were both pretty much perfect adaptations. I think one of the things that worked, especially with Shawshank, was that Darabont essentially used the book as the screenplay. The dialog was practically verbatim from the story. Very little was changed in the transition from story to screen. The same could be said about The Green Mile, though, for me personally, I think that hurt the movie a bit. It was almost TOO close to the book for me. I had reread the book (and the screenplay) fairly soon before I saw the movie, and watching the movie was like, tedious, because it was SO close to what I’d just read twice. I got bored.

But that was just me.

It also didn’t help much that I didn’t really think The Green Mile was that great of a story to begin with.

That being said, it’s been quite a few years since I last read The Mist. I could remember the basic premise and a few key things, but for the most part, watching the movie was a fairly new experience, story wise. So that was good.

So there was a decent amount of expectation for me for this movie based on how awesome a job Frank Darabont has done in the past with Stephen King adaptations.

The other thing is that I’d been getting a LOT of drastically different opinions on the quality of this movie. I’ve had a couple people tell me it’s fantastic. I’ve had a few people tell me that it’s absolutely horrible. I had one customer at work who said that she saw it last night and she hated it and everyone else in the theater hated it and that people were walking out and that I should never, ever watch this movie.

So there’s THAT. I didn’t know what to expect. Fortunately for me, I rarely give a shit what other people think about movies. More often than not, I’m going to disagree with people. It seems that I tend to go against the flow for a lot of this stuff. I like a lot of stuff that people hate and I don’t like a lot of stuff people love. I’m not trying to be difficult or pretentious, it just works out that way.

This also marks one of the rare occasions where Stephen King allowed his name to be attached to the marketing of the film. Ever since The Lawnmower Man debacle (and subsequent lawsuit) King has been incredibly wary of putting his name on anything that he’s not directly involved in. But King has said that he trusts Frank Darabont with any of his material and gave him the rights to The Mist, no questions asked.

Going into The Mist I was pretty much a clean slate. I kind of figured that Frank Darabont was capable of pulling it off, but I also knew that this was a major leap for him as far as the kinds of movies he makes. It’s a horror story and it’s got a lot of crazy shit going on. He usually does fairly melodramatic, heavy stuff.

I was actually a little late getting into the theater. I bought my tickets an hour before the movie and then I went to the mall to do some christmas shopping for Sandra. I did my shopping and then about five minutes before my movie started, I got pulled into a demonstration at Zellers (Canada’s lamer version of K-Mart) where some chick with a spanish accent was giving away free shit. I’m all about free shit. Especially when the free shit turns out to be super awesome kitchen knives. But you had to stay and watch the whole demonstration before you got your free knives, and the clock was ticking.

When it got to seven minutes or so after I was supposed to be at the movies, I gave up and split. I did manage to get a free citrus corer thing.

As I ran over to the theater (first putting my purchases in my car and smoking as fast as I could) and bought my popcorn and jetted inside. Luckily, I came in just as the trailers were ending. That’s the upside of getting twenty minutes of commercials and trailers before you actually get to watch your movie.

I found not watching the trailers kind of liberating actually. I’m usually all about the trailers. I love them. But lately I’ve been shying away from them online and skipping them at the theater felt good. That’s very unlike me. I’m finding myself more and more stepping away from the marketing aspect of movies now. I don’t want to have my expectations dictated by the marketing budget of a movie.

The movie.

It was fucking great. It really was. I don’t know what’s wrong with all these retarded people who hated it. It was everything I want in a movie.

Lemme start over.

For those that don’t know, basic story of The Mist is pretty straight forward. A huge fog appears out of nowhere and covers a small Maine town (or course it’s a small Maine town. It’s a Stephen King story) and it’s full of strange, HP Lovecraft-esque monsters. The mist traps a group of customers in a small local grocery story where they deteriorate, Lord of the Flies style into lunatics. That’s the bulk of the story. It’s simple and direct.

The Mist plays out like a fantastic two hour episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s classic Twilight Zone material. The message? The monsters are us. It’s also like a great play. There’s pretty much one location for the duration of the movie, and there’s an awesome cast of really well defined and interesting characters, all acted impeccably. The cast is a collection of essentially non-stars, which helped incredibly. Thomas Jane is arguably the biggest star of the bunch, and really… he’s not that big. And the character he plays is such a classic everyman, and he suits that role perfectly. Two others in the cast stand out especially for me. The first is Toby Jones as Ollie, the seemingly meek bagger in the grocery store who turns out to be the biggest badass in the bunch with a Dwight Schrute-esque reserve of useful talents and knowledge. I’m not overly familiar with his work. In fact, I think the only thing I’ve ever seen him play is the voice of Dobby the House Elf in the Harry Potter movies. I’ve been meaning to watch Infamous, the other movie about Truman Capote, but I haven’t gathered up the energy that the Phillip Seymour Hoffman movie sapped out of me yet. I’ve heard Infamous is the better of the two movies, and Toby Jones certainly looks more like Truman Capote than Phillip Seymour Hoffman did, but yeah, I haven’t watched it yet.

He’s fucking rad in this movie. I wish there could be a whole movie just about Ollie. He was such a pimp.

The other was Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody, the religious zealot who whips everyone up into a psychotic frenzy. While some might argue that she overplayed it, I disagree. I think she pushed it almost too far, but not quite. The type of story that it is… that microcosm collapse of people that’s so very Twilight Zone kind of demands an extreme performance. She’s a symbol of a HUGE part of human history. A part of history that is just as ridiculous and insane as her character is in the film. She seemed to understand that and played the part accordingly. The dialog was fantastic enough to carry it through. Like I said, I don’t remember a whole lot from the original story, but I imagine that a lot of the dialog is fairly close to the source. For instance, there’s a scene when one of the female leads approaches Mrs. Carmody as she’s praying in the bathroom and offers her friendship and support, Mrs. Carmody responds “I already have a friend, God, and I talk to him every day. When I want a friend like you, I’ll just squat and shit one out.” Now, that has to be a Stephen King line. I think Steve is pretty much the only guy who would come up with a line like that.

Filling out the cast are William Sadler (who you may remember as the bad guy in Die Hard 2, the good guy in Demon Night and as The Grim Reaper in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) as well as that one black guy who’s in a lot of stuff.

One thing that’s been pissing me off about the internet lately is that nothing is a surprise anymore. I think that’s part of the reason I’m off trailers now. I’m sick of knowing all kinds of shit about movies before I go see them. Of course, I’m a huge hypocrite, because I go to Ain’t It Cool News every day and read up on movies I want to see (and then post it online) but I’m contemplating cutting that off too. I’ve seen enough pictures of The Joker now. I’m going to avoid anymore Batman news because I want to see Two Face for the first time on the big screen and not before. I wish I’d waited on The Joker, but that’s would have been pretty much impossible.

Anyway, back to The Mist.

The reason I went off on a tangent about internet is because I’ve been hearing about this super shocking mind blowing ending. I wasn’t so much expecting something to blow my mind, but I knew something was coming. I did remember the ending from the original story, and it wasn’t that striking. In fact, I remember it being pretty ambiguous. The ending in the movie though…

Let’s just say the irony aspect of The Twilight Zone is here in full force as well.

In the end, I have to say that I absolutely loved this movie. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s pretty close. It’s certainly one of the best Stephen King adaptations. It’s up there with Shawshank and Stand By Me to be certain.

One last cool thing, for all of the more invested Stephen King fans. There were at least two references to other Stephen King stories. Specifically, The Dark Tower series and The Stand. That was fucking sweet.

Next up for Frank Darabont? Fahrenheit 451. That’s not interesting, but next AFTER that? The Long Walk by Stephen King. Fucking SWEET. Even though I kind of wanted to do The Long Walk as a low budget black and white movie, but whatever.

So I’m pretty much done with this.

Yeah, bye.

Currently Listening: Iron Maiden – Lord Of The Flies

Dear Saw,

Ya know, we had some good times. Really, we did. I’m not going to pretend like things weren’t exciting and fun in the beginning. Our first date was great. Hell, one of the better first dates I’d had. I was nervous about a lot of things and you really knew how to hold my hand through it all. It was good times. I knew what people were saying about you, but I ignored them and went out with you anyway. I don’t regret it either. Please don’t think I do. I’m a big believer that there aren’t any mistakes, only good choices and lessons.

Well, I learned a lesson.

That first date was exciting and just a whole lot of fun. I was willing to look past some of the more glaring alarm bells that were going off. Some of the things that confirmed what people were saying. I didn’t care. I didn’t care because I was enjoying myself and I wanted to keep seeing you. Sure, I knew that Carey Elwes was a terrible actor, but I didn’t care. He’s entertaining and really, that’s all I wanted on our first date. People tried to tell me that you were shallow and contrived and that you had no depth. They tried to tell us that our love was wrong, but they don’t know what love is.

Yes, you were cheap. 1.2 million dollars is practically nothing when you’re talking a major motion picture budget. Hell, the majority of the action took place in one room. That wasn’t just fun, it was… kinky. New and exciting. One of those things that you only hear about movies doing but never actually expect it to be as much fun as you imagined. It was that much fun, and the kinkiness of it made it that much more exciting.

They tried to label you. Call you “torture porn.” I wasn’t hearing that, and I don’t believe it. Even now, after all we’ve been through, I’m not willing to let them stoop to that level. Believe it or not, I DO still care about you. That’s why writing this letter is so difficult for me. I don’t like to hurt you and I don’t want things to be awkward for us.

It’s very important to me that you understand that I cherish the memories of our first date. It was new and adventurous and yes, kinky. It felt dirty, but in that way that also feels so scandalous that it’s fun. It was a fantastic night, and I really wish we could have just left it at that.

But these things almost never can be left alone. It just doesn’t work that way. You got attached and once the glamor wore off, I caught a glimpse of what life might be like if we kept going the way we were.

I’m talking of course of our second date. I won’t lie. I looked forward to our second date. I had a better idea of what to expect, or, at least I thought I did. I felt so alive and energized before our second date. Then, as soon as you showed up, I knew something was different. I don’t know if you changed or if my eyes were a little more focused. I think it might have been a combination of both. That second date was such an abysmal failure. Your characters were so shallow and underdeveloped that I could barely talk to them, much less sit in a room with them for two hours. The worse part of it is that you seemed to mistake complexity with depth. That was just embarrassing to tell you the truth. By adding a bunch of intricate history and convoluted crisscrossing paths to characters that have no personality and depth doesn’t make them more interesting, it just makes it more frustrating to try and sort out all of their bullshit when you really don’t even care. It became an exercise in disinterest. The only reason I stuck around for the whole thing was that I kept hoping that some of that excitement from the first date would come back.

But it didn’t. Sure, most of the elements were there, but doing them the second time around, it felt less kinky and more just gross and pathetic. The first time around it was like a really sexy girlfriend who is willing to do things the other girls won’t do. The second time… it was like finding out that the sexy girl is a hooker and that she’s not actually that sexy and she just wants your money. It stopped being kinky and just became sad. Sad for both of us.

You even had a chance to impress me. You had that girl from 7th Heaven (the goofy looking one, not the hot one and not the little kid) all lined up and ready for hot torture action, and you couldn’t even do that. She had an asthma attack or a seizure or something stupid like that. What a let down.

I know it’s all very harsh, but it’s the truth.

The worst thing was that you called almost immediately after that second date and asked to see me again the next year.

I told you I’d think about it. And I did.

After a year I very reluctantly decided to give you another chance. I don’t know why, but I did. Maybe I was hoping that I just caught you on a bad day last time around. Maybe I was hoping that you’d grown up a little. I don’t know.

And you had grown up a bit. I don’t deny that. Unfortunately, I think you thought you’d grown up a lot more than you actually had. You were self important and arrogant. You seemed to be under the impression that you were a lot smarter and interesting that you actually are. I know I must sound like a real asshole saying something like that, but at this point, after that third date, and our forth tonight, I’m done being nice. I’m ready to call it like it is.

Part of the reason I feel I need to take you down a peg is because you’ve got a lot of people telling you how great you are. They’re blowing your head up, Saw. They’re making you believe that you’re better than you are. It’s actually pretty sad to watch. If you’d just step back a little and give us more time to reflect on our relationship, we might have had a chance. But no, you had to call BEFORE our third date and ask for a forth. That felt very cocky indeed. I guess I hoped that maybe things had changed enough that you were confident that we’d keep going out. And things did change a decent amount. Enough that I was willing to go out tonight. Your characters were a little more interesting and there was a little of that excitement that I felt the first time around. It was enough to get me to agree on that forth date.

That brings us up to tonight.

The forth date.

Things were going well at first. I was comfortable. We were laughing and you brought more of that kinky fun that I felt the first time around. It was building up to what could have been, finally, another good date.

But you had to go and blow it. You blew it all to hell. Everything that we built up tonight was ruined when you decided to go back to what ruined us in the first place: a horribly contrived and unnecessarily complicated story about characters that I didn’t care about.

Sure, it was a lot of fun seeing Luke from The Gilmore Girls in there. That was great. And yes, finally, your characters seemed to be getting better. I learned a lot more about what makes you you, as well as what your intentions are, and that was nice. That’s what makes this so hard. It’s hard because I finally DO see you for what you are, and it’s simply not something I want. Not in the long run.

You know, when I said that on our second date you came across as more like a hooker than a kinky girlfriend, I was thinking specifically about tonight as well. Yes, I got to know you better, but that doesn’t make you any less of a whore. Because, really, that’s what it comes down to. You’re a whore. The only difference is that now you’re a whore that I know a little better. But you’re kidding yourself if you think we’re going to last or ever develop a meaningful relationship. That’s just not going to happen.

Maybe in the beginning, I was under the illusion that we might settle down and make it work. But I was just caught up in the excitement and didn’t want to let it go. Now that I’ve seen you for what you are, I had to write this letter and let you know, definitively, we aren’t going to be what you want us to be.

Saw, I’ve been with a lot of horror movies. I’ve been with a few that were far dirtier and nastier than you. I’ve been with classy, respectable horror movies. I’ve been with horror movies that I could see myself getting married to and having a million babies with.

But let’s not kid ourselves here. You’re not A Nightmare on Elm Street. You’re not Friday the 13th. You’re not even Hellraiser. The sad thing is that you seem to think you are. And your desperate attempts to shoehorn your way into their company is part of the reason I’m leaving you. I’ve heard you go around telling people that Jigsaw is a “horror icon” on par with Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers. But that’s not something you can create in three years. It took decades for those characters to become icons. We’ve been seeing each other for three years. Jason Vorhese has been killing kids at Crystal Lake for almost ten times that long. You can’t just step up and pretend you’re on the same level with these other horror movies. It just doesn’t work that way. You’ve become needy and downright pathetic. And you’re certainly WAY too confident. Jigsaw no where near Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers. Not even close.

So where does that leave us?

Yes, tonight almost went well. I feel a little better about things than I did. But I won’t lie and say that I’m not a little embarrassed to be seen with you. The worst part of all is that I don’t even really care about you anymore, even though I want to. I’ve let go.

I’m sure we’ll probably hook up again. I’m a realist. It might be in a seedier environment. No more fancy restaurants for us. I think we’re going to have to slum it on DVD. If at all. This isn’t meant to give you hope, because honey, there isn’t any.

Like I said Saw, you’re a whore, and I’ll treat you like one. You can be my booty call and that’s it. We’re never going to be anything more than that. From now on, if we meet up at all, it’s going to be someplace dark and someplace where no one will recognize me. And we’re not going to tell anyone.

I’m sorry it has to be this way, and I’m sorry I had to be so blunt, but it’s the way I feel. I’m done letting you embarrass me, and I’m certainly done defending you. You might not be exactly what they said you are, but you certainly aren’t someone I’m going to invest any quality time in.

Really though, take care of yourself. Maybe, one day, you’ll figure it all out, and maybe down the road we’ll talk again. But I’m not going to hold my breath.

Goodbye,

Joe

I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.

Watched The Reaping and it was pretty damned sub-par. Well, I guess, given the kind of movie it is, I guess it’s pretty much par. But my standard for horror movies is higher than the standard currently set for major studio releases. I guess I was hoping for more from Swank. It had potential, but it fell apart. The gist of it went like this:

INT. COLLEGE – DAY

HILLARY SWANK and some SOUTHERN DUDE walk.

SOUTHERN DUDE
Our quaint southern town has teh plagues!

HILLARY SWANK
PFFT! Plagues aren’t real stupid hillbilly!
I should know, my daughter died so I don’t believe in god!

EXT. QUAINT TOWN – DAY
Hillary Swank, The Southern Dude and a BLACK DUDE walk through a river of blood. Frogs fall out of the sky and flies and lice fly around everywhere.

SOUTHERN DUDE
Plagues I tells you!

HILLARY SWANK
THERE’S A SCIENTIFIC EXPLINATION FOR EVERYTHING SHUT UP!

BLACK DUDE
This shit looks like plagues, beeyotch!

INT. CREEPY BAYOU FAMILY’S HOUSE – DAY
Hillary Swank talks to a CREEEPY MOM

CREEPY MOM
Are you here to kill my baby girl?!

HILLARY SWANK
WTF? No!

CREEPY MOM
Why not?!

HILLARY SWANK
U R teh devils!

EXT. CREEPY BAYOU FAMILY’S HOUSE – DAY
A CREEPY LITTLE GIRL sends swarms of locusts to kill people.

SOUTHERN DUDE
I’M TEH BAD GUY!!

HILLARY SWANK
OH NOS!!!

SOUTHERN DUDE
AND THE BLACK GUY IS DEAD!!

HILLARY SWANK
OMG!!

SOUTHERN DUDE
lol!!!!!!!

HILLARY SWANK
OMG TEH PLAGUES IZ REALZ!!

God kills all the bad guys.

INT. HILLARY SWANK’S CAR
Hillary Swank drives and the Creepy Little Girl rides.

CREEPY GIRL
U R PREGNENTS WIT DA DEVILZ BABIES!!!

HILLARY SWANK
OH NOS!!!!

THE END… OR IS IT?!?!

I’m so sick of movies where the main character used to believe in god but then something bad happened and now they don’t and the rest of the movie is about them getting their faith back. Fuck that. It’s getting really old.

Especially in that shit ass movie Signs. Mel Gibson disowns god because M. Knight Shamalamdingdong drunk drived his wife into a tree and then he gets his faith back when Johnny Cash beats up aliens with a baseball bat. LAME.

And why is it so goddamned impossible for movie people to make blood look like blood? And what’s with all of the bad CGI blood that’s been in movies lately? And why is she dressed like Laura Croft for the last half of the movie?

Anyway, I have to go to work. I want to stay at home and sleep.

Currently Listening: Madonna – Live To Tell

No time. We’re leaving in like, fifteen minutes or something.

Quick recap of things I wanted to post about but didn’t get time to before now.

