Pilot Watch: Reign

As has been mentioned here before, I like most CW shows.  I don't care if they're full of insanely unrealistic pretty people, I don't care if they're silly; I just likes them.  And what's wrong with silly pretty people if it's well-written and entertaining?  Nothing, that's what I says.  So why did I wait for five episodes to pile up before I decided to give Reign a try?  Well, it looked stoopid.  Too stoopid for me.  I had also heard not-good things about it.  But, with the pilot episode about to expire from Hulu, I decided to go ahead and give it a go.

And people...it wasn't good.  It made me giggle in places that I don't think were meant to be funny.  It's like...if you've seen good productions of historical dramas, you know what they're supposed to look like.  And this show is about Mary Queen of Scots, and there's a mental image you get when you think about shows about royalty.  Mostly I think of Downton Abbey, full of production values and ACTORS and good writing.  And I know DA isn't about royalty, per se, but it is about posh people wearing posh clothes and getting dressed for dinner and worrying about heirs and marrying for political purposes and not for love.

And Reign?  Is full of pretty people playing dress-up.  None of them look or act like they live in a different time period.  The writing is silly, the acting is silly, and sometimes it's so silly it's giggle-inducing.  For instance, this guy?  The French dude Mary is supposed to marry?

Made me giggle SO HARD.  There's just something so weird about his facial hair and his acting and I dunno, I just giggled at him.  Not sexy AT ALL.

And then there's Hunky Nostradamus*.  I guess at this point in time, Nostradamus was actually around 50, or 70, I dunno, but he was OLD.  He definitely wasn't 20, which is what he looks like on this show.  Which is just, well, silly.  They could have hired someone venerable and made it interesting, but instead we get another generic stud who will be more believable as a romantic possibility for someone later on. 

*I believe this term originated with Dan Feinberg from hitfix.com; at least that's where I first heard it.

If I graded such things, I'd probably give this one a C-.  It wasn't terrible, but it sure wasn't good.  However, I didn't immediately delete the rest of the episodes from my Hulu queue, so it's likely I'll give it a second episode. 

Review: Curse of Chucky

Well, Child's Play 3 can revel in the fact that it is no longer the worst in the Child's Play series.  That honor can now go to Curse of Chucky.  I'm just glad I waited to get the disc from Netflix instead of renting it from Amazon instant over the weekend.  After my Chucky marathon on Saturday, I really wanted to watch Curse, but I knew I had the disc coming, so I decided to wait.  I would have been pissed if I'd wasted $5 on this piece of crapola.

First of all, the movie is only 90 minutes, and yet I kept looking at the time, waiting for it to be over.  Seed of Chucky, which is kind of the weirdest entry in the Chucky oeuvre, at least isn't boring.  It's kinda weird and stooped and the doll kid was named Glen, but Tiffany wanted him to be a girl so she called him Glenda, and then he didn't know what he wanted to be so they called him Glen or Glenda, haha, wink, get it???  Just too much.  On the other hand, it had even more Tilly than in Bride, and that's always a good thing.  Point is, not boring.  Not looking at the clock going, holy baby jeebus, make this end!

Also, the attempt at MORE backstory.  Now, I love some good mythology.  I was stoopid enough to watch Halloween Resurrection even though I knew they'd ruin the great ending to H20, because I wanted to know how he wasn't dead.  I've gone back and filled in all the Fridays I hadn't watched because I wanted to know how he got killed at the end and then got brought back for the next one.  I like that kind of shit.  But you don't need to go overboard.  We already know that Charles Lee Ray was some kind of strangler before he was gunned down in the toy shop before he transferred his soul to the Good Guy doll.  We don't really need any more back story than that.  And when you have flashbacks to poor Brad Dourif looking about 50 years older than he did in the first one?  Just sad. 

The only thing I can say I kinda liked was the post-credits sequence.  It makes no sense, but I dunno, I still kinda dug it.  (And yes.  I will watch another one if they make it.  I love my horror movies.)

