I was really, truly, pleasantly surprised by Dreamcatcher. It’s starts out as an interesting psychological thing – a bunch of scattered friends have this power of intuition, they just “know” things. Then they go on a camping trip, and suddenly, aliens show up. But ultimately everything, including some flashbacks that first seem to be completely detached from anything important, turns out to be connected.

I think a lot of people really switch off once the aliens show up. They look pretty ridiculous at first glance, and their introduction is done by way of a little strange toilet humour. I haven’t seen any of the Ghoulies movies yet, but I remember the posters and trailers, and there are scenes early on in this movie that made me think, “didn’t Ghoulies already do this?”.

The aliens aspect of the story kind of lost me too to begin with. But this is one of those movies where you don’t have time to stop and think “this is ridiculous”. The story just keeps on running, never letting up, and I love that. Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore are a great double act as the ‘villains’, and there are some pretty amazing visual effects for a movie that was never exactly promoted as a huge blockbuster (at least I don’t recall it – perhaps it was declared dead before it reached the UK). A glance at the crew certainly doesn’t imply a bad movie – John Seale as cinematographer, James Newton Howard scoring, William Goldman writing, Stephen King source material, Lawrence Kasdan directing and co-writing. Okay, from those lot, I have to say, I would’ve expected something better. But Dreamcatcher is definitely not as bad as the reviews say.

I had no reason to expect to like this movie – the very look of its hero sets up a wall for me, like Spawn, it just looks ridiculous. But I will give it points for its slickness, and it does at least try to have some kind of emotional core (if I had to name a ‘favourite moment’ it would be when Ron Perlman gestures towards his face in the company of Selma Blair, says something like, “I wish I could get past this,” it’s a neat moment).

It’s based on a comic book so I guess there’s a whole bunch of background information that the movie skips on. I personally couldn’t fathom the reason for the Nazi connection and the whole space thing.

Basically, this is actually an okay movie. But the look is just way too extreme for me.

The DVD is pretty stunning – you get two commentaries, one from the crew, one from the cast, a storyboard track that hooks up corresponding storyboards as you play the movie (which you can couple with a commentary to save yourself some time), and a branching “set visits” set of clips that also plays alongside the movie like The Matrix’s “white rabbit” feature (I’m assuming that this, too, can be played along with a commentary – I haven’t got that far yet). And I guess that’s just disc one (it’s a rental I have).

I really thought I’d be able to pull a really thorough and all-inclusive long review of this movie this viewing, but I really don’t know where to begin. I’m thinking it may be about 15 years since I first saw it, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t influence pretty much my entire outlook on life through my teenage years. It’s a classic.

Watching it now, it hasn’t aged a second. I notice how brilliant the dialogue is even more – not just the ever-quoted lines, like “F**k me gently with a chainsaw, do I look like Mother Theresa?” “What is your damage, Heather?” etc, simply every line. This screenplay predated Tarantino’s work by years. Daniel Waters invented an entire language, and all these great words are delivered by the perfect cast. So Christian Slater is channeling Jack Nicholson – JD would too!

I love the whole atmosphere of the movie. It’s kind of surreal all the way – the cafeteria of the opening scene, the whole school in fact, has this dreamy, almost misty quality. David Newman’s weird synthy score is perfect, even covering for party music (I guess they were trying to save money) in the big Remington party scene.

Mean Girls recently emulated a lot of the bitchy style of this movie really, really well, but nothing will ever compare to Heathers. In the “Swatch Dogs and Diet Coke Heads” documentary on the DVD, Daniel Waters talks about how he envisaged Heathers as the movie Kubrick would make if he made a movie in the highschool genre (ie. The Perfect Movie of its Genre à la sci-fi 2001, war Full Metal Jacket, period Barry Lyndon). It sounds like an insane vision, but the miracle is that looking back now, that really is what it became. It’s not just a cult classic – nearly 20 years later, I think it’s definitely earned the right to drop the word “cult”.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the last Japanese horror remake, The Ring, nor really its original… nor even as-yet un-remade Japanese horror stuff like Audition. Like this movie, they all seem to me to be masquerading as being somehow more “artful” than the average slasher, whilst basically doing nothing different – the norm being, make it newer, make it more disgusting.

The Grudge, for it’s “I Am Art!” argument, has its timeline sort of pointlessly convoluted, but even when you put it together it still amounts to merely a series of bizarre killings. While it’s all better made and acted than the average horror, give me an 80s slasher anyday.

