Short Thoughts: Winners on Netflix

You don't get to say the words "winner" and "Netflix" too often in the same sentence these days.

Anyway.

Here are some movies I've enjoyed on Netflix in the last month or two but that I don't have time and energy to write a full post about.

Salvage. Quiet little British thriller about a military operation gone wrong spilling over into suburbia. Starring the always wonderful Neve McIntosh who gives a stand-out performance in a cast full of pretty damned good performances. Pay attention to the guy playing her boyfriend -- he's doing very nice things in the corner when no-one's looking.

Wilderness. Not-so-quiet British thriller. This is more if you're feeling the need for blood splashing around the screen and lots of yelling. Oh, and "attack dogs."

If you like Sean Pertwee, this one's definitely worth checking out although the whole "juvenile prisoners on a character-building weekend trip" framework is bizarre to the point of unworkability. I'm willing to buy "juvenile prisoners" and I'm willing to buy "character-building weekend trip" --  but maybe not partnered in the same movie? And there's a whole bullying-leading-to-death storyline that is, ostensibly, the trigger for all the violence in the film that appears and reappears at somewhat random intervals.

Don't focus your eyes entirely on Pertwee -- although he gives his usual, slightly exasperated performance here -- there are several of the young characters who are more worth watching. I'm on a network so slow I can't access IMDB (or, indeed, poster graphics), so I can't look up anything like performer or character names but there's Annie from Being Human and the two young (male) skinheads.

Super 8. This one really does deserve its own blog post and I really do want to write one. I put off seeing this because I figured it couldn't possibly be as good as everyone said it was.

Wrong again!

It's totally as good as everyone said it was. I described it to my parents as "the best homage to E.T. and Close Encounters that Spielberg could have asked for on bended knee." And it's better than that, too, because it steps beyond being a nod to bigger and better things and becomes its own thing -- a little awkwardly at times but that doesn't matter because you're so in love with it, you don't care.

Captain America: The First Avenger. Not my fandom. Not my thing. Not going to be my fandom or my thing any time soon.

Thor. Ditto. But a step beyond the above by being directed by Kenneth Brannagh and including Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba. Has the single most wooden kiss that I have seen in a long time.

Graveyard Shift. A film adaptation of a Stephen King story. You already know so much from that phrase alone, don't you? But this is better than most -- if for no other reason than there's Doc from Deadwood in a leading role as a crazy ratcatcher.

Friday Fun Times

The easiest possible way to come back to non-work-blogging -- posting videos!



And the fun partner game: how many of these can you name?

Homework

So I've been doing my horror movie homework lately: the first two Friday the 13th movies and the first Nightmare on Elm Street. I'd've hit up the Halloween series, too, but the first movie is gone from Netflix insty and H2O sequel is...quite, quite dreadful. I watched it out of desperation on cable once when I was sick. Even my massive childhood crush on Jamie Lee Curtis couldn't make it good; it only made it watchable.

(Admittedly, a cable edit is not ideal viewing at any time for anything except, perhaps, Stonehenge Apocalypse and then only because the ad breaks give you a chance to recover from your bouts of helpless hysteria.)

Lets do Friday first. I...wasn't unduly impressed with this. Slasher flicks are not my favorite movie meat at any time of day and, while I'm interested in the Friday series for a number of reasons, the actual content of the story isn't high on the list! I find the durability of the franchise fascinating (12 films, the last in 2009), the role it has in the development of modern horror, the impact it has on other films, on pop culture in general (who doesn't have some faint "back of the brain" recognition of "Crystal Lake" or "Jason"?), and so on and so forth.

But the slasher film per se doesn't do much for me: blood for the sake of blood...eh. The first Friday had enough other things to keep me interested: the characters were actually...a little character'y; it's always fun to watch the back-story unwind (even when you already know it); and, honestly, the setting is quite gorgeous. This, really, was one of the things working against the scare value of the movie for me; I grew up somewhere that looks very much like "Crystal Lake" and, while I've seen plenty of horror movies with a woods'y setting that work just dandy to set my adrenaline going, this wasn't one of them: there wasn't a nasty vibe coming out of those trees, at least to my mind.

What I found particularly interesting sitting and watching the first two Friday movies in immediate succession was, among other things (sex = punishment!), was that the surprise, the shock, the horror (if you will) is supposed to come from the kill itself. There isn't much emphasis put on the lurking killer, the mutilation of the bodies, the disposal or discovery of corpses, and all the trappings that I (and I suspect other viewers) have become accustomed to watching more recent films. The killer kills -- and that's it. If you're lucky (or unlucky) you get a shot of a corpse with a hatchet in her head or his throat slit (physiologically inaccurate, if anyone cares) and that's about it. If that doesn't scare you -- too fucking bad!

It's an interesting take: it assumes that your effect can be totally gotten across to your audience by a brief -- seconds only -- shot of a hatchet in someone's skull. Okay, yeah, Tom Savini did a great job with the make-up, but...perhaps my palate is just jaded but -- not really that scary.

In time and place, however -- I remember once having a conversation with my sewing teacher back when I was in 4-H as a child about, for some reason, Jaws and how she remembered the summer it had come out and how terrified people were. I'm not sure if I remember her saying she'd been to see it or not, but I've always remembered her saying how scared people were and how silly it seemed now, etc., etc. Well, I've seen Jaws on the big scene and it was fucking terrifying and that was in 2009, 30 years after first release. I can't imagine seeing Friday the 13th on the big screen and it having the same effect.

The GUT of Neil Marshall

I bought a cheap copy of Neil Marshall's The Descent at Newbury Comics the other day and, from the reaction of the dude running the register, you'd've thought I just bought gold covered in chocolate. Or chocolate covered in gold: "Oh, God, this is the best movie. Have you seen it? You haven't? Oh, you're going to love it! Yeah, there's the sequel but -- I don't think it's as good. Yeah, definitely see this first..." And so on.

Now I actually bought this movie because I was sick of only the sequel showing up on Netflix. I don't know about you but I try really hard not to watch sequels first. I've done it occasionally out of horror movie desperation, but I've always regretted it.

But lets get to the point: the Grand Unified Theory (or GUT) of Neil Marshall (based on two movies and therefore in no way generalizable and produced only for entertainment):

A. The man has no idea what real blood looks like.

B. He has a very generous estimation of the abuse the human body can take and survive.

C. He really doesn't know what shock looks like -- except when he does, and then it's startlingly good.

D. He's very good at the sudden reveal scare -- except when he's not, and then it sucks ass.

The Descent was a disappointment. I bought it expecting an above-average monster movie with a nifty cast; what I actually got a was a well-below-average monster movie with an "eh" cast. But nice scenery.

Yes, the all-female cast was a unique aspect to the film but I can't say that in and of itself makes the movie more watchable or any better although I had been led to believe that it kinda did. It's interesting as a movie fact; that's about all you can say for it. Oh, and the screaming is in a generally higher register than it might otherwise be.

Potential spoilers follow.

