WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 02/03/08

I finally got around to seeing Cloverfield, after missing it for the past couple of weeks due to various circumstances. I saw it with my friend Paul on Friday night. It was pretty cool. It’s definitely Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project and it has some of the problems that the original Blair Witch did as well. The camera work does get shaky at times. I never got dizzy, but there were a few spots where I was ready for it to stabilize.

Also, it had the same trouble with stupid characters doing stupid things, but that’s also kind of the charm of these films. I was getting a little tired of the party banter in the beginning and the monster could’ve showed up a few minutes early. However, once the action got going, I thought the characters worked well. I was chuckling at them at times, but that’s good.

The drama was bare-bones and there wasn’t any character development, but you can’t have that in this type of movie. I also thought the mechanisms they used to drive the drama were fairly effective. Having the footage from an earlier tape the camera was recording over pop into the movie from time to time was an obvious trick, but I liked it.

I liked the first person POV of the camera too. It’s been likened to various video games, which I think is a good analogy. It’s a fantastic and fun ride and I was laughing with joy several times throughout the movie. The action and pacing was quite good and everything worked pretty well.

I really liked the shots of news footage that was used in a few spots of the movie too, which gave just enough needed information, but not heavy exposition to slow it down. I was worried that they wouldn’t show enough of the monster, but there were several nice shots and scenes with monsters that were really cool.

So it wasn’t high art, but it’s a really neat experiment and a successful one at that. It was also just plain fun. I had a good time watching it. Heh, my friend Paul and I had a good laugh when the Statue of Liberty loses its head. “You blew it up! Damn you all to hell!”

Written 11/30/07

I went to see The Mist tonight. I’d heard some good things about it, so I was really interested in checking it out. It was a mixed bag, but fairly decent. Director’s have a tough time bringing Stephen King’s stories to the screen, in part because he can tell a tale in such a way that makes a silly concept believable, whereas in a movie it might not fly.

The Mist is a good mix of horror as well as atmosphere. It has some nice monsters, but also a good bit of the end-of-the-world drama where a small group of people watch society fall apart. It’s the same type of society in a microcosm setting that I like about good zombie movies. Things started out really well. The characters were arch-types but they were nuanced and played off one another well, that is except for the protagonist of the fundamentalist nut job. She was a cardboard figured who was really grating.

Unfortunately, from what I remember of the story, she was the same way in the novella. Once again Stephen Kings shows he has an axe to grind against religion, or at least a certain interpretation of it. He’s done that in several other stories as well. The character could have worked as an even-handed critique of the dangers of an over-zealous interpretation of religion, if only she’d been given some nuance like the other characters, but she was too much a caricature. It’s odd, most of the film-adaptations of King’s films fail because they didn’t translate his stories well enough, but here I think they translated it a little too well. They had the story warts and all, and I think a little bit of depth to that plot would have worked much better.

The monsters were pretty cool and the scenes with them were great fun. They were a little cartoony in their design for a couple of the beasts, such as the faces of the giant spiders, but I think it worked well. It’s not as good as that film, but I don’t think I’ve seen a monster film that’s been as fun since Pitch Black. There were lots of different beasties to enjoy here.

So the first two-thirds of the film were great, but it fell apart in the last act. There was the heavy-handed twisted-religion angle, and also the ending annoyed me. I was worried about that, since I remembered the story ended very ambiguously and I didn’t think they’d let that happen in a mainstream film.

I was impressed with the ending at first, since it was a little different but very hard-core. If they’d ended it there, that would have been fine, but then they had to tack a stupid Hollywood ending onto it. It’s not as egregious as the one in A.I., but I still wanted to slap the director for it. It got a couple of points for its irony, but lost even more for how it de-constructed and went against the whole mood of the story.

Oh well, I still liked enough of the film to find it enjoyable. It’s definitely flawed, but it’s a good ride. If you don’t see it in the theater, it’s definitely a good rental. I’d give it 3 or 3.5 stars out of 5.

Originally Written 11/13/07

I braved 30 Days of Night with a friend this evening. We knew it had mixed reviews, but we were curious about it and it looked like it could be a fun goofy movie. Wrong! Sometimes bad is bad. It wasn’t fun bad, it was boring and stupid bad. It was wretched!

It started out with some promise and had a bit of style to it. Then it went to hell pretty quickly. The director confused action and suspense with quick edits and shaky cameras so you couldn’t see what was happening, and freaking loud sounds. I know they wanted to make it gritty and dark, but the vampires were just ugly thugs and the violence was pointless and artless. After a couple of shots of bloody-faced pseudo-philosophy spouting Russian Eurotrash, I was immensely tired of them. And quit screeching already, you want to scare me, not annoy me to death. I did find the flicker of amusement at seeing the likeness of Tor Johnson in the mix though.

The movie was full of pointless scenes, confusing exposition, inconsistencies and plot-holes. I wasn’t expecting anything great, but it wasn’t even entertaining. I think the movie had about five minutes of enjoyment for me. There was one fun and unintentionally goofy scene where one of the guys chases after the vampires with a giant construction truck, which conveniently had a tar-chewing chainsaw mounted on the front. Now that was cool, but sadly it didn’t last and we were back to the same old crap again.

I haven’t hated a film this much in some time. It’s been awhile since I’ve left the theater annoyed and borderline angry. Heh, I guess we had it coming and at least we had some fun kvetching at how crappy it was afterwards. Man, it’s like Underworld, but not as entertaining or good; actually that film is a masterpiece compared to this turd. Now there’s a warning for you!

Originally Written 09/12/07

I need to get back on track with writing, correspondence and other personal projects, but I’ve been catching up on my movie and TV watching lately as well. Last night and today I finally got around to watching Everest: Beyond the Limit, which had been languishing on my TiVo since last November. It was the Discovery Channels coverage of one team’s expedition to the peak of the highest mountain.

It was fascinating to watch. Like all documentaries and reality TV, they film all the footage, and then piece it together afterwards. Therefore, when they’re telling the stories, they know how it’s going to turn out and they can choose what to focus on, to have things play out to a script of sorts. There was plenty of real human drama and tragedy, and it was nice watching the people who tried to make it, some succeeding, and others failing at various points. A couple of people failed within sight of the summit, and barely made it down safely.

They didn’t pull any punches showing the danger of the mountain, which I was glad for. They showed the perils and after-affects of frostbite and how it’s possible to lose life and limb making the gambit to get to the top. The fact that the mountain is littered with bodies of those who have died and can’t be brought back down is a sobering thought. They ran into one climber who had been separated from his group and who was unconscious and dying. They couldn’t do anything for him and they had to leave him to his death.

I also really appreciated how much they showed of the Sherpas too. A lot of the time these Burmese mountain men get ignored. They do most of the work, bringing up equipment, setting up the safety ropes and even carrying people up and down parts of the trip. Without their tireless efforts, the Western Mountaineers couldn’t make it, so it was really nice to see them shown for their pride, bravery and strength and have them share some of the spotlight.

Originally Written 07/13/07

Paul and I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight and it was quite good. I’m still behind on my reading, having only gotten up to The Prisoner of Azkabann, the third book, so like the last film, I didn’t know what was going to happen. There were a couple of places where the details seemed a little thin and that I might have gotten more insight if I knew the story, but even so, the plot of the film was easy to get without having read the book.

I like how J. K. Rowling continues to make the stories progressively darker. Not only are more things happening and the stakes getting higher, but the kids are growing up and their perceptions are changing, so they’re discovering how the world is darker and more dangerous than they originally saw. I like how Harry is more active in this movie. In previous stories he was pulled along with the plot, but here he takes more of an active stance, with a little help and prodding from Ron and Hermione.

I really liked how political this film was, and how the political intrigue was almost more dangerous than Voldermort himself. I asked Paul about all the political machinations and he said that he thought he remembered they were all from the book. However, we both caught a couple of bits in a few places which seemed like they could have been a nod to the current political climate and the current presidential administration. Whether that was by design or by accident catching the feeling of the times we couldn’t figure out though. If they were intentional, they weren’t heavy-handed. I totally dug Dolores Umbridge’s character as the kill-them-with-kindness enforcer of the Ministry. She was wickedly vicious, and they did some great stuff with her, such as the collection of enchanted collectors plates hanging on the walls of her office, each with its own animated cat. That was brilliant.

All in all, the movie was quite good and very entertaining. I liked how everything played out, as well as seeing some beloved characters returning from previous stories, though I wish they’d gotten a little more screen time, but such is the case with translating a book to film.

Also, one thing I forgot to mention is that I also liked how even amidst the growing peril of this film, there were still moments of wonder as the kids learned to do more with magic. I liked how they balanced that, adding lighter bits of relief to the darker story.