Shark Night 3D (2011) [REVIEW]

May 22, 2012 2 Comments

 

Can I call this film “Shark Night 3D” if I saw it in 2D during the daytime? Fuck it. As some of you guys who might know me even a little bit could tell you, I’m typically not a fan of movies that vilify animals, especially awesome animals. Okay okay, Jaws is one of the best movies ever, but that’s based more on the paranoia and fear of the town with an unknown invader and the conversations between Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. Point being, despite not typically liking creature features based on real, unwilling animals, there can be exceptions to that rule. As much shit as I talked about this movie, considering it was a B-movie plot with a PG-13 rating, the fact that it was directed by David R. Ellis, the man who brought us Snakes on a Plane and Cellular, and riding my fondness for Sara Paxton‘s character in The Innkeepers, I decided to give it a shot. Oh yeah, and I was bored as shit.

 

With all this shark terror going on, it was a wise decision to “cover up”.

Similar to the opening of Jaws, the opening scene of this movie involves a lady allowing her boyfriend to take her top off (don’t get excited, it’s only PG-13), and when he thinks she’s fooling around, she gets eaten by a shark. We’re then introduced to a hodgepodge of college-aged characters who are about to celebrate spring break or finals or they won a frisbee tournament or something, it doesn’t really matter. The way they choose to celebrate being attractive college kids is by going to Sara’s (Sara Paxton) family lake house in Louisiana. While wakeboarding, one guy gets him arm bitten off by a shark. Oh no! The rest of the gang need to contact the authorities to try to save the arm, but while using their boat, it fucks up on them and explodes. Two local rednecks offer their services, but that’s when we learn that these rednecks are the ones who put the sharks in the lake, as well as having rigged the sharks with cameras, so that way people are getting eaten and it’s all being filmed. Assholes. Even the sheriff is in on the whole thing! All the college kids get killed, except for Sara and athletic yet intelligent male counterpart, who are able to kill the rednecks and the sheriff. Our heroes make it out alive, as well as a dog, until at the very last moment, we see a great white shark jump out of the water at the camera! I bet THAT was cool to see in 3D!

 

Anyone feel like explaining to me how great white sharks were able to osmoregulate in order to survive in fresh water? ANYONE?

Let’s start off with the things I like, of which there were three. First, Sara Paxton was in it. Second, there was a point where one of the redneck characters said there were nearly 350 species of sharks, which would be correct. Third, the first time we see a shark attack, one character comments on it looking like a bull shark, which would make sense, considering they are the only species of shark known to travel into freshwater and can adapt to living in it. The things I didn’t like were everything else going on. There were hammerhead sharks and great whites, WHICH COULDN’T HAVE FUCKING SURVIVED. Had they chose to ONLY use bull sharks, I wouldn’t have been as angry, but why would you go through the effort of doing a tiny amount of research, like with how many sharks there are, and realize there is a reason why sharks live in the ocean? Did I mention this was PG-13? It was like if you had taken Piranha 3D and cut out all of the gore and boobs to be able to show it on TV. Donal Logue played the sheriff and Joel David Moore played one of the coeds, and that was kind of entertaining, but those guys weren’t used nearly enough to make it a funnier movie. Also, the excuse for why this was happening was because of Donal Logue’s statistics on how many people watch “Shark Week” every year. THAT’S THE REASON THEY’RE DOING THIS…IT’S BECAUSE OF FUCKING SHARK WEEK. Even had this movie been rated R and had they stuck to only bull sharks, it still would have been a poor knock off of Piranha 3D, and still would have been too little, too late. I recommend checking out Cellular though because THAT movie is hilariously terrible. Oh yeah, and that skinny guy from The Blair Witch Project isn’t skinny anymore, in case you were wondering.

 

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The Darkest Hour (2011) [REVIEW]

May 15, 2012 Leave a comment

 

The first I learned of this movie was when a poster appeared at work, alongside posters for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and The Hunger Games. It just made me long for a time when posters had paintings of the main characters on it, as opposed to just tossing a bunch of black and orange on there. There’s also the very popular orange and blue color scheme, which is equally as annoying. I also remember that this film came out right around Christmas, and despite having no interest in seeing it at that time, I didn’t see it playing at a nearby 18 screen theatre. THERE WERE 18 SCREENS AND THEY COULDN’T WASTE A SINGLE ONE OF THEM ON THIS GARBAGE. It also wasn’t screened for North American critics, which is always a good sign.

 

This was the other image I constantly saw while this movie was being promoted. Sorry, Emile, but you can’t hide from this piece of shit movie.

