Shark Week: Day 1 of Terror

Without knowing much about it, 12 Days of Terror. Feels remarkably like Jaws. It's a simialr formula. Shark attacks swimmer. Officials down believe it's a shark, so the beaches stay open and another person dies, thereby redeeming the Brody-type character. Next, the town goes shark crazy and an attempt is made to capture the shark. There's a crazy hunter, a boat captain, your Brody and a scientist involved in all of this.

There's a lot of similarites. And, it makes it feel very formulaic.

Here's the thing though, 12 Days of Terror is based on actual events. Back in 1916, when men were men and swimmers all wore onsies, there was a series of attacks along the Jersey shore.  These attacks laid the groundwork for what became Peter Benchley's novel, Jaws. Of course the movie of the same name was based on the book. So, the story of 12 Days of Terror feels so Jaws-like because it was the basis for Jaws. Of Course, movie-wise,  Jaws came first, so 12 Days of Terror feels incredibly derivative. It's all very circular.

The movie was a made for TV movie, for The Discovery Channel no less. Strangely, that seems to mean that the budget is a bit higher than many of the other shark movies I've watched over the years. Not to mention, easy access to shark stock footage!

John Rhys-Davies is the best known of the cast. I don't get him though, as an actor. He's done movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and all 3 Lord of the Rings movies! And yet, he keeps slumming it in movies like this and Chupacabra Terror. It makes you think that someone has some good blackmail on him somewhere. He should be above this kind of fare.

It was bound to happen eventually.

I'd read how great it was.

I'd read how boring it was.

I'd read how faithful it was.

I'd heard it was amazing.

And, after reading and hearing so much about it, I got around to watching it myself.

That's right, I finally saw Watchmen.

By now, you've either seen it, read more than you ever wanted to about it or have been living underneath a rock (a rock with wifi access apparently if you're reading this).

I didn't hate it. I'm not sure I liked it though either. I was very 'meh' about it. I'm glad I watched it, and there were certainly things about it that I enjoyed...but, I think I still fall firmly in the 'it's unfilmable' camp. It's just too complicated of a story to do in a medium like film. You'd have to really adapt the story differently and it trying to remain ultra faithful to the source, it falls short.  

Watchmen is the kind of movie that needs characters you're familiar with. It works in the graphic novel because you can spend time on backstory. In the movie, well, much of the backstory is lost, and it suffers for it.

I blame director Zack Snyder. In his efforts to remain 'faithful' he gets the look right and he gets the story right-ish...but something is still lacking.

It reminds me a bit of the adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One of the things that Adams does well in the book is write jokes. And one of the worst things the movie did was set up Adams' jokes from the book, and then fail to deliver the punchline. Sure, it was still funny and enjoyable enough, but you knew something was lacking.

Watchmen all but puts it in writing that, with the exception of Dr Manhattan, these are all regular people. It makes very little effort to even try to explain why an ordinary person would put on an utterly ridiculous costume (and many of them are just godawful) and parade around fighting crime.

Sure, with an infinite amount of time to tell the story, Snyder would have answered every little question, delved into every character. I have no doubt there. And that's kind of the problem that I had with it. I really would have prefered that Snyder took the story and put his mark on it. Tell it his way. You don't have to use the comic as a storyboard to make a good adaptation. But, because that's what he decided to do, the end result is a movie that isn't nearly as good as it's source.

All I wanted was to see the helicopter destroyed

Do you know why I grabbed Asylum's Supercroc at the video store? No, of course you don't. I haven't told you that. It's certainly not based on Asylum's track record.  I still remember watching Monster. So, that wasn't it. The title itself is enough to pique my interest. It's enough to raise at least one of my eyebrows There's a certain imageto it. The title, Supercroc, is enough to get me to look at the box. It' the back cover, however, that sold me. 

I never realized it before, but in that moment, standing there at the video store, I knew, without a doubt, that all my life I'd wanted nothing more than to see a giant crocodile LEAP from the water and envelop a helicopter in it's massive jaws.

It's not as exciting as the cover would have you believe. The attacks are actually all pretty blurry. The supercroc is mostly blurry when it appears. It must just be cheaper.

