Apocalypto

When I threw on Apocalytpo I really had no idea what I was in for. All I remember reading from anything surrounding the film was that it was an exciting action movie which led me to think I was in for great things. An action movie that centered around the Mayan civilization, what could be cooler than that?!

As an aside, I'll state right now that I actually like Mel Gibson. Every time Braveheart is on TV I without fail end up leaving it on and watching it till the end. I've always thought he was an incredibly entertaining actor as well, between the Lethal Weapon series and films like Payback and The Patriot he always keeps me entertained. I have indeed seen The Passion of the Christ and frankly I didn't care for it because I just found it to be a mediocre, boring film. I've never really paid any attention to his outspoken, real life personality because frankly I find most celebrities are often completely misinformed or so biased about their topics it's funny and also have a habit of picking the most worthless causes possible to speak about. And now on with the review.

After finishing the film, the first thing I did was go online and read other reviews to see if I had missed anything involving the film and to get a general feel of other people's feelings towards the film. Two things that were consistent across all reviews and stuck out quite clearly:
1. The costumes, soundtrack, and acting in this film were great.
2. It's very polarizing, or rather, people either loved it or found it boring for the most part, there's very little middle ground.
I happened to fall into the group of people that found this movie incredibly boring. The film begins by setting up Jaguar Paw's (Rudy Younblood) family, friends, and village for 20 minutes. After that 20 minutes which gives just enough time to give the audience an idea of the village life but not nearly enough time to make the audience care or connect with any of the characters, they are attacked by a band of warriors that ends in a bloody mess. From there, the audience watches an hour long march (that could've easily been done in 5 minutes) to a massive Mayan temple. Here, where Mel could've given the audience some interesting insight into the little bit we know of the civilization and way of life, he instead skips to a long drawn out scene of human sacrifice which isn't all that thrilling or entertaining. Jaguar Paw escapes through a series of absurd and overt "deus ex machina" moments and eventually the film ends with 45 minutes of a small group of men chasing Jaguar Paw with more "deus ex machina" garbage. So to reiterate, the film is broken down into the attack on the village, an all-to-long death march to a Mayan temple, and an all-to-long chase scene.

One of the major criticisms I've found amongst reviewers is that in Gibson's films the gore is excessive. What I find amusing is that the gore is supposed to add to the realism, however, it often comes off looking very cartoonish and made me laugh. The gore in Braveheart I found to be necessary and that film involved much more blood than this one, so I had no problem with it. I actually, at points, found it amazing that more blood and gore were not used, as I imagine when you cut open someone's stomach using a knife made of rock and rip out their heart there would be plenty of blood. Another criticism is that the facts involving Mayan civilization were virtually absent, and this is very apparent to anyone that has ever done any sort of research or reading regarding the civilization. While I love the civilization and was fairly upset at how it was portrayed initially, eventually I got over it by reminding myself this is a film and a work of fiction and not a documentary. What was silly to me, however, was that Gibson uses the native language (such as he did in TPotC) to ensure realism, however, any research done on the civilization must've been thrown out the window. Finally, I don't understand what was "visually stunning" about this film as often the shots looked pretty bland or poorly presented as though it was someone's directorial debut.

One of the most notable things I found about this film, was that for an epic, it lacked any sort of grandiosity. There were no memorable speeches (heck there was very little dialogue through the entire film), almost no memorable, breathtaking shots, and no hero that you actually cared about if he lived or died. It actually took me several minutes to figure out who the hero in the film was, until finally Gibson decided to add in the little plot of Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife and child. Oh yes, during the attack on the village, Jaguar Paw hides them in a well (whom we revisit several times through out the film only to see them sitting around not doing much, think the queen subplot in 300), which is when I finally figured out who the hero was and from then on was bored because I knew he wasn't going to die anytime soon. The complete disconnect between myself and any of the characters ever presented on screen was by far the most off-putting thing about this movie for me. I could not engage or empathize with any of the situations as the whole time I just found myself bored because I had absolutely no emotional attachment to any of the characters. Finally, the other problem I had with the film was that the action scenes were incredibly slow and flat out boring. Gibson never gives you a sense that the pack of warriors are closing in on Jaguar Paw in the last chase scene, never really presents any sort of suspense at any point during the chase, spends far too much time just focusing on one person running, and the fighting is virtually non-existant except for a few moments that look like something straight out of MacGyver.

