224 - Sinister

    A family moves into the house where most of a family was murdered, and the father investigates the crime for his true-crime novel.  Evil stuff starts to happen when he finds footage of the murders - and others.
    I showed this to Cathy, as it was one of the more interesting horror movies from the last several years.  It’s been awhile since I saw it, and this viewing did make things more interesting.
    The sound and music is really unusual.  While the found footage is playing, some very unsettling music plays.  It’s a little like a heartbeat, but less organic.  There are synth elements.  It’s strange that I didn’t remember this from the first time I watched the movie.  I kept wondering if the found footage sequences would have been more or less effective without the score.
    The story fits together better than I remembered.  There are a lot of red herrings during the first half, but I’m impressed with how deftly the script inserts the important pieces of information.
    I do have one main complaint, and it really seems like something the director would have addressed.  There are two points in the movie where they use a jump scare that involves the supernatural being’s head jumping in from the side of the frame along with a big stab on the score.  These moments are cheap, and they break the fourth wall, for some reason.  They actually hurt my respect for how well the movie is done otherwise.  It’s like some producer said “we need a big scare to go out on!  Do this!”
    Regardless, the movie was effective at scaring Cathy.

223 - Suspiria

    An American girl goes to a foreign dance academy.  People start dying, and strange stuff happens as she gradually investigates things.
    I’ve avoided a lot of the giallo movies.  I haven’t cared much for Argento in general.  Last year, I watched Tenebre, which I think I liked a little more than I expected.  I’ve also found that he directed the Masters of Horror episode Jenifer, which I liked quite a bit.
    Suspiria enjoys a very positive reputation, and a pretty influential status.  I think I can understand this sort of thing, since it does make an impression, but honestly, I find it exhausting and weak.
    The movie focuses on two specific aspects: color and sound.  The script, the acting, the effects… all of it is unremarkable.  The editing is interesting, but it’s remarkably difficult to follow.  The design of everything is tilted toward making interesting colors.  Tinted windows are exploited to throw bright colors on things.  Red is all over the place, then blue, then occasionally, a green is used.  This focus actually works against the believability of the movie.
    There’s a sequence where a girl is fleeing a killer.  She makes it through a small window, putting a room between her and her stalker.  She sees an open door on the other side of the room.  She drops down, falling onto a whole mess of barbed wire.  The room is lit well enough that the audience can see all of the wire clearly.  If we had seen from her perspective, and the wire was entirely in shadow, I could believe it.  As the scene plays out, I can’t help but wonder why she decided to jump into the wire.
    The sound is really strange.  Music appears and pounds loud - really loud - and then stops.  This happens several times.  I don’t mind the idea of this, since the music is tied to the editing, and there’s some kind of internal logic to it.  The problem is that the volume difference is so incredibly huge, it’s hard to feel anything but annoyed.
    I had heard something… when Star Wars was originally released in Italy, audiences loved Vader’s breathing.  As a result, the Italian mix pulled the breathing way up.  This is all I could think of.  These audiences would rather hear the music than the dialogue.
    The story itself is kind of minimal.  It isn’t written especially well.  There aren’t many surprises to be had.
    I don’t actually think this is a great movie.  But I do think some of the imagery and the coloring, and the framing of the shots are fairly influential.  I think I just wanted a stronger, more coherent story.

222 - Ishtar

    A pair of songwriters get a gig in Ishtar, where they get entangled in a political mess.
    Cathy got me the Blu-ray for Christmas.  We watched it together.
    After I watched this the first time, I liked it quite a bit.  The longer I thought about it, the more I liked it.  Dangerous Business has been in my head often, and I’ve been suggesting the movie to almost anyone I can.
    The second viewing was actually better than the first!  While I had really liked all of the music/songwriting sequences the first time through, I felt like the plot was almost an intrusion into that bliss.  This time through, the plot wasn’t bad at all.  It felt like there was more of a continuity from the song sequences into the plot ones, and it felt more like two people from another movie stumbling into a big-budget action movie.  The tone of the delivery and the photography changes.
    I was more aware of a variety of continuity gags.  Every time they’re on stage, they invariably kick a microphone at some point.  Dangerous Business is remixed into different instrumental versions for background music (as well as a piece of music used in the Mission: Impossible series, in a very pleasing easter egg).
    There’s one complaint that I have, and it’s hard to blame them for.  There are passages where most of the dialogue is whispered.  I wish the mixing were better for those scenes.  I think those play better in theaters though.

221 - Charade

    A woman is widowed.  She finds herself surrounded by con men, looking to find $250,000 that her former husband supposedly had.
    I’ve had this in my queue for a long time, since it looked vaguely Hitchcockian, and I’ve wanted to see more of Cary Grant.  I finally gave in and watched it.
    It’s okay.  I’m surprised that it has an 8 on IMDB, but it is fun, even if it’s a little weak.
    The story is mostly told from the perspective of the female lead.  We learn what she learns, and we don’t get any information that isn’t directly shared with her.  Most of the story is built on trying to reformulate the audience expectations.  First, Cary Grant is a good guy.  Then something reveals he’s a bad guy.  Then he offers an explanation, and he’s back to being a good guy.  This keeps on cycling through.  It doesn’t feel like it’s masterfully handled, but it may just be an issue of the time period.  Everything feels like it’s being spelled out too clearly to the audience.
    The biggest problem is that the story is tonally confused.  It plays out like a mystery, focusing on tension for some of the story.  Then there are these witty, flirty exchanges between the leads that play like a romantic comedy.  Things keep flopping around, and it never does either of these things especially well because of it.
    There are two main reveals near the end.  First, the location of the money.  Second, one person isn’t who they seemed.  The location of the money is something they’re all focused on, but it never seemed to be the important question.  I certainly didn’t care.  Even the female lead doesn’t seem too concerned about it.  Come to think of it, she didn’t seem too concerned about her husband’s death either.  The second reveal is something that I saw coming.  Even from the beginning, the setup seemed fishy.  It makes the female lead come across like she’s not especially bright.

    Yet, perhaps because of the strange tonal shifts, this remains more watchable than I expected.  Some familiar faces are nice to see - Matthau, Coburn, Ned Glass.  Still, could use some trimming, and possibly a bit of restructuring to make the developments happen in the right spots.

220 - We Are the Best!