Your basic plot: heroine is suffering from trauma and grief due to having survived an auto accident which killed her husband and young child. Friends band together to create a yearly wilderness outing to bring their grieving friend back to some semblance of a normal life. Wilderness outing goes horribly wrong. Group is lost. Monsters descend. The band of friends blows itself apart -- as such groups are wont to do, apparently -- and much death ensues.

So far, so basic.

My problem is that there isn't anything here by way of unique characterization or interesting group dynamic or even real plot tension to keep the thing going forward. Okay, so it's a group of all women instead of all guys or a mixed group. So? And? Now what? There basic character types that tend to be women in horror movies are still all here: there's the slut, the studious girl, the good girl, the sisters, the sporty girl... there's nothing different going on here. They're just all a little older than they might otherwise be. Yes, okay, I was glad that the script never got to the point of desperation where the whole "You slept with my husband and therefore distracted him and therefore he died in a horrible, horrible, ironic car accident!" had to be said aloud but perhaps saying it aloud would have given the actresses a little something to sink their teeth into rather than just wandering around the edges of it.

And the monsters? Oh, dear God, the monsters. They're pathetic. Really. Seriously unscary. And they don't make sense which is even worse. A little basic research on the structures and habits of cave-dwelling creatures might have saved the screenwriters from looking like idiots. Hell, Gollum makes more sense than these sods.

And, Mr. Marshall, do you really think I'm going to lose my shit over a cave full of bones and a gooey pond? Well, it ain't gonna work and I'm vaguely insulted by the suggestion!

And one of the the only interesting moments -- "do I kill my friend to save her from being eaten alive?" -- took place then, too, and I was so pissed off by then that I couldn't even respect it as a moment.

So, if you have nothing better to do with the next two hours of your time...well, personally, I'd say watch A Very Supernatural Christmas twice before I'd suggest you watch The Descent.

Friday Fun Times

Following through on last week...don't blame me if this gets stuck in your head for hours! I can still sing most of this -- as well as most of the opening of Act 1, all parts -- from memory; how sad am I?

Oh, and I suppose this is probably mildly NSFW if you care about that sort of thing!

Rant: SW Fans, STFU

My parents and I have watched a lot of very bad movies. And when I say "a lot," I mean a lot: we must be past dozens and into the low hundreds. Movies so bad that they kind of paralyze you into watching them -- you know the ones I mean. Where you finish it and turn to the other people in the room as the final credits roll blissfully past and say, "Why did we watch that?" Movies like Quigley Down Under and Species and Twister. Okay, maybe not Twister for which I have a sneaking fondness based largely on Bill Paxton and the nifty-shit aunt who gets her house destroyed by the F4 or whatever the fuck it is.

 Anyway, my point is: I watched a lot of bad movies with my folks when I was living at home. And I've watched a lot of bad movies since -- sometimes, I search out bad movies: movies with disappointing CGI, poor casting decisions, bad use of documentary footage, or movies that are simply a bad idea. Some of these movies turn out to be joyous little slices of deliciousness as in the wonder that is Shark Attack in the Mediterranean, a German attempt at Jaws dubbed into English which takes place in what may or may not be Majorca and the climax of which features Ski-Doo racers being stalked by a genetically recreated Megalodon with the accompanying soundtrack of a cheery little pop-song that I swear to God is unironically and with no apparent attempt at family-unfriendliness or sarcasm called "Do the Sixty-Nine." Sheer glory, I tell you.

Over the years, though, my parents and I have learned that there's this great thing on the remote to help you deal with bad movies: it's called the "stop" button or the "power off" button. It really works like a charm -- and I want all the Star Wars fans currently bitching about the Blu-Ray release of the movies to learn the fuck about it.

 Don't like it? Don't freakin' watch it.

There's an "off" button, people -- better yet, keep your damned credit card in your wallet and don't shell out in the first place! It's not like Lucas isn't a multi-zillionaire nine times over at this point; I don't think he's hurting for your $59.95 or however much the Blu-Ray set costs. I myself own the original trilogy in two different formats at least 3 times over, the new trilogy -- I think only once. I'm happy with the edits I own: I was happy when Lucas brought out the original edits of the first trilogy on DVD; I bought the box set; and I stick with it. I have the circa 1998 edits, too, because I happen to like a lot of the changes he made to Empire. 

And while we're on the subject, please, for the love of heaven, stop going on about how Lucas is ruining his own story. It's his story, folks, his. Not mine, not yours, not anyone else's. Okay, it's moderately Joseph Campbell's, but we'll let that slide since he didn't seem to mind. And I hate to tell you: but as long as that copyright is in Lucas' beflannelled little hands, he gets to do what the fuck he wants with it and maybe, just maybe, at this point, we could all just shut the fuck up about it. The man is a compulsive re-editor; we're just going to have to live with that. Yeah, he does shit we think is stupid; who doesn't, really?

And on the whole, I am still far more grateful to him for putting the story out there in the first place than I am niggly about different audio cues or actors edited in to places they shouldn't be.

I'm glad to say that I have totally reclaimed my love of RENT after many years of trying.

To celebrate this fact, enjoy one of the (very very) few undramatic, simply enjoyable songs:

Short Thoughts: Also, Magical Cats

I've been doing something that I should have done a long time ago: watch through Hiyao Miyazaki's/Studio Ghibli's back catalog.

Believe it or not, until recently, I had only ever seen two of these films: Mononoke Hime and Nausicaa. I love them both and I own Nausicaa -- a fancy collector's edition, actually, that was a birthday gift -- but I hadn't seen anything else.

Now I've got two more under my belt -- Castle in the Sky and Howl's Moving Castle, which I know isn't technically a Miyazaki story since he adapted it from the late Diana Wynne Jones' novel which I have never read.

And I always have the same reaction and now I've come to expect it as I start to watch: "Oh, this again. I know how this goes. Yes, yes, I know what all this looks like. Yup, there's little furry things. Oh, well, I guess this is the one where..." And then the dots lead into the bit where my brain simply goes wstfgl because something so lovely and unexpected has happened that I can't think what to think about it for a minute.

I don't know how else to explain it, really, other than by saying that every time I think, "Oh, this is just another Miyazaki movie; fine," there is always something surprising and something that transcends the film. Maybe it isn't a grand philosophical statement -- although sometimes it is -- but most often it's something that's simply beautiful.

Or weird.

Or both.

Friday Fun Times: "Michael O'Sullivan was my great friend..."

This one has a long instrumental lead-in; stick with it. You'll be glad you did.

Movies In Which Meeting the Family (Or Going on Long Trips) Is Not Good

So this post is really in response to a conversation a few days ago between myself, Anna, Lola, and Minerva.

If you're reading through and thinking, "There must be an in-joke here," you're absolutely right -- there is! But feel free to make up your own.

And these movies aren't in order -- unless you count "what I thought of as I was walking home" as order.

Dog Soldiers. "Why, yes, please come take shelter in my way-the-hell-back-in-the-woods family home. Which is deserted, now you come to mention it. And also smack in the middle of Scottish werewolf country. And...by the way...did I mention....I have really big teeth?"

