#1,981: Prisoners

Let's do a movies post!

This Is the End - ★½☆☆☆
I was surprised that so many people I knew were into this movie, so I checked it out. They were especially enthusiastic about the first 20 minutes or so, and when I was watching it, I couldn't really figure out why. But then I saw the rest of it. I figure they must have just been nostalgic for better times.

The Wolverine - ★★★½☆
We need to think of a third superhero movie plot. I'm not inherently opposed to the origin story or the powered down story, but this wasn't even an especially good version of the latter. Wolverine didn't do anything different from how he would have if he were in normal condition.

Still, some rad fights and action scenes, and the teaser for the new one was surprisingly exciting. Especially since I don't really want to see the next one.

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 - ★★☆☆☆ ` Been meaning to watch for a while, but it was not at all what I expected. Bleak. Plot a little familiar to some other recent watches (The Bletchley Circle, The Fall), although some choices seemed baffling. Not sure if I want to see the next two.

How Videogames Changed the World - ★★★☆☆
Perfectly nice and well made, but nothing especially new or thought-provoking to someone paying attention to the topic. A general primer that can't devote enough time to any one era to really get into what makes it interesting.

I'll say though, I had no idea the pac-man ghosts behave differently.

Prisoners - ★★★★½
Suspense! I liked not knowing exactly how it was going to turn out all along. Maybe my favorite ever Jake Gyllenhaal? Either way, it still fits in with my Theory of Jake Gyllenhaal.

I’m pretty sure the pieces fit together pretty well. A day after watching, I keep thinking up different angles on the events and it turns out the movie had those covered.

I liked it.

Diani & Devine Meet the Apocalypse

A few years ago, I helped make a feature film called The Selling. It's a horror-comedy about a haunted house, except instead of being scary for a family like in Poltergeist, it's inconvenient for a real estate agent.

It's probably the best feature film I've worked on so far.

Now Gabe & Etta are gearing up to make another movie, and they're raising internet money to do it. I want them to succeed, so I helped make some of their campaign videos. I'm part of the bloodthirsty mob. Go Bloodthirsty Mob!

These guys are also the most expert folks I know on crowdfunding, with a few successful projects to their names already. Etta has written some interesting things about how the landscape has suddenly shifted when it comes to using social media to get your indie film off the ground.

They have some distance yet to go in order to finance their film this week. Check out DDMTA.com to watch their dozens of short videos, check out the impressive sci-fi cast they've assembled, and of course, pre-order the new film. (And buy a copy of the last one, and all their other crazy rewards, some robotic in nature.)

#1,892: Dirty Harry

Here are some recent movies, including an inadvertent trilogy of films with doubt about ghosts:

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Pretty satisfying. Almost everything I would expect a courtroom drama about an exorcism to be, I guess. B+.
Existence of the supernatural: [UNCONFIRMED]

Hereafter - Three intertwining stories of people dealing with the possibility of a spirit world. The main thing in one of these movies is that you're just waiting for and/or trying to figure out how they'll all eventually intersect.
Existence of the supernatural: [CONFIRMED]

Red Lights - I was so excited to see this one. It's from the director of Buried, which I liked, and here's the setup: Sigourney Weaver is a James Randi-like debunker, Robert DeNiro is a world-renowned psychic, and one of them has to be wrong. Sometimes a movie sounds so great , like Time After Time, (Jack the Ripper steals a time machine, and it's up to HG Wells to stop him!) that I wonder if I should just never see it, in case it's no good. Red Lights didn't go how I might have guessed, and maybe the first half was more fun than the second half, but I still liked it.
Existence of the supernatural: [REDACTED]

Also…

This Film is Not Yet Rated and We Are Legion: The Story of Hactivists - the former is about the secretive MPAA ratings board. The most fun, if morally dubious, section is when private investigators track down the identities of the raters. The latter is primarily about the organization Anonymous), and interviews the no-long anonymous anons who were arrested and punished for the actions of the group. I'm grouping the two movies together here because in both cases, they offer a pretty decent primer to the subjects, but if you're already familiar with either one, there's not a lot of new information presented. I do remember when Anonymous' Scientology protests were taking place, so I was surprised to see the film report that thousands of people participated. Maybe they were all down on L. Ron Hubbard Way, and not at the Celebrity Centre, which is located across from the UCB Theatre. My memory of it is of maybe 6 heavy guys holding their cloaks and masks and sweating like crazy, sitting on the sidewalk. I wish I'd gotten pictures.

The Nude Vampire - This is an italian horror from the 1970s, which doesn't feature much in the way of nudity, and no vampires at all, unless the one nude girl, who doesn't appear to figure into the plot in any way, happened to be a vampire and nobody mentioned it. I'll accept that as the answer, but if so, it's not an especially apt title. It's definitely no Big Fan or Constant Gardner.
Existence of the supernatural: [CONFIRMED]

Chernobyl Diaries - This sucks. Look through the website that probably inspired the movie instead. Or don't. Go fishing. Write a poem. Do what you want.

Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal - Press Your Luck was a fun game show where your money could get taken away by little cartoons called Whammies that were drawn by "Savage" Steve Holland, director of Better Off Dead. In 1984, a guy noticed that the patterns on the board weren't random, so all you have to do to win a lot of money is learn them and not stop on a Whammy. There you go. Whole movie. You are free to go about your day, citizen.

Dirty Harry - This was great! Sometimes, you see an old movie that was groundbreaking or influential in its day, and it's boring, or trite, because it's been so thoroughly ripped off. But not this one. This was great! A clear precursor to the Die Hards and Lethal Weapons yet to come. Can't wait to see the next 4 movies in the series!

#1,878: Contagion

My plan was to watch Contagion as though it was a direct sequel to Rise of the Planet of the APES, since the idea of a pandemic is only suggested in the end title sequence. The biggest problems with this approach are that a) the virus in Contagion doesn’t turn anyone into an APE, and b) that doesn’t happen in the ape movie either.

Instead, we get a fairly “realistic”¹ portrayal of what happens to us in an outbreak. And the problem with that is that it’s a little bit boring. Although humanity is decimated, it still feels like nothing much happens. There’s no main character, or anyone whose life, death, or infection status seemed to matter. I didn’t really care about any of the humans in this movie, so on that score, it’s right there with APES, except that unlike that movie, Contagion hasn’t got any apes.

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1. : Whether or not the science is accurate doesn’t matter. The movie is realistic in what seems to be a non-fantasy portrayal of what might happen. It’s probably about as accurate as an XKCD What If? ↩

#1,820: The House on Skull Mountain

Sometimes old posts get stuck in draft form because they need more thought and revision.  I have no idea why capsule movie reviews don't get published.  These seem to be from December 2011.

-Hugo - Great 3D, and identifiably Scorsese, from the first shot, a long tracking through the station. Weird script though; characters exclaiming stuff in the same room instead of listening or talking to each other. Also, hints of a hated trope: Can't Spit It Out.  That is, if one character would just speak up when they're a) in trouble and b) in no danger as a result of just using their words, so much trouble could be avoided, and so easily.

- J. Edgar - A perfectly good telling of the story of J. Edgar Hoover.  If you've ever seen or read anything about him before, you've probably got the story down already.  Saw it in the theater with a bunch of chatty audience.  But they were a few guys in their 60s, so nobody had anything to say to them.

- The Lie - This seems like something that would be sold as a drama, but actually: pretty funny. Dark, and funny. Jess Weixler is great. Especially her reaction to her husband's terrible rock song.

- Real Life - Albert Brooks on reality TV.  Really good. I love the nonsense presented as good science and sociology.

And of course:

- The House on Skull Mountain - a mostly black  version of Dark and Stormy Night, or any other meeting for the reading of will in a spooky old house.  Above all else, this was a movie that lives right on up to its title:

This is the very next shot: