4 May - "It doesn't hate or even care. It just happens"

Doomsday (2008)

dir. Neil Marshall - The Descent (2005)

CAST
Jason Cope - District 9 (2009)
Jeremy Crutchley - The Poseidon Adventure (TV 2005)
Rhona Mitra - Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
Bob Hoskins - Hook (1991)
Alexander Siddig - Reign of Fire (2002)
David O'Hara - Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Adrian Lester - Case 39 (2009)
Nora-Jane Noone - Ella Enchanted (2004)
Malcolm McDowell - Easy A (2010)

Doomsday was an odd movie about a quarantined section of Great Britain that had been walled off because of some sort of virus, and then a special-ops team has to go in there to figure out why people are still alive in there after years and years. As is to be expected, without law, order, and electricity, society devolves into a tribal-esque, post-punk, Mad-maxy mess of biker gangs. I watched this back in May and I don't even remember what the essential conflict was, let alone how it was resolved. Verdict= unmemorable.

23 Mar- "Whatever you do don't let them starve"

The Hunger Games (2012)

dir. Gary Ross - Pleasantville (1998)

CAST
Stanley Tucci - Easy A (2010)
Wes Bentley - American Beauty (1999)
Jennifer Lawrence - The Burning Plain (2008)
Elizabeth Banks - Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Sandra Ellis Lafferty - Walk the Line (2005)
Paula Malcomson - The Green Mile (1999)
Rhoda Griffis - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Josh Hutcherson - Howl's Moving Castle, voice (2004)
Anthony Reynolds - Down in the Valley (2005)
Woody Harrelson - Zombieland (2009)
Toby Jones - Les Miserables (1998)
Lenny Kravitz - Precious (2009)
Donald Sutherland - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Of course, everyone who's anyone who gives a shit has already seen The Hunger Games, but I was there on opening night, in the fifth row, craning my neck upwards to watch the story unfold. I liked it, I enjoyed it. I thought it was visually appealing, but I also think it could have been better. Here's why:

1) Adaption of a book based on a first person perspective
The book is told from Katniss's perspective, and the readers are limited in our understanding of her world by her physical limitations. For this reason, we can't really understand what goes on in the minds of the other tributes, for example, and we can't see the reactions of the audience in Panem. The medium of film is almost always in third person perspective (with the exception of found-footage based movies). That means we lose Katniss's inner dialogue, which is tough because she isn't a very verbal character, but it also means we are able to see a lot of the world than Katniss is. I don't think the filmmakers took advantage of that strength. The other tributes were irritatingly flat characters. In the book five out of the twelve were portrayed largely as mindless killers, but that doesn't mean the filmmakers couldn't show them as being more rounded out. Which brings me to the next point.

2) Uncreative storyboarding
The point of the Hunger Games is that they are televised for the people of Panem. Since the book was from Katniss's perspective, we didn't get to see how she was portrayed on film. But this time it's in a movie and we are the audience. I would have liked to see some more creative changes in perspective that could drawn the audience into the story-world and potentially make the movie a lot more meaningful. After all, it's supposed to be a critique of the brutality of watching other people suffer. Let's make the audience feel a little less safe and a little more culpable.

3) Josh Hutcherson
How about we just get one of those big Easter Island heads to play Peeta?

16 Jan - "What's with all the bullets?"

Priest (2011)

dir. Scott Charles Stewart (Legion, 2009)

CAST
Paul Bettany (Iron Man 2 (voice), 2010)
Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002)
Maggie Q (Live Free or Die Hard, 2007)
Lily Collins
Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003) 
Cam Gigandet (Easy A, 2010)
Alan Dale (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2008)
Christopher Plummer (Must Love Dogs, 2005)
Stephen Moyer

I'm so behind on my posts, so I'm going to divide and conquer and try to publish 2 every day, the most recent movie I watched and the least recent, and so hopefully everything will converge upon The Return of the King (as one does) in a few days and then I can move on with my ho-hum life and this foolish attempt to record my emotional development through the mediator of cinema. If this were a movie, I would have just spoiled the symbolism by explaining it with a voiceover. Soorry!