Halloween Quickies, pt. 2

Okay, so after Sleepaway Camp 2, I watched:

The Innkeepers:  Talk about a tonal shift.  SL2 was loud, obnoxious and incredibly stoopid.  The Inkeepers was more thoughtful and slow.  UNTIL IT WASN'T.  I was a big fan of Ti West's  earlier movie The House of the Devil because it was really atmospheric and full of tension.  The Innkeepers has the same kind of vibe.  And unlike SL2, it had characters who I was interested in.  I liked them.  The basic plot is that this old hotel, The Yankee Pedlar Inn, is closing and this is the last weekend that it's open.  There are only a few people in residence so there are only two employees working, who are also attempting to document the existence of a ghost.  I really, really liked this movie.  It was funny and it was also genuinely scary.  There were things that a jaded horror movie watcher SHOULD have seen coming, but I didn't and I actually yelled once.  There's a scene towards the end where the tension was so unbearable I almost wanted to turn off the teevee.  Very good flick.

The last movie I watched was:
Epitaph: After watching all five of the Child's Play movies, I wanted something scary.  So I picked this Korean movie, hoping for something creepy like Ju-On or Ringu.  Instead, I got a quite lovely psychological ghost story of sorts.  It took me a while to actually get into the movie.  In fact, I was ready to turn it off after 30 minutes, but for some reason I kept watching.  The plot seems kind of crazy because it's highly complex and you think you're missing something and then realize maybe you weren't.  It's one that I'd like to go back to at some point and see if it makes more sense after having seen it once.  I'd recommend it if you don't mind a slow-paced atmospheric movie.  And when I say quite lovely, I really mean that.  I'm not good at the ol' film jargon, so I'll just say it was pretty to look at and was actually about something.

Anyhoo.  I watched that one on Saturday night, and I was all prepared to make another day of it on Sunday afternoon.  But even though the Child's Play franchise isn't even as half as graphic or bloody as the Friday the 13th movies (and there are only 5; well, plus the new one I haven't seen yet), somehow I felt all horror movie-d out and ended up catching up on some of my teevee shows.  So I guess I have a horror movie limit after all.  I even got really grossed out watching last week's American Horror Story.  Like flinching at blood and stuff.  Totally not like me.

But all in all I had a good weekend of drinking and sitting on my butt on the couch, watching silly movies and annoying my blind kitty.  I mean, by moving around so much on the couch she calls her bed.  Maybe by next October, I'll be writing more regularly and have gotten better at it, and maybe I'll actually plan something out.  One can hope! 

Halloween Quickies, pt. 1

So, my Halloween movie marathon didn't exactly go as planned.   I only watched movies on Saturday and instead of watching a random assortment of movies, I went killer doll crazy and watched all of the Child's Play movies.  In some ways, it's a better franchise than some of the others because they're mostly pretty good.  Pretty good in a silly horror movie way, that is.  I mean, I've seen all of the Nightmare on Elm Streets and Halloweens and Friday the 13ths, but mostly, there are maybe three good ones in the mix and the rest are shit.  I'd say all but Child's Play 3 are pretty darn watchable.  And I haven't seen Curse of Chucky yet, so I don't know how that one will pan out.  Child's Play 3 was the only one where I was looking at the clock, waiting for it to be over. 

Anyhoo, I watched some other things besides Chucky movies.  Here they are:

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: I guess this was a remake, but I'd never seen or heard of the original, so I have nothing to say about that.  This was a pretty decent movie, but I had one major problem with it.  There's a little girl in the movie who, either because of the writing or the performance, seemed to be fairly intelligent.  She's being stalked by little demony fairy things in her new house and at some point discovers they don't like light.  And she does a few smart things in that regard.  BUT, later in the movie, she's taking a bath and they come in and somehow turn off the light.  She gets out of the tub and runs to the door but then just kinda stands there while I'm yelling "turn on the light, stoopid!!!"  And she never turns on the light, despite knowing it will make them scatter.  DUMB.  I mean, if she had, it wouldn't have suddenly turned the movie into a modern masterpiece or anything, but I would have thought much better of it.  As it was, it was all right, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers: Um, yeah.  Sleepaway Camp is a terrible movie.  TERRIBLE.  But I had heard some people kinda liked the sequels, so I thought, why not?  I'll give most anything on Netflix Instant a try.  OMG.  Sleepaway Camp 2 is WORSE than the original.  Just horrible.  From about five minutes in, I just wanted all of those stoopid campers dead.  And you watch a movie like this and you remember that not everyone could afford the services of someone like Tom Savini.  So instead, when Angela cuts out someone's tongue at the beginning, rather than actually seeing any kind of simulation of such a thing, Angela just puts her hand over the girl's mouth, then moves a knife around like she's cutting off her lips, and then it cuts to her throwing a tongue on the ground.  I mean, her mouth wasn't even open.  Just ... inept. 

