Just watched the remake of Funny Games on DVD, and as it works out, it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I've seen plenty of violent movies made by directors who made the movie as a statement to show how horrible violent movies are, how the media glorifies violence, and how it's "demented and sick" to be entertained by violence. I disagree with that, actually—violence, like any sort of conflict, is precisely what makes entertainment entertaining. Probably because humans are, by their very nature, violent. (If you disagree, I'm afraid you're living in a world I'm unfamiliar with.) But more likely because entertainment entertains by evoking emotional responses, be those responses of fear, joy, laughter, sadness, or whatever. Why is a movie that makes you cry any more reprehensible or worthwhile than a movie that makes you scream or laugh? If a movie elicits ANY emotional response, it's working.

And in that regard, I suppose Funny Games works. But not as a horror movie. More as a case of some guy you don't know (the director) coming into your house and insulting you by tricking you into watching a movie that you thought was about one thing but was nothing more than a trap to annoy and aggravate you. The intent of the movie, as far as I can tell, is to make you hate violent movies and perhaps hate yourself for enjoying violent movies. The fact that it's quite well directed and quite well acted doesn't hide the fact that the story cheats and reinvents itself in ways that, by the time you're done watching it, you realize that it's sole goal the whole time was just to be a jerk about it and make you regret watching it.

Just read a quote on IMDB about the original version of the movie (directed by the same director—the US remake is a shot-by-shot remake, apparently), where the director is quoted as saying, "...if the film was a success, it would be because audiences had misunderstood the meaning behind it."

I'm not sure why you'd knowingly tell a story that you hoped would be a failure, unless you had some sort of agenda to try to destroy a genre of movie you didn't approve of. Well, I've got good news and bad news for the director of Funny Games. The good news is that your remake was indeed a failure; according to IMDB, your $15 million movie made about half that in worldwide box-office ticket sales (about 1.5 million of which came from the good old USA). The bad news is that, for this fan of the horror genre, the only failure you exposed was yourself.

Funny Games: F

A delightful book that provides movie reviews for pretty much all of the Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies made between the years of 1964 and 1994. Frequent visitors to Bigfoot Country might remember a while back when I watched two particularly onerous and horrific movies; Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferrox. Those are the two most notorious of the genre... there's plenty more, and this book covers them all.

For the most part, it's interesting to note that the "highpoint" of cannibal and zombie movies in Italy seems to be around the late 70's and early 80's; that's when movies like the above two came out, along with other classics like The Mountain of the Cannibal God, Eaten Alive!, Cannibal Apocalypse, and Anthropophagous the Beast. Some of these movies are worth the entertainment value just to read their names: A Virgin Among the Living Dead, The Gestapo's Last Orgy, The Beast in Heat, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Zombie Holocaust, The Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, Porno Holocaust, Zombie Creeping Flesh, Erotic Orgasm, and Massacre in Dinosaur Valley. For teh most part, the movies sound horrible. There are a few in there, though, that I've seen, and that are either okay movies (Zombie 2, The Beyond, and Demons), and two are legitimate brilliant great movies (Dellamorte Dellamore and Dawn of the Dead, although that second one is technically an American movie, it was co-produced by Itallians, so it sort of counts as an Itallian movie).

As for the book itself, the reviews are mostly entertaining, and the reviewers treat the subject matter both maturely and in a usually entertaining matter. Two of the reviews were even written by one of my favorite authors: Ramsey Campbell (who'll be showing up at least twice more on this book list this year). Unfortunately, just as the genre itself started geting old, long in the tooth, and outstayed its welcome in the second half of the 30 years covered in this book, the reviews started to get dull and repetitive as well. Although now and then there's interviews with actors and film-makers from the movies, and the stories they told of what went on during the making of some of these movies is really rather amusing in a shocking sort of way. It's apparently not all sunshine and rainbows on the set of a cannibal movie being filmed on some remote tropical island with a director who may or may not be insane or just merely evil.

ALSO: The book has a lot of pictures; mostly movie posters and movie stills. Said pictures make it a poor choice of book to page through at work or leave out on the coffee table when you've got sensitive visitors over. Just go back and look at some of those titles to find out why.

