Category Archives: Film

Jennifer’s Body

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This was not the movie I expected. I saw previews in which the freakishly hot Popular Girl and the attractive but movie-mousy Best Friend have a power-based friendship that devolves when the hot chick is revealed to be a vampire, and I was pretty sure I’d be seeing a horror-slanted riff on the darkly comedic high school ground broken by Heathers. Coming out of the theater though, I can better relate it to the cinematic version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that Joss Whedon disliked so much. There’s still a little black comedy, sure, but it’s pretty much an even split between an actual horror movie and an over-the-top zany comedy.

Jennifer’s Body follows the devolution of that primary relationship I mentioned after the aforementioned Jennifer turns out to be a demon who is gradually eating the boys in the senior class. Which is not really a good measure of… Well, words are kind of failing me here, which is unfortunate because it’s a surprisingly good flick. Mixed in with the hilarity and the occasional scares is a pretty decent metaphor for growing out of school relationships that are based more in history than reality and toward adulthood. Then again, the paired sex scene between the main characters in dueling scenes[1] made no sense to me at all, so I’m not trying to say it’s all oniony layers of impressive and thoughtful depth here.

But I can say that Megan Fox has the best set of dying words I have ever seen on screen.

[1] 2018 edit: I know what I mean here, but damned if I can figure out how to phrase it better. They each were having sex with other people, in different locations, in one intertwined scene in the movie, is what I mean to say.

9

MV5BMTY2ODE1MTgxMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTM1NTM2Mg@@._V1__SX1859_SY847_I had my time-killing afternoon movie for yesterday narrowed down to three options, when suddenly someone at the end of the table said, “Hey, do you wanna go see 9?” And other than a slightly more expensive ticket price, I had no compelling reason why not; after all, it’s a flick I’ve wanted to see, even if Tim Burton is kind of getting played out by virtue of basically every single one of them being about loneliness. I can deal with that in my music, but it starts to get old on the screen, eventually.

In the dawning years of World War II, war-attuned scientists have created self-replicating machines “for the defense of the nation”. And then… well, you know what happens next, don’t you? As sure as zombies commute on trains[1], the machines rise up against their masters. And as humanity declines, one scientist, perhaps seeing the way the wind is blowing, engages in a knit-punk experiment to create nine tiny homunculi in the slim hopes of carrying on life on the planet. So, that’s where the movie begins; as for the actual plot, it can best be summed up as “adventure and interpersonal[2] conflict ensue”.

It was a decent albeit flawed movie. I look at it like this: if you want to see a movie with incredible animation, as good as any I’ve ever seen, you should check this out. If you want to see actiony dramatics, you’re good. If you want to see the best use of Over the Rainbow as score, this is the place to be. If you want to see a thoughtful movie that makes coherent sense as a whole, well, you might should ought to look somewhere else. Also, if you are at all allergic to the really crunchy granola[3], you’ll have some problems.

[1] Dude, it rhymes. You expect more depth from zombies?
[2] Grpuavpnyyl, vagencrefbany, but that would be a spoiler. P.S. http://rot13.com
[3] Hippies, yo. Hippies. You know what I’m saying.

Sorority Row

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One of the things I like best about horror movies is how there are no surprises. I mean, there are, obviously, but they’re all of the shocking, jumpy, and/or dramatic reveal types. There are no archetypal surprises, though. The story goes exactly the way you expect it to, and the characters act exactly the way you expect them to. Take Sorority Row. If you know the title and that it’s a horror movie, there are immediate expectations set up in your mind. There will be a bevy of attractive, sexually permissive, emotionally distant sorority chicks, at least most of whom have distasteful personalities predicated upon their innate senses of superiority over the common throng of humanity. And through some slight, real or perceived, they (and their similarly described boyfriends) will “earn” a series of brutal murders. All that, just from title plus genre.

The reason I’m okay with this is that it leaves the slate clean for the important parts of the movie. Like, how will someone die next, and who will it be? Who is the killer? Is it a g-g-g-g-ghost? Or someone with more plausible motivation? Will the movie take itself seriously and therefore be bad? Will it take itself seriously and be so bad that it’s entertaining on those very grounds? Or will it not take itself seriously and instead be equal parts ridiculous and awesome within its self-awareness?[1] Most importantly, will Carrie Fisher kick some ass?

These questions, you can clearly see, are far more interesting than the ones raised by mainstream movies. Which of these characters should I care the most about? Where is this storyline going? Who has secret tragic cancer that will be revealed in the second act? That shit simply doesn’t rate, is all I’m saying.

[1] It’s this one.

