Aliens Resurrection is perfect for me because I like City of Lost Children... It's basically one of those "what if the guy who made City of Lost Children re-made Alien 3" movies and it works if you look at it that way. I enjoy it the same way I enjoy Terminator movies/tv show. It's all variations on a riff just go with it, you have your favorites and everything else is just a cover song.
As interested as I am in seeing Riddick and his franchise continue, I worry that solving his mysteries would make the character less interesting, not more.
First one, really. That is not to say that what they make of him is not interesting, but the way he is presented in Pitch Black is so dope that you don't need any more.
Everything about making him the chosen one was fucking terrible.
That said, I liked how CoR ended. It's a really interesting idea I'm sure the next movie did nothing with.
Yeah, Chronicles could've been the launch of a really fun universe full of space pirates, mercenaries, bounty hunters, criminals, and monsters. Instead they went with the hackneyed plot of "The space-prophecy says that only the chosen one can stop the evil darkness." Lame. The ending was pretty boss though, you're right about that.
CoR's Conan ending was my favorite part of the movie.
The interesting thing is that in many ways it mirrors the end of Pitch Black. Riddick, a man with no interest in what they are offering (power/redemption/forgiveness/goodness) gets it anyway and is left wondering why he has it and what he has done to deserve it.
It's just trapped in a terrible movie that does everything wrong with what Pitch Black did and makes you wonder if everything that works in Pitch Black wasn't just an accident.
Just watched World War Z. Pretty good zombie movie I'd say.
Completely falls apart in the third act, to the point that I feel it short-changed everything that came before.
Better than the original planned ending.
0
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Today on Killtoberfest 2, it's a pair of not really very good, not really very horror movies, both only partly redeemed by their endings. Well, they can't all be winners. At least not when they're from the late 1970s, apparently.
First, the 1977 based-on-a-bestseller cautionary tale about the dangers of being a slut, Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
1977 is the year Diane Keaton won an Oscar for her performance in Annie Hall, but arguably she turns in better work here, in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Her character, Theresa, is a schoolteacher for deaf children who spends her nights in seedy New York bars, looking to get picked up by men so she can engage them in sex and a kind of mutual disrespect. The film is episodic, tracing Theresa's slow descent over the course of a year into a depressing, hopeless cycle of casual sex with violent men. It's based, as I said, on a bestselling novel of the same name (by Judith Rossner, 1975); the novel is apparently more extreme (reviewing the film, Ebert mostly complained that the movie left the Theresa of the novel's masochism and thrillseeking on the cutting room floor). The book is, in turn, loosely based on the life and murder of Roseann Quinn, a case which became something of a media sensation, with people considering Quinn's habits and death as emblematic of a generation of young people run amok.
Richard Brooks, perhaps best known for another true crime movie, In Cold Blood, wrote and directed this film in a way that declines overt comment on the narrative. But in offering up this particular story, both he and Rossner make an implicit judgement about the social and sexual habits of Quinn and women like her. On the one hand, it's a very offensive film--I was particularly put off by Tom Berenger's character, a stereotyped, violently self-denying gay man. Again, without comment, but simply through juxtaposition, the movie makes unspoken points about the salaciousness of Theresa's double life (at one point she has a nightmare about what the public response would be if she became known as both a teacher and a drug-using slut), suggests ham-handed Freudian reasons for her behavior (an early love affair with a teacher, a shameful polio scar, a repressed religious upbringing, an abusive father), and, in its conclusion, offers not a shred of hope or mourning for Theresa. In the end there is only horror at the place to which all her human need has brought her.
Does the film still have value? It's overlong, and its values antiquated. Yet Keaton is phenomenal in a layered performance where Theresa wields a slightly goofy, sarcastic Annie Hall-style persona as a weapon against the uneducated, unworthy-of-respect men she seeks out night after night. Her two main lovers are William Atherton, the safe, educated civil servant who declares his love and seems slightly unhinged by her unwillingness to reciprocate, and a very young Richard Gere, the sexy, unpredictable stud who reacts with a violent possessiveness when she tries to push him away, too. One gets the sense that Theresa lives by one of Alvy Singer's jokes: "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." She allows herself to be picked up by men she could never possibly have a real relationship with, seeks to manipulate, control, or insult them, and then kicks them out of her apartment. She seems to believe that she can do this over and over again without ever having to worry about what they feel, or want, or will do in response--that, because she looks down on them (and they her), she remains separate from them, untouchable. That this turns out not to be the case is her tragedy.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar is not a nice film, and it does not have happy things to say about men or women. It's bizarre to think of it as popular entertainment. Ultimately, beyond the film's craft and the skill of its cast, if it has any value at all, it's as a time capsule. You can watch and journey back to a grittier, grimmer New York City; and back, too, to a time when the nation looked at a young woman's life and behavior and judged her harshly for fulfilling needs it didn't understand. Well. New York has gotten better, anyway.
Strangely, this movie is almost totally unavailable; it's not even on DVD, and no trailer exists online. Here's a clip, instead:
From the depressing to the absurd: Brian De Palma's The Fury (1978).
Watching this movie, I started wondering why so few movies really use psychic phenomena as story elements--what at one point were called "weird talents," like telekinesis and ESP. After 1981's Scanners, those ideas seem to drop out of vogue, as both science fiction and horror moved on to other stories. Yet the concepts hold some fascination for me, particularly within the (pseudo)scientific trappings of the '70s. It seems to me that the notion of learning one has strange and terrible powers, unasked for and ill understood, carries with it a great deal of pathos that a movie could use to good effect. This is not that movie.
What this is is two movies, both of them essentially broken. In one of them, an aging but still badass Kirk Douglas sneaks or shoots his way through the ranks of the secret organization that kidnapped his son and tried to have him killed. In the other, a young girl with psychic abilities so powerful they make make the people she touches bleed tries to find a boy whose own abilities may help her control hers. These two stories are in the same movie because the boy and Douglas' son are one and the same; but in terms of tone, affect, and interest, the two narratives couldn't be further apart. And they work fitfully at best.
On a scene by scene basis, Douglas' story is legitimately entertaining, with lots of fun spy antics (particularly a foggy car chase/fight/thing set in an empty construction site). But the movie never gives you enough information about his character or his goals to make you care what happens to him. Meanwhile, the reverse is true of the psychic storyline, where I cared about the girl (and really liked the creepy effects work with her powers) but found each individual scene brain-meltingly boring. (Here, the problem is that we have too much information about exactly how sinister is the school for the "gifted" she's at, and it takes her too much of the film to catch up to us.)
The movie only really comes alive at the end, when their story lines come together (in a well-directed bit of slow-motion violence) and we meet the most interesting character in the piece, Douglas' son. It's only then that the movie really embraces the horrific side of its psychic elements, and the result is wonderfully eerie and dark. But the real joy is The Fury's epilogue, which I suggest you watch here because it's awesome. No set-up or explanations necessary, just enjoy one of the all-time great movie deaths.
Overall, The Fury is less than the sum of its parts. But some of its parts are actually pretty good. It's a set-piece movie, with a decent number of big, exciting scenes aided by De Palma's energetic direction, a nice score by John Williams, and the performances by Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes (as the villain). It's just too bad it doesn't hold together.
The Fury isn't streaming anywhere, but it is available on HBO Go.
My big problem with World War Z is that they made a really cool and interesting world and then pretty much showed the least interesting part of it. This became especially clear when they showed a snippet of Moscow street war vs zombies and all I could think was how much I would rather watch that movie than the one I was.
