The Woman In Black (2012)

..oh don't look at me like that, nothing came out this weekend. I've really wanted to see this movie but I haven't had a chance until now. Live with it. 

   Women In Black is one of many many many many many many horror movies that will probably be enjoyed and forgotten with time. Hell i just walked out of it and I'm already having trouble remembering the main character's name (Harry Potter. They should have just stuck with that). While not a bad movie nothing about it really stands out and it falls into a list of many other horror movies that have the same problems; Pacing, tension, and actually being scary. 


   The movie starts off way too slow giving us a ton of useless information about the main character, then trying to explain all the useless information that most of the audience probably understood just fine. We don't actually get to see or go into the spooky haunted house *SPOILER ALERT* Its about a spooky haunted house in the middle of no where northern England* until almost half an hour in. The character's reasons for going to the house in the first place aren't explained in a way that makes it seem vital (Another case of amateur directors trying to tell us things instead of showing them to us). When he finally gets into the house it looks way smaller on the inside then it did on the outside which broke the setting for me a bit, even if they had used the excuse that he just didn't want to explore the whole house they should have made more of an effort to make it feel as big in scary on the inside as it looked on the outside. 


   From then on the movie speeds up and never slows down, the plot gets revealed in chunks that are like simple little mysteries and aren't very hard to predict and it runs all the way to the end leaving what i thought was going to be slow atmosphere building in the dust. The problem with the way the story moves along is that the amateurish horror directing misses key opportunities to be genuinely scary, instead going the lame route and stuffing in cheap little jump scares that for the most part wouldn't mar the jumpiest frightened cats. That ends up being the movies second main problem, whether its the fault of the director or the editor is unclear but neither of them seemed to know which scenes were tense or creepy. The jump scares are often thrown in after all the tension is lost, or before new tensions are about to come up and they have little effect. The last couple scenes in the movie do their best to make up for this but fall short becuase of the pacing. 


   Which at the end is absolutely snooker loopy, I think i counted four failed attempts at a climax, each getting more and more ridiculous until the movie just put itself out of it's misery with an overly sentimental ending that would have been affecting if it hadn't been so bluntly hinted at the entire movie. 


   Overall the movie just failed to scare, which is made even worse by all the potential it squandered. Daniel Radcliffe was totally believable and i feel like he could still have a big acting career. A lot of the minor characters are played by talented British sit com stars and make their scenes feel very real, all the sets in cinematography were actually really good for this kinda movie and I was very pleased during shots of the village and the house and the marshes and all that. The film even makes a concerted effort to have some dark and twisted psychological stuff, but it never amounts to much. 


   All and all i guess it wasn't all bad, it wasn't too long and had a lot of cool ideas, but the damn thing just wasn't that scary. And the pacing was just so strange. I can't really recommend it but even if i did, you won't be remembering this movie even a month down the road. 


Harry Potter gets a D+ for not being able to cast a spell that scared me in the slightest. 

Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace 3D (2012)

   Man oh man oh man. Star Wars. What have they done to you my boy? Three amazing films followed by redone versions of those movies, followed by three lesser sci-fi action movies... and now followed by those movies all  in one blu-ray bow (Which i bought day one) and as of today they have begun the re-re-releases in theaters in 3D. 

   Now I'll get to my actual opinion  of the movie in a second but first lets get this out of the way: The prequel Star Wars movies are NOT as bad as most people on the internet will tell you. Now they're not great movies, they have pretty lame acting, sub par special effects, and more than a few bad instances of them telling us things not showing them (For example how they never show us or even explain the prophecy that's supposed to balance the force). However they aren't terrible and don't deserve all the shit they get, they have some great cinematography, a lot of the planets and structures are beautiful from a creative/artistic perspective, and to the credit of the series as a whole Star Wars has always been a very original story with cool characters with well choreographed action scenes and  it has one of the biggest expanded universes of all time. With hundreds of books, tons of games, and more  than one cartoon show, the current one is actually really good just so we're clear), the Star Wars Universe is huge. 

   So obviously by the law of the universe it has to have bitchy fanboys that complain about everything and in recent years have made it their life goal to ruin the reputation of Lucas Films. Which is terrible, if your one of those people stop it. End it now. Your a jackass. I would know, i used to be a jackass too. 

