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Creepshow: Drug Traffic/A Dead Girl Named Sue (2021)
By Far One Of The Best To Date
I've been pretty disappointed with season 3 so far, so I was happy to thoroughly enjoy this episode. Both stories were well-crafted and well-acted.
"Drug Traffic" is a J-horror type tale, with shades of Junji Ito. A girl has her meds confiscated at the border, but what those meds hold at bay is fuel for pure manga nightmare. Michael Rooker's strong and layered performance levels this story up. There's a political aspect to the story, but the politics remain those of the characters and the filmmakers wisely don't push anything on the viewer.
"A Dead Girl Named Sue" follows an honest cop attempting to deal with a vigilante problem during the same night that the movie Night of The Living Dead takes place. This fully immersive, skillfully shot black-and-white horror-noir works well as an additional tale set in a universe many horror fans will already be familiar with.
It seems like last season they saved the best til last. Hopefully next season they production will step its game up and make all the episodes of this quality. Creepshow could be the anthology horror series we've been missing. Fingers crossed.
Tiny Creatures (2020)
Why Does This Exist?
Billed as a docuseries, and presenting itself as such, complete with narration, really this show is as much a documentary as Babe: Pig In The City.
In the first episode follow the journey of a young kangaroo rat in the Sonoroan desert. The narrative soon takes bizarre turns, with the rat having strangely human motivations, going on an adventure before returning home with a cunning plan to turn its predators against each other.
The more observent viewer will notice that it was shot in a studio with cgi compositing and multiple impossible camera views etc. But there is scope here for people to be confused or duped by the pretense. I'm sure this show breaks every documentary code in existence.
The thing that really confuses me though is just who this show was made for. What were they thinking? They could have openly made kids' stories from this basic idea and while it wouldn't have been good, it would have been better. People expecting to see an animal documentary will be sorely disappointed. As far as I can see this show caters to no one at all, if not people who are easily duped and desperately want to believe animals live human-like, action-adventure lives.
In summary, I advise you to stay away from this car crash.
Dead Silence (2007)
Dumber than a Box of Dummies
Searching around for a popcorn horror and having watched most of Blumhouse's movies of the last decade, I decided to scour the Whannell/Wan back catalogue. I was thrilled to stumble across Dead Silence (DS), as it seemed to be a happy convergence of the excellent Dead of Night (1945) and a pre-rise-of-Blumhouse Wan flick. Unfortunately the movie turned out to be seriously dumb, with a plot more convoluted than even later Saw movies (DS came out in the same year as Saw IV).
Unbelievable, ridiculous and short on scares, in times with the production values of a TV movie from the early 90s (bad acting/cheesy-looking night shoots/smoke machines etc), DS was a severe disappointment, which was a shame because the the seeds for a great ventriloquist horror were there, and they even borrowed what could have been an excellent plot point from Lovecraft's Whisperer in Darkness, but they squandered it, along with a whole bunch of underdeveloped concepts.
The film is lumbered with Wan & Whannell's crass Se7en-imitating film noir style, which I'm glad they finally moved away from when making Insidious three years later, by which time they'd also finally worked out how to execute a jump scare, because there are none worth noting in DS. (As an interesting side note, they basically exported the ghost lady from DS into Insidious).
If you're looking for ventriloquist horror, check out Dead of Night, or Magic (1978)--both of which are far superior to this forgettable movie. Unfortunately cannot recommend.
Creepshow (2019)
Flawed, Cheap & Fun
Having been a longtime fan of shows such as Tale From the Crypt, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone etc, as well as a fan of horror anthology in general, I was looking forward to see how they put this show together. Now I've watched the first five episodes I have to say the jury's still kind of out.