My big problem with World War Z is that they made a really cool and interesting world and then pretty much showed the least interesting part of it. This became especially clear when they showed a snippet of Moscow street war vs zombies and all I could think was how much I would rather watch that movie than the one I was.
But then it would have been pretty much every other zombie movie. I like how it didn't do the traditional "ragtag bunch of survivors trying to survive with diminishing resources in a claustrophobic bastion/prison", rather that it did "well-backed expert with virtually unlimited resources failing at (almost) every turn due to hubris".
It's not really a zombie movie per se, in that zombie movies tend to focus more on the relationships between the survivors and the commentary of the social restrictions we impose on the world (interspersed with characters getting their brains eaten). This is much more of a disaster movie - "we think we can plan for everything, but we can't - however humans are pretty ingenious in surviving against the odds".
My big problem with World War Z is that they made a really cool and interesting world and then pretty much showed the least interesting part of it. This became especially clear when they showed a snippet of Moscow street war vs zombies and all I could think was how much I would rather watch that movie than the one I was.
where people were using clever solutions like sound on a roof and spraying flamethrowers at the zombies en masse and shit?
yeah
zombie movies are almost universally dumb humans dying in dumb ways
for example: Israel building a wall around a city but not really putting any guards on the walls or having figured out that zombies are attracted to loud noises despite that being super goddamn fucking obvious, and the single helicopter they got on zombie patrol only having a single machinegun
like
why are you ever not attacking the zombies outside the walls? I get it you're safe, but you have lots of bombs and shit right? What reason do you have for not constantly shooting them/lobbing things at them/burning them/dropping bladed objects onto them that cut them up when they try to climb them? Why are you taking precisely zero measures to deal with the zombies?
Then in the credits they show the army using noise to lure like a quarter million zombies to a stadium and hitting it with a huge bomb
oh okay, so you guys are on the ball with this shit after the movie is over
My big problem with World War Z is that they made a really cool and interesting world and then pretty much showed the least interesting part of it. This became especially clear when they showed a snippet of Moscow street war vs zombies and all I could think was how much I would rather watch that movie than the one I was.
But then it would have been pretty much every other zombie movie. I like how it didn't do the traditional "ragtag bunch of survivors trying to survive with diminishing resources in a claustrophobic bastion/prison", rather that it did "well-backed expert with virtually unlimited resources failing at (almost) every turn due to hubris".
It's not really a zombie movie per se, in that zombie movies tend to focus more on the relationships between the survivors and the commentary of the social restrictions we impose on the world (interspersed with characters getting their brains eaten). This is much more of a disaster movie - "we think we can plan for everything, but we can't - however humans are pretty ingenious in surviving against the odds".
It doesn't really do that either though. I mean, yes, it does take a more disaster-movie approach to the whole thing, which I appreciated. But it doesn't actually tell an interesting story with that. Rather the character just goes on a silly world tour instead, going from spot to spot to witness bad shit happening, but having no effect on any of it. Our main character is, until the very end, a completely passive and non-acting observer to random zombie shit. Nothing he does is of any consequence.
Just watched World War Z. Pretty good zombie movie I'd say.
Completely falls apart in the third act, to the point that I feel it short-changed everything that came before.
But Capaldi as a WHO doctor? Really? A Doctor for WHO? COME ON!
...It was well before he was cast on the show, wasn't it?
How?
I mean, what is there to even shortchange? It's only in the 3rd act that the movie actually becomes anything but a random sightseeing tour.
It was a random sightseeing tour that created a problem huge in scope and spectacle, and seemed to aim at the third act to solve that problem, but the third act just turned into Resident Evil... the first game, no less. Dialed way back on the spectacle and scope.
Then there's the fact that they started relying on stupid contrivances (surviving the plane crash) and artificial stupidity (the final dilemma could've been solved with a phone call instead of the suicidal shit he ended up doing).
It was a different sort of zombie movie, for sure, but it wasn't actually better than the traditional formula, because they couldn't stick the landing.
Haven't talked about a bunch of the movies I've seen lately, been a bit too busy to really organize my thoughts. But my gf wanted to watch The Lion King last night while I was puttering about with dinner and shit and I wanna talk about that opening for a second.
Cause fucking hell that is a fantastic opening. The animation, the music, the everything. It just incredible and perfect and gives it all this huge epic feel that really sells you on the whole idea of the world you are gonna be rooting for the characters saving as the movie goes on. The animation is great and beautifully timed and even has some neat shifting of focus effects that must have been a bitch to make but are both gorgeous and seamless. The sound nails it from that first cry as the sun rises on the black screen to the incredible swell that ends with the slam of the percussion as the title card hits, somehow managing to make the ending feel like ... exciting and powerful. Apparently at one point this section had dialogue that they cut when they saw just how well it all worked and how anything else would take away from the experience and everyone involved in that deserves a raise cause it's totally the right decision.
Honestly, I think it may be better then the rest of the movie and that's a damn good movie. It ran, as I remember, in it's entirety as the trailer for the movie and it practically works as it's own thing. That thud as the title card hits feels like one of cinema's most epic mic drops.
I can like picture the guys making it being on stage as this is running being like: That's how it done bitches. That's how it's fucking done.
BOOM!
/mic drop
The Lion King's opening is definitely the best thing about it
I didn't like the protagonist at all in it, or Timon
Scar is great as the hammiest lion tho
+1
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
So, I saw Gone Girl. It was pretty good. But a pretty bad movie to see in my current state of mind.
I saw trailers for the Christian Bale Moses movie, which seems like it's going to redefine awful as well as make no sense historically or biblically and still be a woooooo Moses and Judeo-Christianity woooo movie.
So, it's not even going to be as interesting as Noah.
As interested as I am in seeing Riddick and his franchise continue, I worry that solving his mysteries would make the character less interesting, not more.
First one, really. That is not to say that what they make of him is not interesting, but the way he is presented in Pitch Black is so dope that you don't need any more.
Everything about making him the chosen one was fucking terrible.
That said, I liked how CoR ended. It's a really interesting idea I'm sure the next movie did nothing with.
As interested as I am in seeing Riddick and his franchise continue, I worry that solving his mysteries would make the character less interesting, not more.
First one, really. That is not to say that what they make of him is not interesting, but the way he is presented in Pitch Black is so dope that you don't need any more.
Everything about making him the chosen one was fucking terrible.
That said, I liked how CoR ended. It's a really interesting idea I'm sure the next movie did nothing with.
No, but the fourth (if there is one) might.
Riddick spoilers
They did. Riddick got reckless being "civilized", became too lazy to take his oath and Vaako exploited Furia to launch a coup.
+1
Options
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
As interested as I am in seeing Riddick and his franchise continue, I worry that solving his mysteries would make the character less interesting, not more.
First one, really. That is not to say that what they make of him is not interesting, but the way he is presented in Pitch Black is so dope that you don't need any more.
Everything about making him the chosen one was fucking terrible.
That said, I liked how CoR ended. It's a really interesting idea I'm sure the next movie did nothing with.
No, but the fourth (if there is one) might.
Riddick spoilers
They did. Riddick got reckless being "civilized", became too lazy to take his oath and Vaako exploited Furia to launch a coup.
Also, IIRC, Riddick's voice over at the beginning of Pitch Black was added after they realized that had a Franchise on their hands and added stuff to the first movie to make him more of the lead instead of just the "crazy psychopath" of the group. Stuff like the VO and I think a few extra scenes where he's in the background doing creepy things like cutting a lock of that one girl's hair and a few other things. Basically in the original dvd release (before it got slapped with the "Chronicles of Riddick" pre-title) he wasn't in the first part of the movie a whole lot.
+1
Options
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Watching Event Horizon right now. Forgot how decent it is (barring early cgi effects of the weightless objects in the early part of the movie, luckily it's gone after about 20 minutes).
Given the earlier conversation I wonder if this scenario could be done outside of its sci-fi trappings, cause the whole thing works really well as is.
As interested as I am in seeing Riddick and his franchise continue, I worry that solving his mysteries would make the character less interesting, not more.
First one, really. That is not to say that what they make of him is not interesting, but the way he is presented in Pitch Black is so dope that you don't need any more.
Everything about making him the chosen one was fucking terrible.
That said, I liked how CoR ended. It's a really interesting idea I'm sure the next movie did nothing with.
No, but the fourth (if there is one) might.
Riddick spoilers
They did. Riddick got reckless being "civilized", became too lazy to take his oath and Vaako exploited Furia to launch a coup.
Also, IIRC, Riddick's voice over at the beginning of Pitch Black was added after they realized that had a Franchise on their hands and added stuff to the first movie to make him more of the lead instead of just the "crazy psychopath" of the group. Stuff like the VO and I think a few extra scenes where he's in the background doing creepy things like cutting a lock of that one girl's hair and a few other things. Basically in the original dvd release (before it got slapped with the "Chronicles of Riddick" pre-title) he wasn't in the first part of the movie a whole lot.
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Maybe? It's been a long time since I saw either version (bought both when they were released) but I could have sworn there wasn't a voice over the first time. Just a creepy pan shot to let you know "this guy is dangerous" then Johns builds him up as well.
I wonder if I'm thinking of CoR then... Talking about how you're not suppose to dream/think while in stasis because only the primal/animal part of the brain is awake, but he/Riddick does.
Watching Event Horizon right now. Forgot how decent it is (barring early cgi effects of the weightless objects in the early part of the movie, luckily it's gone after about 20 minutes).
Given the earlier conversation I wonder if this scenario could be done outside of its sci-fi trappings, cause the whole thing works really well as is.
I don't think it'd be too hard to do outside of a sci-fi setting. Granted, it's been a while since I watched Event Horizon, so I could be wrong or forgetting some important bits.
Swap "Experimental FTL star ship that just reappeared" with "long lost cruise ship (or other boat) just sent a distress signal". Might have to jigger the script a bit to get around the star drive opening a hole to the Immaterium to travel through. Maybe the ship was cursed, or haunted or something and wound up with a round trip ticket to hell.
Outside of that, I don't really recall anything in the movie that required it to be in space. Any remote place on the planet where a mysterious boat could show up and attract a salvage crew (but be far enough away that further rescue would be unlikely) would work just as well.
+1
Options
NoneoftheaboveJust a conforming non-conformist.Twilight ZoneRegistered Userregular
Watching Event Horizon right now. Forgot how decent it is (barring early cgi effects of the weightless objects in the early part of the movie, luckily it's gone after about 20 minutes).
Given the earlier conversation I wonder if this scenario could be done outside of its sci-fi trappings, cause the whole thing works really well as is.
I don't think it'd be too hard to do outside of a sci-fi setting. Granted, it's been a while since I watched Event Horizon, so I could be wrong or forgetting some important bits.
Swap "Experimental FTL star ship that just reappeared" with "long lost cruise ship (or other boat) just sent a distress signal". Might have to jigger the script a bit to get around the star drive opening a hole to the Immaterium to travel through. Maybe the ship was cursed, or haunted or something and wound up with a round trip ticket to hell.
Outside of that, I don't really recall anything in the movie that required it to be in space. Any remote place on the planet where a mysterious boat could show up and attract a salvage crew (but be far enough away that further rescue would be unlikely) would work just as well.
There's also the fact that whatever kicks off the event damages their ship and the constant ticking of the clock since they don't have CO2 filters/scrubbers.
And the one crew member that decides to throw himself out of an airlock.
I dunno to me the whole "breaking physics"/"gate to the warp" thing makes it seem that much more real (I guess for lack of a better term) then just another ghost ship. Also the gothic interior of the Horizon compared to something that looked like a more generic "working sci-fi" ship with the Lewis and Clark.
+5
Options
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, a sequel that actually could have been good, but is just complete schizo in presentation.
The first Wall Street is also a mixed bag, but Douglas and Sheen carry it when it becomes way too cliched (blue collar good! white collar bad!) and it was before Oliver Stone's head got up his ass (he was just tossing the salad then), but the sequel tries to piggyback off the 2008 recession and just feels more blowhardy than necessary. Resting the bulk on Laboof's shoulders doesn't work as you can't take him seriously when he's also incorporating the other cool 20 something dude dreams of L.A.; he's skinny and frail but he's into motorbikes and good hearted in the cutthroat stock world and has a manic pixie political dreamgirl girlfriend who also happens to be the daughter of a rich guy!
It tries to just stay above the details and sticks to low information things, piggybacking on Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns storylines to hurt the innocent stock guys while letting Josh Brolin be the bog standard Gecko stand-in, but you also have....Gordon Gecko himself that the film doesn't know what to do with. And to Douglas' credit he still pulls his role off well, it's just stuck within more cliched confines. The ending can be seen miles away, even with the incredibly offputting resolution to a subplot:
Laboof and MPDG were engaged, and she's pregnant, but he lied about knowing Gecko so she left, but they reunite in the end, but only after Gecko gives back MPDG's hundred million dollars that he stole to start up his own company again in London. The film tried so hard to make MPDG not about money because she's a Lena Dunham free spirit who has a website! but ultimately shows she always did care about the money, which was just lolz.
In terms of cinematography and editing, I've never seen such a weird use of swipes and inserts, from Iris wipes like a Looney Tunes cartoon to near 80's TV cuts when people talk on phones and their faces show up, to showing the internet tubes when stocks go on to bad CGI to show fusion, along with bad music that's hip and cool because a guitar and a dude with probably a patchy beard is barely singing aloud. It doesn't feel like Stone was in on the joke, he actually thought it made sense to do so. Plus there's a really bad cameo by Sheen right before he went full on Winning that serves no purpose.
In the end it's a weak movie that could have been so much more and relevant than what it was. Margin Call was hella better.
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, a sequel that actually could have been good, but is just complete schizo in presentation.
The first Wall Street is also a mixed bag, but Douglas and Sheen carry it when it becomes way too cliched (blue collar good! white collar bad!) and it was before Oliver Stone's head got up his ass (he was just tossing the salad then), but the sequel tries to piggyback off the 2008 recession and just feels more blowhardy than necessary. Resting the bulk on Laboof's shoulders doesn't work as you can't take him seriously when he's also incorporating the other cool 20 something dude dreams of L.A.; he's skinny and frail but he's into motorbikes and good hearted in the cutthroat stock world and has a manic pixie political dreamgirl girlfriend who also happens to be the daughter of a rich guy!
It tries to just stay above the details and sticks to low information things, piggybacking on Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns storylines to hurt the innocent stock guys while letting Josh Brolin be the bog standard Gecko stand-in, but you also have....Gordon Gecko himself that the film doesn't know what to do with. And to Douglas' credit he still pulls his role off well, it's just stuck within more cliched confines. The ending can be seen miles away, even with the incredibly offputting resolution to a subplot:
Laboof and MPDG were engaged, and she's pregnant, but he lied about knowing Gecko so she left, but they reunite in the end, but only after Gecko gives back MPDG's hundred million dollars that he stole to start up his own company again in London. The film tried so hard to make MPDG not about money because she's a Lena Dunham free spirit who has a website! but ultimately shows she always did care about the money, which was just lolz.
