#30-The Lovely Bones (2009)

The Lovely Bones

It is interesting to go from one of Peter Jackson’s more enjoyable films, Dead Alive, to what is possibly his worst, with The Lovely Bones (Mike called it on his comment below Dead Alive) . Once again he is in the business of adapting a novel to the big screen, this time one about a murder instead of a ring, a girl instead of a hobbit, and the 70’s instead of middle earth. And while I think that The Lovely Bones is a hard project to do, simply because you have both strong dealings with fantasy and reality, and must communicate both to the audience in a sense that makes them accessible, I just can’t help but feel like Jackson dropped the ball a little on this one.

Our story follows a young girl by the name of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) who is living a typical teenage life in the seventies with her Mother (Rachel Weisz), Father (Mark Wahlberg), Brother and Sister. Susie is a typical young girl, loves taking pictures, is in film club, has a crush on the boy, and goes to school. Unfortunately while walking home from club one day she finds out that her neighbor (Stanley Tucci) is building a club house next to the school, ’Just a little something for the kids’ with only one rule: ’no adults allowed’. He invites Susie to be the first one inside the club house, but she never does make it out.

Stanley Tucci received an Oscar nomination for his work on the film, and I got to say, he deserves it. He plays a really creepy man thoroughly and mercilessly. He is simply terrifying to watch onscreen, as with Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds (not quite there, but close) The rest of the cast does a decent job, virtual new-comer Saoirse Ronan does an okay job of playing our lead girl, and Wahlberg and Weisz perform middle ground as well, but unfortunately, their characters get pushed to the wayside by Stanley Tucci, who simply steals the spotlight whenever he appears. Rachel Weisz’s character could have been left out altogether, as could so many others, who seem to be put there for just more dialogue.

Now, what The Lovely Bones does differently from other murder mystery’s, is it puts Susie in ’the in-between’ which is a world of completely fantasy, untouched by reality, as she is able to look down and see her family, and she must remain here until her killer is caught. This is where Jackson excels, he is a great fantasy director, and he can capture leaves on a tree turning into birds and flying off well enough, but where he struggles is with the real world, which is half of the film as well. Part of the film is the family falling apart after the murder of their daughter, but I didn’t care about the family falling apart because I didn’t care about the family. They are not given enough time to tell us their story, nor are we given enough reason to care about them. All we want, or really need to see is the Tucci character interacting with them and the police. I could care less about the grandmother moving in with them, and I could care less about their marital issues, and the screenplay was not written to make you care, which unfortunately is a major flaw of the movie because it is a good chuck of its running time.

"My name is Salmon, like the fish."

Another problem that comes with the movie is the way the Tucci character is created. He is set up as the nicest guy in the world before we meet him, so we have a little tiny spec of sympathy for him, even though we know he is going to be the killer. He then proceeds to what killers do, and progressively get more and more creepy by the end of the film. What is wrong with this, is we never actually see the murder. We see a little bit of struggle and that’s it, the camera cuts away before she is actually killed, and in fact, because of the whole ‘in-between’ business, we think that she’s escaped for some time, which is a fatal mistake. Though we already dislike the Tucci character, and hate him as it is, had we actually seen the murder, had the tones been darker, had the camera been rougher, we could have really, really hated this man. I think, by the way a few of the scenes go, this movie was originally intended to be an R rated film. To be a hard-hitting make you cry kinda movie, and was later changed into a PG-13 teeny-bopper thing, which was not a good move for the film itself.

Another gigantic problem I had with it was the ending. When it happen I just stared open-mouthed at the screen and went “Really?”. I mean I won’t spoil it here, but we knew that the real world could effect the ‘in-between’, but that just took it way to far. Not only that but the way the scene was shot, it happen all to quickly, without much context, and couldn’t really effect our opinion. It was one of those rousing scenes where everyone screams in joy because of it, it was just this tacked-on little ‘oh, by the way, this happens’ which nearly killed the movie for me. Because this part was happening in the real world. In reality this never would have happened. The film needed to separate the reality and in-between to make it effective, but they just don’t pull them far enough apart, and this scene is the perfect example of this.

One thing however that I did enjoy about the film, was it had some cool camera-work at times. Such as extreme rough close-ups of his hands, and a few nice Snorri-cam shots that made the whole thing feel a lot darker for a few moments, which you know I would have appreciated. But these hardly last long enough, or are enough in general to bring the film up from the slump it had already created for itself, and it pretty much just sits for a long time, doing nothing for the audience, just sitting.