Watched Bug (comes out Tuesday on DVD)

It was fantastic! Great characters. Interesting metaphors. Good stuff. Harry Conic Jr is the fucking Man. If they ever (god forbid) decide to try and do another X-Men movie, he is the perfect guy to play Gambit. Not that they should do another X-Men movie… or put a lame ass character like Gambit in a movie. I’m just saying is all.

Watched Knocked Up. It was also fantastic. Way better than I expected. I wish all romantic comedies could be good like this instead of pandering crap like they usually are. I was surprised that they worked the close up birth shots into the movie. Not that I was bothered by it, I just didn’t expect it.

I just heard Sandra say “I’m ready!” from the bathroom where she’s been dicking around with her hair and make up and shit for the last hour. So I guess that means it’s time to go now!

Back in a week!

Alright, so I went and watched Rob Zombie’s version of Halloween today.

I should get a few pieces of baggage out of the way before I start talking about the actual movie.

Baggage #1.
I’m not a huge fan of the original. I respect the original, and I enjoyed the original, but it’s not one of my favorite horror movies. It’s not even one of my favorite slasher movies. I can totally see why people love it, and I see what it did for the genre and why it’s a landmark film… but honestly, I’m not a huge fan of John Carpenter and I’m not a huge fan of Michael Myers as a villain.

Baggage #2.
I really, really loved The Devil’s Rejects, and I’ve got a lot of respect for Rob Zombie as a film maker, mostly because of that movie. I’ve also got a lot of hope for his future movies, and I was pretty damned excited for this one.

Baggage #3.
Unlike most movie geeks (I don’t really consider myself a movie geek, but other people probably would) I don’t hate remakes. In fact, I like the concept of them quite a lot. I like the idea of someone putting their own spin on “classic” modern mythology. I recognize that remakes have a tendency to suck, but that isn’t because of deviations from the source material, but because people feel that they can use the foundation created by the original to fuel their own movie and that they don’t have to try as hard. What I think people fail to understand is that if you’re going to remake a movie, you have to be willing to actually reinvent the movie with your own perspective. I think it probably takes more work to remake a movie properly than it does to make an original movie. In order for a remake to work, you have to not only justify the remake, but also do something different enough to qualify as a new movie. It’s a pretty fine line.

Baggage #4.
It should be understood that over the course of writing this, I will more than likely reveal story elements that could be considered spoilers. So, if you haven’t seen the movie, and you intend to, you should stop reading now. Hell, if you plan to see this movie and you haven’t yet, you shouldn’t be reading ANYTHING about it. Just go see it first, then come back and read this.

Now on to the movie itself.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween both succeeded and failed in a few different areas. I’m pretty conflicted on it to tell you the truth. The soup of contradictions that the movie ended up being tasted good enough to say that I liked it, but it wasn’t the savory meal I wanted.

It seems that Zombie’s approach to this movie was to try and ground Michael Myers in some sort of reality. He approaches this a couple of ways. The first is to give him a fairly text book serial killer child hood. Young Michael is a sensitive, weird kid who comes from a broken and abusive home. He tortures animals and is bullied in school (by the kid from Spy Kids no less) and his mom is a stripper. It’s almost a cliche serial killer background. But, at the same time, it’s a typical background because it’s true. Most of the “great” serial killers have come from a variation on these cliches. It’s just how it works. Whether or not psychopaths are born or made is debatable, and not really addressed here. The fact of the matter is that one popped up here, in this town, and his name was Michael Myers.

If Zombie’s goal was the explain why Michael Myers became who he became, he both succeeded and failed in my opinion. The explanations he came up with work in a few different ways. We understand why he wears the mask he wears and we understand (sort of) how a ten year old boy could go on a murdering rampage and kill everyone in his house. The problem is that by setting this theme of explaining away the Michael Myers myth, it makes it that much more awkward when Myers does things that don’t make sense. It’s almost like Zombie got tired of explaining things and just wanted to get to the killing.

I can picture Rob sitting at his laptop, smoking a cigarette and wearing a ballcap, a Final Draft document open in front of him. I can see him kind of lifting his hat and scratching his head and thinking “okay, now what?” never quite sure what direction he wanted to go. It’s like he had two movies he wanted to make, and never could decide which one to actually film. The end result feels… frustrated. If that makes sense. Like, when it was finished filming, Rob let out a giant sigh, glad it was finally over and hoping he can forget the whole thing.

I’m not trying to suggest that this is a movie isn’t something to be proud of. The good things about it are really good. But I can see where it would be hard to get past the bad things.

In what is becoming kind of a trademark for Rob Zombie, the kills are incredibly brutal and disturbing. Not because of the nature of the murders (they’re mostly pretty standard Michael Myers butcher knife stabbins) but because of the way Zombie films them. In deaths that would be purely entertaining and fun in any other movie, this film presents them as vicious, cringe inducing, completely unglamorous savage murders. Which is really different in this genre, and it’s completely due to the way Rob directs them. It’s certainly not that we care about the people dying, because we barely know them. Rob just seems to know exactly how to make death look just as disturbing and fucked up as it should. And it’s not because of the gore either, because really, the gore in this movie is pretty minimal. It’s almost ironic that in remaking the daddy of all slasher movies, Rob Zombie actually departs from his own gory tendencies. There’s no denying that Rob Zombie can paint a picture on the movie screen, and extract the feelings he’s trying to extract and place them directly in your mind. He’s an artist through and through. It just happens that the pictures he’s painting and the feelings he’s evoking are pretty damned dark.

The movie is peppered with horror veterans and Rob Zombie regulars.

—-

Okay, so it’s like, a week later. I still haven’t gotten around to finishing this review. I’ve had some time to process how I feel about it, and to have a couple discussions with other people who have seen the movie. I find myself defending the movie more than talking it down. For the most part, I enjoyed what Rob did with it. It truly was exactly what it was supposed to be. It wasn’t a “remake” of Halloween or a sequel or anything like that. It’s like someone asked “What would Halloween be like if Rob Zombie had done it instead of John Carpenter?”

It needs to be approached as though the original Halloween never existed at all. It’s kind of like those old What If comics that Marvel used to put out. The premise of the series was that there was this big bald outer space dude called The Watcher who would show us alternate realities that could have occurred, had certain events in the Marvel gone differently. The Watcher would give us a brief synopsis of the “actual” events and then show us how it would have turned out if those events happened differently. So like, one issue might be called “What if Uncle Ben Had Been Bitten by a Radioactive Spider and Became Spider-man” or “What If Galactus Punched Wolverine in the Balls” and then goes on to explain how that could have happened and what it would look like.

