Sisters (2006)

JULY 31, 2011

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL

SOURCE: CABLE (SHOWTIME HD)

In college I had to take a “Humanities” course, which focused on art, music, philosophy, and literature, and while I didn’t mind the typical classes and occasional paper writing too much, I performed miserably at the exams, particularly the music part. Basically the teacher would play a section of some classical piece and we’d have to remember the composer, composition, and year it “dropped”. I got a zero on one test – my brain just cannot hold that sort of information no matter how hard I try. Thus, my viewing experience watching Douglas Buck’s 2006 version of Sisters wasn’t a total loss, because it helped me identify one such piece for good.

See, because of this 'affliction', I often run into the problem of hearing a bit of classical music and having no way of identifying it, because I obviously can’t just Google a few of the lyrics. And recently, it was driving me nuts that I heard one such piece in a trailer for a documentary, recognizing it as being used in several documentary trailers and other places. I spent a good hour Googling the trailer, the movie, terms like “documentary trailer music classical”, etc, before finally giving up. And then, 15 minutes into Sisters, a character puts on said piece and even discusses a bit. So now I know – it’s Bach’s Cello Suite 1. I shant ever forget! Also – stop using it in trailers all the time! Move on to Suite 2 at least.

Anyway, that’s about the only good thing that came out of watching this movie. The original Sisters isn’t one of my favorite De Palma films, but it has a personality and some wonderfully off-kilter touches (final shot with Durning watching the cow, for example), plus some great suspense bits, such as when the police come over with the reporter looking to investigate her claims that she saw a murder. This version strips away all personality, leaving just the meat of the (not particularly great) story, adding almost nothing, and actually making the climax MORE confusing than the original’s.

In fact, the only bit about the entire movie that works only does so if you’ve seen the original, which is a problem when pretty much everything else is a copy. The film actually starts at the institution (solving one of the original’s problems, which is that the institution stuff was clunkily introduced late in the film), and the “normal” twin meets up with a guy in a less silly manner – they both volunteer at the hospital, as opposed to meeting on a very terrible game show and somehow ending up on a date. So I’m thinking that this is going to be a very different movie, and then the male “hero” (Dallas Roberts, who was great in Joshua but has almost nothing to do here) spies a cake shop – oh shit! He’s doomed!!!

But from then on it’s pretty much the same damn movie, except without the humor or directorial style (nice random diopter shot, Buck – too bad there’s a little more to it than that). There’s no detective character, no pestering mother, etc. I’m not one to complain about changes in a remake – the more the better, I say (as long as they are justified). But here they aren’t changes so much as they are omissions – these characters and plot points are dropped but replaced with nothing. There’s a bit more with the doctor (Steven Rea*), but as the movie goes it just feels less and less like its own thing and more and more like a direct lift of the original’s ideas, sans the style or quirky appeal.

And again, the last act is even more confusing than the original’s. I admit I sort of got lost in the big “reveal” at the end of the original, having trouble telling what was just the creation of Grace character’s fractured psyche and what was real, but that was as complicated as Sesame Street compared to the random assault of hallucination/dream-like images, out of nowhere “reveals”, and general batshittery going on at the end of this version. Suddenly, our heroine (Chloe Sevigny, who also deserves better) has dark hair and seemingly believes she is the twin sister, who we discover died during the separation process. We also learn that she herself had a fucked up childhood (sexual abuse is hinted at) and may have been a guest of the hospital herself. Or something.

Now, usually I don’t like to admit that I couldn’t comprehend a movie’s climax, but when the writer (or someone involved with the production) makes an IMDb account under a vague name and offers a “theory” for what it all meant in order to combat all of the “What the fuck is going on?” posts, I think it’s safe to assume it’s not just me – the filmmakers just did a piss poor job making sense out of their story. So thanks, anonymous production person, for clarifying what was happening while offering a little “personally I thought it was a great movie” aside – way to erase any doubt that you’re actually the writer or director.

Other changes are largely of the modern variety; Grace no longer witnesses the murder through a window but via a bunch of spycams that are set up around the apartment, monitored in the doctor’s office that she is snooping around in when the murder occurs, for example. Folks have cell phones and can use the internet to look up information, though the scene with the news footage seems a bit anachronistic – why is it presented like a 1960s or 70s newsreel? Wouldn’t it have been just a few years ago?

Ultimately, the most curious thing about the movie is that Larry Fessenden is listed as one of the executive producers. I assume this has to be some sort of honorary credit, because his entire career is built around original movies, so I can’t imagine he’d make an exception for such a generic, ill-conceived remake (the ONLY true De Palma remake to date, as far as I can tell). I may dislike some of the films he’s produced, but the worst original film is still better than a lazy remake that wastes the time of a talented cast.

What say you?

*Seriously, between this, Company Of Wolves, In Dreams, and Feardotcom, seeing this guy – who I otherwise like – in a horror movie is almost a guarantee I’m going to be yelling “WHAT?” at my TV a lot. Come to think of it, the only thing about The Reaping that I didn’t understand was the point of his character. Is he doing this shit on purpose?

Blu-Ray Review: Stake Land

JULY 31, 2011

GENRE: VAMPIRE

SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Still resting comfortably in my top 5 of the year, Stake Land is now on DVD and Blu-ray, packed with bonus material and (on the Blu at least) a gorgeous transfer that actually improves on the digital showing I saw at the Sunset 5 during its perfunctory, largely unadvertised theatrical release. And since it’s a movie that I actually enjoy more on repeat viewings, I’m glad it’s finally widely available for folks to check out in a proper presentation (i.e. not some streaming OnDemand horseshit).

As I said in my original review, the movie is not unlike The Road, but far superior: less award-wanting acting, more danger. Nick Damici’s script isn’t too concerned with long bouts of exposition, allowing the actors to work with their eyes and gestures instead of their words (probably the sort of thing that attracted Kelly McGillis, who hadn’t been in a feature for years). And while there are no big all out attack set-pieces, there’s actually quite a bit of action; I don’t think there’s ever more than 10 minutes in between some burst of violence (either at the hands of a vamp or one of the religious cult members who seem to be more vile than the damn creatures). Also, without spoiling – none of the heroes are safe, with one kill in particular being a painfully harsh shock moment.

If you Google “Stake Land score” (no quotes), the first thing that comes up is my original review, which I should be proud of but actually kind of bums me out. Jeff Grace’s work here is his best ever, and actually IS available (via iTunes), so I don’t see why the link to buy it isn’t higher than the link of a blogger praising it, but whatever. I’m glad it’s released, and if I had one complaint about the evolution of DVDs over the years (besides forced trailers at the top) it would be that isolated scores w/composer commentary seem to be a thing of the past – I would have loved to have heard him talk in between his cues.

