Movie Watch: Paranormal Activity 3

I've generally been a pretty big fan of the Paranormal Activity franchise.  I got some friends to re-watch the first two prior to heading out to see the third.  I think one of the most positive things about this series is its ability to dig deeper into the history of the story with every installment without feeling overly forced.

By itself, Paranormal Activity 3 holds its own against the first two movies.  There is still the methodic observations on everyday life and scenes where nothing goes on at all just to set that creepy baseline for the viewer.  There is still the judicial use of sound of effects to warn the viewer that something is about to jump above that baseline.

And there is still what I like to refer to as excellent Hollywood magic tricks.  I simply refuse to point to an example because the less you know about what happens in the film, the better, but while the series has special effects - they're extremely subtle and you could almost imagine most of the events of the film happening on a stage in front of you, not something which simply must be pumped through a high end computer to generate.

End the spoiler free section of it.  If you liked either of the first two, highly recommended.  If you haven't, and now that we are in the post-Halloweeen season, I'd probably recommend snagging the first one at least and watch all the films.  But Paranormal Activity 3 is certainly a fun spookfest on its own right.

Is the plot unraveling?
If there's any complaints about the third movie - it's that it raises some interesting inconsistencies with the first two movies.

SPOILERS ABOUND FROM THIS POINT ON

Got that?  Is the bold and all caps clear enough? Ok, then.

First problem that the movie gets itself into is the dubious use of images in the various trailers.  The trailers seem to be sections of the film which were mostly not used in the long run, which is relatively legitimate but can get a little confusing.

This is especially true since one of the key plot points mentioned in the first two films is the girls' house being burned down, which is apparently shown only in one of the trailers (I've seen it, but never caught it on TV).  The timestamp of the trailer, however, points to the house fire happening after the events of the film and my guess is that the makers wanted to keep the "final shock scene" which has been the trademark of the first two films instead of any kind of explanatory epilogue.

Also confusing the references to the girls' mom in the first two films.  Micah makes a crack about not inviting her over in the first film, and the girls talk about her briefly in the second with references not shown in the third film (namely people coming over and their mom crying a lot).

There are two defense for the mentions in the second film.  One is that their mom may have been crying more than we saw in the first film, especially considering the overall discord in the house towards the end ... and perhaps "people" included Dennis' friend.

Or, and this goes for Micah's reference in the first film - "mom" refers to their adoptive mother.  We don't really know what the girls remember or think happened after grandmother walks them upstairs, after all.

Still, this shows a danger of a story being told in a chain of prequels.  You can't expect viewers to try and piece together all these minor aspects - it should be part of the fun.  I don't think the third film necessarily violates anything plot-wise of the first two movies, but the filmmakers should be on notice: Paranormal Activity fans are taking notes.  And any future movies will be judged with those notes in the margin.

Paranormal Activity 4?
When walking out of the theater, I had thought that perhaps this would be swan song of the series.  After all, we have a pretty complete picture of the story in general.  And if they do another prequel, they would probably have to drop the found film aspect or go to reel to reel or something like that.  Neither sounds like a good idea.

But money is money - and Paranormal Activity 3 made a metric ton of it.  A fourth film is almost assured.  Those note taking fans have noted there is a "1992" tape shown in the box Katie brings over ... which possibly indicates they'll advance the story a few years after the events of the third film and perhaps explain the house fire, the adoptive mother, etc.

Another good possibility is having a movie which takes place after the events of PA2.  The makers have clearly made an effort to keep in touch with the original cast members, perhaps to make sure Katie Featherston would be around to portray her more demonic side in what would probably need to be the series finale.

So far the producers, directors and writers have done a good job keeping to the spirit (no pun intended) of the first film, so I'm still confident they can keep the quality up.

First trailer which reminds me of Blair Witch 2, however - and I am so not confident....

A Brief Guide To Shaky Cam Horror

In the vast amount of time I have not been blogging, I have managed to catch up on many, many horror movies. While on they way, I rewatched Paranormal Activity in anticipation of of the sequel, and regretfully (because it was free and easy to click on) watched Paranormal Entity.