It's a crocodile that the movie's scientist claims could eat a T-rex. A T-rex! Think about that! That's just SO cool. Of course that's the only thing that they say in their little 'war room' that isn't complete gobbledygook.

Look, you and I both know that this is not a good movie. It filled with plot holes, cliches, bad acting and worse effects. No, you know what, the effects are actually much better than most of the acting. I don't care though. I had fun with it. I want to be in an Asylum movie. I really really do. Is there anyone out there who can help me with this? I don't even want to speak in it, I just want to be a part of a movie like this. That's my new dream. 

You know what this movie needed? A couple of knocked down buildings. Just let the supercroc take out a building or two with it's tail! It would have been perfect. Considering that the supercroc takes out a helicopter and an SUV with no real difficulty, a building would have helped demonstrate it's destructive effectiveness. Also, it would have been really sweet.

Nathan Fillion Week: Let's Make Some Pie

I feel like I should include a pie recipe here today*...I don't know any pie recipes though. In fact, I can only really think of one time I made pie I made an apple pie something like six or seven years ago. So, I don't have any pie recipes. I don't really like pie** that much anyways.

The characters of Waitress like pie though. And Jenna is like a pie genius. She invents a new pie*** like every day. Sometimes more than one a day! She works at a pie diner. I assume that's a southern thing. Then again, her doctor claims to have gone to a pie diner as a kid, and he's from Connecticut, so maybe it's just not a Detroit thing.

By the way, Jenna and her doctor? Totally having an affair. She's cheating her complete dick of a husband and he's cheating on his wife. A wife we really know very little about through most of the movie. But it's ok, because they're in love, or something. Why is that acceptable? You know what? I'm not getting into a discussion on morality here. It's not worth it. Not even a little.

Oh. And Jenna is pregnant. Don't worry, it's her husband's baby. She didn't get pregnant by some other guy or anything like that. Nothing like that. Which is almost a bit of a shame. Jenna's husband, Earl, might be one of the least likable characters that I have EVER seen in a movie. There is nothing even a little sympathetic about him.

This is how you can tell a movie wasn't made to appeal to you...in the first ten minutes, you hate every character you meet and everything that comes out of their mouths. And, as it goes on, you find pretty much every character unlikeable. That's okay though. This is not a movie made for the likes of me. Quite obviously. Though at about 53 minutes in, they played a Cake song. THAT was meant to appeal to me. I think. Really, though, that's the only thing that they film makers did to appease me. Jerks.

Nathan Fillion had a few moments where his character was clever or enjoyable. A few traits that were fun. Even he couldn't shine through in this one though. You know who could? Friggin Matlock dude. Matlock was the only remotely likeable character in the whole movie. He gets the cranky old man role. The cranky old man who turns out to be a big softy. It's kind of like the hooker with the heart of gold, you know? Good job Matlock.

Old Joe: Are you with child?
Jenna: Shush!
Old Joe: I saw that look on a woman's face before. Her name was Annette. I made sweet sweet love to her all through the summer of 1948, and she had that look on her face all through the fall.

Waitress kind of feels like it's going for that kind of quirky Amelie vibe. I could be reading it all wrong, but that was what I was left with. And who can blame it? Amelie was a fun little movie. It had spunk. Waitress does not have that same spunk. There are a few laughs to be found in the movie, but not as many as I might have hoped for.

Like I said though, I'm not the intended demographic for Waitress, so that I didn't like it in the end isn't exactly surprising or anything. I'm ok with that. This is a movie that has an audience out there. It's just not an audience of me.

*Or, held off until tomorrow, since tomorrow IS pie day...well, pi day. 3.14
**I do like pi though.
***Hooray for pi!

Nathan Fillion Week: Does anyone else actually remember Seven Mary Three?

Do you remember the band Seven Mary Three? They did that Cumbersome song that people liked at one point. I have actually heard it in the last three years I think. On the radio no less. I mean, sure, I used to have the cd, but not anymore. I got rid of it a long time ago. I think. I hope. Ugh. Anyway, they also did a song called Water's Edge. And I liked the song. I remember liking it more than Cumbersome, that's for sure.

