Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder (1944)

STEVE says:
Well, what can you say? Double Indemnity is simply one of the best films ever made. Where do you go from there?

Showed this one to my class tonight. I've got them looking into Film Noir this term and since Double Indemnity was the first Noir I saw (not the first I'd watched, but the first I really saw for something other than just "an old movie"), I decided to open with it. As I'd hoped, it blew them away. The dialog, the plotting, Edward G. Robinson's "little man"; it all made an impact, and elicited some spirited discussion afterwards.

Something I learned while researching the movie for class: It's based on an actual event. In Queens in 1927, a woman named Ruth Snyder talked her boyfriend into killing her husband Albert, after having Albert take out a big insurance policy with a double-indemnity clause. This inspired James M. Cain to write not only his novel Double Indemnity, but also The Postman Always Rings Twice. Apparently this story struck quite a chord with Mr. Cain.

5/5

Nikki did not view.

La Terza Madre (aka. Mother of Tears), dir. Dario Argento (2007)

NIKKI says:
Did somebody say this movie was Dario "back to form"? I'm sure I heard that prior to watching it. It's very true, at any rate. For the first time since discovering Tenebrae or whichever Argento I watched first way back when, I felt genuinely creeped out, by the story, the effects, the horror, and I genuinely cared for the woman in peril.

My god, how gruesome. New wave horror has nothing on Dario. The blood spatter here proves that old school horror/violence is still the most effective, even if you can tell the spike through the eyes is so totally fake. It just looks good. And I don't think much of it was CG, which is even better. The woman at the start stumbling around in her own intestines -- gross! But awesome.

The story wasn't bad, either. This is apparently the final film in the Three Mothers trilogy that includes Suspiria and Inferno. Here, Asia Argento plays the daughter of a woman killed by the Mother of Sighs from Suspiria. In this movie, she and a friend at a museum open an ancient urn, inadvertently bringing into this realm, the Mother of Tears. Asia must steel herself against the witch and her powers, which see the entire city turning on itself in horror and fury.

Asia goes to an old house to face off against the witch, ad stumbles across an awful party scene where the women are all chanting and singing for the one main witch in the little red dress. It's all so creepy and weird. Asia ends up swimming through a body-infested sewer, and -- ugghh -- it's just awesomely revolting.

But it never feels exploitative. I did find myself cursing Dario when not one, but TWO, babies found themselves at the receiving end of his horror vision, but that's Dario, I guess. Taking me places I don't want to go so sharply and so quickly that I barely have time to register it. These days, with the drawing out of the gore, they've just got it so wrong. It's so much harder to process Dario's type of violence that aims not to gross out, but to shock. It's fast, and it's mean. Just dare to watch the woman get her mouth ground open (AHHHH!), or the spike up the dress, or the spike through the gullet, or the poked out retinas. Snap, snap, snap.

This was a fitting conclusion to the director's weird vision.

3.5/5

Angel-A, dir. Luc Besson (2005)

NIKKI says:
I haven't seen Wings of Desire, which this apparently borrows from in terms of theme and style. Had I seen that film, my perceptions of this one might have been different. In any case, I enjoyed Besson's little fable, and while I realise Angela's eventual means of making Andre believe in himself are a little simplistic, I still found it moving.

The style, too, adds much. What a beautiful picture to watch. The Parisian streets, the landmarks, the quadrangles overlooked by the Eiffel Tower, the bridges. I think Angela comments several times in the film just how beautiful Paris is, and at the end, when she's rising above this gorgeous backdrop, in full flight, it's even more exquisite, with this heavenly feel.

I remember reading that Angela's "job" was supposed to be some great secret. As if knowing she was an angel would ruin the thing like finding out Bruce Willis was actually dead the whole time. I don't think that's true. You'd have to be quite the simpleton not to see what was going on. She shows up out of nowhere, she's absolutely stunning, her name is ANGELa, and, at one point, she stands up against a statue, the statue's cement wings protruding up as though out of her back. It's a brilliant shot, and purposely reminding you this woman is otherworldly.

So, visually it's brilliant. The story is funny and touching, and a tiny bit inspirational. I thought the end was a bit too easy. I think Andre should have taken Angela's advice and gone off to live his life. But the movie chooses a different fate for him. If only what happens to him could happen to us all. Suicide might be eradicated, that's for sure.

3/5

10 Items or Less, dir. Brad Silberling (2006)

NIKKI says:
This was pretty much exactly as I expected: a cute movie about two different people who manage to strike a bond and influence each other's lives.

In a way, it was quite standard -- the young and willful young woman who needs calming down is given a sort of peace by the sage-like older man. He's been there and done that, and he knows the screaming and the kicking won't do anyone any good. He gives her self-belief, that she is worth something.

What does he get out of it? I'm not so sure, really. He is in town researching a role for a film, and that's where the two meet. But what is his goal beyond finding the inspiration for a character? He does say something about life being in the conversations, the interactions with people in their daily lives. He goes around making little impacts -- smiling in appreciation of a woman putting on makeup, watching a little boy show off his golf swing, things like that.

He's also afraid of committing to his latest project, so perhaps he goes around researching, getting what he needs from people for life, and then shying away from the working thing. I'm rewriting the movie -- perhaps that could have been explained a bit more.

His goal seemed to be real interaction. There's truth within all human being if the surface is scratched even just a little bit. If that was the movie's (and Freeman's) overall reason for being, then I can handle that. A nice little movie.

3/5

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, dir. Sidney Lumet (2007)

NIKKI says:
Never has a film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman promised so much and delivered so little. Although, admittedly, I appear to be on my own with this, as the film is receiving positive reviews all over town.

I just didn't care. I started caring because the story started out so interesting -- brothers in need of money, one seemingly well-to-do, the other a hopeless fuck-up, plan to rob their parents' jewellery store. Things go wrong, and our story starts.

But as it played out, I found myself less and less interested in where these down and dirty lives ended up. I found myself only interested in just where Ethan Hawke was going to take his character, acting-wise. His performance was extraordinary, and just made me think how much I have missed him in movies. This was the first time, I think since Tod Anderson, that I've genuinely been enthralled watching him. Usually, he seems a bit bored. Here, he appeared to care a bit more.

