Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh, where this weeks theme was monster movies. I have loved monsters since I was a kid, and monster movies have always been some of my favorite, be it supernatural or Kaiju or something in between. We had a lot of fun this week, so without further ado, to the list!
1: Trollhunter
This is a great Norwegian film about a bunch of college students filming a documentary about bear poachers. Along the way they start to follow a suspected poacher only to find out that he is actually a troll hunter. After this revelation, the group follows him to learn about trolls and get the word out about them. This movie is fantastic. I love the idea behind it, and the mythology they set up is super fun. The acting is good, and the trolls are well designed. The only problem I have with it is the shaky cam thing that all of the mockumentary monster/horror movies use for realism. Its not bad enough to make the movie unwatchable, it just makes a couple scenes odd, though they also do some fun stuff with it. I would go into that, but I don't want to spoil the movie. Watch it, its great.
Eshi: Trollhunter is everything I like to see in a monster movie. I dig that the trolls have always been a thing, people just don't believe in them. I enjoy the complexity of the world environment and the individuality of the trolls. I agree with Brian that the shaky cam shit is annoying but I've certainly seen worse. There are also some really beautiful shots of the Norwegian countryside, some of which are made metal as fuck by giant rampaging fucking monsters.
2: Thale
Another Norwegian film, though this one was shot for almost nothing. For a movie made for only $10,000 it is amazing, and even without knowing about the budget it was a good movie. Its a movie about a couple guys who clean houses after people die in them. The two main characters get called to a house out in the wilderness and start to clean it out when they stumble across a secret basement with a strange naked girl in a bathtub named Thale. Slowly they start to realize that she is not normal. The woman in the movie is a Hulder, a mythological being from Norwegian folk tales. I don't know a lot about the folklore behind the Hulder, so I can't speak to that, but the rest of the movie is cool. It feels like the setup to something bigger, as there is some underground organization hunting Thale, but it doesn't go to far into it. I found out that they are making a sequel, and I am looking forward to it. This isn't the best movie ever made, the dialog feels a little forced at times and switches gears very quickly from one topic to a completely different topic for like no reason. Other than that, its a good movie, and I hope that the sequel continues what this movie started.
Eshi: I was originally drawn to Thale because of my love for mythology, its pretty fucking difficult to find a good folklore based movie sometimes and Thale came in the midst of a dry spell for me. It delivered exceptionally. There are some pretty ham-fisted cliches but they manage to not actively detract from the film. I'm a bit giddy for the sequel.
3: The Host
This movie is a Korean movie about why industrial pollution in water is bad. It revolves around a mutated fish-monster that starts rampaging around the Han river in Seoul killing and capturing people. During its initial rampage it kidnaps a kid and apparently releases a virus that starts to contaminate the populous. The father of the girl it kidnaps starts to look for her along with her grandfather, aunt and uncle so that they can rescue her before the monster kills her. This movie shifts in tone a lot. It goes from silly to tense very quickly. I have a strange love for Korean movies. I don't think I have ever seen one that isn't a little sad in the end, and that's okay. This movie falls into that as well, but it wasn't bad. The Host was fun and tense and well worth watching. A couple bits of the story seemed a little odd, especially surrounding the story of the virus, but other than that it was a good movie. Watch it.
Eshi: This is the story of a starry-eyed giant fish-monkey trying to get by in a crazy, messed up world after being mutated by formaldehyde. There are very few actually serious moments in this film, and yet still no one can be happy. The prologue is pretty ridiculous, but not really that far out of tone from the rest of the movie. Also, the design for the monster is fucking bad ass, which is always high marks for a monster movie.
Showing posts with label monster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monster. Show all posts
Friday, July 31, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
Weekly Cinemeh
Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh, our weekly movie review post where two buddies talk about the movies they watched in the past week. This week's theme was horror movies and there were some goodies.
1: What We Do In The Shadows
I loved this movie. So much. Its about a bunch of vampires living in a house together in New Zealand. The movie is shot reality television style and plays on the format very well. It was written and directed by Taika Waititi, who also wrote Eagle vs Shark, and Jemaine Clement from Flight of The Conchords. I loved both of their other projects that I have seen, and this movie only makes me want to see more. This movie had it all: It was funny, heartwarming, and tragic. The cast is great, and have good chemistry. Also, I love Rhys Darby and wish he got more work. Definitely watch this with some friends and have a great time.
Eshi: We watched this movie twice in twenty four hours and I'm still craving it. Jemaine is fucking fantastic, Taika Waititi delightfully offbeat and the whole tone of the film is just grand. There are no words for how much I love this movie.
2: The Babadook
This was an odd movie. It starts out feeling like a movie about a Damien style kid, then turns into a possession movie where the mom is a bad guy, and ends as a monster movie. Usually I like a more coherent movie than this, but I might need to change my tune on that. The constantly shifting antagonist added to the uneasiness that accompanies horror movies. This movie also has a novel way of dealing with the monster, which you don't see that often, and was impressive to me. So many movies try to kill off the monster whenever they get the chance, but this one fucks with that trope in a nice way that fits with the interesting mythology it sets up. I loved watching Essie Davis playing the mother. She has an arc that forces her to change up the tone of her character a lot, and she handles the shifts very well. It also loves to Chekov's Gun the shit out of stuff and not deliver. I think this happens to set up more of the uneasiness that comes from the constant reevaluation of reality. All in all a good film, if not a classic. Watch it if you feel like seeing a movie about the dangers of reading.