Overall, The Lovely Bones just doesn’t work. I think that the project could have been done well as an adult Fairy Tale, a sort of Pan’s Labyrinth kind of thing, but it just doesn’t. The film is too easy on the eyes in the real world, has too many characters we just don’t care about, and just sits about trying to be something that its not. Peter Jackson can be good, but his great fantasy sequences can’t overpower what should be happening in reality, which is nothing. Stanley Tucci is the saving grace here, with an excellently dark performance as the killer that we don’t see enough of, and a few shots that seemed to be from the original cut of the film also make it a tad better. I almost want to give it in the 1-ish out of five zone, but damn if Tucci didn’t give me the creeps every time.

I Give The Lovely Bones A:
2/5

#29-Dead Alive (1992)

Dead Alive

Before he went all crazy, making those silly Academy Award Winning Lord Of The Rings movies, Australian director Peter Jackson had a fairly nice career making crowd-pleasing horror film. His most famous of which are Bad Taste and Dead Alive. While these two films didn’t make much of a splash stateside during their theatrical release, they did soon become cult classics, and made a killing on DVD.

Dead Alive is known to most by a different title. One that is a little more catchy, being Braindead. It was put out under Braindead in most regions of the world, nearly all in fact except America where it was changed to Dead Alive, which makes it sound more cheesy than it should. Even though this movie has enough cheese to make Kraft jealous.

The plot that the film follows can be easily claimed by almost any zombie flick. On a trip to a remote jungle, a zoologist uncovers a strange breed of monkey, which at that point attacks both him and his crew. Somehow the monkey catches a ride on a boat and makes it way to land, where it is promptly caught and placed in a zoo. Enter a young man with an over protective Mom, a crush on the girl next door, a heart full of gold, and a body full of clumsy. Lionel decides to take his girlfriend on a date, and go to the zoo of course, but his always knifing mother is there to put a stop to things, and subsequently gets bitten by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey. She gets ill, passes on, and then comes back, only to bite and infect more people with this strange disease from a distant land.

"I've got some Cure-All in the Jeep."

Obviously, Dead Alive isn’t one of the most original films to grace the screen. In fact, its plot has been done several times, near to death, but it just keeps coming (he-he). The screenplay, weak as it may be, is always fun. Now fun doesn’t mean good. It’s full of inconsistencies, impossibilities, voice-overs, terrible dialogue, and to many deux ex machinia’s to count. Our hero begins as a bumbling idiot, and somehow becomes a leading class strong-man in the course of about three days. He also has the keen ability to get the girl, end his mom, and save the day. Like I said, fun doesn’t mean good. But in the life of a film critic, sometimes its nice to just sit back and watch some stupid without a care in the world.

That being said, for what it is, Dead Alive is an excellent film. It obviously knows what it wants to do and does that perfectly. It has a certain vulnerability at its heart that entrances the audience into rooting for the characters, and hoping for the survival of their favorites. It may be one of the best zombie films made. It’s intentionally funny and self-referential, the humor doesn’t always hit, but when it does, it hits spot on. The film is also unrelentingly grueling, gory and violent. Peter Jackson knows how to direct violence, he puts things at the perfect angle, sets up just the right shot, gets the gore, and doesn’t let up. He isn’t afraid to cover the screen in gooey red, or green, or even white. (yes white, one of the more disgusting scenes in the film)

Not a whole lot else matters in a zombie film like this. The film sets it sites, and hits its mark. It knows what it does, does it perfectly and nothing else. You cannot hate a zombie movie for being a zombie movie, especially a good one. It is wholesome, mindless, brain-bashing, gut-munching, side-killing fun, that never lets up and never holds back. Peter Jackson can have his cake and eat it too, as he knows how to direct fun, entertaining horror films, and win some Academy Awards too.

I Give Dead Alive A:

3/5

#28-Surveillance (2008)

Surveillance

Surveillance is the second film from Jennifer Lynch. Daughter of David Lynch, her career was thought to be short-lived after her debut feature Boxing Helena was received extremely negatively by both from both movie-goers and critics alike. Now, fifteen years later she tries again to break into the business her father is constantly revolutionizing, and she does so with mixed results.

If her career speaks for Jennifer Lynch thoroughly, she is never going to be as talented as her father is. This is something that needs to be stated, and known. If you go in thinking that Jennifer Lynch is going to be there for us when David passes on, I’m afraid you’re going to be wrong. Boxing Helena was obviously a film with a number of flaws, all of them nearly unforgivable. Surveillance however brings her work up a notch, and almost lets you forget about her previous film, but that however is not something very hard to do.

For all it’s worth, Surveillance certainly doesn’t have as unique of a story as Boxing Helena, but that doesn’t really matter when the other film just ended up terrible. Surveillance is about two F.B.I. agents investigating a series of murders, and a missing woman. While at the town where these vicious acts have taken place, they interrogate three people: a cocaine addicted woman, a corrupt police officer, and a little girl whose family was killed by the murderer. All three of the stories are told slightly differently through the eyes of these people, and ultimately interlock.

