Category Archives: Hilary Swank

Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Four

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Finishing this in February feels so wrong it’s almost right. By now I’ve actually seen movies released in 2012 and I’m still posting about last year (the movies from this year being The Muppets, which the UK got obscenely late, and Chronicle, which is fantastic stuff and well worth a watch). The Oscar nominations have also been announced, with the deeply-average The Descendants and the deeply-awful War Horse getting a few nods while Fassbender, Swinton and Brooks are snubbed. Disgusting. If ever proof was needed that the Academy doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have a whine about that before the award ceremony, so without any further ado, let’s end Listmania! with a bang. The only other posts that have taken me this long were my Lost finale posts, which took three months to write. This only took a month and a half, so I’m getting better at this. If you’re a fan of pointless miscellania, you’ve come to the right place.

Best Movies I Saw In 2010 That Were Released More Generally In 2011: Black Swan, 13 Assassins, Archipelago, Amigo, Meek’s Cutoff, Submarine

Best Scene: Rango walks through the desert during a crisis of confidence (Rango)

Honorable Mentions:

Tom Cruise climbs up the side of the Burj Khalifa (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol)

Matthew Broderick attempts to teach a class of precocious kids about King Lear and it doesn’t go well (Margaret)

Michael Shannon and his family attend a meal with their fellow townsfolk and it doesn’t go well (Take Shelter)

Jung tries to tell his new buddy Freud about synchronicity and it doesn’t go well (A Dangerous Method)

Kristin Wiig gets drunk on a plane and it doesn’t go well (Bridesmaids)

Best Action Scene: Tintin and Captain Haddock chase a hawk through the streets of Bagghar (The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn)

Honorable Mentions:

The final physics-mangling car chase in Rio De Janeiro, including some serious hardcore badassery from The Rock and Vin Diesel (Fast Five)

The longest and most explosives-packed train in the history of the world crashes for a long time (Super 8)

The Revolutionary Army of Apedom makes a break for freedom through San Francisco (Rise of the Planet of the Apes)

Alex Pettyfer, Teresa Palmer and a big alien dog wreck a high school using telekinesis and big lasers (I Am Number Four)

Guy Ritchie goes crazy with ramping and cameras attached to people running and all sorts of tricks in a forest (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows)

Best Hero: Caesar – Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Honorable Mentions:

Captain America – Captain America: The First Avenger

Thor – Thor

Moses – Attack The Block

The Driver – Drive

Rango – Rango

Best Villain: Loki – Thor

Honorable Mentions:

Bernie Rose - Drive

Society’s indifferent or vexed reaction to those unfortunate enough to be afflicted with mental illness – Melancholia

The oppressive horror of modern life – Take Shelter

Rattlesnake Jake – Rango

Chris Cleek – The Woman

Best Couple: David Norris and Elise Sellas (Matt Damon and Emily Blunt) – The Adjustment Bureau

Worst Couple: Emma and Adam (Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher) – No Strings Attached

Most Doomed Couple(s) of the Year: Justine and Michael and Claire and John (Kirsten Dunst, Alexander Sarsgaard, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Keifer Sutherland) - Melancholia

“I Hope These Guys Make It” Couple Of The Year: Russell and Glen (Tom Cullen and Chris New) – Weekend

“Please Bite Them And Get It Over With, Evil Colin Farrell” Couple of the Year: Charley Brewster and Amy Peterson (Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots) – Fright Night

“Okay, I Really Don’t Think He Should Be Attracting These Improbably Hot High School Hotties In These Movies, What With Looking Like A Surly Child Half The Time” Couple of the Year: Porter and Norah (Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence) – The Beaver

Greatest Disparity In Energy Levels Between Partners of the Year: Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris (Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively) – Green Lantern

Most Improbable Couple of the Year: Ernesto Botta and Laura Aliprandi (Toni Servillo and Sarah Felberbaum) – The Jewel

“Only In The Movies” Adorable and Romantic Couple of the Year: George Valentin and Peppy Miller (Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo) - The Artist

“Only In The Movies” Twee Asshole Couple of the Year: Enoch and Annabel (Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska) – Restless

“Rather Raunchy For A PG-13 Movie, Eh What?” Couple of the Year: Ren McCormack and Ariel Moore (Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough) – Footloose

Most Adorable Fuckbuddies of the Year: Dylan Harper and Jamie Rellis (Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis) – Friends With Benefits

Most Inappropriate Couple of the Year: Robert Ledgard and Vera Cruz (Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya) – The Skin I Live In

Worst Love Triangle of the Year: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black (Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner) – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One for the third year running

Best Love Triangle of the Year: Brian O’Conner, Dominic Toretto and Luke Hobbs (Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson) – Fast Five

Most Satisfying Finale: The Artist

Honorable Mentions:

Attack The Block

Melancholia

Real Steel

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Arriety

Best Finale in a Bad Movie: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Least Satisfying Finale: Green Lantern

Dishonorable Mentions:

The Adjustment Bureau

I Don’t Know How She Does It

Blitz

In Time

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Worst Finale in a Good Movie: Source Code

Badass of the Year: Lisbeth Salander – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Best Double Act: Tucker and Dale (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) - Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Worst Hero: D’Artagnan – The Three Musketeers

Dishonorable Mentions:

Hal Jordan - Green Lantern

Mater – Cars 2

Theseus – Immortals

Joey the Super-Special Horsey – War Horse

Dagny Taggart – Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Worst Villain: Karl Hendricks – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Dishonorable Mentions:

The concept of generosity – Atlas Shrugged Part I

Hector Hammond – Green Lantern

The Red Skull – Captain America: The First Avenger

That sinful sexuality in any form it’s SO SINFUL – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One

