Tag Archives: 2015

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A quick review of “The Visit” (2015)

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I quite liked M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit” (2015); I’d give it an 8 out of 10.  It is by no means a perfect movie.  But it has all of the elements of Shyamalan’s work that I love: it’s beautifully shot; it has a fresh, creative story; it’s suspenseful; it’s atmospheric, and it has well drawn, likeable protagonists.

I am an unashamed Shyamalan fan.  I love all his horror-thriller movies, even the one or two in which I can guess Shyamalan’s trademark “twist” in advance.  Yes, I even liked “The Village” (2004).  And I liked “The Happening” (2006) a hell of lot too.

This movie indeed has said twist.  I thought I guessed what it was in the opening minutes.  I was wrong, and when the real twist was revealed, it was pretty damn effective.  For a moment, I was as dumbfounded as the characters on screen.  This was despite the fact that all the clues had been right there in front of me, and seem obvious in retrospect.

And it is scary in places.  A scene beneath the house comes first to mind.  So does the “oven” bit that we see in the trailer.  The cast is uniformly good.  The standout was a fantastic performance by Deanna Dunagan as “Nana.”

A couple of things nudged this movie just slightly left of the “great” category, into the “good but not great” category.  For one, I think this could have been a short film, and didn’t need more than 40 minutes or an hour to tell its story.  The pacing seems to suffer a little because of that.  For the first hour, we keep revisiting the same arc in tension: a grandparent behaves strangely, a grandchild queries them, and then the behavior subsides.

Character choices are also implausible.  These are bright, savvy kids, who are either oblivious to or cavalier about obvious signs of danger.  I think any person in real life would be too frightened to remain in the house where “The Visit” takes place.  Later, certain things change a little too conveniently after the twist is revealed.

The rapid change in tone after the story’s conclusion was a little heavy-handed.  I thought the story’s final minutes were nice, but maybe a little too much.  (I am being intentionally vague here to avoid spoilers.)

Still, I’d recommend this.  If you can overlook the movie’s faults here and there, you’ll enjoy a damn creepy modern fairytale.

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Catch “Cooties” (2015) — you’ll like it.

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And I am certain I am the only filmgoer who has come up with that clever headline.

This was fun, though — I’d give it an 8 out of 10.  It isn’t quite the instant classic you might expect from the trailer, but it’s an engaging horror comedy that made me laugh.

The running jokes connected with Elijah Wood’s straight man and Jorge Garcia (HURLEY!!!) ran thin early on.  (The former is an obsessed would-be author, that latter is a drug-addled security guard.)  Far funnier was an unrecognizable Rainn Wilson as the boorish gym teacher, and the pretty Nasim Pedrad as the paranoid aggressive.  The nod to The Lord of the Rings was especially nice.

Upstaging the entire rest of the cast, however, was a surprise comedic performance by the screenwriter himself, Leigh Whannell, as the office weirdo.  Whannell wrote this film along with other great horror movies like “SAW” (2004), and the “Insidious” films.  I had no idea that he could be so damn hilarious; he’s a talented guy.

If you like horror-comedies, check this out!

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Tonight we sleep peacefully thanks to the ardor of the brave.

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If you are reading this now, then you are likely to head to bed soon for the night, safely.

If you are like many today, then you might have said a prayer, or a few words of thanks, for the soldiers, the police, the firemen, and the emergency professionals who have made such safety possible.

You and I will retire to sleep tonight without event.  We will awaken in a free state tomorrow.  These are rarer things than we often realize, in a frequently ugly world, where despots threaten and madmen make red pageantry in our skylines and in our saddest inner moments.  But tonight we sleep peacefully thanks to the ardor of the brave.

Indeed, we WILL never forget.

To all of the especially good men and women whose job it is to keep us safe, often at the highest risk to themselves:

Good luck, Godspeed, and thank you for your service.

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Rest In Peace, Wes Craven.

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You brought us “Nightmares” when we were growing up.

Now we hope that easy sleep brings you nothing but gentle dreams.

