Monday, April 28, 2008

Cloverfield

This film wasn't nearly as bad as I expected from other reviews, all slamming the "shaky-cam" effect as being too annoying or causing too many seizure induced comas or whatever... pussies!

Although I do concede that most likely if I had seen this film in the movie theater that the shaky-cam may have made me want to rip the director's arm off and beat him to death with it... but I wasn't. I was on my couch not being some loser "movie-goer", thanks.

Anyhow, if it hadn't had the Shaky-cam crap, would it not have just been some Sci-fi special?
Would it not have been just another Godzilla? Sure would! Because in spite of my lack of annoyance at the shaky-cam style of the movie (No-one got this annoyed at Blair Waitch. wtf?) I was quite displeased that the creature itself looked about as original as a Michael Bay epic.
Could it not have been a giant frog?
Could it not have been a magnificently oversized slug?

Whatever, no big gripe because I'm sure half the point in the film was that, unlike Godzilla, the pointin the film was the people in it rather than the monster itself.
Which would be why they didn't get someone as cardboard as Mathew Broderick in it.

That was a zing!

Goodnight.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Ichi The Killer

There is something remarkably weird about this film!
I'm not talking about the content, in fact I cannot for reasons about to be disclosed.
No, I'm talking about the fact that I've tried to watch it several times and every time, 30 minutes in, I inexplicably slip out of consciousness... bizarre!
No matter how many times I've tried, I always wake up 2 or 3 hours later drowsily awakened by the DVD title music once again... it's uncanny. The film is far from boring, so it's not like I'm trying to sit through a Michael Bay marathon and dozing off, and I find myself fairly captivated by the story so my only guess is the film-makers put in some sort of subliminal tone in the soundtrack that has a frequency that affects only certain minds (if it affected everyone then no-one would have ever seen Ichi The Killer, and we would have some sort of a world-wide bizarre-o phenomenon going on!) and sends them off into a deep unconscious state (otherwise known as "sleep"!).

It's truly bizarre and I have no explanation for it!

Oh yeah, did I mention that every time I wake up there are gallons of blood splattered everywhere and a mountain of bodies mysteriously appears in my basement?

How queer!

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon

I think I saw a near perfect movie...

It starts out a little bit like the Blair Witch Project, except in this film the documenters (Is that the correct word?) are following Leslie Vernon, who they call a "supernatural killer". He corrects them saying he's more "in the business of fear", but basically he's a "Jason", "Freddy" or "Michael Myers" in training.

We follow him and the documentary makers (Still not sure what the term for one who makes a documentary is) as we see how Leslie stalks the correct prey, making sure his primary target is a teenage virgin girl and ensuring that she hangs around a mixed group of friends in order to vary up his killing spree as much as possible. We also follow his extreme training so he can do things like, look like he's dead for prolonged amounts of time or keep up with people who are running at full speed but still just looking like he's walking and several random things that are wholly cliched in slasher films... it all comes across as ridiculous and hilarious, and comedy slashed with horror is always my favorite kind of comedy (and horror) and with just this comic look at a serial killer from the perspective of a bunch of people who act basically as though they're merely tracking someone with an unusual obsession with stamp collecting the movie would be complete enough and I would have been wholly satisfied but...

The film-makers (the real ones, who made the film, not the ones in the film) correctly deduce that the people who will be watching this film will be people into slasher films... so why just document the killer! We are introduced fairly early on to some cut scenes away from the documentary style and see what will happen in the lives of the victims, and get glimpses of a "real" slasher film, interspliced nicely with the clips of our humorous documentary.

Kind of like a really awesome cheese and branston pickle sandwhich.

Friday, April 4, 2008