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doctor 7 posted:The movie started, all the people started killing themselves and it was genuinely creepy as poo poo. I was floored and thought to myself "what the hell? Everyone is insane, this movie is going to rule." Shyamalan has always been really good at creepy, even in his lovely movies. The frustrating part of his career is you can see the potential for some real talent there but the success of Sixth Sense must have come too fast and easy or something and it all went to his head. A problem I have with *criticism* of Shyamalan's movies though is everyone casts everything he does in light of the Sixth Sense. Most of his movies don't have a twist. No seriously! Most of his movies don't have a twist. That the aliens in Signs were defeated by water isn't a twist ending, it's a plot resolution. That the trees were responsible for the suicide gas or whatever the gently caress in The Happening isn't a twist, it's the reveal of a central mystery as the characters uncover the plot. The only movies of his that actually have a twist are (obviously) the Sixth Sense, the Village, and maayyyybe Unbreakable, though that's really just a sort of revealed character motivation that the protagonist rejects anyway.
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Sep 23, 2011 17:58
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Monkeyseesaw posted:A problem I have with *criticism* of Shyamalan's movies though is everyone casts everything he does in light of the Sixth Sense. Most of his movies don't have a twist. No seriously! Most of his movies don't have a twist. That the aliens in Signs were defeated by water isn't a twist ending, it's a plot resolution. That the trees were responsible for the suicide gas or whatever the gently caress in The Happening isn't a twist, it's the reveal of a central mystery as the characters uncover the plot. Thank you for saying this about Signs. It was eyeroll inducing when people completely missed the point. "Hyuck, Hyuck, those Aliens got beat by water how duuuuumb". The Aliens weren't even the point of the film. The point of the film was a man who lost his faith having these experiences happen, and him interpreting that as a sign that he was wrong to doubt. He makes leaps like "my son had Asthma so that he wouldn't get poisoned" and uses that to justify regaining his faith. The film makes no judgement on whether or not that conclusion was the right one to draw...and it shouldn't. It was just telling his story. M. Night has made some horrible stuff...but I will defend "Signs" all the way.
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Sep 23, 2011 18:51
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OldTennisCourt posted:I've seen Xanadu and all I can remember was that it was like watching a marathon of ABBA videos with a very thin plot framing it. That's an insult to both ABBA videos and very thin plots. Xanadu is just a painfully lovely movie. I don't even know if I have enough vodka in my freezer to make it watchable, which is a pretty good indicator that humans in general should avoid it.
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Sep 23, 2011 19:05
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I completely agree that the thing with the aliens in Sign wasn't a twist, and neither was the whole "everything happens for a reason" message since the entire movie had been building to that naturally. The problem is that it was presented like a twist, complete with the music building to a huge crescendo, a close-up of the sudden look of realization of Mel Gibson's face, and flashbacks to everything that lead up to this moment. I find it hard to blame people for saying Signs had a twist ending when it was directed and edited the same way as the revelation in The Sixth Sense.
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Sep 23, 2011 19:09
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sethsez posted:I completely agree that the thing with the aliens in Sign wasn't a twist, and neither was the whole "everything happens for a reason" message since the entire movie had been building to that naturally. That's fair I suppose...but I loved the music there anyway. Though I think the crescendo and build was more of a "personal revelation" moment than a "twist" and I think people simply assumed it was meant to be one because they had come to associate M. Night with them. I'm not saying the way they shot it helped matters, though.
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Sep 23, 2011 19:32
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sean10mm posted:That's an insult to both ABBA videos and very thin plots. Xanadu is just a painfully lovely movie. I don't even know if I have enough vodka in my freezer to make it watchable, which is a pretty good indicator that humans in general should avoid it. I sort of liked the soundtrack, though, and the animated sequence was nice looking. What sort of kills the film, though, I think is the Disco era in which its set in that dates it and destroys it with the era's fashion and design sense. I do get the feeling that there is a better film that could have been made with the same plot, though. Oddly enough, it's one of those things were a modern stage production of the show seems to have had a much more favorable public/critical opinion and reception of it than the original film. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 19:40
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ComposerGuy posted:Thank you for saying this about Signs. It was eyeroll inducing when people completely missed the point. "Hyuck, Hyuck, those Aliens got beat by water how duuuuumb". The stupidity of the aliens plot aside, the 'personal revelation' plot was awful as well. I don't get how anyone can say Shyamalan is anything more than a mediocre writer/director/actor.
