Contradicting Popular Opinion :
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks
Intro
Today, CPO brings you a look into Silent Hill, and a couple of glimpses into a few other flicks.
Silent Hill
I like Sean Bean.
I wish he would stop making crap.
Silent Hill was crap.
I would say that his character in the film was unnecessary, but the whole film was relatively unnecessary. Where to begin?
First off, I should mention that I’ve never played a “Silent Hill” video game. I have played through “Resident Evil 2” with liberal use of cheat codes (I’m not gonna conserve f*cking ammo! There is a f*cking alligator after me!). I’ve also played the dick out of “Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.”That was the game that forced me into buying a memory card. I also own many crappy “Survival Horror” games which will probably make Mark and Matt’s Horror Countdown over at Retrograding Games. I’m talking about things like the unplayable Evil Dead game, “Alone in the Dark 4” and other such entries which make up the dark side of the Sega Dreamcast.
What the hell was I talking about?
Oh yeah, Silent Hill!
So, some woman named Rose adopts a noctambulist girl, who keeps on having nightmares about a place called Silent Hill. Rose decides to drive there on what appears to be a lark, and in what appears to be an SUV, despite the common sense admonition of Sean Bean. As they get closer to the abandoned mining town, the little girl’s paintings all change. Basically it looks like the little girl was painting the Ramones over and over, which I actually encourage my daughter to do.
Rose is played by Radha Mitchell. If she looks familiar, you might have seen her playing Melinda and/or Melinda in the gawdawful Melinda and Melinda, or as Johnny Depp’s bitchy wife in Finding Neverland. All acting abilities aside, Mitchell is mostly unlikeable in pretty much everything in which I’ve ever seen her. I.e. not really somebody for whom you want to cheer.
Anyways, Rose gets stopped by a butch lady biker cop (X-files alum Laurie Holden) and inexplicably decides a car chase is in order. Naturally, Rose crashes into the sealed of entrance of Silent Hill. When she wakes up her daughter is gone, so Rose decides to aimlessly saunter around the town, eventually teaming up with the Biker cop to run away from children made of ash, Marvel comics’ alien symbiotes, and some guy with one of those novelty oversized Cloud/Nightmare swords.
The whole thing is mostly pointless and doesn’t ever come out making too much sense. Roger Avary’s script is just no good. It feels like he wanted to write an issue of “Swamp Thing” during the Alan Moore run, and failed miserably. Although, if Radha Mitchell’s character were the Swamp Thing, this film would become INFINITELY more watchable.
The Swamp Thing makes everything better.
Come to think of it, Roger Avary hasn’t really justified the existence of his solo career. He’s tolerable when he is helping out Quentin Tarantino, but left to his own devices he gives us crap like The Rules of Attraction. It’s as though he openly holds contempt for all of humanity. Why else would one adapt Bret Easton Ellis?
Back to the movie: the big climax of the film comes when Rose travels to the alleged source of all this evil. She does this by taking an elevator. Then she has to get past a bunch of rotting, undead yet still kinda sexy nurses. She is able to do this thing by turning off her flashlight. Rose goes to the room of all evil, and fittingly enough, it leads to what feels like 20 minutes worth of exposition by the demonic version of her daughter. My wife was fast asleep by this point; I just feel like mentioning. She’s lucky like that.
Some more movie happens after that exposition but nothing really worth mentioning.
My friend and occasional sidekick, Mxzzy, defends this film as a joyous attack on religion, that is to say: zealots create their own evil. I guess I’m just so much in the nut atheist position that I take this theme as a mere truism.
Perhaps if the film were a little less competent, it would be more entertaining. You know what I’m talking about? The perverse enjoyment of watching a truly inept film-maker in action. (See: House of the Dead) But if you hate all that is good, and have two hours to throw out the window, then Silent Hill is the movie for you!
All in all, bland zombie flick Resident Evil and sci-fi Enter the Dragon knockoff Mortal Kombat currently hold up that low bar as “best video game movie.” If you happen upon another film based on a video game, make sure you stretch before hand. Maybe warm up a little bit with Squirm, Night of the Lepus or The Beginning of the End.
The Proposition (2005)
Though not technically a Western, in the traditional sense, The Proposition is the best post-Unforgiven western that I’ve seen. It is a simple story about love and family in the midst of horrifying violence and cruelty. The performances are all fairly good, with Ray Winstone (Narnia‘s Mr. Beaver) stealing the show as Captain Stanley. The direction is straightforward, exceptionally competent, and does a exceptional job conveying the humanity of the piece. I think the Nick Cave goth poetry might’ve been a little overdone, but it still works in that “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling” way.
Good flick.
When a Stranger Calls
When a Stranger Calls is 15 minutes worth of a movie you’ve probably already seen before, crammed into a 90 minute running time. At best, it is redundant. At worst, it is a film which spends 60 minutes showing the dipshit teenage girl protagonist meandering around some yuppie’s McMansion.
The most exciting moment of the film came when the actor that plays Pam’s ex-fiancee on The Office shows up as a cop.
MAILBAG
Lost Boys
Good friend of CPO, DC, laments The Lost Boys:
The saddest part is that The Lost Boys completely schooled Near Dark when
they came out at about the same time. Watching Bill Paxton kill some guy
with boot spurs is arguably no less goofy than watching Corey Feldman sing
“Ain’t Got No Home” covered in bubbles, but one of these things doesn’t
belong in a self-respecting vampire movie, or anywhere but Corey Feldman’s
bathroom, with the door closed. Near Dark loses a few points for insisting
that home-cooked potatoes cure vampirism (even though it’s probably true),
but there’s nothing like pulling the camera back on some blood-sucking to
show an oil pump churning away in the background. In any case, it boggles
the mind. At least it isn’t Underworld.
Colin P. talks KitH and defends Kiefer:
C’mon, not all non-24 Kiefer is bad. There’s Stand By Me, A Time to Kill, and you really should have picked Flatliners over this atrocity.
Or make the entire column about Kids in the Hall. For all the homo subtext, there’s the classic probing sketch: “Surely the Leader knows what he’s doing.” “I think it’s altogether more likely that the Leader is just some sort of twisted asss freak. I mean, we’ve been anally probing the humans for years, and all we’ve learned is that 1 in 10 don’t seem to mind.” (dang swearing filters).
Or when there’s the first person view from the vampires flying down to a car, it turns out to be Bruce as a flying pig! “Wheee! Look at me everybody! Hey hey hey!”
And of course, when the kids look crazy for giving Grandpa Gilmore too much garlic, “We’re not 3 clearly insane people! We’re sisters, Jerry Sizzler.” “You prrrrrrick. Jerrrrrry!”
Then just replace Gramps and his vampire-killmobile with the guy who crushes people’s heads, and Dianne Wiest with the Chicken Lady.
Sweet.
Colin
Here’s some mail from the High Tension piece I did for our “Unhappy Endings” feature.
Neil MacD writes:
I always took the ending to high tension to me that everything the lead said
was a lie. The entire movie was a fictional account. But even thinking
that way the ending still sucks. Aja tried to same twist ending to the very
end of the hills have eyes remake AND THAT SUCKED. I think this guy needs
to lay off the twists. Just like M Night Shyamalan.I like high tension till the last third during the chase and then it went
all down hill. Keep it with the cool freaky old guy as the killer and not
what they did.Neil
Well, done for this week. You can catch me every Thursday here at CPO, every other Thursday at Beyond the Threshold for AHA!, every Wednesday at Moodspins with How to Make Decisions, and over in the DVD Lounge whenever I gets me some swag.