I think of this movie as “What if Rob Zombie had made Halloween instead of John Carpenter” rather than as a remake or re-imagining or whatever they’re calling it. Rather than comparing it to the original I think it works better to simply pretend the original didn’t exist at all and just look at this as an original Rob Zombie film.

Of course, the original DID exist, so people are going to compare them, but whatever.

There seems to be this notion that certain films and works of art are some how sacred and not to be touched. I disagree with this idea very strongly. The fact is that the original Halloween did what it did thirty and some years ago, and that’s all quite remarkable and everything… but really, it is what it is and it will always be that. Whether or not Rob Zombie makes a movie has nothing to do with the original Halloween. Yes, he’s using the original Halloween as the inspiration for his movie, but that doesn’t change that Rob Zombie’s Halloween is just that… Rob Zombie’s Halloween, and it should be judged strictly on it’s own merit.

And judging it on it’s own merit, it is a flawed film. I certainly won’t deny that. There are some things that I take major issue with in this film.

First and foremost, it seems as though Zombie wanted to make two films and couldn’t quite reconcile the two. What we’ve got here are two distinct and different halves of movies. The first half is a serial killer movie. The second half is a slasher movie. These are two different kinds of movies and they don’t really work well together. Especially when each half is given it’s own specific genre. Some movies have managed to blend the two fairly well. Silence of the Lambs is an example of the successful melding of the two genres.

But here, it feels like we suddenly switch genres halfway through the movie and it’s uncomfortable. It also doesn’t really work, story wise. While both halves are fairly well constructed when looked at as separate parts. The problem is that Rob seems to be trying to explain away the Michael Myers as “The Shape” in the second half of the movie (who is for all intents and purposes the classic killing machine he was in the original films) by giving him the history of a serial killer. A Jeffrey Dahmer childhood does not explain why someone is able to apparently psychically find his sister that he hasn’t seen since she was a baby when she doesn’t even know who she is. It doesn’t explain why he can get shot to shit with a 357 Magnum (sold to Dr. Loomis by Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees no less) and still keep coming at you. It doesn’t explain why he is essentially super human.

But being in a slasher film does. That’s the nature of these films. If it had just been a slasher movie, then I wouldn’t expect or ask Rob to explain any of it. That’s part of the fun of the genre. These monsters exist and can do what they do in these movies, and that’s that. The fact of the matter is that he DID try to offer an explanation, and it doesn’t really work.

Now, Rob Zombie has already made a fantastic serial killer movie called The Devil’s Rejects. That was a straight up serial killer movie. He also made a fairly decent slasher movie called House of 1000 Corpses. That was a straight up slasher movie. He obviously understands both genres through and through. And, like I said, if the two halves of his Halloween had been individually developed as their own movies, he could have produced two really great movies. The idea of a ten year old serial killer could have been a fantastic movie on it’s own. His interpretation of Michael Myers in White Trash Land could have been a fantastic movie on IT’S own. Unfortunately, when he mushed them together… the end result is just muddled.

Now, that’s enough talking shit. I should really get to the things I liked.

I’m finally getting the impression that Sheri Moon Zombie is an acceptable addition to the film world.

I’ve always kind of had a problem with directors and producers who cast their significant others in their movies. Especially when that significant other wouldn’t have otherwise been cast. It drives me batshit when Tim Burton does it. Kevin Smith goes as far as to cast his wife in movies when she isn’t even an actress, and certainly isn’t good at playing the parts she’s given. To me, that’s an example of someone who really doesn’t take what they do very seriously. Handing out major roles to unqualified actresses simply because they’re sucking your dick is entirely disrespectful to everyone else working on your film, as well as those paying to see your film.

It never really bothered me when Sheri Moon Zombie started popping up as Baby Firefly in Rob Zombie’s first two movies, because really, the part she was playing didn’t require her to be much more than pretty and kind of bratty. They were easy roles to play and she did an decent job playing them. But this role was much more involved and required her to actually do some decent acting. I knew she was in the movie as Michael Myers’ mom, but I didn’t know the extent of the role she played. As the film started rolling along and I realized that she was playing a fairly pivotal role, my first reaction was to be a bit put off by it. But as the movie cruised on, she actually managed to carry herself quite well, and impressed me. She did a fine job, and had she not been married to the director, I wouldn’t have taken any issue with her performance, so in the end, I’m fine with it. Good for her for making it work.

This was by far Zombie’s best looking film so far. With House of 1000 Corpses, the style was so chaotic and music video-ish that it kind of gave me a headache to watch. The Devil’s Rejects looked great for the style he was going for… that kind of desert wasteland western look. But the style that it was eventually became somewhat bland, just by it’s nature.

This film had a pretty decent variety of styles and color pallets. It was a giant leap forward for Zombie as far as style and finding that balance between chaos and reality. I’m fully confident that Rob Zombie will only get stylistically better with each film he makes.

The two halves (like Full Metal Jacket, though not as successfully) each worked quite independently of each other. The cold, merciless killing the young Michael Myers handed out was expertly handled in my opinion. Rob did a fantastic job of making a ten year old boy seem not only terrifying but horribly plausible. There ARE kids like that out there, and he did a great job of showing just how a ten year old murderer might come to do what he does. There’s a feeling that it’s never REALLY explained why he is the way he is, but honestly, there IS no explaining it. Yes, he has the classic serial killer history. Yes his family is disturbingly dysfunctional. But by the point that we join this family, young Michael is already killing small animals and well on his way to snapping and taking that next step. You can’t explain it away because no one can explain it. There are plenty of people who come from horribly abusive home lives that don’t become murderers. It’s not really an explanation as it is simply the catalyst for what was probably bound to happen eventually anyway. I believe that had the film been allowed to progress as a serial killer movie (without bringing the classic Michael Myers slasher element into it) we could have had a really impressive and disturbing film.

The slasher half of the film was even better. He took a genre that’s been beat into an unrecognizable and pathetic pulp and made it not only intense and scary again, but damned fun to watch, while still managing to stay within the confines and rules of the genre. The killings seemed fresh and horrible again. The slasher was intimidating and freighting again. Yet it still respected the rules of the genre. That’s something that I wouldn’t expect from many film makers, and I’m quite happy Rob was able to pull it off.

