instant watch – Page 6 – Late to the Theater

The Blair Witch Project: Sticks and Stones Breaking Bones, But Hysteria Can Kill Us

The movie certainly creeped me out. There was the lost in the woods at night thing, the creepy half-heard sounds thing, all the little weird stone cairns left around, and some woven stick-sculptures. But I left the theater thinking that while it was fun and a lark, it wasn’t genuinely scary.

That came later.
On that score, I feel TBWP delivered.

Good horror stays with you. The dark parts of your mind pick and choose things from the images and ideas presented, and tuck them away to germinate, and spread. Then when you’re alone, those things come creeping back out from the cracks and shadows.

I saw the Blair Witch Project in the theaters, WAAAAY back in 1999. I didn’t know what to expect, and if you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time you’ll know I love horror movies and fiction and games, and I figured something like TBWP would be right up my alley!

It was and it wasn’t.

In the theater, the movie bemused me. The camera work was offputting, but these days you could put a smartphone in the hands of a toddler and achieve the same effect. I loved the American gothic setup of the legend, evoking not only the horror of the witch trials but the possibility that, if they were real, they would want vengeance for their treatment. Colonial America was a new world still stuck in the old world mindset, and nothing brings people together like ostracizing others. Even the “characters” had their charm: stolid, level-headed Mike, with his hangdog expression and flannel; laidback and good natured Josh, channeling the ultimate Gen-X male; and shrill, pain in the ass Heather.

God. Heather.

Before I go too much further, I need to point out that Heather Donogue has already taken a metric ton of shit for her portrayal of control-freak Heather. She based her performance on a colleague she had known, who insisted on taking control of situations only to fall to pieces constantly. So she really turned in a great performance at being a massive pain in the balls.

That came later.

On that score, I feel TBWP delivered.

The first freakout came when I was home alone. I was in my second year of college and home visiting my parents, sleeping in my old room. They were out of town for some reason or another, and as I lay in my childhood bed in the darkness, I suddenly remembered the image from the end of the movie, of Mike, standing in the corner with his face to the wall. My room was on the south side of the house, and there was about seventy feet between our house and the street, so the streetlights cast dark shadows from treelimbs and leaf clusters over the once-familiar interior of my room. My heart raced and my eyes bulged as i lay alone in the dark, sure that if i looked, I would see Mike in my room, standing in the corner with his face to the wall.

The second freakout came a few weeks later. I was in the habit of running at a nearby park in at dusk. The park was familiar, was somewhere I had been dozens of times. But that night it was almost deserted, sinking into darkness as the sun fell down the sky. There had been a storm, and pine needles and sticks were scattered all over the ground. As I was running I looked up into the trees, and a trick of the eye made it seem as if the treetops were filled with the little woven totems shown throughout the movie. DOZENS of them, just hanging in the air, revealing my impending doom. There was a shudder, a squawk, and then a feat of athleticism that I have never again been capable of. I may have run the world’s only half-minute mile.

As I was rewatching the movie a few nights ago I remembered something my French teacher of the same year said of the movie. She was talking about a recent hurricane that had come through. The news had basically warned us this hurricane would be the end of earth, but it turned out to be just a series of heavy thunderstorms, which is always a relief in our, fair but oft hurricane-ravaged state.

“It was kind of like the Blair Witch Project. A lot of hype, a lot of sticks lying around, but nothing really happened.”

Still though, I enjoyed the film and the waves of nostalgia it brought back. And it’s certainly something to study for aspiring film-makers since it made disgusting amounts of money despite being an independent movie.

It’s available on Instant Watch!

More 80s Vampire Fabulousness – Once Bitten

Anyhoodle, after Mark is bitten, he has to deal with the fallout of his girlfriend Robin being enraged that he cheated on her. Plus, the Countess still has her sights set on him – she has to drink his blood twice more before Halloween in order to retain her youthful beauty and immortality.

