Pulse

I’m sure we’ve all seen the work of some impressionist painters before. Impressionists weren’t concerned with getting the details right. They wanted to make sure you understood the whole scene. That you got the emotion of the painting, the heart of it, rather than the brain. Take Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ for example. We’ve all seen it. Try to pick out any real details in the painting. You can’t. But those details aren’t really needed are they? In fact, if they were there they’d ruin the painting wouldn’t they? We don’t need those details to give us the feeling of looking at the stars on a clear evening. Let’s pretend for a second that Van Gogh, instead of sticking to peaceful scenes, had attempted to paint pictures that disturbed you. Pictures that made you paranoid and uneasy and frightened.

Pulse would be THAT impressionist painting. It’s missing alot of details but the cumulative effect is a masterwork of paranoia and loneliness.
I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way. If you can’t stand a story that doesn’t tie up neatly, stay away. If you want blood and gore, stay away. If you’re sick to death of the “let’s cast whoever’s hot on the WB and MTV” thing, stay away. If, on the other hand, you can tolerate something that’s a little slow and takes it’s time to gradually, almost imperceptibly, bring on the creeps, this is for you. And I’ll be the first to admit, that the premise is very stupid.

The premise is that a couple of computer hackers have found unknown radio frequencies and strangely enough, people are talking on them. Turns out those people are dead and now that someone has discovered them they can come on down to where you and I live. There’s more to it than that, but, the movie doesn’t attempt a really detailed explanation so I won’t attempt to understand the details. Neither should you. Just know that these ghosts are everwhere where there’s a radio or phone signal. And if you’re in one of those areas you are fair game.

Once you get past the premise being very bad, the effect is very unsettling because there are essetntially no safe areas. And as the movie progress and more and more people start dying, the movie achieves a feeling of very intense paranoia. The ghosts can’t be seen until they are right near you. They can’t be heard at all if they don’t want to be. And since signals can go through walls there is no where to hide. They only hope for escape is to grab a car and head for the mountains. Which is what the last remaining survivors of humanity have to do.

Sometimes horror works not because it’s scary, but rather, because it gets under the skin and makes you paranoid. It presents a scene where you are asked to explore a very dark and disturbing idea. Pulse presents a picture which attempts to convey paranoia and loneliness. It does this very effectively, even if it leaves out a couple of big details along the way.

8/10

Beerfest

I don’t drink very often. When I do though I prefer to drink good beer. Usually something imported. I won’t get into specifics because there is no accounting for tast as far as beer is concerned. Also, We don’t need a “my microbrew could beat up your microbrew” argument. Suffice to say that in the world of beer there are levels of goodness and we can almost all agree that on those levels, a Bud Light is near the bottom. But Bud Light serves a purpose too. Let’s face it, when you’re drinking just to get hammered you aren’t gonna spend the money for good beer. You’re gonna go cheap and easy. You’re gonna get a case of whatever’s on sale and go for it. Sure it doesn’t taste all that great, but with enough of it in you’re not gonna care.

Beerfest was like a six-pack of cheap beer. No taste. Just enough alcohol to get ya feelin’ good.

It’s hard not to appreciate this movie for what it set out to be. Nothing more than a bunch of dumb and crude humor. An approach the Broken Lizard guys have been taking for years, and in this one they mosly succeed. The set-up is that two brothers have to go to germany to scatter their dead grandfathers ashes. Once there they end up seeing a secret beer drinking competition called Beerfest. They end up being humiliated by the Germans and vow revenge. Once they return to America they assemble the ultimate drinking team and start training.

It’s in these training sessions that the movie starts to hit it’s stride. Almost every drinking game I’ve ever heard of and a few I haven’t gets made fun of and all of the typical “oh my god I was so wasted” stories you’ve ever heard get shown. Now, I’m not saying that you need to have some humiliating drinking experiences to enjoy the humor, but it will definitely help. The movie as a whole does rely on picking at your own experiences with alcohol to get some laughs at of you and if you don’t have many of them you won’t be able to laugh along with the movie. There is plenty of plain ol’ stupidity to go around for the rest of us though. At one point a character falls in a vat of beer and can’t swim to the top so he attempts to drink all the beer out of the vat. Dumb? Yes. Hilarious? Yes.

