2 out of 5 ain't bad...but it's not great, either
February 15th 2008 18:18
This is one of those posts that'll make you think, "Why the f-ck did he bother watching that sh-t, let alone feel the need to write about it?" Fair warning.
Suburban Girl (4/10)
made me squirm more than many of the sh-tty horror flicks I've seen lately. Problem is, it's not a horror flick. Sarah Michelle Gellar is an up-and-coming proofreader who falls for Alec Baldwin's man about town. They both seem hellbent on making this believable, but it isn't. Not even for a moment. And if her character really is the sort of dope he would sleep with and then cast aside, what sort of heroine is she? I think we're supposed to buy that right up 'til the end she feels she's different from all the others, but that just makes her seem dumb(er), because I was never convinced of that. Alec is fine as the cad, but there's not a frame of film where he doesn't seem to be looking down on her even in the few moments when the script suggests otherwise. There are a couple of funny lines buried in the muck, like when she catches him "cheating" on her and asks "Who was she?" His bourbon-soaked reply: "A way out." I think this marks the beginning of an era where SMG's presence alone isn't enough to sell me on a film, as it was with Suburban Girl. Or these films, for that matter.
I've always been a little cautious around "psychological thrillers," especially films tagged as such.
Joshua (4/10)
doesn't change my mind about that. Great name for a film, though. Young Joshua is thrown off his game by the arrival of his parents' second kid. He does some creepy things, but things that I don't imagine will shock or surprise you very much. Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga play Joshua's folks and it's one of those relationships that make you wonder if there's any couple who has that sort of anger toward each other in real life; and if there are, how or why the hell would they put themselves through that. Mom's going through a wicked case of the post-partum blues, and she seems wayyy scarier than anything Joshua has in his arsenal.
Speaking of arsenals, Kevin Bacon's Death Sentence (3/10)
dad amasses a sizable one on his quest for revenge. Unfortunately, it takes so f-ing long for this modern day Death Wish to work up a head of steam that I lost interest before the blood started flowing. It does flow, and the flick does get ultraviolent (as we'd expect from Saw writer-director James Wan), but it's never very involving. There's a home invasion segment that invokes Straw Dogs and a finale that recalls Taxi Driver, but making me think of better movies doesn't really do this one any favors. As he takes the law into his own hands, Kevin Bacon's Nick Hume transforms into cold steel, and that's good and bad. All bad, however, are John Goodman as an underworld greaseball and Aisha Tyler as a concerned detective.
I dug Timber Falls (7/10)
more than any of the above flicks. That's not saying much, I know, but it's an entertaining enough spin on the whole Chainsaw/Wrong Turn/Hills Have Eyes path that I've been down so many times before. A couple running afoul of some crazed hillbillies is nothing new. Some really bad decisions on the part of the couple are nothing new either. But there are a few aspects of the film that felt original and fresh enough for me to recommend it. Sure, there are a few sequences of torture that seemed shoehorned in (guess they didn't get the news about "torture porn" in time to yank 'em back out). I also had a bit of a problem with the logic of, "Crazy hillbillies just interrupted me and you f-cking and made threatening/lascivious comments about you. Perhaps I should throw my bullets away and we can walk a little bit deeper into the woods and try to f-ck there?" Maybe I was just in the mood for some good old-fashioned blood & guts, or maybe I was surprised/impressed by how violent it got with such a limited pool of victims.
Hmm...how to segue to a film about blowing a dog...guess I can't.
Sleeping Dogs Lie (8/10)
was directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, who has more free passes than he'll ever need, just for making Shakes. He doesn't need to use one here. Sleeping Dogs Lie is a funny, at times uncomfortable film about what happens when you're completely honest with your significant other. Scratch that - it's a film about what happens when you're completely honest with your significant other about how YOU BLEW YOUR DOG. The film opens with a quick and funny look at how it went down, and moves nicely through some humorous sequences that will have you on the edge of your seat, thinking "When is she going to tell him that SHE BLEW HER DOG?" Don't worry, it's right around the corner. What follows are some things you'd expect, and some you wouldn't. Big props to all the actors, especially Melinda Page Hamilton as the dog f-cker in question, Jack Plotnick as her meth-addled brother Dougie and the always funny Brian Posehn doing little more than a cameo as one of Dougie's dope-y friends. You really do feel for each of the characters, and there are a ton of laughs (not as many as Shakes, of course). If you rent one film about blowing a dog this year, make it Sleeping Dogs Lie, but if you do give this one a shot, you'll see a film that has a lot more going for it than just that gimmick.
