If I was the kind of person who walked out of / switched off movies, and lord how I wish I was sometimes, I would’ve been done with this around the hour mark. It fits the mould of the Grindhouse movies, particularly Planet Terror, but like, in a really, really bad, sad, pathetic wannabe British way.

I really don’t want to write what I really think of this movie because I did so and I read it back and I just don’t want the feedback that what I wrote might trigger. That some people might get some enjoyment out of this movie doesn’t bug me. That someone like Neil Marshall can make such a movie and still somehow be regarded as a gem in the British film industry … no matter how much I may try to distance myself from the herdlike mindset of the masses … it still makes me feel ashamed to be alive.

I’m inclined to add somewhere here, “y’know what, it’s just not for me,” but I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it being somehow okay for people to get a kick out of shit like this while I and others get regarded as sickeningly weird for, relatively speaking, reasons that couldn’t be more innocuous.

‘kay, like I said I didn’t even intend to include those last few sentences, but I couldn’t bring myself to delete them anyway. I’m not sickened this way by many things. I laugh at people who are sickened by such things in such a way. But I don’t know what else to say about this movie. It just made me wanna die, and right now all I wanna do is get any words I have about it published so I can move on. And for the record, I wrote the bulk of this long before this past weekend’s events. Thank God I didn’t watch it after, or I mightn’t be here at all.

Weird how I hadn’t seen this one yet. I thought (particularly after the super-obscure Cathy’s Curse) I pretty much knew where all the devil children were I have to admit I was a little disappointed first when I realised Brooke Shields wasn’t the Alice of the title and then when I saw her vanish entirely from the cast within about 15 minutes of the runtime, lol; but it didn’t deter me too much from sticking with it. Shields’ performance has nothing on, say, her work in Pretty Baby a couple of years later, but really none of the performances here are particularly noteworthy – though there’s something particularly haunting about the face of the girl who does play Alice, I’m sure Brooke would’ve done just as serviceable a job.

It’s kind of like Don’t Look Now meets Mystic River at the start, with a tone similar to Mommie Dearest (but maybe that’s just the deceptively innocent sounding title working its incidious charm, hehe). In the end it’s one of those 70s horror movies that “just works” despite its flaws, and I could’ve pretty confidently told you as much before even putting it on. I know that I say that often, but somehow I can’t help it. It’ll be interesting in 20 or 30 years to see if people 20 or 30 years younger than me start saying the same of the crappy teen “horrors” of this decade, that’ll be a real noodlebaker, but for now, I can just repeat what I’ve said before, that though the technical stuff was often sprayed on the wall like so many guts in these productions, they really knew how to up the freakout factor and haunt you, be it with music, images, blood, or sound.

As I said the performances are lacking – it’d be easy to call the whole production frankly shocking, in fact. But such is the story that I’d prefer to call it abysmally stylised. Like Happy Birthday to Me, Bloody Birthday, the Slumber Party and Sleepover Camp movies, I’m even willing to give Black Christmas another shot … it was more worth my time than a lot of things lately.

This was a very odd viewing experience – I remembered this being talked about quite a while ago but I didn’t actually realise they’d ultimately made and released it, lol. I loved the first Hitcher movie, the whole storyline is one of those magical basic few like conmen and heist movies that works (just about) every time – see The Vanishing, Breakdown, Duel. As such, the only downfall of this production is really that it seems too familiar, to the point where I actually had to check back over my reviews and see if I hadn’t actually already seen it and forgotten about it (if I’m honest, after a particularly vague weekend, the jury’s still out on that one lol).