Grace does appear on one of the two commentary tracks, but doesn’t say much. Director Jim Mickle is the main participant, and along with Grace there’s the sound designer and the DP and a couple producers – gets a little crowded. Unsurprisingly, most of the track is technically oriented, discussing how shots were pulled off, where locations were, etc. There’s a fun camaraderie among the gang, and Mickle admirably points out a few mistakes (including a minor plot hole involving the trunk of the heroes’ car), making it a good track, but since Mickle also takes charge of the other track, featuring Damici, actor Connor Paolo, Larry Fessenden, and one of the other producers, I wish that they had just let Mickle and Damici have their own track to discuss the story and other natures, and then had another with all of these guys (even one edited together from multiple recordings) so we could get a little more insight on their contributions. Still, both were enjoyable to listen to and chock full of information, with very little overlap.

And both are of far more use than the behind the scenes doc, which runs about an hour but says almost nothing. Halfway through there’s some interviews with the principals, but otherwise it’s just an hour of random b-roll of the production, more often than not without any context whatsoever. It’s nice that they give title cards to pretty much every crew person of note, and it’s not without entertainment value, but it could have been cut down to 20 minutes and had the same effect, and it’s a shame that there’s no real insight to the process offered. Near the end, Sean Nelson jokes about how they should be able to shoot the following scene in two takes, but the scene in question is the triumphant single shot sequence where the vamps attack the town they have just arrived in – they could have spent an hour just detailing the production of this shot/sequence, but that’s all there is to it.

Of much more interest to me was the collection of video diaries, each focusing on a different aspect of the production. All five are fascinating, showing some of the emails that led to the development of the script in the pre-production diary, and another (yes!) gives a glimpse into the post production process, including the scoring sessions. I also loved the one about the visual effects – many created by Mickle himself – where you see a lot of before/after shots and probably get shocked as to how many elements (graffiti, road signs, etc) were created invisibly with CGI. I also enjoyed the character origin short films, which were shot for the website and released leading up to the film’s theatrical bow. As expected, they are hit or miss depending on your personal tastes (and possibly how much/little you liked a particular character); I enjoyed the ones focusing on Mister, Belle, and Willie the most (Mister’s also explains the significance of the skull necklace he wears). I also dug the general “Origins” piece (directed by Fessenden himself), which runs a bit long but has a terrifically gruesome final moment. The film’s trailer rounds out the supplements.

Dark Sky and co have also provided a terrific transfer for the film; again, I honestly think it looks better than it did at the theater I saw it at, and the sound mix is better than most big budget productions – the one-take siege sequence might end up being demo material for your surround speakers. The intentionally muted colors look perfect, and in turn during those rare warm scenes (Danielle Harris’ character's introduction, for example) just look all the more wonderful. In short, you’d probably be pretty stunned to hear how much the film cost to produce after watching this disc.

I tweeted last night that this was one of my top 5, and was met with some derision, so I should probably point out that I have a deep love for these sort of “isolation” movies (Cast Away is one of my all time favorite films), and several scenes reminded me of a dream project I’ve been writing in my head for the past couple years, which didn’t bum me out but more made me realize that it’s probably a good idea. The slower pace and Malick-esque stretches of silence and “beauty shots” may not be for everyone, but if you can appreciate the tone and approach they were taking with the material, I’m sure you’ll have no qualms about adding this disc to your collection.

What say you?

A Stupid use of commas

I hear Crazy Stupid Love is pretty, possibly very, good. At least two critics I respect have praised it in the highest possible terms.

Good for it. I had my doubts, I must say. I distrust Steve Carell at the movies, and I was actually at one point going to write a speculatively disparaging post about this movie called "Ryan Gosling sells out." But since few of my regular readers will allow me to make such blind indictments of an actor's role choices -- and probably for good reason -- I decided not to damn the movie without giving it a chance.

However, today I want to damn something that's not related to its actual quality.

Like, the use of commas in the title.

There are no commas when I wrote the title above, just as there are no commas on any of the posters you see. Yet over half the time I see this title in print, it is being listed as Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Given that commas tend to confuse people, particularly in a title, why include them here, especially when the grammar is not even correct?

In order to understand my argument, we have to parse the meaning of the title. At its most obvious level, the title is talking about love with two modifier words: "crazy" and "stupid." The two adjectives may separately modify the word "love," or one may modify the other, as in "That's crazy stupid." ("Crazy" is loosely translated as "really" in the latter example.)

If the title is talking about love that's "crazy stupid," the title should be Crazy Stupid Love or possibly Crazy-Stupid Love. If the love is both crazy and stupid, but not "crazy stupid," then the title should be Crazy, Stupid Love.

In no context does Crazy, Stupid, Love make sense. Unless you are just listing three things, two of which are adjectives and one of which is a noun. Which in itself does not have any overt meaning.

I'll grant you that the effective advertising campaign does lend some credence to the "listing three things" argument. As you see, the poster above says "This is stupid." Then there are these two below that concentrate on each of the other words in the title:


I'll also grant you that each of the three words can finish a sentence that starts with "This is." But that doesn't mean each is the same part of speech, or that those three sentences would be grammatically parsed the same way. "Crazy" and "stupid" are predicate adjectives, and "love" is a predicate nominative.

The commas don't work. Just nix them.

And then you might have a pretty good movie.

Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991)

JULY 30, 2011

GENRE: PUPPET, REVENGE

SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I like when the sub-genres are right there in the title, don't you? Unlike the previous movies, Puppet Master 3: Toulon's Revenge is actually pretty straightforward, telling the tale of Toulon getting revenge against the Nazis for killing his wife (and also, I assume, just the general fact that they are Nazis). We also learn that many of the puppets are infused with the souls of Jews (or at least, sympathizers) that were killed by Nazis for one reason or another, making their revenge all the more sweet. It makes more sense than having them kill psychics, at any rate.

And thus, as I was told more than once, this is the best of the Puppet Master films, as it tells a simpler tale and puts the puppets in a true heroic role. The problem with the other two films is that they were supposed to be the bad guys (until the climaxes anyway), but I couldn't stand any of the "heroes", making them rather uninteresting affairs. But I mean, who doesn't like to see Nazis getting killed? And when it's a puppet drilling a hole through one of their backs or dropping killer leeches into their mouth, all the better. I've seen enough of them get shot/tossed off railings to last me a lifetime, but this is the first time I've seen one get his Achilles slashed by a little toy doll.

Another thing that works in its favor is showing the origin of two of the dolls. I can't remember if we were told anything about their backstories in the other films, but it was a nice surprise to see how Leech Woman came to be (infused with the soul of Toulon's wife, gunned down by the Nazis). Blade's origin is a little less interesting; it's a Nazi doctor who eventually turns against his comrades and aids Toulon - it's a nice little character arc, but not sure if it was worth keeping Blade - easily the coolest puppet - out of the movie until the very end. We also get the origin of Six Shooter, a new puppet who wasn't around in 1 or 2 but apparently sticks around for all of the following installments. Not sure if his absence and/or reappearance in PM4 is explained, guess I'll find out later this week (I got the next couple films in the mail to review - god help me), but it would have been fine by me to see him get created/killed in this one movie as a one-off puppet. He LOOKS cool, sure, but all he does is shoot - the others' weapons are far more entertaining.

