Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Tags

Film, Movie Reviews, Movies

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Art 0/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 0/5

I must be missing something here. From the mere title, I expected this one to be ridiculous. Not ridiculous like I want to rip my eyes out, but zany ridiculous. The mirth and laughter incurred from preposterousness. The kind of cultural reference that would draw laughter from its mere mention. It was not anything of the sort. The purposefully nutty melding of the horror and epic genres, and ahistorical play on the superhero origins of Honest Abe might have been something interesting in the novel, I don’t know, I don’t read novels about vampires because I’m not a retarded 16 year old girl. But it clearly didn’t work out here. They failed at the mere essence of the business: there wasn’t a single laugh to be had, quite the opposite. What was effected in this film was a confusing matter of whether it had taken part in the Vampirization of history, or the Ninjification of history. Let me explain.

The Vampirization of history is the more brazen and intellectually vacant of the two, but hardly the more amusing. It’s one subset of the larger pandemic: the Infantilization of narratives (see: Christopher Nolan’s Nu-metal “serious” Batman). The Vampirization of history – seen in various Vampire flicks such as the ones that portray Judas Iscariot, or some other sinister or religious figure as their historical forebear – revisions the historical record, and to whatever end tries to explain a role vampires have long played in human history. Some of these are benign, most laughable, few aren’t clever in the least.

What AL:VH achieves is a rather unbearable revisionism, because it competently sweeps all societal wrong under the carpet, and dismisses it all as the work of Vampires. Killin’ the injuns? Vampires did it! Slavery? Vampires did it! Numerous times, we’re rushed through a background infomercial telling us about how we got here, and how vampires did it all. Each time, it’s reminiscent of the unbearably annoying rants of Turkatron, the malfunctioning robot turkey from the future who harasses the characters on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, beginning each story with “In the year of 9595″. This is the brainchild of bums yelling at you from behind a dumpster, not something even a society as low-brow as ours should entertain.

Now, to the one point of any merit in this giant turkey: is it instead more a perpetrator of the Ninjification of history, wherein heroes of the past are given martial arts super skills to defeat baddies of all sorts? Here, Abe Lincoln becomes an ax-wielding monster slayer in an antebellum version of Mortal Kombat as written by a syphilitic Mark Twain impersonator. Compare to the embellishment of Sherlock Holmes in the Robery Downey, Jr. movies, or the latest Three Mustaketeers movie (the one with sailboats that managed to sustain flight). It seems Japanomania came early to the West. There really isn’t much to this, but it’s funny as fuck in a pathetic way, and maybe the only unintentional source of laughter in this flaming turd.

One big thing … just why did they pick Benjamin Walker? Doesn’t he look more like a young Liam Neeson than a young Abe Lincoln?

Oh the story? The acting? You must be kidding. They had bad vampire people whose jaw bones extend and their skin gets pale and boils up when they’re preparing to bite. It’s all cliches swirled together incompetently. This is the bottom barrel of the vampire genre, which is fashionable in cyclical waves, and it’s movies like this that wind the cycles down. Marton Csokas was the only bit of interest as far as craft goes here. He plays minor bad guys quite well. Look at his filmography and you’ll probably get why I say that.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1611224/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/abraham_lincoln_vampire_hunter/

Chernobyl Diaries

Tags

Chernobyl Diaries, Film, Movie Reviews, Movies, Oren Peli

Chernobyl Diaries – Art -1/5 Ent 0/5 Worth 0/5

I’m absolutely convinced that most of the good Hollywood directors are low hanging fruit with a knack for explosive stories that put meat in seats. But what of the lower rate Hollywood directors who sit in their apartments doing cocaine all day long, going to gaudy hip hop clubs and racing their souped up cars with blue lights on the bottom with Vin Diesel? That might not be an accurate description of Bradley Parker, hitherto a visual effects guy on a few movies like Fight Club, but I can only imagine that’s exactly what all of his competition is. Chernobyl Diaries is the brainfart idea conceived by some tool who went to Pripyat for “nuclear tourism” and thought to themself “whoa man, this would be super creepy for a horror movie, how profound and significant this all this, whoa man”. That’s the extent of what works for this movie. It’s another, like Hostel, and even EuroTrip that exploits Western paranoia about Eastern Europe. Though I admit my time changing trains in Breclav on the Czech/Austrian border, and in the Leningrad subway were two of the most panic-inducing thanks to gypsies and criminals and foul smells, that’s really not a lot to go on.

If you’re thanking whatever god it is that you pray to that this is only partially a “found footage” film, don’t, stop right now. You don’t need a bullshit premise of the cops finding your footage later for your shitty film to have a shaky cam and incomprehensible action. Following a group of nameless, faceless, Q-list actors as they galavant around Europe and take a curious detour to the Ukraine for a chance to see Chernobyl, we meet some buff Igor (Yuri I think his name actually was, of course he was in a track suit, and of course he served in the Special Forces. Every soldier in the movies is always in the Special Forces) who offers to guide them into the city. The guards at the first check point don’t let them through, but Igor, I mean Yuri, finds another way in. There is a lot of nothing that happens, a scare with a bear, some emotional drama that comes out as they start getting scared after someone mysteriously fucks up their car, and then a lot of flashlights in the dark as they’re running nowhere, and seemingly everywhere.

