I just got back from watching An American Carol, the new film by David Zucker. It stars Kevin Farley, the brother of the late Chris Farley of “in a van down by the river” fame, and is a typical Zucker-esque film. Over all, I’m not a large fan of the style of humor that Zucker has, since it tends to rely more on slapstick and horrific puns; however, the Zucker brothers have always managed to pull it off to make better than average movies (Airplane!, The Naked Gun series, etc.). David, who is now a conservative, manages to pull it off very effectively without his still-liberal brother, Jerry. (Jerry, in fact, wants to make it clear that he has nothing to do with this movie.)

The movie is blatantly right-wing, and gets bonus points in my book because of that. Liberals are going to hate this movie with a passion. It has everything in it that could possibly offend them. In fact, it reminds me of a Stephen Colbert episode in reverse…

It will be interesting to see what reaction all the liberals who say conservatives have no sense of humor will do now that they are the ones being lampooned. The reviews I’ve read so far are not promising. But then, consistency never has been a liberal strong point.

For the record, if Public Transit ever did become a movie, I’d love for David Zucker to direct it.

That said, the movie isn’t perfect, even for someone who is in the tank for the right wing. Instead of an A+, I’ll have to give it an A-, borderline B+ even. Again, a lot of this has to do with the fact that I’m not a huge fan of the style of humor, and I’d give the same marks for Airplane! for instance. So if you loved Airplane! then you’ll love this movie, assuming you’re not Michael Moore.

One final note. The irony of the movie extended beyond the movie itself. Indeed, it began during the previews for coming attractions. We got to see previews for Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Sexdrive. In other words, the typical liberal fare that constitutes “humor.” The contrast between that and the humor of An American Carol is something that David Zucker would have loved to have planned, I’m sure. Instead, he got it for free. The rest of Hollywood will miss this; but for some reason I doubt “fly-over country” will…

I just got back from watching The Dark Knight at the Imax. Let me just say that I went into the film with high expectations, and they were not disappointed. Heath Ledger gave a tremendous performance, and I would agree with any of the posthumous Oscar drives for him. The other acting was quite solid too.

Where the movie shines is in the character development. This film isn’t a typical Hollywood film. It certainly isn’t a typical “superhero” movie. The Nolan brothers have crafted a story that would have worked in any setting–it would not have needed Batman or the Joker at all. And because of that, it gives a sense of reality to the series. You actually feel like you can understand the inner workings, the motivations, of each character.

The result is a movie that I already rank within my top 5 favorites, and I’ve only seen it once. I will, however, see it many more times, and will definitely buy it when it comes out on DVD (although you really need an Imax screen to appreciate the film…and some awesome speakers for the killer soundtrack that Zimmer and Howard put together).

One final word. For those of you who read my Thirty Days of Night review, take everything in there and reverse it and you’ve got the level of movie that The Dark Knight is.

WTF Just Happened?

INT. CLASSROOM – DAY

MARK W is teaching a class. He is a complete dork and couldn’t act to save his life.

All the bees are dead.

I’m allergic to bee-stings.

Where did their bodies go?

Global Warming!

Could be.

Bush did it!

Exactly! Bush did it.

There are sudden screams from outside.

What is it? That noise. I mean, what
is that noise?

Someone just jumped off the roof of
the bank!

(with cell phone camera)
I’m so gonna put this vid up on MySpace!

The SUPERINTENDENT of the school rushes into the room.

We’re all going to die!

He throws himself out the window. The kids continue filming it with their cell phones.

CUT TO…

EXT. WOODS IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE – DAY

Why do we have to walk? The train
was running perfectly well.

I think M. Night’s been reading The
Stand. God, I hope we don’t have to
walk all the way to Boulder.

They stop five feet away from a fifteen-story building.

Where do we go now?

I don’t know. Hey look, a building!

Good thing you saw that or we’d be
stuck here forever!

They go the door of the building. It has a giant red screen reading “LOCKED”, a huge padlock on the door, etc. Mark W. tries the door anyway.

Oh no! It’s locked!