Halloween II (2009)

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This right here is a difficult review. Because I’ve just reviewed a movie that, however barely serviceable its plot, understands the way horror sequels work. Because John Carpenter’s Halloween II is the best horror sequel ever made. Because I enjoyed both Rob Zombie’s remake of John Carpenter’s original Halloween and his other movies that I’ve seen. Because it will pretty much require a non-stop spoiler parade to really explain myself. But mostly because, despite a deep inner craving to love Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, I kind of hated it. So, that’s the short version review. The longer one[1] includes, as stated, dangerously high spoiler levels.

[1] Everything below this footnote, basically

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The Final Destination

MV5BOTMwMTMzNDM1N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjMyNjk3Mg@@._V1__SX1859_SY847_I’ve said it many times before, but it has been true for as long as I’ve known about it. It appears to have been true since Joe Bob Briggs first said it in the early ’80s: if you want to make a good sequel to a horror movie, look at the movie you made in the first place and make your sequel identical to that. As such, I will not have very much to say about The Final Destination. Because it had a dude who has, for no apparent reason, visions of an upcoming tragedy and accidentally helps several people escape said tragedy.[1] After which, Death’s plan has been thwarted, and thusly these several “lucky” near-victims start to die in unlikely ways to bring things back on track, while vision-dude continues to have new visions and tries to prevent all their deaths and his own, despite the inevitability.[1]

I mean, let’s be clear. There is no point to this movie except to see people die in gruesomely inexplicable ways. But you have to give some credit to whoever came up with a concept that allowed them to film death after grisly death while avoiding all semblance of a plot, and then has gone on to do it three more times.

Also, it’s in 3D if you like that sort of thing.

[1] Matching the original film as well as both previous sequels? Check.[2]
[2] I believe that the vision-dude in Final Destination 2 may well have been a chick.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

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Movie genres, you may or may not have noticed, should be sorted by decades as well as types. 1950s screwball romantic comedies, for example, are quite different from 1990s staples such as Sleepless in Seattle. 1970s horror movies are a very different[1] thing from the 1980s slasher-dominated field, which is different again from the 1990s slickly self-aware and post-modern era. (The 2000s, across all film genres, are the decade of remakes.) My point, which may otherwise be lost in an accidental yet wholly predictable digression, is this: if you think that the 1980s comedy genre in which as much ridiculous shit is crammed into each scene as humanly possible and in which, often, the misfits battle it out with their traditionally powerful rivals for control of [the summer camp/the car wash/the campus/the used car lot] is the very best decade for comedy, then you should ought to go see The Goods. Because whoever wrote and/or directed the movie absolutely thinks so too.

I’ve already pretty well described the movie exactly, but to give it fair shrift: a failing car lot hires professional traveling car salesmen led by Jeremy Piven to come in on the Fourth of July weekend and move a lot of merchandise. Occasionally offensive[2] but generally funny hi-jinx ensue until[3] an ill-considered bet against a rival car lot threatens the whole team. Looking back, I can’t say exactly why it struck me so, but the Abe Lincoln skydiving scene was the hardest I’ve laughed at a piece of film since the Japanese investors came to Arrested Development.

[1] and, I would argue, more primally evil
[2] again, in exactly the kinds of ways you’d expect a 1980s comedy to be offensive; no surprises here
[3] well, they continue the ensuing trend after the second act turn as well, don’t get me wrong

Inglourious Basterds

MV5BMTk3NDA0NTI3Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTUwODQzMg@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_The problem I think with a Quentin Tarantino movie is that it defies categorization. He’s not exactly his own filmmaking genre, not really, but it’s a close thing. And it’s not even that Inglourious Basterds is a multi-genre hodgepodge like Kill Bill was; it’s on the whole a straightforward World War II action movie. All the same, it’s tricky to explain. But here goes: a band of Nazi-killing Jews led by Appalachian Brad Pitt, a Jew-hunting SS officer, and a young Jewish theater owner cross paths in 1944 occupied Paris over an Allied plot to take out the Nazi high command in one fell swoop. …yeah, that looks right.

There’s plenty of stylized violence, over-the-top yet finely-drawn characters, and episodic storytelling; all straight out of the Tarantino playbook. I guess he maybe does have his own genre. But it’s a good genre! Aside from my appreciation for the tropes and for this particular plot and character combination, the most interesting aspect of the film was, for me, dissecting its trajectory. More bluntly: a plan to kill Goebbels and Hitler and etc. is pretty much doomed to failure in mid-1944. I have pretty explicit historical knowledge backing me up on that point. So there I sat, watching and wondering, is this a comedy of errors? A tragedy? An ironic masterpiece in which any of several plans might have succeeded without the interference of competing plans toward the same end? What movie is Tarantino actually making? Obviously I can’t tell you what he made, because, well, that’s the whole movie. But I can say that lens really worked for me.

