The Shining (1980)

The Shining is regarded as a classic which makes the fact that I haven’t seen it before today even more baffling. I saw the documentary ‘Room 237’ which basically that The Shining could be anything including Kubrick announcing that he faked the moon landing. To be honest it took me an awfully long time before I started to get into it. Another thing to note is that there is very little of Stephen King’s novel in this movie apart from the setting and the characters name. The movie sees Jack Nicholson play Jack Torrance who takes on a job as a caretaker of the Overlook Hotel during the winter months so that he can write his novel. Things seem to go strange quite quickly though to be honest with Jack Nicholson, its hard to tell when he’s being himself or being the character.

As the movie progresses things get very bleak and one of the things that I do like about this film is that it’s very well shot. From the flying over the lake to the constantly following Danny around on his little bike, there are some good shots which help add to the tension that was in the film. To be honest though Danny Lloyd who played Danny Torrance out acted Shelley Duvall who played Wendy. I have to say that I could have done without Wendy because even though she’s suppose to be in terror at what her husband has turned into I just found myself being slightly bored by her. She didn’t seem to really contribute and was out performed by both Danny Lloyd and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson is on fine form here and pretty much steals the film. Every time he was on screen he was in complete control and every time he wasn’t on screen, I took this as an opportunity to take a mental breather and wait for the next time and that was probably a wise thing to do. The infamous ‘here’s Johnny’ line was exactly as good as I hoped it would be when seen in the context of the film.

As a movie, I thought that it was rather good. It’s very tense and very well acted (apart from Duvall) and also I liked the story but I’m going to read the novel and see a) how different it is to the movie and b) whether its as good as the movie. Only time will tell but I think that as a horror film it does what its does very well and despite the rather reduced cast and characters that are in the vast majority of the movie, it kept my attention from the very beginning and I like this movie.

REC3 - Genesis (2012)

REC 3 is a film that mixes the found footage genre with Zombie genre. Now I am not a gore fan and I had not seen the previous two REC films and the film starts off with a wedding and things seem to be moving along normally and on a side note it must be about ten minutes before we get the title card before returning to the action. The thing that strikes me about film is that it seems like they have gone down the comedic road which is a bit of a surprise. Not as much of a surprise when at one point they seem to ditch the hand held camera style and just go for a generic horror film.

Not being a gore fan as I mentioned I thought that the gore was rather tame and I thought that this was going to be perfectly fine until the last quarter when it gets really gorey and I had to look away because I am a bit of a wuss. It does seem a bit odd when they decided to just go mad with the gore and I wonder why they didn’t do this sooner but I suppose that would have undermined the comedy tone that they were so desperately going for. I thought the idea that the zombies are stopped in their tracks because the vicar is talking about Genesis was a clever idea and this led to another good idea where the grandfather who has a hearing aid wasn’t affected because his hearing aid was turned off so was continuing with his normal behaviour thus leading to the demise of Clara.

The performances were as you would expect and with the film being set at a wedding the loving couple decided that instead of getting out they would find one another and both Leticia Dolera (Clara) and Diego Martin (Koldo) do their best with what are quite frankly rather standard characters. I did find the John Sponge character to be quite funny because it seemed to stupid and yet funny so I didn’t mind that particular character. Quite why Clara decided to go all from being a normal bride to being like Alice from the Resident Evil films is a bit of a mystery. They even go to the trouble of cutting her wedding dress so that it looks like Milla Jovovich in those films.

I’m not quite sure about REC 3 because I think that the comedy part of the film was slightly disjointed and compared to the other REC films I’m told that this is the weakest but I doubt that I will watch them. As a standalone film, I’ve seen far worse and I thought that there were some good performances and some good moments though having seen ‘The Walking Dead’ TV series, it seems that this is a little behind the times in terms of storytelling.