I can't go down to the water's edge,
I didn't do it,
I saw who did.
Don't go down to the waters edge,
They did it once and they can do it again.

Water's Edge has NOTHING to do with that song. I mean, they both deal with murder, murder near the water at that, but that's really where the similarities end. See, in the song...you know, I looked up the lyrics, but I don't really remember the music, so I forget what happens in the song. There's a van and a crime and someone died and, you know, he didn't do it but he knew who did. Ok, look, I'm not going to go find the song and listen to it. I just don't care that much. Let's just get to the movie, huh?

Let's see...Nathan Fillion plays an author named...well, he has a name and I don't remember. Robert I think. Robert Graves. That sounds kind of ominous. Anyways, Robert and his wife, who also has a name, are broke. And, like many people in today's world, they are doing what they have to do to survive. In this case it's leaving New York City for a place in the middle of nowhere called Reedsville. Robert's father owned a house there, and when he passed away it fell to Robert.  So, they move out to the middle of nowhere called Reedsville.

I guess it's worth noting here that two years prior, their daughter died. As a result, their marriage is...strained and the wife, who I swear has a name, is suicidal. She tries to kill herself with a shotgun of all things. Which, as anyone who has heard the Kurt Cobain conspiracy theories knows is pretty tough. Well, hubby finds out and runs off with the gun. He ends up finding a sheriff about to kill a young lady for reasons unknown. With a rock. You know, standard police procedure. I was going to ask my friend who's training to become a cop, you know, to make sure that bashing in a young lady's head with a rock is standard, but she signed off...so we'll have to assume it is.

Well, he finds this and the cop is a bit of a dick about it all. Clearly he's doing something outside the boundaries of the law. It's a tough situation. And, the cop gets shot. In order to protect the young lady's life, he shoots the cop. And then...he does something dumb. See, he was right in shooting the officer. The cop was obviously doing something illegal, and the woman couldn't defend herself. The officer was shot in defense. The woman's life was in danger. If he hadn't fired the weapon, it's likely that they both would have been killed by this sheriff. So, he loads the sheriff's body into the back seat and dumps the car in the lake! I hate shit like that!

So, he saves the girl. She's having an affair with the mayor. There might be blackmail involved. And, like any small town, there's the good ole boys network to contend with. There's a lot of twists and turns. The to-be-killed girl, who (you guessed it) had a name too, explains what happens. Rob doesn't believe her. It feels like she's manipulating things throughout the movie. And the ending...just feels weird and forced. Actually, it really annoyed me. No, not the ending. Let me rephrase that. The ending was fine. It felt right. The movie's climax felt strange and forced and...only made a little bit of sense.

Nate was good in it, don't get me wrong. The guy can do dour as well as he does smarmy. And, the other people, with their names were fine. The story was a bit all over the place at times, there's more than a few holes in the plot. I don't know, Water's Edge isn't a terrible movie. Really, it's not even bad. I just couldn't recommend it to anyone.

Nathan Fillion Week: Dracula Goes To Mardi Gras

Dracula is kind of unique among monsters. In the pantheon of monsters, there are few that can hold a candle to the man himself. No other monster walks with his head held as high. There is no iconic mummy. No standout amongst the werewolves. No singular zombie that the others aspire to. Frankenstein's monster comes close, but let's be honest, no one cares unless the monster is played by Boris Karloff.

No, Dracula is more than just a vampire, he's the vampire. The one they all aspire to be. He is, as they say, The Man. We know this already. So, what can Dracula 2000 do to add to the myth? What can it do that hasn't been done before? Um...well...we could go to the year 2000 and check out Mardi Gras?

The 'This is SPARTA' guy from 300 plays Dracula, aka Judas Iscariot. 7 of 9 plays a reporter who becomes a vampire. Dr Foreman is a thief, Sickboy is an antiques dealer and Christopher Plummer owed someone a favor and repaid it by playing Van Helsing himself. THE Van Helsing. Kept past his 'sell by' date by injecting himself with Dracula's blood...filtered through leaches. You know, so it would healthier...like light cigarrettes.

Also, in a star making performance is one Nathon Fillion playing the pivotal Father David. And by pivotal I mean completely irrelevant. This is, of course, pre-Firefly. So, he wasn't brought in to play the smarmy, jokey kind of character that he plays so well these days. He's just a priest. A friend of Mary's who tries to help her in a time of spiritual crisis. He adds little to the story. Which is a shame.

Because...it could use the help. It's fun to watch some of the actors in this. Some, like Sparta Guy and Fillion are here before people really knew who they were. Others, like Christopher Plummer...well, sometimes it's just fun to watch an actor like that slum it in a movie like this. Like John Rhys-Davies in Chupacabra Terror. Unlike Chupacabra Terror though, I don't think I'd want to sit through this one again.

I really thought this was going to be a good idea...pt 2

And then there was Pulse 3.

*sigh*

Let's just get this over with...

At the end of Pulse 2, Justine was on the magic bus to the refugee camp. 7 years later, we meet back up with her. She's been living at the camp the whole time learning about how computers and cell phones and wifi are the devil's tools. They're evil! So, you know, stay away from it. Well, one night, after a fight with her foster parents, Justine finds a plot device under the seat of a truck. Wait, I mean a laptop. Via the plot device, she begins talking to some guy named Adam, and he's super dreamy! Adam convinces her, via IM,  to come to the city...to hang out, have some cookies...maybe meet Chris Hansen. Justine seems to think it's a great idea since she's 17 and her life is the most tragic EVAR.

Once there, and along the way, Justine finds out she's in over her head, because she's 17 and that's what happens when you're 17. You're dumb and you make dumb choices.

Now, regardless of age, imagine YOU were told that YOU had to make a choice. Would you prefer a shit sandwich, a steaming bowl of shit, or shit on a stick. It's all shit. That's how it was with the 3 movies in the Pulse 'franchise'. I'm in a position now where I need to tell you that one of them was better than the others. That one kind of shit is preferable to the others. Fine. Pulse 3 is the best of the 3. It's the most interesting and the most coherent. It suffers from the same green screen tradgedy that Pulse 2 toiled through. And the story is just as awkward, but...it's...it's the best of the bunch. It's the shit sandwich. At least there's a little bread there to give you the hope it will mask the shit a little.

If you've wasted your time watching the first two, Pulse 3 is a nice payoff. It's almost interesting and it's almost fun. If you haven't watched the first two movies, there's no real reason to start here.

I really thought this was going to be a good idea...pt 1

It was one of those strange moments where reason abandons me and I think to myself 'That sounds like a good idea! Let's watch a sequel to a movie I absolutely hated. Wait, there's TWO sequels??? Let's watch them both!'

So it was that I undertook the task of watching the sequels to Pulse. *sigh*

I grabbed them both from Netflix. They came in the mail and I decided I needed to get down to business.

I must not like myself very much. Pulse 2 is a poorly paced, incoherent mess. So...I guess it takes after it's predecessor. It's a mess of a movie. It really is. I'm not just saying that for effect.

I have NO IDEA what was going on in this movie. This lady is looking for her daughter, but I guess the lady is dead. And her husband (Battlestar Gallactica's Apollo) is looking for her and takes her to his cabin where his bitch of a girlfriend is. And then the laptop attacks them or something and he leaves and gets carjacked by a guy in a red bodysuit who then gives him a single roll of red tape which is enough to coat the inside of Apollo's SUV. At least, I think that's what happened.

The whole thing has a strange, stylized look that makes it look like it was shot poorly on a green screen. In reality, this is exactly the case. The background are all photographs with the actors inserted into them. Which, is a neat idea, but it looks awful in practice. It screams low budget. No, not low budget, no budget!

It's 20 minutes into the movie before Apollo speaks more than one word lines. It's 23 minutes in before you know if Apollo speaks with his normal voice or an American accent! It's an American accent, for the record. Which is fine, he does a great American accent. Him and Hugh Laurie. And Gary Oldman. 3 brits who do great American accents. And he's better than this! He is a better actor than this. He doesn't deserve to be stuck in a movie like this.

I'm suddenly dreading Pulse 3 even more now.

sit back and wave through the daylight

Underworld: Evolution was one of my first reviews. It was a cold Monday night in January of 2006. I left work and went to the theater by my office, excited to be seeing the sequel to a movie that I loved. I sat in the back row to enjoy the movie, and enjoy it I did.