You’ve got these two dudes who are flying to Moscow (that’s in Russia) to try to make money from some internet computer thing. Don’t worry, none of that shit is important, because aliens show up. None of the characters are really that important or interesting or entertaining, because all that matters is that aliens show up and start turning people into ash. The main characters manage to hide for close to a week, thanks to something referred to as a “door”, behind which is a “room”, and that provides enough security for the aliens to not find them. Through some huge jumps in science and logic, our characters learn that the aliens have armor that makes them invisible, but a drawback to that armor is it electrifies nearby objects. This means that all the characters have to do is wear lightbulbs around their necks and if they light up, bad guys are nearby! Convenient! They get word that there’s a nuclear submarine that’s leaving Moscow so the characters make their way there and some of them die but some of them live and these aliens are living everywhere but their weakness is microwaves so the humans fight back and it’s all a bunch of dumb, pointless bullshit that nobody cares about.

 

“Well of COURSE this microwave gun, built by a guy who covered the walls of his apartment with cages, is going to work when it comes to short-circuiting the extra terrestrial armor! Was I the only one who found that to be obvious?!”

Where do I start with what were the worst parts of the movie? I guess I had assumed there would be a reason why this movie would take place in Russia, other than maybe they got a discount for filming there. I didn’t see any aspect of why this movie was made better or more intense for having taken place in Russia, especially considering we learned that these aliens invaded the whole world, so this movie could have taken place ANYWHERE and been just as shitty. The aliens themselves switched from looking like shit that fell off of a tree in Avatar when they wore their “armor”, to looking like an enemy from a Sega CD videogame. Just a terrible, design for something that you’ve already established as essentially being invisible. Not to mention that one of their weaknesses was that they couldn’t see through windows? Really? When I talk about their weaknesses and jumps in logic, all of the rules were established by these American dum-dums who were trying to become billionaires through the internet, not any type of scientist. You have invisible aliens who can’t see through the store windows in a mall, so you immediately know that it’s because these windows have small amounts of electricity in them that disrupt the sensory perception of aliens, and when a character asks, “How’d you know that?”, the character’s response is “Shark Week”. AN ALIEN COMES IN TO DESTROY EVERYTHING AND YOU HAPPEN TO STAY ALIVE BECAUSE YOU HIDE BEHIND A GODDAMNED WINDOW AND YOU IMMEDIATELY JUMP TO THE CONCLUSION THAT ELECTRICITY CAN DISRUPT THEIR SENSORY ORGANS BECAUSE OF HOW CLEARLY SIMILAR THESE INVISIBLE ALIENS ARE TO SHARKS. What the fuck? Just skip this movie entirely and know that it should have gone straight to video and I’m sure that’s why the producers pulled it from theaters as a gift to humanity around Christmas, just like Jesus did. That’s what Jesus did, right?

 

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Akmareul boatda (I Saw the Devil) (2010) [REVIEW]

April 22, 2012 1 Comment

 

This movie has been staring at me right in the fucking face for months. It was at the top of my Netflix Instant queue ever since it was available, but I kept finding reasons not to watch it. The biggest being the subtitles and my inability to focus on anything because I’m kind of dumb. The reason I finally bit the bullet was because I had recently gone to theaters to see The Raid: Redemption (which was pretty crazy, if you’re into those action-y martial arts type movies) which featured subtitles. It helped me realize that reading subtitles wasn’t as big of a pain as I always think it’s going to be, which built up my reading confidence! Hoo-ray! And even though I posted this review in the “horror movie” category, I only did that because it’s got a lot of gore in it. It’s more of a revenge thriller, which are typically more tense than they are scary or creepy.

 

Must have been one intense sled ride.

There’s this nice, sweet couple who are planning on having a baby, when the pregnant lady gets raped and murdered as fuck by a psychopath named Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi). The dad of that baby, named Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee) happens to be a secret agent who is able to track down Kyung-chul, and rather than just killing him, tries to bring him the kind of torture that was felt when his wife and unborn baby were murdered. Soo-hyeon forces a tracking device down Kyung-chul’s throat to keep track of his whereabouts, and then Soo-hyeon goes on a catch/injure/release program with Kyung-chul, including breaking arms and slicing Achilles tendons. Kyung-chul realizes who is doing this to him and why, and goes on a hunt of his own for the remaining family members of the happy couple. After every sick and twisted thing that these two have done to each other, it’s ultimately Soo-hyeon who gains an “upper hand” and creates a makeshift guillotine for Kyung-chul that doesn’t go off until Kyung-chul’s mom, dad, and son show up. Their arrival is the final piece whose attempts to save Kyung-chul triggers the guillotine, so when they open the door, they are greeted by Kyung-chul’s head rolling across it.

 

This man hates plants!

Did you see how a few sentences I used the term “upper hand” and put it in quotes? That’s because it’s really not any sort of upper hand, because Soo-hyeon’s wife and child are still dead. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the titular devil in the film is Kyung-chul’s character, and we are mostly concerned with how far Soo-hyeon will go before he turns into someone as evil. The idea of finding the person who has caused you an incredible amount of emotional trauma isn’t really anything new, in fact, it’s old as shit. All those movies where we empathize with a main character who has been wronged and the viewer must decide what they’d do in that situation. The enjoyable part of this film is the fact that in most other movies, the moment where you question what to do with the person you’ve apprehended is typically a short-lived moment, and the resolution comes quickly, but instead we are shown those few scenes stretched out over almost the entirety of the movie. We see a sick and sadistic cat and mouse game being played, where you almost, almost have sympathy for Kyung-chul because of all the things he is forced to survive. Then we realize how good of an actor Min-sik Choi is and really convinces you how depraved the character really is and we go back to wanting him to be tortured even further. The movie did run a little long for a revenge thriller, and those typically aren’t the kinds of movies I’m drawn to, but I think this one might set the standard for ways you can innovate and surprise people within the  limitations of the genre.

 

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The Cabin in the Woods (2011) [REVIEW]

April 17, 2012 7 Comments

 

Because so many people have been complaining about spoilers for this movie, I am going to warn you now that yes, my review will include the details of what happens in the movie. You can finish reading this paragraph, as there will be no spoilers, but if you read further, it’s your own fault. Maybe because I heard so much about spoilers, I had assumed there was some crazy insane twist ending that changes your opinion of the movie, but that never happened. I think people are just trying to keep all details of the movie secretive so that way you can watch the movie fresh, but with so many people talking about how amazing this movie was, I had my standards set pretty high. I’d like to watch this movie again once the internet chatter dies down to see if my opinion is any different. My spoiler free review is that I liked it, but didn’t love it, even though I really, really wanted to. Remember, I’m going to spoil everything, and it’s not to be a dick, it’s because I know people who want to know what happens in this movie but don’t want to see it. REMEMBER, SPOILERS, STOP READING IF YOU’RE GOING TO GET CRANKY.

 

WOLFMAN LIKE!

Five college coeds are heading into the woods for a long weekend to get away from the pressures of college, similar to how plenty of other horror movies start. We learn that things aren’t quite as they seem, as we are also seeing some underground bunker where characters seem to be aware of the plans of this group of college kids. The audience starts to understand that this isn’t necessarily a movie just about these kids, but the story revolves just as much around the office workers. It turns out that these office workers are manipulating the events that these kids are going through, including the different supernatural elements that the college kids are encountering. Did that make sense? Think of it this way: the kids go exploring the creepy basement of the cabin, each person exploring some strange relic, while we see office workers placing bets on which relic will be chosen to summon a supernatural creature. In this case, one of the college kids reads a diary that summons zombies to attack the kids. These kids don’t know they’re part of some big illusion until it’s too late and some have been killed, but things do turn around when one of the college kids finds an elevator under the cabin. This elevator takes them down to the bunker where they see a whole bunch of other monsters, and when they realize they were part of some big hoax, decide to unleash all the monsters on everyone who works down there. The whole purpose of everything was that there are demon monster things that require ritual sacrifices so they won’t destroy the whole world, and each sacrifice had to fit the archetypes that are most commonly seen in horror films. Once this is discovered, the two remaining college kid sacrifices decide they don’t want to take part and would rather have the entire world get destroyed, so we see a giant demon hand come up from the underworld to smash the cabin, the camera, and the credits roll.

 

Could you have cast two better people to play cranky office employees than Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford?

 

It’s not often that I can accurately describe a movie by comparing it to other films, but I think I’ve nailed it this time. If Evil Dead and The Truman were to fuck each other, and then that baby grew up to have sex with The Monster Squad while H.P. Lovecraft watched, then you’d get The Cabin in the Woods. Yup, nailed it. These comparisons aren’t meant to take away from Cabin in the Woods, but rather, if you took all the horror/comedy elements from Evil Dead, and added in the idea of all the events in someone’s life being planned, then added in the feelings of fun and adventure of seeing your favorite horror movie icons in one movie, as well as the strange mythology about Cthulhu-like elder gods, there’s nothing to NOT like. I’m thinking that the reasons why I didn’t love the movie is because it did borrow so heavily from so many things I liked, but there weren’t too many things that felt new or original to me. DON’T GET ME WRONG, I’m not trying to say that the whole concept of this movie wasn’t refreshing to see for a horror movie with a wide theatrical release, because it was. It’s shocking to see something like this in theaters, considering how shitty most horror movies are. And considering this movie made less money opening weekend than the goddamned Three Stooges movie, this was clearly a movie that was made out of love for the genre rather than for financial gain.

 

This movie’s actually about a haunted mirror that makes you look like Ellie Kemper from The Office. For the record, the red-headed lady is Kristen Connolly. For the record.

