Blogorium Review: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

 I find interesting parallels between Rodman Flender's Conan O'Brien Can't Stop and Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here; both films are ostensibly about a man who made his career entertaining people, and is taken away from that life (both, one could argue, by choice) and opts to start anew. Conan O'Brien and Joaquin Phoenix relaunch themselves as live performers, mixing stage appearances with musical sets, and the strain of that reinvention wears on them and their assistants. The difference is that Affleck presented his fictitious film about "Joaquin Phoenix" as a documentary and Rodman Flender is documenting what happened to Conan O'Brien after NBC famously bought out his contract and placed Jay Leno back into the hosting spot for The Tonight Show.

 O'Brien, feeling the void of not performing for the first time in twenty five years, elects to put together a stage show called The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, a play on his contractual agreement not to appear anywhere for five months. He brings together most of his backing band (notably minus Max Weinberg), hires two Coquettes (Fredericka Meek and Rachel Hollingsworth) to perform as his back up singers, his writers, assistant, and Andy Richter to take their show on the road for 44 dates.

 The title is more than appropriate for the film: O'Brien cannot stop performing and interacting with the public. During a show, O'Brien works out a skit with surprise guests Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, and in Seattle he invites Eddie Vedder onstage to sing "Baba O'Reilly." After he begs not to do anything for his two days off, O'Brien goes to his 25th Reunion at Harvard, band in tow, and decides to perform "Rock This Town" for the talent show. The following day, after a red-eye bus drive to Tennessee for Bonaroo, instead of kicking back, Conan opts to have a secret fan show at Jack White's studio and performs another full set before heading to the festival, playing the Comedy Tent with no air conditioning and 95% humidity. And before it's all over, O'Brien discovers he's been booked to introduce every act the next day, much to his chagrin.

Every show seems to include backstage time with the public, and O'Brien obliges with a smile. He greets every fan he meets, regardless of how exhausted he is after shows; his dressing room door is always open and he constantly gets up to take pictures with family members of the band or the Coquettes, even when it's clear that all Conan wants to do is rest his voice and call it a night. When a lone fan is outside one of the venues and O'Brien can't leave, he asks his assistant to bring up the photo his fan is holding so that he can sign it. While in Toronto, he mingles with three teenagers who drove sixty hours to make it to the show, and helps one of them get in without a government issued I.D., even after the kid makes a questionably Anti-Semitic remark. While at a truck stop outside of Boston, he gets out of the bus, talks to some women stopping for gas, and then hangs out with three more ladies who want to pray with him. All the while, he keeps up positive spirits, never letting the frustration of the NBC situation show in front of his supporters.

 Don't think that everything is sunshine and roses, however; Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is a "warts and all" documentary. It's clear early in the film that it does bother him, and the anger O'Brien admits to feeling tends to bubble over during meetings with his writers, manager and assistant, who bear the brunt of his sarcastic jabs, some of which border on insults. While O'Brien is consistently testing out jokes, insisting that his team is only allowed to speak while using a banana as a phone irks some of them, and his perfectionist attitude (and self doubt) tend to turn joke sessions into sometimes bitter exchanges.

 For the most part, it never reaches into a mean-spirited tone, save for one moment when Jon Hamm and Jack McBrayer come to visit Conan backstage in Los Angeles, and O'Brien unleashes a litany of "hick" jokes at the 30 Rock star that go over the line. It's clear the McBrayer is trying to have a sense of humor about Conan's wisecracks, insults, and at one point, a song, but his expression eventually turns from politely bemused to irritated with the barrage of demeaning comments. I have a hard time believing this was just a "bit," considering how much of Conan's comedy comes from a very dark place in the film, but it was the only genuinely uncomfortable moment in the film.

While he tries to avoid directly talking about Jay Leno or NBC for most of the proceedings, Conan does let one slip when a pizzeria attaches two articles about O'Brien on the boxes. He pretends the note is a telegram from Leno, which closes with "P.S. What is it like to have a soul?" that elicits laughter from his team, but underscores the dark side we see fleeting glimpses of in the film. There's also a pot-shot taken at TBS, the network he'd eventually sign with, when he derisively responds to their meeting with "when is the meeting with Oxygen? I have plans for Animal Planet."

  Despite the NBC shaped cloud that hovers over everything that happens, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is a very funny documentary / performance film, one that accentuates everything that Team Coco already liked about Conan while also giving us insight into the man behind the personality. While I was reminded at times of I'm Still Here, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is almost never uncomfortable in the same way, and feels more authentic than the "reality" Affleck and Phoenix presented under false pretenses. The humanizing element, complete with corny jokes and griping adds depth to smaller moments, like an impromptu version of The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" in the Harvard dressing room. For O'Brien fans, this is an absolute "must-see," as someone who missed the tour, you'll see most of the show during the film. If you're curious about the whole Tonight Show situation, this might not reveal much, but I still think Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is well worth your time.

Retro Double Feature Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman Returns

 This is a true story of one of the coolest (and when you think about the age-to-film relationship, strangest) double features I've ever been privy to in theatres. The only other double feature that springs to mind in the same ballpark is Death to Smoochy and Panic Room, and considering I saw them as a young adult, the edge still goes to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman Returns.

 Here's the brief back story: My parents were going to a dinner party or... something. I'm not really sure, but it was the kind of social function that a 13 year old and his 11-going-on-12 year old brother would stick out at. They decided it was best to take us to Waverly Place, home of a multiplex that's not a gym, buy tickets for two movies playing in close proximity to each other, and let us walk from one screen to the other between them.

 Why Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman Returns? Well, there's a good chance we'd already seen Batman Returns when it opened, so they figured we'd be okay watching it again. We both liked Batman, after all, so that one made sense. Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Okay, I don't really know. Maybe the PG13 didn't worry them too much, maybe the comedy looked fairly innocent - I mean, it's a Valley Girl who learns she's the next in a long line of vampire killers. It had Luke Perry and Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens. And Rutger Hauer - I mean, we'd already seen Blade Runner, even if we didn't understand it, so we knew most of these actors. It was a comedy about vampires, and the other options at the time were Universal Soldier, Mom and Dad Save the World, Boomerang, A League of Their Own, and Cool World*. Maybe the times just lined up right.

 This is going to sound odd, but I don't blame my reticence on watching the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the movie of the same name. I actually like the movie, or at least with the last time I saw it all the way through, which was probably ten years ago. Maybe it doesn't hold up, and maybe (okay, almost certainly) the series aged better than the film, considering it's Joss Whedon's unfiltered version of the Buffy mythos. Still, I have a fond place in my heart for the goofy charm of Kristy Swanson fighting Rutger Hauer at the prom, or of Paul Reubens losing his arm and his prolonged death scene (which extends beyond the credits).

 Whedon fans are well aware that Fran Rabel Kuzui and Donald Sutherland did some serious tinkering with his original screenplay, taking the story less seriously (or at least, overplaying the "tongue in cheek" aspects). The series was designed to reset perceptions about Joss Whedon's character, and it seems like the movie now has a bum rap (it has a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.3 rating on IMDB). I enjoyed it enough in the theatres that there's a copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer around here somewhere on VHS, and now I want to watch the film again...

 At the end of Buffy, we walked across the lobby and waited for Batman Returns to start. Since it came out almost a month before, we must have seen the film before, but I honestly can't remember what the reaction to seeing it a second time was. Instead, I frequently drift instead to The Nightmare Before Christmas, a movie we was in the same auditorium a year and change later**.


 I really had to think carefully about Batman Returns, because while I know that was the movie we walked across the lobby to go see, it just didn't make sense. My lingering sensation of Batman Returns is that it's a Christmas movie - that's when the film is set, Burton adopts his muted visual palette to include snow caked Gotham City and transitions the visuals to match the frigid tone of the film. Yes, Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) is sexually charged, and the Penguin (Danny DeVito) is appropriately animalistic, but after Batman Returns begins on a Charles Addams inspired pre-credits sequence with the Cobblepot family (Paul Reubens and Diane Salinger), the film takes a persistent, emotionally frozen turn that bothered audiences.

 This is all the more surprising because Batman Returns was released in June of 1992, in the middle of the "Summer Season," where it seems the least appropriate. I genuinely had difficulty reconciling my memories of Batman Returns as a movie (tonally, at least) with when I saw it on the big screen. It didn't seem possible that Warner Brothers would want to release a "winter" movie in the summer, but they did. Batman Begins makes sense, as does The Dark Knight, which are movies piping with steam or basked in sunlight. Even the cartoonish Batman & Robin, with Mr. Freeze as the villain, feels more appropriate to release in June than Batman Returns.

 Speaking of appropriate, I mentioned in my Army of Darkness Retro Review that there was a semi-stringent policy about what the young Cap'n could and could not see during my teenage years (Army of Darkness and The Crow: "no", Pulp Fiction: "yes"), but having seen both films now over the years, Batman Returns is thematically more "adult" in tone than the exaggerated Army of Darkness. It's a continuation of themes of disfigurement, abandonment, and psychosis from Batman, and one could argue as "dark" as the ending of Edward Scissorhands, which I also saw at a young age. One might argue that in the late 80s and early 90s, what was considered "family friendly" was a little more lenient in terms of violence and disturbing content, which might explain the eccentricities of people around my age.

 Either way, I still watch Batman Returns, still enjoy it more than any of the other cinematic iterations until The Dark Knight, and also plan on watching it again soon. In fact, I might stage a "double feature" event for both films so that everyone can enjoy the "related by Paul Reubens, mostly" pair. Let's pencil that in sometime soon, shall we?


* By the way, I'd say by 1993 we'd seen all of those movies, save for Boomerang and probably Cool World. We saw A League of Their Own at Mission Valley. I'm pretty sure I didn't see Cool World until high school, and to be honest I sort of wish I had never seen it.
** Which is, by the way, how that the film was much more kid-friendly and less frightening than I hoped it would be. Once I moved past that initial disappointment, I was and remain a huge fan of Tim Burton and Henry Selick's stop motion masterpiece.

Summer Fest Supplemental: Evil Laugh

  When one thinks about horror films that classify as "80s Cheese," one considers Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and The Slumber Party Massacre Part 2, which doesn't get much more quintessentially hairspray and lip gloss than a killer with a drill inside his electric guitar. I would like to formally submit 1988's* Evil Laugh to that pantheon of cheesetastic horror films. It fails to do what it sets out to, but is at the same time a must-see for fans of goofy slasher flicks.

 Jerry (Gary Hays) is a doctor engaged to Connie (Kim McKamy, also known as porn star Ashlyn Gere), and the two of them are planning on renovating an abandoned Foster Home - with a horrible secret! - in order to give it a fresh start. Jerry and Connie invite their medical school interns up to the house to help clean it up. There's Barney (Jerold Pearson), the weirdo who's way into horror movies; meatheads Mark (Myles O'Brian)  and Johnny (co-writer and brother of Scott, Stephen Baio), rich jerks Sammy (Tony Griffin) and Betty (Karyn O'Bryan), as well as airhead Tina (Jody Gibson); none of whom seem like they ever have been or will be in the medical profession (just my unqualified opinion, but if these clowns are in Med School, then I'm glad I don't have the insurance to go to their practices). Anyway, a strange killer with a doofy laugh (or is it an EVIL laugh... see what I did there?) is killing off anyone in or around the house, so can this group of unappealing jerks clean up and have some make out time before it's too late for them?

 There's not a single moment in Evil Laugh that works: it's a horror movie that isn't scary, it's a comedy that isn't funny. Every time Dominick Brascia and Steven Baio try to go for scares (or laughs) they fail miserably: the explanation of why the Foster Home was shut down is intercut with some lame comedy involving landlord Mr. Burns (Howard Weiss) and his wife (Susan Grant), as well as the unsexiest bondage scene you'll ever bear witness to. There's a lengthy scene involving Chief Cash (Hal Shafer) and his not-really-Deptuy Freddy (Johnny Venocur) that seems to exist just to add two more victims. They botch a "microwave to the head" kill, fudge a "character that knows horror movies explains why another character shouldn't have sex" scene**, and they can't even rip-off Friday the 13th correctly at the climax of the film.

On the other hand, Evil Laugh is constantly laugh out loud funny for purely unintentional reasons.Early in the film, for reasons I like to ascribe to as the "if the audience can't see it, neither can the character" camera angle, Johnny decides to pee off of a hill, and ends up urinating all over a biker and his girlfriend. The biker and his girlfriend never figure into the film again, but the moment is so pointless that I began chuckling in disbelief. More than one time during Evil Laugh I found myself asking aloud "is this a real movie? Am I actually watching this, or is it some kind of prank?"

 And then there's the sexually ambiguous Barney, who cuts a hole in Mark and Tina's bed so he can rub Mark's ass and disrupt the sex scene. There's a montage of dusting, dancing, and ass shaking, but because it isn't fair to just to involve the girls before you know it the camera is focused on Johnny, Mark, and Sammy's behinds too. When you find out who the killer is, if anyone bothered thinking about the movie at all, it wouldn't make sense that said person could kill Chief Cash and Freddy in one scene and be somewhere else in the next.

 But that's the charm of Evil Laugh; despite the fact that nothing works, everything evens out because so many odd choices on the part of Baio and Brascia compound on one another, providing and experience wholly beyond whatever it was they had in mind. Don't take my word for it; watch it yourself, in its entirety (and for free) on YouTube. It's the perfect "party movie," because you can wander off if you want, but when someone comes in and says "wait... did that really just happen?" you'll be able to say "yeah, that's Evil Laugh for you." Everybody wins!


* According to the end credits, it's actually 1986, which explains why it feels like a film from earlier in the decade.
** By the way, you'll see a lot of coverage about Scream that claims no slasher film acknowledged other slasher films before 1996, but even as a BAD example, Evil Laugh openly addresses Halloween and Friday the 13th by name, as well as prominently displaying Barney's interest in Fangoria.

Summer Fest Supplemental: Mortuary

 I've long wanted to check out Mortuary because of its fantastic trailer. It doesn't tell you much of anything, features no footage from the film, but is short, memorable, and promises a properly spooky film:



 Going into the film, I wasn't sure what to expect based on the trailer, but I guess it wasn't roller skating or people quacking like ducks. The trailer may be misleading (okay, it's blatantly misleading about the actual film), but Mortuary actually has plenty going for it in its own right.

 After Christy (Mary McDonough)'s father , Dr. Parson (Danny Rogers) dies in a pool related "accident," she's prone to nightmares and spells of sleepwalking. Her boyfriend Greg (David Wallace) and his pal Josh (Denis Mandel) are dropping by the warehouse of a mortuary Josh used to work for, when they discover the mortician, Harry Andrews (Christopher George) holding a seance with a woman that appears to be Christy's mother (Linda Day George). The guys are separated, and just as Josh finds what appears to be the body of Mrs. Andrews, he's killed by a mysterious figure in a cape. Greg arrives in time to see someone speeding off in his van, and he and Christy set off to discover what happened to her father, Josh, and what the behind all of these clandestine activities. Is Christy losing her mind? Are Mrs. Parson and Mr. Andrews scheming behind her back? And who is the stranger terrorizing them in the night?

 Mortuary is a pretty straight forward mystery with some clever twists and turns. After a slasher-like set up, the film shifts between Greg's attempts to find Josh and Christy's delicate grip on reality. Is she really being followed at night, or are they part of her walking nightmares? Did Josh really leave to join the Navy (okay, no; we see him die), or is Mr. Andrews colluding with the Sheriff (Bill Conklin) to railroad Greg? And what about Paul Andrews (Bill Paxton), Harry's well-meaning, if slightly loopy son? He has a crush on Christy, but his innocent flirtation and awkward social stylings don't seem to be doing him any favors.