Carriers. "Road trip! Wait -- what does that little symbol mean?" I've written a whole post about how much I hate this movie, but in terms of demonstrating why road trips will always end in bloody, bloody death, Carriers is a pretty solid example: four charming young things decide to go on an alcohol-soaked road trip -- to...Vegas? Reno? I can't even remember -- and end up as one of the lone surviving groups in an infected and deadly world. You know who ends up living? The whiny younger brother and the truly bitchy self-serving girl. Thanks, movie, for destroying those stereotypes for us. Well done. *headdesk*

The classic, of course, Psycho. "Gee, I guess I haven't checked in on Mom lately..."

In the Mouth of Madness. Weekend road trip to quiet New England town? Sounds fantastic! In search of reclusive famous author? Great! Beautiful scenery? Check! Cosy B 'n B? Absolutely. Demons from beyond the brink of comprehension coming to twist your soul and devour your every thought? Of cou--wait a minute, what?

The Lost Tribe. A gorgeous long vacation in a pleasure cruise -- oops! The boat sank. But look! There's a deserted island just perfect for being a rescue site. What's this weird deserted work-camp in the middle of the island? Why are there bones everywhere? What's that growling noise? Who happened to Ted?! (Plus, this happens to be a truly sucktastic movie. Really just -- really dreadful. If you want to watch this film, do yourself a favor and watch Predator instead.)

It Waits. Awful thing happens. You retreat with your pain to a distant fire-station in the beautiful remote wilderness. And what happens? A huge flesh-eating revenge demon bursts out of its long-buried cave to come play with you. Will you and your helpful pet parrot survive? Well...

Curse of the Komodo. (Yes, I watched it. No, I'm not proud of it -- I was severely depressed, okay?!) Relaxing weekend on spa island? Nope, giant genetically mutated komodo dragons with -- and get this -- infectious disease spit. *sigh* Plus, lets discuss the quality of the computer animation -- if the dragons don't scare you (which they shouldn't) you may very well laugh yourself into a conniption at the "My teenage brother did it last night" quality of the effects.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Where do you go to take sanctuary during the zombie apocalypse (Stage 2)? Well, a nice big church would be a good idea, yes? Solid doors, high-up windows, potential for raiding the vicar's cookie store in the pulpit...sound logic all 'round! Until you realise the vicar's living in the church -- with his infected sister -- who he has wired to a chair -- oh, and he's been feeding her. Just don't ask about the wedding catering.

And last but not least (in this version of the list, anyway):

28 Weeks Later. Here's a note for all the rest of you who plan to survive the apocalypse: if you abandon your wife to a horde of flesh-eating disease victims, don't look back. Just don't. Don't go pick up your kids at the train station; don't try to make nicey-nice like this is all fine; and above all, if you do feel the need to try and rebuild the shattered remnants of your family, don't, for the love of God and everyone else in your tiny, disease-free citadel, lie about what happened to your wife. Because, if you do, it will not end well. She will come back; and you will try to kiss her hello; and -- well, to put it simply, have you ever heard of Typhoid Mary?

And to the kids: when you return from abroad to your disease-ravaged and strangely deserted home city, don't go home. Just...don't. Ever.

Happy Arbogast Day!

A day with a two-fer, huh? Wow. Must be y'alls lucky week! ;)

Anyway, how could I miss out on Arbogast Day (as started by the good folks at Kindertrauma and condoned by the equally good folk at Arbogast on Film) and the opportunity to talk about the eternal question of all fandoms: who would you save?

And so at some point last year I wrote a pretty uninspired post for this meme about Newt from ALIENS. And that's fine and I still adore Newt and I would still save her given the opportunity.

But over the past few months I've been delving deeper into my adoration for '50s sci-fi and I've rewatched Them! a frighteningly large number of times and you know what? It's Police Sergeant Ben Peterson's turn.

Them! is one of your seminal "effects of radiation making things huge and nasty" films. Released in 1954, its villains are giant irradiated ants who have become bored in their desert home and are wandering further and further abroad in search of food -- food that, increasingly, comes in human shape.

You don't actually see the ants for quite some time: the opening of the film is pure atmosphere as two New Mexico policemen, Peterson (James Whitmore) and his sidekick, Blackburn (Chris Drake), investigate a string of strange events, starting with the destruction of a family trailer and the disappearance of the family. The trailer is torn apart and, weirdly, sugar is strewn on the floor.

Peterson is the first to find a survivor of the ants: a little girl (Sandy Descher) wandering in the desert. He picks her up, carries her carefully back to the police car, and is sure to look after until the medics take her away. When a strange sound echoes across the desert, neither Peterson, nor anyone else, notice that the girl reacts -- but silently.

As the weather begins worsen -- turning into a sandstorm -- Peterson and Blackburn turn to the local gas station -- only to find it, too, destroyed. The owner's nowhere to be found; his shotgun is torn in half. Sugar is, again, on the floor. Peterson goes for help; Blackburn will not be there when he gets back.

The opening of Them! is really slow in comparison to things like Space Children (which comes to mind because the Descher is in both films) or The Monster That Challenged The World or even something like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms or It Came from Beneath the Sea! -- Them!'s opening gives the audience time to settle in, feel comfortable, and then get disturbed -- and then feel comfortable -- and then get disturbed all over again. Perfect horror timing, really. Plus the filming is beautiful: lovely clean black-and-white with no camera tricks to distract from the essential fascination of the landscape itself -- and whatever is lurking in it.

But the point of this post is Sergeant Peterson. As I said before, he's the first to find a survivor and his care of the little girl and his evident sympathy for her situation and the deaths of her family make him stand out. The other policemen are interested in the crime -- not the little girl who survived it. Watch his face as he fits together the broken pieces of her doll and realises this poor kid is on her own. Peterson is interested in the people -- something that he evidences throughout the movie and eventually gets him killed.

As the story progresses and the eventual call is made for "expert scientific assistance," Dr. Harold Medford (Ed Gwynn) and Dr. Pat Medford (Joan Weldon) arrive. By now we also have Robert Graham (James Arness) as our local scientific expert overwhelmed by what's happening around him. Graham and P. Medford are clearly going to be our couple for the film and, since no-one tries to exclude Peterson, he tags along, learning as best he can and contributing as best he can. By now, the Army in full regalia is involved and Peterson is outgunned and (could have been) outclassed. But he's quiet, assertive, and calm -- in a room full of dramatic duelling egos, he's a valuable team member. He has a solid sense of humor -- as in his interactions with H. Medford during a helicopter search for the ants-nest. He knows these people are probably smarter than he is -- but there are also things that he does well -- like diving into said ants-nest with a flamethrower -- which he can do that they can't. He's willing for there to be give-and-take and to be a team-member without being a glory-hunter.

Some ants make an escape from the doomed New Mexico nest -- one queen is caught with her new brood on board ship. As the ship goes down, so do the ants: problem solved. But others are uncaught as yet -- until Peterson and the team start getting funny news stories out of Los Angeles. (The storm drains must have been a powerful pull for film crews even then!)