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Sep 23, 2011 19:47
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ComposerGuy posted:That's fair I suppose...but I loved the music there anyway. Oh, I know what it was meant to be, I just don't think Shyamalan thought to shoot a scene meant to be a revelation for the main character any differently than he'd shot scenes meant to be revelations for the audience. So it was easy for the audience to conclude "Shyamalan tried another twist and failed" rather than "oh, now Mel gets it."
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Sep 23, 2011 19:50
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Regardless, that ending is incredibly clumsy and barely works any way you look at it. I mean really. "Swing away, Merril?" THAT's the big phrase that ends up saving everyone? The equivalent to "pick up a blunt object and hit the alien with it"?
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Sep 23, 2011 20:11
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I would like to introduce The Knowing to this thread. Right now it's got 33% at the Tomatometer. The blurb at the Tomatometer says: Knowing has some interesting ideas and a couple good scenes, but it's weighted down by its absurd plot and over-seriousness. I also read a lot of negative reviews here at CD when it came out. I thought it was an awesome movie. What the heck? Over-serious? It should have had more comedic elements? It already had more than enough things like the deer on fire and Nicolas Cage walking through the plane wreckage like it was a piano accidentally fallen in front of him to show that it wasn't trying to be Schindler's List. And absurd plot? What? Maybe I'm more open-minded than the average critic, but I didn't see anything too absurd in it. I mean, it's about premonitions of the end of the world, whether you think that's absurd or not shouldn't have anything to do with movie. Donnie Darko is at 85% and that one's whole lot more absurd than The Knowing.
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Sep 23, 2011 20:17
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M. night is that dude who never got out of the mental need to make alien saucers out of paper plates and just film because he has a camera. He's not and never going to be a Nolan, but I think the fact that he is really quite OK with that irks people more than his movies do, IMO. That said, The Last Airbender was a crime. It would have been better, easier (and made sooo many people happy) throwing his budget behind getting an animated feature-length film done with the original studio. Avatar is not old enough by any stretch to have a Bay-like reimagining. Back to bad movies, I know someone here saw Robot Jox.
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Sep 23, 2011 20:22
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ComposerGuy posted:Thank you for saying this about Signs. It was eyeroll inducing when people completely missed the point. "Hyuck, Hyuck, those Aliens got beat by water how duuuuumb". So what then, we should be happy that Mel has faith despite the basis of his faith disintegrating under basic scrutiny?
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Sep 23, 2011 20:24
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ComposerGuy posted:Thank you for saying this about Signs. It was eyeroll inducing when people completely missed the point. "Hyuck, Hyuck, those Aliens got beat by water how duuuuumb". While the aliens weren't the point of the movie, they were the vehicle used to return him to faith. As such, the fact that they were weak to water is a perfectly valid thing to both make fun of and roll your eyes at. Really, by making them weak to water it almost turns the movie into the most horrific team up of Job and Rube Goldberg to get a Lutherin(?) priest back his faith. I killed your wife then had her give you vague clues so that years later when I send aliens to invade Earth you'll realize how to defeat them and in the proses get your faith back. Which you lost when your wife died. Oh...wait. gently caress. -God
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Sep 23, 2011 20:43
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Armani posted:That said, The Last Airbender was a crime. It would have been better, easier (and made sooo many people happy) throwing his budget behind getting an animated feature-length film done with the original studio. Avatar is not old enough by any stretch to have a Bay-like reimagining. But this approach would be unnecessary due to the redundancy, unless it was a sequel to the show or something. There's nothing inherently wrong with condensing each season of the show into a 2-hour live-action film. It theoretically could have been fine. For every failure of execution in the film, there's an identifiable way that it could have been made more sensible and effective (this is because, unlike other cinematic messes like the Star Wars prequels, the core story is good and has already been proven to work). The film is just a bizarre case where, somehow, every beat was missed and every note was off-key. Supercar Gautier fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 20:46