Room 237 (2012)

Room 237 is a movie about how a bunch over people who have obsessed over the movie ‘The Shining’ talk about the various things and messages that are littered throughout the film. I have never seen ‘The Shining’ before watching this film but to be honest I don’t think that I have missed anything but I will see the movie at some point. The thing that I’ve been told about Stanley Kubrick is that he was a perfectionist and so nothing went into his movie that he didn’t obsess about so that is the one thing that you have to keep in mind when listening to these theories. On the subject of theories, some make sense such as the window in the managers office when the layout would contradict that. Then there is the theory about Kubrick faking the moon landing and you just end up thinking that its another wacky idea but then when the kid stands up and you see him wearing the Apollo 11 jumper then you start thinking that there might be some credit given to this. Another thing is where Kubrick is suppose to be giving a big FU to Stephen King when there is a shot of the car that King has in his novel being crushed in the movie.

There were several moments when watching the movie when I just thought that this was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. There were theories where you just think “nope”. The moment is where apparently Kubrick has his face superimposed on the clouds. Now with the best will in the will there is no face in those clouds and no face of Kubrick. Sometimes the voice would say “Now I’m taking a leap” in which I would respond by saying “You haven’t taken a leap so far?”. My favourite BS moment was when one person said that a ski poster which was clearly a ski poster was in the eyes of this person a minator. Then there was the idea that when the manager goes to shake Jack Nicholson’s hand he stands at the end of the desk and it looks like an erection. As the film progresses it seems that the outlandish ideas take centre stage.

There are so many theories and BS that go through the film that its amazing that Kubrick was able to make anything at all. That said I think that there might be some foundation in the theories about genocide and the Indians but other things such as the geography (except for the office) of the corridors are more a continuity error that Kubrick couldn’t do much about. At the end of the day he was a director working for a major movie studio and would only be given so much room for moving. Even the great Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t be able to dictate to the studios.

As a movie I think that providing you leave your senses at the door and are willing to accept some of the more barmier ideas that get voiced in the movie I think that it’s a fun movie but my ultimate feeling when the movie finished was that I am glad that I don’t obsess over movies like these people and I think that the people that participated in this movie need serious help. Go out and have a long walk in the countryside or read a non-scary book. Do something because its not healthy to obsess over a film this much.

 

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

On the cover of the DVD is says ‘From the creator of Paranormal Activity’. This means that Oren Peli did the screenplay and also produced it but to say that it was a Peli film would be a slight bending of the truth.

The movie starts with Supergrass and the song ‘Alright’ which must be a gag because of what will happen.

I question the decision to set this in Chernobyl where in 1986 the city suffered a nuclear accident which has called over three decades of problems for the people affected. On a less serious note I question about putting the words diaries into the title because there are things shot on cameras but they are not entries.

Apparently there is a thing that has extreme tourism. The extreme tourist is called Uri and immediately I dislike him but not as much as I hate Paul who acts like he is very pleased with himself. Chris (Jesse McCartney), Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Amanda (Devin Kelley) are perfectly fine because they take Paul’s manner in the negative way that they are suppose to. Paul has some annoying company when two backpackers join them in the form of Michael and Zoe. After being denied entry by some guards Uri comes up with another way to get in and this instantly makes you feel that everything that happens to all of them is of their own making.

There is a sombre moment when they are entering because it reminds you of the terrible disaster and why it seems even more in poor taste to base a horror movie here. They could have come up with a made up town and you would think that it’s a made up version.

The first proper scare was quite a good one. It happens in the flats when they hear a noise and I wasn’t expecting a bear coming out of nowhere.  It’s at this point that the inevitable thing happens where they means of leaving the area is broken and they start to question whether they are alone. There are some scares but the problem is that the film feels rather ordinary and it’s a shame because there is potential here but its wasted.

The film picks up once Natalie gets taken. Then people start appearing out of nowhere and it starts to get a bit tense but its taken so long to get to this point that I feel like its lost my attention. You can tell it’s a Oren Peli film because you have to spend so much time in the company of these people before anything remotely happens and when it does its followed by more nothing.

What starts off as a movie that might have supernatural themes just becomes a generic jumps and nothing movie. It

Someone used the term Cattle Prod Horror to describe Insidious Chapter 2 and this definelty falls into this category. It’s slightly better than I thought it would be but compared to the first Paranormal Activity film it’s a bit ordinary. It even has a sort of shock ending that the Paranormal films have and whilst it was quite good it felt like they have ben ticking off a checklist from the very beginning. The lack of any diaries is a mystery and also its not scary which is a disappointment.

