There's something in the mist....

The blogosphere is all a-twitter on big holidays like today, chomping at the bit to post something related/themed/marginally relevant. Never one to stand back as the lemmings rush over the cliff, MovieZeal is joining the fray by cataloging all of the horror reviews we’ve written over the past 9-10 months. Not surprisingly, Luke has written almost every one.

Wondering what to watch tonight at your Halloween party tonight? Concerned that The Strangers might be as bad as everyone says it is? Inquisitive about whether The Orphanage is really that awesome? Look no further, my gore-hungry friends.

Oh, and Happy Halloween. Hit the jump for the goods.
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Whether or not this episode is any fun to listen to, I don’t know, but we kinda think it’s our best episode yet. For better or worse, our ability to surf down pop culture rabbit trails is on full display here. What other podcast jumps from a discussion of zorks (not corks, zorks) to the Super Mario Bros. movie to the musical stylings of Roxette? It’s either amazing or….well, I’m just going to stick with amazing.

Some highlights:

• Mark Wahlberg talks to animals.
• We discuss who would have been a worse casting choice than Mila Kunis (hint: starts with a ‘P’ and rhymes with Farishilton).
• Heather waxes nostalgic on the moment she discovered that Samus was really a girl.
• We each offer up our deepest insights as to why video game adaptations consistently suck.
• Luke’s talent for pulling puns out of thin air continues to amaze.
• We discover that Super Mario Bros. has a surprisingly awesome soundtrack; and then proceed to take a trip down memory lane through it (early ’90s glam rock FTW!).
• Also, we sing some. This point is, arguably, not a highlight

 

 Episode 8 - Video Games [54:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Every Wed. at 11AM CST we play this game. Easy poster worth 1 point, hard poster worth 2. Whoever has the most points at the end gets a personal foot massage from Luke, quite possibly the most tantalizing prize in the history of prizes. Also, congrats to taybo20 for getting on the scoreboard last week. He certainly worked hard enough for it.

Went with a bit of a minimalist aesthetic this week. I’ll be interested to see if the Hard poster actually is hard or if someone guesses it right out of the gate.

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Why? Because we like you guys. Really. We do. And First Look Studios has graciously agreed to give a copy of Transsiberian away to one super-duper-awesome-special MovieZeal reader. The film stars Ben Kingsley, Woody Harrelson, and Emily Mortimer; it’s a twisty little neo-noir thriller set in the Siberian wilderness; it’s directed by Brad Anderson, who’s last film was the extremely underrated The Machinist; and Luke gave it a nice 3 1/2 stars in his review.

In order to be eligible, just leave a comment on this post and be sure to use a valid email address. That’s it. Just leave a comment (duplicate comments will be punished with fire & brimstone, however). We’ll randomly select one of the entries and announce the winner a week from today. Piece. ‘O. Cake.

You can find more information on the film at its official website and you can watch the wicked-cool trailer here. Transsiberian hits DVD and Blu-ray on November 4th, a week from today.

When I was in high school, parts of all four of my summers were taken up with attending a music camp near Philadelphia. I considered this place to be the best place on earth not just because it was full of people who “spoke my language”, but because of the eccentric one-of-a-kind artists I found there. One person in particular was especially scintillating and I tried my hand at making an amateur documentary about him.

I was reminded of that little movie more than once while watching Jennifer Venditti’s Billy the Kid, a documentary about a high school boy so socially awkward and downright different that watching him on the screen can be … well … painful.
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I really love graphic novels (comics, trade paperbacks, whatever your nomenclature of choice is). Part of it has to do with how busy I am; between my family, my job, and regaling all of you with my sparkling prose, when I sit down to read something the last thing I want to pick up is War and Peace. I have the brand new translation in gorgeous hardback even, it’s sitting on the nightstand next to my bed, and I want to read it, but it requires an effort of will that is currently being expended elsewhere. Tolstoy will have to wait.

Currently I’m reading The Walking Dead (hattip to Matt Gamble), essentially what you would get if Night Of the Living Dead never ended. I dip into Fell by Warren Ellis on occasion (hattip to Graham Culbertson), and I have Adolf by Osama Tezuka waiting in the wings. One of these days I’d like to try my hand at actually writing a graphic novel. I just have to find someone who can draw.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Elite Squad
I’ve been jonesing for this one ever since it won top prize at the Berlin Film Festival (although some were baffled by its victory). Take the geography and visual punch from City of God but place your protagonists on the other side of the law and Elite Squad is what you get. Hyper-stylized, politically ambiguous, and raucous entertainment: please sir, can I have some more now.