Beerfest is not a nice imported beer that you drink to savor the complicated the flavor. It’s a cheap domestic that you chug to get a good buzz and enjoy your evening.

8/10

Little Miss Sunshine

I have this aunt named Betty. Betty is kind of an odd duck. She likes to talk a lot and, more often than not, it’s about something you don’t really care about. She’s not crazy or anything by any stretch of the word. She’s just kind of odd. She likes to put on lots and lots of make-up but she doesn’t really put it on properly. Her eyelashes are always caked with mascara. Her lipstick is generally also on her teeth in addition to her lips. Most of my family avoids her. I do to. But I also feel kind of sad for her. She’s kind of old and lonely see, and I get the feeling that she just wants a friend. But she’s so socially awkward that being friends with her would be like teaching a bear to wipe his ass. Difficult, to say the least. So consequently we all try to avoid prolonged conversations with her. I’m sure you know at least one person or family member like this. You probably take the same tact with them that we take with Aunt Betty. Avoid a drawn out conversation with them at all costs.

Little Miss Sunshine is about what happens when you take a family of Aunt Bettys and force them to communicate.

You’ve got a foul-mouthed heroin snorting grandfather. A dad that’s trying to pitch a self-help program to publishers. A son who’s taken a vow of silence until he accomplishes his goal of getting into the Air Force. A gay uncle who’s just attempted suicide. A homely young daughter who wants to win beauty pageants. And a distracted mom trying to keep them all together. Each one of them has their own worldview that is a source of irritation with everyone else in the family. They don’t talk much anymore. Then an opportunity for the daughter to compete in the “Little Miss Sunshine” pageant, 800 miles away, forces them all into an old VW bus to drive her there. It’s here in the unairconditioned confines of the bus that the family finally starts to really communicate, even if it’s only out of sheer boredom. Along the trip each member has either a breakdown or an epiphany which snaps them out of their malaise and makes them realize how much they truly love their family.

The danger with putting this much quirkiness into a movie is that it can feel forced. And it’s only thanks to an incredible cast that the movie never crosses into cheap sentimentality. Alan Arkin and Steve Carrell are especially good in the two roles that could have ended up being annoying but thanks to their great interpretation of the characters make the grandfather and the uncle especially endearing. The movie as a whole, in fact, is very charming despite the fact that it is itself, an Aunt Betty. It has all the typical “independent film” tricks. Quirky music. Well known actors proving their depth. And last but certainly not least, titles all done in a minimalist font. Oh yeah, dig it man. Dig it.

Still, Little Miss Sunshine is a rare gem in that it manages to get its somewhat heavy handed message across in a lighthearted and charming way. Even if it sometimes gets its lipstick on its teeth, you’ll forgive it and make friends pretty quick.

8/10

Monster House 3D

My mom tells me that when my older brother was real little he used to love being picked up and launched in the air by my dad. The sight of it used to scare the hell out of her. My dad would grab him by his little arms and he would let his legs buckle. Then my dad would hurl him into the air with all of his strength. Sometimes getting five or six feet above my dad’s head. My fiancé likes to tell a story about how she would sometimes climb up on top of the monkey bars near her house and walk on them. Her mom to this day doesn’t know that she used to do that. She’d probably crap herself if she knew how close my fiancé came to snapping her 6 year old neck on occasion. I bear a scar on the right hand inside of my mouth where as an infant I was learning to crawl and I crawled right over to and electrical outlet and bit the hell out of it. I don’t know why as kids we’re given such curiosity about the world that makes us want to go explore it, but, we also have such innocence and naïveté that could get us killed by doing so.  It’s even more astounding that in those instances where adults weren’t there to protect us from our own stupidity that we didn’t get impaled or crushed or god knows what else. But, also, in those instances were some of the most incredible times you could have as a kid.