Rush (2013)

Now I am a Formula One fan so whenever there is a film about the sport that comes out then I want to go and see it. I saw the 2010 film ‘Senna’ in the cinema and loved it because it had Formula 1 in it but it was about the rivalry between Aryton Senna and Alain Prost. There has always been talk of a Formula one movie way back in the early 2000’s but it ended up being ‘Driven’ with Sylvester Stallone in a CART movie. When I heard that Ron Howard was going to direct this movie I was worried that the same sort of thing was going to happen but I am happy to report that this wasn’t the case. Rush tells the story of the rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt during the 1976 season. The story starts in 1970 when they were both in Formula 3 and what the film does quite well is portray Hunt and the playboy and Lauda as the serious and focused driver.

The central performances were very good. Chris Hemsworth played the pretty boy role well and I thought that whilst Hunt did come close at times to being a pantomime character the action meant that he was always going to have to be a bit more serious. Daniel Bruhl is the better of the two as Niki Lauda. Some of the scenes where he is in the hospital having his lungs cleared are truly uncomfortable but I think it does a great job in making the viewer sympathise and even like Lauda despite Lauda not being a particularly warm person.

Some of the racing action is superb. It genuinely looks like they have filmed it during the races but some of the circuits don’t exist in their current form. The highlight came in the final race where it was pouring down with rain and there is a shot where we are seeing Lauda’s POV and all you can see is a red light and its not a sharp light. Most people who aren’t F1 fans question how hard it is to race well this is a prime example. Driving on the motorway at 70mph is difficult enough but times that difficulty by 5 and it might come close to what this must have been like. The ending might come across as a bit melodramatic but as that is how it happened then its just something to deal with.

I thought that the final scene was the perfect way to end the film. It was a nice scene where they both argued that their way of driving and lifestyle was the best way and how they were made better because of their desire to beat the other. The voice over from Daniel Bruhl when he say that when Hunt died aged 45 that he wasn’t surprised. I think that everyone is surprised that he lived to the age that he did. I thought that Rush was a great movie and despite the scene where Hunt attacks a reporter, both Lauda and Hunt were portrayed in the right way and its another great F1 movie that is more about the personalities in the sport than the sport itself.

The Game (1997)

The movie starts off with a long (ish) home video and then we are introduced to Michael Douglas who plays Nicholas Van Orton who is an financier who doesn’t seem to have a particularly nice life. He almost reminds me of a tone down version of Gordon Gekko. In the film, he gets given a birthday present from him odd brother. He signs up to CRS which just screams wacko. After we are introduced to Nicholas and his brother the story spends a fair amount of time showing that CRS don’t seem the full ticket. The main question is just what is CRS offering and to be honest it’s a good question and it’s made even more intriguing because it Michael Douglas that its happening to. It’s not long until the story starts to unravel and the moment it goes weird is when Nicholas goes home and comes across the doll, then the TV starts talking to him. Things get even stranger when he encounters a waitress and after coming across a bloke on the floor the movie descends into a bit of a far fetched idea and whilst watching it I was thinking that it resembled North by Northwest a bit in that it stretches credibility a bit.

The film does have a strange curiosity to it as the question to what the game is. Things seem to be getting out of hand before the mad scene involves Nicholas and the house has been painted with ultra-violet paint and weird loud music.  When Conrad (Sean Penn) comes back into the story after appearing and leaving at the beginning, he seems somewhat more hysterical. He is very untrusting when he finds a glove compartment full of CRS keys. This leads to a nice scene between Penn and Douglas when they talk about stuff that has happened in their past.  After a good scene with Douglas being trapped in a taxi after it goes in the sea. When Douglas and the cops go to the CRS headquarters it has magically disappeared, that much was obvious.