Eaten Alive!: B

The Unborn has its heart in the right place: it's got a pretty good plot, some striking visuals, some imaginative special effects (especially the creepy dog with the upside down head... GAH!), and a nifty monster from real-world myth (a dybbuk), but in the end it's a deeply flawed movie. Strangely... the fact that it's one of those oh-so-popular-to-produce-these-days PG-13 horror movie isn't a flaw. Unlike most PG-13 movies, this one doesn't feel out of place in the rating. It isn't a gory movie and it never feels like it's missing content to fit into a PG-13 rating. Unfortunately, it DOES feel like it's missing content: characters get introduced out of nowhere, other characters that are introduced never end up coming back into the story, and the plot makes several HUGE leaps, story-wise, that make the whole thing feel rushed. I'd be interested in seeing a director's expanded cut of the movie... but not so interested to buy the DVD to find out what else could have been in there. It doesn't help that it's got a LOT of horror-movie cliches, particularly the "spunky black girlfirend who won't make it to the end of the movie alive" and the "evil kid appearing out of nowhere" and the "scary things associated with the bathroom mirror." And then there's the ending, which feels unnecessary and tacked on and super cliched and needless and anticlimactic.

Too bad. Cause that dog with the upside-down head was neat.

The Unborn: C +

So here we go! The first movie of 2009!

Gran Torino stars Clint Eastwood as Clint Eastwood, and no one plays Clint better than Clint. This is a really impressive movie in that the main character is a horrific and unapologetic racist; If I ever met someone who talked the way he did in real life, I'd hate him pretty much on the spot. But there's more to the character than racisim, and the way Clint pulls it off (he directed the movie, starred in it, produced it, and even sang the song over the closing credits) makes the character into a complex, real person that's someone I'd actually like having as a friend. As difficult a friend to have in public that would be.

Clint Eastwood's probably the only director I know of who can direct himself and have the resulting movie not feel the least bit like he's blowing his own horn or being arogant or narcisistic. Not somehting I can say, oh, about Mel Gibson or Kevin Costner, that's for sure! The movie gets a little too rushed near the end and a little too convenient plot-wise, keeping it from getting an A or an A+, alas... but that's like saying you found a $100 bill but it was muddy. It's still a good day!

I should mention that Clint's not the only outstanding actor in this movie. Both Bee Vang and Ahney Her do an incredible job as two of the young Hmong people who move in next door; for both of them, this is their first movie. Well done!

So, just like last year, with Cloverfield being the first movie of the year, I'm starting things off strong with a movie that'll likely end up in my top 10 of the year come December 31st!

Gran Torino: A –

So! Haven't had much time to post here; been super busy designing monsters for the upcoming Pathfinder Bestiary and also trying to get all caught up on Pathfinder itself after the Snowpocalypse. Working long hours at designing and developing and editing tends to wear one out on the writing scene... especially when you get caught up and spend time you COULD have been making your own blog posts replying to messageboards and friends' blogs and the like.

Anyway... here's what I hope to accomplish this year. Not really resolutions as much as goals.

1) See 52 movies that release in 2009. I tried this last year and didn't quite make it to 40. This year, I'm expanding what qualifies for the 52: I can see movies that TECHNICALLY release in 2008 as long as they weren't playing locally at the time; movies like my first of the year, Gran Torino, count here. Also, if I see a 2009 movie on DVD this year that doesn't play locally, that'll count too; a lot of movies that came out last year I wasn't able to see simply because they never played locally. If a movie plays local, though... I have to see it in the theater (of course, I have to KNOW it played local for that to work!). I'll post short reviews of movies when I see them to track them, but I'm not gonna keep the cumbersome version I was using late last year, nor am I going to go back to the stars. Simplify is the key. So each movie gets a letter grade, from A+ to F.

2) Read 52 books. These can be novels, anthologies, non-fiction books, audio books, Fighting Fantasy boooks... whatever, as long as there's a minimum of 100 pages per book. Again, I'll revew them here with letter grades to track them.

3) Get into an excercise routine, and maybe start a diet. Reduce weight is the key here. I've always been a big guy, but it's time to reverse the direction of my pants size before something lame, medical-wise, hits me.

4) Get my credit card debt back to $0.00. Having a car and a comptuer die on me at the same time really hit me hard, finacially, and I had to live off the credit card for a month there. I'm not quite out of the hole yet, but I AM off the credit card, which is good.

5) Clean apartment, and KEEP it clean. It's easy to let the place get messy when you're A) naturally disoragnized and sloppy and B) not home that much (I spent, on average, probably 60 to maybe 65 hours a week at work in 2008 and another 10 to 15 hours a week seeing movies, eating out, or visiting with friends). The goal here is to be able to have friends over to visit without being embarassed at the mess.