In terms of cinematography and editing, I've never seen such a weird use of swipes and inserts, from Iris wipes like a Looney Tunes cartoon to near 80's TV cuts when people talk on phones and their faces show up, to showing the internet tubes when stocks go on to bad CGI to show fusion, along with bad music that's hip and cool because a guitar and a dude with probably a patchy beard is barely singing aloud. It doesn't feel like Stone was in on the joke, he actually thought it made sense to do so. Plus there's a really bad cameo by Sheen right before he went full on Winning that serves no purpose.
In the end it's a weak movie that could have been so much more and relevant than what it was. Margin Call was hella better.
Wall Street 2 just seems like a movie that Stone just didn't know what to do with. Like he looked at how out of control wall street was with mortgage backed securities and all that shit and felt like he had to say something, but didn't really know what. It's just a mess. Put it up against something like Margin Call, a movie about the same topic but that's tightly structured and actually says something, and it's not even close.
Stone is one of those directors that will see what ever he does in theaters, hoping he gets some of his mojo back, but it just never happens. I'm an idiot I guess.
Watching Event Horizon right now. Forgot how decent it is (barring early cgi effects of the weightless objects in the early part of the movie, luckily it's gone after about 20 minutes).
Given the earlier conversation I wonder if this scenario could be done outside of its sci-fi trappings, cause the whole thing works really well as is.
I don't think it'd be too hard to do outside of a sci-fi setting. Granted, it's been a while since I watched Event Horizon, so I could be wrong or forgetting some important bits.
Swap "Experimental FTL star ship that just reappeared" with "long lost cruise ship (or other boat) just sent a distress signal". Might have to jigger the script a bit to get around the star drive opening a hole to the Immaterium to travel through. Maybe the ship was cursed, or haunted or something and wound up with a round trip ticket to hell.
Outside of that, I don't really recall anything in the movie that required it to be in space. Any remote place on the planet where a mysterious boat could show up and attract a salvage crew (but be far enough away that further rescue would be unlikely) would work just as well.
There's also the fact that whatever kicks off the event damages their ship and the constant ticking of the clock since they don't have CO2 filters/scrubbers.
And the one crew member that decides to throw himself out of an airlock.
I dunno to me the whole "breaking physics"/"gate to the warp" thing makes it seem that much more real (I guess for lack of a better term) then just another ghost ship. Also the gothic interior of the Horizon compared to something that looked like a more generic "working sci-fi" ship with the Lewis and Clark.
I think the sci-fi meets religious horror part is the best aspect of the premise. I love the idea of the height of scientific and rational achievement leading to a completely irrational and insane state. We tear a hole in reality with science so we can go fast and find utter madness beyond human comprehension on the other side.
Like, if I was redoing that movie that would be the angle I'd play up to the max. Start it off as a "disaster assessment" type movie, with them trying to figure out what went wrong on the ship. And stuff is kinda getting weird, but they keep throwing out plausible scientific explanations but slowly it all begins to fall away to a sort of lovecraftian unintelligible madness till you have to accept that what is going on does not make rational sense and the whole movie and the characters within it become unmoored from reality. Fuck with the audiences expectations by setting up a sci-fi horro movie and delivering gibbering horror.
I do wonder if this would actually work to screw with the audience though as audiences either don't actually seem surprised by bullshit explanations or get really nerd-angry if you hold out science answers and then substitute for craziness.
Watching Event Horizon right now. Forgot how decent it is (barring early cgi effects of the weightless objects in the early part of the movie, luckily it's gone after about 20 minutes).
Given the earlier conversation I wonder if this scenario could be done outside of its sci-fi trappings, cause the whole thing works really well as is.
I don't think it'd be too hard to do outside of a sci-fi setting. Granted, it's been a while since I watched Event Horizon, so I could be wrong or forgetting some important bits.
Swap "Experimental FTL star ship that just reappeared" with "long lost cruise ship (or other boat) just sent a distress signal". Might have to jigger the script a bit to get around the star drive opening a hole to the Immaterium to travel through. Maybe the ship was cursed, or haunted or something and wound up with a round trip ticket to hell.
Outside of that, I don't really recall anything in the movie that required it to be in space. Any remote place on the planet where a mysterious boat could show up and attract a salvage crew (but be far enough away that further rescue would be unlikely) would work just as well.
There's also the fact that whatever kicks off the event damages their ship and the constant ticking of the clock since they don't have CO2 filters/scrubbers.
And the one crew member that decides to throw himself out of an airlock.
I dunno to me the whole "breaking physics"/"gate to the warp" thing makes it seem that much more real (I guess for lack of a better term) then just another ghost ship. Also the gothic interior of the Horizon compared to something that looked like a more generic "working sci-fi" ship with the Lewis and Clark.
Okay, I think I can write around the first two things...
To the first: The ship reappears near Antarctica. Ticking of the clock goes from running out of air, to risking freezing to death if they can't get the ship up and running. Maybe a massive ice storm is due to hit in X-hours, if they can't get the engines up and going before then, the boats likely going to capsize from the ice buildup. Maybe the hull was damaged (intentionally?) and is slowly sinking, the crew can try to repair it, but shit gets creepy before they can get too far with that.
The second point really writes itself after you decide to set the boat in Antarctica, guy spacing himself instead jumps overboard into near freezing water and dying of hypothermia/drowning/penguin attacks in a few minutes.
I agree that it's a better movie for having been set on a space ship as opposed to just another haunted boat. The design of the Event Horizon really makes for some creepy atmosphere. I'm just saying that the script beats could all work in a different setting with relatively little rewriting.
And really, it's the closest we're ever likely to see to a Warhammer 40k movie, so I'll be happy with that.
As I've said, Event Horizon should've just gone full Lovecraft and skipped the personal horror stuff. If they're just having an evil force that shows people what they're afraid of, I'm already bored. Nightmare on Elm Street is right there.
Eldritch horror in space is a fantastic combo. Heck, they could've made a backdoor pilot for a Warhammer 40,000 franchise, and wouldn't that have been sweet?
I'm really not in love with the 40k connection people are all over when it comes to Even Horizon, Hellraiser... in Spaaaace does well on its own without any giant shoulderpads.
I'm really not in love with the 40k connection people are all over when it comes to Even Horizon, Hellraiser... in Spaaaace does well on its own without any giant shoulderpads.
That's why Space Marines never surrender! They'd crush their heads if they raised their arms that high.
As I've said, Event Horizon should've just gone full Lovecraft and skipped the personal horror stuff. If they're just having an evil force that shows people what they're afraid of, I'm already bored. Nightmare on Elm Street is right there.
Eldritch horror in space is a fantastic combo. Heck, they could've made a backdoor pilot for a Warhammer 40,000 franchise, and wouldn't that have been sweet?
Well, it sort of is. The ship is, to paraphrase Sam Jackson, an evil fucking ship.
I'm really not in love with the 40k connection people are all over when it comes to Even Horizon, Hellraiser... in Spaaaace does well on its own without any giant shoulderpads.
As I've said, Event Horizon should've just gone full Lovecraft and skipped the personal horror stuff. If they're just having an evil force that shows people what they're afraid of, I'm already bored. Nightmare on Elm Street is right there.
Eldritch horror in space is a fantastic combo. Heck, they could've made a backdoor pilot for a Warhammer 40,000 franchise, and wouldn't that have been sweet?
Well, it sort of is. The ship is, to paraphrase Sam Jackson, an evil fucking ship.
