Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Movie Review: Cloverfield
To everyone who talked a bunch of shit about J.J. and Lost and Alias (I totally think that show blows, so whatever) and viral marketing and SLUSHO: eat it. Cloverfield was awesome. As far as I’m concerned, it lived up to all the hype. I understand a lot of people had a lot of problems with it. Most of these people have not seen the movie. Let me address some of the things I’ve been hearing:
1) “You don’t get to see the monster.” Uhh, really? Who told you that? Because you absolutely see the monster. Like, a dozen times. And it’s scary. The ironic thing here is that everyone is complaining that it’s not Godzilla or Cthulhu and that it’s “stupid” because it’s not a well-known monster. These are the same exact people who are complaining that there’s nothing original in
2) “They are using 9/11 to scare people.” Well, yeah. Anything taking place in a city, with collapsing buildings, that is even remotely realistic, is going to remind us of 9/11. So should we stop making movies like that for this reason? Should we continue to do things like pull out that scene in Spider-man 2, the one that was never shown, the one that was supposed to be the original trailer, in which he strings up the robbers’ get-away helicopter in a web between the two
3) “The story is not clear/undeveloped/bad/stupid/it should have been a movie about them escaping and not about them going into the city.” Wow! I didn’t realize this was the latest Francis Ford Coppola movie, or an independent movie with a deep plot, and not actually AN AMERICAN MONSTER MOVIE. What the fuck were you looking for,
4) “The ending is bad.” The ending is what? What did you want? You knew what the ending was going to be in the very beginning when they showed you the layout of the movie. The VERY ending is actually pretty awesome, because it gives you some insight into where the monster came from (though I have heard two very different ideas that are both awesome). But seriously, it’s a monster movie. If you want to see a GOOD monster movie with a GREAT plot that will absolutely suck you in and give you everything you ever needed, rent The Host. Otherwise, for serious, shut up.
Whew. Ok. Rage abated. And if you want to read an article that is hilarious and includes major spoilers, go to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Oh, and read their write-up of the last Harry Potter book, too.
Movie Review: Juno
Dear Ellen Page,
Seriously, you are so cute, I just want to eat your little face. I loved your portrayal of Juno, the itty-bitty pregnant teenager, who was sort of like a character from Napoleon Dynamite wrapped up in a modern version of someone John Cusack would have been in love with in any of those 80’s movies with a tablespoon of my own teenage years and a pinch of Kitty Pryde. The dialogue was witty, the love triangles were acute, and the adorability of Michael Cera rose to an all-new high. Seriously, I just can’t take that kid sometimes. He is so cute I want to laugh and cry at the same time. The two of you together in one movie made me want to hug things (much to the chagrin of my cats). The soundtrack was also a delightful treat, full of whimsical numbers that made me want to take a time machine and go back to the easy-going days of high school. Well, minus the teenage pregnancy. But plus the armchair on the lawn.
Your Pal,
Nicole
PS, we should totally be friends!! I love you for real.
Movie Review: The Orphanage
The Orphanage is about a woman who is an orphan in…an orphanage. Right. And then she gets adopted and grows up and adopts a son of her own. And then she buys the shitty orphanage she grew up in and opens it up as a special needs orphanage. And then crazy ghosts come and kidnap her son, and the ending is horribly depressing, and I was so sad I couldn’t even cry. The end.
Ok, ok, I’ll back up. This is a movie produced by Guillermo Del Toro, and after Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, I should have accepted that this was going to be a depressing piece of work. I had no idea that it was going to be so bone-crushingly awful, though. It was marketed as a horror movie, but instead sapped me of my will to live. If I hadn’t immediately disassociated myself from my feelings when I realized exactly what was happening at the end, I probably would have stepped out in front of a car afterwards.
The main thing that pissed me off was that I saw through part of what was going on right from the start. The ghosts play a trick on the son and the son shows the mom how to play the game. I knew, right from there, that as soon as the son disappeared and the mom found her first clue, that she was supposed to play the game with them. I was practically yelling at the screen, and by the time she figured out what was going on, I had given up on any hope of her actually unraveling the mystery.
You know, I’m almost too disappointed in the movie to finish the review. The story was choppy, parts of it were totally unnecessary, it didn’t connect with other parts, and the advertising for it was misleading (which works sometimes for me, but most of the time, no way). I was glad they ended it the way that they did, because with Pan’s Labyrinth, they left it open to interpretation, and there is NO WAY I was going to stand for it if they left this one up to interpretation and I had to listen to people say how the two movies ended so happily because SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, that is TOTAL CRAP and it’s delusional to think there is ANYTHING happy about these endings.