    Three young girls in 1982 Sweden form a punk band.
    This had a solid five-star rating on Netflix.  I decided to overcome my lack of interest in punk music to give it a try.
    It’s good.  I feel like there are aspects of it that I don’t quite identify with, since I’ve never been to Sweden, I’m not a girl, and I’ve never identified with the punk mindset.  Outside of these issues, there’s something very charming about this.  Their band is almost incidental.  It seems to give the characters something to do, but most of the story is just the three of them having fun, arguing, and indulging in their friendship.  And that’s where the movie feels best.  The three girls have interesting relationships, they have distinct personalities, and the interplay is simultaneously unpredictable and completely normal.
    The ending comes with their first public performance, and it’s strange.  It doesn’t feel like much of an ending, but at least it seems like it solidifies the point made about their friendship.
    What I found most likable was Hedvig, who knows her instrument well, but seems to like the fun of playing punk music.  But it was her role as a mediator that I liked.  She doesn’t have as many lines, and she seems the least comfortable with stretching her boundaries to accommodate her friends, but her behavior is still something I identify with.
    Still, I don’t really understand the punk mindset.  That isn’t to say that the adults in this come across as good people, or even reasonable.  They seem shortsighted, probably about just as shortsighted as the girls do.  But it reinforces a few stereotypes I have about punk music, notably that it involves a bunch of musicians copying each other and repeating ideas without actually believing in anything in particular.

219 - The Wolf of Wall Street

    The rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, a stock trader who was convicted in 2003 of securities fraud and money laundering.
    I’ve been reluctant to watch Scorsese movies for awhile now.  I liked Goodfellas during high school, but eventually I grew out of it.  I realized that I find many of his movies kind of indulgent.  I think I like my stories a little more compact, tightly wound.  (Although Cathy didn’t care for Shutter Island, I remember liking it, and I’ve intended to revisit that one soon.)
    This movie is hard to avoid comparing to Goodfellas.  It’s long, at three solid hours.  It’s a similar rise and fall structure.  It ends with the person being convicted, ratting out his accomplices, and pining for the life he once led.
    There’s one key difference.  In Goodfellas, Henry Hill’s life is in a pretty constant decline.  He peaks pretty early on, but the drugs filter into everything, he gets less likable, and more and more people have to be killed off.  It gets harder to feel like it was a life worth living.  Here… I don’t get a sense of that.  It’s a party time from the beginning until about 15 minutes from the end.  Even the sequences that should have been terribly bleak feel like they’re being played for laughs.  He insists on his yacht being driven into a storm?  The scene becomes a joke as he sends his buddy down below to get some drugs.  Even after the ship capsizes, there’s a little dance party afterward.  What’s the message?  It doesn’t really matter.  He’s got enough money that it doesn’t matter at all.
    All of the negative consequences of Belfort’s behavior are personal problems.  Divorce, jail time… everything is softened because of his wealth.
    As I watched this, I thought of all of the people from my class that went on to work in finance.  Some of them were decent people.  Some of them were the most amoral people I knew.  I can imagine this movie captivating, especially in the time leading up to high school.  Without a strong moral core, I feel like this movie is missing something important.

    I read a handful of reviews on IMDB, and it reminded me of a few things.  The movie follows the general layout of a normal story, but it’s padded out to an excess.  There are loads of scenes that don’t really advance the story, or do it in the longest way possible.  Then there are a few other sequences that gloss over substantial events.
    Even though I can’t say that this is actually a good movie, it’s an entertaining watch.  Performances are fun, direction is usually enjoyable, and the quick pacing gives it a sheen of humor.  But at the core, I can’t say that this is good.  I can’t recommend it to anyone.

218 - Harold And Kumar Go to White Castle

    Stoner buddies Harold and Kumar decide that they want to make a trek out to White Castle to get some burgers.  Their trip turns into a night of (mis)adventure.
    I saw this a long time ago, probably 2005 or so.  I remember being pleasantly surprised.  There was mention of Neil Patrick Harris yesterday, and I remembered him being a highlight of this movie, so I decided to watch it again.
    I think I like it more than I did back then.  I’m seeing the unrated version now, which just means a bit more nudity, some of which adds to the surreal qualities of the movie.  I’ll get the one scene I really don’t care for, and that’s the toilet scene.  It’s not terrible, and it might play better for some age groups, but it seems out of place at that point in the story.
    The things that I like are much more unusual things.  Playing with the audience perception of racial stereotypes.  Putting an Asian guy as a romantic lead.  Even the appearances of some of the guest stars are about subverting the audience expectations of them.  Neil Patrick Harris is a strange, messed up, horny guy.  Christopher Meloni is cast wearing a bunch of weird deformities on his head.
    None of the white male characters are positive or honorable.  This doesn’t bug me.  It’s actually pretty refreshing.
    It’s also remarkable how the movie takes a premise that revolves so centrally around White Castle, and manages to prevent the movie from feeling like an ad for the chain.  It never says anything bad about their food, and the good material is glowing.  But it feels completely real.  These cravings happen.  I remember one day in college where a bunch of us started thinking about how great it would be to get Subway.
    I also like how well the movie ramps up the craziness.  It reaches a peak a little early, but it seemed like it didn’t make logistical sense to arrange it any different way.

217 - Troop Beverly Hills

    A stereotypical materialistic mother in Beverly Hills goes through a divorce, and decides to run her daughter’s Wilderness Girl troop.
    A podcast I listen to has mentioned this movie a fair amount.  One of the hosts of the show grew up watching a VHS copy of it.  I didn’t have any strong expectations of it.
    It’s not bad… but it’s not that good either.  There are a few good gags, but much of the humor feels weak and predictable.  I can’t blame this on having a cast that is largely children, either, since Shelly Long is the main character.  In fact, I didn’t feel like the girls were developed all that much.  Most of them were interchangeable.
    I realized that this was the equivalent of The Mighty Ducks to another person.  It’s a slobs-vs-snobs story (although cleverly inverted this time) that has lots of kids having fun and acting cool.  There are a few differences though, in that Ducks had the adult storyline, but shifted it far into the background, and even then, tethered the adult relationship to an adult/child relationship.  In this, the adult storyline is pushed further into the foreground, and it was hard to feel invested in the children.
    Most of the humor is a one-note kind of thing.  I don’t know what I think of that, since stuff like The Brady Bunch Movie is also a one-note story… but it’s done well.  I think the humor of this may have just been wasted on me.  I understood it was intended to be funny, but I simply didn’t care.
    This didn’t prevent me from enjoying the movie.  It gets a little more fun as the story builds, even if it’s a formulaic approach.
    If I saw this when I was younger, there’s a good chance I would have liked it.  If I were a young girl, I almost definitely would like it.
    The weirdest thing is the occasional use of the word ‘shit.’  Doesn’t seem like it fits with the tone of the movie.

216 - Oculus

    A lady and her brother attempt to understand and defeat a mysterious mirror that was involved in the deaths of their parents 11 years prior.
    This started off pretty poorly, playing like any number of haunted house type stories, but it gradually ramps up into something a little more interesting.
    The story focuses on two main characters, playing off of their parents.  The twist to the casting is that the story unfolds both in the present and the past, so two of the characters are played by four actors.  There’s a lot of confusion about when events happen, and the story jumps back and forth in time, and occasionally overlaps.  This is combined with a sense of confusion about what is real.
    I liked one sequence, when a girl starts to eat an apple.  Then she realizes that it’s actually a lightbulb she’s bitten into and is chewing on.  Then she realizes that it’s actually an apple.  The tricks on the viewer are endless, and it actually gets a little frustrating.  You never feel like it’s clear what the viewer can believe is real.  This is intentional, and it’s interesting to get engaged with a movie in this way.
    I don’t know how I feel about the ending.  Normally I’m not too picky about the endings of horror movies, but it didn’t seem to be what I expected.  I think I would have preferred a bittersweet ending, with the mirror breaking and the sacrifice, but instead…
    I wonder if this is an effort to leave the story open for a sequel.  I don’t think it needed it.