Recommended if you liked City of God, City of Men, or Dirty Harry.

Billy the Kid –
Social awkwardness comes to life in this documentary about Billy, a one-of-a-kind teen cutting his own personal swath through the world. At times fascinating, at times painful, this is an intimate look into the life and mind of someone who is definitely not like you at all.

Recommended if you liked Crumb, Stevie, or American Teen.

Red
There is something deeply gratifying about the revenge genre. The intellectual in me knows – knows! – that revenge is poisonous and unsatisfying, but sometimes you just want to see the bad guy get it. Brian Cox tries his hand at a little righteous payback here, the difference being that the titular “Red” is a dog. I could probably watch Brian Cox read the IRS tax code, so watching him exact sweet vengeance is a no-brainer.

Recommended if you liked Sleepers, Death Wish, or Deathproof.

Tuya’s Marriage
Oddly enough, this film won the exact same award that Elite Squad won the following year, the Golden Bear. I love films that open a window into another world, and Tuya’s Marriage takes a deep look into complicated relationship within inner Mongolia, something I certainly know less than nothing about. When Tuya’s husband is crippled in an accident, she sets out to find a new mate with one condition: he has to take care of both her and her ailing husband. Although Mongolian romance is foreign to me, I imagine that is just as tall of an order as it would be here.

Recommended if you liked Mongol (the romantic bits) or The Cave of the Yellow Dog (the nomadic life bits).

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This review was originally published July 13th, 2008

Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth has been used and abused by filmmakers for years. Who could forget the phony Scottish accent of standard crooner Pat Boone in the 1959 adaptation? Or last year’s 188-minute Hallmark Channel event? Even Wishbone got his paws on Jules Verne once or twice. Walden Media’s new take on on the story is less a conventional movie than a chance to show off what Real-D 3D projection can do. In fact, it functions best when computer graphics are exploded onto the screen and little firefly-birds are flapping their luminous blue wings in your face. There’s novelty to it for sure, but in the end it smells a bit like second-rate amusement park sideshow.
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Chances are, you already know if you’re going to see this movie or not. At this point in its run the Saw franchise is a known quantity, offering up no surprises, just new traps and barely coherent bits of moralizing. It has come to be a comfort food of sorts; that is, if you’re part of Leatherface’s family. That being said, let me put off judgment on the fifth film in this gruesome juggernaut for just a few moments and talk about the series in general.

Since the first film gained enough popularity to be talked about on the national scene it’s been slapped with the label “torture porn” and talked about as the harbinger of this new horror subgenre. To me, torture porn is a term that elicits a very specific response. If standard “porn” (or should it now be termed “sexual porn”?) has no purpose other than to bring us real (or realisitc) images of people copulating, then “torture porn” should have no pretenses with regard to character or plot, just hack, slash, thank you ma’am. When applied to Saw this has always felt a bit off. The film plays out more like a gory Twilight Zone episode than Faces of Death with a moral. (if you can dig that minor distinction) The blood is always deployed in the service of teaching a lesson, nor is it overly gratuitous. Of course the same could be said of the sex in a porn flick, but I doubt anyone has ever uttered the phrase, “There is just too much fornication in this pornographic film!” At any rate, I personally don’t buy the Saw movies as torture porn. It seems to me that the intent behind them is to deliver thrills along with a twist-filled storyline.
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For more ooey-gooey Max Payne goodness, be sure to give Episode 8 of the MovieZeal Podcast a listen, wherein we discuss the Payne-meister and other failed video game adaptations.

At some point in the film, the titular Max Payne is forced to enter a spooky apartment in search of his ex-partner who may have Important Information about who really killed his family. Gun drawn, he whips around darkened corners, malicious shadows stalking him across the wallpaper, at which point my colleague turned to me and whispered, “Why don’t people ever turn on the lights?” Which makes perfect sense. If there’s a perp in there, the darkness is only helping him, so why not cut on the lights and even the playing field? Duh.
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News item of the day: Flobots are friggin’ amazing. Okay, I promise that’s the last time I’ll do that. It was just a mind-blowing show, that’s all.