We’re doomed!

Behind them, a BUSH appears looking menacing.

We’ll be safe as long as the wind doesn’t
blow.

The wind blows.

MAN THIS MOVIE BLOWS!

They run into a conveniently placed cottage, but Mark W. goes in one door and Zooey in a different one!!!!

Zooey! I love you! Where are you?

I don’t know! It’s dark. I’m scared.

Just stay alive! I WILL FIND YOU!

We get a top-down view, showing Zooey and Mark in two rooms at the end of a long hall. The doors are not locked.

I can’t live without you.

He walks as slowly as possible outside. Zooey does too. They meet in the field and kiss.

We’re not dead!

Our careers are.

The end credits begin. The camera pulls back from the screen showing…a dead audience.

The credits end. We see the fifteen story building. The screen changes from “LOCKED” to “UNLOCKED.” The door opens.

An AVALANCHE OF BEE CORPSES falls out.

I just got back from watching The Happening with my friend Travis. Thankfully, the movie theater provided us with a refund. Because seriously, I’ve had bowel movements that were more creative than this movie.

How shall I sum this up?

I think that was about as subtle as the point M. Night Shyamalaladingdong was trying to make.

It’s difficult to believe this is the same guy that wrote Signs and The Sixth Sense. I don’t know what M. Night was smoking when he thought This is a great idea for a movie!, but for the sake of the universe whatever it was needs to be criminalized.

The Happening was supposed to be a scary movie, one that would thrill you. Instead, it’s so bad you couldn’t even spoof it. We’re treated to an endless montage of the worst dialogue ever penned coming from characters so flat they disappeared when they turned sideways (and Wahlburg had to have what’s got to be the absolute worst delivered “Oh no” ever put on film). To make up for it, however, there was no plot. The motivating force of the movie was simple: “See everyone who’s not Mark Wahlburg, Zooey Deschanel, or Ashyln Sanchez? They’re going to die.”

Normally, that fact would rank up there as a SPOILER ALERT but unless you’re dumber than a package of mislabeled UPS bubble wrap (which, incidentally, would have written a better script than M. Night), you figure this out pretty much 27 seconds into the movie. Ergo, I haven’t ruined anything for you.

This movie is Shyamalan’s first R-rated movie. I agree with Travis, who said it would have worked better as a PG-13 movie. It’s rated R for gore, and the gore just doesn’t fit. There are movies where gore is appropriate (We Were Soliders, When Harry Met Sally), but The Happening is not one of those films. Instead, it’s distracting. The film is set up just so that M. Night can kill each character in more gruesome ways.

The problem is that for a horror movie to work, you actually have to care about the characters who are at risk of death. That’s where the scary part comes in. You empathize with them and you don’t want them to die. In this film, each death scene is so abrupt and so over the top that it’s closer to a comedy than a horror flick. This sets a dangerous precedent.

The film is also so on-the-nose that it’s pathetic. The Earth is dying and we are the problem. It’s so bad, after the guy gets run over by a lawnmower, you see the real estate sign proudly saying, “You got what you deserved!” Yeah, nothing subtle about that, M. Night! Where’s the skill you had when you weaved the threads of Signs together?

Also, this whole notion that everyone from the Midwest is a militia gun nut? Pathetic. Go back to your progressive cave and spawn a stalk of asparagus or something.

To conclude, the only good part of this movie was The X-Files trailer. And I could have watched that on You Tube for free. If I wanted to see something on the caliber of this movie, I’d watch a compost heap for a few hours. For the first time ever, I asked for my money back after watching a film. The theater probably was not surprised. But if this movie is still showing on Friday, I’ll be surprised.

Last month, I was able to watch a screening of Ben Stein’s upcoming movie, Expelled (http://www.getexpelled.com/). Stein was there at the presentation too, so I got to sit through a little Q&A with him. At the time, all viewers had to sign a confidentiality agreement that precluded us from writing reviews about the movie. That restriction was lifted yesterday, however, so today I bring you my review of Expelled.

