Review of Milk (2008)

Hello and Happy Easter, all! This post is late; my apologies! This is technically my Friday post, but I was so busy at work on Thursday, Friday and yesterday that I didn't get the chance to post the review until now. So let's get on with it!

I reviewed the film "Milk," which is the real-life story of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay man to be elected to California's public office in 1978. The film recounts his life from the time he decided to become a part of the gay rights movement, until his assassination in 1978. The film stars Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, James Franco as his partner Scott Smith, and Josh Brolin as Dan White, a fellow politician who is fiercely conservative and who is basically against everything Harvey Milk stands for.

Pros:
1. Sean Penn was awesome as Harvey Milk. Not just in terms of acting, but he looks just like him, too. The likeness is uncanny, even. In terms of a straight man playing a gay man, it worked out well for him. He was believable, but not over the top.

See?

2. The film includes real footage from gay rights protests, arrests, riots, everything that was going down in San Francisco in the 1960's-1970's. That really made the movie even more emotionally vulnerable than it is by itself.

3. The filmmakers really cared about this project, and it shows in their work. They spent months researching Milk's life, down to what he liked to wear, places he liked to go, and even food he liked to eat. They talked to old friends of Harvey Milk, researched his actual belongings, looked at hours and hours of archival footage, and even bought out the shop that used to be Milk's personal camera shop to use in the film.

4. The cinematography is just lovely. Not only does the film feel like it was made in the 70's, but the lighting of the whole movie adds an ultra-dramatic feel to it. The happy scenes are all very bright, open and vibrant, while the more foreboding scenes are dim and intimate. Seems obvious to film a movie in this way, but they really triumphed in making me feel an entire range of emotions simply with the right lighting.

5. The soundtrack was awesome. Danny Elfman composed the soundtrack, too, which was surprising to me, since he usually doesn't do historical dramas. He's best known for his work with Tim Burton on movies like "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and "Alice in Wonderland." His style is usually more childlike and playful, so the fact that he can go so far as to write a score for a serious drama is a huge - and pleasant - surprise, and really shows his diversity.

6. Josh Brolin was a great Dan White. He was perfect as a super conservative politician who isn't sure how to handle having a gay man in public office. He tries to be friendly to him, but when Milk opposes everything he's working towards, things go sour very quickly.

Cons:

1. I don't want to hate on James Franco, but I have to in this one. His performance felt very much like a straight man trying to play a gay man. I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do, but all of the love scenes with Penn looked a little awkward because you can see how uncomfortable Franco is. And he's not the only offender! Emile Hirsch plays Cleve Jones, one of Milk's disciples, and he too looked very fake playing a gay person.

2. After Milk and Scott Smith break up, Milk meets a troubled youth named Jack Lira, who eventually becomes his next partner. Throughout the movie, Milk is seen as a push over character who can't resist helping out a person in need; however, the character of Jack Lira can be compared to an immature child. Not only are his actions over-acted and over the top, It's a sub-plot that is never explained thoroughly. He meets Jack, a relationship develops, he gets SUPER clingy and then all of the sudden he can't stand being second to Milk's political career, so he hangs himself. It happened so fast that I didn't really understand why they included that sub-plot.

3. It's a true story. It sucks to watch the movie and realize that the same issue that was being argued over then is still being argued over now. And it sucks that if you know the story of Harvey Milk, you know the movie is going to end badly.

And that's it! Thanks for reading! Happy Easter!

Review of Closing Escrow (2007)

Hello all! Sorry about the late post. I decided that an exciting way to start out my week was to get into a pretty horrible car accident, so I've been dealing with insurance people and cops and whatnot. It's been super stressful, as you can imagine. So unfortunately this post is late BUT, it's a good one today. I'll be reviewing a little unknown film called "Closing Escrow," starring Wendi McLendon-Covey ("Reno 911!," "Bridesmaids"), Cedric Yarbrough ("Reno 911!"), April Barnett ("Reno 911!") and a bunch of other genius comedy actors and writers.

"Closing Escrow" is a relatively low-budget mockumentary film about three quirky families who decide to move, and hire three different real-estate agents who are just as quirky - if not more - than the families they're helping find a new place. After a series of unsuccessful open house showings (and crazy shenanigans), all three families and agents bid on the same property, making for an unexpected (and hilarious) climax.

Pretty interesting premise, eh? At first I thought trying to make a movie about real-estate was hard enough to make interesting, let alone a comedy about real-estate. But trust me; the people who wrote "Reno 911!" wrote this movie, so it was in good hands from the beginning.