The only saving grace of this film were the completely absurd, arbitrary, and sudden explosive acts of violence that, as I stated earlier, actually didn't involve all that much gore. For a film that has this listing on IMDb "Plot Keywords: Stabbed In The Chest / Blow Pipe / Shot Through The Mouth / Hunter / Fall From Height" I could not have fathomed how you could make the action uninteresting, but Gibson does it. I "get" the ideas that people are violent and I understand the (laughably horrendous) ending, I just found this movie to be poop.

When A Stranger Calls

I know this film is old news now, but it's been on my list of movies to view ever since Mr. Neville recommended it to me and today I finally got around to watching it. All I can say is, wow! This film was everything I expected and more!

The film is a remake of a 1979 film, however, with obvious updates to ensure that today's modern teenagers would be able to relate to the heroine Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle). The plot of the film is very simple and does not require much exposition or logical sense, and as such the film delivers on this as well. Jill Johnson is grounded for going over her minutes on her cell phone and therefore will not be able to attend the big bonfire where apparently the entire high school travels to a local hillt0p location which manages to kill every student's cell phone signal and burns a huge straw effigy in some sort of voodoo ritual where underage drinking and streaking are acceptable and so is the high school marching band prancing around playing. Instead, Jill babysits for a the family of a doctor and begins receiving strange calls. These strange calls quickly evolve from heavy breathing to statements which quickly inform Jill she is being watched and shortly thereafter letting her know her life is in danger.

The film opens with a brilliant scene of quick cuts of a carnival (because everyone knows carnivals are essential for the teen-horror genre since they're the scariest places ever) together with a random house that ends in a scream. A quick scene of a police investigation informs the audience that the people in the house were murdered most horrifically. The great thing about this opening sequence, however, is that we don't really care about them as they're never mentioned again, none of the police investigators are heard from or seen again, and the town where Jill Johnson lives is 125 miles away (yes, the film tells you that exact number).

After the opening sequence, the audience discovers that Jill's best friend Tiffany kissed her boyfriend and now they are fighting which is the cause for Jill going over her cell phone minutes. Might I interject, at this point, that the film is full of brilliant, humorous little interchanges and quips. Two of these specifically stick out in my mind. The first occurs between a police officer and a random investigator in the beginning, which goes something like this:
Policeman: "Hey Hanz, growin' a beard."
Police Investigator: "Yes, I am."
Policeman: "It makes you look um..."
Police Investigator: "Old and fat, I know I've heard."

The other occurs during the scenes in the high school between Jill and her friend Scarlet.
Scarlet: "Guys, this is so high school."
Jill: "Scarlet we're in high school."

Brilliant! Anyway, after the audience receives a brilliant 10 minutes of exposition which prove to be completely worthless they receive a 15 minute tour of one of the most expensive houses with the absolute poorest lighting possible. For the rest of the film, the audience is treated to viewing 45 minutes of viewing Jill sitting on the couch from different angles, 35 minutes of Jill slowly creeping through dark corridors (which director Simon West ensured were shot with the proper lenses to create the illusion they were miles long), and 5 minutes of unimpressive action towards the end. Through out this whole film, the entire soundtrack consists of random ambient noises, heavy breathing, and phone static.

I must say, however, that Jill is a mighty interesting character to examine. At the beginning she is very upset that Tiffany kissed her boyfriend, mad enough that she won't even talk to her. Hours later as she begins to get harassed, however, it takes only a single sentence from Tiffany to change her mind and reconcile them. Jill manages to continue these schizophrenic episodes through out the film, as she goes from recoiling in horror at every noise in the house to attempting to bait the stalker into a conversation which must last for 60 seconds in a matter of minutes. Through out her stay in the house she is consistently feared for her life, however, she is willing to slink through the shadows in attempt to discover her pursuer and at one time is even willing to run through the stormy night in her t-shirt and jeans wielding a phone, heavy metal object (I couldn't see what since the lighting was too poor) and a flashlight.

Yes, this film had everything I expected and more. It managed to avoid any violence altogether and had absolutely no T&A (clothed or not) which allowed to it to maintain its precious PG-13 rating which is so hard to achieve today. I truly believed that absolutely nothing would happen in this film and I was not let down, absolutely nothing happened.

This film is exemplary in its ability to rank as one of the absolute worst teen horror/thriller flicks I have ever seen in my entire life. It managed to take all the worst parts of the teen horror genre formula and twist them into something that I did not think was even possible. The ending could not have wrapped up this film more spectacularly. This is one of those films that is able to be crowned "so bad it's good" to such an extreme that I am actually on my way over to Best Buy now to pick it up on DVD because I honestly feel that any fan of horror films or film in general as an art ought to own this.

