What I'm Watching: Mine Games

I've been doing a lot of Trisklets these last few months trying to catch up on the stuff I watched earlier this year, but there've been a few exceptions where a movie has spoken to me, either for good or ill, that I just needed to get things down while they were still fresh in my brain.

Dead Still was one of those, on the side of the not so good.

Mine Games is another, but where does it fall?

I first came across this movie back in, geeze, May of this year?  April?  And the concept sounded fun, the trailer was cool, and it then got delayed from the release date I'd seen, it got renamed to "The Evil Within" if I remember correctly, and THEN it was renamed BACK to Mine Games before it finally got to me.

Which, quite frankly?  Is one of my favourite titles of anything this entire year.

I have a lot of things that I *want* to say about this movie, words itching to come out, but I know they're the wrong words to use.  I want to spit out that this movie is brilliant, but it's not.  I want to shout how great this movie is, but I know better.

Much like Mischief Night, this movie just lands with me in such a way, that while yes, it DOES do some great, fun things, and I *thoroughly* enjoyed my time watching it, I can also acknowledge they are not great movies.

But since when did greatness matter to Trisk?

You get sucked in right away with some very VERY common tropes, of the college gang off to the deep dark woods to spend some time at a cabin, and we even begin right at the typical last gas station before civilisation retreats.

And if that was the entirety of the movie, if this was Just Another Cabin In The Woods movie...ugh, I would not have bothered.  Even the trailer had me sighing at the idea.  Oh.  But oh, it doesn't stop there.  Again, like Mischief Night, it gives you those familiar horror tropes, and then RIPS THEM AWAY and goes in a *completely* unexpected and different direction.  They teased JUST enough in the trailer to make jaded, cynical Jason go from "Seen this before" to "I NEED TO SEE THIS NOW".

(So of course it then took five months to finally be released, but I digress...)

After pulling an "I Know What You Did Last Summer" with a guy in the road, they arrive at the cabin, and tiny little things start to go wrong and get weird.  Nothing TOO out of the ordinary.  The true weirdness doesn't hit until the gang finds an abandoned mine nearby and decide to go exploring.

As one does in these situations.

While down in the mine, things continue to get weird, until some of the group find a few dead bodies covered up in one of the storage rooms.  Which would be more than enough in any other movie, but Mine Games?  Mine Games goes that one extra, unbelievable step.

It's THEIR OWN BODIES.

Yep, stumbling around a dark, abandoned, already creepy as hell mine...and you find your own dead body.

And from that point on, the movie could do no wrong for me.  The plot is inventive, the mystery actually unfolds (And folds right back in on itself) in such an interesting way that shows multiple versions of events, but the same version, and even adds on some great twists and turns to the ride that make things all the more satisfying AND confounding.

This kind of plot can turn out very dodgy, and Mine Games gets a little too caught up in the minutiae of its ideas.  But the fact that they managed to work out so much is actually quite commendable.  It is SO very hard to forget details in movies like this.

Sure, the whys of it all are never explained, but I don't really need them to be.  I am content in "supernatural mine" being the explanation.  I've seen some people argue that everything is all in a certain character's head, but that is A) unsatisfying for an explanation making the entire movie just a dream, B) too many other character - ALL OF THEM - experience the weirdness as well as Michael.

I was surprised at how much I even enjoyed the characters.  There are no real familiar tropes here.  There is no jock.  There's no sex-crazed bimbo.  There's no stoner...well, someone brings along mushrooms, but he's never played up as the jokey pothead we know so well from horror movies and comedies alike.  The characters actually feel like genuine people in their own right, and not hastily scribbled familiar traits.

It's tough to say anything about Michael's descent into madness, because every character goes along for the ride down that road, but Michael's naturally stands out, since he's someone who's decided to go off his meds for the trip.  That doesn't end well, to do that and end up with a creepy mind and familiar dead bodies.  Joseph Cross does a great job selling the struggle this guy is going through, trying to figure out what's real and what isn't, and what to do about it.

Briana Evigan does a good job as Michael's girlfriend, constantly trying to help him, make sure he's okay, and generally trying to take care of the group as everything falls apart around her.  She's easily the character you're most along the journey with, even though the story isn't really about her.

The writing may not be the best, but the dialogue pops fairly well, and feels natural enough.  Everyone's arc comes full circle in ways you wouldn't expect, and I am just endlessly pleased with the movie makers catching almost every single ball they threw into the air in this juggling act, and even a few more balls that we never saw coming.

My biggest complaint is, sadly, with the mine itself.  A lot of it is fine, because they did SOME filming in a real mine to help sell the idea.  But a majority of it, for obvious safety reasons of IT'S A MINE, and for stunt reasons to boot, was filmed on a set.  And it looks like a set.  Badly.  1970s Doctor Who would look at this set and laugh.  I've seen more realistic looking rock climbing walls.  When such an *important* piece of your movie is the mine, and it really needs to exist as its own character, having it's production values be so low is such a shame.  The mine needs to work, you need to believe it, and I just didn't.

Fortunately, the plot is THAT strong, in my opinion.  Sure, it ends with a gigantic ball of "Wait...what?" but I love that, and it really does come together surprisingly well.  Even with it leaving you scratching your head.  I'd *almost* say better than Donnie Darko, but not quite.  But does it ever come close to that.

If you are looking for one twisted mind trip of a movie that starts you off in familiar territory and then drags you along to a whole new level of WTF, you really must see this movie.  Unique experiences like this must be enjoyed and nurtured, so we get more of them in the future.

What I'm Watching: Dead Still

Hey, something recent!

I really love the idea of 'evil camera' movies and stories.  There is just so much about the terminology and lore behind film, photography, and cameras, that just SO immediately lend themselves to supernatural stories.

Sure, we all know the "souls trapped by cameras" stuff, but even beyond that, there's a lot of good stuff to work with.  The title of this movie is a good example, of people trying to remain 'dead still' to get clear photographs taken with long exposures.

So when I saw Syfy Channek had an evil camera movie on last night, starring genre faves Ben Browder and Ray Wise, well...sure, I'll tune in to that!

Sadly...the movie was just not that great.

Which, sure, you could say, "But Jason, Syfy!" and you would not be wrong.  However, when it's not an evil nature movie, or some mockbuster from The Asylum, they generally tend to have some decent offerings in the horror and scifi genres.  I was hopeful.

 Outside of the previously mentioned two actors, the rest of the cast is pretty wince-worthy.  There's a few other decent performances, but for the large part, yeah, not so much.

The plot has it's moments, and there's decent ideas buried in there, but the execution is decidedly lacking.  There just felt like so many missed opportunities.

Take for example the "Negative World" inside the evil camera.  Now, that idea SOUNDS great, right?  A world of negatives where the souls are trapped and twisted and such, right?  You could do some cool visuals there.  Now, literally inverting the colour palette to make it a TRUE 'negative' of the actual image could be a bit much for an extended trip, but there must have been SOMEthing they could've done besides what we got.

Because a typical labrynthine corridor system with catacomb overtones that looked like leftover set pieces from Hellraiser or classic Doctor Who?  Yeah, just didn't work for me.  It wasn't BAD, but I get intrigued by the ideas, and then get your typical basement from everywhere else.

The kid playing Ben's son wasn't bad, but making him mute for most of the movie was largely unnecessary.  When his text to speech app on his tablet began saying "He's in here with us!" to dad, once the CAMERA had sucked him in, made me want to see Ben spend the next 20 minutes trying to figure out how the iPad was haunted.  I'm only mostly kidding.

The plot also suffered from some clarity issues in the storytelling.  Once the people that Ben was taking pictures of began dying, the movie kept flashing to someone performing arcane spells and rituals as their bodies were mangled and melted and such.  It was later revealed that the person was a descendant of someone that Ben's great grandfather (Ray Wise) had tormented for his photographs, and another member of their family had been the one that cursed Ray and the camera.

They um, kinda then failed to explain just WHAT she was doing with all the magic and such that sure looked like she was responsible for the deaths.  If you're going to make someone SEEM like they're the bad guy, and then swap it so nope!  She's on Ben's side! you kinda need to explain that thing, and why she's not evil.  I get that she *wasn't* and she was trying to stop the camera, but they dropped the ball on just what she WAS doing, and that's kinda important to the narrative, yes?  Did I miss something?

Also, the final sacrifice really seemed tacked on, and also not explained at ALL.  Aside to say, "In order to be free, a great sacrifice must be made!"  But...why?  Aside from narrative stakes?  But that's for OUR benefit.  What's the story logic to it?  Just saying, "A sacrifice MUST be made!" doesn't make it so, and just felt like they wanted there to be a sacrifice and emotional "No, don't!  You must go!" moment.

And finally, the very last moment of Wise's spirit still kicking around, DESPITE THE SACRFICE and everything else they did to stop him, was really out of nowhere, made zero sense, completely invalidated the entire climax they had fought so hard to do and force that sacrifice on the plot, as just one final "Mwahahaha!" moment to 'gotcha' the audience.  It was an unnecessary twist and just really crapped all over a climax that was already shakey.  It doesn't even really work as a pyrrhic victory, since in the end no one wins.

Now, there are some highlights to the movie.  The effects are pretty great.  There aren't many, but every death is pretty damned memorable and/or gruesome, I was impressed there.  Ben Browser is always a pleasure to watch, and Ray Wise as an evil crazy madman photographer?  Heck, evil crazy Ray Wise is almost worth the price of admission to ANY movie, no matter HOW bad, and this movie isn't *terrible* so there's at least the joy of watching him chew scenery right up to the very end.

The story has its moments, and the ideas are sound, the execution just never quite delivered on the promises they wanted to give the audience.  I could tell this movie WANTED to be something more, wanted to do certain things, but they never managed to get there

It's not quite worthwhile JUST for Ben and Ray Wise, but I can't outright say run away from this thing entirely.  Give it a shot if you're a fan of theirs, and you might get some enjoyment here and there, but otherwise, stay away.

Someone really needs to make a good supernatural camera movie.

What I'm Watching: Banshee Chapter

What do you get if you mix together the MK Ultra experiments, HP Lovecraft, numbers stations, Hunter S. Thompson with the serial mumbers filed off, Katrina Crane from Sleepy Hollow, and just a hint of found footage?

Well, you get Banshee Chapter!

This movie was surprising to me, in all the right ways.  I went in expecting something that was wholly found footage, but oh so fortunately it miraculously wasn't.  It's shot handheld, so has that feel to it, and they do splice in quite a bit of footage from cameras people are using in the film, but it's fortunately just part of the storytelling, and not straight up the whole movie.

I needed the break.

The movie is about a journalist, played by Katia Winter, investigating the death of her best friend from college.  He's been investigating the MK Ultra experiments, and got his hands on some of the LSD-like drugs they utilised to mess people up, along with some footage.

He soon hears some strange noises eminating from his radio and is eventually attacked in his home, and goes missing.

Katia follows the trail to a counter-culture author, drug advocate, and all-out rebel with too many guns...yep, it's Hunter Thompson, but not.  And quite honestly, the movie's version, Thomas Blackburn, is the breakout character of this.  As much as I love Katia's performance, Blackburn's snarky attitude and poking fun at the plot were a joy, and easily the best thing to watch.

"Can we go already?  It's 2:45am and my eyes're bleeding!"

After a rough start, he eventually gives the journalist the drug, and things get weirder.  Creatures begin popping up, strange things happen in the shadows, and the strange noises from the radio continue.

The movie ties the noises and MK Ultra into the phenomenon of numbers stations, and offers their own explanation of what those are, and it's a good little twist that fits this story.

Eventually, the movie tracks down the location of the original experiments, where everything hits the fan, things explode, and Katia barely escapes.

This was SUCH a thrilling movie.  The scares are effective, and very creepy, and since they usually come along with the off-putting noises from the numbers station, it adds so much atmosphere.

The biggest problem with the scares is that they are very frequently of the jump scare variety, and over so quickly, you never quite get a good look at just what is tormenting Anne and Blackburn.  That has its pros and cons, but with so much of the creatures (The banshees of the title, as the movie hints is what people call these otherworldly visions) kept in the shadows or to brief moments, it feels unfullfilling.

And yet the pro is, every time it happens, you wanna scream, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" and the movie earns that response, because you're half looking away and half wanting to see more.  It's frustrating and perfect all at once.

The single best scare is from an early point in the movie where Anne is sitting in her car, waiting to find the numbers station, with a camera pointed at her.  At one point, the focus slips and she goes all fuzzy, presumably because of something outside her car that drew its attention away.  You never see anything, all that happens is the camera going out of focus, AND YET it is so damned off putting.

"You don't scare too easily, do ya, Anne?  This shit scares the fuck outta me."

The movie never quite answers its own mysteries, but I think that's for the best.  It leads you down certain pathways, and I think I know what the movie WANTS you to think, and I walked away from the movie very satisfied with the story as it was given.

The movie's final few twists and turns are pretty good, and while they point in the directions of "otherworldly beings" trying to possess and ride humans as living skinsuits to further their goals (Whatever THOSE are...), they also leave that question open to interpretation that it's just all crazy mind control LSD people are taking and going nuts.

And of course, the final secret of Chamber 5 is perfect and answers a few questions and asks even more.

I loved this movie for the good scares it gave, the solid lead actors, a pretty good story that keeps you guessing...  I only wish it had a bigger budget, because it often felt like it wanted to tell a bigger story that it just couldn't quite reach.  A few more answers would've been nice, as well as a clearer overall narrative, and personally I would've preferred to have gone more in the direction of HP Lovecraft, and less in the direction of MK Ultra.

You can keep the latter, but drawing comparrisons to Lovecraft only made me want to expand on those ideas.

It's a solid, low budget, indie flick that maybe reached a little beyond its means, but still managed to be a fun, very creepy ride.

Definitely worth seeing!

What I'm Watching: The Vessel

I have a confession to make; I kinda love haunted prison stories.  At least, in theory.  Prisons are such bleak places, such stark places, such *terrible* places, where so many terrible things happen, and with the cells, and atmosphere, they should be the *perfect* spot for a good old ghost story.

Sadly, the promise of such never quite seems to materialise, does it?

The Vessel is another haunted prison story, and it too doesn't quite hit the mark.

After one Professor Samsa and his foundation has used DNA evidence to at long last prove the innocence of a convicted felon, who died tragically, he and his team head to the closed and supposedly haunted prison.  For shits and giggles and finding ghosts, although that always seems at odds with the Samsa Foundation's goals of clearing criminals.

"The Samsa Foundation!  Dedicated to proving your dead dad's innocence...and speaking to his ghost!"  Yeah, no.

Still, Samsa takes his team, and has one of them call up an estranged friend, Jason (Yay!), who has a secret or three.  The most important one, the one that Samsa has learned about, is that Jason is a vessel, a person who can easily carry and be possessed by spirits, like he's been doing for his dead friend Frank, the reason for his estrangement from his friend working for Samsa.

Oh yeah, that's a bit of a spoiler, but you can pretty much figure out Jason's "I see dead people" schtick from the second or third scene you have with Frank.

Naturally, Jason's gonna get possessed by SOME evil spirit in the prison, and it just so happens he gets possessed first by the guy Samsa found innocent, and the pair struggle to keep Jason's body out of the clutches of a third spirit, another older, angrier one, that had last possessed the innocent guy way back when, making him seem more guilty than he was.

Which of course leads to a pile of dead bodies made up of Samsa's team by the end of the flick.

I really love the multiple layers of that story.  It coulda just been a straight up evil killer possession, but the plot swerves around to keep you guessing, and it works fairly well.

Finding out whose body the evil spirit Tanner eventually ends up in is a great twist, and the story definitely delivers on that account.  The movie is pretty great in the broad strokes, but the details really REALLY kill it.

First of all, it should be no surprise that the acting here isn't great.  It's not terrible either, but it's a small indie movie, and it is what it is.  Everyone at least gives a fairly believable performance.

The worst out of the bunch though is Hector, the Mexican cellmate of the innocent inmate.  Not so much for his acting, but because of how he comes off as pretty much THE MOST stereotypical Mexican you could possibly imagine.  Cheech and Chong would cringe at this guy.  It settles down a bit as the movie goes on, especially as he gets fleshed out, but the first few lines out of his mouth are downright painful, and Hector never really recovers.

As if Hector wasn't bad enough, some of the girls are there for nothing more than titilation.  Which is something you're gonna get in horror movies, unfortunately, but this movie is pretty shameless about it.  It's not just in the sense of the audience's entertainment, but the movie actually goes out of its way to have the members of Samsa's team say flat out that the girls are there for titilation and to be used as bait for the spirits.  That's just downright disgusting, and I hope it says more about the *characters* and less about the filmmakers, because ew.  The filmmakers share some of the brunt of that responsibility though, because they could have still gone that route while making the women actual characters in their own rights and not just scream machines.

Also, Samsa's motivations get a bit dodgy as the movie goes on.  He dedicates his life to clearing criminals via DNA evidence, but then doesn't have any trouble shoving a guy into a cell who's already served his time, if it serves Samsa's own goals.  He comes right out and says it's fine, he's used to it.  This is a guy who wants to get people out of prison if they're innocent, but will shove a guy who's done his time right back into a cell, just for reasons?  More ugh.

The deaths are fun, but end up feeling way too fakey and planned out.  If you've ever seen stunt rehearsals, before they get used to the moves and ramp things up?  You know how they take things just that tiny bit slowly?  And it LOOKS fake because there's no real impact or speed to it?  Yeah, these stunts all look like that, with that slow, planned, underrehearsed feel to them.  Which is a shame, but understandable for a movie of this sort.

Still, the plot isn't half bad, the lead characters stand out amongst the crowd and even stand on their own in the world of horror movies, not quite existing as pure cliches.  The story's not too overdone, and comes at the ideas from a place all its own, so this movie isn't terrible.

But there are far too many places where it stumbles, and far too many things that are just downright *problematic* to the point of harming the movie.  If you can get past the problematic elements, and I would not blame you in the *least* if you could not, this movie actually offers up a solid story with okay acting that clocks in at just over 80 minutes, which is just about the right amount of time for this sort of thing.

While I can't quite recommend it, I can't quite say avoid at all costs either.  Consider this review your warning and your recommendation.

What I'm Watching: You're Next

Oh yeah, I run a website, don't I?

Ugh, it's been a weird month, and I won't bore you with the details.  Instead, I'll give you a review.  I think we all win in that instance.

What I've got up for review today is You're Next.  This was the latest in a recent string of 'masked people invade your home' movies that seem to be making a resurgence these days, with films like The Strangers, and even The Purge.

They're all pretty formulaic, and it's hard to make any of them stand out, since the gist of any of them is pretty much, 'people get trapped in their house and terrorised for 90 minutes'.

So, how does You're Next fare on that count?

Oh, it does a great job, I'll be honest.

I very much enjoyed my time with this movie.  The cast was super fun, with some seasoned veterans as the parents of the family that is eventually targeted, and some newer faces (Although some will be familiar to fans of recent horror, surely) nicely round out the cast.

This variation of the classic tale starts off with a well off couple moving into their new home in the country (Shortly after their new neighbours have been killed, oops), and their kids coming from all corners of the country to help celebrate the new housewarming.  The family is not super close, they have their issues, but all that is interrupted when some weirdos in animal masks show up to wreck things.

The way the plot unfolds is great, and there are some absolutely wonderful twists and turns to the proceedings.  The deaths are super creative, although sometimes they end up being super silly at the same time.  There's one death in particular that was wholly unnecessary and a bit TOO perfectly predicted to be believable, but if you can survive that one "OH COME ON" moment in the movie, you should enjoy the rest of the ride immensely.  In a lot of ways, that death also sets the tone for the movie, so if you get through that, you're also primed for what you're in for.

I compared The Collector movies to being a kind of twisted Home Alone, and this movie also ends up in that same category, with a bunch of Kevins trapped in their house and laying booby traps for their pursuers.  However, things get a bit more gory in this version, and the killers like setting traps of their own, as I mentioned.  It is a fun game of cat and mouse that is so damned entertaining to behold.

In fact, the large part of what makes this movie work is that sense of fun they're having.  You're not SUPPOSED to take this movie seriously.  Yes, that over the top, silly death is silly.  But that's *exactly* what they were going for.  This isn't a big, intellectual picture, but it's not dumb either.  I'm sure the plot wholes are wide enough to sprint through, but they are just having so much damned fun with the story, and so did I, that I don't care.  Yeah, it's one of those rides.

The masked attackers are great additions to the pantheon of horror baddies, and are at once instantly recognisable and familiar, and yet unique amongst the group.  They stand out, while at the same time harkening back to other movies of this genre, and a little bit of a nod to the Saw movies.

The movie really does a great job of keeping you guessing right up until the last act, and they manage to keep pulling the rug out in fairly believable and fun ways.  I kept wondering, "Is this how they're going to end it?  Or are they going this way?  They can't go THAT way, can they??" and I was so not disappointed with the way things wrapped up.  I'm sure others will take issue with it, but I thought the ending made perfect sense for this story.

It may be a fun movie, but it's also pretty dark, and not just because of the gory deaths.  They balance humour and darkness very well, and straddle that line damned near perfectly.  The movie knows when to crack a joke, and keep it serious, never making you feel like you're laughing when you shouldn't be.

All in all, a thrilling ride, and a unique new twist on a familiar subgenre of horror that will keep you guessing, as long as you're not taking it too seriously.  This is an easy recommendation.

What I'm Watching: Guardians of the Galaxy - For reals

Okay, but seriously. ;D

Insert the usual blah blah blah about how I'm a huge comics nerd, and been watching Marvel and DC movies for ages, reading the comics, etc etc...

Now that we have that out of the way, what did I think of THIS Marvel movie?

It felt a little like the Marvel movies were stumbling a bit after Avengers.  The next wave of flicks were busy picking up the pieces, which is fine, and it felt like they were struggling to A) figure out what to do with those pieces in a post-Avengers MCU (I am looking at you too, SHIELD), and B) struggling to get out of the shadow of the greatness of Avengers.

Iron Man 3 was the worst of the bunch, Thor 2 was enjoyable but took awhile to start to get the gears rolling, and Cap 2 was when things really started falling back into place, with only a few minor hiccups.  Cap 3 also helped get the wheels back on Agents of SHIELD and help them out.

Guardians of the Galaxy though...  MAN it was a breath of fresh air.  It's not tied down by the new status quo, what with being set way WAY off of Earth and with no regard for its continuity.  Mostly.  Okay, there's the Infinity Gems...Stones and Thanos (THANOS!) but there's no real major plot connection, since we're off on our own objectives here.

It's almost like starting off in our own separate universe and doing our own thing, with no regard for anything else.  The awesome part there is that this DOES tie in, and will dovetail back into the plots of the wider MCU in a BIG way later on down the road.  But it was so good to not have to deal with all the baggage of the invasion for a change, and just have an adventure.

And WHAT an adventure.  In a lot of ways, this blew a lot of the other movies out of the water.  It was gigantic in scope, we traveled all across the galaxy, there was space battles aplenty, humour, fun, a LOT of heart and seriousness too...and the balancing act actually worked for a change.  That can be hard to pull off.

It did take me quite awhile to warm up to things, as Peter Quill's antics were just kinda silly and goofy at times, and took me out of the moment too often.  It seemed more like I was watching Chris Pratt and not the character.  But once we started getting the band together, things settled down, and the character found a good balance with everyone else to play off of.

It feels like everyone got their moment, even the villains, and even the best Marvel movies struggle with that at times.  I'm very possibly forgetting some things, but all the main characters had a moment to shine, and there's quite a lot of cast members to try and pull that stunt off with.  A lesson learned from Avengers, where you could argue it was everyone's story in one way or another.  Even if it was TOTALLY Black Widow's story.

My initial feeling was that the use of classic rock tunes and such wasn't going to work, or be overdone, but they also managed to pull that off mostly well.  The moment that really made it work was Quill's struggle to get his tape back when he was imprisoned.  When you realise how precious those tapes are to him, the only solid things he has from his mother, literally his memories of her in his hands, that's when the music usage really clicks.  It may be one of the best soundtracks of any movie in a long, long time.

One of the things that bugged me though was Yondu.  And that's strictly because I am an old-school Guardians of the Galaxy fan.  That guy was not MY Yondu.  But damn if Michael Rooker didn't make me enjoy his role, once again.  If it had been a unique character, or one more closely connected to the sort of character they wanted, I'd be less grumpy.  As such, I don't hold this against the movie, it just made me pout and sulk.  Although I *did* get a huge nerdgasm seeing him use (an adaptation of) Yondu's whistle-controlled arrows.

I was quite pleased, and surprised, at how good Bautista was as Drax.  The trailers seemed like they were going for the strong silent type, and playing towards the "He's a wrestler, he can't act" thing, but I am pleased to say that they gave his character dialogue, a story, and a lot of heart.   AND punching, so everyone's happy.  I only wish he'd been a little closer to the comics version, but they kept the heart of his character and motivations, while not sticking to the precise details, and that's fine.

One of my biggest fears, and I made no secret of this online, was also with the trailers.  They were messing with the timeline of things so much, and making it sound like they were already called "The Guardians of the Galaxy" when they were this band of thieves and brigands, and it really put my teeth on edge, because it made zero sense.  Again, I am happy to say that the ACTUAL MOVIE did not go that route, and got the evolution of these characters right, so that by the time anyone calls them the Guardians of the Galaxy, they've *earned* it, and most of the movie has long since gone through everything the trailer showed.  I was pretty sure the movie would go that route, but the trailer was just presenting a wrong picture at times, and it made me concerned.  Having the movie knock each and every one of those concerns away also surely helps with my enjoyment of the movie.

And then there's Thanos.  What can I say about Thanos?  THANOSTHANOSTHANOS!!

I talked about, in my Avengers review, those moments on screen where you stop and realise, "Oh man, oh wow, I am watching a movie with Thor and Cap and Iron Man and Hulk all together and oh my gods Hulk just punched Thor and am I seeing this and AAAHHHH!!!"

Thanos was that, in this movie.

I never thought I'd see the day when Thanos would be on screen.  AND BEING THANOS.  I have like...zero complaints.  They nailed the character, the personality, and Josh Brolin's voice WAS ABSOLUTELY PERFECT.

