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I couldn’t have said it better myself…
Tag Archives: Film
Double Your Pleasure With Two Tom Hardys in Legend!
Will Tom Hardy finally get his Oscar nomination this year? Well, he has already starred in one of the best films of the year, Mad Max: Fury Road, though I would argue that Charlize Theron is the one who deserves to be nominated for that film.
However, Hardy may have a chance of scoring a nomination for his performance in the fact-based gangster film, Legend! Not only is Hardy playing a real-life killer (which always seems to be a good way to get nominated, just ask Steve Carell) but he’s also playing twins!
That’s double the Tom Hardy!
Legend will be released in October.
Film Review: The Stranger (dir by Guillermo Amoedo)
Meh.
Who cares?
That was my main reaction to watching The Stranger, a film from Chile that, for some reason, is set in Canada. (There’s absolutely nothing about the film that brings to mind Canada. The film was obviously shot in South America and almost all of the actors are Chilean. And, just in case you forget, they’ve all been badly dubbed.) The Stranger is full of atmosphere and it does attempt to do something new with the vampire genre so I guess we should give it some credit for that…
No, sorry.
Can’t do it.
Listen, I love horror movies. I think that some of the most interesting films being made today are coming out of the South American film scene. And, in the past, I’ve even defended Eli Roth, who is credited as being one of the producers on this film. But I’m sorry — The Stranger is an incredibly boring and unpleasant film.
And yes, I fully realize that the best horror films are meant to be nightmarish and, as a result, somewhat unpleasant to watch. However, there’s a difference between the stylized violence of a good giallo and the relentless sadism of The Stranger. There’s no real point or style to the overbearing violence and gore in The Stranger and, as a result, it gets pretty boring after just a few minutes.
Of course, another huge difference between good horror and The Stranger is that The Stranger takes itself way too seriously. Again to return to the Italian horror comparison, the best giallo films always featured quirky characters, clever dialogue, and plot twists that took us by surprise. They were exercises in pure style that celebrated cinematic excess. The Stranger is so somber and grim and serious that it all becomes a bit tedious to deal with.
Also, an innocent black cat is brutally murdered about 30 minutes into a film. Then, towards the end of the film a dog is similarly attacked and left to die in the desert. And you really don’t get the feeling that there was any reason for these scenes, beyond the fact that the director needed to keep up with his onscreen death quota.. If you’re going to portray an innocent animal being killed by your hero, at least make sure it’s absolutely necessary to the plot. Otherwise, it just comes across as pointless sadism.
Anyway, the movie itself is about a stranger (Christobal Tapia Montt), who shows up in what we’re told in a small Canadian town. He’s looking for his runaway wife, who he discovers has subsequently died. The man has secrets of his own, of course. He hates the sunlight. He apparently cannot be killed by ordinary methods. His blood can heal others but it also tends to transform them into being blood-thirsty monsters. Yes, the man is obviously a vampire but the film never comes out and admits that.
There’s all sorts of small town intrigue going on but I’m not going to talk about it because it was tedious enough just trying to watch it. Ultimately, the whole film is basically just a collection of scenes of people threatening the stranger, the stranger looking somber, and then people threatening each other. None of the actors are particularly memorable and very few of them speak in their own voices. One gets the feeling that the Chilean cast could not sound properly Canadian and so a bunch of American actors were hired to overdub everyone’s dialogue. (I say American because I heard many regional American accents but not a single Canadian one. All of this again makes you wonder why this film was set in Canada as opposed to some place like maybe Chile.) The dubbing is atrocious, with the voices rarely matching either the facial expressions or the body language of the original actors.
This movie is a total mess. Sorry, Eli. I still think that the Hostel films have a lot more to say about America’s place in the world than most people are willing to admit but ultimately, The Stranger is a disappointment.
What Lisa Watched Last Night #125: Perfect High (dir by Vanessa Parise)
Last night, I watched the first post-Deadly Adoption Lifetime movie, Perfect High!
Why Was I Watching It?
Because it was on Lifetime and it was about a dancer, of course!
