CAST Kiefer Sutherland (Twelve, 2010) William Baldwin (The Squid and the Whale, 2005) Oliver Platt (X-Men: First Class, 2011) Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly, 1996) Kevin Bacon (X-Men: First Class, 2011) Beth Grant (Rango, 2011) Benjamin Mouton (Basic Instinct, 1992) Kimberly Scott (Batman Forever, 1995) Julie Warner (Tommy Boy, 1995) Patricia Belcher ((500) Days of Summer, 2009) Jim Ortlieb (Home Alone, 1990) Angela Paton (Joe Dirt, 2001) Ingrid Oliu (Stand and Deliver, 1988)
I'm not sure what genre to categorize this as. It may just be a tame horror movie, but you may just want to generically slot it under suspense or drama. When in doubt, do as my friends at Vision Video do, and put on the drama shelf. The premise is that a group of medical students--and I would love to know where they filmed the creepy, converted-seminary hospital scenes--kill and then resuscitate each other into order to explore the phenomenon of near-death experience. They discover that experimenting with brain-death gives them quite a scare, and each character (except for Oliver Platt) is forced to face the wrongs they have committed in the past.
As I said, this movie has remarkably lovely (in a spooky way) sets which feel as if they are heavy with symbolism but probably aren't (just like a Wes Anderson movie). The character development is subtle but effective, you feel as if you know enough about each person by knowing very little. It's the kind of conservative scriptwriting that I find most appealing in movies. I think this is a greatly underrated movie, especially for it's now-they're-super-famous cast and delicate subject matter. The tone remains clinical even as the symptoms begin to defy a clinical explanation.
CAST Bonnie Aarons (The Princess Diaries, 2001) Joanne Baron (Valley Girl, 1983) Adriana Barraza Tom Carey (Spider-Man 2, 2004) Molly Cheek (Smoke Signals, 1998) Alexis Cruz (Stargate, 1994) Kevin Foster (The Village, 2004) Reggie Lee (Psycho Beach Party, 2000) Alison Lohman (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (voice), 1984) Justin Long (Serious Moonlight, 2009) Ricardo Molina (Spanglish, 2004) Bojana Novakovic (Devil, 2010) David Paymer (Amistad, 1997) Ted Raimi (Clear and Present Danger, 1994) Dileep Rao (Avatar, 2009) Fernanda Romero (The Burning Plain, 2008) Irene Roseen (Beautiful, 2000) Chelcie Ross (Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, 1991) Octavia Spencer (The Help, 2011) Scott Spiegel (Spider-Man, 2002) Alex Veadov (Air Force One, 1997)
There were a number of odd themes in this movie. The first one, which my buddy Cora pointed out, is that all of the scary parts featured things going in and out of the protagonists mouth. There was a lot of yucky mouth imagery in this movie. First the old gypsy woman removes and reinserts her teeth on the banker's desk. In two or three scenes the gyspy woman puts her gaping toothless mouth on Christine's mouth or face, and in one of those scenes green gooey vomit was involved. There's another part where the old woman sticks her arm down Christine's throat to the elbow, and a nightmare in which a fly crawls into Christine's mouth only to be coughed out later. Christine gets a projectile nosebleed at the bank and her boss asks, "did I get any in my mouth?" There wasn't any psychological horror in this movie, it was just disturbing gross-out scenes.
The ostensible theme was, I think, "does the punishment fit the crime?" or maybe, "who has the right to judge?" Christine is apparently a sweet and good-natured girl, but at the moment before her demise she admits that she could have gotten an extension for the old woman's loan payment, but it was her decision to decline it. Does that mean she deserves to burn in hell for eternity? More so than the nasty co-worker who tried to sell Christine up the river even when she was nice to him? More so than the cursing gypsy herself? We don't know. For one thing, Christine was never repentant. She did not attempt to apologize to the old woman or to her family. I guess that means something.
I still didn't like the ending. I like my movies to have heroes and I like the heroes to win in the end. This was too in-your-face ironic. Stupid.
CAST Patrick Fabian (Must Love Dogs, 2005) Becky Fly Victoria Patenaude
I've read a lot of articles about The Last Exorcism already, so I'm going to try and not repeat any of those critiques. However, I don't think that will be too hard because nothing I read about The Last Exorcism prepared me for the actually movie, which pleasantly defied expectation.
