Blog: Brian

With the release of Saw VI up-and-coming, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about this quaint little series and its nauseating sequels. On the one hand, Saw is often compared to better movies such as Seven with it's terrifying philosophy of almost universal guilt. It's particularly unsettling to live in a perfectly civilized society where it still seems like everyone is deserving of punishment. It's an indictment of not only our own personal flaws, but the corrupt society that we--like a malignant tumor on a throbbing mass of cancer--are part and parcel of.

On the other hand, Saw is justly derided as "Torture-Porn", a simplistic gore fest that satisfies our natural bloodlust in the most macabre fashion and whose only redeeming quality is that it's not actually happening. I find the truth lies somewhere in between, and the best way to demonstrate this is to watch the movies individually, recording my thoughts in the most topical fashion I can manage, ensuring the shallowest analysis possible.

Saw

So the doctor is here because he's cold and doesn't respond to his patients. I get that. The reporter is here because....uhm...his voyeurism prohibits him from living his own life? No that's giving this movie way too much credit, but I can't think up another reason. Danny Glover can't seem to let things be, that Asian guy from Lost is here anWHOA WHOA WHOA did he seriously just get his head blown off by like 4 shotguns at once?!? That's totally boss.

Legit Movie (out of 5): 3.5. The concept is original, the cast is solid, and the movie seems earnest about it's concept.
Torture Porn (out of 5): 2. There's not a whole lot of torture, mostly just characters choosing to mutilate themselves for the sake of survival, and even when this does happen, it doesn't seem arbitrary or gratuitous, simply an unfortunate plot point

Saw II

Ok this one is easy, they're all horrible people, they all deserve to be punished, I can roll with this. Donnie Wahlberg is apparently the Danny Glover of the sequel. Bad people getting punished, Jigsaw's former victim Amanda has apparently relapsed and is being punished again. As a side thought, if this is supposed to be some sort of terrible game of reckoning that Jigsaw constantly touts as "fair", why put some homicidal, insanely muscled maniac in with a bunch of people who obviously can't defend themselves against him?

Ok so apparently Amanda was working for Jigsaw the whole time and Donnie Wahlberg was being indirectly punished for not letting things go. Wait, I'm confused, in the first one the characters were being punished for not caring enough about their lives, and in this one people are being punished for caring too much? What is Jigsaw, some sort of sick Buddhist enforcer?

Legit Movie (out of 5): 1. The concept of Jigsaw being able to strike even when in Police custody would be cool in a better movie, but here it just comes off as contrived and unbelievable. Serious, this shit sucks.
Torture Porn (out of 5): 2.5 This is mostly run-of-the-mill violence. There's not a lot of torture, just people being homicidal dicks to one another. It scores a half-tick higher than its older brother simply because the violence seems like it's there just to up some sort of arbitrary body count instead of being integral to the movie.

Check back later this week when I cover the rest of the Saw movies and come to a completely made up summary judgment

In my yet-to-be-uploaded review of Paranormal Activity I tried to make the argument that hiding behind a scary-as-balls movie were the characters from just about any other low-end horror and a plot that reeks of film school and lack of effort. I wanted to say a few more words on the subject:

Paranormal Activities is Really Friggin Scary

This movie will easily slide into my top 10 scariest movies, and will probably hover around the top 5 until I stop sleeping with the lights on. It is the rare, masterfully done horror that fools you into a sense of normality, that doesn't start out the movie by screaming "Hey look at this unstoppable killing machine; we're going to use a tired sharp violin noise to scare you for the next 90 minutes."

The movie sticks unerringly to the tried and true code of good horror, namely don't show much and build it slow. It is a perfect case study in our imaginations being scarier than anything a director could imagine. After all, our brains are hard-wired with millions of years of defenses that are there to constantly remind us to be prepared for threats, and it doesn't care if that's a lion, an incorporeal demon or the terrible pun at the top of this post.

Being Scary is Not Enough

This may seem like nit-picking, but good criticism isn't about asking, "Is this good on the whole?" It should be about asking, "How could this have been better?" Paranormal Activity is like the crazy-smart nerd in the class who can recite pi to several thousand digits but will be a virgin well into his 20s. It's really good at causing me to vacate my bowels in terror, but in the almost week since I've seen it, I haven't once felt a twinge of emotion when thinking about the characters. And that's saying something because I felt a little bad when Jazz died in Transformers (though that may have been white guilt that the only Transformer who died was the walking black stereotype).

In the first half of this piece I talked about two video game movies you might want to check out because they’re actually kind of not totally unwatchable. In this part I’d like to talk about those that are so bad they tore a hole in the fabric of space-time and somehow sucked in some funny.

3. Doom

The Doom video games would be fun blank slates on which to graft a plot and characters. You have a pre-made epic battle between a lone, grizzled marine and the entirety of the legions of hell. Cast Bruce Willis, hire a writer for some snappy lines, throw in a half-baked love interest and laugh all the way to the bank as your fans don’t totally hate you for not ruining the treasured memory of a game they remembered from their elementary school days.

Or you could make a completely baffling, nonsensical story starring some no name reprising his role from Chronicles of Riddick and only feature one monster out of the gory plethora of the Doom games. I really can’t emphasize enough that this movie makes no. goddamn. sense. There’s some nonsense about good and evil and hilarious pseudoscience where more chromosomes means super powers instead of…you know Down’s Syndrome. Even the Rock seems to realize this movie is one shithouse spectacle when he’s dragged into the darkness by monsters and, with a confused look on his face, says “but…I’m not supposed to die?”

