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Not Another Happy Ending (2013)
Bit creepy.
Story about a schizophrenic and vulnerable woman called Jane and her relationship with a manipulative psychopath called Tom.
When Jane was a child her mum died, and her dad turned to booze and disappeared, which seems to have contributed to her pursuing abusive relationships with father figures. Tom wages a campaign to make Jane's life as miserable as possible (resorting to breaking and entering, theft, kidnapping, and threatening to kill her dog), in order to exploit her financially and sexually.
The dark subject matter is hidden in romantic comedy tropes in a similar way to 500 Days of Summer. To begin with it hits every romcom beat - you'll anticipate every new plot point - but gradually becomes less predictable and it's not till the end that it becomes clear if the story's going to be a redemptive one and she either kills Tom or escapes him, with a new sense of confidence, or if it's going to go the full tragic heroine route and have Tom take her away from her remaining family and set her up as a domestic slave. *cough*
Mirrors (2008)
Genuinely creepy.
I don't usually comment on films that already have this many reviews, but I saw Mirrors three or four years ago, and it stayed with me. I realise I'm in the minority, but I really liked it, so I got the DVD to make sure, and I still really like it.
The first hour accurately replicates the terror and confusion of the onset of mental illness, both from a sufferer's point of view and that of someone witnessing changes in a person they know. There's a palpable atmosphere throughout the runtime, helped by an energetic score, the performances, especially Sutherland's, who's very good, and some stylised lighting, particularly during the burnt-out shopping precinct scenes.
While the effects are generally impressive, this stylisation helps soften some of the less convincing CG. The precinct set (or location, possibly) looks great - I hesitate to say it but it's reminiscent of games such as Devil May Cry, and looking like a video game generally isn't a good thing for a film, but it does work. The scenes outside this setting are lit more realistically, but the difference isn't jarring.
As the second half gets going it naturally becomes unequivocably supernatural, which is often a turnoff for me, but by that point I was invested. It kinda becomes a mystery for 20 or 30 minutes, as Sutherland's character tries to figure out what's going on, then returns to its original unsettling mood. The tension never lets up for long, and the ending is satisfying.
Definitely watch it with the lights off. Preferably surrounded by mirrors. And if you need a bit of light relief afterwards, there's an extra on the DVD with a goth talking nonsense.
Episode 50 (2011)
Sometimes amusing, usually not.
This has turned out to be really long, sorry. I've tried to keep the paragraphs short.
My housemate brought me some DVDs back from a charity shop and I knew I had to watch this one first, having preliminarily checked out a few reviews. I knew I needed to watch it before I ran out of beer and it potentially became unbearable. So at least with the beer, I don't want to hazard an opinion on without it yet, it wasn't entirely unwatchable.
I was expecting a completely first-person hand-held thing, and I was a bit confused as to whether it was or not throughout most of the (nicely modest) running time, trying to work out whether a shot was supposed to be third-person or via a security camera or something. The video was apparently 25 fps but it seemed higher.
But I came to the conclusion that some of it probably was intended to be third-person - because of sequences I'll go into in a minute and one shot which DID show "Surveillance Cam 16", which suggests the other stationary shots WEREN'T surveillance cams, if you see what I mean. I think part of the confusion stemmed from the general lack of differentiation between the two.
The sequences I mentioned exactly a minute ago though were mainly attempted copies of the effects of other films, notably The Ring, which was of course a copy of Ring. And other shots with a bit of post-production work that would have been fairly effective, if derivative, if the rest of the film was presented in a similar way. Other notable digital effects included computer screens that weren't really on but which appeared to be on, but which you, reader, could probably do better given ten minutes in GIMP.
Although I found myself not bothering to listen to most of the dialogue after a while, the religious, anti-science thing was weird and I didn't like it. I wouldn't actually have minded it I suppose if it was well-presented and worked in the context of the film, but because of lines like - and this is from a doctor (of something) apparently - "We only use 70% of our brains. We still don't know what the other 30% is for." (70% is even lower than the common fallacy of 90%.)