So what I heard was that this movie was about an exorcist who really doesn't believe in demonic possession and just provides a cathartic performance to superstitious rubes. Of course, in this last case all is not as it seems, and it starts to become difficult to figure out who is playing who, and what are the motivations. I guess you could say it was a twist ending, but it was the clever kind that I like. Looking back, I think the biggest tell was the suffering girl's brother, when he told the preacher that he saw the trick that made it look like the water was miraculously boiling, and that meant the preacher was "alright in my book."
See, he was in on it the whole time. And I know the father was genuinely trying to save his daughter, but I can't decide whether the girl was a willing sacrificial lamb or not. At times it seemed like she genuinely wanted to be saved, but at other times she appeared to be putting on her own "show" of possession, acting like a parody of Regan MacNeil (oblique reference!) and lying intentionally about where she had gone and what she had done. But on the other hand, she had moments of precognition which at first seemed to reveal sinister intent, like a picture of the preacher and his film crew being slaughtered, but may have also served as a warning. Maybe she wanted to protect the exorcisors? This may warrant a second viewing.
Case 39 (2009)
dir. Christian Alvart (Pandorum, 2009)
CAST Renée Zellweger (Appaloosa, 2008) Jodelle Ferland (Girl Fight, TV 2011) Ian McShane (Coraline (voice), 2009) Bradley Cooper (Valentine's Day, 2010/1) Callum Keith Rennie (Blade: Trinity, 2004) Adrian Lester (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004) Kerry O'Malley (The Happening, 2008) Cynthia Stevenson (Air Bud: Golden Reciever, 1998) Alexander Conti (Cheaper by the Dozen 2, 2005) Mary Black (The Wicker Man, 2006) Benita Ha (X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006) Fulvio Cecere (Watchmen, 2009) Colin Lawrence (Fantastic Four, 2005) Dagmar Midcap (The Last Mimzy, 2007) Bill Mondy (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008) Andrew Arlie(Final Destination 2, 2003) Sarah-Jane Redmond (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, 2005) Daniel Bacon(The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008) Dalias Blake (Red Riding Hood, 2011) Phillip Mitchell
I expressed trepidation towards this movie a while ago but I decided to go for it anyway because I felt like watching a movie about possession. Turns out I might have been better served by checking out The Rite, The Last Exorcism,or finally getting around to The Exorcism of Emily Rose. This movie is about a well meaning social worker who takes in a child seemingly abused by her parents only to discover that all is not as it seems. This movie was hard to get through because Renee Zellweger sort of rubs me the wrong way, and it was one of those movies where the protagonist never does what I would do in that situation, and that just seems stupid.
The little girl was also sort of confusing because I was unclear on whether she was killing people expressly to make Renee's character unhappy or just to manipulate her into playing happy family or just because she was crazy demon-spawn. It was also unclear why she was so desperate to have a loving caretaker.
The ending was hectic, it seems that the evil was defeated, but is the social worker going to prison now? What will the official report say? I'd also like to say that I feel a lot of this was lifted from old episodes of the X-files, especially the parts where the adults are forced to cater to the untenable whims of an implacable child.
On the other hand, it was interesting to see how the possession theme was treated without any religious overtones. There was no priest or exorcism or ceremonies. The kid was just a demon. Case closed. It's true enough that the exorcism narrative has been beaten to death, but I'm not sure the attempt to circumvent those themes was effective here. One thing that religion always gives us in movies is the potential for redemption. In Case 39, not only was the child destroyed, but it seems that the heroine is also slated for demise, as is everyone else the girl came into contact with. I don't really enjoy it when a movie doesn't have any winners.
CAST Jack Nicholson (The Witches of Eastwick, 1987) Shelley Duvall (Home Fries, 1998) Joe Turkel (Blade Runner, 1982)
My friend Cora says that The Shining was a terrible movie to choose for a date. I thought it was OK, though. I've never see The Shining and neither had my gentleman companion and it's on my list of famous movies I really ought to get around to.
You see how casually I introduce context?
