Screenhead

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, this is it, kids.  Today the last week comes together in a magnificent culmination of lights, sound, screaming, and oh yes…there will be blood.

Today we’re talking Saw VI, most recent in the franchise, and ironically, by a large scale, BEST of the franchise.

With Jigsaw, Amanda, and Agent Strahm all pushing up daisies, the only one left to run Jigsaw’s grand games is none other than Detective Hoffman.  But is Hoffman nearly as alone as we think?  Someone else is waiting in the wings–someone else with a vested interest in executing Jigsaw’s final will.  Will Hoffman be able to run the games?  Or will Hoffman’s test leave him without a piece on the board?

I’ll be honest with you, I had big expectations for this one going in.  REALLY big.  One, Saw V was my personal favorite of the series thus far for the massive supergame it ran instead of branching off into smaller games or leaving one person mostly unscathed.  Two, it was directed by Kevin Greutert, whose short film Old Friends we reviewed here a while back.  Old Friends was an awesome piece of filmmaking that really left me on the edge of my computer chair (only place you could see it was YouTube), so hearing that he’d be running Saw VI left me pretty excited.

And sure enough, I enjoyed this one.  For those concerned that this would be a tired rehash of earlier events, no sir.  Saw has one great tendency to build up and kick off something that’ll need a whole new movie to resolve.  There’s more loose ends in here than a telephone switchboard, and it’s small wonder it looks to make nine before it finally ends.

Saw also has one truly ANNOYING tendency, too, and that’s to add details to its earlier canon as it sees fit, despite the fact that there’s no real indication that they ever should have happened.  For instance, when you find out who was with Cecil the night Jill lost her baby, you’ll probably wonder how the hell that actually could have happened, because nothing like that seemed to go on when we actually SAW it happening before.

But there will be something here for all the old fans–the traps we know and love are as awesome as ever–remember the automatic revolver in two?  They kind of did that here…only with a twelve-gauge.  There will be more blood than ever–this is probably why it’s rated like PORN in Spain.  Plus, they’ve kicked off one very important plot detail in the last three minutes of the movie that has me positively drooling over Saw VII.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, is patently blown away, but bothered by the series’ incredible propensity to cheat at every given opportunity.  It therefore hands over a full on eight out of ten for being probably the best Saw yet, both for what it does now and what it kicks off for the next.  We can only hope the remaining entries can live up to this kind of hype.

I’m downright baffled by this, but apparently, if you’re looking to catch Saw VI, which we just reviewed today, in Spain–you’re going to be headed for the red light district.  It’s rated X, you see, and that puts it in the same classification as porn.

I personally remember how shocked I was to hear that, back in the late sixties, a similar fate had happened to the original Night of the Living Dead.  That sucker plays on early-afternoon network television today, so standards have been at least somewhat relaxed.

There’s not much word out of the Spanish government as to why they’re freaking out quite so epically (is “epically” a word?  Well, if it wasn’t already, it is now!), but chances are Lions Gate will take that ball and run with it.  “Forbidden in Spain”…”Some countries just can’t handle the horror”…lots of good taglines there.

But what could possibly make Saw VI that objectionable?  Well…you’ll find out….

I was actually really looking forward to this one, and given that I had such an array of movies to choose from today, it was kind of tough to finally settle on one.  But settle I did, and here I am, talking about Law Abiding Citizen with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler.

When a couple of random hoodlums break into Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler)’s house, kill his daughter and kill (and possibly rape) his wife in the process, he gets a first hand look at the magnificent justice system, that’s willing to let one scumbag off with five years in exchange for sending another scumbag to death row.  Brokering the deal in question is hotshot attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), whose proudest achievement seems to be either his daughter or his ninety-six percent conviction rate.

Clyde, meanwhile, feels the system has let him down and thus launches off on a one man crusade to fix it by first tearing it to the ground in a series of horrendous remote-control murders.

About midway through the movie, I knew that they were going to have to cheat their metaphorical heinies off to get out of this one in anything resembling one piece.  They had set it up so clearly and so beautifully that Clyde Shelton was a remote control killing mastermind that, in order to win, the government was going to have to cheat itself BLIND.

But aside from the ethical and moral ramifications of watching your government toss out the rule book it wrote itself to satisfy its own vendetta against one man, Law Abiding Citizen is a fantastic, thought-provoking movie that ably combines a legal thriller with a mechanical engineering spectacular like Saw.

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.  Picture Jigsaw in The Pelican Brief and you’ve got a pretty fair idea of what’s going on here.

Law Abiding Citizen is easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in a good long while–yeah, I know, I said that about Zombieland, too.  But they’re in different genres, so it’s still valid.  Oh, sure, there’s a lot of unpleasant things you could say about this movie.  I personally hated that ending, and watching Jamie Foxx’s regular stiff-necked pride throughout the whole thing, even as he was CONSTANTLY being showed up by Clyde was annoying to say the least.