A Perfect Getaway

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I had a fundamental misunderstanding about this movie that completely changed its makeup for me. Luckily, I would say the change was for the better. A Perfect Getaway chronicles the fates of three couples on vacation in Hawaii who, while hiking in the largely unpopulated wilds of Kauai, are constantly dogged by rumors of a man and woman who gruesomely murdered a pair of newlyweds in Honolulu just days before. So, what I thought I went to see was a horror movie, in which the couples face a gradually hopeless game of cat and mouse against the killers. Instead, the movie is a suspense thriller in which each couple suspects the next of being the harbinger of their doom.

I think that’s the most I can safely say, suspense thrillers being what they are. I will add that our main characters shine pretty brightly, Steve Zahn continuing his [largely successful] quest to transform a supporting actor’s looks and general air into a leading actor’s success using nothing but his talent, and Milla Jovovich successfully portraying a bubbly, vivacious, and merely moderately attractive leading actress with talent you would not suspect her knockout looks to be capable of. (If you found that sentence nauseating and impossible to get through: they were good!)

Dead Like Me: Life after Death

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One upon a time, there was a television show in which the always enjoyable Mandy Patinkin (as Rube) wrangled a group of grim reapers, those randomly selected dead who remain alive to harvest the souls of the living as part of the cycle of life and death. Think the personification of Death, if it were a worldwide non-profit business organization instead of one guy in a robe, or perhaps girl wearing an ankh and black casualwear. Anyhow, Mandy was the district manager for this group of people assigned to handle accidental deaths in the Pacific Northwest, and the series opens on one such death of a teenage girl and focuses on, in addition to the reaping, Georgia Lass’s slow process of moving on with her life after death, and on her family’s slow process of coming to terms with their dead daughter. It was a good, funny, occasionally moving show.

In the curse of time, it was canceled, as tends to happen. And then, unexpectedly, a direct-to-video movie was made. Life after Death covers a couple of plotlines, one following Rube’s replacement as the regional boss and one following George’s assignment to reap a teenage boy who happens to be her sister’s boyfriend. The second plotline was everything that I would look for from the show when it was on, funny and moving all wrapped up in one well-written package. The first one, on the other hand, was meaningless from start to finish. There was no good explanation for or resolution of Rube’s disappearance. The remaining side characters all ditched their past motivations, in ways that are slightly believable, but only if I fill in the gaps for myself; the script did not explain adequately. And the resolution felt episodic rather than like its own story; that is, the situation at the end of the story was exactly the same as it had been at the beginning. Which I assume was an effort to leave a space for Mandy to return if another movie is made, because his absence was a glaring hole. But it still made what was half of a good movie turn into half of a good episode and half of a terrible one. The idea of a film doesn’t offend me, but if it’s only going to be a long episode, they should bring the series back instead. And write it the better way it used to be written!

District 9

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It occurs to me that really good science fiction movies don’t come along all that often. In this decade, there’s pretty much Children of Men and Serenity. And I mean, those are two great movies, but there’s only two of them, so. Except, I watched another one on Friday. The only problems I have with District 9 are that I have to figure out whether I liked it better than Children of Men and that I have to figure out how to talk about it without actually saying anything.

Because, see, this is a movie that I’m pretty sure is best seen cold. But that makes a weak review, so I’ll give you a little less than I got from the previews, and certainly no more than I got from the first ten minutes. Twenty years ago, a spacecraft carrying insectoid aliens in conspicuously refugee-like conditions appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. Whether this was a true state of affairs or unfortunate human prejudice trumping the facts is neither answered nor even addressed by the often documentary-style film. All that matters is twenty years have passed during which the residents of Johannesburg have become gradually more disenchanted by the slum called District 9 to which all the “prawns” have been relegated after it became clear that their ship wasn’t going anywhere. Nobody wants to be subjected to the prawns’ presence or share any services with them, out of nothing more apparent than outright xenophobia, excepting only enterprising Nigerian[1] businessmen hoping to profit off the suffering and a multinational conglomerate who wants to unlock the secrets of their weapons tech.

So, that’s the setting. The film documents an approximate week during which the prawns are to be evicted from their slum and then moved to a new, designed camp with the bureaucratically original name of District 10, which has been set up 250 kilometers outside Johannesburg, conveniently out of sight and mind of all the disaffected human citizens. That’s about all I have to say, except that it is by turns horrible and deeply moving, has possibly my favorite child character of any movie in history, and did I mention that it is that rare gem of the cinematic experience, good science fiction?

[1] Seriously! They were identified specifically as Nigerians. I snickered.