Anyway, I knew enough about this movie to not be too surprised by any of the twists and turns. Although I WAS surprised by the scary naked lady scene. I didn't really get that part, was she supposed to be the murdered wife of the first caretaker? Like the little girls? But then why did her age change, and why was she covered in tattoos? Were those tattoos? I wasn't sure.
I was also hoping there would be more hedge maze featured in the movie. I'm a big fan of hedge mazes, so maybe I should be grateful that this movie didn't make them horror-filled death traps for me.
My mom says that Stephen King only writes about immature boys, and even though that isn't what The Shining is about at all, you can tell that his strength is certainly not writing about married couples. The dynamic between Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson was horrendous. They didn't even seem like a happy couple at the beginning. Duvall acts like an obsequious, irritating wife with no inner life, and Nicholson is an asshole husband even before he goes crazy.
In conclusion, the scenes with running and chopping were good, the dialogue not so much.
Here's another spooky movie I watched before Halloween. It's about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, from the perspective of the good doctor's maid, the title character. The twist is that it's also sort of a love story. Jekyll/Hyde loves Mary because of her innocence, and Mary loves Dr. Jekyll as well as his evil incarnation. The big question is why, and how is Mary able to love Dr. Hyde even when she knows that he is a vicious heartless killer. Part of it must have something to do with her abusive father. A connection is established when Mary describes him as having a peculiar way of walking, not quite a limp, and later the housekeeper uses almost the same words to describe the gait of Mr. Hyde. At the end of the movie, however, Mary is unable to forgive her father for his sins, but she has no hesitancy in forgiving Dr. Jekyll. I haven't quite figured that out yet.
I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I remember that no symbolism was more salient than the description of the architecture. Luckily, the filmmakers behind Mary Reilly acknowledged this importance and even amped it up a little. Dr. Jekyll's main house is separated from the laboratory by a small courtyard. The laboratory represents the cruelly analytical and mysterious person of Mr. Hyde. However, in the movie the courtyard space itself takes on a symbolic form. Mary Reilly asks if she can plant some flowers in that area, to brighten it up a little. When the flowers finally show up, they are terribly depressing little colorful things barely penetrating the heavy gloom that seems to hang perpetually over Victorian Era England. Thus Mary herself assumes the role of the bridge that connects Jekyll and Hyde int one man.
What I never figured out, or forgot, about the story is whether Dr. Jekyll was attempting to isolate his dark side in order to attain pure morality in his actual person, or whether he was seeking a release from the enforced sociality of his culture. Either way, I do remember that he is seduced by the apparent freedom of Mr. Hyde and his lack of conscience, but as Mary points to the good doctor, there are no actions without consequences and the burden of Mr. Hyde's crimes, combined with Dr. Jekyll's even weakening resolve to remain his true self, ultimately destroys the man.
CAST David Naughton Jenny Agutter Griffin Dunne (My Girl, 1991) David Schofield (The Wolfman, 2010) Rik Mayall (Drop Dead Fred, 1991) Frank Oz (Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (voice), 1980) Alan Ford (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998) John Landis (Spiderman 2, 2004)
Oh, man! It's October and were are counting down the days until Halloween. Because it's relevant to a movie I've posted about on here, I think I'll post a picture of myself in costume. It's sort of in that trite theme of a "sexy" something, but hopefully you'll see that I've made it my own. Plus, you all know I wouldn't wear something truly indecent.
So! My first horror movie is a classic that I've been meaning to watch for a while, An American Werewolf in London. Let me tell you, it's not quite what I expected, but it was still some quality stuff.
It's about these two American guys who are backpacking across Europe, except they run afoul of a deadly beast. Jack gets killed, but David is far less lucky (drama!). The transformation scene is quite gruesome. but my favorite parts are when Jack returns to talk to David as a member of the cursed undead. Everytime appearing more and more decayed. Jack keeps pushing David to kill himself, because the victims of the wolf are trapped in Limbo until the wolf's bloodline is severed. Jack is joined by more and more of David's victims, but of course David can't quite bring himself to suicide, because he has someone to live for, Nurse Alex.