215 - Sharknado 2: The Second One

    A second sharknado forms, hitting New York.  The hero of the first movie returns to defuse the situation.
    I haven’t seen the first one.  I intended to, but I couldn’t do it.  I heard a review of the second one, and it was resoundingly positive.  They liked it more than the first.
    It’s hard to write anything about this movie.  It’s absurd, but it doesn’t try to be anything that it doesn’t tell you upfront.  The writing is silly and the story is ridiculous.  But what would be expected?
    There are cameos all over the place, and that’s kind of enjoyable.  Some of the set pieces are kind of neat.
    There’s only one way to accurately measure how good a movie of this type is.  How well did it keep me engaged?  On that kind of scale, I’d say it was probably about a 6 or a 7.  Whenever the story tried to incorporate human elements, I just didn’t care that much.

214 - The 400 Blows

    A young French boy deals with a difficult life at home and at school, leading to being held in a detention facility.
    This is one of those classic movies that I’ve just never brought myself to watch.  It’s one of the Criterion titles that constantly shows up.  I think it’s never been out of print in their collection.  Plus, it’s Truffaut’s first feature.
    It’s hard to tell how much of my interpretation is an issue of cultural and period differences.  Most of the behavior seems to be dated, both in the parenting and school settings.  The behavior of the kid is a little bad, but doesn’t seem all that terrible.  He’s not malicious, and he just seems to want to avoid the unpleasantness of the people around him.
    I didn’t think much of the photography until later in the movie.  Gradually, I came to really like the very long shots that he likes using around the city.  These are well-lit, and it’s easy to see exactly what we’re supposed to focus on.  Several of these are done from a high angle, and that really showcases some excellent planning and blocking.
    It’s hard to say that there’s much of a plot.  It’s mostly an exploration of the character and the circumstances he deals with, but there’s also something fascinating about the way that we identify with him.  Identifying with him allows us to feel the sense of imprisonment that he feels.
    There’s one problem that I can see, and it’s that I don’t see the influence this has had.  That isn’t quite true: I see that the school and child behavior in Cinema Paradiso are similar, but that movie is much more of an idealized fantasy… sort of.

213 - Children of the Corn

    A bickering couple drives through the middle of nowhere, encountering a town in which religious fanatic children have taken over and killed all adults.
    This is the 2009 made-for-tv remake.  It’s more faithful to the original story, and proportionally, a much larger budget.  I actually checked this out.  The 1984 version had a budget of $800,000.  In 2009 dollars, that’s equivalent to about 1.65M.  The 2009 version had a budget of about 2M.
    I guess this is to say that the quality of a production has little to do with the budget.  This movie was written and directed by the same guy.  In the interest of directly adapting the story, yes, he did that well.  In the interest of making a good movie, he failed.
    This is one of the first movies I’ve seen where I felt like the performances were the biggest problem.  Normally, when there’s a poor performance, it’s limited to a specific person, or a few people.  With this, there’s one actor that does a decent job, one that does a passable job, and everyone else is terrible.  And this is really puzzling to me, because the female lead is played by Kandyse McClure, who I’ve seen in Battlestar Galactica, and she’s good.  She does a very good job in that show.  I don’t doubt her abilities.  But her performance here is one of the most grating I’ve ever seen.  When she disappears about halfway through the movie, I found it easier to relax and enjoy the movie.
    The children are well-dressed, clean, and healthy.  This is in stark contrast to the town, which is dilapidated and run-down.  It’s actually one of the highlights of the movie - the town looks wonderfully abandoned.  While I have no issues with having different builds for the kids, I do take issue with the largely overweight ones.  It seems like their diet would result it pretty substantial weight loss.
    The script is awkward, and no one talks like a real person would.  When it comes to the kids, this is expected, but the arguments between the couple seem incredibly strained.
    There’s the dark ending, but I couldn’t care less.  None of the characters were likable, so it doesn’t seem to matter if they live or die.
    Effective religious zealotry is a real lynchpin to this story, and the kid playing Issac is so poor… and the kids playing the followers seem so disinterested that it’s hard to believe any of this.
    The one main strong point: it was actually pleasing to see the male lead being willing to kill the kids.  Especially for a made-for-TV movie.

212 - Zombeavers

    A bunch of college kids go on a vacation, where they run afoul of a bunch of mutated beavers.
    This movie is exactly what it should be.

    Certain scenes were done in an improv style, which gives a sense of liveliness to things.  The script is crude, but in addition to being crude, it’s unpredictable.  Jokes often fall on a continuum of how obvious a punchline is.  There are usually several perfectly acceptable punchlines to any given setup.  This script avoids those obvious lines, in favor of peculiar lines that I really didn’t see coming.
    I’m pleased that the filmmakers made appropriate judgement calls about where the money they had should go.  The photography is clear and understandable.  The sound is clear and understandable.  The effects are cheap; but not always.  A decision was made to make the mutated beavers mostly hand puppets and practical effects.  There are only a few computer-generated shots that I could identify, and they’re typically done for comedic effect.  There’s a really hilarious shot where they made the actors a different layer from the shot of the room, and the result is that they don’t move quite the right way… the look like they’re a bit smaller than they should be.

    Despite the campy weaknesses, at the core, there’s a real love for some normal zombie movies.  Return of the Living Dead seems to be an obvious influence because of the canister that creates the problem.  Later in the movie, there’s something about boarding up the doors and windows that feels a lot like the original Night of the Living Dead.
    There are two touches that I especially loved.  First, during the end credits, there’s a great theme song for the movie, and second, there’s a post-credits scene that implies that the mutation is spreading to bee, which will obviously lead to Zombees.
    One thing that I did learn during this was that I find tattoos really distracting.  Especially when they’re text.

211 - Omen III: The Final Conflict

    In his early 30s, Damien plans to kill off the second coming of Jesus shortly after he’s born.
    I have to say that this one at least has a stronger plot than the second one.  And it’s nice to see Sam Neill starring, since he always gives a good performance.  There are still problems, but it’s got some more interesting sequences, and I’m pleased to say that there was at least one surprise that it held for me.
    In order, one of the weirdest things is that Damien’s assistant knows about who he is, and intends to help him.  This makes sense, but the reveal for it seems so strange.  During a normal meeting, Damien pulls out an excised book of the Bible and quotes a passage to him.  I don’t know how the idea would be communicated earlier.  Maybe they’d lean in and whisper “hail Satan” or something.
    The core of the plot gives Damien a goal, which is a real improvement over the other entries.  His goal is to have any male child born during a specific morning killed.  He’s got a group of followers willing to execute his plans, too.  For a sequence that focuses on killing children, this is handled pretty well.  In retrospect, now I’m wondering how he gathered that many followers, and how he communicates to them.
    It’s also interesting that Damien manages to keep his hands pretty clean through most of the story, even as he tells his followers to kill children.  Only near the end does he start to get a little rougher, and directly kills someone.  This, combined with the way that the religious opposition is painted in black and white, makes Damien into a strangely likable villain.
    One other thing that makes this a distinct movie: it’s the first time that one of the Omen movies has ended with evil being thwarted.  Strangely, in this movie, that’s kind of a disappointment.

