Judas and the Black Messiah

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons

Synopsis: Darius from Atlanta fucked up.

Review: Why did I stop writing nonsensical movie reviews on here for every movie I watch even if they don't relate to the movie and make no sense?

I dunno, good question.

Judas and the Black Messiah gets 5 out of 5.

Biggest Positive: I learned another heart breaking piece of U.S. history which I was only vaguely aware of.

Biggest Negative: I learned another heart breaking piece of U.S. history which I was only vaguely aware of.

Trivia: To prepare for the role, LaKeith actually travelled through time to infiltrate the real Black Panthers of the time.

Rating: 5/5

The Crow

Cast: Brandon Lee, Rochelle Davis, Ernie Hudson


Synopsis: A hipster goth-like musician and his girlfriend are killed in a brutal needless murder but luckily for goths everywhere a magical crow decided that it would be cool to bring back the lanky hippy from the dead to seek revenge on his killers (apparently every other horrific murder in history doesn't matter to the magical crow and only people who look cool in white make up and a trench coat can be brought back from the dead.). Madness ensues.


Review: For years random people have been astounded when I tell them I haven't ever seen The Crow. Their heads fall back on themselves, their eyes bug out and some have even melted into a pool of their own self-loathing right in front of me. The reason, I always assumed, is because I used to have long vaguely curly hair, wear a big ol' leather trench coat and could be found occasionally wearing dark make up and leaping from building to building seeking my revenge on criminal underworlds so it seemed like a surprise when I hadn't seen the movie on which it might have seemed I based my entire existence... or so I thought! Until at work, where I wear a uniform and am not allowed to wear make up or kill people, a co-worker who hasn't seen me out of work expressed the exact same exasperation that I "of all people" had not seen The Crow. Thinking there must be something to this I decided (Was given a copy of The Crow by said co-worker and told if I didn't watch it he'd hunt me down and kill me) to finally get around to watching The Crow.

Having now seen it I realize now that when people said that I "had to see The Crow" what they actually meant was "You look like an obnoxious prick who likes shitty vaguely dark over-hyped movies that are only popular because someone died during filming".

Bummer.


In Short: Between this and Reservoir Dogs I realize that when everybody in the world says you need to see a movie it actually means "This movie sucks but everyone likes it because it's edgy without being close enough to the edge to be interesting!"


Biggest Positive: Heath Ledger clearly took some notes from this film, threw out all the shit and amplified the few decent parts a billion times to play the Joker. Then he died too, so it goes to show you should never ever do anything to associate yourself with this film, ever.


Biggest Negative: The hype behind this film is it's hugest flaw. I hope my review paints a picture of a truly awful film so that if you haven't seen the film and you finally do you'll maybe finish saying "Well, it wasn't that bad..."


Trivia: In an inronic twist of fate, exactly one year after his death Brandon Lee was still dead.

The Crow's Loft - fan page

No Country For Old Men

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Berdem


Synopsis: Josh Brolin find a stash of money amongst a bunch of dead Mexican drug lords, meanwhile Javier Bardem is killing people with an air powered cattle-killy thing, meanwhile Tommy Lee Jones is mumbling incoherently about nothing in particular, meanwhile Kelly MacDonald is talking about something I can't quite listen to because I'm too busy thinking "You're Scottish. Where has your accent been in the last 2 films I've seen you in?", meanwhile I just discovered that the guy that played the Deputy Sherrif (Garret Dillahunt) was Krug in "The Last House On The Left" who incidentally, in that film not this one, looked a bit like Josh Brolin, who in the meantime is sort of meandering about his business trying to hide with the money while meanwhile, Javier Bardem kills more people. Somehow all these people's plots are all about the same thing in the same movie...