   While the Phantom Menace isn't the best Star Wars movie it's definitely not thee worst (Attack of the Clones is) and it's two biggest problems were kind of forced upon it; the terrible little kid actor and all his terrible scenes. The Gungans and Jar Jar are bad too. As are the effects. And parts of the screen play. And a lot of the great actors in this movie give awful performances. But it's pretty and geeky and there are cool battles, so if your into that sorta thing and you haven't seen Star Wars before go for it. For what it's worth the 3D doesn't add or subtract from the movie, it adds a new depth to a lot of the shots making some of the cheaper looking conversations a little more pleasing to the eye but that's all the 3D really does here, it adds a few sprinklings of depth which is welcome in some places but ultimately makes no real changes. You could argue that the 3D makes some of the effects worse but this movie has always had pretty bad effects. 

   I would probably be a lot harder on this movie if something else had come out this weekend  (The Vow looks like a gigantic piece of garbage don't go see it) but since it came out on kind an off weekend, and it is a Star Wars movie with some cool space battles and Jedi it's worth a look if your bored. Not great but not terrible and honestly adds nothing to Star Wars except more money for Lucas. I'm sure he wouldn't want it any other way.

   Let's go with a ... C.

   OH it's also worth mentioning that if you haven't seen the recently released blu-ray versions of these movies, they have all the new edits that were made for that box set which in this movie is replacing the puppet Yoda with the CGI one from the other two prequels and it looks  pretty good, there's some dodgy lighting but it's hardly noticeable unless your looking for it. 

#Chronicle (2012)

    Before i saw this movie i couldn't get the title out of my head. Would they say chronicle a lot in the movie? Would that fact that it's a hash tag play some weird part in the characters becoming an internet sensation? Would the movie just suck? Luckily all my questions are now answered and I'm here to set the record straight. Chronicle is a damn good movie, and to my recollection no one makes a big deal about saying chronicle (which was a huge plus for me). I'm very pleased that someone saw the potential in this idea and put some serious money behind it becuase everyone should see it. 

    The basic plot is that three archetypal high school seniors who sort of know each other wander off from a party one night and find something mysterious that for whatever reason gives them telekinetic powers. The three characters ; a depressed loner with an abusive father and no social standing, an arrogant philosophical kind of a guy who's also kind of a loner becuase he feels he's above the system, and an incredibly popular but also genuinely good kid who's spent his whole high school career climbing the social ladder. As they discover just how powerful they are and what they can do they try to turn it down and only use it in private. But no such luck as the plot goes each of the three has their own reason to use or not use their gifts and slowly but surely their team begins to drift apart and you as the audience come to realize that this can't end well. 

    But enough about the plot, what makes the movie so great? Well lets start at a technical level. In the past found footage movies such as the Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield have often had the gimmick for one of two reasons. With Blair Witch it worked well in the story, and since it really didn't have a budget for any fancy effects it had to use the perspective to set up most of the tension and creepiness. In Cloverfield it was becuase they though it'd be cheaper to not show the big scary monster  very much. And i guess they thought it'd be cool to have a robot hold the camera as well but whatever. Chronicle falls somewhere in between, the biggest problem the movie suffers from is the effects, and while they don't ruin it they aren't up to the standards of big budget block busters. Truth be told it never really matters becuase what they're doing on screen is so crazy or creative or intense it's often hard to notice that some stuff doesn't track perfectly but you get over it. The found footage perspective allows the perspective to shift at key moments, and to the films credit they use it in spectacular-gold-star-for-creativity ways throughout the second half. 

    The movie also mixes its substance well with its action, since the story is focused on these three kids as they come into power they spend a lot of time discussing just what they gonna do with all of this, where are they gonna go, and how could they change the world? You've probably never seen any of the actors in this movie before (and if you have you can't name them) but everyone from the abusive father to the crazed loner to the typical high school chumps pull their weight well and i would hope all three of the leads get offered big time roles in the future. I did mention some action however, and while i don't want to spoil it i must again once turn to my new favorite word creative to describe the action. It's intense and thrilling and will having you swaying in your seat as if your the one holding the camera. A lot of what they do in this movie will  probably never be replicated by other big budget super hero movies, and it would be a shame if they tried.

    I could go deeper and deeper into how the subtleties of the score add to the atmosphere, or how affecting some of the early scenes with the lonely kid are but i don't need to. Go see this movie. I hope it tops the box office this weekend becuase it deserves to. I'm sure Women in Black is great and all that but this is really something special and i hope you don't miss it. 

    Definitely an A.