Sunday, January 20, 2013

Holy Crap, I Can't Even Keep Up With All the Movies I've Seen Lately... Part 1


This is a truly a first in this blogger's life, my buddies. Instead of scrounging for suitable movies to see and review, I am actually ahead of myself in the blogging thing. Yeah, I've already got like, three finished posts on standby and am in the middle of working on two more right now. I can't freaking believe it. With my new life in my new apartment, I've just felt so much more energized and motivated to really make this blog what I wanted it to be for me and for anybody that might be reading.

And I won't even let myself be distracted (too much) by watching mini-marathons of Law and Order or  South Park on Netflix. I've watched so many movies in the past two weeks, mostly catching up on the 2012 horror that I spaced out on - what the hell was I doing all year? Anyway, too many movies, not enough brain power to review them all. So here is a Roundup of the past couple of weeks of movie-watching (not counting the ones I've done/am doing reviews for) with movies that probably won't get the full review treatment anytime soon. Maybe later.

The Devil Inside (2012)
Lame. Weak. Nothing else to say.

Demon Seed (1977)
Okay, interesting movie Mr. Koontz and Mr. Cronenberg. Interesting movie indeed. I'm pretty sure this was a movie about a woman getting knocked up by a computer? Or raped by a house? Something like that. I always thought when I heard of this movie called "Demon Seed" that Julie Christie was actually carrying... demon... seed. Not the seed from a super-smart computer named Proteus who has an awesome voice and traps Julie in her house for weeks so she can give birth to its computer baby that turns out to be her dead daughter. Uh-huh. Not saying I didn't like the movie, though. Christie was great, considering the fact that she has to spend most of the movie alone, talking to a computer with an awesome voice. It's all so weird, but at the same time, I totally love it.
  
Killer Joe (2012)
More weirdness here, people, just more awesome weirdness. Matthew McConaughey, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church, and newcomers Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple make up an outstanding ensemble cast for this deep-fried Texas redneck trailer park murder story about a kid who hires cop-slash-hitman Killer Joe to take out his mother for her insurance money. The kid and the father can't pay Joe upfront so they give him Dottie, the family's young, flighty daughter. The movie is foul and dirty and sexual... and goddamn hilarious. When I kept laughing at all this horrible stuff that was being done and talked about, I actually had to do some internet searching to make sure that the movie was supposed to be funny. And thank goodness it was. Directed by William Friedkin, Killer Joe is most definitely not a movie everyone will "get," I guess, but heck, is it fun to watch and be inappropriately amused by. 
  
House of Voices [Saint Ange] (2004)
Sooooo, this turned out to be less of a ghosts-in-an-orphanage movie and more of a pregnant-chick-goes-crazy movie. This is Pascal Laugier's first feature length film before Martyrs and while his style is there, the power of that awesome film is not. I did not understand House of Voices at all. I had to read somebody's post on IMDb to get what it meant, which always makes me feel stupid, but at least I'm not all confused anymore. The movie is good and very well shot and pretty, I think I was just disappointed at the real lack of ghosts. The opening scene gave me real promise with creepy kids in a creepy orphanage but it just gets slow and confusing from there. Part of the main actress's character was apparently to be a little boring and non-emotive, and the other two women were just odd and secretive (about nothing, it turns out... I think...). Bah, I don't know. This one didn't do it for me the first time around. I feel like I might want to give it another shot later on, though.



Creepshow 2 (1987)
It's true, you guys. I had never seen Creepshow 2 until a few days ago. But though a lot of fans seem to really like this one and even prefer it over the first one, I found it less than satisfying. The first story about Old Chief Warpaint or whatever is rather lame. I mean, come on, Stephen. The guy that was in love with his hair? The fat guy with the annoying laugh? Bo-ring. I've always loved the story of The Raft so I was stoked to finally see it on screen. No disappointment there! It was almost exactly how I'd always pictured it in my head (my version might have been a little gorier). Little weird how the one kid decided to get frisky during a life-or-death situation but well, that's men for you. The Hitchhiker was good old-fashioned fun - I loved how the guy just kept getting nastier and nastier looking. So we got two good stories here, but the whole thing was just underwhelming to me. Fun, but not totally awesome.


9 comments:

  1. Thanks for the ride, lady! Hey! Hey, lady! Thanks for the ride!

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    1. I don't even recall that story anywhere... is it even in print? You'd probably know better than me!

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    2. It's not based on a story. Or at least it's not based on a story King ever published. My understanding is that that one and the Chief Woodenhead story were based on "stories" by King in the sense that he came up with the concepts, wrote a few paragraphs worth of plot summary, and then handed them over to Romero, who wrote the screenplay.

      Supposedly, there were a couple that didn't get produced. For some info on that, I'm going to quote from a very brief piece I wrote about Creepshow 2 a while back:

      "According to Stephen Jones in his excellent book Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide (which you really ought to own a copy of), the original plan was to include two additional stories, The Cat From Hell and Pinfall. The Cat From Hell (based on a '70s short story) was eventually filmed as part of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, but Pinfall remains a tantalizing mystery. It was apparently Romero's favorite of the quintet, and involved a bowling game in which human heads were used as the balls!"

      By the way, did you know that that Tales From the Darkside movie was originally intended to be Creepshow 3? True story.

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  2. yeah, The Devil Inside was nothing special but that ending. Watching that ending in theaters where people got pissed and started screaming at the screen made the movie worth it. Agree with you about the awesome that is "The Raft" part of "Creepshow 2" - it's still why I've never swam in a lake.

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    1. Ha, that was my reaction to the ending as well. I contemplated throwing the remote at the TV screen, but was able to resist.

      The Raft is awesome! Would love to see a non-80's, updated version of it, actually.

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  3. Great round up! That awesome voice in Demon Seed is Robert Vaughn - who was the Man from U.N.C.L.E. back in the 60's.

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    1. The voice is really what made me keep watching. Creepy and yet strangely soothing at the same time...

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  4. When I saw The Devil Inside at the theater, everyone screamed at the screen too. Screamed "are you fucking kidding me?!" I wanted to yell out 'No, they're not kidding you. The movie is over, deal with it!' I didn't think it was a bad movie but it wasn't the best devil possession movie.

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    1. It was watchable and all, but it just didn't do anything for me. Nothing new, nothing scary, just a weak attempt to cash in on similar movies' success.

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