Also: real actors! Usually the Full Moon budgets only stretch to a day's worth of work from someone like Angus Scrimm or whoever, but Richard Lynch plays the film's main villain, a Nazi higher-up named Kraus (sadly, Hitler does not actually appear in the film and thus does not meet the business end of Tunneler), and he's always a great villain. "Mr Pitt" himself Ian Abercrombie is also in it for quite a bit, as the aforementioned turncoat doctor, and Guy Rolfe takes over as Toulon (third actor in as many films) and is easily the best one yet, giving the character a humanity that was absent in the other entries. Apparently he appears in a few more films, so I'm glad they (for once) stuck with one actor to play the role.

Hell, even Richard Band's score is pretty good this time around, and also used sparingly (well, sparingly compared to other Full Moon films). Sadly, it still suffers from one of the most obnoxious "trademarks" - an excess of washed out daylight scenes. I don't think I've ever seen such bright, borderline cheery NAZI OFFICES in my movie-watching life. Toulon's makeshift lab in the latter part of the film is pretty dark, and there's a nighttime action scene where the puppets free Toulon from Nazi capture, but otherwise everything always looks like high noon (with a few extra lights off camera for good measure). Even the climax looks like it might be interrupted by a bunch of folks heading off to the beach. This is a horror movie, for Christ's sake! Set some scenes at night, or at least throw some shadows into the mix.

Another thing in its favor, however, is some of the best animation yet. There aren't a lot of "Puppet POV" shots; instead we actually see them walking around quite often, and even sharing a few long shots with actors via splitscreen (I think?) instead of the usual composite shots. They still inexplicably remain stiff whenever they are picked up (at one point Abercrombie holds Jester and says something about how remarkably alive they are, yet the thing doesn't as much as blink). Six Shooter's antics are also quite fun to watch - it's like they finally figured out that people want to see puppets doing stuff, not assholes wandering around a hotel.

Oh, and it's ten minutes or so shorter than the others. Automatic win. Also, I looked at the Wiki entry to see if Six Shooter was around for the other (modern day) installments, and discovered that a few of the others are WWII-set as well. I know I'm all about watching a series in numerical order, but if you haven't seen any of the films yet, might be fun to watch them in chronological order by plot, which would make Retro Puppet Master the first film, followed by this one (with Legacy being the final installment, even though it's just largely a clip show from what I understand). If you do this, let me know how it works out for you.

What say you?

Cluster-clock

So as discussed on Thursday, I went to LACMA on Thursday night to watch part of The Clock, Christian Marclay's compilation of thousands of moments featuring clocks from the history of cinema, comprising a 24-hour, real-time film. It started at 5 p.m. on Thursday and finished at 5 p.m. yesterday.

I'd talked about going at some ungodly hour, like 3 a.m., just for the surreal qualities of being in a museum, watching a movie, at 3 a.m. Traffic would also be non-existent, and as a third benefit, the screening would probably be pretty sparsely attended.

But my wife said she'd prefer it if I went earlier, explaining that she'd feel less bad about having me baby-wrangle before work if she knew I hadn't just come home an hour earlier. We settled on midnight to 1 as a compromise. I didn't care, really -- I just wanted to go.

As I was driving over, I projected my arrival time to be about quarter to midnight. I remember consciously wondering whether I should wait to go in, so I could do exactly one hour's worth of the movie, from midnight to 1. One hour was all I needed -- after that size sample, where do you draw the line between one and 24? And I thought I'd have the luxury of being anal, of walking through the doors at 12:00:00 and leaving at 1:00:00. But then I decided that if Marclay used New Year's movies as his midnight clock, it might be fun to see the minute or two leading up to that.

Um, yeah, right.

When I got there, I could tell almost immediately that it was a clusterfuck. I expected the streets near the museum to be devoid of cars, making parking easy. I did park on the street, but it was in the only available spot I could see. And looking over at the museum, I saw not one but two large crowds of people waiting -- one along an interior courtyard wall of the museum, and one on the wall that runs along the street. In between there was a gap and a security guard managing the flow. I estimated the number of people to be around 200. I shouldn't be surprised -- KCRW was advertising it pretty much every hour of the day for at least a week leading up to it.

So the entry process seemed pretty straightforward -- someone leaves the theater, someone else gets to go in. But in the five minutes I was waiting there, I didn't move forward once. I discussed the prospects of our admission to the group of twentysomething hipsters standing in front of me, and they guessed it would be a 45-minute wait. I thought they were crazy. My own estimate was more like three hours.

"I guess we should have come at like 4 a.m.," I said.

"Oh, I hear that 4 a.m. is the best part of the movie," said one of the women in that group.

Darn it.

So I was back at my house inside of an hour after I'd left. I didn't see any of The Clock, but I probably had a better day at work yesterday than I would have if I had.

Last night my wife and I discussed our prospects of ever getting to see The Clock -- any part of it. And in fact they seem somewhat grim. I'm sure it will play again in Los Angeles, perhaps multiple times, perhaps annually. But if it draws this kind of interest every time, a dead-of-night screening would really be the only way to do it -- and even then I bet the wait would be at least 15 minutes. Also, normal people like us would be competing with all the actors and other industry folk with irregular schedules, who don't really care what time they're awake and what time they're asleep. Perhaps the line would have been just as long at 3 or 4 a.m.

I figured if there's a phenomenon like this, someone someday will try to capitalize on it through a DVD release, a 12-disc set or something. Ah, but there's a problem with that too. Marclay uses so much copyrighted material in this movie that trying to get clearance on it would be a nightmare, if not actually impossible. Only by showing it for free, as LACMA did, are the copyright violations acceptable. Try to make a profit, any profit, on it, and suddenly you owe a lot of studios a lot of money.

Well, at least now I'm ready -- I know what to expect next time.

I've still got you in my sights, Clock. We'll have our date with destiny.

Fertile Ground (2011)

"Uninteresting Ground..."

Is the After Dark Horrorfest losing its bite? Asking that implies that it ever had a grip to begin with, but after last years' solid line up, we had hope for the future... Of this years entries that we've seen so far, we really liked Prowl, and we really didn't like Husk. Husk played like a Sci-Fi Channel movie for the most part, and just did nothing for us.

Now that we've seen Fertile Ground, we can honestly say that it plays like a like a Lifetime movie of a week, just with boobs and a little bit of blood. It also did nothing for us.