What Was It About?
Amanda (Bella Thorne) is a suburban teen who loves to dance. But, after an injury, she gets hooked on prescription pills. She also becomes best friends with druggie Riley (Daniela Bobadilla), Riley’s boyfriend Nate (Ross Butler), and Carson (Israel Broussard). Soon, Carson and Amanda are dating and they become perhaps the most boring couple in history. Of course, since this is Lifetime, the prescription drug abuse quickly leads to heroin, death, and a minute-long rehab scene.
What Worked?
The film did a good job of capturing both the excitement of dancing and the sheer terror of being injured and knowing that, as a result, you can’t do what you love.
What Did Not Work?
The whole movie was just so predictable and so slow. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that a Lifetime film about teenagers using drugs isn’t going to exactly be unpredictable. From the start of the film, I knew that one of the four friends was going to have to die and I easily guessed which one it was going to be. That’s just the way it works, somebody always has to die in these films.
But the problem is that we are now living in a post-Deadly Adoption age. After seeing every single Lifetime convention skewered last week, it’s hard to go back to taking any of those conventions seriously. The whole time I was watching the film, I kept expecting Will Ferrell to suddenly show and start bellowing, “SHE NEEDS HER MEDICINE!”
As well, Perfect High moved way too slowly for its own good. As characters, Amanda, Riley, Nate, and Carson all fell flat. Even before they ended up as drug addicts, they seemed like they wouldn’t be that interesting of a group to hang out with. Before doing drugs, they spent all their time laying on the couch. After doing drugs … well, that couch became even more comfortable. For an anti-drug film to really work, you have to mourn what the character could have been if not for their addictions. But, in Perfect High, everyone seemed to be just as dull regardless of whether they were high or not.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
The movie was about a red-haired dancer who popped too many pills in high school. Oh my God, just like me!
Lessons Learned
Stay away from that heroin, kids. Of course, I already knew that. Even when I was going through my phase where I wanted to experiment with and try everything, I still knew better than to ever use heroin. (Actually, to be honest, I should say that if I had ever had the opportunity to try heroin, I would have politely declined. Fortunately, I never even had to deal with being offered heroin, which I guess is the benefit of going to both a high school and a college where everyone was too busy smoking weed to worry about harder drugs.) Whenever I see a movie like Perfect High, I always wonder how the characters involved have never seen any other movies about heroin abuse.
I mean, don’t they watch Lifetime!?
Ted 2 Sucks!
Well, I think the title of this review pretty succinctly sums up my reaction to Seth McFarlane’s latest film, Ted 2. Thanks for reading and have a good…
Oh, really?
Okay, I’ve been told that I have to try to think up at least 300 words to say about Ted 2. Otherwise, in the eyes of Rotten Tomatoes, we’re not a legitimate film blog.
*sigh*
Okay.
Anyway, Ted 2 is the story of a talking teddy bear (voice by Seth McFarlane) who likes to smoke weed and … well, that’s about it. He’s just gotten married to Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) and they’re having trouble because Tami-Lynn wants a baby but Ted, being a teddy bear, doesn’t have any reproductive organs. So, he and his friend John (Mark Wahlberg) decide to give Tom Brady a handjob so they can still his sperm. But, it turns out, none of that was important because the state of Massachusetts claims that Ted is not even a person. Instead, he’s just “property.” So, now, John and Ted and their lawyer, Sam (Amanda Seyfried), are fighting the courts to win Ted his civil rights. And then Giovanni Ribisi wants to kidnap Ted and Morgan Freeman shows up and says a few words. And the film is narrated by Patrick Stewart because it’s funny to hear Patrick Stewart curse and…
Oh! And Liam Neeson shows up. He’s a customer at the store where Ted works as a cashier. Liam wants to know if Trix are only for kids. The joke here is that it’s Liam Neeson and he’s asking about cereal. Ha ha.
Oh! And there’s two guys who shows up at New York Comic Con so that they can beat up “nerds.” During every scene set at Comic Con, they’re in the background beating people up and insulting them. And the two guys are gay! See, they’re bullies and they’re gay! And they’re beating up random people at Comic Con, just because they can! Hilarious, right?
