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JudasXMachina
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Hampshire (2009)
Gave me indigestion....
O dear God in heaven where to start with this pile of putrescence? Spoilers, lot's of them. It is very low budget and the music sounds like a cross between a guitar being dropped and a 70's porno film. It's also very distracting, drowning out the dialogue at times, and other times completely mocking what's happening on screen. In what should have been a serious montage of events made me think of a Looney Toons episode.
It starts off kind of arty, and the director does not know how to use snap cuts. At first I thought it was going to be a "Haunted Dinner With Andre". Two characters on a date try WAY too hard to segway buying a jacket into their own ghostly experiences. And, of course, what do you do on a date when you mention ghost stories? You wait for the restaurant to close in the middle of the afternoon (?) and break in!
Everything seemed like I was watching an episode of Paranormal Witness with only re-enactments and rationality. These re-enactments are broken up by an awkwardly paced series of flashbacks. The movie would have been immeasurably better had it ignored the owner/manager/prep cook/chef story and started off with the dinner date haunting, and gone straight into the flashback that happened "2 years ago".
They flashback to "2 years ago" twice within the same flashback, so you think they went back 4 years, but no. They are just trying to clarify that it is still 2 years ago.
Also, there is no explanation why a thirty year old man would hang out drinking with underage twin boys. It's not even addressed. Maybe I'm jaded, but most men who would invite two young boys into a secluded area and get them drunk probably has that episode of Silver Spoons on his mind.... I'll go into all the Bullsh*t factors individually because there are a lot of them: 1. The contractor at the beginning of the movie goes missing under unusual circumstances (his tape recorder is found with him freaking out on it) and the manager decides to not call the police to report him missing, and instead plays the tape for the staff, telling them to keep quiet about it. CALL THE COPS! If you want to hide something like that, don't tell your entire staff! 2. If three people walk into your restaurant, and give no indication that they are anything but customers, would you give them a hard time? Insult them? We as the audience know they are up to something, not the characters in the movie itself. Would you compare them to ninjas? I didn't think it would take a lot of ninja skills to get into a restaurant during lunch hour, but the manager seems to think so, calling them ninjas repeatedly. 3. Great date idea: breaking and entering under the cover of afternoon. Did I mention that? It must have been so stupid I forgot. 4. Who wouldn't notice an albino boa constrictor on their table? 5. I can pee for a long time, but one character should be in some kind of Olympics. 6. Character: "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?" Answer: "Because it is". *clap clap clap*. Bravo. Even though that answer was given in The Blair Witch 2 I bought it, but it's a pat answer and cheats the audience. I didn't buy it here. 7. Why the hell does the prep cook get a flashback in the middle of the ending? What does it matter if she ate cookie dough with her mommy while she's getting stabbed. It has no application to the plot.* 8. The ending makes no sense, or at least is not explained. How did these ghosts come to be? Why do they hate the living? It's called "Hampshire: A Ghost Story" and there is no story. Earlier in the movie the staff runs rampant with "what happened a long time ago is zombies/demons/monsters/whatever" rumors. Is this foreshadowing? Is the movie telling us these events really happened, when it shows us a progression of storytelling that makes the rumors seem non-applicable or a throwaway joke? Is it post hypnotic suggestion? Where did all the blood come from before anyone was killed? In the beginning of the movie a man goes insane implying he killed a woman. The woman shows up alive at the end of the movie.
SPOILER (If that's possible): The people who die/get murdered at the beginning live. After everyone else is murdered they go back into the restaurant and have dinner. END OF "SPOILER"
Watch it? Not unless you want to fret over getting an hour and a half of your life back.
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (2012)
Worth watching
I confess first off I have never played Halo. I know it's rough story, and after seeing this I still can't help but be reminded of Starship Troopers. That said, this was an excellent film. The pacing was tight, and it perfectly kept the creatures in "the dark" without giving away too much until the triumphant reveal. The introduction to the characters, and the actors themselves, did a good job. There will be no Oscars handed out, but at no time was I pulled out of the story by campy acting or badly delivered dialogue. The story was straightforward with little guesswork as to how things were going to end, but the great pacing and editing draws you in. Unlike many low budget films that waste time eating up minutes to reach "feature length", and skimp on establishing a budget hoping something else will redeem the movie (like t & a), this film immediately felt like an old school FILM! Nothing felt wasted, and even though you could tell they didn't have a big budget, they made everything work around that. This movie used it's effects, to be repetitive, to great effect. And that's what effects are supposed to do, they are supposed to move the story along, not be it's centerpiece. And they are actually quiet good, and do not distract from the story even when you can tell it's CG or a physical effect. Low budget shouldn't mean low quality, and this movie is representative of this. There are a few nods to the game series (I could at least figure most of them out, and it didn't make me feel like I was missing out on anything. A good story should do that). I highly recommend it!
The Crazies (2010)
Better than expected
Why wear a seatbelt? Every movie I've ever seen has people in horrid accidents just walking away.Anyway. This is not a zombie movie. Well, not per se. I will say that I have watched horror movies since I was young and they never scared me (or few did). In the last decade or so I haven't lost any sleep over a scary movie... I think I might lose some now. I kind of had an idea where this movie was going, but there were enough completely random deaths to keep me worried. At points I actually felt nervous. If you are a fan of the genre, or just want a good scare, go ahead, pop some popcorn, and lock your doors and hide from your neighbors.