Like with The Devil’s Rejects, the soundtrack was badass. A fantastic mix of 70s rock that Rob Zombie obviously loves. Alice Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult and Nazareth and even Peter Frampton. The soundtrack was used perfectly, even almost too perfectly at times. There was a scene when young Michael is sitting on the curb, sad and depressed because his sister won’t take him trick-or-treating, his mom is stripping in a titty bar and his step father is a prick. He’s sitting on the curb watching all the other kids going by with their happy families and the song Love Hurts by Nazareth is playing, almost making fun of him. It’s so sappy it’s funny, and I think that was the intention.

That leads into a crucial point that I think some people missed. One of the major complaints I’m hearing about the movie is that Rob Zombie made Michael Myers a sympathetic character. I don’t believe this is true at all. From the get go we know that he’s a sick fucking cold bastard. From the first scene we understand that. Through the rest of the movie this never really changes. Yes, we see that his life is hard and that he never really had a chance, but I never got the impression we were supposed to feel bad for him. There’s a pivotal scene when Michael is breaking out of the institution where he has a distinct choice to not kill a friendly janitor (played by the always awesome Danny Trejo) that treated him well for the twenty years or whatever he was in there. He chooses to murder him even though he didn’t have to. I think that proves right there that we aren’t supposed to view him as anything other than a monster. The curb/Love Hurts scene felt less like a sympathy pull and more like an almost sarcastic mocking of the young monster who’s feelings are hurt. It’s almost like we’re supposed to watch him with this sappy ass song playing and say “Awww, poor baby!” and point and laugh. He’s a monster through and through, and it’s never really debated or fucked with. Yes, there are these elements that contributed to who he becomes, but I never felt like Rob was trying to justify his monstrous nature, or make him a sympathetic character.

There is something that struck me as kind of odd and I didn’t really know how I felt about it until I started writing this. The image of Michael as an adult, without his mask was drastically different than I ever pictured. He looks like… well… a comic book version of Rob Zombie himself. I kept getting the feeling that Rob created this Michael Myers in his own image. The stringy, unwashed looking hair, the hunched shoulders, head down… even the weird mechanic’s jumpsuit he wears… it all felt like a suped up version of Rob Zombie himself, sans beard. Young Michael wears a KISS t-shirt through much of his portion of the movie. I felt like this had very little to do with him as a character and a lot more to do with that Rob Zombie simply likes KISS and wanted his main character to reflect his own interests.

And I’m okay with this. At first it felt kind of goofy, but the more I think about it, the more I understand it. Any time a writer creates a character he builds that person in his or her own image. It’s the only way it can work. Most of the time these characters come across as far enough removed that you don’t really think about it, but no matter what, every character in every story reflects an aspect of the person who created them. In the case of Michael Myers, he didn’t really have that luxury. Michel Myers is essentially an established (though fairly mysterious) character. So Rob had to take the few opportunities he had to inject a little of himself into what is essentially a faceless character. It’s only fair really.

  Now, it’s no secret that Rob Zombie has some pretty dark interests. That’s a given. More often than not he looks like Charles Manson’s healthier younger brother. He even goes as far as to add the classic Manson X on his forehead when he’s posing in his White Zombie monster make up. Bill Moseley’s character in The Devil’s Rejects pretty much WAS Charles Manson (even down to using Tex Watson’s quote from the Sharon Tate murders “I’m the Devil and I’m here to the Devil’s work” before killing the shit out of some dude) and it seems to be a common thread through a lot of his work both musically and with his movies. It’s something I can understand pretty well, having grown up sharing a lot of Rob Zombie’s interests. I can totally understand the kind of twisted hero-worship of monsters, both real and fictional. That’s not to say that I ever wanted to BE Freddy Krueger or Charles Manson, but there’s a certain degree of tweaked respect that one can develop for people that make an impact. Some people are capable of evoking a very strong response in people, and it’s only natural that some people will respect that, even when that response is fear. Looking up to Michael Myers or Dracula or Charles Manson doesn’t imply a endorsement of their actions… it’s just a fascination with what they do and the impact they’ve made, as well as a tendency to fantasize about being able to evoke that same reaction. Not a fantasy to do what they did, but simply to be able to evoke that much of a reaction from people. I think this is particularly common in creative people. People who dedicate their lives to creative endeavors want to cause an emotional reaction in people, so it makes sense to look up to people who have been able to successfully cause similar reactions. In the case of Rob Zombie, as well as myself, the reaction that is generally based around fear, even if it’s a fun roller coaster thrill ride kind of fear. Rob’s done it for years with his music and now he’s doing it with his movies.

So when he’s given the opportunity to make one of the most iconic characters in horror movie history in his own image, he takes it. He didn’t do it to the degree that it felt self indulgent, but there certainly is a pretty obvious thread of Rob himself in his version of both young Michael Myers and The Shape that he becomes. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have done the same thing.

Another complaint that I’ve heard a few times was about Malcolm Mcdowell’s performance as Dr. Loomis. People have said that he’s campy and silly and over dramatic. I don’t really see the problem. That’s the character. Dr. Loomis a self important jackass. He says pretentious, silly things with complete conviction. Donald Pleasence did the same exact thing in his portrayal of the original Dr. Loomis. Mcdowell played it essentially the same way. There was a certain degree of cynicism and self motivation in the actions of Mcdowell’s Dr. Loomis, but otherwise, he was pretty much the same. You don’t hire Malcolm Mcdowell unless you want someone to be overly dramatic and self important. That’s his style. It always has been. He’s a character actor and he played that character he always plays to a T. It was silly and exaggerated, but it was supposed to be. I felt like it worked perfectly.

The cameos in the movie were great (though a bit distracting at times.) Like the music, it was very comfortable and put a smile on my face when someone I’ve known and loved for a long time showed up. Hell, almost the entire cast of The Devil’s Rejects shows up at some point or another. Brad Dourif, Danny Trejo, Clint Howard, Ken Foree (the black dude in the original Dawn of the Dead) to friggin Dee Wallace (Eliot’s mom in E.T. as well as in Cujo and The Howling.) It was an impressive collection of horror and B movie icons.

I think I’ve said everything I need to say about this movie now. Like I said, I’ve been working on this off and on for over a week now and every time I sit down to try and finish it I end up getting distracted. So I better wrap it up now. I know this has been long and rambling but, you know, whatever. It’s how I roll.