    The one scene that surprised me?  When the mother turns back and sees the burnt corpse of her baby.  Not what I expected.

210 - Damien: Omen II

    Young Damien learns that he’s the antichrist and attends a military academy as people looking into him wind up dying.
    My favorite surprise was seeing Lance Henriksen in this.  He’s always a pleasure to see.
    I wasn’t especially impressed with the first Omen movie… or the remake, which I saw in theaters.  But I wasn’t looking for anything that I’d have strong feelings about.  I’m really feeling kind of down, so I didn’t want anything too serious, or too funny.  Somehow, this was actually about the right level for my mood.
    There are some big problems with this movie, but they don’t become apparent until later on.  There aren’t any really great sequences, like the public suicide in the first movie.  Instead, we get a series of short set pieces that involve peculiar deaths.  A lady has a heart attack after a crow sits at the end of her bed.  A car dies, and a lady gets out, and is attacked by a crow, blinding her, leading to her being hit by a truck.  A doctor gets in an elevator, plummets, then gets cut in half by a wire.  These scenes hold no surprises.  The opening kill sequence is actually pretty well done, involving a pair of people being buried alive as rocks and sand fill in an underground passage.
    The story is really minimal.  Damien doesn’t actually do that much.  He’s a passive character, and doesn’t seem malicious.  I don’t know what I think of this.  It changes the primary antagonist to being something vague - “the forces of evil.”
    I can’t really point to much of a story.  Every person that discovers or suspects something about Damien dies quickly, so there’s no tension built up.  All of it just leads up to his father learning, believing in it, then making the decision that Damien should die.  This part of the story happens in the last 15-20 minutes.  When he comes around, it’s not believable.  He just spent the rest of the running time denying the possibility, then he was persuaded because of some ancient artwork that sort of looks like it could be Damien?
    There’s also one death scene that’s especially funny, because it relied on the victim not pushing himself out of the way.  Somehow, he gets stuck on the front connector for a train car, and just stays there.  It seemed like it required more effort to stay on it than to get off.
    The more interesting approach would have been to focus on Damien’s time in the military academy.  There’s very little time spent there, and it doesn’t come across like this was especially important.  Instead of crafting his own identity, Damien is told who he is.  Not an interesting way to handle it.
    There’s another nice thing about the movie though.  They tone down the music cues that made the first one hilarious to watch.

209 - The Uninvited

    A man and his sister buy a house on a cliff by the sea.  It turns out to be haunted.  With the help of the prior owner’s daughter, they unravel the mystery behind the ghost.
    I saw this listed as one of the few Criterion horror releases.  I hadn’t heard of it, but it must be worthwhile…
    It’s from 1944.  This means that I have a hard time telling if my expectations are reasonable or not.  It’s dated.  The conventions regarding the handling of supernatural stories hadn’t been fleshed out.  One of the things that the wiki article mentions is that it was the first Hollywood film to play a haunting as a supernatural event, rather than a comedic one.  This is implied by the score, which is remarkably upbeat and lighthearted for most of the movie.
    There are other things… like the premise involving a man and his sister buying a house together.  The man being interested in the daughter of the seller is a little odd, because the ages seem very different.  Later, it’s announced that the daughter is 20, so I suppose that’s alright.  I thought she was supposed to be somewhere between 16-18, but that may have been because of how the grandfather was treating her.
    I can see the influence this movie had, particularly on movies like The Innocents and The Haunting.  The story unfolds in a similar way to most of the other haunted house movies I’ve seen.  Even the trope about animals being aware of ghosts.
    There are some strong points here.  The house, the location, is great.  The layout of the house is great, and the main haunted room is really neat.  The script is fun, if a little slow by modern standards.  The effects work is really good for the time period.
    It’s interesting, at least from a cinematic historical perspective.  I can’t imagine watching it again.  I really wish Criterion would do a nice treatment for The Haunting though.

    Also notable is the fact that the piece Stella By Starlight first appeared in this film.

208 - Neon Maniacs

    A variety of creatures from under a bridge come out at night and kill teens.
    For a cheap 80’s horror movie, this is at least unique.  It’s strange, it’s low-budget, but it still gives the audience what it expects.
    The creatures are strange, and they don’t exactly stand up to scrutiny.  Why is one an army guy?  Why is there a samurai one?  Even weirder, why are they destroyed by water?  Wouldn’t the process of killing humans put them at risk?
    There are great 80’s cliches sprinkled throughout.  Ridiculous clothes and hairstyles, fantastically silly credits music, a battle of the bands that uses some great terrible 80’s pop.  This keeps things more entertaining than they would be otherwise.
    The script is weak, but it’s kind of funny.  The script conveniently removes the female lead’s parents by having them on vacation.  Their vacation doesn’t accomplish anything else.  After witnessing the death of several of her friends, the female lead gives a statement to the police… and nothing happens.  She’s pestered by a few people about their missing siblings/children, but she doesn’t seem that troubled by these events.  In fact, no one seems to be especially concerned.  The police give a half-hearted investigation, but there doesn’t seem to be any urgency.
    When the creatures show up and attack the big battle of the bands, one of them pulls out a machine gun and sprays bullets into the crowd of teens.  The teens run.  No one seems to be hurt.
    What are these creatures?  What do they want?  Why are they interested in killing?  Motivation is irrelevant.  They just kill because they do.

207 - The Babadook

    A widowed lady struggles with raising her son, and has to fight being possessed by a sinister spirit.
    The AV Club gave this a very good review, and it’s rare to see a horror movie get substantial critical praise.
    I’m impressed.  It’s very well-made.  The direction is clever, efficient, and evocative.  The script and performances are great, although it is an uncomfortable story.
    There’s one thing that usually drags horror movies down, and that’s predictability.  A twist is able to hold interest, but there are normally a set of rules that most movies are governed by; children in peril is usually a bad idea.  Certain acts take place off-camera.  Usually, it’s a matter of fulfilling the expectations created by the script.  Good movies usually are able to subvert some of these expectations.
    This is why there’s an unusual sequence, probably about halfway through, when the remainder of the story is spelled out for us.  It explicitly creates a new set of expectations, and messes with the audience by starting to fulfill those expectations, then derails them.  This is really smart.  It’s very effective, too.
    There’s an uncomfortable feel that dominates a lot of the first half, and it’s because we are exposed to erratic child behavior.  I know I don’t want kids, and the strangeness of this child’s behavior is a good explanation.  He seems pretty bright sometimes, and then his behavior switches drastically.  It does make us empathize with his mother.
    This is another thing - the movie does a great job of capturing being tired, and barely being able to hold on.
    I suppose my only criticism is that I don’t feel like I fully understand the ending.  I don’t think I understand the nature of the creature, what it wants, or why it remains.  I don’t know if I should be wondering about it, either.