I'm so sad that I didn't. I felt the movie just ached with melodrama -- and not the good kind. This was just sad people doing sad things. And I realise Phillip Seymour was really at the end of his rope, but how he ends up dealing with it just didn't ring true to me.

A good set-up, but ultimately disappointing.

2.5/5

Untraceable, dir. Gregory Hoblit (2008)

NIKKI says:
You know, I expected this to be far worse. Usually, with these sorts of procedural films, the stupidest people in the audience are catered to first. So, we have lots of Law and Order-like expository banter buzzing about, and inept investigators who don't know their nucleic acid from their dermal papillae.

This had elements of that, but I didn't find myself scoffing every five minutes, as in Murder By Numbers or any Ashley Judd film based on a James Patterson 'novel'.

I wonder, though, if the reason for my non-hatred of this film was due to Diane Lane. Steve and I both felt that had Judd or Sandra Bullock starred in this one, we may have tossed around a few more jibes. After all, the set-up isn't particularly clever -- guy angry at horror-obsessed media takes his revenge. And the situations the killer manages to create are too sophisticated, his connections to chem-labs and his web smarts are a bit too convenient. But throw Diane in, and something clicks. You believe every crease on her face, every emotion in her voice. You believe her, you suddenly believe a college student might rig up a sulphuric acid tank in a suburban basement.

So, in praise of Diane:


Right?

Diane has done much good work lately. She was great in this. She was the second best thing about Hollywoodland. And she adds class to every film she's in that would otherwise drown in lameness: The Glass House, Murder at 1600, even Jumper. I'd love to see her in better movies, where her greatness can be used not to lift poor films, but to further elevate good ones.

In short ... Untraceable was not entirely awful, even if we'd seen the story before, and guessed who the killer was from the names in the opening credits. (We pretty much said: "If it's not this guy, it's that guy, and if it's not that guy then that guy will be killed by the other guy." We were right.) And Diane Lane can make anything watchable.

2.5/5

Welcome to the Jungle, dir Jonathan Hensleigh (2007)

NIKKI says:
Here's how this goes: We're watching Southland Tales and the phone rings. It's my dad. "Why aren't you at the Club," he asks? Oh crap -- we forgot we had a family dinner. We stop Southland Tales and get ready to go out. We're 29 minutes into the movie.

I'm brushing my hair, and Steve says to me: "So, what do you think of the movie?" I reply: "Um, I was gonna wait until the end before I said anything ... what do you think?" He says: "So far, I'm not impressed." I can then release my held breath and blurt: "I'm hating it!"

We discussed our issues a bit on the way to the Club. On the way home, we decided to pick something else. I looked through the movies and preview tapes and happened to pull out Welcome to the Jungle, the cover of which is adorned with bloody skulls. Perfect -- when in doubt, Crappy Horror. I tell Steve the rating on it says it has cannibalism, strong horror violence, and gore.

He says: "You had me at cannibalism." And we went with it.

OH MY GOD. Welcome to the Jungle was as far from crappy as we could ever expect to get. It was some of the most compelling, frightening, shocking filmmaking EVER.

We fucking loved it.

It starts out fairly well -- four friends get together to hang out in Fiji, and decide to shoot over to New Guinea, specifically Irian Jaya, to find missing rich guy Michael Rockefeller. They go, and it's all fun, and then they realise, as we do, that New Guinea may not be the most inviting nation to solve great mysteries in. The good thing is, these are not your average horror movie teens. They're actually smart and funny, and we like them. A-plus.

The friends get shot at, briefly captured by some sort of border rebels, before heading into the wilderness in search of Mr. Rockefeller. I kept waiting for the shit to really hit the fan, but it just wouldn't. Instead, a power struggle erupts between the four friends, and the playful ones begin to break away from those more focused on the plan at hand.

Eventually, the camps separate. And ... mmm, yes.

Jonathan Hensleigh has some good credits to his name. Die Hard 3, for instance, which was kinda cool. I'm surprised this wasn't more popular the way horror movies are going at this point. Why does shit like See No Evil and Catacombs get on the New Release wall, while this one lingers in obscurity? Especially when it is just so good?

This is effective, smart horror. Its handheld, doco-style and unknown stars add a realism, and the director knows how to build tension, and when to reveal his hand. The least graphic scenes, such as the natives walking the riverbanks (ahhh!!), are some of the most tense film moments I've encountered. Just superb. I want to buy copies for everyone.

We have decided that we will go back to Southland Tales. Someday. Bad as it may end up being, it inadvertently pointed us to this great movie (oh my god, the spearmen!!), so it already has points.

4/5

Pierrepoint (aka. The Last Hangman), dir. Adrian Shergold (2005)

STEVE says:
Pierrepoint is a harsh movie. A biopic of Britain's most celebrated and prolific hangman (between 1933 and 1955, Albert Pierrepoint was responsible for the hangings of 608 people), it wasn't going to be a laff-riot.

Although it's pretty free and loose with the facts - not the least of which, that Pierrepoint was not Britain's last hangman, despite the movie's US title - I can't hold that against it because I wasn't exactly conversant with the facts in the first place. But facts, to paraphrase Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, should never get in the way of a good story.

And it was a good story: Pierrepoint tried to keep his job as Executioner completely separate from his daily life as a grocer, and later a publican, but it would eat away at him over his 22 years of service, as he first tried to live up to his father's reputation as Executioner, then avoid the same pitfalls that destroyed his father later in life. It's a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, really - I can only wish it had been told with more care.

As I said, it wasn't so much the shuffling of the facts that bothered me about Pierrepoint; it 's that it felt rushed. I know it's difficult to go through 22 years of a man's life in under 90 minutes, but this was a bit much. Early in the movie, Pierrepoint is shyly trying to ask Juliet Stevenson's Annie to a movie. Then they're dancing, then they're married and she's serving him dinner, then they're at the cinema watching newsreel about Nazi War Crimes. Hang on - that's something like 13 years in the space of only ten minutes. Then it's 1950, and then the movie's over. While I didn't feel as though I missed anything, I also didn't feel like any time had actually passed. Simply superimposing the year in the corner of the screen every now and again would have gone a long way in keeping me temporally grounded.