Review: Why is it that every Coen brothers film I've seen has a plot that if you were to tell it to someone (e.g. "There's Mexican drug lords and Josh Brolin steals their money after they all die in a mass shoot-out but Javier Bardem plays this guy who needs that money and will stop at nothing to kill everyone in his path to get to it! Then a hired assassin shows up to kill either Josh, Javier or both! And the cops are hot on Javier's trail the whole way but can't quite get him as he gets closer and closer to catching Josh Brolin!") they'd think the film would be full of car chases, epic gun battles and multiple budget-busting explosions (There is one in this film but it's hardly Bay-esque!) but in reality the Coen brothers tend to make the film just about a bunch of slightly eccentric ugly people saying weird shit?


In Short: Too much romance, not enough human killing


Biggest Positive: "Would you hold still, please, sir..."


Biggest Negative: Not enough on screen violence. Is that wrong?


No Country For Old Men website


Trivia: 50 people died of boredom in early screenings of this film so the Coen brothers has to trim a half-hour long sequence of Josh Brolin watching an entire episode of Jeoporday in real-time and complete silence.

Summer Of Sam

Cast: John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino, Michael Badalucco and a hundred other people. 

  Synopsis: In the summer of '77 New York City was plagued by the notorious killer known as "The Son Of Sam" who targetted young girls and couples in their cars with a .44 caliber pistol. Meanwhile, a bunch of things happened in the city which had no relevance whatsoever to the killings. 

  Review: This was an excellent look at the lives of a group of Italian-Americans living in New York City during the summer of 1977, the same summer in which David Berkowitz (The Son Of Sam) shot and killed at least 6 people. The film seems to try to get an everyday view on how the killings affected the regular people of New York City as Leguizamo's character goes from almost falling victim to the killer, to not giving a shit about the killer, to throwing a temper tantrum out a window at the killer (Who isn't outside the window at the time, or ever), to not giving a shit about the killer again, to forgetting that the film is supposedly about a killer for a good portion of the film, to becoming convinced by his wannabe Mafia type buddies that they know the killer and going on a viginlante hunting mission, to finally not giving a shit about the killer again. A visually impressive film, no doubt and the story of Vinny and his buddies as they come to terms with Adrian Brody's ridiculous British accent is indeed a compelling and intriguing tale however aside from the occasional mention or fleeting conversation it bares no relevance to the killer who, it would have been implied by the title of the movie, the film is seemingly about. Yes, there are glimpses into the killer's life but at no point do they cross paths with Leguizamo. 

  In Short: If all the moments in this film that bared no relevance to the Son Of Sam were removed it probably would have been a reasonable 90 minutes long but Spike Lee being Spike Lee it was instead a sixteen hour epic. 

Biggest Positive: After watching this you can make any regular household activity, like watering the lawn, seem amazing by pretending an epic Who song is playing in the background and Spike Lee is directing it by doing things like giving off-center closeups of the water spraying and bouncing in slow motion off the plants and making nauseating camera motion shots of the background slipping away and spinning while you stand stationary. 

  Biggest Negative: Jon Lovitz should have played the Son Of Sam, and done him in a comical slap-stick style. IMDb page 

  Trivia: Leguizama only agreed to do this film on the condition that Spike Lee release his wife and kids unharmed.

 

Who Can Kill A Child?

Cast: Lewis Fiander, Prunella Ransome, Bunch Of Annoying Spanish Brats

Synopsis: An English couple decides to take their vacation on a remote island which has no contact to the mainland and with no idea who lives there, where they'll stay or why on Earth they don't just find a quiet village on the mainland like any other normal vacationing couple only to find that the island is all but deserted save for the occasional snotty little vicious kids, a bunch of corpses and a creepy looking Spanish dude rocking an awesome 'tache.


Review: The idea of the film is simple: A group of kids on an isolated island decided for reasons unknown to up and kill all the adults and take the island as their own. The adults could have easily overpowered the children but didn't because... (dun dun DUN!)... who can kill a child? A nice premise and one that surely could be thought provoking and deep in a "let's discuss it over a few pints while we all get shit faced and laugh about the piss poor special effects" kind of way if the film hadn't begun with about ten minutes of lengthy tedious intro voice-over telling us that there have been hundreds of instances during man's inhumanity to man (Wars, famine etc etc.) where the kids, either inadvertently or deliberately, are the first and the most plentiful to be killed. So the film basically shot itself in the ass from the get go on that one

Who can kill a child?