What isn’t as obvious is what happens when Nicholas goes to see Christine. After smashing up the camera they had in the smoke detector, a bunch of men with guns come at then and attack them. It’s a great scene. After Christine tries to tell Nicholas whats going on there is a nice twist where we find out that Sam is in the con with CRS. All of a sudden Nicholas is dumped in the middle of mexico and spends several minutes getting back home where he finds his home is to be sold and it’s at this point he tracks down his ex-wife. The story climax’s with Nicholas shooting his brother by accident and in shock jumps off the top of a building and somehow manages to land on a pre-prepared crashmat. When he lands he discovers that his brother did this as a birthday present and he is in fact very much alive. Now if that were me then I wouldn’t just hug him, I would scream and shout at him and walk straight out. Nicholas acts like its just a small prank. The film easily falls apart when you start to think of the different scenarios that could have happened like if Nicholas had jumped off a different side of the building or if he’d hit something on the way down or even if he had shot his brother in the head instead of the chest.

The movie has two faces in it that are familiar to me. The first being Armin Mueller-Stahl (Anson Baer) and the second is Peter Donat (Sam Sutherland) who I know from the X-Files as Fox Mulder’s dad. Sean Penn is quite good and despite not being a big fan of the painfully indulgent actor I can’t deny that he wasn’t mesmerising on screen. Douglas is always good and he was especially good in this. As the lead female actor in the movie, Deborah Kara Unger was ok as Christine. She has a bit of an attitude to begin with but when she returns then she seems to have changed a bit.

This being a David Fincher film it was always good and Michael Douglas and Sean Penn carry the film well. You have to leave your senses at the door before seeing this because if you start to apply logic to this film then it becomes an absurd film but if your willing to look past this then it’s a perfectly fine film that flags a bit in the middle but picks up to a thrilling conclusion.

The Skeptic (2009)

I was a bit of a Sceptic watching the Skeptic. Mainly because it had Tom Arnold in it. Sorry I had to get that gag out of the way. According to IMDB, this film is also called The Haunting of Bryan Becket but The Skeptic sounds better.  

 

The story tells of Bryan Becket who at the beginning of the film finds out that his aunt has died. first reaction when he finds out his aunt died was that he inherits the house thus making him instantly unlikeable. It’s hard to believe that he a) is married and b) has a child. After the funeral he and Tom Arnold go and visit the house and he decides that due to his marriage troubles he is going to stay and sort things out. 

 

When Sully is having what seems like a fit, at first I thought he was pretending to have a fit but in a good twist he was actually unwell. Normally this would have been a joke but it seemed to be the first indication that this wasn’t going to be your typical middle of the road movie. 

 

When he realises that he doesn’t own the house he goes to some institute that his aunt  left the house to and after a bit of waffle we find out that his aunt believes that the house is haunted. I like that he is threatening to contest the will believing that the sleep lab trying to dupe an old woman and manipulate her but in reality it is Bryan that is doing it. 

 

What’s quite interesting is that it doesn’t go weird straight away but takes the time to build things up. The bit where Tom Arnold makes Bryan jump was quite a shocking moment. By the halfway point the shocks start to come more frequently before stopping again. Tom Arnold is easily the best thing in this (never thought I would admit that). Whenever he was on screen I was enjoying the movie but whenever he wasn’t on then I started to lose interest. 

 

The death of Bryan’s mother is used as a reason why Bryan is so sceptic. The wife and kid are bought back in after a while and it seems like they are bought it because the writer needs something fresh to keep the story going.  

 

Zoe Saladna (Cassie) is probably the next big name in this after Arnold. She is perhaps best know for appearing the most recent Star Trek movies. She starts off in the institute as a patient who seems a bit volatile and then disappears for a while before returning by forcing her way into the house. It’s at this point it seems to go even slower and its at this point that I started to give up as it seemed to go from being something spooky to just an episode of Dr Phil or something like that. There’s an awful lot of shouting and screaming from other rooms throughout this film. Robert Prosky also appears as Father Wymond and Prosky has one of those faces that you instantly recognise. He has played roles in Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Miracle of 34th Street (1995) and Gremlins 2 (1990). He died shortly after this film was finished and it’s a perfectly fine performance and he does get some good scenes.  

 

The film picks up in the final act when Bryan goes back in the house thinking that Cassie is in there. The film ends with him falling down the stairs looking into a room that seem to lead to a place that made him smile then it ends. It’s definitely a strange movie and ends all of a sudden. It’s a film that has its moments and its not the worse film that I have seen but I cant deny that it wasn’t what I was expecting.