The rest of the movie is fairly predictable, but the dialogue is snappy and the comedy elements are decent. Hutton is clearly having a wonderful time as the femme fatale, and Jim Carrey makes a pretty convincing 80’s goth during the last third of the film, when the vampiric effects are really showing. There’s even a dance sequence!

Recently I saw another gloriously 80s-tastic vampire comedy, 1985’s Once Bitten. Jim Carrey in his first leading role, Lauren Hutton in her prime, and Cleavon Little! Hurrah!

About what'd you'd expect — Let the goofyness ensue!

I absolutely love cheesy 80s vampire comedies, and Once Bitten totally delivers. I had been aware of it for some time but I think it was out of print or something during the years I worked in video rental and sale stores as I never could seem to find it, but it’s now available on Netflix Instant Watch.

The Countess, played by Lauren Hutton, is living the life in 80s’ LA. She sleeps in a coffin that looks like a tanning bed, lives in a sprawling mansion that’s a few pink accents shy of the Barbie Dream House, and has a stable of undead household servants she’s assembled in her 400 year life. Hutton is a dream in shiny pink spandex, and it’s clear she’s having a hoot of a time. In all honesty, the movie seems kind of like pr0n for guys into cougars – she’s not exactly a spring chicken but she’s aging VERY well, and the barest tilt of her head or lick of her lips promises that she has PLENTY of experience when it comes to doing the nasty.

Enter Jim Carrey’s character, young, virile and frustrated Mark Kendall, whose girlfriend is afraid to Go All the Way (remember that old chestnut from Fright Night?). When his girl puts him off again, he agrees to go with some randy friends of his into town to some kind of weird hook up bar where people call each other on table phones. I don’t know, it was the 80s. Anyway, his friends both get into altercations with married women with jealous husbands, a bar fight breaks out, and hilarity ensues. There may have even been ridiculous sound effects, I’m not sure (EDIT: I had to check – there were!). Amid the chaos, Mark wanders into the path of the Countess, who takes him home to her pastel MegaMansion and sort of makes a man out of him.

Now, I was fully prepared to talk about how blase the whole thing was, until I realized I’d forgotten a lot of the movie (I watched it a few months ago). I went back to refresh my memory by looking at some quotes on IMDB, and some of them totally made me chuckle. While the performances were a little weak, this movie had some SHARP writing – there is a subplot with Mark’s friends worrying about him, and their disastrous attempts to check him for a vampire bite on his groin in the gym’s shower were actually pretty funny. Subsequently, they fret about people mistaking them for gay (THAT again) and more interestingly, whether or not they might be.

The biggest comedy score for this movie was that it has – dun dun DUNN!!!! – Cleavon Little!

Best known as Black Bart in Blazing Saddles, Cleavon Little was a very busy actor in television and stage, but only appeared in a few movies, most of which were forgotten. I saw his name in the credits for Once Bitten and was totally astounded.

He doesn’t get as much screen time as he ought, and he’s definitely a supporting character, acting as both snarky foil to the Countess and scheming henchman. While he’s playing a stereotypical ‘sassy gay butler’ trope, my GOD is he hilarious. If the film had been just a little more serious, with a little more emotional resonance, his performance and the film itself would be better remembered. Alas, there’s only so much he can do with the material, and while the movie IS pretty funny, I just wish there had been more roles in Hollywood for him to play than be relegated to a cheesy 80s vampire sex comedy.

ADORABLE!

There is a great scene where the Countess follows Mark and Robin to a store in the mall, where Robin is trying to help Mark pick out an outfit, suggesting various pastels and Cosby-type sweaters and white jeans (barf), and the Countess keeps surreptitiously intervening, suggesting black leather and such.

Lauren Hutton as the Countess — A fine vintage!

Additionally, the movie touches on some neuroses about sex that were so rampant during the 80s, especially about changing gender roles and the AIDS epidemic.

