Contradicting Popular Opinion
A.K.A.
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks
Hey, you’re that internet guy who’s spreading unfounded rumors about how horror movies might be better than serious-minded middlebrow melodramas, aren’t you? Bastard.
-The opening to an e-mail I received from a friend.
So, at the risk of repeating myself….
I saw The Hills Have Eyes remake on opening night. Such a thing is a bit of a rarity for me. The last flick I saw on opening night might have been Sin City. Anyways, it remains fairly true to the original, adding a touch of deformed body humor to the mix, and a bit more flash. It seems to lose a little bit of the “mirror family” aspect of the original (the “mutants” seem more like a community, less like a family). It makes the “normal” family a little bit nicer, too, but that may just be my imagination.
In terms of recent horror remakes, it is head and shoulders above the rest. It was directed by that Aja fella, that made High Tension. At any rate, he’s pretty competent at this making scary movies business. It also helps to have Wes Craven, creator of the original Hills Have Eyes as a producer.
The only problem I have with the flick is that it’s main distinction from the original is that it is more recent. It is very much the same movie. I’m torn though, because the original is one of my favorite movies. And it is nice to be able to see something very much like it in the theaters. Surrounded by strangers, some of whom actually started to cry during the course of the film.
Now that is a f*cking movie!
Matt does a fair review of this thing (fair as in balanced, not an assessment of Matt’s quality as a writer). This review puts Matt ahead of the crowd in many respects. His criticism are on target. (And I believe that I am the IP writer he mentions in the review.)
Most of the reviews I have read of this flick have been rubbish. Utterly stupid reviews written by those same folk that gush over the latest serious-minded middlebrow melodrama. They either seem genuinely upset that a horror movie is upsetting, disturbing, (GASP) horrifying, OR they use the time-tested hack/critic phrase: “pornography of violence.”
Don’t get me wrong. I do think there is such a thing as pornographic violence. Last Man Standing, Long Kiss Goodnight, any Arnold movie, The Matrix, etc. These are films that are basically about how great it is to hurt other people. I won’t even say “bad people” because The Matrix makes it clear that most of the people they are killing are innocent pawns. Hell, characters, including CHILDREN, are vaporized for laughs in Chicken Little. (Turns out that they were sent to some sort of Phantom Zone though, so it is okay to laugh… I guess.)
I will even buy the “pornography of violence” line for flicks that are way out there like Ilsa: she-wolf of the SS.
And I think I even agree with the label when it comes to things like Braveheart where the female lead is raped and killed in the first reel for no good reason, a pair of bitchy queens are thrown out of a window for no apparent reason, where folk are happily impaled on spikes, and the hero is gloriously tortured and killed in the last reel. The whole movie reeks of Gibson splooge.
BUT The Hills Have Eyes? Actually pornography is about showing sex without context or consequence. It focuses on the cum-shot, not the negative. It glorifies sex. Saying that The Hills Have Eyes glorifies violence is like saying Deliverance glorifies canoe trips.
What The Hills Have Eyes does is show the sickness of violence. It is far less violent than the average action flick from the ’90s. There isn’t a shocking amount of gore. But the audience is far more disturbed, upset and horrified by these things. Why? CONTEXT.
In a 1996 interview with Ian Grey, Wes Craven said a couple of things that really come into play here.
[M]y films have a sense of reality: the violence is very real. You believe it could happen. People get stabbed, and then they bleed and they hurt as they’re dying and it goes on.
…
They [The MPAA] want people to get shot and Bang! they’re done. Like they’re just disappearing.
And it’s weird, because I can see that we’ve become conditioned to this thing. The Hills Have Eyes has this particularly brutal trailer scene. (I’ll be deliberately vague to avoid spoiling too much.)Among many other horrifying things that happens, one of the family members is shot. After things have calmed down somewhat, we see that she is in shock. She is bleeding, clearly dying. At this point in the theater a woman said, “I thought she was already dead.” (I go to a ghetto theater.) Of course, she soon will be dead, but we see this thing. It is terribly real and terribly sad and scary. There exists a humanity to that moment that makes it difficult to watch. It is an over-whelming emotional experience.
Films such as this are confront us with our secret fears. They allow us to deal with such matters indirectly. The Hills Have Eyes makes an honest human connection, albeit one of sorrow and horror.
