Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

23 April 2008

Amityville 3-D, dir. Richard Fleischer (1983)

STEVE says:
I went 25 years without watching this fucking thing. A quarter of a century; 67.5% of my life - possibly longer than I've ever purposefully not watched any other movie. Tonight the streak was broken, and the wait more than completely justified.

There really was no excuse for this movie. The story, as it was, deftly side-stepped that set-up in the first film, choosing instead to go with some ghostly tom-foolery, and then went nowhere for what seemed a really long time, but was in fact only 89 minutes. Long enough, I suppose.

Adding insult to injury, the 3-D isn't used to any particular effect. The occasional "shock-shot" of a hand reaching out toward the screen, yeah, but how many times can we see that in the same movie and still be bothered to care?

.5/5

NIKKI says:
Just when I thought I'd never watch another non-3D movie again... This was just horrendous. I'm starting to think Jaws 3D was actually a shameful film that blinded me with its fish effects.

I said to Steve, perhaps I would have been blind to this film's dumbness had the 3D effects been better, It would appear we had a slightly colour-skewed print, so not all of the 3D worked. This was bad. The main shots were good -- people and walls and stuff were very 3D, but the money-shots -- pole going through car window, hands reaching out, flies and ghost-forms buzzing around -- all split the red and blue in two. So, instead of seeing something coming at us, we just saw it big and twice, as though we had a weird double-vision.

So, that was disappointing.

Not as disappointing, though, as the movie itself, which was stupid, boring, and made very little sense. That is all.

.5/5

Corey Haim: Me, Myself and I, dir. William L. Boyd, Brooke McCarter (1989)

NIKKI says:
So, I wake up in the morning, come out to the computer, flick the monitor on, and I see this. Well, I see Corey Haim, crayon in hand, writing his name on a wall. It's Corey Haim's video diary from 1989. Little does Steve know, he has just found my Holy Grail.

Or perhaps he did know... And, to be honest, my Holy Grail became something far different as of about 1992. Still, watching this "film" so many years after my Haim-obsession was just brilliant. It was everything I thought it would be and more. So, so much more.

I told Steve I had the most success with this when I stepped back into my 1989-self, back when I was going to marry Corey and would save all my pocket money to buy Teen Beats with his picture on the front. I could more easily view this as I may have then, loving Corey as he played tennis and drive his Alfa Romeo down Sunset Boulevard. I needed to put myself back there, because this really is a sad, sad piece of work.

I don't blame Corey. He was 17 at the time, and probably spent much of his teens being told he was the shit, and that everybody loved him, so he acted like it. He really does love him some self here, parading for the camera, saying stuff he thinks is funny or deeply profound, and spending much of his time getting pampered and primped by make-up girls. It's no wonder he acts the way he does.

Research informs me that this video was not a fan piece, but a PSA from Corey Camp that he was off drugs and ready to start his adult career. Apparently, he'd had some law troubles at this time, though I don't remember hearing about that in my only source of Corey news: the teen mags. Funny that. At the end of the movie, Corey tells us to stay in school and avoid "getting messed up". It's all so sincere, and then a make-up girl comes out. Well, maybe she doesn't, but she may as well have.

As ridiculous as this movie is -- it's 37 minutes of Corey playing sports, winking for the camera while floating in his pool, hitting some keys on his synthesizer, doing a fashion show, and talking about how can't wait to live in a mansion in Tahiti -- it's a product of its time, and really shows how blinded we fans were to the lives of our fave stars. There was no Internet, no YouTube, no E! Hollywood Story -- just the teen mags and the movies. We could believe in our favourite stars' innocence for a lot longer than kids can today. I think that was a good thing.

1/5 for content;
5/5
because my life is now complete.

Steve did not view.