And of course implausibility is simply a matter of course around here (how exactly did Clyde manage any of this stuff?  It assumes ridiculous sets of circumstances that are almost, but not quite, on par with magic.), but if you’ve got a really strong capacity for suspension of disbelief, then you’ll have an incredible time watching this.

Sci-fi buffs, I’m looking at you.

Despite the flaws, I had a great time watching Law Abiding Citizen, and as such, am holding a remote control connected to a bucket of salt and batteries that I have dunked the Screenhead Ten Scale’s feet in, and am forcing it to hand over a seven out of ten for a thought provoking thriller with a few glaring flaws.

Folks, I’ll be honest with you–I know, aren’t I usually?–but I’ll tell you right off the bad that Couples Retreat is not the kind of movie I usually go to the theater for.

Frankly, a movie like this, you don’t HAVE to.  There are no big special effects, no huge crashes of audio, nothing that would necessitate a screen measured in feet and a speaker count that requires you to take off your shoes to match the count. But the really interesting part about Couples Retreat is that you’ll WANT to.

Somewhere out there, there are four groups of friends, and their marriages frankly have seen better days.  One of them, a hard-charging type-A couple that is almost incapable of carrying on a conversation without Powerpoint, is actually inches from divorce.  And to that end, they’re seeking therapy at an island resort called Eden.  But Eden doesn’t come cheap, and as such, the type-A excelsior couple wants to enlist its circle of friends to go on a package deal, which is significantly cheaper.  Lured by promises of sun and frolic, the other couples retreat, and discover a whole lot about themselves, their partners, and their lives.

There are several moments in this movie that can really only be described as awkward.  Faizon Love naked, for example.  A day at the spa.  A really uncomfortable yoga sequence.  Some moments in here break open the awkward scale and segue into creepy.

But there are also a lot of good laughs to be had here, and some poignant bits that’ll actually make you think.  Couples out there…how much of your life is “his” and “hers” and how much of it is “ours”?  It’s a question to ask, for anyone who’s ever been or ever thought about being in a relationship.  You would not think of me, a man who can pummel virtually any horror movie trivia into the very ground, as a person to enjoy a romantic comedy, but Couples Retreat qualified.  It was funny, it made me think a bit, it gave me Vince Vaughn as a dad, there’s plenty of great points here.

Of course, I also got to watch a four year old thoroughly use a display toilet in a home improvement store.  Twice.   And that’s something you never want to see.

The Screenhead Ten Scale is prepared to sift through a bit of dross for some comedy silver, and understands that getting laughs is downright important.  Despite the awkwardness, it hands over a seven out of ten for being a thoroughly satisfactory comedy with its share of rough spots.

I was definitely looking forward to a copy of Trick R Treat.  It had just about everything you could have wanted in a horror flick–myth, legend, doublecrosses, strange monsters, creepy whatsits…and of course some unexpected bonuses like Thurman Merman himself from Bad Santa briefly showing up and impressively projectile-vomiting all over the set.  That was just awesome.

Anyway, today we’re talking Trick R Treat, which just became available today in video stores.  From Warner Premiere, this impressive little horror flick is one of the rare breed of overarching-vignette stories that we haven’t seen in quite some time.  You’ll follow a series of interconnecting and overarching stories as they talk about a wife whose husband loves Halloween, and why she should too, then over to a local principal with a secret, a young virgin’s pursuit of that “special someone”, a terrifying prank gone horribly wrong, and a sour old man who could use a little sweetening up for Halloween.

The great thing about Trick R Treat is that most of it is good.  There’s a lot of creepy fun to be had here and most of the sketches will satisfy like a king size Snickers.  There’s not even terribly much to say about most of the movie except that it’s really, spectacularly good.  I was just about to horrifyingly force the Screenhead Ten Scale to hand over yet ANOTHER ten until about the last five minutes.

Somebody owes me an explanation for the last five minutes and they’d better do so lickety-damn-split.  Because I take SERIOUS issue with an ending that won’t even play by its own rule book.  They go to spectacular lengths to illustrate how important the burning jack o’lantern is in keeping away “evil spirits”, and yet, despite the fact that the last victim of the night has easily a couple dozen burning on his porch, he’s STILL ripped to shreds.

Admittedly, on a percentage basis, this is a minor gripe, even if it’s a pretty low blow, especially when I was enjoying the movie so well.  And despite this fairly sizable screw-up, it’s about the only one.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale acknowledges that it’s being a bit of a fussbudget about things and hands over the fair rating of nine out of ten.  Had they fixed that last problem, we’d have yet another perfect dose of horror on our hands.

I love that line.  Really I do.  Because in it is the entirety of the movie Zombieland, opening in theaters today.