I guess my concern with Cabin in the Woods is that this movie wasn’t scary to me, and I don’t feel comfortable giving my absolute best rating to something in the horror genre if it didn’t actually scare me. You might say that for a tribute to horror that is clever, violent, unique, and also pays tribute to the genre in countless ways, it’s impossible to be scary. You’d be wrong. As an example, when I saw Drag Me to Hell, I was fucking terrified. They chose their moments of when to emphasize the horror and when to emphasize the comedy to create some truly creepy moments. Instead, Cabin in the Woods relied more on surprise scares, of which there are probably three, and you were probably chuckling too hard to have those moments make an impact. Another example of a movie that blends “horror” with comedy was Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, but the reason that movie succeeds is because nothing about it is scary, it’s all comedy. It knows the genre that it’s mocking, and isn’t as dumb as parody like the Scary Movie franchise, which I think why it can say that it blends horror elements with comedy. Maybe it’s just my own personal taste in what’s scary, not really being creeped out by jump scares or wanting a movie to rely on them, so maybe that’s why I can’t say I loved this movie. One thing that sucked was I really loved the ideas they brought about with the elder gods that lived underground and would have loved to see a movie explore that concept more. The Lovecraft-ian idea of everyone going about their normal lives and thinking everything is normal, only to realize there are giant monsters living underground that were allowing us to go about their business as long as there was an occasional sacrifice. And how did these people get their job? How did they get these kids to go to this cabin? How long have they been monitored? I guess these are just my own tiny, personal issues with the movie, but this is my own goddamned website where I give MY opinion, so no need to jump down my throat if you loved this movie. That’s awesome! I wanted to love it too! And oh yeah, the filmmakers did decide to end the world to completely eliminate the idea of a sequel, so I guess that was pretty awesome, too.

 

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Le pacte des loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf) (2001) [REVIEW]

April 9, 2012 Leave a comment

 

Not to flex nuts or anything about how cool I am, but I saw this movie in theaters. Yup, that’s right, that’s me bragging about a movie a saw in theaters. In retrospect, that’s really not a big deal. However, ten years ago in western Massachusetts, having to track down a French movie to see it in theaters was kind of a dig deal. In addition to seeing this movie in theaters, I remember renting it on VHS to watch it again! Can you believe it?! If I’ve seen this movie twice, why am I reviewing it now? Because in retrospect, I HAVEN’T SEEN THE WHOLE THING. This movie is two and a half hours long, and fell asleep both times I tried watching it. I remembered the beginning and remembered the end, but whatever happened in the middle was completely unknown to me. But now! I know what happened! In the middle! After ten long years! FINALLLLLLLY!!!!!

 

SIQQ TRIBALS, BR–wait, this guy actually belongs to a tribe. I take back my tattoo mockery.

 

Some old dude is telling this story when he’s getting close to dying or something, but we don’t know who that old guy was. Apparently there is some “beast”, who we’ll call a “wolf”, stalking this one small town in France. NOBODY CAN KILL IT! Two dudes show up in town, the King of France’s royal taxidermist/naturalist, and his buddy, a Native American. Apparently in France in the late 1700′s, a Native American was super fucked up and crazy to have just hanging out. This naturalist does some investigating and is basically saying, “Sorry guys, this thing is not a wolf because wolves are awesome and this beast is being a real dickhead.” Unfortunately, this only adds fuel to the fire because this town is pretty religious and they say that if it’s not a wolf, then it’s a beast sent from God to call everyone on their bullshit. While there, the naturalist is trying to bone this girl who has a creepy brother, but also has time to bone Monica Bellucci, who plays a prostitute. Uhhhh, to cut to the chase, the beast was some crazy unnamed animal from Africa that the creepy brother had brought back and trained to kill anyone he wanted after he covered it in super badass animal warrior armor because he wanted to fuck his sister. I hope you guys don’t mind me cutting out the boring parts, because I wish someone had done that for me.

 

I guess the computer effects were a little dated, but they didn’t really show the “wolf” often enough to be that annoyed.

 

I’m sure after reading that summary, you guys probably thought I hated this movie. WRONG. The shit I left out was just about the main dude who looked like Christopher Lambert trying to decide who he wants to pursue, Monica Bellucci or whatever royal lady. One problem? HE DREW PICTURES FOR BOTH OF THEM. And one got all sad. I don’t know, there was a whole hour of boringness in this movie, and were that hour to be removed, you’d have an AWESOME hour and a half movie. Everything looked really cool, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the director, Christophe Gans, went on to direct the Silent Hill movie. There was a conspiracy and religious cults being dickheads and someone calling them out on it, and wolves. I guess those wolves were getting killed, so maybe that wasn’t good, but it had “wolf” in the title, which gets at least 2 stars in my book. I guess I understand why the director had all that relationship shit going on, and it was kind of cool because it was based on “true events”. In the “true” event, the beast was killed and it was just a big wolf, but the movie explained that it was a big hoax, with the taxidermist being involved. It’s still a pretty good movie, but I would have liked it a little more had it been more concise.

 

Bonus Monica Bellucci picture because I thought I needed one more picture in this post than I actually did. WHOOPS.

