The Battery is the story of two men and their quest to survive a world ravaged by zombies. The $6,000 film is slowly gaining recognition in the horror world and will undoubtedly motivate many slacker filmmakers to write their own horror film.
What I appreciate most about The Battery is the way Jeremy Gardner made the budget work. He could have pushed a massive script upon Hollywood with uncertain results. Would anybody see it? Would anybody read it? Would it get butchered in the filming process? Would Will Smith and Jaden Smith star in it? Instead, he made an intimate film about two baseball players navigating unknown territory. The term “Battery” refers to the relationship between a pitcher and catcher. Their opposing jobs and personalities are what keep them alive.
Jeremy and Adam are opposites who somehow work as a team. Jeremy is the realist who kills the zombies, looks after Adam and is ultra careful in his efforts to survive. Adam is the dreamer who listens to music at great peril, still dreams of love and has a very odd encounter with a female zombie. They are odd little fellas who love baseball, music and somehow can deal with each other in long-term isolation.
The story takes place months after the initial zombie infestation. The two locked themselves in a house for several months and weathered the first wave of undead. Eventually, they escape into the woods where they roam, hunt and play catch. The movie starts with Adam listening to his headphones while the braver Jeremy is pilfering a house of all its canned goods. What follows is 100 minutes of long shots, drunken dancing and strategic blankets.
The film is full of static two shots involving the two talking, walking and sitting. The abbreviated shooting schedule eliminated over the shoulder shots and the limited budget forced them to never shoot wide shots featuring the zombies. Thus, anything involving seemingly massive numbers of zombies had to be kept tight with a shallow depth of field. Their scenes in the car at the end provide an earned claustrophobia due to the fact that they were just roaming massive fields, orchards and woods. Essentially, they recognized all of their constraints and were able to capitalize on them.
I’ve also found an interesting trend in zombie/infected angry person films. The Battery, Warm Bodies, Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later have all used music incredibly well. The music creates memorable moments, moods and atmosphere that I can still see vividly. Do zombies lovers appreciate good music? Do they need to lighten up the violence? Check out the soundtracks and you will find some gems.
Watch The Battery. Appreciate what they did with a minuscule budget. Dig the music. Look forward to the many copycats that will certainly be created.
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The Purge: Horror That Doesn’t Annoy
Most horror films annoy me. They start off strong, show too much and end on incredibly vague notes. Very rarely do they tell insular stories and more often than not are sequels, prequels, reboots or remakes. However, The Purge does something neat. It tells an original story on a tiny budget and didn’t annoy me.
Producer Jason Blum has been responsible for some massive indie hits like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister and now The Purge. What started as micro budget film making has exploded into a billion dollar series of films with more sequels on the way. Also, Blum, Hawke and director Jason DeMonaco have all been working together on various projects for over a decade and have figured out how to make films for cheap without insulting the audience. Hawke adds the credibility, DeMonaco adds the writing background and Blum gets them the money. So far the two films Hawke and Blum have worked on have made $150 million worldwide on $6 million dollar budgets.
Here is the formula. Interesting concepts + cool idea + photo bombing villain + tiny budget = a boat load of money, sequel ideas and more money to tell cheap horror films. It is smart, surprisingly easy and in tune with what horror fans want. The only drawback is that these ideas will eventually be strip mined much like the Paranormal Activity and Saw series that become parodies of themselves. I do have hope for the Insidious series and wasn’t much of a fan of Sinister so I won’t mind that Bughuul the eater of children is being exploited.
The Purge tells story of a night in 2022 where all crime is legal. Once a year for 12 hours anything goes and it has a created a society where unemployment is wiped out and crime is at an all time low. The night allows for all the anger, frustration and annoyance to be non-existant. The problem is that all of the superficial problems are gone but there is anger boiling underneath the surface waiting to spew out. If you knew you could kill somebody you didn’t like and get away with it I bet a god complex would be created and those able to protect themselves would have a feeling of entitlement. You would not want to annoy anybody in fear of death.
What I appreciated most about this film were the spoiled purgers. They are a community of young killers who feel entitled, emboldened and murderous. They are used to getting their way and will stop at nothing to kill whomever they want. In the film they don’t sense fear because they think they are immortal. They are not Highlanders or Wolverine but nobody has ever told them “no.” Actually, if somebody told them “no” they would most likely kill them. So, it is believable that these entitled punks attack the house and play the role of psycho killers. The Purge may seem like a superficial blessing but instead it has created a society hell bent on doing what it wants.
