Full disclosure: I fell asleep an hour in and then later watched the last 20 minutes. Those last 20 minutes were pretty good, Holmes and Moriarty make for some fun scenes. But the rest was awful, confusing, self-indulgent, and surprisingly dull. The first few minutes of the movie make you feel like you somehow started halfway in (I actually brought up the time display to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped a few chapters). Nothing anyone does makes sense and it all just seems overly silly (the fucking disguises, come on). It’s not like this is so brilliantly written and I’m too stupid to follow it, it’s rather poorly written and moves fast to cover for it, not giving the audience enough time to realize how dumb it is. Whatever. Maybe if I had actually watched it from beginning to end I’d have a different opinion, but I’ll never give it that chance. F+.
This was good, better than I thought. Watched it a while ago, actually forgot about it until now. So I guess it wasn’t THAT good. But, it was certainly worth a watch.
Thus ends my shittiest review yet.
I slacked real hard on this one, it’s been a month or two since we watched it. Not a lot of time for movies these days, barely enough time for TV (though we did barrel through Homeland, amazing series).
Anyway, Super. That sure got out of hand towards the end. It begins a bit lightly, but then turns dark and depressing and disturbingly violent. When Juno is killed that really cemented this as a fucked up, dark, but still awesome picture. And Nathan Fillion! Considering the director I am not surprised he showed up, and his bit part was wonderful.
I’m not sold on Dwight as a leading man, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else is either. He was fine in this, but it was really the writing and directing that made this enjoyable. It’s a much darker version of Kick-Ass, if you can imagine that. This guy is seriously fucked up in the head. I’m surprised we haven’t seen this play out in real life. It will eventually.
I didn’t want to finish watching this. It took me about 4 sit downs to get through the whole thing, all on my iPhone. The first half is kind of boring but sets the tone, pretty much like all horror movies. But then once he has assembled his victims and stars building the centipede, oh lord. There’s a scene before that where he caves in his mother’s face and then sits her up at the dinner table for a meal, but that was NOTHING compared to what was coming. I could say the same thing about the first film.
When he started hammering out the first guys teeth I nearly turned it off. I can’t take teeth stuff. And then came the staple gun, and the laxative, and the centipede in a butt. And the pregnant woman in the car, oh god, I think she squishes the baby with the gas pedal. I don’t even want to think about it more to get this all out. It’s fucking nasty and I don’t recommend you watch it. He kills all of them in the end, and then there’s a shot that implies the whole thing was just in his head as he was watching The Human Centipede on his computer.
I keep saying “he”. I’m referring to Martin, the lead character. He was pretty good. Not that he was a great actor, but he is one of the creepiest little fat men I have ever seen on film. He doesn’t say a word the whole time. Fucking creep, exactly what he needed to be.
I can only assume there will be a part three; everything is a trilogy these days. The first one had 3 people, this one had 12, though on multiple occasions I counted 10, 12 is what the press materials and other reviews I read said, I guess they count the person who died early and the person who eventually escaped, even though they were not part of the centipede. The next one is going to have to full, proper, 100-limbed centipede: 25 people. But will it be in the world of the first film? Or even one layer higher where The Human Centipede 2 is a movie?
This one kept showing up as my recommendation on Netflix, and it was in the best/most popular category of some streaming recommendations sites, so I went for it. Not that that stuff was necessary, it looked interesting just from the basic description, it just took me a while to get around to it, and I’m glad I did.
Stifler, or a dumber, nicer version of Stifler, is an alright hockey player but an exceptional fighter, and he gets his chances on a minor league team. That’s basically he whole movie there, throw in a love story with a dash of hero-rivalry and it all plays out exactly as you’d expect. It was pretty well written, and all actors involved did fine, except, oddly enough, the lead. He’s supposed to be dumb but tough, that’s his thing. And sometimes he played it just like that, a well meaning but rather simple man. But then sometimes he went nearly, as RDJ would say, full retard. But then he’s bring it back around. Maybe it was just being around the girl made him exceptionally nervously stupid. But anyway, well worth a watch.