Blackbeard – Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Most Likeable Cast: Thor

Least Likeable Cast: Blubberella

Most Annoying Character of the Year: Sid – The Descendants

Dishonorable Mentions:

Moberg - The Rum Diary

Kate Reddy – I Don’t Know How She Does It

Dexter – One Day

Sean Cassidy (aka Banshee) – X-Men: First Class

Homer Yannos – Tomorrow, When The War Began

Best Live Action Animal: Uggie The Dog – The Artist

Best Animated Animal: Snowy – The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn

Best Trailer: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Honorable Mention: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Best Poster: The Tree of Life

Worst Poster: Hall Pass

Limited Edition Poster I Wish Had Been Used: This superb retro Captain America: The First Avenger poster by Paolo Rivera

Most Profound Poster: Shame

No photo of it will do it justice, but the poster for Shame that we saw outside the London Film Festival screening had a reflective surface, but with the word “Shame” printed at the bottom. Because the movie speaks for all of us who have shame, do you see? Something to think about.

Most Misleading and Tonally Inaccurate Poster: We Need To Talk About Kevin

Nicest Photography In A Headshot Poster: Martha Marcy May Marlene

Most Defiantly Wrongly-Angled-By-90° Poster of the Year: Super 8

Most Fucked-Up / Desperately Controversial Poster of All Time: The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

Most Out-Of-Control Trend In Posters: Character variants (::deep breath:: The Adjustment Bureau; Arthur Christmas; Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked; Bridesmaids; Cars 2; Conan the Barbarian; Contagion; Cowboys and Aliens; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Drive; Footloose; Friends With Benefits, Fright Night, Gnomeo and Juliet; The Green Hornet; Green Lantern; Hall Pass, The Hangover Part Two; Happy Feet Two; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two: Hop; Horrible Bosses; Hugo; Immortals; In Time; Johnny English Reborn; Killer Elite; Kill The Irishman; Mars Needs Moms; Margin Call; Martha Marcy May Marlene; Melancholia [!!!!!]; Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol; The Muppets; Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides; Priest; Puss in Boots; Real Steel; Red State; Rio; Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; The Smurfs; Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; Spy Kids 4: All The Time In The World; Straw Dogs; Sucker Punch; Super; 30 Minutes or Less; Thor; The Three Musketeers; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Tower Heist; Transformers: Dark of the Moon; A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas; Warrior; Water For Elephants; Winnie The Pooh; X-Men: First Class; Your Highness; The Zookeeper)

How many of these posters ever make it into cinemas? How many of them convince people to go and see these movies? Do casual cinemagoers see any of these and think, “Well, I wasn’t going to see Green Lantern but now that I know Tomar-Re is in it I’m IN”? Will people really be excited at the array of not-really-that-well-known actresses in the cast of Bridesmaids before they see how funny they all are (scroll down for the full selection)? Do we really need 31 posters for The Three Musketeers? Do we need more than one poster for Melancholia? It’s not harming anyone, obviously, but it still seems like a waste of resources. If anyone can explain why we need so many variants, please let me know.

Best Publicity Campaign: Paranormal Activity 3

Usually SoC likes to praise a publicity campaign that successfully promotes a tough sell, but this year I have to give huge props to the makers of Paranormal Activity 3 for doing something that should’ve been done a long time ago. However, to do that I have to spoil, so please consider all of the text between these two scary-as-fuck trailers a huge spoiler for PA3‘s best trick.

I won’t lie. That first trailer for this franchise scared the absolute shit out of me when I first saw it, and it deserves some credit for making even this cynic forget about the overwhelming familiarity of the Paranormal Activity template and vow to see the third one as soon as it came out. In that sense, job done. However, what’s really great is that that scene doesn’t happen in the movie, and neither do almost all of the biggest shock moments in the trailer below.

Seeing that at home and getting annoyed at all of the spoilers is one thing; I switched it off halfway through as I was horrified at the amount of spoilage. But if you’re in a cinema and can’t escape, you’re going to absorb all of that information, and more than likely you’re still going to see it (because these movies make money hand-over-fist without even breaking a sweat). And yet all of that stuff you’re expecting won’t happen. Instead you’ll get a bunch of other scary stuff. And even better? You still got scared by those trailers, as if you’re watching a very very short horror movie for free. I’ve waited for a long time to see this done so well. The movie was okay too. That’s a bingo, I reckon.

Worst Publicity Campaign: X-Men: First Class / Green Lantern

Nerds are hard to please; I know because I am one. Thor and Captain America did a mostly good job of introducing two less well-known characters, with the non-mainstream Thor making $450m worldwide and the super-patriotic Cap overcoming some of the anti-American prejudice that could’ve prevented it making any money at all ($370m’s okay. Green Lantern wishes it made that much). If they’re an example of how to do it right, the other two big superhero releases of the year show how to do it wrong, thus squandering all of the nerd energy they needed to stay alive.

Each campaign commits a different crime that has the same result; underwhelming box office. X-Men: First Class‘ promotional crime was to destroy a lot of good will towards a franchise that desperately needed it, even more than the previous X-Men movie did. Wolverine should have killed X-Men dead but Fox wasn’t going to let the franchise go to waste when it could release yet another movie and maybe resurrect it for another few sequels. A lot of good decisions were made regarding casting and crew choices, but all of that was hobbled by some terrible promotional errors.