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The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

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“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

—  The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

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A review of “Extinction” (2015)

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I’d give “Extinction” (2015) a 6 out of 10; it’s a fairly average postapocalyptic horror movie.  And that’s kind of sad, as it seemed to have the ingredients for a great one.

We open with a delightfully scary nocturnal ambush on two school buses crowded with fleeing refugees.  The scene isn’t perfect.  (The soldiers here are both too stoical and too stupid.)  But it’s effective thanks to its claustrophobic setup.  The assailants actually aren’t zombies or “undead” — they’re vicious, fast-moving mutants that are far more interesting.  (Their monsteryness is contagious and catches quickly, a la 2002’s “28 Days Later.”  This predictably spells disaster for the busses’ passengers.)  The animalistic albino baddies actually reminded me a lot of the creatures from “Mutants” (2009).

Then we jump ahead nine years, where two men and a nine-year-old girl suspect that they are the last of the world’s survivors.  But three people are enough for conflict, human nature being what it is.  There is a creatively conceived and fresh idea for a particularly dark end-of-the-world drama.  Jeffrey Donovan and Matthew Fox are both very good; yet the incredibly talented young Quinn McColgan outshines them both.  (Seriously, that little girl is off the hook.  Her performance might be the best thing about the film.)  The makeup effects for the monsters (here only referred to as “they” or “them”) are surprisingly fantastic for what seems like a low-budget film.  And you can tell that a nice amount of thought went into this movie, even if its understanding of Darwin is a little puzzling.  (Why would blindness be an adaptive trait for the monsters?)

I’m just not sure why this movie didn’t work so well for me.  Its formula sure as hell worked for “28 Days Later” and “Maggie” (2015).

Here’s what I think the problem was — the conflict between the two men was a plot that just never advanced.  One hates the other.  We eventually find out why, and it’s a compelling plot point, rendered fairly well in flashback.  But … it’s a static situation that just doesn’t proceed anywhere.  I actually got bored.

The monsters often did little to advance the tension.  They are usually offscreen, absent entirely, or even (in much of the movie’s beginning) presumed extinct.  My attention really did wander.

Finally, the extremely cheesy musical score detracted greatly from the tension that the movie does manage to establish.  This horror movie sounded like a Lifetime Channel movie-of-the-week.  That is not a good thing.  If only those violin players had been victims of the initial apocalypse.

Oh, well.  This is still a fairly good end-of-the-world tale.  And the creepy-crawlies were nice, when we got to see them.

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A tiny review of “Pixels” (2015)

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It’s true what they say about “Pixels” (2015) — it just wasn’t great.  It’s a pretty brainless movie, despite the fact that its sci-fi-comedy premise is actually pretty clever and funny.

I’d grudgingly give it a 6 out of 10, which is better than what many other people are saying.  It was fun, it made me laugh a couple of times, and the special effects were actually quite good.  If you were an 80’s kid, seeing Pac-Man and Donkey Kong brought to life is just too fun not to enjoy.

[UPDATE 7/29:  I am learning now via Cracked.com that the plot is a ripoff of an episode of “Futurama?”  Thanks, Wednesday Lee Friday!]

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“Terminator Genisys” Terminated My Boredom!

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There.  You see that truly sucky play on words that I employed in the headline for this blog post?  That should give you a sense of the quality of this film’s script.  I’m serious.  When one character expresses their desire to rule the world, another character shouts “Rule THIS!” before blasting the former with a laser.  Because the future is a long, looooong way from Tennessee Williams, Baby.

But hold up.  Believe it or not, this will actually be a positive review of “Terminator Genisys” (2015).  I’d reluctantly give it an 8 out of 10, because it was a fun summer popcorn movie, despite its flaws.

And there are flaws.  It isn’t high art, and it can’t even approach the pathos, drama, characters, rich themes and great old fashioned movie thrills of the true terminator classics: the 1984 original and James Cameron’s astonishingly superior sequel in 1991.