In my review of Activity, I hoped that shaky cam would become more of a genre in it's own right. And when you get a mockbuster made of your picture, I think maybe that's arrived. So in preparation for a Halloween weekend, let's go through the shortlist of the shaky cam spookers.

The Last Broadcast
One of the earlier, if not the earliest, movies of this type - The Last Broadcast is also one of the least formulaic of the bunch. While you'll see many of the same trappings - first person confessions, running through the woods, people wandering off into isolation, there's more of a whodunit storyline being followed at the core. Not the scariest, or best produced, by far - but worth watching for those who found Blair Witch at least interesting.

Ghostwatch
Back in 1992, the BBC released this little known gem. It actually caused some hysteria upon its release and was named in one suicide (no joke). I haven't seen it as of yet because it's nearly impossible to find, it has only aired twice and while it hit DVD in 2002, doesn't look like it's been made available for import anywhere.

Blair Witch Project
BWP remains the epicenter of the shaky cam films, having gathered a lot of attention, making lots of money and distilling the basics of the concept: low budget, handy cam directing, and possibly most importantly ... a plot which centers just as much about how relationships take a downward spiral in a crisis as it does about ghosts and creepy moments. It's a hallmark, actually, of what works and doesn't work for these kinds of films ... if the actors can't sell you on the fact that they're in crisis mode, you're probably not going to be in crisis mode either.

Quarantine
Not nearly as much of a copycat as it could have been guilty of, Quarantine uses the shaky cam concept on a twist of the zombie genre with somewhat mixed, but usually decent results. There's a level of predictability, partially because we've all seen the same kind of zombie film a dozen times before ... and also because this is one of those movies that oddly features one of the final scenes as its cover. Can't strongly recommend, but did find it somewhat entertaining.

Cloverfield
The reason why Cloverfield is something of a landmark film in that it combines the general formula: a small group of people armed with a handycam in a desperate and bizarre situation, with Hollywood special effects and a big budget. Most interesting is that the former seems to work much better than the latter, though the level of destruction that the budget provides offers a great deal of value. Somewhere along the way, the movie starts to feel more like a standard monster flick - but it offers a lot of new moments along the path.

Paranormal Activity
The genre took something of a breather for a few years, but a great awakening with this 2007 title. The movie nails precisely what works - focusing on sounds more than visuals, keeping a tight lens on the two leads while document the strain on their relationship the spookhouse moments have on them night after night. I wasn't sure what would hold up during a late night rewatch, but really the only diminished effect is that lack of theater speakers to really catch the mostly invisible action during the film.

The Fourth Kind
A victim of overselling the premise by repeatedly trying explain why Milla Jovovich is on the screen, The Fourth Kind moves the concept over to alien abductions while also trying to provide a backdrop for better produced "re-enactments" than the normal handycam directing provides. There's some very good bits in the midst of it all, though the sum doesn't quite live up to the parts.

Paranormal Entity
A pretty hideous copycat of Paranormal Activity, courtesy of mockbuster producers The Asylum - Entity plays out like a poor student that couldn't pay attention during class. Lacking nearly all of the elements that made Activity work, Entity manages a couple of shock moments but in the long run will mostly scare you for the fact that you bothered to watched the thing in the first place.

Paranormal Activity 2
Have not seen it, but the reviews have been good and fully plan to either by or shortly after Halloween.


Paranormal Entity

For Sunday: Monsters Trailer

This looks pretty awesome.

For Sunday: Paranormal Activity 2 Trailer

Movie Watch: Avatar

I wasn't going to do an actual normal review of Avatar since I had assumed most people had already watched it, there are reviews a plenty, and it isn't really the kind of movie you watch because of reviews but because everyone else is watching it and you know it has some killer graphics.

So here's the review - it is Dances With Wolves mashed with Ferngully, minus Robin Williams but with some of the best digital graphics ever produced. I mean we're talking Weta Digital, Industrial Light & Magic, and really hot ten foot tall cat people.

So you know the movie is a visual treat and honestly, it is quite a lot of fun. Is it a good movie? Uh, well, it also features a mineral called Unobtanium (I would have preferred MacGuffinite myself), has a plot so transparent and full of leaps that - oh look, it's a three legged panther!

