MOVIE: The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

About two years ago, I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel called A Haunting in Connecticut (2002).  It was about a teenage boy with cancer whose family thought they had gotten lucky when a rental house just five minutes from the hospital became available cheap.  After months of many-hour drives to and from the cancer ward, they signed the lease no-questions-asked and moved right in, despite the fact finances were tight and it meant splitting the family up (Mom and kids moved into the rental, Dad stayed behind to work and only came out on weekends).   As it turned out, financial problems and cancer were about to become their most minor of concerns.  Cuz that rental house?  Was such a bargain because it A) used to be a funeral home, and therefore B) was haunted.

Despite the cheesiness of that description, I actually rather enjoyed this two-hour documentary.  So, when I heard the same tale was being turned into a scary movie, I was kind of excited to see it.  I love ghost stories, and this one was pretty creepy even when acted out by unrecognizable TV extras.  Polish it up a bit and throw in Martin Donovan and Virginia Madsen as the Campbell family parents, and heck, we might really be in for something kind of good here.

Now, for the record, I watched this movie in the most perfect setting imaginable — well, wait, I guess the MOST perfect setting imaginable would’ve been an actual haunted funeral home (sahweet!).  But certainly it was the NEXT most perfect setting imaginable.   We had just bought a new tent for a camping trip and I decided to pitch it in the backyard two weekends ago and sleep in it.  For kicks.  So, there I was, alone in a tent in the dark, surrounded by the sound of unidentified animals scampering through the crackling branches of the trees and the periodic rustling of leaves.

And, of course, the gentle whirring of the fan in my laptop, which I had in the tent with me running off an extension cord.  Because what is camping without wi-fi, I ask you?  It’s not the Stone Age anymore, hippies.

In any case, I settled in.  It was dark.  It was spooky.  I was all set to be scared.  I hit play and. . . LORD HAVE MERCY!  THE TERROR!!  THE HORROR!!  THE. . . oh wait, that was just the incident with the big bug in my tent.  The movie?  Not scary at all.

I never know who to blame for stuff like this, so I’m going to go ahead and blame the director and the two guys who wrote the screenplay (Peter Cornwell, Adam Simon, and Tim Metcalfe, respectively) because while they may not have been in charge of everything that went wrong with this picture, they were still the three most responsible, at least from where I sit.  So, here’s the thing — Les Trois Stooges took everything that was effectively unsettling about the original Discovery Channel documentary and replaced it with all the same dumb stuff we’ve seen 86 gazillion times.  And then, just in case we’d only seen them 85 gazillion times, they made sure to punctuate every scary moment with a harpy-inspired shriek from a  violin.  As if to say, “HEY, GUYS, YOU GOT THAT THAT WAS ONE OF THE SCARY PARTS, RIGHT?”

Yeah, dudes, we got it.

By overdoing all the ghost stuff, to the point of gotta-look-away grossness (eyelids: no!), they turned this movie into a ridiculous ew-fest instead of an entertaining eek-fest.  There is nothing scary about grossness — it’s just gross.  And what really bugged me is that they made changes to the original story that could’ve been improvements if they’d committed to them.  In the documentary, Matt (the teenager with cancer) and his little brother share the basement room, and both of them see things during the night.  In the movie, though, Matt lives down there alone.  And because he’s also in the middle of an experimental treatment for his cancer, we start to wonder for a while whether or not the ghosts are truly out there in the real world, or simply flitting around in his brain right next to a big metastasizing tumor.  Then everybody else started seeing them too and the intriguing part of the suspense was lost.  And yes, they were making a “true story,” so they had to make the ghosts real to the whole family, blah blah blah.  But they changed a lot of other stuff, ostensibly to “improve” it, after all, and you know what would be truly scary?  If you were being haunted by ghosts that were only in your own head.  If the terror was just as real, the experiences just as visceral, but it wasn’t really there.  Isn’t that one of everybody’s biggest fears?  Fear of madness that goes that far and has its source in something completely out of your control?

Damn, that would’ve been an interesting picture.

This one, not so much.

