Troll Hunter

Hm.  Mothra, Werewolves, Vampires, and now trolls…  I really have been a monster kick lately haven’t I?  Anyway what can I say about “Troll Hunter”?  At the most simple you can describe it as a Norwegian and much less nauseating version of “Cloverfield”.   Don’t get me wrong, I liked the idea behind “Cloverfield”, but good god!  There’s shaky cam and then there’s, well “Cloverfield”.  But really the similarities are only superficial in that it’s a found footage movie about people seeing giant monsters.

The main plot focuses on a group of film students (meaning that there is little to no excessive shaking of the camera.) that find a man named Hans while they are filming a documentary on bear pouching.  It turns out that Hans is actually a government sanctioned hunter of the trolls spoken of in ancient Norse mythology, which the government has been denying the existence of for years.  That’s really the movie’s big hook, that the rules of troll mythology are actually real rules and the movie goes in depth about several aspects of it in a scientific way.  For example, they explain why it is, that trolls will turn to tonen if expose to sun light and the titular hunter’s main weapon is a giant UV lamp that he carries.  Also, Hans stresses that it’s very important that everyone involved not be Christian as the trolls apparently can smell the blood of a Christian man.  Touches like this make “Troll Hunter” as intriguing to watch as it is entertaining.

I’m not going to beat around the bush on this folks, “Troll Hunter” is a really REALLY good movie.  The cast is all believable, as far as I can tell since I don’t speak Norwegian.  In particular Otto Jespersen as Hans, who plays the man as world weary and cold, jaded to the years upon years he has been working in this job and Jespersen really makes it apparent the toll it’s taken on him emotionally.  In addition director André Øvredal really works hard behind the camera, building up each of the troll sequences so that they are never redundant or boring, but also making the in between dialogue scene stand out as well, this guy is a real talent and I hope this movie leads to great things for him.  The effects used to render the trolls may not look that impressive as this movie was made on a tight budget, but they are well executed effects and I think that the execution, not the actual detail on the things face is what makes a good effect, and the ones from the climax of the film are just out of this world impressive in terms of set pieces and effects.

This review really isn’t going to be that long because there’s A LOT to this movie and I don’t want to spoil it because I really encourage everyone to go out and rent it.  It’s one of my favorite movies released in the states this year.  It’s well thought out, brilliantly directed and just a power house monster flick that frankly we are very lucky to still get anymore.  Seriously, give this movie a watch!

5 Trolls out of 5

Next review:  Darkman

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

You know, as a huge bastion of movie knowledge, I get asked for recommendations ALL the time.  Especially around Halloween, where I really should just start charging for the sheer amount of lists I end up writing, and two movies I always, ALWAYS recommend are the 2001 cult film “Ginger Snaps” and its 2003 sequel “Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed”.  These are the epitome of great horror movies.  The first film centering around two sisters, one of whom is slowly turning into a werewolf in a not all that subtle, but still very well done, metaphor for puberty.  It was a solidly paced, well written horror movie with great performances and amazingly pulled off make up effects.   It was so good an idea that in 2009, “Jennifer’s Body” tried the exact same plot, and failed hilariously.  It came out and made some waves at festivals and did pretty well on DVD so a couple years later two sequels were made back to back.  “Ginger Snaps 2” was a sequel that I was actually not really looking forward to because, as I have come to learn, when a good horror film gets a sequel it’s rather redundant and underwhelming.  This was the exception, I recommend it just as much as the first one, actually I recommend watching both of them in one sitting, it’s quite interesting.  This time, Ginger’s (werewolf girl from movie one.) sister Brigitte is the one turning.  She’s taking steps however by injecting herself with monkshood which is delaying the transformation, but in hot pursuit is a male werewolf intent on mating with her.  Not helping matters is when she ends up in a rehab center and her injections are taken away.  This movie is how I’d love all horror sequels to be done.  It ups the stakes, it adds growth to the characters, it takes where the original started and keeps going replacing the puberty metaphor with drug addiction and withdrawal, not to mention this ending is just perfect, creepy and totally not going to be spoiled here.

            What is going to be talked about here is the third sequel, “Ginger Snaps Back:  The Beginning”, which as the rather dumb title suggests, is more of a prequel set during frontier times.  Shot right after “Ginger 2”, we find our two heroines Brigitte and Ginger wandering through a forest after the coach they were traveling in has crashed.  They come across a Fort where the men are constantly fighting werewolves and things are looking bleaker by the minute as the girls arrive and Ginger is once again bitten.

            So how is the movie?  *sigh* it’s really disappointing.  Don’t take that the wrong way, it’s not a terrible movie by any means, I’ve seen and reviewed far far worse, but following on the heels of two horror movies I would give either 5’s or at the very least 4.5’s to respectively?  This is really remarkably underwhelming.

Let’s start with the good, Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins are incredible as Ginger and Brigitte like always.  The movie has a very gothic, fairy tale-like atmosphere to it that kept giving me flashbacks to Neil Jordan’s excellent “The Company of Wolves” (WATCH THAT, NOW!) and ANYTHING that can make that claim is doing something right.  The make up effects are still great, many of the supporting bit characters are very well performed, and the film has a very interesting conclusion.