It's pretty standard action fare, all in all. The uninterested bits (i.e., it takes a white man to save a native tribe) are surrounded around by some rather curious elements of transhumanism in general. The most obvious, of course, being the namesake device that allows paraplegic Sully to become an ten foot tall jungle predator. In reality, though, this mostly just serves as an excuse to divide the movie more readily in between scenes requiring no human body shots and those with body shots. Don't expect any deep discourse on the nature of man (or the disabled) - it's more akin to TRON than anything else.

No, the fascinating bit is how the concept that your body is not the limit of your presence pervades across so many parts of the movie. From the avatars, to the Na'Vi's sync cable with animals and trees, to plant based neural clusters, to even motion-based mecha suits. The message is repeated over and over again - the body just isn't all that.

Anyway, it's a decent film with some truly amazing graphics. Watch in 3D, because as beachheads into the new 3D revolutions go - this is a pretty potent one. I don't know if it has convinced me that 3D is the way of the future, but it was still worth watching in 3D.

Movie Watch: Battlestar Galactica, The Plan

Battlestar isn't necessarily a show which is it a love it or leave it kind of affair - there's plenty of elements to go around, though they might not always create the grand cohesive goodness Battlestar fans had found.

One element was the relatively mysterious backstory. You have a race of robots evolved well past their original specs, seemingly hell-bent on the destruction of humankind, but with a lot of religious overtones and several (including the opening scene) references to "a plan."

You can imagine the desire fans might have to see an entire movie devoted to said plan. Sadly, the movie serves more of side story, weaving various points of the previous plot (in particular the first couple of seasons) with added, more Cylon heavily, perspectives. It serves as one part swan song, another part prologue, to an already decent story.

The problem is that if you aren't a Battlestar fan, there is nothing here for you. You'll be lost as there is a lot of assumed knowledge about the show, you're missing many, many salient points and quite honestly, the production is at its highest when it reuses previously shot material.

If you are a fan, you'll probably find a good deal of entertainment, even if it is short in actual information. The backstories on the Cylons makes for good fodder, especially the machinations of Cavil. It's kind of like one good drive around the block before leaving the house for good.

Very, very slight spoilers ahead.

My only real complaint, as one who watched the whole series, is that "the plan" is really just "genocide" which doesn't do anything to explain the particulars of the Cylons, their relationship with God(s), their true history, or any higher motives to sending many, many, many nuclear warheads humanity's way.

So kinda recommended, but mostly just for fans.

Bad Movie Showdown - Transformers 2 Vs. GI Joe

As stated elsewhere, when I travel I often dig up movies which I know The Girl won't object to me watching without her. This often requires lowering the quality bar to nearly subterranean heights. This last week saw Transformers 2 pitted against GI Joe.

Both flicks are derived from Hasbro toy lines, both were once long running cartoons which resulted in movie length features. They have established plots, backstories, and characters - all, of course, being pretty hokey and shallow ... but naturally the whole thing could use a touch up for modern audiences.

And to be fair, one of these is a sequel.

GI Joe
I had a huge Joe collection as a kid. It was about the only thing that rivaled Star Wars in terms of pure action figure goodness. These were toys with serious backstories, an arsenal of weapons - and thumbs that mysteriously broke off quite a bit.

The movie can be somewhat excused for tossing out the majority of the ensemble, I suppose - especially if you take the stance that people might not have a voluminous set of toys to instantly know the characters. Even the characters that are spotlighted, though, undergo rather drastic changes to serve the plot. It's nothing earth shattering considering we're talking source material based on a toy line, not Tolkien - but still somewhat sad that even basic outlines can't be followed.

Then there are the toys. Somehow the movie takes a franchise which already had some pretty hokey concepts and just makes them big screen hokey - the well noted "accelerator suits" (AKA - CGI Battle Warriors) as a perfect example.

And poor Dennis Quaid -I don't think he's been this out of place since Dragonheart. He seems to have problems with characters who are supposed to have growly accents.

So it's bad - not over the top bad (usually) - but pretty bad. It has some fun moments, the plot isn't so absurd that you'll hate all of it - and mostly is criminal for butchering an otherwise simple concept. It's bad, and there is better movies to watch well before getting to this one.