Currently Listening: Alice Cooper – Gimme

I posted a little bit ago that I watched the 2004 TV movie Helter Skelter, starring Jeremy Davies as Charles Manson.

Around the time that movie came out on DVD I went looking for it. I couldn’t find it anywhere, but what I did find was this film, The Manson Family. Given that there was a string of horrible serial killer movies going straight to DVD at the time, covering everyone from John Wayne Gacey to Ed Gein to Jeffery Dahmer and everyone in between. Most of these movies were complete crap. There were a couple of stand outs (most notably is, in my opinion, Matthew Bright’s surprisingly entertaining film Ted Bundy) but generally the majority of them weren’t worth watching. Given that current climate in low budget, straight to video “true crime” serial killer movies, I didn’t get any farther than the box of The Manson Family. The images on the back looked so low budget and cheesy that any potential interest I might have had in it was gone. I eventually gave up my quest to find the Helter Skelter DVD and pretty much forgot about it. Every now and then (generally whenever I saw Jeremy Davies in anything else) I’d find myself wondering if the new Helter Skelter was as bad as people said it was.

As you probably know, I finally watched the 2004 Helter Skelter, and yeah, it was pretty bad. It had moments that were interesting, and it’s focus was more on what led up to the murders rather than the trial itself (which was what the book was mostly about, naturally, since it was written by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi) and the way Charlie interacted with the family.

I read a review of the DVD of The Manson Family (which I’d since forgotten about) that was singing it’s praises. I still anticipated a pretty hefty load of crap, but my curiosity was raised and I set about trying to procure a copy. I ended up downloading it and I just finished watching it.

Holy shit! That movie was fucking AWESOME!

Yes, it’s extremely low budget… but it’s intentionally extremely low budget. It’s filmed as though it’s a no-budget independent movie from the 70s. It’s like a mix of Last House on the Left, Behind the Green Door and like… an early Troma film.

It’s a fake documentary, mixing “interview” footage with actors playing the people involved, both in the interviews and the reenactments. If it wasn’t for a few production errors (and the fairly obnoxious modern storyline following a group of new Manson family members that didn’t need to be there) I would have believed that it WAS a low budget 70s exploitation film. The film is purposely cheap and degraded. The sets are cheap and feel like 70s porn sets. The acting is the same kind of stiff and awkward acting you get when you hire a bunch of local theater kids to act in your movie. The same kind of acting you find in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Toxic Avenger. Whether that was intentional or not, or just a fortunate accident, doesn’t really matter, because it works perfectly. The editing is cheap and completely inline with 70s horror. It’s loaded with cheesy horror gore and about as much sex and nudity you can pack into a movie without getting an X rating. It’s an exploitation film in all it’s glory and completely unapologetic and proud of what it is.

All of that aside, the film also manages to portray probably the most accurate and honest rendition of the Manson Family story I’ve seen yet. Yet, at the same time, is ridiculously over the top and silly.

The way it works is somewhat similar to the movie Wonderland that came out a few years ago, about John Holmes and the Wonderland murders. Like Wonderland (though not nearly as cohesively) it presents the events from a few different perspectives. It shows what the Family members said about what happened, what the myths about the events were and then what the film makers believes actually happened. It does this chaotically and without real definition, so at times, it’s hard to really tell which story you’re actually watching. But in the end, you get a definite feel for both the sympathetic view of the events as well as the demonic, more commonly accepted view, and finally, the simply sad and entirely unimpressive “reality” of the situation.

The film itself isn’t sympathetic to Charlie or the Family at all, but it does a fantastic job of showing how things could snowball into the horror of the killing spree. We get the impression that things started out innocently enough and that the excessive drug use and attempts to distance themselves from the capitalist American culture, combined with Charlie’s frustration with inability to get a record deal and a drug deal that ended in violence eventually pushed the family well over the edge, and they simply weren’t able to crawl back to sanity. The whole situation was really much more pathetic and sad than evil and menacing. Charlie wasn’t/isn’t a puppet master. He was exactly as he says he is… a dirty kid that was raised in the gutter, destined for jail and was never meant to function in our society. He was charismatic and he understood people and what people want to hear, and he used that to build a family for himself. And I mean an actual family. He, like anyone else, wanted to be loved and accepted, and the way he facilitated that was by providing a place for lost children to “find themselves” and do what lost children want to do… sit around smoking weed and fucking. It was destined to fall apart, and it’s a shame it crashed and burned as violently and horrifically as it did.

Vincent Bugliosi wants you to believe that Charles Manson is a monster. That he controls people and brainwashes people and that he can stop clocks with his mind and that he has networks of hundreds of people everywhere, waiting to spring Helter Skelter on the world. He’d have you believe that Charlie Manson convinces people to kill for him because he’s a sadistic devil. I simply don’t believe that.

I believe that Charles Manson and the Manson Family were collectively in that place where you can’t really tell what’s up and what’s down. Where reality and chaos are so intertwined that it’s impossible to get any sort of grip on what’s real and right and decent and what’s just a bloody hunk of your Id pouring out of your brain. You do enough acid and spend enough of your time stoned out of your head and I think it gets fairly easy to lose track of where your feet are and why you’re doing what you’re doing. I don’t think there was a whole lot of rational thought involved in the killings that happened. I believe there was intent to murder and I believe that these people who committed those crimes are guilty of murder, but I also don’t really believe anyone involved was thinking with a clear head, Charlie included.

Yeah, they had their Helter Skelter theory, and yeah, I believe they were pretty heavily invested in it. If you get worked up enough about something, and you get stoned enough, some crazy shit can start to make sense. And really, at the time these kids were formulating this theory about an impending race war, it’s hard to deny that the idea wasn’t really that crazy. Obviously the Beatles weren’t instructing anyone to do anything, but things DID look pretty grim at the time. Race relations were completely fucked in the 60s and 70s. The concept of a race war wasn’t that far off from a potential reality. So was it crazy? Yeah… but not nearly as crazy as it seems looking back.

The Manson Family, like the Waco Branch Davidians and the Jones Town nutjobs, were really little more than a bunch of sad people pushed into a corner. They tip toed too far into the deep end of the pool before they realized they couldn’t swim. They were led by someone who started out well intentioned enough, but didn’t know how to handle the unquestioning love and devotion and worship laid at his feet, and it went to his head. These leaders got greedy and started to believe their own bullshit. When sane people didn’t accept them the way their followers did, the results were ugly.