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Silent House (2011) [REVIEW]

April 2, 2012 2 Comments

 

IF THERE’S AN OLSEN SISTER IN IT, I’M SEEING IT. Simple as that. I think this movie got good reviews or had some sort of buzz around it because of some screening at a festival? I can’t remember. I was looking forward to it for some reason, and I kept thinking Clive Owen was in it. Then I remembered he was in some other shitty movie involving a house, and got sad I wouldn’t get to see Clive Owen. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I saw this movie that’s called Silent House. I had heard there was some sort of twist at the end, yet didn’t quite know what it was, so I guess I wasn’t exactly impartial to what was going on. I was constantly trying to predict what that twist was, and I was only partially correct. I’m going to spoil the ending for you guys, so if you don’t like spoilers, my review would be that the first 60 minutes aren’t that bad, and the last 30 minutes aren’t that good. And yes, I know it’s a remake of a horror movie from Uruguay, but I didn’t see that movie, so don’t feel obligated to leave comments about “blah blah blah THE ORIGINAL…” unless it will phyiscally pain you.

 

Anyone else think they just shot this on a break while filming Martha Marcy May Marlene because they had 90 minutes?

 

Elizabeth Olsen plays Sarah, a girl who is helping her father John (Adam Trese) and uncle Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens) clean out their old house so it can be sold. They don’t live there anymore, so most of the windows are boarded up because kids keep stopping by to break them. While John and Peter are busy, a neighbor stops by to reflect on all the childhood memories she shared with Sarah, despite Sarah not remembering them. Sarah keeps hearing weird noises in the house, and her father says there’s nothing to worry about, but that changes when she hears a loud thud and finds her father bleeding from the head and knocked out. There’s someone in the house with her! But all the windows are boarded up and doors are locked! There’s a long period of time where she is just kind of hiding from some guy who is trying to find her, until Peter comes back from some trip. When he gets back, he is also attacked by whoever is in the house, and when Sarah follows the trail of the intruder, she finds her father, conscious, as well as an Peter and the girl from next door. THIS IS WHERE IT GOT KIND OF CONFUSING. Basically, her father and uncle had molested her in the house and she had flashbacks that brought those memories back to her and the intruder was a scary memory or something and she was the one hurting her uncle and father the whole time and the neighbor was a different repressed memory and WAIT THAT DOESN’T MAKE MUCH SENSE. Anyways, she kills her dad and leaves her uncle for dead and then leaves the house.

 

Behind you! It’s Maggie Gyllenhaal! And she’s pissed at you for stealing her face!

 

Let’s talk about the good things before we get to the bad things, deal? One of the gimmicks with this movie was that it was shot in real time and in “one” take. We all know that’s not true, because way too much stuff was happening. Rather, the film was shot in ten minute chunks and then edited together to look like one shot. A few of these edits were noticeable, but for the most part, the whole thing had a good flow to it. 95% of every scene was just a camera pointed at Olsen and you maybe saw something over her shoulder that she was scared of, and despite all that pressure, I’d say she carried that weight well. One problem I have with movies where there is one character with no one to interact with is that they talk to themselves a lot to try to build some sort of narrative. REAL PEOPLE DON’T DO THIS. They don’t splash water on their faces and look in a mirror and say something motivational or remind themselves the narrative of their lives. Most of this movie she didn’t talk at all, which must have been a challenge, but it paid off. Although she did make a lot of faces where she looked like she was screaming but wasn’t, and those were kind of funny.

 

What it lacked in full frontal nudity was made up for in cleavage throughout.

 

NOW IT’S TIME FOR THE BAD. Well, BEFORE the bad, something I wasn’t sure how I felt about was the camerawork. A lot of the time it looked like I was watching that old MTV show “Fear”, where the camera was attached to someone as they ran around scared. Other times, the camera in the movie would clearly be running along with Sarah and, although I’m sure it gave some people motion sickness, it did have a certain authenticity to it. More authenticity than most found footage movies have these days, I’d say. As far as the ending…what the fuck? I’ve complained about movies like Identity or The Ward before where you realize you didn’t give a shit about anything you saw when you realized everyone was inside of someone’s brain. On the other hand, I am a fan of the movie High Tension, which had a similar ending that didn’t really add up the more you scrutinized it. I’d say that Silent House falls somewhere in between. You couldn’t quite tell if what was happening was a memory or if it was reality, maybe we were time-traveling, and you couldn’t really keep anything straight. I tried drawing diagrams to figure out the course of events and what was real and who did what, until I realized I didn’t care enough and gave up. On the one hand, it was the killer who was the one doing the murdering and she was imagining someone else doing them so it wasn’t as pointless as something like Identity, but it added in too many different perspectives to make it confusing.

 

Hold up a flashlight if you enjoy raping people!

