Not-A-Sci-Fi Sunday: The Wolfman

'Kay, so... The Wolfman is not a sci-fi movie but for once I actually saw a film within a short time of it coming out and I feel the need to share. Also my DVD player is possessed, but more on that at a later date.

The movie begins with a man walking through a dark fog-laden forest, freaking out at every noise, gun in hand. Something is after him and DUN DUN DUN he gets ripped apart by a big bad monster. It's probably the most tension you'll feel throughout the movie, with some nice pacing and good music cues. Expectations are raised. You think, hey, maybe this'll be pretty good after all. Depending on how high your expectations are, you might be right. But probably not.

We discover that the walking in the fog man was Ben Talbot, and his widow Gwen (Emily Blunt) writes a letter to his estranged brother/Shakespearean actor Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro) beginning him to come back and help them find him, because at this stage he's merely missing to the good people of Small English Town. 

When Lawrence arrives, he's greeted by the corpse of his dead brother, as well as some small-town politics ("It's the gypsies!"). Lawrence decides to go investigate and visits the gypsy camp just as the angry townspeople arrive to chase the gypsies out of town, bringing with them a nice big full moon. Cue wolfie.

Big beasty circles the camp, taking out villagers one by one before just going nuts, and ripping everything/everyone to shreds. The best moment occurs when after hearing noises coming from a gypsy van, one of the men goes over, all casual-like, to have two wolf claws shoved into the underside of his jaw, with the fingers/claws coming out through his mouth, before he's pulled into the van and cut into tiny pieces. It ellicted an 'ooh' response just for the imaginative use of claws alone.

Lawrence gets chased by wolfie who then bites him but is scared off by Men With Guns. He's taken to the gypsy healer who sews him back up (in real nice detail), while the gypsies argue that she should just let him die. She doesn't, obviously.

This is around about the point where my attention started to wander. The slaughtering scenes are quite entertaining to watch but all the storyline in between is just a bit hollow. There's some great villiany from Talbot Snr (Hannibal Lector Anthony Hopkins), and the awesome Inspector Aberline (Agent Smith Hugo Weaving), who was the highlight, for me, although my mind kept making Matrix references where del Toro was Neo and that was quite distracting. You never really care about the characters' plights though, because well, you just don't. You've got some excellent actors and great scenery, sets and costumes but there's no real emersion in the movie at all. And so when the big dramatic climax arrives, you find yourself wishing they create as much carnage as possible so you can see some more disembowlings.

I saw The Wolfman with two friends - all of us female, between the ages of 17 and 23 - and I'm not sure what it is other than the possibility that we're a bit sick, but... we didn't find it scary, just kinda funny.

And we might have just maybe laughed through a lot of the not-at-all funny moments, such as the attack on the gypsy camp, the human to wolf transformations, the Wolfman vs Wolfman end battle which looks a bit more like wookie vs wookie and that weird wolfboy who looked a hell of a lot like Gollum.

There are a few jump scares that caught out a couple of audience members, but a lot of them are so predictable you can spot them from a mile away. And when the evil doctor-man says that Lawrence turning into a werewolf is as likely as him sprouting wings and flying out the window, you better believe he gets thrown out the window once Lawrence turns.

And then impaled on a fence!

All that said and done, I really enjoyed The Wolfman - just for all the wrong reasons. It was entertaining and funny and the music was pretty good, but the best part about it had to be the sets, scenery and costumes. There's so many great foggy woodland areas and the dilapidated mansion and mausoleum are so well done, that's it's almost worth watching the movie to see those things alone.

A classic, this movie is not, but it's worth renting the DVD or going to the movies if you've got some time to kill to see it, and confirm if my friends and I should go see a therapist or something.

Sci-Fi Sunday: The Thing (1982)

Is that a man in there, or something else?

I think I liked it.

I'm not sure though. The premise was good, and the sociological aspects of it were great, but it was... a bit slow. At times the slow pacing added to the suspense, making you wonder just how long was left, other times it just felt like they'd run out of script and you wondered how long before you left.

Originally, I'd wanted to do a double-feature comparing this to 'The Thing From Another World', but apparently none of the local video stores have even heard of it. This one I already owned, but never watched. I decided I probably should seeing as there is talk of a prequel being filmed this year.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The special effects, while not brilliant in the world of today, with Avatar's giant blue people, I imagine would be quite impressive in the early eighties, and provided a few "Ew" moments, particularly during the dog explosion, which is more than I can say of a lot of the movies I've watched recently.

Once upon a time, this was a husky.

The film follows the basic plot of 'something strange is found, it turns out to be evil, and it tries to kill everyone' which is a storyline we should all be familiar with by now. As the 'thing' takes the form of whatever it kills, there's no way for anyone to know who's the bad guy, and so the crew of the remote arctic outpost turns on each other in an attempt to stay alive, and to prevent it from reaching the rest of humanity.

Luckily the crew know the basic rule of the unknown evil: Kill it with fire.

Flambé anyone?

Also, I've been resisting the urge to make this joke all day;

"Look deep into the parka"

Sci-Fi (Almost) Sunday: The Core

First, I must confess, I have seen The Core before. Twice, in fact.

My first viewing of The Core was probably in 2004/5, a year or two after it had been released in cinemas and flopped incredibly. The television was being particularly uninteresting and this was the best they had to offer. The main memory I have of it was falling asleep half-way through out of boredom. Not exactly a great endorsment.

The second time I saw it was sometime in 06/07. In science class.
Everyone knows, watching a movie in class is always good, even when they're just boring educational nonsense, because sitting in a dark room, the teacher doesn't know (and usually doesn't care) if you're paying attention or not. I thought that seeing as I didn't see the ending last time, I should pay attention to parts of it. Plus our teacher said that this way we could learn about the different levels of the core of the earth. To this day, I couldn't tell you anything remotely sciency I learned from watching The Core. In fact, scientists voted The Core to have the worst basis in science for a science fiction movie.

Sciencey.

So it must have lots of other cool stuff to make up for the complete disregard for science, right? ...Not really. As far as disaster movies go, The Core is strong on the doomsday, but rather light on the explosions. The acting is decent, but not even Two-Face and Hilary Swank, I mean, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank can make this movie any more than bearable. There's also "the guy who was in The Devil Wears Prada" (Stanley Tucci) as the movie's annoying guy, "the guy who's been in a dozen of my favourite tv shows" (DJ Stanley) as the computer nerd, and "that French guy from all those French films" (Tchéky Karyo) as the weapons specialist.

Two-Face talking about sciencey things. Next he plays a trumpet.

That's right, weapons. Because you see, the core of the earth is said to be made of molten metal, which spins around and around and around and keeps the planet doing whatever it is that keeps us alive, until one day it stops. So the plan is that they build a ship to take them to the core of the planet, so they can detonate some nukes to get it running again. Very sciencey. They conveinently skip through the 3 month building process, explaining it all in very simple terms, so in the end none of it really makes sense. Eventually they get there after lots of stuff goes wrong and lots of people die and they save the planet! Which is such a surprise.


Ultimately you're going to have to see it for yourself, just to witness the complete disregard they have for even basic science principles. And that's what makes it watchable, in the end. It's so bad it's bearable. Watching them trying to explain the vacuum inside the earth filled with amethyst is hilarious, and much fun can be brought from guessing who dies first (and next). And don't forget the whales (you'll have to discover that on your own).

And you thought I was joking.

Sci-Fi Sunday: Alien

Ooh look, alliteration. Kind of.
I felt like I needed some sort of themed-post thing going on so I've decided to create Sci-Fi Sunday. Every 3rd Sunday of the month (and what ever other Sunday that I have nothing better to write about) I'm going to write about something Sci-Fi related. Most likely movies. I like movies.

Anyway this weekend I watched the Alien films. All of them - Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection. Even Alien Versus Predator, and then later tonight I'm going to watch Alien Versus Predator: Requiem. I have a lot of things to not be doing.

I'd never actually seen an Alien (or Predator) movie before this weekend. I live under a rock, several thousand leagues under the sea. On Jupiter. Luckily for me though, my brother is slightly obsessed with them, owns them all on DVD, and has been bugging me since AVP2 was released to WATCH THEM ALREADY!
Fair enough. He did have a point. Or several.

I'm not going to go over each of the films in great detail because, well most of you will have already seen them, and those who haven't probably don't care. I know I never did. So here's a very superficial view of the franchise.

Aliens are cool looking. Except the chestbursters. They're a little... well... I giggled. The first time you see a chestburster, it's meant to be incredibly dramatic and like, totally scary, because like, nobody's like, ever seen one before, you know? I couldn't help it, it's entrance made me laugh. And then it ran across the table. Man, I was about to die I was laughing that hard. One could say that it was the result of forcing myself to sit through Batman & Robin just moments before - I found it very hard to take anything seriously after that. But the obviousness puppetry of it really took any of the scare out of what was meant to be a defining moment.