Anyway, like I say, there’s not much that can truly be done to break these stories beyond redemption and for me this hit the beats perfectly. Sean Bean is a perfectly fine substitution for Rutger Hauer, the kids in the car are a comfortable step below the glossy teens that usually populate these remakes; even the guy who plays the sheriff, a character who even in the original I seem to recall struck me as particularly creepy in his outright level-headedness lol, though his performance is annoying as hell it somehow works anyway. The “moment” at the end – it would be the hugest spoiler if I even hinted at it especially if you’ve not seen the original – it still made me nearly fall out of my chair and make an embarrassingly audible gasp (in fact, gasp is the wrong word, it was more like a combination of, “Jesus Christ!”, “No!” and gugggghhhhhh lol). Really, I don’t understand any review of this movie that doesn’t at least give it props for going all the way, just like the Texas Chainsaw remake that Michael Bay also had a hand in bringing to the screen, it’s frankly eons above the likes of Prom Night and April Fool’s Day, for god’s sake. I’m giving it an extra heart just for the sake of balance here, lol.

Oh boy. wipes the tears from my face. Laughing tears, before you ask. Really this one had me laughing the laugh I’d never have expected from it. As with the last couple of reviews, I’ve gotta apologise, I’m really having trouble finding the place that usually comes so easy to me and writing about movies etc so if this review sucks I’m sorry. It may be better represented by my simply saying, I liked it – but usually I eventually work my way back to my former self quicker if I at least try to make the words come.

I had a really dodgy viewing experience with this due to the age of the copy I had. I finally decided to watch it ‘cos of this week’s wonderful Kubrick season on More4 (if nothing else, watch the trailer, wow). While it’s not particularly Kubrickian, it certainly appeals to a Kubrick fan, at least, this Kubrick fan, with its soundtrack selections if nothing else.

It’s basically The Hoax meets The Talented Mr. Ripley with a whole lot of hokum and camp silliness – that’s the part that I didn’t expect and I’m surprised that I haven’t found bundles of reviews criticising this factor. Jim Davidson … oh my god … that’s when my eyes literally started streaming I was laughing so much, from the moment he appeared singing “Hello” lol. I loved him after the whole Hell’s Kitchen thing, but this is something else entirely. That he steals the movie from the already wonderful John Malkovich is reason enough to watch in itself.

“There’s no one here but the fighters.”

I was pretty damn loathe to watch this without any prior knowledge of what it was about etc after Spartan completely failed to ignite me. That I’ve been terrible at keeping up the movie-watching habit lately (I’ll get better soon, I promise) made me even more apprehensive: I thought a stupid comedy might’ve been an easier option to get me writing again.

But dammit, it’s Mamet. I decided that if this movie couldn’t hold my attention then there must clearly be something wrong with me or it, lol, and I dove in. The opening credits didn’t let me down – all the names you want in a Mamet movie, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay, a couple of surprises in Tim Allen and Jennifer Grey, the brilliant Robert Elswitt on photography duties. And then the madness begins.

The movie is pretty convoluted for the first 40 minutes. Speaking of Elswitt, the quirkiness of the plot points actually kind of reminded me of Paul Thomas Anderson. A strange and frazzled girl walks out of the rain into a martial arts place and almost shoots a police officer and we’re just expected to accept that “these crazy things happen all the time” as the Magnolia narrator might say. The moment is “forgotten” and we move onto something else. I think the one reason none of this bugged me because it was scored – yes, scored, I think that’s the only word for it – at all times by Mamet’s unmistakably perfect dialogue (something else that’s familiar in Anderson movies, in fact – I don’t think I’d ever entirely made the connection). It’s like Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes plus the old world meets new world ways of Ronin meets Rocky and Mamet’s edge.

But fear not, because it all comes together in the end, in more astonishingly powerful ways than I’d ever have seen coming. The strange girl turns out to be an attorney who has issues with physical contact after being attacked before the story begins. There’s a scene where a trainer from the martial arts place at the start, our hero Chiwetal Ejiofor, who must surely be headed for an Oscar some day if not today, breaks through the wall and holds her in exactly the way she doesn’t want in order to help her. It’s an outstanding scene ending in the line above that speaks volumes about how the good guys, the honest guys, maybe avoid such confrontations too much. The movie is ultimately about having enough of the bullsh*t and speaking the truth and it’s done in such an overwhelmingly brisk and unique fashion … one should expect no less from David Mamet, but like I said, after Spartan … it’s practically phenomenal. Double bill it with In Bruges. Even I’m inclined to dub it a “man movie” despite it’s leanings towards very womanly issues in that attorney subplot that really made the movie for me – those two times Ejiofor and the attorney touch are cinema at its best to me.

I wanted to love this so much so, as such, I went in with the utmost fears of being grossly disappointed. I’d seen the marketing clip of Meryl Streep singing “Winner Takes it All” and it just took my breath away, it was the kind of emotion I never really associated with the musical which, in all it’s Greasey popularity, I had no option but to loathe from the off. I don’t see the reasoning behind spending £20 and upwards to see these jukebox shows in the theatre, and though I’ve certainly done my share of standing and clapping etc to a show that moved me that way (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), I hate when I go to a show and feel like I’m being compelled to get involved. I don’t like to share that admittedly grumpy side of myself lol but, hey, it serves as the perfect setup to my review.

For 20 minutes or so (aside from the gorgeously spinetingling “I Have a Dream” opener), it wobbles something disastrous. There’s a lot of exposition in setting up the basic story (girl is getting married, doesn’t know who her father is, invites the three most likely candidates without her mother’s knowledge – but you probably knew that better than me) around the song “Honey, Honey”. But then Meryl Streep finally pokes her head in on the scene. And the movie literally takes off when she opens her mouth to sing “Money Money Money”.

Now I’ve never denied that Streep is one of the best actresses ever to grace the screen. But she never really did anything that struck me beyond the appreciative acknowledgement of her talent like this did. It was there in that short “Winner Takes it All” clip. But taken as the full 2 hour performance – it’s overwhelming. She’s so alive, so full of joy, and the camera loves her. It gets right up in her face in places but at times just sits back, like us, in awe of such a fantastic woman being in the moment. If I called Evening “so vaginal it’s stifling” (_checks_: yep, sorry, that was me, lol), then this movie is so much so that it’s joyous. When even my least favourite ABBA song, “Dancing Queen”, can move me to wish more than ever I could join those girls dancing and leaping in the water, so much so I almost applauded out loud in the very British silence of the multiplex, lol … you know we have a winner. It just killed me how beautiful all the female interactions were in this movie, how upfront and unashamedly they were placed on the screen, all manner of girls and women, mothers and daughters – never done in this retributional way so many feminist tracts come; just as a statement of people with as much right to be and love and live as anybody else, no matter what their age, sex or level of conventional beauty. Did I mention that all this is glorious?

But, oh, there are men too. Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsard, Colin Firth: never mind the Meryl, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski, all of whom in opinion were perfect on the tunes … these guys are adorable when they sing. The guys’ songs seem mostly to come in those moments of character where they’re unveiling the side of themselves that is usually regarded as something that ought to be hidden. There’s a moment when Brosnan sings to Streep, I think it’s his first sung piece in fact, and it cuts back to her face in a picture of shock, the kind of shock that you get when a traditionally uptight male breaks down and cries and reveals an embarrassing secret or, hey, just plain talks ... this is how screen musicals should be, this is how the songs should come in my opinion. It’s just wonderful. Colin Firth’s voice is like the lead singer of the Zombies or Belle & Sebastian: that endearing weakness, again the honesty and love that I love so much about this movie. There are lots of other guys in the movie too lol, very much there for the girls or guys who want them lol.

I didn’t expect this to be one of my “gush, gush, just get the initial reaction into words and publish!” reviews, lol, but the movie really did strike me that way, moreso than I even expected or hoped. I’m still buzzing when I remember the songs and the faces – I even emerged with a new favourite ABBA song, “Slipping Through My Fingers”, which I’d never heard in my life – it comes just after Sophie asks her mother to help her prepare for the wedding, something Streep takes to with heartrending glee. The song is about a young girl’s first day at school and the mother saying goodbye like losing her to the wide world, and we see Streep doing her daughter’s hair, butting a bandaid on her ankle and kissing a booboo better as she brushes her teeth, sitting in a chair doing her nails and talking, all in the present. If I go any further into why this scene crushed me so much I’ll be here for pages lol. All I’ll say is it’s the most beautiful standalone scene I’ve seen in too long and for it alone I could go back down to the multiplex and pay for another ticket right now, let alone all the other wonderful moments I haven’t even touched on.