Fertile Ground made us sad too, Leisha.
Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate's ancestral home in New Hampshire. There, isolated and haunted by inexplicable noises and horrifying visions, Emily learns she's pregnant while Nate is possessed by the homicidal spirit of his forbearers. In a house haunted by past victims, Emily learns that she's the latest target in a murderous tradition.

It's a nice little film, it really is. It's well made, stars the sexy Leisha Hailey, and has a decent story... but as a horror movie, it's just too bland and uneventful. I mean the movie opens up with a shot of Leisha Hailey -and her amazingly amazing boobs- buck naked and rubbing herself in front of a mirror... how do you go wrong with that? Show her having a bloody miscarriage all over the floor, that's how. That will take the wind out of any sail.

Udderly beautiful.
Add to that some old genre stand by's such as:
Troubled couple moves to country to make a "fresh start."
The old home the move into has a "mysterious" and "troubled" past.
Odd things begin to happen, which all point to "creepiness."
Our heroine has odd dreams which all point to "creepiness."
Hubby slowly loses his mind and becomes increasingly mean and evil.
*don't forget the jump scares.

There's nothing original at all here, and worse than that is the fact that what is there isn't even compelling to watch. This honestly could be a movie on the Hallmark Channel (nudity aside), for all of it's horror, or even suspense.

Leisha Hailey really does give it a good go with her role, but she's working with very little here. Same with Gale Harold. Nice try, you two. We dig you.

D Fertile Ground isn't atrocious, it's just nothing worth making an effort to see. Catch it when it hits cable if you find yourself bored one afternoon, but other than that, give it a pass.

Unless you like Lifetime movies. Then, watch it.


Word.

Beowulf (1999)

JULY 29, 2011

GENRE: MONSTER

SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Apparently assuming that Mortal Kombat's box office success was due to the techno music and a white-haired Christopher Lambert, producer Lawrence Kasanoff brought these elements into what was shockingly the first feature version of Beowulf, which - to be fair - more or less stuck to the original story. Unfortunately these things, and several others, combine to make a pretty bad movie regardless of its respect to the source material.

For starters I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be the future or the past. There are several anachronisms, both technical (nice modern eyeglasses!) and superficial (few are the historical epics that have a hip comic relief black guy - not saying they definitely didn't exist, but they definitely don't fit the mood/tone/etc), but the castle itself looks like some wizard tower in long shots, and I swear there's a loudspeaker in there too. Also, again, the techno music. I'm not going to lie, I really don't like techno at all, but it can work if appropriate to the movie - Swordfish comes to mind, for example. But not only does it not belong in this setting, it doesn't even fit the on-screen action! Early on, Lambert enters the castle and just sort of looks around, but the music suggests some high octane action sequence is occurring. The occasional tracks with vocals are even more ill-fitting; an unnecessary distraction that just makes a bad movie worse.

Granted, even the best James Horner (dismiss him for Titanic or whatever all you want; the man scored Aliens and Braveheart - respect) or John Williams score wouldn't save this movie, but at least it would be less of an obnoxious viewing experience and merely a boring one. This movie actually cost MORE than Mortal Kombat but is shockingly low on fighting and violence; I have no idea where the dough went but it's certainly not on-screen. None of the actors save Lambert could have cost much to hire (Rhona Mitra and Patricia Velasquez being the only other ones I recognize, but this was one of the first film roles for both), and pretty much the entire movie takes place inside the rather bland (and hardly expansive) castle.

But more problematic is the aforementioned lack of action. Lambert is playing the title character, obviously, but barely ever really shows the supposedly legendary fighting skills, nor does anything nearly as badass as the 2007 Zemeckis version, who tears off his own arm in order to save the day. Mostly all he does is dive and flip around and occasionally use a grappling hook. Cool. And we don't get to see Grendel doing a hell of a lot either; for a monster that has this entire castle fearing their lives 24/7, he's pretty slow and unambitious. At one point the movie turns into a slasher movie, as he slowly stalks and even toys with a single guy before killing him. We're told over and over that he's unstoppable and all that - why the hell doesn't he just wipe the whole place out?

Well, he does, at one point, but we don't even see it! Actually it might be his mother that does it, it's vague (that's what happens when major plot points occur off-screen). At this point of the story we're supposed to believe that Grendel is dead and his mother is looking for revenge, but then Grendel reappears when Lambert and Mitra (the only survivors at this point) enter the main hall and see everyone dead, including Roland. Roland is played by a guy who looks a bit like Everett McGill, and is set up as a potential rival/eventual trusted comrade to Beowulf, but he dies off-screen along with everyone else. I mean, fine, if your 20 million budget wasn't enough to show a bunch of random Romanian extras being slaughtered in close-up by a latex tentacle, fine, but you can at least offer us a death scene for our 3rd lead.

On the other hand, the less we see Grendel, the better. In the trailer and in some shots he looks normal, but they added a bunch of ridiculous filters over it, including a sort of purple cloud that makes no sense whatsoever. It's actually not a badly designed monster, and some of the CGI work is decent (much better than the mother/Grendel hybrid thing that appears at the end, which actually does the unthinkable and makes the Scorpion King in Mummy Returns look good in comparison), but these "bonus" elements just make it laughable. He also talks at one point - I don't know who ever came up with the idea that an otherwise silent killer uttering a single word would be cool, but he's a moron. The only successful example I can think of would be Hills Run Red, which worked because he sounded so normal (and spoke a complete sentence). But this single, strained, monster-voiced word nonsense has got to go.

As for Lambert, well, you know what to expect. He's not a particularly good actor, but he's got a presence; like a more everyman version of Schwarzenegger. I think he's at his best when playing "normal" characters - Fortress and Gunmen come to mind. Obviously Highlander is his claim to fame, and he's fine there because part of the character is a guy trying to blend in, so it works. But here, when he's supposed to be this legendary warrior, it doesn't quite have the right effect (especially with that ridiculous dyed hair). Also, for his fans - he doesn't do the laugh until the very last shot of the movie, which is a bummer since any respectable audience member will be laughing quite frequently.

As with Prophecy 5, Echo Bridge goofed and inserted the original Dimension disc inside their new packaging (you can tell because a 2011 release from another company probably wouldn't have a teaser for Scream 3 at the top of the disc). Of course, this just means a (presumably) better transfer and a few bonus features. One is the trailer, which hilariously copies Kombat even more by giving the movie a medallion like logo (with a profile of Lambert carved into it!) and saying "in the future..." even though the movie seems to exist in the past with a bunch of anachronisms (none of them weaponry - I'm guessing a few shotguns probably could have taken down the Grendel, and if this was really the future they would have had some, no?). Then there's a two minute, wordless featurette that's merely a bunch of random behind the scenes footage set to that goddamn techno score. So, very un-special features, but still more than you'll get with the actual Echo Bridge disc, which will give you a cheesy menu and possibly a washed out transfer instead.