Grr!

But back to the Aliens. I dig the design. If I had to be an evil space alien, I think I'd want to be one of them. Except for the mouth inside the mouth. I want to stay far far away from the mouth inside the mouth. It just continues the chestbursters' phallic imagery, which, to be honest, creeps me out. Don't look at me like that, you know you were thinking it too. If not, well... you do now. Sorry.

Alien was rather average, for me. It wasn't horrible but I never really cared about any of the characters, which made it hard to really care whether or not they got impregnated and eaten. Except Jones. But Jones was a cat, and therefore unlikely to be impregnated/killed. Although that theory didn't really pan out when in A3 an alien is inside a dog. Mostly I just wanted to make sure that Jones wasn't left inside his little catbox on board when the ship got blown to pieces. That would've made me sad.

Hiding skills superior to those of a human. Or aliens just don't eat cats.

Aliens was definitely a step up from Alien, at least in terms of characters I actually cared about, and ergo, suspense. And boy did they like the suspense. It's alive! No, it's dead! No, it's alive! We're safe now. No wait, it's still alive! We never saw that coming! Surely someone would think to check the ship for aliens and alien eggs! We also discover their fondness for air-locks. Sure, it makes sense, but after seeing it used for what felt like the billionth time in Resurrection, I really just wanted some good Kill It With Fire.

Most importantly, we see Jones get left behind when Ripley decides to go with the marines. What happens to Jones after that, seeing as Ripley never ever comes back? I'd like to imagine he takes over Ripley's little house-thing and spends the rest of his days in happy-cat-land. And yes, clearly my attention span is too short to be watching these types of movies, but I liked Aliens. There were believable characters and nifty turret guns, and she set fire to the Queen.

Alien 3 was... fairly good. I don't really remember much of it, to be honest, and I'm pretty sure I only watched it this morning. It started on rather a sour note for me, with the two and a half characters I actually liked being killed off in the first few minutes - Hicks, Newt and half of Bishop dying when their pod thingies hit the ground. Then we get to see Ripley be quite a bit more spacey as she discovers she's pregnant with a really ugly baby. The Queen! But dispite being on a space colony filled with murderous rapists, they're all actually pretty nice guys and all but one of them dies trying to save her. Aw. And then she dives into molten lead to kill both herself and the creepy beast inside her. Oh and she gets a haircut. Which makes me very happy because I've been bred on female leads who look pristine except the token bloody cheek in horror movies, and her hair was driving me a little insane.

 

After seeing her die in A3, seeing her reborn in Resurrection was a bit... eh. Didn't really care anymore. Interest peaked in the second movie and it was all downhill from there. Swimming aliens were a cool addition, as was Winona Ryder, but ultimately I didn't really care at all. Especially at the end with the birth scene and the creepy scientist fellow. And then more airlockage. Although I did like seeing the human-alien having it's innards pulled out through a small hole. Made me feel better about the whole experience.

"What a beautiful butterfly"

Seriously, did no one else think this looked like they melted E.T.?

Just when all hope was lost, then came Alien Versus Predator. Oh sweet merciful entertaining movie. The whole premise of it was a little overdone but after watching my thousandth airlock death it was a breath of fresh air. I went into it expecting to be rooting for the aliens. I had for most of the other movies, so I saw this one as being no different. However, I definitely found myself on the predators' side. Sure, they're massively ugly, but they have cool weapons. And they're actually pretty nice fellows too, it turns out. The two best parts of this for me were that 1, there's an ass kicking female... who's not Sigourney Weaver. As much as I liked her "I can kill it" attitude, Ripley was beginning to really grate on me with her spaced out-ness in the later movies. And 2, the set design and dressing. All the symbols and the sacrificial tables and most importantly, all the bones. Bones bones bones bones bones. Very pretty. Bonus points also for bringing back Bishop as Weyland, the man who takes them out to the remote arctic post in the first place.

My brother tells me Requiem is just as good, but my memory of the trailers is that this one is set in a wooded area, rather than sacrificial pyramid for death games, so I might not like it quite as much. But what I do like is pictures like this:

There's a few of these in the series, and I think I have The Art of Darkness blog to thank for posting a link to them, although I'm not entirely sure. If I'm wrong, hit me. Or better yet, shove me out an airlock.