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Doom (2005)
Extremely derivative but good fun up until a mind-numbingly tedious finale
This film pulls off the neat trick of ripping off like 4 different Aliens movies at once. It's a feat of screen writing.
It's good fun for a long time, nonetheless. The casting is rather good, I've never liked Urban as much in anything else as I did in this. Rosamund Pike is great as always. And great credit for casting The Rock in a bad guy role. Dwayne Johnson is much better-suited to be playing menacing heavies like this than his usual stuff. He started out as a heel in wrestling for a good reason.
Anyway it's well-made, by the numbers kind of stuff. It includes a 'revelation' of something the audience had figured out literally a half hour prior. Bad writing there. But it doesn't connect the twins' parents' death to the current plot - which is good writing and shows restraint.
The monsters were OK. Nothing special. The rules of the hunt weren't really established - movie didn't quite play fair. Monsters would seemingly reappear out of nowhere when needed, when realistically, 3 or 4 giant monsters rampaging around would make a lot of noise and be hard to miss.
There's a rather brilliant bit late. Urban has just 'evolved' via the injection. The film suddenly wakes up, as he wakes up, and suddenly we're seeing a hyper-kinetic film version of a first-person shooter game. Stylistically this works in two ways at once, showing how he sees now with heightened awareness and intelligence and ability, while also doing the cool homage to the game.
Unfortunately, following this wonderful scene, we get a horrible endless drawn out terrible tedious not interesting at all knock down drag out between Urban and the Rock, both enhanced. This damn scene just refuses to end. There's literally no tension or interest whatsoever, the thing isn't filmed interestingly, or choreographed interestingly - we know who's going to win, and Pike's character has already been safely seen away, meaning there's nothing at stake in the scene and no risk to anybody. It's just bad. It's a slog. A huge comedown after the amazing rush of the first-person shooter sequence.
But all in all, not a bad movie. As a fan of such stuff (monster movies, sci-fi action films, etc) I enjoyed it. No regrets.
Daredevil: A Cold Day in Hell's Kitchen (2016)
Finale (mostly) succeeds despite atrocious direction, writing and editing
Where to start with this mess? First off, the opening scene, the pre- theme song scene - oh my lord, it goes on forever. It's just Daredevil and Elektra standing on a rooftop for literally like 8 minutes, talking. And not talking interestingly. And it's not filmed interestingly. It's the deadest 8 minutes ever. By minute 4 or 5 I was like "You've got to get out of this scene, please cut already" but they just kept talking, saying empty general things and vague dull plot things. Then follows the most awkward cut ever to the theme song. Because usually something dramatic happens, or an impressive scene has just happened then quieted down a second, when the theme song hits. But here it just awkwardly follows this 10 minute horrible conversation.
Then there's the final fight. Holy crap was this badly staged. Everyone involved should apologize. There's a point in this fight where Nobu is fighting Daredevil and Elektra by himself, and the whole time there are four Hand ninjas just standing together nearby, not doing anything. They keep being in the shot, standing there, not being involved. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. The show hadn't forgotten they were there - it kept showing them. But they just weren't doing anything. The whole ending fight is a disaster, filled with bad staging and nonsense tactics by the Hand ninjas and Nobu.
Then there's the random reveal in a late scene that it's Christmas. The last we'd heard, at the beginning of the season, it was a heat wave. There had been nothing in the meantime to indicate passage of time, and not a single hint that the weather had gotten colder or that it was winter in NY. Just a bizarre random decision.
Elektra's death scene, then - just so, so bad. It's like the writers and director had never seen a death scene before and had no idea how a dying in one's arms death scene was supposed to be. So instead of Jon and Ygritte, instead of something poignant, we end up with something closer to Shmi Skywalker.
Then the poor non-reveal reveal of the Punisher's iconic outfit. Or the confusing staging leading us to have no idea if Punisher knows DD's identity or not, or if Karen knows it or not (we find out at the end that Karen had apparently not known it, which makes a couple earlier scenes of hers questionable).
Despite this litany of horrible failures of execution for which the parties responsible should be penalized by never being allowed to work on this show again - the episode ends up working, more or less, simply by virtue of the characters, story and world leading to it being so good.