Here we are, a scant 3 years later and it's once more a cold January evening and I'm on my way to see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. I left work and went to the theater by my office, excited to be seeing the prequel to a movie that I loved. I sat in the back to enjoy the movie, and enjoy it I did not.

I wanted to like it. I really did. I went to see it EXPECTING to like it. I mean, I loved the first two. I really like Rhona Mitra. And I liked the Victor and Lucien characters in the first movie. Something about this one though, just didn't do it for me. After the first five minutes, as the voice over sets the stage for what's to come, I was already unimpressed.

Something about it was just...wrong. Off. The origin of the Lycans, the timeline...it all just just seemed wrong. At least wrong enough that it left me with a (figurative) bad taste in my mouth.

Lucien is a servant to Victor. A slave actually. A slave held in high regard, but a slave no less. Lucien is a lycan, a werewolf. Unlike the werewolves that have come before him, however, he can shift between wolf and human forms. This makes him valuable. Victor uses him to make more lycans like him. More slaves. Slaves who can help to protect the vampires in the daylight.

and in the daylight we can hitchhike to maine
i hope that someday i’ll see without these frames
and in the daylight i don’t pick up my phone
cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home*

Unless you're a vampire. If you're a vampire then in the daylight anywhere feels like burning! And that's not good. It leaves them vulnerable. A fact that should have really been exploited. Hey, whatever. I'm no general. I'm no leader of men (or lycans) what the hell do I know.

Back to Lucien though, since this is his story. See, he's in love with Viktor's daughter Sonja. And blah blah blah. Look, if you saw the first movie then you know the whole story. That's the problem with doing a prequel, you're covering ground that you've covered before.


Look, lets put it this way...name a prequel that really helped a franchise, a prequel that added to the overall story. Not just added, I suppose they all add something, but added something good. Something worth while. Something that didn't leave you thinking 'well, I could have done without that'. Go ahead. Name one. I'll wait.


...


...


Take your time.


I've got plenty of time to sit back and wait.


I just got a new disc of House: Season 3 from Netflix.


Look at that guy limp.


Hey! He just made ajoke about Foreman stealing something! Hahaha!


...


Oh snap! He just called Chase British!


...



...


Boy, that House guy sure is wacky! Wacky and smart!


...


So, did you think of one? I sure didn't. You know how this shit is going to end. You know who lives. You know who dies. It removes the suspense from the movie. And while you know the 'what' going into the theater, you hope that the 'how' is at least interesting.


The 'how' could have been really interesting, but it was just such a rehash of what we learned in the first movie that movie served no narrative purpose. The story of these characters, the world they live in was not enriched. So, other than so-and-so begat so-and-so, nothing is really accomplished by RotL.


And that's the problem. Rise of the Lycans is a movie full of sound and fury, signifying nothing**.

*From Daylight by Matt & Kim. It's off of their new cd Grand. It just came out and it's pretty sweet.
**Hell yes I closed a review with a little Shakespeare! I'm cultured and shit, yo!

Where the hell has the time gone?

I'm sitting around, trying to enjoy the secular, commercialized, Anericanized holiday like I do every year. Just sitting around, taking it easy. Clearing out the old mental inventory of everything that has happened over the past year. Relaxing and watching movies.

Movies.

Oh shit! I write about movies!

I forgot for a minute there. So, in the interest of just playing catch up...here for you is my holiday viewing:

Traitor:

 

I liked it. It wasn't what I was expecting though. It was much slower and less action than the ads would have led me to believe. It was a different take on the terrorism theme though and showed the Islamic faith in a much more favorable light than American movies usually do. 

Speaking of movies that weren't what I was expecting...

There Will Be Blood:

Not that I really knew what to expect from this one. It was certainly interesting though. Very dark, and a great performance by Daniel Day Lewis. I think I liked it. I'm not sure though.

CJ7:

 

Honestly, it's not a bad movie. It was even fairly enjoyable in a way. In the end though, I just didn't feel like it was a good movie.

