The Happening

The tagline for this film in the commercials leading up to its theatrical release was 'M Night Shayamalan's First R-Rated Movie.' The fact that they had to plug the film's rating should have been a dead give away that it had nothing else going for it. It would have been far more accurate to state that M Night Shayamalan had made one of the most lame movies ever, and it just so happened to have received an R rating from the motion picture board; one of the weakest R ratings ever doled out, too. It barely warrants a PG-13.

Marky Mark, his wife, and the kid survive 'the happening,' which is little more than plants giving off a neurotoxin which makes people kill themselves. The plants have wrought their revenge for humanity's treatment of nature. Totally boring plot, villian, characters, dialogue, etc.

At the end, Marky's wife delivers the exciting new to him that she's preggo and they're going to have a child of their own (in additions to taking in the new orphaned like girl character). And then.....then....

OH NO HE DIDN'T

It all starts happening again, but IN EUROPE.

Hang it up, M.

The Bank Job

They get exonerated by the government, get to keep all the money and have a party. Jason Statham stays with him wife instead of running off with the other woman. Predictable, but entertaining. Good for a rainy night. No qualms here.

Them

I'm guessing this was more or less a toned down version of Micheal Haneke's Funny Games (had I bothered to actually watch Funny Games when I rented it I'd be able to much more clearly state how much it has in common with Them. It sat on my coffee table for about two weeks before I decided that I probably wouldn't be in the proper mood watch it anytime soon).

Them focuses on one night in the life of a French couple living somewhere in Eastern Europe. If I've learned anything from horror films released over the last few years, Eastern Eupore seems to be a land plagued by roaming gangs of sadistic kidnappers, hellbent on abducting and torturing the life out of the innocent in the most inventively evil ways. Seems like there's also an incredible nightlife available for the twenty-something traveller, as well. I suppose you need to make sacrifices and let the good come with the bad.

Clemetine and Lucas, our unfortunate couple, live in a secluded mansion somewhere in Bulgaria or Ukraine. I can't tell these places apart. The plot, evidently based on 'true events' revolves around our pair of handsome French ex-pats succumbing to the violent urges of a group of local childrens' desire for 'play'. I'd like to see a film make based on the true events in the one night of my life I was kept up all night after eating $10 worth of food from my neighbrohood taqueria. I'm sure it would be equally terrifying to this turd. In the same way I believe I'll never again eat a huitlacoche quesadilla, I think I'm finished renting french horror movies.

Altered States

William Hurt's character, through a combination of a psychedelic potion and sensory depreviation experiments, is able to awaken in himself the primal human. Basically, he turns into an ape-man and wrecks the shit out of everything. It was grand. At one point, right after his full transformation into a Cro-Magnon, he stumbles into a the city zoo (which apparently is only about two blocks from the university and only surrounded by a five-foot fence) kills and eats a sheep (there's about 300 sheep in a city zoo for some reason) before passing out and waking up a normal human being, albeit very naked and covered in sheep's blood.

The end of this movie has to be seen to be believed. Im sure that sounds as cliche as it comes, but I really have no idea how to best describe it. So I've just posted the video below.


A+ stuff, though, for what amounted to the greatest B movie I think I've ever seen. No idea how I let this one escape me for so many years. You'd figure this would be a Saturday afternoon classic shown on every UHF channel on earth.

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of Insufferable Disappointment

My decades long fantasy to one day wake up as Indiana Jones has now been replaced by a days long fantasy to have Steven Speilberg personally apologize to me for making the most recent Indiana Jones farce. It was incredibly bad and leads me to wonder what any critic who had even the slightest positive remark to scribble about it saw in it.

I had so many problems with this pile of leavings that I don't know where to start and refuse to dwell on further, so let's get the key powpoints out of the way:

Shia LeBeouf turns out to be the child of Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood. They were set to be married until Indy ran out at the 11th hour.

The main plot involves aliens. The ending finds Indiana Jones, 'Mutt' and Marion returning the cystal skull to the alien temple, which fires up a dimensional portal that claims Cate Blanchett's character in a way far too similar to the death of the lead villian in the original film, before swallowing up the temple and surrounding city.

Finally, as Dr. Jones, his son, and Marion look on from their escape, a UFO comes out of the ground and flies off into space, or as some other random character informs us - into another dimension, the 'space between spaces'.

In the closing scenes , Indiana Jones and Marion are married. I almost puked.

I suppose Goerge Lucas couldn't rest until he'd tainted two great series of films that most people my age still highly enjoy. Way to go, pal...and in case he needs to be reminded, Sylvester Stallone did an exponentially better job of resurrecting and making more enjoyable films out of two dormant series that paled in comparison to the original Indiana Jones trilogy. Yes, Rambo was more plausible and entertaining that this dud.

Halloween (the Rob Zombie remake)

It's been quite a while since I updated this blog and with good reason - I've decided to waste my time watching Battlestar Galactica, the Sci-Fi channel's remake of the 70s series that I apparently used to watch as a child but cannot remember to save my life. It's great, and reminded me of another remake I watched recently and decided I needed to tell you all about.

Rob Zombie's Halloween.

Horror film remakes typically blow. We all know that. I just paused for about 60 seconds to think of one that didn't, and I came up with nothing. Texs Chainsaw was awful, that one about retarded mutants in the desert was garbage...I'm not going to continue. RZ's (I'm LAZY) Halloween continues in the fine tradition of wasting tons of studio money and my time. I liked RZ's two previous efforts, so I figured 'WHAT THE HELL'. And do I ever regret it. This film's fatal flaw is how inconceiveably boring it was. It's not until well after an hour into this that Micheal Myers escapes from the looney bind and goes after whomever it was he was all about killing. I can't even remember. I was more into revising my monthly budget than sitting through anymore of this shit, so I turned it off and called it a night. Thanks Rob. This was your cinematic version of John Bush-era Anthrax. I'm sure Micheal Myers kills a bunch of people with a kitchen knife, gets shot nine times before falling out a second storey window, and then mysteriously vanishes, thus setting up for the sequel-remake which I will castrate myself before watching.

The Ruins

The Ruins will, henceforth, carry the torch as the absolute worst horror film I have ever seen. I have seen many, many, many terrible horror films. Remember when I couldn't make it through more than 30 minutes of Sleepaway Camp? Well, this was somehow worse. This ultimate turd had everything wrong possible going for it. The main characters? Four whiny Americans. The villian? Sentient poison ivy covering an ancient Mayan Temple. I SHIT YOU NOT. This was adapted from a book, too. When I finish writing this I'm going to check to make sure this author has never won a National Book Award.

Three of our four heroic American college grads never make it down from the top of the temple. Blondie cuts herself to death, but only after accidentally stabbing her boyfriend. At this point, the kid going off to medical school in the fall cooks up a plan to get his girlfriend to safety. Luckily, he's shot full of arrows by the indigenous tribes gaurding the jungle from being infected by those who've had contact with the poison ivy on the temple. There's a German in there, too, but he's taken care of relatively early.

Steer clear.

Guest Ruin: The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Remember "The X-Files"? That was a fun show. You know what's not so fun? Paying 7 bucks (it was a matinee) to see a lousy remake of a cherished part of your adolescent nostalgia. The truth is out there.

Okay, let's get to it. Years have passed. Our heroes are older, wiser and more conflicted than ever. I don't know what happened with the whole "conspiracy" nonsense, but Mulder and Scully have been run out of the FBI. Scully is an ace surgeon. Mulder sports a beard, chews sunflower seeds and, taking a page from Mel Gibson's book, spends his days clipping newspaper articles about strange phenomena and government conspiracies. All is well until Scully is approached by an FBI agent, played by Amanda Peet, who needs help with a case. Women have gone missing, including a colleague of Peet's, and a psychic has offered to help. By the way, the psychic is an ex-priest. A pedophile ex-priest. (Cue pedophile priest jokes...now!) Peet has studied Mulder's work and figures he'll be able to handle the priest. Mulder shaves, signifying his readiness to again associate himself with the bureau. Peet touches the spot where he nicked himself; Scully watches with narrowed eyes. Drama.