So there you have it - the R rated, live action version of Beowulf that is somehow less scary, less gory, and less exciting than its PG-13 animated counterpart. It should be noted that director Graham Baker and screenwriter Mark Leahy haven't made a film since, and Krasanoff now produces Lego movies while pursuing his endless quest to get another Kombat movie made. As for Lambert, he is getting another chance at big-screen glory with a plum role in Ghost Rider 2, a movie I am actually excited for despite not thinking much of the original OR anything Neveldine/Taylor have done post-Crank. I think them paired with Cage and what appears to be carte blanche (and an R rating?) from the studio can produce magic, and Lambert - well, he'll certainly be having a grand ol' time.

What say you?

Straight to the point

I thought up the idea for Cowboys & Aliens about ten years before producer Steven Spielberg, director Jon Favreau or the seven credited writers ever did.

(You don't have to mention this to them. I'm not planning to sue or anything.)

Except in my version of the story, the aliens were attacking during Revolutionary War times. There was something about the image of early Americans frantically reloading muskets while aliens wiped them out that appealed to me. Of course, the Americans would have to win in the end, but in the meantime, there would be a lot of powdered wigs blown off of a lot of heads.

Of course, their idea is better. By using cowboys, not only do you have better weapons that are easier to load, but you've also got an actual established genre: the western. Besides, Cowboys & Aliens is a much catchier title than Minutemen & Aliens.

"Catchy" may not be the word for Cowboys & Aliens as a title, actually. "Straight to the point" might be a better way to describe it.

That's right, the title of today's big release is all concept and no poetry. This is not necessarily a bad thing -- it's just funny. It tells you exactly the idea behind the movie without any pesky metaphors or abstractions to get in the way. "If cowboys and aliens occupied the same territory in the space-time continuum, this movie is what you would get." Almost like the title was a placeholder until they came up with the real title, and they just ended up keeping it. If all movies followed this bare bones title philosophy, a movie like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would be called Memory Erasers. And many of us wouldn't have gone and seen it.

But it really works here, I think. It gives the movie a bit of a kitschy, B-movie feel, one that helps rather than hurts its cause. It tells me about what to expect from Cowboys & Aliens -- a fun summer ride that isn't going to be too deep. But not in a bad way.

So it got me thinking of other titles that leave no room for nuance, that get straight to the point of what the movie is about. Now, in a way, that's the primary goal of any title -- you want something memorable that will give the viewer a good idea what they have in store. And so a lot of movies do this in some way or another. But not that many of them do it in such funny, obvious ways as Cowboys & Aliens. Sure, the title Nixon is straight to the point -- you're seeing a movie about Richard Nixon. It works a lot better than Not a Crook or Corruption or Impeached or any other title they could have come with for a movie about Richard Nixon. But it's not funny, and that's the big difference.

So, I've come up with a list of titles that do strike me as funny in some way, because they totally eschew any sense of subtlety in communicating what the movie is about. Ten seems like a nice round number, don't you think?

10. Hot Tub Time Machine. "This movie involves a hot tub that functions as a time machine." Yep.

9. Four Weddings and a Funeral. And all the action will take place within the course of these five events.

8. Three Men and a Baby. "There are three men taking care of a baby, and shenanigans ensue."

7. Walking and Talking. I almost didn't include this one because it's actually sort of abstract -- you don't necessarily know what it's about just from the title. However, once you've seen the movie, you realize it distills the essence of an independent movie: people walking around and having conversations.

6. Monsters vs. Aliens. I sort of think of this as the template Cowboys & Aliens used.

5. Zombie Strippers. "Strippers become zombies, and shenanigans ensue."

4. Love & Basketball. "This movie is going to have some love, and it's going to have some basketball. If you like those two things, you should see it."

3. Hobo With a Shotgun. "A homeless guy has a shotgun, and shenanigans ensue."

2. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag. What more do you need to know? I guess how they got there might be of interest.

And of course, #1 ...

1. Snakes on a Plane. Yep.

Would love to hear any you might like to add ...

Goblin (2010)

JULY 28, 2011

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL

SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

The near miracle of my Blockbuster actually stocking a new DTV horror movie was enough to make me interested in Goblin, as it is literally the first new release I’ve been able to use for a HMAD there since February (The Traveler). I know DTV horror movies continue to exist, but whether it be their financial troubles or the fact that I’m probably the only one who rents these things, they just don’t put them on the shelves anymore, which means that there are probably a bunch of minor gems like Goblin that are passing me by.

Now, I stress minor. The first half hour or so is pretty bad, literally racing from one cliché to the next (the lack of cell phone signal AND the electrical problems in the house are revealed in one sentence) and focusing on a very unlikable teenaged girl, who, like many sullen annoyances before her, is angry at her dad for remarrying, hates the stepmom, resents having to help take care of her new infant half-brother, etc. Again, just once, can a teenager get along with her (it’s always a girl, too) new stepmother? Granted, I never had to deal with that personally, but my dad remarried (to my mother, he was married before her) and his daughter from his first marriage gets along great with my mom and always has. Hell she even stays with my mom when she visits even though my dad has passed away. To be fair, yes, she’s a little old to be petty and surly like a horror movie girl, but again, they always got along – it IS possible!

But then, something magical happens around the halfway point: our titular goblin eviscerates the ever loving shit out of one of the obligatory “cute guys in town” that have come along, distracting our heroine and her best friend away from watching the baby. Not that I was surprised he got killed – his name might as well have been Fodder – but it was so delightfully violent. The goblin is a sort of Sleepy Hollow-esque local legend and appears largely as a specter, so I wasn’t expecting too much in the way of gore – it was a nice little surprise to see entrails and what not being thrown around.

And it just gets better (spoilers ahead)! The best friend is killed, which I was a bit surprised by, figuring the “safe” family unit would extend to the friend, leaving everyone else as fair game. So when she got torn apart, I figured “Oh, I guess then her new boyfriend will survive instead” – but I was wrong again! Dude gets his throat slashed in the climax. Bonus: stepmom bites it too! In fact, there’s still a ways to go when she dies (well, gets fatally wounded, she sticks around for a while gasping for breath and what not), which serves not only as a great shock moment, but also a great way to keep me focused on the film. With the stepmom (who is not an “evil” type, it should be noted – she actually dies trying to protect the bitch of a stepdaughter) dispatched, I was no longer convinced of ANYONE’s safety, something that is increasingly difficult to pull off with me as, as you may have noticed, I watch a horror movie a day. Anytime I can be surprised at even one death is laudable; if you can actually get me to believe that no one is safe, I’m full blown impressed.

