CAST Michael J. Fox (Mars Attacks!, 1996) James Hampton (Sling Blade, 1996) Jerry Levine (Wag the Dog, 1997) Mark Holton (A League of their Own, 1992) Doug Savant (Godzilla, 1998) Gregory Itzin (Adaptation., 2002)
So apparently that corny line from Spiderman was lifted from Teen Wolf? Fair enough, I suppose.Teen Wolf is one of those classic comedies that I really felt obligated to watch, and it was cute, and funny, and totally not like anything Twilighty at all. Essentially, it was your basic nerd-coming-into-his-own-style movie, with the twist being that Michael J. finds out that he's a werewolf instead of getting some other kind of makeover or pretending to be something he's not. The catch, though, is that the other kids in high school like the Wolf-guy better than they liked the original dweeb, but even then it's sort of in an exoticizing-the-other sort of way. They like the Wolf, but they don't want to really get to know the person. The teenaged protagonist finds that he has become an emblem, and that's alienating.
In different ways, I think most people learn at some time in their life that the price of popularity is to allow the most vulnerable parts of yourself to recede into an indeterminate location. Teen Wolf literally hides behind a mask of fur and claws, and in so doing he gains acceptance. People like him. He's stronger and faster and never appears to be afraid, but the person on the inside is still there, just hidden. But this is a false happiness. They like you for who you are on the outside but recoil from the weak and ugly thing that lies at the core. You gotta be true to you, that's the moral of the story today.
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.
Christine Willes (The Wicker Man, 2006) Michael Adamthwaite (New Moon, 2009) Dalias Blake
The name of the game, apparently, is fairy tale reinterpretations. I was hoping this movie about Little Red Riding Hood would be like Snow White: A Tale of Terror, but this was so much more like bubblegum pop-drama with pretty teenagers than a Grimm fairy tale horror.
As in Twilight, the heroine's desire to run away with the boy she likes is the primary concern, but she has a few reservations concerning a werewolf. Valerie's life outside of Peter, the bad-boy (he's always wearing black!) orphan woodcutter and Henry, the nice-guy her mother wants her to marry, is virtually nonexistent. She has two friends without personalities, and one of them turns out to be kind of mean. The big mystery is that we (with help from Gary Oldman, who is lovely and hyper-talented as always, injecting some character drama into this shallow movie) have to figure out who the werewolf is, and what its connection to Valerie is (the revelation will shock and surprise you!). What do I think? Swing and a miss.
Eclipse (2010) dir. David Slade (Hard Candy, 2005)
CAST
Kristen Stewart (Adventureland, 2009)
Robert Pattinson (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2005)
Taylor Lautner (The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, 2005)
Bryce Dallas Howard (Lady in the Water, 2006)
Dakota Fanning (War of the Worlds, 2005)
Billy Burke (Ladder 49, 2004)
Gil Birmingham (Twilight, 2008) Jodelle Ferland (Good Luck Chuck, 2007) Dawn Chubai (Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 2007) Leah Gibson (Watchmen, 2009)
I'm going to pause for a moment so everyone can make fun of me.
Yes, very good.
So I decided to watch the third Twilight movie because I wanted to watch something corny and self-indulgent and eat brownies on the couch with my cat and paint my toenails and girl crap like that. But this shit was just, just terrible. Maybe, MAYBE you could call it delightfully dreadful but mostly I was just confused: how many people gave this movie the thumbs-up before it was released for mass-viewing. Isn't there any honor left in cinema? Why didn't anyone STOP IT FROM HAPPENING?
By "IT" I mean the heinous performance given by Kristen Stewart. I mean that, I've heard about her bad acting and I just say, 'well, as long as she's being an angsty and apathetic teenager she does okay' (which is generous, because 99% of everyone under the age 20 can pretty effectively act like an angsty and apathetic teenager). But here's little Kristen, playing the apotheosis of angsty teenager roles and I'm just not buying it. Audibly, I had to exclaim to the screen, "Okay Kristen, now try it again but pretend like you give a shit." Isn't she dating Robert Pattinson in real life? Can she use that somehow to act like she's in love?
And she's a mouth-breather.
I also didn't really understand the conflict, which I'll attribute to a poor adaptation of the book, which of course I didn't read. So, this vampire Victoria wanted to kill Bella because her BF died in the last movie (but Bella didn't kill him, Edward did), so she raises a modest army (maybe fifteen strong?) of vampires to attack the Cullen family + werewolf allies and then goes after Bella and Edward (her primary targets???) with just herself and one other guy.
That's a stupid plan. Bella acts mildly pleased once all the threats against her life have been eliminated.
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.