206 - Five Easy Pieces

    A skilled pianist lives an aimless life as a drifter.  After his father gets closer to dying, he visits home.
    While I haven’t ever seen this movie before, I feel like I’ve seen it.  This type of story is recycled quite a bit.  It’s a pretty standard “coming home to deal with psychological issues” story.  Sometimes, I like these.  I felt like About Schmidt was a quality one.  This one is kind of… aimless.  It’s a shame, because it’s pretty interesting, but by the end, I felt like it was missing a point.
    As a character study, it’s good.  It’s a pleasure to watch Jack Nicholson work.  The script is interesting.    The personality traits that come through are interesting.  It’s tense, mostly because you keep waiting to see how Nicholson will react to whatever else is happening.  He isn’t an especially likable character, even after we see more of his home life.
    The only idea that seemed like it was worth exploring was the issue of people ignoring their gifts/talents because they get bored with them.
    The ending is bleak.  Even bleaker than the rest of the movie would imply.  It’s easy to spend most of the movie hoping that Nicholson will turn around and do something good, but most of his dialogue and behavior tells us that he won’t.  And at the end… he doesn’t.
    There isn’t much I have to say about the movie.  It’s interesting, but not especially entertaining.  The highlight of it is that there’s a character named “Terry Grouse.”  This is pronounced exactly like the NPR host.  Making it funnier is that the character is played by Toni Basil, who went on to release the hit single “Micky.”

205 - Invaders From Mars

    A young boy runs as an alien invasion begins.
    When I was young - probably younger than 10 - I saw a portion of this movie on broadcast TV.  I didn’t see the whole thing, but I remembered liking it.  I only remembered the details about the neck-related implant, and the image of the fence running up the hill.  I decided to watch this because it’s coming down from Netflix shortly.
    It’s better than I expected.  I’ve always been a little disappointed with Tobe Hooper’s direction.  His work isn’t bad, but it tends to be weaker than I expect, or at least more forgettable.  This is probably the most distinct work he’s done.  It’s a remake of a 1953 movie of the same name, but this retains a lot of the flavor of that time period.  In fact, there isn’t much to date it to the 80’s.  There’s a color palette… there’s this fantastic lighting, something that makes houses look like they’re on a massive soundstage.
    The effects work is varied, but it’s generally good.  The aliens are interesting, because they have horrific elements - like the teeth - but they also have things that seem almost comical or silly - like their leg/arm arrangement.
    The dialogue is a bit campy and over-the-top, but it’s exactly what should be expected for this kind of movie.  What’s more impressive is how fast the story runs.  It’s roughly the second scene when his parents are taken over by the aliens, and the story just runs forward incredibly fast.
    There are two effects that I really like in this movie.  One of them is the frog-eating scene.  The other is the sand-pit effects.  Really well done.

204 - Ishtar

    A pair of bad songwriters get a booking to play in the Middle East.  They wind up becoming entangled in a rebellion and the CIA.
    Ishtar has a remarkably bad reputation, and when I started off watching this, I had no idea what to expect.  When someone describes The Room as bad, they normally focus on the bizarre acting, the awkward script, the continuity, etc.  But no one ever says anything specific about Ishtar; it just became a punchline.
    Ishtar is a good movie.  It’s funny, but I think it was ahead of its time.  I think it was actually a pretty influential movie.  It’s a buddy comedy with two characters that are simultaneously miserable, deluded, and occasionally dumb.  They fall into a story that is beyond their understanding.  Their performances as songwriters are amazing.
    Things slow down a little during the back half, but it still isn’t too bad.  The movie still ends on a high note, and I finished by wondering why this has a bad reputation.
    It may have been an issue of casting.  Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are both great, and play their parts well, but the problem may have been that the audience expected them to both be smart or charismatic.  This may have attracted a more adult audience that didn’t appreciate their lack of talent.  I can imagine that if you don’t understand how silly their performances are, it might be easy to ignore that it’s a comedy.
    The writing is solid, if a little understated.  It’s funny, but many of the jokes don’t pop to the forefront the way you expect them to.  It requires some listening, and the editing, performances, and direction aren’t going to tell you when to laugh.

203 - Swiss Family Robinson

    A family is shipwrecked, and left marooned on an island.  The family builds a house, tames a variety of animals, and enjoys an idealistic existence.
    A Disney movie, so my expectations were low.  It’s a strange movie, especially by modern standards.  I think it would play better to kids, but as an adult, so many things seem laughable.  The island somehow has at least one tiger, an anaconda, elephants, ostriches, zebras, hyenas.  Somehow, the family is able to build an absurdly fancy house using salvaged scrap from the shipwreck.  The absurdity of this is compounded by the way that the movie avoids giving a sense of passage of time.  As far as I can tell, it took about a day or so for the house to be built.
    There are a few interesting things going on.  One of the primary plots involves a love triangle between the two brothers and a girl they rescue from pirates.  The tension is interesting, and it doesn’t play like normal Disney material.  The boys actually fight.  There’s a big finish battle at the end, during which the family kills a good number of pirates.  While the violence is kept in check, near the end, pirates are shot, and some of them fall off the side of a cliff.
    A lot of the running time is devoted to the family having fun, playing at a swimming hole, playing with animals.  There are a few sequences that have family members riding an ostrich, which seems cruel, but it seems to be something you can do nowadays.
    There was also a scene where the two Great Dane dogs they have fight with a tiger.  They seem to legitimately fight, which was really puzzling.  Neither of them seemed to be injured, but I really wonder how they did it.
    But the most important thing about this movie is how the imagery and ideas shaped the fantasies of children for a long time.  I see elements of this movie present occasionally in The Simpsons and Life in Hell.  The image of the fancy jungle house is silly, but it’s charming, and it captures the imagination very effectively.
    My biggest complaint about this movie is that there’s no indication that there was any struggle.  They never address how they get food, or clean drinking water.  I don’t mind that they have a good time… but it just seems like they should have had to earn it.  They don't even seem to be worried when the ship is wrecked!