6) Work less. As I mention above in #5, I've been putting in some pretty crazy hours at work. I'd like to say a lot of that is freelance, but honestly, it's not; the job itself is pretty hectic and busy, and it's a great one but I really REALLY don't want to burn myself out of it and start making stupid mistakes or start being a jerk to my coworkers because I've got frayed edges or whatever. The goal here is to cut down the work hours while keeping things on schedule... and the way to do THAT is to just be more efficient at work and to simplify things. And to a certain extent, learn to delegate more to other folk in the editing department.  Of course, right now isn't really a great time to talk about working less, especially with design on the Pathfinder Bestiary and getting the Adventure Path back on schedule after Snowpocalypse is still in the air... this one'll probably have to wait until February at the earliest to kick off.

Anyway... that's about it. If I can get half of these done by 2010, I'll be satisfied, I guess. I'm gonna TRY to meet all of them though... particularly #3 and #4.

About two months ago, I started to realize that there was just no way that I'd make it to 52 movies in theaters this year. That, and as it turned out, my newest method of writing up movie reviews was a bit too complex and clunky for my tastes, and it made me not want to write movie reviews.

SO! Here's the wrap-up party! Likely all the movies I'll be seeing in 2009, celebrated by one-line reviews of the movies I never got around to writing REAL reviews of that I'd seen in theaters over the past 2 months. I'll give them letter grades this time around, I guess.

#29) Appaloosa: A really fun western about a pretty potent clash of personalities. B+
#30) Quarantine: Remake of the Spanish movie "REC," about a group of people quarantined in an old apartment building with some pretty grisly folk (vampires? zombies? mutants? Something else? I won't say!). Done in the good-old first-person shaky-cam style, but done very well. B+
#31) Blindness: About an epidemic of blindness. Interesting concept marred by some hard-to-swallow plot developments and a relatively annoying habit of bright lights and artificial distortions, meant of course to symbolize blindness. Alas, just makes the movie a little tougher to watch than it should. C+
#32) Passengers: Billed as a ghost story, this competently acted and directed movie was actually a one-trick-pony that didn't really have a trick that I was entertained by or surprised at. D+
#33) Quantum of Solace: The second Daniel Craig James Bond movie. Entertaining, but doesn't stand up that well on its own. Hampered by the obnoxious super-fast editing style. B
#34) Transporter 3: The most ridiculous entry in the series yet, but also a pretty neat plot with some fun fight scenes and WAY over the top action scenes. B-
#35) Body of Lies: Cool technothriller by director Ridley Scott about the CIA and various shenanigans in the middle east. B+
#36) Valkyrie: After I got over the fact that this was a movie about the German plot to assassinate Hitler yet all the major roles were played by Brits or Americans without bothering to do accents, this was a really engrosing movie about a subject I've come to be fascinated by (World War II). Very well made movie. A-
#37) The Day the Earth Stood Still: A forgettable movie in all the ways the original was extraordinary. An unnecessary expenditure of money by the studio. There were some interesting parts and some enjoyable set pieces, but if you've seen the trailer, you pretty much have the idea already. D

There's still quite a few movies that are still in theaters I want to see, like Benjamin Button, Doubt, The Reader, The Wrestler, Punisher: War Zone, and Gran Torino. And there are plenty of movies that I missed that I wish I'd seen in the theater and will probably see on DVD some day soon, like Death Race, City of Ember, Saw V, Bangkok Dangerous, Babylon AD, and some others (most of those are probably terrible, though).

The point is... I probably COULD have hit 52, had I been more diligent.

I'll try again next year. With expanded and adjusted rules.

So. Next year, there are two movies coming out that I'm really looking forward to, Watchmen and Star Trek. What I'm NOT looking forward to is the legions of fellow nerds who won't allow themselves the chance or possibility to enjoy either movie because of impossible-to-meet expectations, resulting in endless wailing and gnashing of teeth that "THINGS HAVE CHANGED!"