And so he runs amok in London. Including through the tubes, as in this particularly well shot scene:
you know I don't usually notice things like camerawork, I'm more about the stories. But this shot was so good I had to rewind a little to look again. You see the wolf just slightly creeping in from the top of the frame, and the victim has fallen down on the escalator and he's frozen in fear. It was very scary. But there are funny parts too, like when David wakes up in the zoo after his rampage:
In the 80s a little bit of public hair wasn't such a big deal. A few times you can sort of see what my little brother calls the tenders, but just quick. That would never happen in a modern movie. No winkies (this is why I don't have a boyfriend) at all, only breasts and butts. I remember the first time I saw a dude's tenders in a movie, it was What Alice Found (2003) which was playing on the Independent Film Channel. I was shocked! I didn't know that was allowed. The first time I saw lady-tenders in a movie was, I think, Animal House (1978, also John Landis), but I don't remember how old I was when I watched that (not old enough!). But in both of those movie the purpose of the nudity was blatantly sexual, and that's not the case here. That's my point: nudity doesn't have to be sexy.
I guess I won't spoil the ending but I will say that it's stark and abrupt. It seems like only modern movies feel that it's necessary to ease you out of the storyworld by letting you know that all the characters are going to be OK.
So, Dowdle, who I've never heard of, was the director of this movie, but M. Night Shyamalan did the story. Poor M. Night, I think he's having trouble getting directing gigs since all of his movies made so little money. Personally, I think he's a fine director, it's his stories that are too heavy-handed with the symbolism. Devil certainly has the key characteristics of a Shyamalan film, beside the fact that M. Night himself is not in the picture. First off it is set in Philadelphia, home to both M. Night Shyamalan and myself. Secondly, it's got that final act revelation that really clearly spells out how everything else in the movie is interconnected, because you wouldn't want anyone walking away after the first viewing with any misunderstanding, and that's what kills me. Signs, The Village, even The Sixth Sense had these pandering endings where they flash back to all the relevant bits and hit you over the head with this grand revelation and I'd much rather than the filmmaker give me a little credit as a thoughtful human being and let me put the pieces together on my own. That's the difference between a great film, one that demands review and reinterpretation, and a dumbass one that makes fools feel clever. It's a soft pitch, M. Night, and that's why you weren't drafted into the big leagues.
Apart from that, though, Devil was a pleasurable psychological thriller that kept you guessing for a good long while.
I not sure why, but for some reason I'm just totally not in the mood for writing about Jaws. Which is odd because I would about myself that, at given moment, I am on average 70% enthusiastic about talking about Jaws (and sometimes I'm sleepy or hungry and I don't really feel like talking about anything at all, so obviously that skews the statistics.)
Despite this setback, we will press on. Jaws is one of the most iconic American films ever. Consider the soundtrack, DUN DUNT! - two notes that are immediately recognizable and undoubtedly creepy. How about that perpetually misquoted line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat."?
And the villian! There are no special effects, there's no sinister back story. It's not a mutant shark, it's not a super shark, it's not a particularly clever shark. None of that, this movie appeals to the basic shared human instinct: sharks are creepy as fuck. AH! There's one here!
Look at those unfeeling black eyes, the mouth that doesn't seem to fit quite right on it's head. If you can call that a head. It just sort of tapers at the front end of the body. Would you even call it a snout?
Sharks are just one of those animals that when I see them in real life I just have to say AH! because I really cannot wrap my head around the fact that I am sharing the planet with something that is so different from me. It's like, what are you doing in my universe?
And if you don't feel anything like that sort of feeling then there is not enough wonder in your life.
The major conflict of the movie is that even as Chief Brody knows that the shark will kill again, Mayor Vaughn doesn't want to close the beaches on fourth of July weekend, the big tourist holiday and the major source of revenue for Amity Island. Isn't it so true that we refuse to account for the primal forces of nature as we are making our personal agendas? Mayor Vaughn's conscious cognitive dissonance stems from the belief that nature is something controlled and subjected. The horror of Jaws is the in-your-face reality that this enormous animal is very real - it's in the world with us right now, and it's bigger than you and it's underwater and it can kill you so, so easily and if it decides to chill out off the coast of New England during tourist season there isn't a lot you can do about it. That's scary stuff, right there.
And my favorite part, because I'm also tired, and I want to go home.
