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Reviews
The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
Had less do to with the X-Files than Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants II
As an x-files fanboy, I really wanted this movie to be everything I hoped for in an x-files movie. I at least wanted to enjoy the movie, even a little bit. I really wanted to... But apparently that's too much to ask for. Instead of feeling the fulfillment I wished for I was left wishing I had the ability to travel back in time and warn myself not to see this movie. Actually, if I had the ability to travel back in time, I'd warn Chris Carter not to make the movie at all.
The story is vapid and incoherent. Mulder and Scully are reduced to cheap caricatures and the plot is ridiculous enough that significant parts of it seem to exist for the sole purpose of setting up a few of Mulder's jokes. Carter also included a couple of absolutely horrifying moments, such as playing a snippet of the x-files theme while Mulder and Scully gaze at a portrait of George Bush, and the final inexplicable clip at the end of the credits in which Mulder is shown shirtless rowing a boat in the middle of the ocean with Scully laying at the bow in a revealing bikini like an overpaid fashion model. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to travel through time and stop this abomination from irreparably corrupting everything that is good about the series, so I'm doing the only thing I can do: warning everyone I can not to see this film. For your own sake, if not for Mulder and Scully's.
The Strangers (2008)
Almost less boring than staring at a blank wall
As everyone probably anticipated, this film is another in a seemingly endless string of unbearable formulaic pap that Hollywood has been spewing out for the past nine billion years. This film wasn't exactly horrible, and I admit I was hoping against all reason that it might succeed at least a tiny bit in creating an eerie mood and generating some genuine scares, but no, that's just too much to ask for. Without going in to too much detail, I can tell you that the first 30 minutes or so are sort of creepy, but the rest is nothing but cheap, unnecessarily noisy scares and way too many glimpses of these totally unintimidating people in stupid looking masks. And yes, as the previews implied, the movie really does revolve entirely around the gimmick that these people are wearing scary looking masks. And that's it. The highlight of the movie, for me, was the "hey that's the dude from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia!" part. So if you like watching Liv Tyler's upper lip continue to be bigger than her lower lip and people in stupid masks walking around banging on things, this is the movie for you. Oh, and it's completely anti-climactic as well. A true Hollywood gem.