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.

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.

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.

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: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

What a weird movie.

I didn't really know what to expect going into this movie, apart from the fact that it was an X-Files movie. Which meant that I did know what to expect, on a certain level... but not WHAT to expect. I knew that it wasn't a continuity-heavy film, and that anyone could watch it without having seen all 9 or whatever seasons of the show. But you know what? Those are the folks who you can COUNT on going to see an X-Files movie.

It's too bad this is the movie we get.

Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad movie. But it's certainly a very unusual choice for Chris Carter to make a big summer X-Files movie that's so low key. There are no explosions, no gun shots, no real special effects sequences in this movie, which is unusual for a franchise that's all about aliens, werewolves, chupecabras, sea monsters, vampires, fluke men, mutants, and radioactive body-controlling black ooze. The movie itself felt like a mid-season throwaway episode. The central story was little more than something going on in the background of character development for Mulder and Scully.

Since I really enjoy watching those two characters do their thing, that pretty much makes it an enjoyable movie to me, of course. But if they wanted me to give it four or five stars... was it too much to ask for a monster?

X-Files: I Want to Believe: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It's hard to say what's more exciting; this movie or the impact it's making. At 14 or so days in release, it's already made just over #350 million dollars. This is huge. This movie may well be the one to dethrone Titanic as the biggest box office success ever. It's got the perfect storm going; great ad campaign, it's a summertime PG 13 movie, it's the 2nd part of a superhero arc (see last post), it's star-studded, and it's got a lot of press from Heath Ledger's death. And on top of that, it's INCREDIBLY good. Right now, it's hovering at rank 5 on my best of the year list... but I suspect that might change. There's levels and layers in The Dark Knight you can't appreciate, I suspect, on only one viewing. I'll be seeing this again, for sure, and that may bump it up in rank.

The thing I like best about the movie? How grounded in grit it is. For too long, movie Batmans have wallowed in camp. The first Tim Burton movie with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson SEEMED like it wasn't campy, but it was. There was a lot of bright colors in it; it had a sense of hyper-reality to it. Not so in Christopher Nolan's resetting of the franchise with Batman Begins. And certianly not so with The Dark Knight. It feels like it was a movie made by adults for adults. Better, it wasn't trying to impress. It knew it was impressive and didn't need gimmicks or trickery.

AND: Yes, Heath Ledger is every bit as brilliant as the Joker as  you've been hearing. There's talk of him possibly becoming one of the few actors to posthumously win an oscar for his work. I wouldn't be surprised if that ended up being the case.

The Dark Knight: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

So it seems that the second installment of a superhero movie is where it's at. The character's established, we know where the hero's from, and the movie can get right in to telling the story.

This isn't always the case, though.

I liked Hellboy better than this movie, but that's only because I liked the villains in Hellboy better. That's not to say that I didn't like Hellboy 2, though. On the contrary, this is currently my 2nd favorite movie of the year. It's not only a great movie, but the world it depicts is visionary. The movie looks like it cost three times what it actually cost to make, but despite that... the special effects aren't the point of the movie. The acting is. The characters are. The movie is as interested in showing us the quiet moments in their lives, the arguments and the silly parts and all the non-action scene stuff that happens between the action scenes. And guess what? Those scenes are as enthralling as the action scenes.

Watching this movie confirmed what I already knew: Guillarmo del Toro is more than capable of delivering on the Hobbit movies. He has a good chance of making them even better than Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. That the two of them are working together on the Hobbit boggles my mind with how much awesome will be in the Hobbit.

Alas... that he's going to be making two hobbit movies next is also very dissapointing, since that means we'll need to wait all the longer for his version of At the Mountains of Madness. Which is the moive I've been waiting for him to make the longest.

Anyway... Hellboy 2. Great stuff.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I understand that a lot of people consider Mel Brooks to be funny. Heck; I got a kick out of Young Frankenstein the first time I saw it as a kid. But that viewing, about 20 years ago, was the last time I really laughed at a Mel Brooks movie. Since then there's been some chuckles, sure, but for the most part, Mel Brooks humor strikes with surgical precision to a dead part of my brain, I think. He's Just Not Funny.

Unless he's filtered through Steve Carell.

The new version of Get Smart is really quite hilarious, and more delightful... the comedy isn't all about pratfalls and incompetence. It has the same sort of humor that works so well for the Venture Brothers. The characters are silly, yes, but at the same time they're VERY GOOD at their job. Which in this case happens to be Super Spy or Arch Villain. There's something so much more honestly entertaining about a funny person who's not a fool, I guess.

