4 Shots From 4 Films: A Trip To The Moon, Moon, Apollo 18, Melancholia

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Happy End of the World Day!

(In certain cultures….)

4 Shots From 4 Films

A Trip to the Moon (1902, dir by Georges Melies)

Moon (2009, directed by Duncan Jones)

Apollo 18 (2011, dir by Gonzalo López-Gallego)

Melancholia (2011, dir by Lars Von Trier)

Arleigh’s 10 Worst Films of 2011

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Arleigh

I’ve been pretty good at avoiding fillms that I knew was going to be awful before I even stepped into the theater so certain films from 2011 that everyone call the worst I probably won’t have on my list since I never saw them. So, such films as Jack & Jill, Bucky Larson and Zookeeper will not make my list since I was smart enough to not pay to watch it.

This ten worst list of 2011 are from films I did see during the year whether in a theater or on video. I couldn’t decide which film was worse than the next so this order doesn’t really determine which was worst. It’s just my way of keeping things organized.

Shark Night 3D – I had high hopes that this film would be 2011’s version of Piranha 3D in that it would be silly, goofy and over-the-top and knew it. Instead it’s tame with it’s PG-13 rating (seriously a film about Sharks eating college kids in 3D gets a PG-13 treatment) and has none of the joie de vivre that Piranha 3D had or the bugnuts craziness that Drive Angry 3D threw at you.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – With a cast that looked to be better than the Orlando Bloom/Keira Knightley one of the original trilogy I thought this new beginning for Capt. Jack Sparrow would breathe new life to the trilogy, but instead we get one of the worst entries in the franchise (that’s saying a lot) and one that ended up wasting the talents of Ian McShane in the role of Blackbeard.
Season of the Witch: I never saw it in the theater after I read Lisa Marie’s review of it. So, I waited until it arrived on Netflix and took a chance that maybe it wasn’t as awful as she said it was. I think she was being kind with her review. This film was awful in it’s awfulness that I couldn’t even enjoy just how bad it was.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon – When I first saw this film I enjoyed enough of the action when it was robot vs robot so all the human interaction part never registered, but as I saw it again on blu-ray I realized just how awful this third entry in the Michael Bay franchise was in a franchise that should’ve been fool-proof. I mean it’s giant robots that transform fighting other similar robots. I think if Shia LeBouf was replaced by someone like Jason Statham I would’ve enjoyed this film more, but Shia’s whining and screeching took away any enjoyment I had from seeing robots fighting.
Cowboys & Aliens – Another film that had a premise tailor-made for the summer blockbuster season with a cast that had Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde (Mmmmm), Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, etc…not to mention Jon Favreau in the director’s chair. I thought that Favreau may have been railroaded and made a scapegoat for some of the failures of Iron Man 2 in 2010, but seeing what he ended up doing with this film made me rethink that maybe Marvel Studios was smart to cut him loose and bring in someone else.
Green Lantern – DC Studios…Geoff Johns…one of the Justice Leaguers. One would think that was recipe for one kick-ass space opera that would rekindle the fun that are superheroes the way Iron Man did in 2008. Instead what we ended up getting was one of the worst superhero films ever made which made Hal Jordan an emo character fighting against a villain who wasn’t terrifying and a cosmic evil that made the Lost smoke monster look horrific in turn. Fuck you DC and Johns for ruining what could’ve been a great franchise.
Arthur – I’m a child of the 80’s so I remember the original Dudley Moore version, but I was willing to give this one a chance. I shouldn’t have and any goodwill Russell Brand got from me with his performance from Get Him to the Greek vanished with this film.
Apollo 18 – Moon rocks with legs!! Nuff said.
Dream House – Another film that I thought was interesting enough to take a chance on despite the trailer pretty much ruining the twist in the story, but I thought it would have an interesting path getting to that twist. Daniel Craig may need to just stick to being James Bond, because he was almost like a cardboard in this film and the rest of the cast weren’t far behind. I never thought Jim Sheridan would ever make a bad film. I guess I was right. He didn’t make a bad film. He made a horrendously awful film.
Priest – This was another film that could’ve been fun fluff or even an entertaining bad film, but it wasn’t either of those. This was directed by Scott Stewart who did the abysmal Legion from 2010. I thought maybe he would do better a second time around adapting a popular Korean manwha title, but I guess the saying is true: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

I’m sure I left out a few other titles that ohters think should be on this list, but those probably I actually enjoyed or weren’t bad enough to bump any of these ten from my list. This list is pretty much almost a full day of my life wasted and me not able to get a refund. It’s near to 24-hours of awful that took a full day off of my lifespan. Ten films which could be the death of me down the line.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Apollo 18 (dir by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego)

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, the long-delayed “found footage” horror film Apollo 18 was finally released at the beginning of this month and critics, both mainstream and not-so-mainstream, have been having a collective orgy in expressing their hated for the film. It currently has a “rotten” rating over on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert — a man who gave the god-awful remake of Straw Dogs a positive review (“better than the original!”) — didn’t care much for it. Over at Hitfix.com, the appropriately named Drew McWeeny practically popped a blood vessel expressing his hatred of the film. (McWeeny followed this up by giving Shark Night 3-D a positive review.) The toadsuckers at AwardsDaily.com haven’t even acknowledged that Apollo 18 exists. (Then again, the folks in charge of that movie site have lately been more obsessed with Barack Obama’s reelection chances than with film.) Yes, everyone’s been busy hating on Apollo 18 but you know what?

I kind of enjoyed it.

As the film’s trailer makes pretty obvious, Apollo 18 is the latest example of the mockumentary horror film. At the start of the film, we get a title card telling us that the film has been edited together from long-classified footage of a secret NASA mission to the moon. At the end of the film, we get another title card inviting us to visit a web site that, presumably, will have more information about how this footage was discovered. The found footage shows us two pleasantly bland astronauts who, once they’ve landed on the moon, find themselves being stalked by some sort of shadowy creature that always seems to be hanging out just slightly out of camera range.

As many critics pointed out, this film’s plot — once you get pass the novelty of where it takes place — is pretty much standard as far as “found footage” horror movies are concerned and yes, Apollo 18 would never have been made if not for the success of Paranormal Activity. However, I still enjoyed Apollo 18 because — unlike the Paranormal Activity films — Apollo 18 is truly an homage to the Grindhouse heart that beats within the whole found footage genre. Whether it’s the gimmicky nature of the film’s storyline or even the attempt to recreate both the Space program and the moon for next to no money, Apollo 18 is a film that belongs in a double feature with some other critically reviled but fun horror film. Much like Ruggero Deodato did with Cannibal Holocaust, director Gonalo Lopez-Gallego artfully uses scratched and overexposed film stock to create the feeling that we actually are watching footage that somebody just happened to come across out in the middle of the desert. The film’s plot is predictable and there’s not a lot of jump-out-of-your-seat scares but, like many good grindhouse films, Apollo 18 does create a palpable feeling of doom that doesn’t let up until the end credits. Even the film’s tongue-in-cheek claims to being factual are, in the end, rather likable.

Apollo 18 may not be a great film but it’s certainly doesn’t deserve the amount of hatred that it’s received. It’s an occasionally enjoyable film that was made by people who, at the very least, seem to understand why the old films of the grindhouse era are still being watched and rediscovered today.