‘Twas okay.. but mostly skippable. I’m not sure that it would be worth a viewing when it’s released to DVD or whatever, but horror junkies need their fixes, so maybe?

About the movie..
Basically a group of three American, college-age kids go on a European vacation, meet up with the brother of one of the characters in Kyiv, and he convinces them to go on a special tour to the site of the Chernobyl meltdown. Two other tourists join the four, and the guide brings them to the site. Being a former military person, the guide has apparently worked out a deal with the gate guards to bring tourists in, but on this day there is something wrong so they get turned away and have to sneak in on a back road. All is well until they try to leave D:

Director/Producer/Writer
Chernobyl Diaries features a screenplay by Oren Peli, who wrote and directed the first Paranormal Activity movie. Since he made the first P.A. movie, he has stayed in the background with writing and producing, so his name was on the other Paranormal movies, but he won’t have another directorial credit until Area 51 is released at the end of the year (low budget ftw!). Chernobyl is instead directed by Bradley Parker, and this is his first major credit.. he did okay, so I’m thinking that writing was the biggest issue with the movie.

Cast
Chernobyl Diaries is mostly composed of unknowns, but the evil hacker from Live Free or Die Hard (Jonathan Sadowski) is one of the brothers, and Natalie is played by Olivia Dudley from 5SecondFilms.com — wherein her every appearance is subject to constant heckling by perverted internetz-ers. Everyone plays pretty simple roles, with the only notable going to the brothers for having an annoying on-screen dynamic.

«< some spoilers »>

Plot/Writing :p
I thought this movie had an interesting enough premise, there just wasn’t enough follow-through. Once on the site it seems like the writers can’t decide what sort of creatures to throw at the characters. In the start they do a small setup with mutant fish, which was obvious foreshadowing but later fizzled (no one had to die, but there didn’t seem to be any real peril in the river-crossing scene). There is a bear, some dogs, some kind of colossal beast which isn’t explained/identified, and then actual mutant people. All these things make for great horrors, it’s only that there is nothing to frame it all. They might have thrown in too much and not explored any one thing enough to create relevance. It is the characters against *everything* — no sinister design, just whatever is conjured for that particular scene.

Continuity was also a bit of an issue.. this was a very short movie so there’s really no reason they couldn’t have added detail to their second day (giving extra runtime). Instead, the morning after their first night, three of the group set out on a 13 mile, on-road hike to get help from a checkpoint, find a part for the broken van along the way (then deciding to return), and by the time they get back it is dark again.. That was a short day. Even if they all woke at noon..

The writers tried a little to give the characters motives, but their decisions were limited. They tried to make a background story with the brothers; one always disappointing the other and hoping now to make up for another mistake.. the extra body-count tourist couple had a generic tragedy connection (if one goes then the other is inevitably next), one brother was getting ready to propose.. and so there might be a *small* statement in that they decided to keep only the unaffiliated characters alive for last. Maybe they were saying that characters without history have a chance at surviving new situations, but I doubt that came about intentionally. This is not high-cinema

And the funny moments came from some of these classic plays. I think I was the only one laughing in the theater (oops!) but when the van was disabled in the beginning and the older brother started complaining and verbally attacking their guide, it was funny because, well, how quickly they become uncivilized :p  .. And of course he was telling his brother to calm down while he was the only one yelling (lol). And there were fun, explanation-free situations.. like the guide deciding to get out of the vehicle and walk away even though he had been adamant that it wasn’t safe outside (too much complaining I guess). Their often changing decisions and directions.. And then creature motive, like why or how Olivia managed to get away in the first place, why she was grabbed and then just left somewhere else.. where the brother could have been and why they didn’t seek shelter.. a lot was wrong and it goes beyond their just being confused and scared. It’s possible that deleted scenes or on-set cuts were an issue or else that a sequel was hoped for if they received a positive response, but really it seems like they had half of a script, showed up to film, and just sort of did all they could.