Now, I've done a bit of this myself... but I like to think I went into things like Devlin & Emerich's Godzilla and 4th edition with an open mind and didn't fire up my nerd rage until after the experience had taken place. So that's all I ask of my fellow nerds in the theaters next year. Please go into these movies with an open mind and save the disdain and nerd rage until the credits are over. Who knows? I may be joining you! (Although J.J. Abrams has yet to disappoint me, and Zak Snyder already pulled off the impossible by remaking Dawn of the Dead and having it be a great movie, so I trust their movies will be excellent.) But at least give the movies a chance to stand on their own before having at them.

That is all.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but this is actually starting to maybe look like it might happen...

So I just watched my first-ever pay-per-view movie! 

Splinter released theatrically two Fridays ago in a VERY limited release. I'd been hoping to see it, but it hasn't shown up here in Washington. Turns out though that it's doing something pretty interesting; it's doing a simultaneous theatrical and pay-per-view on cable release. So I fired up the TV and looked at my Pay-per-View options, and sure enough, there it was in glorious High Definition.

The movie itself is actually quite good, too! I'd suspected I would like it, of course, based on the trailer and the advance word that was comparing it to John Carpenter's The Thing. The movie's extremely low budget, but they do a pretty good job hiding the budget limitations with some well-used practical effects and CGI work. Plus, the monster in the movie's a really interesting one; a sort of parasitic fungus that stitches together host bodies to form an ever increasing in size amalgam of horror. And when you chop off a part of it, that just makes smaller hosts. Neat!

Quite a nifty movie!

Since I didn't see it in the theater, I'm not gonna give it the treatment I'm giving the 52... but I think next year I'll be expanding my rules to allow for seeing movies on DVD or Pay per View, as long as I see them in the same year they release.

So I worked late, but managed to finish off the writing portion of a late article for Pathfinder. Now, the rest of the weekend is pretty much devoted to getting the adventure for #18 developed by Monday, if possible... it'll be a grueling weekend and I doubt I'll finish, but stranger things have happened.

Anyway, rather than stay at work till close to midnight for 3 days in a row, I cut out early to head home to celebrate Halloween. How, might you ask? By watching my shiny new blu-ray disc of "John Carpenter's The Thing." 

It looks better than ever in high def. Things like Doc's nose ring and the final monster aren't hidden  in shadow or blur like they are in lower-res versions, and the whites and blacks look super stark and awesome. The opening scene with the helicopter coming over the mountains actually works! (As in you can see the helicopter in the distance when it first appears.)

I have no idea how many times I've seen this movie (at least a few dozen... at LEAST), and seeing it in high def like this is a real treat. Yay!

And then played Fallout 3 for a few hours until I was burned to death by a fire ant the size of a German shepherd. The Apocalypse is a tough place.

Eagle Eye
If you want to live you will obey

Bigfoot Score: 3.6
The last few movies I've reviewed with this new system were anything between good and great. With this review of Eagle Eye, I get to see how the system handles crappy movies! Warning: There's a certain amount of spoilers in the notes below... reader beware!