 Even if you've already figured out who the killer is (and it won't be hard about an hour in when they pretty much tell you), Mortuary finds other ways to misdirect you and keep you invested in the mystery for 87 minutes. Just when you think you have it figured out, a revelation shifts your perspective on motives and leads you in a different direction, which I always appreciate. It offsets the slow chase scenes and overlong game of cat-and-mouse towards the end. At the risk of spoiling too much, I'll say the ending is an interesting variation on Psycho, but with a final shot that you might not see coming, even though they set it up briefly.

 I'd like to highlight a young Bill Paxton, who nearly steals the show as the awkward Paul Andrews, a guy who doesn't know much about other people but is an ace around the dead. He's endearing, a little off-putting, and just "off" enough to keep you watching, even when the pace gets a bit sluggish.

 Was I a little disappointed that Mortuary isn't at all like its trailer? Well, yeah. It wasn't the movie I was hoping to see; the one I was promised. On the other hand, Mortuary is still a fun movie from the early 1980s with a more sophisticated plot than many of its contemporaries. The gore is sparing, the body count not high, and the gratudity is pretty limited for 1983, but what is there makes sense in the story. While not exactly what I wanted, I'm happy to say that Mortuary still delivers in its own way.

Summer Fest Supplemental: Ack!

 Oh my, Summer Fest visitors, how the day has gotten away from the Cap'n. Work does that, and I just haven't had the time to build up a proper backlog of reviews, but if I can squeeze it in tonight, I'll get you a movie review and then try to get some more content up tomorrow after my shift ends.

 In the meantime, might I suggest a few reviews from earlier this year of films that have a place at any Summer or Horror Fest:

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

The Boogens

Pontypool

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Cabin Fever

George Romero's "Dead" Saga: Night of the Living Dead

Dawn of the Dead

Day, Land, Diary, and Survival of the Dead


 Okay, I'll see what I can get you before bed time. Until then!

Summer Fest Supplemental: Counterpoint from a Saw Fan

 Welcome back to more virtual Summer Fest coverage. To close out day one, guest blogger Professor Murder answered my request for a Saw fan to explain to me what they found interesting in the films. While I gave Saw 3-D a shot, I didn't find it worthwhile, and the Professor has been kind enough to provide a counter view, based on points I made in the review. I'll hand it over to the Prof.

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If you are going into the “Saw” movies determined not to like them, to find them predictable or formulaic, they will never win you over; they are predictable and formulaic. I, and quite a few others that I know, actually enjoy them for exactly these reasons. They are dumb. They are the “Police Academy” of schlocky gore-fests. I will address several points from the blogorium review. I'm not trying to convince anyone to like them here, I will never be able to do that just as no one will never convince me that I don't enjoy them immensely. I also don't care what the filmmakers intentions were... the movies seem to take themselves very seriously, which is exactly why I don't feel the need to.

“...not only was it really, really easy to pick up on plot developments in the three-and-a-half films I skipped...”

Part of the fun of the later Saw sequels is the revisionist-history flashbacks where, in the later sequels, upwards of 10% of the movie will be flashbacks that have a ham-handed extra shot tacked on to the end showing that Hoffman apparently was there the whole time. It's dumb and funny. They are designed so a four year old (with really cool parents) could come in at any point in the series and know what's going on.

“Saw 3D makes the critical mistake of being more interested in the cat-and-mouse games between Hoffman and the police than the grand guignol murder set-pieces, so to justify the film's existence for gore obsessed fans and the extra five bucks for 3D glasses, Greutert and the writers shoehorn in some more mostly unrelated "games" with characters that have no bearing on the story itself.”

This is not new to the later Saw sequels. The dumb, poorly planned storyline has always been balanced with random people who barely BARELY fit in anywhere in the story. It almost gives the stories a made-for-TV feel which just adds to the schlock.

“I don't know whether to blame Greutert, Melton, Dunstan or the actors for the terrible dialogue...”

Anyone who knows me knows that I find “terrible dialogue” very enjoyable if the writers were sincerely trying to write something poignant. The Saw movies are so melodramatic you can't help but chuckle.

Fourth:

“... the film opens with a kill that has nothing to do with the story, but exists to keep the bored gorehounds that flock to see these films drunk with bloodlust so that writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (Feast, The Collector) can dither around with the plot until the next bloody set-piece.”

Exactly! What's the problem? Besides, I enjoy the “plot dithering.” It is exactly this poor planning and discontinuity in production staff that have lead to each movie revising the events of the previous movies... which I have already stated is one of my favorite things about the series. The things I like most about these movies are consequences of their shittiness and anything they did that was half baked only served to increse their appeal to me.

We could continue ad infinitum with this ping-pong game of point-counterpoint. It seems like everything the Cap'n dislikes about these movies, I like. The fact is that if you want to like the movies, you will; if you don't you won't. I'm not even trying to make a case that the movies are defensible. From the Cap'n's perspective, they are bad, and not enjoyable. From my perspective, they are bad and very enjoyable; I love terrible movies... I have always loved terrible movies. I can't really defend my enjoyment of the Saw movies, but I do enjoy them

Summer Fest Supplemental: Quarantine 2 - Terminal

 My initial enjoyment of 2009's Quarantine diminished rapidly after seeing [REC], the film it remade almost shot for shot. Quarantine wasn't necessarily bad, it was just unnecessary. Find a way to dub [REC] if people really have such a hang up with subtitles, but if you're going to just make an English version that's otherwise identical, then please don't cast recognizable actors from Dexter, Snatch, and Ally McBeal. It really diminishes the whole "found footage" concept when you can say "hey, I know ____ from that show!" I had trepidations when I found out that Quarantine 2 was on its way; there was no reason to assume it would be anything other than a direct remake of [REC]2, which was an audacious one-up of the first film.

 The Good News -  Quarantine 2: Terminal is not a remake of [REC]2. It's not even attempting to be the same kind of movie, down to the fact that it's not a "found footage" subgenre entry. While it finds ways to shoehorn some of those tropes in (more on that later), Quarantine 2: Terminal is its own film, not attempting to copy the narrative of Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's sequel.

 The Bad News - Quarantine 2: Terminal is an average (at best) continuation of the first Quarantine, opting to make what is basically the same film in a different location. In this case, instead of an apartment complex, it's an airport terminal that was shut down for security reasons. Instead of vaguely relatable characters, the film is populated with stock character "types":

 There are the two stewardesses (Jenny and, um, the other one), who you can distinguish because one says she's getting married and the other one isn't. There are the two pilots (one is old and the other is bald and sick), there's the Army Medic, the Fat Guy, the Unaccompanied Minor (George), the old couple (one of whom has Parkinson's and can't talk), the Horny Couple, the Asshole Couple, the Cat Lady, the Guy with a Laptop, and the Nice Guy Who Seems Awfully Suspicious Because He's Part of the "Doomsday Cult" Responsible for the Disease.

 Oops, I guess there should have been a (SPOILER) on that last one, but if you can't figure it out as soon as you meet him, then you'll have lots of fun with this movie. Anyone else is going to notice right away who seems the most suspicious when his "hamster" bites the Fat Guy and then everyone gets sick. Eventually the movie adds a Boarding Technician and some CDC agents, so that we have someone who knows the building and some more people to kill. Again, my apologies for the lack of (SPOILER) alert there.

The film attempts to connect to Quarantine with some news footage of the apartment building, and then a cursory explanation from a CDC Agent about why the terminal has also been quarantined, and then that whole "Doomsday Cult" thing. This part is where I was probably the most disappointed, because I really liked how [REC]2 took a simple infection plot line and took it in the craziest possible direction. Quarantine 2 settles for being a watered down version of 12 Monkeys, right down to what the bad guy is planning to do to help spread the man-made disease. Putting a human face on the problem works against what did make Quarantine (and for that matter [REC]) work. We don't need some speech about how "the world needs a good plague" when I already have a far more batshit explanation from a better movie.

 (I won't spoil [REC]2 for you because I really think you should find out for yourself where the virus comes from and why, so watch [REC] and [REC]2 as a double feature when the second film hits DVD shelves soon. They're both great movies and you'll have much more fun than you would with Quarantine and Quarantine 2: Terminal)


 Quarantine 2: Terminal isn't awful, per se, but there's nothing original about the film. If you've seen [REC], Quarantine, or even the SyFy Channel's Terminal Invasion, there's absolutely nothing about this film that's going to surprise you or put you in a state of suspense. The gore is okay, the acting is uniformly terrible, and the plot is predictable to the last shot. It's a competent, if derivative film, one that has a rough start, finds its footing, and then quickly decides just to be a remake of Quarantine. The difference this time is that instead of changing the language, they change the location.
 It's nice to know that director John Pogue (who wrote The Skulls and Ghost Ship) takes an already poorly lit terminal and further renders any sense of geography pointless. Not only did I have no idea where most of the stock characters were at any point, but there was little sense of tension anywhere outside of the airplane. Quarantine at least gave you a clear idea of the layout of the apartment building, of where things were and where the characters were going in relation to each other. When it isn't painfully obvious what's going to happen to characters or they're simply behaving in a manner contradictory to what they just said, it's almost impossible to see what's happening until Pogue gives up and pulls a page out of the [REC] / Quarantine playbook: night vision goggles.

 The play is one of desperation, because since Quarantine 2 isn't a "found footage" movie, there's no point previously in the film where the camera is subjective for more than one shot. When Pogue switchs to Jenny (and later George)'s night vision POV shots, and then back to a third person camera shot, one can't help but feel like the director is cheating in order to milk the tension for as long a possible. It's also really just there for the final shot, which moves the film from being 12 Monkeys-lite to being 28 Weeks Later-lite, and promising a Quarantine 3: Vegas that I can't say I'm all that interested in after the second film.

 So I guess the bad news kind of outweighs the good news. I mean, it's not exactly a remake. Well, it is, but not in the way I was expecting it to be. Having seen Quarantine 2: Terminal, I kinda wish it had been a remake of [REC]2, because I'd love to see an American horror film be willing to go crazy, even if it was the same crazy I'd already seen. At least that'd be something worth watching. As it is, Terminal isn't going to be of much interest to fans of the originals, or even fans of Quarantine. People who haven't seen the first one certainly aren't going to be lining up to check this out, so I don't know who that leaves.

Summer Fest Supplemental: Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors

 I thought I'd start our virtual version of Summer Fest with a love letter of sorts to horror film. Many of you may not know this, but 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the VHS release of Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors, a sixty minute documentary about the first ever Fangoria convention. Held in 1985, the first Weekend of Horrors was a gathering point in Los Angeles for horror enthusiasts, short film makers, and aspiring make up effects artists. Unlike UnConventional, a film I reviewed last year, the Weekend of Horrors doesn't feel sleazy or exploitative, despite promoting Fangoria throughout (it's co-director, Kerry O'Quinn, is actually the creator of Fangoria, along with Starlog).

 Compared to 2004's Unconventional, Weekend of Horrors feels relatively quaint: the enthusiasm of the fans is infectious, with many effusively gushing about their favorite monsters and why they're attracted to horror films. While there are merchandise tables - the site of a surprise appearance by Star Trek's Walter Koenig, wandering around the convention with his son - most of the tables that appear in the film are designed to showcase amateur makeup, monster, and effects work by fans of the genre.


 Like UnConventional, there is also an auction and a costume contest, but the costumes are all homemade and shall we say, less slutty. Instead of auctioning off Tiffany Shepis' underwear, the Fangoria fans bid on a shooting script for John Carpenter's Halloween, and judging by how little other items were going for, I'd be willing to bet someone went home with it on less than twenty dollars.

The main attraction of Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors is the guests of the convention, who range from Wes Craven and Robert Englund (there to support A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Craven-less Part 2: Freddy's Revenge) to a beardless Rick Baker, who brought along some ape effects from Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan. Tom Savini appears briefly during a montage; Elvira answers questions from the audience (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was apparently the worst Movie Macabre film she ever aired); John Carl Buechler does a Q&A for Troll; Steve Miner and William Katt talk about House; Dan O'Bannon talks about Return of the Living Dead; Tobe Hooper appears to talk a bit about his films but also to preside over the Cinemagic Short Film Search Festival, where fans are awarded for their 8 and 16mm films.

With a magazine like Fangoria behind the event, it's no surprise that the emphasis is on special effects makeup, and many of the montages are devoted to masks from films like Friday the 13th and Creepshow (as well as a certain monster Tales from the Darkside fans will recognize immediately). Makeup effects artist Craig Reardon (Altered States, Poltergeist) gives People Magazine reporter Tony Lawrence a quick monster makeover in time for the costume contest. Special attention should also be given to Nora Salisbury, a fan who made her own Freddy Kreuger costume (with full head piece and glove) that's pretty impressive.

 For a sixty minute film, Weekend of Horrors does at time lean too heavily on scenes from films mentioned by guests (I still don't understand why the entire trailer for The Toxic Avenger needs to be there) and it takes a curious detour into promotional territory when Tobe Hooper finishes with the short film competition and begins talking about his remake of Invaders from Mars. There's a lengthy section devoted to behind the scenes footage, which does admittedly find a way to include Stan Winston in the film, but it's a jarring shift in the movie that sticks out when O'Quinn and Mike Hadley cut back to Dick Miller. Why this breaks up the previous montage, which includes interviews with Clu Gulager (Return of the Living Dead, Feast), producer Alex Gordon (Voodoo Woman, The Atomic Submarine), and composer Albert Glasser (The Cyclops, The Amazing Colossal Man), who talk, in part, about Roger Corman, is unclear.

 There's a bit of a "home movie" feel to Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors, but in a good way; it feels like a tape made to share the good time had by people there instead of a document of the lurid side of horror conventions (okay, I'll stop beating up on UnConventional), and I have to say it sure seemed like a great place to be in the summer(?) of 1985. People came from all around the country to share their enthusiasm for horror films, to show off what they could do, and to meet their heroes. I give O'Quinn and Hadley a lot of credit for conveying that sense of joy in such a concise package, and this is a great kick-off to Summer Fest!

 I'll be back a little bit later with a review of Quarantine 2: Terminal. Until then, stay scared!

A Few Ideas for Your Own Summer Fest!

 Greetings, gang; the Cap'n is working furiously on putting together his own virtual Summer Fest - in the absence of a real one - and coordinating with a few regular readers to contribute reviews of their own. I want everybody to be able to join in this year, in their own way. Below you'll find a list of a few possible "themes" you can mix and match from. Watch one, watch two, watch them all! If you feel like you want to add something to the conversation, send me a comment or email and I'll spotlight you in your own "Guest Blogger" post.

 Here are a few possibilities:

 Summer Camp Gone Awry
 Friday the 13th
 The Burning
 Sleepaway Camp
 Cheerleader Camp
 Madman

Killbillies
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II
Wrong Turn
Just Before Dawn
The Hills Have Eyes 
The Final Terror

Vintage Schlock-o-rama-rama
Bride of the Monster
Creature from the Haunted Sea
I Was a Teenage Werewolf
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter
Werewolves on Wheels
 

Newer Schlock-o-rama-rama

Slime City Massacre

Street Trash

Class of Nuke 'em High

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers

Wild Zero

It Rocks, Heads Roll

Rockula
Slaughterhouse Rock
Rock 'n Roll Nightmare
Hard Rock Zombies
Black Roses
Phantom of the Paradise

Halloween, The Latter Sequels

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

Halloween H20

Halloween: Resurrection

Remakes That Are Better Than They Should Be
Piranha 3D
The Hills Have Eyes
Dawn of the Dead
The Thing
Halloween II

Horror Spoofs, Good and Bad

Saturday the 14th

The House of Long Shadows

Nightmare Sisters

Repossesed!

April Fool's Day

Slasher Films on VHS
House of Death
Graduation Day
Bloody Birthday
Microwave Massacre
Scared to Death

What the Hell Was That?