Zombieland brings us back with Jesse Eisenberg, the Michael Cera knockoff whom you may remember macking on a surprisingly able Kristen Stewart back in another movie about land, Adventureland.  Anyway, this time, naturally we’re in Zombieland, a world vaguely like our own but jammed to the hilt with zombies.  Those few human beings who are left find themselves forced to make deadly choices every day for the sake of survival, but yet, even here, they still manage to have dreams.  Simple dreams, for the most part. Thoroughly American dreams.  But will they capture those dreams?  Or will they be zombie chow?

After I finished watching this one, which I had been longing to see ever since I saw the trailer, one thought hit me like a bolt out of the blue.  This is just the Americanized version of Shaun of the Dead.  Zombieland was another hilarious zombie comedy, the only real difference here being that the thoroughly British qualities of Shaun of the Dead had been replaced by thoroughly American qualities.

Sure, everyone’s got a gun in Zombieland, but they’ll also feel that British influence (after all, Great Britain really IS the mother of America if you want to get metaphorical about it) by striking out with whatever’s handy.  Rakes, hedge clippers,  the Garden Weasel (the weirdest garden tool ever), even pianos on ropes–we’ll take out zombies with whatever we can get our hands on.

Yes, Zombieland is hilarious.  Woody Harrelson is much more talented than anyone gives him credit for (he actually WAS an action hero of sorts at one point), Jesse Eisenberg makes a great foil for Woody’s over-the-top lunacy, and the fact that Bill Murray is in this just made my jaw drop.

But Zombieland will actually make you think, too.  Think about the common dreams we all share.  Oh, sure…in Zombieland, the goals of the day are amusement parks, family and Twinkies, but is that really so far removed from baseball, mom and apple pie?  And in the end, when faced with those horrible choices, and left to, as the movie so dynamically puts it, “nut up or shut up”, you’ll find that more often than not, you’ll be better equipped to nut up than you thought.

There’s so much to like about Zombieland–hilarity, personal growth, violence, zombies, Bill Murray–that the list alone is reason enough to see this.  Zombieland is an incredible movie, and as such, I can’t believe what I’m about to do.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shares my horror and wonders if I’m going soft as I pound its override button like a test-your-strength mallet into a clown’s face and award Zombieland a full-on ten out of ten.  This is just too funny and too action-packed and even too scary not to see.

Michael Moore sent out a press release today saying “We’re just one day away from the widest opening I’ve ever had for any of my movies. Tomorrow, Friday, October 2nd, Capitalism: A Love Story opens on over a thousand screens across the United States, a record for an independent documentary.

This follows last weekend’s limited opening in New York and L.A. where Capitalism  set the box office record for the highest per screen average of ANY movie released so far this year. Not just any documentary — any MOVIE! It was, as the studio said, a good indicator of just how well the movie may do when it goes wide this weekend. I sincerely hope they’re right because I believe deeply in this film.”

To kick off the national release of Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore has asked the studio to offer a number of screenings in the nation’s hardest hit cities — the ones with the highest unemployment rates and highest foreclosure rates — where those who’ve lost their jobs or who are in foreclosure (or have already been evicted) may attend his film free of charge. The studio has agreed, and so tonight (Thursday), the night before the movie’s opening day, ten cities will grant the public free admission for those who have fallen on hard times. The list of theaters and cities are here at Michael Moore’s website. You don’t need to bring any “proof” of your situation — just show up — it’s the honor system, no questions asked.

So, if you’re going through tough times and you live in one of the areas,  ”Please be my guest tonight, on the eve of my new film’s opening. Seating will be on a first come, first served basis,” says Moore.

It’s happening this weekend Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D double feature at select movie theaters.  You can watch an even cooler trailer at MSN Movie Trailers by clicking here.

Sometimes I wonder why I subject myself to clearly amateurish short film that actually has to apologize for itself in its opening remarks.  But then, I remember it’s for a couple good reasons–one, you guys go looking for movies on YouTube and such and there’s no reason you shouldn’t know what you’re getting into and two, sometimes there’s a really good one.

Brotherly Revenge is, however, not one of them.  It falls under the first category, and you really should know what you’re letting yourself in for if you click this link.

What follows is the largely nonsensical story of a boy who killed his brother and now finds himself pursued relentlessly by his slain brother’s soul.

It was a good thing they explained this to me because otherwise I totally wouldn’t have had a clue.  Seriously, this movie is just perplexing.  And when they announce that they’ll have a sequel ready later, eventually, I found myself groaning inside.  As it turns out, this is the work of young kids with cameras, so I’m not going to be too nasty as this is likely their jumping-off point.

As such, the Screenhead Ten Scale exercises mercy and gives this one a three out of ten in the hopes that they’ll get their act together and do a good movie next time.