This movie is about a small, intensely Christian town which becomes subject to a series of apparent suicides. It is soon revealed, however, that the true cause is a curse cast by the vengeful sons of a pagan woman who was lynched for a crime she did not commit. The protagonist is a girl who is dating the pastor's son, but dumps him for the sensitive bad-boy. There's a race to undo the curse before the angry townsfolk kill the cute boy, while our Heroine races to save her new BF and her town, and not strangle herself death in the process.
No character was more irritating in this movie than the pastor's son, who, as the token best friend points out, "is the closest thing to royalty in this town." His radical turnover from a pleasant, trust-in-God's-will, sort of Christian to a kill-all-infidels sort of zealot is alarming and unexplained. By the end, he has replaced his father as the leader of the community and is willing to kill anyone and break any rule in the pursuit of his goal, which is to destroy the sensitive bad-boy who practices an alternative religion.
I can't help but point out that of the six possessions that occurred in this movie, only one of them was a man, and his "suicide" wasn't even an articulated scene, just a cutaway to a pair of hanging feet. I guess I won't go further into that because apparently some people get a little uncomfortable when I discuss the representation of gender in horror movies, and I'd hate for anyone to start thinking I was one of those "uppity" sorts of women that points out totally obvious patterns such as this and asks, why? Why is it so much more fascinating to see a girl covered in blood? Why does it seem so much more insidious when a girl is penetrated by a dark, uncontrollable force?
But we're not going to worry about those uncomfortable ideas, even though there's barely a point in blogging about movies if we aren't going to acknowledge such a blatant recurring theme.
It's a shame that I got all passive-aggressive here. I had some points to make about the title's metaphor. How the destruction manifested by the curse was actually a reflection of the town's dark secret, the murder of pagan woman referred to earlier, and the truth behind the murder she was killed for. She was scapegoated, sacrificed so the town, as an entity, could persevere in the face of irreconcilable iniquity. In turn, the nature of curse is that can only drive you to destroy yourself, it has no power beyond that. So the townsfolk are forced to turn their destruction back upon themselves in order to atone for the violence that came from within. Bang! I figured it out.
CAST Ellen Burstyn (The Wicker Man, 2006) Linda Blair Max Von Sydow (Minority Report, 2002)
I managed it on the second go this afternoon. And like most things, it wasn't as scary as the anticipation, and it's good that I can cross this off the classic movies I haven't seen yet list (Maybe Taxi Driver will be next).
I was surprised though, by the degree of sexual violence implied by possession. There's one part where the mother runs into Reagan's bedroom and she's bleeding as she stabs the crucifix into her crotch repeatedly, shouting, "Let Jesus fuck you!" after that, Reagan grabs her mother and pushes her head down, saying, "Lick it!" I guess the perversity was startling to me. It's not something I've seen in the more modern movies about demonic possession.
On that note, why is it that only girls are possessed? There's Exorcist (1979) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Last Exorcism (2010). Or how about The Reaping (2007), End of Days (1999), Ghostbusters (1984), Stigmata (1999), or that chick who needs to be rescued in Constantine (2005).
Can we think of men who are possessed? Sort of, maybe Constantine can be used again, since Keanu is sort of walking the line between life and afterlife in that one. For the same reason we could use Hellboy (2004), and Ghost Rider (2007), there's also Fallen (1998).
What's the difference? Besides the fact that the first bunch are, on the whole, better movies, the men who get possessed continue to act from a position of power. They use their new evil powers to fight MORE evil, or maybe they just go on a killing spree. They certainly don't get tied to a bed and wait for the evil to be beaten out of them - because they're men they get to do some beating of their own. Men gain control, women lose control.
I also have a rant about superheroines in movies as compared to superheroes. If I ever subject myself to sitting through Catowoman (2004), you'll get to hear it; unless someone wants to propose a superheroine movie they think it actually good.
Paranormal Activity(2007) dir. Oren Peli starring No one on the cast had any significant credits. So :P
Yeah, it was pretty scary. I coped with this in various ways, as you'll see below. I hope I don't have trouble sleeping tonight - 'cause that would be lousy.I'm not really sure what else to say, as significant critique seems unnecessary. Anyway, I don't want to piss off the demon.
I thought maybe it would be better to put a screen shot from the movie as the leading image rather than the movie poster. I don't know if anyone cares about that.