«< end spoilers »>

Overall..
It really fell short for a horror movie. Not explaining things is fine, but creating an atmosphere where there is no fear communicated to viewers even though all sorts of terror is around just shows a lack of intention.. There were too many moments which *could* have been scary, but which instead just sort of circumstantially happened. It wasn’t a bad movie. The problem is they had all the material potential but didn’t make anything of it. There were great sets and good creature work, but no writing to give it effect..

I might look into this again if they release extras later.. just not worth seeing the theatrical release.

Is couch :D

http://angryjoeshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/D3servers2.gif

I’m behind!

Below:
Casa de mi Padre (2012)
The Raid: Redemption (2011/2012)
John Carter (2012)
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Safe (2011/2012)
The Raven (2012)

-=-=-=-=-

Casa de mi Padre (2012)

Funny!
This one went near completely under the radar (limited release), though it was a lot of lulz

Synopsis
It’s a Will Ferrell movie, and that carries a lot of the expected, unexpected :p
It’s almost entirely in Spanish with subtitles, shot in the style of an authentic, [maybe 70’s?] Mexican/Western. It has some of the familiar Mexican trafficking elements, with the story being about Will Ferrell’s farm family, drugs introduced around them, and their family vengeance sublines. There’s brotherly jealously, a love triangle, Desperado gun fights — all kinds of stereotypical elements merged into a sort of Mexican parody of The Godfather.

And about that…
All of what the movie tried to do may be why it wasn’t received well or marketed. For one thing, just like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo remake proves: mass audiences are too lazy to read subtitles. Add that difficulty to a comedy and the viewer base becomes very small. Another thing is that all of those cinema elements require viewers to recognize the juxtapositions of the parody versus assumed source material. That requires thinking on the audience side — again, not an easy sell for a comedy. It wasn’t like a sitcom where canned laughter or special pauses indicate the end of a joke; the funny moments come off with subtly in a lot of cases. There *were* obvious, slapstick moments, but those won’t get an average audience through the entire movie. Without paying some attention it may not be clear just how absurd everything really is.

So that explains an empty theater, but “why it didn’t do well” aside it was really funny. It had fun turns on Spanish soap operas (like characters not facing each other while delivering monologues), painted sceneries added into the middle of outdoor shots, an awkward sex scene with a mannequin, and lots of other weird stuff :p

Overall
Worth a watch when it makes it to DVD. It may not compare well with some other Ferrell movies, but funny all the same :)

-=-=-=-=-

The Raid: Redemption (2011/2012)

I don’t usually get over-excited about pure action movies, but The Raid looked *a lot* like Hard Boiled (fun, 1992 John Woo movie) in that a small group goes against an entire building :D

In The Raid, an Indonesian SWAT team tries to extract a crime boss from a building which is occupied by heavily-armed outlaws. It’s supposed to be stealthy, but a few minutes in the alarm is sounded, they run out of ammunition, and they have to fight their way out D:

There were really *a lot* of great sequences, and I was particularly happy to *not* see cable-work. Cable-work may have been used for all I know, but it didn’t look like it. All of the fights looked very real and showed a lot of skill from the actors and choreographers. It was also very brutal; the “R” rating absolutely applied.

The story was minimal, having just enough purpose to carry the circumstances. It’s obviously not the central draw. The point is to show all of the fight scenes, and since they did such a great job, that is just fine. Highly recommended if you want to see that fight choreography can still be very entertaining

-=-=-=-=-

John Carter (2012)

It was okay, though its major flaw is that it was released a few years later than it should have been.

I’ve read it described to be a combination between Prince of Persia, Avatar, and .. Mars.. something Mars-y. That’s accurate. And the problem isn’t that it lacks originality — some of the concepts take new shape given the setting — it’s simply that John Carter was competing with those over-the-top blockbusters and didn’t sell its own separate ideas well enough. The target audience of ‘big studio’ is getting jaded, and I think John Carter is a example. Its budget was 250 million USD but it earned 270. 20 million is a lot though? Not for studios. Considering that movies like this get made entirely for money, that’s not good. Compare to The Avengers budget of 220 million and its current earnings of 832. Of course, The Avengers is an exception in that regard, my meaning is only that I think the producers of John Carter could have gotten away with a much smaller budget and made it a character-driven movie instead of a “check out these effects” movie.