Monster house is all of those near death experiences you had as a kid. Only this time you can just enjoy them and not worry about dying.

The movie tells the story about a group of three kids who try to kill the haunted house that sits across from them. The crotchety old man who lives there has been harassing them for stepping on his lawn for years. If any of their toys or balls land on the lawn he takes them and keeps them. The house doesn’t pull any punches either. It doesn’t just want to annoy or scare these little guys, it wants to literally kill them. But the kids figure out a plan to slay the giant shingled bitch anyhow and set out to leave it in ruin.

This movie really does convey such an amazing sense of danger and excitement. But it tempers that danger and excitement with a great feeling of wonder and adventure. It makes sure that the danger never becomes terrifying, only exciting. Which is a hard line to walk. The movie pulls this off while maintaining a great classic feeling.  Like E.T., The Goonies, or Adventures in Babysitting, the movie has all the hallmarks of a great kids adventure. Not the watered down edutainment that passes for kids entertainment these days.

The other really cool part of this movie is that it’s not being shown in digital 3D at certain theaters. If you have the chance to watch the movie like this I highly recommend it. The movie never goes for the cheap “things flying out of the screen at you gag”. Instead it uses the 3d in very cool and subtle ways. When a kid has to run across the yard to try and retrieve his ball before the house eats it the movie uses the depth perception that 3d offers to show how his initial 10 yard dash is turned into what seems like miles by the house. Very cool and a very great way to show these artistic possibilities of 3d beyond mere novelty.

9/10

World Trade Center

It’s amazing how exactly I can remember details about what I was doing on September 11th. The one thing I can recall with the most clarity, however, isn’t a particular event, it’s a recurring theme. I remember all of the confusion about what was happening. When the North Tower was hit, nobody had a clue what had happened. Some news sources said it was a small prop plane, others said it was a large commuter plane. Some were already calling it a terrorist attack and others were calling it an accident. Then the second tower got hit and everyone got on the same page. Definite terrorist attack. Then the pentagon was hit and the confusion started again. Some said missles. Others said plane. Others said explosion. Then flight 93 went down in the field in Pennsylvania. Then the south tower collapsed. Then the north tower. Boom Boom Boom. Then World Trade Center 7 collapsed. Reports started coming out about fires breaking out uncontrolled all over Washington D.C. Then someone on CNN reported that the CDC in Atlanta had been hit. Lots of different people on the news just started reporting whatever unsubstantiated rumors came into them. And I recall, very clearly, how frustrating it was to not be able to know exactly what the hell was going on.

World Trade Center brought back to me the most painful parts of that day. And you should really see it only if you think you’re ready to go through that again.
For me it was the confusion. For others it will be the way it came out of nowhere. A still larger majority are going to get waylayed by the endless walls of missing posters. The way the dust and smoke made everyone look like ghosts. Everyone, no matter how hard hearted, is going to get suckerpunched in some way by how accurately World Trade Center conveys the emotions of that day.

The movie follows two Port Authority police officers (William Jimeno and John McLoughlin) as they get up and go to work in the early morning hours of September 11th. They get their showers and drive into Manhattan from New Jersey. They go through their normal routine as they get handed their daily duties. They go out and start patrolling their normal routes. Officer Jimeno rousts his favorite bum from Jackie Gleason’s statue. It’s in these early scenes that the movie does an amazing job of reminding you how no was prepared for what was about to happen. How even when it does happen no-one expects what happens next or what happens after that. No-one was capable of comprehending just how bad things were going to get.