One was to have the only convention appearance take place at the inaugural London Comic-Con, with an appearance by co-writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz. Other than that, the production and release schedule meant they unfortunately missed out on those opportunities, and had to rely on trailers and posters. While all of the trailers are good enough, if a little calm, the first leaked picture of the cast was a disaster. Even worse were the posters: the ones above were two separate teasers, with little heads gestating inside shadowmen; the one below is an advert for X-Men-themed bobbleheads. I can’t understand why someone would sign off on it.

Only one of the posters was any good, but if you look at the bottom of the page you’ll see even more awful examples, including some shocking Japanese ones. XM:FC was considered enough of a success to warrant a sequel (it made less than Cap and cost a bit more, but it’s not a dramatic difference), but that success was only because of the (bafflingly) good reviews and the fact that it had the weekend to itself. Though it’s not a representative sample, there were a number of X-Men fans of my acquaintance who were burned out on the franchise after Wolverine and even the raves for this couldn’t persuade them. Who knows what that opening weekend would have looked like if Fox had done a better job of getting my nerd brethren off their sofas?

Warner Bros., on the other hand, couldn’t do anything to get anyone into the cinema to see Green Lantern. I only went because I try to see as many films as possible, and we’re talking about my favourite superhero of all time here. To be fair to the folks responsible for promoting GL, they were dealing with a (relatively) obscure character with a mythology that’s hard to explain in posters and short trailers, plus it was saddled with a cast and team of writers that didn’t excite the fans either, so they were trying to ice-skate uphill from the start. The posters were okay, I guess. They were nice and colourful enough, though that fucking stupid mask really doesn’t help.

The mainstream audience doesn’t love Ryan Reynolds or Blake Lively enough to take a risk on a movie that looks like the adventures of a rubber-bodied space man versus a creature made of sentient dreadlocks, but readers of the comic weren’t likely to show up either. Most of the initial reports on the movie made it seem like the filmmakers were trying to be loyal to the comics while getting the tone entirely wrong. There was also barely any sight of Oa or the Corps early on (most likely because the FX weren’t finished), so the fans felt even more nonplussed. When footage was released at Wondercon the fans justifiably went nuts. Sadly, that was almost all of Oa / Corps footage that appeared in the finished movie. WB shot their wad in desperation. The movie opened to at best, indifference; at worst, derision. Was that the fault of the promotional campaign? Well, it certainly didn’t help.

Best Hair: The assorted period-appropriate ‘dos in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Worst Hair: Daniel Craig – The latter half of Dream House

Most Appropriate Hair For A Cancer Patient: Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s unnerving shaved head – 50/50

Least Appropriate Hair For A Cancer Patient: Mia Wazikowska’s tasteful pixie-cut – Restless

Best Facial Hair: Dominic Purcell - Killer Elite

Worst Facial Hair: Clive Owen - Killer Elite

Scariest Hair/Make-Up Combo: Tom Hanks - Larry Crowne

Best Wig (Actor): Nicolas Cage – Season of the Witch (possibly borrowed from the set of last year’s winner The Sorceror’s Apprentice)

Best Wig (Actress): Emily Browning – Sucker Punch

Worst Wig (Actor): Logan Lerman - The Three Musketeers (actually they were glued-in extensions but you get my point)

Worst Wig (Actress): Cate Blanchett – Hanna

Wig I’m On The Fence About: Justin Theroux – Your Highness

Best Hats: The Adjustment Bureau

Honorable Mention: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Best Dressed Chap in Sweden: Daniel Craig – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Worst Casting: Sensible Reese Witherspoon as a PG-13-raunchy and unpredictable acrobat in Water For Elephants

Most Scatological Movie of the Year: Spy Kids 4D: All The Time In The World

I’m kinda glad I didn’t see this at the cinema with the Smell-O-Vision scratch card; if the middle section of this movie is anything to go by, I’d just be sniffing a piece of cardboard soaked in Essence of Fart. But I’ll be honest; the cavalcade of poop, barf and fart jokes made me laugh more often than most adult comedies released this year. Shame about that incoherent final act, though.

Most Weather: Wuthering Heights

Best Recasting: The mostly awake and reasonably charming Rosie Huntington-Whiteley replacing orange-hued erotic rabbitbot Megan Fox on Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Messiest Eater: Mickey Rourke - Immortals

Most Expressive Fist: Ryan Gosling - Drive

Biggest Build-Up For Least Payoff: The appearance of Kominsky – New Year’s Eve

Midway through Garry Marshall’s fractured compendium of schmaltz, Hilary Swank decides she needs to hire the legendary Kominsky to fix the broken new year ball in Times Square, and this causes a ripple of excitement to run through the extras clumsily assembled around the set. Kominsky, they whisper with amazement, she’s getting Kominsky. There is much fuss, palaver and hullabuloo about the imminent arrival of Kominsky. It’s infectious. This is, after all, a movie that features a dazzling array of cinema legends like Lea Michele and Josh Duhamel, while filling the smaller roles with yer DeNiros and Pfeiffers. So what legend will they get to play Kominsky? Pacino? Cruise? Hanks? No, silly! It’s Hector Elizondo! For fans of Garry Marshall I’m sure this was a big deal. For the rest of us? Even those of us who have nothing against Hector Elizondo? Not so much.