This is followed up by a psychology student saying, "It literally is dormant for all practical purposes ... I mean, there have even been cases where the human brain has been able to project images on to unexposed film, for crying out loud!" My sister just graduated from a psychology degree and she wouldn't say anything like that.
Oh and then another doctor (working in "Computer Science R&D", so she'd know) says "There's criss-crossing EM fields all over the earth. It's theorised that when a person walks through one of these EMF cages, it traps the electric impulses firing in their brain, in much the same way as you'd download a file to your home hard drive."
Sorry, I'm giving away all the best lines. No no wait, just a couple more:
"There's a whole nother world out there. While we're here fighting and killing on this plane, the real battle's out there, you know, between heaven and hell, for our immortal souls." (Nods meaningfully as the camera holds.)
And: "One of the bees moved."
But the ones more along the lines of "There's no such thing as an inhuman. We've proved/proved (unclear because the actor doesn't enunciate the word too well) it before, and I'll prove it again," where a scientist wouldn't claim to be able to prove the nonexistence of something, just that there wasn't enough evidence to suggest the existence of it...lines like that meant that any religious counterargument was baseless and thus unconvincing.
But yeah, bits of it (including in fact the "I can't believe they actually said that, what are they talking about?" moments) were at least entertaining, even funny now and then. Like this bit (last time, I promise):
A character at the bottom of some stairs kicks a stair, apparently on purpose, I don't know why (well I do know why, I'm being facetious: he was supposed to have stubbed his toe accidentally), which hurts of course, so he says "Argh, argh," to which the man with the biggest arms (and everyone likes big arms), who's made it successfully to the top of the stairs, replies "Stop being a biiitch. Come on!"
And there's a funny possession of a woman.
The acting's variable, but a lot of it's like if your friend was in an am-dram production and you enjoyed watching them because you like seeing them doing things that make them happy, and you congratulated them and said they were really good but you were being a bit kind. The cast's a bit bloke-heavy but unfortunately the female actors tended to be some of the least good at the acting thing.
The lighting of the sets was pretty stagey too, and what everyone else said about the plinky piano music, they weren't exaggerating, but the more electronic stuff that's largely in the end credits was fine, I would have preferred more of that.
Just over an hour into the thing there's what is apparently a helicopter shot, which I thought must be CG, then I thought it wasn't, which was a bit jarring because it presumably cost as much as the rest of the production put together. I mean I grew up on Troma, I have nothing against low production values, but this one didn't seem as self-aware as it needed to be.
To its credit, the last minute recalled the end of, for its numerous sins possibly the first one of these films, Cannibal Holocaust.
But bottom line, I wouldn't recommend it.
A Letter from Death Row (1998)
No matter how many bad films you see there's always more of them.
This is, or should have been, the vanity project to end all vanity projects. The plastic-boobed strippers in thongs, the pointless camera effects, the pointless strange angles, chapter titles, in fact continual titles, continual voice-over, cheesy music (natch, he's from Poison), average (being kind)-to-poor acting, awkward exposition...if you've had a smoke and a drink it's hilarious, otherwise it's about a 1:4:4 solution of mildly amusing, irritating and boring. Just like me.
(I was going to rate it higher than a 1 because I'm nice like that but the IMDb definition of 1 is "awful", and I can't argue with that really.)
Deadgirl (2008)
Pathetic in the modern sense of the word.
I gave this the second chance it didn't deserve, listened to the commentary track thinking even if they didn't successfully justify the misogyny, if they at least addressed it, mentioned it even, I could give them some leeway, because the film's technically well-made, well-shot, well-directed, well-edited, the sound design's good, the acting's usually fine. In an attempt to be fair to the filmmakers, I'll try to quote them accurately. This is what we get:
"When we finished the movie we were wondering if people were gonna say the movie's misogynistic or not. If you didn't get it, it'd be an easy thing to throw out at us. But it's not."