When the north tower is hit all of the Port Authority officers are recalled to the station to prepare for rescue attempts. It’s truly depressing to see these men prepare for their rescue attempt. Not only because we know that they aren’t going to make it, but because their plan would never have succeeded anyway. It’s so disheartening to see these men put their blind faith in their Sergeant (Mcloughlin) because he came up with the plan for evacuations after the ‘93 attacks. And even though he truly did know more about the buildings than almost anyone else save the architects, it would never have been enough. It’s very disturbing to see how the best and most capable men we had, the ones who were the MOST prepared, were basically slaughtered.

I could go on like this for page after page but I think you get the idea. This is not a lite afternoon at the movies and it requires a heavy emotional investment out of you. I still don’t know if I’m glad I sat through it or not. Because even though we’ve had time to let our wounds heal, those wounds were very deep and very sore when they were created. Alot of people have just now got them bandaged up. It’s up to you to decide if you’re ready to tear all of those injuries open again.

9/10

Talladega Nights

I’m about a million percent certain that at some point in your life you’ve met the guy I’m about to describe. You and your best friend decide to go out to a few bars for the night and have a good time. Your buddy says “HEY! let’s pick up this guy I know from work named (jon/deric/ted). He’s HILARIOUS”. You, of course, agree because you don’t want to offend your buddy and who knows, this guy might be cool. So you pick him up and he’s not bad at first. He likes the pacers. He hates myspace. He’s alright. He’s good people. Then you get to the bar and he starts doing shots. Pretty soon he’s trying to dip his balls in people’s drinks. He calls every female he passes the c-word. He’s hanging off of your neck telling you he loves you and as soon he says he loves you he finishes it off with “I’d love to teabag your mom!”.

Now, your buddy, the one you rode there with and the one who invited this clown, is falling off his barstool laughing at both you AND ol’ whatsisface. So are several people around you. Even a handful of the females that got called cunts by this guy are laughing. You, on the other hand, are mortified and embarrased. You have no clue why anyone is laughing at this immature dick. It’s not funny to you and you’d rather just run as far away as you can and pretend you don’t know either of them.

Talladega nights is that guy. And you’re either the guy who invited him or you’re the guy who wants to just run away from the whole silly mess.

Which one you are will depend on whether or not you like Will Ferrell when he’s completely turned loose. He has that whole manchild thing that he does in every movie, but in this one, like ‘Anchorman’, he doesn’t rein it in in anyway. Which at times can be utterly hilarious or painfully unfunny (depending on which one of those guys you are). I personally find the whole thing to be quite entertaining. I guess you could say I’m the guy who ended up running away, but I assure you I laughed my head off at first. You see, It’s not that I got a problem with a guy getting drunk and making an ass of himself. That can be VERY funny. But if that’s all the guy does and it’s the only reason anyone invites him anywhere, is he really worth having around? If he’s only interesting when he’s got a fifth of what the hell in him then he’s just an attention whore and that can get pretty old pretty quick. But I guess, even in the end, it’s worth hanging out with him a couple of times just because you know you’ll get some good stories out of him and before the joke has worn out it’s welcome, it’ll have in stitches.
If you’re one of those people that fell in love with the sweet and endearing Will in ‘Elf’ then run as far as you can as fast as you can. If you’re one of those that loved him because of ‘Anchorman’ or the more surrealist segments he did on SNL (like the one where he had a staring contest with a stuffed elk) then you’ll probably be glad you invited this guy to the party.

7/10

(if it seems like I only focused on Will Ferrell in this review it’s because he’s honestly the reason why 99% of people will choose to see or not see this movie)

Snakes on a Plane.

I want you to think back to your childhood. All of us at that time had one thing we would do just for the sake of having fun. Some of us would twirl around with our arms outstretched until we got sick. Others would jump up and down on our beds. I liked to ride my bike down this really steep hill near my house. Do you remember how you could do that thing and feel good afterwards? Do you recall how it was fun for the sake of fun and completely innocent?

Snakes on a Plane is the cinematic equivalent to jumping up and down on the bed when you were 7 years old.

