Floating

Speaking of Norman Reedus...

I clicked around the internet for a bit and ended up watching a stream of the first film he was ever in, Floating. He plays Van, whose plans of going to college are shattered after his father loses both legs in a car accident and his mother took off with all the money and valuables she could get her hands on. Now he is stuck in a small house by the lake without a plan for the future.

Both, father and son, cannot adjust to their new situation and the only diversion Van finds is hanging around with a couple of friends, smoking joints and raiding houses. When Doug moves in across the lake, he and Van become friends. Doug has what looks from the outside like a 'good' family, but suffers under the pressure from his father, who is not willing to accept that his son is gay and puts him down any chance he gets. Doug is on the college swim team but the whole concept of going to college to get away from your family gets defeated by the fact that his father is also his swim coach.

The four friends continue to steal anything they believe they can make into money from the lakeside houses until one of their raids ends tragically.

In the end, there is a glimpse of hope that Van and his dad may just be alright.

A sad and desperate story, but there is a lot of shirtless Reedus to lift our spirits.

6/10

The Messengers

The Solomon family moves to a farm in North Dakota to plant sun flowers, after they have had a rough time of it in Chicago for the last two years. The father lost his job and the daughter got into trouble back there.

The house they bought with their last money is, unsurprisingly, haunted by the ghosts of a family that died there. There are ominous shadows in the background and the daughter and her toddler brother seem to be the only ones seeing them - the teenage girl terrified by them, the boy having a blast.

When a mysterious stranger shows up and stays on to work on the farm, nothing much seems to happen for months, however. Then suddenly the visions come back with a vengeance. Nobody believes the teenager, however, as she is a known troublemaker.

In the end, it turns out that the farm hand was involved in causing all of the trouble back in the day, he was actually the father that did away with his entire family and loses it one day, after he has been attacked by the ever present crows. He suddenly cannot tell the new and old family in the house apart and tries to kill his all over again.

There are a lot of eye-rolling moments in this, mostly about the philosophizing of the farm hand and a local teenage boy. The scares are kind of interesting. The film also gives Kirsten Stewart an opportunity to show off the entire range of her acting.

Yes, I was being sarcastic just then.

Why the ghosts would be called "messengers" is not ever addressed. They don't appear to be giving any messages to anybody, unless you interpret their weird behavior in trying to scare the hell out of people and possibly trying to kill them as warnings. Come to think of it, though, the  crows on the farm are the probably the messengers.

Maybe we get confirmation in the sequel. Yes, there is a sequel! Part two at least bears the promise of some serious eye candy in the form of Norman Reedus. The only saving grace in part one was William B. Davis (the cigarette smoking men from The X Files).

4/10

Small Town Murder Songs

In a small Mennonite farming town a murder occurs. Local policeman Walter, whose violent past is no secret to the community, is one of the people working the case. The suspect is his ex-girlfriend's new lover and over the course of the investigation, Walter struggles to keep his newly found composure.

The film is not so much about who killed the girl - with only one suspect and a witness putting him in the same location with the victim the night of the murder - but more about everyone's, especially Walter's, reaction to the tragedy that has befallen this quiet town.

Peter Storemare in the lead role is absolutely wonderful. The film's look borrows from the Coen brothers. The story, however, has all the dark of a Coen mystery without any comic relief. And the soundtrack is absolutely wonderful (never heard of Bruce Peninsula before, but went right onto iTunes to download the album).

I like this a lot.

8/10

Thinner

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King (or rather, his alter ego Richard Bachman).

Billy Halleck, an overweight small town lawyer, accidentally hits and kills a gypsy woman with his car. During the deposition, the local judge and a policeman fix the case so that there will be no further criminal investigation into the death, which gets ruled accidental. As he leaves the court, the gypsy's father comes up to him, strokes his cheek and says, "Thinner". From that moment on, Billy starts losing weight rapidly.

The gypsy apparently also cursed the judge (who slowly turns into a lizard - official explanation "skin cancer") and the policeman (who sports a gross collection of boils all over his body). Billy tries to find the gypsy, convinced that the one who puts a curse on you is also the only one that can lift it again.

Stephen King himself has a cameo in the film, like in several others. Here he plays the local pharmacist.

The book is rather mediocre and so is the film.

3/10

Deck the Halls

One last brainless Christmas comedy before the season ends. This one is Matthew Broderick vs. Danny DeVito, two angry neighbors. Broderick, obviously, is the uptight one who is used to being 'The Christmas Guy' upset about DeVito's strive to make his house visible from outer space by the use of Christmas lights.