202 - Stoneheart Asylum

    A new doctor travels out to an asylum in the middle of nowhere to finish his training.  Shortly after arriving, he discovers that the asylum has been taken over by the inmates, and that the head doctor is a patient.  He must manage his appearance and behavior until he can figure out a way to free the real staff, and prevent them from being slaughtered.
    I’ve been putting off watching this for a long time, even though I generally like movies set in asylums.  Plus, this is directed by Brad Anderson, who made Session 9, a fantastic movie.  It’s good.  They’ve got a strong cast, a great location, a great budget put toward set dressing and props.  Everything is wonderfully done in a period style.
    But it’s a bit slow.  I can’t point to anything that should have been trimmed, but the pacing is just luxuriously slow.  And even with that feeling, it still seems like developments happen at the right points.
    The highlight is the twist ending.  I really didn’t see it coming.  It doesn’t quite add that much to the story, nor does it tie up any loose ends, but it’s somehow a satisfying one.  It seems fitting, even if it isn’t necessary.
    The weirdest thing about this movie is that Kate Beckinsale got top billing.  I would make the argument that Ben Kingsley is the lead, followed by Jim Sturgess, then maybe a tossup between Kate Beckinsale and Michael Caine.
    I’d say this is worth a watch if you like asylum movies… Edgar Allan Poe… or period pieces like this.  But it requires a little more patience than I expected.  On the other hand, Session 9 required a bit of patience as well.

201 - Raptor Ranch

    A sleepy town in Texas has a scientist that has somehow created a handful of dinosaurs.  When the scientist dies, the dinosaurs stalk a handful of characters.
    It’s hard to talk about how terrible this movie is, because there was never any inkling that it would be any good.  If you know you’re getting into a cheap, poorly made movie, what else do you expect?

    For this occasion, I’m going to do a bigger, more comprehensive writeup, since it’s hard to explain everything that’s wrong about this movie.

    We open on some Native American drums and flutes, as a girl gives some voiceover narration about who and where she is.  Her name is Abbi Whitecloud.  There are a few shots of bare trees.  Then we see Abbi doing some kind of ritual.  There’s actually crosstalk during this bit.  Abbi’s narration continues as she speaks words during her ritual.  The narration talks about how she wants to be a successful singer.

    Abbi is suddenly attacked by a dinosaur!  We know that it’s coming at her, because we get dino-vision - a green filter.  The dinosaur attacks and eats her!

200 - RoboCop 3

    OCP has a plan to redevelop part of Detroit.  They do this by taking over the neighborhoods, and forcefully evicting everyone there.  Robocop winds up getting involved, joining forces with the resistance to prevent them from losing their homes.
    It’s a bad sign when I start watching a movie, and immediately think that something is wrong with the plot.  The city has clearly made a deal with OCP.  Why do they have to go in and round people up?  They aren’t actually homeless there, some of them clearly own and rent.  I shouldn’t start the movie by thinking that the bad guys are in the right.
    To make matters worse, Robocop overreacts.  He threatens the forces looking to evict people.  Even if we agree with him, if this were real life… I would consider the cop to be out of control.
    Like the second movie, Robocop is out of commission for much of the movie.  In this one, I’m not really positive why he is.  Yes, he was damaged, but his problem seems to be electrical.  How does he get enough power to remain functioning?  Why does Robocop seem to prefer absurdly destructive methods of doing things?  Instead of driving up to assist his fellow officers, he drives to the top of a building, then drives the car off the edge so that he can land nearby.
    The story has a bunch of weird little turns, even as the core of the plot is very simplistic.  It’s not very rewarding either.  The specialized baddie that Robocop has to fight in the last reel is bizarre, but doesn’t have much personality.  It seems to be some kind of sword-fighting robot.
    What the movie has going for it is a pretty notable cast.  In particular, it’s great to see Stephen Root in an earlier role.  Lots of familiar faces sprinkled throughout.
    There’s a tone throughout the movie, and it becomes more obvious near the end, that this movie was adjusted in order to sell toys.  Robocop gets to fly around with a jetpack near the end.  It’s absurd.  There’s a cameo by ED-209, again, strangely conspicuous.  And even with these kid-centric developments, the movie is violent.  It’s really violent, just less gory.  It’s a strange distinction, but Robocop sprays bullets all over the place, unlike his usual method of careful targeting.
    A pretty bad movie.  At least it’s out of my queue now.

199 - Scream 4

    Years later, Sidney returns to her hometown.  Upon her return, a killer begins trying to re-create the original murders.
    I had heard that this movie was a return to form.  Given that I think the original Scream was actually a pretty weak horror movie, this isn’t a selling point.  To be fair, they did a good job with the opening scene.  It’s a nice, nested version of things.  This is always the peak of any of the Scream movies.
    Once the story gets going, I realized that it was remarkably boring.  There were a few things that I enjoyed - developing Gale and Dewey’s relationship was a real plus.  It’s nice to have them moving forward instead of resetting with every movie.  Sidney remains just a much of a non-character as ever.
    There’s the usual twist upon twist, adjusting the audience expectation of who the killer(s) will be.  As usual, it’s hard to care.  I guess I just don’t like that it’s not nuanced.  I’d rather that there were small, subtle hints that actually felt like you could unravel them.
    When I reached the last fifteen minutes of the movie, I actually felt like the pre-ending sequence would have been a really great way to end the story.  It would have opened the door to a much more interesting franchise of movies.  Instead, they undo the possibility of that, and put everything neatly back in place.  Everyone who needs to, survives.  Everyone evil, doesn’t.
    Why did I watch all of these movies?  I’m not sure why.
    One of the things that has bothered me with all of the movies, but I’ve never put my finger on it, is the acting.  Everyone involved in these things is good enough, but I think it’s a direction problem.  Everyone amps up their acting as far as they can.  It’s fun, and a little campy at the beginning.  Then the longer it goes along, it gets exhausting.  Really exhausting.  By the last act, everything is nonstop hamming it up, people yelling and delivering everything in the most ridiculous over-the-top dramatics they can think of.

198 - Scrooged

    A misanthropic TV executive goes through his own version of A Christmas Carol.
    I like Bill Murray.  I should have had more interest in seeing this, but something about the box art always put me off.  But I wanted to watch something, and I wasn’t in the mood for horror, so…
    It’s good.  It’s really good.  But it’s not something I would return to for the holidays.  This is a peculiar problem, since it should be some really solid holiday fare.  Bill Murray is as good as ever.  He even gets some of his trademark singing in at the end.
    What makes it hard to handle as a holiday movie is that it’s probably one of the darkest adaptations of A Christmas Carol that I’ve ever seen.  Part of this might be because the story has been transplanted into modern times (yes, most adaptations of the story made for TV have transplanted it, but they also usually play it as a straight comedy.  This is mostly played as a comedy, but there are some really dark things - like a frozen dead guy in the sewer.).
    Carol Kane, who I usually really love, is in a very manic part, and she mostly spends her time on screen pushing Bill Murray around.  It’s entertaining, but it feels like they could have gotten nearly anyone for that part.
    Even though most of the movie is so much more potent than the other adaptations I’ve seen, Murray’s transformation at the end isn’t handled quite right.  He’s scared straight by the vision of his corpse being burned up, but he doesn’t seem to be distressed by his legacy.  The result is that he jumps a little too quickly into being a good person.
    However, he does deliver a nice talk at the end that expresses a good philosophy of positivity.  I’m also really impressed with how well the handled the equivalent part for Tiny Tim.  It was obvious from the start, but it still paid out really well.

197 - Quick Change

    After robbing a bank in disguise, three friends struggle to escape New York, fighting against typical New York difficulties.
    This is part of a small family of comedies that I really love, that are under-appreciated, and don’t get decent video releases.  I’ve seen this several times, and it holds up really well, but seems to struggle to find an audience.
    Most of the credit for how good this movie is can be attributed to Bill Murray.  It’s a little more straight than most of his roles, but he delivers almost all of his jokes with a dryness.  Occasionally, a hint of a smirk.  It reminds me a little of how he performed in What About Bob?
    The story is really solid, but it somehow seems almost understated.  The most memorable sequence of the movie is the opening bank robbery, and after that, there’s this calming feeling.  Maybe the problem is that the leads don’t feel like they’re any closer to being captured.  Even the close calls don’t seem like there’s a real sense of risk.  But this brings up another issue that holds this movie back.  There aren’t any real bad guys.  The cop that’s trying to catch them isn’t a mean guy.  He’s a little gruff, and he’s concerned with his reputation, but he doesn’t do anything wrong.  In fact, he tells a more aggressive cop to back off later on in the movie.
    So the ending makes sense - everyone comes out of this well.  But it’s hard to feel like it’s an effective movie.
    Oh, it’s good.  And I’d suggest that anyone watch it.  It’s nice that it’s a bit different.  But this might be why it hasn’t attracted the full audience it deserves.

196 - Dolls

    Five people take shelter at a secluded dollmaker’s house during a storm, then fall victim to the animated dolls within.
    Another movie with memorable cover art that I never bothered to rent.  It’s an interesting movie, at least in a few regards.
    As a horror movie, it’s not that strong.  The characters are broadly drawn, and no surprises are anywhere to be found.  The effects are suitably gory, creepy, and clever.  But where it fails is in the story.
    This is hard to say, because in another way, I actually like the story.  The dolls are willing to kill, but they aren’t bad most of the time.  They only kill people that seem to have earned it by being jerks.  Not just to other people, but specifically to the dolls.  Knock a bunch of dolls off a mantle?  That’s pretty jerky.
    There’s one aspect of the story that plays out in a way I didn’t anticipate involves the good male lead.  It seems pretty obvious that he will be spared the wrath of the dolls, but there’s an interesting twist to his story.  He’s actually willing to go against our expectations of him, at least for a short time.
    The slightly campy performances, the broad characterization… it’s all enjoyable in a weird way.  This isn’t a timeless classic, or even the best of the creepy doll subgenre (that would probably go to The Twilight Zone’s episode Living Doll.)  Still, this movie held my interest better than expected.

195 - Don't Blink

    A bunch of college kids go on a vacation, running out of gas as they reach their resort, which is mysteriously deserted.  People start disappearing.
    I think I like these mysterious types of horror movies.  I think I was pretty forgiving to Vanishing on 7th Street, which never explains itself to satisfaction.  But this movie is really pretty bad.  The script is ridiculous and unsatisfying.  It tries to offer some kind of philosophy, but it comes across as a desperate attempt to give the impression of depth without saying anything.  Do I need a serious message to the movies I watch?  Not at all!  But I can’t stand to be told I’m seeing something important when it’s obvious I’m not.
    Wow, I sound really angry about this movie.
    Okay, let me start off with the bad stuff.
    First, the movie kicks off by introducing the characters as they chat in their cars as they make a long trip.  There’s some silliness, some gags about urinating in a bottle.  (This gag should be pretty funny to me.  A friend of mine insisted that he really wanted to do the same thing during a drive we made.)  During this sequence, I realize that I’ve seen this setup happen.  It’s happened many, many times before.  Nearly every dead teenager movie since the 90’s has done this kind of setup.  It’s cliche, but I’m not too picky about this kind of thing.  We move on.
    Then they arrive at the mysterious luxury cabin.  They look around, and seem mildly wary of the fact that no one is around.  This is okay, but this also takes up about a half hour of running time.  In that time, they make mild incremental discoveries.  This would be okay of this was setup, but this is just developing atmosphere.
    This makes me wonder what the structure of this story is supposed to be.
    Eventually, people start to disappear.  They just blink out of existence.  This is a little puzzling, I suppose.  The other characters have the weirdest reactions to this.  I would expect the experience to just be creepy to them, but in this movie, half the time, characters start screaming in reaction to it.  Why?
    Mena Suvari got top billing.  She’s got a minimal part.  She’s the first person to disappear, and her disappearance happens off-camera.  It’s almost like her character was written out unexpectedly.
    Pretty early on, I noticed that there were references to the characters being in college.  One of them is specifically supposed to be 23.  (Maybe 22?  I’m not positive now)  I realized that they all looked a bit old to be playing college-age kids.  I looked it up on IMDB… and most of them are in their late 30s, some of them in their early to mid 40s.  I should also clarify; this isn’t the kind of thing that I normally complain about.  I don’t notice it in most movies.  In this, it seemed weird.
    The rest of the story doesn’t have much of any development.  It’s characters overreacting, people occasionally disappearing.  There doesn’t seem to me any real speculation about what is happening.  They go through a phase of that early on, but they never offer any ideas that seem worthwhile.
    Then, we reach an ending that doesn’t explain anything at all.  I feel ridiculous for complaining about this, since sometimes the absence of an explanation can be very effective.  In this case, the whole movie was built up around getting the audience to wonder what was happening.  When we end without any explanation or clues, it’s only natural that the audience will feel cheated.  No characters developed.  No mysteries were uncovered.  No deeper meaning was explored.


    Now that I’ve addressed the bad qualities, maybe I should talk about some of the good things.
    The movie is shot reasonably well.  There are a few notable sequences, including a fairly long scene of talking and argument, as the camera runs around in a circle.  Some of the decoration is effective and clever.
    There are occasionally a few nice moments in the script.  There’s an exchange where a guy says that he was concerned that a girl had melted.  This felt genuine, and probably one of the nicest bits in the story.

    I hate saying that it’s a bad movie, but it’s a pretty poor script.