But it's just not nearly as bad as...

Transformers 2
Wow. Just wow.

I had no idea how bad this movie was going to be. It's not like the first one was fine cinema, but kinda like Joe it was at least somewhat fun while slashing apart the original material. There is nothing redeeming about this movie. Every scene that is supposed to be funny - isn't. Much of the human interaction in the movie comes off like bad improv.

Even the big bang special effects somewhat fizzle. For one thing, every Decepticon manages to look like nearly every other Decepticon - except for the extreme cases and Soundwave ... who is now a satellite.

Yeah. A satellite. Capable apparently of shooting plot holes to earth with alarming frequency. Trying not to spoil too much here - but a quick list ... a Decepticon Pretender shows up, though unless you are wildly familiar with the comic line ... this feels like just a bizarre violation of the "big transforming robot" concept in general, humans get swallowed whole and then transported safely half way across the world (apparently that Decepticon also transforms into a motel of sorts) and the main villain spends so much time off screen doing nothing relatively nothing except confusing you if you should be paying attention to Megatron or him ... you'll wonder why the whole thing wasn't called "Transformers 2: Revenge of the WTF were we thinking".

It's just a mess, and honestly big screen special effects aren't that hard to find these days. Sadly this movie made a ton of money, so we're likely to be burdened with "Transformers 3: Rise Of Our Massive Lack Of Editing Ability" in the near future.

Fun Fact: The Baroness was voiced by Stargate alum Teryl Rothery for a while. Also, Duke's death in the animated GI Joe movie was averted because of public outcry to Optimus dying in the animated The Transformers film, produced at the same time. Oddly, Wheeljack's death had no such impact.

Movie Watch: The Wrestler

Honestly, about the only nice thing I can say about this movie is that Marisa Tomei is a very attractive fortysomething.

This is now the second Aronofsky film I didn't finish. First was Requiem For A Dream which I found so profoundly depressing that I could feel enjoyment sucked out of the room. Jennifer Connelly became wildly unattractive to me during the movie - a clear crime against nature. While The Wrestler doesn't share quite the same level of surrealistic masochism as Requiem, there's certainly enough pain and loathing to go around.

I can't find anything particularly interesting about the singular focus on a man's tragedy which is just so droning and unrelenting. Rourke does an amazing job (hey, two nice things), for sure, but there isn't a scene with any respite for the character. Even when he plays Nintendo with a fellow trailer park kid - the kid has to rub it into his face that Call of Duty 4 is out and he's stuck with an NES.

In summary: His day job sucks, his night job is killing him, the closest thing he has to a girlfriend is a stripper, his daughter hates him for being a dick, he abuses drugs, and the people who adore him either want to staple gun his face for amusement or have no idea who he really is as a person.

What's awful about The Wrestler is that it isn't even terribly unique. We've seen this kind of character before - but without the snuff film edge to it.

Obviously not recommended.

America, Apocalypse and Anime

There are some spoilers here pertaining to the movies Cloverfield, Watchmen and Knowing, so if you haven't seen them be warned.

When 9/11 hit, certain taboos became self-evident in the media. Sensitive of the national tragedy, any imagery involving the World Trade Center, attacks on major cities - and especially New York, and terrorism in general became hot topics. No longer could terrorism be a blanket kind of bad guy, a default motive for any villain in an action movie - now it was all extremely real to American culture. An interesting example is Man On Wire, which is particularly more potent because of the focus of the two towers, even from a relatively serene, stoic, pre-9/11, stance.

Cloverfield probably most famously crossed over this line, rampaging and destroying Manhattan in full monster movie trappings. New Yorker friends of ours still haven't seen the movie for exactly the fact that destroying the island doesn't hold much entertainment value for them.

Yet in one weekend, we saw Watchmen and Knowing to see the theme re-addressed all over again. Watchmen underwent a specific change to the ending from the graphic novel, removing a lot of graphic carnage from a giant squid for a massive blast instead. Recall that the script was being done when 9/11 was still new, and yet it is interesting that the World Trade Center is prominently displayed in one scene. Knowing seems to direct the action to Manhattan specifically for some apocalyptic scenery.