Acting (5): Pretty average here, but Billy Bob Thornton's at least fun to watch and has a few fun lines, so I'll bump it from a 4 to a 5. No lines good enough to remember, really (which is why I use the movie's tag line above instead of a quote). But the actors do well enough that I was never annoyed at them, so I guess that's a victory for the movie.
Direction (3): The movie is directed by D. J. Caruso. A quick check of IMDB shows that he's also the director of last year's Disturbia, several TV show episodes, and some other stuff I've never heard of. And I saw nothing in Eagle Eye that would make me think he'll change that anytime soon. The movie's greatest directorial sin is the choice to mask average or below-average action sequences with a series of VERY rapid cuts and loud noises and music. Here's a hint: If in a car chase scene I can only tell who has and hasn't wrecked when the scene's over and I see what actors are still in cars that aren't wrecked... you need to rebuild your chase. Action scenes should show action in the movie, not action in the frantic pace of editing.
Sights (5) : Special effects were fine, but they and the action scenes were, more often than not, hard to make out due to the movie's short-attention-span and inability to stick with one shot for too long. Using big lifting cranes to move cars was kinda neat. The evil computer looked kinda neat too, I guess. Woulda looked neater if it wasn't sort of a 2001 rip-off.
Sounds (4): Not a particularly memorable score. Good sound effects, though. Well... they were loud, at least.
Story (1): Here's where Eagle Eye falls completely apart. So okay, big spoiler time, the main bad guy in this one's a supercomputer the US Government built to handle all of the intelligence gathered in the world via sattelites, cell phones, security cameras, purchasing habits, and so on. The computer does this for everyone and then compiles the information to know everything about everyone, building psychological profiles. When the US Gov orders an attack on a suspected terrorist safe house in the Middle East against the computer's recomendation, and that attack ends up killing a lot of innocents, and the resulting wave of revenge terrorism kills a lot of more innocents, the computer decides to assassinate the entire government so we can "start over." The guy in charge of watching/programming the computer realizes this, and uses that bastion of movie secret messages (morse code, of course, wich no villian knows and most heroes do) to record his discovery on a security camera and leaves his post to drive to someone to warn them or something, but the computer is tapped into everything and manipulates traffic lights to have a dump truck plow into the guy's car, killing him. This is important. The computer can kill people by doing things like controlling traffic. It thus stands to reason that the computer can do a whole lot more.  The problem arises in that it's big master plan to kill the government leaders off is blocked by a failsafe code put in place by the main programer, and that his "bio signature" is the only thing that'll unlock it. Of course, since the computer killed him, you might think the computer's screwed? NOPE! Because that programmer has a twin brother who's a layabout and a loser, and the movie's about the computer manipulating events to put this twin brother through ALL MANNER of life-threatening situations to trick/force him into coming to the computer (which, by the way, is located in a secret basement under the Pentagon that's apparently pretty easy to sneak into or out of) to turn off that failsafe so that the computer can then act upon its plan to use a crystal explosive disguised as a diamond necklace get triggered by a sonic trigger placed in a kid's trumpet that when it hits the 2nd to last note in the national anthem during a performance for all of these government folk will blow up everything. I'm not sure what I just wrote is a whole and complete sentence, but that's okay. This movie's not a whole and complete movie. Watching it, questions like the following came to mind:

"Why does the computer put this guy into so many life-or-death situations when it wants to keep him alive?"
"Why does it have to do such a complex Rube-Goldberg type plot to kill off a dozen or so government officials, when it could just reroute traffic or crash planes or start fires or do any number of other things to them? If it can control a crane to swing around and crack open a building so its human pawn can jump out onto a perfectly timed train passing by below... why does it have to resort to so much goofyness?"
"Why does a computer that can organize all this not realize that someone acting suspicious is using morse code?"
"How can a computer make power lines explode and then fall with pinpoint-accuracy down on a fleeing no-longer-useful minion?"

And so on. Bleh. Movie makes me angrier the more I think aobut it. I'm gonna go back up there and reduce it's story award from 2 to 1.
 

Burn After Reading
CIA Superior: Report back to me when it makes sense.

Bigfoot Score: 8.8
The thing about Coen brothers movies is that they're almost always about stupid people who have a raw talent for getting into situations well over their head. Of course, they're smart enough to know a basic idea about how to handle the situation, but stupid enough to not follow through. It makes for some endearingly human characters; even when they're doing things like trying to sell mundane financial information to the Russians as top-secret intelligence. Now and then, an honest to goodness smart and competent person wanders into a Coen brothers movie, but int he face of such cosmic stupidity, there's little they can do but watch. And the end result is never dull. In fact, it's usually brilliant.

Burn After Reading is a hilarious movie, but it gets funnier the more you think about it and recall the situations the characters find themselves in. I suspect it's gonna end up being like The Big Lebowski, and get even funnier with repeated viewings. And even if it doesn't... watching John Malkovich curse like he gets a thousand-dollar bill for each profanity is entertaining enough!

Acting (10): Here we have an excellent mix of brilliant famous actors (Brad Pitt, Francis McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and George Clooney) mixing it up with a cast of character actors and eccentric local actors in the classic Coen brothers style. Well done. The divorce lawyer is particularly funny, especially at how pained he seems to be whenever he offers advice that might result in his client reconciling with her husband. Brad Pitt was a little bit TOO over the top, but I got used to his character soon enough and in the end it all pays off for his character really quite spectacularly so it's worth it.
Direction (9): From the opening panning shot from space down to a CIA meeting room to the awkward closeups of Francis McDormand to the details of swinging lanterns on an interior shot on a boat, here's another example showing that the Coen brothers know their way around a movie.
Sights (7): Well shot, and with a few really cool sequences (including a pretty shocking bit of gore that I was NOT expecting), but lacking some of the really cool signature shots of many other Coen brothers movies like the endless expanse of snow in Fargo, the lightning on the horizon in No Country for Old Men, or the crazy dreams of The Big Lebowski.
Sounds (9): A great political-thriller style soundtrack that feels more like it should be in a serious espionage movie really works well to elevate the shenanigans on screen to the point where it matches the characters' convictions that they're really into something big. Also, there's all these really cool and ominous humming noises in the CIA scenes whenever doors are opened, as if some enormous world-monitoring God-device is buzzing away just around the corner.
Story (9): Very funny movie that, in the end, has a lot of really cool surprises for the characters. The story itself is a quite amusing tale about inanity and misconceptions elevated to epic level.

