Doom Plague Movies

I recently got pretty sick. Sick enough that I was incapable of doing anything at all except laying on my couch in complete delirious misery. I wasn’t even able to sleep, it was so bad. This gave me a lot of hours to fill. A lot of hours. Needless to say, perhaps, I cleared out a good number of things from my instant queue, and even hit a few things that were just randomly picked hoping they’d lull me into oblivion.

In total, I hit 20 movies in about 60 hours.

So I thought I’d do a bit of a brief writeup on each, and use a very easy scoring system. + if I liked it, - if I didn’t, \ if I don’t really go either way or maybe go both ways.

Here we go:

-American Loser: I really feel like they used Sean William Scott and Gretchen Mol as magnets for this movie knowing that people would flock to it, and then didn’t bother, you know, writing anything. This was such a boring movie. The idea that a guy is an alcoholic with learning disabilities and is trying to form a relationship with a chick that is just as fucked up as him has potential. It was not met. Or even glanced at.

+Assassination of a High School President: This was a lot better than I expected it to be. There were really interesting layers and the story was pretty intriguing. Bruce Willis’ character was simply amazing, his aversion to gum was well played out (something that I thought was going to be really stupid). It had a kind of noir-ish feel to it, but doesn’t quite dive into the pool. This isn’t a bad thing, even though it sounds like it should be.

+Let Go: Another movie I really thought was going to be blah, but turned out better than hoped. The description that Netflix gives it doesn’t really do it justice, not that I’m surprised by that happening anymore. Everybody they cast did a brilliant job at their parts, though I have to say my favorite was Kevin Hart. I love that guy. I really felt for him through the whole movie. He just kept trying and failing, and it so wasn’t even his fault.

+Safety Not Guaranteed: Granted, this movie has some kind of strange moments in it, and those moments wouldn’t have worked in any other setting, but they did in this one somehow. They only really left one thing untouched that nags at me, and that’s the like “I have only done this once before”. It’s never questioned, never brought up to the guy. Everything else is taken care of. Why not that? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME!? I WAS SICK!

+Heavenly Creatures: I’ve known this story for some time. I have a couple of true crime books that talk about it or give the short version. When I found out that a movie had been made, of course I had to see it. I had never previously encountered the journal entries, and the addition of those just made the whole story more … more. It adds a level that you just don’t get when you’re reading the basic facts.

\The Snowtown Murders: So. So, I really liked the information this movie put forth. The facts of what went on. Depicting all the characters really well. It just wasn’t a very exciting movie. At times it was incredibly graphic (a scene where one brother rapes another goes on a lot longer than you’d think), and there was enough to keep my attention, but I think that I would have much rather read about all of it. As detailed as it was, there were some spots that didn’t really touch on things too deeply, and that was weird. I didn’t hate it, but I won’t watch it again.

-Jerk Theory: Fucking suuuuuucked. There was no redeeming moment in this movie at all. Not one. Nothing. The acting was bad, the story was stupid, it was boring, it had obnoxious songs in it. Bad. All bad. No good.

+He Was A Quiet Man: Not really something that I expected to see Christian Slater in. I mean, obviously he is, but the role, the character he plays, isn’t really Slater norm. I think it really shows his diversity as an actor, his amazingness, really. This movie was really touching. There were a lot of unexpected things, too, which I liked. I kind of wonder why I didn’t hear more about this movie, but I kind of don’t. You don’t really know what to expect going in, and there’s no real way to describe it to anybody else that doesn’t make it sound trite or unlike the movie you just watched.

+The Killing Jar: It could be that I just really really love Danny Trejo, Michael Madsen, and Harold Perrineau, but I had a lot of fun with this one. A lot. The plot synopsis makes it sound really boring, but I was not bored for one second.

\Capote: I like things that Capote has written, I just wasn’t really interested in the movie. I can’t exactly say why, either. Maybe just because I was sick and it’s not really a great sick movie? I don’t know. I also didn’t hate it. And Phillip Seymore Hoffman’s portrayal of Capote was glorious. Beautiful. He was stunning in that role. That’s what kept me watching the whole time, honestly.

-HottieBoombaLottie: Just. Shut up. This was a movie I hoped would destroy my brain and let me sleep. Unfortunately, I stayed awake for the whole thing. There were tiny funny moments, and that’s all it’s got going for it. So bad. So very, very bad. I might have actually gotten sicker due to this movie.

+Repeaters: What happens when you Groundhog Day a trio of recovering drug addict kids? Chaos! Wonderful, wonderful chaos. It’s not the most intelligent movie on the planet, and there are some plot holes that never get cleared up (really kind of minor plot, thankfully). Still, it was fun.

\Hick: The actors played their parts well, the concept was interesting, but when it was all said and done, I just wasn’t into the story. It wasn’t bad, it was just blah. Not the best. Also, Netflix should learn how to properly describe things, because this movie is nothing like how it’s written up.