All these people can and did

Oh...

The end!

Instead we follow a couple of fairly obnoxious English people as they trek through the island contemplating their own failed existence and wondering when the silly bitch is going to realize that she should just let her husband brandish the biggest Gatling gun available and plow through the hordes of snotty pre-teens like it was a ridiculous 'Nam movie shot by Michael Bay.

I think this movie had some real potential - it could have had the creepy kid element, it could have been a real gut-wrnecher as far as the kid killing was concerned and it had the isolation down but I feel overall the movie fell way short of it's potential...


In Short: Worth a watch? Sure, but don't get excited just because it got an X rating in Britain and was banned in Finland. I dunno what that means, for all I know Bambi is banned in Finland...


Biggest Positive: The realistic language barrier. You half expect the main guy to just start yelling at the "crazy foreigners" when they start to struggle with words... wait, that's my biggest positive? That sucks... oh well


Biggest Negative: It's hard to watch without thinking how much creepier, scarier, gorier, better it could have been no matter how much you enjoy it...


IMDb Page


Trivia: The spanish word for A-Bomb is "bomba atómica"

The Last House On The Left (2009)

Cast: Garret Dillahunt, Sara Paxton, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn

Synopsis: When the recently crumbled and bought-over movie studio New Line ended up cold and alone and without a hope for a future, Hollywood decided to ambush it in the woods! First they turned to something they owned but didn't create - Friday the 13th. They took Jason and they destroyed him utterly. Then they turned their sites on destroying one of New Line's shining stars, Wes Craven's babies - The Last House On The Left. They took The Last House On The Left and savagely raped it repeatadly in the woods and told it to fondle A Nightmare On Elm Street's breasts and piss it's pants. It promptly did so and once it was at it's lowest point, Hollywood remade Last House On The Left and turned it into a pile of excrement...

In it's dying breath, Last House On The Left fell to the ground, clawing at the dirt and croakily screamed to Nightmare On Elm Street - "Run! Don't... let... them... remake... you... too!".

And with that - The Last House On the Left was destroyed...

Review: I don't know why we feel compelled to go to the cinema to see movies like this when there were perfectly good movies like... well, I guess Watchmen is the best one out just now but hell, I bet Miss March would be in many ways a superior film to this.

It wasn't a bad film really but you have to remember that it's basically starting from a very low point given that it's a god-damned unnecessary remake (again!) so that automatically sets it at a negative score right now...

It wasn't nearly (even remotely close) as gritty and almost snuff-like as the original but that was to be expected... perhaps though it was expected too much by some members of the audience who seemed to be appalled when the rape sequence began. I mean, did they think it was just going to be left out altogether? Perhaps they were (more likely) too young to have even seen the original and have parents too dumb to realize they shouldn't even be seeing a watered down remake of Last House On the Left.

Anyway, the rape scene began and so many people left the theater that it made me want to spin round in circles and laugh! My wife pointed out all the "evacuees"; but I surmised eventually that they probably just had to pee or get snacks and chose the awkward scene to do it in.

But then out of the ten or thereabouts that left only a couple seemed to return to the theater...

I guess people generally don't want to sit and watch a girl get forcibly fucked in the ass.
At least not in a room full of strangers anyway, that's awkward!

The film has promise but falls way short of being either as gritty as the original or able to be a mainstream "re-imagining" and popularized version of the it. Instead it is some sort of middle ground for lazy people who can't be bothered to locate a copy of the original.

There's too much cutting between "shaky-cam" and regular camera work too and the shaky-cam is extremely forced, you can tell someone's trying to make it seem cheap and nasty but failing, since you can tell they're trying.

In Short: A decent enough, watchable film but a few too many attempts at arty shots and close ups of girls panties - done in a way that makes you feel like the director thought that's all you had to do to make a film dirty and raw.

Biggest Positive: It stayed fairly true to the original film, a lot more than it could have and a lot more than many remakes do.

Biggest Negative: The original wasn't that good to begin with so they were pretty much fucked from the get-go.