 

Despite being confusing, I did like that there was one definitive moment that separated reality from crazy person fantasy imaginations. Early into the film, Sarah’s father uses a Polaroid camera to take pictures of some mold, which he was planning to send to the insurance agency. The effect of being in a dark theater and having a bright flash go off was a little jarring for not just the viewer, but also for Sarah. Throughout the film we see John and Peter finding Polaroids and hurriedly shoving them into their pockets. At one point, when the “intruder” is trying to find Sarah, the lights go off and she uses a Polaroid camera to try to see them. Again, very intense, bright flash that lit up the whole theater. When Sarah realizes she was molested, she finds a box of Polaroids that her father and uncle took of her, presumably doing inappropriate things. I’d say that just the effect of being in a dark theater with these bright flashes was gimmicky enough, as well as was a reference to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it also fit into the context of the story. Maybe I’m being a little too critical of a movie that I’m sure most people quickly dismissed, but it was a nice detail to include. If you want to watch Elizabeth Olsen for 90 minutes, then I guess this movie is worth checking out.

 

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Yup, I’m Seeing That (Volume 2)

March 31, 2012 5 Comments

One post that I did last year that was really helpful for me was a post where I listed all the movies I wanted to see that were coming out between March and September. Once I hit September I was running out of movies, which was why I arbitrarily stopped finding movies. I ended up seeing all the movies on that list, with the exception of Cowboys & Aliens because I heard it was kind of poopy. Haha, I called a movie “poopy”. Anyways, these are the movies I want to see, and I encourage you guys to share your thoughts on what I might have left out!

 

DISCLAIMER: I know there are plenty of movies that are going to come out in this time that I haven’t seen the trailer for yet and I did not include it on this list. I did that on purpose. I try to avoid trailers as much as possible, because it turns into an endless spiral of watching more and more bits from the movie that are edited together by someone trying to coax you into watching it. In other words, you don’t need to sell me on a movie that’s coming out then, because if it comes out and I hear good things, I might still check it out.

 

The Cabin in the Woods – April 13th

I know that this is a Joss Whedon movie and is supposedly a tribute film to movies that involve cabins being in the woods. I’m trying to avoid the trailer because I’ve heard this movie has a similar tone as Drag Me to Hell? I think? I don’t know, I hope it’s good. Then there’s that OTHER Joss Whedon movie…

 

The Avengers – May 4th

WELL OF COURSE I’M GOING TO SEE THIS! I think the most difficult part about the whole thing will be who the movie focuses on. Iron Man already has two movies under his belt, so the obvious choice would be to have his character driving the story. Then again, you have Captain America getting involved, who most would agree is THE leader of the Avengers, were you to pick only one person. Thor will most likely just show up out of nowhere and fuck things up, but that’s okay, because his movie last year didn’t impress many people. Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Hulk will probably all just poop around in the background, and then Samuel L. Jackson will say something very Samuel L. Jackson-y, and everyone in the audience will giggle. I can pretty much guarantee that this movie will be a lot of fun, but might not necessarily be all that good.

 

Chernobyl Diaries – May 25th

Something from some guy who apparently had something to do with Paranormal Activity? Okay, maybe not the biggest selling point (just ask that TV show The River), but shit going down at Chernobyl is something I can get behind.

 

Piranha 3DD – June 1st

The first one was a lot of fun, and what this movie lacks in Adam Scott I hope it makes up for with Katrina Bowden. It’s possible that this installment will get TOO wacky, considering the addition of David Hasselhoff, but I guess wackiness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Alexandre Aja isn’t directing this time, and directing duties have been passed over to John Gulager, who I feel was kind of hit and miss with his Feast movies. I guess as long as there are boobs in 3D, this should be worth price of admission.

 

Prometheus – June 8th

I really, really, really, really, really don’t want to consider this the best movie of the year after only having seen a trailer, but how can I not? The confusion over whether this is or isn’t a prequel to Alien or if it just takes place in the same universe or whatever doesn’t really matter, because it’s Ridley Scott coming back to sci-fi with the help of Damon Lindelof. I am also glad that no one really has any goddamn idea what this is about, and since it’s a prequel, it’s hard to have any preconceived notion of what might happen. It just….looks so….awesome.

 

The Amazing Spider-Man – July 6th

I wish I could be more excited for this than I am, but I’m not. Did that make sense? Shut up. At its best, I’m pretty sure this movie will only be considered “pretty good”. At its worst, it will probably be considered “bad”. Some of the footage from the trailers looks kind of cool, but there wasn’t one sequence or bit of casting that made you sit there and think “WOW” the way the trailer for Raimi’s version did in 2002.  I mentioned last summer how I did get chills when I watched the video of Andrew Garfield at SDCC going up in front of an audience to proclaim how proud he was to be Peter Parker, so I’m happy for him, but I guess we all just have to wait and see.