And it's not just Steve Carell who's hilarious in this one. The entire CAST does a great job at the comedy while at the same time portraying super spies or arch villains. Terence Stamp in particular is priceless as the bad guy who's such a bad guy that he even hates his closest minions and henchmen, never sparing a moment to let them know how much he despises them.

The movie just misses getting the five stars because, as with most comedies, not ALL the jokes work. And there's a particular plot development that utilizes the Law of Conservation of Actors that I felt was sort of unnecessary, especially if this movie makes it into a franchise and spawns some sequels. I would have liked to see a few key characters not get offed in this one, is what I'm saying.

Get Smart: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

So I think I'm the only one who actually liked Ang Lee's version of the Hulk. I actually enjoyed the fact that it was more character-driven than action-sequence-driven, and didn't mind the fact that it takes a while to get to the hulk doing hulk stuff. Now... The Incredible Hulk isn't a bad movie, but it's certainly not great cinema. It's basically just one long chase sequence that ends in a pretty cool but sort of sterile CGI fight sequence.

The Incredible Hulk: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Well... I may have fallen behind on posting about the 52 movies I'm hoping to see this year, but I HAVE been seeing movies in the meantime. I'll try to get caught up over the next few days.

First up: Wanted. A fun movie that's a lot more like a superhero movie than I was expecting. Actually... more like a superVILLAIN movie. Sort of a cross between Fight Club and Equilibrium. Way WAY over the top action sequences that go from realistic to unbelievable and then settle in at just plain fun. Also, you get to hear Morgan Freeman drop the F-bomb, and Angelina Jolie's naked in one scene, and there are FAR more exploding rats than any other movie. Good times.

Wanted: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Saw The Happening earlier this evening on a complete lark. I was in the parking lot in front of the grocery store, saw that the movie theater across the lot was playing the movie, whipped out the trusty iPhone and divined that the movie was starting in 4 minutes, so I drove over there to see it. Now, going in, I had relatively middling expectations; I'd heard a LOT of negative reveiws of the movie, but I'd heard lots of negative reviews of pretty much all of M. Night Shyamalan's movies since the Sixth Sense. A lot of people want his movies to tank, because his first movie was such a runaway blockbuster. And then a few years ago with Lady in the Water one of his movies DID suck. I mentioned to someone at lunch today, "Each one of Shyamalan's movies is better than the next." It's true; I've liked all of them BUT Lady in the Water... but the Village was broken at best.

Well... for me at least, his pattern broke. The Happening isn't his best movie, but it's not his worst. It's not even his second worst. For me, it's firmly between Signs and The Village. The central plot of The Happening was very chilling and interesting and unusual and compelling. It was hampered by some awkward acting, alas, and  the fact that while the central plot point was intriguing, it didn't go far enough. It was too tame, in other words... it should have been a lot more grisly to pack its punch.

I'm also pretty sure that I'm gonna be the only person I know who liked the movie, since I'm pretty okay with slow movies and I'm also pretty okay with movies that don't totally answer all of the questions they've posed to us. The problem with The Happening is, unlike say in Cloverfield (which felt VERY internally consistent and VERY strongly like there was  a lot of story and back matter that had been created to support what we DO see on the screen), I didn't get the vibe that there was much more thought put into the connotations and world effects of the incident in the movie beyond the movie. Maybe there was... but it didn't really feel like it.

Not sure that makes sense, but it does to me.

Anyway, The Happening is one of those movies that I enjoyed and don't regret seeing At All... but probably won't be purchasing on DVD unless they do an unrated version.

The Happening: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

No, I'm not gonna tell you what a Donkey Punch is. Not because it's not family friendly... Bigfoot ain't got no qualms about those silly squeamish families and their puritanical values, but he doesn't want to spoil the movie for those of you who haven't seen it yet. Think of the movie as an educational movie! Not only will you learn what a Donkey Punch is, but you'll learn why you shouldn't trust people you meet while on vacation who say they "Just want to have a little fun," what kind of devices on a yacht can be used as weapons, why it's always important to check to make sure the getaway raft has its motor attached, and how to use a flare in methods that are decidedly NOT the manufacturer's recommended usage. The movie was basically a Hitchcockian type thriller (but with the sex and violence turned up a LOT higher) about a bunch of college-age kids who decide to "borrow" a yacht to go out and fool around. Things pretty quickly go bad once we see why the movie's called Donkey Punch, after which the sun unfortunately sets and the movie makers didn't quite seem to know how to light night scenes right; a significant portion of the movie is just too dark to see what's going on. Also, it's one of those British movies that, while in English, is too cunning to be understood by us Americans and I would have appreciated some subtitles... or maybe the problem was that the moviemakers didn't go for the high-end sound equipment and everything got a little mushed up in the dialogue. In any event, that wasn't TOO much of a problem once the blood starts flowing... murder and mayhem being a universal language and all...

Of course, if you don't know, and you must find out... the internet is full of descriptions about what a Donkey Punch is. Take care when you go looking, though... it's certainly not safe for work or home or mixed company. It's not really safe at all, actually.

Donkey Punch: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

SPECIAL NOTE: At the start of this screening, the presenter had a funny way to help us decide how to rate the movie on the standard SIFF scale of 5 to 1.
"The Time Machine's one of the better time travel stories, so that'd get a 5. Back to the Future was well-made; that's a 4. The Back to the Future sequel you liked? That' one's a 3. The Back to the Future sequel you didn't like is a 2. And of course, down at 1 we've got Jean Claude Van Damme's Timecop."

Well... while Timecrimes was no Time Machine, I'm happy to report it certainly wasn't a Timecop. The movie itself has a structure sort of similar to Primer, which is a quite excellent movie (I think...) about time travel that's a bit too smart for me (or too stupid... it's hard to tell) to completely follow. Timecrimes wasn't as complicated as that, but it was pretty weird. Basically... it's about a guy who sees some weird things going on in the forest behind his new house, and when he goes to investigate, he blunders into a time machine experiment and gets sent back in time about an hour. And as they do, things get complicated fast after that. It's a pretty nifty movie, with layers of stuff going on in that we have multiple different stories happening in the same timeframe but we don't really understand the significance of everything until the end. It's a pretty low budget affair with only a few actors and no big sets, but it's really fascinating in the same way that Primer was... only without being quite so baffling and impossible to figure out.

Timecrimes: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this one going in... the SIFF schedule said that it was a fantasy movie from Denmark that involved some sinister plot about a necromancer trying to come back from the dead, and additional web research revealed that the movie had "more special effects than Jurassic Park." Which sounds good... but then maybe it doesn't, since Jurassic Park is over 10 years old. I found further evidence on ye olde internets that this movie was a "kid's movie."

SO! Turns out, it was all of that and more! The best way to describe the movie was that it was a Harry Potter type movie, but without the whole "magic school" angle. Basically, in the ancient past, a secret cabal of anti-evil magicians tried to destroy a necromancer, but they didn't finish the job. He came back and started shifting from body to body, calling up the spirits of the dead to torture them into revealing where they hid their riches in life so he, the necromancer, could steal those riches to fund his scheme to take over the world. Unfortunately... one of the ghosts of the ancient good guys gets free from his clutches and possesses the younger brother of our young heroine, and before you know it, they're off to the wilderness island that serves the necromancer as a lair.

The movie itself was pretty fun. Those special effects ranged from mundane to really quite good; one of the monsters in the movie was an animated scarecrow that leapt and bounded like a ninja and chittered like a velociraptor; he was EASILLY the coolest character in the movie, but the fact that the 3 child actors didn't annoy me (and in fact were really quite good and believable) was pretty incredible too. The movie was marred on account of several key scenes being resolved by REALLY unbelievable bits and characters who seemed to be able to show up exactly where they were needed without any explanation as to how they got there, but then it gets bonus points for being a kid's movie that's not afraid to throw around the R-rated profanity now and then. Also? I wouldn't mind having a hard-core scarecrow minion to take care of my problems!

The Island of Lost Souls: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

So The Strangers certainly does a strange thing.

It starts out rather strong, and builds tension VERY well. And then, there's a point where this tension culminates in one of the creepiest scenes I've ever seen in a movie.

The problem is? That single scene is spoiled not only by every trailer, but by the movie's poster. It's still a VERY effective scene, but I wonder how much more awesome it would have been if it wasn't spoiled all over the place?

Anyway, once that scene is over, the movie starts spiraling into mediocrity. And it doesn't stop there; before the movie's over, we're deep into the idiot plot (a movie that requires its lead characters to behave like an idiot). Put another way... if the killer has a knife, and you have a shotgun, the screenwriter needs to Try Harder to get rid of the shotgun. It's hard to be scared for characters who have all the tools available to survive, yet the movie doesn't let them use those tools AND doesn't set things up so they CAN'T use the tools. Then, near the end, we get another really impressive shot, but it's too little, too late. And then at the very end of the movie, we have one of the cheesiest scares I've seen in a long time. Having seen a billion of these scares before, it didn't really scare me, but it did knock the final review down to 2 stars from a comfortable, if mediocre 3.

But that one scene, the one spoiled by the trailers and the poster... that one scene was five star stuff. Kept this one from being a one-star-movie all on its own. Too bad it was stuck in this movie.

The Strangers: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Although one might think a documentary about Antarctica would be about Antarctica... you wouldn't expect it to also be about madness, but then again, if you go to a Werner Herzog movie like Encounters at the End of the World and don't expect it to be about madness, that just means you've not seen enough Herzog movies.
    Sure, there's a LOT of really incredible footage of Antarctica, from the frozen Ross Sea to the precipice of the crater of volcanic Mount Erebus to the frozen ocean below the ice to the strange banality of McMurdo station. Along the way we meet such strange and eccentric characters as a linguist who works on the only continent with no indigenous languages, a penguin researcher who's sort of forgotten how to talk with people after being alone for so long, a guy who services and maintains the ice cream machine on Antarctica, a sci-fi fan/geneticist/diver who describes the world under the ice as one so violent that it is probably the reason land-based life evolved out of the ocean so it could flee to safety, scientists who lie on the ice to listen to strange seal-song echoing up from below, a volcanologist who looks and dresses like Dr. Who, another volcanologist who calmly explains how you avoid being struck by flying bombs of lava ejected from the volcano's core ("look up, watch, then step aside as it lands"), alien-looking sea creatures that look like the've stepped right out of Lovecraft's nightmares (ever see a skinny-legged starfish walk like a spider?), and a lone penguin determined to walk directly into the interior of the continent where there is no food and only death awaiting him. And there's a lot more as well.
    All of this combines not only to show us a strange and mysterious and beautiful and remote region of the world, but also shows us that humanity, as a race, may be fundamentally insane. Which is kind of the point of all of Herzog's movies, I guess.
    Also: This is the only place you can go, as far as I know, if you want to see a picture of a chimpanzee riding a goat into the sunset.

Encounters at the End of the World: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Just got back a bit ago from my first SIFF movie of the year: Mother of Tears.

HISTORY LESSON: I'm a big fan of the horror genre. I grew up watching movies by John Carpenter, George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, Stuart Gordon, Don Coscarelli, Clive Barker, Stephen King, etc. But I never really went beyond the USA, really. Now, of course, J-Horror's all the rage, but as it turns out there are even MORE countries with strong traditions of horror movies. For example: Italy. There's this director I'd heard all about from my Fangoria magazines, interviews with other directors, and documentaries about the genre, and that guy was Dario Argento.

Several years ago, I started the process of catching up on his movies. And it took me several to realize that a Dario Argento movie isn't like the movies I grew up watching. Their plots never make sense, but you don't really notice while you're watching the movie because of the sheer spectacle of what you're seeing on the screen. He treats violence like a ballet, gore like fine art, and in between all of that he's got long sections of movie that make no sense but are still hypnotic for their nonsensicalness. Add to that the fact that most of his movies are scored with a really catchy combo of synthesizer music, weird drumbeats, and choirs, and presto!

So his most famous movie is probably Susperia. He made that one in 1977, and I must say, it IS his best movie. It's about a dance school that just happens to be run by one of the three Primal Witches, the Mother of Sighs. Dario made a sequel in the early '80's called Inferno; this one was about the second witch, the Mother of Shadows (and who also might just be Death). He'd apparently been planning on doing a final movie to round out his "Three Mothers" trilogy for a while... but until last year, nothing.

Mother of Tears is that third movie. And it's one of his better movies, I must say. The plot gets a little weird at times, but that's cool because the movie makes up for it by having his daughter Asia Argento play the lead role, because it has a fun Udo Keir cameo, because it has some really over-the-top "I've never seen THAT before" gore gags, because it has lots of nudity, because it has a really evil monkey, because it has a great and creepy choir score, and because it had a zombie that when you light him on fire he just starts chasing you FASTER and you have to run and you can't slam a door and lock it because HE'LL BURN THROUGH IT IN NO TIME!!!

Mother of Tears: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

So on Thursday, Paizo took all of us Paizolings out into the wild to see a movie. Said movie: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Which has a long title, but that's okay!

Of course it's no Raiders of the Lost Ark. I didn't go in there expecting it to be a revolutionary movie that would change how movies were made. That's not something you should ever expect of a third sequel.

What I did expect was to see an entertaining movie, and that's exactly what I got! There was about 20% of the film that was a bit too annoying/childish/unbelievable* for my tastes, but I like to blame those parts on Lucas and the 80% that was really cool on Spielberg and the rest.

*Yeah... I'm aware of the irony of calling a movie like Indy unbelievable at times. What I'm talking about isn't the crazy sci-fi/fantasy/magic stuff, nor am I talking about the over-the-top stunts. I'm talking about things that you could never do in real life because it'd either kill someone or because that's just not the way physics works, but you have state-of-the-art CGI effects and can make it happen anyway. Lame. But I forgive the movie those mis-steps for the awesome opening, the fun car chases, the awesome ending, and the nostalgia.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