Ok, enough of this, thinking about the movie is making me want to eat thumbtacks. Four thumbs down on this one, including my toes. Well, maybe not four, but at least one.
Movie Review: Volcano High
There are a lot of things I could say about Volcano High – it’s a colorful comic-book movie hailing from
The main story is – the students at this high school are supernatural kids. They have powers. And the principal has…some kind of magical manuscript kind of thing. And whoever has it, has “the power.” And then something happens to the principal (something supernatural!) and the school gets turned upside down – all the students, and the teachers, are now vying for that power.
Hysterically enough, this movie reminded me of a film version of a book I read when I was kid, called The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. Yes, the book was as awesome as the title suggests. The book was a little less supernatural than the movie, but not by much. Either way, they were both completely over-the-top awesome.
I definitely recommend Volcano High as a fun movie to watch with some friends – so long as you don’t mind subtitles (or alternatively, maybe you LIKE Snoop Dogg and want to be regaled by his voice acting!). Two scary-Japanese-bees-sized thumbs up. (For those of you just joining us, that reference is from this horrifying piece of hilarity: http://www.cracked.com/article
Show Review: The O.C., Season 4
Yes, I’ll admit it – I’m addicted to The O.C. I was obsessed completely when I saw the first commercials. Something about Benjamin McKenzie just completely kicked my ass. I know many people think he’s – I don’t know, I guess they think he’s too pretty, or maybe they just dislike everyone on the show because, well, it’s The O.C. Many people tend to hate mainstream shows simply because they are mainstream. (I tend to dislike most mainstream shows simply because they appear totally unappetizing.) But whatever the reason, I love this freakin’ show, and that’s that.
I recently got to catch up on the series and watch season 4. I was going to avoid it, but I stumbled upon a review of it on Amazon.com one day, and it said that it went back to the roots of the original first season. I was intrigued by this. The first season was awesome – it was smart and funny – low on drama and high on quick wit. It was filled with one-liners from Ryan Atwood, Seth Cohen, Sandy Cohen…all my
Seasons 2 and 3 were boring – it seemed they took out three parts wit and added equal parts drama. What?? STUPID. I wanted less Marissa and more…well, ok, anything other than Marissa and her annoyingly bad decisions and constant other boyfriends and blah blah blah. Who cares what she’s doing? The only thing I ever liked about her in the show was that she looked relatively normal – as compared to how she looked outside of the show, which was a total go-fug-yourself party. In a word: suckfest.
I will say one thing: the music was consistently awesome. Seasons 1 and 2 were by far the best (recall Halloween, Alaska and, of course, the love of my life, Aqueduct), but season 4 pulled out the stops with some amazing music – including Jason Schwartzman’s solo project, Coconut Records. Way to keep it fresh, dudes.
Season 4 went back to the basics. It had the same great rapport between the characters, the quick wit was back, Taylor Townsend was actually kind of cute, and best of all, Marissa was dead! Yay! There were a few overly dramatic moments – let’s have an earthquake and make like everyone’s dead! But other than that, it was right back to where we started…and that’s where it ended.
All in all: this was a great season and a great way to end the series. The last episode had me in tears…from the first beats of Phantom Planet’s “
Friday, January 25, 2008
Movie Review: Barking Dogs Never Bite
If you’re anything at all like me, you not only love movies, but you tend to fall in love with directors as well. You enjoy a certain style, the way the dialogue is brought to life in a scene, or the way a certain scene is shot. I end up liking a movie, looking into who “did it,” and following up by watching their other movies. I started, in this case, with The Host, a fantastic Korean monster movie directed and written by Joon-ho Bong. I moved on to his Memories of Murder, a movie about the first documented Korean serial killer, and from there I discovered the one I’m going to talk about here: Barking Dogs Never Bite.
Please note: this is not a movie for the animal lover who can’t bear to see a single moment of cruelty to animals. Trust me. I’m not one of those people, and some of the scenes made me cringe.
The story starts out with a man and his pregnant wife living in an apartment complex. He is working part time at a local university and trying frantically to secure a full time position. Between his periods of inactivity and his desperation to become full time, he is not quite sane, and snaps one night when a neighbor’s dog won’t stop barking.
One thing leads to another, and soon there are posters around town for not one, but two missing dogs. The girl who works at the municipal building becomes involved with the owners in trying to find the dogs, and through a cunning plot twist, the professor and the clerk end up befriending one another.
I don’t want to spoil anything about what happens to the dogs OR the people, but I’ll say that it’s definitely a quirky little movie and worth watching, especially if you’ve seen Bong’s other movies. You’ll enjoy the performance here by the clerk, who played the aunt in The Host, and was great in both movies. (Also, her best friend, who works in the coffee shop, is one of the women in jail in