 

The Dark Knight Rises – July 20th

The way I feel about Prometheus might just  be my way of taking the pressure off of this movie. Everyone knows that at its worst, this movie will still be good, and at  its best, it will be fucking incredible. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is one of the best superhero movies of all time, and I don’t there is any way he can fuck this up. This is another one that I don’t want to look too much into, because the more I see now, the less stuff there will be to blow my fucking mind when I see it in theaters. I guess I just wonder if Nolan will have the balls to permanently cripple Bruce Wayne so someone needs to take over forever, or if Bane will hurt him just enough to take a nap or something. AHHHHH I SHOULD JUST STOP THINKING ABOUT IT NOW!!!!

 

HOLY SHIT, IS THAT IT?! Last year I had a bunch of movies and I was totally stoked. I thought this summer was going to be just as good, but clearly it won’t. I guess last year there were a lot of movies I kind of wanted to see, but between Avengers, Prometheus, and Dark Knight Rises, there are a few films that I really want to see. And next thing you know, it’ll be the summer of 2013 and we’ll all get to watch Anchorman 2! Yay!

Filed under Comics, Horror Film, Inane Bullshit, Non-Horror Film Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Ruins (2008) [REVIEW]

March 28, 2012 6 Comments

 

 

Remember a day, four years ago, when the only way to see a movie at your house while it was still in theaters was to watch a streaming, bootleg version of it? These days, all the kids are using their downloads and their “torrents” and can watch an HD version of a movie in theaters the day after its release. Am I going somewhere with this? Oh yeah, the first and only time I had seen this movie was when I watched a bootleg copy of it online. I couldn’t see a lot of what was going on and it kept buffering and it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. You know another movie I watched like that? THE NANNY DIARIES. Yup, I watched it, and I also just remembered that I bought The Nanny Diaries on DVD because I really needed a 4th movie for Blockbuster’s “4 Movies for $20″ deals. Hahaha, remember DVDs? That was crazy. Good story, Wolfy!

 

This movie also reminded me that Jena Malone and Kristen Stewart were two completely different people.

A bunch of vacationing suburban brats are partying in Mexico and….something bad happens! Okay FINE, I’ll go into more detail, I just feel like I’ve been starting off with “…a bunch of douchebags are on vacation”. These college kids meet some dude who is looking to investigate some ancient ruins–WAIT! Is that why this movie is called “The Ruins”? Probably not. All these dumb white people go into the Mexican forests and when they get to the titular ruins, they are surrounded by locals with guns and bows and arrows. Weird, right? The group run to the top of these ruins and find abandoned camping equipment. I THINK SOMETHING WEIRD HAPPENED! The weird thing that happened was the vines that covered the ruins are killing people by burrowing into their flesh and doing gross things. The reason they aren’t allowed to come down from the ruins is that they’ll carry the vines with them and that can’t happen. There’s a leg amputation scene involving rocks and an impromptu surgery scene where characters go digging around inside themselves to kill vines, but things don’t end there! Only one member of the group is able to escape the vines and the ruins and the locals and we think she’ll make it back to civilization, only to see some vines growing under her skin that she probably doesn’t know about and WHAT THE FUCK WILL HAPPEN WHEN THIS SHIT GETS TO TOWN OH NOOOOO!!!!!!!!

 

THIS SHIT’S SCARIER THAN WHEN TEMPLE GUARDS JUMPED OUT AT PEOPLE ON “LEGENDS OF THE HIDDEN TEMPLE”.

This is based on a novel, but I guess the author of the novel was involved in the making of this movie, so I’m assuming he endorsed the story. How many times have we seen this story before? Group of characters are stuck in a small physical space, not knowing what to do or not necessarily knowing where the dangers are, resulting in most or all of the characters dying. Once you get past the relatively generic series of events, this movie’s not all that bad. The characters weren’t necessarily all the likable, but that might be because they were somewhat atypical. For example, the “lead” college guy, played by Jonathan Tucker, was kind of a douchebag. You totally understood why his girlfriend, played by Jena Malone, would cheat on him. Despite his douche-factor, you were glad to see him step up and use his medical school skills to help amputate a guy with a rock. That leads to another selling point of this movie, which were the effects. Granted, the effects of the vines crawling under the skin were done through CGI, but the idea of it and the impromptu surgery scenes were pretty gnarly. Not necessarily a bad movie that had some mildly amusing twists to an otherwise played out storyline, but not something that will stick in many people’s memories. I enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane and watching Jena Malone on my TV because everyone thought she’d have some sort of actual “career” after Donnie Darko.

 

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Wolf Creek (2005) [REVIEW]

March 14, 2012 2 Comments

 

I remember seeing advertisements for this movie as a young boy, and wondered what the fuck all the hype was about. I use the term “young boy” pretty loosely, because it was only seven years ago. That doesn’t change the fact that this movie that was made in Australia was somehow popping up on my radar of movies, even without spending nearly as much time as I do now seeking horror movies. All I really remember hearing was “Hey guys, there’s this movie from Australia that’s supposed to be awesome!”, and it even got a theatrical release somewhere near me. I didn’t see it until it was released on DVD, but when I watched it, I didn’t realize what all the fuss was about. It was good, sure, but was it great? Not really. I couldn’t really remember much about it so I gave it another shot. Will my opinion change? Will I like it more? Will I like it less? Well just keeping reading to find out, ya dummy!