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doctor 7 posted:Apparently I should watch it again with RiffTrax though. Definitely do this. It's one of their finest moments. Moving on, here's one that a lot of people outright think is as big of a travesty as the "Star Wars" prequels that I will defend passionately. Alien 3  ...more specifically the 'Assembly Cut' version made in 2003. During the 1992 L.A. riots, David Fincher, fresh off the nightmare that was directing his first film, and subsequently shut out of the post-production process, dryly commented that the rioters were close to the warehouse 20th Century Fox was storing film material, including the camera negative of "Alien 3". He remarked it might be a good thing if the place burned to the ground. After a grueling, hugely-expensive pre-production process that saw several vastly different scripts and dozens of drafts thrown around as a potential sequel to "Aliens", 20th Century Fox went with a very odd script set on a space station that functioned as a monastery, described as a 'wooden planet' by the writer. Sets were built, Renny Harlin was selected to direct, and just a few weeks before cameras were set to roll, Harlin dropped out, the script changed radically to be set on a desolate planet formerly home to a steel mill retrofitted as a prison, and David Fincher, primarily known for music videos and commercials, was placed in the director's chair. Production went about as you'd expect. There was constant studio interference, the script was being rewritten daily, and Fincher was at his wits end. After delivering a workprint of the film to Fox, the studio decided to boot him off the project and finish it with their own people, reshooting quite a bit of footage (notably much of the opening) in the process. What hit theaters in 1992 can be described only as a problematic film. Long story short, there's a shitton of plot holes, most notably a seemingly important character who the film spends a lot of time introducing, only for him to vanish entirely out of the film in the second half. Reception was mixed. Everybody praised the expansive set design and music score by Elliot Goldenthal, but found the movie unsatisfactory, relentlessly grim, and weird. To this day, fans go into a frenzied rage over the opening scene, which off-camera kills both Hicks and Newt, two beloved characters from "Aliens", essentially forcing Ripley to start over from square one. Cut to 2003, when production is underway for a special edition box set of the "Alien" franchise, and Charles de Lauzirika, producer of the DVD, takes up a massive effort to reconstruct the workprint that Fincher delivered before his firing by Fox. Running 30 minutes longer (a robust 145 minutes to be exact) what is invariably called either the 'Assembly Cut' or 'Special Edition' of "Alien 3" has a lot of the problems that were inherent in the 1992 theatrical release (most notably, concepts being brought up only to be dropped later, a side effect of the constant rewrites), but is at the very least an emotionally stunning piece of work. The visuals of the steel mell/prison are at once awe-inspiring and nightmarish, with smoke-choked sets that seem to go on forever; the music by Elliot Goldenthal is easily one of my favorite film scores - big and operatic one second, an industrial-tinged crawl through hell the next; Fincher's camerawork, especially showing scenes from the alien's POV as it runs up and down corridors, is dynamic to say the least; and last but not least, the acting is really quite impressive. Sigourney Weaver does anguish remarkably well, Charles S. Dutton is perfect as the spiritual inmate, Paul McGann is nicely creepy as a deranged prisoner, Charles Dance rescues what could be a very soap opera-y character with his performance, and Brian Glover gets in some particularly memorable dialogue scenes as the warden. OK, so I just slathered on the rapturous praise... but there are two things that I still balk at with this movie. The special effects vary in quality dramatically from shot-to-shot. In attempting to make the alien more mobile, a puppet was shot in front of a bluescreen and composited onto the scenes for much of the climactic chase scene. It looks abysmal, like a big dark green blob darting around on top of live-action footage. Also, this cut makes a big change to the ending which I find baffling. Originally when Ripley jumps into the furnace, the alien bursts out of her as she falls, but this cut removes those shots and just has her fall straight in. Fincher's (and Weaver's) intention with this was to say to the audience, "There. It's done. There never has to be another one of these loving 'Alien' movies." It's a pretty gory way to send out Ripley, but it works. Seriously, check this out. I know a lot of you out there probably have that monstrous box set on DVD or Blu-Ray and this is on there. It's kind of a tough sit at 145 minutes, but it's worth a second glance, and needs serious reappraisal. I'm in the minority here, but in it's Assembly Cut form it holds as much of a place in my heart as the first two movies.
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Sep 24, 2011 04:14
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Alien 3 is a really odd beast because while there's such a drop-off in quality from the previous instalment, it's nowhere near as bad as its detractors make it out to be either. Most of the resentment generally appears to stem from the way in which the survivors from the last movie were so casually taken out of the narrative which I guess feels like a bit of a betrayal after all the emotional investment in them that Aliens demanded. I think people also found the almost oppressive grimness of the movie to be off-putting. The previous two films weren't exactly light-hearted romps, but this movie really did turn the dial up to 11 when it came to grim-dark. The movie also ends up with the baggage of the legacy of Alien and Aliens and unfortunately, it falls short of the bar set by those films. That said, considering the circumstances that the film was made in, I do agree that the extended edition that we ended up with was the best that we could have got. A part of me does wonder what the Vincent Ward version of the film would have come across like, though.