The first thing I'll note is that the introductory segments involving The Creep (as I'll call their cryptkeeper rip-off animatronic) seem rushed and badly made. The Creep doesn't speak, just laughs at nothing. Likewise the comic book introduction--though a nice touch overall--seems underbaked, with lots of text you don't have time to read and no narrator, which makes it disorienting. That said, the 5th episode cut the Creep segment and had basic narration for a couple of comic panels, so maybe that's something they're learning as they go ahead.
It's clear this is low budget stuff and it's quite fun how it embraces that. The 40-50 minute runtime is cut up into two stories, and there have been some incredibly inventive stories among them--most notably ones involving a haunted doll's house, a man in a suitcase, and a finger found at the side of the road. Because of the tight time in which to tell these stories, they tend to end a little abruptly. Hopefully that's also something the showrunners will work out.
If you're looking for something cheap, gruesome and fun to pass an hour with, you could do worse than putting an episode of Creepshow on in the background. I'm looking forward to them working on and improving their formula.
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
Inventive Stab at the Silent Movie Genre & Lovecraft
A faithful retelling of HP Lovecraft's short story The Call Of Cthulhu, this sub-one-hour silent movie has some charming quirks and creative solutions to special effects--including miniature models, forced perspective sets and stop motion--all of which will keep you engaged.
The first five to ten minutes I wasn't entirely convinced I would get into it, the shots began slow and static, and they certainly rely on a lot of text cards to move their story along (something the auteurs of the silent era tried to avoid). But you have to hand it to the crew here, they really put their all into it and gave us something out of the ordinary that proves itself an entertaining little gem.
As a fan of Lovecraft, I hope one day soon someone makes a full Cthulhu feature, and that they put as much heart into it as this production did, before Hollywood gets its hands on the property and ruins the damn thing with big budget CGI and a gutted storyline. For now, we'll have to happily do with this shortish silent rendition.
Snatched (2017)
Had me crying uncontrollably with laughter
I'm writing this review because I literally couldn't believe how low a score this movie has. For disclosure, I don't class myself as a "comedy" person - that is, I have a wicked sense of humour, thanks, and find most American comedies too hackneyed and by-the-numbers to be funny. I'm maybe what you'd call a comedy snob, though not on purpose. My internal comedy meter just tends towards high standards.
But this American comedy had me literally eye-watering with laughter by the end of it. The jokes are witty, crude, and executed at times with sublime genius. I read another review on IMDb that says no one laughed in the audience. I'm not sure what conservative neighbourhood they watched it in, but the audience in my local cinema were howling with laughter.
I heard that this film was promoted over mothers day - there's a mother-daughter element, and so lots of people took conservative elderly ladies, who were thus scandalised. This is the only reason I can see for the score. I guess gags including Amy Schumer washing out her private parts with a damp tissue while on a date, and Amy physically getting a boob out, were a step too far for the biddies.
If anything let this movie down, it was the standard far-fetched comedy-vehicle plot. Americans get kidnapped by stereotypical latino gangsters while on holiday. Here it feels a bit like comedy plots haven't advanced since the 80s. But to be honest, the plot is not important for this type of movie. Both Schumer and Hawn shine with comedy flair, with strong supporting turns from Barinhotlz and Wanda Sykes, and that carries the movie to its comedic goal.
If you want something light-hearted yet genuinely funny, and you aren't scared of a bit of sexual humour, I highly recommend you ignore the score here and give this film a try.
Man of Steel (2013)
Steel Pins
New lows of product placement? Check.
Higher levels of playing to the American public's masturbatory love of seeing their country and cities destroyed? Check.
Hours and hours of invincible people bashing each other futilely? Check.
This movie failed to raise my blood pressure one notch. It went through the motions of the Superman plot fairly enough, but in the end I didn't care. In fact, several different groups of movie-goers who were in the theatre left before the end. I'm assuming that they felt similarly.
This movie didn't hurt me, but that's all I can say.
Oh, actually one bit I really liked: the Kryptonian's tellies were made out of those pin-art executive toys.
Life of Pi (2012)
If you're expecting enlightenment...
