If you have ever wondered what the life of a high-class Manhattan call girl is like, then The Girlfriend Experience might be just up your alley. Steven Soderbergh’s film puts you in the shoes of a two-thousand dollar an hour prostitute named Chelsea, who is played by actress Sasha Grey, a famous porn star. The film follows Chelsea through five days of work, as she visits many of her wealthy clientele during the October of 2008, and uses a loosely mixed up narrative structure to tell its story. The film claims to be “experimental” but I didn’t find it too difficult to follow or have it use too many self indulgent techniques that the term “experimental” seemed to indicate.
The film does a great job at focuses on the trials and tribulations of the call girl profession. Chelsea has to be there for all her clients. Not simply physically but also emotionally and intellectually. As the film progresses we see that Chelsea finds things lacking in her own life and relationship with her personal trainer boyfriend. The difficulty of maintainin a long term relationship with a prostitute is explored quite well and provides most of the conflict in the film as Chelsea contemplates breaking up with her boyfriend.
The Girlfriend Experience is extremely low budget, and aside from a couple of the main characters, it uses mainly inexperienced amateur actors in many of the roles. This makes some of the acting seem a bit weak in some scenes as the actors are clearly improvising a lot of their lines and seem almost overacting a bit to appear casual. It works very well in other scenes like when Chelsea is interrupted by one of her johns on a date with her boyfriend and awkwardness ensues. I thought the casting of a porn star in the lead role was a little too obvious of a choice, but Shasa Grey worked well in this role. She was very believable and seemed to be a bit of an airhead but was very vulnerable too.
One of my favorite aspects of The Girlfriend Experience is the constant references to the economy and the 2008 presidential election that are made throughout the film. From Wall Street big shots betting on how many electoral votes Obama will take, to a Hassidic Jew client urging Chelsea to vote for McCain in order to save the state of Israel, these exchanges really give the movie a sense of time and place, and will make the movie even more enjoyable to watch ten or twenty years in the future.
The Girlfriend Experience doesn’t really go anywhere, attempt to tackle anything really big, try something different. It is a slow, quiet movie, that is entertaining enough while it lasts but you won’t be thinking about it much after it finishes. Much like a real prostitute.
7/10
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Troll 2 (1990)
Troll 2 is what happens when you try to set out to make a silly horror comedy without any good jokes or a cast that lacks any degree of comedic timing or talent on a shoestring budget. You get a movie that does end up being humorous, but for all the wrong reasons.
First, viewers should know that Troll 2 engages in a deceptive bit of false advertising. If you are thinking that a movie called Troll 2 should feature a Troll or maybe two Trolls, then you will be in for a grave disappointment. Because I will let you know up front that Troll 2 is about Goblins. Yes, that is right... Goblins. I have no idea why Troll 2 features Goblins, but I can only imagine that the script for this movie was simply tacked onto this project when the studio decided to make a sequel, and nobody either bothered or cared enough to make the changes necessary.
Troll 2 begins as an innocent young family engages in a house switching program with a Amish family in the rural town of Nilbog. When they arrive at the community they soon discover that things are not normal in this community thanks in part to their psychic son Joshua. Joshua has a completely inexplicable ability to communicate with his dead grandpa Seth, who for some reason can appear to him through mirrors and warns Joshua that his family must leave the town of Nilbog as soon as possible.
Apparently Goblins have taken control of the small city and brainwashed its denizens by using a strange green vegetable slime implanted in their food. Joshua tries to warn his family of the Goblin danger by hilariously peeing on his families food before they can become poisoned. Of course, his family refuses to believe him and his claims about Goblins and contact with grandpa Seth. Most of the middle portion of the film consists of completely random scenes as the Waits family blindly stumbles into the goblins clutches while Joshua tries to warn them. Eventually, Joshua figures out that Nilbog is actually Goblin spelled backwards, but by then his family has been captured by goblins.
Troll 2 is simply a mess from start to finish. You can tell that director director Claudio Fargasso was trying to create a clever, but tense and creepy film somewhere along the line of a cross between Gremlins and the Ghoulies, but you can tell that the cast of this film is made almost completely of amateur actors, and the script feels almost unfinished as there is no internal logic to the film at all. Sometimes Granpa Seth can appear to Joshua and other times he can't. It is also never very clear what the Goblins goal is other than being Goblins and enslaving this family.
Which reminds me, the goblins and special effects for this movie look like complete shit. The goblins themselves are actually nothing more than guys in pajamas and cheap Halloween masks.
