steve1-1 Reviews

The Thing (I) (2011)

Horror for a different age.

[27 November 2011]

Now now children, some people will have different opinions than you and just because it's different, doesn't make it wrong. Having read the first couple of pages of reviews here and having just seen the film only quarter of an hour ago, I felt compelled to write something about this prequel to the 1982 'The Thing'.

It's fair to say that opinion is divided on the merits of this offering, but it's also fair to say that most opinions that lambast this film are from die-hard Carpenter fans who are woefully disappointed by what they have seen, and fair play to them. No, it's not like the original movie. Go figure. It's nearly thirty years later. If you want to see the same film, go and rent it (and then watch it) twice.

Having seen the original movie maybe three or four times in the past thirty years (I was fourteen when I will have first seen it in 1983) I was quite pleasantly surprised by the end of this prequel. True, it lacks some of the tension of the original and the acting from most, if not all, was below par. I remember the wonder of the special effects taking my breath away in the early eighties. This effort failed to bring me those same kind of delightful terrors. However, this is not due to the realism or effort on the part of the film-makers.

This is purely down to my experience of horror movies throughout the past thirty years. My expectations at 42 are not the same as that 14 year old boy and I am a grisled and wisened old movie cynic these days as opposed to a wide-eyed horror newbie. I think I watched this around the same time as my pirate VHS copies of The Evil Dead and Poltergeist.

In short, this wasn't half bad. It was faithful enough the original film for my liking, though having only seen it a few times, I am far from an authority on the subject matter. Continuity sputtered from time to time and there were slightly too many plot lines left dangling for comfort, but altogether, this was an enjoyable hour and a half. Yes, it's true that you didn't feel for the characters as much as say MacReady (or whatever Russell's name was) in the first film and some of the blame for this should fall squarely on the writers. After all, bad though the acting may have been, they can only read what's on the page in front of them.

Don't be put off by the comments you read here that tell you this is nothing more than an awful pile of monkey doings, because that is judging it too harshly. It's never going to be the classic that Carpenter's film ended up being, but given the last decade of truly terrible remakes we have been forced to sit through, horror-wise, this is almost a breath of fresh air. Remember what decade you're in be thankful that whilst this is not a classic, it is better than much of what we've seen recently.

300 (2006)

Fighting with panache and not much else.

[6/10 · 19 March 2007]

I usually try and give immediate feedback where possible and as I have just finished watching the film, I think it's safe to say that I got exactly what I expected. In the same way that the film skirts any reasonable attempts at attention to detail, both in fact and picture, I will therefore not spend any time dressing up the experience for you.

This does have Sin City and Gladiator all over it, but fails to live up to either, if I'm honest. It doesn't portray it's characters well enough for you to care about them. You don't care so much as what happens to them, but those with a taste for violence will be entertained by how it happens to them.

This is a pretty film, dogged only by it's determination to entertain rather than inform. It could do both, but chooses not to. Nonetheless, entertaining it most certainly is. I sat through the whole thing and didn't yawn once. The fighting does get a bit repetitive after a while. After you've seen one nasty Persian knocked off a horse or get gutted by a spear, you've pretty much had the ride. Still, the ride is good enough, at least, to make you hop on a couple more times.

As I said, this is really all about fighting, and doing it with style. I was reminded of Troy on occasion, but the biggest nod goes to Gladiator, helplessly hoping to emulate something that, in my opinion, can't be faulted. The use of grayscale and reds is something that all Miller designed movies will no doubt be judged on in the future, but personally, after this and Sin City, I have seen enough of these already.

A no-brainer, truly, with delusions of grandeur, much like the Spartans themselves. Could do better.

White Noise (I) (2005)

It hurts!

[6/10 · 10 January 2005]

The first blockbuster of the year? I don’t think so. It would have been nice, particularly for struggling odd job man Keaton, but it’s stretching credibility in a world where we have real blockbusters, to lump this effort into the same category. In short, White Noise has a nice beginning, a dodgy middle, and a very dubious end.