They introduce the warp, but the horror is pretty mundane haunted house in nature. Kinda a waste.
I'm really not in love with the 40k connection people are all over when it comes to Even Horizon, Hellraiser... in Spaaaace does well on its own without any giant shoulderpads.
As I've said, Event Horizon should've just gone full Lovecraft and skipped the personal horror stuff. If they're just having an evil force that shows people what they're afraid of, I'm already bored. Nightmare on Elm Street is right there.
Eldritch horror in space is a fantastic combo. Heck, they could've made a backdoor pilot for a Warhammer 40,000 franchise, and wouldn't that have been sweet?
Well, it sort of is. The ship is, to paraphrase Sam Jackson, an evil fucking ship.
They introduce the warp, but the horror is pretty mundane haunted house in nature. Kinda a waste.
The engine is the monster, mate. It's what twists Weir and kills the most people directly.
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
edited October 2014
My next pair of not-really-horror movies for Killtoberfest 2 are both Michael J. Fox vehicles. One of them is bad, but silly; the other is silly, but bad. How can you tell them apart?! Well, one is about ghosts, and the other is about teens. (And also wolves I guess.)
Reverse chronological order gives us Peter Jackson's The Frighteners (1996) to start with.
Let's be clear: this is not a good movie. It's not even a particularly fun movie. But then, I don't like early Peter Jackson.
The Frighteners is the last movie Jackson made before Lord of the Rings, and it demonstrates a technical virtuosity that is staggering. The movie's use of CG is seamless and effective, particularly when it comes to the movie's villain, a creepy Grim Reaper-type character that carves glowing letters into the foreheads of its victims. Less convincing is the effects work on the ghosts, which are generally just composited actors with a blue glowy filter laid over them. (To be fair, whenever the ghosts shift their bodies around or whatever, that does look good.) Friends with some of these CG things and enemy to others is Fox, playing a scruffy semi-charlatan of an exorcist (his schtick is having his ghost buddies perform some poltergeist prestidigitation so that he can swoop in and save the day). It's a rare movie when Michael J. Fox isn't likeable, but there you go. It's a shame, too; it's a fine casting choice but the script gives him so little to work with that the character ends up extremely bland.
Essentially this movie is the quintessential FX-heavy but totally empty studio film. Jackson was clearly having fun, and his direction is energetic, but the movie isn't about a god-damned thing and it shows in every frame. Most of the characters are boring as hell, although the script has a lot of fun with a very, very deranged FBI agent (best line in the movie: "You are such an asshole!" "I'm an asshole... with an UZI!" bang bang bang). The plotting is fairly complex, to the point where the film has multiple climaxes, each taking place on multiple planes of existence at the same time, Inception-style. (In one, two ghosts have a fistfight in the same physical space as, but unseen and unaffected by, a second pair of characters also having a fistfight. In another, five characters chase another through an abandoned mental hospital, ducking in and out of a hallucinated past in said mental hospital involving two of the five characters who mirror their present day actions in the past.) But all of this is, as I've indicated, completely boring on anything but a technical level. It's like watching many different colors of paint drying all at once.
That said, other people may get more enjoyment out of this than I did. Like I said, I don't like early Peter Jackson, or any of the times that guy bleeds through in the Lord of the Rings movies--there's a corny goofball in that man only sometimes restrained by his better impulses. That spirit (no pun intended) is alive and well all throughout The Frighteners, which is just filled with weirdness and dumb jokes. One of Fox's ghost buddies, an old West judge, is inexplicably depicted as a necrophiliac (or is it rape, given the existence of the soul?); I've already mentioned the crazy FBI agent, who decides that Fox is killing people with his mind and that the FBI agent can protect himself from that psychic attack with lead-lined body armor; then there's R. Lee Ermey, the guy whose entire acting career is reprising his role as the cursing sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, doing that here but as a ghost with machine-gun arms; and on and on. Dumb dumb dumb.
I was going to say The Frighteners should have been half an hour shorter, but who am I kidding? It should have been 110 minutes shorter. But I cannot possibly be as mean to this movie as it deserves, so here's Ebert:
Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through “The Frighteners.”
The Frighteners is on Netflix, but why would you do that to yourself? You're better than that. You don't deserve The Frighteners. Nobody deserves The Frighteners.
Next up: he's a teen! He's a wolf! He's a Teen Wolf (1985)!
It's impossible to hate Teen Wolf, I'm convinced, because if anybody should hate Teen Wolf it's me. (Exhibit A, my Frighteners review above, where I got angry at the very notion of humor in a serious movie about ghost fights.) But this is the kind of stupid I can get behind. I'm not in love with the movie, but it does feature a point where a werewolf plays basketball, and come on, I'm not made of stone.
In his review, Vern says that the movie feels like it's an allegory, but that none of the metaphors you'd expect (race, sexuality, puberty) hold up. That's true, but it doesn't mean the movie isn't about anything. It's a story about celebrity--or, as we call it during high school, popularity--and identity.
As protagonist Scott, Fox is much more charming in this than he is in The Frighteners, although he doesn't seem young enough to be a high school student, even though he's perfectly acceptable in Back to the Future, which was released in the same year. Not nearly as charming as the movie perhaps thinks he is is Jerry Levine as Scott's friend Stiles, who I decided to see as a tragic figure desperately trying to be the center of attention because deep down he doesn't believe he deserves it. Aw, cheer up, Stiles! People don't hate and ignore you because you're not a worthwhile human being; they do it because you're fucking obnoxious. Rounding out the main cast is Susan Ursitti as "Boof," a name so stupid you can forgive Fox for not trying to date her, despite the fact that she's the typical hot, smart, funny best friend and that literally everybody else in the movie tells him over and over again to take her to the dance instead of psychotic blonde bimbo Pamela. Eventually the plot starts when one of these people finds out he's a werewolf! (Spoiler alert: it's the main character.)
At first Scott is nervous about revealing his weird secret and dumb-looking werewolf make-up to other people--there's a particularly uncomfortable scene where he essentially comes out to Stiles, a subtext made text as Scott reassures Stiles that he's no fag, just a werewolf. Then Scott becomes massively popular when it turns out that being a werewolf is exactly like finding a magic pair of sneakers that used to belong to Michael Jordan, ie, you suddenly become supernaturally skilled at basketball. (The movie tries to argue later that Scott's newfound skills have nothing to do with his werewolfism, that he just needed a boost of confidence; but this is utterly ridiculous, even discounting the fact that it's his lycanthropy that gives him the confidence boost in the first place. Dumbo, this ain't.) What this middle portion of the movie goes to show is that, in America, there's literally no abnormality that won't be excused or even celebrated as long as it makes you good at sports. Immediately, Stiles co-opts his friend's genetic affliction, branding him the Teen Wolf and selling t-shirts and souvenirs in the halls between classes. At first Scott is happy, because everybody likes him now! But then Scott is worried, because some people dislike him now, and also if people only like him because of his condition, does that mean they really like him or what? This bog-standard teenage existential crisis is a metaphor for the movie itself: if Teen Wolf was just "Teen," wouldn't it be a shitty movie? Doesn't that mean we only like it for the Wolf part? Does that mean we really like the movie, or what?
In conclusion, this is a bad movie, but it doesn't feel good to kick it. So instead, feel free to enjoy this logical conclusion of the American cultural hegemony, a video clip in which a werewolf dances to the Beach Boys on top of a speeding van:
Posts
Maybe if he had put Audrey Tautou in it. As Amelie. She can just chuck pebbles at the Xenos.