And it has to be said, I've a newfound respect for Timothy Spall (who I'm now coming to think of as The Great Timothy Spall). To this day, I've always found it difficult to separate him from his role as the pitiful-yet-creepy Dr. Polidori in Ken Russell's Gothic, but he was moving and utterly convincing as this man who basically led a dual life, and was almost destroyed by it.

3/5

NIKKI says:
Steve is right: This movie needed more time to tell its complex story. So much went on in Pierrepoint's 20 years at the gallows, and though the film did very well in eliciting concern for the man, respect, and pity, I felt there was more to his life that could have been explored.

This was very much the snapshot version of a life, so instead of viewing it as a biopic about Pierrepoint, I think I appreciated it more as a lesson in history. Just how Britain selects its hangmen, what they have to do, how they cope -- all intriguing elements of this story. I was enthralled by Pierrepoint's handling of his position. The manner in which he dropped the floor on 13 Nazi war criminals (men and women) without batting an eye was just fascinating. What it does to him in the end is even more so.

The routine-ness with which Pierrepoint carries out his duties speaks to this sad time in world history. This is not the place to get into issues of capital punishment, but I would have liked to know a bit more about Pierrepoint's eventual change of heart, speaking out against the death penalty as a means for revenge. What does Pierrepoint think of the fact that he put innocent men to death? I realise he's carrying out orders, and who gets to the gallows is not his decision, but that has to do something to a person?

His downfall began when he became famous for his work, and when he put a friend to death. But what of these other things? Again, reason this was too short. There's so much to explore here. Still, a good film about a horrible thing.

Abolish the Death Penalty.

3/5

See No Evil, dir. Gregory Dark (2006)

NIKKI says:
Apart from my oft-mentioned addcition to baaad horror movies, I wanted to see this one simply because The Condemned, another WWE Films production, was so enjoyable. I had a sneaky feeling this, too, would be smart and satirical, with Kane sending up his status as a mad wrestling machine, as Steve Austin did so well in the other movie.

Well, how wrong I was. See No Evil appeared to take itself quite seriously. I think we were actually supposed to be scared of all the goings on. Instead, we were simply amused. Or, we may have been amused if we cared to be anything at all.

The gist? A group of hot prisoners (already your disbelief is well-suspended) are sent to a big old mansion on day release (I assume) to help an old woman tidy up. Before the prisoners (all about 20, all in suspiciously non-regulation hot clothes) do any work at all, they settle in for the night. One showers, two get it on, another looks for a escape hatch. Soon, though, the reverie is disturbed by giant marauding Kane, who catches his hot, young prey with a giant hook attached to a chain.

As expected, the kids start dying off one by one until the remaining few realise something is up and attempt to rescue their friend who Kane has locked in a cage.

Throughout, Kane has flashbacks to his own childhood locked in a cage. His mother tells him all about dirty pillows and sinful, lusty kids who need wiping out. Kane, she believes, is the Hand of God, eradicating sinners from the world. Quite an elaborate scheme she cooks up, though, with the prisoners. No seeking out hookers on Main Street for Kane.

Kane like to gouge eyes out, too.

So, it all goes downhill where it never really went uphill so bad storytelling becomes worse as the thing progresses. The kids become more annoying, the revelation about the old woman and Kane is just dumb, and the eventual killing of Kane is downright disappointing because by the end of it, I was hoping Kane would win. He'd killed his insane mother in order to save one of the girls, and then he was eventually overthrown by a guy who earlier in the piece threw something at the head of a stray dog. Who's my hero again?

Confusing, really, that I should be made to feel sympathetic towards poor, tortured Kane, and then feel good when he gets a pole through the head. Indicative, I guess, that the writers here had no idea what they were doing. It's world's removed from The Condemned.

.5/5

STEVE says:
I did not expect See No Evil to be any good at all, and in that regard it did not disappoint. A horror movie produced by the WWE, with zero star-power and helmed by a former porn director, in my book, is the absolute definition of poor quality. It was destined to suck.

And suck it did. But then you've got to get into degrees of suckitude. Was it worse than 7eventy-5ive? No, clearly not. The story, while heavy on cliché, was at least coherent. And porn director or not, Gregory Dark knows not to close in on three empty pizza boxes to get the point across. Was it worse than Prom Night? Yes, but in different ways and for different reasons. Death Row? Hmm... unknown cast heads into spooky prison/hotel (or other convenient single-set location), are attacked by ghosts/ax-wielding creep (or what have you), and only three make it out alive. Yes, that's about the level we're looking at here.

But in the end, does it really matter? Each of these movies only received .5 ratings, so are any really either better or worse than any others? You could argue either way, but it would only waste more time than has already been wasted just watching the movies.

Hey, at least we watched a half-decent movie before blowing our evening on this one.

.5/5

Cleaner, dir. Renny Harlin (2007)

NIKKI says:
Where did this movie come from? Until last night, I'd never even heard of it. It's weird that a movie with these themes and this cast should pass by us. Alas, we just found it on a preview disc alongside something called Bats: Human Harvest.

It wasn't a bad little movie at all. Sam Jackson plays a crime scene cleaner hired for a particularly sticky job at the home of a local businessman. A master of his profession, Sam leaves the place spotless.

He has cause to head back to the place the following day, and learns from the woman of the house, that he shouldn't ever have been there at all. Has he just cleaned up a fresh, evidence-filled crime scene? An ex-cop, Sam is intrigued, and must get to the bottom of the thing, especially when he links the scene to a corrupt official.

And so the story plays out -- Sam is a step ahead of his cop friends, and starts putting pieces together while attempting to help his young daughter come to grips with the death of her mother. So, we have crime drama and family drama playing out simultaneously, and though they wind up connecting through circumstances the end, I'm not sure I fully understand why.