Anyway, this week, you have the choice between watching people get tortured (Saw V), watching cops make torturous decisions (Pride and Glory), watching a movie with torturous suspense (Passengers), and — well — actually getting tortured yourself (High School Musical 3).

High School Musical 3
Of course, if you know me at all, you know I was kidding about that last part, because I FRIGGIN’ LOVE HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL!!! I do have to admit that I finally saw High School Musical 2 the other day, and it was a bit disappointing — but I won’t let that keep me away from the franchise’s big-screen debut. Yes, debut. What started as a little one-shot on the Disney Channel has grown into a cultural phenomenon. This, my friends, is true grassroots. Also, what I just said made absolutely no sense. I must be blinded by the awesomeness of High School Musical. !!!!!!

Recommended if you’re a ten-year-old, or if, like me, you’re a really creepy adult who thinks he’s a ten-year-old and routinely terrifies his wife with his obsession over High School Musical

Passengers
Anne Hathaway is a therapist that has to counsel the survivors of an airline crash that’s shrouded in mystery…and then all the passengers start disappearing one by one. How is she going to solve the mystery? Don’t worry — Anne hath a way. (I always wanted to make that joke…and then when the moment finally comes…wow, this is all just too much for me.)

Recommended if you like mysterious airline crash stories like Lost or Fringe

Pride and Glory
In yet another family-vs.-justice crime movie, Edward “HULK SMASH” Norton has to choose between turning in his own brothers and…um…not turning in his own brothers. How’s that for high drama? This one also features Collin Farrell and a poster that looks like the one for last year’s We Own the Night.

Recommended if you liked any crime movie to come out since The Godfather

Saw V
So, wait…this guy’s still around? Are they still actually making new Saw movies, or just splicing together old footage from the first couple? And more importantly, would the fans notice if they did? Seriously, how many different variations on the “torture porn” genre can there be? Then again, the creative potential for “regular porn” was exhausted some time in the 1970s, and they’re still making more of those. So there must be something I’m missing here. I wonder if this has anything to do with those F’s I got in my business classes?…

Recommended if you haven’t taken that ICP album out of your car stereo since 1998

Near the top of any of list of 2008’s most acclaimed foreign film offerings is a new Czech film by famed director Jirí Menzel titled I Served the King of England. Known best for his masterful 1966 adaptation of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel Closely Watched Trains (available on DVD from The Criterion Collection), Menzel again refers to Hrabal’s work as inspiration for this historically panoramic fable.
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You know the drill: every Wednesday at 11AM CST we run this little game. EASY poster worth 1 point, HARD poster worth 2.

In combing the ‘net for movie posters, you tend to notice certain recurring motifs. One of those is the “Big Honking Hand With A Gun” marketing ploy, wherein a character points a obscenely large gun at you, the prospective audience, thereby titillating you with promises of gratuitous violence. Exciting, no? The two posters below (obviously) feature both a big hand and a big gun. Hopefully I’ve chosen wisely and you won’t figure them out within 15 minutes.

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The DVD case for The Rape of Europa is adorned with one of those generic marketing taglines you’ve seen countless times before: Imagine the world without our masterpieces. It slides right past the eyes like most focus-grouped Hollywood fluff does, but halfway through this seemingly above-average History Channel doc, one realizes those 6 words hold unexpectedly chilling ramifications.
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Slow yet diverse week on the DVD front. We have reviews for three of them. In other fascinating news, here’s what I’ve been watching this week:

• Max Payne - Not as bad as it could have been, but not as good as it had the potential to be. Fire the casting director and the screenwriter and they might have actually made a decent film.
• A Tale of Two Sisters - Some of the most effective art direction in a horror film that I’ve seen since The Shining, it was nevertheless disappointing that it had to stoop to using two of my biggest horror-genre pet peeves. I won’t ruin the “twist,” but suffice to say it’s not that far from the tried-and-true “it was all a dream” copout.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender - I started watching this because the episodes were short and I could watch it with my daughter. Midway through the second season I was hooked, and now all I can think about is getting home from work to watch more. I’ll be sad when it’s over. Excellent animation and surprisingly deep themes for a kids show.
• Dexter - Pure crack. Michael C. Anthony Michael Hall is brilliant. Not sure how I feel about Jimmy Smits yet, but Dexter is Dexter is Dexter and I’m gonna watch it anyways.

