Halloween Movie Roundup!

Happy Halloween everyone! As you probably know, this is the holiday when the barriers between the living and the dead are the most permeable, and supernatural creatures wander the earth. They’ll probably want to watch movies, so you’re gonna want to have some decent horror movies onhand. I mean, if you were a ghoul come over to this side of the veil, would you want to watch The Ugly Truth? I thought not. So here is a quick roundup of great scary movies to watch on Halloween. Many of these are movies that even scared me—and I have a protective layer of cynicism towards most horror films that keeps me insulated from their effects. Okay, so let’s get to it: Gunmonkey’s Best Movies for Halloween!

Keep watching the skies! Keep watch…oops, never mind: “The Thing”

John Carpenter’s remake of 1951’s The Thing From Another World—abbreviated to simply The Thing (because, really, the whole “from another world” pretty much goes without saying)—was little loved upon release during the summer of 1982. Critics were understandably put off by its gore and violence and relentlessly pessimistic vantage point. After all, this was the summer of E.T.—a magical time when lovable, big-eyed aliens descended upon suburban California to fill the void left in a 10 year-old boy’s heart by the absence of his father. So, yeah, you can see that with your girlfriend or the John Carpenter flick that features a dude’s head separating from his body and sprouting spider legs and eyestalks and walking across the room. Hmmm…I wonder which one is more likely to lead to some action in the AMC Gremlin’s backseat…

It’s taken about a quarter of a century, but finally Carpenter’s version of the horror has finally found some modicum of respect.

More Capsule Reviews!

Okay, a couple movies fell through the cracks while covering G.I. Joe and doing Michael Mann week. Fear not, gentle reader, for I wish to rectify that situation right now. So, there were three notable films I missed. Two horror movies and one sci-fi drama. Two of them suck, one isn’t so bad. They are Clive Barker’s Book of Blood, Solstice, and Timecrimes. Heard of any of them? No? Well, don’t get to worked up about it.

Now I claim your sun! “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

If you’ve read my review of the first Transformers movie, then you know that I didn’t love it. I thought it was loud, stupid, obnoxious, and not all that exciting. It was as if Michael Bay thought if he bludgeoned us with enough activity onscreen, he could convince us we were seeing a fun summer movie. A lot of people thought I was being too hard on what was meant to be a silly summer action movie about giant robots fighting. Kassandra the Work Wife brought up this point on several occasions, “Big robots whaling on each other. What more do you want? I don’t want to think too hard about a movie, Mr. I’m-All-Cool-Because-I-Use-My-Higher-Brain-Functions. Just eat your damn popcorn and enjoy Optimus Prime stomping Deceptacon ass, Mr. Thinkee.” The problem I have with this argument is that the classic summer movie’s that we’ve come to love were well-made­ pieces of disposable entertainment. We still recall and love them precisely because they were so well-made. Transformers was not. Quick, tell me your favorite line or scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Terminator 2, Escape from New York, or Die Hard. Okay, now tell me your favorite line or scene from Transformers (and none of that “One will rise; one will fall” bullshit. That was on the poster). Right, I didn’t think so. Well, the bad news is that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is everything the original was and much, much  more. If the first one was a cinematic pummeling, this one is the Bataan Death March.

REPOST: “Transformers”

In, uh…anticipation seems like the wrong word… preparation for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, I’m reposting my review of the original Transformers , uploaded July 5, 2007.

“Before time began there was The Cube…”

Uh-oh.

Yet this opening voiceover was but the latest evidence that Transformers the movie and anything associated with it is simply bad, wrong, and possibly evil. Others include the Transformers logo bumper stickers that grown men have begun affixing to their cars, the chat room arguments that the robots in the movie lack the depth of personality present in the cartoon series of the mid-‘80s, and the fact that GM—a once-mighty American corporation—is using this movie to hawk their cars the way McDonalds uses Shrek to sell green milkshakes.

Extremely Artificial Intelligence: “Terminator Salvation”

Going into a Terminator movie made without James Cameron or Arnold Schwarzenegger is a lot like going home with a Thai prostitute you met on the corner of a back soi when you’re very drunk. You have no idea what you’re in for when she takes her clothes off, but you can be sure that you’re probably going to be unpleasantly surprised, and regardless, you will have to pay for the experience. And that’s more of less what Terminator Salvation delivers. No, not transsexual Asian prostitutes, but a lot of disappointment that you pay to see.

Getting in touch with my inner 13 year-old girl: “Twilight” (for BondGirl)

One of my coworkers—who happens to have a name that would be perfect for a Connery-era James Bond movie—has been bugging me to review Twilight. This is my punishment for being sociable to the people I work with. Initially I blew it off: “Aren’t those books for teenaged girls?” I asked. “No. People of all ages read them,” she replied. “Yes, but they shouldn’t,” I answered. “Come on! Tap into your inner 14 year-old!” She retorted. “Why would you think I even have one of those?” I thought this would be the end of it, but BondGirl undertook a truly heroic campaign to bring me around. Soon my email inbox was bursting with messages, my cel phone blew up with texts (“When R U goin 2 C Twilight?”), and when I came into work and found a life-sized cardboard cutout of Twilight vampire heartthrob Robert Pattinson propped up in my office. I figured I should probably just review the damn movie before I found my office wallpapered in pictures of Edward and Bella and a pile of carved-up Tiger Beat magazines choking the shredder.

The good (well…fair, well…passable) German: “Valkyrie”

I take some measure of satisfaction in the fact that I was never taken in by Tom Cruise. Even in his heyday of the late ‘80s, I found myself uncomfortably sandwiched between my older sister’s girlish crush on him and my older brother’s guy-crush (“He kicks ass! He flies an F-14! He nailed Kelly McGillis, and she’s hot!”). I wondered why these people and the rest of America didn’t sense, as I did, that he has no soul! There was nothing likable about him. This was not a guy you wanted to have a beer with. He was a guy who’d stiff you on the tab and then leave with your girlfriend just to push your buttons. And then maybe leave her corpse in a ditch. Think I’m kidding? Look at his career before his teeth took over the Universe. His first role was in Endless Love as the kid in juvie who convinces Martin Hewitt to set Brooke Shields’ family’s house on fire. Allegedly, when he showed up on set for Risky Business, director Paul Brickman thought he was a psychopath (only Michael Mann seems to have found a way to harness this spiritual-deadness on the big screen with Collateral). For 25 years America has been perfectly happy believing this ersatz person was, you know, an actual human being up there on the screen. Yet somehow buying him as a Nazi is just too much of a stretch.

Keep watching the skies! “The Thing from Another World” (1951)

Okay, enough of that benevolent-alien-“hey-I’m-just-passing-through” crap. E.T. has officially left the building. Here we have the beating, passionate heart of 1950s genre cinema—The Thing From Another World. This is alien-invaders as vicious other and American camaraderie and ingenuity as the salvation of the free world. What? We already saw that in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers? Yeah, but this one takes place in the Arctic and was remade by John Carpenter.

The Internet, and Why It Wants to Kill You: Untraceable”

Oh that rascally Internets! That malevolent series of tubes (not, I repeat not, a truck!) which helps you wile away the hours of your life shopping, dating, paying bills, catching up with news, and…MURDER! At least that what the good and not-terribly-Internet-savvy folks who made Untraceable would have you believe. See, in their view the Internet has not only made us more connected, it has also made us into serial killers and the ghouls who live vicariously through them.