But, as I said this movie was not nearly as good as the other two.  I find it hard to really say why this is, since it had a lot of things that I liked about it.  Like the camera work and the costume and production designs, are all spot on, so what’s wrong with it?  The script, that’s what.  It’s just so lazy!
  This movie is sadly padded, not as padded as things like “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” but the movie really doesn’t go anywhere.  I kept waiting for the plot to start, but it just never seemed to happen until about the halfway point and even then the movie still drug like a sloth on the back of a turtle.  It was just a clichéd “group of sexist and superstitious men blaming all their ills and bad luck on the arrival of two women.” Type of story, even though that makes no sense as it was implied that the fort has been fighting off werewolf attacks for awhile before the girls were even lost in the woods! Not helping things are the stereotype priest character that is the main instigator of the whole deal.  This character is just ridiculous and has no right to exist other than to give this movie a cheap way to build tension, one that I might add, barely works.  Every single time the movie looked like it was going somewhere, the priest would do something or something else would happen that basically made this movie have the same five or six scene played on a loop!  It gets really old even faster than you'd think.    

There’s a lot of good elements here, but they’re going to waste because this script is just a badly written cliché that’s hoping its visual aesthetic will make up for its short comings.  It’s a lot like how I felt about Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” now that I think about it, only not QUITE as much of a train wreck.  This movie had a lot of potential but it never really rises to the occasion to take advantage of it.  It’s not a terrible watch, but as a big fan of the other movies it’s almost inexcusable how just plain old average it is.  I would recommend it, if only for the cinematography and performances, but I would much rather you go out and watch, or re-watch, the first two movies instead.

2.5 lycanthropes out of 5.

Next time:  Troll Hunter.

Fright Night (2011)

You’d think that from latest year’s rather incendiary and hate filled review of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake that I have a deep and passionate hatred for horror remakes in general, especially lately with nearly every horror movie that comes out these days being a remake, but don’t take that to mean that I hate remakes in general. That said there are things that I feel a remake should be held to. For starters, a good remake should start off with the same idea as the original, but then use that premise to do its own thing. The original “Fright Night” was a cheesy and fun vampire movie from 1985, and it was a basic boy who cried wolf story. Charlie Brewster starts to suspect his new neighbor is actually a vampire and when no one believes him he goes to the TV horror host Peter Vincent (played wonderfully by the late great Roddy McDowall) to take care of the problem, but in the midst of this, the vampire Jerry Danridge (Chris Sarandon) is in hot pursuit. It’s a solid flick but not without it’s flaws and it’s very of it’s time. So how is the remake? It’s actually really good. The movie takes the same basic premise and goes another direction with it. In the original Charlie’s played as a bit more of a nerd, which works fine but there were things to him that still felt a little odd like how he goes to Vincent thinking he’s a real vampire hunter, fine if he was like 11 or 12, but this kid’s in high school. In the new movie Anton Yelchin play’s Charlie is much more like, well, any character Shia LeBeouf has ever played. But what makes Charlie in the new Fright Night work is that Yelchin can play him with a little more charisma than LeBeouf tends to bring to his parts. He’s mostly a FORMER nerd that’s started to break into the cooler cliques thanks to his hot girl friend Amy played by Imogen Poots. Most of the nerdiness and early suspicion of Danridge actually comes from his friend Ed played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse who is also good and has basically perfected playing these kinds of characters at this point. But the real stars are the vampire and vampire hunter. I’ve never been a huge fan of Colin Farrell but I’ve also never really hated him save for parts that were just very poorly written anyway, but here he’s great. He adds just the right amount of malice, charm, and sheer insanity, not to mention he’s yet another vampire that actually ACTS like a vampire (suck it “Twilight”!) A lot of the movie’s suspense really comes from the fact that Farrell is just really damn intimidating. All this said, he’s totally blown away by David Tennant as the new Peter Vincent, who plays the character as pretty much a spoiled play boy/occult scholar/vampire hunter/ Vegas night club act and when he’s on screen you just can’t help but love this guy. He is really funny and you can tell Tennant is having a hell of a lot of fun with the part. However though Tennant steals the show with the part that added attention does drag up pretty much the only flaw I have with the movie which is that with all the things to make Vincent work in a time where TV horror hosts don’t exist anymore it does seem a bit like this is reaching, and while it is a little bothersome, it never becomes a deal breaker as the rest of the script is well written and the movie keeps a solid pace and I actually feel it does a lot better job tension with it than the original did. The director Craig Gillespie really seems to get that this movie works better if you have a gradual mixing of the horror and comedy, the film opens in a manner that’s indicative of a horror movie, but when the movie’s in its down time the characters get to be quirky and fun and it makes the audience actually give a damn what happens to them. Which is how a horror film should work, though these days rarely does. Final verdict is that “Fright Night” is the first truly good horror remake to come out in a long while. It’s atmospheric and well paced with a solid cast that all really bring their A game and if no other reason you should see it to be reassured that while “Twilight” is pretty much the worst thing to happen to vampires as far as pop culture, at least there are people that still know how it’s done and what really makes it work. Hell, even if you like “Twilight” Farrell’s sex appeal as a vampire should have gotten you in the seats already anyway, just don’t expect him to sparkle. (And no, I don't care what your reason is Stephanie Meyer, you will never ever convince me that was a good idea.)\

4.5 fangs out of 5.