But many critics I’ve read seem content to blather on smugly about what is “wrong” with the movie. I’ve actually read things that have discounted the mutagenic effects of radiation as “we banned those nuclear tests years ago.” And we all know how hard it is for radiation to linger. In fact I’m buying a condo in Chernobyl, that is, as soon as they clean out all of those giant mutant rats. Roeper seemed to want to know more about a day in the life of the mutants, and seemed a little tentative about the whole concept of mating. Ebert? Well, I know he is Mikey’s e-mail buddy, but the man hasn’t shown any ability to critically think about film since he got first billing on the show.
So, I say to you: Go see The Hills Have Eyes. You can’t see the original in theaters, and I have never seen it on TV.
And if need be, feel free to curl up into the fetal position in the theater, telling yourself that it is only a movie.
Waking Life
So the Blockbuster by my in-laws folded. As such, the Kennedy household prospered with cheap DVDs and VHS. One of the films purchased on this occasion was Waking Life, a film which neither myself nor my wife had seen.
So, we go to watch this thing. It’s highly regarded by several critics I respect, like EW’s Lisa. It’s got that funky, we traced the film cartoon going on things, kinda like the “take on me” video, but ya know with color too.
So, we watch this thing. It’s kinda pretty. Everything is squirming around the tv a little bit, sorta like a lava lamp. But the style seems to change from shot to shot, which is probably very artistic, but mostly just made me nauseous.
So, we’re watching, and watching, and sooner or later, something has to happen right? Mostly it is just different folks spouting philosophy worthy of one’s first year at community college. Our main character, at least I presume, has said virtually nothing and seems content to sit there and mime active listening. If you ever wanted to see a cartoon nod its head while listening to what some guy said about Sartre, this is the flick for you! And it just goes on and on and on. These cartoon people are arguing about existence and free-will by throwing out non-sequiturs, false analogies, and frequent bandying about of the word paradigm.
Watching it is like going to that 8:30 A.M. Spanish class through which I couldn’t ever stay awake. Except instead of the benefit of bilingualism, we instead get a bunch of lave lamp cartoons of boring people asking meaningless questions.
Then, just when I achieve a disoriented state where I contemplate how much I like Monto Cristo sammiches, star of GACACTATAGCACAAA Ethan Hawk show up to wax philosophical about reincarnation.
Sadly, I have never been stoned. But I imagine the experience of Waking Life is similar, minus the euphoric high. It’s got the blurred vision, time dilation, general disorientation and dizziness. It even has a bunch of people fatuously questioning, “what if like the universe man, were like a molecule, and…” Fuck that shit man.
We had to tap out to this movie. My wife and I gave up on it fairly quickly, grateful that it only cost us 2 dollars. The nicest thing I can say about it is that the VHS tape is a nifty blue color. I, personally, have not given up on a movie so quickly and completely since The Good Girl.
I will do no research about Waking Life I do not care who made it or who is in it. I submit to it. It has beaten me. I will offer it no more of my time.
If they release a sequel entitled Sleeping Death… that I might be up for. Creeping Death even moreso.
Hustling Flow?
No just pimps.
But is it just me or is Terrence Howard a big freaking ‘mo. I’m not saying; I’m just saying.
Mark B. does me proud by repeatedly mentioning SHINING FORCE. Ah sweet sweet Shining Force. The B in Mark B. must stand for Balbaroy.
It looks like Mikey tricked Schwob into doing the weekend box office deallee. SUCKER!
Rob has something about Chuck Norris up. I cannot pimp this as I am a member of team Jack Bauer.
Oh and some people have called me out on reviews where I say that there are Easter eggs, but don’t say where they are. So here goes.
On the main menu of Zathura hit left twice to highlight a button on the game board. Press enter to see a little robot deallee.
On Chicken Little, which isn’t out yet I think, go up to PLAY press right to highlight one of them hidden Hexagon panels. Hit enter to play a minute long teaser trailer sort of thing, where Foxy stands on a stage talking about Chicken little.
There is another similarly easy to find Easter Egg with the pig. I believe if you go to the Special Features and press either left or right while on the music option, you’ll be able to get that one. It’s not terribly good though.