Another movie I had not planned to watch but it was starting at the right time so, what the hell. We actually missed the first 5 minutes or so, coming in about halfway into the opening vision. Good thing they pretty much recap the whole thing minutes later as he’s remembering the order in which people died, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Though it was a little confusing because we thought they were high school students, but then one was working as a chef, and another in an office, and then they said the trip was a company retreat. So, temp agency and they brought along their chef friend? Whatever, it’s a non-issue.
What really matters is that lots of kids died in very creative ways, that’s all this series is about. I think it was part 3 where this series became what it is. The first one was a typical teenage slasher/horror movie with the “death is coming for you” twist. The sequel was a logical continuation of that that got a little more creative with its kills. Then part 3 simply became a series of Rube Goldberg death sketches. I didn’t see all of part 4, but since part 5 follows that formula precisely I’d imagine 4 did as well.
The gymnast death was kind of awesomely silly (no way she had enough force to do that). And the acupuncture scene was actually kind f painful to watch, but that dude was a douche. The big fight in the kitchen towards the end was over the top silly. And the final stinger where the black dude gets killed after finding out that he guy he killed had a tumor or something, so he only had a short time left on his clock, was great.
I already knew the “they get on flight 180” twist because I figured I would never see this and something about a twist was mentioned on one of my movie podcasts so I looked it up. It definitely feels like they wrote the movie and then just plopped that twist in in the end. The whole ”are you terrorists?” subplot is very post-9/11, but the date on the ticket is 2000. Also there are cell phones (though they do make sure to use old models), but as far as I remember they weren’t really big in the first movie, which is on the same timeline by just a few weeks/months. And I don’t remember what Candyman’s story is, in this one he is a coroner going out to crime scenes and such, but in the first one he is a creepy crematorium guy. There’s a good chance I’m getting this wrong. And it doesn’t matter, this was totally enjoyable even if it didn’t make total sense. I’d gladly rent Final Destination 6.
This really wasn’t that bad at all. It was mindless fun, exactly what I needed. The plot is exactly what you see in the trailer, and the end is exactly what you’d except, give or take a highly illogical gold car. All the leads did a good job, even Eddie Murphy. I love a good heist movie. This isn’t exactly that, but it is a heist movie, so it got those bonus points. And really, the gold car aside, it’s a pretty tight script when you look at the heist part. Maybe. I might be forgetting other silly bits. But whatever, it’s not supposed to be great, it’s supposed to be a fun watch, and it was everything it needed to be.
While it wasn’t as sad as it seemed it might be, the scene at the end with his mom right before he went into surgery got me. And it’s because in that moment I didn’t identify with him, despite myself being a 20-something handsome dude, but I was seeing it through his moms eyes. All I could think about was watching Ronnie go into a surgery where there is a serious chance she might not come out.
But anyway, the movie, really really good. Well written, well acted, everything worked perfectly. Anna Kendrick was particularly good, as was JGL. Everyone really. I’d watch it again for sure. It was very clever and didn’t manipulate your emotions when it clearly could have. It’s not that kind of movie. Knowing that he is still alive today helped, it would have had quite a different feel otherwise, but still, I think it may have creeped into my 20122 Top Ten list, not that that’s relevant any more. I should do top ten lists 3 years late.
This should be filed under Horror and Do Not Watch. Not because it wasn’t good, it was actually quite excellently made, but it’s way too real feeling, I don’t want to worry about this kind of stuff. I don’t know anything about epidemics, but I imagine if one were to happen today it would go down pretty much like this.
No one stood out as particularly excellent or bad, everyone just kind of fell into their role and despite this movie starring about half of the working actors in Hollywood today, I didn’t really think about it while it was on, I just got into the story. And speaking of story, it doesn’t really feel like a traditional story, more like a documentary from multiple viewpoints. Anyway, I really liked it except that it scared me and now I don’t want to leave the house
Remember: Always Wash Your Hands!
Was I paying enough attention to properly write this one up? No, not really. But I can say this: it was pretty, it had good action, and it was silly (but in a good way). What else can you expect from Paul W.S. Anderson? I thought it would be horrible, and if you think it is I totally support your choice, but I found it to be just the right about of nonsense and action to be utterly enjoyable.