Troll 2 has become legendary for how bad it is, so keep this in mind when you are watching this and you might have a good time.
1/10
First, viewers should know that Troll 2 engages in a deceptive bit of false advertising. If you are thinking that a movie called Troll 2 should feature a Troll or maybe two Trolls, then you will be in for a grave disappointment. Because I will let you know up front that Troll 2 is about Goblins. Yes, that is right... Goblins. I have no idea why Troll 2 features Goblins, but I can only imagine that the script for this movie was simply tacked onto this project when the studio decided to make a sequel, and nobody either bothered or cared enough to make the changes necessary.
Troll 2 begins as an innocent young family engages in a house switching program with a Amish family in the rural town of Nilbog. When they arrive at the community they soon discover that things are not normal in this community thanks in part to their psychic son Joshua. Joshua has a completely inexplicable ability to communicate with his dead grandpa Seth, who for some reason can appear to him through mirrors and warns Joshua that his family must leave the town of Nilbog as soon as possible.
Apparently Goblins have taken control of the small city and brainwashed its denizens by using a strange green vegetable slime implanted in their food. Joshua tries to warn his family of the Goblin danger by hilariously peeing on his families food before they can become poisoned. Of course, his family refuses to believe him and his claims about Goblins and contact with grandpa Seth. Most of the middle portion of the film consists of completely random scenes as the Waits family blindly stumbles into the goblins clutches while Joshua tries to warn them. Eventually, Joshua figures out that Nilbog is actually Goblin spelled backwards, but by then his family has been captured by goblins.
Troll 2 is simply a mess from start to finish. You can tell that director director Claudio Fargasso was trying to create a clever, but tense and creepy film somewhere along the line of a cross between Gremlins and the Ghoulies, but you can tell that the cast of this film is made almost completely of amateur actors, and the script feels almost unfinished as there is no internal logic to the film at all. Sometimes Granpa Seth can appear to Joshua and other times he can't. It is also never very clear what the Goblins goal is other than being Goblins and enslaving this family.
Which reminds me, the goblins and special effects for this movie look like complete shit. The goblins themselves are actually nothing more than guys in pajamas and cheap Halloween masks.
Troll 2 has become legendary for how bad it is, so keep this in mind when you are watching this and you might have a good time.
1/10
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Hello, just checking in to wish everyone a happy holiday for december. Expect some new updates and reviews soon.
How can the back crawl?
How can the back crawl?
Friday, November 26, 2010
The Human Centipede: First Sequence (2009)
Ashylnn Yennie and Ashley C. Willams play two American tourists sightseeing in Germany when they get a flat tire on a rural highway. Seeking help, they approach a mysterious house inhabited by a reclusive German surgeon named Dr. Heiter. Heiter kidnaps the two girls and plans to use them to create his masterwork: a centipede made from three humans sowed together mouth to anus, and with their kneecaps removed to prevent them from standing straight up. It doesn’t ever really become evident why Heiter wants this centipede, other than the fact that he is completely insane, and seems to desire to keep his creation as a pet and enjoy watching it suffer.
Heiter is played in a brilliantly creepy fashion by actor Dieter Laser who does a great job playing a convincingly cold and calculating sociopath who would make Joseph Mengle look like Ronald Mcdonald. The two female leads of the movie are terrible actress, but you only have to put up with their ham handed delivery for the first twenty minutes or so until their faces are sewn onto a Japanese guys ass. From then on they deliver an excellent performance of muffled grunts, moans, and shrieks and giving wide eyed expressions of terror as they swallow feces, and are forced to be “trained” by the sadistic Heiter.
The concept of the Human Centipede is perhaps its greatest strength and weakness. Once the characters are finally fused together in the horrific creation, there is practically no hope for them to resist the wild machinations of their captor. This makes the last fifty minutes consist of watching a parade of pure abject suffering and human misery. This dehumanization of the main characters makes for great horror, and is really the central theme of the film, but also makes the film lack tension and drive as the characters are literally helpless passive actors in the films plot. This causes the climax of the movie to rely heavily on a series of somewhat goofy and very convenient plot coincidences. Despite this drawback, I found the final scene of the film to be pretty creative and actually pretty haunting and disturbing way to end the movie.
I’m hesitant to say I was entertained by The Human Centipede as I found parts of the film difficult to watch, and I think anyone who is too entertained by this movie probably needs some psychiatric help. However, the concept of the film is so bizarre and out there that I think anyone who can stomach horror films should at least check this movie out (as far as outright violence and gore goes it is actually fairly tame). It’s not something I will probably want to watch anytime soon, but I am glad I checked it out.
6/10
Heiter is played in a brilliantly creepy fashion by actor Dieter Laser who does a great job playing a convincingly cold and calculating sociopath who would make Joseph Mengle look like Ronald Mcdonald. The two female leads of the movie are terrible actress, but you only have to put up with their ham handed delivery for the first twenty minutes or so until their faces are sewn onto a Japanese guys ass. From then on they deliver an excellent performance of muffled grunts, moans, and shrieks and giving wide eyed expressions of terror as they swallow feces, and are forced to be “trained” by the sadistic Heiter.
The concept of the Human Centipede is perhaps its greatest strength and weakness. Once the characters are finally fused together in the horrific creation, there is practically no hope for them to resist the wild machinations of their captor. This makes the last fifty minutes consist of watching a parade of pure abject suffering and human misery. This dehumanization of the main characters makes for great horror, and is really the central theme of the film, but also makes the film lack tension and drive as the characters are literally helpless passive actors in the films plot. This causes the climax of the movie to rely heavily on a series of somewhat goofy and very convenient plot coincidences. Despite this drawback, I found the final scene of the film to be pretty creative and actually pretty haunting and disturbing way to end the movie.
I’m hesitant to say I was entertained by The Human Centipede as I found parts of the film difficult to watch, and I think anyone who is too entertained by this movie probably needs some psychiatric help. However, the concept of the film is so bizarre and out there that I think anyone who can stomach horror films should at least check this movie out (as far as outright violence and gore goes it is actually fairly tame). It’s not something I will probably want to watch anytime soon, but I am glad I checked it out.
6/10
Monday, October 18, 2010
October Movie Marathon Part 4: House of the Devil (2009)
House of the Devil is a movie that is completely unashamed of what it is. It is also uncompromisingly straightforward in its premise. In fact just knowing the title of this movie will give you a pretty good idea about what is going to happen in this film. However, despite this, or maybe because of it, House of the Devil is a fantastically frightening and fun film to watch.
Immediately one will notice when watching House of the Devil that director Tai West has made a conscious decision to set this film in the 80s in a homage to many of the classic horror and slasher flicks of the era. While some movies such as Machete or Planet Terror utilize the grind house aesthetic in a tongue and cheek manor, House of the Devil plays it much more straight by setting the movie in an era that evokes the feel of older horror movies without trying to engage in parody.
The film begins with a college student, Samantha, attempting to get a side job as a baby sitter so that she can move out into apartment and escape her obnoxious room mate. She lands a gig at an isolated mansion deep on the outskirts of town. Her job is to baby sit a mysterious man’s elder mother. The movie follows the events over the course of the night as Samantha finds more than she bargained for at the house.
This is a movie based on slow tension and anticipation on what will happen next. Samantha is a likely character played excellently by Jocelin Donahue. This great, since a large portion of this movie is nothing but long shots of her alone in the mansion, as she explores and begins to unravel what is going on in the house. As the movie progresses your really start to feel some apprehension for what is going to happen to this girl. However, when everything goes to hell at the end of this movie (literally), it is like a punch in the gut, all leading up to a masterfully executed abrupt ending that is classic horror.
House of the Devil is one of the best horror films I have seen from 2009. Some may criticize this film for being too uneventful or lacking substance, but this movie does everything it sets out to do, and does it with a slick retro style. It is definitely a movie worth seeking out and is great for Halloween.
9/10
Immediately one will notice when watching House of the Devil that director Tai West has made a conscious decision to set this film in the 80s in a homage to many of the classic horror and slasher flicks of the era. While some movies such as Machete or Planet Terror utilize the grind house aesthetic in a tongue and cheek manor, House of the Devil plays it much more straight by setting the movie in an era that evokes the feel of older horror movies without trying to engage in parody.
The film begins with a college student, Samantha, attempting to get a side job as a baby sitter so that she can move out into apartment and escape her obnoxious room mate. She lands a gig at an isolated mansion deep on the outskirts of town. Her job is to baby sit a mysterious man’s elder mother. The movie follows the events over the course of the night as Samantha finds more than she bargained for at the house.