While it does make the sexually-aggressive Countess into a bad girl, Hutton does her best to make the character charming and fun, even if she IS evil and selfish. It’s clear that while she adores Mark, but he is just another fling in her long life, as illustrated by the stable of ghosts that live in the Countess’s basement. No doubt she courted each one as fervently before drinking their blood and losing interest.

Robin, though a boring good girl, is plucky and fiesty with her denim overalls and culottes, and is at least equally likeable. Usually the virgins in these movies are dull as dishwater, but she does a great job making the material work.

Overall, Once Bitten is another fun entry to the ’80s Vampire’ movie genre. It’s available on Netflix, and is a fun Friday night with friends nostalgia-fest.

Oh THAT’S Why I Haven’t Watched it in 27 Years Entry: The Fox and The Hound

[Spoilers Ahead!]

Somewhat recently, a whole slew of older Disney movies have come available on Netflix. A lot of them are the older animated ones, and the combination live action/animated ones from the 70s and earlier. Think Aristocats, Pete’s Dragon, and some of the wholly live action ones like The Parent Trap.

There are movies you grow up loving, because you remember them as you age and, as they hold up to repeated viewings, you re-familiarize yourself with them every few years, and remember why you loved the film all over again. Some of it is nostalgia, and some of it is just that the movie stands up after all the years.

I had no memory of the Fox and the Hound other than a vague sense of unease, like I knew it was one that I’d seen but never been overly fond of, but I couldn’t have explained why. I had seen someone post a scene from it on Imgur.com a few days before and, as I had some time while I was home sick a few weeks ago, decided to check it out.

Good LORD.

Copper and Tod chilling — Friendship! Togetherness! Splashing!

As I mentioned, there are movies you grow up loving. I am convinced that every generation views the newest generation’s entertainment as some how lesser than their own; sort of an outgrowth of the ‘kids these days!’ mentality, which is usually accompanied by a world-weary eyeroll. We’re all guilty of it; I know I myself have done it. And then some things are enjoyed multi-generationally, as parents and older siblings/family members introduce children to things they themselves grew up with. Sometimes there’s a bit of culture shock: a child (or anyone, to be honest) who grows up watching very modern entertainment might be deeply upset by something like Bambi, The Black Cauldron, or The Dark Crystal.

I am here to tell you that I cried through MOST of The Fox and the Hound, and it sure wasn’t the cold medicine. There were several times when I bawled out loud, to my sniffling boyfriend, ‘How is this a CHILDREN’S movie??!?!?!?’

I mention these not because I am condemning the movie, or think it is anything but fine filmmaking. But JESUS. If you saw it when you were about 5, haven’t seen it since, and think to yourself ‘Hey that’s a children’s movie! I will watch it with my small child!’ then perhaps you might want to watch it yourself first.

To wit, here are a few things that happen:

– In the first 5 minutes, Tod’s mother is killed after hiding him at the base of a fencepost. She laid the little bundle of her baby down, gave him a last look, and then ran off. My tear ducts immediately began production.

– Amos tries repeatedly to shoot Tod.

– A dog gets hit by a train. SERIOUSLY. He doesn’t die, but the dog falling down a rocky hillside to land in the water was pretty goddamn upsetting. Tissues were again deployed.

– The Widow Tweed drives Tod into a game preserve and leaves him there, to keep him safe. Her taking his collar off KILLED. ME.

– Amos and Copper go into the game preserve for the express purpose of hunting Tod. They leave traps all over the place for him, and watching him pad amongst the leaves, juuuuuuust missing the traps was nerve-wracking.

– Amos sets fire to the treestump where Tod and his mate, Vixey, live. They struggle to escape and are almost burned alive.

– Tod, Copper, and Amos all fight with a bear. The ensuing fight leaves Amos wounded and trapped by his own fox traps, and Copper knocked aside. Tod takes it upon himself to save Amos and Copper, doing his best to fight and distract the bear.

– Copper positioning himself between Amos and an exhausted and wounded Tod, refusing to allow his oldest friend to be harmed.