Most Admirable Commitment To Onscreen Skeeviness: Ben Foster (duplicitous assassin in The Mechanic, wheelchair-bound substance-abusing snitch in Rampart, convicted sex offender and possible murderer in 360)

Most Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Michael Fassbender – Shame (And also X-Men: First Class, A Dangerous Method and Jane Eyre)

Honorable Mention: Hayley Atwell – Captain America: The First Avenger

Least Convincing Lust Object of the Year: January Jones – X-Men: First Class

Dishonorable Mention: Ryan Reynolds - The Change-Up

Most Obscenely, Depressingly Beautiful Cast: Immortals

Ugliest Contact Lenses: The Rum Diary

Honorary Manuela Velasco Award for Services to Scream-Queen Culture: Florencia Colucci - The Silent House

Most Depressing Mise-en-Scène: Tyrannosaur

Honorable Mention: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Use Of Split Screen: The Green Hornet

Worst Use Of Split Screen: 360

Most Depressing Depiction of a Sexually Aggressive Woman: Jennifer Aniston – Horrible Bosses

Dishonorable Mention: Marisa Tomei – Crazy, Stupid, Love

Cheapest But Most Effective Device In A Horror Film: The swiveling camera in Paranormal Activity 3

It’s just a camera on the bottom half of an oscillating fan, but that simple trick, with the camera panning back and forth very slowly, amps up the tension more than any expensive CGI trick. Kudos to Henry Joost, Ariel Shulman and Christopher Landon for coming up with it.

Worst Product Placement: New Year’s Eve, because nothing says New Year’s celebrations like those joy-embodying products from Toshiba, Phillips and Nivea.

Worst Manners: Jason Statham – Blitz

Weirdest Impersonation of What Sounds A Bit Like Ray Winstone: Mel Gibson – The Beaver

Weirdest Impersonation Of What Sounds Like Jennifer Jason Leigh In The Hudsucker Proxy: Andrea Riseborough – W.E.

Most Logistically Impressive Movie: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Honorable Mention: Battle: Los Angeles

Most Unusual Fighting Implement Wielded by Zoe Saldana In An Otherwise Forgettable Luc Besson/Robert Mark Kamen C-Movie Actioner: A toothbrush (Columbiana)

Best Location Shooting: The Descendants (Hawaii)

Honorable Mentions:

Blitz (London)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Chicago and many other parts of America)

A Dangerous Method (Germany, Austria)

Wuthering Heights (Yorkshire)

Thor (Asgard)

Worst Cinematic Trend of 2011: Underwhelming third acts – Insidious, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, The Ides of March, Hugo, The Silent House, The Eagle, Dendera, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, Warrior, Paul, Cowboys and Aliens, The Adjustment Bureau, The Skin I Live In, Source Code, The Descendants, War Horse, Super 8, Drive, In Time, Trespass

Anne Billson wrote this great article on the problem of the bungled third act, and though I enjoyed a couple of her examples, there are a few there that cannot be argued with. Too many movies this year fell apart in the last 20-30 minutes, sometimes so badly that the rest of the movie was irreparably damaged. I’m not sure what the reason for this is, other than that too often films aren’t rewritten often enough before reaching the set, but whatever it is, three-quarters of each of the films above were reasonably-good-to-great, and that’s a very frustrating fraction.

Most Publicity Pictures of a Director: Paddy Considine – Tyrannosaur

Last year (scroll down to the bottom) I noticed the IMDb page for Biutiful‘s images featured a lot of shots of Iñárritu (aka The Director Formerly Known As Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu), most of them featuring him pointing and looking very thoughtful on set. It struck me that he was going for the title of Most Pictures Of A Director Pointing And Looking Very Thoughtful on IMDb, a title currently held by Michael Bay. And yet this year there’s a new potential winner in the shape of Paddy Considine, with four pictures on IMDb, more than co-star Eddie Marsan (he gets one), and as many as Olivia Colman. Bear in mind, Considine’s not even in the movie.

Even more shocking, Bay only has three on-set photos from Transformers: Dark of the Moon on IMDb this year, the other 600 pictures being 67% shots of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley getting out of cars, and 33% images of smoking rubble. Considine even manages two more shots of himself than Bay got on his debut movie Bad Boys, though none of the shots of Considine are as moving as this ferociously erotic pic of Bay’s torso. So this race to the bottom of the ego continues, but with a new contender around, THIS SHIT OFFICIALLY JUST GOT REALER.

And with that, I’m finally done. Thanks to all who have contacted me about this epic series of posts, and to everyone who has made their way through this mass of opinion and bad jokes, I doff my cap, and say, until next time. ::theme tune plays me out:: ::collapses::

Movie Face/Off! Biblical Horror Edition (Results)

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The reckoning is here! The scoring is very arbitrary and specific for these films, but the last set of figures represent things I’ve found I look for in every movie. Production values are something that often mean nothing (the best looking movie can still be shit), but it’s where I’ll give bonus points for nice photography or an excellent score. Unique selling points account for cool moments that cannot be classified otherwise. Oh, and sorry for using an obnoxious corporate phrase.

As for liveliness, a degree of coherent energy can make up for a lot of other failures, and by that I don’t mean crazy pace. Something slow-paced, e.g. Jonathan Glazer’s widely hated Birth (off the top of my head), barely moves at all, but there is an intelligence and plan for maximum effectiveness to that film that many films lack despite the frenetic editing or stunt-packed explosiveness or otherwise skillful filmmaking. It’s just apparent there’s some attention to pacing beyond making individual scenes work in a certain way, something that extends from committed and thoughtful performances on set down to the arc of the movie, and whether it works as a progressive ebb and flow from the first moment to the last, i.e. has the director figured out the movie’s parts and whole from a God position instead of just focusing on the money shots, for lack of a better word. It sounds silly and nitpicky, but I’m always surprised at how many talented or untalented directors nowadays can’t be bothered to figure that out. ::shakes cane at whippersnappers on their skateboards::

Ugh, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and hope to explain better in the future, as well as come up with a better word for it. Not right now, though. We’ve got facing/off to do.

The Omen

Cast:
Liev Schreiber: -10
David Thewlis: -10
Julia Stiles: -3
Pete Postlethwaite: +2
Michael Gambon: +4
Mia Farrow: +7

Total: -10

I will admit, kneejerk dislike of the leads didn’t help here, but as much as Schreiber and Thewlis get on my nerves, I’ll admit they’re talented, intelligent actors (cursed though they are with sinuses that function as reverb chambers). Here, though, they just give up, sleepwalking through the movie with just enough awareness to point their faces in the right direction. Gambon and Farrow bring it back through sheer insane effort, but John Moore really wasn’t paying attention to some of the performances, and thus we get a mixture of apathy and shrill annoyance.

Plot elements specific to these films:
Elegant transmission of exposition: -5
Crazy deaths: +4
Ridiculous character names: +3
Grasp of London geography: -5
Fair treatment of women/reproduction: -10
Avoidance of lazy dream sequences: -4
Survival of ethnic sidekick until final frame: N/A (Thewlis doesn’t count)

Total: -17

Yes, Thewlis’ death was great fun, but once cinema has offered the sight of someone sliced into pieces by a flying wire fence (as in Final Destination 2), or a skull chopped into pieces by a dislodged engine (as in Final Destination 3), you’ve got to try hard to top it.

Miscellaneous:
Originality: -10
Liveliness: -7
Enthusiasm for project: -8
Avoidance of cliche: -10
Unique Selling Points: -10
Production values: +1

Total: -42

Lowest scores possible for originality, as it’s pretty much a Van Santing of the original movie. As for cliche, perhaps it’s a bit unfair to judge the script on that, but Moore offers nothing directorially that could sway me. Everything is filmed exactly the way you would expect it. As for offering something you can’t get elsewhere, you’ve got the superior original and the macabre Final Destination trilogy, which not only loses the religious guff (a secular horror movie about fate!) but presents pregnancy as something positive and hope-inspiring. That those movies are horribly bleak is both an unfortunate side effect and a USP. ::sigh:: I really like those movies.

Omen overall total: -69

A truly appalling, cynical cash-in movie, and further casting doubt on the ability of John Moore to create anything memorable in his career, other than the awesome plane crash scenes in Behind Enemy Lines and Flight of the Phoenix.

The Reaping

Cast:
Hilary Swank: +6
David “Elvis” Morrissey: +1
Idris Elba: +1
AnnaSophia Robb: +3
Stephen Rea: -4
Andrea Frankle: 0

Total: 7

For all the film’s faults, Hopkins did get a bunch of talented actors and didn’t get in their way too much, as opposed to Moore’s higgledy-piggledy approach. Swank especially tries hard. I just can’t hate on her. Her taste in projects is often way off, but she commits to it, at least. Andrea Frankle, playing Robb’s mother, was in the movie enough to register, but was given nothing to do other than be a red herring. She might be good given something to do, but here she was ill-served.

Plot elements specific to this film:
Elegant transmission of exposition: -2
Crazy deaths: -2
Ridiculous character names: 0
Grasp of London geography: N/A (If you could see the London Eye above the bayou, it would win hands down.)
Fair treatment of women/reproduction: -10
Avoidance of lazy dream sequences: -7
Survival of ethnic sidekick until final frame: -7

Total = -28

If only this film had a Bugenhagen, or death by satellite-crashing, it would register more. Instead the earnestness swamps anything, with only the staging of the locust scene making an impression. It’s the only proof that the crew were awake during the planning of the movie. However, see below.

Miscellaneous:
Originality: -7
Liveliness: -8
Enthusiasm for project: -7
Avoidance of cliche: -8
Unique Selling Points: -2
Production values: +5

Total = -27

Not as cynical as The Omen, and certainly the dour atmosphere tends to suggest Hopkins thought he was making something more than a silly potboiler, but it doesn’t hide the lack of imagination, not to mention the derivative script. It rips off many better movies, and the best scene in it, i.e. the locust attack, is nowhere near as emotionally affecting or dramatic as the locust scenes at the end of Days of Heaven. Completely different film, but infinitely more compelling. Some nice photography and effects, though.

Reaping overall total = -48

Bland to the point of barely existing. It looks a lot better than it should, but it’s a film that just didn’t need to be made. Not that that’s a bad thing; lots of films don’t need to be made, but they can still transcend that and become something great. A half-hearted rehashing of better plots without the wit or imagination to rework them, play homage to them, or push them to an insane level of melodramatic hysteria, is not what I have in mind, though.

So, in a fairish fight, The Reaping wins through superior acting and some nice production values. But as you can see from the score, it’s a Pyrrhic victory. In fact, here is an accurate representation of the Biblical Horror Movie Fightbot Face/Off, from Stuart Gordon’s massively entertaining Robot Jox.

Oh, the humanity! Those final shots show what me and Canyon’s brains were like once the movies were over. Damn you biblical horror movies! We should have rewatched Exorcist III. And pooed ourselves with fear.

Movie Face/Off! Biblical Horror Edition (Round Two)

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I blame the Reaping trailer. From the first moment I set eyes on its finely edited, momentum-packed, locusty goodness I was sold. Also, I’m one of the few who doesn’t think Hilary Swank is a punchline to a joke, and have a thing for bibli-horror, so it was a no-brainer. Even though reports were coming in of less-than-10% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and people leaving the cinema wailing and gnashing their teeth at the awfulness, and the direction being handled by long-time moviemaking failure Stephen Hopkins, still I held out hope. What, I ask you, is wrong with my brain that compromises my judgement so completely? Is there a medical condition out there that explains why fast-editing gets past my internal censor? I should ignore trailers for life. They’re responsible for so many wasted hours.

Last week we wasted two on The Reapening. Many apologies to Canyon who was wise enough to stop me from seeing the damn thing at the cinema, but unable to stop me hiring it via Amazon. Tellingly, it was the first brand new DVD I’ve ever put at the top of my rental list that didn’t indicate any waiting time. Even The Number 23 has a Short Wait marker. This should have been a warning. In my defence, I will say I thought the negative reviews were easily ignored. Horror movies are notoriously ill-served by critics eager to distance themselves from a genre they think is beneath contempt. So we watched The Repeapening immediately. And verily it did suck, enough to bring down the walls of Jericho and scourge the city of Sodom even unto the ending of the world, amen!

Swank plays a professional miracle-debunker, zipping around the world in a effort to disprove the existence of God, like Richard Dawkins crossed with Indiana Jones but 100% less exciting than that, though admittedly 100% more attractive. Considering the amount of Swankbum close-ups, I think Stephen Hopkins agrees. She is approached by David Morrissey, all rumpled and tortured after the death of his only child, whose hometown of Haven is being plagued by, well, plagues. Biblical plagues! Right up Swank’s alley.

She enlists the help of her colleague Idris Elba, wearing an egregious handlebar moustache, at which point I placed my bets as to when he would die. Because it’s the rule in movies that the black sidekick dies before the end, usually to signify the raising of the stakes or the evil of the antagonist. It’s so common that I unconsciously make predictions even while feeling nauseated by the whole insane cliched horseshit of it all. I plumped for one hour in, and settled back as the team leaves to go meet Morrissey back at his town, way down in Louisiana.

Morrissey, famed for undergoing auto-erotic asphyxiation during sex in Basic Instinct 2: Kink Addiction, is one of those actors that is obviously talented, but is most famous for appearing in films where there is no evidence of such. It’s very frustrating. There is also the problem that he looks a bit like a smug potato, something that The Nesbitt also has trouble with.

Here he is charming the pants off Swank with his erudition and earthy, Southern swagger. It’s a serviceable performance, hamstrung by the decision to use his dialect training to improve his Elvis impression, and we spent the entire movie finishing every one of his lines with an impassioned, “Uh huh huh!” This joke refused to get old, despite my efforts. He tells her of a murder of a boy in his town, and the young sister who may have committed the murder and then turned the river to blood (AnnaSophia Robb, who does sinister child-staring very well). He’s pissed because, while investigating it, he ruined his best pair of Blue Suede Shoes. Uh huh huh.

With barely any delay, our team of Mythbusters get to work testing the bloody river for the presence of sciencey stuff. Biblical scientists (those who tally biblical tales with verifiable historical events) were consulted for the film, which accounts for one of the few good moments of the film, where Swank is confronted by a bunch of scared yokels whose cows are tipping themselves (by dying horribly). After listening to their theories of plagues and whatnot, she snaps and reels off the ten plagues that hit Egypt after the Old Testament God got pissed off at something the Egyptians did. Exploring their sexuality, or getting body piercings, or exercising their free will, or something equally heinous and plague-worthy. All ten plagues are accounted for by science: bacterial contamination of the Nile killed all the frogs, which created an increase in flies, which coincided with a terrible sandstorm, and more spreading of illness, and the poorly fed firstborn children of the area couldn’t fend off the disease, and thus died (there was more, but I can’t remember the ten plagues now. Baldness? Giant rabbits? My biblical knowledge is very basic). It’s a very convincing argument, and the yokels immediately ignore it. Except Morrissey, who is all shook up by her brilliance.

Or so it seems! The town really is being hit with a series of biblical plagues, usually heralded by an appearance of the weird girl. Even if she was the meanest girl in town, why is this godly place being hit with the same plagues visited upon the godless Egyptians? It makes no sense, something that anyone with a suspicious mind would spot. So someone at some point says, “The Devil likes to borrow God’s tricks,” which is great misdirection, and totally fools everyone, oh yes (except for me who had totally spoiled for the finale for myself months earlier).

I know what you’re thinking. “Why is Swank so anti-religion? There must be a very serious reason, because a natural belief in rationality and an interest in scientific objectivity just isn’t good enough.” The film responds thusly. She is phone-stalked by a priest from her past; Father Costigan, a name nowhere near as likeable as Bugenhagen. He’s played by Stephen Rea, obviously killing time until Neil Jordan gets in touch. This was bad news for Canyon, who reacts to the appearance of Rea in much the same way I do when Thewlis and Schreiber show up.

During his various conversations with Swank, we slowly (and I do mean slowly) find out that Swank was a nun whose husband and son were killed in the Sudan by superstitious villagers suffering from the effects of a severe drought. Those crazy primitives! Beyond the offensiveness of the stereotype, it paints the scientific sceptic as someone hitting back at religion as vengeance. God (literally) forbid she might just be an unbeliever. Who’d sympathise with one of those? I’m sure it fulfils some McKee doctrine rather too literally, and ticks a box from a script meeting, having the heroine face the demons from her past, but it bugged me, especially as she is shown to have tried to commit suicide, which is ripped off heartily from Carl Schultz’s far-superior The Seventh Sign. Anyway, her scepticism soon fades in the face of her many many dream sequences, mainly of her family being killed, though with the occasional kitchen mishap involving eggs filled with blood and kettles that don’t just boil, but boil in italics with multiple exclamation marks after it!!!! She reacts badly to this, as you would.

See her pain? This scene made me wish I was watching Poltergeist. You know, the bit with the crawling steak, and the maggots, and the torn-up face. That was proper horror. The trouble with this scene is that a fairly important moment happens before this one. Morrissey decides Swank is probably feeling lonesome tonight. Cue much rutting, though at least this time we don’t have to witness Morrissey’s twitching buttocks and neck-harness enhanced O-face, a la BI2:RA. Despite this wonderful omission, the scene is filmed in such a way that you can’t tell if it’s actually happening, or if it is, is Swank in control of herself?

(I don’t have a screen capture of the sex scene, for decency’s sake, but I do have a picture of Idris Elba, topless. You can’t see his back, which has a huge tattoo on it. He’s a Christian in the movie, so I guess the tattoo is probably Jesus, but I was convinced it was Bob Marley. Hopkins has lit the scene so badly you can’t tell what’s going on. This is nothing new.)

Re: Swank’s possible loss of control, I don’t mean, “Phwoar, I’d do Morrissey as well, cor!” Until that moment she appears to be a hard-headed woman, but suddenly she’s all swoopy hair and sweaty back with the potato man. If you know what happens at the end (hint: it involves evil pregnancy, as lots of bibli-horror movies do), this dramatic plot-swerve comes across as obviously paving the way for the big reveal, and if you don’t know the ending it’s needlessly creepy and unerotic, perhaps not as much as the rape scene in Rosemary’s Baby, but similar in tone if not extent. Either way, it’s ambiguous, because as soon as that ends, she’s in the kitchen, and things are going bump, and the ghostly mysterious child returns, and then she’s in the Sudan. Was the sex a dream a la Rosemary’s Baby? Or is Stephen Hopkins a really shitty director with an appallingly bad track record? Oh, I answered my own question there. Never mind.

By this time there are more plagues, including a lice infestation among the children. This spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E for our intrepid scientists, and B-O-R-E-D-O-M for the audience. A series of plagues hitting a small Louisiana town should be fun, right? Well, perhaps it’s the presence of Hopkins behind the camera, or budgetary constraints (it’s made by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis’ medium budget horror factory Dark Castle), or maybe plagues just ain’t what they used to be, but it goes nowhere real fast. We ended up entertaining ourselves by inventing alternate endings. Our favourite involved the Lice King, who lives in the sewers and send his lice soldiers out to rummage around in hair. Here is Canyon’s sketch of the mighty and fearsome Lice King:



And yes, that ending would have been better. At around this point (where we were both surfing the net or washing the dishes in terror), Stephen Rea phones Swank to blurt out a ton of exposition about an ancient cult that sacrifices every child except its firstborn. Oh my God, more sacrifice! Swank’s backstory has matched up with the A-plot! But what’s this? More exposition tumbles out of Rea, heralding his imminent death, of course. There’s an unnecessarily complicated prophecy involving second born children and a chosen one who will become the Anti-Christ! So it must be the young girl, right? She was a second born. But God doesn’t actually seem to be targeting her. And there’s supposed to be an angel involved. Whuh? That doesn’t make… Oh, look, a big effects sequence involving billions of super-deadly locusts!

Swank regains her faith in about four seconds flat after getting the call from Rea (who then dies, for no real reason), and surmises the mysterious child is going to be killed by her crazy hillbilly family, and while looking for her gets caught up in the 7th plague, known as The Enlocusting. Actually, this is apparently what The Reaping is, perhaps because locusts eat/reap crops, though I doubt they can kill people, which is what they do here. Are they poisonous? Do they fly into your lungs eww? Maybe I missed something from my vantage point in the kitchen. Ignoring our sudden compulsion to switch the movie off and watch A Bug’s Life instead, we stuck around to see, oh teh noes! Idris Elba killed in mysterious circumstances! At an hour and twenty, so I lost the bet with myself. This movie is obviously full of surprises.

Like the first big shock of the finale; it wasn’t just the hillbillies that are evil, it’s the whole damn town! And the kid is not evil, but sent by God to trigger the plagues, or something. And David Morrissey, while not actually being the devil in disguise, might as well be, that pig. And Swank is the angel, because she was once a nun. God unleashes his final horrifying plague; the CGI Fireballing! The townsfolk are rent asunder in a shitload of digital flames, and Morrissey tries to mess with Swank, but God says nuh uh bitch and hits him with all of his fancily rendered wrath. Booyah, potato man! God obviously likes his spuds roasted.

With everyone else in the film now dead, Swank drives off with the holy child, which would have made a tolerable end, but then the child reveals that The Shagging that happened mid-film got Swank pregnant. That virile bastard! Turns out it counts as her second child and his second child, and basically, thanks to the risible rules the movie has written for itself, the kid is the Anti-Christ. All along she was a puppet on a string, and woooo big shock ending. It’s totally superfluous and adds nothing to the movie. In fact, it just complicates matters greatly. Very silly stuff, but of course the film has to portray sex and pregnancy as being the end of the world. That’s what this shit always does.

Needless to say, I hated it. The able cast is wasted utterly, obviously trying desperately to breathe life into a movie edited into flatness in post. I really do have a big problem with the continuing employment of Stephen Hopkins. Again and again he pummels good or indifferent material into empty, momentum-free film-chaff. With The Repeapeninging Hopkins proves yet again he has no idea how to pace a movie or create atmosphere; it’s one of the least effective horror movies I’ve ever seen. Nothing in it works, which is surprising as it borrows plots from far better movies: Rosemary’s Baby, Exorcist III, The Seventh Sign, etc. Yes, the script (which he is not responsible for) is horribly derivative and silly without his help, but that doesn’t change the fact that everything he touches turns to grey paste. Only the first season of 24 and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers rise above his usual level, and they’re for TV. Perhaps he should stay there.

Right, I’m in the middle of inventing a hugely complicated scoring system to see which Fightbot will triumph in this Face/Off, but until then, see how many Elvis references you can find in this post. It should give me time to work out my film algebra.

Movie Face/Off! Biblical Horror Edition (Round One)

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In a not-really-very-odd coincidence, over the past couple of weeks we watched both The Omen remake and The Reaping, two low-wattage horror movies tapping into the religious paranoia fad currently sweeping the world. Of course, this being the real world, that semi-coincidence did not signal the imminent birth of the Anti-Christ, or bring about a series of plagues that range in severity from mildly inconvenient to just plain deadly. Which is good, I guess. However, it begs the question, if The All-New-No-Actually-Pretty-Much-The-Same-Omen and The Swankening were downloaded into the bodies of giant robots and then sent to battle it out inside an enormous futuristic arena, which flavour of film-inspired Fightbot would triumph?

The original Omen isn’t that great a movie, but it is a lot of fun, and was directed with an entertaining OTT conviction by Richard Donner. The remake, on the other hand, is utterly flavourless and pointless. Other than the rubbernecking attraction of seeing Mia Farrow play a crazy nanny (she’s very convincing), there is nothing to recommend. It doesn’t help that it features the two most adenoidal actors on the big screen, Liev Schrieber and David Thewlis. Their scenes together sounded less like exposition-heavy blithering about Revelations and more like two adjacent hornet’s nests exchanging hostilities.


I’m not a fan of either actor, finding them to be deeply unwatchable, what with their numerous acting tics, relentless nasality, and humourless approach to their craft (though Schreiber did a lot to erase that image with a brilliant appearance on Conan O’Brien taking the piss out of Studio 60. I’d link to it but Satan himself took it off YouTube). The film also erased any good will The Bourne Ultimatum had generated towards Julia Stiles. Perhaps that’s a little harsh. After all, it can’t be much fun playing that most unpleasantly misogynistic of bibli-horror staples; the mother whose womb and maternal instincts are used as a battleground and weapon in the war between God and the Devil. Still, like Schreiber and Thewlis, she looks like she’s counting the money in her head for long periods.


However, it’s all well and good seeing actors you don’t give a crap about turning up in dreary biblical horror movies, but when it’s someone who you think is an acting hero, i.e. Michael Gambon, it gets less funny. Thankfully he’s only in one scene, as the memorably named Bugenhagen. The name is whispered dramatically throughout the movie, usually by deformed or insane priests, often during thunderstorms. The dramatic effect this should achieve is undermined by the fact that Bugenhagen sounds like the creator of a popular ice-cream brand. Gambon gives it his all, bellowing various expositionary ravings with a conviction the movie doesn’t deserve.

It was also a shame to see Pete Postlethwaite turn up as a priest who tries to encourage Schreiber to kill his kid. Quick pointer; telling someone their adopted child is borne of a jackal is a quick way to alienate them. I mean, I assume so. It’s not like I’ve ever done it. Second thing to remember; if the hounds of Hell and all of Satan’s minions are trying to stop you from killing Damien the demon child and will use the weather, twisted probability, and various possessed animals to do it, get to the point. Starting conversations with such information-lite ravings as, “When the Jews return to Zion, and a comet fills the sky, and the holy Roman Empire rises, then you and I must die. From the eternal sea he rises, creating armies on either shore, turning man against his brother, until man exists no more,” just obscures the important facts. A simple, “Kill your jackal child with a bunch of daggers owned by Fred Bugenhagen of Megiddo City or we’re all screwed,” should suffice.


The most frustrating thing about it is that, as has been commented upon by many, the film was rushed out to capitalise on the date 6.06.06. Knowing that, and sadly without the ability to verify this, I was unable to determine any difference between David Seltzer’s script for the new movie and the original. Is it the same movie with contemporary references? It certainly seems like it, with only a couple of the death sequences altered, seemingly just to punch them up. Patrick Troughton got impaled by a church spire in the original, but Pete Postlethwaite gets impaled to the power of eleventy by a church spire and multiple shards of stained glass. A damaged sign swings down and clips off Thewlis’ head in a shot that is probably less dramatic than David Warner’s outrageous death by sheet-of-glass, but is maybe a touch more elegant, if you can call demonically-inspired decapitation powered by mystical contrivance elegant. Whatever. It was the only moment of the film that entertained me, and not just because it meant no more Thewlis, so it gets bonus points.

But I cruelly take those points away for the worst crime in modern cinema; misuse of London landmarks! It’s a stupid thing to be pissed about, and I’m sure it happens in movies set in all the major cities, but having the US Embassy downriver from the London Eye is nonsense. Plus, where is the Saatchi Gallery? And the Aquarium? And the Royal Festival Hall? There is nothing. Just a landmark digitally patched into the background. Later, there are several scenes with Stiles and Schreiber driving miles out of London to get to their enormous estate, and yet over the tops of the trees you can still see the Eye. Perhaps it’s possessed by Satan, and is following them around. In the final breathlessly boring chase sequence you can see Czech signs on shops in the city centre. I know the movie is a half-hearted, cynical exercise in cashing in on a frigging date, of all things, but surely someone somewhere could have made a bit of effort. I guess if effort’s what you want, director John Moore is not your man.

So, in a Face/Off between this and The Reapening, surely the latter will triumph. Have I ruined the suspense by slating this movie so badly? Well, anyone who has seen Swank battle evil plagues with little more than science and not-science will know it’s probably going to be a photo finish.