Movie/film thread: resurrected

Calvary

Baffling.

In confession one Sunday, a local man tells the priest he will kill him in a week, but not for anything he did. For the next six days the priest goes about his duties ministering to the people of the parish. The movie is a funny passion play containing real anger and hatred, and I can't tell whether in the end it is a condemnation or confirmation.

Under the Skin

Oooohhh... an erotic scifi thriller.  A hot alien babe seduces and kills men - starring Scarlett Johansson.

So let's take stock of what we have:

Sex
Nudity
Scarlett Johansson engaging in both of the above.
Plus alien killings.

This should have been a 100% sure-fire way to make a movie that would, in a worst case scenario, be ever-so-slightly below average.  It would take serious effort to screw this up.  Sadly, someone decided to put in the effort to do just that.

Take a mental detour and run through 2001 A Space Odyssey in your mind.  Now, go back and try to imagine a similar movie with ALL the most memorable parts removed.

Jonathan Glazer, the director of Under the Skin, seems to be a Stanley Kubrick fanatic who totally missed the concept.  Minimalist dialog can be OK, but is NOT supposed to be a competition to set a new record for fewest words spoken in a feature length film.  Leaving some items vague and unresolved is NOT an excuse for dumping the whole concept of having a plot.  This film is not an homage to Stanley Kubrick.  Instead, it's an insult.

I'm also sorry to inform Mr. Glazer that there is no award given by any film group for slowest bite of cake ever seen in a movie.  If he really wants to apply for a Guinness World Record on this, no one will ever bother to try to take it away from him.  BTW - The real reason she yacked up that bite of cake is probably because it has rotted by the time the director finally let her put it in her mouth.

Sadly, Ms. Johansson appeared to either be suffering  terribly throughout the film or else had just had a massive series of botox injections.  She had a single frozen expression that was supposed to serve in every scene, or perhaps it was just her attempt to cover the horror she felt being forced to perform in such a pathetic film.

What could have easily been a great movie instead turned into a long, painful experience of intense boredom that gradually escalated into a form of slow torment while waiting hoping praying for something important to the plot anything vaguely interesting to happen.  A few moments of Ms. Johansson in various stages of undress and a couple of nice shots of Scottish scenery can't come close to making up for the suffering this movie inflicts on anyone watching.

If you are even thinking of watching this film, don't.

Cold in July

Starts commonplace, a standard psycho-killer thriller, and I was wondering why all the good reviews. Sure, it has Texas Dexter with a mullet, but it was looking rote! Then it changes into something else. And after a while it changes again, this time almost into the surreal. All told, an imperfect end, but not a bad movie.

 

Under the Skin

Sadly, Ms. Johansson appeared to either be suffering  terribly throughout the film or else had just had a massive series of botox injections.  She had a single frozen expression that was supposed to serve in every scene, or perhaps it was just her attempt to cover the horror she felt being forced to perform in such a pathetic film.

What could have easily been a great movie instead turned into a long, painful experience of intense boredom that gradually escalated into a form of slow torment while waiting hoping praying for something important to the plot anything vaguely interesting to happen.  A few moments of Ms. Johansson in various stages of undress and a couple of nice shots of Scottish scenery can't come close to making up for the suffering this movie inflicts on anyone watching.

If you are even thinking of watching this film, don't.

She must have practiced that same expression for the movie "Lucy".  Embarrassingly bad even for a summer knockoff.  I did find it interesting though that the "dastardly villains" in this one were from Tee-Wan.  I'm sure the marketing department for this studio was proud of itself.

A Prophet

I saw this one referenced in a review of Starred Up, so I took a look. A French Algerian kid, 19 years old, winds up in adult prison right when a long-term prisoner, a Corsican mobster and boss in the local hierarchy, finds he has orders to kill another inmate, only that inmate is Arab and has retreated to the Muslim section. The boss recruits, with menaces, the new kid. The movie turns out to be a lengthy gangster flik about how a kid might shake up the hierarchy without ever having expected to. If you ever eventually work out why the movie has the title it has, an extra layer is added that sort of is needed given the ending. Still...

 

Presently going through the British series, Foyle's War, having finished watching Have Gun, Will Travel.  Also enjoyed seeing Call The Midwife, based on Jennifer Worth's books about her days in Poplar.

Love them all, for different reasons.  Apart from occurring in various locales and times, they are all very well-written and hold our interest.  Highly recommend

from: 1994.

"What's prison taught you, Billy?"
"Don't get caught."

In some quarters, regarded as one of the worst British films ever made. TO THEM I SAY, SOME PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA AT ALL WHAT A MOVIE SHOULD BE!