Just spent several hours pretty much watching EVERYTHING on my Cloverfield DVD. Movie, commentary, all the documentaries, the previews, the deleted scenes, the alternate endings.

It's still the best movie of 2008. I'm usually pretty hesitant to graduate movies to my Top Ten lists in the same year that they come out, but Cloverfield's got a good chance of muscling its way up there anyway. There's really not much more coming out this year that I think has a good chance at dethroning it for me as best of the year. I wish I had a time machine to go back to 1-18-08 and so I could see it for the first time again.

There's talk still about a sequel/prequel type movie in the works still... or maybe even something like a weird sort of remake that takes the events of the movie and sees them through a different camera. I'll take whatever JJ Abrams and crew create, but until then I'll be content watching this one over and over.

I should put it onto my iPhone so it's always there for me. I should do the same to Alien and The Thing.

I'm not obsessed though.

Well. Maybe a little.

Mirrors

There Is Evil… On The Other Side

Bigfoot Score: 6.2
I'd read that this one had some pretty poor reviews going in, so I cautiously set my expectations low. The idea of the movie appealed to me (Keifer Sutherland versus the monsters in the mirrors), but so did the idea behind a LOT of movies that ended up being really bad. And, despite the fact that the most crass, obnoxious, and rude audience members of the year chose to see the movie at the same time as me, I came out of Mirrors with a positive experience. The movie starts strong, then kinda slumps for the majority of the time, with a lot of cliches and some poor writing and then gets to the meat of the matter with the mirror monsters and ends on one of the coolest endings I've seen all year. Don't be like the six idiots who talked throguh the whole thing and then left a minute before the credits rolled; you'll miss the part of the movie that makes it all worth it!

Acting (6): Keifer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer again. Which is good; he does the stressed-out guy pushed to the limits and beyond VERY well. Unfortunately, he's held back by a supporting cast that is either mediocre or just plain bad; Paula Patton (who plays the love interest) is particularly grating upon the nerves, as are the two child actors. But still... Keifer's on screen most of the time doing his thing so for the most part... it's good.
Direction (6): Directed by Alexandre Aja (director of The Hills Have Eyes and High Tension, both tense and quite good thrillers), Mirrors does a good job at establishing a brooding sense of menace. It wasn't long before I was watching every mirror with anticipation, both hoping to see a mirror spook or a camera or crewman getting caught in the wrong spot. There were plenty of spooks, but no crew. Well done! Lots of dark scenes that looked dark without being obscuring, some cool city scapes, and a particularly effective set of crane shots near the end.
Sights (8): The special effects were pretty good; not GREAT (the scenes where reflections start detatching and doing their own thing looked a bit off before they started doing weird stuff, so you could usually tell when a mirror monster was about to do its thing), but there was one gore scequence in particular that was one a quite grisly and unusual screen killing. VERY well done. Also, the ending sequence (no spoilers) was a real treat. Great giant burnt-out department store set too. The main mirror monster was a bit underwhelming, but it did the trick.
Sounds (7): The sound of the mirrors flexing and cracking and doing their thing when things were getting spooky were very well done, and the score ranged from servicable to a few pieces (particularly during the opening credits and the final scenes) that I think I might have to track down on iTunes to buy. Some cool scary ghost shrieks too!
Story (4): This is where things weren't quite perfect, alas. The central conciet was strong, as was the twist at the end of the movie and the fact that a key name looked like it was being set up for a REALLY cheesy twist but ended up not going that route at all (the name no one recognizes; I kept expecting the reveal that, when read BACKWARDS, as in a mirror, would reveal a Major Clue, but it wasn't that at all, which was refreshing). But the dialogue was pretty weak; no memorable lines at all, really (hence the fact that I had to quote the movie's tag line above instead of quoting a line of dialouge... a fallback I hope not to have to do too often for these reviews). And there was a lot of lazy scriptwriting, where it was obvious the movie was just trying to set up the next scene but didn't care if how it was doing it was ham-handed and awkward. A fair amount of deus ex machina bits in there too, with characters finding clues too easilly or doing illogical stuff. Too bad, because again, the central plot was pretty nifty.
Closing Comment: This is a remake, yes, of an Asian horror movie called Geoul Sokeuro. I haven't seen the original, but I'm gonna go see about Netflixing it. Unlike the vast majority of USA remakes of Asian horror movies, Mirrors retains its grisly, edgy side with an R-rating, which was much appreciated by me.

