Screenhead

Fox Searchlight sent me eight featurettes for the movie Mr. Fantastic Fox.  I found this one to be the most interesting of them all, so enjoy!

Then, I watched this one, below, and found it to be the most interesting one of all.  Which one do you like?

It’s extraordinarily difficult to write a review of a movie like The Fourth Kind because it’s not really a movie so much as it is an agenda.

Clearly, someone desperately wants us to believe that what we’re seeing is actually really really REALLY REAL, and won’t be satisfied until, my guess is, we start pestering our Congress critters for answers.  I’m not sure.  Because I’ve never left a movie so utterly confused, and I’ve seen David Croenenburg movies.

This one follows Dr. Abigail Emily Tyler, who is played by Milla Jovovich, who actually TELLS us that’s what she’ll be doing in the beginning of the movie.  And we’ll be following her around as she conducts a sleep disorder study on the people of Nome, Alaska.  Now, Nome is downright infamous for being hard to reach, but apparently it’s also got a serious missing persons problem, and it’s somehow become the FBI travel destination of choice, garnering over two thousand official visits when neighbor Anchorage, who has something like seventy times the population, rates only about three hundred visits in that same time frame.

Now, it’s hard to tell at first glance just how much of this is real and how much of it so utterly fake as to be a complete pantload, because the movie is trying so very desperately hard to convince us that EVERYTHING WE SEE IS HAPPENING FOR REALS, YO, by virtue of running split screen so often I thought I was watching 24.  They’ll do two splits and three splits and four splits and four splits with rotating frames.  It got to the point where I wondered, is this a movie or a Final Cut Pro demo?  And they’ll run, almost ad nauseum, “real footage” alongside footage of the actors, to try and cement that belief.

I’ll freely admit that this is some creepy stuff–when that guy started levitating I got a little freaked out, and Abigail Tyler “herself” under hypnosis was a cold chill up my spine but do I believe this actually went down?  No.

See, one great line from the movie that manages to describe the movie in its entirety is where one of the “patients” is muttering that he’s okay, and “Dr. Tyler” swings in with “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”  And that’s exactly what I thought of this movie.  Yes, okay, you’re going to RELENTLESSLY show me this “real footage” and insist, as loudly and vociferously as possible that it’s real, and frankly, I kind of doubt it.

Folks, this has allegedly been going on since the year 2000.  But somehow it took almost TEN YEARS for someone to exploit it?  Come ON.  We’re talking about a Hollywood scene so desperate that TWO GARFIELD MOVIES looked like a good idea but we’ve got allegedly actual footage of a woman shrieking that she’s god in SUMERIAN and NO ONE’S ran with that ball yet?

The Screenhead Ten Scale joins me in a dismissive back of hand “bah” to this creepy but horrendously disjointed fright fest and acknowledges that the idea is pretty scary but forces my suspension of disbelief engines to glow white hot and give off an ominous whining noise.  Thus, it hands this incredulous horror romp a five out of ten for being creepy yet not even vaguely credible.

Well…here we go.  Rumors about the next Transformers movie have emerged, and anything short of Michael Bay actually putting a proton cannon in his own mouth and tabbing the firing stud will be something of a disappointment.

But you’ve got to admit, the guy has made thinking big into an art form.  Long term Trans fans may not be wondering, but everyone else might wonder what’s next?  The answer may already have been given away via the Transformers 2 DVD, found on an Easter egg.

Here, let’s have some fun.  Guess the new secret huge feature for Transformers 3!

A. For some reason, QUINTESSONS! Finally!

B. Megatron will finally make the big move to Galvatron.

C. Out of nowhere, UNICRON!!

The answer, of course, is C.  Michael Bay must have some kind of mental disorder in which he must do everything bigger and louder than he did it before, and when he can no longer do bigger and louder, he must move on to something else.

Although I did enjoy Unicron, I’d still personally love to see those fabulously schizophrenic Quintessons get a piece of the action somewhere.  Why, I might even look forward to a Michael Bay movie if that were so!

Today I want to personally thank the Miller-McCune Group for blowing a whole lot of time and personnel dollars to engage in some serious spreadsheet fun, all meant to reveal one of the greatest truths of the media universe–not all critics are created equal, and some of them just love or hate things unaccountably.

As a token of my appreciation, the Miller-McCune Group will be receiving a large novelty pre-voided check for one hojillion dollars.

Anyway, they’ve built a whole lot of interesting graphs here revolving around a smattering of data from Metacritic, the critic amalgamation site that gives you a general idea of what a whole bunch of critics said.  On a side note, as though anyone would want that–I mean, come on…half the point of reading film criticism is to enjoy the wordplay and the clever comparisons and whatnot.  If you wanted raw numbers you’d play with a calculator.  You want the advance word from a person you can trust.

Some other interesting points include that Michael Wilmington might want to sleep with one eye open lest he be branded a quote whore sometime in the future (most of his work seems to be positive, and interestingly, so does Roger Ebert’s!  Ebert a quote whore?  Say it ain’t so!), Marc Savlov is a tough act to please, and Rene Rodriguez and Mick LaSalle seem to have the best balance of positive and negative work.

Look, I’ve said it before–the best thing you can do is find a critic you can trust.  And the only way you can do that is not with charts and graphs, but rather with a long term commitment and regular readings.  Find the one you know you can trust, and stick with them.  It doesn’t matter if it’s here at Screenhead or somewhere else (though we’d prefer it if it were here at Screenhead), just as long as you can trust it.

You’ll never guess who, of all people in the UNIVERSE, wants to star in a romantic comedy!  Let’s just say it’s probably the most unlikely person you can imagine–let’s have a little fun and see if you can guess who!

A. Artie Lange

B. 50 Cent

C. Bruce Campbell

The answer?  Shockingly, it’s B!  FITTY CEN!  Can you believe this?  After the sheer number of craptacular games and albums he’s put out, he actually wants to star in a romantic comedy. I mean, come on now…I’ve heard some idiotic ideas in my time, but this second rate halfwit in a romantic comedy?  That’s one of the dumbest ideas I’ve heard since “John Kerry, reporting for duty.” !  And this is how he put it:

“I’d do a romantic comedy if I liked the script.  But it has to be believable and I have to feel I can bring the character to life.”

Kinda like you “brought your character to life” in that horrendous game you put out about the crystal skull a month or so ahead of Indiana Jones, Fifty?  Yeah, okay…call me when you discover reality.

No, really.

There’s a short film on YouTube–in retrospect it never should have been this big of a surprise–called The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon.

And as Jack Cucchiaio finds himself running from his life from the poorly armed maniac, he finds himself in a race against time–an extremely slow race, granted, but a race nonetheless!–to find out the truth behind this killer before the killer can finish his deadly, extremely long term, project.

I about laughed myself stupid watching this.  Seriously–these are guys who know their horror movies, because they’re frantically mocking virtually every convention ever involved in a horror movie.  Watching this horribly slow murder go down was just hilarious.  And yet at the same time, a little creepy.  They really knew what they were doing, and so I recommend it openly.  The movie itself actually drags on, much like the killing itself.

So does the Screenhead Ten Scale, which knows a laugh when it sees it.  Short film or no, this is hilarious stuff and absolutely deserves its eight out of ten.

On behalf of Overture Films, Screenhead presents a new production still featuring Radha Mitchell from The Crazies, starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker and Joe Anderson.  Quite a bit has been posted here about The Crazies, which opens February 26, 2010. 

The story is about a small town where everything is safe and happy…until suddenly it isn’t. In a terrifying tale of the “American Dream” gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in The Crazies, a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

Divorced… with Benefits?…  well, It’s Complicated!   

On behalf of Universal Pictures, Screenhead is excited to let you know that the new trailer and one-sheet for Nancy Meyers’ upcoming comedy about love, divorce, and everything in between, has just debuted online. It’s Complicated stars Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin – they are hilarious. Come Christmas Day we will find out if love is truly lovelier the second time around…

If anyone has ever seen Nancy Meyer movies, you know you are in for a treat. This trailer proves it. Go to Apple to see the new trailer!

I am NOT a huge fan of Jack Ketchum’s work.  Ever since I saw The Lost–in which only I really lost, about ninety minutes of my life and a sinking feeling that someone somehow was making a living at writing torture porn–I looked at pretty much everything he did with a sinking suspicion.

So when I settled in with a copy of Offspring, one of the newest parts of the Ghost House Underground collection, which the folks at Lions Gate sent my way, I wasn’t expecting much good to come of it.  Were my suspicions met?  You’ll find out directly.

First, the plot.  We’re going back to Maine, a land that Stephen King pretty much managed to convert almost singlehandedly into the horror capitol of the world.  But the town of Dead River is playing host to a secret that even King might have had a hard time swallowing–a clan of flesh-eating monstrosities that propagates seemingly entirely by abduction.  And when the local sheriff is forced to step in and deal with them, he’s reminded all too clearly of the last time he took these killers on.

This one is, somewhat, different.  In fact, “graphically screwed up” might be a better term.  In fact, if you want to get an idea of what it’s like, imagine Clan of the Cave Bear intermingled with The Hills Have Eyes.  And you’ll be mostly horrified, but at the same time, you’ll be so catastrophically weirded out by the whole thing that you’ll scarcely know what to think.  Watching these dirt people tear apart actual humans and eat flesh is…well…it’s not the kind of thing you’ve seen lately, I guarantee that.

It’s graphic, it’s violent, it’s grotesque in the absolute…but it IS unique.  And that definitely gives it at least a point in its favor.  But the sheer horrendousness of the content leaves it difficult to recommend.

It’s downright painful to be looking at a movie that’s the most unique thing I’ve seen in a good while, but have it be so thoroughly repugnant that it’s tough to recommend.  It’s really just painful.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shares my consternation and hands The Offspring a thoroughly confused five out of ten.  It’s too unique to not bear mentioning, but it’s too downright vulgar to encourage anyone to watch.

Excuse me if I’m not even VAGUELY surprised by this bit of news because, frankly, I saw it coming from a distance of several miles, metaphorically.

This chunk of news, that the national release of Gentlemen Broncos has been cancelled following an opening weekend best described as dismally mediocre, taking in just over six grand a theater for the weekend, and it essentially only opened in New York and Los Angeles.

If you’ve seen the trailer for this, what looks like a hallucinogenic pile of suck, you’ll know that it was 1. made by some of the same people who brought you Napoleon Dynamite, and considering how godawful that sludge was, that’s not exactly a promotional bell-ringer, and 2. it involves some of the most baffling science fiction since L. Ron Hubbard.

So it’s not a huge surprise that it went clean over most people’s heads (when’s the last time you heard someone say, man, I’m dying to see Gentlemen Broncos! in the same tone they said that about, say, Paranormal Activity?) and many of the ones who got it didn’t want it, so the opening was a slump and they pulled the plug on wide release, knowing they were about to get their hats handed to them by a slew of big name movies coming soon.

In the end, it was probably for the best.