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ganubis
Reviews
Lights Out (2016)
Lights Out ...of Original Ideas
Watched this with a friend and she was so nonplussed by the predictable 'scares' that she began to doze off about half way in. The next morning we perused IMDb reviews for what we assumed would be some laughs. To our shock we discovered that almost every review was not only positive, but positively glowing, often with scores of 10/10. Perhaps the lack of negative reviews is due to the fact that Lights Out is the boring kind of bad that makes it almost no fun to bash?
This attempt at capitalizing on the viral popularity of a horror short was successful only from a business standpoint. The short was both clever and fun, while the feature film was neither. Dare I say that the short managed more tension and humour in 140 seconds than the feature managed in 81 minutes? Yes.
The opening of the film was jarring and ineffective, giving away everything in a matter of minutes, never to regain a sense of tension for the rest of its running time. The editing and pacing was simply atrocious. The script and acting (perhaps limited by the terrible dialogue) were just abysmal. Amateur hour all around.
Everything about it felt like a lazy cash-grab. Too bad, because the basic idea of a malevolent force whose movement was limited by light - while not entirely original - could have been developed into something interesting. The short had some promise. Instead they took a fun little short and pumped it full of the most obvious James Wan plot points and tiresome horror conventions and, even then, barely managed to pad it out to 80 minutes.
Without any real idea as how to build upon the elements of the original short, the rest of the film was your standard string of tiresome clichés, including the cliché of clichés, the creepy-little-demon-voiced-girl-in-the-hospital-psych-ward trope, complete with the doctor's audio recordings of their sessions that someone listens to for sake of exposition. Snore.
Nothing about the film makes sense, even in the world of horror and suspended disbelief. The 'monster' is inconsistent and breaks its own rules not only from scene to scene, but from moment to moment within the same scene. It is obvious that the producers decided the film would become stale if they set it in the one house, and so the characters change location rather arbitrarily and the malevolent force follows despite it not having any motivation to do so. They do so only to eventually return to the original house. Nothing comes of the scenes outside of the house, except the monster does what so many monsters in the post-Paranormal Activity world do: it took time out from trying to kill people to leave clues that could be traced back to a 'creepy crayon drawing' drawn by a child. Snore.
The only really effective sequence was when the little boy when to speak to his mother and she kept referring to "we" and sorta motioning to the darkened doorway as if there was someone there. That gave us both a chill. But that was the only time we weren't laughing or, in the case of my friend, sleeping.
Really, just make to time to watch the short a couple more times over your lifetime and save an hour of your life to do anything besides watching this (barely) feature-length film.
The Erlking (2003)
Absolutely gorgeous sand-on-glass animation.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's eerie poem "Der Erlkönig" is brought to life in this beautiful short, "The ErlKing", directed and animated by Ben Zelowicz. While the dying boy's face is perhaps given too much screen time, the imagery of the woods, the ride and the ErlKing evokes the quiet horror of German woodcuts from the 16th-18th Century. The brief use of colour is extremely effective.
A possible negative would be the soundtrack, which I found somewhat overbearing. Peter Mikamoto's piano and especially Paul Berkold's baritone (singing the original poem in German) is simply too grand for the small frame. Franz Shubert's music is too jarring and distracting from the visual feast, which could have worked quite nicely as a silent piece or, at most, with minimalist piano. Their work is superb on its own, but it is too much on the small screen. Perhaps it is more suited to live accompaniment at a screening?
All in all definitely worth the five minutes.
Tex, the Passive-Aggressive Gunslinger (2000)
Bob Balaban makes this work.
This is a short and sweet..er..short. It's a one-gag show so it's good that it's only 10 minutes. The title says everything...it's impossible to have a spoiler. Yes, by this I mean it's terribly predictable...watch it for Bob's performance.