The film wants to, and sometimes tries, to be about the different reactions of different people when they know they are being watched by authority or peers. While it desperately wants to be deep and tell us a little something about the human psyche, and ends up falling short, and reverting to a murder-mystery tale that has a trick that we’ve seen before (different people, different stories, overall story develops through different additions ), and even has some slasher film influences, with the killers wearing creepy masks, and lots of blood making it’s way onto the screen.

"Is that your statement?"

The story is interesting enough, but it has been done before. A lot before. This idea of telling the story over and over again through different perspectives has almost begun to be normal, and the classic murder-mystery style of having one person solve it the lesser used. The mental aspect they wanted to add doesn’t work, and the twist ending easy to see coming. There is nothing specifically good with the story, but nothing specifically bad about it either.

The two main parts in the film are played by Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman, playing the F.B.I agents, and they do decently, again something that I could go either way on, there was nothing that made their roles jump out, or hold back, but I do have to admit, Bill Pullman is always kind of creepy, so it did somewhat add to the performance. Ryan Simpkins places the young girl Stephanie, and does a fantastic job for her age and part, she is easily one of the best child actors I’ve seen in awhile, and can’t wait to see more from her, in fact she is the first child to win a Best Actress award at the New York City Horror Film Festival. The film also has some other not to shabby performances from Kent Harper and Pell James.
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Jennifer Lynch’s direction in this film is actually rather nice. She keeps the film raw and unshakeable. Never do we see anyone in the background, keeping us with a feeling of desperation a solitude, as if we couldn’t escape. A good deal of the film is set in the middle of the desert, which only enhances that effect. The office building in which the police work is desolate and empty, which though unexplained is still creepy as well. The film rapidly switches through color tonality, which gives us different feelings based on which character we’re watching and that helps the film quite a bit.

Jennifer Lynch has certainly beaten her previous offering with Surveillance, but like I said, it just doesn’t matter because almost anything could be her previous offering. She showed that she does have some skill behind the camera and can create a certain amount of emotion, but were she lacks is in directing people. The plot is ordinary, overused, and has been outdone, but is never boring, if she does another film, I will go ahead and give it a shot, but won’t necessarily look forward to it. Surveillance is a film that won’t kill you to see, but you shouldn’t kill to see it. It rests right in the middle, and is worth a rental if you were looking for it.

I Give Surveillance A:
3/5

#27-Tideland (2005)

Tideland

Monty Pyton animator turned director Terry Gilliam makes his way onto the blog again! It’s his second time, and it hopefully it won’t be the last. He was previously on for Brazil, a film that I absoloutly loved. Tideland, one of his most recent attempts is one of his worst. I don’t think he has made a specifically bad film yet, but Tideland gets pretty close.

The story follows a young girl named Juliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who is the child of two very neglectful parents. Both into hard drugs, her father (Jeff Bridges) and her mother (Jennifer Tilly) are very bad for, and to her health. Having no friends being on the move constantly because of her father being a musician, she has no friends, except for her dolls. After her mother dies, and her father overdoeses, she continually escapes into a fantasy world, filled with many creepy characters and strange elements.

The film was universally panned by fans and critics alike upon intial realese. And I have to say, I don’t really disagree with them. The film is very weak for most of it’s course, having no real centerfold story, except for the life of this young girl, which we learn realativly nothing about. Her escapades into a fantasyland becomes boring after a few visits, as the movie plods along at a pretty slow rate.

The side characters are interesting and fun, more so than our main girl, which also leads to another problem, similair to the one I had with Everything Is Illuminated, where we want to see more, and are more interested in the dilemmas of the supporting cast than our leaders. Also to note, the film boasts having stars such as Bridges and Tilly, but they are hardly in the film.

Speaking of which, Jodelle Ferland gives quite possibly one of the best perfomances I’ve seen in awhile. And this is coming from someone who absoloutly hates children in film. She carries the film on her shoulders, completely on her own. But she has a very boring and plain character to play, which makes her performance something less. Nonethless, it is quite amazing.

I also applaud the films style and art direction. Its very unique in its use of special effects, and ideas. The dolls are particularly creepy, and the day/night transitions are very cool. Another thing the film has on it’s side was cinematography, which kept an otherwise slow and boring film interesting and fresh.

Overall, Tideland was a very mixed bag. The film had cool style, and an excellent lead actress. However, style cannot overcome substance, and a lackluster plot, slow story, poor character development, and pretty uninteresting people make the movie somewhat hard, and annoying to watch, it isn’t necissarily the bad, but that doesn’t make it good either.