I certainly enjoyed the movie, I just wasn’t expecting to to punch me in the gut the way that it did. I totally underestimated it because I had filed it under ‘lesser Disney’ of the 70s, when they had run out of Princesses and were doing a lot of animation recycling. Basically, I forgot that it doesn’t matter what medium a good movie is in, if it really is a good movie.

I think the most interesting and perhaps the hardest lesson of all in the film is the fact that even though Tod saved Amos and he and Copper could become friends again, Tod remained in the forest with his mate. The wild was his place, and he was not a pet. Of course there are efforts to domesticate the fox, and plenty of anecdotes about them living with or near people, but they are still largely wild animals.

Long story short, The Fox and the Hound is a masterful piece about putting differences aside in the name of friendship. There are a few charming songs and cute moments, including a subplot with a caterpillar and some hungry birds. As always, you would be the best judge of what’s appropriate for your children (or yourself!).

Just, you know, keep some tissues handy!

The Bitch Is Back Post: Catwomen and She-Devils

Granted, putting glasses and beige on Michelle Pfeiffer doesn’t exactly put her in the same league as Roseanne Barr, but Tim Burton’s effort to represent those forgotten women at least pays lip service to the fact that they exist. Because Selina Kyle’s apartment is TOTALLY that kind of woman’s abode: stuffed animals, pink, nightshirts with kittens on them, an old dollhouse. . . everything unthreatening, soft and pink and friendly, and it exists as her own escape from the cruelties of her real life.

Disclaimer: No, I never saw the Halle Berry one. We do not speak of it.

So!

Batman Returns. And She-Devil.

Although both had different aims, they both succeeded at some of the most subversive ideas brought to the screen in a mainstream 80’s movie.

They were delightfully underplayed attempts at bringing feminism with subtly anarchic overtones to the screen . Both, in their ways, were like the girls’ version of Fight Club before there WAS a Fight Club.

When Batman Returns came out, it was the summer between my 6th and 7th grade years. I remember the trailers for it–it looked like the exact thing my little heart had been waiting for. Even though I’ve seen it umpty-billion times sense, I remember the excitement during the opening credits sequence; Cobblepot’s tortuous pram is floating through the sewers, and just as the music swells, a cloud of bats flutters from the dark to form the film’s title. I STILL love that moment.

And of course–there was Catwoman.

Sultry, slinky, strong and dangerous, she was doing the stuff I pretended to do in my backyard–climbing walls, doing cartwheels, and making it look awesome. My diet of Ninja Turtles had fed in me a desire to practice backyard ninjitsu, and my Barbies had engendered a fascination with makeup. Catwoman was the perfect storm.

Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is obviously not a direct interpretation of the comic–the comic Catwoman was a jewel thief, a criminal with a more formalized modus operandi; she and Batman both break the rules, and both do it for personal reasons, but his reasons are (ostensibly) selfless while hers are selfish.

Hell Yeah — No, you cannot has. But maybe you can?

BR’s Catwoman is breaking the rules because she wants to, because the same rules are the ones that broke her. Her aim is less focused and results in chaos. She focuses her efforts on property destruction at first, and her first crime is to destroy a department store, one of those wretched bastions of ‘femininity’ that pretty much exist to convince women they are somehow inadequate in order to sell them shit they don’t need. Sound familiar?

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”

The first rule is. . . — Oh yeah. You know it.

Women (and more recently, men–welcome to the objectification club, boys!) have been sold an idea of what they are supposed to be by the media. And it doesn’t stop at gender; minorities, gays, religious groups–everyone is shown by advertising and media what they are expected to be, and how they are expected to behave, by telling them what to buy. This is not news. Or it shouldn’t be.

The 80’s were a great time for onscreen anarchy, in both overt and covert forms. I’m not too interested in covering the overt forms, because for the purposes of this post, subversion is the name of the game. Bringing it down from the inside. . .oh yeah.

It’s interesting also because this is in line with another oddly anarchic women’s film of around the same time, Roseanne Barr’s She-Devil.

