Ten Statements About....SHARK NIGHT (2011)

What is up with your forehead, woman?  WHAT IS UP WITH
YOUR FOREHEAD?

"There's no such thing as sickness anymore. It's all moral relativism. Remember Faces of Death? Real killing on tape, banned in 40 countries? An eight year old can download it on the internet for free, man. Comon', it's beyond good and evil! Someone's gotta raise the bar."

1) I would gladly watch Katharine McPhee do her taxes in loose fitting sweats and fuzzy slippers. It's most likely one of the reasons why I watch the wretchedly stupid Smash, and the main reason I allowed Des Reddick to convince me to watch this film. And, judged solely on the amount of McPhee-ness, this film admittedly delivers, even if she is eaten by tiny little CGI 'cookie cutter' sharks at the one hour mark.

2) On the other side of the coin, Sara Paxton is one weird looking chick, even for a Final Girl. I'm not surprised to find that she's distantly related to Bill Paxton...but her strange, all-forehead face confused the Hell out of me. In fact, she has a strange in-bred air to her, so much so I was waiting for the moment when she turned to Dustin Milligan's Nick and reveal that she brought the group there intentionally because she was either in on the scheme or the ringleader.

"It's your fault I'm saddled with a phony-ass missing arm!  I
keel you!  I KEEEEEEL You!"

3) And speaking of that scheme....here's the fundamental problem with the film. The scheme is so bizarre and so wildly over the top (at no point does anyone address how these people actually got the finances to populate this lake so thoroughly) that the script by Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg needed to decide whether this was a put-on or not. And if they did intend it to be a put-on like Pirahna 3-D (an obvious influence), they needed to have the courage to blow up the tropes of the slasher genre and not try to do this half-and-half schtick they ended up doing.

4) ...and make no bones about it; this is another film like The Grey (which, unlike this one, does have a thought in its head) which is a slasher film. Only in the case of this movie, the killers utilize sharks--many with cameras attached to their hide--as their murder weapon.

5) This film came very, very close to losing me within the first twenty five minutes, as it features not one, not two--but four montages that are there primarily to sell the soundtrack. Hell, until a shark takes a bite out of Sinqua Walls' Malik, I was convinced this was a soundtrack that just happened to have a movie attached to it.

6) Another major flaw of the film--it never bothers to establish our Designated Shark Chum as actual characters. Oh, there are attempts to give them characters, but they're firmly in the 'Hey, you're going to be a first round pick in this year's NFL Draft,' 'Oh yeah, well I'm going to get you laid before you become immersed in pre-med preparations' mode of dialogue. Similarly, there's no attempt to conceal, even in the slightest, the nefariousness of our three villians (yep, even the one we're supposed to be shocked to learn is in cahoots with the other two...). That being said...

Dear movie...please don't throw the genuine hot
chick to the tiny sharks and let Forehead Girl live.
Love, Tom....

7) I have to admit that Donal Logue, a much better actor than his cv indicates, manages to almost sell the scheme these three numbnuts come up with to get rich through shark snuff porn. Wisely, the script entrusts Logue's Sheriff Greg with the explanation of what's going on, and he gives the concept that, ummmm, society is to blame a little gravitas.

8) I admit, I was a little put off by the PG-13-ness of the whole film. Given that it's sold entirely on the idea that we're going to see people get et by sharks, the carnage is relatively bloodless. Hell, most of it is conveyed by red-tinted water, with one really phony looking missing arm and a CGI burst shark head being the exception to rule. Even the Katharine-McPhee-getting-cookie-cuttered-to-death scene, which is obviously meant to be the film's 'wow' death, is handled so daintily. It needed to have the same gross factor as Pirahna 3-D for it to really work.

9) You know what I really wanted to know? Why Joshua Leonard's Red had his teeth filed. I assume it's because he wanted to emulate the sharks he liked so much, but the film could have benefited a lot from a little explanation....because without any reasoning, there's just a cardboard trio menacing a cardboard group of kids.

10) Ummmm....what the FUCK was the whole deal with that awful rap song the cast put together that serves as the post-credit easter egg?  Look, I understand that post-credit thingies are a way to keep the audience in their seats during the final role, but that thing is so brutal I almost wanted to break the DVD to make sure it never gets played again.