Ted 2 spends a lot of time trying to convince us that Ted’s struggle to be recognized as a person is actually meant to be a metaphor for the American civil rights movement. But, honestly, I get the feeling that McFarlane relates more to the bullies than he does to any oppressed minority. As he previously proved with his TV shows and A Million Ways To Die In The West, McFarlane is only interested in going after easy targets. He’s your typical white male hipster who thinks that, because he voted for Obama, he can get away with telling racist jokes.
And, before anyone misunderstands, I wouldn’t mind McFarlane’s humor if it was at least funny or original. But instead, it’s the same stupid jokes that he always tells. Seth McFarlane’s comedic technique is to basically drag things out until viewers laugh from pure exhaustion. Is it effective? Well, there are people who continue to praise and defend him and Seth certainly has made a lot of money off of his act. So, obviously, there are people who respond to this. But to me, Seth McFarlane’s humor just feels lazy.
Ted 2 lasts 128 minutes. That’s over two hours devoted to a concept that feels more appropriate for a five-minute skit. Interesting enough, the first Ted was tolerable because it focused on Mark Wahlberg’s Johnny. Ted was just a supporting character and he worked as a metaphor for Johnny’s struggle to choose between growing up or being a happy slacker. (The first Ted was all about Johnny falling in love with Mila Kunis, whose character is rather cruelly dismissed at the start of Ted 2.) In Ted 2, Ted is the central character and once you get over the fact that he’s a teddy bear who drops multiple F bombs, there’s really not much to the character. It helps, of course, that we only have to listen to McFarlane. We don’t have to look at his imminently punchable, oddly lineless face. But, to be honest, even McFarlane’s voice has become grating. It’s just so self-satisfied and smug.
I saw Ted 2 with the blogger also known as Jedadiah Leland. Over the course of 128 hours minutes (it just felt like hours), we each laughed once. Not surprisingly, both laughs were inspired by Wahlberg’s dumb-but-sweet performance. Now, I will admit that the rest of the audience laughed a bit more than we did. But still, there was a definite atmosphere of resignation in the theater. You could literally hear the people thinking, “Oh, Ted just made a joke about black people. Better laugh now so everyone knows that I get whatever the Hell this is supposed to be. After all, those tickets weren’t free…”
What’s the word count now?
758?
Cool.
That’s enough words for me to say, “Ted 2 sucks!”
Revisiting an Old Fiend: THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK
Recently I switched from cable to DirecTV. As part of my package, I’ve officially joined the DVR generation. This is like being in heaven for an old movie buff like myself. Now I can record films of interest no matter what time they’re on and enjoy them at my leisure. Especially those older black & white gems that air mainly in the wee-wee hours. I can catch up with some classics I’ve only read about over the years but never had the opportunity to view, and those I only have vague memories of watching decades ago on snowy looking UHF channels.
THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK falls into the latter category. This 1941 Columbia film was directed by the criminally underrated Frenchman Robert Florey and stars everybody’s favorite madman Peter Lorre. The movie’s a very early example of 40s film noir, as was another Lorre vehicle, 1940’s STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR.
Lorre plays Janos Szabo, a newly arrived Hungarian immigrant watchmaker, come to America to find work and live the American dream. He’s befriended by police Lt. O’Hara (Don Beddoe), who buys the naïve newcomer a five dollar lunch and directs him to the Excelsior Palace, a low rent hotel. When another border’s negligence causes the joint to go up in flames, Janos is trapped inside, and suffers a horrible disfigurement.
O’Hara feels responsible for the poor guy’s plight and writes a message on one of his calling cards for Janos to contact him when he’s released from the hospital. Now unable to find work due to his terribly scarred visage, Janos goes to the waterfront, contemplating suicide. He meets up with a petty crook named Dinky, who takes a liking to Janos. Dinky has a safe job lined up but falls ill, and asks Janos to take his place. The Hungarian, good with his hands, takes care of business, When Dinky’s former comrades Benson and Watts show up wanting to know why they weren’t in on the score, the four decide to form a crime gang, with Janos (now nicknamed Johnny) as the ringleader. A crime wave ensues, baffling the police, and putting O’Hara under pressure to end the larcenous spree quickly as possible.