What I'm wondering is if we won't see more and more of this line being crossed. The analogy here is in anime, where the dropping of the atomic bombs set a tone for the genre which still persists today (not to mention, to be a little circular, monster movies in general where radiated creatures lay waste to urban landscapes). Whether revisting the carnage is cathartic or exploitative is probably a topic for a whole other post, I don't see much reason why American media would diverge from the Japanese direction, and it seems to be following suit. And we've seen this before - science fiction owes much to the Cold War, not only in general themes but having some ancestry in the way aliens and robots are portrayed as well.

I would also expect, especially given the growing similarities between large scale game development and movie production, that games will pick up this trend as well. inFamous comes to mind, for sure.

Movie Watch: Watchmen

Alan Moore is a guy who has had a pretty rough road with movie adaptations, quite probably culminating in the completely dreadful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but the basic trend of Hollywood running slipshod over his material.

So it is a bit of a shame, I think, that he decided in the end to "spit venom", as I believe he put it, on Zack Snyder's adaptation of the much revered graphic novel Watchmen which has, if anything, been critiqued for being too loyal to the source material.

The end result is anything but a standard comic book movie, but that's precisely what fans of Moore and Gibbon's work would have wanted. The story is a subversive and not exactly slightly deconstructive look on the genre in general, a story of "masks" running headlong into culture and history and the gritty outcome of the conflict for the characters and the world in general.

Snyder has put the somewhat sprawling novel onto the screen with a high attention to detail. The decision to avoid big name actors works extremely well and every performance in the movie is top notch, with Rorschach being particularly outstanding. The plot survives fairly intact, the major points remaining the same and no embarrassing changes to the ending or softening of some of the more controversial portions of the subplots. Moviegoers are seeing the novel here, there's little doubt of that.

So I find myself having trouble saying anything bad about the film. It's a beautiful adaptation of a great work in comics, highly recommended.

Even if you're Alan Moore.

Burton's Alice Looking Amazing

Wired has a great preview of Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland adaptation:

Potential Buffy Film ... Sans Whedon

What with vampires and franchise relaunches suddenly all the rage, plans for a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie have inevitably come to pass, with the rights holders of the franchise announcing plans for a new Sunnydale-set film.

But there is a catch.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film, which will neither be a sequel nor prequel but a relaunch, is moving ahead with absolutely no involvement from film and series mastermind Joss Whedon. It will also fail to feature TV's Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and will in fact have no connection to the long-running series—meaning Angel, Willow, Xander and Spike will also be MIA.

-- Buffy Relaunching Without Whedon, Gellar...Regard for Fans?

Trying to think of a better recipe for disaster, but oddly none comes to mind.

Movie Watch: Revolver

You might think that with Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie driving the movie, you'd know where all the corners would be ... but Revolver is Ritchie's attempt at a Lynchian style film, even if it is still a gangster film at heart. That's not to say that it's bad, it is actually very entertaining for much of the film and the odd surrealism gives it a boost in places your normal flick wouldn't get any, but just don't expect much to make sense in the end, even when they start rolling quotes from eggheads during the credits.

Somewhat recommended, but best to know what you're getting into.

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

First heard of this on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me during the "Stump the Listener" portion:

Few challenges, however, are as unusual as the latest foe facing Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice – a plague of the undead sent to reduce the picturesque villages of Longbourn and Meryton to smouldering ruins.

Hollywood studios are bidding to turn a radical reworking of Austen’s most popular book, now called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a parody to be published in April, into a blockbuster movie.

Desperate for new ideas, studio chiefs hope “P&P&Z” will mark the bloody birth of a feral offspring of classic British literature: “monster-lit”.

-- Jane Austen's Bennet girls go zombie slaying

That it may be made into a movie, however, is new to me. Oh Darcy, I may have just swooned.

Movie Watch: The Dark Knight

I'm not sure how much there is to say about a movie with as much buzz as The Dark Knight. It's every bit as good as you've probably already heard, it does feel a little long but not uncomfortably so and Ledger is so dead on brilliant in his role that the whole situation surrounding his death is probably even more tragic it might seem.