Pros:

1. Each real-estate agent is funnier than the last. Wendi McLendon-Covey plays Hillary, a kind of Michael Scott character, and she is a white real-estate agent that sells homes to minorities without realizing she's super offensive. She tries very hard to be politically correct, but she's so dense that she doesn't realize that that's what makes her even more offensive.
Ryan Smith plays Richard, a real-estate agent who destroys homes for sale to get the selling price down.  And Bruce Thomas plays Peter, the most normal of the real-estate agents with the perfect life. I'd call him the control in the experiment. He over-acts a bit, but in all he's really the only "normal" character in the movie. Each character is different and hilarious in their own way, and you can't help but watch as they embarrass themselves and everyone around them.
Same goes for the families that are assigned to each real-estate agent. There's an African-American couple who are both attorneys and constantly talk to each other as if they're in court, with the wife being the apparent dominant one in the relationship; the most white bread American church family ever, who is overly attached to their house, and whose father constantly tries to one-up Peter's seemingly perfect life; and the crazy couple, complete with the shy, meek Tom and his rabbit-killing, psycho stalker girlfriend Dawn.

2. Each pairing up of real-estate agent to family couldn't have been more genius. Hillary of course gets paired up with the African-American couple and embarrasses them time and time again with her ignorant attitude. For example, when she first meets the couple she'll be working for, she says "I want you to know that I am YOUR slave; I work for you."
Richard gets paired with the shy guy and his psycho girlfriend, and they have to try to stop him from destroying every potential home they see. He even takes them to houses that aren't considered open houses yet, and breaks into them while people are still living there.
Peter gets paired with the all-American white bread family, and when Allen - the family's father - realizes how perfect Peter's life is, this starts a one-upping mission of epic proportions. Their pairing was also funny to me because Peter is a legitimate real-estate agent that is trying to keep his cool with a client that won't make up his mind (and doesn't intend to). It's even better when you keep in mind that it's a neighbor he wants gone, so he is trying desperately to help him find a house.

3. The fact that it's shot documentary style is what makes it so funny! I totally bought that these crazy and quirky characters were entirely real and totally believable.
Along those same lines, the characters were silly and maybe even extreme at times, but still remained totally believable. I totally think that there are people out there like the characters in this film, and they're probably not exaggerating the personalities of real people.

4. It goes back and forth between the different families and agents, so every scene feels so fresh and even more hilarious than the last, even though you're following the same three families.

Cons:

1. I wish more people knew about this film.

That's about it, folks! This review was short and sweet today, but I hope you liked it! If you hadn't seen or heard of this movie before this (I'm guessing most of you haven't), then GO SEE IT. It's definitely worth checking out. 4 stars for you, "Closing Escrow"! You go, "Closing Escrow"!

Review of V/H/S (2012)

Hello all! I hope all of you had a fantastic weekend! Today I will be reviewing "V/H/S," produced by Bloody Disgusting !! I know this is my third "found footage" style horror film I've reviewed...in a row...but fear not! It is but a coincidence. However, not only is the found footage style super popular right now, but now you can compare the same style of film to see which one would be most fun (and terrifying) to watch! Oh, and side note..."V/H/S" is the most terrifying found footage film I've reviewed so far, if that helps.

 V/H/S is about a group of ruffians who video tape their many exploits, ranging from burglarizing houses to violating women in parking lots. Hoping to up the ante of their criminal activity, the group eagerly takes a job offered by a mysterious third party to break into what is believed to be an abandoned house and steal one rare VHS tape. Once there, they find a room full of televisions turned on to white noise, a dead man in a chair in front of the TVs, and hundreds upon hundreds of dated VHS tapes. The rest of the movie is followed by a series of VHS tapes that are played on the TV while the criminals watch. After every tape is done, it cuts back to the efforts of the criminals trying to find the one tape, all the while being terrorized themselves by a mysterious force. 


Pros:
1. Each VHS tape segment is directed by a different modern horror director. You can see the full list of directors here. That makes the movie a hundred times more terrifying, because even though each tape is a found footage style tape, each segment has a different horror type, ranging from creepy little kids to demons to psycho killers. The fact that they are all found footage style but so different helps intensify the scares without seeming like a recycled trick.

2. Once again, the found footage style is an absolutely effective and terrifying way to go when filming a horror movie. I absolutely buy into the found footage style because people document EVERYTHING nowadays. It's completely believable for someone to capture something terrifying on tape - especially in an intimate setting - because it's just human nature these days to document every experience you ever have.

3. Once the guys get into the house, they find hundreds of VHS tapes, about 10 TVs all stacked up in one room that are all turned on, and a random dead guy sitting in a chair in front of the TVs. It's immediately set up to be completely opposite of what they're expecting. And it's set up to automatically make the VHS tapes scary as cuss. Are the VHS tapes there to distract them so something else can get them? Who put them there? Why? It's truly unsettling.

4. Any gore that was in the movie was completely appropriate and served the story well. Not that gratuitous violence and gore isn't fun to watch sometimes, but I'd rather leave that to the horror comedies and teen slashers of the world. When it comes to a legitimate scary movie, the less gore the better. Your imagination is the most terrifying thing in the world, and when a film maker can leave just enough to your imagination, I bet it can come up with something way more horrifying than anything a film maker can put on the screen.
  
5. Most horror stories are most effective when they are short stories, so each mini-movie was stronger than its flaws. Most of the flaws they had were the same kinds of flaws you would see in a full length horror movie, but they didn't have to put in a bunch of filler to stretch things out, so you don't have a lot of down-time to pick apart the story. 
*Special mention: The bad guy in the "Tuesday the 17th" short. One of the most original versions of a "pure evil" character I have seen. He has human characteristics but can not be caught on film (except as a blur of pixels and TV snow) and can not be killed even though he can be touched and trapped.