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Sep 24, 2011 04:28
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Alien 3 assembly cut went a long way to restoring the film, but there are still huge problems with all of the actual alien scenes. The attacks are embarrassingly inept. It's all flailing idiocy like when she grabs its tail or unconvincing rod puppetting. The alien POV shots were particularly bad. They felt like a violation of the series, because they were the first thing to turn the alien from a weird inscrutable menace to some slasher villain you could cheer for.
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Sep 24, 2011 05:08
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If it wasn't an Alien film (as in a film from that series), it probably would have had a far better reputation.
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Sep 24, 2011 05:11
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Vagabundo posted:If it wasn't an Alien film (as in a film from that series), it probably would have had a far better reputation. Not really, though, because some of its best moments hinge on the legacy of the series - all the bits about her "not remembering what it was like before" the alien showed up, and the controversial opening deaths which made us feel the same anguish she felt. It was well on its way to being as smart and reflective an Alien sequel as Cameron's, but it blew it on all the big moments.
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Sep 24, 2011 05:15
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If it wasn't an Alien film I doubt people would have been as willing to deal with the almost complete lack of characterization anybody gets in that thing. It's Ripley and a bunch of interchangeable bald meat puppets. Combine that with a tone that never varies and you've got a big monochromatic blur of a movie. The only reason I like it at all is due to the residual good feelings I get from seeing Ripley do her thing.
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Sep 24, 2011 05:19
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Vagabundo posted:I think people also found the almost oppressive grimness of the movie to be off-putting. [...] this movie really did turn the dial up to 11 when it came to grim-dark. I briefly touched on this, but yeah, it's extremely dark and disturbing, especially Newt's autopsy, which I still find difficult to watch, and have had a few people tell me they've skipped when they watch the film. penismightier posted:The alien POV shots were particularly bad. They felt like a violation of the series, because they were the first thing to turn the alien from a weird inscrutable menace to some slasher villain you could cheer for. I love those. Then again, I don't think you're supposed to be happy everyone was getting killed (this isn't like a standard slasher movie where the filmmakers went out of their way to make the victims absolute shitheads). The use of the shots are at times a little misguided (most notably Pete Postlethwate's death), but there's this momentum to those shots that reminds me of what Abel Gance was doing with something like "Napoleon". For the record, and I should have mentioned it in my wall of  , I really don't like "Resurrection".
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Sep 24, 2011 05:21
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penismightier posted:Not really, though, because some of its best moments hinge on the legacy of the series - all the bits about her "not remembering what it was like before" the alien showed up, and the controversial opening deaths which made us feel the same anguish she felt. It was well on its way to being as smart and reflective an Alien sequel as Cameron's, but it blew it on all the big moments. It is quite a double-edged sword though, since what's led to most of the vitriol aimed at the film that I've come across also hinges on the legacy of the series.
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Sep 24, 2011 05:21
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Robert Denby posted:I love those. Then again, I don't think you're supposed to be happy everyone was getting killed I hate those shots because they inherently ask us to identify with the alien, which is such a mistake. The Alien series is, like, the only horror series (maybe Evil Dead, too) that could've gotten away with never having us root for the bad guy, because Ripley was such a strong character, but those shots totally blew it. Fincher is such a careful director otherwise, it really was a bummer.
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Sep 24, 2011 05:24
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Alien 3 is perfectly well-made and atmospheric from a filmmaking perspective. But I just simply cannot tolerate the fact that it opens with "Hey, you know the bittersweet ending that was earned at the end of Aliens, one of the best action movies ever made? Yeah, gently caress that!" It just takes a huge poo poo all over one of the few perfect action films in existence. Alien 3 is nowhere vaguely near being one of the worst movies ever made, but it is very, very high up on my list of my most disliked movies of all time because of that. I wish to this day and will continue to wish forever that the Alien franchise consisted of Alien and Aliens.
