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Content by Daniel Jolley
Reviewer Rank: 2
Helpful Votes: 13125
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Reviews Written by
Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA)
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Bad Paths
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by Justin Behrens
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: £8.00 |
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| Availability: Not in stock; order now and we'll deliver when available |
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Sometimes, you have to go home again, 17 Jul 2008
The horror genre is always in need of fresh new blood, and Justin Behrens seems to fit the bill quite nicely. At first glance, I thought Bad Paths, Behrens' debut novel, would be a good but somewhat derivative read, but I was wrong on that last point, as there's an unquantifiable freshness about the story as it unfolds. There's no ultimate battle of good vs. evil here, which isn't to say there's not plenty of action in the end, and the main character's family's legacy is not just another case of pure evil or Faustian bargains for power. In the end, Bad Paths is the story of a young man coming to terms with a special gift and a family history he had never known. Perhaps best of all, the whole story doesn't even revolve around the main character so much as it does a remarkable canine, and I love that about this novel.
In life, Greg Dameron's mother sheltered her son from his own family, leading a nomadic life that led anywhere but home in Iowa. Perhaps inevitably, his mother's reticence to talk about her past and her oftentimes odd, overprotective behavior created a distance between mother and son that could not be bridged before her death. Ironically enough, that death leads Greg back to the very place she isolated him from in life. He's in for quite an awakening in terms of his family history, as it doesn't take long for him to discover that the Dameron name is both feared and revered in this small town - or that his mother wasn't the only strange member of the family. His Aunt Claire is as nice as can be when he first arrives, but her oddities begin to surface once he gets settled in. His Uncle Ron seems like a harmless old drunk - until Ron takes it upon himself to warn Greg of the danger coming his way if he doesn't leave town within a couple of days. He says there are mysterious, frightening creatures lurking in the surrounding woods, but his attempt to capture security camera footage of one of them fails to move Greg, who does predictably acquiesce to his aunt's plea to stick around a few extra days. The best character by far in the novel is Spooky, a huge mastiff dog who enjoys watching The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock on TV, has quite a knack for getting into locked rooms (especially Greg's), and seems more human than canine sometimes. Greg is noticeably wary of the huge family pet initially, but Spooky becomes his greatest protector as he pushes forward to discover the truth about his highly dysfunctional family.
The novel can be jarring at times, as Aunt Claire has a few tricks up her sleeve and sometimes does the most shocking things right out of the blue. Two scenes stand out in particular, but I won't describe them here - I daresay the future reader will recognize them rather easily. I know some reviewers have mentioned the story's level of violence and gore, but I actually met with less than I expected of both - I certainly wouldn't consider it excessive. As for the ending, I must admit that I found it somewhat anti-climactic, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does wrap up the story quite well and avoids taking the easy way out. Had Behrens grafted a thoroughly clichéd and predictable ending on to the novel, it would have nullified much of the satisfaction the reader derives from everything that precedes it. Perhaps the best thing about Bad Paths, though, is the evidence it provides for bigger and better things to come from this young author. Justin Behrens is a name that bears watching.
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The new standard bearer for brilliantly unique and disturbing indie cult films, 17 Jul 2008
When you're talking about the most avant-garde, uniquely unconventional, and surreal of films, you can often tell how brilliant that film is not so much by the glowing reviews as by the tenor of the critical reviews, as greatness tends to be hated by some as much as it is loved by others. Mad Cowgirl invokes plenty of venomous negative criticism. For example, Jeff Shannon of The Seattle Times wrote that this film would "appeal primarily to 20-something psychos-in-training and women who hate men." The New York Times critic basically dismissed it altogether as a film of "aggressive pointlessness." Even some horror fans bemoan some of the more perplexing aspects of the film. Of course, it's easy to throw out charges of incomprehensibility when a truly creative film comes along, especially if some blood and gore (not to mention sexual perversion, blasphemy, etc.) are involved - especially since almost everyone who subsists on a steady diet of Hollywood big studio movies has already been programmed not to have to think at all about any story that comes his/her way. For my money, though, Mad Cowgirl is nothing short of envelope-pushing brilliance and deserves more awards than the two it has received (best experimental film and best performance at the Los Angeles Silver Lake Film Festival). I freakin' love this movie.
Only a rare breed of frighteningly talented actress could have conceivably carried this film on her shoulders, and Sarah Lassez (who's praises I will continue to sing until she receives the kind of recognition she deserves) proves to be the perfect (perhaps only) choice for the lead role in this film. Her character Therese is a most complicated person to begin with, and then all of her unique qualities begin to increase exponentially once she is diagnosed with what her doctor initially identifies as a brain tumor but is actually - or so we have every reason to believe - a tell-tale symptom of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease aka bovine spongiform encephalopathy aka Mad Cow Disease. It's exceedingly ironic because Therese works as a health inspector on the front lines of the fight against tainted meat, and her brother Thierry (James Duval) is a butcher.
Therese is pretty messed up to begin with, so her advancing slide into insanity (for lack of a better word) is a little on the disturbing side. At this point, I would like to welcome any and all Star Trek fans who have wandered into Mad Cowgirl territory after learning that Trek's very own Chekov (Walter Koenig) appears in this film as, of all things, a televangelist who doesn't exactly practice what he preaches - not when Therese comes calling, anyway. Believe it or not, this isn't Therese's most disturbing sexual relationship, though - not by a long shot - and her sexual needs seem to increase exponentially as her hold on reality continues to slip away. The end result is something akin to a blood orgy of death and destruction inspired by her kung fu hero The Girl With the Thunderbolt Kick.
It's best not to ask why too often as this film unfolds, as that just takes away from your enjoyment of all the weirdness. I was never even quite sure where all of this was taking place. It's supposedly in Los Angeles, but you have Japanese news reports about Mad Cow found in Canadian beef; Therese's Sri Lankan doctor speaks to her in his native Sinhales, while she speaks English, and yet both understand one another perfectly; and Therese's mother speaks her own native Vietnamese to her only daughter, who clearly doesn't seem to have a drop of Vietnamese blood in her. And guess what? I haven't even talked about the really strange parts of this film.
Writer/director Gregory Hatanaka has earned himself a permanent place on my watch list with this brilliantly innovative film, but Mad Cowgirl is really all about Sarah Lassez. Quite frankly, the image on the DVD cover doesn't begin to do the girl justice. I could go on about how hot and talented she is, but I think Phil Hall says it best in his review of this film for Film Threat: "she is clearly the rare woman who can maintain a state of drop-dead glamour while disemboweling men with chainsaws." My friends, you can't beat that with a fistful of hickory sticks.
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Cursed [2004]
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| Dvd ~ Hiroko Sato |
| Price: £7.99 |
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| Availability: In stock |
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A surreal, uniquely weird film I found mesmerizing, 15 Jul 2008
In America, low-budget B-horror movies are, for the most part, open invitations for people like me to write scathing reviews trying to be as hilariously witty as possible while describing just how bloody awful they are. In Japan, low-budget B-horror movies are, for the most part, innovative, unique, and memorable. 2004's Cursed (not to be confused with the embarrassingly awful American werewolf film of the same name) is a great example of this. This is one weird movie - actually, surreal would be the word for it. The opening scene (the kind of jolting start we've come to expect from Japanese horror) may lead you to believe that there will be a good bit of blood involved in this one (and there is some), but this film is primarily all about atmosphere.
It's far too simplistic to say this is the story of a haunted mini-mart. This little store is so bizarre that even Ahpu from The Simpsons would refuse to work here. It's nothing obvious (well, not to most people, anyway), but the negative vibes this place puts out makes for quite an oppressive atmosphere, one that everyone who spends any time there can't help but feel (although, in some cases not for very long). The owners are beyond strange. I would call them robotic, but robots actually seem more human than this husband and wife. They spend almost all of their time sitting in the back of the store, watching security camera footage of their part-time workers, convinced that at least one of them is pilfering money from the cash drawer. They are no help at all to poor Ryôko (Kyôko Akiba), the representative of a large chain who comes to help inventory and pave the way for the store's transition to new management. Thankfully, we do have one ray of sunshine in this disturbingly dark atmosphere, and that is part-time worker Nao (Hiroko Sato) - but she is increasingly disturbed by the goings-on there. Only she and Ryôko are sensitive enough to see what others cannot see. I really like Sato and hope to see more of her in the future.
Cursed serves up a virtual buffet of creeps and scares, as those having shopped at the mini-mart are stalked and attacked by a number of different entities, while Nao and the night clerk Komori (Takaaki Iwao) see and experience some pretty nasty things themselves. I won't describe any of those things here, but trust me - these folks have more to worry about than some girl with stringy wet hair hanging down her face crawling out of a television set.
I'm really not sure how to explain Cursed, apart from calling it a unique cinematic experience. Its undeniable weirdness means some viewers will hate it, simply because they won't "get" the slow-moving story. I personally don't understand everything about the film after just one viewing (there are lots of strange little details scattered throughout, such as the amounts of different purchases, that may or may not mean something important to the story), but I found it mesmerizing from start to finish. I don't care what several film critics have to say - in my opinion, first-time director Yoshihiro Hoshino definitely knows what he's doing.
The original Japanese title for this film is Chô' kowai hanashi A: yami no karasu. It is part A of the Chô' kowai hanashi (Extremely Scary Stories) series of five films by five different directors, with "yami no karasu" meaning Dark Crow. Personally, I think Extremely Scary Stories: Dark Crow is a much better English title for this film than Cursed, but I guess some guy in a suit somewhere decided otherwise. Whatever you call it, the film is the equivalent of an urban legend story based on the short fiction of the increasingly influential Hirayama Yumeaki. It's a classic example of yet more innovation in the horror film genre by the Japanese, and I'm pretty much loving every minute of it.
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A super-intense, uncomfortably realistic thriller from Down Under, 13 Jul 2008
Black Water is one extremely intense human survival movie. I don't know how anyone could sit through this and not have to consciously unclench most of his/her muscles before he/she can walk away after it's over. I can see where comparisons with Jaws, Open Water, or Rogue would ultimately come up in the discussion of this film, but I absolutely did not expect to see some viewers rating it so poorly. I don't think the Jaws comparisons carry much weight, and -as far as the other film comparisons go - who cares? Even if you've never seen a movie before in your life, you pretty much know how the film is going to play out by the twenty-five minute mark - and that doesn't make the film any less thrilling or suspenseful. The only question that really matters here is who, if any, of the characters are going to survive. The plot is one of brutal simplicity - and I mean that as a compliment.
Here's the situation. You're enjoying a fishing adventure with two family members in a mangrove swamp in Northern Australia when your boat is capsized by a salt-water crocodile. Two of you manage to scurry up a nearby tree, while the most vulnerable member of your party clings to the top of the overturned boat. Forget about your tour guide because he doesn't survive the initial attack. The odds are that no one is going to be looking for you any time soon, and there are hundreds of little tributaries to search if someone does come. Your best bet is the boat, but - assuming you can first rescue the third member of your party, there's no way to get to the boat without venturing dozens of terrifying meters into the water. That water, by the way, isn't black but it is definitely dark (I imagine they would have called this movie Dark Water if that title hadn't already been taken so recently) - unless the crocodile shows himself, there's almost no way you're going to know he's coming until he's torn into you with his massive jaws. What do you do?
I love and respect crocodiles. They are second only to sharks in the list of nature's most brilliantly designed killing machines. As unfortunate as the characters' situation is, I can't hate or condemn this salty for doing what he was born to do. That being said, this particular croc is a mean one; I don't want to give anything away, so just take my word on this. The big guy's in total control of the situation, and he knows it - and he has all the time in the world to wait for his victims to make a deadly mistake. You're not looking at some kind of CGI creation or mechanical beast here, either; Black Water serves us the real deal. Some people, of course, complain that the crocodile does not get enough screen time, but any fan of classic horror can tell you that less is more in situations like this. Maybe the ending doesn't ring quite true, but overall I found this film disquietingly realistic.
Perhaps the most horrifying thing of all about this film is the fact that it was inspired in part by actual events. Salt water crocs kill several people a year in Northern Australia, but most of those deaths involve humans doing something they shouldn't be doing. Here, as in the case that inspired the movie, you simply have a case of three individuals being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I realize I haven't mentioned any of the characters in this film. We may not get to know them like old friends, but I thought there was definitely adequate characterization in play here - and I thought Diana Glenn, Maeve Dermody, and Andy Rodoreda turned in inspired performances. In fact, I'm going to throw out kudos all around, especially to co-writers and co-directors David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki. I understand that this film had a low budget (as little as one million dollars), but I would never have guessed that for myself. Black Water is an immensely excellent film.
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More of a cheesy action film than a science fiction thriller, 11 Jul 2008
Despite the basically unexplained absurdity of the whole storyline, Ghosts of Mars is a pretty entertaining film to watch, what with all of the explosions, gun battles, decapitations, and bare-fisted brawls riding the crests of John Carpenter's hard-driving musical score. Sure, it takes a little while to put the characters in place and set the Martian scene for us, but once the gauntlet drops, it's pretty much on. You don't need a lot of character development in an action thriller like this one because you know most of the characters you meet aren't going to survive in the end, anyway. I do have to deduct some points for the whole flashback business, though. It's bad enough that the bulk of the film is presented as a flashback, but when you start putting flashbacks inside your flashbacks, I've got to stop you right there and call Shenanigans. Flashbacks within flashbacks should be the sole province of fifth-year, we've-run-out-of-ideas sit-coms.
It's the year 2176 and man has established a strong presence on Mars, setting up mining colonies all over the increasingly terra-formed planet. Society is set up along matriarchal lines, which should be interesting but isn't because the story just throws that out there and does nothing with it. It certainly does nothing to stop the practice of male sexism because Sgt. Jericho Butler (Jason Statham, who always brings plenty of action to the party) spends most of his time (when he's not fighting for his life, of course), trying to get into the 22nd century knickers of his superior officer Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge). Ballard and Jericho are part of a quintet of cops dispatched to a remote post to pick up a prisoner and bring him back for trial. This isn't just any prisoner, though; no, this is the formidable Desolation Williams (Ice Cube), a dangerous but as of yet thrice-acquitted murderer now accused of slaughtering six people. When the cops arrive, they are disconcerted to find a virtual ghost town. Williams is still secured in his cell, but most everyone else in town is hanging upside down, sans head, in one building or another. We already know from the early minutes of the film that Ballard is the only person to make it back to base camp (a fact which robs the movie of a great deal of potential suspense); what we don't know is what happened out there - and that doesn't become perfectly clear until the end of the movie.
Natasha Henstridge doesn't really do a lot for me, but she was pretty good in this film (although some of the scenes wherein she shows her authority and general toughness rang a little hollow). She's not your ideal cop, and that makes her character more interesting - especially when everything hits the fan and she's forced to seriously change tactics in an attempt to survive. I thought Ice Cube was great; his is really the most interesting character in the film, and even Jason Statham can't match him in the "one tough hombre" department. For their part, the "ghosts of Mars" aren't impressive at all, and their minions (whom they "possess") look like a huge gang of WWE rejects trying to channel The Crow. They are evil and relentless (not to mention ugly), though, which pretty much guarantees that all of the fight and battle scenes are going to be fiercely waged. Their little flying body slicers are particularly effective at disarming (and sometimes even "dis-heading") their victims.
Basically, Ghosts of Mars is more of an action movie that just so happens to take place on Mars than it is a makes-you-think kind of science fiction offering. If you're not into relatively bloody action movies, you probably won't enjoy this film very much.
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You have to see it to believe it -- and even then you might not believe it, 9 Jul 2008
I don't even know where to begin with this one, as Jigoku kôshien (aka Battlefield Baseball or Battlefield Stadium) is unique in every sense of the word, a wholly indescribable film that must be seen to be believed. If I laid out the whole plot of this movie for you, you wouldn't believe a word of it - and that would be perfectly understandable, since no one in his right mind would make a movie like this. You have to love Japanese culture and society - rather than lock Yudai Yamaguchi up in a padded cell somewhere, they actually allowed him to direct this movie, and now we can all enjoy the world's only - as far as I know - zombie baseball kung fu musical comedy. Okay, if you happen to have seen the film Versus, you might find this film less shockingly different, since Jigoku kôshien basically comes to you "from the team that brought you Versus," or if you've read the manga comic by Gataro Man (serialized in Shonen Jump magazine) on which this film was based, you'll know what kind of kooky humor to expect going in, but a lot of us Westerners will walk into this film completely unprepared for what is about to happen - after all, we've been conditioned by Hollywood to expect no trace of originality or creativity in our movies.
We all know the Japanese take their baseball seriously, but at Seido High School, the shared determination to win the Koshien Tournament makes the most avid of Texas high school football fans look like a polite crowd at the PGA Open. Kocho, the team's principal and coach - well, let's just say he really, really wants to win. And with the slugger Gorilla anchoring the team, he has just the boys to go all the way. Then disaster strikes - Seido's first opponent is the infamous Gedo High. These, uh, boys play by their own rules - actually, they have only one rule, and that is that there are no rules. Rather than waste their time actually hitting, fielding, and the like, they just go out and kill their opponents. Literally. I'm talking limbs strewn all over the field, heads on pikes, the whole nine yards. Then, just when it seems all is lost, Coach witnesses new transfer student Jubeh (Tak Sakaguchi) wipe out a gang of bullies in an impressive display of "baseball fighting" (you'll want to see this for yourself). Unfortunately, "Jubeh the Baseball" has taken a vow to never play baseball again - for personal reasons.
Wait until you get a load of the Gedo team. They're not exactly human - well, not anymore. The Z word never comes up in the script, but let's just call them zombies for the heck of it. Led by a coach (Yukihito Tanikado) who looks like Jim Carry in The Mask dressed up like Crocodile Dundee, these guys are mean, green killing machines who bring a lot more than baseball bats to the field of play. If you're hoping to see some great baseball action out of these guys, you can forget it; they turn fields of dreams into blood-soaked battlegrounds. The gore is pretty standard low-budget stuff, but that actually suits this unusual film quite well.
Maybe I should stress the fact that Jigoku kôshien is overflowing with humor, much of it of a satirical nature. No sports movie cliché is safe, the couple of short musical numbers completely knock you off balance, and the film's "poignant" moments (such as the weirdest family reunion you've ever seen) are all reinforced quite ingeniously with a gimmick that never gets old. Sure, on paper, the film looks and sounds like a cheesy stink bomb, but it's loads of fun to watch. Just leave your expectations at the door because you won't know what hit you once you settle in for the Jigoku kôshien experience.
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The controversial 1996 NBC documentary challenging the uniformitarian "science" of man's origins, 7 Jul 2008
This is an excellent documentary first aired on NBC in February 1996; hosted by the distinguished Charlton Heston, it's a virtual who's who of groundbreaking scientists and thinkers challenging the uniformitarian views of Egyptologists, naturalists, archaeologists, paleontologists, and Darwinists with a myriad of facts which don't fit the established story of man's origins and evolution. It is perhaps the ultimate of ironies that modern science has become the very thing it fought to overcome for so many centuries, an unmoving monolithic "church" that dismisses and ignores any and all evidence that casts doubt upon its proclaimed edicts and actively persecutes those it deems the most dangerous heretics. Thus, modern man first appeared in southern Africa 100,000 years ago, slowly migrated across the continents, reaching South America some 15,000 years ago; the Great Sphinx was built by ancient Egyptians in the third millennium BC; the Great Pyramids at Giza are funerary monuments built at roughly the same time as the Sphinx; all plants and animals evolved via a process of natural selection over the slow progress of millions of years, culminating in modern man first emerging some 100,000 years ago, with civilized man eventually appearing all of a sudden in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, etc. - and there's to be no argument about any of this.
In this documentary, however, you will learn about a number of "anomalous artifacts" that strongly suggest, if not prove, that anatomical man as we know him today has been here for millions of years and that a lost, highly advanced civilization thrived many thousands of years ago, when science tells us man's forbears were the most primitive of hunter-gatherers. You will hear from Dr. Virginia Steen-McIntyre, who was basically blackballed and ridiculed out of her specialized field after verifying (using two different methods) that sophisticated stone tools found at Hueyatlaco, Mexico, were - much to her own surprise - around two hundred and fifty thousand years old. See with your own eyes the demonstrably human footprints found alongside dinosaur tracks in the once-muddy plains near Glen Rose, Texas (some of them found underneath ancient limestone ledges). View the ruins of Teohuanaco in modern-day Bolivia and ponder hard evidence that it was built at least 12,000 years ago - and with the help of metal clamps - making it the oldest city ever discovered. Take a gander at ancient maps accurately depicting the coastlines of Antarctica as they exist underneath the ice. Hear how the tenets of Darwinism are ponderously weakened by the fact that no missing links have yet to be found to explain man's evolution from the ape-like creatures of pre-history.
The cutting-edge scholars appearing in this documentary include Richard Thompson and Michael Cremo (authors of Forbidden Archaeology), Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval (whose astronomical study of the Sphinx dates it to 10,500 BC), Rand Flem-Ath (who builds upon the pioneering work of Charles Hapgood to explain the fate of Atlantis), Richard Milton, and David Hatcher-Childress. Although it's now over twelve years old, this documentary is still very much worth a look. Don't buy this version, though - there is a UFO TV Special Edition featuring over four hours of additional material.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting and thought-provoking, but limited in its practical effectiveness, 1 Jul 2008
I can't think of any non-religious individual more qualified to address the terror of death, man's strongest and most natural fear, than Dr. Irvin D. Yalom. Having recognized that death anxiety is oftentimes at the root of his many patients' problems, he developed his own brand of existential psychology (even as the profession moved away from this type of approach) to help get to the root causes, no matter how hidden they might be from the surface, of many of his patients' problems. Basically, Yalom : Death :: Freud: Sex. The good doctor has also mined the thoughts and insights of many a great philosopher in formulating his psychological world view (his incredible novel, When Nietzsche Wept, is what introduced me to Yalom in the first place). There's also the fact that Yalom is now in his mid-seventies, an age at which you can't help but come to some kind of terms with your own mortality. Never one to isolate his professional self from his patients or readers, Yalom shares his own personal feelings and thoughts to an unprecedented degree in these pages.
Fear of death is the one thing that unites all of mankind. Even our most idyllic days of childhood offer no immunity from it, as that is when most of us are forced to confront death for the first time - be it a grandparent, aunt, pet, etc. Granted, I have the kind of mind that seemingly begs to be someone's case study, but some of my earliest memories had me wondering if I might already be lying dead in my coffin, dreaming my life over again - and I have long predicted that I would die at 42 (I hope I'm wrong, since 42 isn't all that far away now). At least I, as a Christian, know that death is in no way the end; I can't really imagine how atheists could ever come to terms with the looming nothingness awaiting them in their graves. Since Yalom is such an atheist, I was most interested in seeing what he would have to say on the subject.
The basic message I get from this book is that one must identity and then confront one's fear of death, for in doing so you can learn to appreciate life all the more. Yalom talks a lot about the positive correlation between one's sense of "the unlived life" and death anxiety, and it would certainly seem to be true that many individuals (including yours truly) let their fears hold them back from living life to the fullest. To hear Yalom describe cases in which people broke through their walls of fear to find a new and extremely passionate love for life is undeniably inspirational. His is an Epicurean philosophy, and Yalom shows how "eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may die" is a distorted and far too simplistic concept of his favorite philosopher's beliefs. Epicurus, Yalom tell us, believed the whole point of philosophy was to relieve human misery - and that a great deal of said misery was a product of the omnipresent fear of death. Yalom also emphasizes the concept of rippling as a counter argument to the often cited transiency of human life. The things we do and say will affect others on down the line long after we are dead and forgotten. Frankly, the concept of rippling doesn't do a whole lot for me, but it is the kind of argument atheists have to make in order to convince themselves that their lives are not inherently meaningless.
Basically, Yalom tells readers that they can create their own fates, one which they can embrace rather than cower before in fear, and he offers examples of individuals who overcame debilitating death anxiety and emerged as happier, more alive men and women capable of living their lives and connecting with their fellow man in ways they could never have imagined. For my money, though, Yalom's own personal ideas and insights make for the most interesting reading. It's not every day that a leading existential psychologist grants us entry into his most personal and deepest thoughts. Does Yalom succeed in offering "specific methods" with which to battle death anxiety? No, not really, but I will say that I found the book fairly inspirational and thought-provoking. Still, Yalom's personal dismissal of any and all religious beliefs his readers (and undoubtedly a significant number of his patients) may have is a definite weakness that calls into question its ultimate effectiveness. Rooted in secular humanism, though, Staring at the Sun can only take the religious reader so far, for the utter finality of death is not an obstacle of death anxiety that we have to overcome.
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Far from smooth sailing, but it gets you there in the end, 29 Jun 2008
I have to admit that The Ferryman wasn't nearly as bad a movie as I was expecting - at least it didn't suck my will to live out of my body as I watched it. Leaving aside the whole supernatural aspect of the story, though, the film does have a significant problem in terms of the silly direction Chris Graham (the director) allowed things to take in the final half hour. Letting a person steal another person's body by stabbing them to death with an ancient knife is bad enough, but having both parties flop around like fish out of water for upwards of a minute as the body transfer takes place just opens the floodgates of laughter and ridicule. There's also no way to rationalize one crucial aspect of the film's most climactic scene. All hope is not necessarily lost, though, as the writers and director redeem themselves somewhat with an ending that invites failure but ends up working quite well (and I'm not just saying that because one of the actresses suddenly becomes about ten times as attractive as she had already been up to that point).
If you've ever wondered what happened to Charon, this movie has the answer: apparently, he's been tooling around the South Pacific for a couple of thousand years trying to track down a customer who got off without paying him. That kind of stick-to-itiveness is probably what got him promoted up to head Ferryman back in the day, so let know one question this old timer's job commitment - especially when there are so many other things about this storyline to question, from the whole "body transfer knife" to the deus ex machina in little girl's clothing. We're never told anything about the knife's origins, nor do we know where Charon's unpaying customer found it. All we know is that our main characters' fancy yacht trip turns out to be an unmitigated disaster, even before a dense fog rolls in and the crew picks up a stranded sailor (John Rhys-Davies). Even though this guy has been stranded out in the middle of the ocean for who knows how long, Charon is suddenly hot on his trail once he sets foot on the Dionysus (that's the name of the yacht). In other words, it doesn't take our bad guy long to start switching bodies.
If you love animals as passionately as I do, be warned that this cinematic voyage will not be smooth sailing. One fairly lengthy section of the film is particularly hard to sit through. The stereotypical blonde, self-absorbed, high maintenance female character also may not sit well with feminists. Here's what really bothers me about this film, though. John Rhys-Davies' character has a huge tattoo on his back, and that tattoo stays with him as he moves from one body to another. Sure, its figure of a snake representing infinity, but we all know the director put that bloody huge tattoo there because he thinks at least some in his audience are too stupid to figure out the dumb body transfer plot point on their own. That's really subtle, Mr. Director.
Despite all of its problems, though, The Ferryman is still a halfway decent horror film. It never rises to the occasion of generating any suspense (especially since we always know whose body the bad guy happens to be inhabiting), and things get pretty darn silly toward the end, but it does serve up a reasonable amount of blood and a much better ending than you would ever expect from a film such as this.
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The Happening [2008]
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| Dvd ~ Mark Wahlberg |
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Yet another patented Shyamalan snoozefest, 28 Jun 2008
Can we please stop talking about M. Night Shyamalan as a "master" or "genius" already? The man hasn't made a good movie since The Sixth Sense. Most one-hit wonders just disappear, but Shyamalan just keeps coming back. Fortunately, The Happening isn't as bad as, say, Lady in the Water, and Shyamalan doesn't cast himself as the enlightened genius who will save the day as he did in that perniciously bad film. Still, if you screened this film to an audience without telling them it's a Shyamalan film, there's a 62% chance every one of them would hate it (hey, if a character in the movie can give something a 62% probability of happening or not happening without any evidence whatsoever at his disposal, I can do the same thing - in fact, I am going to start using the word Shyamalan as a verb meaning to fudge numbers in a vain attempt to make yourself look smart).
So what happens in The Happening? Not a whole heck of a lot. New York City finds itself the epicenter of a terrifying and mysterious attack by a biological or chemical agent that makes everyone it comes in contact with kill himself or herself. The squeamish should not be concerned in the slightest, as people somehow manage to cut their own jugular veins, jump off of tall buildings, and even shoot themselves in the head without actually bleeding. You would think mass suicide on such an unprecedented scale would leave the big cities swimming in blood and gore, but no - all Shyamalan gives us is a bunch of dummies strewn about the landscape. When others talk about how frightening some of the scenes are, I have to wonder if we actually watched the same movie. I guess a couple of scenes might prove disturbing to young children, but I see no reason for this film receiving an R rather than a PG-13 rating.
Mark Wahlberg plays a New York City biology teacher who joins the masses of people calmly evacuating the city (yep, millions of New Yorkers flee town without even a single incidence of pushing and shoving) with his wife, a buddy, and that buddy's little girl. Elliott (Wahlberg) and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) make for an odd couple. I don't know what was up with Alma, but half the time it seemed like she and Elliott had just met. John Leguizamo plays Elliott's buddy, but Leguizamo is totally wasted on the part. Anyway, Elliott and his crew end up on the run, trying to find the most isolated of areas to hide out in (by this point, Elliott has a hunch or two as to what is actually going on).
I guess the "big twist" this time around is the lack of a big twist. Shyamalan should really consider hiring someone to write his endings for him, as the ending of The Happening just sort of lays there like a dead fish - a smelly dead fish. The end result is a movie that only Al Gore could love (for reasons that will become clear if you see the film) - even though I half suspect that even he would find it boring in places. The best thing I can say about The Happening is that it's not quite as bad as Lady in the Water.
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