4. Wing Commander

Wing Commander makes it on this list because I have never seen a movie that is more conducive to MST3K-like banter. It’s like the director kept telling everyone to “just be more dramatic” to the point where everyone became this melodramatic caricature of the character they were supposed to be playing (except for David Warner, who is always this way). This results in long, dramatic pauses, faux-vaguely-foreign-maybe-British accents, and more avenue for ridicule than Batman and Robin.

5. Alone in the Dark & Bloodrayne

I know I promised not to bash Uwe Boll, and I won’t. These movies have enough bad on their own to fill Mount Everest, with enough left over to power a flight to Saturn. Again, I’m trying not to go for the easy target so I’m not going to say anything about Tara Reid. No I have a bone to pick with Christian “My Hair Was Stuck Like This From Birth” Slater. First, let’s try an exercise. I’ll give you 10 seconds to think of anything Christian Slater has ever been in that has been good. Go ahead I’ll wait.

If you’re a sane human being you should now be scratching your head and wondering in what sort of just world is Christian “My Hair’s Been Like This Since The 80s” Slater a millionaire. He has simply never made anything worthwhile, Alone in the Dark being one of those reviling things. He simply makes bullshit, goes on the talk shows, and everyone pays attention because they think Leno said “Christian Bale”.

On Bloodrayne: Ben Kingsley better have hired a new agent a long time ago. That’s about all I have to say. Oh and also the fact that the last 5 minutes are a quick recap of the last 10 minutes. Have fun with that and Kristanna Loken’s tits.

It's no secret that movies based on video games tend to be the laziest, most unimaginative swill ever to be projected on a silver screen. Certainly Uwe Boll is partially to blame for this, but the trend began long before him, so despite the much-deserved criticism directed his way, blaming him for this trend is like blaming Abaddon for the Apocalypse (however apt a comparison between Boll and the lord of the locusts may be).

As easy as it would be to populate this list with Boll's movie, saying that would be like shooting fish in a barrel isn't quite accurate. It would be more like shooting a Sea Bass in a sippy-cup. So I'm going to start out this list with two video game movies that are actually kind of watchable.

1. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children:

Let's start out by pretending that a well-intentioned but spectacularly terrible movie of a similar name never existed. Final Fantasy, from one to twelve were all ridiculous hyper-Japanese stories that existed only to further a fun and intense gaming experience. Advent Children seems to have a certain awareness that (fanboy bullshit aside) the plot to Final Fantasy VII was a little silly and the characters were a little unoriginal, and simply rolled with that fact to create a fun, action-packed, straightforward little number.

In this, it's demonstrated that it has something so many video game movies lack: self-awareness. Whether it's turning Alone in the Dark into some bizarre creature horror or Mario Brothers into...whatever the hell that movie was about, so many video games fail to realize what they really are: stupid one-off marketing devices for fans. So in the special-ed class that is the genre, Advent Children gets a gold star for at least realizing it's "special". Consequently, if you've never played the game you're going to be left scratching your head, but if you haven't played the game you're obviously dating some incurable nerd who forced you to watch it in which case your problems are much larger than simple mild confusion.

2. Resident Evil

Again, let's start out by assuming that the sequels to this movie never existed. Resident Evil makes the list for being actually kind of an okay Zombie Movie. In the days of super-fast, insanely mutated creatures that could barely be classed as "zombies", Resident Evil was a--and I have to cough when I say this--a semi-bold return to the claustrophobic, scary zombie flick. Sure it turns on the tired old "Super Soldier" trope toward the end, but at least the only "Super Zombie" we see is the Licker. And even then it's not featured gratuitously. Most of the tension comes from the good old-fashioned zombies.

In a day and age where even the zombie comedies just have to feature fast zombies, I'd give Resident Evil a three-out-of-five sort of score for just simply not trying to do too much. The essence of horror is being afraid of the unknown, and when a small child with a baffling English accent says simply "You're all going to die", and then you hear an inexplicable metal-on-metal scraping and a loud shuffle, you're doing something right in the set up and pacing

I should emphasize once more that these are the best of the worst, and I by no means think they deserve to be anywhere but the bottom tier of movies. But if you're a rabid video game fan like myself, here are two faint, tarnished glimmers of hope that the Bioshock movie will be halfway decent.

Obviously, there's a reason I could only find two video game movies that I could recommend on merits alone. And while finding the best of the worst is a fun little exercise, lampooning the worst of the worst is just too much goddamn fun. So look here later this week for what I consider three of the worst video games ever made

With so many "family friendly" movies starring characters who can alternately be described as "delusional" and "obsessive", watching Observe and Report was a refreshingly realistic take on the caricatures I'm forced to deal with on weekly basis. Let me give you a brief rundown of how this usually takes place:

Brian: Goddamit Paul Bart is such a dumb movie
Someone (probably my sister): Oh but it's so cute and funny
Brian: Yes, it is cute. Cute in the same way that a small puppy is cute. Small puppies also piss all over the carpet and possess the cognitive capacity of a small handful of rocks
Someone (borderline in tears): Why do you have to be so mean
Brian: lol, wut?

You can like whatever stupid movies you want. Hell, I have a ginormous soft spot for Transformers. However, I recognize that Transformers is a silly, stupid action-fest designed to tickle and entertain. I have a healthy hatred of it, Michael Bay, and myself, because to do anything less would be to consign myself to having no critical framework, no idea what is actually "good" and "terrible" and sooner or later shiny objects and fingerpaintings would be fucking Picassos to me.

That aside, Observe and Report is wonderful because it is a perfect foil to one of the dumbest movies released in the past two years. I can simply say that if you like Paul Blart, just watch Observe and Report and you can see how an intelligent, honest take on a delusional mall security guard can be realistic and insightful instead of saccharine gumball bullshit.