Change Your Image
zmwalter
Reviews
Shrooms (2007)
We are all dumber for having watched it.
Some friends and I have a Saturday night tradition of getting together for a couple beers and a terrible (usually horror) movie. Our most recent event featured "Shrooms".
Wow.
I don't have enough space to write about how stupid this movie was. It managed to hit just about all of the usual dumb horror-movie clichés (except that the sexually-active kids don't get killed first), and the ending was telegraphed throughout the movie. I think we were about 25 minutes in when one of us figured it out.
The only thing that kept me from giving it a "1" rating was the line, "Yeah, I'm a f*cking cow . . . who can f*cking talk." That was so over-the-top that it deserves honorable mention.
"Shrooms". Bleagh. Blech.
Angels in America (2003)
So close, and yet, so far.
Okay then.
Was the play groundbreaking? Yes. Skilfully done? Let's say so. A labor of love better achieved than abandoned? I'll give it that. A watchable piece of cinema? Not hardly. And if you must try, for the love of all you consider holy, take it in small doses. Trying to watch the whole thing, even in only two sittings, is torture. Do yourself a favor, and do not more than an hour at a time.
Look, the cast is fantastic (who doesn't love Mary-Louise Parker?), and the performances are quite good. But this piece can't decide whether it's a serious work meant to break ground, or if it's a soapbox from which to shout "We're here, we're Queer, get used to it!" Exhibit A is the "conflict" between the two AIDS patients. Justin Kirk's Prior Walter fulfills the now-tiresome role of the AIDS-ridden saint, complete with hipster irony and "wit". Al Pacino's Cohn is, well, Pacino, but he seems to embody the self-hating homosexual without being an effective foil for Prior. As a result, the film (and the play on which it's based) comes off as preachy and smarmy. AIDS is bad, but having it doesn't make you a saint (hear that, "RENT"?).
Look, I came into this hoping to be blown away. Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep are, as expected, brilliant, and Parker's utterly human performance just builds my enormous crush on her. But come on. I don't want to be preached at. And that's unfortunately, that's what this series does best.
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
For fans of low-brow gore-fests only.
Ugh. What a waste of time.
Let's start with the fact that the flick is formulaic in the extreme. Every single plot element is damn-near interchangeable with several other movies in the genre (of which, more later), to include "The Descent", "Wrong Turn", etc. No shocks, no scares, utterly, completely, predictable.
Which makes one wonder, "Why would anyone watch this?" Because it's an example of what contemporary writers call "torture-porn", and what earlier writers call "Theater of Pain". You watch it because you enjoy seeing people hacked to pieces, burned alive, impaled by all manner of pointy objects, or even, in this flick, raped by deformed mutants (although in response to a common thread on this movie's message boards, I didn't find the rape scene all that graphic. Disturbing and awful, yes. But glory be, they left some things to the imagination). Maybe you like the thrill of nausea you get from watching cruelty, maybe you don't. But if you don't get a little creeped out by the degree of violence and depravity in this flick, you should perhaps be a little concerned about your own psychological barometer.
I won't patronize the audience by asking "how could you enjoy this?" Like I said, it's a form of porn. It just isn't for me, nor, I would venture to say for anyone who like films with subtlety or nuance. This is Grand Guignol, nothing more or less.
Feardotcom (2002)
By turns incomprehensible and ridiculous.
While in the video store the other day, the video box of this movie caught my eye, but I ultimately decided to rent something else instead. Then, by chance, my roommate and her boyfriend rented it the following day. After seeing this flick (they lent it to me when they were done with it), I have only one thing to say:
Thank God I didn't pay for this one.
Poorly-lit "action" sequences are randomly interspersed with incomprehensible hallucination sequences and uber-cliched drama/romance scenes. The end result is a movie that, whether or not it was any good as written (and it seemed like it might once have been), is ultimately an utter waste of time, film, and money. Rent ANYTHING ELSE in the world but this.