The team goes down to investigate and finds that a local man and his two sons have disappeared -- while flying a toy plane near a drainmouth. And an inmate in the hospital drunk ward across the way has seen strange things moving in and out of the drains -- huge ants, he says. But who's going to believe a homeless drunk? Peterson and Graham will, since they know he's right. Peterson and Graham have both honed their listening skills by this point in the story!

And here's where you start to feel that the storywriters either didn't know what to do with Peterson or thought they could give him a blaze of glory ending that the character really doesn't quite warrant. Graham and P. Medford are, as I said, clearly going to be the couple; H. Medford is the aging scientist who gets the glory of the new discovery in his old age; the Army dudes are....well, the Army dudes. They get to shoot things. What does Peterson get?

As far as we've seen in the story -- there's nothing he wants. There's no girl for him to get; no guy for him to get, certainly! He's happy with his job (we assume.) We don't see a home or a family or get any sense that there's someone worried about whether or not he comes back. He seems to leave New Mexico readily enough when the story moves away from its original setting. While the other characters either have roots that come with them -- the Medfords -- or are busily occupied in the creation of new roots -- Medford/Graham -- Peterson has neither and thus has no future at the end of this movie.

It becomes evident that the storm sewers need to be searched for the missing man and his kids. Peterson volunteers to go in as one of the on-foot searchers and, of course, tracks down the kids in the middle of a huge ants-nest: ants everywhere. As he struggles to get the kids up into a passage where they can climb down to the waiting soldiers, an ant comes up behind him and catches him. The boy safely climbs up into the passage but can do nothing to help Peterson. Despite the best efforts of Graham and the soldiers as they rush into the passage a few seconds too late, Peterson dies.

In the end, a few minutes later, the soldiers pour fire down onto the two queen ants in the nest and destroy them as H. Medford intones the semi-famous closing line of the film: "When Man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What will he eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict."

Peterson's death is pointless. It would have been just as easy to have Graham and the soldiers rescue him as not. As it is, it seems like his only point is to save the kids and then die -- as quickly as possible, please, we have a denouement to get to! I think he deserves better. Certainly better than a not-all-that-quick death by ant in an LA storm sewer. He's been a solid team player all along; a valuable member of the Anti-Ant Group; a helpful soother of distressed children; and an intelligent asker of questions. Couldn't we have done better for him than this?

In a way, Peterson is too nice for his own good: he hasn't eyed women (Graham) or been crotchety (H. Medford) or given orders to up the firepower (military). He's been almost self-effacingly quiet -- in a lot of scenes, it's possible to not notice he's there until he asks a question -- and reasonably pleasant. He's established early on as a rescuer and a salvager, a noticer of small things -- by his death, it would seem that the story is arguing these things aren't important or, worse, these things are dangerous. This seems unfortunate. A world left to the Medfords, the Grahams, and the military would be very full of shouting. Perhaps there would be no giant ants, but there would be no-one noticing lost children either.

Perhaps the Doctor and Sergeant Peterson would have gotten along well; neither of them felt able to pass by a distressed child.

The Feverish Critic

In that these are all the movies I watched whilst I was sick! Or snoozed through. Although I have removed from the list anything I actually slept through more than 55% of.

Partly Cloudy with Chance of Meatballs. If you enjoy this sort of thing, you may enjoy this.

It made me dizzy.

And the monkey was annoying.

The Land Before Time. Anna and I watched this before she went to work one day. I have a vague memory that this was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid but I find I had no real recollection of it at all. But, damn, is that T Rex persistent! It must be second cousin to the ones in Jackson's King Kong remake -- goal-oriented behavior in a very serious way.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The new one. It was...good? I guess? I think I would have had a lot more fun with it if I watched it with my old roommate.

I don't find Nicolas Cage abhorrent and the kid was ok and Alfred Molina was delightful and there just wasn't enough Alice Krige. I mean, if you're going to cast Alice Krige as the maleficent sorceress -- then, by God, I want tons of evil witchy! Opening and closing scenes only = insufficient! I mean, it was a Disney movie. What are you going to say, really? Oh, I know what to say: was the little blonde goody-two-shoes "heroine" a total waste of time or was it just me? I mean, she was actually quite annoying, wasn't she? She seemed really...I hate to say this, but really stereotypically "dumb blonde." Cute and all but...wow. Or is this the decongestant talking and I'm being unkind?

Under the Mountain. I was a little more awake by now and less medicated and this is actually quite good. It's a rather slow, pretty quiet little Australian flick about a pair of twins -- a boy and a girl -- who have to reconcile their differences -- largely over their relationship as well as reaction to a death in the family -- in order to use a (good) alien weapon to destroy (bad) aliens under volcanoes.

Ok, that's the two-cent version and there isn't a whole lot of depth to this movie, to be fair. But there is some beautiful photography of New Zealand and some very nice quiet scares. Weta Workshop did good effects and makeup; octopoidy, slimy, kinda evil -- nice, middle-of-the-road villain. Oh, and someone scouted a great haunted house location on a lake -- full points for that. Sam Neill is fun to watch as always as the helpful alien who's been hanging around for a few hundred years trying to figure out a way to use his weapons against the nasty invading aliens. Real life kicks in every now and then -- check out the family conference after the next-door aliens have melted the front door to get at sister Rachel -- but not so much to derail the story. And the end is very satisfying.

In the Mouth of Madness. This, I really should have seen years ago. And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be horrified by the general shenanigans and goings-on or by Jurgen Prochnow's hair. What the hell was up with that?

In a more serious vein: John Carpenter. Early 1990s. Cthulhu mythos. Sam Neill. About books. Hell yes.

And it is actually quite good. I'd almost given up on ever watching it after reading some critical reviews that just panned it from one end to the other. I remember when this originally came out and, if my memory serves, a couple of issues of Starlog of which I was a dedicated reader at the time were largely devoted to pictures of Sam Neill running down a slimy hallway.

There isn't, actually, a lot of slimy-hallway-running when you get right down to it, but there are some really interesting conversations about reality and fiction and how and when and where the two might intersect or become each other.

There are also a fair number of monsters and some seriously creepy kids with a red ball. Also a lot of nods to Lovecraft and King (more or less in that order) with the main plotline -- involving John Trent (Neill) as an insurance claims investigator being employed by a publishing house to check out the "disappearance" of their bestselling horror author, Sutter Cane -- taking most of its inspiration from "Call of Cthulhu" and a little bit from It. Cane's editor, Linda Stiles, is practically a walking dissertation on the nebulousness of the horror in Cane's work as she tries to convince Trent to take the case seriously and, as time goes on, to take what Cane writes seriously, too. In order to investigate the author, Neill first has to figure out where he might have gone -- since he turns in all his manuscripts by mail or through his agent and his agent is...unavailable for comment on the question, this involves some serious headscratching.