Produced by Oren Peli, the mad genius behind the “found footage” masterpieces in the Paranormal Activity series, this is about what you’d expect from this crowd: utter insulting horse shit. This was a high school movie made in visual arts class with more money. I find certain areas of Minneapolis particularly creepy, especially the Witches’ Tower in Prospect Park, but you don’t see me making entire sagas about a water tower and the fucking goblins that inhabit it and protect the secret of its ooze. I’m really starting to suspect that everybody involved in the arts is Keanu Reeves saying “whoa” all the time. If there were justice in the universe, Chernobyl Diaries would have been a documentary, and everyone involved should have been eaten by mutant Soviets. This is a shameful film, a low mark on our culture.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1991245/

The Hunger Games

Tags

Film, Movie Reviews, Movies

The Hunger Games – Art 1/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 1/5

Good gravy. The title must be alluding to starving the audience while constantly dangling the prospect of something interesting ever over the horizon, because otherwise, this humble movie reviewer who’s never read the book has no goddamn clue what hunger has to do with this. If it’s an allusion to some fascistic silencing of the hungry plebs, that’s kiiiiind of neato. The same kind of neato you experience when you figure out the connections in Pokemon mythology. After the placebo-esque Twilight movies provided a scientific control that determined audiences will gush over any empty nonsense, it’s mere muscle memory to gush over this ‘film’. I put ‘film’ with hesitant quotes, because I don’t think a projector launching flaming rhinoceros vomit at a screen constitutes ‘film’ but rather some new art form to fill our Friday evenings.

In a vaguely rendered Nickelodeon version of an Orwellian dystopia, Jennifer Lawrence trades in the Ozarks of Winter’s Bone for futuristic / fascistic West Virginia as Katniss Everdeen (the parody names for this are just too easy – Katnip Evergreen?), an avatar for angsty youth who overcomes her poverty-stricken Appalachian existence to beat up bad guys in outdoorsy gladiatorial combat for reality television (the production values for which make the Academy Award red carpet coverage look explosively interesting). The politics and social critique, as far as it exists in the movie, is superficial and puerile, and almost wholly non-existent. There’s nothing that should command any interest here other than the fact people actually see something profound in this film. As Kyle Smith writes in his New York Post review, if anything it celebrates reality television. The narrative, adapted by one of the writers of Volcano (the breakthrough avant garde epic that had the most laughable anti-racism message until 2004′s Crash, where ash on people’s skin convinced them not to hate each other for racial differences any more), makes boilerplate Hollywood action fare look complex and fastidious. You can match the plot points to fingers on your hand. And you can watch as meaning slips through those fingers like sand in a wind that both sucks and blows.

I’m absolutely positive Jennifer Lawrence has more to offer than this, and the inclusion of the always brilliant Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, and Toby Jones gives me deeply conflicted feelings for dismissing it, and filmmaker Gary Ross pulled off an incredibly well conceived mind-fuck in Pleasantville, and I’ve even heard good things about the source material (the young adult novel written by Suzanne Collins) … but this movie is fucking stupid. There’s really no possible explanation or better method to really elucidate this point than blunt insult. It belongs on the SyFy network with Megashark and Giant Octopus and Alien vs. Hunter. Almost 2 whole minutes (that dovetails ungracefully into following scenes) are devoted to mourning the death of a character who showed up only a few minutes earlier. The elaborate universe easily explained in a novel feels like it’d take 4 hours to fully flesh out here, and without the explanation it’s forecast looks glib. The author’s ‘eureka moment’ – experienced while changing channels between the Iraq War and reality television – is quite telling. A very shallow The Truman Show meets In the Army Now. One of the most pivotal scenes in the entire film is about Jennifer Lawrence’s big triumphal quadriga entrance donning a futuristic Star Wars prequel hair-do. That’s what this movie – and I’d venture to say it’s appeal – is all about.

Will not play the Hunger Game again.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/

Aliens vs. Avatars

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies, worst movie ever made

Aliens vs. Avatars – Art -1/5 Ent X/5 Worth X/5

EDIT: This is not an Asylum picture apparently. Coulda fooled me (really, it’s not that difficult). Yes, this is a real movie. Yes, I am being extremely liberal with the term “real movie”. This Asylum flick shares many properties with Alien vs. Hunter. It was filmed probably in the same person’s back yard in Barstow or Bakersfield. It probably cost as much as a used car. It was a “versus” movie that wanted to avoid copyright infringement, so its concept was essentially nonsensical: what if X and Y fought … buuuut we’d get sued for showing that, so what if Xα and Yα fought? The “Avatar” here is a blue-faced chick (played by Harvard grad Cassie Fliegel with all the gusto of a drunk chick in Uptown trying to be funny in the back seat) who, opposite to the Jim Cameron picture, has a human avatar on earth to save the day by being cold-clocked by a date-rapist looking dude who belongs in some fight happening at a bar near you. And bizarre failures manifest such as inexplicable plot points like confusion of stock villains: it’s Aliens vs. Avatars, not Predators vs. Avatars, yet we have a Predator-like creature in a Halloween outfit.