 

For now it’s all fun in the sun, but wait until you are getting TORTURED AND KILLED AND DEAD BECAUSE YOU PROBABLY WON’T BE LAUGHING THEN BECAUSE YOU’LL BE DEAD.

A group of friends are on a vacation traveling through the Australian outback. They’re camping out, going to parties, going to the beach, doing all the things that good buds do. They’re in search of Wolf Creek, a cool place to camp out, when they get into some car trouble. A man is passing by and offers them assistance, but before he does, they all just hang out together and drink some beers. When the man finally does help, he turns out to be a crazy weirdo who kidnaps and tortures them! Oh no! Who woulda thunk it?! OF COURSE THAT WAS GOING TO FUCKING HAPPEN. The two ladies of the trio are tortured for a little bit, seemingly for no other reason than the guy is a creep, and they also get killed. Wherever the guy from the trio was being held, he was able to escape and find a car driving by who actually saved him. I mean, that’s it, really. People hang out, get kidnapped, one escapes and the wildman torturer is never found. And it’s also “based on true events”, despite not really being based on true events.

Avoiding the more traditional Crocodile Dundee quote about knives and will instead reference the game of knifey-spoony. Wait, I just did reference that. Add in your own quote in regards to knifey-spoony. Thank you.

I suppose I might have confused you with that last part, the “based on true events” thing, so I apologize for that. There isn’t one specific event that this movie is based on, but rather it is influenced by multiple murders of multiple backpackers that took place in Australia where the murderer was never found. I guess that might be what makes this kind of creepy for people? They go backpacking a lot and think this might happen to them? This movie certainly isn’t bad or anything, just not my particular taste. A couple of characters that the filmmakers try to get you to connect with, but ultimately don’t, getting tortured and killed. John Jarratt as the backwoods murderer was pretty good and there were some pretty good effects for the torture scenes, but nothing much else did it for me. If you like gritty slasher movies then you’ll probably really dig this movie, but it’s just not really my favorite genre.

 

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Wake Wood (2011) [REVIEW]

March 11, 2012 3 Comments

 

What on Earth could a movie with the words “wake” and “wood” in the title be about? Could it have anything to do with woods? Or being awake? WHO KNOWS! This movie could have been about practically anything! But you were right, it has something to do with woods and be awoken. Except rather than being awoken from a slumber in your bed, it’s from a slumber in the dirt! From death! SCARY!

 

And this guy is in it! Did I mention that? IT’S THIS FUCKING GUY! YOU KNOW THIS FUCKING GUY!

A little girl is attacked by a dog and killed and I’m already starting to hate this movie. DOGS ARE NICE. The parents of this little girl relocate so a small, isolated town called “Wake Wood”, and basically hate their lives. One night, they see a weird ritual take place that seemingly brings the dead back to life. They ask the guy who was involved in the ceremony and he says that it’s possible, but with a few caveats. It’s stuff you can imagine, like the person can’t have been dead for more than a year, they dead person only has 3 days, the dead person can’t leave town, and the parents need to live in Wake Wood forever. They oblige and their daughter is brought back, but other people in town notice strange things. The parents try to leave Wake Wood, but the daughter starts face bleeding or something. It is also revealed that she had been dead for more than a year, so since her resurrection, she’s been killing people. She must be put to death for the second time to stop the deaths, and this time the mom needs to be sacrificed with her. Once the mom and daughter go back to being dead, the dad resurrects the mom because she was pregnant! And there’s a baby! Yay for things being alive!

 

Oh yeah, you also have to be born out of a cow or something. I don’t know, but it’s gross whatever it is.

I tend to write reviews shortly after I’ve watched a movie, but sometimes THAT’S NOT THE FUCKING CASE. I feel like I watched this movie years ago, so I don’t really remember it all that well. It had cults and death and resurrection, so that’s always a plus. Wait a second, this movie STARTED with a dog killing a little girl. That’s bullshit! Dogs just want to party and hang out with their friends! If a dog murdered it a little girl, it was probably for a good reason. That’s really the only negative thing I can remember about the movie, but it’s a big one. I guess the whole dying to be reborn and dying again thing was getting a little redundant, seeing as how it happened so frequently. And why didn’t someone who lived in Wake Wood get on the internet and tell their buddies to come and revive their friends? Where did they learn the rules about reviving people and the instructions? Did they just keep attempting to revive people in different ways until it happens? All I’m saying is you don’t just go to every town you live and attempt to revive the dead, so who was the first guy to do it? Maybe it was a girl? I don’t know, this movie was just average and made a cool dog look like a shithead. NOT COOL, WAKE WOOD.

 

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