WHAT YOU WATCHED THIS WEEK

[Sheridan Passell]

Can't discuss the concept but more generally it's a Blair Witch-style ghost story with schoolkids. Not set in the woods.

[dalmatianjaws]

You're Next - really messy horror film that starts off generic and slow, has a very dull and stupid second act, and really throws in some fun stuff in the final half hour but not enough to save it in my opinion. The acting from the secondary characters is horrible, the humor is odd, over the top, and injected in weird places, and the scariest part (the animal masks) is completely thrown away when the killers take them off halfway through the movie. All the kills are generic too, every single one is a simple stab to the chest or head, until the end when someone takes a blender to the head, so it feels REALLY out of place.

[dalmatianjaws]

Troll Hunter - fun, with good VFX, but ultimately pointless and not scary at all. Found Footage is so boring now, it's all exactly the same.

[Sheridan Passell]

One of the readers said he was watching Troll Hunter, it was the last third, he popped out for a quick cigarette, got chatting to some people. Never went back in.

[dalmatianjaws]

Yeah, Troll Hunter wasn't a bad entry into the genre, just didn't add anything. The VFX really were pretty cool, but the troll design wasn't scary in the least.


Absentia - despite the boring-as-hell title, this turned out to be a damn good indie horror film, almost to the level of Session 9. Great acting and character work (first scare doesn't come til 20 minutes into the movie, all owing you to really dig into their personal lives). Some damn good low budget scares, too.

Make Believe - a real solid doc from the folks that made The King of Kong, about high-school aged magicians competing in Las Vegas. Some good magic is on display, but it's really about the folks they meet and their journey. One scene in particular is an absolute gem of social dynamics caught on tape that's absolutely heart-wrenching, but it's too hard to describe out of context.

Horrible Bosses - only the third movie I've walked out of in my life. Utterly unfunny, either there are no jokes or the jokes they make have all been made before in much better movies. A complete missfire on all levels, I have no idea why anyone likes it.

[Sheridan Passell]

I only heard good things about Horrible Bosses, surprised at your reaction. Will have to check it out on dvd here.

[dalmatianjaws]

Yeah, it got solid reviews and made a ton of money over here, we were excited for it. We kept watching, thinking it had to get better, and it just didn't. They would set up a good gag/scenario (one of the characters was drunk one night and got arrested cause he peed in a park at night, which turned out to be a playground so he became a registered sex offender even though no kids were around. Now no one will hire him but a dentist who holds that over him to make him a sex slave ) and then completely throw it away (she does things like squirt his crotch with water, then look down and say "Shabbat Shalom, someone is circumcised!").

They also botch the dark humor genre by making the bosses so outright cartoony evil (one of them is planning a company change that will poison villagers in a third-world country) in order to justify their protagonists behavior, but what made movies like Throw Mama From the Train work so well is because the murder isn't justified and you laugh at it anyway.

Then, after setting up the hapless hero vs. super evil boss scenario, they cut to scenes where these "nice guys" are in a bar ogeling women and saying things like "I need to see that girl about her vagina" which doesn't make them "bad" really, but undermines the kind of pure image they portray with the bosses, making them less likeable.  The flick is all over the place.

All the jokes play to the greatest common denominator or are crude for crude's sake without being clever, unlike, say, Hangover or Bridesmades

Jokes like that elicited a lot of laughter, like it's this powerfully cathartic thing to watch a movie mocking horrible bosses, which is why I think it did well. If you actually like your boss or have a modicum of self respect about your career, I think the film is laughless.

[dalmatianjaws]

The Millennium Bug - bought this flick at a film festival and watched it today, absolutely hilarious. Made almost the entire thing in a soundstage using practical puppets. Utterly ridiculous gore and utterly committed actors reading inane dialog. What a blast. This should be a guide for Blood Bears

[Sheridan Passell]

I somehow didn't read the title, just started watching the video, while it was going I was thinking "what's 1999 got to do with a giant insect?", when the title came up I laughed out loud. Brilliant.

[dalmatianjaws]

I know, right? There are these weird clawed tentacle things that kill folks throughout the movie and you know they are connected to the monster but don't know in what capacity. Then, in one scene the monster looks down and sees a victim and the tentacle comes shooting out of its nose making that whirring rope sound and I did a spit take. Hilarious stuff.

[dalmatianjaws]

Poltergeist II: The Other Side - I'd heard it was horrible, but man I had no idea ... utterly pointless from start to finish, not a single effective moment.