Also like “AVH” (the endearing acronym stolen from the Alien vs. Predator sub-franchise for Asylum‘s own mockbuster purposes), “AVA” has struggling, untalented, horrific actors just thrilled to spend a week in a real film production -that they can actually tell their parents about this time- not setting tables and serving hors d’oeuvres as real life versions of the crew in Party Down. Needless to say, the direction, writing and even the editing are atrocious. Scene to scene could have better transitions done by my German Shepherd, with a little training seminar in Windows Movie Maker. Of course, as soon as I said “Asylum”, you probably expected all of that.

I recently watched Ed Wood, and these Asylum movies are close enough to being modern day Ed Woodery. Seemingly oblivious to any standards for professionalism and not self-conscious of its own failure at all, yet still fully capable of initating belly laughter on cue. Yet the Asylum movies are also kind of depressing. This is stuff where the hilarity is accentuated by intoxication, but the onset of deep depression occurs while the “actors” are attempting “dialogue”. It’s a short trip from failure to glory. This is to date the only film I’ve ever seen that has a credit for “Idea by ____”. If only ideas were worth their weight in gold …

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1854506/

Fat Slags

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies

Fat Slags – Art -1/5 Ent X/5 Worth X/5

Words would escape Wordsworth, whose words were worth a lot. Fat Slags (British slang for obese women of ill-repute from the north [their version of our south]) is a story about two unlikely women finding their way as megastars in the pop-culture of modern Britain, seemingly against all odds. The guy from Sliders shows up as an important businessman who’s constantly on the phone with his important business partner, the Dalai Lama … whom is … I can only guess investing in a scientific exploration of the sound of one hand clapping (exactly the reaction to this film btw). The Sliders guy gets bonked on the head by Divine Buddha throwing a plant pot on him, and he suddenly becomes a mong who wants to bed fat women. Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhh. Fat slags is the kind of thing that makes the ending of Ghostbusters make sense: a cult wanting to destroy humanity because of the evils of which we ourselves are happily capable.

I went looking for exactly the worst movie I could possibly find, so I have no room to complain, but what’s most painful about Fat Slags is that it isn’t bad in terms of production values or even storytelling, no, both of those are about on par with Eat, Pray, Love or any Julia Roberts movie for that matter. What truly effects depression in the audience is the fact that a group of professional film artists came together to rape our imaginations with this hate crime upon human dignity, and they did it without the trappings of amateurs, whose works are noticeably ’obvious’. What makes Fat Slags so horrible is that decent artists made something with the imagination of a 4 year old. When you know a poop or fat joke is coming, you aren’t disappointed.

But this movie is definitely in the category of so bad that it’s funny. I couldn’t control myself from laughing at its awfulness. I’ll call a spade a spade: it was fucking funny. Of course, my laughter was a cynical manifestation of my low opinion of human potential, but it is what it is folks. The inspiration for this abominable tripe was a comic strip in the British comic Viz, which was a Beavis & Butt-head-esque social critique of boorish portly women during the anti-feminist ‘lad culture‘ of ’90s England. Some novel subversion there, to be sure. Not in the movie. Oh god, nothing in this movie does anything for anybody, except barf your chips all over the floor.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382028/

J. Edgar

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies

J. Edgar – Art 1/5 Ent 1/5 Worth 1/5

Oh god, Clint, what have you done? This film is a total mess. It’s a bunch of vignettes from J. Edgar Hoover’s life in a seamlessly incoherent arrangement, without any purpose other than coming to understand him on a superficially personal level. You’ve come a long way since Gran Torino, and only take from that the boring melodrama and none of the vim and originality. And you Leo … what the fuck is it with you and wanting to do all kinds of accents? You sound ridiculous, your acting suffers as a result, and I’m left in awe of how unintentionally hilarious your films have become lately. Jesus son, you don’t even look anything like Hoover whatsoever! Are you going to play Patrice Lumumba in a biopic next with a heavy Congolese-French accent?

Baaaah. Worthless. Waste of time. Could have been so much better. Actually, looking at all the other biopics of late, no, probably couldn’t have been anything other than a series of mindless misfires. And to think, this movie is up for a bunch of awards already. Blech.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1616195/

The Three Musketeers (2011)

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies

The Three Musketeers (2011) – Art 1/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 1/5

Never in a million years did I think I would find myself saying “boy, I really liked this more when Charlie Sheen was in it”. That’s now twice this year it’s happened. There is so much wrong with this flaming turd of a film, from the radical genius mind of Paul W.S. Anderson, who also gave us Resident Evil and Alien vs. Predator, the two signature films that have come to define the last decade. That would be the decade widely known as “The Lost Decade”. It’s too bad Mr. Anderson didn’t lose enough money to jump from a tall building, but being subjected to further cruelties like this flammable fecal projectile can be an amusing way to spend an hour or two if you’re so hardened by god’s sadistic sense of humor like I am.

Now, I just want to clear the air here. There are indeed some noteworthy successes in the midst of this catastrophe. Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu is once again, a revelation. It’s a real pity it had to be in this slow motion toilet explosion. It really is. I’m being 100% sincere when I say that, because it’s like Laurence Olivier delivering a stand up performance that could register in many film histories as one of the greatest, except for the fact that it’s in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Aside from Waltz, the willingness to put some steampunk into an early modern era film is a set of balls I wish more directors had.

As for the rest of the film? Euh. It pains me to even remember what I witnessed, as if I’m describing the events of a bestiality crime on Fat Tuesday. Milla Jovovich should just stop making movies, unless they’re of the sort where she gets tied up a lot and farted upon. Otherwise her utility, as rated within the film set hierarchy, is in the range of the coffee girl and the casting of extras. Who did she sleep with to get the part? Oh yeah, the director. Really pulling rank there, honey. Orlando Bloom’s swagger for this outing is particularly troublesome, because you get the impression that his actorly trick is that he’s just imagining he has a dinosaur-sized poop that’s crowning and has to sigh his lines like James Mason. The banality of the script wouldn’t be so offensive if it weren’t for the final product’s soothing self-love.

The story is dumb. The dialogue is pathetic. The history is non-existent. The homage to Alexandre Dumas is more an insult. The new D’Artagnan is Michael Cera’s stunt double. It has Renaissance people acting like ninjas. The humor is offensively stale. And it has flying boats.

Flying boats…

I know I complimented the film’s ability to think steampunk in the Renaissance, but jesus christ …

The worst part of the movie comes when D’Artagnan’s father explains to him what “a musketeer’s true weapon is.” IT’S HIS MUSKET! IT’S HIS GOD DAMN MUSKET! IT’S IN HIS FUCKING NAME YOU TWIT!

I’m actually amazed this didn’t have Predator in it to shoot people with his laser.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1509767/

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)

Tags

Movie Reviews, Movies

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010) – Art 1/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 1/5

I’ve never seen the original, but its reputed imaginative influence on the writer Guillermo del Toro seems to have been quite a bit more strong than the average impulse behind a remake. It’s doubtful that a single soul with an ounce of artistic inspiration will ever look to this remake, however. The traditional haunted house movie blends into a micro-monster story. There aren’t any innovative tricks or fun and scary scenes. It’s like taking a bike ride, the same bike you’ve taken for 10 years, but veering off into the grass for a few minutes. Katie Holmes isn’t a horrible actress, you could find worse, but … yeah, whatever. What is it with horror movies focusing on children and 75-90% of the movie revolving around parents who refuse to listen to them until it’s too late? You can find something better to do with your time.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270761/

Condemned Horror: 21 Films in from the Dark

Tags

a serbian film, Antichrist, blair witch project, dario argento, demons, giallo, grotesque, horror, Night of the Living Dead, Roman Polanski, rosemary's baby, salo, Satan, slasher films, texas chainsaw massacre, the descent, the ring, vampires, Zombies

The horror, thriller, crime and supernatural genres all sport an enormous collection of films, many of which I haven’t seen. Out of those I have, there are certain types that serve certain roles. The best in each role I’ve outlined below. Condemned Movies’ favored horror pictures of the modern era:

These actually kept me up at night:

The Blair Witch Project

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/

When I went to see this in theater, the terror it struck in my psyche didn’t quite manifest while I was in the dark theater with about 300 other kids my age on a Friday night. The gasps and tremors effected only a smile on my face, no terror, knowing that I’m in a brigade of generation y kids who will face any specter or demon that would thrust itself out of the screen. Once my friends and I made our way back home after the movie, it became quite another story. One of them suggested we immediately go camping, because in no simpler terms I think he’s a fucktard. Of course, we all considered it, and started gathering camping supplies, but after taking one look into the bush, filled with a massive grizzly bear and wolf population, that was visible just beyond my neighbor’s backyard, we reconsidered for “practical” reasons, obscuring the surreal reasoning: how exactly were we to know the Blair Witch wouldn’t leave little straw trinkets outside our campground? The first person shaky cam revolution may not have begun here, but it hit its fever pitch here, proliferating a dizzying and tired style that seems inappropriate when not being chased by redneck phantasms.

