Satan Lives…in a jug: “Prince of Darkness”

You can accuse John Carpenter of many things, but remaking the same movie certainly isn’t one of them. Unlike the Saw guys who just keep cranking out newer and rustier ways to dismember people, or George Romero who never met a symbol he couldn’t fit the Zombocolypse into, Carpenter genuinely tries to make a different movie every time. Of course, they’re not all good—hit miss-to-hit ratio is pretty high—but you can’t say the guy doesn’t try. From the late ‘80s through, well, today he’s hit a bit of a rough patch. A few of the movies he’s made in the past 20 years have some followers, but few have truly tapped into his talents. 1987s Prince of Darkness is a misfire—albeit one beloved by Carpenter fans—but a somewhat intriguing one. Its central concept has all the potential of a cerebral, psychological horror film. Unfortunately, in the execution we get a lot of lame-brained dialogue, bad acting, and a central notion that posits that Satan lives, and he is a math geek.

Do Not Taunt the Demon: “Paranormal Activity”

Welcome back. Today we’re going to be looking at the film Paranormal Activity, which is a DIY movies that some people slapped together for a couple bucks and then gets released and makes quadzillions of bucks. The movie has actually been around scaring people for a couple weeks (and two years in small screenings before it got a decent distribution), but I’m only getting around to it now. Ideally I would have reviewed this in time for Halloween, but I didn’t. Sue me. Anyway, I’m also going to SPOIL Paranormal Activity, but the version I’ve seen is an earlier version with a different ending. Anyway, let’s have at it…

Dennis Quaid’s career death-spiral continues: “Pandorum”

Okay, so what’s on deck here? Pandorum? Aw, dammit…(sigh). All right. Pandorum. Well, here’s something novel about this movie: it’s simultaneously stupid and disappointing. Disappointing because it’s so stupid, and stupid because of the ways it disappoints. Wow, it’s sort of a Mobius strip of badness. That’s something, isn’t it? Well, not really, but I’m doing my best here. Pandorum reminds me a lot of Event Horizon. Like EH, it’s a wholly original sci-fi vision of terror. Not a franchise, or a reboot of a franchise or a bastardization of a franchise, but something totally new. And like Event Horizon, it carries this idea as far as an intriguing set-design before promptly pissing all over it. Thanks screenwriter Travis Milloy and director Christian Alvert. Want to kick my dog while you’re at it?

The Bangkok International Film Festival Concludes: Fiveplay…”Phobia 2″

So, the last installment in our roundup of the Bangkok International Film Festival, comes from the host country of Thailand. No, it’s not Sawasdee Bangkok! the country’s official entry (fer chrissakes, that movie is 247 minutes long–I couldn’t watch Freema Agyeman bathe for 247 minutes…well, maybe…probably not…possibly…), no, instead we’re going to look at a scary little installment called Phobia 2 (or Haa Phrang in Thai—Five Crossroads). Phobia 2 is a series of five horror vignettes, directed by some of Thailand’s most successful commercial directors. As a general rule, I’m not a huge fan of vignettes—movies or TV shows—since by design they can’t delve too deeply into the worlds they present. In this case, as a horror-injection system, they work pretty well. It kept the girlfriend huddling against me in fright, and what more can you really ask of a horror film?

Dispatch from the Bangkok International Film Festival: “My Dear Enemy”

Hold on to something, because the next BIFF offering is a whipsaw 180-degree turn from Antichrist. We move from a movie that builds from a series of shocking acts to a horrific, over-the-top climax to a movie which trundles along with all the speed and power of a Prius. The South Korean film My Dear Enemy is pretty much everything Antichrist is not. It isn’t lurid, overheated, violent, or even possessed of much momentum. What it does have is an emotional center that drives the narrative and two sharply and realistically-drawn characters it follows for its runtime. It also has such a palpable feel of realism that there truly is not a false note in its entirety.