Trivia: In order to fully experience this film in the best possible way pick up a pair of the super-special dark 3D glasses on the way in and put them on right away so no-one can tell you're taking a nap!

Eden Lake

Cast: Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbenger

Synopsis: A couple makes plans to spend a romantic weekend away but have it turned into a blood filled horror-fest when a bunch of Neds (Chavs, Townies, whatever) start stalking and attacking them.

Review: This is one of few horror films that genuinely scared me somewhat in recent years, especially since it didn't involve the things which usually scare me: Rape sequences, killing animals or German people. But this managed to do it!

Probably because I know that somewhere out there, there are little fucker Ned shitheads who might pull this shit off if you spilled their White Lightning on their bright white kappas. So I knew what the poor bastards in the film were going through...

Highly recommended film for all the family!

In Short: I have never been so glad to be now living in a country without Neds in my life!

Biggest Positive: Genuinely fearful! Managing to scared of something that could happen and not something that only maybe possibly, but probably wouldn't ever, happen.

Biggest Negative: Neds are really fucking annoying and since the film's about them they're quite prevalant.

Eden Lake's Website - this site is pretty nifty, you should go!

Trivia: Eden Lake is currently being used by the British tourist board to show a better side of British youth!

Snakes On A Plane

If you need a review of Snakes On A Plane to tell you anything about it then I truly have nothing more to say to you...

"First I was like..."

"Then I LOL'd!"

Do You Like Hitchcock?

Yes, yes I do.

This is probably the best scene in the movie:

Hellraiser: Bloodline

I fell asleep almost as soon as this started (Due to tiredness, not boredom) and for some reason I feel that was probably for the better
This seemed to be essentially "Pinhead In Space!", which seems rather corny and worth missing to me...

I was rather surprised to learn this is only the fourth in the series though and not "Hellraiser Part 56: We've Really Ran Out Of Ideas"

I wonder if they'll ever make "Freddy In Space"!

(This rating is a complete guess and possibly is giving the film the benefit of the doubt)

A Review By Someone Who Stayed Awake

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

I must admit that when I decided to watch this for the first time over the weekend I felt I was in for a bit of a laugh fest (ala War Of The Robots), but what I got was a well acted and thought provoking little film about a lovable alien coming to Earth with threats to annihilate us all. But in a nice way!

The special effects, though obviously dated somewhat, struck me as being relatively believable.
I was thoroughly impressed and it actually made me look forward to the new version, starring Keanu Reeves, a little more than I already was. I'm just sort of curious as to how they pan it out as it seems from the trailer that Keanu comes to Earth with a much more threatening position than the lovable Klaatu played by Michael Rennie who just doesn't seem to want to scowl at all.


Anyway, the facvt is I only reviewed this to try and snatch some gullible fools looking for The Day The Earth Stood Still reviews!

Gwahahahahahahahaha!

No, really, I did watch it though

That's me, rambling about the remake

The Day The Earth Stood Still's Wikipedia Page

The Happening

If you don't want to know anything about The Happening, then why in the name of God are you reading a review of it? Hop off!
The Happening (Winner of the "Vaguest Movie Title Since 'The Thing'" Award), for those of you who were living in a sensory deprivation chamber throughout the earlier part of the year, is the most recent offering from visionary wank-fart M. Night Shyamalan. Of course it's filled with social points, surprising performances from actors you previously discounted as being completely cardboard and of course the mandatory unnecessarily uncomfortable close ups of frustrated looking people.
That's pretty much par for the course in an M. Night film.

What's different is that this one was rated "R"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!!!!one!!!!!! OMG U guyz!

The trailer and pre-release press were very aptly set up in a way to make people watching think "Oh my God, what if the things happening in The Happening really happininged?"!
Such is the way with semi-epic "Oh Gosh, what if something slightly weird, but not too chaotic, happens?" films.