————————

The Descent

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/

I went into this movie expecting some scares, and yet I was also expecting a pedestrian thriller with creepy crawlers. I left this movie with a trace amount of post-traumatic stress. I stared at the dashboard in my Cadillac for 10 minutes, baking in the sun, trying to process what just happened in that dark, unpopulated theater. The only other time I left a movie swearing that fighting in combat wasn’t worth it for any reason was after the opening minutes of Saving Private Ryan. The harsh doling of mortality quickly made the cruelties of the universe well present in The Descent, I remember seeing three ladies walk, nay, dash out of this film as soon as the roller coaster began. There are few movies that can match the claustrophobic panic of this one.

————————

The Ring

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298130/

Call me a sacrilegious oaf, but I enjoyed the American version far more. The DVD came with a tongue-firmly-in-cheek feature that connected you directly with the narrative ploy featured in the film, conveniently titled “Don’t Watch This”, which held the prospect of the girl crawling out of your very own television, much like those in the film. I didn’t click it. I’m not an adventurous spirit by heart, I enjoy staying home and watching Squidbillies when all the excitement is going down. But for the love of Christ I will never, ever, click “Don’t Watch This”.

Iconic classics:

Night of the Living Dead

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/

Every boy worth his salt is schooled in every possible scenario and “what if” of the eternally perplexing question: what would you do in the, albeit rare, case of the eventual Zombie invasion? … steal an AK-47 and a box full of motrin IB then dash to Isle Royale. The zombie movie (and vampire movie) prior to Romero’s classic was easily dismissed as an archaic romp not necessarily worth one’s time. Mummies and Frankenstein. Such does not sate the mind’s curious search for meaning through the portal of mortification. “What if”, expanded radically with racist and sexist themes in this landmark film, would continue with a critique of the consumer culture in the sequel “Dawn of the Dead”. This film is indeed “patient zero” for most horror films made today.

————————

Rosemary’s Baby

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/

Lucifer is an extremely popular villain, and anti-hero (since Milton’s Paradise Lost), but his progeny is a pop culture villain of recent vintage. The Satanic cult was a fresh invention in the time of Rosemary’s Baby, and some cruel arithmetic in the universe had it that Roman Polanski would feel the sting of the inferno quickly after making this film. Mia Farrow gave up a role in The Detective to star in this timeless creeper, despite the admonition of her recent beau Frank Sinatra, resulting in her divorce. Such trivia only serve to make such painful flux hovering around this picture all the more attention-grabbing, with other cultish rumors and general inexplicables floating around. The film itself and the narrative were shocking for their time, and inspired countless other pale shadows. Polanski’s fetish for the devilish noir would not end here.

————————

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072271/

Ick. Just ick. Texas is ick. Leatherface is ick. Inbred southerners are ick. Meathooks are ick. Chainsaws are ick. Every … single … thing …. about this film is ick. TCM inspired countless other horror films that came after, with the sheer terror, the obscured character of the primary villain, and the gruesomeness that separated all that followed from the candyass slapstick murder that preceded. Are we worse off because filmmakers decided that realism counts for something more than atmosphere? Well, we’ve always had people like this, maybe TCM just woke us up to their presence.

The new gothic atmosphere:

Alien

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/

I’ve told this story before: while watching this movie in theater in the ‘70s, my mother and her friend jumped out of their seats in the infamous chestburster scene and immediately went out for pizza, never considering watching another second for another ten years, once I watched it all the way through myself at an inappropriately young age. Though we might not really understand it today, with the over-commercialization of a niche monster movie series, the original Alien scared the bejeesus out of people. Before this, they hadn’t much dark sci-fi to go on. They probably expected Wookies monging about like Yogi Bear on meth. The effervescent psychosexual tension between a 7-foot tall penis monster and the female object(s) of its murderous desire make this one disgusting cornucopia of Freudian frustration splattered on screen. And to think, they made children’s toys out of this within the decade.

————————

Let the Right One In

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/

I’m of the opinion that this film cheats in exporting a cultural norm with Scandinavian decorum. Like Italians exporting food or Brazilians exporting music, this borderline turkey gets away with a few oohs and aahs abroad despite its failings. If you’ve ever been to Luleå, or sifted through the metal section of a record store (what are those?), you know just how god damn dreary, moody and laconic the Scandinavian joie de vivre is. In any case, they pulled off an interesting enough marker of the vampire tale, Viking-style. Unfortunately, we’re deprived of the rich bile-churning disgust that the novel presents, which is Lolita meets Bram Stoker. Profits dictate that will have to wait until we’re truly a degenerate society.

————————

The Ninth Gate

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142688/

You probably won’t like this movie. You won’t get it. You won’t want to get it. You may even be discriminatory because of the fact that Polanski is directing it. If you’re a real putz, you probably don’t care much for the narrative. Most likely, you just feel jilted by the ending. No worries, folks. This film is entirely worth it solely for the Ayn Randesque characters and the uncompromisingly rich cinematography. I always hear how people want to watch movies so they can travel to Europe. If you want to see the Europe that everyone else sees outside of tourist season, this is it. But even better, if you want to see a Europe that takes The Third Man and shoves him up Satan’s asshole, sows him in, and cuts him out of the horse innards in a Bahomet ritual … Polanski did it for you. The puzzling symbols and clues are left scattered throughout the film, only serving our intellect like a French butler, while the British cook boils us up a hot bowl of funny red mushrooms to digest in the final scene.

