Frailty (2001)

Alright, last week's review was not very Christmassy. It was, in fact, not at all related to Christmas. But this week I have truly found the meaning of the holiday in a religious horror film that shows the roots of this festive time of year – a belief and devotion to Christ, whose birthday we should all revere and celebrate instead of that fat jolly red bastard who really just represents the evils of American capitalism. 

With that said, this is a movie about a guy who gets visions from “God” that tell him to go murder people who are apparently demons. Now that's festive!

Director: Bill Paxton

Starring: Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaghuey

IMDb

This movie and I have a long history together. See, I used to rent a lot of horror movies at now-defunct video rental giant Blockbuster. I became fascinated early on with horror movies, and often would try and rent random ones that nobody ever heard of in an attempt to find a really, really good one. Most of the time, these movies turned out to be complete shit. Other times they were mildly okay with flaws. Sometimes, though, I'd get a really good one. They were rare, but it was worth the effort. This was one of those few choices.

We start this one off with an FBI agent, Wesley Doyle, receiving a visit from Matthew McConaghuey's character, Fenton Meiks. It's painfully obvious this was before McConaghuey was a household name, because rather than be starstruck, Doyle is just confused as to why this weird guy is coming to his office in the middle of the night with stories about serial killers.

You shoulda seen the time George Clooney came to his office and started talking about sports statistics!

Fenton says he thinks the killer may be his brother, Adam. When asked why, Fenton says he used his incredible reasoning and deductive powers – while he was sitting on the couch getting wasted off his ass, Adam called him, made some damning comments about how the world was full of demons, and then shot himself in the head. I know, that really took a lot of deduction, right? He must be a super sleuth.

This is when I have all my best revelations too.

Do all serial killers HAVE to keep a board with newspaper clippings of their crimes? Seems a bit counterproductive...

As this was apparently a huge murder case in this city, Doyle asks Fenton to take him out to this garden where Fenton claims to have buried Adam. I guess they have to do it now rather than just asking Fenton for the address and going out with a proper forensics crew in the sunlight like sane people. That would just be too much of a hassle. No, of course they have to do it now! For dramatic effect!

In the car, Fenton reveals one of his many magic powers – when he speaks, the movie goes into Super Flashback Mode, to when he and Adam were happy little children in an idyllic small town. Their father is played by Bill Paxton, who comes home one night and tells his children that God has spoken to him and wants them to start “destroying demons” as part of a holy mission about the end of the world or something else silly like that. Rather than just start planting fliers on cars or screaming about it in front of college libraries during finals week, I guess Paxton is just a special kind of crazy who starts plotting to do it immediately.

The best time to manipulate your own children is when they're clearly half asleep!

Yeah. I guess there was no qualms about killing people from this apparently normal guy, huh? Not even a sliver of doubt? You could say he's just that into doing whatever God says, and as we don't know this character, you could be right about that. His brain, like many fervently insane zealots, is really just a black void with an Etch-a-Sketch in it waiting for God to use His hands to form ideas upon it.

What follows this is several scenes of two children watching Bill Paxton kill people. While I'm sure that's exciting for Paxton, for those looking for that good old Christian spirit, it is a bit of a buzzkill. I must say, this is not doing its Christian duty at all.

I guess Adam, the younger brother, actually buys into all the bullshit Paxton is spewing about it being a calling from God. Usually you have to buy a kid a few video games to make him believe your holy murdering crusade, but Paxton doesn't look to have much money at all. Huh. Must just be a persuasive guy then.

For all the strangeness of these murdering scenes, I do have to give the movie one thing – it is quite creepy and unsettling to watch these scenes. With Paxton's dead-eyed stare and creepy 'enlightened religious zealot' cadence to his voice, followed with the grisly implications of the bodies being chopped up in that basement, it's pretty gruesome and chilling.

However, I do have to call the movie out for one of the strangest scenes in it – when young Fenton runs across town to the sheriff and tells him his dad is killing people, the sheriff just flat out doesn't believe him and mocks him as a liar. Why? Doesn't it at least merit checking out? He's accusing somebody of MURDER. I get that you're a small-town sheriff and you'd rather be doing the crosswords or humping your secretary than solving crimes. I get that your most devious cases usually just involve some kid drinking too much at the local bar. BUT COME ON. IT'S A MURDER CASE. You gotta at least look into it!

"I'm halfway into a bottle of Wild Turkey and was in the middle of watching the hockey match. How dare you disturb me for your petty causes like 'murder' and 'upholding the law of the land'?"

Even though the sheriff believes Paxton when Paxton says he isn't killing people, the sheriff goes and checks in the shed outside anyway. There's nothing there now and the sheriff still thinks Fenton is a liar, but Paxton comes in anyway and kills the sheriff with an ax. Why? He was on your side! With law enforcement like this, hell, I'd just start dropping decapitated bodies on his fucking lawn. Not like he'd care! Why kill him? He's your greatest ally in this killing spree and you just got rid of him.

Then Paxton locks Fenton up in this hole in the ground for a week until Fenton 'fesses up to believing in God and their murder-mission. Hell, stick me in a place like that for a week and I'd cop to seeing JFK murdered by aliens in flying saucers. I don't think this is quite a confirmation that Fenton is exactly on your side, Paxton – but I guess a guy who thinks God is instructing him how to kill people isn't really the sharpest pencil in the drawer.

I'm sure nothing bad will happen after this. Nope. Nothing!

The murders continue on their merry paths, until Fenton finally has enough and gives ole Paxton the ax:

"On second thought, maybe I shouldn't have believed you were on board with my religiously inspired killing spree! I guess I'm a real idiot!" 

Unfortunately, Adam takes over and kills the guy they were originally trying to kill. Boy, this sure isn't putting the Christ back in Christmas at all!

Not your grandfather's Christmas Story! Actually this movie doesn't take place around Christmas. Why am I trying to hammer this joke in?! WHY AM I SO UNFUNNY?!?

Then we go back to the present times, where Fenton reveals to Agent Doyle that he was really Adam Meiks all along, and Fenton was another serial killer altogether. It's here that the movie shows us there really were supernatural religious elements in play all along – they weren't just Paxton hallucinating. To demonstrate this, we see Adam now magically knowing that Doyle murdered his mother years and years ago:

The funniest thing about this scene is the fact that an old lady died. No, I'm kidding – it's that the movie never fucking explains why Doyle, who is apparently a regular FBI agent now, would kill his mother! Was it a bout of temporary insanity? Was she evil too? Is he just a sick fuck who needs to be locked up? I dunno. The movie never tells us. It's pretty much just a shockingly poorly written excuse for Adam to lure Doyle out there and tell him this whole story.

In addition, we also learn that while the guy we thought was Fenton was really Adam, the real Fenton was a serial killer, too! Yup. I guess that crazy gene runs in the family. Why did he become a killer? Because he was traumatized because his daddy was one? I dunno, it isn't very well fleshed out or established. I guess everyone in this universe is a serial killer! Call the world the Killerverse for all I care. Say that the old lady down the street kills orphans in the middle of the night for shits and giggles. Say the receptionist at the FBI building murdered her whole family last week and nobody found out. Go crazy!

After that we see Adam is actually the sheriff of this town now.

His opponent in the last election was the town's local pedophile. Because the only choices in this world are bad and worse!

I love this movie's stance on law enforcement. The only cops we see are a) a non-caring dipshit who doesn't even see accusations of murder as a big deal, b) a guy who killed his mother and c) a God-powered religious serial killer who makes Dexter Season 6 look like child's play. That's lovely. I'm sure the cops watching are just overjoyed at that!

This movie is still pretty frigging good. It's a solid thriller with good performances from the kids, especially given that they have to carry so much of the film. Paxton and McConaghuey do serviceably and the story is very solid overall. The fear comes from watching Paxton believing he's exactly right in murdering these people, and especially goading his young sons into it. That kind of thing could probably happen in real life, and things involving terror to children are scary as shit.

There were a few points I can see now aren't all that good, sure. Like the numerous holes in the plot whenever law enforcement is involved – come on, that sheriff should have known SOMETHING was up. And I guess the film is really weakened by the reveal at the end where you see McConaghuey and Paxton really did have some kind of supernatural powers to see people were evil. That kinda makes it too much like a Christ propaganda film of sorts...I mean, it still works overall, but the effect is a bit less, is all.

I would have preferred it remain more ambiguous as to whether or not there was anything supernatural. For that matter, keep it all in the past. Don't even show us the present at all, or if you have to, make it very minor parts at the beginning and ending. The scariest part of the film is the middle bit where you see Fenton and Adam as kids – just make a whole movie about that, from their eyes, and don't make it too obvious whether God really is telling them to kill demons or not. That would just be a better flick, and I'd find it even scarier than I found this.

Overall though? Still a good horror movie. Go check it out!

Though, now that I think about it, this wasn't very related to Christmas either. Huh. I guess the idea of God telling people to murder in his name isn't the part that those Christians really wanted Christmas to be about. My bad!

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Much Ado About Nothing: The Pointless Fuss Over "The Interview"

Yeah, you knew this was coming...

For those of you who have been living under a rock recently, "The Interview" is a movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco as two television personalities who get the chance of a lifetime: a one-on-one interview with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un. But when the CIA recruits them to kill the dictator, things get crazy...

Or at least that is the impression we get. We do not really know for sure because not long before the film was set to be release, suspected North Korean hackers launched a cyberattack on its producer, Sony Pictures, releasing a flood of private information in retaliation for making the movie. After theaters refused to show it, Sony decided to pull the plug on the picture altogether.

Before we get into this discussion, let's take a look at the trailer:

Looks pretty stupid, doesn't it? Apparently the fate of North Korea depends on whether Rogen can stick something up his butt or not. I'll be honest, if it were not for this whole incident, I probably would not have even seen this film, at least not in theaters. Maybe there are better parts, I don't know. Just did not quite cut it for me...