The main subject is this venture, despite popular belief, is not Keaton or, at the start of the picture, his soon-to-be dead wife. The hero of this outing is something called EVP. (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) This is, so we are led to believe, a form of communicating (or at least receiving messages) with the deceased. No particular dead person, you understand, just the dead in general, as pointed out by Raymond Price (McNeice) near the beginning of the picture, when confronting Johnathan Rivers (Keaton) about the whereabouts of his recently missing spouse.

This is a topic that has some bizarre foothold in reality, as EVP is said to be very real indeed. It is practiced by many people all over the world with varying results. Most of these people would say that this film makes contacting the dead seem all too easy and that you are not likely to have tons of messages left on your TV set or tape recorder, especially if you’re like Johnathan Rivers, who even while his wife was alive, never had more than one message waiting for him on his answerphone at a time, despite owning the architectural firm that he occasionally visited. It is very convenient that if you want to take some time off from work, that in order for the main character to do so, he just so happens to own the company. Would this man have become embroiled in this scenario if he was an ordinary Joe? Would he have had the time? Would he have had the sense just to leave it alone? We have to ask ourselves, does this stack up?

Well, regardless, this is entertainment, not reality, (smirk) and he does become embroiled in the world of EVP, buys a raft of TV sets and video recorders and gets a bit handy at receiving messages from dead people all over the place. Why, if these people were at rest and happy, you are forced to ask, would they bother coming back to tell us all about it? Because they promised to? Who knows? Still, seems a tad unlikely. Even if it is happening, our hero seems to be getting an awful lot of messages. Not only from strangers, but inexplicably, if we are to believe in EVP at all, from his wife as well. What a fortunate coincidence. Not only that, but the dead wife knows what his movements are and can also see the future from her decidedly ethereal perspective. She gives him messages and he rushes off, following her directions, in order to save a baby from a falling electrical pylon or an abducted woman from a man who is obviously deranged as Rivers himself.

The film left a lot of questions unanswered or misunderstood. I think it clearly lost it’s way and you have to ask Sax if this was really the film he intended to make when he started out. Artistic licence is one thing, but if you are to scare an audience, it has got to be completely fantasy and therefore enjoyable fear in a ‘never going to get me, but wouldn’t it be awful if it were real’ kind of way, or, and this is where White Noise tries to place itself, ‘this is real and the only reason it isn’t happening to you was that you didn’t know about it beforehand’ type way.

It almost makes it and I did jump in my seat on three separate occasions, despite guessing the shocks were coming. Tired old formulas still work simply because of the anticipation of an experienced and appreciative audience. That doesn’t mean it’s a classic, it just means the method is tried and tested. And the result of using this tried and tested method, was a quantifiable response that you could have worked out in advance. The film itself breaks no barriers, although the subject matter tries to. IT is an interesting idea that may have been better executed by other more renowned exponents. I would personally have loved to see what M Knight Shyamalan would have done with this. Still, too late now.

Keaton and the rest of the cast seemed a little wooden early on in the picture. You would need to ask them the reasons why that is, but as the film progressed, they certainly appeared to warm to their own separate characters, Keaton in particular, got dug in to his bewildered, determined, scary, truth-finder with great aplomb, eventually.

I have to admit I was really looking forward to a trouser-browning evenings’ entertainment, and while it didn’t go so far as to do much more than cause me to jump once or twice, it did remind me in mood and style of The Mothman Prophecies. The similarities are endless and obvious, but Richard Gere played the same character, but better. Julianne Moore’s supporting lead in Mothman too, was streets ahead of anything Unger displays here.

Not a waste of time at all and I am sorely tempted to play literally with Unger’s line of “It hurts” whilst lying in a hospital after throwing herself out of her apartment window. (how did she survive that then?) but it really wouldn’t be warranted. A valiant effort and made for the right reasons, but it could have been much more.

6/10