It’s just a shame that the production value and other elements don’t measure up to the script’s willingness to think outside the box a bit (a baby gets tossed into a fire in the first scene, it should be noted – the goblin curse involves the death of all infants). For one thing, the goblin is atrocious looking. Luckily they stick to a sort of vague black robed figure for the most part, but when we do see the creature underneath, it’s sadly one of the lamest CGI creations I’ve seen in some time, and yes I’m including Sharktopus. I know “looks like a video game” is an easy criticism to throw around at bad CGI, but in this case it’s incredibly apt – when he is fully shown near the end before getting offed, I swore I was looking at a cut-scene from a Philips CD-i game (how’s THAT for an obscure gaming shout out?).

Another issue is that the movie takes place on Halloween (nice little shoutout to Halloween too, with the ominous date/title card over an otherwise pleasant daytime exterior), but you’d never be able to tell for the most part, as they let a few lines of dialogue (and said title card) to tell us that it’s Halloween instead of things like costumes, decorations, etc. Hell I can’t even recall seeing a damn pumpkin in the movie. Granted, the movie primarily takes place in a house that has been abandoned for a while, but even the few town scenes don’t look very festive, which makes me wonder why they’d go out of their way to say it takes place on Halloween, when all it does is raise expectations within the horror genre. No one expects greatness from a movie set on, I dunno, March 4th.

And what’s with Syfy hiring actors from Battlestar Galactica to be in their original movies, and then viciously killing them? Last month we were “treated” to Sol being murdered by the Ice Road Terror as his poor wife watched (and then got killed herself), even though his character was a pleasant, helpful heroic type that neither deserved or needed to die, and now Doc Cottle gets the same treatment. He plays the “crazy old man who’s actually right” type character, trying to warn our heroes early on and later giving all of the exposition, and even with so many good guys dying off I figured he might have a shot of making it out alive, but no. Goblin actually tears him apart even though a terrible human villain character is right there. She dies a few minutes later too, but the fact that Cottle gets it first (and so viciously) just makes it all the more mean-spirited. Hey, it’s not the actors’ fault that the show devolved a bunch of pseudo-religious horseshit! Stop passive-aggressively taking it out on them!

One odd thing about this release is that it’s from Lionsgate (which hid its Syfy roots from me for a while), as Syfy originals usually get released by Image or Anchor Bay. But that means that instead of trailers for Hatchet or whatever, we get a new Saw ad that highlights kills/events from the entire series, hawking the fact that you can now own the entire series on Blu-ray. Sure, but when the hell are you guys going to make a boxed set with all versions, all the bonus material, and new features? Until you do, no one is going to believe that the series is really over! Sadly that’s the closest thing to a bonus feature; I wouldn’t have minded a featurette or something, as the director is one Jeff Lando, who also made the “better than expected” Thirst (which also had a painful first act) and less successful but still watchable House of Bones. Let’s be honest – most of the names I see over and over in this area of the genre just inspire dread (Declan O’Brien, for example), so to see the same guy behind three movies that weren’t a total chore to sit through is sort of comforting. Also, awesome name.

What say you?

The spirit of Andy Warhol is alive and well

For the second time this year, I'm going to miss my chance to see the longest film ever made.

I don't know if I'm correct in calling it that, but Christian Marclay's The Clock is playing tonight at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), starting at 5 p.m.

And finishing the next day at 5 p.m.

That's right, it's a real-time, 24-hour movie, which charts the passage of time as captured in cinema over the decades. If I'm understanding it correctly, it's a pastiche of thousands of moments from film in which a clock is captured in the frame, and given how many movies there have been with clocks in them, Marclay has managed to find images that contain every single minute of a day -- all 1440 of them. And no, I don't think he cheats by having a 3:37 p.m. stand in for a 3:37 a.m. That wouldn't be sporting, would it?

What's more, the film is synchronized to local time, meaning that if you drop in from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. of the screening time, you're seeing 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. of the film. That's one feat the TV show 24 could never pull off.

Because very few people are likely to watch the whole movie, and the event by definition depends on people dropping in for an hour here or an hour there, LACMA is not charging for it. The only potential limitations are on the ability to find seats. LACMA screened The Clock for the first time a couple months ago, and it must have gone well, as this is an encore screening.

I would truly love to see this movie. Or some of it, anyway.

It reminds me very much of something Andy Warhol would have done, though perhaps it would be a bit too on-the-nose for Warhol. Still, I think about Warhol's screenings of such films as Empire, the eight-hour-and-five-minute 1964 film which just shows continuous footage of the Empire State Building. He would never allow it to be shown abridged, and if you had a whiff of artistic integrity, you would watch the whole thing.

LACMA is not holding us to that same standard. I was never going to watch the whole thing -- I don't know that I could, even if I had no responsibilities, no job to go to, and a direct intravenous pump of Mountain Dew into my veins -- but I'd sure like to watch some of it. I floated the idea yesterday to my wife in the guise of a joke. You know the strategy -- you bring up something you actually want to do, then laugh afterward, to see if perhaps it will turn into a real conversation about how you actually might want to do it. She didn't bite, and instead started talking about the similarly themed Life in a Day, Kevin Macdonald's documentary culled from footage people took of themselves around the world on July 24, 2010. Which is also in theaters now, but is only 95 minutes long.

I thought this was the end of it, but as I'm sitting here now, writing this, I'm wondering if it might be worth it to take a wild stab at seeing some footage in the middle of the night tonight. If I were to go watch some of this film from, say, 11 to 1, it might not impact either my responsibilities (the baby slept very well last night) or my job (it's Friday tomorrow, so if I'm a bit sluggish, I can probably push through, with the weekend waiting on the other side as my reward).

Because I don't know if LACMA will schedule a third screening. And this is the kind of novelty any film fan should want to experience. Not only does it have the virtue of being a film itself -- a film that, if watched conventionally, would set length records -- but it also celebrates our collective love of film. You'd never know when a moment from your favorite movie might appear.

Then add in the fact that I just love participating in kooky experiments, and the wheels are really turning in my brain now.

So tune in tomorrow -- or more likely, Saturday, since I've already got tomorrow's post planned -- to see if I was able to fit in a couple seconds, minutes or hours of The Clock.

Here's hoping I find the time, as it were.

Uninvited (1988)

JULY 27, 2011

GENRE: MONSTER

SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

On the other side of the Mutant disc was Uninvited, a film of equally generic titling. That’s what’s great about big hit movies. If you tell someone you’re watching Pulp Fiction or whatever, the answer isn’t “Which one?”. But tell someone you’re watching Uninvited, and you’re met with “Oh, the one with Elizabeth Banks?” “The 1940s one?” “A film version of the Alanis Morissette song?” (OK, no one probably says that). To be fair, this one drops the “The” from the title, but come on, that barely helps. “The” isn’t even really a word.

