The Abandoned

I have no idea how I’ve missed this, but The Abandoned (2006) is one of those rare movies that riveted me.  It helps if you’re not of the group that expects explosions or flying body parts every 2.3 minutes.  This movie gives a slow, but continuous, build of tension.

It stars Anastasia Hille as Marie and Karl Roden as Nicolai.  I really enjoyed the work of both of these actors in the movie.  So much so that, by the end of the movie, I really wanted to see more of them.  The locale (set in Russia, filmed in Bulgaria) is both beautiful and subtly ominous.   The film’s soundtrack is another rare work of being non-intrusive, yet aiding in building the tension.

Marie had been adopted by an American couple when she was a baby.  She returns to Russia to visit her family’s home (which she inherited after her mother died several years before and which she finds out about through a notary in Russia).

Her arrival at the notary’s office is when things get weird.  And wonderful.  And creepy.  And confusing.

Marie meets Nicolai (the brother she didn’t know she had) at the family farm and their dive into family history begins.

While it’s unclear just what the overall story is (zombies, ghosts, undead, an unending time loop???), it’s a trip worth taking.  It’s fascinating and keeps you watching and, at the end, leaves you wondering.  There may be cultural beliefs/legends that might fill in the blanks that, as an American viewer, I don’t know.

Several notes of caution:

There is some brief nudity.  There is one particularly disturbing scene regarding Nicolai’s death.  And, while this isn’t a first-person shaky-cam movie, shaky-cam is used to effect in a couple of scenes.  One of those scenes goes on for a bit.  While I normally hate it, it was well-done and added to a sense of disorientation.  I was surprised to not mind it.

If you like a decent, suspenseful thriller, you won’t be disappointed.  There are some wonderful moments in it, it’s well-acted, it delivers (except for the storyline), and the actors bring something to it that you don’t often see.  They just are perfect for their roles.

The Secret Village

Everyone involved in making The Secret Village did bad and they should feel bad.  Very, very bad.  If this movie is any indication, they feel nothing.  Do you know that person that sucks the life out of a room the minute he or she walks in?  The Secret Village is the cinematic version of that person.

Two characters named Greg and Rachel end up sharing a house and investigating something that is either mass hysteria or, possibly, witchcraft in a small town.  A bunch of really stupid script writing happens, there’s some really bad editing decisions made,  and someone’s idea of what makes something suspenseful gets taken out back and shot.  That was the movie I saw.

There’s some attempt at creativity with…I don’t know…time, I guess.  But it feels like someone tried extrapolating the idea of “shaky cam” to create something called “shaky time” and it’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Plot lines develop, almost.  Then never go anywhere.  Characters have no personality, no motivation, appear and disappear for no reason.  And the soundtrack?  I can’t even anything about the soundtrack.

Now, the movie the director/producer/actors/etc. wanted me to see is another story.  What that story is, I cannot begin to comprehend based on what I saw and heard.

There are some bad mistakes that not even a rookie would make.  Like placing a call with a cell phone and, instead of hearing the standard tone you’d hear from the earpiece, you hear the recipient’s ringtone.  I’d expect something like that in something from the Scream franchise.  But as a point of humor.  Not as a serious moment in the movie.  The characters cast as the “bad” guys, are so freaking inept at being threatening that it is almost humorous.  But it’s not.  It’s just apathetic.

My ability to enjoy a movie in the moment and not try to figure out the ending was completely thwarted by this movie.  Being generous, I had it figure out in 30 minutes.  And was sorely disappointed to be right.

If you could extract the the dullest parts of ennui, boredom, lethargy, and mediocrity and combine them into some new even more listless sensation, you would still have something more exciting than this movie.

You could give a six-year old child a film editing machine (don’t do that!) and access to Plan 9 From Outerspace, Birdemic, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  That kid would put together something more compelling than this movie.  Hell, you could have the kid’s movie dubbed into Swahili and then have that translated and subtitled into Swedish and that would make more sense than The Secret Village.

Contracted

Contracted was interesting. Weird. But interesting.

Continuing my involuntary string of movies with lesbians, the protagonist of our show is a lesbian who is no longer in a relationship (although she doesn’t know it and acts in a kind of “let’s boil the bunny” way about it). To help her get over her breakup, a friend invites her to a party where she gets drunk and has sex with a guy.