Stay tuned for part 2!!

Happy Halloween!

If I were less boring and lazy and all of that, I would have planned something in advance for Halloween so I'd have something more interesting than just "Happy Halloween" to say today.  I AM WHAT I AM.  So there.  All I know is, I'm watching silly horror movies on Netflix Instant all weekend cuz  I couldn't take today and tomorrow off from work.  I've got a bunch queued all up in there and I'm not gonna think too hard about it, just gonna press "play" and watch 'em up!  Anything that doesn't grab me within 30 minutes, is dunzo.  I will move on and feel no guilt!!

At some point I'll probably watch the original, the best, Halloween movie and see if it still scares me. 

He's in broad daylight!!  This is one of the scariest scenes in the movie, when Laurie and Annie are walking towards him and he just moves out of sight and they keep walking and OMGHFDOFJISOFJDS!!!  Freaky!! 

Halloween 2013: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was originally made in 2006, but due to complications with its distributor, it didn't get a U.S. release until just this year.  I don't remember when I first heard about it, but I'd been anticipating its release ever since because everyone was raving over it.  Owing to its limited release this year, I actually somehow avoided knowing anything about it, which is kind of nice.  I was able to watch it without ever really being sure what was going on and what I should be expecting.

In case you didn't know, Mandy Lane is a horror movie.  Amber Heard plays the titular character, a gorgeous virginal blonde who is indeed lusted after by all the boys at her high school.  She is invited to a get-together at a friend's parent's cattle ranch where all the boys are each hoping to get it on with her.  And I'll leave it at that.  If you like horror movies, especially slasher movies, you don't need much more than that and I'd rather not say anything else.  This isn't an especially scary movie, although YMMV. 

Now, did I like the movie?  Was it worth the wait?  Well...I dunno about that.  I was mostly enjoying it until a certain point, and even though the characters weren't particularly likable, I was curious about where it was going, and what was going to happen.  But then when it all became clear, it really wasn't that clear, and I felt a bit let down.  I don't mind movies that don't have clear answers.  A great example is Black Christmas, where you never really learn why the guy in the house is killing everyone.  That's okay.  But this one, I felt a bit cheated.  I think part of the buildup to this movie was that I got the idea it was some kind of female empowerment something-or-other, and I'm not sure that it was. 

I gave this one three stars.  Like Final Destination 5, if I had stopped the movie before the letdown, it might have gotten three and a half.  I'd recommend it to slasher movie fans, especially those who like something a little different.

Netflix is weird

As I was doing breakfasty things in the kitchen this morning, I happened to notice a Netflix thingie, one of many that pile up on the table because hubbie and I are SLOBS.  Oh, what's a Netflix thingie, you might ask?  Well.  If you've never received discs through the mail, here's what they look like:

The sheet on the left side is essentially an ad for Netflix.  You tear that sheet off and throw it away.  Or leave it sitting on your table, along with junk mail, until you get sick of it, and THEN throw it away.  ANYWAY.  I happened to notice the most recent one sitting on the table, and it was basically a reminder that Netflix has zombie movies for you to choose from, since it's almost Halloween.  And then it had four DVD covers.  I'm guessing this is what they would consider the cream of the crop?  The quintessential entries in the genre?  Well.  Here are the four movies they chose:

Zombieland.  Shaun of the Dead.  World War Z.  AND...  AND....  Young Frankenstein.

"One of these things is not like the other..."

Um.  I have ISSUES.  The most obvious is that Young Frankenstein is NOT A ZOMBIE MOVIE.  Yes, Frankenstein's monster is a reanimated corpse, but he is not a zombie.  Not in the classic sense of what I consider to be a zombie.  Zombies are reanimated corpses who then eat other people and pass on their zombieness.  Ol' Frankie could eat people, but he wouldn't pass anything on.  The only way Young Frankenstein fits is that it's a horror comedy, and in that sense, it can go fine alongside Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead.  Which means World War Z then doesn't belong, because as far as I know, it's a serious zombie movie.  But it's a zombie movie and therefore belongs.  Dagnabbit!!