+Nightwatch: There are two movies of this name. One of them is Russian and the other has Ewan McGregor and Josh Brolin. It is very important to make sure that you do not watch one thinking you are watching the other. They are very very different movies with very different plots and you will get VERY confused. That said, this Nightwatch was FANTASTIC. Man, I loved it. I was on the edge of my seat. As much as I could be, since I was laying down curled in a ball. WATCH THIS MOVIE. Goddamn.

\Howl: I am not a fan of the poem, Howl. This movie, however, was pretty well done, and the animation was amazing. Jon Hamm and James Franco nailed their parts. And the story of the trial is pretty interesting, too. They cut out the more boring bits, of course, making it seem less tedious than I’m sure it was. It was entertaining enough to keep a sick girl happy.

-Arthur: I hate Russell Brand. I do. There’s only one thing he’s in that I can think of that I enjoy, and that’s Despicable Me. I’m not sure why they picked him to redo something Dudley Moore did so well, but it was a poor, poor choice. He just didn’t pull it off.

\Project X: I watched this largely because I saw a preview for it with a friend of mine and the dog in the jumping castle was really amusing. I’m ambivalent toward the movie in general, as it had some fun parts, but the concept is not really… anything I’m into. If that many people were anywhere near my house, people would be getting shot. By me.

-Nine Dead: I don’t think I’ve been so disappointed in a movie in a really long time. This one should have been great. Nothing about it was, though. It was flat, it didn’t have suspense, it didn’t have interesting characters, the actors failed at getting anything across (except for the mob guy, he was pretty believable), and I will never – not ever in my life – believe Melissa Joan Hart in a role like that.

+Employee of the Month: This movie really starts out shitty. I gave up on it a couple of times just because the flow was off and the story wasn’t catching me. But I hit a certain point and all of it turned around. From then on, it was good times for everybody. Okay, just for me, since I watched it alone. Blood, laughter, things that were completely unexpected. It’s like the recipe for awesome.

+Killer Elite: Yep. Yes. All the time yes. All the yesses in the whole world. I cannot yes enough. I did go into this thinking that it was all action, which it’s not, but I wasn’t upset at the absence. There were actiony parts that were enough to fill my desires. The rest of it… wow. Wow. And the line “Strawberry or fuck you”? I knew I was in love as soon as it was uttered.

Kalifornia

This is one of the strangest movies I’ve watched in quite a while. From the story itself to the characters themselves, I hardly know what to think about everything that went on.

Let’s start with the cast, shall we? We shall.

First you’ve got Juliette Lewis. She’s playing a young, kind of stupid, kind of overly innocent, girl. She does it very well. If I had never seen her in anything else, I would have thought she was actually an idiot. She’s played the girlfriend of a deranged motherfucker before, in Natural Born Killers, but this was less of a knowledgeable role. Here she believes that her man is a good person at heart, where in Natural Born Killers, she helps in the slaughter and mayhem.

Then we’ll move on to David Duchovny. He plays a guy you sort of expect Duchovny to play. Intelligent, writer, unsure about where he’s going in life. Just knows that he needs to do this thing, write a book, because he’s already spent all of his advance, and he’s not really sure where to go with it.

Plus Michelle Forbes. You may not recognize her name right off the bat, but I assure you, she’s done some notable things. She’s been in some pretty high profile situations on television, such as Maryann Forrester on True Blood. Recognize her now? You might not when you see her in this. Man, she’s a fucking chameleon. You change her hair and her makeup, and she’s nigh unrecognizable. It took me a really really long time to realize who she was, after a long bout of nagging in my brain that kept saying I knew who she was.

This brings us to Brad Pitt. This is where things start getting weird. Oh, it’s not as if we haven’t seen Brad in the role of somebody off their hinges before. Remember 12 Monkeys? Oh yes. But this time, it’s something a little special. He’s an ignorant, psychopathic, redneck. Oh, how he does play his part well. Brad is, arguably, the first reason I decided to watch this. The second being that the premise really interested me.

Premise. Writer takes a trip to Cali, deciding to try to ride share, and ends up with our dearest little girl and her disturbed boyfriend. Not knowing who they are, agrees to welcome them on board on his tour of the most famous murder sites in America.

Who would NOT want to watch that?

You know from the start that it’s going to go badly at some point. But you just don’t know how or when. Let me tell you, when it comes, it kind of comes at you from a blind corner. Then, just when you think that everything couldn’t get more strange, it does.

I’m not saying I didn’t like this movie. Because I did. I guess I just wasn’t expecting what it was. I kind of had this idea in my head and then when it didn’t fit, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I’m still not really sure. Do I watch it again, just to make sure that what I saw is what I saw? Also, you shouldn’t mistake this strangeness with the sort that comes from surrealist movies like Slipstream. This is it’s own kind of strange.

Special, maybe.

Most of it comes with Brad’s character, Early. Just all the little nervous ticks and habits that Brad slipped in, the things that were consistent through the whole movie, the way he would look – that look in his eyes – when he was going to kill, the throat/nasal clearing thing, the laugh. It sort of crawls into your brain and stays there. I don’t know where Brad got the ideas for these things, but they’re pretty inspired.

Juliette’s character brings a lot of her own, though. She was like a little girl most of the time, too eager to please and trying too hard to make these strangers into her friends. She has this trademark “um” that in most people would be obnoxious, but in somebody like Adele it’s almost endearing. She needs that “um” to have a moment to gather her thoughts. She needs it to move into some other conversational territory. She’s not an adult, but she’s in a very adult place. Let me correct that. She’s an adult chronologically, but not mentally. The situation she finds herself in, the things she does, proves this.

The ending was certainly brilliant. Not at all what I would have expected. Probably not what it would have been if this had been a main stream movie. They wouldn’t have allowed it. It was far too dark. Not that the rest of the film isn’t dark. But there’s a certain level that they’ll allow in when movies go big, and I think this pushes that line to it’s breaking. But it was absolutely perfect. Anything else would have ruined the whole experience.

I think the only thing I am truly confused about, though, is the fact that this had a warning for graphic sexual whatever. Which was only in photographs which weren’t all that graphic.

No Country For Old Men

The movie where fucking everybody and their mother dies.

German Serial Killers – Antibodies

I wonder, really wonder, why there aren’t more movies like this accessible to hands like mine. Really, really wonder. I’m a girl who really enjoys things like horror, murder, serial killers, psychological rapings. Yet, somehow, the films made my Germans which encompass said themes aren’t just… added into my Netflix queue by magic. This is actually the first one that has even been in the “You Might Like This Because…” area.

Holy shit, what an excellent mindfuck. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. They didn’t pull back on anything. Anything. If they did, I’m actually a little stunned. If there are cut scenes more graphic and brutal than the scenes that actually made it into this film? I’m sure they’ve been set on fire. And if they weren’t set on fire, I hope to god they’re on the dvd, because I’m buying it as soon as I can.

Two things I should note:

1. Hearing Mass said in German is pretty fucking hilarious. It sounds so musical in Latin, and yet so harsh and abraiding in German. It was like being scolded the entire time.

2. You cannot say something is starring Norman Reedus if Norman Reedus dies in the first 10 minutes.

The People Under The Stairs

I haven’t seen this movie in a really long time, and there’s a reason for it. I wasn’t particularly impressed with it the first go ’round. Maybe it got hyped up to me too much, or maybe I’ve been snobbish about my horror movies since I was little.

Recently, however, I started to remember these times when a cousin of mine used to want to play “People Under The Stairs”. You know, we pretend to be characters in the movie. Reenact it. Whatever. I was remembering that she always played the girl, you know, the one played by A.J. Langer – you might better know her as Rayanne Graff from My So Called Life (don’t even lie, you watched it, too). And she would always make me be Fool. The little black boy who eventually saves the day.

Anyhow. (She said, not wanting to get into the creepy things her cousin made her say and do) I thought that since I was thinking about it lots recently, I might as well watch it again.

Let me just say this = I fell asleep through the middle part and I still feel like I wasted my time. I do not like this movie any more than I did when I was younger. I don’t. And I’m starting to wonder if I have some sort of grudge against Wes Craven or something, because almost every one of his older movies that I’ve encountered or rewatched recently has been an incredible disappointment.

On the other hand, I could have just been recalling awkward memories too much and rested the burden of those on Mr Craven’s shoulders instead of where they belong, which is sitting firmly on my cousin’s.

The best part, I think, was watching Ving Rhames pre-Marsellus Wallace. No less of a badass, mind. Just more of a babyface. Just squish his little cheekses and make kissy face. Or not.

I’m curious to watch The Serpent And The Rainbow now to see if it, at least, stands up to my hopes and memories. Memories of how it was the first time, and hopes that I haven’t become such a prick about my horror that I can’t enjoy it like I used to.

Halloween Redux

Putting Michael Meyers into the hands of Rob Zombie was, by far, one of the best decisions ever made.

In the original, you have a character that is essentially a freaking mac truck. He knows what he wants, and there’s nothing in the world that can stop him. Not even bullets. He just keeps coming. All the while, never saying a thing.

In Rob Zombie’s hands, Michael is more like a freight train. Running over his previous incarnation and grinding him into the dirt.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy the original, I do. But in this iteration, Meyers is far more believably unstoppable. Not only is he physically much more massive, but the set up for it is far more detailed and explanatory. We get to see the reasons behind his mask wearing and silence. The family dynamic that helped to create what he became. The love he had for his little sister – possibly the only person he felt actually protective toward.

We see the transformation instead of just running face first into destruction (which isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion, it’s just interesting to see such a difference).

I also really enjoyed watching the heroine get battered and see the results of it, instead of the typical horror movie impression that no matter what happens to her, she might limp a little bit, but her clothes stay magically mostly whole. With her face swollen and bleeding, I could believe the state of mind of Laurie as she sat on the chest of her brother and tried her best to shoot him in the face.

I know that people are sick of older movies being remade, but sometimes the result is something spectacular. So maybe Halloween didn’t particularly call for a remake (unlike The Last House On The Left), but I think that Rob Zombie really did something great here. He did it as a tribute to Carpenter and the movie becomes more a prequel and homage than a “fuck you, I can do it better”.