Sigh.  Good times.

And I haven't even *touched* on the effects yet.  Rocket and Groot were freakin' seamless, I think.  The only moment that may have given me pause was when Groot put his hand on Drax's back.  Or vice versa, I forget which way that went.  Either way.  They nailed a talking raccoon, and a gigantic tree, and the spaceships, and space, and the battles...  Man, what a special effects extravaganza that was, that doesn't let the effects run away and end up making the movie all style and no substance.  The movie has plenty of substance, and the effects are largely a means to tell the story.

Oh, and um, one minor plot quibble.  Why would Peter wait TWENTY SIX YEARS to open his mom's final gift?  You get the impression he'd read the letter before (And it's where he got the name Star-Lord from, hence his *INSISTENCE* on using it, no matter how dopey everyone else felt it was)...but he never opened the gift?  It seems like one of those forced touching final moments crafted soley by the hand of the movie makers, and with no regard for human logic.

There's surely some other plot holes (Like I could bitch about the vaccuum of space a bit, but they hand-waved that...okayishly), as are wont to happen in big blockbuster films, scifi films, AND space films, and this movie is all three.  But the movie is so filled with fun, and joy, and action and manages to be big and bombastic while still having heart *coughcoughMichaelBaycough* that I can forgive it the few moments where the plot got away from it.  If you give me a good ride, you can drop the ball on a few logical inconsistencies, I always say.

I seriously think Guardians may well be my favourite Marvel movie since Avengers, and that's saying a lot.

Now, I always felt like Guardians was a bit of a test case scenario.  This always felt like a movie where Marvel was saying, "Okay, let's throw the absolute craziest ideas at the screen, go completely off the book of the current MCU, shoot off into space, and see how this works!" with the idea of, if the audience can embrace this level of insanity and coolness and bizarre comicbook nonsense...then they can handle damned near anything.  Well, Marvel?  Guardians is pretty much a success with a huge opening weekend.  We will watch anything you give us and accept whatever it is, in all it's comic glory.  So give us a Black Widow, Captain Marvel, and Black Panther movies, already.  Guardians has shown you we are down for anything, and you gotta do something about the diversity.

The movie may not be perfect, and may have it's share of flaws, but by damn if it isn't some of the most fun I've had in a theatre in awhile.

I want this movie to become the 21st Century's Star Wars, for this generation.

What I'm Watching: Guardians of the Galaxy

I am Groot!  I am Groot.  I am GROOT!

I am Groot.  I am Groot.  I am Groot.  I am Groot?

I am Groot.  I *am* Groot.  I am Groot.  *I* am Groot.

I am Groot??

I AM GROOT!!

I am Groot, I am Groot, I am Groot.  I am Groot.

IamGrootIamGrootIamGroot.

I am Groot!

I am Groot.  I am Groot.  I am Groot!

I am Groot.

(Seriously though, I'll be back with a REAL review later.  But I had to.)

What I'm Watching: Carrie 2013

So, let's see.  I'm a huge Stephen King fan, I've read the book, I've seen the original Carrie...but it has been forever since I've partaken of either of them, so I'm gonna avoid comparing the remake to those TOO much, because that's not far.

Still, certain things stick with you no matter what, and comparrisons are hard to avoid in this situation, but since memories are super fuzzy, keep that in mind.

Do I really need to some up the plight of poor Carrie White?  We all know the gist by now, right?  Girl has her period, turns out to be Jean Grey in disguise, and after getting pigs' blood spilled on her goes all turbo Dark Phoenix on her tormentors, right?

With that out of the way, I *really* enjoyed the remake.  It hit all the right notes, and a movie exploring the Very Real horror of bullying is always a timeless thing you can and should talk about.  And having those actions have consequences most terrible, even if they are highly fictionalised by way of telepathic vengeance, the metaphor still holds up today; as well as the metaphor of female empowerment.

My love of Chloe Moretz is no secret, and even in lesser movies like Dark Shadows, she always brings her A game and is easily one of the best actors out there today.  And pairing her with Julianne Moore as Carrie and her mother make for quite the acting tour de force.

Are they better than the original?  Yes and no.  I'd say Sissy Spacek was far better at being Carrie the outcast on multiple levels, but Chloe is SO good at portraying a shy, quiet introvert for most of the movie, that you easily buy into her take on the character, and the dark turn she takes after her blood shower is great.  And Julianne Moore does such a great job of protraying Carrie's mom, she is so terrifying in her dominance (Until she loses control of the situation) of her daughter, that you forget about any other role she's done before.  And yet she also brings a level of understanding to the character, if not just a hint of sympathy.

So while the original has some things going for it, if they HAD to make a remake of this, I don't think there are two better actors who could have carried it off as well as the two we got.

The most surprising thing about the movie, was the updating.  Whenever you do a remake these days, especially with something set as long ago as the late 70s, and you make it contemporary, you run into the problems of technology.  And it's a little bit frightening HOW MUCH WORSE the bullying of Carrie becomes all because of cellphones and YouTube.  That alone almost justifies this remake existing.

It was well-cast, well-updated, and pretty well directed, considering they're going up against someone like Brian de Palma, I'd say they held up pretty well.  I'd say, if anything, the movie is a little TOO faithful to de Palma, but at least they didn't go full on "Psycho" with it.

My biggest problem with the movie is, you guessed it, the ending.  They try to tack on one last scare, one last WTF moment, and it just doesn't work.  If you ignore the final 30 seconds of the movie, it's great.  And fortunately, those final few moments are so much their own separate entity that you can pretty much stick your fingers in your ears and pretend they don't exist, and not ruin the movie at in the slightest.  But hey, endings are hard, and they *mostly* nail it on the Carrie storyline.

If you've never seen the original movie, this is definitely worth seeing, and even for the fans of the original, I'd say this is worth a look.  If you're gonna do a remake, this is almost exactly the way it should be done.

What I'm Watching: A Serial Killer's Revenge

Back with a quick little review for all you Triskelions!  I'm hoping to push out a few of these over the week, so let's see how that goes.

I am so far behind on these, and always adding more to talk about, that sometimes makes me not post stuff just because I look at the backlog and sigh...

But enough sighing!  On to a review!

A Serial Killer's Revenge is a very interesting little flick.  So nicely intimate and independent, there's really only three or four characters in the entire thing.  At least, those are the ones we care about.  I could almost see this being done as a play and it would need very little changing, but I digress.

The story focuses on William, a middle-aged man who has finally been released from prison for killing his family when he was 12.  He's never spoken about the incident, and the mystery of why and how it happened remain just that.  William has chosen to finally tell his story to an up and coming reporter, in exchange for a series of pills that the pharmcutical company Ryan's wife works for.

It's maybe a bit of a stretch to have these five pills that when taken in series will painlessly end a person's life, but they're little more than a macguffin to use as a plot point, and it's the only stretch they ask of us, so I can let them have this one bit of unreality.  And it's not TOO far out of the realm of possibility, just kinda makes things a little off.

The story plays out as a series of interviews Ryan gets from William, and also a series of life lessons William gives back to Ryan.  Well, life lessons isn't the best phrase since they get a bit harsh and violent, but William's been in prison for awhile, so his people skills are lacking.

The mystery of William's criminal acts slowly unfolds, and it's pretty masterful.  I would've maybe liked a little more nuance to them, and you can see the big twist coming, but the WAY in which it unfolds, and some of the unique details to his story and how they're given out, are really well done, for the most part.

A Serial Killer's Revenge is pretty dark, but tells a gripping tale from a unique perspective, and through an interesting medium, that it's pretty easy to recommend.  I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this movie going in, but it drew me in very quick, and kept hold of my attention all the way through, even if I figured out the story's broad strokes at an early stage.  It was still great to see just how this particular story arrived at the same conclusions, and even where I was wrong about things.  Sometimes a movie about conversations is a tough sell, but the acting and subject matter was really quite gripping, and interspersed with more than enough other things going on.

And yes, I am avoiding spoiling it, because this is a movie worth seeing, and I don't think enough people will have heard of this great little mystery/drama/thriller out of England and by a first time director.  Especially since it shares a name with an episode of freakin' Ghost Hunters.  You might also find it as "The Point of Regret".  And because I am sometimes SUPER nice, here it is on IMDB.

What I'm Watching: Pretty Dead

Hey!  It's a new post, yay!

I am SO behind on these, and movies just keep on coming.  I don't wanna deny you all my delicious thoughts, and want to try and catch up.

Like this movie, Pretty Dead?  I watched it back in January.  Eek.

But oh man, did I enjoy it!

It's quite possibly one of the best found footage movies I've seen this year, aside from Mr. Jones.  And I think I liked the story here more, and preferred the use of the found footage tropes more over in Jones.

In short, a young med student, Regina, is out partying one night, and after a bad experience with drugs gets a terrible infection because drugs aren't exactly regulated.  Everything seems fine, given that she's got a bit of a nasty thing in her, but it soon becomes clear that all is not well.