Sidenote here: it is really satisfying that Carpenter thought to answer the perennial question of all horror films here which is when the heavy brown matter begins to strike the rotating blades, the inevitable question I have is: hasn't anyone in this film/book ever seen a single horror movie in the entirety of their lives? Not even a single late-night viewing of Nightmare on Elm Street? And the answer in this case is: no. Trent is asked this point-blank in reference to Cane's work and he answers quite simply that no, he doesn't like horror or supernatural stuff because he doesn't find it believable. Great! Fine! Awesome. At least there is an answer.

Additional sidenote: Stiles was great. She's half a believer when she takes off with Trent on their doomed road trip and her willingness to deal with what's in front of her as opposed to what she "knows" must be true is heartwarming. It doesn't make her sliding slithering fall any less inevitable, of course, but at least she knows what the hell is really going on.

Once Cane's location is discovered -- after the creep starts to set in -- Trent and Stiles set off to locate an apparently fictitious small town in New Hampshire called Hobb's End. Weird shit happens on the way and weirder shit happens once they hit town. Are Cane's books deforming the town or has the town deformed Cane? Perhaps reality is just straight-up deformed and we've been fighting it all along and now gravity, so to speak, is reasserting itself.

Trent fights the good fight but, as is inevitable with all Lovecraft mythos heroes, loses. Dramatically.

Not to give away the game, but I loved the end. Shades of Danny Boyle all over the place.

Short Thought: "Squirrel!"

I deeply resent being told things are going to make me cry. I don't know why, but I do. If you want me not to watch something/read something/listen to something, tell me it will make me cry. I don't resent people who do, but I don't enjoy doing it myself.

There are, of course, movies and TV shows and books that make me...ahem...require the services of the Kleenex Corporation, shall we say. But I don't particularly enjoy being warned ahead of time that something will, of course and inevitably make me go all soggy.

So I avoided Pixar's latest production, Up, like the plague because that was what everyone I knew who watched it told me: "Oh, you'll cry your eyes out." "I cried so hard..." And...why would this make me want to watch a movie again? I want to cry, I'll watch The Dresser or the second part of End of Time again. Plus...something about the whole thing just looked so -- cheesy cute. I'm not a fan of heartwarming. I prefer my heartwarming accidental rather than intentional. I find the end of Terminator 2, for example, quite pleasing. You don't call me weird; I won't call you weird.

Still, this evening I was tired and feeling unwell and my parents had just watched it and raved about how good it was. Not how cute or how sobby it made them feel -- which would have made me worry about their alcohol consumption for the weekend -- but that it was a good movie. That, I will go for.

So I watched it. And it is a good movie: Pixar is a continual pleasant surprise in the quality and ability of their storytelling. The first eleven minutes and some-odd seconds of the film are...brilliant. A grand illustration -- literally -- of wordless (or nearly so) storytelling.

Once the story gets rolling in the present, of course, it's more or less your standard fairy tale: old guy is grumpy about his now deceased wife not getting to fulfill her life's wish; decides to fulfill it for her; attaches small fleet of balloons to house; takes off for South America. Er. Well, okay, maybe not quite standard, but you get the point. Pixar rings the changes quickly enough that you don't get bored and the lovely moments of character development and narration aren't subsumed under a heap of visibly fancy computer animation (although I can only imagine the skull sweat that went into making this thing.)

To cut a long story short, I was on board until the dogs started flying biplanes. Then -- I kind of opted out. Not that the ending of the story wasn't wholly satisfactory in an H. Rider Haggard/Indiana Jones-kind of way because it totally was, but there was only so far my headachey suspension of disbelief was going to stretch and that was it.

I loved Carl's storyline; was less interested in the boy, although he was sweet; and I kind of wish someone had done more with Doug. Something more like the valet-bot in Wall-E would have been nice. But, honestly, I adore Wall-E -- this really had no chance of unseating my favorite Pixar. (And it would have to work past Finding Nemo first, in any case.)

But Up is very sweet -- Carl's story is lovely -- and you don't have to go through two boxes of tissues to enjoy it either.

Short Thought(s): Bad Shark Movies

In recent weeks, I've watched a lot of bad movies. And, for your entertainment and edification and possible warning, here are the worst of the worst:

Shark Attack in the Mediterannean, 2004. This has to be some of the worst of the worst of the worst. A German (dubbed with no real care into English and Italian) genetically engineered prehistoric giant killer shark movie. There are boats, helicopters, and a Rolls Royce. The hero is a dude who looks like he really wanted to go up against Schwarzenegger for Mr Universe back in the 1970s. There's an evil German geneticist, for heaven's sake, and a recreated prehistoric shark! You'd think there was real possibility there!

And you'd be wrong. It is so bad it's good, but only barely. Mostly, it kind of hurts. The actual shark footage is ok -- they got half-way decent documentary footage from somewhere -- but the giant genetically engineered thingummy? Oh, heavens, no. It just simply doesn't work. Your eye looks at it and says, "No. No, I don't buy that." There's some kind of altruistic hoohah about the shark having been created to "cure cancer," but that line didn't work in Deep Blue Sea either and that had way better sharks.

~ ~ ~

Shark Zone, 2003. Excellent documentary footage here but you'd really do better to avoid this movie entirely and watch Air Jaws. The Shark Zone sharks look vaguely embarrassed to be in such an awful movie and, frankly, they should be. Someone on the production team decided that a great white isn't frightening enough as is: it also needs to make some kind of noise.

Like...like a dog kind of noise.

So these sharks don't just bite you -- they growl when they bite you.

I'm not kidding. You'll wish I was.

~ ~ ~

Blue Demon, 2004. Now these sharks: they have a moral purpose. 

These are anti-terrorist sharks. I'm not kidding about this, either. 

This is another "lets break open sharky brain and see if we can make 'em worse" movie. In this case, two scientists have been genetically engineering them -- some days, I think screenwriters, if they want to write screenplays involving scientific concepts, should be forced to attend seminars at MIT or CalTech or something so that they know what these words mean -- to be border patrol guards from hell, essentially. 

Of course, they get out; of course, the Good and Kindly Scientists want to warn people; of course, the Evil Military Dudes won't let them. You can write the rest in your head, really.

These sharks -- suck out loud. They're clearly computer generated -- I think on some kid's Mac PowerBook in his bedroom at about 2 a.m. They look like the sharks from EverQuest -- and I mean EverQuest I, here, back in the late '90s.

Short Thought: "Resident Evil: Afterlife"

"Spoilers." Just imagine Alex Kingston's smile here, okay? Thanks.

I rather feel that this thumbnail review is a bit pointless. I mean, it's a Resident Evil movie, right? What do you think you're going to get? You're gonna get zombies, more zombies, something weird and genetically mutated, more zombies, guns, bombs, knives, grenades, and, if you're really lucky, a nuclear explosion. Oh, who am I kidding: you just have to be patient for the nuclear explosion. You'll pretty much always get one!

In other words, this is pretty much what you get.

There isn't a lot of point in rehashing the story for this one 'cause -- there isn't one. There's an attempt at creating some kind of suspense with Alice attacking an Umbrella base in Japan in the opening moments of the film -- one of the best action sequences in the film; it's a bad sign that it comes so early. The actual opening of the film with a long overhead shot down into a busy pedestrian crossing in Shibuya is really lovely. It's a rip-off of so many other films it makes me kind of tired to think about it, but that doesn't stop it being very beautiful. The Resident Evil films have always had a nice feel for shots involving water -- rain, pools, flooded places, whatever -- and this one is no exception. Not quite sure why that is, but there you have it.

See? Water.

So Alice attacks the base; meets the next-gen T-cell infected superhuman; supposedly gets shot up with an antivirus that should make her "human" -- hands up if you believe that one -- and then, yeah, wave goodbye to that storyline because you're not seeing it again any time soon. Don't get worried about Alice being less then superhuman 'cause she's never going to be human again. The rest of the movie goes back to the "safe place with no infection" storyline that the third movie introduced: now it's a town called Arcadia. Alice goes looking for it, hoping to find the rest of the group that she shipped up there almost two years before. No town, but she does find Claire -- except Claire's been shot full of Umbrella tech and remembers nothing.

Once Alice has knocked some sense back into Claire's head, the two of them head off down the West coast, aiming to look for survivors, and end up finding a small enclave holed in a max security jail in LA. They think our two heroines are a rescue team sent from the Arcadia, a massive cargo ship docked in the harbor that they think has been sending out radio signals for almost a week. The next step seems simple enough: go to ship. The complication in this nice, simple plan is that the jail is surrounded by pretty much every undead in LA: they may be dead, but they're not stupid and they know where the nearest food is.

The sunglasses are not his.

So there, I did do a story rehash despite my determination not to. Look, if you've enjoyed the other Resident Evil movies, then you'll enjoy this. There's nothing here you haven't seen before except for the creeping sensation that the whole thing is getting very tired. There are some great action sequences: notably the first Alice incursion into the Umbrella base and the fight as the jail goes down. Wentworth Miller does a reasonably good job as the new character for this film and manages not to die which was considerate of him; if the series is going to consider, we need some new blood.

Called "Flower Mouth" apparently.

The new creature for the film (those little charmers over there on the left) are cool lookin', but not explained or  described at all beyond being self-evidently "zombies whose mouths open in four directions." Well, yes, but it would be nice if you told me why. I mean, the rest of the zombie population is just drying out and getting increasingly cranky, not turning octopoidal.

There's an attempt at the end of the movie to broaden this idea and apply it to our old friends, the zombified Dobermans. (You remember these little fuzzies from the first movie, right? They were fun back then.) It doesn't work well. It just looks top-heavy and fake.

But, really, there's no fun to be had by pulling this movie apart. You can do it so easily it's barely fun at all: the story is non-existent; character development just...well, it never showed up and someone else ate its doughnut at the catering table; and the fight choreographer just gave up at some point and phoned in a description of Neo's fight with Agent Smith from the first Matrix movie.

Afterlife is shiny, high-speed, and, like the rest of the R:E franchise, addictive like cheap, sweet coffee. You think you can give it up -- but you find yourself sneaking back for more. So just give in,  kick back and enjoy.

Because you're watching it for her and you know it.

RIP

John Barry.

Everyone's posting James Bond clips in memory of this great film composer and that's great; but this will always be my favorite.




Wait for it. About 5.12, if you're impatient. It really is worth watching the whole thing. (It's really worth watching the whole movie if you haven't seen it!) The picture quality of this was the best I could find and it seemed worth the extra time that isn't Barry's music to have Streep's lead-in.

And Out of Africa is closely, closely followed by the brilliance that is his score for The Lion in Winter:

"...I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of ya."

So today I'm all set to talk about a movie I've actually seen. Exciting, yes?

Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers. This is a pretty awful trailer, but it kind of captures some of the feel/problem of the film, so...

You can tell the distribution company had some doubts due to the number of dribbling fanboy reviews excerpted before you see a frame of film.

This isn't entirely deserved skepticism -- there are bits of Soldiers that are really quite awesome. Spoiler warning: Er. There are some, so be warned.

Anyway, quick summary: we open with a couple camping in the wilds of Scotland by something growly. We cut to a soldier running through the woods; turns out he's been trying out for some kind of Special Ops squad and fails the cut for some really "plot point! plot point!" reasons. Cut to full British Army squad -- including our opening scene failure -- being dropped in the woods of Scotland for a "live exercise." Things go rapidly downhill. Turns out Scotland is -- those of us who have been watching Being Human already knew this, of course -- totally infested with werewolves. These, though, aren't slightly flash, slightly grungy wideboys like Human's Tully -- these are big, fast, nasty, and very very smart.

I was kind of mis-sold on Soldiers -- someone told me it was the werewolf equivalent of 28 Days Later. It isn't -- but it is a totally respectable werewolf flick. I have sat and watched way worse than this (Devil's Tomb, anyone? The Jaws sequels?).

One strength Soldiers has on its side right from the start is the cast: Sean Pertwee as the sergeant of the protagonist squad; Liam Cunningham as the human bad guy; and Kevin McKidd as the "failed" grunt who makes good. Not to mention Emma Cleasby as our somewhat dubious "rescuer" who knows a lot about werewolves. A lot a lot about werewolves.

There's a good, reasonably sharp script -- we're not talking Guy Ritchie in his Lock, Stock, and 2 Smoking Barrels phase, here -- but the characters ring reasonably true and are all individual enough that we can tell them apart even if we can't be bothered to remember their names, as I couldn't. There are some startlingly good touches: one of the squaddies spends most of the movie complaining, with increasingly good cause, that he's missing the footie (England v. Germany ) to bugger about in the woods of Scotland. After he's eaten -- rather unrealistically, by the way: a were rips off his head and his insides apparently fountain out as though his ribs had been gently blendering his internal organs all along; I'm pretty sure humans are slightly more solid than that. Anyway, during the credit crawl, we're shown some newspaper front pages as our lone survivor tries to get the word out. One of them has a huge headline: "England 5; Germany 1." Nice touch.

Don't go to Scotland for a camping holiday, apparently.

So there are a fair number of nice little touches in this movie -- the relationship between all the squaddies is pretty fair; some of them have nice stand-out character moments; the weres are just fucking awesome: big, bad, scary, and very smart. There's a great moment during a stand-off in the cottage where the squad retreats where one young man is firing through a window at a were; he goes to punch with the butt of the gun; the were grabs it out of his hands; the soldier dives for cover; there's a moment of silence, then two rapid-fire shots from outside the window, and then gun is tossed back on the floor with a definitively disgusted growl. :)

Marshall loves him some blood and guts which doesn't necessarily serve the movie very well; the question of whether or not poor old Sergeant Pertwee could have actually survived the gut wound he receives early in the film bugged me until the closing credits. The young man who apparently has liquid insides, ditto. Perhaps my suspicion is unfounded, but I don't think some of these things would work. And so much in the rest of the movie did look like it would work and was believable that these moments really stuck out. "Like a sore thumb" simply doesn't describe it.

As a closing thought, it was nice to have a monster movie where the cast didn't have to take half the movie to figure out what was going on and be convinced of its truth. I realise it's a trope of the genre that the characters have never seen a horror movie in their lives, never read Dracula or Frankenstein, never seen I Was a Teenage Werewolf, or read a Stephen King novel, but it can get a little old. I prefer people who are a little more willing to deal with the reality in front of them.

Final man and...dog?

Who Cast Eric Bana as a Villain?

So last weekend when I was having a pretty damn bad day, I thought: "What I need is something bright. And sparkly. That goes boom on a pretty frequent basis."

Therefore: Star Trek. The new Star Trek movie, that is.

Disclaimer: I was never a huge Trek geek. I was into Next Generation briefly in high school 'cause it was on every night and...well, if 'Inner Light' doesn't get you, 'Best of Both Worlds' probably will. If neither of them do -- well...you probably care less for Trek than I do.

I did watch the first couple of seasons of Deep Space Nine until I got tired of the nothing happening. I understand that an awful lot of sex happened almost immediately after I stopped watching which is at least something but I've just never gone back. I understand the attraction of Trek, don't get me wrong -- I think all fans understand the basic draw of a fandom even if it isn't one that draws them particularly -- but it doesn't happen to attract me very strongly.

I've tried going back and watching both the original series and Next Gen relatively recently: TOS is good ol' fashioned campy fun (I love the rubber rocks) and Next Gen still has Patrick Stewart in it, so we're all good there. But...I don't know -- I feel like I'm being lectured about something. And, frankly, Starfleet pisses me right the hell off. They're just an irritating group of people -- like new-school UNIT or the bit of Torchwood that doesn't feature Jack Harkness: they talk a good game, but their real world approach features a lot of guns.

Still despite all that -- the new movie is a lot of fun. It's very silly, even I realised it wasn't particularly close to canon -- which I seem to remember being part of the selling point -- and JJ Abrams is definitely stuck on the idea of stranding people in extreme climatic conditions with inadequate equipment. I can't say I paid a lot of attention the plot -- I'm sure there were holes you could have flung a giant genetically mutated cat through. There was a lot of time travel that seemed to reinvent its rules every time it came up; in the end, I was fairly sure that Spock in the future had done something that some people, also in the future at the time, were seriously narked off about and they had, for reasons that passed understanding, come back to the past to --- dump his books? I'm really not quite sure but it doesn't really matter very much: the focus of the story here is on showing us the roots of the relationships between the chief crew members: primarily Spock, Kirk, and Bones.

There are a fair whack of plot problems with this movie; mostly, it's unimportant because the point is the flash and the bang and Chris Pine's charm which carries a lot before it.

What is important is how much of the movie is about three white guys showing the rest of the universe how it's done.

Yeah, this is basically what Star Trek is a lot of the time but this seemed to me to be particularly egregious. Sulu and Chekov are humiliated by Captain Pike in front of the entire bridge crew for no good reason. Uhura starts out kind of kick-ass and chilly competent -- and quickly degenerates into being a raving Spock fangirl (which has it's own whole level of odd but we won't go there.)

In the original series, which is what this movie is playing with, the whole point of the "multi-cultural" cast was, as I understand it, Gene Roddenberry positing a future where race was, if not unimportant, significantly less important than it was in the early '60s when the show was airing. Skin color or nationality would be less important than skill at a job or ability to perform under pressure.

In the case of the 2009 film, it seemed like the non-Caucasian, non-American characters had to be humiliated by the Caucasian Americans in order to prove who was in charge. Not exactly the most enlightened piece of thinking -- or the most enjoyable to watch, particularly for someone who always liked both Sulu and Chekov and expected better both for and from them!

Overall, it's a good movie but I hope the sequel has more thought put into it. Still, if what you want is a (slightly shiner) trip down memory lane, Star Trek does push all the right buttons. Mostly.

the endless joy of lists

So there I was sitting on my couch on Wednesday afternoon, trying to come up with a list of 20 horror movies in response to the prompt over at Final Girl.

I pull out my pen -- fountain, purple ink -- and a piece of paper -- ripped out of a Moleskin; yes, I am a writing supply snob, thank you -- and started listing:

Silent Hill. Solid, no-one can argue that's horrible and use 'horrible' in any way you like. Personally, I like it, but that might have a lot to do with the fact that I'll follow Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean just about anywhere to say nothing of Laurie Holden as the eye-candy cop. And I like the fact that not only is the protagonist female, but the antagonist is, too. And, lordy, there isn't a lot creepier than Alice Krige when she gets rolling.

Jaws. Might be marginal, but still, I doubt anyone can argue it's at least half in the horror genre.

Pitch Black. Now I start to wonder: horror? sci-fi? thriller? action? Well... Yes. It does all those things. Every box ticked, I'd say. It's got undeniable horror elements (situation you can't get out of; unreliable partners; unknown/uncombatable opponents); sci-fi (space-ship; aliens); thriller (darkness; time-linked challenge); action (I'm not even listing anything here!)

28 Days Later. Okay, I'm off the thin ice now. Zombies, infection, brain-munching, lots and lots of blood -- this is horror.

Alien vs. Predator. Still firm, I feel. Cheesy, but firm.

Resident: Evil. Ditto. And how can you resist Alice's one-liners? "I'm missing you already." Love it!

Day of the Triffids (1962). I feel unsteady again. IMDB.com, interestingly, has it listed, under its "Genre" tab as both "horror" and "sci-fi." I've always felt personally that it verges more onto the sci-fi end of things, but there's no doubt that it has a lot of horror elements -- the couple locked in the lighthouse; the implacable enemy you can't escape who kills you and then eats you; the blindness epidemic -- it's got a lot of boxes ticked here. And Carole Ann Ford who was one of the first companions on Doctor Who -- in fact, the very first given that she was the Doctor's granddaughter -- is in it.

From Hell. Firm again! Yeah, I know Johnny Depp's accent comes from no known location and it's really only loosely tied to the events it claims to portray, but I love the movie anyway.

Sleepy Hollow. Another bizarre accent from Mr. Depp, but this is Tim Burton being bloody and creepy and weird all at once -- three things he does very well and doesn't really go for again until Sweeney Todd unless I'm totally out of my reckoning. And there's Ian McDiarmid. How can I not have this movie on here? But -- horror? Ye-ee-es...I guess? Maybe? There is a pretty convincing "can't kill the boogeyman" bad guy in the shape of the Horseman; there's Depp's whole weird flashback childhood with his mom and the iron maiden; Miranda Richardson;...I think there's enough here to justify inclusion, yes?

The Thing. No explanation necessary.

The Orphanage (El Orfeneo). Weird-ass Spanish movie. I think it can carry itself on weirdness alone. And when my father watched it, he offered all sorts of analogies to Psycho, the great horror classic of all time, so I think that's sufficient, don't you? Yes.