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Genre:  Horror
Cast:  Martin Donovan, Virginia Madsen, Elias Koteas, Kyle Gallner, Amanda Crew

MOVIE: Public Enemies (2009)

I’ve never been much of a Michael Mann fan. His movies always seem sort of the same to me — heavy focus on manly posturing, not enough focus on the things that make characters interesting.  Like, for example, their character.

I thought this movie MIGHT have a shot at being different, though, because it stars Johnny Depp, who has rarely failed to impress me (speak not to me of Secret Window), and because a movie about John Dillinger seemed pretty aptly timed, given the current state of American finances.  I wondered how Mann might try to connect the two — how he might portray Dillinger as a product of his time, and, in so doing, posit that we might be driving some of our own most troubled of souls in the same direction.  Something to that effect anyway.  Something sort of timely and interesting.  Or, well. . . I don’t know what I expected, exactly.  But I do know this much:  I didn’t expect this movie to suck quite as much as it ended up sucking.

The film opens with one of John Dillinger’s famed escapes from prison, this time busting out not only himself but several members of his gang.  From there, it takes us through the thirteen months that came in between that escape and Dillinger’s death, through a series of pursuits, near-arrests, deadly gun battles, and his codependent relationship with a young woman named Billie Frechette (played by Marion Cotillard).

There are, as is often the case with these types of movies, two separate paths for the story — one is Dillinger’s path and the other is that of the man trying to catch him, a young FBI agent named Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), hand-selected to lead the Dillinger task force by none other than J. Edgar “Don’t Call it ‘Vacuuming’” Hoover himself.

Now, here’s where things get kind of complicated.  I can see where Michael Mann was trying to take this movie, I think.  There’s a long history of movies about famous criminals that all sort of work the same way — The Untouchables and 3:10 to Yuma both kept springing to mind while I watched this one, for example.  In those films, both the good guy and the bad guy are broken down into pieces for the audience.  We start to understand what it is that drives the hero — what makes him work so hard to stop the villain, regardless of personal cost.   On the other side, we are shown the true nature of the villain himself — he might be vicious, he might be cruel, he might rape, rob, or steal, but deep down inside, he too is just a man with a history.

We usually end up with roughly the same epiphany at the end — the two men on the two sides are actually the same man, but for circumstances that drove them in opposite directions.  Reminds me of that line from Capote:  “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.”

I could tell from early on in the picture that Mann had no interest in taking Public Enemies in that direction.  A few elements of Dillinger’s childhood are touched on lightly — he reveals his mother died when he was young and his father used to beat him, for example.  A few elements of Billie’s past are also briefly lit, in an attempt, I gather, to show us the extent of her vulnerability and explain why she would become so loyal to John, and so quickly.  And maybe something here and there for Purvis too — an agent in so far over his head even treading water seems fairly futile most of the time.

But that kind of stuff is not the actual heart of this movie.  Instead, this movie is just about . . . well. . . shoot-outs and cool cars, I guess.   Instead of sticking to the formula, Mann shook the formula off with a bitchy temper and then sort of forgot to put something back in its place.  So, what we’re left with is a bunch of running around and violence, with a few little laughs here and there (I’ll confess I did love it when John walked right into the Dillinger Task Force HQ and asked what the score of the ball game was), and almost no substance whatsoever.

Did I want the same old movie?  I don’t know — maybe I did.  But I would’ve settled for something else if only it had had any intensity or power whatsoever.  I mean, even Depp seemed like he was bored a good 9/10ths of the time.  There was no spirit to his role or anybody else’s — there was just nothing.  Nothing.

Go for the scenery if you plan to go at all.  Good looks are all this movie has going for it, I’m afraid.

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Genre:  Drama, Action
Cast:  Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard, Christian Bale, Channing Tatum, Stephen Dorff, Billy Crudup, Giovanni Ribisi, Emilie de Ravin, Leelee Sobieski

Dimples Divorces!

I wonder with what tone Eddie Cibrian’s (future ex-)wife delivered the line, “Eddie and LeAnn deserve each other. . .”

http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2009/07/eddie-cibrians-wife-leaves-him-makes-room-for-leann-rimes.html

Oh, Dimples.  If only you’d met me first. . .  I wish you luck, sir.  Don’t be a dick to your kids.