Delicious pastiche:

Amer

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1426352/

The filmmakers (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani) deliver the goods in this homage to giallo slashers of the ‘70s. Included are some haunted house and psychosexual dreamscape luciferean romances, as we plod through a film virtually bereft of dialogue, something that deeply pleases anybody sick to death of pathetic attempts at dialog by genre writers unfit to write book reports on A Confederacy of Dunces. The vibrant colors are a given, with their objective in mind. The insanely beautiful framing and detailed shots are painful to sit through because of their presence in a mere stabby mcvagina movie. Nevertheless, what more praise can I give this film than it raises all the wrong passions in me, just like it aspires to do.

————————

Scream

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117571/

A highly amusing byproduct of this film is the Scary Movie series, in two respects. For one, at least the very first Scary Movie served as a hilarious send-up of Scream and similar late 90’s slasher revivals. But furthermore, the redundancy of Scary Movie is made clear in how they’re parodying a pastiche. Scream was a fine enough self-reference on the slasher pic, it didn’t necessarily need a Budweiser commercial spoof. Wes Craven is at home with horror/thrillers, and this might as well be his magnum opus in that regard. In otherwise underwhelming careers, the cast here works out splendidly for their archetypal roles. Finding people who haven’t seen this movie is a pure delight, because its relation to middle class suburban American households, enjoying a film on a dark Friday night, works out to keep you on the edge of your seat, regardless of how many shotguns you have on your gun rack.

————————

Shaun of the Dead

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/

The Zombie film has largely met all of its creative cult-de-sacs by the time ‘Shaun’ came out. It had tried out goofy camp, darker and more evil re-makes, and even a complacent return to pre-Matheson Zombies that sleepwalked through the kitchen for orange juice. A triple-punch of 28 Days Later, the Dawn remake, and Shaun of the Dead returned to life in a revenant dance the latest generation of Zombie fanatics, whose fantasies are spilled out into Left 4 Dead, comic books and the ever intriguing “what if” scenarios. Shaun held itself above the others by being conscious of the Zombie clichés and having fun with them, but it also struck new territory because it explored the adventures of the 21^st century inept beta male.

Cult classics:

Evil Dead II

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092991/

The sequel is pretty much a direct re-make of the first Evil Dead, but it’s the difference between a Rolex and a water-proof Nickelodeon Spongebob watch. Even better, Raimi and Campbell developed a more sardonic sense of humor for the sequel that made it less of a taxing experience and a richer leaping-off-point for the cheese-o-rama adventure film that completed the trilogy. Like the “Night of the Demons” series, Evil Dead gives us the conflated monster of lazy thinking: the Zemon. Part Demon, part Zombie, 100% Ty Cobb swinging dick monster truck-driving cornswogglin’ evil undead. Bruce Campbell might not be the second coming of Peter Sellers, but he serves his purpose in Evil Dead II, and makes the movie an enjoyable watch.

————————

Hellraiser

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/

The creative, check that, destructive mind behind this story should, in any safe society, be locked away with the other lunatics who urinate in public and eat glass. That man would be Clive Barker, and I think anybody who watches Hellraiser will be feeling the tortured imagination swirling in a black cloud of hate in his mind for some time. Pinhead using flying meathooks to tear random people to shreds just because they played with some rubix cube has to be the most arbitrary demonry imaginable. The other causations just make me want to puke. I won’t give them away. Just terrific.

————————

Night of the Demons

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093624/

I discovered this one in a backwards way after seeing the sequel on subscription cable at 3AM, which galvanized my black leather-wearing rebellious years. A decade and a half later, I’m looking back in morbid disgust at the laziness abound in that sequel, but I’ve really gained an appreciation for the more raw and visceral original. I should have been clued in when I noticed the sequel sparing absolutely no expense by lifting entire scenes from the original. Like I mentioned about Evil Dead II, this movie has the venerable Zemon monster foe (part Demon, part Zombie). Once bitten, twice converted, six hundred and sixty six times lathered with makeup in the matter of seconds. The camp is existent here in an unassuming ‘80s kind of way, but if there were such a thing, this is a candidate for supernatural realism in its matter-of-fact presentation of just the facts. The comedy doesn’t pacify the creepiness of this gem.

The philosopher’s skullfuck:

Antichrist

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/

There’s no getting around the fact that this movie has some of the most visually powerful scenes in recent cinematic history. That only bears the sledge hammer’s weight heavier upon your nutsack. Von Trier pulled a few public stunts to preface the reception of this film, coloring the overactive imagination of cultural theorists to anticipate misogyny and other Freudian ‘issues’. In a word, he’s a prick. Don’t shy away from exploring it, the tantalizing meaning behind each and every “wtf” experienced in this movie is worth prodding. With our powerful relationships thus deconstructed, how far are we all from the state of nature? Clubbing bitches upside the head for procreation … thinking like bears in our murderous neglect of children that leads to heightened sexuality in the mother … forcing a controlling hold over the mentality of one’s lover to manipulate their emotions to our benefit. Von Trier is, in effect, the opposite of Dr. Phil vis a vis healing the marriage crisis.

————————

Deep Red

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073582/

Before committing to his various kills, Dario Argento planned out each scene with the meticulous design used by the obsessive compulsives who figure prominently in his features. Some of the deaths have their own foreshadowing, ringing a poetic note in tune with an empty-souled organ player. The murderer is given a circumspect and drawn-out appreciative camera for each death. The camera builds a world that can only be soaked in on slow motion. David Hemmings continues into another noir picture with another Italian luminary, and throws into the thriller genre to consummate the frustrated implications leftover from Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Argento taps into some pretty deeply-rooted cords wrapped around our psyche in Deep Red, making us feel disjointed and tipping over the edge of a cliff with surreal imagery and attempts to make us feel calm and safe. Hitchcock on LSD, as it were.

————————

Funny Games

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119167/

Michael Haneke must have woken up one day and said to himself: “Michael, today we’re going to write a screenplay where a couple of sick sunsabitches terrorize the audience by first breaking the fourth wall, and then directing the narrative”. I don’t like this movie on a personal level. It’s fucked up. It plays cinematic games while the characters play sadistic ones. Some viewers propbably can’t tell which ones affected them more. I haven’t seen this movie in a good 8 or 9 years, and I think that’s too fresh in my memory. Even the final category below doesn’t compare to the story in Funny Games, because of its quintessential attitude, where Haneke treats it as an elaborate terrorist beheading that takes a giant shit all over structural narrative assumptions we’ve been subjected to in other thrillers. The re-make is supposedly a shot-for-shot deal. I’m not watching that one either.

God is not a loving god:

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099763/

Low budget. Gruesome pathology. Stendhal meets Hannibal Lecter. There’s just all kinds of shit wrong with taking a realistic take on a prolific and … a recent at the time, let’s not forget that … a recent serial killer. Michael Rooker had a field day with this career-maligning role that he might’ve felt was just worth it. This is disturbing to watch in how cheap the production is, and how unromantic and gritty the act of murder becomes. Re-living it within the mise-en-abyme prism of the characters watching a massacre over in VHS is just too hard to bear. Fire and forget is the key here. I’m not watching this shit again. And it’s not even that bad compared to the two below.

————————

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/

The source material for Pasolini’s choral ode to murderous sexual humiliation was, surprise of all surprises, the Marquis de Sade. De Sade wrote 120 Days of Sodom as a reaction to the Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, who assumed a natural grace in reason and human progress. De Sade held the aristocratic assumption that humans were limited in their rational faculties, but he took it a step further than anybody else would ever conceive through the next century and a half: he posed our limitations as a gross middle finger shoved right into our faces. Napoleon, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao – what unites them? They had a common assumption that they utilized human reason to devise a grand new strategy for living and being in their respective polities. They were all wrong. Their end results uniformly matched exactly what you watch in Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom. Eating buckets of shit. An aristocratic insolence towards the dignity of the common people. The use of the common people as objects of pleasure and mortification for the whimsy of dignitaries. The Italian fascists aren’t the only ones given a nod here, but everyone who is so converted to a material culture that their grasp of pain and pleasure is alienated enough to permit them an unfeeling hold over inter-personal relations to any degree where Orwellian language covers up mass suffering.

————————

A Serbian Film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1273235/

I hate people. I officially hate people. If I can specifically target Serbs for my hatred, I would. I know how complicit they are in a psychopathic national attitude in regards to what they did in Bosnia and Kosovo. I would just love to have it so simple as to single Serbs out as a bunch of monsters, but of course, and depressingly, I know better. The filmmakers of this disgustathon wanted it to be a testament to the political culture that emanates from the Milosevic ultranationalist state that emerged in the post-Tito Civil War era. Everything depicted here, other than coincidental incest, was very likely a casual if not endorsed action during the Civil War. I’m sorry, I know some of you might think it only ironically feeds into the cycle, but all of that only makes me feel even better about having bombed them. This is a nation that took offense to a harmless joke by Chelsea Handler and issued hundreds of death threats to her. I’m sorry, I can’t resist saying it: Serbs, ya’ll are fuckin’ clownin’.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – Art 1/5 Ent 0/5 Worth -1/5

First, a word for the children: a very fun movie to see, you should definitely have fun at this one kiddos! Now a word for the children who never grew up: Good god is this movie fucking stupid. You people actually enjoy this feral dogshit? How? I want to know what’s so amazing about this, because I must be some kind of curmudgeon or iron-hearted ghoul, because to me, there was little separating this from an Uwe Boll movie. You should be ashamed of yourselves, every last one of you. You sicken me. Clean yourselves up and get out.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1201607/