Okay, it does give Sinqua Walls a moment where he is genuinely funny, doing a kinda, sorta R. Kelly-esque ode to the Hammerhead shark he kills in the film. But it's. Just. Not. WORTH IT.

Overall...not a terrible film, but not a good one, this needed to make a decision on where it wanted to stand and stick to it. Still, I don't know if I can recommend it...unless you want to see Katharine McPhee in her underwear. In that case, well, win.

Ten Statements About....THE GREY (2012)

"I got your picture/I got your picture/I'd like a million of
you all by myselllllf...."

"Once more into the fray

Into the last good fight I'll ever know.

Live and die this day.

Live and die this day."

1) I should get this out of the way--I can maybe understand why Liam Neeson took this role, but the subplot involving his wife and why he's where he is at the start of the film left a bad taste in my mouth given Neeson's personal history in the last few years.

(Of course, Neeson was apparently a last minute replacement for Bradley Cooper, so maybe he did this as a favor for director Joe Carnahan regardless of how he felt about that portion of the script.)

2) I do like the fact that Carnahan lets the audience in on a little piece of information that only we (and Dallas Roberts' Hendricks) know that makes it clear that he is the absolute last person we want to lead us out of a disaster.

"We're going to walk south, we're going to find civilization...
and you, Mulroney, are going back to that hospital and
feign some interest in Ellen Pompeo!"

3) At its absolute core, this is a classic George Romero 'The Human Fuck It Up For Themselves' film--and if we didn't get it from the way Carnahan shoots many of the wolf attacks, it's driven home by that final scene, where Neeson's Ottway reaches the end of his road.

4) I have to wonder if Carnahan shot portions of this film on film stock. Especially in the first act and portions of the second, there's a graininess that gives the film a weird cinema verite feel, as if this is some sort of documentary. And to be fair, some of the close-ups, with the grain seeming to crawl over the actors' faces like insects, gives us a general sense of unease.

5) There is some heavy CGI work, but here's why it didn't bother me--the CGI animals are obscured by snow, which prevents us from getting a good look at them, and furthermore gives them a strange, ghostly appearance as they apparently materializes out of the malestrom.

6) While I appreciate that Carnahan always plays fair and foreshadows each man's fate (we see Nonso Anozie's Burke wheezing and slowing down throughout the film before he succumbs from hypoxia; Frank Grillo's Diaz never mentions any family which leads to his decision to sacrifice himself, etc.), that foreshadowing gives the film a slightly mechanical feel to it, as if the script is playing things by rote. But then....

7) This film, for most of its running time, is structured like a classic Slasher movie with wolves in the place of Freddie or Jason, and the middle of nowhere in the place of Small Town USA. And it fits rather well....

"And if you don't name your poison/I'll have to call the bo--
no wait, I'll just punch you in the face."

8) Dermot Mulroney's Talget is the one character that seems out of place here. Carnahan's script makes it clear that this oil drilling site is home to a bunch of nothing but Pur-Dee Mean Desperate Men (the words 'ex-cons' and 'assholes' is bandied about at the top of the film)...and yet, save for a reference to his ex-wife, Talget is portrayed as anything but Pur-Dee Mean. And given how his flaw (he's afraid of heights, and he has to climb along a rope high up in the sky! Scary!) is foreshadowed so shortly before his death (he falls!), everything about him rings false in this otherwise well-structured film.

9) On the other hand, Robert's Hendricks manages to walk the fine line between being a Desperate Man and A Sympathetic Guy....and Carnahan's reveal about what Hendricks knows about Ottway throws his behavior in a new light--juuuuust before his fate (arguably the most shocking of the bunch) is triggered.

10) It should be pointed out that the moment we're all waiting for--i.e. Neeson punching wolves in the face--never really happens. The lead up does happen, and Carnahan leaves it up to us to decide the outcome. However, there's a post-credits shot that I am positive was added after the fact as a sop to people who were going to complain they didn't get what the trailers promised them they'd get.

Overall...a much different experience than the trailer promises, this is a bleak and sometimes depressing little number that comes off sometimes as horror movie, sometimes as art movie and can be seen to work as both. It might not be to everybody's taste...