This leads to pretty much every disgusting thing going wrong with one’s body that one could imagine. Pulling off her own fingernails made me cringe. Even the hair loss thing, which has been done endlessly, was pretty creepy. We’ve got teeth and bleeding and skin and a rash and a seemingly idiotic doctor. (The only real clunker line in this movie was one of the doctor’s lines about not giving her antitibiotics “because over the counter medications” might not work and “we won’t know until we get the tests back”. Very paraphrased, but not far off. I remember thinking “Wait…antibiotics are over-the-counter now? That’s not right.” Actually, all the medical stuff felt mostly like “I went to a gynecologist once then looked up a bunch of stuff online”.)

My prediction that she was incubating alien spawn was wrong. (I’m pretty sure it was wrong. A bit of an open-ended ending that seems more likely to be the “start of the apocalypse” versus alien babies.)

Not horribad. Not even really bad. There’s kind of a “must watch this slow trainwreck in motion” vibe to it. Plus there are lots of lessons to learn from this movie (I wouldn’t say it’s anti-woman or anti-lesbian, it’s more like a creative resetting of a standard trope without it being tedious):

Do not decorate your bedroom in purple.

Do not have unprotected sex with men.

If you do have unprotected sex with men, don’t do it in the back of a car.

If you do have unprotected sex with men in the back of a car, don’t do it in a car with 6-8 tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror.

Dear god LOOK AT THE FACE OF THE PERSON YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE SEX WITH. Really, horny teenager? Those eyes? That mouth? And you’re still all “LET’S DO THIS THING”? Pay attention, man!

Loving a lesbian is likely to get you killed.

It is not supposed to tingle. EVER. (Barring some special lubricant. Even then… )

If it does tingle, STOP.

If it does tingle and you don’t stop, DON’T LOOK AT THE FLOOR!

If it does tingle and you don’t stop and you look at the floor, DON’T GO IN THE BATHROOM!

If it does tingle and you don’t stop and you look at the floor and you go in the bathroom, DON’T LOOK BEHIND THE SHOWER CURTAIN!

I give it three brain pans.

Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D

Before delving into the review, I should make a disclosure:  I really enjoy Dario Argento’s movies.  While that’s a topic for a separate, long post, suffice it to say that there’s something about his use of color, proportion, and scene setting that resonates with me.   In fact, in terms of “bad” movies, Argento is the high standard to which all other bad movies are held by this reviewer.  Seriously.  I love his stuff and, at least subconsciously, it figures into how I judge other bad horror movies.

Last night, I became overly excited to see Argento’s Dracula 3-D available on iTunes.  I read the reviews on iTunes and went ahead and rented it.  (Note to self: iTunes movie reviewers are, generally, idiots.)

Some warnings:  this is an adult movie.  There’s nudity and one graphic sex scene; it is also violent and gory – there were a couple of scenes that bugged me.  One scene in particular:  the scene after Lucy Westenra is dispatched.  Nothing is shown on screen, yet it’s a rather uncomfortable moment.

Dracula doesn’t quite rise to the same quality (in terms of color and proportion) as Argento’s other movies ( such as Suspiria or Inferno).  The movie also doesn’t follow the traditional storyline of Dracula.  Well, it does, I guess.  In a rather mixed up way.  Argento has always had his own take on these things.  All the traditional characters eventually show up in some form or another.  And there is what seems to now be the standard line indicating “this is a Dracula movie”, to wit:  “The children of the night…what music they make.”  Beyond that, it’s more of a movie inspired by Bram Stoker’s novel.

The movie opens with a peasant girl, Tania, helping to lock up the house and then taking off to rendezvous with her married lover.  At which time, there’s a rather extended scene of them copiously copulating.  There is nudity.

As is wont to happen after hot barn sex, the couple fight, Tania takes off and is bitten by a vampire owl (yes, I know that’s not how you spell “bat” because…well…it wasn’t a bat) that transforms into Dracula.  Dracula is played with a sublime air of creepiness by Thomas Kretschmann.  He did a nice job with the role.

Tania becomes a vampire and then Jonathan Harker shows up in town to work for Count Dracula as his librarian.  Harker cuts his hand, Tania show up to suck it.  Later, in an objectively horrible scene of seduction (more nudity, no sex), Tania attacks him, Dracula appears and attacks her, then he attacks Harker.  Later Harker escapes.  Just to get eaten by wolves.  Which is OK because the entire time Harker is on screen, all I could think was “Would someone please cut that poor bastard’s hair!”.  Sure, getting eaten by wolves is extreme.  But, hey, no more hair!

Mina comes to town and visits with her friend Lucy.  Lucy gets sick, dies, comes back, attacks a kid – pretty much the standard storyline.  Somewhere along the way, Van Helsing (played by Rutger Hauer – which you’d think would help things, but it really doesn’t) shows up and gets to work.