Anyway, through a series of improbable twists, Mulder cracks the case, but not before Peet is shoved down an open elevator shaft and impaled on some rebar sticking through the concrete floor. (Oh, and the priest dies of lung cancer. It's ironic because: 1. He deserves it, and 2. He's psychic, but he didn't see that coming!) Mulder stumbles into a makeshift hospital in rural West Virginia, kills a two-headed dog, and discovers that Russian doctors are using body parts from the kidnap victims to keep a Russian dude with some freaky disease alive. Why? Good question...it seems to have something to do with another Russian guy, who is his lover. Mulder is overcome by the surgeons, and Ruskie #2 is about to chop him up with an axe when Scully and Skinner save the day. How did they know where to find Mulder in the middle of snow-covered rural West Virginia? After the two-headed dog, it's probably best not to worry about things like that. So Skinner busts the Russians, and Mulder and Scully agree to get away from "the darkness" for a while. They kiss, for like the millionth time. C'mon...it's just weird seeing that.

Conclusion: I saw this movie while hungover. It is probably best to see it before the more pleasant effects of drunkenness have worn off.

The Messengers

The drawback to finally ordering cable tv is I get 200+ channels of programming and still watch the same episodes of Law & Order and Family Guy I could have watched on normal broadcast television. The upside, without a doubt, is on demand. I now have access to more dumb movies than I could possibly have dreamt before. Robocop 3, anyone? Watched it recently. Who could blame Peter Weller for not donning that outfit for a second sequel. But on to the point of this shitty missive -

The Messengers is a textbook horror stinker for the new millenium. I don't know who writes this schlock these days, but CALL ME. I have 8 million retarded ideas and each is priced to move. The Messengers is up there with The Grudge, The Ring, The Eye, and all other 'The ___________" movies. As you might have surmised from such company, it is terrible.

Long story short

Haunted house - only little kid can see ghosts - ghosts terrorize troubled teenage daughter - I fall asleep on the couch for twenty minutes - daughter is attacked by ghost child - turns out the farm hand killed his family in house - farmhand attacks family - family hides in basement - ghosts in floor of basement pull crazed farmhandin mudpit/portal to netherworld.

Fin.

(fart sound)

Guest Ruin: The Mist, by Rebecca

I'm going to try not to insult anyone. Ruining the ending of a Stephen King movie is like ruining the end of a bus schedule: it'll get there, it just might be a few minutes late.

As usual, our hero (Thomas Jane...punishing) is a city-boy artist who has relocated to a New England hill town to cultivate his talents and raise a family. As usual, a New England hill town is ground zero for an interdimensional scrub match. Seems the local military base has been experimenting with "opening a window" to another dimension. The window is "broken" during a severe thunderstorm, and huge, flesh-hungry monsters seep through in a misty medium. The usual types are trapped in a grocery store to wait it out. And, as usual, the black characters are quickly dispatched when they try to leave the store. Insult to injury, TJ tries to get them to stay by offering barbequed chicken. Then Marcia Gay Hard-on goes all righteous and gets shot in the head. And oh my god, at the very very end, TJ shoots his son so the aliens won't get him. 5 minutes later, the mist clears and the military comes to the rescue! As we say in the hills, "Whooda thunk?"

BONUS RUIN: Stephen King's Life

Stephen King enters inpatient treatment for severe neurological effects of undiagnosed Lyme disease. The tick, a resident of Ogunquit, Maine, says that he settled behind the bestselling author’s ear during a summer he describes as "sweaty, but prolific." A representative of an unofficial Steven King fansite reports that he is deeply saddened by the news and ashamed for not having recognized Dreamcatcher as a clear indicator of Mr. King's condition.

Hancock

Hancock finds out he is immortal and had previously been married to Charlize Theron, who also an immortal superperson in the movie, is married to Jason Bateman's character. Like a real married couple, prolonged close-proximity drains each of them of their greatness and powers, and Hancock is forced to re-locate to the East Coast so that they can both go on living normal lives. There's some subplot about a jail break and attempt on Hancock's life, but what I just divulged is what you're really supposed to learn from this movie. Trust me.

After the credits begin rolling, there's an extra scene where a criminal calls Hancock 'handjob'. Not only did I find this joke enormously funny, but a very yound child in the row before me said aloud, 'he said handjob'. This was far and away funnier than the original joke. Children grow up so quickly these days.

Diary Of The Dead

PUT THE CAMERA DOWN, ASSHOLE.

I swear if I'm ever in some survival situation and someone I'm with insists on documenting it with a camera, I will not be pleased at all. That being said, the most gratifying moment of this film, as with Cloverfield, is the scene toward the end in which the chuckle who films everything is attacked by a zombie and has to be put down by his girlfriend.

This movie really sucked and making it all the way through merits some reward for me. In the end the few remaining kids lock themselves in the panic room of the rich kids house, and there's some goofy monologue about whether or not humanity is truly worth saving. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. On top of that doozie, there was some lesson in here about the media, which I purposefully ignored because I am not taking lessons about the world from a zombie movie.

Teeth

Dawn is your average 17 year-old Evangelical Christian abstinence advocate. She's cute, sweet, naive, and every man in her life (sans, ironically, her father) seems out to sexually abuse her. But Dawn has a shocking surprise in store for each maiden's head invader - her buhgina in loaded with shark teeth. You have to figure with that sort of plot we're in for a treat and can just cut to a severed-dong count:

3 severed penises. Boyfriend who tries to have his way in a cave; guy who she turns to when all goes wrong and find comfort with, only to find out he bet his friends he could bang her; and her step-brother, who she turns her choppers on to avenge the death of her mother. Yeah, really.

*BONUS: 4 severed fingers from the left hand of the Gynecologist who decides the speculum can't do the job that the old southpaw is known for.

I'd call this one a safe rainy day Saturday rental

RAMBO

Instead of ruining the ending to this marvel of modern cinema, I'll just say this - if you are male and between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, just go rent it immediately. I guarantee you will find nothing wrong with this movie. Your friend who told you it sucked is an idiot. Don't even bother to get your girlfriend to watch it, and turn you phone ringer off so there's no chance of interruption. Trust me on this one

Ok, so Rambo saves the captured Christian missionaries, wipes out a brigade of Burmese soldiers and then packs his bags and heads back to the US to settle in the Arizona countryside. The war finally has ended for John Rambo.

Sleepaway Camp (By Request)

This was so bad I'm surprised I sat through the 30 minutes I did. Teenagers at summer camp are slowly killed off in the assumption no one ever saw any of the few dozen Friday The 13th movies. I have no idea how this one ends and cannot possibly even guess. But if I were forced to - the killer was someone who knew the dad who's run over by the negligent teenagers in the motorboat in the first scene. This was like someone took that 'D' I got in Organic Chemistry and made a movie out of it. Terrible.

Beowulf

Was it really necessary to overlay this flick with CGI? I figured out roughly twenty minutes into this one that if I took my glasses off, I couldn't tell it was meant to look like an entirely too long video game cut-scene.

So anyway, Beowulf kills Grundel, falls for the mom, bangs her, becomes king, then has to kill his demon spawn (this time around a dragon). He manages to do this by ripping out the dragon's heart, mid-flight, but not before he somehow cuts off his own left arm so he can better reach into the dragon's fire-hole. I vaguely remember reading this thing in high school and the story coming across nowhere near as retarded as its portayed in this movie. 100% entertaining, though.
Go figure.

Frontier(s)

So the French figured out how to combine Hostel and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake into one film. Good for them. I didn't bother to watch this entire film, since I'm not a fan of whole 'gorno' genre, but I'll take a stab (WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA) at how I imagine it ends:

Each of the kids is graphically disfigured, the girl escapes, but not before killing the sadistic grandfather or maybe burning down the house. Either way, I bet the last scene involved her drenched in blood/mud/whatever and crying by the side of a highway, where she's discovered and offered a ride by someone who's somehow connected to the muderous family that owns the motel.

1408

I've had indigestion more suspenseful than this stinker.

Just as you're led to believe it's all been a terrible dream, John Cusack's career takes one final lap around the drain and he lights the room on fire, killing himself and destroying the ol' 1408. I've painted myself into corners before, too, so it's cool.

Stephen King, you crafty bastard, you have won again.

Invincible

All I actually watched of this movie was the last 20 minutes, since it was on when I woke up today, so we needn't screw around with plot details before getting straight to the end:

Just when you think Vince Papale is going to suck the entire season, he is inspired by an anonymous note left in his locker stating "You suck - signed, the rest of the team" and goes out in the 2nd game vs the Giants, racks up numerous dramatic tackles, and then knocks the ball out of the punt returner's hands, helfting it up to score a touchdown at the very last moment, winning the game for the Eagles. HUZZAH! Cut to actual game scences, feel good.

Into The Wild

Luckily, you know at the outset of the film that the kid dies, so you don't need to bother watching all two-and-a-half hours of it. But anyway, the kid does actually try to get Outta The Wild when he realizes he's going to starve to death, but the river has risen due to the change of seasons and is uncrossable, so he goes back to the bus and dies. Read the book, it's better if not only for the fact that it lacks the unending Eddie Vedder vocal warbling that drove me nuts during what of this film I was actually able to sit through.

Now Taking Requests

Have a movie in mind you've really wanted to see? Let me know and I'll ruin the ending for you.

It's just that easy.

Lars and The Real Girl

Ryan Gosling rerpises Giovani Ribisi's character from 1999's The Other Sister, in what I thought when I rented it was a retarded screwball comedy about a guy who pretends a realistic sex doll is his girlfriend. It was retarded, so I wasn't far off on that assumption, but in no way was this funny.

Long story short, Lars is born and raised under power lines, and is a mentally ill 27-year-old man. Cutting directly to the end, so I don't have to think anymore about this gem, he pretends the doll becomes terminally ill and dies. They literally rush the doll to the hospital, have about 20 minutes of 'Lars shares those last few precious days with her' and then have a full funeral service and burial for it once its expired. At the last scene you see Lars accept the company of 'the real girl' because he's overcome his severe social anxiety of whatever the hell if it was that led him purchase a sex doll and pretend it's real, and blah blah blah blah blah. A real think-piece.

People who put together film trailers are geniuses.

Spiderman 3

(Last night I passed on the opportunity to join my friend Brendan and his buddy Bob on their quest to see Iron Man, thus being able to ruin the ending of a film the day before its major theaterical release. Instead, I chose to continue home to watch the second half of Spiderman 3, a film that's been available on dvd for ages now. But I must say, HOLY SHIT, what a doozy of an ending this turd had.) Here goes:

Sandman and Venom join forces to attempt to kill Spiderman, since neither seems to care too much for the guy in red. They kidnap Mary Jane and trap her in a cab suspended by a web 50 stories above the street. Spiderman swoops in and takes a massive beating from the one-two of Sandman and Venom. But right as Spiderman is about to take that last blow from Sandman that might end his part-time career, who swoops in to save him but Harry, his sworn enemy and son of Willem DeFoe. God I hate when enemies get together for the greater good. Gimme a break. But anyway, Harry rolls around on his modified floating snowboard, tossing bombs and missiles at Sandman, who we've already learned could be simply defeated using a supersoaker. Worthless. Harry dives in to save Spiderman from an attack by Venom only to be stabbed in the chest. !!!!! Spiderman figures out that all it takes to kill Venom is a tuning fork and starts banging together pipes. !!!!! Spiderman then tosses some sort of softball sized nuclear device at Venom, who has a headache, and obliterates him but is unscathed himself, though he's well within the blast radius of this thing. Harry dies. They go to his funeral. Mary Jane and Peter get back together. Spiderman 4 due in a few years.

Sorry this one was so long, but you know, complicated endings and whatnot.

Lust, Caution

Right before the shit is supposed to go down - assassination of the bad guy - Agent Deep Cover realizes she must save this guy she's been setting up and getting down with for the last few weeks/months (I'm a terrible judge of passage of time in films). The old guy makes an astonishing dash out of the jewelers office and dives headfirst into the backseat of his car and gets away. As it turns out, saving the old guy wasn't the best idea for Agent Deep Cover, as she along with the rest of her acting troupe/spy brigade is rounded up, taken out to what I think was the edge of a quarry, and shot one-by-one. It's such a shame Ang Lee isn't doing the new Hulk movie.

The Reaping

The little girl is actually an angel, not a demon, and the population of the town is revealed to be a satanic cult. Welcome to Topsy-Turvy Town, where the joke's on me/you/Hillary Swank's career. Yay!

Cloverfield

The US Government green lights its 'hammer drop' policy that the one army guy alludes to, right before the girl bitten by the monster more or less explodes. Anyway, right after you think the three remaining characters are going to escape to safety in the evacuation helicopter, the monster leaps up and knocks them out of the sky. The three somehow survive the helicopter crashing and end up in Central Park, where Hud, possibly the most annoying character ever in a film, is eaten by the monster. The other two find refuge under a bridge, film their final statements, and are blown to hell when Manhattan is leveled by a million bombs. I can't stress enough how annoying Hud is the entire movie. Other than that, it was perfectly entertaining.

I Am Legend

Will Smith discovers the cure for the zombie infection and hands it off to the woman and child he's ushered to safety, then pulls the pin on what has to be the most incediary hand grenade of all time, effectively killing himself, the legion of infected monsters that wandered over from the Resident Evil set, and detroying the multimillion dollar research laboratory he somehow built in the basement of his massive Manhattan brownstone. It was Saturday morning and I really had nothing better to do.

Blade Runner - The Final Cut

Harrison Ford is/n't a replicant. Choose your own adventure.

The Orphange

Turns out the kid got locked down in some hidden basement. His pounding for help was misconstrued by the mom to be ghosts, and he fell off the stairs and died. The mom ODs on pills to go be with the son and the other kids in the orphan afterlife, where orphans are at peace (but still orphans). Even the deformed kid seems to be happy. I lose an hour and forty five minutes of my life, and also, ghosts don't exist.

There Will Be Blood

There was blood. Lots of it. Daniel Day Lewis bludgeons that kid from Little Miss Sunshine. Also, Daniel Day Lewis is old and very drunk. He fell asleep on his bowling alley eating a pork chop. When he wakes up he keeps eating the pork chop. Then he kills the other guy.

But seriously, I really liked this movie.

No Country For Old Men

Josh Brolin dies
The villain gets away
Tommy Lee Jones closes the film with one of those country-fried, "well, ain't that sumpin'" moments.

Fade to black.

Sweeney Todd

Johnny Depp kills Alan Rickman, then kills his long-lost wife who Helena Bohnam Carter told him was dead. Turns out she wasn't, but had instead gone crazy. Johnny Depp then throws HBC in the giant furnace and she burns to death. The kid who was rolling with Ali G climbs out of the sewer and kills Johnny Depp with his barber's razor.

Kids, I tell ya.