Back to the Atlas for this one, which featured some really peculiar trailers, including Silent House (since found footage is loosing its glamour, it's time to trot out real-time films and one take films, and mash 'em into one!), Jeff Who Lives At Home (an arthouse comedy trailer--down to the use of Arcade Fire songs as background music!--that I might be interested solely for the presence of Jason Segal and Susan Sarandon), Lockdown (which must have been cobbled together from the script fragments of John Carpenter's Escape From Earth, down to when I saw the point when one of the actors claims there's only one person who can get the President's daughter out of the prison in space, I expected him to finish with 'Snake' and not 'Snow.') and Cabin In The Woods (which looks like stock slasher movie stink...until a bird flies into as force field and actually convinces me this might be more than Joss Whedon Pop Culture Wanking).

Ten Statements About....PIRAHNA 3-D (2010)

They're coming to et you...

1) You have to give Alexandre Aja credit for thoroughly and completely understanding the Hitchcock rule about following through on expectations....so when there's some attention drawn to Riley Steele's Crystal's fake boob job, you know you'll be seeing those popped saline bags floating in a mess of bloody water. And when Jerry O'Connell's Derrick complains that the pirahnas ate his penis, well....

2) Aja also studied the rules of early 70's nature gone amok pictures, as so much of this film--from the plain yellow arial type that make up the earliest titles to the way the cameos echo back to previous roles the cameo-ing actors had to the formula where asshole get punished for their assholery and the non-asshole victims die acting heroically--speaks of a respect for the genre and the original film.

3) And to make things even more satisfying--Aja knows that this is a 3-D picture and revels in the carnival sideshow-ishness of it all. There are loads of 'coming at ya!' moments and deep focus shots, although I could have done without the direct-to-the-camera shot of Jessica Szohr's Kelly puking....

4) Look up Milf in my personal dictionary and there you'll find a picture of Elizabeth Shue...

5) You know....even though this is obviously a movie aimed at the younger crowd, it's refreshing to see that the heroes are mainly middle-aged.

Laugh while you can, Jerry O'Connell...something dear to you
is about to get et....

6) And similarly--by introducing the 'Girls Gone Wild' manque of O'Donnell and his pair of nymphs into the mix, it allows him to focus on the very realistically cute-without-being-Caucasin-Wankery-Network-sexy Szohr as the female lead

7) Eli Roth utilizing a garden hose as if it is his spurting cock and talking about wet t-shirts and breasts....some things can not be unseen....sigh

8) If there is any doubt about how lowbrow this film's intentions are, the seemingly endless 3-D sequence of Steele and Kelly Brook's Dani playing nude Esther Williams before they get chopped into little pirahna-shaped pieces puts it clearly on the metaphorical glass...

9) Pretty much the bulk of the carnage comes at the beginning of the third act, when the monster pirahnas come a'snacking on all the dumb teenagers. it's maybe a ten minute or so sequence...but damn if Greg Nicotero and company make the most of their time to shine....

You may have been a shark hunter, pal...but you're gon' get et...

10) A lot has been made about Richard Dreyfuss' cameo....but it pales in comparison to Christopher Lloyd and Dina Meyer as a couple of wackdoole fish store owners/scientists Mr. and Mrs. Goodman. When he pronounced these things as prehistoric pirahnas, a wave of knowing laughter rippled through the theater...

In short. Aja knows exactly what he needs to do to entertain us, and acquits himself admirably. It prolly will be forgotten the moment you leave the theater, but while you're there it'll just make you laugh and cringe at turns.

This was my first time at the Loews Kip's Bay in Manhattan since my college days; it seems that the $6-before-noon policy is good all over the city for AMC/Loews' theaters (It's the only way I'll see a 3D film, as the policy makes them the same price as a regular matiness elsewhere). It's got one of the friendliest staffs I've experienced in a while...but the prices for concessions--even the vending machines--are insane.

The trailers contained the usual one of Machete that never gets old, a pretty decent one for Faster that gives me hope that Dwayne Johnson got all that family crap out of his system, the guardedly promising Tron Legacy, two airings of Resident Evil: Aftermath 3-D in both flatscreen and 3-D, and the nightmare-inducing-for-all-the-wrong-reasons collaboration between M. Night Shamalyn and Jim Dowdel, Devil. Of course, the biggest nightmare came from watching the puff piece for You Again?, in which Kristen Bell's tormentor from high school is marrying her brother (and what's more, her mom's tormentor is her tormentor's aunt, and they only discovered this juuuuuust now...it's as if Bell has decided she never wants to make another film that won't make me throw up again...