Eshi: The Babadook plays a lot of cards very quickly, and it does it pretty well. The only non-shitty people in this whole film are an old lady and a horny nurse, and weirdly that helps. You aren't really supposed to like anyone for most of the story and that lends a layer of catharsis when the shit goes down, as well as a layer of disquiet when characters start evolving. Its pretty good at keeping you on your toes, and I really enjoy that.
3: Nightbreed
This movie was brought to my attention by Eshi when he saw it a little while ago. We watched it this week on his recommendation and I was kind of surprised. I am not really a fan of Clive Barker's work, but the setup in this movie was interesting. It feels like the beginning of a long series, and as some minor research showed, was. Nightbreed was supposed to be the first in a trilogy adapting Clive Barker's book Cabal. Unfortunately it was a flop, though Barker claims this is because they tried to market it as a slasher instead of a dark fantasy epic. We watched the latest cut of the film, and not the cut from the theaters, and it wasn't bad. David Cronenburg was kind of a surprise for me, I could not remember having ever seen him act. I am aware of his horror background though, and his acting fit the movie well. The oddest thing about this was the romance between the leading lady and man. Lori (Anne Bobby) seems consistently hostile towards Boone (Craig Sheffer) and it feels like they are in an abusive relationship, with Boone being manipulated emotionally by Lori. I am definitely going to go find the novella this is based on, just to see more about the world. Its an interesting movie, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see a movie that depicts movie monsters as people.
Eshi: The most engaging part of Nightbreed is the mythos, which is both great for immersion and almost entirely unexamined. I can easily see why this movie flopped if they tried to sell it as a slasher. That said, taking it on its own terms, Nightbreed is very good. The social commentary is by no means subtle and the structure is pretty disjointed, but those both serve to make it a more complete and evocative experience. As Brian says, the primary romance is super fucking manipulative, crossing well over into the realm of emotional/psychological abuse, and I'm not certain how to feel about that without the context of the rest of the goddamn story. Honestly the only legitimate complaint I can muster on this one is that we don't get to see the rest of it.
1: What We Do In The Shadows
I loved this movie. So much. Its about a bunch of vampires living in a house together in New Zealand. The movie is shot reality television style and plays on the format very well. It was written and directed by Taika Waititi, who also wrote Eagle vs Shark, and Jemaine Clement from Flight of The Conchords. I loved both of their other projects that I have seen, and this movie only makes me want to see more. This movie had it all: It was funny, heartwarming, and tragic. The cast is great, and have good chemistry. Also, I love Rhys Darby and wish he got more work. Definitely watch this with some friends and have a great time.
Eshi: We watched this movie twice in twenty four hours and I'm still craving it. Jemaine is fucking fantastic, Taika Waititi delightfully offbeat and the whole tone of the film is just grand. There are no words for how much I love this movie.
2: The Babadook
This was an odd movie. It starts out feeling like a movie about a Damien style kid, then turns into a possession movie where the mom is a bad guy, and ends as a monster movie. Usually I like a more coherent movie than this, but I might need to change my tune on that. The constantly shifting antagonist added to the uneasiness that accompanies horror movies. This movie also has a novel way of dealing with the monster, which you don't see that often, and was impressive to me. So many movies try to kill off the monster whenever they get the chance, but this one fucks with that trope in a nice way that fits with the interesting mythology it sets up. I loved watching Essie Davis playing the mother. She has an arc that forces her to change up the tone of her character a lot, and she handles the shifts very well. It also loves to Chekov's Gun the shit out of stuff and not deliver. I think this happens to set up more of the uneasiness that comes from the constant reevaluation of reality. All in all a good film, if not a classic. Watch it if you feel like seeing a movie about the dangers of reading.
Eshi: The Babadook plays a lot of cards very quickly, and it does it pretty well. The only non-shitty people in this whole film are an old lady and a horny nurse, and weirdly that helps. You aren't really supposed to like anyone for most of the story and that lends a layer of catharsis when the shit goes down, as well as a layer of disquiet when characters start evolving. Its pretty good at keeping you on your toes, and I really enjoy that.
3: Nightbreed
This movie was brought to my attention by Eshi when he saw it a little while ago. We watched it this week on his recommendation and I was kind of surprised. I am not really a fan of Clive Barker's work, but the setup in this movie was interesting. It feels like the beginning of a long series, and as some minor research showed, was. Nightbreed was supposed to be the first in a trilogy adapting Clive Barker's book Cabal. Unfortunately it was a flop, though Barker claims this is because they tried to market it as a slasher instead of a dark fantasy epic. We watched the latest cut of the film, and not the cut from the theaters, and it wasn't bad. David Cronenburg was kind of a surprise for me, I could not remember having ever seen him act. I am aware of his horror background though, and his acting fit the movie well. The oddest thing about this was the romance between the leading lady and man. Lori (Anne Bobby) seems consistently hostile towards Boone (Craig Sheffer) and it feels like they are in an abusive relationship, with Boone being manipulated emotionally by Lori. I am definitely going to go find the novella this is based on, just to see more about the world. Its an interesting movie, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see a movie that depicts movie monsters as people.
Eshi: The most engaging part of Nightbreed is the mythos, which is both great for immersion and almost entirely unexamined. I can easily see why this movie flopped if they tried to sell it as a slasher. That said, taking it on its own terms, Nightbreed is very good. The social commentary is by no means subtle and the structure is pretty disjointed, but those both serve to make it a more complete and evocative experience. As Brian says, the primary romance is super fucking manipulative, crossing well over into the realm of emotional/psychological abuse, and I'm not certain how to feel about that without the context of the rest of the goddamn story. Honestly the only legitimate complaint I can muster on this one is that we don't get to see the rest of it.
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