But Capaldi as a WHO doctor? Really? A Doctor for WHO? COME ON!
Completely falls apart in the third act, to the point that I feel it short-changed everything that came before.
...It was well before he was cast on the show, wasn't it?
The interesting thing is that in many ways it mirrors the end of Pitch Black. Riddick, a man with no interest in what they are offering (power/redemption/forgiveness/goodness) gets it anyway and is left wondering why he has it and what he has done to deserve it.
It's just trapped in a terrible movie that does everything wrong with what Pitch Black did and makes you wonder if everything that works in Pitch Black wasn't just an accident.
How?
I mean, what is there to even shortchange? It's only in the 3rd act that the movie actually becomes anything but a random sightseeing tour.
Better than the original planned ending.
First, the 1977 based-on-a-bestseller cautionary tale about the dangers of being a slut, Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
1977 is the year Diane Keaton won an Oscar for her performance in Annie Hall, but arguably she turns in better work here, in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Her character, Theresa, is a schoolteacher for deaf children who spends her nights in seedy New York bars, looking to get picked up by men so she can engage them in sex and a kind of mutual disrespect. The film is episodic, tracing Theresa's slow descent over the course of a year into a depressing, hopeless cycle of casual sex with violent men. It's based, as I said, on a bestselling novel of the same name (by Judith Rossner, 1975); the novel is apparently more extreme (reviewing the film, Ebert mostly complained that the movie left the Theresa of the novel's masochism and thrillseeking on the cutting room floor). The book is, in turn, loosely based on the life and murder of Roseann Quinn, a case which became something of a media sensation, with people considering Quinn's habits and death as emblematic of a generation of young people run amok.
Richard Brooks, perhaps best known for another true crime movie, In Cold Blood, wrote and directed this film in a way that declines overt comment on the narrative. But in offering up this particular story, both he and Rossner make an implicit judgement about the social and sexual habits of Quinn and women like her. On the one hand, it's a very offensive film--I was particularly put off by Tom Berenger's character, a stereotyped, violently self-denying gay man. Again, without comment, but simply through juxtaposition, the movie makes unspoken points about the salaciousness of Theresa's double life (at one point she has a nightmare about what the public response would be if she became known as both a teacher and a drug-using slut), suggests ham-handed Freudian reasons for her behavior (an early love affair with a teacher, a shameful polio scar, a repressed religious upbringing, an abusive father), and, in its conclusion, offers not a shred of hope or mourning for Theresa. In the end there is only horror at the place to which all her human need has brought her.
Does the film still have value? It's overlong, and its values antiquated. Yet Keaton is phenomenal in a layered performance where Theresa wields a slightly goofy, sarcastic Annie Hall-style persona as a weapon against the uneducated, unworthy-of-respect men she seeks out night after night. Her two main lovers are William Atherton, the safe, educated civil servant who declares his love and seems slightly unhinged by her unwillingness to reciprocate, and a very young Richard Gere, the sexy, unpredictable stud who reacts with a violent possessiveness when she tries to push him away, too. One gets the sense that Theresa lives by one of Alvy Singer's jokes: "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." She allows herself to be picked up by men she could never possibly have a real relationship with, seeks to manipulate, control, or insult them, and then kicks them out of her apartment. She seems to believe that she can do this over and over again without ever having to worry about what they feel, or want, or will do in response--that, because she looks down on them (and they her), she remains separate from them, untouchable. That this turns out not to be the case is her tragedy.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar is not a nice film, and it does not have happy things to say about men or women. It's bizarre to think of it as popular entertainment. Ultimately, beyond the film's craft and the skill of its cast, if it has any value at all, it's as a time capsule. You can watch and journey back to a grittier, grimmer New York City; and back, too, to a time when the nation looked at a young woman's life and behavior and judged her harshly for fulfilling needs it didn't understand. Well. New York has gotten better, anyway.
Strangely, this movie is almost totally unavailable; it's not even on DVD, and no trailer exists online. Here's a clip, instead:
--
From the depressing to the absurd: Brian De Palma's The Fury (1978).
Watching this movie, I started wondering why so few movies really use psychic phenomena as story elements--what at one point were called "weird talents," like telekinesis and ESP. After 1981's Scanners, those ideas seem to drop out of vogue, as both science fiction and horror moved on to other stories. Yet the concepts hold some fascination for me, particularly within the (pseudo)scientific trappings of the '70s. It seems to me that the notion of learning one has strange and terrible powers, unasked for and ill understood, carries with it a great deal of pathos that a movie could use to good effect. This is not that movie.
What this is is two movies, both of them essentially broken. In one of them, an aging but still badass Kirk Douglas sneaks or shoots his way through the ranks of the secret organization that kidnapped his son and tried to have him killed. In the other, a young girl with psychic abilities so powerful they make make the people she touches bleed tries to find a boy whose own abilities may help her control hers. These two stories are in the same movie because the boy and Douglas' son are one and the same; but in terms of tone, affect, and interest, the two narratives couldn't be further apart. And they work fitfully at best.
On a scene by scene basis, Douglas' story is legitimately entertaining, with lots of fun spy antics (particularly a foggy car chase/fight/thing set in an empty construction site). But the movie never gives you enough information about his character or his goals to make you care what happens to him. Meanwhile, the reverse is true of the psychic storyline, where I cared about the girl (and really liked the creepy effects work with her powers) but found each individual scene brain-meltingly boring. (Here, the problem is that we have too much information about exactly how sinister is the school for the "gifted" she's at, and it takes her too much of the film to catch up to us.)
The movie only really comes alive at the end, when their story lines come together (in a well-directed bit of slow-motion violence) and we meet the most interesting character in the piece, Douglas' son. It's only then that the movie really embraces the horrific side of its psychic elements, and the result is wonderfully eerie and dark. But the real joy is The Fury's epilogue, which I suggest you watch here because it's awesome. No set-up or explanations necessary, just enjoy one of the all-time great movie deaths.
Overall, The Fury is less than the sum of its parts. But some of its parts are actually pretty good. It's a set-piece movie, with a decent number of big, exciting scenes aided by De Palma's energetic direction, a nice score by John Williams, and the performances by Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes (as the villain). It's just too bad it doesn't hold together.
The Fury isn't streaming anywhere, but it is available on HBO Go.
Man, this is a depressing post. I was just trying to have some fun there.
Oh my Lord, that was certainly a movie.
It's not really a zombie movie per se, in that zombie movies tend to focus more on the relationships between the survivors and the commentary of the social restrictions we impose on the world (interspersed with characters getting their brains eaten). This is much more of a disaster movie - "we think we can plan for everything, but we can't - however humans are pretty ingenious in surviving against the odds".
where people were using clever solutions like sound on a roof and spraying flamethrowers at the zombies en masse and shit?
yeah
zombie movies are almost universally dumb humans dying in dumb ways
for example: Israel building a wall around a city but not really putting any guards on the walls or having figured out that zombies are attracted to loud noises despite that being super goddamn fucking obvious, and the single helicopter they got on zombie patrol only having a single machinegun
like
why are you ever not attacking the zombies outside the walls? I get it you're safe, but you have lots of bombs and shit right? What reason do you have for not constantly shooting them/lobbing things at them/burning them/dropping bladed objects onto them that cut them up when they try to climb them? Why are you taking precisely zero measures to deal with the zombies?