Janos wants the illicit dough so he can have plastic surgery and restore his features. A rubber mask is made from his passport photo for him to wear until the doctor returns. When the doc (an uncredited cameo by Frank Reicher, KING KONG’s Captain Englehorn) finally does see Janos, he informs him that the facial nerves have suffered too much damage, and it would take fifteen years before any progress could be made!
Disheartened, Janos leaves the doctor’s office, where he (literally) bumps into Helen Williams. Helen is blind, but she can sense the goodness still inside the scarred master criminal. Eventually, Janos comes clean to her about his face, but not his illegal activities. Helen is played by the beautiful Evelyn Keyes, best known as Scarlet O’Hara’s Younger Sister (the name of her autobiography) in GONE WITH THE WIND.
Now in love with Helen, and with plenty of money stashed away, Janos decides to leave his life of crime behind and settle down in the country. This doesn’t sit well with his former cronies, especially Jeff, the gang’s new leader. When the cop’s calling card (remember?) is found in Janos’s old desk, they fear their former boss has turned stool pigeon. The gang beats and tortures Dinky, the only one who knows Janos’s whereabouts. Dinky spills the beans, and Jeff and company pay a visit to Janos and his new bride. While Jeff delivers a warning, the gang plants a bomb in his car, connected to the radio. Dinky gets dumped to the side of the road, badly beaten and shot, but manages to get to a phone and warn Janos. But it’s too late. While Helen’s unpacking the car, she wants to hear some music, turns on the radio, and KA-BOOM! She sadly dies in Janos’s arms.
Dinky’s still alive though, and tells Janos the gang has chartered a plane and are going on the lam. They take to the air and head west, unaware that Janos has ambushed the pilot and is flying the plane. He lands them smack in the middle of the Arizona desert and tells them he’s stranding them all there to die a slow, painful death. Soon after, O’Hara gets a hot tip (pun intended!)and flies west to discover a gruesome tableau. The gang members are all dead, including Janos, who’s been tied to the plane’s wing. O’Hara finds an explanation note in his little friend’s pocket, along with the five bucks for the lunch O’Hara bought him long ago.
Lorre is superb as a man trapped in circumstances beyond his control, showing a wider range of emotion beyond his standard pop-eyed psychopath roles. Keyes is also good as the doomed Helen, proving she could’ve been a much bigger star with better roles. FACE BEHIND THE MASK features plenty of familiar faces from the Mighty Columbia Arts Players brigade (Beddoe, George E Stone, Cy Schindell, John Tyrell, George McKay). The film’s a brisk 75 minutes of entertainment for lovers of 40s cinema in general, and Lorre in particular. The name Janos, by the way, was obviously inspired from the Roman god Janus, always depicted with two faces!
I’m glad I got to rewatch this movie and enjoy it without all that UHF snow.. I’ve got plenty more lined up in the DVR, and look forward to sharing my impressions of them with you, dear reader. So get that popcorn ready and let’s go to the show!
Trailer: Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
Yep, this again.
4 Shots From 4 Films: Deadly Blessing, The Journey of Natty Gann, The New World, Cristiada
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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Tonight, the film community is in shock following the news of the passing of award-winning composer James Horner. Our latest installment of 4 Shots From 4 Films is dedicated to to the memory of this talented artist.
The four shots below all come from films that feature a score composed by the great James Horner.
Deadly Blessing (1981, dir by Wes Craven)
The Journey of Natty Gann (1985, dir by Jeremy Kagan)
The New World (2005, dir by Terrence Malick)
Cristiada, also known as For Greater Glory (2012, dir by Dean Wright)
Yes, A Deadly Adoption Was A Comedy…
Last night, an article appeared on Mashable in which I was declared to be one of the “20 people who totally get the ridiculousness of Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig’s ‘A Deadly Adoption.” At the time, I was incredibly flattered but also somewhat incredulous. If I was one of the 20 people who understood that the latest Lifetime film, A Deadly Adoption, was meant to be a drier than dry comedy then that meant that there were presumably people out there who did not get the joke.