In this film Mark Wahlberg's character (who should have been played by William H. Macy in order to make this film about 523 times less douchey) is a school teacher (See? Why is Wahlberg teaching children things? Truly this is a work of horror beyond compare...) and soon becomes aware that trees are communicating with grass and sunflowers and telling them to send out magical "Take 4 steps backwards then kill yourself" beams to all the humans in the vicinity.

"I can't stop furrowing my brows any more than you can stop looking all 'indie', dear"

A truly magnificently terrifying concept that Mr. Shyamalan has presented us with. If plants could make us all take 4 steps backwards and kill ourselves what would happen, man? Good God! It would truly be The Happening!

Yeah, unfortunately the whole concept of plants being able to release some sort of spore into the air that evokes the exact same reaction in every single one of the highly developed Homo Sapien psyche's it encounters is about as likely as M. Night Shyamalan's next movie not trying to mess with your head in one way or another.

Yes, bees are disappearing and yes, if we're to believe the crazy cross eyed weirdo in the movie, plants can emit some sort of spore that attracts a very specific wasp to deter a very specific caterpillar when it feels threatened by it's presence - but these things are insects.

Did you know that there are parasites that can completely envelope ants, snails and spiders minds and have them do their bidding? Turning them into effective "zombies"?
It's true! But there's a very good reason why no-one with half a brain created a movie in which those very same parasites were responsible for a zombie outbreak and it's because it doesn't make sense. There's a huge difference between controlling, distorting or completely destroying the mind of one of the most simple and low functioning creatures on the planet and being able to control the mind of any mammal, never mind the human brain.
Don't get all environmental on me!
The Human brain would be far less susceptible to any sort of mind controlling spores, even in as simple a way as we have communication and understanding to get us through such crises.

It's not like a movie couldn't exist where weird spores were affecting us in some way... why not make the spores just make people go a little nuts? Sure, suicide rate is up but everyone isn't killing themselves in exactly the same damn way!
That doesn't make any sense!
You could have murder rates up... people pressing their own eyeballs out through their noses, people hallucinating that their long deceased ancestor is talking to them through their bathroom mirror beckoning them to kill every pet Pug in the neighborhood, people stapling pancakes to peoples heads... a whole manner of messed up shit happening! People going nuts in their own little ways all over the place creating chaos!

But instead we have a bunch of people calmly stepping off buildings and Mark Wahlberg looking like he's on the verge of a very minor breakdown, from which he will only recover with a huge dose of Chamomile tea.

Screw this film, M. Night, your next one had better be about 100 times better.

(It wasn't that bad actually, just unrealistic... unlike Unbreakable, that made perfect sense!)



The Happening Movie Site

NOTE: To see how this film should have gone down, watch The Signal, which I reviewed a couple of posts back...

The Butterfly Effect

We recently had the good fortune to find The Butterfly Effect for $1 on VHS on the bargain racks at a Video Store recently...


... a movie which is easily worth at least one and a half times that amount! Score!

The Butterfly Effect is a movie I've seen a few times and is by far one of the best time-travel based movies there is (Just below Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure! Of course!), and easily one of the ones with the least time-travelling plot holes that most fall prey to. Coupled with the fact that Ashton Kutcher is the lead role who had, until then, mainly played "the goofy stoner kid" in anything else he was in made for interesting viewing given that he made an awesome performance in this. You hear that Ashton? Awesome! Where are you now? Stop playing dumbass pranks on celebrities and trying to produce failed attempts at sit-coms and get back to acting in slightly edgy films, dude! Duuuuuuuuuuuude! Saaaweeeeeeeeeeet!

So, Butterfly Effect = Awesome! All the way through until the VHS tape gets to the end...