A bunch of other stuff happens (OWEMYGAWD! the leadership of the town was in cahoots with Count Dracula all along!) and eventually Dracula gets killed by Mina.

While there’s nothing to especially recommend this movie, I was still entertained.  There were some new takes on the Dracula mythos (e.g., the owl and watch out for the praying mantis scene) and a rather faded sense of Argento’s color/proportion/blocking is present.  The story is choppy (yet leaves one with a feeling of having been told a good story); the acting is…well, I kind of had the feeling that no one really knew their lines and everyone had had too much wine at lunch, breakfast, and dinner; there are some CGI effects that may elicit laughter.

There are some very nice scenes in terms of photography and blocking.  Most of the scenes have just the right touches of color (the scene of Mina and Lucy in the landau is a nice highlight of that).

If you’re a fan of Argento’s work, I think you’ll like it and also see a fading of the talent.  If you don’t like Argento’s work, well why the hell are you even reading this?  Go play in the snow!  Have some fun.  If you’re new to Argento’s work, you’ll get his best work in Suspiria and, to an extent, Inferno (I also really liked Opera and Giallo).  To American audiences, a good description of what you might expect is “spaghetti horror” (reminiscent of the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and 70s).

I also have a feeling that, to an American viewer (specifically, to me), that Argento’s work might be more intelligible if one had a better background of Italian life.  I have a feeling that there’s some cultural context that would add some depth or, at least, fill in some gaps that always seem to be present in his movies.

Olympus Has Fallen

Olympus Has Fallen and, let me tell you, there is not enough erectile dysfunction medication in the galaxy to get it back up.  Is this movie about a falling out with your sparring partner?  Is it a touching story of an adult man’s vaguely disturbing concern for the president’s kid?  Is it a hot mess of crap trying to pluck at your patriotic heartstrings so hamfistedly that you’ll cry bacon juice?  I don’t know.

But I do know this:  you’d think that with a line up like Aaron Eckhart, Gerard Butler, and a bit of Dylan McDermott that keeping Olympus up wouldn’t be an issue.  Yet it is.  Morgan Freeman is in this manly embarrassment, too, and he doesn’t seem very happy about it.  You can’t blame him.

The movie opens with Eckhart (as U.S. President Benjamin Asher) and his family getting ready for some winter holiday party or appearance or something.  You can tell everyone loves each other a whole hell of a lot and there’s still passion in them there fires.  Apparently, how well the president loves his family is the major criteria for being a “good” president.  As that’s pretty much the only thing we have to judge him on as a president.  Soon, they’re all off in their limos and SUVs and to grandmother’s houBAM!  A crash.  Gerard Butler whose job it is, as a Secret Service agent, to guard the president decides to…well…do his job and save the president’s life.  And the president’s wife dies.  Right after exchanging holiday gifts in the back of a limo because, goldurnit, that’s the American president way.

Under president Asher, doing one’s job is grounds for demotion and Butler’s character, Mike Banning (a name that almost oozes testosterone), is demoted to security for STD or FTD or some odd branch of the Secret Service that involves tossing a koosh ball against your monitor. But he’s still friends with the director of the Secret Service (played by Angela Bassett).

While the president is meeting with the prime minister from Korea in the Oval Office, a retrofitted cargo plane (it sure looks like that) is in Washington DC air space and it’s got guns.  This magic cargo plane of shootiness is so fantastically terrific that it has a higher kill rate while flying overhead than armed soldiers on the ground.  It’s killing tourists and officers in bullet-proof vests and just pretty much everyone – all while FENDING OFF THE U.S. AIR FORCE!  Killing everyone except Mike Banning, that is – the one person running around in slacks and a shirt (pretty sure he’s not even wearing a t-shirt).  Oh, and it doesn’t kill the busload of Korean tourists.  Because this terror from beyond space and time retrofitted heap of junk (it honestly does look more like a Lockheed C-130 Hercules though the may have been going for the look of a Lockheed AC-130, than anything capable of precise and widespread killing) is just that goshdarned good and apparently got a gold star in target practice.

The president and a bunch of high-ranking people are shuffled off to the super secret bunker hidden in the bowels of the White House.  And they bring the Korean visitors with them!  Could that be a bad idea?  Let’s see!

In the secret bunker, shit goes sideways.  A couple three of the Korean guys start killing people, including the Korean prime minister.  The president and a bunch of other people you don’t care about are hogtied and Kang (yes, really, Kang) and his small gang are in charge.  It’s never really clear what the motivations are beyond “my mommy died, you Americans and Korea grrr <fist of rage>” – there’s nothing really political or personal or anything motivational enough to rise to the level of taking down the White House.  Just a pissed off guy with mommy issues.  Oh, and Kang has a sexy female computer nerd to help him out with his master plan of turning America into a nuclear wasteland by blowing up our own nuclear weapons while they’re in their silos!

In order to carry out this nefarious plan, Kang (you know, that name just feels like it should have an exclamation mark after it so, henceforth, it will) needs the three CERBERUS codes.  (In some half-assed logic that only a government or a movie director could come up with, having the codes that disarm the missiles can actually be used to blow up the country.  DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!  THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT PATRIOTIC AMERICANISM AND OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN!)  Three different people have a code.  All three of them are in the bunker.  Dylan McDermott is also in the bunker.  We saw him earlier sparring with the president.  Turns out Dylan McDermott is a traitor.  Kang! wants the codes.  Kang! starts killing people to prove it (there is a helluva lot of gore porn in this movie, actually).  The secretary of the Navy has one of them.  Kang! threatens to slit his throat if he doesn’t give it up.  The president hollers “TELL HIM THE CODE!  HE’LL NEVER GET MINE! I AM AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT AND A HERO CAN’T YOU HEAR THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER PLAYING? TELL HIM, MAN!”  (Maybe not exactly that, but pretty close and still better dialog than in the actual movie.)  And the secretary finally complies when the president issues a direct order.  Kang!’s sexy computer assistant enters it into the computer.

Meanwhile, Mike Banning is running around worrying about finding the president’s son and kicking ass and killing a bunch of Koreans who broke into our White House (turns out that those tourists were part of Kang!’s coterie).  It’s like Mike Banning is the brawny love child of Jason Statham and Bruce Willis.  Hmm…um…oh my…um…wonder if Santa could fit that down the chimney…hmmmmm…where was I?

Oh, yeah.  Movie review.  Sorry about that.

Then Kang! needs the second code from the secretary of defense.  But this one’s a woman, so we won’t threaten to slit her throat.  We’ll just smack her around and kick her because it’s a lot more angrily abusive looking than just holding a knife to a throat.  (There’s some serious misogyny in this movie.)  The president hollers “TELL HIM THE CODE!  HE’LL NEVER GET MINE! I AM AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT AND A HERO CAN’T YOU HEAR THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER PLAYING? TELL HIM, WOMAN!”  (Maybe not exactly that, but pretty close and still better dialog than in the actual movie.)  And the secretary finally complies when the president issues a direct order.    Kang!’s sexy computer assistant enters it into the computer.

Sadly, while our president was busy saving the lives of secretaries, he wasn’t being very smart.  Turns out that with two of the codes, a computer running cracking software, and a sexy geek assistant, you don’t even need the third code.  But why would they go through all of this if they could just do that with the other two codes, too?  DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!  THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT PATRIOTIC AMERICANISM AND OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN!

During all of this, there are a lot of scenes of a serious Morgan Freeman as the acting president, and Angela Bassett, and a bunch of other bureaucratic types trying to get this thing under control and conversing with Mike Banning about the president’s kid or the president or tattoos and more killing.  There’s a scene of a tattered American flag being ripped down from atop the White House which is supposed to make your patriotic heart skip a beat and your eye juice to leak a little.  I’ll admit it, my eye juice did leak a little.  From laughing.  “Here’s a bunch of gore porn and several actors and a magic cargo plane of shootiness and now here’s something to gives you a sad.”  Jeesh.

The Air Force is finally showing up!  But wait!  Kang! has a super top secret weapon installed in the White House.  But, in a bit of dialog with one of the bureaucrats and Morgan Freeman, we find out that the U.S. is the only country with this technology.  So, how did Kang! get it and get it installed in the White House?  Or if he didn’t, why didn’t the Secret Service/Department of Defense/”cleaning lady who is really a mad killing machine in charge of defending everything presidential” use that awesome thing to blow up the magic cargo plane of shootiness or the tourist bus of non-tourists (hmm…terrorists + tourists = terrourists)?  DON’T ASK QUESTIONS!  THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT PATRIOTIC AMERICANISM AND OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN!

A bunch of other stuff happens.  The highlight of which is watching the secretary of defense being dragged down a hall (in a camisole and a skirt) while hollering the Pledge of Allegiance.  (Spoiler: she lives.)  Dylan McDermott hollers at the president something like “Why shouldn’t I sell out?  How much does a presidency cost?  $500 million?  You’re the one that sold out….”  Then goes off to try and kill Mike Banning.  As if the government hadn’t been tainted by money and lobbyists for decades before.  The incredulity it is stretched.

All the stereotypically good people we stereotypically care about live.  All the stereotypically bad people die (although Kang! was pretty sexy in a crazy kind of way).  Except for maybe the sexy computer geek – not really clear what happened to her.  Mike Banning saves the presidential offspring.  President’s wife is still dead.  Mike Banning gets his old job back or something.

Then president Asher makes some half-assed patriotic speech and there’s a shot of Old Glory once again flying proudly above the White House.

The end.

Good cast. Potentially good storyline.  Really had potential.  This movie would have been so much better if it had some actual feeling behind it, if it didn’t play so heavily upon gore porn and Asian stereotypes, if it even bothered to flesh out a few things (like why anyone did anything in this movie), had a few scenes of all the men shirtless, or just including a few scenes of Zeus fighting leprechauns.

Apartment 1303

This Apartment 1303 is a U.S. remake (that term is used very loosely) of a Japanese movie by the same name and an excellent example of how not to make a horror movie.  Read this review.  Then watch the Japanese one.

One of the criteria of making a horror movie is…um…horror.  And it’s, you know, right there in the genre name.  It would appear that some movie makers need help with remedial reading because the cover art/poster for this production is scarier than anything in the movie.  Admittedly, it is possible that, some time in the last few days, the definition of “horror movie” changed and now means “a movie we made while simultaneously studying for the California bar exam and discussing Keynesian economics”.  They also tacked on an “in 3D” – I guess to try and sell it.  But even in 3D, it would have only been one more dimension of awful.  Fortunately for you, I watched it in 2D and was only able to absorb two whole dimensions of awful.

The movie is set in Detroit.  This movie did you no favors, Detroit.  Especially as it was filmed in Montreal and the exterior shots did look nice.  Why Detroit is the setting is unknown.  Location doesn’t really play any role in the film – outside of the apartment.  It could have been set in Montreal.

In addition to Detroit or Montreal or whatever, the movie also stars Rebecca De Mornay as Maddie Slate.  Maddie is an award-winning singer (we can tell from the gold record clock next to the fireplace that’s in nearly all of her scenes) and abusive drunk with two daughters:  Janet (played by Julianne Michelle) and Lara (played by Mischa Barton).  In one tiny bit of originality, I’ll give the movie credit for making the abusive drunk parent a woman.

The movie starts with 24-year-old Janet moving out of the house into her OMG MY FIRST APARTMENT EVAR!  An apartment which, from the exterior, looks like a housing project (which is supported somewhat by the lobby and elevator interiors).  But apartment 1303 is fabulous (really, it is – in the context of what the rest of the building looks like)!  And it’s only $750 a month!

So, Janet moves in.  Then there are some scenes of Lara and abusive drunk mom.  Then we’re back in Janet’s apartment where she pathetically implores her boyfriend (secret undercover cop!) to come over.  At which time they engage in one of the worst sex scenes ever that, basically, involves them knocking over cheap furniture, Janet saying sexy things like “Oh, I’ve been a bad girl.  I deserve to be punished”, etc.  The scene is unnecessarily violent.  Probably as some weird attempt to let the audience know that these kids have real Passion-with-a-capital-P.  It is also unnecessarily disturbing for some reason.  Maybe the actress looks too young.  And it doesn’t tie into the movie otherwise.  Just your random sex scene that isn’t sexy, isn’t well done, isn’t necessary, and isn’t something I want to see again.

Afterward, asshole boyfriend leaves and Janet takes a header off the balcony.  And you realize you don’t mind too much because you just didn’t like her any way.  At this point of the movie, most viewers are thinking, “Great! Now maybe we can get on with some horror stuff!”  The rest of the viewers have shown good sense and left the country entirely.

Then there’s more stuff with drunk mom.  Who, at one point, sings a bit of some song she wrote for now-dead-Janet.  Remember: she’s supposed to be a successful award-winning singer <insert shot of Maddie with gold record clock in background here> with oodles of money, so why they thought Rebecca De Mornay could (or should) sing is one of the biggest horrors (and mysteries) of this movie.  Of course, in the last few days, the definition of “successful, award-winning singer” could have changed to mean something like “here let me swallow some razor blades and Jim Beam and croon my heart out to you”.

Then Lara (pronounced, variously throughout as “Laura” or “Lara” – who knows…let’s blame Montreal!) who is penniless and seems to have some job as a waitress (and let’s randomly throw in some allusions to either mental or drug problems) decides to move into Janet’s place because “I wanna know what happened to may baby sister!”.  (Lara is older than Janet, and Janet was 24.  Yet it’s Lara’s bedroom at home that looks like she’s 13 and has cool shit like “Love is punker than punk” in some faux artsy-fartsy way above her bed.  Maybe Lara never grew up – even though she looks ridden hard and hung out to dry?  The director never explains so why care?)

Well, some spooky stuff starts happening – basically just noises and “ewww – what’s that smell?” (welcome to Detroit, honey).  Somewhere along the way, we find out some mother and daughter died in the apartment and are haunting it because they don’t want anyone else to live there.  (Seriously?  A mother/daughter ghost team?  Haunting an apartment in the projects?  IN DETROIT?  Talk about suspension of disbelief.)

Naturally, Janet’s boyfriend/undercover cop decides to help out Lara because there’s just not enough real crime in Detroit…or something.  More shit happens, he goes over the balcony.  Or gets stabbed.  Or maybe just walks off the set in disgust.  I don’t remember.  Because I was given no reason to care for him.  Or any of the other characters.

More shit happens and Lara gets arrested for murder because “apartments don’t kill people, people kill people”.  OH MY GOD!  Thank you for clearing that up for me.  And to think of all the time I’ve wasted trying to outlaw apartments because of the hideous acts they perpetrate on people – hideous acts like this movie.

A dull, hacky retread of stuff that isn’t even scary or suspenseful – this is one movie that won’t automatically exercise your kegels.  Bland movie, bland characters, nothing’s sufficiently explained (unless you count “the entire floor is haunted” as an explanation), some nice exterior shots of Montreal.  That’s about it.

The only rating I can give this movie is:  baby-poop brown.  Because that’s the only thing that comes to mind when thinking about it.

This movie is highly recommended if you happen to be an alcoholic, washed up singer in Detroit who is considering becoming a mom.  Or if your moving to Montdetroit or Detroitreal or whatever.

Apartment 1303 poster

Open House

If you hate realtors and love Adrienne Barbeau, you must watch Open House.  And I do love Adrienne Barbeau.  Always nice to see her show up (as with her recent turn on Sons of Anarchy – short-lived thought it may have been).

Adrienne plays a successful realtor. This is late 1980s Hollywood so women realtors are, naturally, a threat to everything!

Her boyfriend is a therapist who hosts a radio call-in show. He is all about “protecting the callers’ privacy”. Because calling into a radio therapist (if he’s even a doctor I don’t know) is of course clearly protected by doctor-patient privilege although all 38 of your listeners heard the conversation in public. It’s just good TV.

And someone is killing all the realtors!

Lots of bad acting, lots of really odd gay references that made me wonder what the hell was going on with that (as in: “is someone just randomly casting his boyfriends?”), the soundtrack is an amazingly muddied bunch of weirdness ranging from elevator music to 70s porno track, the acting is overdone, the special effects aren’t very good, the story makes no sense.

So, if you hate realtors and you love Adrienne Barbeau, you’ll probably like this movie. Probably. No guarantees.

If you only mildly dislike realtors and think “who’s Adrienne Barbeau”, you probably won’t like this movie. Probably. No guarantees.

If you enjoy condiments with your food, you probably won’t like this movie. Probably. No guarantees.

If you’ve recently inhaled oxygen into your lungs, you probably won’t like this movie. Probably. No guarantees.

If you like seeing an overweight bully realtor try and take on Adrienne and her agents and who ends up in a dog collar while taking a whiz before he’s killed, you might like this move. Probably. No guarantees.

The killer turns out to be something of a surprise and, since I know you’ll never watch this movie if you haven’t already seen it, the killer is a homeless guy (I did not know there were homeless people in the 80s, so I did learn something <sarcasm tag>) who moved into a home that wasn’t really abandoned, but it wasn’t occupied either, and then “those damned realtors—oh you realtors!!! <angry fist>” tried to sell his house and he had been “taking good care of it”.

So it’s about homeless people having the right to move into homes that aren’t occupied and, if a realtor tries to sell it, to kill all the realtors in creatively stupid ways.

I did not understand this movie. It was mildly entertaining. I blame the laundry fumes.

Bad Kids Go to Hell

Bad Kids Go To Hell. (According to IMDB, it is “Based on the best selling indie comic book series/graphic novel of the same name.” If that adds anything.)

TL;DR: Just watch it. Unless cockroaches terrify you.

Slightly longer TL;DR: This may be the best bad movie ever. At least of 2012.

Full-blown OMGSTFU already review:

The movie kept coming up in Netflix “recommends” but the cover art and the description just left me blah. “Oh, hooray. <yawn> Another scary movie about teenagers possessed by demons during a visit to the local Pepperidge Farms store and now their nostrils glow before they kill someone.” Or: “Oh, hooray. <yawn> Another shaky-cam movie about teens trapped in a haunted house/mental asylum/forest.”

Well, that should teach me to prejudge things. (If I had a nickel for every time I said that!)

This is a comedy/mystery (maybe a bit of horror) somewhat along the lines of the Scary Movie franchise. Based upon some reviews, you’d think this movie sucked tailpipe. However, on its merits in that small sub-genre, it’s actually pretty subtle and pretty well done. Many reviews are “Oh, har. A horror version of Breakfast Club.” Those people fail at life. There’s also a lot of “this movie’s a mess” reviews. Because, I guess, people don’t pay attention because it’s all spelled out PRETTY FUCKING CLEARLY IN AMERICAN ENGLISH IF YOU WOULD PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE AND WATCH IT YOU FUCKING MORONS. It saddens me that a movie like Bad Kids Go To Hell is, apparently, too deep for a lot of people. I mean WTF Fred?

Don’t get me wrong. We’re not talking about some Ingmar Bergman-like reductive reflection on life and the misery one endures by silently plucking out one’s own pubic hairs on a remote island in Finland. It’s a comedy/mystery movie that, even if it weren’t supposed to make sense, still does make sense if you’re paying attention and graduated from 8th grade. There’s no deep message. No meaning of life will be found here. It’s called relaxing your goddamned anal sphincter, kicking back, and just enjoying it for what it is: a pretty well done B-movie.

Much like ice cubes on your nipples, the points are: (1) not every movie has to be a work of art that causes one to cut one’s self out of a sense of loss and existential angst; and (B) some people just don’t know how to have fun. Whew. That’s out of my system.

The movie is set at Crestview Academy (a ritzy school for rich kids), where a group of kids will be spending their 8-hour detention in the library. Turns out Crestview was built on land stolen from a Native American and it’s cursed! (Maybe.)

Our plucky kids (actually, high school seniors in the movie), locked in the library on their own with no internet (but they very specifically and clearly have “intranet”) and no cell phones and NO SMOKING!, decide to hold a seance. Stuff happens and death starts its march through the detained. I am compelled to point out that, since this school is an Academy, that that means school uniforms.

The movie does pluck a bit heavily upon the Breakfast Club theme (right down to Judd Nelson appearing). But there are subtle tips of the hat to quite a few other teenager movies from Breakfast Club to Carrie. Done pretty well. It’s enjoyable just for those little homages.

The young cast is quite competent – a pleasant surprise these days in terms of young actors. Everyone seems to be having a good time with it (which, IMHO, counts for a lot of the reason the movie is enjoyable).

There is some funny and very politically incorrect humor. This movie is not recommended if you’re having your vegan-heart liberal friends over for the weekly “tofu and wilted cardboard dinner with a piquant rosé from that charming winery in Argentina we visited last year”.

There is a bit of blood and gore. The soundtrack is actually pretty cool. And between it and the movie, I bought the soundtrack.  It’s kind of hard to describe kind of “happy goth” maybe? (The last time I bought a soundtrack was the one to Empire Records [without seeing the movie] and I still stab myself from time to time over that mistake.)

And, finally, the stripper scene. Yes, there is a stripper scene. A stripper scene that even I, a non-heteronormative red-blooded American man, found to be enjoyable. I was honestly sad when it was over.  The actress who does it (Amanda Alch, I believe) just has fun with it. Plus, the way it’s filmed is just a hoot. (Full disclosure: if a man had done that with the same level of appeal and talent, I’d feel the exact same way. It’s probably one of the funnest, most enjoyable stripping scenes in a movie that I’ve seen.)

This movie is so goodly bad that I may actually buy it, too.

Absentia

Occasionally, I get lucky and stumble across a movie that I actually like.  It is at those moments that I question my sanity.  But that’s a topic for another day.  Plus, you won’t get regaled you with the crap I’ve seen (like the abysmal, disjointed, predictable, poorly written, bland, and uninteresting Side Effects with Jude Law – so bad that it may never get reviewed by me because…well…I don’t think there’s a way to verbally convey how bad it is).

Absentia is a really nice little movie.  It fits, to a T, the first line of the Wikipedia definition of suspense:

Suspense is a feeling of pleasurable fascination and excitement mixed with apprehension, tension, and anxiety developed from an unpredictable, mysterious, and rousing source of entertainment.

The movie was funded via Kickstarter (I did not fund this movie and have no ties, financial or otherwise, to it), and the cast members are newer and somewhat unknown.