Suburban Girl (4/10)
made me squirm more than many of the sh-tty horror flicks I've seen lately. Problem is, it's not a horror flick. Sarah Michelle Gellar is an up-and-coming proofreader who falls for Alec Baldwin's man about town. They both seem hellbent on making this believable, but it isn't. Not even for a moment. And if her character really is the sort of dope he would sleep with and then cast aside, what sort of heroine is she? I think we're supposed to buy that right up 'til the end she feels she's different from all the others, but that just makes her seem dumb(er), because I was never convinced of that. Alec is fine as the cad, but there's not a frame of film where he doesn't seem to be looking down on her even in the few moments when the script suggests otherwise. There are a couple of funny lines buried in the muck, like when she catches him "cheating" on her and asks "Who was she?" His bourbon-soaked reply: "A way out." I think this marks the beginning of an era where SMG's presence alone isn't enough to sell me on a film, as it was with Suburban Girl. Or these films, for that matter.
I've always been a little cautious around "psychological thrillers," especially films tagged as such.
Joshua (4/10)
doesn't change my mind about that. Great name for a film, though. Young Joshua is thrown off his game by the arrival of his parents' second kid. He does some creepy things, but things that I don't imagine will shock or surprise you very much. Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga play Joshua's folks and it's one of those relationships that make you wonder if there's any couple who has that sort of anger toward each other in real life; and if there are, how or why the hell would they put themselves through that. Mom's going through a wicked case of the post-partum blues, and she seems wayyy scarier than anything Joshua has in his arsenal.
Speaking of arsenals, Kevin Bacon's Death Sentence (3/10)
dad amasses a sizable one on his quest for revenge. Unfortunately, it takes so f-ing long for this modern day Death Wish to work up a head of steam that I lost interest before the blood started flowing. It does flow, and the flick does get ultraviolent (as we'd expect from Saw writer-director James Wan), but it's never very involving. There's a home invasion segment that invokes Straw Dogs and a finale that recalls Taxi Driver, but making me think of better movies doesn't really do this one any favors. As he takes the law into his own hands, Kevin Bacon's Nick Hume transforms into cold steel, and that's good and bad. All bad, however, are John Goodman as an underworld greaseball and Aisha Tyler as a concerned detective.
I dug Timber Falls (7/10)
more than any of the above flicks. That's not saying much, I know, but it's an entertaining enough spin on the whole Chainsaw/Wrong Turn/Hills Have Eyes path that I've been down so many times before. A couple running afoul of some crazed hillbillies is nothing new. Some really bad decisions on the part of the couple are nothing new either. But there are a few aspects of the film that felt original and fresh enough for me to recommend it. Sure, there are a few sequences of torture that seemed shoehorned in (guess they didn't get the news about "torture porn" in time to yank 'em back out). I also had a bit of a problem with the logic of, "Crazy hillbillies just interrupted me and you f-cking and made threatening/lascivious comments about you. Perhaps I should throw my bullets away and we can walk a little bit deeper into the woods and try to f-ck there?" Maybe I was just in the mood for some good old-fashioned blood & guts, or maybe I was surprised/impressed by how violent it got with such a limited pool of victims.
Hmm...how to segue to a film about blowing a dog...guess I can't.
Sleeping Dogs Lie (8/10)
was directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, who has more free passes than he'll ever need, just for making Shakes. He doesn't need to use one here. Sleeping Dogs Lie is a funny, at times uncomfortable film about what happens when you're completely honest with your significant other. Scratch that - it's a film about what happens when you're completely honest with your significant other about how YOU BLEW YOUR DOG. The film opens with a quick and funny look at how it went down, and moves nicely through some humorous sequences that will have you on the edge of your seat, thinking "When is she going to tell him that SHE BLEW HER DOG?" Don't worry, it's right around the corner. What follows are some things you'd expect, and some you wouldn't. Big props to all the actors, especially Melinda Page Hamilton as the dog f-cker in question, Jack Plotnick as her meth-addled brother Dougie and the always funny Brian Posehn doing little more than a cameo as one of Dougie's dope-y friends. You really do feel for each of the characters, and there are a ton of laughs (not as many as Shakes, of course). If you rent one film about blowing a dog this year, make it Sleeping Dogs Lie, but if you do give this one a shot, you'll see a film that has a lot more going for it than just that gimmick.
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