Is Charles Manson a bad guy? Yeah, I think he is. I think he’s as bad as anyone who can’t function in our society without creating chaos and violence. He’s as bad as anyone who takes their need for love and validation to an inappropriate level. He’s a bad guy… but I also think he’s just a guy. He preached love and the destruction of the egos society gives us… and eventually it ended in horrible, unfortunate violence. He’s a charismatic, intelligent guy who has a fucked up set of values and a completely whacked view of the world. Whacked in the sense that it doesn’t jive with our society as it stands right now. But then again, the same thing was said about Jesus Christ.

Well, Fido is pretty much the best movie ever made. Not just the best zombie movie, but the best movie period.

A few thoughts:

#1. Billy Connolly is the fucking man. We already knew that, but he’s proven it again. The fucking MAN.

#2. I think I may have gotten to the point where I can watch Dylan Baker in a movie and not see him as the child raping pedophile from Happiness. It’s taken a while. It’s been almost ten years and he’s done like, fifty movies since then. I guess that’s the mark of a really great performance.

#3. Any time I see Tim Blake Nelson in a movie, I smile.

Especially when he’s chomping on a cigarette holder like Hunter S. Thompson and leading his sex-zombie around on a leash.

#4. Finally a truly great Canadian film. I wasn’t sure Canada had it in them. It’s been what… almost thirty years since The Changeling? Lions Gate is “testing” the movie in Canada first to see if they want to actually do a theatrical release in the States. If you’re Canadian and reading this, go see this damned movie. If you’re American, pray that Canadians go and see this damned movie, otherwise you’re looking at a direct to video release, and that just aint right.

#5. I didn’t think I could really love Carrie-Anne Moss in a movie. I thought The Matrix movies wrecked her for me. Guess not.

#6. There’s an actress in this movie named Sonja Bennett. She plays Tim Blake Nelson’s sex zombie, Tammy. Now, I first saw her in the John Landis episode of Masters of Horror, Dear Woman. She played a coroner. I thought she was really cute and interesting so I looked her up, found out that she’s Canadian and looked into who was her agent. I’ve been back and forth with her agent for the past few months about possibly representing me as a screenwriter. He really liked my Alice in Wonderland script but felt it would be too expensive to sell without having an established name, but asked me to send him my vampire script when it’s finished.

Well shit. That was kind of fucked up.

I knew very little about this movie before watching it tonight. I knew it was “controversial” and that it was considered very disturbing, though I didn’t know what specifically was disturbing about it. I knew it was a “classic” and that it heavily influenced a lot of modern horror film makers.

But I didn’t know the story or really anything about it.

Now I do.

It wasn’t particularly scary as it was disturbing. Deeply disturbing. For a movie shot in the late seventies, the special effects and style of shooting were extremely ahead of it’s time.

It’s weird… this is the third movie I’ve watched in the last month that deals heavily with the idea of dumb Americans going into parts of the world that don’t want them there, acting like dicks and paying the price.

Basically the movie is two stories. The first half is about this professor going down into South America to recover footage lost by a team of documentary film makers. He has to deal with all sorts of wild cannibal tribes. It’s somewhat disturbing though nothing mind blowingly sick. So he gets the footage and brings it back to New York. Then the second half of the movie is watching the footage and finding out what happened to the film makers. This second half is 100% Blair Witch Project. Like, almost to the point that you could accuse the Blair Witch Project of plagiarism.

There’s a scene in the first half where one of the guides who is taking the professor through the jungle catches a small animal that he calls a muskrat (I’ve since found out it was actually something called a coatimundi) that he kills and cooks. He stabs it in the head. I was watching it going “Pfft. Fucking puppet ass puppet.”

Then later in the second half there’s a very similar scene where again, a guide is catching supper. A couple of the guys from the documentary crew and the guide capture a sea turtle and chop it up. I was watching it going “Hmmm… that’s like… a really really good puppet… Like some serious Jim Henson Creature Shop shit… how ever did they make such an amazingly life like puppet way back then?”

I started getting a little nervous.

Then even later in the movie there is a scene where these native dudes have these little squirrel monkeys captured and they hold the monkey down and cut his friggin face off.

I’m sitting there starting to sniffle a little bit and saying “I fink dats a for reals mokey… <:o” and so I pause the movie and jump on the interwebs. Wikipedia. IMdb.

Yeah… controversy. Real animals getting killed.

Fuck.

It wasn’t AS bad as it could have been. I mean, aside from one scene, all of the animal killing was depicting how these animals would be killed before being eaten. It’s not like it was the Animal Torture Show. It’s wasn’t quite like watching Faces of Death or something where it’s like “Check this out, we’re going to stab this kitten in the face!”

But it was still pretty damned uncomfortable. And honestly, I don’t really know how a group of that many people working on the movie would be cool with it.

I’m kind of conflicted.

Like the monkey scene I told you about. Reading up on it, apparently they fucked up the first shot and then were like “Shit. Better get us another monkey for take two.” But at the same time, these people actually DO eat monkey brains and that shit would be going on whether the cameras were rolling or not.

I dunno. I know that I couldn’t do it.

Anyway, all of that shit aside, it was actually a pretty friggin dope movie and way ahead of it’s time. The animal death did serve a purpose and the betterment of the film, even though the ethics of it is certainly debatable.

For a pretty decent review of the movie, check out Lloyd Kaufman’s article on the Troma website.

Current music: Jane’s Addiction – Jane Says

So I rented Hollywood Land tonight. Here is my review:

I watched about 20 minutes of it and then turned it off and said “FUCK THIS MOVIE!”

The end

This is apparently a commercial for Courtney Cox’s new show Dirt

Yeah, that’s Courtney Cox and a vibrator. wtf?

Oh, and here’s the trailer for the Dirty Harry video game, starring Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry (meaning, he actually went in and recorded new dialog for the game)

Too bad I don’t have an PS3 or a 360 like everyone else in the whole world.

In other news:

I just watched Employee of the Month starring Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t exactly good but it was watchable and Dane Cook was funny and there were a few parts where I laughed.

#1. www.pubesaid.com

What?

#2. M. Night Shyamalan can suck my fucking dick. Lady in the Water was absolutely retarded.

#3. That ANTM chick who hooked up with Peter Brady did the right thing and got implants. Good for her! Finally someone is CONTRIBUTING to the world, which is a lot more than I can say for you lot.