NB: under no circumstances should you watch the US release. Egregiously stupid edits were performed for the US market that defy explanation.  It's shockingly stupid for instance to see implied in the US release that Billy and Jo have sex, when in the real movie Billy pulls away and says  "Come on, Jo, this is the nineties. Sex isn't safe anymore"? Mind: boggled.

21 Jump Street (2012)

Funny; energetic. 



22 Jump Street (2014)

Less funny; more labored. 

Dead Snow

It's spring break for some med students in Norway.  What do to?  How about heading up to a remote cabin in the snowy mountains and hope that nothing goes wrong?  After all, a group of young people in a remote cabin never ever have life-threatening problems in any movie, right?  It's not like there could be anything bad out there like zombies.

These are not your usual zombies.  These can move at a fairly fast rate and can use weapons.  They are reasonably intelligent and also are truly monstrously evil . . .  Nazi Zombies!

Funny and deranged all at once, this one is well worth the time to watch.

But wait!  There's more!


Dead Snow 2

Sequels often fail to live up to the quality of the original.  Not this time.  The original was good, but this one amazingly better on nearly every level.  As a zombie movie fan, I'd have to rate this as the most original and fun (and sick and disgusting) zombie flick in years.  If you liked Army of Darkness, Shaun of the Dead, and Dead Alive, you'll love this movie.

Special note for the squeamish - Bring an air sickness bag.  You'll laugh so hard the puke will come out your nose.

It also contains a lesson that all filmmakers in all genres should take to heart:  If you can get your hands on a tank, have as much fun with it as possible.

Well, I accepted that dare, and sadly, Doed Snoe was in my humble estimation, okay. Two stars. A handful too many Evil Dead references, and intestines too often used as props.  But not bad.

Now for hi-larious gorefests, I am reminded of Braindead. I can't bring myself to watch it again, but I remember laughing out loud at various points (and also not really ever wanting to watch it again).

"These final hours" is a movie set in Australia. It is about the last day on earth. A self obsessed young man makes his way to the party to end all parties as the final hours are at hand. You can imagine what was going on at that party, with plenty of nudity and drug snorting and wild dancing etc. This guy ends up saving the life of a little girl who was searching for her father. Their relationship ultimately leads him on the path of redemption.  The lady in charge of the theatre told me that she considered it one of the top movies of the year. She told me that she ended up in tears and that she was really interested in my view. To be very honest, there was a lot that I couldn't make sense of and I really think that things would be very different if this situation came about where we knew that we only had a few hours to live. I would be really very interested in the views of you guys who watch a lot of movies.  I didn't end up in tears and actually laughed where I think that I was supposed to cry. Perhaps I really am getting old and cranky!

GM, if the world is going to end, come visit me and we'll give it a great sendoff! 

Well, I accepted that dare, and sadly, Doed Snoe was in my humble estimation, okay. Two stars. A handful too many Evil Dead references, and intestines too often used as props.  But not bad.

See #2 as soon as you can.  #1 is just a good lead in.  Sort of like Evil Dead 2 leading to Army of Darkness.

Challenge accepted. Meanwhile...

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

A remake, colourful and shiny. Within minutes people are already running and screaming. 

Now, as we all know, in the beginning there was Night of the Living Dead, and it was an actual horror movie, intended to make you feel bad. (Which it did. I was bummed by how it ended.) It was remade in 1990 as a much more fun film. Oh, there was screaming and so forth, but by 1990 B-movie makers had discovered "helpless girl transcends role to become ninja amazon lone survivor". Which brings us to...

Hell (2011)

Post the global warming heat apocalypse, people are very mean to one another. Very, very. But in a rather more egalitarian fashion than totalitarian. Thus, an interesting German survival horror movie. No camp at all, and no zombies, but plenty of existential worry plus running and screaming. 

Dissenting opinion.

Dead Snow 2 is indeed different from Dead Snow 1. But, like 1, I want to say "comedy monster movie", not zombie movie. Granted, there is precedent for zombies with intelligent motive. Witness Bub and (I had to look this up) Big Daddy. But Herzog is just too organized. He's a cursed person, not a zombie.

Actually, it's been a while since I last saw them, but by this rule the Evil Dead "zombies" are probably not zombies either.

Night of the Living Dead (the remake), 28 Days Later, and World War Z (however much it differed from the book) - these are zombie movies. Zombies are impersonal exterior forces made horrible by their representation as entropy in human form. They are what is disgusting in the form. The Form! And how it corrupts the psyche. But they can't themselves have a psyche. Typically, zombies are thought redeemable if they cling somehow to a psyche. And Herzog, who has a significantly human but evil psyche, is thus not a zombie.


As a gross-out comedy monster movie, Dead Snow 2 is okay. Needs an associated drinking game. 

Well, if we are going to list odd zombie flicks, how about "Black Sheep"...zombie killer sheep....