I read "Life of Pi" a couple of years ago while I was touring around Europe and I found it to be a mildly-entertaining book which touched lightly on the philosophical side. It was no surprise to me then, when I discovered Ang Lee's faithful film adaptation to be exactly that - mildly entertaining, touching lightly on the philosophical side.
I believe a lot of people came to watch this movie with many different expectations, from those who wanted to watch a realistic sea-survival movie, contrasted by those who believed it would offer something truly deep and significant philosophically. Both these camps will be disappointed. As Jonathan Romney says in the IOS review "Life of Pi is fatally scuppered by coy, bogus mysticism." Conversely, as you will read on the message boards here at IMDb (spoilers abound there, be forewarned!) a lot of people couldn't even handle the philosophy-lite that was on offer and were "disappointed" that it wasn't the straight- forward boy-lost-at-sea-with-a-tiger story it falsely claimed to be (*deep breath*). Hey everybody, this film will not change your life. It will provide you with some inoffensive entertainment for a couple of hours, and probably little more.
"Life of Pi" - whether in book-form or in this adaptation - is neither high art, nor gruelling adventure. What it actually is is a fantasy story, framed at the edges with a smidgeon of realism in an attempt to add a soupçon of depth and food-for-thought. Approach the film as such and you may well enjoy it.
As a heavily CGI-ed film it provides at times a stunning visual work. Again reviewers have been mixed, some claiming that the over-playing of visuals falls into the garish, and attempts to wash over the philosophical shallowness of the movie. Well, CGI is the trend today; it has some benefits, but the overall effect of digitally rendering your characters and sceneries is bound to leave something missing soul-wise. "Life of Pi" is pretty enough to look at, but personally I think much more could and would have been made of it if it was adapted as an (classic style) animation.
I'd mark the film as 6.5 (it made my partner cry), but I'm rounding down this time because of the sudden wave of sycophancy present on IMDb, meaning that every film that comes out has 8-point-something (corporate presence?). Either way, a pleasant break from Hollywood aggression, and worth a watch.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Why "an Unexpected Journey" missed the point.
The main problem with The Hobbit, as far as I can see it, is that it strays so ridiculously far from the original. Now, I'm not one of those nerdy puritans who thinks that the book The Hobbit resembles something sacrosanct like the Koran or the Bible, but the point is that the book holds a lot of beauty, intelligence and intrigue - the point is that Jackson and crew have completely missed the point.
It's clear from the outset that Jackson/Hollywood/whoever wanted to string what is in reality a simple tale into a three-part money-spinner. Okay. If they'd kept more closely to the original and added extra adventures in-between it may have served. But instead they've brushed over the entire meat of the story and twisted it until it resembles only in bones the original, and I think that's a shame, because the opportunity was there to bring the beauty of the book to life.
Let us take, for example, the beginning, when the dwarfs arrive at Bag End believing that Bilbo is a burglar. In the book it is his inability to be impolite, followed by his desire to live up to good things that others have said about him that drives him to continue the charade of being a burglar - and the dwarfs DO believe he is a burglar for the entire journey. This is integral to the story, yet in the Hollywood version, Bilbo has a Hollywood style tantrum that the dwarfs magically ignore, the whole script comes back to "I'M NOT A BURGLAR! I'M NOT A BURGLAR! I'M NOT A BURGLAR!" repeatedly, into the bargain they've written in an enmity between Thorin and Bilbo that doesn't exist, and Bilbo at some point in the film tries to slink off (going entirely against his faithful nature which is core to the reason Gandalf selects him) - all of these ill-thought out gaffs and many more we don't have time to go into serve to lose the identity of Bilbo and flatten the story into two-dimensions.
For a film they've labelled "An Unexpected Journey" they sure brushed over the journey aspect of it. Maybe the idea that the weather was bad and they run out of food quite early on doesn't seem like box-office gold to the makers, but maybe also they underestimate the general public and like I've said before, something more beautiful and timeless could have been made from this story. Instead they've invented aggressive bad-guys to pursue and turned every episode of the adventure into a battle, again missing the point, as it is Bilbo who, despite being timid and unsure of himself, does the right and clever thing and saves them each time. Again, it is a Hollywood preoccupation with violence that ruins what could have been a classic movie.
As to the battle scenes, they're not even well done. We have a modern state where we can produce on computer almost any image, and the culture is to try and make films visually more and more extreme. But 50 giant wargs charging violently and super-fast at 13 dwarfs and a hobbit looks absolutely ridiculous when not a single member of the troupe is harmed. This over-playing of CGI battles occurs again and again, and completely destroys any feelings of suspense we may have had during the battle. If, for example, they'd kept to the original story in the Goblin caves and the battle had been confined to completely dark tunnels, lit only by the eerie light of the swords Orcrist and Glamdring, with the horde of Goblins pursuing heavily but fearing the swords, that would have made for great suspense. As it is the troupe take on, unconvincingly, hundreds and hundreds of goblins in a basically open space. This OTT CGI completely guts the film of any drama, with the gang on several occasions falling far further than it would be possible to survive (without a scratch), being under horrendous rockfalls with no adverse effects etc etc. The makers of this film really need to go back to film-school and learn about basic techniques pertaining to the suspension of disbelief.
I could go on, about how the malevolence of the goblins is completely brushed over for example: the Great Goblin has more of an air of the late, great Sir Patrick Moore than an evil creature, but I'll leave my gripes now by stating that the errors integral to the story are manifold, and - quelle surprise - the motivations of the production company have pretty much ruined the story.
If I have harped on about the errors I have to say that the movie is not all bad, it has some humour, and its triumph is that it plays everything for laughs. Of course, the vast majority of movie-goers have never read the book, and don't care a whit about seeing a timeless classic on screen (in latter years they've had no opportunity, being content with largely trash). For these people I suppose the movie should be highly enjoyable, and for this reason I guess it is ranked so highly on IMDb.
Beyond that the scene with Gollum is great. Here they have taken the original story and brought it visually to life. If only they could have done the same with the rest of the movie. 4 out of 10 for all the visuals and humour that money can buy.
Shooter (2007)
Masturbatory, gun-obsessed and predictable
In a world where the shots are called by sadistic, cynical and frankly eager killers there is only one man who can save us all - a sadistic, cynical and frankly eager killer.
Quite rightly left to die after a mission in friendly territory killing innocent people, our hero Mark Wahlberg (played by Marky Mark) goes into seclusion, only to be coaxed out again when the President's life appears to be in danger. All is not as it seems though, and soon our killer is on the run, accused of being a killer. Only he can hunt down and kill-from-a-distance-by-shooting-in-the-back the real killers.
This movie is a string of clichés to the backdrop of gun-obsession that appears to be marketed at backwater, macho, pick-up riding men's men. At one point my partner and I spontaneously laughed out loud when we were subjected, at an inappropriate moment, to 15 seconds of Wahlberg walking ridiculously towards the camera in slow motion, a giant US flag as his background - A scene which highlights the general masturbatory tone.
Both dialogue and action are hammy and unrealistic at best. For example, Marky Mark turns up at the house of a woman he doesn't really know. Shirtless and injured, he explains in graphic detail how she has to cut into his wounds and stitch him up, before sucking on an aerosol and passing out. Only in an ill-thought out, macho fantasy world would this woman silently take on such a burden of a known assassin without politely telling him to "f@*& off" or at least phoning the police while he was asleep. The movie continues in this vein, and the underlying philosophy seems to be that what we need in this world is a man who's really good at shooting and prepared to murder from afar anyone whom he thinks is bad, or anyone who hangs out with them.
If you want action, find a film like "Taken" or the Bond films, where at least the characters have some complexity and drive. Even the fight scenes of this movie are boring.