Tarzan (1999)
More Garbage From The Disney Garbage Machine
It appears that putrid garbage has become the status quo at Disney. This film was a complete waste of time and effort. For both the artists and the audience. Well, I guess Eisner gets a new home. Disney starts off with their now requisite butchering of the story. But this time 'round the changes completely alter the tale. The book isn't much to begin with but having animals that speak English kinda takes away everything that TARZAN was about. Why not just call him Zantar or Notlob or something. Because the names are all that remain of Burroughs' story.
And so with that eliminated, what are we left with? Sub-par animation (yes, the computer technology has improved the animation technically, but it also seems to be having a detrimental effect on the artistic quality), equal to that of the average Saturday morning cartoon; bad jokes (both those aimed at the adults and the children); an absolutely offensive performance by Rosie O'Donnell as Terk; one-dimensional characters that you've seen in every other Disney flick in the last 10 years; ridiculously inaccurate animal behaviour; intrusive, grating pop singles that do not jive with the context; cutesy baby faces and corporate and fast-food merchandising tie-ins galore. I know ones who read this will say "but it's a KIDS movie"...but it isn't about kids or storytelling or even just plain entertainment anymore. It's just fat guys in nice suits and dollar signs in their eyes.
Besides, children are far more intelligent than Hollywood treats them, running them through the brainwash & ringer of mindless consumerism, supplying the predictable formula of familiar franchise foodstuffs of cinema to minds arteries clogged with nutrient-free subsistence. If you absolutely must place your children in front of something that buzzes and flashes, please, for the love and future of humanity, put them in front of an episode of Sesame Street or an old episode of Reading Rainbow, they'll have more fun and even learn something.
Still, Disney Co. will continue to throw around the words "classic" and "magic" like they created (or own) them.
Sorry, this ain't much of a review but the film weakened me to this state.
Ugh, I feel like my innocence has been swallowed by some beast.
Time of the Apes (1985)
"I don't care!" if this was a TV show..it still sucks
A wretched piece only rendered watchable by the MST3K crew. Submoronic script and plot not seen since the 50s heyday of science fiction. Pseudo-science abound, contrived plot points and a tie-up complete with 50s-styled message-preaching that was telegraphed a mile away. The dub is an atrocity. Poor translation and aggravating voices up the cringe factor immensely.
We join Catherine and two children, Caroline and Johnny on a trip to check out Johnny's uncle's lab where they are performing experiments in the field of cryogenics (or "cold sleep" as they call it in the film). You know exactly what is going to happen...slam bang, they're frozen in the chamber during an earthquake. Blahblahblah. They awake in a strange land where apes rule and humans are no where to be seen. It is not clear why or if the three believe themselves to be anywhere but the same old Japan they 'left' before. But nothing really is. It's just a sad knock-off of Planet Of The Apes. "NO!" Like you're surprised. Planet of The Apes was a bad film, this is just worse. With the 6 years of new make up and prosthetic technology over the original Apes flick, you'd think they'd be able to make it so the apes could at least kinda move their lips. Yes, it is a low budget TV show. Whatever. It is still a rip off and a dreadful one at that. And yes, it is a rip. Not an "homage", whomever started that whole angle must have been a hollywood producer.
Them! (1954)
Hey, this could really happen!
Of all the films of this genre (1950's cold war paranoia, aliens, monsters and atomic mutations) that I have seen, THEM! is by far the best. Yes, it certainly has the 'plot' of countless other films (Big _________s caused by radiation) and the square-jawed heroes, but THEM! goes beyond that.
Despite the fact that it was intended to be shot in color, this film seems more natural in b&w. The lighting holds THEM! together. Particularly in the desert 'tension' scenes and the finale in the flood drains of LA. The acting is fine, definetly not wooden-a trait which plagues this genre. Thankfully, other than the something-exposed-to-radiation-must-become-a-larger-something thing, the film doesn't get muddled in pseudo-science and gibberish thus killing any anxiety with un-intended laughs. Some people might even learn something about ants (and giant ants).