But yea. Not good. Nobu, Nobu the Nobody, the guy who was a sub-boss, a henchman in season 1, trying to act like the Big Bad, like he's Wilson Fisk? No. Just no. Or how about his random bitchy white lady assistant out of nowhere? This was really just a weird episode.
And did they ever explain what that hole was for? What the hell?
Lifeboat (1944)
propaganda with a difference
Weirdly sophisticated because it does something you rarely see in war propaganda - functions by wholeheartedly accepting as true a piece of enemy propaganda. Whatever contemporary critics thought, it's Allied propaganda - a call to unity and solidarity among the diverse elements and interests of the Allied west, specifically in the US. It's also a brutal denunciation of what the film wants us to believe are Nazi ethics, and in contrast, a celebration of what the film wants us to believe are Allied/American ethics. The Nazis are devious, callous, amoral, selfish, and without compassion, even if outwardly friendly. Even where they seem human, they are in fact inhuman monsters, most merciless precisely towards those who are most vulnerable and least useful.
And if that were all, it'd be more or less typical war propaganda. But it's how it achieves it, or things it does in the course of achieving it, that makes it strange and made Allied media dislike it.
To make the point about German heartlessness and deviousness, the u-boat captain is portrayed as outwardly likable and sympathetic and human. He's played by a likable-looking actor, a heavyset guy with a kind-looking face and even a kind voice. And at every step throughout the film, practically, he's set up as sympathetic, or at least likable and friendly. Until he's not and we find out what he's really about. We never quite trust him or his motives (having seen him sneak looks at a hidden compass), but even as we suspect he may be lying to the crew and bringing them to one of his own ships, we like him and don't think he's a monster or a bad guy or a villain, or even necessarily an antagonist. All because of the casting and the way he's portrayed as charming and friendly.
But that's not what elicited most of the complaints.
What elicited most of the complaints is, to make the propaganda point that everyone needed to work together to be as strong as the Nazis and win the war, the Nazi's shown as superhumanly strong and able. Willie, the u-boat captain, is, despite being heavyset and having an unassuming look, the Nazi superman in the flesh. And this may make it even stronger Nazi propaganda - "Look, even a regular-looking schlub, if he's German, has these superpowers." Willie, besides being hypercompetent (which fits, given his profession) as a seaman, is depicted as hypercompetent as a medical man (this is given as his previous profession), and as a tireless rower (that he's later revealed to have been drinking water and energy capsules the whole time does little to diminish our impression of his abilities in that direction). In one scene Bankhead's character even explicitly says, "He's made of iron, we're mere flesh and blood, how can we compete with that?" The film was really laying it on thick.
So that's an odd concession - to allow your enemy's argument that he's superhuman and Godlike and hypercompetent, in order to better make the case to your own people about the necessity of their all working together to fight him. But that's how Hitch and his writers (presumably not including Steinbeck, who disowned the film) chose to go about it. While it may weaken it as pure propaganda, it makes it a much more interesting story and work of art than it would've been otherwise. I think it says a lot about Hitch that he couldn't even do war propaganda straight, but had to make these weird thoughtful additions and changes to the usual format in the service of making a more interesting and entertaining film. That was always his foremost concern, and I see this film as the best compromise he could come up with between the demands of propaganda and the demands of making a good movie. Technically, it does work as propaganda, albeit not ideally, since not so easily - you have to think about it to see how it's Allied propaganda, and that kind of defeats the purpose. But technically he's off the hook, at least. And of course no one during wartime (especially during WORLD wartime) wants to hear someone is amoral as propaganda against them. I think that's why so many saw the German's portrayal as sympathetic, despite his seeming (to me) to be the most evil Nazi ever depicted on screen. In wartime, saying the enemy is a devious killer of the weak who'll sacrifice anyone's life for his own interests just isn't that damning. Better, most think, to show him AS the weak, than as a killer of them. We're not arguing before God or the Pope here, after all. This is war, not a morality contest.
Or so most probably think, or thought at the time.
The film itself, as a film, is quite good. In many ways, despite their different settings, situations, and points, it reminded me most of 12 Angry Men and the Twilight Zone episode "5 Characters in Search of an Exit". Strip the intellectual content and context from it and that's what it most resembles. It's a handful of people stuck together in a tiny space over days; the three stories have the same manner of characters being defined for the audience and for each other, and meeting, and dealing with each other, etc. Same ups and downs. I liked the u-boat captain, and Bankhead's character and performance. Rest of the cast didn't really stand out or make an impression, tho Bendix was memorable (not altogether in a good way) as Gus, who gets the worst of it during the trip.