Fast Food Nation

Now to begin, I need to clear something up. I'm not exactly a "smart" guy. I don't read "books." I'm not exactly "literate." If something can't be said by a fat orange cat in a three-panel comic strip in the newspaper authored by Jim Davis, I don't want to know about it. Therefore, every time I hear of a best seller or any extraordinarily popular book being thrown into a film adaptation, I do a little dance. Where as books-on-tape you actually need to listen and interpret what is happening, often film further allows you to sit back and basically shut down most of your mental processes. After hearing so much buzz about this book "Fast Food Nation" I was thrilled to hear it was being made into a film. I was hoping it might be a form of docu-fiction, sort of like Michael Moore likes to build in his films, except it wouldn't masquerade behind a documentary style of filmmaking. I hoped it would be as hard-hitting as "Super Size Me" which blew the cover off fast food and taught me that fast food isn't healthy if that's all you rely on for a diet (which is the polar opposite of your normal meals involving minimal meat consumption) while quitting your daily habits of any form of routine exercise.

The last two films I've seen directed by Richard Linklater were "A Scanner Darkly" and "Bad News Bears." "Bad News Bears" is an experience I prefer to block out of my mind as I think I would've rather asked Jack Bauer to spend an hour and a half torturing me than think about that film. I decided to give Linklater another chance after "Bad News Bears" and ventured to "A Scanner Darkly" which is another book-to-film adaptation. I actually enjoyed it. Instead of just being a film relying on the gimmick of rotoscoping which I felt "Waking Life" was, the technique added to the surreal feel of the story. I decided to delve into another Linklater venture of "Fast Food Nation" without having read the book hoping to have the whole thing summed up to me in two hours.

The film is broken into three stories that have the connection of Mickey's (the fictional restaurant in the film) fast food franchise. The first segment involves a group of Mexicans, including Raul (Wilmer Valderrama), illegally crossing the border to come to America searching for their dream life. The next segment involves top marketing executive Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear) investigating reports that "There's shit in the meat." Finally, the third storyline revolves around Amber (Ashley Johnson) whose widow mother (Patricia Arquette) is always drinking or going out on dates and receives a surprise visit from her uncle Pete (Ethan Hawke).

Based upon these three storylines and what I learned in the film, I think I can break down the evils of fast food into five points:
1. Illegally crossing the border from Mexico to America is dangerous.
2. Illegal immigrants get bad jobs that are often dangerous, disgusting, and underpaid.
3. Executives in the fast food franchises care about profit and nothing else.
4. Teenagers don't like their jobs.
5. Cows are killed so that people can eat beef.

I'm not sure exactly what "truths" were supposed to be uncovered in this film, so let's explore some of these. I'm not campaigning for political office, so I'm going to leave all opinions and ideas out of this involving illegal immigration, but needless to say I'm pretty sure everyone understands that illegally crossing the border from Mexico to America is not going to be an easy adventure. Next, the higher-ups at Mickey's in the film are the epitome of capitalism and it's what our society and country was founded upon; no "truths" revealed yet. Following that, teenagers have almost always hated their jobs and future generations of teens will probably continue having the same abysmal jobs. I stocked dog food for three months as a teenager at a pet supplies store, how come I don't get my own storyline in a movie? Again, we are still waiting for a "truth" to come out. Finally, the film uses real footage of a meat-packing plant including segments from the dreaded "kill floor." Audiences will see footage of cows getting their throats cut, the removal of limbs, skin being ripped from the muscle, disembodied heads, and organs flowing down a trough. Again I don't know what "truth" this is revealing besides the fact that cows, like every other animal we eat, need to be gutted and cleaned before ingestion. The meat still seems cleaner than many other forms of food you can find around which films such as "Fight Club" and "Waiting" have graphically portrayed.

The only intelligent point of the film involves uncle Pete explaining to Amber that if you're stuck in a small town and in a job you hate, you should probably do everything in your power to change that situation. In the end it felt like a propaganda film for PETA with no new "truths" to me, yet I can easily see this being a "shocking and revealing" film for many Americans, specifically groups that thought "Fahrenheit 9/11" was a mind-blowing documentary that was cause for a revolution, to chat about. If nothing else, I must say that the cast was excellent in their acting and I actually did begin to buy into the characters, but it was more like having a friend that consistently makes stupid decisions and you want to explain to them everything they are doing is wrong.

Also, for no reason revealed, Greg Kinnear likes to watch porn in the movie.