John Carter wasn’t a *bad* movie. I did like that Silverfox and Gambit were in another movie together (Lynn Collins and Taylor Kitsch). Lynn Collins, especially, seems like she could take stronger roles. The writers of John Carter minimized her somewhat to create that classical Disney narrative of a princess who needs to be saved. They’ll get it eventually.

I can’t be excited about this one. Watching wouldn’t be a waste of time.. does have fun

-=-=-=-=-

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

I hate Joss Whedon. I really do ;D
No… I loved the Buffy series and the start of Angel. His problem is his endless God Machine narrative. A writer’s broken fourth wall / God Machine can be fun — if it *says* something — but the message in The Cabin in the Woods was really just.. blah :/

Plot Overview
The Cabin in the Woods is a playful retelling of the teen/college horror movie.. a familiar one; a small group of people go camping or become stranded and then murder :| . In Whedon’s version it is all a design. A group of scientists control the group’s behavior to create certain roles and let them unleash horrors while the scientists themselves make sure all goes according to plan, to placate greater calamities

The Obvious
Okay, so it’s about writers making these recycled plots and audiences buying it. That’s obvious. What of it? Well.. that’s about it. The God Machine is *so close* to the surface that it’s practically the entire movie. Which, again, is fine if it *says* something. In Cabin it’s just..: okay.. writers keep making these stupid roles (the dumb blonde, the jock, the nerd, the virgin, etc.) and audiences buy it in whatever form we choose for the movie-of-the-week.

From there, every character in the movie is just a one-dimensional, writer’s voice. People end up having these conversations where you could change only a couple words and it would be a discussion about the need for the entertainment industry to innovate. A novel idea, but acted out in this fashion it is just too simple to sustain an entire movie. Fortunately the movie has some redeeming qualities. Although the main theme is hollow, Cabin has some fun moments. It’s a parody at heart, so if you can ignore any greater message it fails to broadcast with any depth, then it’s enjoyable.

«< small spoiler »>

I’m sure lots of people liked the ending collage of villains. They drew from all sorts of horror movies. Notable to me was the group from The Strangers, since that made me wonder just how close their references could be to the source material. And the gore gets a plus! Always appreciated ;p

..also thought it was funny that the audience didn’t recognize Sigourney Weaver’s voice when she spoke on the intercom. It’s very unique. When she later walked on screen in person people were all like, “Oh! Sigourney Weaver!” .. yeah.. a little late to the party.

« end spoiler »

Overall
This review may be overly critical of Joss Whedon. Some people may appreciate the message he’s making, I just think it’s too simplified and too pronounced. Sadly, ignoring his message may be the best way to watch this movie, because otherwise it’s like watching the theme of a Disney TV show or listening to the lyrics of a teen pop song; they might have been profound to witness at age 8, but now it’s just self-evident.

Taken away from that motive, the movie is alright :/ ..  I’m not sure that it’s worth seeing in the theater. No rush.. just a casual horror movie, like those it’s trying redefine.

-=-=-=-=-

Safe (2011/2012)

An excuse to watch Jason Statham rampage for an hour and a half? I think so! :D

This one kind of reminded me of the focus of The Grey: a person trying to find a reason to live when everything’s been taken away. For Statham, it comes in the form of Mei (Catherine Chan) whose troublesome look speaks to a Statham on the verge of suicide.. He decides to intervene, and with his super powers changes the course of history *dun dun dun*! :D

The Plot
Mei is a super-smart math whizz who was stolen from her parents in China and hired to run the numbers for the New York City Triad. Having been there for about a year, she is asked to memorize a specific number, which is apparently code for a Triad safe combination.. but then the Russians kidnap her, oh noes! In the meantime, Luke (Statham) is a cage fighter who won a fight he was supposed to lose. The Russians lost a lot of money, so they make him “walk the earth, meet people, get into adventures.. like Caine from Kung-Fu”; “a bum.” Mei escapes the Russians for a time, but they almost catch up to her at the subway, and Luke is there, doesn’t kill himself, and triggers an endless fight scene between Police, the Russians, and the Triads.