It starts off slowly, but I found myself engaged pretty quickly.  Courtney Bell stars as Tricia. Katie Parker co-stars as her sister Callie.  Tricia’s husband Daniel has been missing for seven years, and she’s in the process of having him declared dead when Callie comes back into her life.  Callie had also been absent for a long period – different rehab places in different states, maybe some other wandering during that time.

Callie is a recovering addict who seems to be clean.  She’s found a little religion (a very minor theme which also plays off of Tricia’s Buddhism prayers) and healthy living; one day, while out running she encounters a man in a pedestrian tunnel.  Someone that appears to be your rather stock “homeless” guy, even though she’s a bit freaked out by him.  And things slowly start getting weirder and weirder.  Piles of small things (buttons, watches, etc.) show up first on their doorstep and, later in Callie’s bed.

Then, Daniel reappears.  Which kind of throws a monkeywrench in Tricia’s relationship with the detective she’s been seeing.   Eventually, Callie discovers that people have been disappearing in that area for a long time.

The best thing about this movie is the technique.  Most of the reactions of the people involved seem like “now, that’s how most people would react in that situation”.  No overblown emotional shit; no stoic “nothing can phase me” shit; no flying karate kicks to the Adam’s apple shit – the actors made the characters believable.  There is one excellent “gotcha!” scene.  I’m sitting on the edge of the sofa with a nice bowl of ice cream.  You know it’s coming.  Yep.  Yeah.  Yes.  Come on alreaBAM!  My spoon goes flying across the room.  Just perfect timing.  Several times, I was sitting on the edge of the sofa actually caring about what might happen to the characters.  Because they did a great job with building suspense both in the movie (things happen slowly, up to a point) and with the soundtrack. While there are a couple of loud moments, mostly the soundtrack is minimal and is there to add to the sense of suspense.  When was the last time you saw a movie and found yourself suddenly at the edge of your seat?

Another nice touch was showing possible logical explanations, from a logical police officer POV, for everything that happened.  Although it may not necessarily be what really happened.  A “well of course there’s nothing supernatural going on because it can all be logically explained (unless there is something supernatural going on)” thing.  The movie serves up a little something to think about without being “this movie has a message”.

All of the actors were really good.  I found myself liking their characters and wanting to see the actors in other work.

Definitely a nice pick for Halloween time.

Absentia poster

Errors of the Human Body

What would you have if you had a movie made by recent graduates of an Eastern European art/film school that were named Gunther, Dagmar, Fritz, and Schotzie? Not their real names AFAIK. (Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required.) Why, you’d have something like Errors of the Human Body. Something Netflix kept throwing up at me as a recommendation. (Oh, Netflix!  You crazy kid, you.) After watching it (while doing chores so I might have missed a vital bit of dialog that adds sense to this mess), I imagine the development of the film went something like this:

Gunther: I vill direct! It vill be set in a university in Dresden. American doctor whose babby son died from a rare juhnetick disease vill come to Dresden und help zee university’s juhnetick program. We vill show his American happy life in zee soft-focus flashbacks wiss zee happy pregunant vife. Zen zee babby tumors und no no more of zee happy.

Dagmar: I vill assistant direct! Oh he must have zee lover interest und she must have freckles und no one vill wear makeup so we can see her freckles. Und zee pony tail! Und she needz zee pony tail!

Fritz: I vill be best boy! Zee bad guy must not be too obvious. But he must be bald und looken like zee albino und have zee buggy eyes. Und zee freckle girl will have had sex wis him but she vill lie about it.

Schotzie: I vill make zound effects wiss my armpits!  Farfergnuggen! You all have forgotten zee important tings. We need a scene wiss zee Yooropian siren sound und vee must show zee modern underground rail station!

Gunther: Yah! We can throw zem in at zee end. We must not forget a decadent party scene wiss peoples in costumes of creepiness. Vun of dem vill be zee bad guy’s assistant und he vill be a trahnsvestite at zee party und he must look at zee American und suck seductively on a straw. Und, zen, in zee ironical tweest zee American will get zee diseeze of his babby but he vill be also the cure which will be like arthouse movie sad because no more babby. Und a mouse virus. Mouse virus very popoolar now.

Dagmar: Oh yah und zee trahnsvestite should look like zat Frankenfurter guy from zee Rocky Horror so Americans vill know heez trahnsvestite!

That’s pretty much the only way my brain can parse getting all of those frantasically glorious details shoved into 101 never-ending minutes of cinematography.

The best thing about this movie: it ends (although I spent the last 20 minutes thinking “would you die already, jeesh”).

The worst thing about this movie:  there’s something to dislike for everyone!