Regina can't sleep, she heals rapidly, and develops a craving for meat like she never ate before.  Oh yes, horror fans can maybe start to notice some traits here.

She occasionally blacks out, attacks people, and things just get steadily worse, until she is taken away to a hospital to see if they have any luck diagnosing her.

I love love love that this is told from a medical student's perspective.  It really gives some weight to the science of what's going on, and helps make it all the more real, and make it seem natural that she'd be curious and scientific about this strange thing happening to her, rather than the usual excuse of just doing it for kicks.

You really feel for her charatcer as she struggles to maintain her humanity, as the infection gains more and more control over her.  It is a great mixture of the parasite/possession genres with the zombie undertones.

I really don't want to call this a zombie movie, even though the hallmarks are there.  If I must, it's clearly closer to the 'rage zombie' side of the horror family tree.

The biggest shame is that the cause for all this, the cordyceps fungus that causes 'zombie insects' in nature, kinda hit a saturation point in pop culture and the collective consciousness of our media.  If this movie existed in a vaccuum, it would be a great, refreshing, unique idea.  Sadly, with other things like "The Last of Us" and their clickers using a very similar idea, it kinda gets lost in the crowd.  Which is a shame, because the story is well told, with a great lead you feel for, like I said.

Still, having the real world basis for this makes it just that much more terrifying.  Which is naturally why everyone's using it right now, right?  I don't believe anyone copied anyone else, but we all saw those documentaries and videos online at the same time, so naturally everyone went, "NEW ZOMBIE MOVIE IDEA!"

The ending did leave me a little cold though, at first.  As is usual with horror, it is so easy to drop the ball in those last few minutes, and this one literally lost me in the last five seconds.  It didn't really end, so much as stop, as these sorts of flicks tend to do.  I know I make a lot of the same complaints about found footage movies, but they are almost universal problems of the style, and more people need to avoid them, not embrace them.

But, the more I thought about the ending, the more I've become okay with it, and the commentary definitely helped me once it was couched in what sort of terms the makers of Pretty Dead wanted to end the movie with.  This is the outbreak origin story, the movie we rarely get to see, and it ends at the point where so many others begin, and we've SEEN that movie over and over again.  And that's fair.  And I can live with that.  It just threw me the first time I saw it.

So, in short, I give Pretty Dead a high reccomendation, even if the acting isn't great, even if the ending was abrupt.  But we've almost come to expect that from these movies, and since you've been warned, you might get more enjoyment out of it than I.  For a no-budget, found footage take on zombies, with a new(ish) twist, it's a pretty unique thing to watch.  Although less unique than it wishes it was, which is a shame.

What I'm Watching: Mischief Night (2014)

Jumping from Memorial Day to almost-Halloween, I thought I'd give my thoughts on the freshly released Mischief Night!

Now, when trying to find information on this movie, I discovered there's like...a dozen of them with the same title.  And nearly FOUR of them in the last year.  So if you want to find stuff out about it beyond my words, Here is the IMDB page, and Here is the trailer.

Mischief Night is, as most of us surely know, the night before Halloween, which has taken over a lot of the pranking on that night.  Some other movies...er, cultures call it Devil's Night, but it's all the same thing.

Here, we have a young girl, Kaylie, who is babysitting for a family to help out a friend, and has to deal with the usual batch of naughty teens.  And then Malcolm McDowell arrives at her front door to warn her to be careful and not open the door for any strangers.

She promptly ignores that advice and ends up being the victim of a masked home invader, and ends up getting chased, attacked, and tied up.

Now.  I know what you're thinking.

Jason! you say.  Jason, we've seen this movie a hundred times before!

And you are correct.  But here's the thing.  All that?  All the usual stuff?  Takes place in the first act.  The first 30 minutes get through everything you expect from that plot.

And then things get interesting.

The second act was just...  It was SUCH a delightful surprise, because I was realising, as Kaylie was being tied up in the chair, just how little movie there had been, and this was usually the point where the movie was wrapping up.  I was wondering where the movie would go from here, and it did NOT disappoint.

See, Kaylie is a little disturbed, and she starts to freak out her captor.  This whole thing didn't go as planned, and he's got a headache from a few dozen vases getting smashed in his mask.  So he decides to screw this and go home.  He frees Kaylie and is about to leave when the pranksters return, stopping his escape short.

He watches as Kaylie shows her own mischievous side as she gets her revenge on the pranksters.  He gets this GREAT look of "Dude, this chick is more screwed up than me, and I'm wearing a cheap Michael Meyers knock off mask!" on his face for a good solid five minutes as he watches his former captive go about her fun.

It was at this point, as the pair start to actually bond, that I got a huge grin on my face, asking out loud, "Are...are they actually flirting?!"  The movie swerves wildly in the second act and actually becomes the single most bizarre and most awesome horror love story I have ever seen.

And it was a joy to behold.  The chemistry was decent, the mischief they made was fun, and it was just such a surprise that I was totally along for the ride because this was a truly unique experience.

I was legit nervous that the third act wasn't going to live up to the promises of the second act, and the movie would fizzle, but oh no!  I should have had no fear!  The movie continues to surprise in the final 30 minutes continues to deliver on surprises as things get back on the horror track and get weird and a little disturbing.

Those final surprises may not have been the most surprising turns of events, but they still kept things lively and flowed out of previous events perfectly.  That's part of WHY they weren't surprises, but they were executed well.  Pun most definitely intended.

And no.  I will not spoil those final twists.  I have already spoiled too much of this movie, but I had to give the readers something to explain my feelings for this movie.

I absolutely adored Mischief Night.  It was the single most enjoyable experience of a little indie movie I have had in a VERY long time.  Any horror fan has got to see this movie for a unique story that just has not been told, and is told fairly well.

You get the usual pitfalls of a lower budget flick like this.  The acting isn't great at times (But I have zero problems with it) and McDowell was ultimately wasted in a bit part that he was still great fun to watch, though.

I cannot reccommend this movie enough.  It started off okay, and then just kept surprising and pleasing me, leaving me with the biggest grin on my face for having given this a chance.

So here's to Mischief Night, my new favourite holiday movie.

What I'm Watching: Mr. Jones

No, I do not mean to say I've been sitting around endlessly watching Counting Crows videos.  What a cruel, terrible fate that would be.

Instead, I checked out a new found footage movie, Mr. Jones, and it may be one of my favourite found footage movies yet.  Certainly of this year.

It starts off with a premise I can get behind.  The movie is a documentary about reclusive artist Mr. Jones, whom no one has ever seen, met, heard, and even his name is made up just so he can have a name.

I love that right off the bat the movie has a reason for being a movie.  It's not just a collection of some footage someone 'found' and crammed together to show us bad shit happening.  The movie of the movie has a purpose, and that's always good, and is far too underused in the found footage genre.  And thankfully it's also not the overdone variant of "ghost hunters looking for stuff".

Scott's documentary doesn't start off that way though.  It starts off as just he and his girlfriend Penny taking a break from reality for a year to go live in a cabin and try and fix their relationship and life, while he tries to make a film about SOMEthing.  He doesn't know just what that will be at the start, but once the couple discover the strange and unique scarecrows of Mr. Jones in the fields and shrubbery in the mountainous desert around them, Scott knows he has a subject; the definitive movie about this reclusive artist.

The first half of the film is filled with them first trying to figure out what to do with their movie, which I love because I've SEEN documentaries like that, starting out with, "Well what do we do??" is a great way to set things up, then it has Scott going back to civilisation to do interviews with Mr. Jones experts over his 30+ year history, art historians, professors, and people who have owned his art.

This slowly starts to deepen the mystery of Mr. Jones, only leading to more questions.  Meanwhile, the shadowy figure is terrorising Penny back at the cabin (And Scott before he left, just so he's not left out).

Which brings us to the final third of the film, when everything goes crazy, and is probably what makes this a fave of found footage.  Mr. Jones seems to be a figure protecting our world from the dreamworld, and Scott and Penny have upset a delicate balance with their meddling.  There comes a point where they both fall into the dream world, and all the rules of found footage fly out the window.

There are no more cameras, for a large part, but footage is still being taken, the characters see themselves being filmed on the tv, and even comment on there being no possible camera where it is.  They directly wave their hands through where the camera should be, and even affects the footage.  It is just something so new to bring to this subgenre, it makes this movie feel really fresh, and doing something different with the tools, by breaking the rules.

Like most found footage movies, the movie has its bit of a "...Huh." ending, and doesn't entirely satisfy, but it does leave me with most of a completed story and doesn't just stop dead like so many others.  The format is great, builds well, and I love how it just utterly unspools towards the end.  I especially love the interviews, as they created a rich tapestry with very little to use other than words, and some of the interviewees were fantastic, including the always great Taran Fahir, whom I just love and was such a pleasure to see turn up here.

