roby2358 Reviews

S. Darko (2009)

Was it deep? Who cares

[3/10 · 23 May 2009]

I have the feeling that if you watched this over, you would start to pick up on tons of depth and symbolism. The big problem is, who cares? This sequel lacks all the bizarre drama and compelling mystery of the original.

It felt like someone sat down, made notes of the mechanics of Donnie Darko, and then replicated it in miniature over and over with some good-looking robotic teenagers.

The filmmakers completely missed the point that was was happening to Donnie in the first movie was a blend of The Universe and his Mind, and it was impossible to draw a line between the two. In this sequel, there are just a bunch of too-cool-for-words teens marching through the paces the Universe is putting them through, like good little pawns on a chessboard.

Too bad, too. The original was so strange and compelling, I still think about it after all these years. Clearly the filmmakers of number two wanted to create a work of intricate mystery, but it just didn't seem to have any pull.

Living Hell (2008 TV Movie)

actually pretty darn good

[7/10 · 26 February 2008]

I insist on watching the movies on Sci-Fi because, well, I have to. I keep hoping someday there will be a hidden gem, or at least one with some cool special effects. This one was a little of both. While overgrown with B-movie clichés and iffy CGI effects, there were still some pretty interesting twists, and some genuinely creepy moments. I did get caught up in the race to defeat the -ah- monster (?), and I liked the acting of the two main characters, even if the dialog left them pretty thin. The story was a very nice diversion from the usual sort of humanoid-alien-or-zombie run wild. It was fun to watch. I thought the solution was maybe a little trite, but I enjoyed the film enough that I was OK with it. There were little glimpses of pretty intelligent writing sprinkled through the movie. It almost felt like a decent script that got stretched and produced and Sci-Fi-ized into a B-movie (C-movie?). But I think it still maintained some of the interesting parts of the premise, and played them out well. All in all, I enjoyed watching it, and it held my interest all the way to the end. I wonder why the Sci-Fi channel insists on matching cheesy special effects with cheesy acting and cheesy writing. Dr. Who is proof that good writing can carry really cheap effects. I think this movie was a big step in that direction, and I hope they go with it more.

Monster (2008 Video)

ow ow ow it hurts make it stop

[1/10 · 29 January 2008]

I marked this as containg "spoilers", although I really don't think you could spoil this one. The short version is: a couple of cute actresses don't make up for 90 minutes of innovatively slow and eye-wrenching film-making.

Wow this one was bad. I kind of like these rip-off titles, because it's fun to see a low-budget rip-off of a Hollywood production. This one was timed to pre-empt Cloverfield with a 1-15-08 release, and mimic the hand-held camera, street point of view experience of a giant monster attacking a large city. In this case the city is Tokyo, and the monster is... uh, some kind of tentacle thing. Hard to say cause you never really see it.

However, the filmmakers here decided to one-up Cloverfield by making the camera MORE shaky. And they came up with the brilliant device of simulating a damaged tape by having the picture fuzz out and go to black...well, every three seconds or so.

So basically it was like watching a feature-length film in three-second bursts, separated by static and black screen.

What's worse, when something does happen, the film punctuates the action by freezing the film and then cutting to black. Wha....? Most of the film consists of excessive shaking of the camera (either Tokyo was built on pudding, or both actresses have a really bad nervous tremors) while filming the actresses talking or crying. Sometimes there are sound effects of people screaming in the background, and sometimes a terrifying monster roar.

Because HEARING the monster roar is better than SEEING the monster. Which seems to be the mantra in this movie.

I measure how bad a movie is by how quickly I start fast-forwarding through it to get to the special effects. Five minutes into seeing the girls acting cute, I was blazing at full speed. And I think I stopped maybe three times to see glimpses of the monster and then... fuzz out and cut to black.

The only good thing about this movie is that the girls are cute. They are easy to watch for a while. And in another innovative simulation of what real life may be like, a lot of the scenes are shot of the actresses from the neck down. There are several scenes with the camera lying on the floor with an actress crawling toward it.

But on the whole, this is an amazingly bad movie, with some amazingly bad filmaking choices sort of obsessively driven home. In the end, it's not even close to being so bad it's good -- it's just spasmodic, choppy, and amazingly slow and talky.

I think the real monster in this snoozer is the film itself.