This was Hitch's only film with Fox and in that and other ways it's unique for him. Most Hitch films, even back to the 30s, you know more or less what you're getting. This one's weird and un-Hitch, while still managing to be good and entertaining and involving, and giving one a lot to think about besides.
Die Hard (1988)
often (poorly) imitated, never duplicated
The thing the sequels and copycats forget about John McClane is that he isn't a fearless badass Rambo character. What he does in the film is stunning even to him. He keeps fearing for his life and thinks every new insane thing that happens could be where his luck and his planning finally run out and he gets killed. McClane can be heard saying to himself, "Please don't let me die, please don't let me die" just before perhaps his craziest exploit in the film. He can be seen taking long breaks during which he's out of breath and half mad with the conviction of his impending death. He can be seen painfully pulling glass from his bare feet, bandaging them, and barely able to walk afterwards. He can be seen getting legitimately frustrated with the cops and FBI, and not from a place of Godlike hypercompetence, but from a place of desperation and fear - he NEEDS their help, needs them to be competent - or at least he thinks he does, at the time. This is John McClane before he or anybody else knew who John McClane was. This is a McClane who, if he has plot armor (and he does), doesn't know about it, isn't yet arrogant about it, smirking and laughing his way through perilous situations. When he smirks or laughs in this film it's a kind of pathetic coping mechanism, a false bravado, rather than an action hero trademark. The sequels and copycats forget this. They give us cartoons who know they're cartoons, where Die Hard gave us an action hero cartoon who honestly thought he was a man, and who everyone else honestly thought was a man. Take away his seeming to be just a man and you lose half of the quality at least.
Anyway this is a classic. It's nearly perfect. Everything in the building (which is the vast majority of the movie) is perfect. Unfortunately, literally just about everything outside the building involving the police and FBI (the reporter stuff is fine) is terrible, and undermines the reality of the movie in a way even McClane's insane heroics never do. And this starts immediately, with his 911 call, which is handled by what must be the worst 911 operators on the planet. Then continues with VelJohnson's cop, who is incompetent for a moment, then passes the baton of incompetence to the next law enforcement character and becomes competent and sympathetic (this actually happens twice - Paul Gleason, while he's the main obstructivist cop in the movie, is aggressively and implausibly stupid, but once the FBI guys show up to be the main implausibly stupid hero obsructionist guys, Gleason is allowed to become likable, more or less competent comic relief in a couple scenes). The VelJohnson stuff in particular doesn't work at all. We never care about him or buy any of that back and forth for a moment. Nor do we buy McClane going for that sappy stuff. The McClane we saw prior to the building being taken was hyper-cynical and brusque. He'd have rolled his eyes at 90% of VelJohnson's dialogue, and at the tone of all of it. And Gleason, while amusing in playing what is basically his Breakfast Club principal thrown into an action movie, isn't an actual character. So. All that is sacrificed to make the plot run. And the plot runs so well that ultimately these decisions were probably the right ones, or at least not terrible ones. But you never know.
I really like the film's politics. It's extremely anti-PC, and anti-corporate and anti-greed. It's anti-sensuality and anti- softness. It's anti-globalist. It's classically American, in the DH Lawrence sense. McClane is an iron killer able to defeat a dozen other iron killers, because they have mercenary motives. He kills the greedy, dishonest, amoral Euro snake - with a ruse, appropriately enough. But not before the killer snake takes out the globalist Japanese businessman, waging an old war in a new way and commanding US labor to serve Japanese interests (the bit in his bio about having been in an internment camp after coming to the US as a child is significant - you think he doesn't remember and resent?). And not before the snake takes out the master of the universe coked up greedy cocksure materialistic sellout (who, appropriately, dies because he was bluffing). That Takagi and Ellis, two symbols, are the only two hostages killed, is not an accident. The story hates what they stand for, just as it hates the bureaucratic side of policing, the feds, the media, and greed. And just as it hates feminism and the cultural Marxist destruction of the family and of traditional gender roles. Meanwhile what does the film love? Masculinity, courage, resourcefulness, ingenuity, disdain for unmerited authority, and self-reliance.
So. A great film, an action classic, extremely entertaining, and a great snapshot of all-American politics. If this film's likes and dislikes were the likes and dislikes of every US citizen, the country would not be in ruins today. But alas...
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
weirdly brilliant, weirdly weird, weirdly invigorating, and hard to quite categoize
All time travel stories end in paradox so there's no use even thinking too much about it. After this film you may wonder what exactly happened the first time around. It would have to have been just as it was, except without the blackouts. Except no, that isn't true - because taking out the blackouts changes everything. And his just living the 'important' moments normally, without the weird blackout behavior, also alters everything, so that the later important events wouldn't necessarily have even happened. Also includes the usual paradox where events occur that were dependent on their having occurred in the first place. So. Time travel story. No use even thinking about it.
I'll get my one real criticism out out of the way upfront - the theatrical and director's cut endings are both god awful. The theatrical doesn't even make sense, either for the filmmakers or for the character. He has literally no reason not to go talk to her, and every reason to go talk to her. He knows better than to think he's inherently 'bad for her' or some kind of curse, or that they're doomed - he knows and understands the specific childhood moments that caused the problems. He has avoided them for her - she's fine and grown. So go talk to her. The other ending, with the death in the womb, makes sense, but is just too grim.
That's the thing with this movie - it's one of the most relentlessly depressing, pessimistic movies I've ever seen. A list of the things that occur in the film would read like a rap sheet of the 10 worst people in Hell. There's content in this that is entirely out of place in this kind of narrative. In one scene the characters are shown watching Se7en at a theater - well, to me, there are scenes and elements in this film creepier and scarier, by a lot, than anything in Se7en. To be honest, if you really think about it all, this is actually a weird kind of horror film. But it's like an existential horror film. Just a collection of horrifying experiences and nightmarish circumstances - and the horrific circumstances are always taken fresh, they're always new and acutely felt, so that their full horror is always there for both the viewer and the character. In real life we rarely realize the full horror of our situation, however horrible it may be. We're just so used to it, and we arrived at it so naturally and so gradually - we take it for granted. We don't see it as it really is. If at odd moments we do understand the full horror of our circumstances, we tend to panic. But these moments are fleeting.
Well, one way to describe this movie is to say that it's a succession of such moments of sudden realization of the full horror of one's circumstances. So, as I say - an existential horror film. Maybe the best ever.
For all that, it left me feeling invigorated and challenged. It left me thinking about my own life and my own decisions and my own paths not taken. "Oh man," I thought, watching it, "I'm one of the bad versions." Most people, if they were honest, would say the same as they watched it. The film made me reassess and want to do better.
Not many movies leave us with these lingering feelings of mission and purpose and possibility. But certain narratives and types of narrative can do the trick. Source Code is another one. They just leave you thinking and feeling all shaken up. You sit there and reflect on your life and feel you could live it differently and better.
This is valuable. As to the rest - quality of the production is top notch, writing is brilliant, acting is solid across the board. As mentioned already, subject matter is just ludicrously brutal and depressing. And maybe all the worse for being depicted matter of factly. There's no sentimentalism about any of the stuff. There's not even that much sensationalism about it. It's all just boom boom boom, very casually and matter of factly presented to you. The film is super casual about horrors that in other movies would have an aura of unspeakable horror and all the solemnity that goes with that and so on. No real solemnity here. And it's unsettling.
So yea. It's a good one. I didn't expect much from it. But as far as the ending - a film this relentlessly depressing and brutal deserves its happy ending. Give them the serendipitous moment and let the sun shine on your characters for once.
To Catch a Thief (1955)
solid, not great, Hitch
Hitchcock is so reliably good that his movies tend to only stand out from one another in their flaws. Very few have unique GOOD qualities (Vertigo does, and maybe we can count the horror thrill and misdirection in Psycho, but that's about it). The flaws are the fingerprints of the individual movie.
The flaws in this one are that it's somewhat obscure - it's an English guy playing an American guy who'd been in a French prison and then fought in the French resistance, and now was living in Italy (I believe) ten years later. That's confusing. The whole French resistance backstory is confusing, and confusingly handled. We don't understand it at all early on, and then the French girl does an exposition dump and we more or less get it. So the film's saddled with a complicated and confusing and kind of weird backstory, that the screenplay doesn't do the deftest job of communicating to the viewer. And this all is also confusingly told and involved in the story - combined with the huge red herring (described below), this creates scenes of legitimate confusion - for instance I still have no real idea what happened with the wooden leg guy and his death and that whole scene, or who did what in that scene or what it meant.