So, what have you been watching this week, and are you interested in any of the below DVDs?

The Incredible Hulk -
I’m a teensy bit ashamed of that 4-star rating up there. I certainly enjoyed the film in the theater, but it hasn’t held up that well in my mind, and I imagine a second viewing would drop that rating a half-star if not a full one. It was less ambitious than Ang Lee’s failed attempt at the green giant, but more successful. The opening scene with the Hulk is the best in the flim (part action, part suspense, part horror), and it’s a bit disappointing that the rest of the picture doesn’t work as well.

Recommended if you’re so obsessed with the Hulk that you only buy canned vegetables with pictures of the Jolly Green Giant on the side.

| Buy The Incredible Hulk on Blu-ray

Flight of the Red Balloon
I am thoroughly unfamiliar with Taiwanese director Hsiao-hsien Hou’s filmmography and I know little about this one, so I’m going mainly off of critical pedigree and the raves I’ve been reading for the past few months. This film is in French, his second foreign language outing, and deals with a boy, his babysitter, and the ethereal red balloon that follows them through their imaginary adventures.

Recommended if you like Italian and French cinema in general, which Hou’s films are often likened to.

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“It’s a monster! Run for your lives!”

Apart from being a quote from Frankenstein, those are also the words uttered by Marvel and company following the 2003 release of Ang Lee’s Hulk. Perhaps an obvious pairing on paper, the Asian auteur of angst took significant liberties with the property and rendered a film that was well written, superbly acted, ambitious, and…absolutely no fun. And in the comic book genre, ‘no fun’ is just another way of saying ‘franchise killer’. “Hulk Poodles!” became the bitter rallying cry of spurned fanboys the globe over.

So Avi Arad and the boys at Marvel (not content to let one of their most recognizable properties be remembered primarily for Nick Nolte shooting lightning bolts out of his eyes) turned to a director guaranteed never to make anything in his career that even remotely resembles Brokeback Mountain – Louis Letterier, the French action junkie responsible for the Transporter franchise and Unleashed. With a lot more SMASH and a lot less pathos, The Incredible Hulk is as obvious an apology for Hulk as The Last Crusade was for The Temple of Doom, which both helps and hurts it.
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This review was originally published June 2nd, 2008.

A few months ago, there was some controversy surrounding Michael Haneke’s remake of his own film Funny Games. In addition to the obvious disagreement over the film’s inherent value, many questioned why Haneke felt the need to remake himself. Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers answers this question definitively: Because, if you don’t (and often even if you do), Hollywood will. And they’ll royally screw it up.
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This review was originally published April 20th, 2008.

“Science is an intellectual dead end, you know? It’s a lot of little guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs on foundation grants.” –Woody Allen, Sleeper

How did that quote make you feel? Love it? Hate it? Did you feel liberated by it, or threatened? How you answer those questions will probably determine how you feel about Ben Stein’s comedy-documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. With his latest project, Stein has chosen to question authority, but he’s chosen an authority that’s not particularly popular to question. I’m referring to the scientific establishment (a loaded phrase to be sure, but certainly an accurate one, at least divorced from all connotation), and specifically the field of evolutionary biology. Odds are if this sounds like something you’ll enjoy, you’ve already gone to see Expelled—but regardless of how you feel about its arguments and its conclusions, I think it’s always fun to see some holes shot in authority figures, don’t you?
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This is a 2nd Opinion of the film. Luke Harrington published a critical review which can be found here.

Try as we might to be objective, I believe that it’s impossible to view a film through any lens other than that of your own understanding. I think that realizing and admitting this is vitally important to having truthful conversations about movies of any caliber. Films about real life figures only compound the issue, as they require us to consciously bring our outside life into the screening room. With that in mind I am going to offer up some information about myself that will hopefully give you a better idea of where I am coming from in regards to my thoughts on this film. On Facebook, in the about me section, I’ve chosen to define my personal political views as “liberal to a fault” and my religious views are summed up thusly: “No, thank you, I’m doing fine.” What does that mean in regards to Oliver Stone’s W.? Primarily, that I was really looking forward to a knock-down, take no prisoners approach to mocking the titular President. In the heat of the current political climate I was hoping to see Stone take the gloves off and stick it to the far right. Instead of getting my rocks off to a leftist revenge fantasy (how’s that for an oxymoron?) I got something better: understanding.
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It sounds too lurid to be true. It seems as if it had to come from the mind of Stephen King. Possibly it could be an urban legend, but not something that actually, really happened. As horrifying as it is, in 2003 a woman in Texas seemed intent on proving the old cliche that truth is stranger than fiction. On her way home from a night of partying the young woman struck a homeless man with her car. In a bizarre example of physics at play the homeless man became lodged in the broken windshield. Horrified, the woman drove home, parked her car in the garage, and went inside to try to sleep the events of the evening off, the whole time leaving the homeless man stuck in a horrible limbo, slowly dying in her garage. Given the facts of the case you’d think that a movie based on these events would be a humorless exercise, delving into the depths of human depravity and suffering. If it had been directed by anybody except Stuart Gordon, I’d be inclined to agree with you.
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Okay, time for some shameless self-promotion, in case there’s anyone out there who just can’t get enough Luke (I know there’s one of you)! I finally snagged a paid writing job. Okay, so it’s freelance, and it pays beans, and I’m writing about music, not movies (which is okay — perhaps someday there will be a MusicZeal.com…) — but I don’t think that’s too shabby for a guy who’s only been out of college a year with a worthless B.A. in English and film. I’m covering music for a local e-news outlet. I’m new to the music beat, so I’m still learning, but here’s a link to one of my better pieces, if you’re interested (note: I didn’t come up with that grammatically nonsensical title). You can find more by clicking on “Entertainment” in the sidebar.

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, here are the movies coming out this week:

Sex Drive
Yet another comedy about a dorky teen boy trying to get laid? Why is this on the top of my list? Well, put simply, I watched the trailer, and it looks HILARIOUS. The premise is vaguely original as well: Josh Zuckerman is a recent high school grad who’s never had a girlfriend, but has a girl on the Internet convinced that he’s a hulking football player. And then he has to meet her in real life. Oops.

Recommended if you liked Superbad, American Pie, or Porky’s

Morning Light
Yeah, this one is my second choice for the week, but I can’t imagine that many other people will be interested; it’s this high on the list primarily because I love sailing. Roy E. Disney, an avid yachtsman himself (it’s hard not to have bags of money to spend on yachts when your uncle built one of the world’s biggest corporate empires ever), produced this little documentary about the youngest crew ever to compete in the Transpacific Yacht Race. It sounds like a fun time, as long as you like two or more of the following: 1) documentaries, 2) sports movies, 3) boating.

Recommended if you liked Spellbound, White Squall, or Bra Boys

The Secret Life of Bees
Um…Dakota Fanning is a white girl raised by Queen Latifah? Or something? Sounds like a cross between Waiting to Exhale and The Jerk. Call it Waiting to Exhale the Jerk.

Recommended if you’re wondering whether Alicia Keys can act (my money says no, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for her)

Max Payne
These last two are pretty much tied, as far as I’m concerned — how do you choose between a movie based on a videogame that no one’s cared about in several years and a movie based on a president that no one’s cared about in several years? Here’s a discussion question for the board below: is it possible for a movie based on videogame to be good? My standard answer is no, since a film adds nothing new to a videogame (unlike it does when you adapt, say, a novel). Anyway, as per the film’s website, this one stars Mark Wahlberg as the “maverick cop.” John McCain was unavailable for comment.

Recommended if you liked Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Hitman, or Resident Evil

W.
Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) stars as the president of some obscure banana republic called the “United States of America.” Okay, serious question: does anyone really want to see this movie? Whether you love Bush or hate him, this just feels like really bad timing. The general vibe seems to be that people are simply done withe the guy — people are sick of hearing about him and ready for a change, regardless of whether they lean right or left. Even if this movie mercilessly mocks him (and I don’t think it will), Bush-bashing hasn’t been trendy for several years. Am I wrong? Let me know what you think.

Recommended if you liked JFK, Nixon, or Primary Colors