This was a very brutal movie. Not brutal like The Raid, but brutal like, with a surprisingly murderous main-character. No Spider-Man knocking people unconscious — nope, there’s a sale and everyone must die!

«< small spoiler »>

The Cast
The New York City mayor in the movie is played by Chris Sarandon.. I couldn’t place him while watching — he was Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride, among other things. Robert John Burke was the Police Captain, familiar from Steven King’s Thinner. Anson Mount from Hell on Wheels made a small appearance. It bothered me at the end that he would just put his pistol down no more than a foot away from Mei to start a fight with Statham.. They were going for one of those, “surprise! Not really going to be an epic fight after all” moments (Indiana 1, Equilibrium), but setting the pistol down like that telegraphed the outcome.

«< end spoiler »>

Overall
Violence, action, violence.. pretty standard :p
This one might be worth a theater viewing if there’s a need for a mindless murder movie

-=-=-=-=-

The Raven (2012)

A nice, dark movie. This was one of the lucky few that was blotted out by “The Avengers” release date.

Basically..
The Raven is a kind of hacker way to get a bunch of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories into one movie. They kind of worked it out, except that they didn’t sew it into the factual accounts quite right — not even the ones they portrayed. The story follows Poe’s (John Cusack) cooperation with the Police; someone is killing people by replicating Poe’s stories and is threatening Poe..

Cusack & Cast
In the start of the movie Cusack is kind of annoying. It’s partly just the character (trying to play Poe), but it seems mostly to be bad method on Cusack’s part. By about a half hour in, he levels out. Everyone else is fine.

Writer/Reader Relationship
This movie has a lot to offer for the relationship between artwork creators and those inspired by the works. It’s perilous, of course; one’s imagination becoming another’s reality. And Raven addresses difficulty in connecting the ideas a person can create with their physical gestures; it’s all a test designed by the villain to see if Poe can compete in a broader game, exploring the horror show first hand ..

Overall
Of the movies in this grouping I think The Raven has the most for return viewing. Dark atmosphere, familiar horrors realized in someone else’s imaginings.. all the best evil.. and I’ve been craving dark; topping all my favorites on Netflix, so I may be rethinking some old ones soon.

Worth a theater viewing, or worth a solitary viewing in a dark room >:D

http://www.hulu.com/watch/359398/the-colbert-report-tue-may-8-2012

5-Second Film lulz

[I’ll give spoiler warnings when needed]

Pretty good!
Going in with low expectations definitely helps to make this a better movie. It seemed reasonable that this would at least be better than the individual, garbage movies that were Thor, Captain America, and The Hulk (2008; though Hulk in 2003 was also bad) {Ironman gets a pass; I liked the first one} because those were just setup movies made to feed into this one, but all the same, the “Avengers” story arc seems like a difficult one for writers. Team-ups usually just exist to satisfy some ridiculous, fan-driven concept of the comic universe and fail by having too many moving parts without practical roles for each individual hero to take on.. but the writers of The Avengers did pretty well to make it work.

Effects & Pacing
The effects really were the central part of the movie. All the same, luckily the effects weren’t overwhelming and self-serving. The Avengers *is* a mindless action movie, just not so mindless that it’s unwatchable. Even though the movie was made to please all the idiots who appear in the summer to watch Will Smith talk about close encounters, the writers weren’t totally afraid to have non-explosion moments. I was happy to see them apply some patience with pacing, sometimes showing simple conversations and debates that.. well.. I don’t know, *added* to the actual value of plot? That’s a blockbuster rarity. Don’t be mislead, this isn’t to say that it was mindbending writing, just not totally vacuous either. I’m sure that this scared some audience members a little bit, but the parts of their brains which still function must have appreciated that it led to something (extra explosions) ;)

The effects themselves were really impressive. I did not see it in 3D because I hate 3D, so I can’t say anything about whether or not they did anything with that — I’ll say the normal version was well-produced :p
I’m not sure there were any “wow” moments for the effects alone, but I didn’t see anything worth complaining about, which is a big plus. No too-obvious green screen moments, and no annoying Gods-vs-Gods moments which held no value — that is, when things were hit/interracted with, there was an effect when relevant (so nothing stupid like the 2003 Hulk’s CGI finale fight). Another plus is that they didn’t do what Michael Bay does. When things were happening on the screen you can actually -see- what’s happening; none of that, “oh! look! Moving shapes! Something cool must be happening! ..I guess. :| “

So props to the special effects team! I think they had something like, half of China in a special effects office making sure it was presentable.