One of her character Rose’s great moments of revolution is to destroy her family home and all her family’s possessions; she does this by basically breaking all the ‘good housewife’ rules: she puts aerosol cans in the microwave, overloads electrical sockets, overfills the washing machine, throws a bunch of metal shit in the dryer (including the overhanging lightbulb) fills an ashtray on top of a magazine pile with still-lit cigarettes, and leaves the blender on high with a knife jammed in the beaters.

After destroying the house, she takes the kids in a taxi to the abode of her nemesis, Mary Fisher, a romance novelist who has seduced Rose’s husband (played by a way too convincing Ed Begley, Jr. as a whining, entitled douche) away from her. Bob has been living in the lap of luxury, and now that Rose has dumped the kids on him, Mary Fisher’s fairytale life begins to crumble.

The anarchic thread in She-Devil is the preposition that there are more than beautiful, statuesque women in the world; indeed, the entire film is about those women marginalized and ignored by society; the same ones whose desire to be beautiful, and to be the center of everyone’s attention fuels the romance novel and romantic comedy industries. Society thrives on these women, who have been made to feel unattractive and undesirable to the point that escape from reality, through daytime soaps, romance novels, melodrama, and even video games has become necessary to their daily life. These women who–in the film–are instrumental to Rose’s vengeance plot through their intelligence and talents rather than their beauty (although one does get exploited for her beauty; Olivia, the bouncy, somewhat brainless secretary is manipulated by Rose to get to Bob, but since Rose herself was a victim of Bob’s duplicity the audience is not too unforgiving of Rose).

Which is why it’s so brilliant–every woman who’s been downtrodden or marginalized had, at some point, something fierce and ferocious in her that had to be beaten out by society. It’s nice to imagine that just Selina’s fire was never really beaten out, ours hasn’t been either. It’s in there, waiting for something to come along to stoke it and prod it back to the surface. . . or maybe, sometimes it just happens all by itself.

‘I Wanted to Like This and Couldn’t’ Entry: Prince of Persia

I just don’t see Gyllenhaal as a serviceable action hero, at least not the way he’s presented here. I can certainly see him as the type who is called to action, but he’s being sold as Han Solo, when he’s more of a Luke Skywalker. I want to see him start at awkward and sensitive before he’s doing parkour all over the ziggurats. Going from pencil pushing geeks and Donnie Darko to THIS with no gears in between doesn’t sell me. I need to see some kind of progression; maybe by the end of the film he can be bouncing off walls and running across parked horses, but let’s start out in first before trying the interstate, shall we?

Y’all know me.

Y’all know my failing tends to be a certain willingness to overextend credit to films that might not deserve it, and to turn a blind eye to the failings of something otherwise mediocre in order to celebrate the effort of the filmmakers’ having done anything at all.

But man.

From Pencil Pusher to Prince of Persia! — Someone at Empire magazine was kind enough to make this graphic. Which is good because even a white arrow is beyond my photoshop skills.

Partly, this entry is to prove that yes, no matter how hot the lead of a film is, I am still capable of disliking said film. Maybe I need to convince myself of that more than anyone else; at any rate, here we go.

When I first heard about the movie based on the game, I was a little excited. I hadn’t personally played the game, but was familiar with it as Nathan had played through most of the series. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but was mildly curious.

The photos coming out, of an uncharacteristically buff and cut Jake Gyllenhaal, were strange at first. “Huh. That’s odd. But also. . . yeah!” I fully admit that it was his hotness that got me interested in the movie.

The trailers didn’t inspire confidence, but I realized recently how little stock I put into trailers; I think of them as the worst way to judge a movie, because of how many times in the past I have been surprised by the end product. After viewing the trailers, I didn’t think much of Iron Man or Pirates of the Caribbean, or many other films that turned out not just to be enjoyable, but bonafide blockbusters. Other movies’ trailers got me hugely excited, only to let me down. Someday I’ll post my thought process behind that, but not today.

Still, I decided to give it a shot.