 Next up Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning.

Rebirth of Mothra/Trigun Badlands Rumble

I’ve already said that I’m a fan of Godzilla and due to this I have recently be looking into other movies that fight into the genre the big G occupies, known as daikaiju (Giant Monsters.). I mentioned back when I was talking about “Godzilla: Final Wars” that I have a particular fondness for the movies of the Heisei era (Roughly 1984 to 1995ish) that I started looking into other things from that particular time period to expand my horizons in. The first thing I picked up was “Rebirth of Mothra” which peaked my interest because, well, Mothra has always kind of been the silliest of Godzilla’s enemies, with the possible exception of Hedorah the giant sludge monster. My first thought was wondering how Mothra would fair in her own movie again as she was first seen in “Mothra” in 1961 (no I haven’t seen it, but it could still be potential review material.) before taking full time work in the Godzilla movies. How was it? This movie is just weird. Not weird on the level as something like a David Lynch film or early Coen brothers movie, but still really damn weird. Featuring things like Mothra’s twin fairies riding on a miniature version of Mothra called Fairy and then getting into what can only be described as a dog fight with another, evil fairy riding what I went on to call the flying Derp-asaurus (according to Wikipedia it’s really called Garugaru but I can’t recall a specific time that they said it in the film) The plot is that Mothra has laid an egg to continue on her work as Guardian of Earth, draining a massive amount of her life-force. But at the same time a logging company has uncovered a prison containing a great evil sealed long ago and I’m sure you can see where this is going if you have a working brain. However, the plot isn’t really what daikaiju films are about, it’s the monster on monster battles that bring in the audience and as such having a stock plot is not that big a deal, but half the time this feels like a balls to the wall monster battle and the other half is like a bad Disney movie about a family coming together. That said the effects are all good and it’s all fun if you like that kind of thing, but there really isn’t much to say other than it’s an average at best monster flick that doesn’t do anything significantly special or different other than a few wtf moments that are more just odd than entertaining, I recommend it if you really like Mothra but that’s about it.

3 little fairies out of 5

 Since I had little to say on this choice of movie for this week, and it took me awhile since the last post. I’ll fill out this one with another review, and since we’re in Japan this time, let’s talk anime. “Trigun” is a famous manga by Yasuhiro Nightow about a lone gunman named Vash the Stampede, though in contrast to the typical stereotype of the uber gun man that can kill six people before anyone else could fire a shot, Vash actually hates violence and has sworn to never kill anyone. The story is much more about how he travels the frontier world of Gunsmoke and changes peoples lives for the better while trying to come to terms with a dark past that hasn’t quite finished with him the way he’s finished with it. It was adapted into a very well received anime series and just last year we got a follow up to the show in the form of a feature length animated movie. Done by studio Madhouse, who also did the original series, the animation is very fluid with great attention to detail and characters that never go off model, not to mention fight scenes and gun fights that would make even the great John Woo blush. The story is such that 20 years in the past Vash gets caught up in a bank robbery where the gang turns on their leader, who has now come back seeking revenge. Along the way he runs into old friends MillyThompson and Meryl Strife, but also fellow gun slinger Wolfwood appears as the body guard of the gang leader, Gasback. Also along for the ride is Amelia, a female bounty hunter that Vash can’t seem to leave alone. “Trigun: Badlands Rumble” is the kind of thing that I’d like to see more of when it comes to action movies. It’s serious when it needs to be, but it can be really funny without being stupid, unlike some other movie I saw this summer that I promise I will stop going on about, and it also knows how to make the action pop and get you on the edge of your seat. I went to a screening of this movie that was dubbed because while it is originally Japanese, I strongly prefer Trigun’s dub if for only for one reason, Johnny Young Bosh IS Vash. The way this character is, equal parts serious goof ball, bad ass and philosophical mentor, is really really hard to pull off without having the right balance and while in Japanese on the show it’s ok, it worked so much more for me when Bosh was doing it because he just seems to feel comfortable with the role in that way people like Harrison Ford naturally just slid into the roles of Han Solo and Indiana Jones. All the other people do the job just fine though as a fan of the original series I was rather disappointed when I found out that Jeff Nimoy wasn’t voicing Wolfwood in the dub but I’m just nit picking at this point. The point is that “Trigun: Badlands Rumble” is well worth the watch, I dare say even if you don’t like anime you should give this a watch. It’s fun, funny and well just plain old fashioned entertaining. At this point it’s not out on DVD yet, though it will be available September 27. Track it down if you can.

 4.5 trick shots out of 5

 Next up: Fright Night (2011)