Finally taking care of a few things...

Alright, I prised myself away from SupCom...

Alright, I've discovered that I've moved well beyond the Normal AI in Supreme Commander, which is fine, but more challenging enemies also means longer games.... damn.

When I said above that I would be taking care of a few things, what I meant to say was that I would be writing a few movie reviews while watching the episode of Lost I missed this week. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Unrest

One of the 8 Films to Die For, Unrest is like the others, semi-obscure indie directors and writers, actors that no one's ever hear of, but, fairly decent movies. They were likely submissions that weren't good enough to stand on their own, but, package them together and market them as they did, and you've got something people will actually seek out. It clearly worked on me.

Of course, I'm a horror movie fan, be they good or bad

Now, Unrest fits in nicely. It's not terrible, but it's clear why this one wasn't marketed on it's own. The film is written and directed by no one, and stars some people I'm sure I've seen in the background of various network shows. With that said, the acting level in the film is not going to turn heads, though I've certainly seen worse. But, I won't be expecting any of these people in any other major titles soon.

The story is actually pretty straight forward, a creepy American woman dies abroad, her body is brought back to the states as a medical cadaver. The story then revolves around an young, attractive med student who doesn't feel comfortable slicing into it with her peers. Of course, this is for good reason, as the corpse is apparently carrying the enraged spirits of several Aztec or Mayan dead she'd found in some sort of mass grave. Actually, that whole part of the story is pretty convoluted.

The brunt of the movie flows like a 'suspense horror', but it seems the writer was determined to add a flair of the 'spiritual' and what have you, as many of the characters all seem to bring to topic up. The dialog is also pretty poor in more than a few spots, one memorable quote would be, "My cadaver wants something from me and I better figure it out before she kills me too." Another great line, from one medical student to another while suturing a human bite wound, "Don't you need a tetanus shot or something?"

There's also some major inconsistencies as well. First, the main heroine of the film is an atheist, but she seems to be wearing a cross necklace throughout the movie, it even falls out while she's talking about being an atheist. Another is the odd bit is where, the med student, completely creeped out, sets aside her fear for some frisky sex, which wouldn't be so bad, but they'd just been 'fighting the evil' for a while, and then suddenly flipped it to the sex. Oh, and there's not one, but two scenes where the attractive main character takes off her top to be in her bra so that she can reach into a large vat of formaldehyde, as if we didn't get enough the first time, we get to see it again.

The shooting is solid, and while it's clearly not researched well, it was supposedly shot in a real morgue, and according to the trailer, they actually used real bodies. All things considered, it seems like a great first film for those involved. The ending did seem to leave things open for a sequel, although I don't imagine we'll see one.


The Hamiltons

Now, the second of the 8 Films to Die For series that I watched, and after having a relatively good experience with the first, the second really frustrated me.

It's not that the movie is bad, it's just not exciting in any way. There's hardly any build up, perhaps it's just knowing that it's a horror film, but you don't go from zero to sixty, it just seems to remain at a zero all throughout.

Don't get me wrong, there's blood, and gore, but never there's never a shock, there's never a scene where even a 13 year old girl would jump. It's boring.

The acting isn't terrible, either, but it's certainly not compelling by any stretch of the imagination. The dialog is pretty piss poor, as well.

As to the writing, everything about the film just rolls along, of course not well, but it clips along. The problem comes in when they try to introduce the twist, it's pathetic. It's sad, and feels as though they were just itching to be clever, but fall well short of the target.

All in all, I hated it. Not in the way that I've hated movies like The House of the Dead, but in the way that I would never watch it again. I really don't recommend it.


Idiocracy

Mike Judge, apparently still trying to do things since the Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill. Alright, I'll admit to loving Office Space, but he's certainly not a juggernaut in his own right, and of course, that was in 1999. Luckily, he actually managed a pretty funny movie with Idiocracy, unfortunately, the film had nearly no marketing.

This is the first point I'll talk about, because it's annoying. The movie was distributed by 20th Century Fox. The movie does not do much to help the image of large corporations, showing the future of companies like Starbucks as handing out handjobs, and Fuddruckers name slowly morphed into Buttfuckers. Carl's Jr.'s new motto becomes "Fuck you, I'm eating", supplanting their "Don't bother me, I'm eating." Most notable is that they depict Fox News as being hosted by beefy wrestlers and having little actual news content. The end result was that the film had a limited release in only 125 theaters, a far cry from the typical 2500-3000 theater release. There were no posters, no ads, no trailers. It seems that they did everything they could be keep the film quiet. Which is really too bad.

Now, on to the actual film. The movie starts out with a montage of videos with powerful voice over, it describes the way that stupid humans seem to procreate much faster than those with some level of intellect. It uses humorous charts and various clips of an oversexed hilbilly.

From there, we are set-up for the rest of the movie, where an Army Sergeant, an meager man who when confronted with the "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" speech, will simply move away into obscurity so as not to draw attention to himself. He's taken from his job as an Army librarian, and given to a military experiment. He's supposed to be frozen for 1 year, to prove that the system works, allowing the government to freeze they're most impressive soldiers during times when they're not being used, so that they can be unfrozen when they are actually needed. The idea is to test this on someone who is completely unremarkable in every way so as to not lose an asset. There's also a hooker who goes under at the same time. Due to a snafoo, the project is dismantled and the Army base is bulldozed. They are never unfrozen.

We watch as 500 years pass, people get stupider, and keep breeding. The pair end up as part of a massive landfill, which are huge towering mountains. Apparently they are prone to avalanche, which is apparently one of several problems now plaguing humanity.

Everyone is stupid, and our hero turns out to be the smartest person on the planet. He is retained by the President to fix all the worlds problems, he's given a week. The main problems are that crops aren't growing and the country is plagued by massive sand storms.

The former Sergeant realizes, that while he's not brilliant, he realizes that the problem seems to be coming from the liberal use of Brawndo, an energy drink that has supplanted water in every application. As a matter of fact, water is only used in toilets.

The movie is pretty funny, and actually has a decent enough message, which will probably be lost on the cretinous mouth-breathers about which the film is written. But, there's enough jokes that even stupid people will laugh and point, while trying not to spill their beer.

Final Destination 3 - or - I can't believe I watched this movie...

I was at a friend's (Mike's) house, and we were going over his massive collection of DVDs and we came across this film. My initial reaction was, "Huh, they did a third one?"

But, in retrospect, I do recall saying that I would never see this movie when an ad came on television.

Alas, I did see it.

It's awful. But, at least it's awful in the way that all bad horror flicks should be.

First, there's very little consistency, most notable comes in the very beginning, when our heroine envisions the roller coaster crash. When she throws a fit, she and her cohorts end up off the ride, which promptly crashes anyway. The problem here is that the character carrying the video camera which actually cause the crash in her vision, ends up off the train as well.

It's all down hill from there folks.

Of course, they again recall the fate of those that weren't on flight 180, but in an even more loose manner than the second. The beauty of this comes from the fact that most of the people who watched this don't need it recanted, even through the illogical find on google, since they probably saw at least one of the two, and of course those that didn't aren't going to feel like they know the movie better by hearing it. It's just pointless filler that could have been left out.

The only redeeming value of this film is that the deaths are terribly fun to watch. The set-ups for each are nearly as good as the previous films, so, it's not bad.

Of course, I thought the second was better than the first, but none of these were all that good to begin with. Would I watch it again? Yeah, sadly I probably would... although I'd have to be doing something else at the same time.


That's it for now.

As always, though, I shall return.