So, yesterday Cora had a bunch of her german friends over for dinner and Cillian and I watched Priest. I was pleased when he suggested we watch a movie because I'm just terrible at navigating large groups of people. Especially when it feels like everyone else likes each other a little bit more than they like me (Some people are able to successfully avoid this kind of scenario their whole lives, or else I'm just overanalyzing everything). I said we should watch something I've already seen before, in case it's hard to pay attention, so I suggested The Fifth Element, but I guess Cillian doesn't like that movie because he put on Priest, which I think would have been hard to follow in a dark movie theater with an acceptable sound system. On Cora's laptop, it was near impossible. Luckily there was a really tidy recap at the climax, where the villian explains the whole sequence of events for the stupid audience members, like me, who haven't been able to put it all together on their own yet. I finally understand why action movies always have that, now.

I found the premise to be delightful. In a post-apocalyptic future organized underneath a totalitarian clergy, one member of the elite warrior-priest caste goes rogue to take on a vampire scourge that has kidnapped his estranged daughter. That's some L33T science-fiction, right there. In this sotry-world, the future is very wastelandy, which is not an unreasonable assumption, especially if someone Fs us all over and drops a nuke somewhere. Yes, the future is a dark and desolate place, but nevertheless our Hero must fight to protect it.

Feb 14 - "You were ready to do it. That's what counts"

Time of the Wolf (2003)

dir. Michael Haneke

CAST

Isabelle Huppert (I Heart Huckabees, 2004)
Patrice Chereau

Anaïs Demoustier
Lucas Biscombe

Here's a terrible choice for Saint Valentine's day, but otherwise a very powerful movie. If any of you saw The Road (2009), you might enjoy this movie as the premise as well as the tone is very similar. That being said, Time of the Wolf is not a plot-driven movie, but leans upon the emotional reactions of the characters to keep the story going. It is about a mother and her two children struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of sorts. Like The Road, we are never informed about the nature of the disaster or the extent of its impact. We learn that all of the water has become contaminated, but it also seems like there is some hope for reconstruction, the promise of supplies always about to be delivered from the South, and the wait for a train that will take our heroes someplace better.

As for the name, I'm not sure. There aren't any wolves in the movie. There's a bit of a motif with the wild dogs however, and one particular poignant scene where the daughter, Eva, is talking with a boy about her own age, and he says that he tried to befriend one of the dogs, but when they ran short of food the dog bit him, and so he killed it. In another scene, Eva and the boy hide together after he steals one of the milk-goats from the village, when the goat begins to struggle and bleat, he kills it. Eva admonishes him then, saying, "I thought you would help me, but you just ruin everything."

11 Jan - "He doesn't have a name so death can't find him!"

Waterworld (1995)

dir. Kevin Reynolds (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991)

CAST
Kevin Costner (JFK, 1991)
Jeanne Tripplehorn (Big Love (TV), 2006-2011)
Tina Majorino (Napoleon Dynamite, 2004)
Dennis Hopper (Choke, 2001)
Jack Black (King Kong, 2005)

Robert LaSardon (Bubble Boy, 2001)

My brother says that Waterworld is a knock-off on Mad Max. To that I say, I never really cared for Mad Max anyway, but I DO like Waterworld, even though it's commonly referred to as the worst movie ever conceived. And to be sure, there are an awful lot of plot holes, like how all that contemporary stuff remains preserved on the surface of the water for thousands of years. And the whole "Smoker" culture seems terribly unsustainable. I mean - imagine a whole world utterly devoid of natural resources besides fishies and dirt derived from decomposing bodies. There shouldn't be any wood, there shouldn't be any metal. None of it makes sense and certainly they can't be affording to decimate the scant stuff they've got at the rate that occurs in this movie.

Kevin Costner is a particularly dull actor. Really, he can pretty much suck the emotional reaction out of any scene. Waterworld isn't awesome because of the acting, although I think Dennis Hopper does a fine job, it's because of the crazy atmosphere and the technical scenes of sails unfurling and gears grinding. Waterworld = what a whacky place!

Oct 13 - "I know I will be alone."

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.