There's also some - not a ton, but enough to annoy - untranslated French, especially early. It's annoying in old books (Dinesen, looking at you) and it's annoying here. Untranslated anything is annoying. Each film has a language - anything spoken aloud in another language should be subtitled. Am I an uncultured ignoramus for not knowing French? Yes, sure, fine. Should it nonetheless always be subtitled? Oh yea.
Then there's a narrative issue - the red herring. Big spoilers ahead, so tread carefully.
The red herring is Grace Kelly's character. We're meant to think (I think) that she's the other cat burglar. It's not 100% obvious that she is, not an open and shut, maybe not even clearly suggested by the text of the film - but subtextually it's communicated to such a degree that a more or less astute viewer will more or less astutely assume it's going to be her, that he's in on the secret twist, and - he'll watch the entire portion of the film between Kelly and Grant with the expectation that it's her. Maybe it was just me, I dunno. But I thought it was her. I didn't judge it as good or bad storytelling that it was her, I just thought it was the story they'd gone with, and was interested in how they'd reveal it. But then it wasn't her at all, and Grant never even suspected her for a moment, as far as we can tell - nor, as far as we can tell, did the film suspect her for a moment (it just wanted US to suspect her). She was 100% a subtextual fakeout that afterwards the film has plausible deniability about even having set up as potentially being the other cat burglar. But one's thinking it's her seriously mars the viewing of the film, because - you're watching it all with something in mind that the film itself can't have had in mind during those scenes (it wanted you to be thinking that, but couldn't have been thinking that itself - to the film, the romance was just the romance), and certainly that neither character could have had in mind during those scenes. If I were to watch it again now, knowing what I know, it would play entirely differently - whether better or worse, I can't say, but entirely differently. I'd watch the whole romance as what it must actually have been, and appreciate it on its own merits. As it was, I watched it and the whole time there was this tension as I thought - as the film intended me to think - her entire flirt with him involved much more and much different stuff than it really did.
So. You always lose something when you commit that much to a complete fakeout, misdirection or twist. In this case, you lose the viewer's ability to actually just watch the romance as it really is and enjoy it for whatever it really is. And this fakeout, I dunno when exactly we were supposed to snap out of it - I didn't snap out of it until literally the scene where the insurance guy is revealed in the costume and we see that Grace Kelly was in on that con. So you watch that much of the movie thinking Grace Kelly is the burglar. It mars it.
But anyway, enough complaining. It's solid Hitchcock, and if you're reading this you know what that means. Cary Grant is great, and Grace Kelly is great. And you know what that means. She of course holds her own with him, and the age difference is no issue at all. He's barely old enough to handle HER, imo. Loved her character and performance, even after I understood her for what she really was (tho I must say that during the long red herring section, where we think Grace Kelly is a sassy young cat burglar who's copied this suave older burglar in order to lure him out of retirement in order to seduce him - well, that's an entirely different kind of girl and would've been quite possibly the sexiest character ever). The French girl in this is quite good, also. Loved her flirty performance and her witty comments. She was a firecracker. The scene in the water where she trash talks Grace Kelly is hilarious.
So. It's a good movie. It's Hitchcock and it's not bad Hitchcock. Which is to say it's better than 99% of all the other movies ever made by major studios. You could do a lot worse.
Random Hearts (1999)
quite possibly one of the best "15% fresh on rotten tomatoes" movies of all time
Without actually having read any of the reviews (except Ebert's), I think I can understand why it would rate so low - it fails as a movie. Kind of. It makes a half-hearted attempt to have a plot and to have plot mechanics and so on. And just doesn't care at all about any of that stuff, and eventually it all just fades away to nothing. Because the filmmakers don't care at all about the cop's case or his career, any more than they care about the congresswoman's career or her race for re- election, or her relationship with her daughter, or even how each of these people grieves over the loss of their spouses or the betrayal.
No, the movie's not about any of that, yet that takes up a good portion of it - so it makes sense that a lot of people would go thumbs down on this.