The Wolfman (2010) dir. Joe Johnston (Jumanji, 1995)
CAST Benicio Del Toro (Traffic, 2000) Emily Blunt (Sunshine Cleaning, 2008) Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) Hugo Weaving (Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 1994) David Schofield (The Last of the Mohicans, 1992)
I did some serious multitasking while watching this one! I also took notes! And I discovered I have problems distinguishing Benicio Del Toro and Javier Bardem!
Ok - I guess they don't look THAT much alike, but they do have that swarthy, hispanic, heavy-jawed thing going on and it wasn't until the movie was over that I was 100% sure it was not Javier Bardem that I was watching. I also thought Benicio del Toro directed Pan's Labyrinth until just right now (Oops! That's not even close).
I don't know where to start! At first The Wolfman was really good! I thought the only reason it didn't do well in the theaters was that gothic horrors weren't really in the mode now (What was the last one? The Others?) But then it sort of devolved into a Van Helsing/League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sort of mess. Was this supposed to be about coming to terms with the undeniable-yet-ultimately-unacceptable beast that exists in the heart of Man or is this about beasties tearing it up? Because you're not allowed to have it both ways.
There was some cool visual stuff, Anthony Hopkins was supposed to be some sort of Great White Hunter type guy, and he had this tiger-fur lined coat that was badass. Also the African-Animal topiary garden where child Lawrence discovers his dead mother makes me want to live in an old-time British estate.
On the other hand, the second half of the movie was really tedious and predictable. Really shameless forshadowing is rampant throughout. The one exception is a silver cane/sword received by a mysterious stranger near the front end, which entirely violates the rule of Chekov's Gun, and I'm not sure whether I should be relieved about that or not.
A few points remaining:
1) Cameo by GOLLUM at the 35-minute mark
2) Death toll in the 20s, but the DEER survives.
3) Old-time insane asylums are the scariest places in all of space and time
4) Requisite circling dolly shot of the anti-hero perched on the edge of a rooftop and howling
5) The romance was SO contrived: OMIGOSH - he taught her how to skip stones! They are soul-mates now! I have asked countless male-types to teach me how to skip stones, and not only have I never fallen in love with any of them - I still can't skip a damn stone. This scene irritates me.
6) Where can I get some arcane old textbooks with monster illustrations?
7) The sequence of full moons is insensible. From Buffy, I know that the full moon lasts for 3 nights a months. However, in Wolfman, it only lasts for one. Fine. Whatever. Here's the timeline.
Moon1) Lawrence visits the gypsies, gets bit by wolf.
Moon2) After recovering from his injury for a month, Lawrence transforms into a werefolf and kills many townsfolk, he is apprehended in the morning.
Moon3) Lawrence has been confined in a mental asylum for what we can assume is one month. He transforms and kills many sinister old-time doctors. In the morning he tells his GF that he has to return home to kill the first Werewolf (for vengeance reasons)
Moon3-4???) Lawrence returns to his home (after dark!!!) pursued by his GF and Scotland Yard after a journey which could not have sensibly taken a whole month, and seems to have only taken the day (making it the night after the full moon). Nevertheless, Lawrence and the original werewolf transform well after night has fallen! Grrr, sloppy storyline.
Last point: They stole this scene from The Lion King, and it's weird how obvious it is.
Carriers (2009)
dir. Àlex and David Pastor
CAST Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly, 2000) Chris Pine (Star Trek, 2009) Emily VanCamp Christopher Meloni (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (TV), 1999-2010)
Starting with The Burrowers from Monday, the rest of October will be all horror/scary movies unless I can't take it anymore, but by then it will be Halloween and then everyone else will be into it too. Unfortunately, I've been heavy dosing on zombie/post-apocalyptic/horror movies ever since I moved to Georgia in August, so I'm already a little burnt out. But I think this is probably my favorite genre so if anyone can stand blood+guts+ghosts for a whole month, it's me.