Yes, it is as shallow as it sounds.

Funniest bit:
The two men washing their eyes out with holy water because they have just seen their daughters dancing in skimpy dresses and cheered them on before they realized who they were.

Also, Kal Penn has a tiny (uncredited) role in this. I love Kal Penn.

3/10

The Joneses

The family Jones is made up of a group of pretty people that practice stealth marketing. They represent everything their neighbors want to be and as a result, improve sales figures for whatever new product they are assigned to push.

The mother power walks in the niftiest new clothes, the father mows the lawns in the newest mowers, the kids flash all their great new stuff around school and for their new friends. And the friends and neighbors bite...whether they can afford to or not.

Of course, the marketing concept gets the proper Hollywood treatment - an illicit affair, the token gay character, real romance and the big tragedy that finally cracks the shiny front the family unit put up.

Personally, I would have preferred less shine and a little bit more grit to the story. In the end it is all just as shallow as the values the Joneses sell.

3/10

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Nothing is as heartwarming around Christmas time as a tale involving a small community, a group of children and the real Santa Claus. Santa Claus is, of course, a monster that does not reward the good kids but punishes the bad ones.

When Santa is excavated in some mountain area in Lapland, reindeer (and the excavation team) get killed and children disappear. This courtesy of Santa's Little Helpers, who look slightly scary.

A group of locals first try to extort money from the man who originally paid for the up-digging but once they realize that the man in custody is not actually Santa himself and, well, their kids are gone, they decide to take action. Santa is still frozen inside a huge block of ice and all the radiators his minions have stolen are simply not fast enough to unfreeze him before the men put the plan devised by the one left child into action.

The young boy plays bait and (together with a cargo made up from all the other, recently discovered, children of the town) lures Santa's Little Helpers away from the shed the block of ice is stored in. While they are well away from any danger, Santa gets blown to bits. His Little Helpers get retrained over the next year and are exported to serve as traditional Santa Clauses all over the world.

Christmas is saved!

6/10

Invaders from Mars

I'm a sucker for sci-fi films of the 1950s-1970s. Futuristic gadgets that were only imagined at the time usually looked nothing like the real thing realized years, or even decades, later. Scientists were smartly dressed men that could get the girl anytime. We've come a long way towards the tech nerds sitting in basements, haven't we?

Invaders from Mars was made in a simpler time. Here grown-ups would still listen to little kids like David when they tell their stories of space ships and sand pits swallowing people that later reappear changed into robotic shells lacking all humanity.

See, David is a good child with friends in high places. His father (seemingly the first victim of the space invaders) is, after all, a rocket scientist and his young son was always looking through telescopes and listened closely to what the smart scientists had to say.

When he tries to alert the athorities he first stumbles into some unpleasent situations since the invaders work rapidly and get to some people before David does. He does find help from a beautiful young female psychiatrist and one of the aforementioned smartly dressed scientists that alert the military (obviously) after hearing David's tale.

In combat, the brave few fight off the green (!) Martians, apparently descended upon the earth to sabotage an atomic rocket. The aliens leave. Day = saved.

Or is it?

The ending calls the whole story into question. Maybe all was just in David's dream? Or maybe he had a prophetic dream? Oh my God, could he be stuck in an infinite nightmare-loop?!

5/10

Unforgiven

Normally, I am not much of a fan of wild west films. The cowboy romantic doesn't do it for me. What I require for me to enjoy this type of film is one of two things - (1) humor, (2) a good story. Unforgiven, luckily, covers (2) nicely.

A prostitue in a small Wyoming town gets her face cut up by one of her costumers. When the sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) doesn't punish the cutter and his friend to the other prostitutes liking, they throw their money together and offer a $ 1,000,-- reward to have them killed. One of the groups gunning for the money are one young wannabe killer ("Schoffield Kid"), and two retired ones, played by Clint Eastwood (William Munny) and Morgan Freeman (Ned Logan).

The main problem anyone trying for the reward money face is the no-nonsense sheriff, who takes anyone's gun in his town and beats them up - sometimes for no reason other than them not having noticed the sign specifying that no guns are allowed in town. A real asshole, that one.

After the trio kill the first of their targets, Ned Logan gets captured by the sheriff's men and eventually tortured to death. The Schoffield Kid finishes off the second target (his first ever kill), the climax sees William Munny facing (and killing) Little Bill Daggett.

A sometimes brutal, sometimes sad film, that won the best picture award at the Oscars and established Clint Eastwood as a great director.

from Roger Ebert's review:A lot of the shots are from the inside looking out, so that the figures seem dark and obscure and the brightness that pours through the window is almost blinding. The effect is to diminish the stature of the characters; these aren't heroes, but simply the occupants of a simple, rude society in which death is an everyday fact.

6/10

Salinui chueok (Memories of Murder)

This is based on an actual series of murders that took place in rural South Korea between 1986 and 1991. I don't know how much of the film corresponds with actual events. The number of victims is never mentioned (there were 10 attributed to the same killer). However, some of the details and modes of the murders were taken from the real crimes.

The film is elegantly bleak and beautifully shot with a very tense atmosphere that keeps you watching even though (if you checked, as I did) you do know that the killer was never caught (in film and in reality).

It is said to feature some political commentary on the military rule of the late 1980s that you probably only get if you are from South Korea. I don't know enough about the history of, well, most of Asia, to get it. However, this doesn't make the film any less interesting.

I really enjoyed this.

7/10

Pontypool

You may have noticed by now that I watch a lot of horror films. In recent years I came across quite a few interesting ones (as in: they do not follow the apparent standard formula many genre films do) and a lot of those are Canadian products.

Canada gave us some real gems in that regard. The Cube series, the Ginger Snaps series, The Brood, or the classic Black Christmas to name a few.

With Pontypool, we get a zombie flick in which you don't actually see much of the zombies. As an avid reader using my imaginagion to draw up pictures of people, places, scenes is not a new concept. In films, however, rarely anything is left to you. What a breath of fresh air to watch a film that does not present bite-sized pieces of familiar patterns.

Almost the entire film takes place inside a small town radio station, where talk show host Grant Mazzy and his crew of two get disturbing reports about mobs going rampant all over town. Throughout the whole film we, the viewers, know as much or little as the characters in the film. We learn what is happening outside from frantic phone calls.

Eventually, the zombies reach the station, as does one Dr. Mendez, who seams to have had an unknowing hand in starting the outbreak. Even the infection that produces the zombies is out of the horror movie norm. What we see of the outside crowd is mostly hands and, later, shapes through dirty, bloody glass. The epidemic does affect one of the women working for the radio station and we do get to see how the affected act. In full detail.

This film is very, very interesting.

8/10

Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield

This is only very loosely based on the real events and murders of Ed Gein and is actually more about country cop Bobby Mason than it is about the serial killer.

Gein is your standard loner that is locally only spoken off in hushed tones because his mother and brother died last year and he hasn’t been the same since. The scenes of attack usually involve poor Ed imagining his mother speaking to him rather than the women he picks out for killing. Surely, it is all mommy’s fault.

The town folk is portrayed as plain and almost cartoonish at times. The cop’s momma particularly overplays the matronly lady. She gets so annoying at times that you wish Ed Gein upon her – and sooner rather than later. Bobby is about as one-dimensional and stupid as they come (think Dewey from the Scream films without the humor angle). He is either staring in wide-eyed wonder when making any discovery of any significance or boldly making out with his girlfriend Erica (his boss’ daughter – never a good idea, and his mother may not approve either). This is 2007, so we can go a little steamy, no matter when the story is set.

There is even the inquisitive female (!) journalist hounding the sheriff for details of any crimes. An impromptu press conference brings out all the awful acting in full force. The only person that does  a halfway decent job is Kane Hodder, who plays Ed Gein. Hodder also played Jason Voorhees in the later parts of the Friday The 13th films. In his work as a stunt man he badly burned part of his body. This – as well as his stature – probably is part of the reason he seems to be stuck in murderous roles.

For some reason that I don’t quite understand, some of the really bad scenes are played out in slow motion, which feels totally out of place.

Fittingly, the dialogue falls flat through most of the film, like

“Erica! Erica! Erica! She was right here! Where did she go? Erica!”

or

“Now, we know for sure that you are somewhere on this property. We’d like you to kindly help us in this investigation by coming out and introducing yourself.” “I don’t think he’s home.” “Oh no, he’s home. I can smell him.”

or even,

“Bobby don’t do it. Don’t lower yourself to his level.”

The film has a score of 3,8/10 on imdb, which is too high for my liking.

1/10