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Sep 24, 2011 06:09
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Alien 3 holds a special place in my heart because it was the first Alien movie I saw (on TV, in Japan with commercials interrupting at inopportune times). Now Alien Resurrection? I like to pretend that movie never happened. When I bought the 9-disc DVD set, I sat down to watch the extended cut of the 4th one and listened to what Jeunet had to say. I figured, surely there must have been some stuff in there that might make it better, right? Like some really good material that raises the quality of the film considerably had been left on the cutting room floor, resulting in the piece of poo poo we know and hate, like the Sheinberg cut of Brazil? That lasted until Jeunet basically said "the theatrical cut is basically the director's cut."
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Sep 24, 2011 06:15
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I only really sat down and watched Alien 3 after becoming sympathetic to it from watching the making of that revealed how torturous the process was. It's like that adorable misbred dog that waddles around making snorting noises, you know you can't fix it but it's too cruel to not at least give it attention. The only thing I liked in Resurrection was the magic cube of liquor.
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Sep 24, 2011 06:27
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Jeunet just doesn't have the kind of sensibility for an Alien movie. He was a completely bizarre choice for a director, given that he's mostly known for childlike whimsy with streaks of dark comedy and a love of Rube Goldberg machines. I still find the movie more interesting than Alien 3, though, entirely due to how ridiculously miscalculated it was from beginning to end.
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Sep 24, 2011 06:33
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Vagabundo posted:If it wasn't an Alien film (as in a film from that series), it probably would have had a far better reputation. Bizarrely, it's actually written like a standalone film. Specifically, it's a murder mystery where a stranger with a dark past disrupts the balance of a peaceful community and people start dying. Were it not for Alien 1 and 2, there is an obvious intrigue set up over whether Ripley herself had gone mad and started killing people, blaming it on a 'demon'. The other insane inmate also serves as a red herring. The entire film seems structured on not knowing who the killer is - the existence of a 'real' alien is set up as a revelation. It can definitely be said that Alien 3 subverts the standard mystery narrative in its way, as it's akin to a film noir told from the perspective of the femme fatale. We know from the beginning that the woman isn't 'hysterical' or whatever, and that the other characters are wrong to disbelieve her or to blame her for the goings-on. It's just bizarre.
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Sep 24, 2011 11:06
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Alright So, Cutthroat Island. My main hope for this thread was that people would see films with terrible scores and re-evaluate them, with the hopes that some would not deserve them. I was hoping that I could start the thread off like that, by telling you that this movie truly did not deserve it's 44% score, that it was maligned for no reason and that it's status as a bomb was a tragic end for a film like this. I, unfortunately, can not say this at all. This film is annoying. Annoying and boring. The acting consists of reading off of a terrible script like they were recording lines specifically for the trailer. Each line has this strange feel to them, none of it sounds like a real conversation, everything sounds forced and awkward. The special effects are absurd and make no sense in the context of the setting and in a few cases actually make no sense in the context of the scenes themselves. The plot is boring and by the numbers for an adventure movie. Nothing about this movie is fun, innovative or enjoyable, it's a mashup of a bunch of old tropes with the fun taste of lovely acting and the slight hint of overblown special effects to help it go down. Geena Davis plays Captain Morgan, a female pirate who gets the first part of a map from her dying father. The first part of the map being his scalp with the map tattooed on it. She carries this with her and shows it to people in such a strangly calm manner that you tend to forget that it's HER OWN FATHER'S SCALP. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of bad acting. Stan Shaw plays Mr. Glasspoole, Morgan's right hand man. He does this by talking in an almost robotic voice (THEY. ARE. SO. MANY. WE. SO. FEW. WHAT. ARE. WE. GOING. TO. DO. MOR. GAN.) and beating the piss out of people. While Davis is just the typical pirate lead, the real problem lies with her male co-star Shaw, played by Matthew Modine. Every single line this man speaks sounds like he's making a one liner. It's amazing. Even conversational lines are given with the same delivery that he would give the lines seen in the trailer. He is by far the most annoying part of this movie. He tries desperately to be the dashing lead but only succeeds in being so annoying I actually hoped he would die about halfway through. The romance between him and Davis feels forced and strange. They are clearly being set up together, but it never feels natural. They just spout flirty quips and end up in love. Magical. The best part of the film is Captain Dawg, played by Frank Langella. He's still given an awful script to work with ("I'll find you Morgan....Uncle Dawg will have his day..." jesus christ you can not make that line sound threatening) but at least he seems like he's having fun being the evil rear end in a top hat pirate. He tries his best with what he's given but he's nowhere near enough to give this movie any sort of enjoyment. As doctor 7 said, the special effects are absurd. These are cannon balls, not compact plastic explosives, yet every time they hit an explosion occurs. This is most pronounced in the chase scene near the start of the movie. Morgan and Shaw are escaping from British troops while a ship fires on them. First of all, the British troops are firing into a crowded area with cannon balls to kill one pirate captain and a slave. Secondly, because you can't see the cannon balls really hit it just looks like they're running while timed explosions go off behind them. The film is 124 minutes long and you feel every one them. It's boring, the acting is awful and the whole thing just feels like someone took Pirates of the Caribbean and sucked all the joy, fun and adventure out of it. Dear god this film deserved it's rating. OldTennisCourt fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 24, 2011 |
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Sep 24, 2011 21:15
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OldTennisCourt posted:
Fantastic review OTC! I couldn't stop laughing at this part. I think my fix for this part of the script is every time the scalp is onscreen, Morgan cries hysterically until it is put away.
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Sep 25, 2011 03:07
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I'm going to do something with Dreamcatcher just because it's so flabbergasting.
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Sep 25, 2011 03:34
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I watched Cutthroat Island thanks to this thread, it was streaming on Netflix so I figured I'd go for it. I didn't hate it and I didn't like it. It might've been a better film if the protagonists were played by people with a single drop of charisma. Geena Davis sounds like she's reading cue cards the entire time. I kept going to watch Frank Langella devour every scene he is in.
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Sep 25, 2011 03:39
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Safe Driver posted:I watched Cutthroat Island thanks to this thread, it was streaming on Netflix so I figured I'd go for it. I didn't hate it and I didn't like it. It might've been a better film if the protagonists were played by people with a single drop of charisma. Geena Davis sounds like she's reading cue cards the entire time. I kept going to watch Frank Langella devour every scene he is in. The best part was the romantic scene between Davis and Modine after he finishes saving her life. It's supposed to be sexy and flirty with the whole "Gimme the map " "Give me....a kiss" poo poo, but it's so stilted and awkward it felt like a high school play where the leads barely knew each other.
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Sep 25, 2011 03:43
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I'm going to do something with Dreamcatcher just because it's so flabbergasting. You might want to consider doing it on a double bill with "Lifeforce", another critically maligned science fiction/horror movie that needs to be dragged out of obscurity for all to see as the masterpiece of mind-blowing insanity that it is.
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Sep 25, 2011 05:54
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Robert Denby posted:You might want to consider doing it on a double bill with "Lifeforce", another critically maligned science fiction/horror movie that needs to be dragged out of obscurity for all to see as the masterpiece of mind-blowing insanity that it is. Lifeforce is legitimately pretty loving awesome and is one of those rare vampire movies that really tries to revolt viewers.
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Sep 25, 2011 07:30
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I'm going to do something with Dreamcatcher just because it's so flabbergasting.
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Sep 25, 2011 07:50
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Dreamcatcher trip report. So I'm all like "Hey roommate, let's watch Dreamcatcher on Netflix!" And he's like, "Oh I have that on DVD," to which I just straight up accused him of being a horrible reprobate. He hadn't watched it, or at least didn't remember seeing it, so I informed him that he was in for a terrible treat. It's really difficult to briefly summarize Dreamcatcher's plot, because the plot is a trainwreck of useless bullshit. The film's tone is completely scattershot, there is no clear protagonist until maybe an hour in, there are trillions of continuity errors and plot problems, and clearly no one on set had any idea what the gently caress Stephen King was thinking. It's also important to remember that all of the acting is wooden in the extreme, so anything I'm about to tell you that might sound interesting on paper, isn't. Everyone delivers their lines like they're doing the readthrough for the first time and they just realized that the script is awful while they were sitting there. The dialogue is also terribly written, providing a double whammy, followed by a triple whammy from the amount of fake laughing that the "friends" have to do. The main thing we learn early on is that we are following the adventures of four psychic assholes. Just about every one of these guys is distinctly unlikeable. Timothy Olyphant is a drunken fool who creeps out women because he can't keep his powers to himself. Thomas Jane is a psychiatrist who manages to prove that being a psychic makes you worse at reading people's feelings. Damian Lewis is just sort of there I guess. And finally, Jason Lee plays one of the single most awful characters that I've seen put to film in a while. This horrible character needs its own exhibit in the Hall of lovely Movies. Lee plays Beaver, a tactless, juvenile moron who attempts through the course of the movie to make "gently caress me Freddy" a catchphrase with the audience. He eats peanut butter out of the jar with his fingers. He drops infantile curse phrases like "bitch-in-a-buzzsaw" and other things that would be cool if you rode a skateboard and were in dire need of being shot in the head. It's really difficult to intuit anything about Dreamcatcher, but I think they wanted him to be the comedy relief, or the guy the audience is sad to see die. He also gets several scenes where they attempt to give him that Tarantino-style small talk dialogue. To say that none of this worked would be an understatement. Even when he dies, he won't go away; there's one more flashback with Young Beaver, who is similarly flummoxed by his terrible dialogue. Anyway, these four annoying friends share a lifelong bond, partially from their collective childhood encounter with a mentally challenged kid named Duddits, told during some poorly written flashback sequences. Duddits somehow makes them all psychic. As befits the plot's needs, they can see the future, communicate telepathically, and easily read minds. Fast forward twenty years later. Most of them are deeply dysfunctional in some way and not dealing well with being psychic. After Damian Lewis is injured in a car crash, they take a vacation in Maine while some aliens crash land nearby. These aliens are obviously evil, and are most notable for having a life cycle that includes gestating inside a person, bursting out of their anus, and then becoming British fops. Other than that the alien basically looks like a flukeworm with vagina dentata for a face, and it spreads by somehow infecting you with alien hepatitis, more or less. Veteran alien hunter Morgan Freeman arrives with his black ops team to contain the infestation of "poo poo weasels" (yes, really) by rounding up and killing everything in the immediate area of the crash. Freeman is really a sight to see with his pasted-on bushy eyebrows and marine corps haircut, and it escapes me why he would agree to something like this. His second in command is played by Tom Sizemore. This was one of Sizemore's last films before his sextape/drug addiction scandal ruined his career, and what a terrible note this was to go out on. Sizemore and Freeman just absolutely sizzle off the screen with their worthless trying-to-sound-like-badasses dialogue while delivering lines on Ambien. The four friends piece together, well after the audience has, that maybe Duddits gave them psychic powers so they can fight this alien menace. This a curious theory, since Duddits is a retarded kid who can't pronounce most consonants, but it's science fiction. It becomes even more curious, however, when two of the four friends die without having accomplished anything at all, and a third has his body taken over completely by one of the aliens. So, the story awkwardly moves from "four friends on a heroic journey where they achieve purpose in their lives" to "two friends and some beefaroni." Judging by how the scenes went, I think Thomas Jane probably had one day on set with Morgan Freeman, which would have pissed me off if I had to work on an obvious dud like this. By the end, when Jane is using a gun like a phone to talk to Damian Lewis, he's clearly hamming it up, as there's no way to approach the scene that could lend dignity to the acting profession. The best way to summarize Dreamcatcher is that it is a wavering effort between misfired comedy and misfired horror. Not one of its attempted tones is struck true throughout, and with the awful acting it's some wonder that it didn't assassinate any careers. We are watching Life Force tomorrow to wash the taste out of our mouths. It also makes me want to watch The Mist adaptation, since while that's not a perfect film (terrible re-written ending, so-so acting), at least it's something. This thing left both me and my roommate speechless for long stretches, which is kinda saying something, since even most bad movies fall into a groove where you get what they're going for. You're not going to receive that mercy from Dreamcatcher. Name Change fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Sep 25, 2011 |
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Sep 25, 2011 12:37
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I was in a Big Lots a few years ago and they had a Stephen King Collection DVD set for something like $10 with 3 movies. Shining: I would probably pay $10 for this on it's own. Shawshank: Wow! I'd gladly pay $10 for this AND The Shining! What's the third mo-- Dreamcatcher: *sigh* Putting it back on the shelf...
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Sep 25, 2011 12:46
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To be entirely fair, the book that Dreamcatcher is based on is just as loving absurd and stupid.
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Sep 25, 2011 13:12
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OldTennisCourt posted:To be entirely fair, the book that Dreamcatcher is based on is just as loving absurd and stupid.
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Sep 25, 2011 14:35
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