Cellar Dweller

Humongous

Mortuary

Dolls

Rubber

 

Animals, Insects, and other Creepy Crawlies
The Uncanny
Bug (1975)
Ratman
The Boogens
Willard 

The New, the Worthwhile

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Husk

Pontypool

Altitude

[REC]

Martyrs

 

Retro Review: Cap'n Howdy's Four Favorite Summer Fest Moments

 After getting the bad news out of the way, let's move on to happier times, shall we? After last year's Horror Fest: A People's History, wherein the Cap'n collected memories from folks who attended the first seven Horror / Summer Fests, I thought that to follow it up with my own favorite moments.

 Summer Fest was always designed to be more on the "fun" side: we'd watch horror comedies, focus less on being scared than being entertained, intentionally or otherwise. The atmosphere at Summer Fest is designed to be looser, less regimented. I like to put a list of movies out there, and adhere to it slightly - that way, you never know what you're going to see on a given night, which gives you incentive to come every day of the fest.

 It's traditionally where we'll try out some kind of new "gimmick": field trips, 3D, guest bloggers, or one of the five moments listed below (that happened after the oral history came into being). They slowly transformed from being all night affairs to include afternoon mini-marathons, as was the case at Summer Fest 3. Listed below, in no particular order, are four memories from Summer Fests 1-3 that stick with me. Many of them are film related, and even the one that isn't directly tied to a movie is an experience I'll never forget (or live down).

4. The First Field Trip - What often gets lost when discussing The Happening's role as our first "field trip" screening was the film that followed it when we got back to The Apartment of Solitude: Plan 9 from Outer Space. The experience of watching The Happening was a jovial one, save for one major issue - the air conditioning was so loud that half of the group couldn't hear the film. While that may sound like a godsend, considering how bad The Happening is, it doesn't help convey just how awful the film is without the wooden line delivery.

 Most of the negative reaction to The Happening comes (I think) from the second time I screened it, during Horror Fest III - it was an unannounced surprise, following the already bad Paul Lynde Halloween Special, and being exposed to something so terrible less than six months later was a bit cruel. That said, I think that during Summer Fest 2, following The Happening with Plan 9 from Outer Space gives you a much better idea of how the Cap'n views M. Night Shyamalan's "B-Movie." The idea was to convey a disasterpiece in its classic and modern forms, and had I not dropped The Happening in out of context four months later, it might not be as infamous as it is now.

 Or not.

 3. Late Nights / Early Mornings - What sticks with me about the first Summer Fest, beyond The Happening, was that it was the last time we consistently watched movies from dusk till dawn. I have vivid memories of being half-awake, watching Shark Attack 3: Megalodon and Friday the 13th Part 2 with Neil and the Cranpire at six in the morning. We'd nod off a little, wake up, nudge each other to catch some unforgettable moment (and there are many in Shark Attack 3), and then try to go on as long as we could before passing out as the sun came up.

 As I get older, it gets harder and harder to stay up all night, and we usually peter out somewhere between two and four a.m., and agree to regroup the following afternoon. During Summer Fest 3, we actually started Saturday at 2 in the afternoon, watching a quadruple feature of Phantasm III, Cheerleader Camp, The Gate, and Thankskilling, then took a dinner break (more on that next) and continued well into the night. Alas, the Cap'n and compatriots aren't as young as we used to be, and no amount of caffeine has been able to alter our curmudgeonly ways. Before too long, I'll be hosting Horror Fest Early Bird Specials, so we can all be in bed by 9. In that respect, it's nice to look back at those barely awake moments of shocks and laughs, aided by sleep deprivation.

 2. The Great McGangbang Experiment - Okay, so I don't think I gave her proper credit at the time, but the Rianimator (and at the time, Dominator) brought the concept of the McGangbang to my attention during Summer Fest 3. They insisted we read an article from Cracked.com about "food for failures," which was so funny that their insistence we try the McDonalds catastrophe seemed like a great idea. There were a handful of intrepid McTaste Testers, and after the matinee feature, we went to get the necessary materials to rock a McGangbang.

 I mentioned this in the original coverage (which has pictures), but the unholy combination of cheeseburger and McChicken sandwich wasn't all that bad. At first. The combination worked, in some illogical way, until your stomach caught wind of what was going on upstairs. Then rebellion began, and with the exception of our intrepid junior Summer Fest attendee, Chris, everyone who finished their McGangbang spent the next two hours in their own personal digestive hell. We had an extra one, thanks to a snafu about who was going to pick them up, but none of the people who arrived after the challenge wanted any part of it, mostly because they could see how miserable we were.

Luckily, iron stomach Chris took the last one home, secretly hoping that we could try the Taco Bell variation some time soon. It's the first food challenge we've ever had at a horror fest (if you don't count trying to drink Bud Light with Clamato or our Wild Irish Rose mixed beverages a challenge), and I don't know if there will ever be another one. If so, it would have a lot to live up to.

 1. Discovery, discovery, discovery - I'm not even sure where to start with this one. My main goal with the Blogorium is to expose people to films they've never heard of or have never considered before. Horror and Summer Fests are an opportunity to move beyond just writing about it and to actually watch those movies with and audience. Sometimes, it may be a film we've seen before that takes on a life of its own (like the Night of the Lepus screening at Summer Fest 1 that became a twenty person version of Mystery Science Theater 3000), but more often it's about films that I've heard of and save for a fest, often without watching them myself. Better still are movies that someone brings to a fest that knock everybody off of their feet.

 I mention Blood Car and Terrorvision a lot on the Blogorium, but would have never known they existed without Neil and Dr. Tom (respectively) bringing them to my attention. That they stand out at their respective fests (Summer Fests 1 and 2) is saying something, considering just how many great movies played those weekends, but it's so. I'd also like to highlight Teeth, The Giant Claw, Fido, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, ThanksKilling, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Drag Me to Hell, and Basket Case, which I hadn't seen to that point. The lost, forgotten, and obscure gems are what keep these festivals interesting to me, or we'd just watch our favorite horror movies over and over again (which we sometimes do).

 In that spirit, if there's a Summer Fest this year, I have many films that I'd never heard of prior to 2011 that should be fun to watch, including The Boogens, Abby, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, Rubber, Bug, and From Hell It Came that should provide hours of enjoyment. I also have ideas for new "theme" nights, although they might be split up over the next few years, devoted to blaxploitation films, animals gone wild films, and marathons based on actors from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who (would you believe that I'm working on finding horror movies for as many of the twelve doctors as I can?).

The Bloodied, 800lb Gorilla in the Room...

 Long time Blogorium readers (in all of its forms) have probably noticed that the Cap'n has been very quiet about something I'm usually hyping like crazy this time of year: Summer Fest. In fact, this week should be the ramp up to Summer Fest 4: Cap'n Howdy vs. Giant Sharktopus, with lots of details about the schedule, where Summer Fest is going to be this year, and the "theme" nights I teased in the spring.

(Newer readers might want to check here for a full history of Summer Fests, coverage of films, and photos of previous horror / comedy marathons)


 The lack of Summer Fest coverage has been the source of some questions, and I'm afraid that the news I have isn't going to ease concerns. Because of work and scheduling issues, Summer Fest 4 isn't happening this weekend. We're going to be missing our 4th of July holiday weekend marathon because I'll be working all of the weekend and can't devote the kind of attention that I'd like to.

 It's a shame, because I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have one of my favorite line-ups ever for this year. What I hope to do is to put off Summer Fest until later into July or August, when things might be a little less crazy. In the meantime, I'll be putting up lists of possible marathons you, the reader, can have at home. If you want to try one out, write up the films you watch, and send them to the Cap'n, I'll be happy to post them as part of Summer Fest coverage.

Stay tuned for some suggestions, and I'll try (on a limited scale) to provide some reviews of horror and horror comedies during the week and over the weekend when possible. I have a stockpile of rare, obscure, and forgotten horror flicks from the 1980s, as well as a handful of titles I've been longing to share on the Blogorium.

What the Hell Week: Sucker Punch

 One of the most overused terms to deride a movie is to call it "masturbatory" - it's a quick and easy way to dismiss the filmmaker for dwelling in their obsessions while ignoring anything else in the movie. I've probably used it before (I can't remember off the top of my head where) and the Cap'n sees it all the time on the internet, where reviews are as numerous as websites devoted to fetishes. Why that comparison? Because as much as I'd like to find anything else to say about Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, invariably I'm left with a list of fetishes on display; PG-13 porn for geeks.

Baby Doll (Emily Browning) and her sister (Frederique De Raucourt) are left alone with their abusive Stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) when their mother dies. While trying to save her sister from the loathsome guardian, Baby Doll accidentally kills her sister and is sent to an asylum. Her Stepfather bribes Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) in order to ensure Baby Doll receives a lobotomy when the Doctor (Jon Hamm) arrives in five days. Under the care of Doctor Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino), Baby Doll imagines the asylum is instead the "Club," where she dances for male clients, as well as other seductive techniques. Baby Doll discovers her dance transfixes men, and she hatches a scheme to escape. In order to find five items needed to be free, Baby Doll enlists the help of fellow dancers / inmates Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung), who assist her in separate fantasy world under the tutelage of the Wise Man (Scott Glenn). Can Baby Doll and the others find the five items and escape before the Doctor / High Roller comes to claim her?

 The Russian doll approach to Snyder's story serves little purpose, because the further removed from the reality of the asylum we get, the less invested we become in the peril for Baby Doll and the other girls. Fights with Giant Samurai wielding Gatling guns or Steampunk German Zombies are devoid of the peril we need to feel because the audience knows this is just the fantasy world Baby Doll escapes to while she's dancing in another fantasy world to avoid dealing with reality. There's no sense of tension, no concern for her well being because WE KNOW SHE'S NOT REALLY THERE. Imagine if every action set-piece in... let's say, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, took place while Sarah Connor was dreaming in her cell. After the first one, the dream where Kyle Reese comes back and she escapes and is nuked, we'd lose any and all interest in the jeopardy she faced. The first one only works because we don't realize it's a dream, but Snyder shows his audience up front this is all make-believe. None of it is happening and has minimal bearing on reality.

 I have some inkling why Snyder decides not to show Baby Doll's dance in the "Club" reality: the descriptions of what she does would certainly rob him of a PG-13 rating, but that's not what I suspect is going on. The real problem with Sucker Punch is that these fantasy breaks happen to fulfill a particular kind of geek fetish, one that Snyder must have as much as the audience the film was designed for: hot chicks kung-fu fighting monsters. Sucker Punch is one excuse after another to put swords and guns in the hands of scantily clad women and turn them loose against geeky enemies, like robots and samurai and dragons. If you get your kicks watching Catholic school girls with thigh high boots bloodlessly chopping up bad guys, good news; Sucker Punch has it in spades.

 And when they aren't doing flips that conveniently provide upskirt shots, Snyder finds other ways to engage your libido in a theatrically friendly way: like girls in their PJ's in the rain? How about ballerina strippers? Sexy nurses? Fishnet stockings and lace armbands? Pigtails? Leather bustiers?Yup. Please don't buy into the argument that this film is in any way "female empowerment." Just because all of the men in the film (save for Scott Glenn's "mentor" character) are lecherous pigs doesn't mean that the girls are suddenly "empowered" while wearing clothes designed to get fanboys all hot. It's a hollow sentiment, one designed by Snyder and others to dodge the "objectification of women" argument. The men are pigs, the women are objects, and the only thing important is that the ladies look "cool" while they look good for the predominantly adolescent male audience.

 So, does it look "cool"? I guess, but what's the point to all of it? The action sequences don't serve the narrative in any way - they're just there to look "cool" and enable Snyder to get all of his fetishes in one place. I haven't mentioned the music yet, in part because I was trying to forget the awful covers of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)," "White Rabbit," and "Where is My Mind." They exist to underscore otherwise arbitrary decisions (like the white rabbit painted on a robot) and only reminded me of Moulin Rouge, which Tuesday's Retro Review makes clear is a bad thing.

 I'll go this far: Zack Snyder, who has to this point adapted or remade his way into geek cinephiles' hearts (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen, Legend of the Guardians), at least tried to make a film not based on something else. While I don't love Watchmen or 300, I do like Dawn of the Dead, and I have to give Snyder credit for wanting to make a film wholly of his own. Think of Sucker Punch as Snyder's Inception; it's a big risk in a culture that likes recycled everything, and as much as Christopher Nolan succeeded, Snyder did not. Yet. I suspect Sucker Punch will be very popular on DVD and Blu-Ray, where it has an extra 18 minutes in an "extended cut."

 Now, I won't be watching that cut, but if you're inclined to watch vapid, monotone acting coming from dead eyed Emily Browning, as long as you can see her panties once every six minutes, then a longer cut that jumps from PG-13 to R will be right up your alley. Me? I was bored at the one hour mark, and Sucker Punch never won me back. While I give Snyder credit for not adapting something else, it doesn't mean that being original and failing is any better than recycling successfully.

What the Hell Week: X-Men Origins - Wolverine

 It only seems fair that if I'm going to put aside avoiding films because of reputation that I check out X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I know it's not necessary to have seen it before watching X-Men: First Class, but "what the hell"? I mean, I watched X-Men, which is an okay movie; I watched X2, which is one of the better comic book movies out there in terms of doing the series justice AND being entertaining without being stupid; I even watched X-Men: The Last Stand against my better instincts. I was well aware that Brett Ratner was no Bryan Singer*, or even a Matthew Vaughn**. I didn't enjoy The Last Stand, I don't really like most of X-Men, but I do still watch X2, in part because Hugh Jackman finally cuts loose and embodies Wolverine. Did he carry that over to a movie that showcases the injury regenerating, adamantium clawed, Canadian berserker? Let's find out...


 James Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) are brothers and mutants, able to heal and live unnaturally long lives. Oh, and they have claws - Logan's are in his hands and Victor's are his fingernails. During the opening credits we see them fighting side by side through every major war since that Civil one (even though they're Canadian), and Logan becomes increasingly worried by Victor's bloodlust. The brothers are recruited by Major William Stryker (Danny Huston) to join Team X - an elite squad of mutants including Wade "Deadpool" Williams (Ryan Reynolds), John "Kestrel" Wraith (Will.i.am), Fred "Blob" Dukes (Kevin Durand), Chris "Bolt" Bradley (Dominic Monaghan), and Agent Zero (Daniel Henney). Their increasingly violent tactics causes Logan to leave, but when Victor kills his wife (Lynn Collins), Stryker offers to make James the ultimate killing machine. What the newly rebranded Wolverine doesn't know is that Stryker has been experimenting on other mutants, and may have plans for a few familiar faces from other X-films...

I had to look a number of the corresponding character names up, especially the mutants, because Origins doesn't bother mentioning them more than once, and usually in passing. Forgive me for not being as on top of the X-Verse as the Cap'n maybe should be (I read a lot of X-Men and Uncanny X-Men in middle and high school, through The Age of Apocalypse, and then the first run of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men), but I only half recognized most of the characters not named Deadpool in Stryker's team. It might have helped knowing that one of the characters would be The Blob if I'd caught his name earlier in the film, but then I guess we wouldn't get that ridiculous boxing scene...

I will confess that I'm not an expert on Wolverine (he was never my favorite X-character), but the movie plays fast and loose with some of his origin, mixing and matching from different stories, and making a few up along the way. This is the case when it comes to finding explanations for Jackman's wardrobe and vehicle choices in the (chronologically) later X-films. That said, there's not much of a point to a lot of mutant appearances in Origins (Gambit, I'm looking at you), other than to cram in a few "fan favorites" and pad the running time.

Okay, so the dialogue isn't very good. The special effects are awful (especially Logan's claws, bone or adamantium). The film introduces waaaaayyy too many mutant characters in the interest of cramming as many cameos in as possible. There are no less than three times when the camera is pointed down at Logan (child or adult) as he looks to the heavens and screams / growls. The "Ma and Pa Kent" style couple that give Wolverine clothes and feed him after the "Weapon X" sequence is silly, and not because of the lame comic relief attached to Logan's terrible looking claws (I really can't stress how bad they look. We're talking Playstation One graphics quality rendering here).

The biggest problem is that Origins totally wastes Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. Not putting the mask on? I'll let that slide, because he's still the same chatterbox in the beginning. One could argue that Reynolds is really just playing the same character he did in Blade: Trinity, and I wouldn't debate that. But rendering Wade Williams into a mute, indistinguishable mish-mash of mutant powers so that Wolverine and Sabretooth can fight him atop one of the cooling towers of Three Mile Island (and maybe cause the "incident"?) is unforgivable. It's foolish for a number of reasons and smacks of desperation on the part of "how do we end this?"

 If I understand X-Men: First Class, it doesn't even matter that Origins hits the "reset" button on Wolverine at the end of the film, because chronologically this film couldn't happen. Including a teenage-d Emma Frost in Origins when January Jones plays her ten to twenty years earlier in First Class doesn't make sense, and if the time line is supposed to make any sense, Cyclops would have to be in his mid-forties by the time X-Men happens***. At best, I guess we could consider this film to be one of Marvel's "What If...?"'s.

That said, I don't quite understand why people hate this movie so much. It's not nearly as bad as I'd been led to believe. Director Gavin Hood does a serviceable job with Origins: it's not his fault that David Benioff and Skip Woods wrote such lousy dialogue. The action scenes are reasonably comprehensible, even if the visual effects are (again) cut rate for a major motion picture. Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, and Danny Huston give it their all, which helps balance out Will.i.am's wooden line delivery. I came in thinking I was going to get Elektra bad, or Green Lantern bad. X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn't even close to Ghost Rider or Blade: Trinity, which are so terrible they transcend into another level of entertainment.

 Sure, Origins isn't a great movie, and it's just barely a good one, but if I only compared it to X-Men: The Last Stand, at least it's eye-rolling moments are better presented than "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" I was expecting "unwatchable" and ended up with "overcrowded." The film tries to do too much, fit too much into what could (and should) be a simple story of rival brothers. If you want to complain about Deadpool... well, that's pretty indefensible. The final fight is one of the dumber comic book moments I can think of, and if the film disappointed audiences expecting more, then I suppose I can understand that.

 For me? The level of venom towards this film seems like it would be better directed at Spider-Man 3, or The Fantastic Four movies (which I sometimes hear defended). X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a pretty weak movie, but not the trainwreck I was prepared for. It's certainly watchable in a way that X-Men: The Last Stand isn't, and I've had people telling me for five years that movie was better than I thought it was. I'll count this as at least a pleasant surprise in "What the Hell" week.

* Then again, Bryan Singer was no Bryan Singer with Superman Returns.
** Mind you, I only enjoy ONE of Vaughn's films, Layer Cake, which is why I've hesitated on X-Men: First Class
*** If you go by the comics, this actually would make sense, but James Marsden was 27 when he made X-Men.

Retro What the Hell Week: Moulin Rouge

 Welcome to day two of What the Hell week, where the Cap'n is exploring movies he had otherwise planned to skip out on, but is instead saying "why not?" and giving them a shot. For more details, please take a look at yesterday's review of Saw 3D.

---

 Today's trip to "What the Hell" land is a little bit different, in that Retro Reviews necessitate the Cap'n having already seen the film in question. Lucky for all of us, I've seen a number of films that would, at first, seem uncharacteristic of a "Cap'n Howdy kind of movie": America's Sweethearts, Bridget Jones's Diary, What Dreams May Come, Bring It On, Pay It Forward, The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps, and practically any Disney movie you can think of*.

 One component of my movie-viewing experience that I often under represent on the Blogorium is musicals. That's right, musicals: call it carryover from all the Disney films or a byproduct of being on and off stage during middle and high school, but I know my way around quite a few musicals and I enjoy even more than that. The Sound of Music? There's a copy of it behind me. Oklahoma? Oh, I know how many people hate the movie, but not me. The Music Man? Yep, fan. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying? I used to have the DVD. Meet Me in St. Louis? West Side Story? South Pacific? For Me and My Gal? Singin' in the Rain? Oliver? Brigadoon? Annie? Chicago? Yes indeed. Don't even get me started on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I even watched Paint Your Wagon**...

 From time to time I've reviewed one or two more recent musicals, like Repo! The Genetic Opera or Hedwig and the Angry Inch (appreciated, if disliked the former and am constantly impressed by the latter), but for the life of me I still can't really explain why I went to see Moulin Rouge in the theatre. I'm hoping a colleague of mine who reads this might help jog my memory in the comments, because I am not a Baz Luhrmann fan, and on the surface there is very little about the film that be very appealing, even in 2001.

 I've been trying to rationalize it to myself beyond the fact that we saw just about everything that came out, from Ghosts of Mars to Planet of the Apes to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I was a big fan of Ewan MacGregor's going back to Trainspotting, and I had enjoyed Nicole Kidman in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (and would later that summer in The Others), but my brief love affair with Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet crashed and burned after trying to watch the spastic, ADD-edited cut and paste approach to Shakespeare on VHS. It's more apocryphal than anything, but the CD that Luhrmann released with "Everbody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" that was falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut really irritated me.

 Maybe I bought into the idea that Moulin Rouge's use of existing pop songs as a musical foundation was okay because, well, Singin' in the Rain did it too. In fact, many of the studio musicals released in the 30s and 40s relied on songs people already knew, so I can see a younger version of the Cap'n drinking that Kool Aid, being lured in by the presence of David Bowie, Beck, Ozzy Osbourne, and Kylie Minogue in addition to lyrical mashups of songs from the 70s and 80s performed by actors I didn't really knew sang.

 But I also knew what Baz Luhrmann's style was: over-the-top, loud, rapid, and obnoxious. Nothing in the advertising for Moulin Rouge suggested anything different that an abrasive musical version of Romeo + Juliet. And guess what? It wasn't!

 To this day I still meet people who love Moulin Rouge, and I kind of understand why, because I almost caved in while watching the film. The first hour or so is such a sensory overload for your eyes and ears that eventually you just collapse and let the movie continue throttling along, bombarding you at every opportunity with noise and distracting editing. Had it not been for one song, I might have convinced myself that instead of being exhausted by Moulin Rouge, I actually liked it. But then "Like a Virgin" happened.



 It aims for high camp. but is so obvious in its execution that it pulled me out of the daze of Luhrmann's audiovisual assault and turned me against the film once and for all, never to return. The way that he appropriates the idea of a "drag show" performance of Madonna minus the drag, almost to say "Oh look at how clever I am! They're still dressed up and butchy but they're singing 'Like a Virgin!' What Juxtaposition!" just killed it for me, and the laziness behind appropriating existing songs was apparent.

My central problem with Moulin Rouge is not so much Luhrmann's style - something I already knew annoyed me - but that the fact that the musical doesn't do anything new with the songs. They use them in exactly the fashion you'd expect them to be used in and nothing more. There's a faux-camp quality to most of the songs, from "The Sound of Music" to "Lady Marmalade" that accentuates the hyper-aggressive editing, but in the end the film is all noise and no substance. There's nothing memorable to me about the film in a positive way. I remember plenty of moments I disliked, if not outright hated, but there's nothing Moulin Rouge does that dozens of other musicals don't do better. So what's the point?

 Which brings me back around to the question: why did I see Moulin Rouge? It's out of character for me, even in a time in my life when I happily went to see Hannibal and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. In the rare instance I tried to revisit the film, to understand why I or anyone else found something appealing, I end up turning Moulin Rouge off after ten minutes. Without fail. I never watched Luhrmann's Australia and have no interest in his The Great Gatsby in 3D. Maybe I had a "What the Hell" moment in the summer of 2001; the moment was fleeting, and I cannot say it was beneficial.




*Except Condorman. I have never seen Condorman, even though I kind of want to.
 ** That is, by the way, not an endorsement of Paint Your Wagon. If you don't believe me, see how far you can get into the three hour mess that is the film.

What the Hell Week: Saw 3D

 Welcome to "What the Hell" week, a series of reviews devoted to films that I hadn't planned on ever seeing, but oh well, why not? I just said "what the hell" and am going to take a look at a few flicks that didn't seem like something I'd want to watch. For those of you hoping for those flicks to have the words "Avatar" or "Twilight" in them, I'm sorry to disappoint - that's not happening. Tomorrow's Retro Review is also a "What the Hell" as in "what the hell was I thinking?," and other than a brief stop for a Video Daily Double on Wednesday, I'll be in "adventurous" mode until Sunday.

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 Let me get something straight here: there are people that not only watched, but LIKED all seven Saw movies? In particular, there are people who felt that Saw 3D was a fitting close to the series? I know at least two people who have seen and have begged me to watch the films after I abandoned the Saw franchise halfway through Saw III, but both of them claim that the movies get so "stupid" that I'd enjoy them on that level. As I just said, my history with the Saw films is truncated: I kinda liked the first film, less and less on repeated viewings, I hated Saw II, and couldn't get more than twenty minutes into Saw III before I turned it off. I never entertained watching IV, V, or VI, despite attempts to include them in Horror Fests or just for my own amusement. I had no plans to watch Saw 3D, but in the spirit of this theme week, "What the Hell?"

  Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is hard at work as Jigsaw (Tobin Bell)'s successor, and has his sights set on Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell) -Jigsaw's widow - who tried to kill him with one of her husband's traps. When Jill turns herself in to Detective Matt Gibson (Chad Donella), who has been hunting Hoffman, the killer sets his sights on Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flannery), a survivor of one of Jigsaw's traps, now doing the talk show circuit with his book Survive. The only problem is that Bobby Dagen was never in one of Jigsaw's games, and his attempt to cash in raised the ire of the original moral murderer. Hoffman sets up a real game for Bobby, one designed to test his willpower and see if he can truly call himself a "survivor." Meanwhile, Gibson is drawing ever closer to Hoffman, or is it the other way around?

It's probably worth noting that the title of the film is not Saw VII, but Saw 3D (although I saw it in 2D) - the title on the home video Blu-Ray and DVD may say "Saw: The Final Chapter," but the on-screen title is Saw 3D. Secretly I'd hoped that instead of the seventh entry into what sounds like a hopelessly convoluted series, I would instead see a remake of Saw III, but with 3D gimmickry. Boy howdy do I bet that would have bristled these alleged Saw "fans." Alas, that's not the case, but in for a penny, in for a pound. What the hell, right? I already started watching it...

And what the hell indeed, because not only was it really, really easy to pick up on plot developments in the three-and-a-half films I skipped, but for a film that seems to bring things "full circle," Saw 3D more or less just borrows plot elements from earlier Saw films wholesale: the ending comes directly from Saw II, where a heretofore unknown accomplice of Jigsaw turns up to thwart the plans of a main character, and then locks him in the room from the first film, there's the beginning of Saw III, where a character we assumed was doomed escapes from said room and finds a way to figure into the series again, and another series of non-existent "flashbacks" used to ret-con the series disguised as "revelation" (this I understand figures prominently into Saw IV, V, and VI).

 In the meantime, nothing else has changed whatsoever - the film opens with a kill that has nothing to do with the story, but exists to keep the bored gorehounds that flock to see these films drunk with bloodlust so that writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (Feast, The Collector) can dither around with the plot until the next bloody set-piece. Director Kevin Greutert graduated from Saw editor to Saw director with the sixth and seventh entries of the franchise, and if he was asked to make every room look over-cluttered and interchangeable so that things like a sense of geography were irrelevant, then job well done.

 I don't know whether to blame Greutert, Melton, Dunstan or the actors for the terrible dialogue: one the one hand, someone had to write garbage like "these are my scars... 'cause our minds will heal, but these scars will never go away. These scars shan't be a symbol of shame... they should be worn as a badge of courage," but frequently the delivery is so awful that it does no favors to the screenwriters. Chad Donella's Gibson is so terrible that every scene he has with Betsy Russell (Cheerleader Camp) is laugh out loud funny. I don't think that was the intention. Even Tobin Bell is terrible in his manufactured flashback to connect John Kramer / Jigsaw to Bobby Dagen.

 Special mention goes out to Cary Elwes, who (SPOILER, but like I really care at this point) returns to the role of Dr. Lawrence Gordon, someone I think we all assumed died at the end of Saw, but it turns out didn't. Mostly he growls and grumbles, and really seems pointless in the film until it's time for his not-at-all-surprising "twist" - something you should be able to figure out just by knowing that Dr. Gordon didn't die. If it's that hard to figure out, go back up three paragraphs or think carefully about how Saw II ended.

 Saw 3D makes the critical mistake of being more interested in the cat-and-mouse games between Hoffman and the police than the grand guignol murder set-pieces, so to justify the film's existence for gore obsessed fans and the extra five bucks for 3D glasses, Greutert and the writers shoehorn in some more mostly unrelated "games" with characters that have no bearing on the story itself. The series set the precedent of an opening kill, and Saw 3D's involves a love triangle, a blade see-saw (of sorts) and a reverse pendulum. What I'll give Greutert credit for is putting the trap in full view of passers-by: the trap is in a glass box in the middle of downtown wherever they shot this*, which is a pleasant change of pace from "dingy room," the setting for every other kill in the series. It actually lends a slight sense of tension to the inevitable bloodbath as people begin to panic outside of the trap (even if most of them do nothing to help).

On the other hand, the creative team is so strapped for kills that they include a white supremacist group (led by Linkin Park's Chester Bennington) in a garage "game" so they can quickly rip the skin off of one person's back, run a tire through another's head, rip a man's jaw and arms off, and pulverize the final victim, all in the name of finding a way to get Hoffman from outside of the police station to inside. When you realize that all of that effort went into switching bodies in a bag, the effort seems a little ridiculous, and on top of that, Hoffman also went out of his way to make sure that IF Gibson figured out where he was that a turret machine gun would (SPOILER) kill him and destroy the fake Jigsaw lair.

 The coup-de-grace, however, is not even the Bobby Dagen "game," which has the weakest kills by far (including one that's almost identical to a trap from Saw II), but the fact that in order to squeeze one more drop of blood out of this turnip, the writers create a dream sequence in order to kill Jill off twice in the same movie. The contraption used for the dream sequence feels like a mandate from the studio for one more 3D shot, because there's no reason it would exist in the movie otherwise.

 (for the record, it's easy to see where the 3D would be in the film, even in 2D, and I have to say that it wouldn't be worth the extra cash to me: it mostly consisted of guts, keys, and a hacksaw being flung at the camera)

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that if the Cap'n didn't mind missing three and a half Saw movies that I'd probably hate Saw 3D, but the series continued success has perplexed me. As someone watching from the outside, I had initially planned to just sit out the whole thing and be happy in ignorance, but at least now I can say that I KNOW I didn't miss anything skipping the middle entries**. Under normal circumstances, this would be a So You Won't Have To, but the whole point of "What the Hell" week is to look at movies that people saw so that I wouldn't have to. I'm doing it anyway, but there's always a chance of a pleasant surprise to come, right?

A final note: while Lionsgate, the creative team, and anybody involved with the sequels swears there won't be a Saw VIII, original creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell have indicated that they would like to come back and "close out" the franchise once and for all. I mention this because later this week I'll be taking a look at one of their non-Saw films, Insidious, but also to indicate that it doesn't matter how terrible a sequel gets, how limply it moves to tie itself with A Nightmare on Elm Street for number of entries, or how inexplicable its popularity is***; there will always be room for one more crappy sequel as long as there's money to be made.






* Toronto, but the film's police station is identified as "Metropolitan Police Station" on the sign, so who knows where they want you to think this crap takes place.
** It was explained to me that Saw 3D was "as stupid" as IV, V, and VI, so I feel confident that I understand what I didn't see.
*** Seriously, if someone would like to explain to me why you keep watching these movies, I'd love to hear it. The "mythology" of the films is constantly being revised because the formula of the sequels are stale and interchangeable, the kills aren't really that impressive, and the acting is borderline amateur hour.