THIS Uninvited is the one with Clu Gulager and a mutant cat, which instantly makes it more memorable than the 40 or so others. It’s also possibly the most coked out movie ever made, as the movie starts in a lab (where the mutant cat is “born”) but races through the whys and hows in order to get to where the producers and Without Warning writer/director Greydon Clark clearly wanted to be – a party yacht! What could exemplify 80s yuppies better than a yacht decked out with plenty of floor space for aerobics exercises, endless champagne, and guys in pink shirts? Oh and embezzlers, for that added Trump-ed up 1988 flavor.

Plus the villain could only be dreamed up by two wholly lit assholes sitting around one of their Beverly Hills mansions, talking over each other in a brainstorming session in which every idea is considered a great one. Granted, cats are often presented as villains or at least omens of death in movies, but few grow to mutant size and/or have smaller mutant cats coming out of their host’s mouth. And whether Clark didn’t understand basic continuity or just didn’t care, I don’t know, but either way the cat keeps changing size throughout the movie, sometimes more than once in the same scene. It will be normal size, then at least twice the size of a normal cat, than just sort of bloated... the little “in mouth” mutant cat also comes and goes; every now and then it seems like the thing has long since passed the point where it could readily be identified as a feline, but then two scenes later it will be back to a standard, cute little orange fluffball.

Of course, this just makes the movie far more entertaining than it has any right to be. It’s actually pretty boring; there are long stretches where no one dies via mutant cat, and too much time spent with the mustached asshole human villain berating the other cast mates or talking about his plan with George Kennedy. Hell at one point it seems that the cat might get to sit back and just let everyone kill each other, since Kennedy attempts to murder one of the younger yuppies and Mr. Mustache tries to start the boat when the engines were already overheated, but Garfield finally springs back into action during the 3rd act and eventually helps sink the boat (or, technically, a toy model of it). But the laughably bad continuity makes these scenes more than make up for the movie’s slow parts; at one point it changes size three times in a single attack.

The ending is also a wonderfully ridiculous sequence, as our two nice heroes have managed to make it onto a lifeboat and are seemingly safe, but then the cat leaps from somewhere and claws at the hero’s face. He tosses it into the water and it does it again, at which point the heroine realizes he just wants to avoid drowning. So they decided to take the obligatory metal suitcase filled with one million dollars (equal to the fine a producer would endure if any late 80s movie neglected to include one as a plot element) and toss it off so the cat can float on that. It’s already amazing, but it gets better – first they dump the cash into a bag, thus sparing us the eye-rolling “hero tosses away the dirty money” scene for once (yes!), and then when they toss the case into the water, it turns out that they were right! The cat jumps onto the case and calmly sits, watching them as they float apart. It is honestly one of the most gloriously idiotic/awesome things I have ever seen.

It also helps make up for the movie’s cripplingly bad decision to kill Clu off first (save for a few random lab techs and such as the cat makes its way to the yacht). The great thing about Clu here is that he appears to be acting in a completely different and far more entertaining movie. First he awkwardly tries to hit on some girls at a restaurant, then he stabs a guy in a kiddie pool (and later complains about being freezing from the water), and finally he gets drunk and starts singing to himself while purposely steering the boat off course. Even his death scene is wonderful, as he drags it out to Paul Reubens in Buffy-esque length and finally topples overboard what seems like three minutes later. I could have used an entire movie of him singing and fighting a cat, but as we know, our world is just not a perfect one.

Kennedy lasts much longer, though isn’t nearly as memorable. He mostly just sits around and scowls, apparently saving all of his energy for Naked Gun that same year (“He has a 50/50 chance of living, but there’s only a 10% chance of that.”). Also he’s already been down this road before, having starred in Death Ship, a movie I remember renting but have no recollection of actually watching. Never got released on DVD, far as I know, so Uninvited has one up on it, even if it’s a pretty piss poor release. As with Mutant, it’s a full frame VHS transfer, and given the most obnoxious menus ever, as they replay the movie’s score on a very short loop over and over. I should note that the score for this movie is incredibly bad, and thus the fact that someone sat there and did the necessary authoring to have it play/loop on the main menu (and the chapter selection) just depresses me. Sometimes a static, basic menu is actually better, fellas.

What say you?

Another Moon?

A little over two years ago I saw Duncan Jones' Moon for the first time. Since then, you could say I've been trying, in vain, to recreate that experience -- the experience of modestly budgeted sci-fi that has a brain, and an expansive understanding of the human condition.



Could Another Earth be another Moon?



That's what I set out to discover yesterday, when I caught the film on the back end of some errands I was running for my wife -- errands that earned me the right to cap off my evening with what turned out to be a double feature. (And in an unprecedented move that would ordinarily qualify as its own post, I actually paid for both movies -- I decided that having the opportunity to see Mike Mills' Beginners, only moments after Another Earth ended, was more important than being able to sneak in for free, which I couldn't do because the films were on different floors in the theater.)



And if I'm going to recreate the experience of Moon, I'm really going to do it right. Not only was it the same month on the calendar, but it was also the same theater, the Arclight in Hollywood, which I don't get to very often because it's not geographically convenient. Additionally, the Moon screening was even part of a separate-entrance double feature -- before watching Moon, I'd just gone to a critics screening of the documentary Soul Power, down the road in a separate theater. Yep, I was making sure these experiences mirrored each other the same way that the doppelganger Earth mirrors our Earth in Mike Cahill's debut film.



And?



Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.



The plots of the two movies are not ultimately very similar. Moon deals with a lone astronaut on a moon base, overseeing a mining operation for a multinational company back on Earth. Another Earth deals with an astronomy lover on Earth, racked with guilt over her role in a terrible accident, who obsesses over the discovery of a new celestial body that seems to be an exact duplicate of her planet. But the films definitely share a mindset, as well as a couple thematic elements. For example, in both films, the isolated central character stares at the skies in yearning, and in both instances, it's Earth they're yearning to reach -- the actual Earth in Moon, and so-called "Earth 2" in Another Earth. There's something they're trying to discover about themselves on that other planet, close enough to touch, but distant enough to seem impossible. In both cases, particularly in Another Earth, the main science fiction hook is something of a red herring, a means for the character to examine something about him or herself, about the very nature of identity.



They also share the same high level of quality. Not exactly the same -- Moon is the superior effort. But not by a lot. Another Earth pulls off the nifty trick of blending a high-concept sci-fi hook -- the discovery of a second Earth that's close enough to appear massive in the sky -- with what most of the story really is: a study of the way people cope with loss. In order to do that part of the story well, you need good actors, and the two leads -- Brit Marling and William Mapother -- do not disappoint. Since I don't know Marling from a hole in the ground, I was not as surprised by her performance as I was by Mapother's. He doesn't nail every scene, but he nails enough of them to make you forget that he's just Tom Cruise's cousin, a sort-of funny-looking guy who hasn't ever really had a leading role. And as for Marling ... wow. Her character experiences plenty of emotional situations in this film, and she consistently underplays every one, to great effect. However, she's also luminescent -- a fact we tend to forget, because most of the time she's overwhelmed by self-loathing. One more feather in her cap: She co-wrote and produced the film.