The Purge is smart but not deep. You know what will come into play later, some people will make later appearances and any trace of subtlety is erased by the end. However, from beginning to end I never felt burnt out or annoyed. The movie moves at a brisk pace (85 minutes) and uses it’s surrounding to full effect. The film is not overly bloody, the cast gives solid performances and the action was realistic. When walking out of the theater I felt the need to digest the bigger plot points and co-writer John and I had a really good discussion about the film (which he likes). After most horror films I am annoyed and want to watch something like Community or New Girl to separate myself from the grossness. The most unrealistic aspect of the film was believing Lena Headey as a domesticated housewife after watching 300, Dredd and Game of Thrones. I’ve seen her act tough too many times to believe she could be helpless. I also found the school girl fetish outfit of the 15-16 year old daughter played by Adelaide Kane (who is actually 23) a bit disconcerting (did she have nothing to change into?).
I hope to see more films like this in the future. Films that rely on ideas over budget. It is proof that solid marketing, an original idea and good actors can make a lot of money while surrounded by big summer blockbusters. The Purge gives hope for new horror and will gives Blum and company plenty of more money to continue their ascent up the horror hill of greatness.
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Bad Movie Tuesday: Another Good Day To Die Hard
Hello all. Mark here.
John already wrote a wonderful BMT for this film but I had to contribute as well.
I am a huge fan the Die Hard series. The first four all had their own flavor and style and I loved every second of them. However, this fifth film is incredibly painful, boring and totally unnecessary. Instead of dog piling on top of all the negative reviews I am going to share a message chain that my friends and I came up with in order to provide ideas for the inevitable sequel. We want the series to become relevant again and these ideas could give the producers, writers and Willis a creative boost. Enjoy!
Mark: Die Hard 5 was absolutely soul crushing. Here are my suggestions for the inevitable Die Hard 6.
1. Do a shot for shot remake of the original with Vince Vaughn…..
2. Call it Live Free of Die Hardigan. Cast a cardigan wearing Tom Hardy as the revengeful and ultra stylish brother of prior bad guy Timothy Olyphant.
3. Pretend Looper is Die Hard 6.
4. Go the Leprechaun/Jason route and send Willis to Space. Call it Die Hard: Armageddon with a Vengeance.
5. Make Mary Elizabeth Winstead the main character and include every cast member from Scott Pilgrim and the Fast & Furious series. Call it Die Hard: Sorry for the last one
DJ: Part six should be called a Die Hard: Six Pack and have evil personal trainers steal all the money from Little Debbie to make people thinner
Mark: Die Hard: With a Snack Cake!
Nippy: Or just call it Die Hard: Termination…. and have Allan Rickman play a cyborg version of himself… borrowing many visuals and dialog from the Terminator series
Don: Oh, these are good! Someone should take the movie The Fifth Element and dub it, making it into another Die Hard installment. It has all the makings of a Die Hard movie: the heavy amounts of action; forever being out-gunned and out-numbered; and Willis as the reluctant hero that saves the day. Maybe CGI Hans Gruber’s clone (Alan Rickman) to fight alongside Zorg (Gary Oldman)?
Mark: Whoa. That sounds wonderful. We could do that with a lot of the Willis films. Die Hard 12: Monkeys. Die Hard 16: Blocks
Nippy: Die Hard Sixth Sense
Don: Die Hard: Die Moonrise Kingdom Hard.…..wait…Moonrise Kingdom: The Last Die Hard Boy Scout
Nippy: They could also kill to birds with one stone, die hard 6, roger rabbit 2… Just saying
Don: BTW, they are starting production on Die Hard 7, entitiled “Die Hardest.” Considering there has been a movie with him saving each of his family members (his wife, twice) maybe in this one he saves…the nanny?http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2884178/
Mark: I think Willis should go back in time to prevent Die Hard 5. Or, His character from Moonrise Kingdom is a beaten down McClane (big reveal!) who has lost his kids via Hans Gruber’s other brother and he has to begrudgingly battle the euro villains again.
Don: You mean he reluctantly goes back in time?
Mark: Or, with the downward trajectory of the series they should just re-release Cop Out and call it Die Hard 6. Saves money. Annoys Kevin Smith.
Chris: Die Hard 12: We Can’t Believe We Made it Either
Mark: Die Hard 13: Listen folks, you keep watching this stuff so we are going to keep making them. Heck, we sent Bruce to space last year and he battled a Rickman clone on Mars. The movie made $200 million, Willis was only on set for three days and Rickman was pissed at the tight green suit he was stuck in.
Chris: Die Hard 14: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel
Mark: John McClane in barrel chasing Michael Shannon in a barrel down Niagara Falls. Boom!
Niall: Die Hard: When John met Holly with Joseph Gordon levitt
Mark: Whoa! That opens up the whole prequel world. Police Academy starring John McClane….and Bobcat Goldthwait and that dude who makes all the noises. Check out this meme I found for the new Die Hard too!
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MY CALL: Absolutely meritless; not even funny if you’ve been drinking. Never ever watch this and don’t trust the reviews on Amazon! HFS this was bad. WHAT TO WATCH INSTEAD: If you want torture then you’ve come to the wrong place. And yeah, we have zealots pointing fingers and spouting threats, but that’s done poorly, too. If this is the flavor you want I’d instead turn to Children of the Corn (1984) or Frailty (2001).
Just a typical Wednesday afternoon in 1492 Spain.
Director Stuart Gordon (The Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dolls, Dagon) brought Edgar Allen Poe’s 1492 Spanish Inquisition tale to film for a second time (the first time being in 1961). However, other than the obvious presence of a pendulum and some clear allusions to Poe’s other works, this story hardly seems the work of Poe.
“Oh, yeah. She’s DEFINITELY a witch! We’ll try her next.”
Grand Inquisitor Torquemada (Lance Henriksen; Aliens, Pumpkinhead) emcees public witch-burnings in the name of religion while hamming up archaic holy canon before an audience of peasants. During one of his burn rallies he accuses an innocent baker’s wife Maria (Rona De Ricci; she’s been in only one other movie) of witchcraft. Torquemada is fanatical and exhibits masochistically penitent tendencies. During Maria’s witch trial, her first test is being forcibly disrobed for her examination by Torquemada’s lecherous, corrupt men. “To resist is to admit guilt,” they say. I guess political sexual intimidation was a lot easier back in the day.
“You really need to see me naked?”
“Yes. How else would we tell if you were a witch?”
The movie follows Maria’s ongoing interrogation, Torquemada’s inappropriate fixation on her, and her husband’s attempts to save her in sort of a prison break scenario.
As Francisco, Jeffrey Combs (The Re-Animator, From Beyond) looks charming in his black tights, poofy-dress-like garb and bobbed hair. This role is Combs’ only mistake bigger than signing on to do Lurking Fear. Also keep an eye out for the woman who played Happy Gimore‘s grandma as Esmerelda. Realizing that’s who she was may have been the most enjoyable part of this movie.
“Isn’t that the grandma from Happy Gilmore?”
Do you think she’ll see Shooter McGavin in Hell?
Despite the many positive reviews on Amazon, I fail to see any merit in this movie. The utterly hokey acting and wardrobe truly fail to do Poe any justice, and the limited blood and lame violence do not serve us well to make up for it…I even felt guilty watching the tasteless scenes with nudity since it felt like they were done simply to get teenagers excited. I’m fine with gratuitous nudity–but it wasn’t even laughable here. This was simply all sorts of bad and any attempts to defend it would be wasted on me.
This movie made less sense as it persisted and become accordingly less satisfying. I admit that I laughed, but my eyes almost rolled out of their sockets during the ill-conceived “action-packed” finale complete with swinging pendulum, flesh-eating rats, swordplay and fire-shooting from the floor.
Maria the witch has warned you: “Skip this movie!”
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The Call: WWE’s Slow Crawl to Legitimacy
WWE studios is getting close to putting a cohesive film together. They started off well enough with The Scorpion King, Rundown (the best) and Walking Tall but have since faltered in their mission to branch out (Read the MFF roundtable on The Marine series here). Their last film Dead Man Down was directed by Niels Arden Oplev (The original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and featured a fantastic cast comprised of Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard and Noomi Rapace. However, it turned out to be really, really ridiculously bad. The story telling and writing hurt the soul and you felt bad for the actors involved. However, WWE’s latest venture The Call directed by Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist, Transsiberian, Fringe, Boardwalk Empire) is the closest they’ve come to a decent non-action film and it is light years better than See No Evil, The Chaperone, The Condemned and No One Lives. More importantly, it was a box office success collecting $50 million at the box office on a $12 million dollar budget.
You might be asking yourself why I inflicted The Call upon myself. I’ve enjoyed watching WWE studios attempt to grow over the years (even if I haven’t enjoyed their films). They are an upstart company looking to find their footing and find a niche alongside the established production studios. I’ve watched them ride the Rock’s coattails, invest heavily in John Cena, excell at direct to DVD action films, attempt drama and slowly bring in big name actors to act alongside the big fellas. The results have been disastrous and occasionally fruitful.
The Call focuses on Halle Berry’s character as she attempts to save Abigail Breslin’s kidnapped teenager. Berry works in a 911 call center and she had a prior run in with the kidnapper one night when the girl he was attacking called her. The girl ended up dying and it justifiably pushed Berry to quit the job and teach incoming call center recruits. However, the killer strikes again and Berry is there to talk the girl through the ordeal.
The movie has a lean and mean plot that movies full steam ahead toward it’s preposterous, bonkers and very dumb ending. The killer is played reliably nutty by Michael Eklund who has worked with WWE studios (Marine 3) before. He is a creepy little fella who recklessy kidnaps an industrious teenager and has to deal with all the intelligent things she does to get free (kick out taillight, pour paint out of car, use hairspray well).
The finale finds Halle hunting down the terrible man on her own. Of course, she goes alone, drops her phone into his lair and has to endure a creepy killer starring a doll head moment. It becomes exploitative and mean which is a let down because the beginning had a flow that went for tension and not shlock scares. The WWE has a history of turning to unnecessary violence and hopefully they are able get rid of the nasty blood lust and instead focus on character, plot and believable conclusions.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!
The two women end up tying the man to a chair and leave him to die which is a terrible idea because he is an industrious fella with an underground lair. It ends on the EXACT same note that Saw ended with and it makes you incredibly annoyed. Why chance it? He knows who you are and you let him live? Will you come back several days later to make sure he is dead? Could you sleep not knowing if he lived or died?
Don’t watch The Call. Watch Session 9, The Machinist or Vanishing on Seventh Street instead. Hope the WWE gets one step closer to legitimacy with their next film.
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MY CALL: Simply put, this is the story of a waterbed filled with digestive fluid and powered by a demon. It’s a must-see for those who claim to have seen a little of everything for its novelty and hilarious awfulness. There is nothing else like this, for better or for worse.
This movie gets off to a tasteless start as a couple of young lovers happen upon an old house. The narration of a Limbo-bound spirit reveals that the bed in this house is alive and that he’s been listening to it snore for a century. But, once awakened, it strategically locks all of the doors to the house except for the one that leads the amorous couple to its bedroom lair. Most likely taking offense to the boyfriend’s clumsily amateur breast-fondling technique, the bed spitefully eats the young couple’s lunch…and then eats them.
It seems that these first two victims serve no more purpose than to let viewers know what they’re in for…a movie about a bed that eats people. Our narrating spirit gives us a little history about the bed, its loud munching sounds, and its generally dim wit. Now that we’ve set the stage, it’s time to meet our next victims which include William Russ (the dad from Boy Meets World) in his FIRST ROLE EVER!
This was directed, written and produced by George Barry, who has never done anything else–no disappointment there. The same goes for almost every other actor in this except for William Russ. Probably for the best. The effects were poor, the acting was destitute, the scoring was terrible, and the film editing was somehow yet worse. Following suit was the overly informative, dry, ill-timed narration. Oh, and we get some narrative from one of the victims as well…although I have no clue why. It serves little purpose other than stacking more poor qualities which disrupt the film’s pacing. All in all, this movie feels like a series of fragmented thoughts, punctuated by nudity, that never go anywhere and which frankly are no more comprehensible than the mutterings of a mad man.
The one thing this film has going for it is that it is deliberately funny, for example depicting the bed eating Pepto-Bismol after a meal of a homely naked girl–she would have left a bad taste in my mouth, too. The effects are largely limited to the bed drooling yellow foam and digesting things in a prop department fish tank of yellow liquid. My favorite scene had to be when the bed ate William Russ’ hands to the bone. Basically every scene in this movie labors on much longer than is necessary, and only to its hysterical detriment.
Before he was giving advice to Ben Savage on Boy Meets World, he was doing this. Thanks for this William Russ!
Simply put, this is the story of a waterbed filled with digestive fluid and powered by a demon that uses telekinesis on its more feisty victims.
A must see for those who claim to have seen a little of everything.
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Movienomics: Now You See the Importance of Word of Mouth
What do The Hangover, There’s Something About Mary, Superbad, Napoleon Dynamite, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Pitch Perfect and Now You See Me have in common? All of these films were sleeper hits that made big money because of positive word of mouth. They all offered something new to old genres and audiences connected to them and allowed the films to over perform amidst big blockbusters..
I didn’t want to watch Now You See Me in theaters. I figured I would rent it and enjoy it in the comfort of my home. The fantastic cast of Mark Ruffalo, Melanie Laurent, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Dave Franco and Michael Kelly wasn’t enough to get me to go to the theater. Judging by the 49% on RT I smugly assumed that I made the correct decision to wait it out. However, something interesting happened in it’s second weekend . The movie initially pulled in $29 million and continued to make money with $19, $11 and $8 million in each of the following weeks. The drop off was slow and that indicted it was receiving positive word of mouth.
If word of mouth had been poor the movie would see a second week drop off of at least 55% and plummeted from there. The four weekends would have looked this (29, 14, 7, 3, 1) which total $54 million. Instead, a positive cinemascore (A-) and word of mouth have made it a $100+ million hit.
The tagline on the poster reads “The closer you look, the less you’ll see.” The finer (closer) aspects of this film could be scrutinized to figure out why it has made so much money. You could analyze why movies about magicians rarely work and go all the way back to Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 film The Magician. However, all you need to do is take a step back and look at the bigger picture to understand why it is a sleeper hit.
One of the reasons for Now You See Me’s success is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously which allows audiences to sit back, relax and partake in something other than horror, superhero or drama cinema. It differs from other magician flicks because it doesn’t carry the emotional heft of The Prestige ($53 million),feature an impressively dramatic and goateed Edward Norton performance (The Illusionist $40 million) or receive the negative reviews of the über A-list comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone ($23 million). The Prestige has become a post-cinema classic, The Illusionist convinced some that Jessica Biel would win an Oscar and Jim Carrey went back to his comedic roots in Burt but NYSM will pull in more money than the three films combined when it’s cinematic run is over. Alongside the niceness of the film another reason for it’s success is the release date and competition (Purge, After Earth, Fast Six, Superman, This is the End, Epic, Hangover 3, Internship, Star Trek and World War Z). It had the luxury of being a breezy original flick amidst sequels, comic book adaptations, R-rated comedies and a google commercial.
What NYSM does best is make all of its characters likable and fun. It is popcorn entertainment to the fullest that may be smarter than you think. It is not gross, violent or feature masked men running around. It’s success is not an illusion or a product of hoodwinking marketers. The movie has excelled because it knows what it is and has had the luxury of being different amongst the same summer offerings that we see year after year. Cinema goers gorge themselves on sequels, prequels and remakes but sometimes a nice palate cleanser is needed. Another surprise word of mouth example is Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The critics blasted it but it collected $146 million in theaters and was huge on DVD. Most of the top critics reviews were negative but I found this gem of a quote from my favorite critic Roger Ebert:
Paul Blart: Mall Cop is a slapstick comedy with a hero who is a nice guy. I thought that wasn’t allowed anymore.
NYSM features a lot of nice people doing things of little consequence and it is refreshing. The bad guy gets his due, the magicians get rich and Mark Ruffalo finds love. Movies like this are critic proof because they dare to be little more than fun. Owen Gleiberman of EW sums up the film nicely with this quote:
The actors, including Morgan Freeman as an anti-showman devoted to revealing the magicians’ secrets, look like they’re having so much fun that you can forgive the periodic arbitrariness of it all.
If you look at all of the films I mentioned earlier you will notice a familiar trend. No matter the rating, plot or actors they all involve friends, family and heart. Some are gross, some are hungover but all of them pack a sweetness that people around the world appreciated. Now You See Me will not be looked upon as a classic like some of the word of mouth favorites but it does deserve a spot alongside them due to its niceness and ability to excel in a bustling cinema season.
If you are looking for something different and fun check out Now You See Me. It never wanted to conquer the world it just wanted to tell a nice story that was meant to entertain.
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John’s Horror Corner: Death Spa (1989), sweating out the toxins with some bad 80s horror at its best
MY CALL: SPOILER ALERT! This movie sucks! There, I said it. But I also managed to enjoy it for its immensely funny levels of holy shit awful. IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH: I’d start with some other totally random wtf older horror flick like Hellgate (1990; funny), The Sentinel (1977; serious). The Nesting (1981; serious), The Outing (1987; funny), Deadly Blessing (1981; funny), The Possessed (1975; funny), Xtro (1983; super weird) and Superstition (1982; funny). ALTERNATE TITLE: Evidently, this movie is also called Witch Bitch..or so the opening credits suggest.
POV shots to weird sound effects, nudity within the first five minutes and a sultry Flashdance routine immediately warn of the quality of the movie to come. Our flashdancing spa exhibitionist is Laura (Brenda Bakke; Nowhere to Run, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) and she is nearly killed when the gym sauna spews caustic gas out of some pipe–clearly in an effort to murder her…because spas do that in this movie But have no fear, she judo chops to safety through a window and then passes out naked and sweaty before our eyes.
This spa looks like the 80s vomited all over it. Super short shorts on allegedly straight guys with feathered hair, girls in provocatively snug unitards, lots of hairspray, tights, promiscuity, atrocious movie scoring, legwarmers and a strangely wardrobed black dude (Ken Foree; Dawn of the Dead, The Lords of Salem, Halloween, From Beyond) who the director clearly decided was “tough” because he’s a tall black dude.
As the “spa” continues to strike, its assaults include tampering with a diving board, scalding hot showers and projectile bath tiles flying at naked women, a busted hot water pipe melts the face off of some chick and a needlessly deadly chest-fly machine kills some dude. Not surprisingly it only takes a few free months of gym membership from the gym owner Michael (William Bumiller; Species) for people to keep coming to the gym where several people have been serially killed or injured in the past week! Later some dude has his face squeezed off (the only real latex effort in special effects), a chick’s hand gets blended into a protein shake while it’s still attached to her and there’s a random zombie fish attack…yes, one zombie in the entire movie and it’s a fish. This movie is the ultimate in random stupidity and ill-execution. It even includes death by tanning bed–which may be the first time this ever happened on film (?), later copied by the I Know What You Did Last Summer and Final Destination franchises.
After reaching the limits of his tolerance of all these unexplainable events, Michael hires a paranormal investigator. He’s a psychometrist (I had to look it up, too). His character, obviously intended to be interesting, is at the very least as poorly written as the other aspects of this flick. He’s a boring stereotype and his little value beyond his WTF LOL death scene.
Shower scenes and wet bodies abound in this extra cheesy kill flick in which a HAL-like gym security system takes it upon itself to kill its members like they kill their triceps. Yup, basically an evil security camera possessed by Michael’s dead wife starts killing people. However, her real revenge is that the actor who plays her still living lover Michael would never have a better role than he did in this movie. Why is she doing this? Essentially, she’s lonely in Hell after killing herself. So, to get his attention, she possesses the body of her super-creepy twin brother and starts killing everyone at Michael’s gym and she won’t stop unless he kills himself to keep her company.
The gore is laughable and received hardly any effort even for its time with the exception of the occasional melted face. Meanwhile random blood spritzes and the melted corpses do little to stimulate anything more than an eye-rolling grin.
I’m not gonna’ lie. I’ve seen better…LMAO. This movie starts and then goes nowhere as it sadly misses the potential of each butchered kill scene one by one. I’d like to see this remade by Eli Craig, Joss Whedon or Sam Raimi…you know, like the minds behind Evil Dead (2013), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Final Destination 5 (2011), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Drag Me to Hell (2009), and of course Evil Dead 2 (1987) and The Evil Dead (1981).
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Bad Movie Tuesday: 21 & Over 90 minutes of Vulgarity
21 & Over is incredibly vulgar, every nationality is insulted, every profanity is spewed and every type of liquor is vomited. It is a case study in too much. The movie features two dudes played by likable actors Miles Teller (Footloose, Spectacular Now, Project X) and Skylar Astin (Pitch Perfect, Hamlet 2) and puts them in the traditional drunk escapade involving getting their good friend Jeff Chang to his medical school interview. Throughout the night they unleash a bull, puke on a mechanical bull, sneak into a sorority house, watch women make out, throw a dart through a dude’s cheek, dance on cop cars, throw Jeff Chang out of multiple windows, escape an angry father, get spanked by paddles, only wear socks, endure closeted frat dudes, pee on women and drink a lot of beer.
There is so much vulgarity you never get to like the characters who are engaged in the nastiness. It wanted to be Old School, Animal House, Harold and Kumar and Road Trip but forgot to make memorable characters. The four films I mentioned all feature likable characters, hilarious moments and copious vulgarity that are used in conjunction with each other to create gut busting laughs. However, 21 rarely blends character/hilarity/vulgarity into funny moments. The biggest laugh comes from an incredibly drunk Jeff Chang dancing on top of a car after the police tell him to “get down.” The moment works because of the cheeky dancing and the reactions from the cops. The best moments in this film are not gross and come from little exchanges like this:
Chang: “You broke my laptop!”
Angry dude: “Get a desktop!”
When making a gross-out college romp the most important things are the characters. If you don’t like the people involved you will have nothing invested in the bodily function jokes. There is no Frank the Tank, Harold, Kumar, Bluto, or endearing Sean William Scott character guiding you through the shenanigans. We are stuck with likable actors who have been made unbearable by the constant barrage of dialogue and excretion of bodily functions. Miles Teller is a great actor but the script never lets him stop talking. He talks about everything he sees and it starts to grate the ears and numb the senses. Miles is Vince Vaughn X11 and he explains everything that happens after it happened. For instance, Jeff Chang pukes on some coeds then Miles says “Jeff Chang just puked on some coeds!” Also, They throw Jeff Chang out of a window and Miles declares “We just through Jeff Chang through a window!” You will hear everything twice in 21 & Over.
If you insist on watching this film and haven’t watched Pitch Perfect, Footloose or Project X then I’ve compiled a checklist for watching this film.
1. Drink every time they say “Jeff Chang.” They say it like 700 times. I’m pretty certain the creators intended the constant name check to become a party game.
2. Watch it in the background while at a party and pretend like you weren’t the one who recommended it.
3. If you are writing a film about a wild night of shenanigans this will show you what not to do.
4. Drink every time they say “Randy.” It is a decent little subplot involving a dude named Randy and two dudes who always call him “Randy.”
5. Appreciate better films like Euro Trip, Road Trip and Hangover. Realize that it is hard to make popular frat-house films.
Don’t watch 21 & Over. Watch Pitch Perfect, Footloose or Project X. Appreciate the college Animal House classics that have survived the test of time.
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Stoker: When Goode is Evil
Stoker is cruel, artful and fantastic. It tells a macabre story of a very creepy uncle and two women on the eve of a family death. Stoker will linger in your memory because it strays from the supernatural and instead focuses on people who can kill with little or no conscience.
The film has a southern gothic feel to it that builds an insular world full of dark moments and sudden death. It would be hard to recommend to a non-cinema buff because it is not easy to watch. I’d compare it to I Saw the Devil or Seven because of the stylish ways they capture evil on film. Directed by Park Chan-Wook (OldBoy) Stoker moves ahead at a deliberate pace that could only be created by a master of the genre. The script written by Wentworth Miller gives us a wonderful villain and several questionable characters that take us out of the world. For instance, why is every high school male mean and forceful?
The story centers around Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska mourning the loss of their husband/father (played in flashbacks by Dermont Mulroney). One day a good looking man shows up and tells them he is uncle Charlie. Charlie is known to the family as the world traveling businessman who has little time for family. Mia notices something off about this charming man. His nice clothes and easy smile mask a murderously empty soul. What follows is a tension filled movie filled with stylish shots, fantastic acting and a dangerous pencil.
Matthew Goode owns this film as he walks a fine line of underacting and overacting. There is restraint in his mannerisms but you can tell by his smile and eyes that something is missing. He is the scariest of villains because he is pure evil. He could play a round of tennis then stuff somebody in a cooler and neither of those events would be greater in importance. Goode talked to details magazine and he talked about how he figured out his “eyes”:
I got the eyes a couple of days before we shot the film. We were in a steak restaurant. I kind of knew what I wanted to do, but I was still slightly unnerved, so I had a few whiskeys and was chatting with Park and having a lot of fun. There was a painting in the corner of this little steak restaurant in Nashville. I went over to it, and I was like, “That’s it.” It was this guy in a sort of 1920s outfit with a bow tie, and it was so odd. I brought it to Park, and he was like, “That’s Uncle Charlie.” And that was it. There was something in this guy’s eyes.
Stoker gives us a classic character and proves the Park Chan-wook is a master filmmaker who will be freaking us out for years to come.
Watch Stoker. Beware that is isn’t easy. However, it is a tough journey worth taking.
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