And how could that be!? I wondered.
In case you missed it, on April 1st, a story was leaked that Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig were secretly making a film for Lifetime. The title of that film was A Deadly Adoption and early reports indicated that it was going to be a serious Lifetime film. Because the story came out on April Fools Day, a lot of us assumed it was a joke.
However, then Will Ferrell announced that no, it was not a joke. But now that news of the film had been leaked, he was prepared to close down production and make sure that the film never saw the light of day. Now, whether Will was being serious in his anger or not is debatable. (It’s easier to imagine Ron Burgundy having that reaction than Will Ferrell.) But, regardless, cooler heads prevailed and soon, Lifetime viewers like me were enjoying commercials that featured Jessica Lowndes pointing a gun at a very grim and bearded Will Ferrell.
As the premiere approached, critics and viewers alike wondered if A Deadly Adoption was meant to be a serious film or if it was going to be a comedy. Those who felt that the film was meant to be serious pointed out that the commercials for the film contained absolutely no hint that it might be a comedy. Those who thought it was a comedy simply said, “Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig.”
As for me, I pretty much knew what A Deadly Adoption was going to be from the minute that I discover it was being produced by the same people behind Spoils of Babylon. And, when I watched the film last night, my suspicions were confirmed. A Deadly Adoption is a drier-than-dry satire, a film that mashes together every single Lifetime movie trope in order to create the ultimate Lifetime experience. A Deadly Adoption gets its laughs by refusing to openly acknowledge that it’s gone totally over-the-top. Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig both give extremely serious performances, with the humor coming from the fact that they are, with extremely straight faces, delivering dialogue and dealing with situations that are both ludicrous and yet very familiar to anyone who has ever spent a weekend binging on Lifetime. The end result is that A Deadly Adoption both satirizes and pays tribute to everything that we love about a good Lifetime film.
(Does that make A Deadly Adoption the Sharknado of Lifetime movies? Technically, yes. But let’s not say that too loudly because Mia Farrow might hear and decide to live tweet the next showing.)
As for the film itself, it tells the story of Robert (Will Ferrell) and his wife, Sarah (Kristen Wiig). Robert is a financial author who is also a recovering alcoholic with anger management issues. (Significantly, everyone always talks about how angry Robert is, despite the fact that we never actually see him lose his temper.) We know that Robert is a writer because he skypes with his agent and tells her stuff like, “Let’s cut chapter four.” Sarah, meanwhile, has a typical Lifetime movie career. She sells organic food at the local farmer’s market. And, like all Lifetime movie heroines, she has a token and obviously doomed gay best friend named Charlie (Bryan Safi).
Years ago, as the result of an accident on a dock, a pregnant Sarah nearly drowned and lost her baby. As a result, Robert is incredibly protective of their other daughter, Sully (Aylvvia Alyn Lind). (As part of the A Deadly Adoption drinking game, take a drink every time Will Ferrell says, “She needs her medicine!”) Robert is also now scared of going out on the water so you better believe that the film’s conclusion is going to involve Robert in a tiny boat.
Anyway, Robert and Sarah want to adopt the unborn child of Bridget (Jessica Lowndes) but what they don’t know is that Bridget has plans of her own. Upon accepting their offer to live with them until she gives birth, Bridget starts to subtly disrupt the lives of Robert and Sarah. That right, she’s obsessed! And, of course, she’s got a redneck boyfriend (Jake Weary) who drives a pickup truck and has a lot of “dangerous” tattoos. And…
Well, I could actually devote a few thousand words to telling you the plot of A Deadly Adoption. A lot of stuff happens. In fact, every single plot point from every single Lifetime film ever made gets used at some point. Everything about this film — from the acting to the direction to the tasteful decor of Robert and Sarah’s house to the almost obsessive focus on Jessica Lowndes’s cleavage — is designed to make this film look like a typical Lifetime film.