There's a few slips of editing from here and there where you might wonder just how scenes fit together, but in general the movie feels epic in nature for a comic film. The story blends key elements of the Batman mythos in general - the Caped Crusader's relationship with The Joker, with the law, with chaos itself - and handles it smoothly. If anything the movie is an affirmation that the superhero genre can evolve and mature with style and grace.

Gone are the overly digitized backdrops and it was something to see Chicago look like Chicago. We didn't outright the scenes in our hood that they shot so they were either cut or they may have been some of interior scenes (my suspicion is that it might have the Gordon residence).

Also, The Watchmen had a trailer prior to the show and it looks completely smashing.

DVD Watch: Idiocracy

Idiocracy is one of those sleeper hits which has found a nice niche as a cult favorite. From Mike Judge (Beavis And Butthead, Office Space), the movie details what happens when smart people decline to have kids and morons have ten ... 500 years into the future.

The result is pretty funny and while the movie suffers a little bit from being a one joke note - it manages to try and refresh the joke enough times to make it work. Throw in some cameos (including Judge alum Stephen Root), enough crude humor to fill a Brawndo barrel and you have a pretty winning formula.

Apparently Fox wasn't so amused. As the film's distributor, they provided no real advertising and didn't screen for critics. This is often attributed to the anti-corporate message and Rudolph Murdoch's failed sense of humor. Or as The Girl pointed out, in light of Fox's handling of Family Guy, Futurama and even Firefly ... "they like to kill the fun".

Definitely recommended.

DVD Watch: No Country For Old Men

Another thing about having a fever for a few days - it makes one want to just sit back and watch movies. So I've got like a few of these to catch up on.

No Country For Old Men is a Coen Brothers movie which is Swedish for "I was going to see it sooner or later". Country is an excellent outing for them and a pretty fresh one as well. It doesn't have the odd sense of humor or the usual cast of characters ... no this is a slow and thoughtful movie adapted from a Cormac McCarthy (The Road) novel.

The plot and cadence are about as far from mainstream as you can get. When you think you have your bearings on where the film is going, it likes to duck and dive in another direction. These aren't twists, per se, they aren't setups which are later revealed to be tricks or anything - it's just that Country is set in a brutal fictional world where nearly any character could show up and find a way to kill another at some given point. Javier Bardem is simply chilling as the "psychopath with his own code" and the Brothers milk ever ounce of his creepiness through the movie.

The flipside, of course, is that Country doesn't have anything remotely resembling a Hollywood ending and if anyone was expecting a huge climatic flourish - well, feel forewarned. However, missing this film because there's no explosion to clear everything up in the end would simply be a crime against movies themselves.

Weinsteins Strike Back - The Fanboys Controversy Starts

Fanboys is a movie involving Star Wars and Kristen Bell. Generally speaking, I would need to know little more about it in order to go see it, but apparently Producers Weinstein have decided I wouldn't see it if it mentioned cancer.

Did I mention it has Kristen Bell?

Oh, and this is choice:

Steven Brill, director of Little Nicky and Drillbit Taylor was brought in to do several days of reshoots to erase any reference to terminal illness. The new scenes were shot during the writers' strike, and the dialog was mostly improvised. The original director, Kyle Newman, and screenwriter Cline were not involved in the reshoots or re-editing. "Have you seen the cancer version of this movie?" writes Brill in an email to an angry fan. "I have. It is unreleaseable. It would be irresponsible to release it."

Because people - if anyone ... anyone knows what is unreleasable and irresponsible ... that person would be the director of Little Nicky and Drillbit Taylor. Cancer? Knowing this guy had anything to do with it makes me less likely to see it. I would take cancer over a screening of Little Nicky any day.

Steve Carell Is Maxwell Smart

There's a new Get Smart movie in the works. Check it out. How am I just now finding out about this? Carell as Max, Anna Hathaway as 99 and Arkin as The Chief. OK, sure, one of these days Hollywood will run out of TV fodder - but I'm actually glad for a change it isn't today.

Movie Watch: Juno

As movies go, Juno is pretty much the bomb.

Seriously - do you need another paragraph on how good this movie is? The only reason why you wouldn't see it is because a teen comedy on pregnancy morally offends you - and there's nothing I'll say to change that.