The only thing I didn't really like was Scott rigging up a camera to the camera so it would record the operator and the subject.  It's a clever idea, lets you show reactions of the operator instead of just hearing them say "Oh my gooood!" for 90 minutes, but they used a wide angle lens that instead made everyone holding the camera have a big, round face and the reactions were pretty silly most of the time.  Too much time spent on them mugging for the camera going "Ooooo!" and "Oh wooow!".  I give them points for trying, but it didn't quite come off, possibly because of the actors trying too hard with it, and just coming off unnatural.

But I will give them points for occasionally PUTTING THE DAMNED CAMERA DOWN WHEN IT'S IMPORTANT!!  A big bug about every FF movie.  Fortunately, once cameras become unnecessarily, that also solves that problem later on.

Mr. Jones turned out to be a surprisingly well done and creative bit of psychological thriller by way of found footage, and yeah, it works.  I wasn't expecting much going in, but I had quite an enjoyable ride.  Definitely worth the time.

What I'm Watching: Oculus

Hey hey, Triskelions!

I know I've been missing for a bit, but I just got a new computer and I am busily getting far too distracted by playing video games that are newer than 10 years old!  ...Er, I mean, I am SO busy getting the thing set up and up to snuff!

But I am here now, and I got out and saw the new(ish) horror flick, Oculus.

Now, before I go any further, it should be made ABUNDANTLY clear that I am a gigantic Karen Gillan fan.  Unashamedly so.  Well, maybe a little bit of shame, but no one's keeping track.  So go into this review with that huge grain of biased salt.

So yeah, guess what?  I loved Oculus!

Surprise, right?

What we've got here is the story of two young adults, who were tormented by an evil, cursed mirror eleven years ago.  During those events, Tim was forced to kill his possessed/driven mad father before he killed the kids.  For doing this, and thanks to yelling about a killer mirror, he was sent into psychiatric care.

The story picks up in the present day with him finally coming to terms with what happened as bad memories, being a young kid, and every other psychological explanation to get him past the supernatural.

His sister, on the other hand, has not been developing such coping mechanisms, and still believes that the mirror is more than just a mirror.  She's spent many years trying to track it down, and learn its history, all plotting for this time now, to finally destroy it and avenge her family.

First of all, THANK YOU, OCULUS, for giving us another original story.  Sure, you can find some common DNA with other movies and such, but this is not a remake.  It's not a sequel.  It's not an adaptation.  It is what it is, and as long-time readers of Trisk know, I will heap praise on any horror movie for that reason alone.

I really love how Kaylie laid down the history of the mirror, so far as she knows it.  I also love that the origins of the mirror only go back SO far, and even her extensive research never turn up where it came from.  The whole story reminded me A LOT of the Magna of Illusion.  And if you get THAT reference, we need to be friends.

On top of that, I absolutely LOVELOVELOVE that she took a scientific approach to it, was SUPER smart in her interactions with the mirror, took SO many precautions, had a number of ways to get around the mirror's trickery, and quite honestly, this is the shit so many horror fans clamor for.  It's not perfect, but she had a plan, she stuck to it...it was fun being given rules, and then seeing that the mirror and the things within it were smarter than even all the precautions taken.  So, so good.

Because, naturally, things can never be so simple as, "here's my plan, and everything goes swimmingly!"  Where would be the fun in that?

Also, it was great that they left it JUST vague enough for the first half of the movie whether the mirror was really cursed, or it WAS just stories the kids made up.  That becomes increasingly clear to not be the case the longer the movie goes on though, but they pretty much rode that line perfectly right up until it had to be revealed one way or the other.

On top of all that, I like that Tim, the one who has been seen as crazy for the past 11 years, is the voice of reason.  HE is the one providing all the rational explanations for what was going on, and trying to tell his sister that she's delusional.  It's a great reversal, and a good reason for having him be in psychiatric care all this time, because it gave him all those perfectly reasonable things to say, that would make sense on any other day of the week.

You wouldn't think watching a battle of wits between two siblings and a *mirror* would be this good, but the movie wisely intersperses the present day story with flashbacks to the past to fill in the entire gruesome events of their youth and their parents' demise.  It especially becomes interesting once the walls between the two time periods start breaking down, and while they never quite interact, having Tim and Kaylie also bearing witness to the same events we're watching make them MORE than just flashbacks; they're mind games the mirror is playing with them.  That helps make the scenes an active part of the story, not just filler and backstory.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending.  On the plus side, it absolutely doesn't RUIN the movie, which is all too common in horror movies, right?  But this was one story I was hoping *really* had a positive outcome.  I still like what we got, but I did exit the theatre with a bit of sadness and "Awwh," over what we were given.

Still, the movie has a great cast (I'm not a big Katee Sackhoff fan, but she was really good in this as the kids' mother, being slowly driven insane by the mirror), an original story, and is actually populated by smart characters who think things through.  It is definitely worth seeing for those reasons alone.

But really, it's worth seeing for Karen Gillan trying to do an American accent for 100 minutes...

What I'm Watching: Captain America - The Winter Soldier

Welcome back, Triskelions!

And boy, is that ever an appropriate nickname for all my fans.  All two of you!

ANYways, yeah!  I saw Captain America 2 tonight, if that isn't super clear by now.  This should be NO surprise to anyone.  I love superhero movies more than I love horror movies, I just chose to make a site about those other ones.

But I still talk about the former, so here we go, watch out and don't trip over the spoilers!

The plot finds Cap still trying to adjust to this new time, and honestly?  He's doing a pretty good job of it.  They don't hammer the man out of time stuff at all.  Most of that comes from his moral compass and how he feels America should be, and that is the absolutely correct way to go with that.  Don't spend half the movie making jokes about what the internets is and such, but show him as the great man, the great patriot, he is, and disappointed in what the country he loves became while he wasn't looking.

I really, really liked Cap 2.  Anyone who's talked to me enough knows that I still say the original Cap flick is my favourite of the Marvel movies most days, and that holds true today.  Which isn't a bad thing for Cap 2, that's a high bar to leap over.

I can't say I outright LOVED Cap 2, though.  It is hard to put my finger on precisely what, if anything is wrong with it.  It's a perfectly solid movie, it's very much more comicbook action, but I think, much like Iron Man 3, after the spectacle of Avengers, it has a lot to live up to.

And Cap 2 has even more to pull off, since while it IS pretty good, it's still not up to the gigantic superheroic spectacle of the other films.  I almost don't want to say it's more grounded, more real world, because we still have a dude that was frozen in ice for 70 years, gigantic flying fortresses, and the like, but you get my meaning, I hope!

I really love this being more of a political thriller, because that makes this really its own thing.  The fact that this ISN'T a big superhero spectacular movie is in its favour, truth be told.  That's the brilliance of the comics, and it helps to have each movie with its own flavour to have each one stand out amongst the crowd.  And going the political route definitely helps Cap stand out from an INCREASINGLY crowded crop of superhero movies, as well as being a perfect fit for Captain America.  Duh.  The comics did it for decades, so of course the movies should follow suit.

I especially like that the world wasn't *really* at stake this time out.  Sure, it was in its way, with our freedoms being in grave danger, and a large number of the population being firmly in the villains' crosshairs, but the stakes here are WAY different than an alien invasion trying to destroy everything.  There was very little 'destroy the world' type stuff, and that is SO refreshing in a blockbuster movie.  This is more about the fight for the soul of the country and the world, than anything else.

The biggest problem for me, is that Emily VanCamp was *criminally* underused in this movie.  I really hope this is more setup for future films, because it feels almost like a waste here, and I can only imagine there's deleted scenes.  Still, Emily is such a good actress, that even with what little she had, she still brought SUCH weight to the role, that it felt more than what was there.  Again, I hope I'm making sense here. ;)

They managed to do a very solid adaptation of the Winter Soldier ideas from the comics, and almost everything worked in the remade context of the MCU, which is always good.  The thing I missed the most though, is that they have firmly established that Black Widow was born in 1984 and doesn't have a lengthy history of being a Russian spy, part of which would have involved spending time with the Winter Soldier.  I liked the movies neither confirming nor denying Natasha's age, and losing out on such tidbits of her past just feels like a missed opportunity to me.  I would've loved to have seen some flashbacks with the pair of them.

Speaking of Black Widow, man.  While there's a strong argument to be made for Avengers being her story, Nat was given SO much to do in this movie.  I can't even call her 'the breakout star' of this movie, since Scarlett has done such a great job already in the MCU, but this movie really let us spend time with the Black Widow, REALLY get to know her beyond kicking ass, and it was great to have.

A lot of the characters were well served, from Fury, to Nat, to Falcon and Maria Hill.  Even Peggy Carter got some great moments.  Even some of the lesser characters and cameos got some great moments.  And oh MAN was it *awesome* to see Jenny Agutter in action!  Sorry, the Logan's Run fan in me is showing.

