Change Your Image
Erotophonophilliac
Reviews
The Reaping (2007)
A Plague of Clichés
While I had no real expectations going into this movie, I have to admit it lost me pretty early on. The early scenes of her debunking a miracle in some Central American country were a mish mash of jarring jump cuts and badly lit shots that. With an opening like that you have to wonder how they're going to handle scenes of supposedly real tension later in the movie.
Despite misgivings I stayed watching because there were some genuinely interesting ideas. Unfortunately none of them ever eventuate to anything as the movie lurches from one jump cut dream sequence to another.
The movie, which opens with the devil's symbol burning itself across a series of photographs, then becomes annoyingly coy about the supernatural element. Can it be explained away by modern science? Are the dream sequences real or is poor Hilary becoming unhinged?
The cast are never given much to work with and even the lead characters remain two dimensional at best. The movie meanders on, and in a workmanlike way starts hitting the points of satanic conspiracy (A gold star to anyone who guesses what happens to the black guy) before bumbling to a special effects heavy, but plot light, denouement that seems like it's glommed from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This is followed by a last minute twist so risible you wonder why they even bothered.
Here's a big hint guys, jump cuts, rapid editing and light saturated screen effects DO NOT disguise what is essentially a very dull movie. Avoid like the 10 plagues of Egypt.
Puni Puni Poemi (2001)
Excel's ADD Little Sister.
This show was always intended to be Excel Saga on red cordial and sugar bombs. It makes use of a lead actress who talks so high and fast she can induce tinnitus and scare animals. There's no real plot as such, just the join the dots default of 'moei' cute girl series cut up and thrown at the screen. The send ups are of all the conventions and dodgy sexual allusions found in the genre (such as one of the characters continually complaining about the size of her breasts) but no joke stays past it's welcome. In fact they fly by so fast you need to watch it a few times before you're going to get even half of them. Though a warning, there is a lot of 'adult' content, but it's main impact is absurd not lewd .
Man-Thing (2005)
Plodding, cod-awful horror
This movie ignores almost all of the Man-Thing back story, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The execution and everything else about the movie, however, is.
Changing the creature to an Indian guardian spirit could have taken the movie in an interesting direction. Unfortunately plundering the ideas from the superior 80's Swamp Thing comic and every half-baked horror film for the last 20 years take this to a level of tripe it never recovers from.
Add this to a parade of one dimensional and generally annoying characters who's only purpose is to wander into the dangerous swamp and get summarily ripped apart. Often for no rhyme or reason. I wasn't sure if i was offended most by the racist security guard who swigs whiskey whilst banging on about 'Injuns n' coloureds' (whoa, why not just wear an 'i'm about to be horribly killed' t-shirt, hey guy?) or the inbred Lousiana trapper who, despite being native to the swamp, is still too dumb to take a dump without falling over.
The dialogue is excruciating or dull in equal amounts. Most of it does seem to be the various characters calling each other's names while wandering through the swamp to their gruesome and pointless fates.
There's little logic to the killings, either. Just going into the swamp will get you killed, though nobody seems to be worried about that. Or equipped with even rudimentary wet weather gear such as raincoats or gumboots. It's just lucky for them that every night is a full moon, what with their electricity dying every 5 minutes or so.
The direction also wavers between the pedestrian and the highly annoying with said director displaying a penchant for focusing on objects and then upping the spooky score (oh look, a... well, a vine. DA DA DUM DEE.) And Rene the Indian can't seem to cross a scene without a whooshing noise & his own spooky theme.
I don't usually like to trash a cast when they've been given so little to work with, but it's so hard with this one. Apart from the universally erratic Southern US accents put on by the all Aussie cast, Jack Thompson's pantomime sleaze of an oil baron actually lets loose with a full villainous "BWAH-Ha-Ha-HAAAA" at one stage.
The monster itself is really disappointing. It looks OK cgi, but it's only shown in teaser shots for the first half of the film and when you finally do see it, it's hard to care. The back story is hinted at but not told (SPOILER: I am pretty sure that in a variation of the comic origin, the Man-Thing is a guardian spirit brought into being around the corpse of murdered tribal leader Ted Sallis. This is NOT made clear in the film) There's a whole heap of truck-sized plot holes in the movie (Why does the teacher need to guide the sheriff to the hidden 'dark water' when it's obvious that the oil company managed to build a damn rig there? Is there a reason the local yoda-esquire shaman throws himself at the creature? Why is Billy just reported as missing with no follow up when his girlfriend's been sent to the nut-house? Why did i watch this?) We tried to enliven this turgid piece of swamp mud with a 'drink a vodka shot when you predict the next cliché' game, but by the 50 minute mark (and a nasty three-for-one scene) had almost finished the first bottle and realising there was another 40 minutes to go feared our livers would explode during the climax.
What else can i say? As a scifi adaption i was sort of duty bound to watch it, but try to avoid unless you enjoy the punishment.
Jakten på nyresteinen (1996)
Whacked out, but pretty imaginative, kids flick
This is one of those kid's movies that is either a) charming, imaginative and original, or b) disturbing enough to scar you for life. Either way it's well worth a look. There's some Norwegian cultural touchstones that make me believe it's taken from source material well known in it's homeland, but works at face value level as well. The storyline involves Simon, a kid with 2 expressions and a magic teddy bear, whose Grandfather seems to be getting very sick. "Of loneliness" diagnoses the kid at every opportunity. At the urging of the frankly creepy teddy, Simon ingests a magic potion and shrinks himself down to go and help Grandpa. Once inside, he hooks up with Mapster the young white blood cell & cute piece of lung matter, Alvaoli. Together they skip through grandpa's gnarly innards meeting such characters as the Secretions Agent and Bile Duct, the bad tempered head of the gall bladder department, while they try to stop the evil Calcium Crystals who are building a stone in Grandpa's bladder. The sets and costumes in this movie are impressively designed, even if worryingly skewed towards the rubber fetishistic crowd and the effects are pretty good too. (Favourite moment was the Secretion Agent's 'wanted poster') And for those with the bent for the absurd this movie's worth a look for nothing else than the costumes and interesting look at how our bodies are put together (my appendix is WHERE?) Best watched if: under 12 or drunk.