The other issue is simply that I wouldn't have put both Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead on the list.  They are both excellent zombie movies, but they are outliers of sorts, since they're comedies.  I also wouldn't necessarily have put Return of the Living Dead on there, either.  Now, if the fourth movie had been Night of the Living Dead, or Dawn of the Dead, I probably wouldn't have given the thingie a second glance.  I might have wondered a bit why they'd chosen both Zombieland and Shaun, but I wouldn't be ranting about it.

HOWEVER.  I think, in part, what frustrates me about the choice of these four movies is that they're not zombie gore-fests.  Yes, there is some gore in both Zombieland and Shaun, but my sister watched them and liked them both.  And girlfriend does NOT like horror.  Does not like gore.  I guarantee she wouldn't like Dawn of the Dead, which to me is THE zombie movie.  And from what I've heard and read about World War Z is that it is not a gore-fest.  It's more mainstream.  AND it's PG-13.  The only horror movie I've seen recently that was PG-13 and still good was Drag Me to Hell.  PG-13 and zombies just don't go together.  We go see zombie movies to see body parts ripped off and eaten.  Blood, gore and intestines, oh my!!

None of which is to denigrate Zombieland or Shaun AT ALL.  They're just the kind of movies that non-gorehounds would choose if you asked them to pick a good zombie movie.  I shouldn't be surprised by this, but ya know.  I can be naïve sometimes. 
 
EDITED TO ADD PHOTO EVIDENCE:

That there is the tear-away sheet from a Netflix envelope, inviting the consumer to "add these flesh-eating zombies to your queue."  Frankenstein's monster does not eat flesh!!!  Jeebus Creezypants!!

Blergh

I have 33 horror movies queued up in my Netflix to watch next weekend.  I don't think I'm gonna get them all watched in one day!  Oh noes!!  I might watch a few this weekend if I don't get stuck doing what I always do on weekends.  Which is: doing online jigsaw puzzles while I listen to podcasts.  I am so boring!!  The last time I watched a bunch of movies on Halloween I think I only watched 6?  So, yeah. 

The annoying thing about Halloween this year is that I now have a job where I actually have a specific thing I have to do on the first of every month.  I'd like to take next Thursday and Friday off, but then I'd have to postpone this specific thing to Monday, but I don't know if my boss would go for it.  And I don't really mind having my horror movie marathon on the weekend.  I was gonna start on Friday night and watch stuff all weekend long.  I dunno.  Maybe I'll still run it by the boss and see if I can take next Friday off.

I just wanna go home and watch horror movies NOW!!!!!  Go buy some beer and pizza and turn all the lights out.

Halloween 2013: Final Destination 5

Quick thoughts:  Final Destination 5 is a good example of why I will mostly likely watch Paranormal Activity 5.  Because sometimes a sequel is damn good.  I had kinda given up on the FD series after 4 (mostly because 3 and 4 were boring and I actually keep forgetting I even watched 4), but then someone on a podcast said 5 was actually pretty fun, so I said, what the hey.  I AM a completist, after all.  Now that most, if not all, I haven't actually checked, of the Hellraiser movies are on Netflix Instant, I'll probably make my way through those.  YES.  I will regret it, and I know this already.  But I will do it.

ANYHOODLE.  Final Destination 5.  Again, like PA 5, this series has a conceit that definitely wears thin.  Hence the badness of 3 and 4.  But I dunno, 5 was just fun.  The kill sequences were awesome, and the opening made me giggle numerous times.  Ultimately, I only gave this movie 3 stars, though, mostly cuz the ending was majorly lame.  Unlike 3 and 4, though, I'll watch this one again.  I'd totally do a marathon and skip 3 and 4.  I think Dick Casablancas may have been in 3, though, so maybe I'd watch it again.  *skitters off to check interwebs*  WRONG, it was Nick Zano I was thinking of, not Ryan Hansen, and it was 4.  See, I still don't remember 4 at all!!

So, the FD films in order of awesomeness: 2, 1, 5, 3.  That's it, right?  I'm not missing something??  Nah.