No. It’s not “so bad. it’s good.” It’s just plain (plane?) good. The snakes are really cringe worthy. You’ll laugh with the jokes and not at them. There is real suspense in here and real fun.

If I have any particular gripes about this one is that it’s pretty obvious where they shot material to get the R rating that everyone wanted. It’s pretty obvious when a conversation goes along for a few seconds without any profanity and then someone drops an “f” bomb like nothing happened. oh and that line that we all know Samuel L. says? What the filmmakers have done with that is pretty genius. They know that that WE know it’s coming so what they do is lead up to it a couple of times and then they don’t do it. When he finally does tell us how he really feels about those damn snakes it makes you just want to stand up and cheer.

I won’t go into any discussion of plot or anything like that with this one. Mostly because it’s irrelevant. The title tells you what’s going to happen. It’s up to you be a big kid for an hour or so and enjoy it.

10/10

(and no I’m not being ironic. I’m being honest.)

Accepted

I don’t know if any of you guys did the paint by numbers thing when you were little, but I did. Oh sure, you say to yourself, anyone can do that. There’s no artistry in that. To which I reply, “yeah but the picture looks good when it’s done”. Then I’d hang the picture for a day or two on the bedroom wall and forget about it after a while and eventually the crappy paper they printed the things on would tear and the thing would fall off the wall and It would just get thrown away and nobody really cared.

Accepted is completely paint by numbers.

Let’s check the “fun teen comedy” checklist shall we?

1. sweet, nerdy and lovable main character? check.
2. token black guy? check.
3. Soundtrack of popular hip-hop and alt rock? check.
4. Crude but well within the acceptable limits of pg-13 humor? check.
5. Hot chick that is at first out of the main characters league but after a series of misadventures and funny coincidences she realizes that the nerd is the one for her and not the clean cut all american footbal jock? check.

Accepted suceeds mostly because it knows its limitations and never tries to be anything more than dumb fun with some light heart-string tugging. It tells the story of a few people who graduate from high school and are not accepted at any of the colleges they apply to. so one of them decides to fake being accepted at a fake college that he just completely makes up along with the help of friends. there’s more to the plot than that but it’s unimportant. You alredy know from the premise how it’s going to end don’t you? of course you do. you’re not an idiot. What you want to know is the damn thing funny along the way?

well yeah. it is. suprisingly funny. once you get past the retarded “no way in a million years would that ever happen” premise it actually becomes fairly charming and witty. Thanks, in large part, to a great cast of unknown actors.

Justin “I’m a mac” long plays the main character. The “I just want to buy these boots but you’re making it extremely difficult for me” fat kid from the 40 year old virgin plays his best friend. Anthony “Where have I seen him before?” Heald as the asshole and, in the most inspired bit of casting, Lewis black as the fake dean of the fake college.

The movie takes all the predictable turns as the characters buck the system and then learn their lessons and then manage to give the finger to the system in the end anyway. But for all it’s predictability I still managed to get a few good laughs out of this one and you probably will to. Just don’t expect to remember it more than a week later.

6/10

The Descent

Great horror works on one simple level. it takes death and puts it in the front of your consciousness. The hows and whys and wheres and whens can all vary, but for horror to truly hit it’s emotional peak of possibilities, it needs to peel back your blocked worries and thoughts regarding your own demise. And, if the horror film you’re watching is a true classic, it will confront you with the idea of imminent death. death without the possibility of parole so to speak. It will flood you with despair and depression as you feel what it’s like to KNOW that you ARE going to die and there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it.

The descent is a great horror film.

It tells the story of a group of 6 women who come together to explore a cave in the appalachian mountains. One of these women, is there to confront her grief over the death of her husband and daughter in a horrific car crash. two are there to support her. The rest are there for thrill. After a brief beginning where we see the car crash that killed the one woman’s family, and the 6 of them meeting up the night before the expedition begins, the film heads underground and the claustrophobia begins. Now, I’ve never really been one to freak out about small spaces. But then again i’ve never been in the cave passages that these type of women are forced to go through in this movie. There are sections where they crawl on their stomachs through passages so tight that their lungs aren’t able to expand enough to take in decent size breaths. And the film does such an amazing job of putting you right in there with them when they go through this. There is one section where the women are going through just such a passage and the tunnel starts to creak and dust starts falling indicating an imminent collapse.

And while the movie could have simply been a series of these scenes, showing the horror of possibly being crushed or buried alive, It actually goes one step further. After enduring all manner of physically exhausting passages the women are almost on the verge of finding a way out. But then something happens, something shows up which completely changes the film and makes it even darker and bleaker. I won’t say what because when the film took this turn it was a complete surprise and ratcheted up the despair and terror to almost unberable levels. Suffice to say that these women, if they had only been able to set aside their own interests, might have had a happy ending.

The descent drags death to the front of your consciousness. It floods you with despair. It sucks any and all hope from your life for 2 hours and dares you to try and feel anything good about yourself or the world. The descent is a truly great horror film. and in my humble opinion, like all truly great horror, it transcends it’s genre to become great film in general.

10/10

Lady In the Water

They have woefully misadvertised this

If you want comparisons think more along the lines of movies like ‘E.T.” “Batteries Not Included” and “Cocoon”. Movies that dealt with the supernatural but not a menacing, threatening supernatural. No, this movie deals with the supernatural that is good and protective. The supernatural of guardian angels and benign aliens that wish to enlighten and enrich. So those of you expecting any attempts to care or horrify are going to be let down hard. God only knows why they chose to advertise the movie like they did.

So if the movie isn’t a “horror thriller’ then what is it? Well, early on they were kind of using the phrase “bedtime story” which isn’t innaccurate. But a more accurate way of putting it would be “a bedtime story for kids for adults that want to act like kids” The narrative of the movie is a mish-mash of plot points that seemingly pop-up at random and the logic of the universe of “lady in the water” seems to be very fluid and not really aware of it’s own purpose. But then again, what children’s story isn’t like that? Try to think of any children’s fantasy story that didn’t seem to arbitrarily change it’s direction according to what the author felt would get the kids most excited. got your hero in a tight spot? just make some shit up about him having powers he didn’t know! Gave him powers that were too powerful? just make the enemies suddenly immune to the powers you gave them!

most would call this sloppy storytelling. and indeed if you want to judge this story by more literary means, then, yes, it is a meandering mess that appears to have just been improvised as they were shooting. perhaps it was. but that assesment misses the point I think. This is a movie that tries to get to storytelling in it’s most basic form. where all the rules are off and you can just do what seems right at the moment. A movie that asks you to bring your inner-child to the forefront of your conciousness for an hour or so and just imagine all this crazy shit for the sake of trying to actually imagine something again.

the other thing night has done in this movie is take every major complaint critics and fans have had of his movies since “unbreakable” and amplify them tenfold. people thought it was egomaniacal that he gave himself small parts in his films, in this one he gives himself a MAJOR part. they said that his twists were stupid and seemed to be arbitrary. in this movie, every single scene is an arbitrary plot point that is not set-up. Perhaps the thing he did the most to piss-off movie critics is to make the villain of the film a MOVIE CRITIC! in fact this movie critic is sitting there facing one of the “scrunts” and having an inner dialog about how in horror movies he should be safe because typically the villain will turn and run and the monster will leap and just miss while the villain runs out the door. as soon as he finishes his little soliloquy the thing eats him alive.

All that said i still don’t know how i felt about the movie. parts of it had me smiling and laughing because i could just imagine a group of 4-5 year olds sitting around a campfire while grampa tells them this story and they gasp and oooh at each development. at other times i wanted the movie to get over it’s own self-awareness and just get on with it.

long story short (yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck off)
7/10