Cons:
1. The main story was a little confusing. I get that the group of guys went there to search for a tape, but I was confused as to why there were so many VHS tapes in the house, which is never explained. And by the end of the movie, the audience discovers that the dead guy in the chair isn't actually dead. He's basically a zombie that is controlled by a creature living in the basement. He uses the zombified guy to kill the guys that are watching the tapes, and then the creature...eats the remains? I still don't really know. Some important stuff about main story is definitely not clear enough. It would have been a lot more terrifying if they just cleared up those one or two things.

2. Before the group gets hired to find the tape, they film themselves breaking into houses, forcing girls to flash themselves for the camera, and various other things that are just immature and dumb. These guys look like they're in their late 20's, early 30's, and they're filming themselves throwing rocks at houses and smashing windows? Dumb. Just. Dumb.

3. Once they get into the house where the rare tape is supposed to be located, no one - and I mean NO ONE - ever once says "hey, there's a dead guy in this room; we should probably leave." I'm sorry, but if I was hired to go somewhere, and I found a dead body at said location, you'd better believe I'd be out of there quicker than The Flash on crack. Along those same lines, I don't think anyone has any reaction to the tapes that are played. They just keep watching creepy tape after creepy tape without showing any signs of uneasiness or fear. Sorry guys, NO ONE is that fearless.

4. The fourth short is called "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger," and it's a series of online chat videos between a woman named Emily and her boyfriend James, who's a medical student that lives a few states away from Emily. It starts off with Emily telling James about a mysterious bump on her arm that she can't get rid of, and it reminds her of a wound she received when she was a young girl. James tells her not to mess with it until he comes to visit her so he can check it out. Then strange things start to happen in Emily's apartment in the middle of the night, like mysterious footsteps outside of her room, and seeing a childlike figure running out of her room and slamming the door. She believes that her house is haunted, but her landlord says that no children had ever lived in her apartment before. Later, she tries to make contact with the childlike ghost thing with the help of James, but it knocks her out. Then James leaves his screen and actually appears in Emily's room. He takes a scalpel, cuts her open, and pulls out what looks like a fetus. Then we find out that James was harvesting human-alien hybrid babies using Emily as its incubator. The bump on her arm? A tracking device for the aliens. The end of the tape is another video chat with James talking to a different girl who is telling him about a strange bump on her arm, so it's assumed that James is at it again.

Okay...what?

First off, the ghost things are never explained to the audience. They're pale faced, black haired, weird little kids (there are multiple) and they don't belong anywhere in the story, at all. But they knock her out and watch as James cuts her open and takes the human-alien baby, so it's assumed that they're helpers of some sort. Or something. I really have no idea; I watched it twice and I still don't know what that whole thing was about. Were they used by the aliens to distract Emily and make her think she was going crazy? Were they really ghosts? Were they human-alien hybrid babies all grown up?! I don't know. Whatever the case, that story was just too confusing for it to be really scary. Don't get me wrong, there are truly scary parts in this short, but the whole time I was closing my eyes and thinking "I'm scared but I don't know what's going on!"

Those things aside, the rest of the movie was absolutely cussing frightening, and so worth watching. When you have multiple directors working on one movie like this (especially when they're making their own mini movie) you're bound to get a story you don't like. I know there are just as many pros as cons, but I'm still going to say that I liked it. If a scarecrow falls out of a closet and makes you jump or gets your heart racing, complaining that it's made of cheap materials doesn't change anything. You can like the whole project without liking the small details that make it up, you know? So for that reason, I give this movie 3 out of 5 stars! There you have it; "V/H/S," one of the most terrifying found footage films I've seen recently. And I hope you think so, too! Thanks for reading!

Review of Insomnia (2002)

Hello all! I hope everyone had a fantastic week. Today's review is my first request review! Yay! I was asked to review the movie "Insomnia," directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy, "Memento," "Inception," "The Prestige.") I was immediately intrigued because, once again, it's a movie I had never heard of before, AND it was directed by the great Nolan, which I thought was going to be a treat in itself. Not to mention that it stars Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank. That's a pretty stellar cast, if I say so myself!

The synopsis is what really got me excited, though: Will Dormer (played by Al Pacino) and Hap Eckhart (played by Martin Donovan) are 2 hardened detectives from L.A. that have a history of doing whatever it takes to catch a bad guy, legal or otherwise. They are sent to Alaska to assist Officer Ellie Burr (played by Hillary Swank) and the local police in catching the murderer of a local teenage girl (played by Robin Williams - He plays the murderer, not the teenage girl). In the process, Detective Dormer kills his partner. The rest of this movie follows our hero as he deals with a spiraling descent into self-doubt, guilt, and, well, insomnia while trying to clean up the mess and maintain his reputation. Is Detective Dormer any better than the criminals he locks away? By the end of the movie, no one can say for sure.

Cool! An awesome crime drama with Robin Williams as the bad guy, and Al Pacino as the protagonist? What could possibly go wrong?!
...well, apparently, a lot of things.

I have to apologize right now to the person who recommended this movie to me. I'm so sorry, but I did not like it. It's my least favorite Christopher Nolan movie, of all time. And I'll tell you why:

Cons:
1. I'm not a big fan of Al Pacino's character in this movie. Well, mainly how he changes after his partner is killed. He gets sent to Alaska during the summer, when some parts of Alaska experience a phenomena called the midnight Sun (basically, the Sun does not set for a full 24 hours). This, coupled with his extreme guilt, give him a case of insomnia from which he cannot escape. He becomes extremely fatigued, lethargic, weak, and he starts to hallucinate. The problem is, when Al Pacino is playing someone with extreme fatigue, it just comes off as dismissive. He never looks like he's tired; he just looks like he doesn't care about anything that's going on. It's hard to feel any suspense in the movie when you're following this guy around the whole time:

"I'm too tired to care about anything ever."

2. The cinematography was plain bad. They take a long time to set the back story up so that by the time Pacino kills his partner it's supposed to be a shock moment, but it's just not; all of the suspenseful scenes just weren't executed well at all. "When his partner gets shot, the scene cuts before the gunshot and the sound is super low. It cuts to Pacino looking concerned and running over to someone. Someone he shot? Or someone he watched get shot? I'm not sure if the point was to illustrate that no one on the scene could have known where the shot came from, but they show the audience 2 seconds later. So why make the gun shot scene so confusing?" - (my boyfriend said it best).

There's also a scene where Pacino is chasing Williams' character and falls into a body of water and can't get out because a bunch of logs are blocking him from getting to the surface. It's all suspenseful, and the music is swelling and intense, and then...it cuts to Pacino getting out of the water and staring blankly after Williams. Ignoring the whole "how did he get out of the water safely?" thing, Pacino didn't even shiver when he got out of the water! Alaska in the summer is still ALASKA. It's cussing cold! Stop reminding us that you did that scene on a sound stage in 80 degree water.

3. There's a random rivalry between Pacino's character and one of the younger, local Alaskan cops. I mean, I get it; in certain crime movies there's always that rivalry between the wise, older cop and the young, rough and tumble, cocky younger cop. But this Alaskan cop was such a small part of the movie that the rivalry didn't serve the story at all. And IMMEDIATELY after they met, the younger cop hated Pacino's character, and I just couldn't see why. It's like they tried to add in sub-plots that didn't go anywhere, this being one of them.

4. I almost thought Robin Williams' character was a physical manifestation of Pacino's guilt, at first. He magically just knew everything about Pacino, his past and his partner, which was confusing to me.

5. It didn't feel like a Christopher Nolan movie, at all. He is one of the best new directors of suspense movies; how could he have gone so wrong with a crime drama?! Granted, it is a remake of an older film. But still, Nolan did not do a good job with this one. He's the mastermind behind The Dark Knight Trilogy, "Inception," etc. I expected way more from him than a sub-par, boring crime drama.

Okay, I think that's all the bashing I can do to this movie. HOWEVER, there are some pros to this movie that I think made the movie watchable:

1. Robin Williams' character was really good. That should be a given, really; you can't go wrong with Robin Williams. At first I thought he was going to be playing a full-on psycho killer, but that wasn't the case at all. He was basically just a regular Joe, which makes his character even more unsettling than if he'd been a crazy killer out for the young blood of an innocent girl.

NOT a psycho killer. Right?

2. One interesting thing I liked about the movie was the fact that in the beginning, there is an obvious falling out going on between Pacino and his partner, which makes him (and the audience) question the shooting from the beginning. Any time he tries to make a good point about it being an accident, Robin Williams completely agrees, but is clearly talking about something different. So, did he do it on purpose? Was it an honest mistake?

3. While Al Pacino's character is used to breaking the law to enforce it, this is the first case where the criminal he is pursuing has committed a seemingly similar, 'accidental' crime. Not only does this give Robin Williams leverage as the only witness able to blackmail Al Pacino, but it takes a strong psychological toll on a character that has never doubted himself before. The dynamic shifts from Pacino being a good-guy cop to a potentially corrupt cop, trying to rationalize comitting the same crimes he has dedicated his life to stopping. The character of Will Dormer was super complex and awesome; it was just the actor that lacked any gusto.

4. The setting of the film was pretty clever. Having a crime drama take place somewhere that is able to have 24 hours of sunlight gives you a lot to work with, psychologically. Seemingly never seeing the end of the day can be really distressing, and it weighs heavily on your mind and body.

I think that's it, folks! I give "Insomnia" about...2.5 stars. It was okay, but unfortunately the cons outweighed the pros this time. Thanks for reading!

Review of Cyrus (2010)

Hello all! I'm super excited for today's review because this movie is one of my new favorite movies of all time. Funny thing is, my boyfriend owns the movie, but we never really got around to watching it. The other day we didn't have anything to watch and I thought, "what about that movie with Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly? That could be interesting for my blog." Seriously, best decision ever.

The movie is called "Cyrus." John C. Reilly plays John, a guy who's been divorced for seven years and still isn't over his ex-wife. One night he meets the sweet and quite attractive Molly (Marisa Tomei) at a party and it's apparent right off the bat that they're perfect for each other. But then, John finds out that Molly has a clingy 21-year-old son named Cyrus (Jonah Hill) that still lives with her. He doesn't accept the fact that another man is coming into his mom's life, so he does what any kid might do with a single parent: try to break up the new couple for good.

Pros:
1. Each character seems normal enough at first, but then they show signs of, for lack of a better word, psychological disorders. John has a childlike innocence about him, and is very vulnerable throughout the entire film; Cyrus is vindictive, extremely possessive, and sheltered. The only person that's close to normal is Molly, and even she is overly terrified to be with John since she hasn't been able to date anyone since Cyrus was born. There's almost a feeling of cheating on or betraying her son because there hadn't been another man in their lives before.

2. John and Molly's relationship is perfect and gosh darned adorable. I've never seen a movie with a more likable relationship, probably ever. They're honest with each other, they don't play games, it's super simple and it just works. I wish more movie relationships were like this.

3. Guys, I don't like Jonah Hill usually. I'm sick of him playing the douchey, fat high school kid like in Superbad. Nothing he's been in has made me like him, with the exception of this movie. He plays the PERFECT clingy son. The tricks that he plays on John are so subtle and so funny (like stealing his shoes when he stays over, etc.) so even though he's trying to break up John and Molly, he still remains likable and sympathetic.

4. This movie is filled with awesome awkward moments. From drunk pick-up lines to Cyrus's utterly terrible techno music creations, this movie is riddled with awesome and realistic awkward moments that push the movie from a dramady-like film to just an all out comedy. The awkward relationships are what really made me love the movie. Molly and Cyrus have an almost creepily close relationship, and John and his ex-wife, Katie (played by Catherine Keener) have a super close, best-friend type of relationship as well.

5. The drama in the film is fantastic because it takes normal relationships and flips them on their heads. You don't realize that a mother and son could be too close until it starts affecting Molly and John's relationship, and you can't see a divorced couple remain close until you see Katie supporting and helping John out with his relationship with Molly. If it were an all out comedy, it wouldn't have the heart and soul that the film has. Cyrus's refusal to give up his relationship with his mom, Molly and John fighting to stay together, John still being hung up on his ex-wife after seven years; those situations are very serious and very life changing for these people. But they grow and develop, and learn from the drama that's going on in their lives. And they make it work! Which just gives you that warm feeling inside. Try to watch this movie without smiling, I dare you.

6. It's a film I actually feel could happen in real life. The tricks John and Cyrus pull on each other aren't so ridiculous and out there that its unbelievable. The relationship between John and Molly is real and raw. Even the best-friend relationship between John and his ex seems totally appropriate and true to life. The movie even ends with John, Cyrus and Molly realizing that their relationship is going to take a lot of work with Cyrus around.

7. I need to take a second and mention Marisa Tomei's hair in the movie. Don't laugh, I'm serious. It's angelic.

Let's be real, there are no cons to this movie. It's great, and it has officially put itself in my top 5 favorite comedies of all time. I hope you all watch it, or are at least interested in checking it out! Thanks for reading!

Review of The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

(SPOILER ALERT: I GIVE AWAY PLOT POINTS IN THIS ONE, SO WATCH OUT.)
Hello all! I'm very excited for this review, because it's a review of a horror movie that I just recently learned about. I'm one of those people that researches film extensively, so very rarely do I come across a movie that I haven't even heard about, let alone seen (like I've said, they're my entire life. I know, it's pathetic).
The best part is that my boyfriend watched it before me, and said that he didn't know if I could handle it. I'm a huge wuss when it comes to horror movies, but for some reason the scarier someone says a movie is, the more I want to see it. I don't know, call me weird. ANYWAY, I said "okay, mystery horror movie. Come at me with your best, bro."

The movie is called The Poughkeepsie Tapes. It's shot documentary style, and it's about a serial killer based in Poughkeepsie, New York, who filmed and documented the abductions, murders, and postmortem mutilations of all of his victims on to 800 VHS tapes, and left police to find them. The "documentary" features interviews with the families of the victims, the investigators who were assigned to the case, and psychological profilers, along with actual footage on the VHS tapes which is just a mixed bag of terrible and disturbing images and situations. The movie can't be found on DVD, but you can watch it on YouTube here.

Just knowing what it was about scared me enough to put off watching it until I mentally prepared myself. And I am so glad I did, because there is some messed up stuff in that movie. So let's get started with pros and cons!

Pros:
1. The VHS stuff is incredible. It feels SO real. Every abduction, every killing feels like you're actually watching someone do these terrible things to perfectly innocent people. They don't use the usual sell-out scares that every other movie in the POV genre uses. It literally made me uncomfortable a lot of the time. There were a couple parts of the movie that I actually could not watch because it just felt too real.