Underworld. I'm shoehorning this one here because I adore it and its two sequels. I love Kate Beckinsale in latex; I love Scott Speedman; I love Bill Nighy (have I ever mentioned this was the first movie I ever saw him in?); I love Michael Sheen. The whole thing, really. But -- is it horror? Vampires? Those would seem pretty horrific. Werewolves? Well, if Teenage Werewolf in London and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (oh, god help you, Michael Landon) count, then, yes, weres are horrific. There's a lot of blood, plenty of rending, lots of skin-shifting...plus the dude who played Kraven chewing the scenery. Oh, and Sophia Myles.

The Faculty. God, I love this movie. It is such campy crap and it never really takes itself seriously and it's just a great "high school is hell" movie. Horror? Oh, yes, thank you. We're on nice solid ice here.

The Craft. Okay, I'm elbowing this one a bit, too. It isn't quite horror -- I don't think...? -- and I don't honestly love it, but it is pretty fun if you have some popcorn (some to eat; some to throw at the screen) and a moderately good sense of humor.

So that's 14 -- and there I stick. By the time this post goes live on Friday morning, perhaps I will have solved my dilemma -- but I have also created a new one. I would like to add things like The Proposition and Ninth Gate -- but are those legitimately "horror" films? In the case of The Proposition -- indubitably not. It wasn't made as one; it isn't filmed as one; it doesn't sound like one; and it really doesn't have any of the tags of one -- but the violence, the motivations of some of the characters, what happens to some of the characters -- unarguably horrific on any level, by any standard.

I watch Predator to soothe myself to sleep when I'm sick; I have to feel able to run a marathon in order to sit down and watch The Proposition.

I think there's a larger point to be made in here about the spectrum of horror: there's the really damn obvious alien bursting out of your chest (ooh! ooh! ALIEN! I forgot ALIEN!) kind, all sorts of things in between, and then the less obvious interpersonal kind which can be much worse. But, by that token, does Notes on a Scandal count as a horror movie? Not really -- I mean, yeah, Judi Dench's character is pretty messed-up, but she's not about to grab a kitchen knife and start carving her way out through the schoolkids. But, taken a step or two further and slightly to the left -- and she's not far off a Bette Davis/Joan Crawford-style psycho poisoning the neighbor's cats or introducing the local kids to Satanic worship with their hopscotch chalk.

And what's scarier, really: the alien embryo or the policeman who's willing to take a horsewhip to a 15-year-old boy?

just eat them already!

so this past weekend it was fucking hot in boston. again. and what do we do when it's hot? well, i rewatch jaws. not obsessively, mind you, about once or twice every summer season but still. it has to be done and i'm the woman to do it.

but it occurred to me that i'd never seen any of the jaws sequels -- quite a few, weren't there? and when i was on netflix looking for something else -- withnail & i, if you must know, which my acupuncturist informed me was my homework after he was done being appalled that i hadn't seen it yet! but he hadn't seen little britain, so i figure it's all equal -- what d'you think but netflix had put up all the jaws sequels in wonderful glorious pixellated starz-ness. (am i the only one who gets wicked pixellation on the starz movies?)

when it topped 90 before noon on saturday, it seemed as though those sequels were just callin' my name.

and what i'm really interested in here is the fact that the second one -- poetically called jaws 2 -- is such crap and i say this as a dedicated fan of the bad movie: i buy them; i rent them; i seek them out -- i'm a particular fan of the bad '50s and early '60s sci-fi movie -- particularly japanese or british. true incomprehensibility isn't fun -- i'm not after something that's gnomic in its badness. i'm more after the gamera/the day of the triffids/journey to the center of the earth (the one with james mason) badness. i'll take worse -- i do own doom, after all! -- but i love bad creature effects, guys in rubber suits, obvious model shots, awkward acting, and plots that take random turns in the last 5 minutes because the screenwriters just figured out what had to happen and had no time to rewrite!

and jaws 2 was worse than all of that put in one movie, blended, frothed to a tasty goodness, and mixed with cesar romero, john agar, hugh beaumont, and a random little japanese boy.

it was slow; it was boring; it was practically a sleeping pill in movie form. about the only good thing you could say about it was that roy scheider tried (and he tried well) and john williams clearly didn't waste too much time on the soundtrack.

part of the reason for my puzzlement here is that jaws 2 isn't so much an homage to spielberg's original film as it is a total hash-job of it. the story's the same -- great white cruises into waters off amity island; starts chowing down on holiday-goers; sheriff brody struggles to convince commercially minded city council; gets in trouble; shark goes ballistic in large public way; everyone goes, "oh, brody! we're so sorry! save our sorry asses!"; and he does. tah-dah -- end of story.

but whereas jaws has you munching your fingernails when you run out of popcorn, this one nearly put me to sleep. there was no character development; the plot was okay but nothing to write home about and barely advanced from minute 1 to minute 119; and the tension? where was it? you have a giant. killer. man-eater. white. shark. and i'm bored, movie! wtf! i spent the last 20 minutes of the movie desperately hoping that the shark would scoff the terribly annoying teenagers and save the human race from their potential contribution to the gene pool.

jaws 2 seems to ricochet back and forth between a slavish adherence to the first movie and a deeply 1950s sensibibility that them darn teens what with their tight pants and their rock n' roll music and their kissing with tongues must be punished. and what better way to punish them than by stranding them in mid-ocean with a homicidal shark circling in? oh, and lets just pander to pretty much every bad horror movie chick stereotype while we're at it, shall we? lorraine gary -- who played mrs. brody with some guts, intelligence, and sensibility in the first movie -- is reduced to running around after her men in a way i really hope the actress was ashamed of; and as for the interchangeable teenage girls? the first sign of stress and they become either a) hysterical (what was with that girl who wouldn't shut up with the screaming?); b) shock-ridden (thanks for helping me while the shark was nibbling on my toes, hun! really -- you don't need to try and save me or anything!); c) or completely silent (really, the best option of the three). it's pathetic.

it's just a bad sequel is what i'm saying. bad bad bad. really really awful. all the sins which a bad action movie can commit, this one does, being absolutely mindnumbingly dull right from the get-go. and the worst thing about it is how hard it tries to piggyback on the original, down to ripping scenes -- the long, loving shots of beach-goers, anyone? yeah, but spielberg didn't use them in the original to make fun of the overweight bathers! -- straight from the first movie. if you're going to be bad, at least have the courage to be bad in an original way; don't haul someone else down with you!

i tried to find scenes here to compare to give you a sense of the crap that is committed on screen here. i managed to find a perfectly reasonable rip of the closing scene of jaws -- just as impressive to watch if you haven't seen the movie -- but all i could find from jaws 2 was a video someone clearly made off their tv on their phone. and after some deliberation, i decided that was just fine.



but sadly, believe it or not, that's all i could find for the ending of the original movie, too! also -- wtf? i'm really going to have to up my technical competence one of these days so i can rip my own damn scenes; youtube is letting me down once too often!

i can say that, in comparison to this two hours of boring pain, jaws 3 seemed quite charming. :)