Still, at 88 minutes, this was a tight little thriller. Nothing particularly new is added to the genre, but the performances, and the twisty plot certainly made for entertaining viewing.

3/5

Prom Night, dir. Nelson McCormick (2008)

NIKKI says:
Free tickets. And even that didn't make me feel any better about seeing this pile of utter monkey-drivel. It was stupid, meaningless, and made no sense whatsoever.

So, there's a school teacher obsessed with the Main Girl. He loves her and kills her family who want to keep him away from her. Then he gets insanity, gets locked up, then he escapes. He comes to get Main Girl on the night of her prom. He manages to get into the same hotel in which the prom is being held and just goes about killing everyone around the place instead of heading straight for her, which he has many opportunities to do.

Why kill her friends? They weren't keeping him from her, standing in her way, or anything. All the time he spent chasing Big Boob Blue Dress Girl in the gym area, he could have been out finding his lady-love. Was her death so necessary?

The police investigation section of the film was just hilarious. They're trying to catch a guy who is hiding in the hotel. So what do they do? Send out a major red alert and evacuate everyone from the building. Not exactly stealthy police work, really.

The most embarrassing part of that? The Main Cop asks specifically for the locations of all exits in the building. There's a 30 second scene about him asking for those things. Every other movie would just have the guy say, "Exits are manned!" I'd believe that. Instead, they take the time to make it all known, and then after the evacuation, they can't find Main Girl. Well, all the exits are manned, the cop says. BUT NO ONE THOUGHT TO PLACE A COP AT HER HOTEL ROOM!

Oh my god. They're all, where's Main Girl? And some other guy goes, "She went back up to the room." And the cops and everyone just look at each other and go, "Of course!" Well, where the fuck else would she be, you idiots!?

And then the bad guy gets away anyway, kills more people, including Main Girl's boyfriend, in her room, right near where she is in the bathroom, with people vigilant all over the house, knifed in the throat without making a sound.

Oh god, this was just TORTURE.

1/5 (The added half-point ONLY because Big Boob Blue Dress Girl was nice to look at.)

STEVE says:
John Huston once said, "Don’t remake good movies, remake bad ones!"

A good point there. After all, he was the director of the third, definitive and - pray gods - the final version of The Maltese Falcon. But good points always get lost somewhere between the Hollywood sign and the dollar sign, and here we are today, threatened with unnecessary remakes of The Thing, Fame and The Birds, still feeling the sting of Rob Zombie's Halloween and reeling from the news of a Friday the 13th remake that eschews Mrs. Voorhees as the killer and moves straight on to Jason.

But then here comes Prom Night. It seems someone has taken Mr. Huston's philosophy to heart.

We hated the original Prom Night. Boring and predictable, not even one of the true classics like Halloween and Friday the 13th, but one of the many wannabes that rode their bloody wave of success all the way to the bank. From the ridiculous opening to the obvious conclusion, we sat through every disco-tinged moment, rolling our eyes, sighing, and crying Get On With It! It seemed like an excellent candidate for a remake. Surely this new one had to be an improvement.

Not so.

Of course my expectations weren't that high, and to say they plummeted would be a gross exaggeration, but they dropped as far as they could when I saw the name Johnathon Schaech in the opening credits - he of the abysmal The Foresaken and the curiously pointless 8MM 2. (I would later look up the film's writer, J.S. Cardone, and find that he directed both of those crimes against humanity, and that he and director McCormick will next be tackling - and, one assumes, beating to death - The Stepfather.) So once again, we're sitting there from ridiculous opening to obvious conclusion, rolling our eyes, sighing, and crying Get On With It! That is, when Dana Davis wasn't on screen. I found her very distracting. I'm talking Rosario Dawson in Josie and the Pussycats distracting. That blue dress, man...

And speaking of which - I know I mentioned this before in my Pumpkin Karver review, and I don't want to sound like one of those guys, you know, whose shelves are lined with the ever-popular Girls with Low Self-Esteem DVDs or anything, but - where's the fucking nudity? I was brought up in the 80s, dammit! Blood and sex went together like Hockey Mask and Machete back then. It was the age of gratuitous violence and gore in horror movies and, yes, that included people getting killed for no other reason than having sex. That was the very basic formula for slasher films, their raison d'être, if you will - or if you won't! But Mssrs. McCormick and Cardone apparently felt that formula was no longer relevant and decided instead to imply the slashing - seriously, there was more blood in Knocked Up than there was in Prom Night - and cut the carnality before it even gets started.

It's because of this lame-ass, ball-less, soul-less modern horror that we now have to contend with shite from the exact opposite end of the spectrum, shite like Saw and Hostel, and this new sub-genre of torture porn or "gornography" as someone so wittily called it. If horror hadn't been watered down since the early 90s, there would have been no such backlash, and we'd still have some decent R-rated (but admittedly probably still b-grade) horror.

Granted, Prom Night sucked for so many other reasons - poor plotting, lame character development, expository dialog, impossibly stupid police, etc. - but apart from all this, I maintain that it would have sucked anyway because PG-13 horror Does Not Work.

So it seems that Mr. Huston's philosophy only extends so far. Perhaps the next remake of Prom Night will get it right.

.5/5 (I can't even give it an extra .5 for Dana Davis - the .5 I'm giving it is for Dana Davis.)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, dir. Tim Burton (2007)

NIKKI says:
We found out yesterday that Marcus Nispel is remaking Friday the 13th, with the backing of original Friday production studios, Paramount and New Line. In the new movie, Jason Voorhees, who is a child in the original film, is a man of 40-odd, played by the hulking, strange-looking Derek Mears.

Already, we have a problem. The classic story has taken a butchering, and, yet again, the horror world suffers. You want to make a film about a crazy loon in the woods? Just make your own, and leave my classics alone.

What's the bet the New Jason has a hockey mask? Something you'll remember only showed up in the third installment of the original series.