This is a movie based on slow tension and anticipation on what will happen next. Samantha is a likely character played excellently by Jocelin Donahue. This great, since a large portion of this movie is nothing but long shots of her alone in the mansion, as she explores and begins to unravel what is going on in the house. As the movie progresses your really start to feel some apprehension for what is going to happen to this girl. However, when everything goes to hell at the end of this movie (literally), it is like a punch in the gut, all leading up to a masterfully executed abrupt ending that is classic horror.
House of the Devil is one of the best horror films I have seen from 2009. Some may criticize this film for being too uneventful or lacking substance, but this movie does everything it sets out to do, and does it with a slick retro style. It is definitely a movie worth seeking out and is great for Halloween.
9/10
October movie Marathon Part 3: Dead Snow (2009)
Nazi Germany was one of the most brutal and terrifying regimes of the 20th century. The Nazis have made for menacing foes in plenty of movies over the years, from Indiana Jones to Schindler’s List. So how do you make Nazis an even more dangerous threat? You make them into Zombies! The Norwegian horror film Dead Snow does just that.
The film is set in the mountains of Norway as a bunch of medical students head out to an isolated cabin for a fun weekend full of drinking and snowmobiling. However, once in the cabin, they encounter a mysterious hiker who recounts a tale of German soldiers who occupied the area during the war, and subjected to the local population to unspeakable atrocities. Apparently, as the war ended these soldiers were murdered by the local population who rebelled, when the soldiers attempted to steal their precious gold. The man claims an unspeakable evil lurks in the mountains, and pretty soon the students face a horde of undead zombies who are out to reclaim their lost gold.
Dead Snow plays almost like a remake of Evil Dead set in Norway, and the movie pays direct homage to other classic horror films like Dead-Alive. You can expect the same kind of horror action that straddles the line between goofy and gross that was found in those movies. I felt like the movie was maybe a little too aware of this by going to the lengths of including a nerdy film buff character who constantly references movies. At a point in the movie I started to feel “Yeah we get it, you like old horror movies.”
However, Dead Snow does have some great gore and action scenes toward the end of the movie as the characters engage in all out battle with the Nazi Zombies. There are plenty of decapitations, disembowelment, and characters being ripped limb from limb in this film, and a lot of this happens in broad daylight, so don’t expect too much suspense or scares in this movie. The characters decide not to run from the zombies, but face them head on. This leads to the movies best scenes, including a character mounting a German MG-42 machine gun to his snowmobile and mowing down dozens of Nazis. The movie tries to give the characters Bruce Campbell style one liners thought the film, but most of these fall kind of flat, partly because of the subtitles and partly because they are just plain bad.
Perhaps, the most surprising problem with Dead Snow, is just the lack of creativity. I never really felt that the movie took complete advantage of the excellent premise of having Nazi zombies. There is plenty of rich lore and stories about the Nazis associations with the occult and black magic, or their experiments with eugenics and fringe science. Either of these could have been exploited, and made for a rich and compelling plot. Instead the explanation for the zombies is vague and generic. The film seems too comfortable walking the same well trodden ground of other horror films, and I would have liked for it to try to be its on thing.
Dead Snow isn’t the best zombie film ever, and probably isn’t even the best Nazi zombie film ever. Check it out if you like the Evil Dead films, but keep in mind you won’t be seeing much new here.
5/10
The film is set in the mountains of Norway as a bunch of medical students head out to an isolated cabin for a fun weekend full of drinking and snowmobiling. However, once in the cabin, they encounter a mysterious hiker who recounts a tale of German soldiers who occupied the area during the war, and subjected to the local population to unspeakable atrocities. Apparently, as the war ended these soldiers were murdered by the local population who rebelled, when the soldiers attempted to steal their precious gold. The man claims an unspeakable evil lurks in the mountains, and pretty soon the students face a horde of undead zombies who are out to reclaim their lost gold.
Dead Snow plays almost like a remake of Evil Dead set in Norway, and the movie pays direct homage to other classic horror films like Dead-Alive. You can expect the same kind of horror action that straddles the line between goofy and gross that was found in those movies. I felt like the movie was maybe a little too aware of this by going to the lengths of including a nerdy film buff character who constantly references movies. At a point in the movie I started to feel “Yeah we get it, you like old horror movies.”