Halloween 2013: Paranormal Activity 4

I'm just a sucker for these movies.  I don't LOVE them, but they're good for a decent scare or two.  The real problem with them is the movie around the scares.  Characters you kind of want to slap so they'll shut up already and get to the scares.  And there's definitely a problem of diminishing returns.  By the fourth movie, it's like, "oh, a door opening by itself AGAIN.  I'm SO scared."  For the most part, it's just the same tricks over and over and this movie definitely didn't scare me very much.  Some good eerie moments but not real scares.  But I'll probably watch the fifth one when it gets put up on Netflix instant streaming.  Cuz you never know!  Some sequels are actually fun.

I think the main problem with this one is that they've stretched the found footage conceit almost to the breaking point.  I can buy people who think their house is haunted, so they put up cameras all around the house and check them periodically.  Yeah, it stretches credibility, but if it's fun and scary, I don't mind.  This one, though, just, I dunno.  Mostly we get the stoopid teenage main character chatting with her boyfriend online, so we have to look at her dumb face A LOT.  And her dumb boyfriend is even worse.  And spoiler alert, I guess?  So, psycho Aunt Katie kidnapped her nephew Hunter after killing off the rest of the family, and then she shows up across the street from the people in this movie, with a kid she's calling Robbie.  So I assumed Robbie was Hunter.  But then it seems like later they're trying to say the boy in the other family is actually Hunter??  So then who the fuck is Robbie??  Things like this bug me and take me out of the movie.  They make me all stabby and psycho-facey.

So I wouldn't recommend this movie unless you saw and didn't hate the other three.  Otherwise the whole thing wouldn't make ANY sense, probably.

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

Yeah, I never saw this in the theater.  I really hate leaving the house on weekends and I don't like to go out after work, and I dunno, if it weren't for work I might never leave the house.  I get panic attacks sometimes in large groups of people and sometimes I just can't deal, so I don't see that many movies in the theater.  I dunno.  Maybe I would have liked it better if I'd seen it in the theater.

I enjoyed it for the most part until it started getting all cutesy and up its own ass with the referential crap.  A tribble for no reason, and then the whole reversal of Kirk and Spock at the end of Wrath of Khan, and then suddenly Spock is yelling "KHAAAAAN!!!!" and I'm annoyed.  I love a good wink at the audience if it's done right, but too much and it's just fucking lazy.  And it just made me want to rewatch Wrath of Khan, cuz that's a good movie.  And I love Cumberbatch, but I kept trying to wonder what it would sound like if he said "fine Corinthian  leather..."

Halloween 2013: Cronenberg

David Cronenberg directed one of my very favorite horror movies, the remake of The Fly.  There's a part in it where Goldblum vomits up his food at the table and just says something like "oh, that was gross," that just kills me.  It's gory, gross, funny, and that means it's My Kinda Movie.  Also fitting nicely into that category is The Brood -- awesome and creepy and I love it.  Others of his that I'd seen are The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers, Existenz, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises.  All of which I liked except for Existenz, which for some reason I violently hated.  But everything else is excellent, although Dead Ringers suffers a bit in comparison to the rest.  Anyway, since I got back on the Netflix DVD train, I decided to catch up on a few I hadn't seen.

First was Scanners, which I gave 3 1/2 stars.  Not sure why, in retrospect I'd probably give it just 3.  It was a decent movie but suffered a bit when I realized the big iconic scene (the head exploding) occurred in the first 20 or so minutes, maybe sooner.  After that I was kind of waiting for something even more awesome to happen and it didn't.  But Michael Ironside was really good.  I think that's the best thing about it (besides the 'splodey head, which I howled at).

Next was Videodrome, which I  also gave 3 1/2 stars, and I'll stick with that.  Now when someone says "Long live the new flesh" I have a frame of reference for it.  (cuz it happens SO OFTEN).  This is one of those movies that challenges the viewer a little, at least those of us who enjoy horror.  And at the same time gives us perverts exactly what we want.  I've always liked James Woods, and I enjoyed his performance in the movie.  Also:  Debbie Harry!!  Her acting was not so great, but still.  I think she'd be fun to have a drink with.  Unlike Scanners, I can see myself watching this more than once.  Good flick.

Last was Rabid, which I gave 3 stars.  Creepy, gory, but ultimately, I dunno, somehow not very memorable?  Except maybe for the fact that Marilyn Chambers is in this and is of course as nekkid as she can be.  Maybe if they'd cast a better actress I could've sympathized with her character, but as it was, again, I dunno, I wasn't left with very much of anything when it was over.