My point? It's loosely connected, I'll give you that. But I'm disgusted by these remakes. These people who think they know what we horror fans want, yet fail us again and again for the sake of cash. It's fucking disgusting. It's, I'm gonna say it, the dark ages of the horror universe. The genre has eaten itself and now we're getting the consequential vomit-ridden aftertaste.

And so... when one hears Sweeney Todd is to be filmed (not techincally a remake, but close enough to make my point), one immediately runs in fear that something beautiful will again be tortured into something idiotic. And then you hear Tim Burton is doing it and you breathe a sigh of relief. Never has story and artist come together so perfectly. Who better to do this than a guy who trades in operatic oddness?

The film did not disappoint. It's dark and beautiful. And way more brutal than I was expecting. Tim Burton knows how to represent pain and hurt, and throughout the film we understand more and more Todd's anguish. His brutality, then, is an apt manifestation of this. It's so palpable, this pain, that when Sweeney kills, we feel relief.

The Burton-ness of the whole thing just added so much to it. The reds and blacks, and whites. I loved how they made it visually interesting as a movie, with Mrs. Lovett's fantasy sequence, and her death scene. We just marvelled at this new way of seeing these famous scenes.

The only thing that bothered me was a lack of clear conclusion for two of the main characters. The closing scenes was almost powerful enough to make me forget that the kids were running about closure-less. An extra scene somewhere prior could have helped that.

Still, this bordered on masterpiece. A word I usually despise, but that so rightly described the grandeur of this film.

4.5/5

Cloverfield, dir. Matt Reeves (2008)

NIKKI says:
The Hype Machine murdered this one for me before I'd even finished watching the trailer. All the Blair Witch-wannabe Internet publicity, the handheld camera, the hiring of relative unknowns in leading parts. Is it a monster? Godzilla? A big, giant octopus? What is ravaging New York in this movie without a name from the oh-so-cool J.J. Abrams?

Whatever!

Sitting down to watch the thing tonight, long after the publicity began, I felt similarly. Alright movie -- just try and impress me. But keep in mind, I've had a long day at work, I hate CGI, and I care very little for party-going New Yorkers.

If the movie could have said "Fuck you", I'm sure it would have. Instead, it just sat there, did its thing, and was absolutely, ridiculously brilliant. "Fuck you" enough, I suppose.

What a great movie! Who thought of this? Party-going kids -- who, thankfully, didn't repulse me every time they opened their mouths -- are saying goodbye to their friend, Rob. He's in love with Beth, who he hasn't called in weeks because he's afraid of leaving her. But he has to go. So she comes to his party with another guy, he gets pissed, yells at her, she leaves. This is all recorded by their friend, Hud, who is in charge of documenting Rob's send-off.

So, Rob's brother tells him life is about moments. And if he wants Beth, he has to go fight for her. And about two minutes after that, the head of the Statue of Liberty comes to rest outside their apartment. Moments, indeed.

And it just doesn't stop after that. The kids run, they lose each other, the big thing swaps its tail about, and Hud films the whole thing. They go in the tunnels and things attack them. And they have to get to Beth, and a bridge collapses. Then someone gets bitten and, oh my god!

This goes straight up into my Top 5 for the year, and well into my list of Favourite Movie-Watching Experiences. Alongside, of course, Blair Witch. The only thing I didn't like was that everyone else in the group had families, but none of them mentioned their loved ones, or were contacted, or wanted to run to their homes and friends and whatever. It was all about saving Beth. So, that bugged me. Even mention of the others' families would have been good. Still ...

You win, movie!

4.5/5

Bee Movie

Directors: Steve Hickner, Simon J. Smith
Writers: Jerry Seinfeld, Spike Feresten, Barry Marder, Andy Robin
Released: 2007
Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Renee Zellwegger, Matthew Broderick, Patrick Warburton, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, Barry Levinson

NIKKI says: I'll admit, I wasn't expecting much from Jerry Seinfeld playing a bee in yet another animated movie about a little guy making good. Am I the only one sick to death of Pixar/Disney/Dreamworks/whoever taking one premise and just remaking it with different bugs? It goes like this:

Little bug tries to get by in his community. Sees something he doesn't like, usually this has to do with his desire for freedom, or world exploration. He battles the authorities, which can be parents, bosses, children, other bugs. He has a difference to make, dammit. And then he makes it and becomes a hero and Randy Newman sings a song about him.

Over it. Bee Movie follows pretty much that exact premise. But, this time around, I lost the battle against the Dreamworks Demon of Cuteness, and fell in love with Barry and his story. I think much of it falling had to do with the film's humour, which is very smart. And with the film's overall lack of condescension and sap. They actually tranquilise Winnie the Pooh at one point! And a guy pulls a box-cutter on Barry! They didn't do that in Finding Nemo, I bet.

Perhaps it was Seinfeld's humour that boosted this one for me? He's comedian with obvious ability to look at minutiae of human behaviour. Sticking his voice inside the mouth of an animated bee with a lot to say on that exact subject really kinda works.

This will be one of the few new animated films I'll watch over and over. The only other one I can think of is Toy Story, and maybe Ants. They're really running out of bugs.

4.5/5

Death at a Funeral, dir. Frank Oz (2007)

NIKKI says:
I can't remember the last time I was so overwhelmed by a film's pre-release publicity. All I've been hearing over the past few weeks is how Death at a Funeral might just be the funniest movie of all time, rivalling Four Weddings and a Funeral as the best modern comedy about life and death.

Needless to say, I was happy to take it home. As you may know, I've been craving good comedy lately. This, however, was not really what I was after. It was funny in places, but overall rather ho-hum. Evidently, it's not the British that do good comedy, it's certain British people. Not a single cast member, shall we say, from Spaced, The Office, Black Books, or Coupling appears here.

The gag is this: A family reunites for the funeral of its patriarch. In the short time leading up to the ceremony, one character winds up high on hallucinogenic drugs and wanders about naked, while the dead man's sons discover their father was gay and must pay his lover a large sum of money so he won't reveal the news to everyone.