The dialogue for “Terminator Genisys” is terrible in many places.  The story’s most important character, Sarah Connor, falls flat.  She’s scripted as a chipper, upbeat, 20’ish “It Girl” who utterly fails to win viewer loyalty, as Linda Hamilton’s traumatized crusader did so beautifully in 1991.  I also humbly opine that Emilia Clarke did poorly with the role.  This is the first time I’ve ever seen her perform — I’ve heard that she’s actually considered a very good actress playing a queen on … that TV show.  “Game of Bones?”  “Crones?”  Or something?  People like that show, right?

A lackluster Sarah Connor might be a serious transgression in the fan community.  For a kid who learned to love science fiction movies in the 80’s and 90’s, Ellen Ripley will always be the paradigmatic heroine, but Sarah Connor was second.  No, no one can equal Hamilton’s performance, but others can still perform the role quite well when it is competently scripted.  Just see Lena Heady’s inspired turn in television’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (2008).

The “timey-wimey” stuff lost me early on.  Seriously — the time travel story elements confused and annoyed me as soon as Kyle Reese (Jesus, I almost wrote Corporal Hicks) entered the time machine and began having inexplicable memories of another timestream.

Who is sending multiple terminators on multiple missions?  Are they from various timelines and various iterations of Skynet, or are they from a single future?  Our heroes have an unknown benefactor with access to time machines?  A T-1000 attacks people on a rowboat?  Does it … float, then?  Walk on water?  It seems to me that hopping on a boat would be a rather ingenius way of escaping an unstoppable robot, unless he commandeers his own vehicle …  Hell, it’s something I’d never thought of, and I am precisely the sort of weirdo who thinks about things like that.  (Is it any worse than when other people have zombie contingency plans?)

I’m not even sure I understand the motives of the story’s antagonist who we see the most.  Is this character on nobody’s side, exactly?  If this character is a superior model composed of nanobots, shouldn’t Skynet be manufacturing and deploying dozens, instead of just one?  For that matter … why do individual terminators each have an individual consciousness and point of view?  Can Skynet simply download its own single collective consciousness to every unit?

I felt a little embarrassed at first, but the Internet reassures me that most, if not all viewers, are puzzled about these things.  The wonderful io9.com, for example, has an excellent tongue-in-cheek “FAQ” pointing out this movie’s surprising multitude of unanswered questions.  Warning: SPOILERS.

http://io9.com/terminator-genisys-the-spoilyr-faq-1716548070

Also … I really disliked this movie’s central plot twist.

Still, I have to give this movie a free pass.  I simply can’t give a negative review to a film during which I laughed and smiled throughout.  This is a fun summer event-movie.  It’s a fast-paced, sci-fi actioner with fantastic special effects, the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and tons of fan service and Easter eggs.  (Recreating the 1984 film’s sequences shot-for-shot?  C’mon!  That was just cool and fun.)

We’ve got nanobaddies, liquid metal terminators (made of mimetic polyalloy, to those of us in the know), aging T-800’s with stiff joints, time machines, terminators arriving in multiple decades, Bot-on-Bot violence, a schoolbus flipping over on the Golden Gate Bridge and … somebody does something totally sweet with an oxygen tank.  They really threw in everything but the kitchen sink for this movie.  The result is only kid stuff, but it’s still a good time.  If you see this movie, and you don’t smile when a T-1000 emerges from a police car windshield, then you have never been a 10-year-old boy.

This year’s “Jurassic World” had none of the earmarks of a great film, but it still entertained.  I gave that a positive review, so I’m going to go head and recommend this as well.

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Happy Fourth of July, To One and All!!!

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Maybe it is a bit rainier here on the East Coast than we had hoped, but we’ll still find some way to blow something up.  (We’re Americans, after all.)

Please don’t drink and drive.  Also, please keep your pets indoors.  (I’m told that more pets are lost on July 4th than any other day of the year.)

Everyone have an awesome national birthday party!!!

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident …”

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“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

—  from The Declaration of Independence

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