Now, there has been a lot of discussion about its merits. Should we be making a movie about the assassination of a real leader? Should the film about a guy residing over a brutal regime be taken more seriously? Is it brave or is it stupid, if not reckless? These are all legitimate arguments that people have had, and which I admit to being a participant in. But I have come to a realization: in a way, all these discussions are irrelevant. We are all (again, I'm including myself on this one) basing this on assumptions made about a movie that only a handful of people have actually gotten a chance to see (aside from various clips, including the leaked footage of the Dear Leader's death scene). Maybe we can have that discussion when it is released (as I predict it will, eventually). But for now, we are left in the dark.

So why aren't we getting to see it? We can blame Sony or the movie theaters (there is some controversy at the moment over who is really responsible for the cancellation) all we want and with some justification. But at the end of the day, we know who the real culprit is: a frumpy man-child who rules his country with an iron-fist, yet throws a hissy fit due to the fact that the two stoners from "Pineapple Express" are big meanies!

And to think, he could have been spending his valuable time eating...whatever the hell this is...

But for argument's sake, let's say the tables were reversed: say North Korea made a movie about two guys who try to assassinate President Obama. How would we react? Well, we would be outraged by it. But you know what would happen next? We would probably forget about it within a week. It is not because we do not take threats against our leaders seriously; it is because we know that North Korea is a backwards place and the film would just be a typical piece of propaganda to achieve their motives. And if we were to try to stop it from being shown, at best it would make us look petty and hypocritical for stifling "free speech." By that same standard, while Kim Jung-un and his close advisers may be offended, they also (might) well know that "The Interview" is (again, as far as can tell) a stupid movie about stupid guys acting stupidly.

So why all the fuss? While it is practically impossible to tell at this point, there is a chance that this had nothing to do with the movie at all. This might be part of a political power-play between the U.S. and North Korea, with the movie being used as an excuse to rock the boat. But the intent was clear. After all, "[t]he cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature. As such it is a powerful ideological weapon for the revolution and construction." This is a quote from a 1987 essay written by Kim Jung-il, a notorious cinephile. So if Kim Jng-un is anything like his late father (who was no stranger to being mocked onscreen), he knows how movies effect people, whether making them laugh, cry, or as we have see, angry.

If this whole incident has shown us anything, it reveals what happens when you take things too far. If "The Interview" was allowed to be shown as it was intended to, it is likely that people would have either seen it and gotten a laugh out of it, seen it and scoffed at it, or simply dismissed it altogether and gone to see "Unbroken" instead. Now when people do see it (as I said, eventually), regardless of the actual message and quality of the film, it will now be seen as a sacred symbol of the First Amendment that will be used to "stick it" to the Dear Leader as opposed to what it might have been: the movie where Seth Rogen sticks something up his butt (assuming it is the only one...). In any case, it appears that Kim Jung-un really did bite off more than he could chew [insert another fat joke here].

Oh, and guess who will go laughing all the way to the bank at the end of this?:

"Hahaha," indeed.

I do not own the rights to any of these links, videos or pictures. They are being used for entertainment purposes only, so please don't sue me...or hack me.

The Thing (2011)

Merry Christmas! This movie has snow in it. It must be Christmassy, right? Right?!

Sometimes Hollywood cranks out really interesting, good movies. Other times they get the idea to take perfectly good horror movies and “remake” them in a way that, while not doing anything terribly different on the surface, is actually the Devil incarnate when you really think about it.

I mean, it's not a real remake. Okay. It's a prequel. I'll disregard the obvious fact that most prequels are festering boils on the face of cinema. It's a prequel to the fucking Thing from 1982, one of the scariest movies ever made by anyone. That's a pretty tall order. That's not just something you can throw together in an afternoon. But apparently some douchebags decided they could, and that's why The Thing (2011) exists!

Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton

IMDb

And there's your bedtime story, kids – a cautionary tale, of when Hollywood producers try to remake a classic movie but also simultaneously don't care. The punishment they get at the end is a plague of endless explosive, fiery diarrhea. Or that's what I'm telling myself happened anyway.

We start this off with a bunch of trucks driving to a base in a vast empty white wasteland, which is the same as the vast empty wasteland of the minds who thought this would be a good idea. Yes that was a cheap shot. I should probably actually review the movie instead of taking potshots, huh?

Apparently, just like in the original, we get a bunch of scientists doing scientist-y things in this arctic base I guess. The only difference is that one of them is a woman, played by Mary Elizabeth “Ramona Flowers” Winstead. The character is as bland as any other and has no personality, but she's a woman, and she has tits, so even though you can't see them under her bulky-ass jacket, that makes it worth the writers' time to put her in the film. Just the mere suggestion power is enough.

Not that a female character wouldn't be welcome in a good script, but in this one there's just no reason for it other than "hey! We need something different from the 1982 one!"

Not like the the dialogue is much better. Just listen to this. Or, read it, you know:

GUY: I was hoping to get an American newspaper.

MARY ELIZABETH: What information did you need?

GUY: I wanted to check on how the Cavaliers were doing.

MARY ELIZABETH: Oh, well I don't follow football.

GUY: They're a basketball team.

Amazing how insightful and interesting that dialogue is, huh?

They find the alien frozen in a block of ice at the base, I guess, and start trying to thaw it out. This sequence is really suspenseful since we don't know at all yet that these people are going to die and then the alien is going to get out and go to the other base where Kurt Russell is hangin' out. Nope. We're totally holding our breaths on that one!

Anyway, they examine the frozen alien back at the lab and we get some more boring-ass exposition as they try to figure it out. I was going over in my head while watching this exactly WHY this is so much worse than the first one even despite having the same basic traits. Sure, it isn't as well written, but why does this one specifically make me want to punch someone (usually the Hollywood exec who green-lit it)? Well, it's probably a lot to do with the fact that all this exposition where the characters are wondering what the alien is, is pretty much boring to us. We fucking know what it is already. There's no mystery for us.

So really all we're left with is shitty scenes where the head scientist who has a stick up his ass so far I'm surprised he isn't just a shishkebab at this point pulls Winstead's character aside and goes, “Don't contradict me, your only job here is to get that creature out of the ice.” Even though she was trying to help when she offered suggestions – but I guess being a fucking dick for no reason other than to swing your bloated ego around is cool. And I guess this guy just forgot that Winstead's magical main character powers make her automatically right about everything.

"I am the boss of everyone!"

There's also this other guy, who constantly looks confused or amazed at everything and all his dialogue is literally just pointing out the obvious and dumbing down the explanations for the audience.

Was Keanu Reeves not available? Did you really need this guy just to point out the obvious in your patchwork script?

If all of this was too serious and intellectual for you, don't worry. We have a party scene full of people playing banjos and dancing! What's that? Atmosphere and tension like the original had? Nah. Just throw in more banjo playing scenes.

Exactly what I wanted when I turned on a Thing remake.

So unfortunately, the party is broken up when one dude comes across the alien, which isn't as impressive due to the fact that it's all very poor CGI. More on that later, but seriously, just look at this shit:

The best gore scenes always look more like jigsaw puzzles being taken apart rather than actual human beings dying. It's just kosher.

Oh yeah. Totally worth making this movie at all when this was the type of monster design you went with, right?

So I guess some more very rote, boring “discovery” scenes plod along with Winstead and the other interchangeable jackasses discovering that the monster is replicating people and that it could be any of them. It's all very predictable and dull, again, because we know the story behind it. It's the same exact thing as the 1982 version except worse. How many different ways can I say this? Do I have to make a flow-chart complete with pictures to make this review interesting and make up for just repeating the same stuff over and over again about why the movie is bad?

Sure, a few people die, and you get some halfway-decent ambiance with the cold winter nights outside, but none of it is arresting. The formula is the same – We get a few gross-out CGI scenes, Winstead says something true about the monster, nobody believes her because she is a woman and the main character, and then the scientist leader guy says something arrogant while that other guy just looks bewildered and repeats whatever the scientist leader said. That's the whole rest of the movie. I dunno, man, that icepick lobotomy is starting to look pretty good right about now.

"I'M SORRY I TOLD YOU I DIDN'T LIKE YOUR NEW CIRCUS ACT!"

"Dammit, Angela; again? I told you I'm not into anthropomorphic spider-human hybrids! Now put your clothes back on."

Then we get a very lethargic, boring 45-minute climax in which everyone dies except Winstead and Joel Edgerton, because they were the best looking in the entire cast. Oh and we also get to see the really goofy looking spaceship straight out of a Saturday morning superhero cartoon.

I didn't know the rejected Tron: Legacy sets were so easy to steal.

Why bother even showing us the spaceship? It just feels like the writers went, “oh, this is too similar to the original! Better shoehorn in something pointless and ridiculous that doesn't even jive with the story!”

Then we get a really predictable, seen-it-all-before ending where Winstead gives Edgerton a big speech for the audience about how she figured out he's actually the alien in disguise because his earring was on the wrong side, and then kills him. Why would she bother explaining that to the alien at all? Just fucking kill it! It's not that hard. The idea that she would really take the time to say all this is just icing on the shit-cake of the rest of the movie – such dumb fucking cliché. Such soulless regurgitations of mediocre tropes.

Then because there is no God, we get the end credits interspersed with flashes of the remaining characters chasing after the alien after it transformed into the dog that runs into Kurt Russell's camp in the 1982 version.

I guess it's supposed to be a “tie-in” with the original one, but come on; was the audience so fucking mongoloid retarded that they needed to see that in order to “get it”? Were people so dumb that Hollywood really needed to spend thousands of dollars and make a shitty, boring movie like this to spoon-feed them the truth of what REALLY HAPPENED at that other camp when Russell's guys found it at the beginning of the 1982 The Thing?

Come on. The reason the original was so scary was that you didn't need to see everything that happened to those other scientists! The horror came from the freaky shit that went down when Russell's people started dying and getting paranoid – because not only did you get the complete shock and unexpectedness of that, you also got to imagine in your head the horrors that happened at the other camp where no one survived. That's what horror movies are all about. It's also the exact reason this movie doesn't work. The foreboding mystery and intrigue of what happened to that other camp followed by the explosion of terror later on was the core, basic story structure of that movie. The idea that some numbnuts went 'hey, what if we showed what happened before The Thing' goes directly against that and pisses right in its face!

The power of suggestion when you saw Russell and those other guys exploring the abandoned base and seeing the creepy shit in there and what not is so much better, more evocative and scary than anything in this hour and forty minute waste of time. The Thing (2011) is really one of the most pointless, valueless experiences I can remember having with a movie in, well, maybe ever.

The real cincher of this whole mess is what happened to special effects gurus Bob Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis. Apparently back when this movie was still being made, Woodruff and Gillis made a bunch of awesome practical effects for it, which probably wouldn't have made this great, but would have given us at least a few entertaining moments.

That is, until the producers nixed absolutely everything they'd done, claiming the effects Woodruff and Gillis made were “too much like an 80s movie.” I'll give you a second for that to sink in.

Okay. Done? Good.

Because that is just fucking insane. I mean, the effects we got in this movie were so shitty I'd rather just watch sock puppets pretending to disembowel each other and use my imagination. Too much like an 80s movie? What's next – is it going to be uncool to make Shakespeare adaptations too much like Shakespeare, and so you add in guns and some terrible modern acting to update it? Oh wait, that already happened. Have you no shame? No appreciation for great works of art?

It's very clear to me now how much Hollywood just hates horror movies. Lazy, boring, “we can just throw this together and no one will care.” That's what classic horror is now to Hollywood. Fuck that and fuck you.

And besides – this wasn't even that Christmassy. I'm so sorry I failed you on that front. This whole review is ruined now. I'll have to try again next time.

Fortunately, all is not lost. Woodruff and Gillis have taken their too-much-like-an-80s-movie effects and made their own movies, which will come out next year – Harbinger Down and Fire City: Interpreter of Signs.

Now those look awesome. I can't wait to see those movies. I mean they gotta be better than the crap I just reviewed today...not that that would be a huge accomplishment...

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Fuck Fandoms

Unless you've been living under a rock or paying attention to the actual important things going on in the world lately, you know there's a new Star Wars trailer out. Yes. Even though the film doesn't come out until next December, we got a trailer now, because Star Wars is just the kind of thing people need to be reminded to be excited about.

And while most of the feedback has been pretty level-headed, you DO get a certain subset of backlash over silly things like the very minor changes in design to the Millennium Falcon:

Or the three-pronged, vaguely cross-ish lightsaber we see:

Because apparently a fictional sci-fi universe can't deviate at all from its own rules when a new chapter is made like 40 years later – or maybe just 15 if you're counting the prequels, which I personally don't as they were terrible. Honestly, it just baffles me. These things are problems now? They're little tidbits in a 50-second trailer for a movie that isn't coming out next year. A movie which we know very little about so far. I didn't know you could glean information about the quality of the whole product from a few minor details that haven't even been explained to us yet. You must be psychic. Please, tell me my fortune, too!

I'm just going to come out and say it: if any of those things bothers you, you need to go outside. Just...put down the laptop and go outside, and breathe some fresh air for a second, because you have a problem.

And I'm going to go on a special tangent on the backlash against the black Stormtrooper we see for like a second, which was pronounced enough to get a reaction from CNN.

We see this black dude in a Stormtrooper outfit for like, a split second, which was apparently enough for people to start whining and crying about that too. Oh, is it because all Stormtroopers were “supposed” to be clones of Jango Fett? I'm not even a big Star Wars guy and even I know that doesn't have to be fucking true – and hell, maybe he just snuck into one as a disguise like Luke did in The New Hope. You don't know shit yet. Why would you get mad about this?

Oh yeah – it's because you're secretly a racist piece of trash and trying to cover that up by pretending to care about the franchise.

Some people will also complain about deviations from the “Extended Universe” novels, as apparently some kind of official voice has spoken and said the “EU” no longer “counts” and the movies will be the only official canon. I'm sorry, but what's the problem? You can't just ignore that bullshit and pretend your favorite books are what counts? Who gives a fuck if some multi-millionaire out-of-touch-with-reality movie studio tells you what's what? You like what you like and you make your own canon! That's why it being a fictional universe is cool. I read some of those Star Wars “EU” books – some of them were pretty fucking good! But I just don't see how the studio making a movie that disregards those storylines is so offensive. Unless they're sending Stormtroopers to your house in big black vans to collect and burn all your Extended Universe books, I don't see the problem.

All this just points out one important factor to me that I feel like I just have to say plainly – Star Wars fans can be real nitpicking whiny babies about this stuff.

Not to exclude fans of any other big franchise or fantasy world. Lord of the Rings fans, Harry Potter fans, Doctor Who fans and many others can all be like that. Over the last year or two, I've liked hanging out with people less and less who are super obsessed with movies and TV shows, especially with ones that are big multi-verse fantasies like Star Wars. Which sounds weird, given what I do on here and how invested I can get in a good movie or show, but hear me out.

When I say “emotionally invested,” I don't mean you just can't care AT ALL about these things – certainly you're supposed to get into what you're watching; that just means it's done a good job telling its story. I myself get very much into certain movies and shows and can find them immeasurably powerful. However, there's a certain point when it just gets too far. I think that point is when you start actually referring to yourself as a member of a “fandom.”

If you're not familiar with this term, it's best summed up as a cultlike fanaticism around certain popular series – Harry Potter. Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. Doctor Who. The list goes on – some people are just really, really into that stuff and call themselves part of the fandom. This just means they're super big fans of it. Fine. Yes. OK. I've got plenty of friends who love these things and I have nothing against them for that. If you just really like something, that's cool with me and you're not who I'm talking about here.

The problem though, is that for a disturbing amount of people, fandom seems to be an excuse for “I take this way too seriously and will get mad about changes to it, and then get in pithy overly emotional online debates about it.” Because, frankly, that's what the Internet is for I guess – stupid arguments over fandoms.

So I'll come out and say it – fuck fandoms. Fuck them forever.

I'm just tired of it. Tired, tired, tired of the endless bickering and shit-flinging over what should just be good entertainment. People will go on about this shit for days on end if you let them about how the world of the fiction of their choice is a sacred, real thing and everything in it should be a part of continuity. It's kind of a strange argument because it strangles the hell out of actual creativity. Which is why they like their preferred fandom to begin with (whether they have the articulation to realize that or not) – that big, expansive, fantastical universe the original creators made up that they can dive into and forget their own lives for a little while. It's fiction! You can do whatever you want with it! The Star Wars universe is basically the modern equivalent of a whole mythology, it's got so much you can do with it. Why would you care if someone new who has new ideas made a few changes?

I guess I also just don't get it because honestly, even if the new Star Wars sucks and totally shits on the established franchise and books and what not, why do you care that much? Just acknowledge that it sucks, and then go back to reading and watching the stuff you actually like. Pretending like a fictional universe like Star Wars can be "disrespected" in some way is the dumbest thing ever. Even if the new Star Wars movie is full of rapping Jar Jar Binks, Ewoks everywhere playing competitive sports and Han Solo turning gay, you can still just ignore it and go back to watching the movies or reading the books you actually like.

The only exception to this would be if you are like me and want to lampoon shitty things on a blog for humorous purposes and don't actually let it affect your real life. Then you're totally okay and, since you're like me, are probably an Adonis-like God figure and should be worshipped and showered in gifts. But I digress.

I'm not really talking about one person or one fandom in particular; it isn't just about Star Wars. I have seen this stuff all over the place, from many different people and many different subjects. This stuff should be fun. It shouldn't be some kind of incentive to go to war with people you don't know over stupid shit that doesn't matter. It's escapism – it should be something that makes you happy.

Bottom line is this – if you get mad or upset about anything in a fictional universe changing with the times, you probably need to take a deep breath and just leave the room for a while until you calm down. Seriously. It isn't really a big deal.

P.S. The new trailer actually makes me excited for that new Star Wars movie. I'll go see it.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

A Talking Cat!?! (2013)

It's time, dear readers, to take a break from our usual intake of gruesome horror tales, and instead look at something different. Something involving talking felines, and no dignity or common sense.

Director: David DeCoteau (as Mary Crawford)

Starring: Johnny Whitaker, Janis Peebles, Eric Roberts

IMDb

...yeah, I guess that's as good of an intro as I'm going to get. Boy, am I out of steam! It's almost like I'm doing these reviews and consciously mentioning how out of steam I am just to cover up how out of steam I am! And plus I'm reviewing a movie about a fucking talking cat. Which is, frankly, as low as you can go.

Apparently director David DeCoteau is something of a brainchild as he has done many other movies exactly like this. Some titles include A Talking Pony!?! and My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?! because it's apparently impossible to have a good title if you don't include !?! at the end of it. Am I right!?! No. No I'm not. I'm really just ashamed I just did that.

But really the most interesting part of this whole affair is this:

What? Seriously, what?

Oh well. This is mere chump change compared to the movie we're about to see. Are you ready? No? Well, nobody is ever going to be - not for this. We'll just have to get used to it.

The movie begins with our hero, Duffy, a talking cat whose mission is to help people. We get a voice-over in his head about, I dunno, walking around and shitting in peoples' yards or something. The voice-over by Eric Roberts of The Dark Knight and Heroes fame sounds like your drunk stepfather in a bar at 2 p.m.

He isn't the hero we want, but he's the hero we deserve. Also that looks nothing like the cat on the cover, goddamn you! Was it so hard to take a picture of the actual cat in your fucking movie?

He decides to help two separate families in “trouble.” By that I mean one of them has a dad played by a mordibly obese Bill Murray who likes to do soul-crushing things like sit down in the random car-shaped seat they have for some Godforsaken reason in their living room, and go “Vroom! Vroom!” like he's a 10 year old. The son, who is sitting on the couch reading what I am positive is a book of blank pages just intended to make him look smart, sighs exasperatedly and goes “Dad, why do you keep doing that?”

Did they steal that chair from a mall kids' play area display?

The story is told by the dad, Phil, who explains very calmly and actually kind of happily that he lost his job and will now just laze around the house all day. The son doesn't give a shit at all, and I guess that kind of dead-eyed apathy runs in the family – must be a dominant gene. Phil's apparent plan is just to hang around and eat pizza and stuff. I'm so glad he's a positive role model.

The son, Chris, by the way, is a total wimp who gets this really hot girl to come over and “study” with him, which for her means swimming in his pool while he reads her books for her. Kid, I'd tell you to skip this chick and wait for someone better, but to be honest, your totally wimpy reaction to this in which you run away from her like a pussy tells me you don't have it in you. I mean, come on – even the fucking cat is thinking he's terrible. Really; we get a voice over with the cat thinking how lame Chris is. That's pretty bad.

"How am I using a phone when I'm too stupid to even know how to operate one?"

The other family is a “poorer” family, which means they don't have a house that a hipster art college student would design while he was drunk. The daughter is trying to apply for business school, but the mom says they don't have money for that, and actively antagonizes the daughter for...trying to better herself as a human being and having ambition. Meanwhile, her lazy slacker son who just spends all day in his room and acts like a wooden plank, she loves and adores.

Hmm...so mommy has some issues which will likely be projected onto her weak-willed son. Sound familiar?

Nah.

So if you can actually believe it, the cat can talk to these people only once and tell them something they need to do or know to make their lives better. I'd say this is ridiculous and implausible, but frankly the audience for the movie – whoever the fuck they are – is already close enough to believing shit like this is possible. Whether through extremist hippie new-age belief or being dropped on their heads, the audience for A Talking Cat!?! will probably accept this plot without complaint.

Above: the look of all the legitimate movie studios when confronted with the plot for A Talking Cat!?!

I also love the animation for when his mouth moves, and by animation I of course mean they just photoshopped a black hole over the cat's mouth and had it move vaguely in tandem with the dialogue. Didn't I see this kind of stuff in 2002-era Internet animation cartoons? Why am I watching it in a 2014 movie?

Even old Newgrounds.com games had better graphics.

So I guess the cat gives them some really vague, weird advice – he tells Phil to “go take a walk in the woods.” Which honestly sounds kinda creepy, doesn't it? Is this cat some kind of mafia hitman enforcer? I dunno. Unless there's Ryan Gosling and a place beyond the pines involved here, taking a walk in the woods with anyone in this movie sounds like a terrible idea to me.

The only acceptable outcome of this movie for me.

He also tells the girl, Tina, to look at her computer, which has Phil's website on it. I guess Phil's job, which he lost recently, was something involving computer programming. Because this guy really looks and acts like a guy who knows anything about computers, right?

I guess the whole point of all this is when Phil takes his walk in the woods and meets up with Susan, the mom from the other family. They have a conversation about Humphrey Bogart movies, which I'm guessing is because the director didn't have the money to buy the rights to talk about anything else. I love Humphrey Bogart and all, but this whole sequence is hilarious to me. Yes, truly that is the barometer of quality here – Humphrey Bogart movies on one end and A Talking Cat!?! on the other.

Above: The face of the Humphrey Bogart fan club, circa 2013.

There's also a plot point, if you can call it that, about Susan being this caterer for business parties or something, and she's constantly trying to make cheese puffs to take with her. They talk about this a lot, to the point where my friends and I started to wonder if someone just lost a bet and had to shoehorn in the phrase “cheese puffs” in their script as many times as possible. I mean Jesus Christ, what is the big fucking deal with the cheese puffs? Are they really that good? Will they make you orgasm if you eat just one? Will they make you see beyond our puny reality and soar to the cosmos inside your mind while rainbows shoot out of your ass? I mean, you're setting the standards pre-etty fuckin' high here.

Apparently Susan wants Tina to make more cheese puffs instead of doing work to try and get into computer school. She really acts like a bitch to Tina for wanting to do stuff to try and get into a computer school instead of making cheese puffs – yeah, furthering your education and improving life prospects is lame. She should just be a docile house wife!

All women should be forced to stay in kitchens and make food all day with no other career prospects - A Talking Cat!?! says so, so it must be true.

Phil leaves and Tina goes with him to his house to make the cheese puffs while also talking about computers! They mash their fingers on the keyboards while smiling like a Hallmark commercial, so I guess that counts as the plot moving forward:

"Alright! You found my favorite animal porn website!"

The other son comes up and finds Chris trying to swim in the pool – because he apparently doesn't know how to swim when they clearly have a pool right there and the ocean is just a few miles away, too. I mean, I don't know; maybe there's some rational explanation. But given the movie's titanic levels of stupidity I'm guessing it's because Phil shrugged his shoulders, got that doofy look on his face and went “aw shucks, I ain't good at anything except computer science and embarrassing my entire family in public. You just won't be able to swim I guess!”

There's actual dialogue in this scene where Chris complains about being afraid of pool sharks - like, actual fucking sharks in the pool. Did he get dropped on his head?

So logically, the solution here is for the other son to offer to give Chris swimming lessons. Wait a minute, I thought the whole plot point of the other son was that he wasn't good at anything and didn't know what he wanted to do! But now he's really good at teaching people to swim and seems to enjoy that?! It's almost like the writers just didn't give a fucking shit what they were dribbling out onto the page at this point.

And then he was immediately eaten by a pool shark.

Susan comes over and gets mad at her kids for coming over there, even though they made the cheese puffs like she wanted. But that wasn't good enough because, apparently, in that short time span in which Tina left her house and came to Phil's, the mom had a meeting that went HORRIBLY because she didn't have the fucking cheese puffs! The horror! Stop the presses! So she takes it out on everyone else and ruins everyones' lives. Fuckin' A.

Then we get a montage of Phil and Chris scanning their clothes into a computer somehow, which I guess is Tina's newfangled computer system program or whatever. I dunno, since they figured this out and seem to know how it works, what's to stop them from stealing it for themselves and making even more money than they already have? Just trying to keep it real here, movie. Plus these characters being absolute irredeemable dicks to one another would just be funnier for me. And honestly, a fucking montage of this? Are you shitting me?! I've had more fun watching videos of people getting root canals.

Yes, continue to look absolutely baffled and bewildered at everything you're doing. That makes for a good character.

So I guess the cat thinks he can solve this “problem” by going over and talking to Susan, which he hasn't done yet. Unless what comes next is a suicide pact, then I'm not interested.

But unfortunately, the cat never makes it, after being hit by a car. Yes, really – that's now a plot point in this movie. Now, what I'm about to show you is a picture of the cat's injuries, and I understand that may disturb you. So if you're the type of person who is offended by gore and violence, especially against talking felines, I suggest you click the 'Back' button on your browser.

…

…

Have you done it yet? Because I'm serious. You're going to be disturbed by this.

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No, really. You will be. Last warning!

Okay then. Here are the injuries the cat sustains after the car accident:

Yup. Just one bandage on his head and that's all the injury he sustained from being HIT BY A FUCKING CAR.

Yes, my sentiments exactly.

You can't make this up, people! Hell, I can't even make jokes – the movie already is one! I guess either the cat has some aluminum plates in its skull after the war or the car that ran over him looked like this:

So I guess the cat somehow tells them that to save his life, they have to go out and find a buried collar in the woods. They go walking in the woods to a soundtrack of elevator music that sounds like it was made for a clown school, and find the collar above the ground, not buried like the cat said. Because why have anything make sense now? Who really cares about having a coherent script at all, right?

So although I was really hoping when they put the collar back on Duffy, it would magically transform him into his true form as the dark lord Lucifer, spewing hellfire and brimstone from his cracked lips and with the twisted horns atop his head that seem to be able to pierce the heavens...that doesn't happen. Instead it just magically heals him.

This is apparently what it looks like when a magical cat is healed. Also, good editing is when this happens and only one out of all those characters is looking up and appears to see it at all.

Well, that was A Talking Cat!?!. It was about as good as you would've expected from the title. I mean it isn't like you'd see the DVD cover and expect anything that much better. Christ. What was the thought process behind this? Who was the intended audience?

Oh. Well...okay then.

It isn't like Sharknado or something where it's intentionally bad...there was obviously passion in this and some kind of attempt to tell a story. But it's just incredibly backwards. The cat, for whatever fucking reason, is there to “help” people – so, obviously, he picks some really well-off middle class to rich people who have no real problems. Couldn't find a poor single mom on welfare or a high school drop out addicted to meth to help out, hmm? HMMMM?!

Well actually I'm guessing he tried, but really the only people fucking dumb enough to listen to a talking cat ended up being the characters we saw in this movie. That makes sense. And honestly the 'problems' these people have don't even seem that bad – they aren't that lonely, they seem to be doing decently financially...they have it pretty good, aside from the fact that they made some new friends at the end I guess. I guess that cat just wanted to freeload off them and not sleep in the gutter for a night.

Other than that though, this was pretty much okay. I mean, who doesn't want a movie full of long shots of nothing but nature or people driving?

These kinds of time-wasting shots take up a lot of the movie's runtime - it's pretty obvious they were just put there to pad out the rather meager 80 minute (even with these shots in there) runtime.

Who doesn't want a story with zero likable characters and dialogue more fitting of a bad 1980s commercial? Yes. I'm not going back on any of that.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.