And yet - the movie is really good, if you focus just on what the movie itself cared about in itself, and what it was about at heart. And that is, simply, the two leads, and their relationship. And that's it. The rest of the movie doesn't matter at all to the people making it. But that's OK, because - Ford and Scott Thomas are amazing in this. And have amazing chemistry. And are amazingly written. We love the relationship, we really love the two people in it. We want them to end up together (I won't say if they do or not). Badly. And all the rest is just stuff to justify getting them from point A to point B and having the relationship happen and take the steps it needs to take - and that INCLUDES the entire 'premise' of the film itself, including the plane crash and the situation that opens it.
So. As I say, I can see why this would get a fail grade. But it's so involving and the good in it is so good - we care so much about what the filmmakers cared about in the movie - that I can recommend it and could imagine watching it again at some point. Even if only for Kristin Scott Thomas's beautiful face with those big puppy dog eyes that are just - so open and emotional. You can fall in love with her, watching this, much moreso than in The English Patient. Her character here is extremely endearing and adorable - two words I've never used to describe any politician, fictional or otherwise. So perhaps she was miscast. But yea. A lovely woman playing a character you could imagine falling in love with (and do fall in love with, watching the movie), being hurt and having a disaster befall her, being vulnerable, and then meeting and falling for as likable and respectable and endearing a MALE performer as we've ever seen on screen. It's a recipe for success and despite the failed movie surrounding it, I think it was a success.
Also of note - film features a young Kate "Never Quite Famous" Mara in an early role as the congresswoman's daughter. And there's a late scene of plot movement where a subplot crashes hilariously into the main story, in a way that momentarily threatened to be the most ludicrous such subplot intrusion in the history of cinema (narrowly averted, as she didn't take the bullet, thank God).
Is the movie plausible, psychologically? No. It's absurd, psychologically. My OnDemand deal had Peter Weir's (brilliant) "Fearless" as a similar film to this. And superficially, in some plot details, yea I guess they are similar. But the films are nothing at all alike, nor are they about anything similar. The one line towards the end where Scott Thomas tells the press how the cop had been her friend, seen her thru a tough time when she needed it, how they were 'survivors' - all that rings completely hollow and doesn't match the film, which simply depicts a romance. The thing Scott Thomas is talking about at the end there would match the Rosie Perez/Jeff Bridges relationship in Fearless, which was indeed about two survivors of a tragedy using each other's company to cope (or not cope) with a trauma they'd both experienced. But this film isn't about trauma. It sidesteps all of that very quickly and is simply about a romance that, if freed from the requirements of psychological plausibility and the plot, is quite good. So. If you still are interested in seeing a nice and involving romance, despite all those many caveats - check it out.
Evolution (2001)
as inept a studio film as you will ever see - literally nothing works
Of films I've seen in the last however long, only Jupiter Ascending, among studio films, is as ineptly made.
Every single joke fails. Every single moment fails - every feeling or response the film (presumably) intended to elicit from a viewer, it fails to elicit. None of the performances is any good, but you can't even blame them because there was just nothing at all to work with. These aren't even characters. The 'relationships' and pretty much every single thing that occurs in the film, is given such short shrift, is told so abruptly, that none of it can possibly pay off or work. We're in the middle of this thing and Julianne Moore's character (the whole character consists of a profession and an exaggerated clumsiness) starts talking deeply and familiarly to Duchovny's character, as if they've shared some great film flirtation and relationship prior to that, and we were seeing the latest episode in this great antagonistic flirtation - except no, they'd had like one scene together before then and had barely even talked. The whole movie's like that.
And the jokes, or the humor - I mean just nothing works. You just have to guess where the humor was meant to be, so little is it actually there. Like, you have to try to figure what in a given scene or moment or interaction could have been meant to be funny. It's just terrible, scene for scene, shot for shot, moment for moment, joke for joke. A bad, bad movie.
Also, there's one scene that I found especially hilarious (not on purpose). The guys have just killed the thing at the mall, and then there's just the most inexplicable little interlude I've ever seen in a movie - they cut to the trio in a jeep driving home, and they're all loudly singing "Play that funky music white boy" while doing like Night at the Roxbury head dancing. It's a complete non sequitur. It follows from nothing. Nothing follows from it. It isn't funny. It isn't interesting. Well, it's kind of interesting, as an object. But not interesting in the context of the story. So. Yea I just have no idea. I have no idea what this movie was even supposed to be. I regret having seen it but I'm proud I finished it.