Then in the credits they show the army using noise to lure like a quarter million zombies to a stadium and hitting it with a huge bomb
oh okay, so you guys are on the ball with this shit after the movie is over
It doesn't really do that either though. I mean, yes, it does take a more disaster-movie approach to the whole thing, which I appreciated. But it doesn't actually tell an interesting story with that. Rather the character just goes on a silly world tour instead, going from spot to spot to witness bad shit happening, but having no effect on any of it. Our main character is, until the very end, a completely passive and non-acting observer to random zombie shit. Nothing he does is of any consequence.
It's disaster porn. It's all death, no plot.
It was a random sightseeing tour that created a problem huge in scope and spectacle, and seemed to aim at the third act to solve that problem, but the third act just turned into Resident Evil... the first game, no less. Dialed way back on the spectacle and scope.
Then there's the fact that they started relying on stupid contrivances (surviving the plane crash) and artificial stupidity (the final dilemma could've been solved with a phone call instead of the suicidal shit he ended up doing).
It was a different sort of zombie movie, for sure, but it wasn't actually better than the traditional formula, because they couldn't stick the landing.
Cause fucking hell that is a fantastic opening. The animation, the music, the everything. It just incredible and perfect and gives it all this huge epic feel that really sells you on the whole idea of the world you are gonna be rooting for the characters saving as the movie goes on. The animation is great and beautifully timed and even has some neat shifting of focus effects that must have been a bitch to make but are both gorgeous and seamless. The sound nails it from that first cry as the sun rises on the black screen to the incredible swell that ends with the slam of the percussion as the title card hits, somehow managing to make the ending feel like ... exciting and powerful. Apparently at one point this section had dialogue that they cut when they saw just how well it all worked and how anything else would take away from the experience and everyone involved in that deserves a raise cause it's totally the right decision.
Honestly, I think it may be better then the rest of the movie and that's a damn good movie. It ran, as I remember, in it's entirety as the trailer for the movie and it practically works as it's own thing. That thud as the title card hits feels like one of cinema's most epic mic drops.
I can like picture the guys making it being on stage as this is running being like:
That's how it done bitches. That's how it's fucking done.
BOOM!
/mic drop
I didn't like the protagonist at all in it, or Timon
Scar is great as the hammiest lion tho
I saw trailers for the Christian Bale Moses movie, which seems like it's going to redefine awful as well as make no sense historically or biblically and still be a woooooo Moses and Judeo-Christianity woooo movie.
So, it's not even going to be as interesting as Noah.
No, but the fourth (if there is one) might.
Riddick spoilers
Also, IIRC, Riddick's voice over at the beginning of Pitch Black was added after they realized that had a Franchise on their hands and added stuff to the first movie to make him more of the lead instead of just the "crazy psychopath" of the group. Stuff like the VO and I think a few extra scenes where he's in the background doing creepy things like cutting a lock of that one girl's hair and a few other things. Basically in the original dvd release (before it got slapped with the "Chronicles of Riddick" pre-title) he wasn't in the first part of the movie a whole lot.
Given the earlier conversation I wonder if this scenario could be done outside of its sci-fi trappings, cause the whole thing works really well as is.
You sure? A comparison between the 2 different versions indicates there aren't any changes until about 18 minutes in, and they're pretty minimal character beats.
I wonder if I'm thinking of CoR then... Talking about how you're not suppose to dream/think while in stasis because only the primal/animal part of the brain is awake, but he/Riddick does.
I don't think it'd be too hard to do outside of a sci-fi setting. Granted, it's been a while since I watched Event Horizon, so I could be wrong or forgetting some important bits.
Swap "Experimental FTL star ship that just reappeared" with "long lost cruise ship (or other boat) just sent a distress signal". Might have to jigger the script a bit to get around the star drive opening a hole to the Immaterium to travel through. Maybe the ship was cursed, or haunted or something and wound up with a round trip ticket to hell.
Outside of that, I don't really recall anything in the movie that required it to be in space. Any remote place on the planet where a mysterious boat could show up and attract a salvage crew (but be far enough away that further rescue would be unlikely) would work just as well.
Exactly. Just too many notes..er, characters! So many great actors and only a few that had the screen-time or any amount of plot development.
There's also the fact that whatever kicks off the event damages their ship and the constant ticking of the clock since they don't have CO2 filters/scrubbers.
And the one crew member that decides to throw himself out of an airlock.
I dunno to me the whole "breaking physics"/"gate to the warp" thing makes it seem that much more real (I guess for lack of a better term) then just another ghost ship. Also the gothic interior of the Horizon compared to something that looked like a more generic "working sci-fi" ship with the Lewis and Clark.
The first Wall Street is also a mixed bag, but Douglas and Sheen carry it when it becomes way too cliched (blue collar good! white collar bad!) and it was before Oliver Stone's head got up his ass (he was just tossing the salad then), but the sequel tries to piggyback off the 2008 recession and just feels more blowhardy than necessary. Resting the bulk on Laboof's shoulders doesn't work as you can't take him seriously when he's also incorporating the other cool 20 something dude dreams of L.A.; he's skinny and frail but he's into motorbikes and good hearted in the cutthroat stock world and has a manic pixie political dreamgirl girlfriend who also happens to be the daughter of a rich guy!
It tries to just stay above the details and sticks to low information things, piggybacking on Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns storylines to hurt the innocent stock guys while letting Josh Brolin be the bog standard Gecko stand-in, but you also have....Gordon Gecko himself that the film doesn't know what to do with. And to Douglas' credit he still pulls his role off well, it's just stuck within more cliched confines. The ending can be seen miles away, even with the incredibly offputting resolution to a subplot:
In terms of cinematography and editing, I've never seen such a weird use of swipes and inserts, from Iris wipes like a Looney Tunes cartoon to near 80's TV cuts when people talk on phones and their faces show up, to showing the internet tubes when stocks go on to bad CGI to show fusion, along with bad music that's hip and cool because a guitar and a dude with probably a patchy beard is barely singing aloud. It doesn't feel like Stone was in on the joke, he actually thought it made sense to do so. Plus there's a really bad cameo by Sheen right before he went full on Winning that serves no purpose.
In the end it's a weak movie that could have been so much more and relevant than what it was. Margin Call was hella better.
Wall Street 2 just seems like a movie that Stone just didn't know what to do with. Like he looked at how out of control wall street was with mortgage backed securities and all that shit and felt like he had to say something, but didn't really know what. It's just a mess. Put it up against something like Margin Call, a movie about the same topic but that's tightly structured and actually says something, and it's not even close.
Stone is one of those directors that will see what ever he does in theaters, hoping he gets some of his mojo back, but it just never happens. I'm an idiot I guess.
I think the sci-fi meets religious horror part is the best aspect of the premise. I love the idea of the height of scientific and rational achievement leading to a completely irrational and insane state. We tear a hole in reality with science so we can go fast and find utter madness beyond human comprehension on the other side.
Like, if I was redoing that movie that would be the angle I'd play up to the max. Start it off as a "disaster assessment" type movie, with them trying to figure out what went wrong on the ship. And stuff is kinda getting weird, but they keep throwing out plausible scientific explanations but slowly it all begins to fall away to a sort of lovecraftian unintelligible madness till you have to accept that what is going on does not make rational sense and the whole movie and the characters within it become unmoored from reality. Fuck with the audiences expectations by setting up a sci-fi horro movie and delivering gibbering horror.
I do wonder if this would actually work to screw with the audience though as audiences either don't actually seem surprised by bullshit explanations or get really nerd-angry if you hold out science answers and then substitute for craziness.
Okay, I think I can write around the first two things...