2. They really pushed the envelope in regards to the brutish and truly sick nature of the killer. For example, the first VHS tape they show the audience is a tape of the killer tricking and abducting an 8-year-old girl. THAT is how you're introduced to the killer. Right off the bat I was like, "this is gonna be cussed up." And it only gets worse. Next he abducts a couple on a road trip, beheads the husband and places it in the womb of the wife while she's unconscious, via C-section. Then he wakes her up and films her reaction to his "special surgery." I mean, really?!

At that moment I knew that I wasn't dealing with your usual run-of-the-mill horror film, here. This was seriously heavy stuff.

3. They made the killer smart. Nothing annoys me more than a killer who doesn't know what (s)he's doing. After the first abduction, the killer decides to kill in many different ways, dispose bodies in different ways, and kills randomly; he aims for men, women and children, and even poses as a cop to capture prostitutes. He has no M.O. whatsoever. This throws off the police, who have to try to find him without knowing who is next victim is, where he's located, or what he even looks like. He was able to get away with so many murders because he almost never used the same method of killing twice. He even frames a cop so well that people were convinced that they'd found the killer, and he was sentenced to death for it. THE KILLER KILLED SOMEONE USING THE LEGAL SYSTEM. I just. I didn't even know how to react to that one, except to say "okay. Touche, killer. That was awesome."

4. A killer with no M.O. really pushed the story along nicely. You never knew who his next victim was going to be, so the whole time there's just this uncomfortable air around the whole movie. And you can't be sure of how much they're going to show on the VHS tape, so the anticipation of what you're going to see absolutely kills you. Half the time I was like this: "WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT TO SHOW ME, MOVIE?! WHAT. ARE. YOU. GOING. TO. SHOW. ME." The best part was that it always showed just enough to scare you, but not enough for it to be considered a gross out gore fest. A lot of the suspense comes from what they DON'T show you.

5. The other main character, Cheryl Dempsey (I couldn't find the actress's name; the filmmakers didn't credit the actors in the VHS tapes in hopes of achieving the "based on a true story" vibe) was amazing. She is the one character that the killer didn't kill right off the bat; he abducted her from her home (which was taped) and kept her as a slave for eight years. Yeah. Eight. At the end of the eight years, he left her in his abandoned house along with the 800 tapes for the police to find. She'd been abused sexually, mentally, physically and emotionally, but was alive in the end. One of the final scenes is an interview with Cheryl. She looks almost ghost like as she's being interviewed, and just keeps saying "I loved him, I loved him, my master will come back to me." It's apparent that she developed a sick bond with her kidnapper, which was also disturbing to think about. She eventually kills herself when her "master" doesn't come back for her, and then her body gets stolen from the town graveyard. Yay for happy endings!

Cons:

1. The actors who played police men, investigators, and family of the victims were not good. The scenes in between the VHS tapes were the reason I was able to watch the movie all the way through. It reminds you that it's a movie, which was good for me, because every VHS tape scene made me pee myself I was so scared. But the acting in the "documentary" part of the movie had absolutely nothing on the acting in the VHS tapes.


Fortunately that was my only con for this movie. Everything else about it was suspenseful, frightening, and just plain sick and twisted. I assume it gave me the same feeling that people got when they first watched "Psycho": Never. Showering. While. I'm. Home. Alone. Again.  3 stars for you, Poughkeepsie Tapes!

Review of Defendor (2009)

Hello all! It's Friday, and you know what that means! Friday drama day! Today I will be reviewing "Defendor," starring Woody Harrelson and Kat Dennings.

First of all, let me just say this: "Defendor" is considered a dark comedy. After seeing the movie, all I have to say is: wrong, wrong wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most comedies make you go like this:

Am I right? Right. Well, after seeing Woody Harrelson's performance in "Defendor," you look something more like this:

So, let's be clear: "Defendor" is NOT a comedy, dark or otherwise. This is a full-blown, heartbreaking drama, fraught with danger. "Defendor" is about a mentally challenged man named Arthur Poppington (played by Woody Harrelson) who is convinced that his town needs an every day hero, much like himself. By day he's just plain old Arthur Poppington, but at night he dons his costume and mask and calls himself Defendor. He commits himself to fighting crime and protecting the innocent at any cost.

Pros:

1. Woody Harrelson plays a man who is mentally ill, and does it perfectly. He's immature, naive, has no idea how the real world works, and doesn't realize that he's way in over his head trying to fight violent crimes on the streets. But his disability does not hinder him from going out and bravely fighting criminals. Honestly, I don't know how Harrelson did not get recognition for this role. He was believable, endearing, sweet, and fun to cheer on the whole time, even though from the very beginning you know he's not going to win against big mob bosses.

2. Defendor's badass home weaponry. He uses marbles, jars of angry hornets (my personal favorite) and other home made weapons to aid him in catching criminals.