The jokes basically revolve around that. And then someone dies. But the death comes 20 minutes before the end, which throws the whole thing out of whack, so that the ridiculous ending comes too quickly, and without purpose. Really, the jokes are few and far between, and most of them rely on juvenile humour, such as the drugged out man spitting over a balcony, or a cranky old man in a wheelchair desperately needing a shit.

There wasn't a lot to laugh at, Or what I had laughed at early in the film, became run-of-the-mill the ninth time it was paraded in front of me for laughs. Okay, I felt like shouting, naked guy is acting weird -- can we move on?

So, good for laugh, but certainly not a lasting one.

2/5

STEVE says:
Death at a Funeral simply Was Not Funny. It had its moments, sure, and I didn't not laugh, but everything was either so contrived or cliché, that each laugh was more of a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden switch from the dullness of the rest of the movie.

Luckily, I hadn't been exposed to the marketing blitz as Nikki had, so I had no expectations at all - until I saw that Frank Oz had directed it. Had that not been revealed to me, the movie still would have sucked, but it would not have been the disappointment that it turned out to be.

I mean, how funny is the guy-accidentally-takes-acid scenario anymore? What purpose did it serve, really, apart from getting everyone out of the house to look at him as he's about to jump off the roof at exactly the right moment so that our heroes can sneak another body into an already-occupied coffin? And I'm sorry, but the body-falling-out-of-a-coffin gag has just been (ahem) done to death.

The script was terrible; the structure, all over the place. I couldn't find a clear turning point between the first and second acts, unless it's the reading of the eulogy, but that comes at roughly 31 minutes - way too far in to be an act break. The first act should have moved quicker, much quicker, so that the titular "death" at the funeral would come at midpoint, then hilarious hijinks ensue, bringing us to the finale.

Instead, the "death" turns out to be more of a concussion resulting in unconsciousness for a while, and comes much too close to the end of the film - probably, one can only guess - because the hilarious hijinks well was running dry.

I like Frank Oz, but I think he should stick to making movies he's good at, the light-hearted comedies with Steve Martin and Bill Murray, and leave the Death and Funeral business to the likes of Richard Curtis.

2/5

Outsourced, dir. John Jeffcoat (2006)

NIKKI says:
This is why I love preview tapes. Buried amid the Death Rows and the Skinwalkers', there's stuff like this.

To be honest, were it not for the inclusion of Josh Hamilton from Kicking and Screaming, I probably would have simply pushed this one to the bottom of the pile. Instead, I wanted to see what he was up to and had a look at the Outsourced trailer, and, like Steve, was immediately into the film.

It's about a guy -- Josh Hamilton -- who gets outsourced to India. He must train his replacement in the telesales business, while overseeing a group of marketers. Among his jobs is to teach the Indian salespeople to fake American accents. Josh is not keen on the idea of going to India, but he warms to the country. It's this culture shock and how he manages to overcome it that makes this film especially good. If you've travelled, you'll appreciate it that much more.

This is just a sweet film that relies purely on good characters and story. It resists stereotypes, and celebrates Indian traditions. Josh winds up in a bit of a romantic triangle, and the film is straightforward about the issues the couple face without denigrating Indian customs. In the end, we want to see the couple together, but we understand if it can't be. What eventuates, though, is better than a big, sappy ending.

I enjoyed this one a lot. It makes me want to check back through the preview discs to see what other gems might be hiding there.

4/5

27 Dresses, dir. Anne Fletcher (2008)

NIKKI says:
I hate movie weddings. I absolutely cannot stand to watch actors fake their way through what are pretty much always overly sugary vows about love and honour and whatever. I'd rather the happy couple just go, "Yep, we love each other, that's all we need." But, no. The dresses and cakes and super-perfect hair-dos all have to come out. My main thought watching this film was, "I hope they don't ruin the end by having Katherine Heigl get married."

But how else could they end it?

But then I guess I can overlook the predictable and somewhat sugary ending because other parts of this movie actually were fairly good. It's set-up is ultra-standard, that always-a-bridesmaid thing with our lead girl torn between the guy she loves who loves someone else and the guy we all know suits her down to the ground but she thinks is lame. Who will she pick?

Meanwhile, she has to plan her own little sister's wedding to that man she actually loves. So that complicates things. By movie's end she will have done some pretty catty things to get back at her sister, who is a big fat liar, and while she'll feel bad for them, we'll be hooting and hollering that she's a Riot Grrl of the highest order who gave only what was deserved. But the movie's a bit nicer than all that, and everyone apologises in time for everyone else's big day.

So, how to lift a standard romantic and ultra-girlie film from becoming another My Best Friend's Wedding, with stupid characters, gimmicky situations and false feeling? I don't really kknow how they did it, because the same things could be said about this movie, but they didn't seem so bad here. I think it has to do with the actors. I'm sorry, but I hated Julia Roberts in that other film. Here, we get Katherine Heigl who is sweet and funny and seems entirely without ego. She plays things purely with her heart here, there's no hatred or anger. And I liked that. We like her. And James Marsden was all funny and charming instead of serious Scott Cyclops and it was just fun watching him robot dance to "Benny and the Jets" -- way better than Julia doing the big-laugh during "Say a Little Prayer".

So, yeah. Good actors = Good time? I'll stick with that. Nothing outstanding, but better than your average. Still hated the end.

3/5

Jumper, dir. Doug Liman (2008)

NIKKI says:
Oh, where to begin? You know, I've got no real issue with the plot -- that a guy who can teleport and lives large because of it finds out there are others like him, and others who don't like him, and so becomes involved in an ancient war to wipe out his kind because only God should be able to teleport.

You have to have a set up, right?

So, that was fine. The problem was with all the damn holes in the story, and how loose ends were never tied. More infuriating is the fact that much of these holes could have been puttied over with just a few script tweaks. I thought there were test audiences for these sorts of things? Did no one at the Jumper screening question how easily David, the jumper, slid back into his hometown bar eight years after he was presumed dead? Not a single old friend (all of whom happened to be at the bar that day, luckily) stopped the guy in his tracks and said, "We thought you were dead." It was all, "He's back!" And the bully who caused David's supposed death had no concerns whatsoever but to go and beat him up again?