To the first: The ship reappears near Antarctica. Ticking of the clock goes from running out of air, to risking freezing to death if they can't get the ship up and running. Maybe a massive ice storm is due to hit in X-hours, if they can't get the engines up and going before then, the boats likely going to capsize from the ice buildup. Maybe the hull was damaged (intentionally?) and is slowly sinking, the crew can try to repair it, but shit gets creepy before they can get too far with that.
The second point really writes itself after you decide to set the boat in Antarctica, guy spacing himself instead jumps overboard into near freezing water and dying of hypothermia/drowning/penguin attacks in a few minutes.
I agree that it's a better movie for having been set on a space ship as opposed to just another haunted boat. The design of the Event Horizon really makes for some creepy atmosphere. I'm just saying that the script beats could all work in a different setting with relatively little rewriting.
And really, it's the closest we're ever likely to see to a Warhammer 40k movie, so I'll be happy with that.
Eldritch horror in space is a fantastic combo. Heck, they could've made a backdoor pilot for a Warhammer 40,000 franchise, and wouldn't that have been sweet?
That's why Space Marines never surrender! They'd crush their heads if they raised their arms that high.
Well, it sort of is. The ship is, to paraphrase Sam Jackson, an evil fucking ship.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
WH40K is a mindset, not fashion.
They introduce the warp, but the horror is pretty mundane haunted house in nature. Kinda a waste.
The engine is the monster, mate. It's what twists Weir and kills the most people directly.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Reverse chronological order gives us Peter Jackson's The Frighteners (1996) to start with.
Let's be clear: this is not a good movie. It's not even a particularly fun movie. But then, I don't like early Peter Jackson.
The Frighteners is the last movie Jackson made before Lord of the Rings, and it demonstrates a technical virtuosity that is staggering. The movie's use of CG is seamless and effective, particularly when it comes to the movie's villain, a creepy Grim Reaper-type character that carves glowing letters into the foreheads of its victims. Less convincing is the effects work on the ghosts, which are generally just composited actors with a blue glowy filter laid over them. (To be fair, whenever the ghosts shift their bodies around or whatever, that does look good.) Friends with some of these CG things and enemy to others is Fox, playing a scruffy semi-charlatan of an exorcist (his schtick is having his ghost buddies perform some poltergeist prestidigitation so that he can swoop in and save the day). It's a rare movie when Michael J. Fox isn't likeable, but there you go. It's a shame, too; it's a fine casting choice but the script gives him so little to work with that the character ends up extremely bland.
Essentially this movie is the quintessential FX-heavy but totally empty studio film. Jackson was clearly having fun, and his direction is energetic, but the movie isn't about a god-damned thing and it shows in every frame. Most of the characters are boring as hell, although the script has a lot of fun with a very, very deranged FBI agent (best line in the movie: "You are such an asshole!" "I'm an asshole... with an UZI!" bang bang bang). The plotting is fairly complex, to the point where the film has multiple climaxes, each taking place on multiple planes of existence at the same time, Inception-style. (In one, two ghosts have a fistfight in the same physical space as, but unseen and unaffected by, a second pair of characters also having a fistfight. In another, five characters chase another through an abandoned mental hospital, ducking in and out of a hallucinated past in said mental hospital involving two of the five characters who mirror their present day actions in the past.) But all of this is, as I've indicated, completely boring on anything but a technical level. It's like watching many different colors of paint drying all at once.
That said, other people may get more enjoyment out of this than I did. Like I said, I don't like early Peter Jackson, or any of the times that guy bleeds through in the Lord of the Rings movies--there's a corny goofball in that man only sometimes restrained by his better impulses. That spirit (no pun intended) is alive and well all throughout The Frighteners, which is just filled with weirdness and dumb jokes. One of Fox's ghost buddies, an old West judge, is inexplicably depicted as a necrophiliac (or is it rape, given the existence of the soul?); I've already mentioned the crazy FBI agent, who decides that Fox is killing people with his mind and that the FBI agent can protect himself from that psychic attack with lead-lined body armor; then there's R. Lee Ermey, the guy whose entire acting career is reprising his role as the cursing sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, doing that here but as a ghost with machine-gun arms; and on and on. Dumb dumb dumb.
I was going to say The Frighteners should have been half an hour shorter, but who am I kidding? It should have been 110 minutes shorter. But I cannot possibly be as mean to this movie as it deserves, so here's Ebert:
The Frighteners is on Netflix, but why would you do that to yourself? You're better than that. You don't deserve The Frighteners. Nobody deserves The Frighteners.
--
Next up: he's a teen! He's a wolf! He's a Teen Wolf (1985)!
It's impossible to hate Teen Wolf, I'm convinced, because if anybody should hate Teen Wolf it's me. (Exhibit A, my Frighteners review above, where I got angry at the very notion of humor in a serious movie about ghost fights.) But this is the kind of stupid I can get behind. I'm not in love with the movie, but it does feature a point where a werewolf plays basketball, and come on, I'm not made of stone.
In his review, Vern says that the movie feels like it's an allegory, but that none of the metaphors you'd expect (race, sexuality, puberty) hold up. That's true, but it doesn't mean the movie isn't about anything. It's a story about celebrity--or, as we call it during high school, popularity--and identity.
As protagonist Scott, Fox is much more charming in this than he is in The Frighteners, although he doesn't seem young enough to be a high school student, even though he's perfectly acceptable in Back to the Future, which was released in the same year. Not nearly as charming as the movie perhaps thinks he is is Jerry Levine as Scott's friend Stiles, who I decided to see as a tragic figure desperately trying to be the center of attention because deep down he doesn't believe he deserves it. Aw, cheer up, Stiles! People don't hate and ignore you because you're not a worthwhile human being; they do it because you're fucking obnoxious. Rounding out the main cast is Susan Ursitti as "Boof," a name so stupid you can forgive Fox for not trying to date her, despite the fact that she's the typical hot, smart, funny best friend and that literally everybody else in the movie tells him over and over again to take her to the dance instead of psychotic blonde bimbo Pamela. Eventually the plot starts when one of these people finds out he's a werewolf! (Spoiler alert: it's the main character.)
At first Scott is nervous about revealing his weird secret and dumb-looking werewolf make-up to other people--there's a particularly uncomfortable scene where he essentially comes out to Stiles, a subtext made text as Scott reassures Stiles that he's no fag, just a werewolf. Then Scott becomes massively popular when it turns out that being a werewolf is exactly like finding a magic pair of sneakers that used to belong to Michael Jordan, ie, you suddenly become supernaturally skilled at basketball. (The movie tries to argue later that Scott's newfound skills have nothing to do with his werewolfism, that he just needed a boost of confidence; but this is utterly ridiculous, even discounting the fact that it's his lycanthropy that gives him the confidence boost in the first place. Dumbo, this ain't.) What this middle portion of the movie goes to show is that, in America, there's literally no abnormality that won't be excused or even celebrated as long as it makes you good at sports. Immediately, Stiles co-opts his friend's genetic affliction, branding him the Teen Wolf and selling t-shirts and souvenirs in the halls between classes. At first Scott is happy, because everybody likes him now! But then Scott is worried, because some people dislike him now, and also if people only like him because of his condition, does that mean they really like him or what? This bog-standard teenage existential crisis is a metaphor for the movie itself: if Teen Wolf was just "Teen," wouldn't it be a shitty movie? Doesn't that mean we only like it for the Wolf part? Does that mean we really like the movie, or what?
In conclusion, this is a bad movie, but it doesn't feel good to kick it. So instead, feel free to enjoy this logical conclusion of the American cultural hegemony, a video clip in which a werewolf dances to the Beach Boys on top of a speeding van: