Ice Spiders

"Where Nature Stopped. Science Evolved"

I was just sitting here writing and watching the Sci Fi channel, when this movie came on. Now I expect very bad, very corny things from ole' Sy Fy but this has got to be one of the most ridiculously cheesy movies I have ever been exposed to. As a result I will now expose you to it.

Special Post: Bad Advertisement Part 2

Last time I talked about bad advertisements, today I want to talk about weak ass taglines that find their way onto the slipshod DVD boxes for movies. Now I would have to figure that most of the time, if you're at the point of picking up the DVD box, you've already decided to buy the movie, but if you hadn't decided say to buy the movie Push, this tagline probably wouldn't encourage you to buy it:
"HANG ON TIGHT as a gang of superpowered paranormal operatives takes you on a white-knuckle thrill ride."

....what? I'm of the understanding that the back jackets of these are typically written by people who otherwise have nothing to do with the movie or its production, but still, it might be a good idea to watch the movie... or maybe a trailer before you start writing about 'white-knuckle thrill rides'. I was convinced I was buying a movie, not a roller coaster. This line manages to take what I think is a pretty original movie, and make it sound like the most played out, utterly lame movie ever. The entirety of the back jacket is either misleading, stupid, or just plain untrue.

This is probably not a decisive factor in buying a DVD, but I just found the description of the movie so devoid of content, that I felt it deserved inclusion in my little report. My next entry will return to movie reviews. Look forward to the white-knuckled thrill ride!

Special Post: Bad Advertisement Part 1

So recently I saw the movie Knowing, which if you haven't seen or heard of is about a guy who discovers a piece of paper in a time capsule that has predicted every world disaster for 50 years. It predicts 3 more, one of which is 'everyone else'. Now I'd pretty much avoided this movie because I thought it had looked completely idiotic and generic in the previews I'd seen constantly on tv. I found when I watched it that it was actually an ok movie, and not a generic disaster movie, ala Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, etc.

So that got me thinking, the idea behind advertising is to encourage people to see a movie, but to what degree do advertisements sometimes hurt the movie's chances of being watched? I'm going to first look at trailers. Later we'll move on to other forms of advertisement or promotion.

I've already mentioned Knowing, I had a similar experience with Paranormal Activity, which I only ended up seeing upon urging from a friend. While the movie was one of the scariest I've ever seen, and makes brilliant use of its tiny budget, the trailers look entirely hokey. They use this one 3 second clip (which is from the very end of the fucking movie, more on that later) and then the audience being all scared, and that's supposed to make me think 'ooh spooky!' What it looks like, in the trailer, is a body on wires being carried into the room, and big fucking deal. I'm not sure how they could make the trailer more enticing, but that was definitely not the way. While I didn't know that this shot was the very end of the movie, I still found it irritating after the fact, just like in Surrogates where the trailer also uses footage from the very end of the movie. You have a whole movie to choose 20 seconds from, and you feel driven to use the climax? Just terrible.

Another similar issue that leads to me not wanting to see a movie is bombarding me with 8000 trailers every day showing the movie over and over. I recall at one time the same Transformers teaser being played 3 times consecutively. Even more annoying than this was the 2 weeks leading up to the release of Jennifer's Body. I got so sick of Megan Fox asking me if I wanted it, and I could recite the clips from that stupid trailer for you. I wasn't really hot on the movie to begin with, but I sure as hell didn't go see it after that. I wanted nothing more than to forget about the damned movie for months, so that I could enjoy what my tv looks like without devil megan leering at me and then trying to eat me.

So what have we learned? Choose your footage carefully, choose what you say carefully, and dont say it on the same channel more than 50 times an hour. And watch out for Megan Fox, because she will eat you.

Paranormal Activity

" Don't See It Alone"

That's good advice tagline, that's why we keep you there. I've seen a lot of horror movies, and I usually think very little of them. Most horror movies are intensely gross, but also stupid and not frightening. Saws one through eight million only scare me because someone actually continues to give some director money to make these fucking things.

This movie is, suffice it to say, different. Shot on an 11 million dollar budget in the directors own house, Paranormal Activity uses a 'found footage' style to draw you in, trap you in this house, and scare the ever living shit out of you. I think the style in which the movie is shot is really what does it. There are no special effects that look 'special', no cinematic angles, there is music after a fashion, a sort of "DOOOOM" sound effect, but they effectively blend it so you can't be sure that's what it is. The movie's close up, hand camera style creates a kind of claustrophobia, as does the situation. Through the events that happen, it becomes increasingly clear that there is no escape, for the viewers, and certainly not for the characters. The only thing that sort of bugged me is the stubborn refusal of the guy to admit that the situation is beyond his control. I suppose that might be how someone would react if they didn't believe in the paranormal. I don't want to give anything specific about this movie away, but suffice it to say the instant ouija board bursts into flames while I'm not home, my ass is calling in every psychic, priest, and paranormal expert on the fucking planet, and I'm moving into the biggest church i can find, and filling it with those individuals, and devoting my life to prayer.

I can't say much more without giving anything away, but I think I've told you what you need to know. This movie is hell of scary, you should see it if you like that sort of thing, and Katie Featherston is probably gonna have a rough time finding dates from now on.

Now where was I? Oh right. Our father, who art in heaven...

Surrogates

"How do you save humanity when the only thing that's real is you?"

I'm sure the above is a problem that Bruce Willis has been grappling with for a long time. Despite this hardship, he still seems to be saving humanity just fine. I decided that after The Fifth Element we deserved a look at what Mr. Willis has been doing lately. Evidently pretty much the same thing he was doing back then.

Based on a graphic novel of the same name, surrogates is a story about a world in the near future where everyone lives their lives vicariously through robots that are essentially idealized versions of themselves. Bruce Willis is a cop who is beginning to have doubts about the goodness of the surrogate lifestyle that the world has adopted, and then shit hits the fan.

Visually I was pretty impressed by this movie. They managed to convincingly CG a bunch of individuals to look both super perfect in their surrogate bodies, and alternatively made a bunch of movie stars look absolutely horrible in their 'human' bodies. Aside from that this is a movie that manages to not be TOO obvious, and packs in plenty of Bruce Willis kicking ass and also getting the shit beat out of him, in classic Die Hard fashion.

My biggest problem with this movie isn't actually the movie itself. I have a serious issue with the fucking trailer. I won't link it, but if you watch it and then see the movie you might note something. The end of the trailer uses footage that is essentially the entire climax of the movie. Now you might not remember it, and sure it doesn't necessarily ruin the movie, but still, this movie has plenty of action in it, what possesses you to reveal the very end of a movie?

But that isn't what's most important. The movie is presented stylishly, and presents and engaging plot that actually twists a fair bit. And we still got to enjoy Mr. Willis doing what he does best.

Be Awesome.

Fifth Element

"There is no future without it."

Let's get rid of that nightmare exploration in boredom and replace it with something a little classier. This movie has everything you could possibly want. Chris Tucker as a fruity pop star, Bruce Willis as a ex-military cab driver who kills people, and Gary Oldman as an evil rich guy. Also its in the future. Mostly in space and full of alieenns! Dancing, singing, Opera performing aliens. This is also a very special movie, a science fiction movie with Milla Jovovich in it that doesn't suck! Back then Ultraviolet was just a distant nightmare. Let's talk about why this is a great movie!

First off, this movie is unapologetically weird. There is a battle sequence played against a rock opera sung by a blue alien. Bruce Willis refers to himself as a 'meat popsicle' at one point, which I'm still not really clear on the meaning of. I mean, what the hell is that? xD There is some evil force trying to destroy the whole world, and it makes people drip octopus ink out of their foreheads! I don't honestly get everything that happens in this movie but the point is clear. Milla Jovovich is evidentally the '5th element' that has the power to save the whoooole universe, but to be a real girl she needs love. The kind of love that only Bruce Willis can give.

So is it 'THE RIDE' as the cover art suggests? Maybe not for everyone, but I find it has just the right mix of sort of goofy sci fi tropes, gunfights, explosions, and boobs. Also it introduces us to the marvel of future identification known only as: Multipass.

Valkyrie

This looks... maybe ok?

"Many saw evil. They dared to stop it."

Looks like it could be fun right? That's actually sort of inaccurate. It's more like "Many saw evil. They sort of dared to try and stop it, but failed miserably because they were all such fuck ups."

I didn't exactly expect great things from this movie, but I did sort of expect some amount of entertainment. I mean this is a movie you could pitch by saying "Tom Cruise is a nazi with an eyepatch, trying to blow up Hitler." That should at the very least be the funniest movie ever. Instead I think despite the hundreds of movies I've seen, this may very well have been the most boring movie I have ever watched in my entire life. Absolutely nothing ever happens in this movie. A cast of nazis who are all inexplicably British actors spend the whole movie dicking around and talking about whether or not they will really TRY to kill Hitler. Then at the end, they go off half cocked, fail and die. At the end we're supposed to be like "oh man, not ALL Nazis were bad guys! They tried but died, oh how brave!" All I thought was "man I'm glad they died. Dumbasses." I was sort of expecting an at least decent movie, what with Bryan Singer behind the helm, but evidently if the movie doesn't involve mutants he just doesn't know what to do with himself anymore.

Do you remember seeing the commercial for this movie? You remember there were people running around, explosions STUFF THAT HAPPENED? Yeah well that's actually all of this movie you need to see, because they used up the only two minutes of action in this whole movie in that trailer. The rest is guys standing around, talking about mostly NOTHING. Take a good look at the poster I for the movie. See how it says 'from the directors of The Usual Suspects and X-Men.'? Those are some good movies that you could watch, instead of this piece of crap. Next post I will alleviate the pain of Valkyrie with the best cure for sadness...

Bruce Willis.