I think the biggest failing for me was the character of Dastan, and when your title character is weak, well, there’s not too many places to go from there.

I like Gyllenhaal with some weight to him. I like his shaggy hair, and I thought his stuntwork was decent. But I don’t believe him as a rough and rowdy man of the people, or as a willing action hero. He also has no arc to speak of; he starts out the movie in the same place that he ends it. Dastan, being a street child adopted by the king, already knows how to take care of himself and losing his status as a Prince doesn’t feel like he’s lost anything. Sure, responsibilities of leadership and the people would be better off with him leading and whatnot, but that never even felt like a real threat. Sure, a tyrant is a tyrant, but the idea of rule under one of the other, unworthy characters was never made concrete to me. Wanting to solve his father’s murder is kind of interesting, but he never really goes beyond that.

After way too much exposition, we are introduced to Dastan in the equivalent of an ancient world Fight Club; we are expected to view him as ‘one of the boys!’ because even though he’s a Prince, he still goes and hangs out with the men. Which is idiotic, because (and yes, I know this is a video game) in a world like that, even a fairytale world based on a historical one, there are rules. And one rule is, no matter how cool you think a Prince is, you can’t get in a fight with him. For one thing, he’s not really in charge, the King is. And if the King has a problem with you beating his kid, no matter who started it or if it’s all in fun, then you will be executed. Period. For another, he’s wealthy and well-fed; his soldiers and underlings probably aren’t, and haven’t had his training or conditioning. And yeah, he came from the street and all, but after the fight, he’ll pick himself up and go home to his palace. No matter how you slice it, it still comes across as a rich boy slumming.

Why not introduce him as someone more informed by reality? Picture it: a street child, he’s used to starving, being exposed to the elements, and the uncertain world of an orphan on his own; given the chance to be wealthy, why wouldn’t he be delighted to lie around the palace on pile of money and slave girls? Maybe the King even regrets his decision to elevate Dastan, seeing what a life of luxury has made him, but is bound by his oath and certain that if given the chance, his lazy, libertine son would rise to the occasion. That makes his fall from grace at least worth something to Dastan, and when he realizes he doesn’t need that to be happy or that he had a chance to do something as king and help the people after being reminded of their plight, the character has something more to do. And positing that ‘It’s a kid’s movie’ doesn’t work, because there are plenty of kid’s movies with more complex character arcs. For Christ’s sake, if Gemma Arterton is going to spend the whole movie nagging him, at least give her something to nag him about.

The other problem is that I just don’t see Gyllenhaal as a serviceable action hero, at least not the way he’s presented here. I can certainly see him as the type who is called to action, but he’s being sold as Han Solo, when he’s more of a Luke Skywalker. I want to see him start at awkward and sensitive before he’s doing parkour all over the ziggurats. Going from pencil pushing geeks and Donnie Darko to THIS with no gears in between doesn’t sell me. I need to see some kind of progression; maybe by the end of the film he can be bouncing off walls and running across parked horses, but let’s start out in first before trying the interstate, shall we?

Almost the entire time I was watching the movie I was conflicted. ‘But he’s so hot. . . but character development!. . . but his eyes are dreamy. . . but Ben Kingsley WASTED!. . .but pretty hair. . . but Gemma Arterton has the onscreen charisma of beige paint and should be leaving an orange oilslick from all that bronzer!. . . sighhhhh. . .

It almost feels as though everyone is aware of Gyllenhaal’s hotness but himself. I wonder what he thought about the physical change? Anything? Did it even register, or was it just part of a job? It was almost creepy how his change was presented in the marketing for the movie, almost in a ‘You won’t believe your eyes!’ kind of way.

“SEE! him beat up guys instead of write angsty poetry! SEE! him hurt people instead of their feelings! SEE! him trembling with wrath and power rather than emotion! In theaters now! Give your mom and sister a thrill, and then go read Maxim’s article about how he got (kind of) swole and believe that it too can happen to you if you do enough curls!”