Carriers is about a virus that causes the downfall of western civilization with no zombies. Other than that slight detail - it's a basic zombie road movie with the threat of constant death. Much like The Happening or Zombieland, the gang of two brothers and their girlfriends get into some misadventures on their way to a vaguely described destination. They have to find gas, supplies, occasionally a new car, and avoid the infected (who do not become zombies). The music and the scenery was cool, the characters were poorly developed. The worst was the younger brother's girl, who was evidently not really his girlfriend (I think because she went to prep school?). When I am the leader of my own post-apocalyptic survival gang (and you all know I'm going to be the leader) I won't tolerate annoy bitches like that undermining my authority and telling me to shoot my own brother. She was supposed to have some character trope where she kept checking the payphones to call her parents who were on a cruise ship when the shit hit the fan, and then she stopped checking and I guess that symbolizes her loss of innocence or something but I'm reaching here. I like it when the fictional characters learn something.
Tonight I have to write an application for a graduate workshop which I really want to attend not only because it's really close to Philly and afterwards I can go straight home and have an extra-long Thanksgiving vacation with my family that I miss terribly. So I think I'll have to skip movie time again :(
ALTHOUGH yesterday I watched the first half hour of The Wind that Shakes the Barley (just like I said I would!) while I was treadmilling and let me say that electric thrumming + Irish accents make for poor conflict comprehension but I get there was some problem with the train and so that cute guy from Sunshine decided to join the Irish resistance even though in the previous scene he was pretty set against it. Whatever. So I've got that going on, PLUS Jesse James came in the mail today - so I'm really itchy for some historical kick-assery.
As promised, now I'm going to watch the trailer for the horror movie Chain Letter, and then I'm going to give a detailed plot synopsis, so...spoiler alert???
OK - so i'm calling Urban Legend (1998) crossed with Final Destination (2000). Obviously you start with a group of 7-8 friends because nearly all of them are going to be killed off. Among these there is at least one stoner, one sassy black guy, a geek (he's the one with glasses), a male love interest (prolly that dark haired guy who says 'delete' near the beginning), plus the spunky female protagonist played by Nikki Reed (who was the bitchy sister vampire in Twilight). So the premise here is omigosh, what if those chinsey chain emails were 4 realzies? and the killer tracks his victims via computer virus and dispatches those who fail to "pass it on" with lots of chains 'cause that's, like, symbolic or something. Everyone dies - Nikki is betrayed by her bf and they DON'T BANG (because if you remember Scream 2, you'll know that only virgins survive horror movies) but he gets TOTALLY STRANGLED to death by chains, and then Nikki and the last friend remaining (probably the black guy, because black-guy-dies-first is getting too obviously cliche) find out who the killer was (the AV nerd they excluded from their friend group! He got the chains from the set of the school play) not before the black guy gets his, and then Nikki gets the killer with an axe.
Here's a list of the movies in theaters now that I want to see but probably won't, because I don't have a "movie buddy" here in Athens yet and going to watch a movie by myself in a theater is less fun than watching a movie by myself at home (where pants are optional)
Case 39: I love horror movies, it might be my favorite genre (maybe western??) I'm not wild about Renée Zellweger, but I could see how she might work well in that style, kind of like the naive and sweet protagonist of The Haunting (what was her name?)
Chain Letter: I haven't seen a trailer for this, but moviefone tells me its playing at my local Georgia Theater. It's another horror movie (about a chain letter? Maybe I'll explore this one on guess-the-plot-based-on-the-trailer Tuesday) I'll probably rent it someday.
Let Me In: Omigosh! ANOTHER horror/drama I haven't heard about yet. Sounds a lot like Let the Right One In, which I DID see in theaters and it was FABULOUS. The synopsis for Let Me In reads "an alienated 12-year old boy befriends a mysterious newcomer," and the poster has a creepy looking snow angel.
OK - I did some further snooping and yes, this IS the American remake of Let the Right One In, which was Swedish, I believe. Maybe this marks the upswing of Swedish cinema (those Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books/movies are doing well also).
The Social Network: At first I thought this was a stupid idea for a movie, but all I hear are awesome things, like comparisons to Citizen Kane. So I guess I'll have to get around to it.
Easy A: Emma Stone is a cutie; I loved her in Zombieland. I like teen comedies based on classic literature, and I like teen comedies (especially when murder is involved, but I guess that's not the case here)
Devil: Just seems cool - I love movies with that old-time-Catholic bent.
I think that's all. I have a lot of homework today, so I probably won't watch a movie. But Jesse James should be in my mailbox soon, and I've got The Wind that Shakes the Barley as a backup on my instant queue, so look out for both of those in the near future.