Falcon was an absolute treat, by the way.  Anthony Mackie's joy at playing this part is evident in every moment he's on screen.  He was introduced perfectly at the start of the film, and ever so slowly brought into the circle of chaos around Cap.  It was also a great contrast with Cap's own circumstances, and also great to show how some things never change in wartime.  The pair may be separated by half a century, but they bond over shared circumstances in completely different wars.  It worked SO well, and the friendly banter between them was exactly what I'd expected from the comics coming to the screen.

As you can see, I have a LOT of positive things to say about the movie, and not a lot of negatives.  It really is a matter of just not being as explodey as other movies, but it's also not trying to be.  And at the same time, I love that about this movie!  I'd still give it a giant yay, and of course if you're a fan of the Marvel movies, you are going to see this.

So yeah, that's my chaotic mishmash of a review. ;)  I think this will be more important in what it causes other movies, and Agents of SHIELD to do, in light of its events, than anything within itself.  This was a similar issue I had with Cap 1, in that it felt a lot like putting the pieces into place, and not quite complete in its own right.

Now that I know what to expect from the movie, what its tone is, what it's striving for, I'm sure it will grow and grow on me with later viewings.

Gaaah, and I didn't even mention how cool Batroc was!  As a huge Batroc fan (I know it's weird, shut up!) it was such a blast to see him, even briefly, on screen.  And the fights in general were great!  The action was really well choreographed, and gah, I could go on about every little detail as it comes to me, but I'm gonna jump out now.

What I'm Watching: Dead of the Nite

One of the best found footage movies I've seen is Grave Encounters, about one of those ghost hunting reality tv shows going to an abandoned hospital and trying to capture spooky stuff on camera.  Frankly, those ghost hunting shows are the BEST excuse for a found footage movie.  It explains the cameras with so little effort, the two are a near perfect match.

Which brings us to Dead of the Nite, which trods the same ground.

And sadly, is not really a match for Grave Encounters.

But I still found myself mostly enjoying it.  The plot revoles around some paranormal investigators checking out the legendary Jericho Manor, which is being taken care of by genre star, Tony Todd.

Tony ends up being used to better effect here than he was in Jack the Reaper, thankfully.  Still, his part is far too small, and over far too soon.  But what's there is good, and easily a highlight of the movie.

The biggest problem of the movie is the pacing.  We spend the usual ages of time establishing charaters, and while that usually is good, here it just falls flat.  The characters aren't great, the acting is a little stiffer than I'd prefer, and things really don't start clicking and flowing until the movie is almost half over.

They try and get around this by jumping around in time a little bit, as the cops are investigating what happened and watching the footage the victims/suspects took of the manor and their murders, and it just about save the movie by giving it the pace it needs, and early suspense to keep things interesting.

I was almost thrown by the ending of the movie, but it's almost too big of an ask for the audience to buy into the explanation that is given.  I like the twist because it was unexpected, but it was unexpected because it's so preposterous!  Your mileage may well vary here.

Still, there's some highlights, like Tony, and some good jumps.  The acting smooths out a bit as the plot starts clicking, and hey, a crazy twist is still worth noting.

I wouldn't say you need to rush out and see this movie, but in the found footage genre?  It's one of the more *consistent* movies out there.  So many are great most of the way through, and then completely dive bomb at the end and everything is ruined.  Dead of the Nite actually manages to be slightly saved by the ending, and because it's averageish all the way through, it's almost *more* pleasing that way?

It's a weird situation to be sure but there is something to say for a movie not building up your hopes and destroying them at the last second.  And hey.  Tony Todd is worth seeing almost any movie for, right?

So I guess it's worth a watch, if you've got the time, but no hurry, and don't expect something mindblowingly new!

What I'm Watching: Rewind This!

I'm avoiding watching my next big review movie, hiding from the snow, and there's nothing on the telly save for Olympics, so I thought I am long LONG overdue for a WIW!

I don't do a lot of documentaries in my life, choosing rather to read about events than watch people talk about them, so for me to pick one up and watch it, is saying something.  Mostly about me, but also about the subject matter.

And Rewind This! is pretty much perfect subject matter for me.  The documentary covers the advent of the videotape, the rise of videotape culture, video stores, the direct to video market (And you BET Full Moon and Charles Band are in this!),  and how it all came crashing down.

This is one of my favourite documentaries I've ever seen.  All these fans, showing their love, the personal nostalgia, insights into the industry, and even a few disenting voices about how terrible video was, made this a REAL treat for me.

I don't really have a lot to say about the documentary itself, besides that it pretty much gave the perfect look at the whole boom of the VHS in the 80s, and how we've lost a little something since it went away.  Progress is progress, and necessary, but something got left behind when that particular avenue crumbled.

That was probably one of the best bits of the movie, the reasoning for how all this weird stuff came out in the 80s, as studios rushed to fill shelves from their catalog, grabbing any old thing that might make a few bucks, and less of that has come out on DVD as they go for the purely marketable stuff, and even LESS on Blu-Ray now, with the studios exerting more and more control on just what they'll 'allow' us to see, and that truly is a shame.

(And fortunately there's places like Scream! Factory sneaking out some of those lost gems every month!)

But yeah, this was an amazing documentary on an incredible period in home entertainment, one that is especially important to myself as I am sure you can tell.  I had so many fond memories of watching really terrible horror movies with bad tracking on overwatched tapes with my friends, welling up inside me while watching this.

If you have ANY nostalgia for the video tape, or the 80s, or Blockbuster, or anything on this site, you NEED to watch this documentary.  I cannot recommend it enough.  And the best part about the DVD, is just HOW much extra footage they packed into it.  SO much deleted from interviews, and bonus stuff, it's like another two hour long documentary ON TOP of the 90 minutes they already gave you!

Trisk is a love letter to trashy horror movies, and this documentary is even more so a love letter to the VHS and the 80s.

J

What I'm Watching: I, Frankenstein

Oh look, it is another review in my series of "I finally got my ass out to see it on the last day in theatres!" reviews!

This time out is I, Frankenstein, from some of the same folks who gave us the underrated Underworld movies.

And knowing that going in, you can *kinda* guess how you're going to feel about this movie, since it is very much in the same style.

Now, I loved the Underworld series, and quite enjoyed this movie.  It follows a Frankenstein monster more familiar from the original story, and how he winds up involved in a war between demons and gargoyles, fighting over his creator's lost journal and ultimately his own body.

Yeah, the movie is a bit crazy!

But that's easily one of the reasons I liked it.  The acting is solid, with a fun cast who are enjoying what they do, the action is good, and the story is pretty damned unique.

The movie isn't great though, and it's got some huge flaws, mainly in maybe being a bit too crazy and high concept, throwing too many crazy ideas onto the screen at once.  It walks a tightrope between solid action movie and over the top action with gargoyles and demons and Frankenstein's monster.  It almost works, but that's a tough chasm to cross.

Still, despite its flaws it IS entertaining and fun, and I can't ask for more than that from a 90 minute movie.  It kept me entertained, made me smile, and was just plain good fun.  Is it as good as an Underworld movie?  Nah, I wouldn't even say it's as good as Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, but it's still not bad, all the same.

My biggest problem with it was the world building.  I never QUITE buy into this world where gargoyles who can turn into humans wander around a GIGANTIC cathedral in the middle of a bustling city and have gone unnoticed for hundreds of years.  And the demons aren't much better.  Everything seems to exist in a bubble all of its own, with no real regard to the world outside what this movie is doing.  That can be problematic, but again, if you're willing to go along with the movie, you are in for a hell of a fiery ride.

It's not a classic, it might not even become a cult classic (But I hope it does!), but it falls squarely into 'big dumb action movie' that is definitely a popcorny adventure.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  If nothing else, I'm happy to support something that is pretty unique in voice, tone, and story in the theatres, even if it is kind of an adaptation of existing works all the same.

What I'm Watching: Paranormal Activity - The Marked Ones

Hello, Triskelions!

As usual, killing some time before the new main review goes up in a few days, and thought I'd sprinkle in at LEAST one new quickie review, and hopefully a few more before then!

I have long been a champion of the Paranormal Activity series, loving each of the movies to SOME degree, and they grow on me more and more over time, even if I walk out with more of a "Hmm" reaction to the last few.  So, it's no surprise that I went to see The Marked Ones, although it took me awhile to get there.

The movie follows a family in the LA area, several years after the original events of the first movie, and focuses around some Latinos just after graduating high school, and discovering the woman that one of them lives above may in fact be a witch.

Marked Ones breaks from the more 'security' oriented type of found footage that a lot of the other PA movies use.  Yes, they use a lot of handheld as well, but a lot of the PA visual language comes from a lot of establishing shots setting up each area in a repetitious manner, and this movie did away with all that.