It's then I remember that the version I've seen countless times was the Director's Cut in which (SPOILERS AHEAD) Ashton's character realizes that in the end it is inevitable that no matter what he does he is going to fuck things up for someone in some way and so he watches the home video reel of his mother giving birth and goes back to then when he was still in the womb and strangles himself with the umbilical cord! Awesome! Thus, he never is born and the girl he loves never decides to hang around in that shitty town to get abused, the brother isn't hanging out with them to fuck things up by blowing up a baby and making Lenny crazy and his mother probably doesn't go chain-smoking because she doesn't get her hopes up with a surviving baby (Also something left out was all the still-births his mother had before Ashton's character's birth, though I think that was a deleted scene that didn't even make it to the director's cut! For shame! It implied that there had been many other time-traveling stoner kids before Ashton's character who had all come to the same conclusion that they had to kill themselves before they were born! Extra awesome? I thought so).
Instead the version we bought (Which I call the "shit-assed version") ends with him just going back and not killing himself but still managing to fix everything and make everything perfect and thus destroying any point that the film might have made about inevitability and the dangers of changing things in the past to change the present. Instead we end with an ending in which Ashton's character has potentially perfected everything, instead of fucking up everything, which is exactly how the movie should have ended... and it did! In the director's eyes...

"I swear! I didn't know we bought the version with the lame ending, Lenny!"

It was still enjoyable. Funny, exciting, at times disturbing. But all in all, I think if I had seen this ending first, I wouldn't have remembered The Butterfly Effect as being such an awesome movie all these years...

Still, I think I give it 4/5 all the same:



The Butterfly Effect - Apple Movie Site

The Signal

Who doesn't like movies about fucked up shit happening because of weird telepathic, radioactive, mind controlling hypno-signals coming through the T.V.?
Well, a lot of people... probably why this film wasn't terribly popular as far as I know but it should have been! And it's popular in my book, gosh darn it!


Anyway, the film is split into three parts (It also has three directors - coincidence? Or a sign of something more sinister?) each of which deals with, firstly the fact that a strange transmission is coming through all T.V.s, telephones and radios that is somehow driving everyone who watches or listens to it crazy but mostly following the steps of a young woman named... uh... I forgot her name... whoever! Who is being pursued by her enraged husband Lewis and her secret lover Ben both of whom have different degrees of "the crazy" from watching the strange broadcast.

This film is excellently done, each director manages to get you to really see how every single character genuinely thinks they're the sane ones and everyone else went nuts and then quickly switching it up and reminding you that "Oh! That guy's crazy too, I forgot he likes to spray rat poison in people's mouths! Silly me!".

Point is, excellent movie, excellent point, excellent acting, excellent excelsiur, excellent overall.

Definitely see this one if you like movies about people going nuts and talking to severed heads.


Do You Have The Crazy? - Official "The Signal" website

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Take.. your damn hands.. off her

As is carefully explained on the back of the DVD case, this is the fourth installment in the Friday the 13th series, not the final one as the name might imply. I guess the film-makers didn't know there was going to be five thousand and thirty two sequels after this so they can't really be blamed...

It's pretty hard to review this film since it is in every way identical to every other Friday the 13th film ever made. Seriously, they're all the fucking same!
I'm secretly trying to drudge my way through the series in sequence so I can eventually make my way to "Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan". I mean, how the fuck does that transpire? I'm really curious, but in the mean time I have to sit through parts I - VII...

Only 3 more to go before I hit the motherload!

Anyway, let's focus on the obvious flaws in this film... number one: Crispin Glover was in it and playing someone who wasn't completely awkward.

If Crispin Glover is in your film and he gets laid, you've failed.
Moving on...
Corey Feldman was in this film and wasn't completely awesome!
What?!
It's true... he was this little weedy kid who stayed in his room peeping at boobies and spending way too long making latex masks that didn't really come into play much in the film at all.

Then he shaved his head for no reason.

I' have to admit I'm a bit disappointing in these early editions in the Friday the 13th series (Except for part 1, obviously), the death scenes are really under-emphasized when they should be the main part of these films, and the characters are all detestable... I know some of the later sequels pick up on the death scenes a little so I have that to look forward to.

Anyway, now that Jason's finally really dead (Really, really this time) it'll be interesting to see how they bring him back.

Not really, I already know and of course it's not interesting... half the time he comes back from the dead for no reason at all so I'm not really sure why they feel a need to explain it at all in the next film.

I probably won't review another Friday the 13th until I get to Jason Takes Manhattan. I can't imagine anything interesting is going to happen until then.

Below is the most awesome clip you'll ever see of Crispin Glover dancing in Friday the 13th part IV:



(If you're reading this on Facebook you'll need to click on "view original post" below to see the clip)

Mother Of Tears

Basically the plot of Mother Of Tears is simple. It's practically identical to the plot of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone except instead of Harry, there's a sexy dark-haired Italian woman with her tits out. Instead of Hagrid there's a sexy dark-haired Italian woman with her tits out. Instead of Voldemort there's a sexy dark-haired Italian woman with her tits out. And instead of Dumbledor there's Udo Kier.

A rare clothed moment in Mother Of Tears.

And last but not least, instead of Quidditch matches there are giant lesbian orgies.

Seriously, Witches and lesbianism? That Dario Argento really knows how to push the envelope...



MSN Movie Page on Mother Of Tears

The Reaping

Don't read this review if you haven't seen The Reaping! It contains spoilers...



You see, ladies and gentlemen The Reaping has (drum roll, please) a twist ending!!!

Whatever will they think of next? A huge twist at the end that flips the whole film on it's head! How brilliant and original...
That was a little sacastic...
Don't get me wrong, a film has to have some surprises at the end, otherwise it just sort of fizzles out but I am absolutely sick of endings that make you are supposed to make you think "Oh! I'm sooooo shocked! What brilliant innovative wonderously sexy masterpiece of a director made this film? I must know so I can offer myself to him sexually", but alas most twist endings are forced and entirely and completely unnecessary.

This film did not need a twist! (Here come the spoilers), if the silly little bitch at the end had turned out to be Satan as was implied and flat-out said all throughout the film and was just playing a vicious Satan-like trick on the silly cynical cow that starred in this pile of tripe, all would have been good!
Hilary Skank would have then slaughtered an entire innocent village and fled with the child of Satan into Safety! Brilliant!
But, oh no, she has to go and discover the truth that the whole village is evil and in fact God has been punishing them with these plagues and they weren't coming from the little girl... wah wah wah...

If that's the case though, and it was God who was doing all the big magic plague shit, then why did "God" decide to let that priest who was trying to help Skank explode to death in a rather unnatural fireball? That made sense when you thought Satan was up to his old tricks but God wouldn't have done that would he? Maybe God lost his shit for a moment there and forgot how the film was going to end...

I don't know...

I do know this film wasn't as good as it should have been



The Reaping's Website

Shutter (2008)

Not that many people read these reviews but just on the off-chance that someone out there is checking regularly with a plan to off themselves should my outlandishly pointless movie reviews ever ends I thought I should make it my duty to inform the world that for the next 2 weeks I most likely won't be making any reviews as I have family visiting from Scotland and frankly I'm not going to be bothered with logging in and typing random nonsense about films no-one gives a shit about.

I'm not sure the world-wide-internetwebs will survive my absence and when I return I will no doubt be returning to a blackened charred hollowed out shell where once my blog lay in all it's glory. I'll lift my head to the sky and scream for answers but none will come.
I will turn to the dark side (Yahoo!) for answers but where the might Y! once stood so strong and proud, looming over the web with a bright red (or purple) tempting light, trying to draw the droves of people away from the Google empire, there will be nothing.

All "social networking" sites will have crumbled into obscurity and people will be doing weird things like letting people know what they're up to in person and leaving the house.

Yes sirree it will be a dark dark day for mankind...

But on my arrival back, in two weeks, surely a glimmer of hope will be awakened in the masses and gradually and painstakingly we'll all find a way to rebuild the web and make Google mighty again!

Oh yeah, Shutter was a mediocre American remake of a fairly decent Japanese horror film (I couldn't believe someone came up with the brilliant idea of remaking a film either! I mean, remake, brilliant!). It was fairly pointless and followed exactly the same plot as the Japanese one with very little added, changed or taken away except that it had some guy from Dawson's Creek in it and a weird man with an unusually large forehead. In it some people went "blah blah blah" while scary things apparently happened.

The end...

The Ruins

What Jaws did for swimming at beaches...