However, Dead Snow does have some great gore and action scenes toward the end of the movie as the characters engage in all out battle with the Nazi Zombies. There are plenty of decapitations, disembowelment, and characters being ripped limb from limb in this film, and a lot of this happens in broad daylight, so don’t expect too much suspense or scares in this movie. The characters decide not to run from the zombies, but face them head on. This leads to the movies best scenes, including a character mounting a German MG-42 machine gun to his snowmobile and mowing down dozens of Nazis. The movie tries to give the characters Bruce Campbell style one liners thought the film, but most of these fall kind of flat, partly because of the subtitles and partly because they are just plain bad.
Perhaps, the most surprising problem with Dead Snow, is just the lack of creativity. I never really felt that the movie took complete advantage of the excellent premise of having Nazi zombies. There is plenty of rich lore and stories about the Nazis associations with the occult and black magic, or their experiments with eugenics and fringe science. Either of these could have been exploited, and made for a rich and compelling plot. Instead the explanation for the zombies is vague and generic. The film seems too comfortable walking the same well trodden ground of other horror films, and I would have liked for it to try to be its on thing.
Dead Snow isn’t the best zombie film ever, and probably isn’t even the best Nazi zombie film ever. Check it out if you like the Evil Dead films, but keep in mind you won’t be seeing much new here.
5/10
Thursday, October 14, 2010
October Movie Marathon Part 2: Frozen (2010)
On a weekend ski trip, three college students find themselves stranded on chairlift, and forgotten by the staff of the resort. With the resort closed for the next week and no hope of rescue the trio must figure a way out as a winter storm closes in.
Frozen may stretch the genre boundaries for my October movie marathon a bit. There are no supernatural elements, no monsters, and no serial killers. It might be considered more of a thriller than a horror film. However, I think the movie fits the bill of horror quite well if only for the sheer plausibility of concept. Like the film Open Water, Frozen excels at taking a common place experience, and attempting to show how it can quickly turn into a terrifying one. It is this juxtaposition that fills you with an intense feeling of dread and hopelessness, as the characters of this film are put in an increasingly more desperate position, and you find yourself imagining what you would do in that situation.
A good portion of the horror is psychological, as the characters movie must deal with their deteriorating physical condition and the deaths of their friends, and there is a surprisingly low body count and use of gore, but this only serves to heighten the visceral impact when violence does occur. This movie has plenty of cringe inducing moments. Director/writer Adam Greene does a great job setting up the characters and their relationships in the first twenty minutes, so that you really feel for them with things start falling apart, and they are thrust into life a life death situation. I don’t want to ruin the film, but I felt the climax of the film could have been a bit better thought out and constructed. You don’t really feel like the solution to the conflict in the film feels earned by the characters, but maybe that is just part of the realism that the movie tries to go for.
Frozen is a fun little film that is totally worth a watch. At just under 90 minutes, the length of the film is perfect, and although the concept is limited, the movie does not overstay its welcome. However, do the nature of the plot and action of the film I don’t see me rewatching it very often. If your looking for a horror movie that goes in a bit more realistic direction, then Frozen solid bet.
7/10
Frozen may stretch the genre boundaries for my October movie marathon a bit. There are no supernatural elements, no monsters, and no serial killers. It might be considered more of a thriller than a horror film. However, I think the movie fits the bill of horror quite well if only for the sheer plausibility of concept. Like the film Open Water, Frozen excels at taking a common place experience, and attempting to show how it can quickly turn into a terrifying one. It is this juxtaposition that fills you with an intense feeling of dread and hopelessness, as the characters of this film are put in an increasingly more desperate position, and you find yourself imagining what you would do in that situation.
A good portion of the horror is psychological, as the characters movie must deal with their deteriorating physical condition and the deaths of their friends, and there is a surprisingly low body count and use of gore, but this only serves to heighten the visceral impact when violence does occur. This movie has plenty of cringe inducing moments. Director/writer Adam Greene does a great job setting up the characters and their relationships in the first twenty minutes, so that you really feel for them with things start falling apart, and they are thrust into life a life death situation. I don’t want to ruin the film, but I felt the climax of the film could have been a bit better thought out and constructed. You don’t really feel like the solution to the conflict in the film feels earned by the characters, but maybe that is just part of the realism that the movie tries to go for.
Frozen is a fun little film that is totally worth a watch. At just under 90 minutes, the length of the film is perfect, and although the concept is limited, the movie does not overstay its welcome. However, do the nature of the plot and action of the film I don’t see me rewatching it very often. If your looking for a horror movie that goes in a bit more realistic direction, then Frozen solid bet.
7/10
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