Points also to Cahill for giving the film a snappy visual liveliness in almost every respect, from the interesting camera angles to the thought-provoking cutaways. He really establishes a mood here, a mood of introspection and low-level scientific inquiry, and his limited use of narration and voiceover by poets and scientists really enhances it. The score, a combination of electronic music and more traditional orchestral pieces, works to keep this going. Plus there's that chill that goes down your spine, that sense of awe, every time you see that second planet Earth hanging there in the sky.



Is Another Earth another Moon? Well, I ranked Moon as my favorite film of 2009. You'll have to stay tuned until January to see if Another Earth can mirror that feat as well.

Call Back (2009)

JULY 26, 2011

GENRE: SURVIVAL

SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

There are obscure movies, and then there’s Call Back, a movie that is actually fairly new and stars a cast member from Supernatural, but not only have I never heard of it (not even sure how it ended up near the top of my queue), it seems to have slipped under everyone else’s radar too. The IMDb page for the film doesn’t have a single external review, and the message board hasn’t had a new post in over a year. Hell, even my buddy Scott Weinberg hasn’t seen it (or at least, reviewed it), which is unprecedented – he’s possibly the only person in the world who watches/reviews more horror movies than I do.

Oh, and it’s not very good. It might work as a very extreme play, as pretty much the entire movie takes place in one room with three people, and would function not only as an unusual thing to see on the stage (outside of the Grand Guignol, anyway), but allow some daring actor to spend 90 minutes half naked and strapped down, with his hands stuck between vices (and later he is crucified). It might not be much better, but at least the live performance would add SOME sort of energy to the proceedings.

Because one of the biggest problems with the movie is that it’s just not interesting. The guy is chained up in the first 15 minutes, never successfully escapes, no one comes along to help him, etc. It’s not too much different than Hard Candy in many respects, but there we were at least treated to stellar performances by its leads, as well as a few complications (the neighbor, for example). And the torture scenes were far more interesting; I actually almost got sick at the “castration” scene in that film, but this is just the same sort of lame nonsense we’ve seen in a dozen of these movies; little bit of skin slicing, a cut off finger, etc. The director and/or the budget also never allows you to see any impact, so I can’t imagine gorehounds even being pleased with this stuff. There’s a funny sight gag where they play tic-tac-toe on his skin (with knives instead of a pencil), and at one point he seems to be actually enjoying this shit (he gets half a hand job – his blue balls is about the harshest torture in the film, really), but otherwise none of it is cringe-inducing or thrilling, let alone scary.

The other problem is that the script never allows for the sort of “shades of gray” approach that could have made it more interesting to see how it plays out. I don’t know if we’re supposed to feel sorry for Levi, but I never did – he is introduced as a douchebag and clearly enjoys taking advantage of young wannabe starlets. Near the very end of the movie we learn (spoiler) that he raped one of the girls torturing him a few years back, but if this is supposed to make us change our opinion of him, it’s a failed attempt – I already didn’t like the guy, nor never once felt bad for him (especially since the dude gets a boner halfway through his “torture”).

Then writer/director Ben Ross screws up his movie even more, as the girls clean up their mess, leave him to die, and then open a scrapbook filled with other guys that they have already tortured or plan to, talking about how the next target is a bassist that apparently wronged her in Chicago. So, what, this girl is some sort of serial rape victim? Or does she just go after anyone who ever as much as forgot her birthday? It’s wholly unnecessary to suggest that they have multiple targets unless Levi had never done anything wrong to her to begin with (which would just make her some random psycho), but we know (see) that he raped her. It just doesn’t work on any level, and as a result the movie lacks any real point. If we’re supposed to be sympathizing with her, who is this other guy and what did HE do to her, and if we’re NOT, then why save the “reveal” that Levi is an even bigger piece of shit than previously established for the end of the movie? Make up your damn mind, man.

And can we stop with the classical music-based (read: free) “scores” for horror movies? One well chosen piece used ironically can be great, but an entire movie filled with random (but recognizable) selections from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, etc is just annoying. Like “Moonlight Sonata” or “Fur Elise” need any more exposure in cinema? The movie was obviously shot in/around Los Angeles – why not go down to Hollywood Blvd and have one of the dozens of struggling artists compose some original music for your movie? You get something a little more interesting, he/she gets some exposure, and the only guy apparently watching this damn thing gets less annoyed. Win-win-win.

One thing did amuse me though – the director’s big claim to fame was a torture flick called Vice, and the accompanying poster (and suggestion of other tools) are clearly inspired by Saw, if the title didn’t already tip you off. Even funnier, Levi seemingly suffers from ADD (at least in his early scenes), something that also plagues (Saw II-IV director) Darren Bousman. For the first 10-15 minutes or so, I was watching the movie under the impression that the guy was actually supposed to be a spoof on Bousman, but when his true colors and rapey nature were revealed I quickly abandoned that thought process. Nah, Levi is just a generic Hollywood douchebag, complete with a backstory involving his parents buying him his way through film school and exploiting some connections to get him a job in Hollywood.

And obviously there are parallels to Audition, which I'm sure are not coincidental, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. However, no one can deny that the movie was partially based on Swimming With Sharks, as Levi has a giant poster of it hanging in his foyer, which is about as obvious as you can get (did that movie even HAVE a giant poster, at any point?). But you know what made that movie work? A series of flashbacks, thread throughout the movie, that helped make us understand what led Frank Whaley down this path, instead of just some bland vixen who tells us at the end why we've been watching this stuff (whereas in Sharks it didn't take long to understand why Whaley had snapped). Also, it gave us a wonderfully cynical (and awesome) twist at the end, instead of some random half-assed epilogue that seems more like a (terrible) idea for a sequel than anything else. Oh, and the actors were great. No offense to these folks, they’re fine, but since Sharks is a point of reference, let's use it as an example - I never heard of Michelle Forbes before that movie, and was immediately of the opinion that she was someone to watch (and I was only like 15!), mentally cheering when she popped up in Escape From LA or whatever. Can’t say the same for anyone here, though oddly enough co-star Monica Gambee has caught my eye several times from the cover of Dream Slashers, a horror movie that my Blockbuster allegedly carries since the card is there, but the actual disc has never appeared on the shelf. Incidentally, these seem to be her only two films.

In short, don’t bother unless you absolutely love torture scenes and have exhausted all of your other options; even a movie that’s worse (Captivity, for example) is a better use of your time, because it’s so relentlessly terrible you can eventually give up and just laugh at it. This movie commits the cardinal sin of such fare – it’s just plain dull.

What say you?