Not one solitary person at a screening, during the writing of the script, during the film's entire conceptualisation (if that is a word) even stopped to think, "But wait, he's dead -- that would have caused a sensation, locally."

If that wasn't stupid enough, after five minutes back in town, David's high school sweetheart travels to Rome with him on a whim. Becuase bar chicks in small towns can do that, no problem. Following that, though, she gets arrested by Italian authorities, and spends much of the film saying things like, "What's going on?"

If only someone would tell her, so that perhaps we'd know, too. The basic concept -- got it. But the stuff with David's mum made no sense. Why does she "give him a head start" at the end after helping him to escape in Italy? How could she have simply abandoned her son? Why does Jamie Bell's character go all the way to Japan just to drive a fast car in the middle of the Jumper/Paladin War? Why are we supposed to like David when he has spent his life ripping us off and buying big TVs? Why are we supposed to like David when the day before he reconnected with his old girlfriend, he flew to London for the sole purpose of getting laid? Which he did?

Oh, movie.

Hayden Christensen is not doing himself any favours with schlock like this. He's a good actor. He should choose more roles like the one he had in Shattered Glass. I fear if he keeps doing this sort of thing, no one will give him a chance like that again. Hayden -- save yourself!

1/5

Murder in the Outback: The Joanne Lees Story, dir. Tony Tilse (2007)

STEVE says:
At best Murder in the Outback is a scrapbook, taking the major facts of the case and arranging them in an order that approximates the actual events. At worst, it's an under-written Movie of the Week with top-notch actors playing one-dimensional characters in a 95-minute story that deserved at least that again in order to tell it properly.

Like a scrapbook, all we get here are blurry snapshots that bare further scrutiny or beg explanation. The hair-tie: when he was apprehended, Bradley John Murdoch had Joanne Lees hair-tie on his person. Much is made of this at first; it seems like solid evidence - if not of Peter Falconio's murder, then at least of Joanne's abduction by Murdoch - but we find later, in a throw-away statement by Bryan Brown's Rex Wild (who really needs his own show, by the way) - that it was ruled inadmissible by the court. Why? We never find out. It's never mentioned again. And while it all makes sense when presented in context, much of the detail seems like it's from some kind of checklist - Hair-tie, got it. Secret emails to an ex-lover, that's in there. Joanne's 'Cheeky Monkey' t-shirt, ditto.

I think the movie's biggest flaw, though, is in showing the actual abduction because it gives us the advantage of knowing what's true and what's not when Joanne's story is eventually called into question. While this is handy as far as making us feel Joanne's frustration as the trial descends into a media circus - literally, as Joanne has to "escape" from a pair of handcuffs in court to show how she did it on the night - it's also preposterous because it's a truth drawn from details that are sketchy at best.

2.5/5

NIKKI says:
The opening here was exceptional. It was well-directed, incredibly suspenseful, and really took us deep into the soul of this case. It happened quickly, it was punishingly tense, and if you blinked for a split second, you lost all sense of where you were and how you got there.

In minutes, Joanne Lees' central predicament is highlighted. She experienced these torturesome moments, and how could she possibly know every detail of every quick second that passed? It's no wonder her statements were confused. And it's no wonder she acted as coldly as she did to the Australian media, and to an extent, the population at large, who chose to forget the sorry way they treated Lindy Chamberlain so many years ago. Here's this woman going trhoguh this horrible thing, and all we can do is cast suspicion without knowing the facts.

Joanne Lees was similarly tried by the people before she ever went to court, and that is just one element of the story this film tries to portray. How Lees was fooled by the media and betrayed by the Australian public who denigrated the stupid no-nothing backpackers who apparently deserve what they get for their lack of knowledge about the treacherous Aussie terrain. Or something close to that.

But the problem with this film was that it tried to outline this and so much more about the Falconio case in 90 minutes. It was never going to work. There are great moments -- Joanne Froggatt is really quite something as Lees, for instance, and there was that opening -- but much of it descends into TV-movie stuff and we become bored with the same old points being raised, and so much left out that was pertinent to the case.

It was certainly watchable, and is a good introduction to this case. That's really about it, though.

2.5/5

Balls of Fury, dir. Robert Ben Garant (2007)

NIKKI says:
You just know what to expect, right? It's all that and more. Let's do a checklist.

Stuff to Expect From Balls of Fury

1. The feeling this was possibly written with Will Ferrell in mind. Check.
A bit like Hot Rod, there's definitely a Will Ferrell veneer over this one. But as Ferrell is over taking on bigger sports like basketball, it's left to up-and-coming comedy guys like Dan Fogler to tackle competitive ping pong. Fogler's character is a bit of a dunce, prone to anger, uncoordinated when without ping pong bat in hand, yet somehow a babe-magnet. That's Ferrell all over the place.

2. Random humour that smacks of nostalgia. Check and check.
Need I note more than Randy's obsession with Def Leppard?

3. Bizarre cameo from small comedy greats and big movie stars. Check, check.
Diedrich Bader shows up for a few minutes to make us uncomfortable, and Christopher Walken plays a ping pong Confucius-type in full Chinese traditional wear. The weirdest bit of this was Aisha Tyler hiding in the background as a Grace Jones-type warrior woman.

4. Stereotypes abound for the sake of comedy. Oh, check.
Like the French in Talladega Nights, the East Germans are pummeled here.

5. Comedy is King and so story and character development take a slight backseat to crotch gags. Super check.
But something about this silly film makes that okay. I've just learned this is from one of the writers of the very un-funny Reno 911, so some of the humour makes sense now. In a way, though, it had a bizarre innocence that made me think more of Hot Rod and less of Anchorman -- always a good thing. At 80 minutes, too, it was concise, and took up only the necessary amount of time it should have to tell its ridiculous tale.

So, there you have it. More reasons to love the Anti-Ferrell film.

3/5

Diary of the Dead, dir. George A. Romero (2007)

NIKKI says: How good was this? I don't know what I expected -- I've enjoyed most of George's films, and I still find his zombies the most believable and scary. I was happy with how this one played out, even if the subtext wasn't too sub this time around. It bordered slightly on hitting me over the head, but there was a point to be made and George made it. He just does death like nobody else.

I don't think this one was near as complex and intelligent as Land of the Dead. It had a very precise theme, and so it was less subtle as Land and therefore, for me, less effective. I think it suffered from the hand-held style. I would have preferred to see it happened in glorious widescreen than through Jason's claustrophobic lens.

Still, it was an enjoyable view into George's ever-interesting be-zombied brain.

3.5/5

The Tell-Tale Heart, dir. Jules Dassin (1941)

STEVE says:
This was a disappointing but well-made adaptation of Poe's story that fails only in its departure from the original work.

I lay the blame here, not on Jules Dassin, but on screenwriter Doane R. Hoag, who decided to leave out the narration which made Poe's story so interesting: Here's this guy, clearly insane, trying to justify the murder of an old man for no other reason than the old man's blind eye freaked him out, by calmly and sanely relating the tale. It's given a miss here, and instead we have a guy who's unjustly abused by his boss and decides to kill him. It's just not as interesting, now matter who shoots it.

The murder scene isn't anywhere near as interesting as Poe's, either. Poe had the narrator hide behind the old man's bedroom door and fix a beam of light on his eye ("I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle…") until the old man died of fright. Here, the young man does bring the lantern into the old man's room, then casts it aside and strangles the old man to death! What the hell is this?

The rest of it pans out pretty much the same as in the story, with the police arriving, the young man hearing the beating of the heart, etc., and that's all done brilliantly - but the narrator's cocky nature in the story is undone here by just making the young man crazy, apparently driven over the edge by guilt.

In all, I guess if I hadn't read Poe, I wouldn't have minded this one so much. If Dassin had had a proper screenplay to work with, this would have been a minor classic. As it is, it's kind of forgettable.

2.5/5

Nikki did not view.

Pump Up the Volume, dir. Allan Moyle (1990)

STEVE says:
I'd call this Talk Radio Lite, but there's nothing lite about Pump Up the Volume. I'd say it's Talk Radio for the teen crowd, but I saw Talk Radio when I was in my teens, so that seems slightly redundant. What I can say is that Pump Up the Volume probably had more of an effect on me as far as my personality goes than any other factor I can think of because it introduced me to Lenny Bruce.

In the movie, Slater's character returns a copy of Lenny's How to Talk Dirty and Influence People to the school library. It's ridiculous to think that this book would be stocked in a school library, much less this particular school's library, but we'll let that go in as much as it doesn't affect the plot.

I didn't really know who Lenny Bruce was when I saw Pump Up the Volume. I'd heard the name, mostly in association with George Carlin and Richard Pryor, but had never heard any of his material. Out of curiosity, I ordered the book. I came away from it wanting to be Lenny Bruce, unromantic heroin-induced death not withstanding.

Nikki did not view.

Talk Radio, dir. Oliver Stone (1988)

Death Row, dir. Kevin VanHook (2006)

STEVE says:
We should have watched April Fool's Day. Too predictable? I don't know. We actually did watch it last year on this date and were both kind of surprised to find that it was neither as good nor as fun as we'd remembered from our respective wonder years. Which is just mental because even when I saw it in the theater at age 15, I remember thinking that the only good thing about it was the presence of Amy Steele and the use of Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me Not To Come" on the soundtrack. But memory is a funny thing. It's like Austin O'Malley says: "Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food." I don't know what that means.

Someone actually remade April Fool's Day just this year. Also shite, I'm guessing, though I haven't seen it. The synopsis on IMDb leads one to believe that it's one of those trendy "re-imaginings" that basically take the title and an element or two from the original story, then turn around and go a whole other way, and you're left going, "What the hell?" Like the Day of the Dead remake. Clearly just an attempt to cash in on the tenuous link to George Romero. Makes me sick.

I guess I'd better say something about Death Row. You see Keach's name there on the poster, second to Jake Busey? Yeah. I'm not sure what's more insulting: the fact that Keach is given such huge billing and is in reality only in the movie for like five minutes, or that he's listed second to Jake Busey. Rounding out the star-power here is Danny Trejo. He's only got one scene so his name's not on the poster. Lucky bastard.

Death Row is about a gaggle of wanna-be documentary filmmakers who get trapped in a haunted prison with a bunch of diamond thieves and they start getting knocked off by the ghosts of past prisoners because Busey's grandfather was a guard at the prison before he got locked up for, I don't know, something, and - oh who gives a fuck, anyway? A haunted prison? Really? Have we learned nothing from Renny Harlin?

I'm going to try to go hoard some colored rags, throw away some food and forget this movie ever happened.

1/5

NIKKI says:
Something made me think this movie might be a kind of In the Line of Duty-type hard-ass thriller with Stacy Keach as a vitriolic prison guard and Jake Busey his small-time crook in need of some rehab. But fantasies are often just that.

Within minutes I knew we'd made a mistake. Twas the acting gave it away, believe it or not. Awesome as Stacy Keach is, even he can't make a reveal of two lopped-off legs anything but comedic. The kids he was talking to were terrible, and you think, not even a Jenna Dewan or a Jonathan Tucker here? It was to be the lowest of low-grade. No plot became remotely discernible in the film's fist act, making it impossible to know who to follow, who's arc to watch for, or basically anything making us care at all about anyone. Except ourselves.

And then it's worse. The ghosts are stupid, the scares are lame, nothing is scary, and Jake Busey plays the whole thing like he's Beavis and/or Butthead, grunting all the way through the thing. And though the horrifying effect of a guy being pushed through a chicken wire fence was gross, it didn't look at all real. I've cut myself numerous times, and I've never found my skin to splurge around like old Spam.

The rest of the effects were just lame. I spent from about 25 minutes in just longing for the end. I was also hoping Steve wouldn't storm out and toss away Between Pictures altogether. He didn't, but, you know, I wouldn't have blamed him.

<--- April Fools! 1/5