MOVIE: Passengers (2008)

This movie was really boring and stupid.  I can’t be bothered to expound.

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Genre:  Crap
Cast:  Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson, David Morse, Clea Duvall, Andre Braugher

BOOK: Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart

This short fantasy novel, recommended to me by a book lovin’ (and sellin’!) friend, is set in a fictitious Ancient China somewhere around the seventh century or so. As the story opens, we are introduced to our narrator, a big lumbering oaf named Lu Yu, called “Number Ten Ox” by his friends. In Ox’s village, the yearly silkworm spinning has just begun, an elaborate procedure that brings the entire village together in work and celebration. But instead of the usual bounty of silk everyone has come to expect, all the silkworms have begun to get sick and die. That’s tragedy enough for a village that depends on the selling of that silk to keep afloat, but things quickly go from crap to shite when, one by one, all the village children also begin to fall ill.

Desperate to find a cure, the villagers send Ox to Peking to try to find a wise man to help. Unfortunately, though the village scraped together all the money they had for this task, it’s still not enough for the experts of Peking. One by one, they laugh Ox’s offer of a few coins off, slamming their doors in his face. Ox is about to give up when he comes across Master Li, a drunken genius with a much-touted “slight flaw in his character.” Master Li agrees to return to the village with Ox, and after studying the situation for a while, figures out both the cause and the solution to the village’s problem. Unfortunately, the solution involves finding the Great Root of Power, which Li believes is the key to a cure for the children, and finding the Great Root will be no easy feat. To that end, Master Li and Ox set out on a series of searches for the Root, traveling from one side of the country to the other, and encountering a vivid and wild collection of gods, monsters, ghosts, wise men, villains, and, for extra kicks, the most expensive woman in the world.

While at first this novel seemed a bit disjointed, like the diseased-children storyline was just a clumsy excuse to spin a series of separate adventure yarns, it became clear by the end that there was actually a fairly elaborate underlying framework to the whole thing — one based on an ancient legend and a children’s rhyme. Even better, though, this novel is simply a blast to read. It’s packed with truly magical descriptions of “an ancient China that never was,” a delightful cast of characters, and loads of satisfying puzzles, relationships, and resolutions. On the surface, Bridge of Birds seems like a straight comic adventure/fantasy story. But the more you read, the more you begin to realize it is also a very poignant tale filled with emotion and warmth. I had a really hard time putting this book down once I started it, and I absolutely fell head-over-heels with both Master Li, the perfect flawed hero for a story like this one, and his lovable and endlessly faithful foil, Number Ten Ox. The only thing that kept me from being completely miserable when it was over was the knowledge that it’s the first in a series. Can’t wait to read Number Two Book about Number Ten Ox! (And hey, Steve, thanks for recommending this one — I really enjoyed it and you totally rule!)

[FANTASY]

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MOVIE: Silent Venom (2008)

I have a thing for submarine movies.  I’ve loved them ever since the first time I saw Das Boot, which was about fifteen years ago.   It was the director’s cut, so it was, of course, about 87,000 hours long (give or take, though not by much), and it was playing in Seattle at a local theater with surround sound.  I don’t remember anything about the time of year, the time of day, or even who I went with, but I do remember that seeing that movie in a small, dark theater with surround-sound-generated drips and pings coming from all sides made for one of the most thoroughly claustrophobic experiences of my life.  And also, hands-down, one of the most utterly exhilarating ones too.

I would not go so far as to say that the 86 minutes spent watching Silent Venom were anywhere near as insanely great.  HOWEVER, despite the fact I can’t stop calling this movie Snakes on a Sub and then yelling out things like, “I’m tired of these mother-f*cking snakes on this mother-f*cking sub!” to my own inane amusement, this movie wasn’t half bad.

(Well, wait.  Now that I think about it, maybe it was, in fact, exactly half bad, as that would sort of suggest it was also kind of half good.   That sounds about right, as long as your standards for “half good” aren’t very high.)

The story opens with Dr. Andrea Swanson (Krista Allen) and her assistant Jake Golden (Louis Mandylor, who looks like a poor man’s version of his brother Costas but is actually the better actor, if you ask me) hanging out on an island in the Far East doing scientific experiments on the local region’s deadly vipers.

When a couple of the killer snakes get loose and take out some of the locals, the two are ordered to pack up their stuff and wait by the beach for rescue.  Dr. Swanson tells Jake to kill all the snakes except for the two that have been genetically altered, but, smelling money to be made from snake-o-philes, Jake instead packs all the vipers up and smuggles them down to the beach with the rest of their stuff.

Sent to pick them up is a military sub, captained by Lt. Comdr. James O’Neill (Luke Perry!), who is on one last mission before he retires to go spend more time with his family.  Dr. Swanson and Jake load all their equipment — and the badly-secured containers of smuggled snakes — on board the vessel, and away they go.

As he organizes their equipment in the cargo bay, Jake becomes more and more concerned that his secret might get found out.  So, he makes the brilliant decision to pull aside two young sailors and say pointedly and with much stern seriousness, “Whatever you do, DON’T OPEN THESE CASES BECAUSE THEY ARE CLASSIFIED.”   Might as well put a big red button on the wall and label it, “DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON OR ELSE!  NO SERIOUSLY, DON’T!”  Because, of course, the minute Jake is out of the room, those dumb kids hit that metaphoric red button with everything they’ve got.  They uncover the first crate they can get their hands on, bust open the lock, and with hisses, growls (yep, the snakes in this movie growl!), and slithers, out come a whooooole lotta cranky reptiles.

From there, the movie moves forward in a fairly predictable manner.  The crew can’t call for help or race to the nearest shore because they’re also being stalked by a Chinese sub and are on silent running (no engines, in other words).  But meanwhile, lots of poor souls on board are being nom-nom-nom’d by deadly vipers.  The Lt. Comdr. and the Dr. team up to try to brainstorm some ways to corral the snakes (and even have a brilliant idea at one point regarding the strategic use of the ship’s heating system — an idea they promptly blow, of course, because they can’t exactly be catching all the snakes 20 minutes into their 86 minute movie).  But the battle gets a little more complicated when the two genetically altered snakes, which have been doubling in size at random intervals and are now INSANELY ENORMOUS, also bust out of their boxes and begin devouring ensigns left and right.  And whole.

If this is a movie that sounds like fun to you, you’re probably going to like it.  The acting is not terrible (except for Tom Berenger, who can’t help it), the story is often hilariously ridiculous (I loved how many scenes in this movie involved someone standing/sitting somewhere completely unaware of the fact a dozen snakes were slithering on and around their feet — apparently, people on submarines never look down), and I’ll be damned if Luke Perry doesn’t look darned good in a Navy uniform.

As far as submarine movies go, you could do a lot better.   But as far as good-bad snakes movies go, you could certainly do much worse (Python 2, anyone?).   Recommended to all fans of the snakes-on-a-vehicle genre.

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Genre:  Horror, Monsters
Cast:  Luke Perry, Krista Allen, Tom Berenger

MOVIE: Australia (2008)

Out of Africa + City Slickers + Rabbit-Proof Fence + The English Patient + Pretty in Pink – everything that made those movies any good = Australia

Yes, we knew it would be bad.  It’s not like we don’t pay attention.  But we (me and Mom) like swooping epics and we like Australians (seeing as how there are a few in our family that we’re rather fond of), and so we thought maybe there might be SOMETHING to like about this one.  It was definitely lovely, and not just when Hugh Jackman took his shirt off, either (although, if he ever wanted to leave his socks on my living room floor, I certainly wouldn’t complain about it).  It’s beautifully filmed, almost fantasy-like in places.  We’ll give it that much.

But the story is just BAD.  It’s unoriginal (ugh, unbearably so!), it’s surface, it’s trite, it’s cheesy, it’s stupid.  It’s also at least an hour too long — in fact, it’s like two separate stories squished clumsily together and united by the most boringest love scene of all time (and I’ve seen Eyes Wide Shut, people).

Also, the whole Wizard of Oz thing was just silly and forced.  Yes, we get it.  Wizard of OZ.  Subtle as a chainsaw there, Baz.  Jesus. (Unless, of course, there’s some kind of actual, meaningful history regarding that movie and Australia, other than the fact that Dorothy tried to go there once (in Land of Oz, I believe) and fell off the boat along the way.  If there is, do educate me in the comments, my peoples.  It won’t make me like the movie any more, but it might make me hate it a little bit less.)

And with this, I think I can safely now announce for the record that I think Nicole Kidman is the most irritatingly dull actress working today, and that Baz Luhrmann is an overrated hack.  I still love Bryan Brown, though.   And Hugh Jackman, seriously: your socks, my floor.  Any ol’ day of the week.

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Genre:  Drama
Cast:  Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Bryan Brown, the scary guy from Wolf Creek, Brandon Walters (cute kid)

Seven Signs of the Apocalypse

1 – What Were You Thinking?: Christopher Eccleston starring in GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  One season as Doctor Who, a couple of episodes on Heroes, and suddenly, he’s relegated to crap like this?  No, Christopher.  NO, I TELL YOU.  THIS CANNOT STAND.

2 – Necessary?: Miley Cyrus wrote a memoir?   Isn’t she, like, 14  years old or something?  http://www.amazon.com/Miles-Go-Miley-Cyrus/dp/1423119924/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247163393&sr=8-1

3 – Ominous: Did you know there’s a television show called Life After People?  I am unnerved by this, not in the least because it seems somewhat moot to work hard at figuring out what will happen to Las Vegas after all the human beings are gone from the planet.  Why would we care?  Won’t we not be here anyway?  I’m confused.  I hate being confused.  Can’t you just go back to showing Band of Brothers reruns in perpetuity instead, History Channel?  Currahee!   http://www.history.com/content/life_after_people

4 – Unspeakable!: After years of taunting us with occasional news reports that MacGyver might be revived in movie format, we’re instead officially brought. . . MacGruber in movie format.  I hate you, Saturday Night Live.  http://www.cinemablend.com/new.php?id=13375

5 – BLAAAAARRRRGH:  Sam Raimi to remake The Evil Dead (and ruin it, I’m assuming, because he’ll actually have a budget this time — money alone will suck half the awesome right out of the whole thing).  Don’t make me hate you, Sam.  I don’t want to, but I WILL.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434020/

6 – IT WILL NEVER STOP: Saw VI scheduled for release in October 2009.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233227/.   Talks in progress for Hostel 3 sans Eli Roth, while I’m at it.

7 – And Neither Will This Butthead, Apparently: Joe Jackson hoping to take Michael’s three kids on “Jackson Three” tour?   Bravo, sir.   (Please note that I recognize this may just be a rumor — the source here is not that trustworthy.  However, seems his style, I will confess.)  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31894749/ns/entertainment-access_hollywood/

Those were in no particular order, and I’m sure I missed some.  If you’ve got any horrifying entertainment news to report on, hitten zee comments.

MOVIE: Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009)

It’s rare that really, really bad monster movies make their way into the mainstream press, so when I started to see stuff about this flick in the newspaper and on some notable entertainment blogs here and there, I got kind of excited about it.  Heck, it even showed up as the topic of a Sally Forth comic strip a couple of weeks ago (see graphic, stage left!).  Reviewers seemed amused and entertained, which is great, but it was enough for me that they were even TALKING about it.  I mean, nobody “real” ever said word-one about Shark Attack 3: The Megalodon, after all, and we all know how BRILLIANT that one ended up being.  If the mainstream media is all abuzz about this one, surely it’s going to be even better?

Do I never learn, or what?  Mainstream media:  you’re fired.

This movie should’ve been a total blast to watch.  After all, it has everything a fan of good-bad movies could ever ask for:  a washed-up 80′s pop singer as the star (Debbie Gibson!), a recognizable bad-movie actor as the co-star (Lorenzo Lamas!), an utterly ridiculous storyline, and a final duke-out between two insanely enormous sea creatures, one of which is a SHARK.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, the filmmakers spent so much money casting their two “famous actors” (ha ha!), they apparently had no budget leftover for the sea creatures.  And since this movie was NOT titled, 80′s Pop Star vs. Mr. Hair, I, for one, think their budgetary priorities were a bit out of order.