The brilliance of it comes from the fact that Ferrell, Wiig, Lowndes, and Weary all deliver their increasingly ludicrous lines with such intense commitment and low-key seriousness. (Kristen Wiig, in particular, is great.) With the exception of one line about lighter fluid and a dance party at the end of the film, there’s nothing in A Deadly Adoption that plays for obvious laughs. Instead, the film is a two-hour inside joke and, if you get the joke, you’re one of the cool kids.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of uncool kids out there and a lot of them did not get the joke. If you check out the comments left on the film’s imdb page, you’ll discover that there’s still a lot of people out there who are wondering whether this was meant to be a serious film or not.
*Sigh*
To quote Ron Burgundy, “GREAT ODIN’S RAZOR!”
(Did he say that? Sounds like something he would say.)
Anyway, to answer those who still do not know — yes, A Deadly Adoption was a comedy.
And it was a brilliant one at that!
This is what I feel like doing whenever people say they don’t know if A Deadly Adoption was supposed to be funny.
Zombeavers Is The Best Zombie Beaver Film Ever!!!!
Of the many deliberately ludicrous and over-the-top nature-gone-made films to be released in the wake of Sharknado, Zombeavers is one of the most impressive. Certainly, it’s probably the best film that will ever made about zombie beavers.
The film takes place in one of those isolated areas of rural America where cell phones don’t work, everyone drives a pickup truck, and nobody would dare be seen without a shotgun in his hands. Of course, if you’ve ever seen a horror movie before than you know that any area this isolated is going to inevitably be ground zero in a mutant beaver attack.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s all John Mayer’s fault. Yes, that’s right, John “Your Body Is A Wonderland” Mayer. He makes his feature film acting debut here, playing a dumbass trucker who, after his truck collides with a deer, ends up losing a barrel of toxic waste. That barrel rolls into a nearby lake where it turns the local beaver population into zombeavers!
(Whenever I watch anything on Netflix, I always turn on the closed captioning. One of the joys of watching Zombeavers came from getting to read sentences like “Zombeavers growl,” at the bottom of the screen.)
Meanwhile, three sorority sisters are spending the weekend at a nearby cabin. Jenn (Lexi Atkins) is depressed because she caught her boyfriend cheating on her. Zoe (Cortney Palm) is sarcastic, uses “bitch” as a term of affection, and owns a puppy named Gosling. (I related to Zoe, despite being a cat person.) Mary (Rachel Melvin) owns the cabin and is determined to have the perfect girls weekend. Unfortunately, those plans are ruined by both the surprise arrival of their boyfriends and a sudden zombeaver attack…
Fortunately, there is a potentially crazy but helpful hunter wandering around the woods. His name is Smyth (“Smyth with a y,” he says upon introducing himself) and he’s played by veteran character actor Rex Linn. Linn doesn’t get much dialogue but he still manages to make every line memorable as he gives a performance that strikes a perfect balance between drama and parody. At one point, Linn delivers a monologue about how, in the 1970s, everyone in the county got “beaver fever.” It’s ludicrous and the joke is so obvious but Linn bring so much commitment to the monologue and to his performance that he sells it.
And really, the same can be said for Zombeavers as a movie. It’s ludicrous. It’s silly. There’s not a single beaver joke that doesn’t, at some point, get made. And yet, the film works. It’s a parody that somehow manages to remain credible. Yes, the zombeavers are intentionally designed to look fake but you still would not necessarily want to come across one at the foot of your bed in the middle of the night. Yes, the characters say a lot of silly things but the cast delivers those lines with both a straight face and a lot of conviction. (In fact, all three of the lead actresses are totally natural and convincing in their roles.) Everyone involved with the film — from the cast to crew — is so committed to the material that it works even when it shouldn’t.
Zombeavers is currently available on Netflix and should be watched by anyone who loves insane monster movies. It’s the best movie about zombie beavers ever made.