One good thing about this movie is that it’s different from most British movies, and has big aspirations for its low budget. It looks good and has a few good scares.

One thing I noticed about 10 – 20 minutes in was how easy it is to imagine Dog Soldiers could’ve started life as a reject Alien sequel screenplay. Stick the movie on some derilict planet and replace the wolves with aliens and you’ve got variations on all three sequels in that franchise, complete with “girl who mysteriously knows too much” becoming one of them

I’m a Ginger Snaps person myself.

The most impressive, and most disturbing, thing about The Woodsman is how, well, normal it is. Like Vera Drake, this movie is less about the controversial issue involved (there, abortion; here, pedophilia) and more about the universal process of rehabilitation (in Vera Drake’s case, about the way secrets can nearly destroy a family). There are scenes that really deal straight-up, with first-person POV camera angles, with life through the eyes of a pedophile, and it’s pretty chilling. But for the most part, it’s about a guy who did something really bad, and the question of whether such a guy can ever truly move on and get some kind of a life back.

Kevin Bacon is as good as the other reviews have said. He says more in silence than the lines he has to speak, surely the real sign of a great actor. Kyra Sedgwick is great too, as the one woman who, after a period of stunned reflection, gives Bacon’s character a chance. Also very impressive is Mos Def as Sgt. Lucas, who perhaps has the most powerful character arc of the whole movie. He bursts in on Bacon’s new residence early on the movie, practically ready to throw him out of the window; he’s dealt with these “pieces of sh*t” before and is in no way prepared to believe “they” can reform. In his last scene, he leaves the same apartment, almost stunned by how much the man he’s come to know defied expectation.

There are a few clunky elements: the very location of Bacon’s new apartment, directly opposite a grade school, leading to a whole hokey subplot about another, “worse” pedophile he is watching. You kind of expect these things to happen to Humbert Humbert, but they kind of stand out in this mostly realistic story. But while these things are a little hard to believe, it’s hard to imagine what could have been in their place; for they do serve a purpose in the story. We never find out exactly what Bacon did in the past – he uses uncharacteristic, almost tabloid language when he confesses to Sedgwick, “I molested little girls,” like he’s trying to put it in the worst way possible so he doesn’t have to clarify anything; then he quickly tries to clarify that he never hurt them, and it’s easy to believe him. It doesn’t make his crime any less awful, but when contrasted with the guy across the street getting away with possibly worse, possibly violent, abductions and rapes, it sends an important message.

All in all, a very haunting, disturbing, highly memorable 90 minutes.

This is a really frustrating movie. The concept is great and it could’ve been a kind of Dogma for therapy or something (well, I guess it kind of is... it’s just not very good). There are a couple of good scenes and plenty of good lines, but it never seems to fully manage to say whatever it is that it’s trying to say. Even Jon Brion’s score, while still very catchy, feels too simple, missing some energy. Get Eternal Sunshine or Punch-Drunk Love instead.

Ah my Michelle Pfeiffer fixation continues. But she’s a little lost in this amazing cast which also includes Alison Lohman (how have I gone so long without knowing of this girl?), Renee Zellweger, Robin Wright Penn and Patrick Fugit. I kind of knew I’d like the movie just looking at those opening credits roll by to Thomas Newman’s score.

In one way it was exactly the type of movie I was expecting from what I’d seen before – a dreamy, slow, poetic, talky drama. But the story, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in particular, was totally unexpected.

Alison Lohman is amazing as the daughter of a woman arrested for murder. Through a series of foster homes and care centres, she slowly discovers who she is, while her mother watches her from jail, upset that her daughter’s not turning out like her. Her storyline and character sort of remind me of Evan Rachel Wood in Thirteen, but her problems are far far worse than the average teenager.

There’s one moment in the movie that made me jump out of my skin more than I have in a long time. It’s the film’s first of many slightly outrageous turns – all the bad things sort of tend to happen to Lohman’s character, and it almost becomes a little ridiculous.

Not for me though, I loved this movie. The final moments with Pfeiffer will stay with me for a long time. You can tell this movie comes from a novel, the character details are just so fine. It’s so wonderful when a movie can capture the very fine line that exists between love and hate, and this one really does that perfectly. Add to that some great musing discussions about the nature of art, etc, and this is one movie I’m bound to revisit again and again in the future.