For those who just read my last post... no, it wasn't during Tropic Thunder that I had to endure the year's worst theater audience. Tropic Thunder had a good combo: It was a loud movie and a respectful crowd; everyone in there had come to see a movie, not to practice at being an asshole.

So this is the first movie I've reviewd since I kicked those stars to the curb. Since I'm into stat block type things, being an RPG editor... lets try something like the following out:

Tropic Thunder

Tugg Speedman: I killed one, Rick... the thing I love most in the world.

Rick Peck: A hooker. Oh Jesus, you killed a hooker!

Bigfoot Score: 6.8
SO. What's to like about Tropic Thunder? Quite a lot, actually. On one level, it's a competent action movie. On another, more successful level, it's a REALLY funny comedy that, I suspect, is a lot more close to the truth in a lot of cases about the kinds of people who make movies destined to be failures than anything else. The movie's about a doomed project, an attempt to film a vietnam war movie in which everything goes wrong, starting with the three main leads of the moive: a washed-up action movie star, a heroin-addicted comedian, and a successful star who doesn't know how to get out of character. Add in a surprising amount of gore, a big heap of delightful non-PC irreverence for the system, and Tom Cruise in a role unlike anything I've ever seen him do (a role that seems made for those who hate Tom Cruise, in a way), and presto! Good movie!

Acting (7): Some really quite good comedic timing here, particularly on the part of Robert Downey Jr. who effortlessly outdoes Ben Stiller and Jack Black, two actors who are established comedic types (and good at it!). Throw in Tom Cruise in perhaps his funniest and most unlikable role ever, and you have a great mix! Also, there were about 500 tons of awesome cameos.
Direction (6): Ben Stiller directed the movie; there's nothing SUPER fancy about it, but it's certainly competently filmed. And in places, has some great scenery.
Sights (7): A few really impressive pyrotechnic effects, beautiful jungle scenery, some amusing gore effects that are a bit too fakey to be realistic (but that's not ENTIRELY the point), a fun praying mantis to the eye shot, Jack Black in his underwear covered in mud (woah), and one of the ANGRIEST kids I've seen in a film in a long time.
Sounds (6): Loud, with a pretty run-of-the-mill soundtrack that includes lots of period music to make you think of other, more serious movies about Vietnam.
Story (8): Here's where the movie shines. Not only is there never really a dull moment, but the opening sequence where you get to see fake movie trailers for movies that the main stars worked on before they started making Tropic Thunder is a work of genius.

People who go out of their way to be social troglodytes and talk during a movie are one thing.

But when there are six of you, and you're treating the theater like it's your own home (which is a double-wide trailer with stolen cable TV and two weeks of unwashed dishes stacked in the sink for the flies and ants to cavort upon, by the sounds of you) and talking and carrying on...  the LEAST you can do is respect your enemy enough to remain for the entire movie. But no.... you're such complete and utter failures that you get up and LEAVE THE THEATER because your primitive fish-brain thinks it detects the fact that the closing credits are less than a minute away, and in so doing not only ruin 99% of the movie, but in missing the last 1% you completely ruin the movie for yourselves by missing an excellent twist at the end. Are you that much of a failure at society and life that you can't even let yourself have a pleasurable movie experience?

The thing that's even more frustrating? The other people in the theater put up with you. And even more frustrating than that? That I was one of those other people putting up with you.

What's the right thing to do in this situation? Get up and complain to the manager of the theater? Great; and in so doing miss part of the movie you wanted to see. No... I think next time I might just snap. I might buy some coke, not to drink but to hurl at the next chowderhead who doesn't understand that we paid to listen to a movie, not your comments.

So... I don't quite have my new movie rating thing all worked out, but I DID earlier today finally get to see Rogue, which came out on DVD earlier this year. You may remember I was very disappointed that this movie was only released onto 10 screens earlier this year here in the USA, and it only remained in theaters for a week.