I Give Tideland A:
2/5

#26-Friday The 13th Part II (1981)

Friday The 13th Part II

Aha! Mrs. Voorhees is back again...wait, thats not right...um.... Jason is back once again! Wait no. Jason is...starting? I guess so. In the second installment of the Friday series, another group of unsuspecting teenagers are slaughtered by a vicious killer. However in Part II, five years after the events of the original, a group of young camp counselors set out on endeavour for training, but not at Camp Crystal Lake, one across the lake, but still in the same forest. Jason apparently was more that an imagination, as he saw his mothers decapitation from the last film, and has grown up and is ready to exact his revenge. On more horny teenagers. However, Jason is a little different than you expect him to be. How you ask. Guess what, no hockey mask. Thats a trait that didn't get picked up until the third movie. First the killer wasn't Jason, and now no hockey mask. This series is just full of surprises, just like this sequel, they are mostly good.

We open just three months after the events of Part I, with Adrienne King breifly reprising her role of Alice from the first film. She lasts about fifthteen minutes before meeting her own shocking demise. Driving down the road in an old beat up truck, we find the next two of Jason's victims trying to find there way to a camp not far from the infamous camp blood. Not very many people decided t0 come back for this sequel, Adrienne King and Walt Gorny as Ralph, as well as Betsy Palmer. The new campers are not much different from the last, infact, I swear one of them looked exactly like Kevin Bacon. The new lead is a young blond named Ginny, not Jenny, but Ginny, played by Amy Steel. She was one of my least favorite characters in the movie, and I found her acting to be very annoying. Needless to say I enjoyed Anrienne King as our "Final Girl" a lot more. The rest of the acting in this movie is what you've come to expect from a horror film. Where in any other genre it would be trash, but for a horror film, its passable.

Made after the major, and unexpected success of the first film, Friday The 13th Part II, was made the following year, while still having a meager production, this one was slightly higher, with about one-million dollars on their hands rather than five-hundred-thousand. Originally the story was suppose to end with the third, each Friday The 13th they would put out a new, unrelated film, and turn the movies into some sort of anthology story, much like the Creepshow franchise. However, after each film just kept on raking in the dough, Paramount decided that Jason was enough, and the anthology would just have to wait. Besides, when you try to do a series without the many villian, and turn it into an anthology story, things don't go so well, Just look at Halloween III. Yeah, thats what I thought.

While 1981 was a popular year for the then young franchise, having the films first sequel come and all, and a bigger budget to do it with, you'd think that the special effects would knock the ones from the first one out of the park. No. They didn't. Infact they were about the same. While this films death sequences were a lot more creative, they weren't quite as bloody. The worlds only true Gore-Hound, Tom Savini, decided to skip out on doing the effects for Part II, to work on a film called The Burning. The Burning was one of the Friday The 13th clones that came out directly after the first, granted its also one of the better copy-cat films, its obviously not as popular as the Friday films. It didn't have any sequels. At all. Of course with a series like Friday where you have at films that all come out within the same decade, its kind of hard to compete. While I did kind of bitch about the films lack of blood, this is patially due to the MPAA cutting out 48 seconds of footage, which included much more blood letting during the famous double impalment scene, and since they have not realesed an uncut version of this film, there was no way for me to have seen it.

This film lacks the natural tension and creepiness that the original had, and that I loved so much. This film is much more straightforward, with no fancy twist ending, no special mystery killer, it is your average stalk and slash summercamp film. I also think the original had an advantage of having Betsy Palmer, who did a great job with her role of playing a mentally unstable woman, who is doing bad things but for good reasons, so in some ways, you feel sympathetic for her. I honestly thought that it was a tough role, for a very complex character, that unfourtanetly didn't get enough screentime for explanation. However, what this films lacks in tension and atmosphere, it makes up for with unique kills, and a fair about of gore. While you have classic stabs, and slashers, you also get temple crushes, machete heads, and the personal favorite, the all time favorite double impalment scene.

The plot for this film isn't mindblowingly complex, but you probably didn't expect it to be, so its really not that big of a deal. But I do give new Friday writer Ron Kurz some respect of during the plot device of Jason, into an actual story, and tying up some loose ends with the films continuity, and making things move along briskly. But not too brisky considering the film is only eighty-seven minutes long, and it allows for some story to develope, but have the kills frequently enough to not bore the audience. I also give the writer credit for having the balls to have Jason kill a dog, and then make a joke about. I thought the joke was genuinly funny and well placed.

Overall, this movie is definatly a worthy sequel, and better than most that follow it. The kills are better, bloody, and more fun this time over, Jason is finally brought into the picture to keep things fresh this time around. The plot was more or less the same, but kept itself in perspective enough to make it feel real. But it lacked the creepy atmoshphere the original carried perfectly, and while the acting wasn't much better last time around, and least last time, the main character was at least decent. Plus, I do indeed miss the cult classic quote, "killer mommy, kill her, nowhere to run, kill her mommy"

I Give Friday The 13th Part II A:
2.5/5