 3. The story just plain rocks. Poppington is trying to bring a crooked cop to justice and track down his imaginary arch nemesis, "Captain Industry." Aside from the crooked cop, Defendor doesn't really have any enemies in real life, they're ones that he's made up in his mind. The whole time you just want him to win and to bring these people down, but the sad truth that he's mentally handicapped makes it almost impossible for anyone to believe what he says about the crack-smoking, hooker-buying bad guy cop. It's a downer story to begin with, but there's nothing to do but hold out hope for Harrelson's character.

4. I like that it wasn't a flat out comedy. I liked that it was 100% drama the whole time, but it was appropriate. This man is out of his mind, but really thinks that he can make a difference in the world even though he has this incredible handicap holding him back. It's really inspiring to watch someone do something that no one ever does, just for the sake of helping other people out. Life isn't always about being funny, so this super hero movie was refreshing in that respect.

5. It was well cast (except for Kat Dennings' character). Everyone was 100% believable in their role. (Once again, except for Kat Dennings).

Cons:
1. It made me cry like a baby. I won't spoil it for you guys, but it's a definite tear jerker.

2. Kat Dennings plays a crack addict, but doesn't do a terribly good job. Well, not even a good job, really. She was too clean, too naive looking to play an experienced hard drug user. Her mood swings and sudden anger isn't intimidating or scary in any way; it just sounds like she's whining the whole time. People don't usually get more snarky and clever when they get high on hard drugs. Just saying.

Other than those small things, though, it was a solid movie. I liked it a lot, and it's a shame that no one gave Harrelson any recognition for it. It's fairly unknown to most people, so I hope you go out and rent it! If you're a Woody Harrelson fan, it's a must-see. Thanks for reading, guys! Have a great weekend!

 

Review of Wayne's World (1992)

Hello all! Sorry about the late post. I was not feeling well at all today and I had to postpone...posting.

Anywho, today is comedy Wednesday, and at first I had trouble coming up with a movie to review. Then I thought, hey, why not use my favorite comedy of all time? May sound biased, but I don't even care. What is this movie, you ask? Well, drum roll please...it's WAYNE'S WORLD!

This movie is great for so many reasons. But before I get to the pros and cons, let's go over a quick synopsis: Wayne's World, based on the Saturday Night Live skit, is a light-hearted comedy about two burn-out friends, Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) who host a public-access cable show called Wayne's World out of Wayne's parents' basement in Illinois. One day Benjamin, a slimy television executive, convinces them to sell the show and to let the executives and producers take over it. The show starts to lose its magic and fun, and the whole movie follows them in their quest to get their show back and get revenge on Benjamin. Hilarity ensues!

Pros first! Obviously.

1. Wayne and Garth are the most charming characters in the whole world. They are genuinely nice guys who just want the best for their friends. They're those burnout friends you had in high school that never went anywhere, but who are perfectly fine with that. They see the good in everything, and nothing stops them from getting their show back.

2. It's a family friendly comedy with mass appeal. It's not smart comedy, but it's not hit-you-over-the-head, fart jokes comedy. It's silly without feeling stupid. I've loved this movie since I was three years old, so there's some comedy for everyone.

3. The story is based on characters from a Saturday Night Live skit! How cool is that?

4. It's perfectly cast. Mike Myers and Dana Carvey are seasoned comedy actors, and Rob Lowe is the perfect hateable, terrible, slimy executive who's just the worst kind of money and power hungry person. There's the always-partied-out, always-on-the-verge-of-puking guy who you only see sober once. There's the shady (and possibly murderous) coffee shop owner. So many priceless characters that you never forget.

5. The music in the movie is great! Alice Cooper, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the famous Bohemian Rhapsody-in-the-car scene, and the music from the band of Wayne's love interest in the movie, Crucial Taunt, is all such awesome and fun music because it's 80's and 90's hair metal.

6. There are a lot of celebrity cameos that everyone would love. Robert Patrick (Terminator 2), Alice Cooper, Alice Cooper's real band, Donna Dixon, Chris Farley, Meatloaf, and Ed O'Neill are just some of them.

7. 4 words: Dana Carvey's drum solo. Yeah. A REAL one.

8. All the 90's hair.

9. So. Many. Quoteables. ("Sha-wing!" "As if," "NOT!") Every scene - and I do mean ALL of them - is a classic quoteable scene.

Cons:

1. It's only an hour and a half long.

Okay, that's all the time I have for my review. I hope you found it entertaining, whimsical and yet relevant, with an underlying revisionist conceit that belied the review's emotional attachments to the subject matter.

...and that it didn't suck.