This is both a good thing, and a bad thing.  On the one hand, you lose a lot of that building of tension you get with that style.  You lose the, "See, everything is normal, just like the night before, and the night before, and the night before, and...NOW THERE IS AN EXPLOSION OF CABINETS."  That's a good way to lull the audience and pull the rug out from them, and this movie replaces those with a few lingering shots of the same room, until eventually something happens during the lone scene.  And that's fine, and works well with a more handheld style.

But it also gives this movie it's own visual style, its own identity, and that's good, because it allows this movie to stand on its own merits, and not be "Paranormal Activity, but with Mexicans."  It really is its own thing, and it mostly works.

The movie is smart enough to use some of the same tropes from the main franchise though, so you don't feel alienated.  They sprinkle in JUST enough references to remind you this is the same universe, while at the same time expanding the mythology.  We get a lot of potential backstory here, and since it's not connected to Katie's story, or the new random family of the week, it gets to establish things on its own and fill in some blanks that might have otherwise been difficult to work in.

We get a good number of scares, and since they involve possessed people, we actually get to SEE things happening, and not just exploding cabinets, falling knives, or floating sheets.  We get more physicality of the evil in this movie than we have in previous films, save for Katie's occasionally villainous appearances.

They do a number of new things that really caught me off guard, because they're not typical to a PA movie, and again, these things were welcome.  Warping space in camera was such a "WHOA" moment for me, because such visual effects just aren't done here, y'know?

My fave bit must have been this movie's use of one of the best tropes of the series; the possessed creepy 80s toy.  We've seen it with the Lite Brite, Teddy Ruxpin, and this movie gives us a communicative Simon game.  That was brilliant, awesome, and SO creepy in its simplicity.  But man, they missed a trick with it though, and I wish the scene had gone on for *literally* two seconds more.

If you're a fan of the PA movies, this is a MUST see.  It matters to the series.  It does different things, has a different voice, but is, in my opinion, important to the mythology.  I enjoyed it as much as the rest, and probably more than the third installment.  Do not skip this movie just because it's not in the main branch!

What I'm Watching: The ABC's of Death

Welcome back, Triskelions!

So, what movie had the honour of being the very first thing I watched in 2014?  I hate to say it was "The ABC's of Death" but here we are...

I was going to get this when it came out on DVD, but the price made me scrunch my nose and say no.  Too much for an anthology movie of this nature; 26 short films, most about 4-5 minutes long at most, each one taking a letter of the alphabet, picking a word that starts with that letter, and then telling a story about that thing being responsible for death.

That sounds like it has potential, but having that many short stories, you are also going to have any number of misfires.

I kept the movie in the back of my head, and was poking around Amazon and saw it was free on Amazon Prime, so decided I'd watch it at last.

Let me tell you, I should have taken my computer completely turning itself off due to power issues on the D story as a sign and never gone back.  But I am persistent and pressed onwards.

Yeah, that kinda tells you what I thought right there, doesn't it?

I would say that out of over two dozen short stories, there is MAYBE five or six that are worth your time.  Some have decently cute twists, as much as you can pull one off in a handful of minutes, at least.  But so many stories are just meh and forgettable.

But worse than that, there are way too many that are just sheer fucked up.  And y'all know I have no problem with fucked up.  I like the Human Centipede movies, after a fashion, right?

However, having stories about a girl obsessed with how her teacher's farts smell, and would rather die smelling that than the impending doom of a toxic gas leak, and then gets sucked into her teacher's ass, which apparently also contains a pocket universe?

Yeah.

And then there's the stripping Nazi furry.

But then there's the Dogfight story, which is actually well done, told without words, and is amazingly shot.  The Q story poking fun at this whole thing by breaking the fourth wall in a glorious way.  Xavier Gens' X story, XXL is also really good, has something to say about society, and is super creepy and effective.

Some just don't make a lick of sense to me, like Cycle, which seems to be an endless loop of a guy going back in time to go back in time to go back in time to kill himself, but it also seems like that's NOT it and he was replaced?  The storytelling could have been clearer on so many of these shorts.  And they would have if they weren't forced to be only a few minutes long so this runtime didn't explode with 26 half hour movies, right?

So, a handful of gems, a few okay stories, then a whole back-acre of meh, bad, and WHAT WAS THAT?! stories.  That's normal with an anthology, but usually you can say, oh, there's one great story out of three, or two good stories, but there's just SO many shots going out here, and not enough of a hit ratio.  Which is a shame for the gold buried here.

There WAS some fun to be had, trying to guess what the word would be, since that's not revealed until the end of each short, wondering what each word for each letter would be the thing to do people in.  That was the best way I got through this mess.

ABCs really needed more storytellers that could deal with this short format, and maybe be a bit more creative without being so insane that you just don't care.

Which is another problem; with so many stories told so quickly, you just don't care.  Any one of these might be fine to go watch on YouTube and it would be a fine little short film.  But by story #19, you are being introduced to yet another set of characters that you're supposed to care about for a blink of an eye, in a row?  That's a big ask.  These work less well when seen all back to back, strangely enough.

And personally, I wish the movie hadn't been front-loaded with a handful of foreign language shorts, that kinda made the learning curve a little higher than I would've liked, and took me longer to get into it.  Mostly because I wasn't expecting it, to be sure.

I really can't recommend seeing this as a whole, but there's a few gems worth seeking out, if you want.

A strange experiment that just doesn't work, but has potential with a stronger focus and better creators, maybe?  I dunno.

What I'm Watching: Children of a Darker Dawn

Merry Christmas Eve!

What did Santa Jason bring you for your early present?

Why, it's a review of Children of a Darker Dawn!

This movie can be summed up as a modern day take on Lord of the Flies, but on a global scale, and this particular corner of the post-apocalypse taking place in Ireland.

So SO many things there I should love.  Sadly, calling up "Lord of the Flies" as a cultural touchstone is actually a bad idea.  This is nowhere near as good, and never quite reaches the levels of societal commentary of that movie.

In short, a strange virus infects the populace, and it drives all the adults crazy, and eventually death, leaving the kids to pick up the slack.  Fortunately, with all the hosts dead, the virus soon dies out leaving the kids to grow up in effed up land.

We zero in on the journeys of two girls, sisters, Evie and Fran.  They're trying to keep to themselves, stay alive, find shelter...you know the drill in these stories.

It's not long before they run into a larger group of teens trying to survive, and willing to take harsher means to meet that goal.

They take the girls' food, and leave one of their own with the sisters, but the new trio soon run into yet another group, and the FIRST other group comes along shortly after.

The reason this doesn't quite meet Lord of the Flies territory is that the characters all feel a little samey, or just not well drawn out.  Most characters are defined by yelling, and there's no real societal heirarchy.  Just teens running into each other and trying to take their food.

I'm also trying to decide how I feel about the production values.  Most of the movie takes place in abandoned homes, that look sufficiently decrepit, but they don't look like they've *ever* been lived in.  Now, you could say that they've been picked clean by previous travelers, but there should still be some set dressing.  Same with the costumes.  Most of them looked like they were just what the actors wore to set, which actually *works* by feeling genuine, but doesn't work because of a lack of planning.  It feels both too real by being perfectly normal, and too fake, causing a weird tonal dissonance in the style and look of the surroundings.

Now, the acting IS pretty good in this, way better than I'd expect, based on the ages and experience of most of the cast.  While they can get a bit shouty, when they're not, when they're just interacting, there's a decent genuine quality to it.  And the actress playing Fran really hits on a lot of the same notes that Maisie Williams does, as Arya on Game of Thrones.  In all the right ways, let me say.  Again, she gives in to histrionics from time to time, but she's a kid who has seen everyone she knows except her sister die, so I can excuse that behaviour.

Darker Dawn never quite seems to latch onto a whole story.  There's bits and pieces here, there's vignettes almost that work, and they show other things that are intriguing, and make you wish that the movie was more about that, but it never quite gets to those things.

Especially a series of shots towards the end of a group of girls going full on Hannibal Lecter on someone they come across.  Now this, THIS should be terrifying, and it does cause some chills.  A group of kids, none of them more than 15, many even around ten, bringing down a person by sheer force of numbers and doing what they can to survive?  Why is the movie not about these people?  We never even run into them during this story!  They're just told by someone as flashback!  Or maybe as a warning of the world to come, that was never quite clear.

The movie has a number of moments like that; intriguing ideas that are ultimately unconnected, and would have been a better narrative to follow.  The flashbacks and teases of what happened to these kids are the truly interesting things.  I almost think this would have worked better with the 'current' story being a wraparound, and making those flashbacks of what came before as more of an anthology story type model.  As it is, nothing is given enough time, and just kinda glossed over what we really want to see.

Still, the acting is good, and the story isn't BAD, what there is, but I never quite managed to connect with this movie.  There's something there though, and some people are digging it, so if you have a chance, I do say give it a shot.  There is some good stuff there, it just never landed for me.  I definitely plan to give it another look in the near future.  It's got something there that just didn't quite connect during my first viewing.

J