The plot (ha ha, again!) unfolds thusly:  Gibson plays Dr. Emma MacNeil, a scientist who is studying the effects of Mozart on whale pods (first sign we might be in trouble:  I’m pretty sure her “Mozart” was actually Bach).  Anyway, she’s up in the Arctic jamming on her classical tunes when she suddenly sees something strange in the water ahead.  Unfortunately, before she has a chance to take a closer look, stuff starts exploding and a helicopter crashes for some reason and no, I have no idea why or what was happening during this scene, but the gist of it was she had to skedaddle, and how.

After she gets back to dry land, strange events begin to surface in the news.  First, reports that a giant shark leapt into the sky and ate an airplane (!!).  Then reports that some kind of enormous sea creature with eight legs chomped its way through an oil rig.  Where normal people might arch an eyebrow and wonder who’s been handing out the hallucinogens at the New York Times, Dr. Debbie immediately thinks, “MEGA SHARK AND GIANT OCTOPUS!!”  Because she is very, very smart, you see.

Where the story goes from there, I confess I can’t really say for sure — it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, I’m afraid.  Dr. Debbie teams up with a few other scientists and does  some complicated science stuff that appeared primarily to involve pouring one Erlenmeyer flask filled with water and food coloring into other another Erlenmeyer flask filled with water and food coloring, while wearing lab goggles and looking ponderous.  It was eventually determined that the mega shark and giant octopus A) had been frozen in the Arctic ice mid-battle and were released, still peeved!, when global warming caused the ice to melt; and B) were on their way to wiping out the planet.

No, don’t ask.  I have no answers for you.  Nor can I tell you why on earth (or anywhere else, for that matter) any sea creature would want to eat an airplane when it would be so much easier just to eat, like, whales and stuff.  No metal exoskeletons, which I can only assume are kind of a beeyotch to digest, mega-intestinal-tract or no.

Anyway, long, long, WAY-too-long story short, the crack team of scientists decide the only way to take out the murderous defrosted beasts is to lure them to the same body of water, where they’ll then take one look at each other and promptly resume their battle to the death (or at least TO THE PAIN — hi, fellow Princess Bride fans!).

As we all know, sharks and octopi hold grudges — man, do they ever! — so, clearly, the plan seems foolproof.  Which, of course, it is not.  However, eventually, everything comes together and the shark and octopus swim, swim, swim their way into the same region of the sea as we all scoot down to the edges of our seats eagerly awaiting what is sure to be the scene that finally makes the rest of this wretched debacle worth talking about.  The camera pans over to the shark.  Then it pans over to the octopus.  Their eyes meet.  Their teeth bare.  Their tentacles push up their sleeves and wind up for a brawl.  The fight at long last begins!  And it is. . .

TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY LAME!

You know why?  Because after spending all their money on actors (and food coloring), there apparently wasn’t enough dough left in the pot for CGI effects or any other super-cool monstery magic.   So, what we end up with is not  monstrous-looking monsters, so much as, like. . . bath toy-looking monsters.  Seriously.  I’ve seen more exciting duels between rubber duckies, and these two yahoos didn’t even look like they’d squeak when you squeezed them.

Crikey, we watched this thing all the way to the end?  I’m speechless.  And while I’m at it, Sally Forth, THANKS FOR NOTHING.

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Genre:  Monsters, Crap
Cast:  Deborah “Don’t Call Me ‘Debbie’ Cuz I’s All Growed Up Now” Gibson, Lorenzo Lamas

MOVIE: Quantum of Solace (2009)

Damn, Daniel Craig sure is hot. . .

I have absolutely no idea what this movie was about.

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Genre:  Obfuscation
Cast:  Daniel Craig, The Dame J.D., Mathieu Amalric, Olga Kurylenko, Giancarlo Giannini