When even the cheesy end credits stuff (where it really does threaten to become “menopausal karaoke night” as I wrote here lol) had me buzzin’ (and frankly wishing I was in a livelier audience) ... again, you know a good thing when it’s there in front of you For me it’s really the first great movie of the year, and I’m happy shocked to find I’m still rooting for it to catch on enough to be an Oscars contender next year.

“He’s right. As a species we’re fundamentally insane.”

I want to get to my Mamma Mia! review so this might end up a bit short and sparse lol. I didn’t know a lot about this movie, had never read the Stephen King novella, and I guess the best way to begin here is to say: if the critics of The Happening were so negative because they were coming straight off the back of seeing this, then, I guess I can understand where they were coming from. If it’s fear, nightmare, social commentary and sheer hopelessness you were looking for, then The Mist is absolutely the movie to plump for.

Like The Happening, this is clearly not without its influences – in fact, if anything they’re only more obvious. The Fog is clearly there; that the movie restrains itself to the confines of a mall only a few minutes in immediately recalls Dawn of the Dead. But from there onward – I really can’t detail it because of the joy I got from not knowing what was coming – it’s really quite on its own.

Anyway, I’ve been a little lax in my movie watching of late due to the overwhelming distraction of TV and Second Life – I haven’t even felt comfortable in watching movies in “background mode” ‘cos my attention’s so much in the virtual world, lol. So I guess it’s high praise for me to say that I couldn’t take my eyes and ears off this one. The business of the opening scenes is superbly handled by Darabont introducing us to all the different characters we’ll be stuck with for the next two hours. When the weird happenings start happening, I was far more unsettled than I was by The Happening. And when the, uh, “other stuff” started happening later on … I really didn’t know whether to laugh or hide, and I did plenty of both.

A lot of people have talked about the ending and how down and unpredictable it is. I have to say, I didn’t find it so much surprising as it was inevitable. You kinda know what’s gonna emerge from the mist when that time comes following the incident everyone’s so shocked by. But that second vehicle that passes … that’s the one that really killed me. It’s still a cornier ending than I expected, rather like that “alternate ending” of the man with the X-Ray eyes when he plucks his eyes out and yells, “OH MY GOD, I can still SEE!” lol … but it’s still handled superbly by Darabont. It’s definitely Halloween viewing, that’s for sure.

It seemed a little crazy of me to watch this following two ‘08 movies I’d actually had a little hope for (yes, even Prom Night) and been let down so bad over. But, I don’t know, I never really stopped liking M. Night Shyamalan as some did – the furthest I drifted from him was over Unbreakable which I didn’t like at all on the first viewing. A second viewing remedied that entirely and I never entirely distrusted him since.

And you know what? After these 90 minutes, I’m still with him all the way. No – this movie is not terrifying as some people seem to have been led to expect, and if you go in with those expectations then, yes, you’re liable to wind up laughing. I’m guessing this is bad marketing – I don’t know because I don’t put myself in the position to be overexposed to such things. But if you do want to talk about the fear factor of this director’s movies, then at least compare it to Lady in the Water and The Village (two of the movies not oh-so-subtly mentioned on the poster tagline, lol) and realise, in this department at least, it’s still a slight return to form (if you like such phrases). I found the opening immediately arresting, the later scenes like with John Leguizamo and the two boys truly nightmarish, Zooey Deschanel of course stunning (what on earth are those eyes made of? lol) and the ending really quite moving.

It’s hokey and wobbly sometimes, but, y’know, I’m willing to trust that none of this is entirely unintended. Shyamalan’s shown so many times that he’s clearly a Hitchcock fan and so many of the moments particularly in this movie feel a lot more like the master of suspense’s frequent tongue-in-cheek moments than just a hack who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Whether that’s true or not, it still works for me better than the gigantic pile of crap I’ve had to expose my retinas to so far this year.