Now, having seen the movie finally, I'm sorry to say that the disappointment is legit. Rogue is my second-favorite movie of the year so far, and Dimension robbed me of the opportunity to see it on the big screen, and of being able to include this one in the 52 as a result. Why bother releasing a movie theatrically in the first place if you're only gonna squat it out onto less than a dozen screens? Frustrating.

Anyway, it's on DVD now. It's MUCH better than Greg Mclean's last movie, Wolf Creek, as I suspected it would be. Wolf Creek was VERY well made... it was just a bit too nihilistic and depressing for me. Rogue, on the other hand, is a great movie. They filmed it in actual saltwater crocodile country in the Northwest Territory of Australia, in regions that have never been filmed before. The movie looks GORGEOUS as a result; the Australian outback is very much a character in the movie.

Best man-eating crocodile movie ever.

Under my old system, I'd give Rogue five stars. I suspect when I get around to figuring out my new rating scheme, I'll come back and give this a for-real rating.

So rumor holds:

1) There's a remake of Dario Argento's Susperia in the works.

2) It stars Natalie Portman.

So I'm getting a bit tired of my current method of rating movies. It's a little bit of a pain to copy/paste those stars in, and they kinda look no good anyway with the blank stars looking so simialr to the full stars; hard to tell at a glance how many stars I gave a movie.

Of course... the stars I just pasted into the last review look different now, and are much easier to read. Not sure how I did that, honestly.

Also... giving a movie just one rating seems lazy, especially if a movie's got GREAT acting but lame special effects and mediocre directing.

Anyway... mostly just talking out loud here. But I'll be thinking of some sort of new tactic to take on the movie ratings. Not sure when or if I'll change things up though.

Best Case: I figure out some sort of Bigfoot-related review thing. I was thinking of awarding "Pattersons" or maybe just "Feet." But that requires finding tiny graphics and learning how to code stuff like that into a post. I'm not sure I have that much energy.

Clive Barker's one of my favorite authors. I was introduced to him by my grandma (her words: "This guy is better than Stephen King!" She was right.). She handed me a few of his "Books of Blood" and one of the first stories I read was a charming tale called "The Midnight Meat Train." Which is not the kind of title you can easily forget. In any case, it ended up being one of my favorite of his short stories (along with "Rawhead Rex" and "How Spoilers Bleed"). So when I heard there was a movie in the works, and that it was directed by Ryuhei Kitamura (director of Godzilla: Final Wars and Versus, among others), I began to grow excited. There hasn't been a really good Clive Barker movie since the first Candyman, after all!

Then I find out that Lionsgate, the distributor of the moive, is dumping it. They open it in VERY limited release, only 100 theaters nationwide. And my heart sinks. I'd already missed one movie in theaters that I really wanted to see (Rogue, which comes out on DVD next week, at least), and now it sounded like there'd be another.

Yet fate smiled upon me! Midnight Meat Train DID come to the Seattle region... barely. It's only playing in one theater, a Two-Dollar theater down in Federal Way. The theater wasn't bad, and it WAS nice to only pay two bucks to see a movie, but still, it's unfortunate that the movie is getting dumped by its distributor.

Not that I think it would be a huge moneymaker for them. The movie is VERY grisly, and it's not got a very happy ending. But then, that was the same show for Saw, and that movie was VERY popular and successful. So who knows?

Ah well. I got to see it in the theater, so I get to count it on my 52.

As for the movie? Did I like it? I did. I was VERY nervous that they were going to cut out a key part of the movie (the part that makes it something other than just another serial-killer movie). But no; the movie's actually really quite faithful to the short story, and retains the more outlandish and fantastic parts of the story.

Will YOU like it? At this point, chances are good that you won't. I saw it with a couple friends; mysticalforestand wesschneider, and one of them was lukewarm to the movie and one of them hated it with the firey passion of a thousand dying suns. The extent of his hatred of the movie actually kind of surprsied me, since I quite liked the movie and we usually see pretty eye to eye on movies.

In any case, the movie's only going to be in theaters, I suspect, for about 6 more days. If you read the short story and liked it; go check the movie out. You'll likely enjoy it. If you like Clive Barker's early writing... go see it. You'll get a kick out of it. If neither of these apply to you... you have been warned.

The Midnight Meat Train: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