Oh I almost forgot - the Ghostbusters references. And honestly, in retrospect, maybe the entire movie was a Ghostbusters reference or an attempt to recapture that magic (this film DID succeed in recapturing the 'magic' of Ghostbusters 2, imo). OK, so Dan Aykroyd shows up as the governor and does his usual thing, and then - there's just a Ghostbusters scene. I mean Reitman basically just throws up a Ghostbusters scene, except with a much worse script and horrible characters in a horrible movie with horrible performers. The scene it's copying is the Ghostbusters scene where the EPA guy and the Ghostbusters are arguing in front of the mayor of NYC. In this film it's Ted Levine's general as the EPA guy, the good guys as the Ghostbusters, and Aykroyd as the mayor. It was weird. Just really weird.
I dunno. If I've made this movie sound at all interesting or worth investigating, I apologize. It's not interesting. Don't see it. Watch something else.
Cropsey (2009)
Misguided, appalling, unpersuasive defense of killer of children
First, the good - it's a very involving doc, well-made and interesting and full of good interviews and inherently fascinating material.
But that's also the problem.
The material is so good, and so involving, that you wonder why the filmmakers, in editing, didn't think better of their idiotic, immoral crusade, abandon their untenable argument, and just make a straight documentary about the killings.
What we have here is a prime example of an agenda running up against reality. Andre Rand is obviously guilty of these killings. A reasonable person watching this doc, which means to cast doubt on his guilt and on the process involved in arresting and prosecuting him, will come away 100% sure he did it. How did the filmmakers fail to realize this? The man is obviously guilty. They mention his presence near literally every single dead kid around the time of the kid's disappearance, but never even attempt to address this impossible coincidence. They just leave it there, and it looms over the entire film and undermines any attempt to exculpate him. He did it. Obviously he did it. His letters and his lifestyle and background and the entire set of circumstances only reinforce his guilt. This guy did it. Did he do it alone? Hard to say. The film never said whether or not the one body showed signs of sexual abuse (if that could even have been ascertained), and imo, the involvement of others would only have occurred had there been a sexual element. But, imo, the nature of his likely motive would seem to exclude sexual elements or that kind of exploitation. He would seem likely to have just killed them.
But yea, this is a nonsense documentary. It spends all this time trying to paint the cops as out of touch and incompetent, and undermine them, showing them chasing Satanist boogeymen - but then later on we're told an important Satanist figure lives on Staten Island and has for years. Oh, and we're shown a Christian cult-y church on the island whose creepiness and weirdness is shocking - if THAT can exist, why couldn't a Satanist church exist there?
We're shown witnesses obviously making stuff up and lying in court. But so what? This is heartening, to me, since he's obviously guilty. It's nice to see a community not be victimized by its own laws, but stand up for itself and use the law to get justice and protect the community.
But the worst sin is a cheap shot at one of the contributors to the doc, the woman who runs the local Friends of Jenny or whatever it's called. This woman helped the filmmakers, gave interviews, let them into her home - they even thank her in the credits. But they end their film on an out-of-nowhere cheap shot at her, painting her as an attention-seeking glory hound with base motives. At the same time, in doing so, they effectively absolve Rand of the same thing, when HE is obviously guilty of just that (as well as being guilty of, ya know - the murders). Rand plays these dumb, credulous, misguided kids like a piano, as his sister wisely observes in meeting them. One of his letters (the one where he talks about other filmmakers/writers "continuing what you've started") pretty much outright reveals how he's using them. And they were only too happy to be used this way - maybe they considered it mutual exploitation and manipulation. They got a film out of it, and the child killer got free public advocacy and got a start at being turned into a 'legend'.
In any case, the filmmaking wasn't nearly skillful enough to hide the obvious fact of the man's guilt. This is ultimately an immoral, exploitative film. I feel bad for the families of the children Rand murdered, who participated in good faith and were straight with the filmmakers. Perhaps they didn't even realize their grief was being exploited, and that they were contributing to a piece of advocacy in defense of their child's murderer.
There was more than enough material here to make a great documentary about the true story of Rand, the mental institution, the island, and the killings. It's a shame the filmmakers didn't realize it.