Future Meth, Exploding People, and 007: “Outland”

Our next installment of “Schlocktastic ’80s” is 1981’s Outland, a Sean Connery vehicle that sends the former 007 both to outer space and to the old West. Growing up in the ‘80s, Outland was something of a forbidden fruit to my 10 year-old self, as it was played on heavy rotation on the then-new HBO channel of the recently-installed “cable TV” system. Of course, we didn’t have HBO, because my parents believed that television was a soul-corrupting force that would rot your brain, make you obese from inactivity, antisocial from the lack of human contact, and probably sodomize you when they weren’t looking or something. Even MTV was off-limits on our package. For an entire summer, I had to put up with my (HBO-having, Puritanical-parents-not-having) friends breathlessly tell me about how people blew up in this movie! How awesome is that? Astronauts did wiggy things and exposed themselves to zero-pressure space and blew up. For decades, Outland was, for me, the movie that starred James Bond, and where people blew up. Hell, even today I’d buy a ticket for that.

Michael Mann Week(end): “Public Enemies”

A Michael Mann film often times feels as if you’re watching a story unfold through a gunsight. His latest film, Public Enemies, based on the non-fiction book by Bryan Burrough is no exception. Public Enemies tells the story of 1934, the year John Dillinger stormed the Midwest, knocking over banks, romancing a coat-check girl, and evading the ever-tightening net of FBI. It’s a true story that offers itself up to the treatment of cinema so readily, that Dillinger himself seemed to understand that he was, in fact, the star of his own movie. Dillinger’s tale was Heat fifty years before Heat was made, so it seems almost a foregone conclusion that Mann would make a movie of his life story. If Public Enemies—which is a great film, make no mistake—suffers in comparison to Heat, it’s only because the true story was too vast and sprawling to be captured in the ACOG of Mann’s camera viewfinder.

REPOST: “Miami Vice”

In honor of Michael Mann week (end), I’m reposting my review of “Miami Vice,” originally posted February 13, 2008 from Baghdad, Iraq.

As a television program Miami Vice has a special place in my heart, since it defined cool in my early teen years. Yeah, the show was faddish and burned out fast, but it also holds an important place in television history as the moment when serious money and talent began being funneled into television programming to narrow the divide between movies and episodic TV. The Shield, Deadwood, The Sopranos, the Wire were all made possible to some degree by Miami Vice. Before Vice, there was CHiPs.

Fourth of July in Siam, cameras, lingerie, and Thai movies: “Wongkamlao” and “Nymph”

One of the benefits of celebrating the Fourth of July in a foreign country (one with actual diversions and not a postage stamp in the middle of the desert, like last year) is that you get the days off, but don’t have to deal with the usual Fourth of July headaches: cookouts populated by weird family members you’d rather not spend time with, the annual bloodsport of fighting for a patch of land to watch the fireworks, the list goes on. I mean, I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but part of freedom and independence is the freedom from having to put up with cousin zippy from mom’s side boasting about his new position as deputy chief accountant at the Usinger’s plant. So this year, I headed out to Central World mall, where as fortune would have it, they were hosting a camera expo/lingerie show. Excellent! What better way to celebrate America’s birth than by watching lovely Thai women in lingerie strike Sapphic poses in the middle of a family mall. If this isn’t what our forefathers fought the Revolutionary War for, well…they sure would have. Unfortunately, you can only ogle the pretty girls for so long before the sex-tourist vibe sets in. So, I decided to book some time at the Cineplex. Public Enemies hasn’t yet opened in Thailand, and Transformers is blowing everything else out of theaters, so I saw a couple Thai movies instead. Yes, this whole paragraph was a long-winded way of telling you I’m going to review some Thai movies. But isn’t the pic from the camera expo awesome?

Sea monsters will eat your plane: “Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus”

So, Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus. Well, can’t really go wrong with that combination, can you? And, to its credit, the movie does deliver. There is a mega shark. There is an octopus. The octopus is giant. And they fight (lest you think this is a movie about the 1988 Supreme Court decision M. Shark v. G. Octopus). On top of this we get attacks on ships, planes, submersibles, and even the Golden Gate Bridge. We get Lorenzo Llamas acting like a douchebag, and Debbie (sorry, Deborah) Gibson acting…well…bless her for trying. You know, I’m going to spend several paragraphs ragging on MSvGO, but what you cannot accuse it of is dishonesty.