"I mean I wrote the thing, and you know, I love women and I respect them, and I feel that this was more of an indictment of like this stupid drokking pumped-up sex idiocy of kids than anything. I mean ultimately Ricky objectifies Joanne the same way as JT does to the dead girl and it all ties in together. But some people just think we're getting off on the rape aspect of it."
"The point is you're not really getting off on torture, you're using her as a sex object."
So that's all right then. In my experience, the phrase "I love women" when used defensively is revealing in its generalisation.
Earlier they say, "The truth is that when you're young, I think a lot of people can relate to not really thinking of consequences...or what's right or wrong, you just sort of react." Okay right yeah, I'm sure we can all remember being teenagers and thinking some drokking embarrassing stuff, and if Deadgirl was made by 14-year-olds it'd be fairly impressive. You'd want to make sure they all got some counselling and maybe spoke to some girls now and then, but still, fairly impressive. But these smugfunts don't sound 14 unless all their voices already broke. Just pathetic emotionally-immature little men who hate women and feel like boasting to the whole world about it like we're going to be impressed. As it is no self-respecting woman would drokk any of them with a ten-foot cattle prod, even if they were dead. Basically if you're a 14-year-old Peter Sutcliffe you'll love this film, but instead of watching it you should probably kill yourself.
Being generous, there are two main female characters in this. The first, the dead "girl", isn't really a character, but an object. The filmmakers explicitly describe her as an animal rather than a person. She has copious hair on her pubis - "she would not be getting waxed" - but no armpit hair. The second female character is bound, killed and raped for the crime of turning down sexual advances from a male character. Without any obvious irony, they state "This movie is about female empowerment," because after a woman is hit in the head with a crowbar, she doesn't die.
Sake, I mean...unless you're a religious nutter you've surely experienced a degree of existential angst, and can see the value of something provocative, and I completely relate to that. But there's so little substance to the provocation here it's not worth it.
Decay (2012)
WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE (good things)
First off, you need to know that Dadatuuexx has no idea what he's talking about to a worrying degree, in fact he appears to be personifying the same ignorance and fear of science that Decay (clever title - both people and particles decay - geddit?) is attempting to satirise in the first place. "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should" and all that nonsense. The LHC, stem cell research, Bruce Banner, Mary Shelley, it's been going on forever. What it comes down to is ignorance versus rationality and I know which side I'd rather be on. But then again this is a zombie film, and obviously zombies aren't real, couldn't be real. Bad science and THE BEST science coexist here and the contrast is I think intentionally obvious, the effect of which highlights just how silly all the death-by-a-thousand-black-holes and similar theories patently are. But people do believe them, and that's a problem.
But anyway, that's about the extent of the satire as far as I can tell. The next thing I need to mention is the filmmakers could not have wished for a better location. The LHC is incredibly impressive to look at, and we see more of it here than I've seen in any of the documentaries about it. Not only does it look amazing, and it's HUEG, but the weight of its importance, and the genius not only of its architecture but of what it does, is constant, it makes you proud to be a human in the 21st century. Atmospheric.
The acting is - not always - but sometimes - a bit dodgy, and a few scenes lack the emotional depth and sense of urgency they could have done with. But these are physicists, not actors, and anyway what's cooler, pretending to be someone else for an hour or FINDING OUT HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS? (The clue's in the caps.) A scientist would deck an actor nine times out of ten.
Okay okay, actually, yes they're physicists, which would make you think they'd get the physics of a pipe through a skull or a hand through an abdomen a bit more...right. Both these things were done with seemingly little effort and no resistance (but the technique they use is potentially a smart one). Also the state of severed limbs and stuff like that reminds you that they're not biologists. Which is a slight shame, but it's still nice to see a pipe going through a skull and a hand going through an abdomen. And severed limbs.