< < < Spoiler Zone > > >

Comic Relief
It’s Marvel so nothing is ever too serious, but they did lighten things up pretty frequently :) .. I mostly just smiled — mostly D: .. the audience lol’ed a lot. I actually feel pretty bad for some of the obvious things the audience laughed at. The only moment I thought was lol-tastic was when Stark had mentioned someone playing Galaga, and once everyone left the room that person went back to their game of Galaga :p
<3 Galaga

Another kind of ‘funny’ thing was usage of pistols in the movie. Like when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) prepares to fire a pistol on a plane which is probably already 100 meters away when he draws and also when The Black Widow is in the city with everyone and has just a pistol. It made sense when she picked up an enemy weapon, but later it was right back to the pistol. They could have made her effectual with something significant. She doesn’t need to be doing all that the Hulk and Ironman were doing, but seriously? :p (though it was good when she pulled the pistol on the chasing Hulk, because she used it to create a distraction; she didn’t do it to shoot him)

The extra scene at the end of the credits was also a smile moment for me, but a fun one :D .. Thor taking a big bite of his food was a nice touch.

Rawr (other things)
Did anyone else catch Captain America’s “one god” moment? They mention how Loki is considered a God, and Captain America says something like, “Well that’s fine, but there’s only one true God!” [scene switches] or some such shenanigans. I think that made us polytheistic people in the audience pretty uncomfortable. By Athena! Stupid Christian narratives.. ;p

I thought the moment when Nick Fury was shot was kind of a plot escape-tactic; the writers wanted Fury to speak with Loki, but also didn’t want him to be captured. Loki was slaving people with the staff, Fury is right there, and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) just shoots him. It would have been nice if they had later explained it that Hawkeye (not quite being controlled yet) knew that Fury had a vest on and didn’t want Fury’s knowledge/skills to be taken by Loki. This might be necessary (in my opinion) because the way things were, capturing Fury would have been very helpful for Loki.

Kind of neat they were able to put S.H.I.E.L.D.’s flying fortress in this. I was wondering if they would manage that somehow. They went with the smaller renderings of the comic (battle-ship sized) instead of some of the comics’ full city size. That may have stretched the semi-realism they were going for.

Cast
Scarlett Johansson is still a bad actress, though not a total distraction.. and I thought it was funny that Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) was basically the only character they were willing to kill. Probably thousands of people were killed in the city scene alone, but there is really no tragedy in the movie; it is very toned down. They weren’t even willing to go all the way with Tony Stark. I’m not saying characters have to die to give things gravity, but the way they dealt with mortality does highlight the PG-13 in kind of a funny way.

Joss Whedon & Production
I didn’t realize before seeing this that Joss Whedon (Buffy, Serenity) had directed it, and really, it does -not- show. Leave that to big productions to take the director out of major influence (big productions end up being all about the studio’s PC tactics). He may be responsible for keeping any overtly-[Uh-murr-ica] propaganda out of it.. or someone did. That was nice. No Spider-Man in front of an American flag type stuff. Always a plus. There were some product placements and the type of stuff that these movies tend to attract, just no “Patriots: tear up at this moment” moments.

< < < End Spoilers > > >

Overall
I’m impressed! Low expectations + nothing super-wrong with the movie = The Avengers was good. Worth the ticket cost, worth the watch. Expect the things you normally get in an American Blockbuster (big explosions, lots of FX, only as much character as does not distract people from their want of explosions), but also expect it to be done exceptionally well for a mass-produced movie. It’s a “turn the brain off” movie, but in kind of an okay way.

dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun dun dun dun.. mew mew mew meow meow meow meow mew meow meow meow….

h3r0in 4-20!