Stagecoach - I've never really liked Westerns until recent years and I'm so bummed it took me this long to watch it. Wow, what a great film. Surprised to find it a character-driven ensemble piece about social status. Damn good film.

[Sheridan Passell]

The Losers - Better, and funnier, than its trailer. Entertaining in a wry 80s action movie sort of way. People have complained about Jason Patrick's hammy performance as the villain but I enjoyed the silliness of it. Chris Evans demonstrates great comic delivery. There's a dude in a hat who just snipes and we learn absolutely nothing about him, I mean literally not a thing. I guess it doesn't matter. The movie is let down majorly though by a seriously anti-climactic ending. It resolves almost nothing, being a total set-up for the sequel that was always pretty unlikely to be made. It feels frustratingly unfinished.

[dalmatianjaws]

Poltergeist III - what an abysmal piece of garbage. HORRIBLE vfx, lame characters, painful dialog, complete lack of plot ... makes utterly no sense.

Grace - very solid horror film. Remarkable restrained, given the subject matter, and doesn't succumb to an over-dependance on gore until the very end. Solid acting and twisted, twisted ideas elevate this past the bad cinematography and slow pace.

[Sheridan Passell]

Oh, and Poltergeist II, Kane is amazing -

Although the fact he looked so death-like because he was dying of stomach cancer (he didn't even live until the end of shooting) does make me somewhat disturbed by the ethics of it.

[Sheridan Passell]

Pirates Of Silicon Valley - The TNT TV Movie about the early years of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Brilliant. For me, much more insightful, funny, emotionally moving and thought-provoking than The Social Network. Noah Wyle is excellent as Steve Jobs. It does really help though if you know something of the characters in the sidelines, like Steve Wozniak and Steve Ballmer (another excellent performance), and a half-decent understanding of the history.

Somebody commented on a thread that Noah Wyle is now the right age to star in the new epic Hollywood biopic they're planning of his latter years. That's totally right. He is perfect for it.

[dalmatianjaws]

Where'd you get a copy of that? Saw it on TV years ago and remembered loving it, but last I checked it wasn't on DVD in the States.

Re: Poltergeist II, Kane is a great actor but they throw him away. In context, that scene isn't scary at all because they've already shown him walking through a damn shopping mall as people pass through him cause he's a ghost. Also, putting an actual "face" to  the "ultimate evil" takes away from that primal fear of hell, you know? I love that actor and all, and it's a brilliant piece of casting, but never generates scares because the rest of the film undermines it. 

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - don't see this movie unless you want to yawn a lot but not quite fall asleep. Not a horrible flick by any means, but really uneven and unsure of its tone and the type of scares it wanted to generate. Guy Pearce is good as always, but has little to work with. Child actress is phenomenal.  Story is pretty much crap but the CGI is good enough and the cinepatorgraphy and set design are great and moody, like you expect from Del Toro.

Mimic - Meh. Similar comments to Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. The third act utterly blows and ultimately the concept it thrown away. Very dull.

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop - not a great doc but lots of fun if you love Conan O'Brien. Plays out like a TV special more than an honest-to-god documentary. O'Brien is VERY intense and committed and you'll love him even more after seeing this.

[Sheridan Passell]

I may or may not have seen Pirates Of Silicon Valley on YouTube.

I think Del Toro is the most over-rated name around. Most of what I've seen of his was boring or over-praised. The only movie of his I like from beginning to end is Hellboy. Saw Mimic on opening night in the US and everyone there thought it sucked, it's only being reassessed now but doesn't deserve it. Devil's Backbone, I was too bored to finish. Pan's Labyrinth is still, at the cinema, the only movie I've ever fallen asleep in. Hellboy 2 was unbearably lame.

[dalmatianjaws]

I agree with Mimic and Hellboy 2, but I really love Backbone and Labyrinth. They are definitely slower and more character driven that his other stuff and not for everyone, but I think they are beautifully made.  I really think Del Toro should be a producer (who stays out of the writing) and an art director, not a straight up director. Same with Peter Jackson.

[dalmatianjaws]

[REC] 2 - loved elements, but overall felt it fell short, partly due to the fact it's impossible to make a proper sequel to a found footage film. Made some daring changes to the first film and has a brilliant core concept, but also fails to mean anything. The original [REC] is simple but effective and when you think about the title and what ends up "killing" all the characters, it's actually saying something.

[dalmatianjaws]

Tales from the Script - great little interview documentary about the screenwriting trade. A must-watch for anyone in the film industry.

Dead and Buried - from the writers of Alien comes ... this piece of crap. Well, but really crap, it's not without its moments, but overall it's pretty lame.