Battle: Los Angeles

Tags

Aaron Eckhart, Alien invasion, Battle Los Angeles, dumb movies, Sci-Fi

Battle: Los Angeles – Art 0/5 Ent 2/5 Worth 0/5

Oh, wow, I feel tremendous guilt from how easy this one is, but here goes. It’s two movies wrapped into one: a) Saving Private Ryan (even has the loss of sound as the officer looks around, disoriented, at his troops struggling in battle); b) Independence Day (Alien invasion, one lowly team leads the way in incapacitating their command and control). Sony went so far as to mull legal action against the makers of Skyline for perceived theft of CGI images. Now, call me a cynical bastard, but that usually means they don’t think their own vision was very unique in the first place. Aaron Eckhart isn’t a bad actor, he just chooses some bad roles and/or bad movies. The Dark Knight is worshiped now, for all the wrong reasons, but I’m at least happy it gave him more notoriety and offers for roles. I just wish they weren’t in movies like this. From the Company of Men to the Company of boring ass turkeys. I have one big question for this movie … why do aliens with such technology get into conventional street battles that resemble 2nd Generation warfare, of the type we saw in World War I and World War II? They have giant space ships and drones and laser blasters, but can’t figure out how to wipe us out with Nuclear/Biological/Chemical etc. weapons. That doesn’t seem right. That seems like an excuse to show our current military in a heroic light fighting generic bad people. I couldn’t believe my ears when Eckhart was telling some little kid that he’s the best Marine he’s ever seen. The military deserves better, we deserve better. Blech.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1217613/

Quarantine 2

Tags

dumb movies, horror, Quarantine 2

Quarantine 2: Terminal – Art 0/5 Ent 1/5 Worth 0/5

Ehn. Waste of time, really. The Quarantine series has now followed the trajectory of two other series: the Blair Witch sequel (POV horror movie abandons POV and becomes cheesy schlock) and the Die Hard sequel (Die Hard, but instead of a building, it’s in a plane!). Whatever. Just a waste of time and effort. I could have done this movie in a week with some people selected randomly from the local Target. Why do people become agile cat-like nocturnal hunter killers as soon as they’ve become infected with a debilitating disease? I know you’re not supposed to get things in B movies, but for fucks sake people. Raaawwrrrrrr – that was what the fat guy did when he wanted to be a zombie. Raaawwrrrr. Not worth watching all the way through.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699231/

Grown Ups

Tags

dumb movies

Grown Ups – Art -1/5, Ent -1/5, Worth -1/5

Jesus fucking christ. If muskoxen could commit suicide en masse and void their bowels, that’s exactly what they’d do after being subjected to this “comedy” for more than 5 minutes, and yet somehow that’s the exact method used to produce the celluloid for this “film”. Adam Sandler should stop making movies, soon. He had a few semi-funny hits in the mid ’90s, and we’ve all been paying for it dearly ever since. His massive following with musical-comedy albums never made any sense to me. Now I come to find that’s because your average person is a dumb fucking bastard, and will laugh at anything if it has cute noises. Well, Adam Sandler stopped making funny squeals or baby talk and everyone realized he sucks. This is either the most brilliant pastiche of what the worst studio movie ever would look like, or it’s the genuine article. I can’t decide, because a sliver of hope in humanity still remains in me. Just to be sure, we should enshrine this abomination in the vaults of the Smithsonian, so future or alien civilizations may have no delusions that our society launched space ships to the moon every waking hour.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375670/

Robin Hood (2010)

Tags

dumb movies

Robin Hood – Art -1/5 Ent -1/5 Worth -1/5
Dear gods. Avoid at all costs. Aimless and meandering codswallop. Horseapples. Hogwash. I am his foremost defender, in spite of egotistical trips into base Hollywood irrelevance, but Ridley Scott simply had no fucking idea how to cook this piece of flaming dog vomit together into an omelet, nor did he even try. He didn’t know what he was saying one minute to the next. Somehow, this movie has something to do with freedom, I guess. What a courageous stand that Ridley is taking, in advocating freedom and the law and stuff. I would charge aimlessly on a horse, raiding sandcastles at the beach too if it meant freedom and the law and stuff for my people. Jeez louise, Russel Crowe really has come a long way from winning the Oscar. This is his Cat Woman moment. Cate Blanchett should take a long cold shower to cleanse herself of this stench – I’m sure it wasn’t her fault, her agent probably owed somebody a favor. Completely devoid of any purpose. I am really just baffled by the failure of this movie, considering the talented people comprising its production.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0955308/

Scrooged

Tags

dumb movies

Scrooged – Art -1/5 Ent -1/5 Worth -1/5
Much worse than how I remembered it as a kid. I don’t think I’ve seen Bill Murray give a performance this terrible. There was absolutely nothing funny about this, but yet it’s credited as a “Comedy”. Anything with Carol Kane in it – cannot be funny. Annie Hall? Not funny, on account of Carol Kane being in it. Don’t start back talking me on this subject either.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096061/