What Freddy Krueger did for scary dreams...

What Jason did for sexy times...

What Jurassic Park did for strange Scotsmen who decide to clone dinosaurs for a quick buck...

What Alien did for advanced space exploration...

The Ruins did for DVD sales.

I am now petrified to get another DVD and put it in my player for fear that I may be forced to endure another 90 minutes such as those experienced while watching The Ruins. No, no, it wasn't scary in the traditional way you'd expect a horror film to be, it was scary in how phenomenally terrible an idea the whole thing is... I was pretty slow to catch on to what was actually going on in this film so I won't give it away by saying what is the bad-guy in this film though, so you can at least have that going for you... I think I only didn't catch on because my brain didn't want to believe it? Anyhow, for serious though, this film is distinctly flawed in that it really seems to be made with the thought process that the audience is going to watch it knowing it's a horror film but not know what is going to kill them (at least for the first 20 - 30 minutes of the film) which leaves the audience member (The ones who don't know about the film, such as me) thinking up what elaborate and beastly demons might be lurking in the Ruins to slaughter our hapless main characters one by one in ways each more elaborate and scary than the rest.

Is it demons from the depths of hell?

Is it a weird evolution of man that's been trapped in the ruins for centuries and is now a weird man-eating man-bat thing?

Is it an alien (or predator)?

No... it's... yes, well just take my word for it, any one of those things might have been more exciting. Not as original I'll grant you that... but more exciting for sure...

Anyhow, I'm going to sneak off and hide in a cave for the rest of my life just in case some fucktard bastard decides to make a sequel to this.

Damn, but I'm scared of dark enclosed places now!
Not because of The Ruins but because of The Descent.
Why would the descent scare me and not the Ruins? Well, because something scary is actually after people in that film! Shock, I know.

The only thing this film had going for it was the gore. But, come on! Hostel II had good gore and it didn't excuse that train wreck of a film so I hardly think it excuses this one either...

Face/Off

Basically what happens in Face/Off, for those of you who are unaware, John Travolta steals Nicolas Cage's face. The reasons for this are obvious, you see, Nicolas Cage is a terrorist (A true movie terrorist, who seems to have no motive or reason and just enjoys blowing things up and killing people) and the only way to get answers about where the big scary bomb is, is to steal his face and talk to his brother! Obviously waterboarding, electrocuting and pistol whipping suspects wasn't quite as popular back then... in fact I wonder how Mr. Travolta's anti-terror unit functioned since I'm not sure I saw them even try and question their suspect before they resorted to complicated, dangerous and fairly implausible surgery to get their answers.

This all essentially leads up to a random scene where a bunch of guys get wasted and just keep saying "Face.... off!" over and over again. To me, it seemed like just a little bit of "Movie Masturbation" (A term I think I just invented, thank you!), essentially to give the guys down at Crap Trailers Inc. something to work with.

At the beginning of the movie you may wonder to yourself why it seems like Nicolas Cage is seemingly trying to act, something very rarely seen from him and with good reason, and why John Travolta isn't being a loud-mouthed obnoxious fuck-hole as usual but it becomes apparent that they sort of had to try and be one another at first since they both had to swap places for most of the film.

If you haven't seen Face Off some of your well intentioned, booze hound friends may tell you this movie is "Worth a watch at least" or worse still, "Good for a laugh" but believe me when I tell you that you should fuck them in the earhole and run a mile before they can catch up with a copy of it on DVD. Seriously, what kind of fucking maniacal sadist makes a movie like Face Off? And on top of that, what kind of a shit-faced mental patient decides to cast John Travolta and Nicolas Cage? In the same movie? I nearly died from sheer disgust trying to watch this film through to the end! But I made it, and believe me, you don't want to even try and go there... save yourself and burn every copy of Face Off you can find.

Having said that, it's worth watching... for a laugh.

If you're reading this review on my actual blog, and not through my notes in Facebook, I've attached a video in which someone quite wisely summarizes Face Off into a 2 minutes and 21 second long video, to save people the trouble of watching the whole movie...