194 - Robocop 2

    Detroit has difficulties with the city’s relationship with OCP, as well as a popular new drug called Nuke.  Robocop is on the case.
    The first Robocop is a really fun movie.  It slows down a little now and then, but it’s delightfully satirical, violent, and it has some real thought put into it.  Paul Verhoven wanted to put more time into developing the sequel, but Orion wanted to rush right into it.  The result is that there’s a story that could have been good, and still hits a few interesting notes, but it misses a lot of things that the story really needed.  Robocop doesn’t have an arc.  He has one thing that he has to overcome, he does it, then he fights the bad guy.  In fact, none of the characters seem to have arcs.  Maybe Hob does, but that’s a little hard to tell.
    An effort is made to retain some of the surreal commercial elements that sprinkle the original movie, but the ones that appear here seem to be mostly irrelevant.  They appear as bumpers, but they don’t provide any useful information - or even useful cultural information.  (To be fair, the opening with the car alarm system is pretty fun, and it does establish tone, but the other one(s) are just padding.)
    There are a few improvements.  Most of the effects shots are a bit more interesting, and they do a decent job of using them.  There’s a bigger cast.
    The bad stuff… Detroit is portrayed as such a hellhole, it seems like there’s no purpose in attempting to police it.  There’s no one worth protecting.  This idea is pushed so hard that it’s hard to feel like there was any point.  When there’s only crime, and no innocent civilians… there doesn’t seem to be a use for Robocop.  The story is enjoyable, but it doesn’t leave much space for character development.  The primary villain, Cain, is supposed to be an interesting villain, but he doesn’t get a chance to do much to define himself, except take drugs, and occasionally deliver some pseudo-philosophy about drugs and mankind.
    The body count is much higher in this movie.  And yet, it’s meaningless.  The especially violent sequences in Robocop were effective because of the context.  Here, they seem like they’re just being included for the sake of trying to up the action.
    But I didn’t leave this feeling like it was a terrible movie.  It’s flawed, and seriously so, but it’s still enjoyable enough for a single viewing.

    One little thing that I’m not sure about.  I know that the costume for Robocop was made of lighter material, and he was able to move around better.  But it was strange.  It had a blueish tint, and it seemed bulkier, especially around the torso.  Sometimes, his movements looked weird or comical.  I think I preferred the thinner, more chrome look of the first movie.

193 - Summer Rental

    An overworked air traffic controller goes on a vacation to Florida with his family.
    I remember the box art for this movie.  It wasn’t the content of the art, but it was the layout that made it stand out.  I never rented it, but I was always a little curious.  I’ve grown up to really love 80’s comedies; particularly sex comedies.  They’re formulaic, but there’s always a little something interesting or bizarre about them.
    This is probably one of the worst 80’s comedies I’ve seen.  It’s a real puzzle though, since Carl Reiner directed it, it has some of his sensibilities all over it, and the script actually has some very good jokes in it.  So what went wrong?
    There are two core problems, and in a way, they’re the same.  John Candy is the lead, and he’s just not very likable.  He doesn’t quite have a save-the-cat moment.  When the movie opens, we’re introduced to him leaving for work.  He takes two eggs with him to eat in the car.  One of them turns out to not peel easily, and the other one isn’t cooked at all.  The good thing is that he doesn’t get outrageously angry because of this.  The bad thing is that he still gets annoyed.  This reminded me of seeing the original pilot that became The Dick Van Dyke Show; it was a story that got reworked later, but they had Carl Reiner playing the lead.  The story wound up playing terribly.  There were funny gags, but the whole thing seemed like the lead was such a jerk, there was no reason to want him to do well.  The same thing is repeated here.
    At first, I wondered if this was the first feature Carl Reiner directed.  Then I checked his credits, and this is actually a late period one.  Prior to this, he directed The Jerk!  All of Me!  The Man with Two Brains!  He knows what he’s doing, and yet, this movie seemed sloppy.
    There isn’t much of a plot until pretty late in the movie, when a boat race becomes the big finish event.  Even this is shot in a way that seems to be the most dull way possible.
    Seeing this also made me wonder what makes John Candy likable.  He isn’t a bad presence, but he isn’t especially funny.  I don’t think there were any deliveries he had that stood out.
    Maybe it’s just a sign of the times, but this didn’t seem funny.  It was clearly intended to be a comedy, but the laughs just aren’t there.

192 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    Four mutated turtles and their mutated rat master fight a crime wave run by the mysterious Foot organization.
    I would have been nine years old when this came out, but I never cared that much about the turtles.  I was aware that the movies came out, but they weren’t even ones that I wanted to see, unlike Masters of the Universe.  That’s a long way of saying that this is the first time I’ve watched this movie.
    This movie is firmly aimed at kids.  There are very few lines that might appeal to adults, and the story seems focused on delivering what kids want to see - the turtles goofing off, and the turtles fighting.  For what it is, it’s fairly successful.  It moves along, it delivers enough laughs.  They don’t skimp on the action.
    That’s the most remarkable thing about the movie.  There’s action all over the place, and they aren’t shooting it poorly.  Most of the sequences are built from modest-length shots that show a clear action.  There aren’t these tight-closeup shots of a swinging arm and weapon, or a connecting hit.  These are choreographed fight sequences.  They’re made more impressive by knowing that these are four guys in layered costumes having to jump around.
    The story is pretty weak, but it seems appropriate for the audience.  There’s just about nothing for adults, maybe one or two jokes.  But I did find the costumes interesting.  Logistically, they were a difficult thing to pull off smoothly, but they managed to do it.
    The weirdest thing is how unbalanced the characters are.  Through most of the movie, Raphael is angry for some reason.  The other turtles aren’t developed in any meaningful way.  April and Casey Jones are developed more than the other turtles.  It isn’t a terrible thing, but it’s a little puzzling.  Seeing most of the turtles pal around, they came across more like Bill & Ted than anything else.

191 - How to Train Your Dragon

    An inept young viking befriends a disabled dragon, counter to his culture’s habit of killing them.
    I just… don’t know.  It’s not a bad movie.  It’s not a good movie either.  I have a hard time dealing with these ones.  Disney, Pixar… these movies are so calculated to manipulate the viewer, that even as I have an emotional reaction, I’m acutely aware of a voice in the back of my head reminding me that I’m being forced into this.
    There are some very fun elements to the story.  The handling of the dragon’s playful behavior is really well done.  There’s a good amount of energy to the story.  But then the script seems annoying.  I think this is just me, but I’m really sick of scripts that are written to appeal to young audiences.  This has been a problem for a long time, but I’ve started to realize that there is good scriptwriting available.  It’s just very rare.  One of the things that really made me love The Hole was that it was aimed squarely at kids.  It was an introductory horror movie.  But it didn’t rely on annoying kid-speak to sell it.  It worked well for adults watching it as well.
    I felt like there were a few more things that bothered me.  It felt too clearly manipulative as far as the color schemes went.  We open on a dark night, lots of fire.  The goal is to make the dragons as scary as possible.  For each sequence, the surrounding day or night and location informs how the viewer is supposed to feel about the dragons.  By the end, I was thinking that the dragons looked like they were left over from Monsters, Inc.
    I would never watch this again, but I feel this way about most Disney/Pixar movies.  Even ones like Aladdin, which I really loved, I have no interest in returning to.
     One possible good influence this movie might have is that it might make young viewers less scared of dogs.

    Also, I really hated the love interest in this movie.  The hero likes her, but she's a jerk until she finds out how she can use him.  It actually felt kind of bad to see her kiss him at the end.