We spend quite a lot of time looking at computer screens, and it would be nice if one day we'll get a proper representation of what a computer screen actually looks like in situations like this - but saying that, it was a lot better than we've come to expect. Yes there's green-text-on-black-background flashing around for no reason, text bleeps as it's displayed (that would be my vote for the main thing to sort out, the first thing I do when I install a new OS is to stop it making annoying noises unless I tell it to), and on one occasion a character's username flashes for no other reason than to tell us to look at it. But it's fine, they're using Bash v3.95 Beta and I'm using v4.2.45 and I don't even have an LHC so I'm happy. The joys of the fourth dimension.
They made the right choice leaving it at 75 minutes, it may have started to wear its welcome by the 90-minute mark, but overall I really enjoyed the film, I watched most of it with a smile on my face, so well done, you lot, seriously.
Octopus (2000)
Stop bullying this film.
I put off watching this for ages partly because of the critical reviews I read, but now think some of that criticism has been unfair, and slightly missed the point.
There's nothing much really wrong with Octopus in the context of its genre. Several things consecutively explode into fireballs in the first 15 minutes, and that's not even mentioning the first glimpse of our friend the squid, I mean what do you want, blood? There are -so many- films that I've made a point of watching purely because they're reportedly bad, in the hope they'll be bad-in-a-fun-way. Most of the time they're bad-in-a-boring-way. This film isn't even technically bad: yes it obviously had a lower budget than Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but anyone who uses that against it is probably like that bloke out of Terror Firmer: "If you don't have the budget, don't make the movie." Drokk that stomm. Octopus performs admirably given the resources available to it.
The camera doesn't shake, the camera moves and editing techniques are largely tried-and-tested, but always executed perfectly adequately. The acting is exaggerated but the whole exercise was not a study in social realism. It's good old 80s-action-movie-style acting. They've even got an 80s-action-movie-style baddie (I think he says "lovely jubbly" at some point but it's hard to tell because of his cool 80s-action-movie-baddie accent).
There was a female lead, but that was more-or-less it for women cast members unfortunately. But she held her own and wouldn't have felt out of place even if they'd cut all the bits when she's just in her bra and/or pants. Other people have compared the male lead to Keanu Reeves, and although he doesn't really look or act like him, there was something similar there, I'm not sure what. He can move his face more than Keanu can. The scene where he'd HAD ENOUGH was reminiscent of the "room service" monologue from Johnny Mnemonic, that had something to do with it.
I better admit this now so you can decide whether or not to trust my judgement: I love Johnny Mnemonic and I think The Matrix is boring. This film was a laugh in a similar way to Johnny Mnemonic. The octopus is AT LEAST as impressive and convincing as that dolphin. Right yes, the octopus. The old fella himself. We don't only see him right at the end as some have said, that's a lie, he's either there or we're waiting for him to pop out again at any moment for at least the last half of the running time. He's...hang on, I don't know why it's suddenly a he, we never find out the gender, sorry; it's realised using a mixture of rubber tentacles (hurrah) and CG that's competent enough not to be distracting (so one-up on X-Men Origins: Wolverine and that sort of thing, at least).
The lighting like the acting is usually (intentionally) unrealistic and exaggerated (one shot of two actors' heads is nicely backlit so you can see all the hairs coming out of their noses), but it's not unpleasant to look at. Much better than the perpetual gloominess of the ocean they'd have to go for if it was a more serious film, I mean look at The Abyss, that film was TIRING to look at. Also it was SO DULL, at least Octopus has a sense of humour and the good grace to finish before the hundred-minute mark.
Scriptwise, the plot was fairly nonsensical, but again not distractingly so, and anyway WHO CARES, it's a MASSIVE MUTANT OCTOPUS. There were lots of lovely cheesy quotable lines too.
Anyway, all these things help to create what I'd be willing to bet was the intended tone. I'd stake my good name on it: -intended- tone. Anyone who thinks they're laughing at this film rather than with it is probably (most of the time) kidding themselves, the humour is self-aware and is one of the main things that kept me watching. This film is a laugh, it's funny, it's fun, and it wouldn't hurt you to watch it. If you disagree I'll fight you.