For those who know absolutely nothing about the film, Expelled is Stein’s look at Intelligent Design and the way that ID proponents are expelled from the “academy” via academic censorship. The basic goal of the film is to publicize the fact that there are professors who question Darwinistic dogma who are then censured for it, who cannot get tenure, who are fired from their jobs, etc. Therefore, on a broad issue, the film is designed simply to publicize the suppression of free-thought by Darwinists and not to provide an apologetic for ID as such.

Since I knew this was the motivation, I watched the film intentionally thinking of what Darwinists would say in response to it. Because of that, when I watched it I found the movie does have some weaknesses. The main drawback to it from the intellectual standpoint is that it relied on a heavy emotional link to Social Darwinism, especially manifest by Hitler’s Darwinism; thus the “intellectual” Darwinist will most certainly respond: “It’s nothing but emotive propaganda with no substance” (which isn’t true, but the emotive aspect was emphasized enough that it did sometimes feel that way even to this ID proponent).

By the way, I should also point out that I don’t think it’s bad in and of itself for the movie to play on the Social Darwinistic evils that have come about; atheists harp on the Crusades enough that they deserve this. And frankly most people are unaware of the links between Eugenics and Darwinism and Planned Parenthood, which are also mentioned in the film along with Hitler and the Communists.

Throughout the film is the metaphor of the Berlin Wall, and Stein ends the film by paralleling Reagan’s famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech. The attempt is to get people to know the wall exists so that others will be able to work at chipping it away. The rallying cry is: “We need academic freedom, and that includes the freedom to believe contra-Darwin about origins of life.” I do believe the film captures this goal, and so it succeeds at what it attempts to do.

So to review it, it definitely would get a solid A in my book. And while the movie is only 97 minutes long in the form I saw, Stein told us the DVD is going to have tons more footage and extra features in it, including what will probably become one of the most famous Dawkins interviews, at least for the IDers.

In fact, that interview remains the most memorable portion of the film if, for no other reason, than the fact that I have read so much of Dawkins materials beforehand. Stein had Dawkins looking absolutely flummoxed. During Stein’s interview, Dawkins stated that it was impossible that there is an Intelligent Designer. Stein asked him for a percentage on how sure he is of that idea. Dawkins refuses to give an exact number, then finally decided on 99%. Stein asked: “Couldn’t it be 49% instead?” Dawkins responded with his typical: “No, the probability of a designer is nowhere near half” etc. Then, Stein pressed Dawkins on how the first cell was created, and in the end Dawkins actually acknowledged that he could accept the theory of panspermia (aliens did it). Everyone in the theater laughed, because after just saying it was impossible for intelligent design to have created life on Earth, Dawkins admits that aliens that were “more intellectually advanced than we are” (as close to a direct quote as I can recall from memory of something I saw only once) could have done it after all.

As a funny aside, one of the questions Stein was asked during our forum was: “Do you think you treated Dawkins fairly in the movie?” To which Stein responded (accurately, as those of you who have read Dawkins already know): “I think we treated him charitably. There were many hostile responses he gave that we edited out, where his response was basically, ‘I’m Richard Dawkins and you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Richard Dawkins!’” It remains to be seen how much of the entire interview will be in the DVD version of the film.

Naturally, this film will not convince any Darwinist to look at ID…but then, no film could do that. It will hopefully be enough to pry open the door a bit for some so that others can come along with more detailed explanations in the future.

I just watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse which was included with Resident Evil on a nifty little two-pack. I remember watching the first Resident Evil years ago, but I really forgot how cheesy these movies were. The first one was still infinitely better than the second one, but the second one really made me appreciate Shaun of the Dead that much more.

Question. Why is it that zombies that are so slow can sneak up on people so fast? Further, why is it that the main characters are stupid enough to go into a dark room and breathe a sigh of relief? (This is just asking for a big bite to get taken out of your shoulder.)

Oh well. At least they weren’t vampires in Alaska. Still, I really have to ask…where are the good zombie horror writers?

I wonder if it means anything when I won’t write a zombie story. Perhaps it means it’s just impossible to do anything with the zombie genre. Maybe that’s why all zombie movies (that aren’t spoofs) totally suck. There just isn’t enough there.

Or perhaps authors need to get away from cliches and stupid protagonists who go out of their way to die horrific deaths.

I just got back from watching The Mist. Since Stephen King has threatened to hang anyone who reveals the ending, I shall not do so for you. But I will say this about it: Frank Darabont’s adaptation is straight out of Richard Bachman’s head, which is precisely why Stephen King loved it.

This wasn’t King’s best story. Also, I disagree with him because I do not think it’s the scariest thing he’s written (then again, it’s been roughly 15 years since I read the novella, so maybe re-reading it will change my mind). But the characters are refreshingly real, except for the religious nutbag. (I found myself wishing I could jump on the screen and throttle her by the neck screaming, “Learn some stinkin’ exegesis!” whereas the rest of the audience simply wanted her to die a painful and horrific death.)

In other words, this was no Thirty Days of Night where characters consistently make the absolute stupidest decisions possible. No, here even when characters make dumb decisions there’s at least a little bit of a rationale behind their decision. They don’t go screaming through the middle of the parking lot; they leave because (in one instance) they doubt that anything that’s happening is actually real–it’s just hype.

On to the grades: the script scores a B+ in my book, possibly an A- since the movie is interesting enough that I’ll want to watch it again. However, there were some things about the script that were annoying, and I’m not sold on the ending. Some bonus points do go to Darabont for incorporating part of the King Universe into the movie. For example, the main character, David Drayton (played by Thomas Jane) is an artist who is painting a picture of none other than the gunslinger, Roland of Gilead. Other posters on the wall included The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile (but that’s to be expected, given Frank Darabont did both of those movies too). In this case, instead of looking like cheesy product placements, it fit King’s use of intertwining stories among other stories inside his universe, especially the Roland pic (as those who know anything about the Dark Tower series will understand).

The special effects for the movie were also top notch, and as usual with King’s material the actors had enough material to do a great job looking and sounding real. The only real let down from the technical side came from the music, composed by Mark Isham. There were large chunks of the movie with no music at all, which fit the mood perfectly. Unfortunately, it meant that when the music did play it was quite noticably bad.

Other than that, as I mentioned earlier with the script, the film scores a solid B+, possibly eeking out to an A- if I watch it again.

I remember as a kid that my parents once showed me and my siblings the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was young at the time (somewhere in my low teens) and all I could remember about the movie is it was extremely long and boring. And there were monkeys in it. Plus a talking computer that got disconnected. But other than that, it was long and boring. And also long. Plus boring.

Anyway, this weekend I saw that they had the special edition of the movie on sale for $10, and since it’d been so long since I’d watched it and since I’d grown a lot since I’d watched it, I figured I’d pick it up and watch it again and see how I feel about it now. So I figured I’d review it here.

First of all, the movie is long and boring. There’s also some monkeys in it, a talking computer that gets disconnected, and it’s really long. Plus boring.

Other than that the movie was…well, underwhelming isn’t weak enough.

Frankly, I can’t see why people make such a big deal about this movie. The plot is completely stupid, and I guarantee that no one knows what the movie is about.

How do I know this? Ask ten people and they’ll give you two hundred answers about what the movie is about. My favorite Camille Paglia, a feminist whacko, who concludes that when Dave turns off HAL 9000, it’s really a depiction of a sociopathic man raping a woman. Yes, you heard that right. When a man acts to turn off a computer that has killed everyone else on the ship, that is the same as rape (and I thought Public Transit was fiction.)

Don’t believe me? Check out the video here. At the 5:55 mark is when Paglia goes off on the Dave = rapist point.

By the way, I’m pretty sure Paglia has a psychosis. But that’s neither here nor there.

The end result after having seen 2001 a second time at a much older age is…

This movie sucks.

UPDATE: After talking to a co-worker, I’ve concluded that if Dave’s killing of HAL 9000 constitutes a metaphor for rape, then the rest of the movie is a metaphor showing that if you leave a woman unsupervised for five minutes she’ll kill everyone on board the ship…

If you want to spend two hours watching people make the worst possible choices at every single opportunity, you can turn on CSPAN whenever they’re covering Congressional speeches and watch it for free. Or, you can pay your hard earned money and go watch 30 Days of Night.

I decided to watch this movie because my review of it had not yet been written to disabuse me of the notion that it could be a good movie. After all, the plot summary had some potential. It takes place in Barrow, Alaska (bonus points for me since I was born in AK, and since I have an aunt who lived in Barrow), it takes place during the winter when the sun doesn’t rise (hence the 30 days of night), and it had vampires in it.

I’m tempted to put a “Plot spoiler” alert here, but it would be too generous to call the random events that occur during 30 Days of Night “plot.” Thus, I shall issue my:

Those who think I’m exaggerating the pointlessness of what happens in this story really ought to trust me here; but go watch it if you doubt. Ye shall come forth heaping praise upon me for mine warning.

Anyway, the story opens up with everyone’s cell phones being stolen and burned. Despite the fact that not everyone’s cell phone is stolen and burned. In fact, everyone who needs a cell phone still has a cell phone. Also in fact, the disappearing cell phones have absolutely no purpose in the story. Oh yeah, also also in fact, later on the vampires are going to destroy the cell tower anyway rendering the stolen cell phones completely superflous, unnecessary, and otherwise Congressional.

Then the movie suddenly flashes to a scene of a bunch of huskies. They’re barking and growling and there’s spooky music as they get slaughtered.

Then we’re back to normal and you’re never quite sure why all the dogs were killed. Supposedly it’s so later on no one can mush out of town for freedom. I’m thinking the movie producers don’t know where Barrow is.

Speaking of that…why aren’t there any Eskimos living in Barrow?

Oh well. The movie begins the human slaughter by having the guy in the cell tower hear a sudden noise outside. Naturally, this makes the idiot wander out about 500 yards from the entrance to the cell tower, armed with a flashlight, as he investigates. Because, ya know, people who live in a town that has to deal with polar bears always wander out in the cold armed with a flashlight whenever they hear a “mysterious” noise that sounds like someone banging a pot with a spoon.

Again oh well. As the random events progress, people mysteriously die, getting slaughtered left and right. You can’t keep track of any characters, but it’s not like it matters because you’re sitting there thinking, “These people are too dumb to have me concern myself about them.”

Case in point: two guys are hooking up with a girl and they decide to do “Paper-Rock-Scissors” to decide which of the two guy’s houses they’ll go back to. Lo and behold, they get through “Paper-Rock” and BAM! one of the guys disappears. So the surviving girl and the guy stand there like complete idiots calling out the missing guy’s name.

Don’t worry, a few seconds later his body comes falling out of the sky. The girl takes off running while the guy continues to stand there. You know, like what you’d do if you just saw someone get whisked away into thin air and then deposited next to you from a great height.

Later on, the movie manages to top this. One of the characters decides he’s going to walk to Wainwright. His son decides, after having seen lots of people being killed left and right by vampires, that the smart thing to do would be to run down the middle of the street yelling, “DAD!” as loud as he can.

Amazingly enough, he got killed by the vampires. Who woulda seen THAT one coming?

Frankly, by the end of the movie you realize that no character in the script has the sense God gave a bag of pork rinds. In fact, you could replace half the cast with those bags of pork rinds and the collective IQ of the characters would have doubled.

Now I’m not going to ruin the ending for you because it’s bad enough I don’t need to do so. But the net result of this movie is a whopping F. And that’s being generous.

Bottom line: I’m a writer. If I had written this script, I’d look at taking up figure skating.

I just got back from watching September Dawn. Before 2001, a reference to a historical tragedy in American history with the date of September 11 would have caused one to recall the Mountain Meadows Massacre instead of the World Trade Center. September Dawn is, therefore, the movie about America’s first 9/11.

The historical foundations can be summarized as follows. A wagon train of emigrants from Arkansas and Missouri was enroute to California through the Utah Territory in 1857. In September, they reached Mountain Meadows. On September 7, the train was attacked by people appearing to be Paiute Indians. On September 11, Mormons (led by John D. Lee) under a flag of truce convinced the emigrants to leave their weapons and belongings behind so they could be escorted to a nearby town under the protection of the Mormons. After the group had travelled a short distance, the Mormons killed all but 17 children who were deemed too young to talk about what had happened. It is estimated that about 120 men, women, and children were killed during that five-day battle, most of them on September 11. Only one person was ever tried, convicted, and executed for his role in the massacre: John D. Lee. He was executed at the spot of the massacre over twenty years after it had occured (justice was delayed due, in part, to the outbreak of the Civil War).

As with all movies that are fictionalized accounts of historical events, September Dawn suffers from a few plot gimmicks. For one thing, the writers had to introduce a Romeo & Juliet aspect to the film–an emigrant girl (Emily) and Mormon boy (Jonathan) who fall in love with each other. This part of the plot was, in my opinion, not very well done. It tended for the overly sappy and felt like a deliberate attempt to try to put a human face on the tragedy by making you care about two particular characters.

But of course the reality of the Mountain Meadows Massacre does not need a fictionalized couple to bring home the impact of what occured. The actual scene of the massacre was shot very elegantly with a well-done musical score underneath it. With the attention to the historical accuracy of the events of the massacre, it is a shame the movie had to revert to Hollywood-isms with Emily and Jonathan. The movie was better off without the cliché.

The movie also suffers because there is a huge amount of historical context that has to be compressed into a two hour long movie. While Brigham Young’s sermons were excellent for providing the appropriate Mormon theological context (and it should be noted that virtually all of Young’s comments were taken from source material–the movie even opens with the exact text of the deposition of Young for Lee’s first trial), one is still left wondering why it was that Mormons only massacred this specific wagon train. There were no other events of this nature during time, so why did it happen in this instance? That question may not ever be fully resolved, and an attempt is not even made in the movie.

Despite these shortcomings, overall the movie is well done. The movie does an excellent job of portraying the differences in the theology of Mormons and Christians–and this is something that is generally not done these days. The normative rule is to make movies that show Mormons as being basically identical with Christians; this movie shows Mormons speaking openly of their cultic views. As a result, this movie will almost certainly offend Mormons, although I discovered that the lines that were most offensive were the lines that were direct quotes of Brigham Young, so how far this charge can go is left to be seen.

Additionally, the movie actually makes a strong case for sola Scriptura, although I’m sure that was not its intent. The Mormons are led by direct revelation that only their prophets and apostles can know. There is one particular example in the film, beginning with a scene of the emigrants in the wagon train who have been attacked for four days reciting Psalm 23. The next scene, the Mormons are given their orders from the stake president to kill all the emigrants. Lee, after reading the letter, responds that he cannot carry out what is asked of him. The messenger responds by gathering the Mormons to pray, and after a moment of silence he says, “God has given me evidence. We are to carry out the attack exactly to the letter.” Of course, this evidence is not provided–it was a revelation that only the messenger knew of.

While this is a fictionalized account (we don’t know what really happened or how high up into the LDS church the orders for the massacre rose), the theology of Mormonism was accurately portrayed. The difference between those who can hold equally to the communal revelation of Scripture (the reading of Psalm 23) and those who have to rely on the testimony of an apostle of the LDS church (without any miraculous signs to verify it, or anything of that nature) cannot be more explicilty demonstrated.

Finally, the historical reality of plural marriages in the Mormon Church, and the nature of women as second-class citizens under Mormonism, was also equally portrayed. While it is true that women in general were not regarded very high at the time, under Mormonism (where Young, for instance, had over twenty wives) they fared much worse.

So how do I rate this movie? Well, for historical accuracy, it gets an A- (it was well-researched but took some dramatic liberties). The script as a whole is a solid B. The acting likewise earns a B. The directing was very well done, especially the way the massacre scene was demonstrated, so I give the direct an A.

On the whole, I’d give the movie an A-.