Review of The Bay (2012)

Okay, let me begin by saying SPOILER ALERT: I will ruin this movie for you if you haven't seen it yet. If you don't care to see it, or you've already seen it, read on. If you do want to see it, STOP READING. That being said, I must say that I was cussing excited to see this movie. This is a picture of me arriving home with the last copy of The Bay from the movie rental store: 

 Ignoring my animals’ need for stupid things like food and attention, I popped in the DVD, absolutely thrilled that I was finally going to see what this movie had in store for me. And holy cuss, was I ever wrong about a movie. This is a picture of me after the credits started rolling:

 I’ve never been more disappointed in a horror movie (with the exception of The Sentinel, but that’s for another day). Let’s start with a quick synopsis: “The Bay” is a film shot “found footage,” or POV style, and it recounts one incident in a small Maryland town that sits on the Chesapeake Bay area. The main character, Donna Thompson (played by Kether Donohue) is a local news reporter who is covering the events on this particular day. The town holds a huge Independence Day festival and everyone in the town attends. Everything seems to be going hunky dory when all of the sudden there is an outbreak of epic proportions. People start to get sick and die very quickly. First they develop rashes and boils on their skin, and then they basically explode from the torso out. Which made me kinda think:

 Anywho, it turns out that the town relies heavily on chicken farms, and their excrement gets into the water supply, and that mixes with nuclear waste coming from their local plant. That makes the local tongue-eating louse population grow and reproduce faster than normal. They get into the Bay area and start feeding on the people that decide to take a quick dip in the Bay. If you’ve never seen a tongue-eating louse, they’re absolutely frightening. So here’s a picture!
 
You can read more about tongue-eating louses here. So whoever is exposed to the water in the movie gets a mouthful of these guys, and they grow inside of the person and eventually explode out of them, looking for a new host I guess. And of course no one comes to the town’s aid because hey, that wouldn’t make any sense now, would it? The government basically brushes off the problem and doesn't save anyone (as the government always does in disaster movies, like The Crazies and Quarantine). There’s no real conclusion to the movie, it just kind of ends on a “the town was quarantined for three days, the end” note. So let’s get down to the nitty gritty here. I’ll start with the pro’s to the movie:
PROS:

1. The actual outbreak was super accurate and felt very real. If something happened that quickly in one small town, I believe that it would have happened the way the movie did. It would come quickly and without warning, and the very first time you see someone get sick is truly uncomfortable and disturbing.

2. They used something real as the culprit. They weren’t aliens; it wasn’t some germ that turns people into zombies. Tongue eating louses are very real, and though they don’t feed on humans in real life, they are so vicious and merciless to fish that it was easy to believe that they would do the same to humans.

Believe it or not, those are the only pro’s that I had. NOW on to the fun stuff.
CONS:

1.       Kether Donohue was extremely disappointing as a main character. In fact, the acting in general just sucked. Everyone was so nonchalant about what was going on, and even when Donohue was remembering what happened that day, she didn’t once change the tone of her voice or had any emotion behind what she was saying. It felt like the whole movie featured a ton of Kristen Stewarts. 

2. The first woman to become sick runs around the whole town asking for help, and NO ONE comes to help her. Really? An entire town of 6,000 people doesn't help one lady out? She hadn't even gotten the bad symptoms yet! She looked like she was sunburned at worst, and people were running away from her like she was a rabid crazy woman. It didn't make any sense to me.

3.       This movie treats the audience like they’re idiots. Once you find out what the symptoms are, and what’s causing the outbreak, they don’t let you forget it. Every time someone comes across a dead body, they have to say “boils! Fever! Enlarged stomach! Exploded torso! No tongue! What happened here?!” Ugh. WE KNOW. They go over the tongue eating louses and how they work like, 10 times. It gets really annoying, and what’s worse, it loses the excitement and mystery that way.

4.       This is the only hour and a half movie that I’ve ever seen that felt like it was three hours long. The exciting parts are few and far between, and the stuff in between is very repetitive and very boring.

5.       The “found footage” looks way too expensive to be found footage. It’s like everyone from that town had a $5,000 video camera to work with, complete with boom mics and everything.

So there you have it, folks. It was an extremely disappointing horror movie that could have been amazing. I give it 2 out of 5 stars, just because of the special effects and story accuracy. I hope this has offered some insight into how I work and how these next few entries will go. I hope you all enjoyed it!

Allow myself to introduce...myself.

Hello all! My name is Sheridan, and let me just get this out of the way: I'm new to blogging. This is my first one, and I'm really excited to get it started. This blog will be for movie reviews of movies both old and new! I'm not a certified film critic, but I enjoy reading reviews by someone other than a New York Times critic. I believe that some of the best reviewers are average Joe-ettes, like me! I have an extended background in film, and while I may not have a piece of paper that says I'm a critic, you can trust that my reviews will be well-educated, fair, and concise.
Here are my koalafications:
1. I attended the New York School for Film and Television
2. I love movies.
3. I watch movies every day.
4. They're my life.
5. Seriously. My life.
In the words of, well, me: a piece of paper means jack cuss. Experience matters.
Reviews will be posted as follows:

Mondays: Horror, thriller, action and adventure films to kick start your week!
Wednesdays: Comedies and musicals to get to the weekend!
Fridays: Drama and romance to get you in the "I-just-want-to-sit-on-the-couch-and-relax" mood for the weekend :D

The first review (The Bay, 2012) will be posted on Monday, March 11th, 2013. I hope you all like it, and keep coming back! If you have any suggestions for movies you want to see reviewed by an average Joe-ette movie reviewer, you can email me at GreyFox090@gmail.com. I promise to keep you entertained with witty and awesome movie reviews! Thanks for reading!