It had a trailer though that reminded me that I really wanted to see

Persepolis:

 It was pretty amazing, as movies go. A really interesting story from a perspective you don't often see.

Zombies Anonymous (formerly Last Rights of the Dead):

 

 Cheaply made and it shows. Unlikable characters, lousy actors and a story that doesn't make a lot of sense. Not the worst way to spend an hour and a half, but it felt like it should have been over after an hour.

Kiss Me Deadly:

 

Aside from the fact that Ralph Meeker looks alike like Bill Paxton, which distracted me, it was a pretty good movie.

Last but not least...

The Long Goodbye:

 

Honestly, I just can't decide if I liked it or not. I have a deep affinity for the Raymond Chandler novel and character and it just seems like too far of a departure from the source. On the other hand, it's an interesting take on the hard boiled detective story.

Ok. I think that catches me up.

Um...right

I like zombie movies, even though the recent glut of them has watered down the genre. And, I'll watch just about any zombie movie, even if the box doesn't say something like "Better than Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later" (beyondhollywood.com). Let's be honest though...is a quote like that really going to sway me? No. It's going to make me go into the movie with very low expectations. How likely is some low budget zombie movie going to hold up against one of my favorites?

Pretty fucking poorly.

The Zombie Diaries follows 3 groups of survivors in the immediate aftermath of a zombie outbreak. The story is presented in a 'found footage' style ala The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield. Except, in this case it's neither novel or well executed. While one of the groups of survivors is a television documentary crew, there is no reason given for either of the other two having and continuing to use the cameras.

The movie itself is boring and not exactly what most people would think of as 'scary'. In fact, the most interesting part of the story has nothing to do with the zombies! The characters are poorly developed and, as far as I could tell, most of them may not have even had names.While I may not have liked it, a quick glance around the web shows that I might be in the minority. Once again showing that I'm better than the majority.

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG

On the advice of my cousin, I read James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. It is a fictionalized account of the infamous Black Dahlia murder in 1947.

In a nutshell, on January 15th, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short was found naked and cut in half in an LA park. The body was severely mutilated and the blood had been drained from the body. It was a gruesome murder that captivated the country at the time and to this day, remains unsolved.

Ellroy's novel, and subsequently the movie adaptation, follows the lives of
Bucky Bleichert (who's perspective the story is told through), his partner Lee Blanchard, Kay Lake, and Madeleine Sprague (Linscott in the movie). The story isn't so much about solving the crime as it is about how the crime affects their lives.

The book is great. It's a captivating story full of ups and downs and twists and turns. I highly recommend it to anyone. The movie...well, it might be okay if you've never read the book. I get that things change when a book gets adapted to a movie. The ending changes slightly, parts get dropped for time and pacing. I'm okay with that. There are two problems here though. One is that the omissions make The Black Dahlia into a rather bland, pedestrian movie with a myriad of pacing problems. Skipping over huge plot points and character development to get the movie to come in at 2 hours just causes problems in the end product. We're talking a story that takes place over the course of years presented in a way that it could have happened over the course of a week. Of course this is going to lead to problems. When you have no sense of the time that's passing, it just feels weird.

The second problem is that all of the actors are wrong for the parts. I read The Black Dahlia knowing that there was a movie made from it but without knowing who was in it or what parts they played. There may as well have not been a movie at that point. You know how it is when you read a book though. If it's a book that was made into a movie and you've seen the movie, you picture those people in their parts. Their voices speak in your mind. And, when you don't have that, well, you're mind makes it up for you. While all of the main actors are certainly capable and generally good, they were just the wrong people for the roles. If Hartnett and Eckhart changed roles, maybe I would have liked it a bit more. If Johansson were a little older, she would have been fine. And, well, Swank just seemed wrong for the role altogether.

Like I said, the movie started off at a disadvantage because of my love of the book. I was genuinely excited to see the movie though. I wanted to like it. Too much of what I enjoyed about the book was just missing from the movie. Again, maybe if I hadn't read the book, I would have liked it a bit more. Then again...maybe not.

No, not the country supergroup

I picked up Highwaymen on a whim. I'd never heard anything good or bad about it, hell, I'd never heard of it, period. I was bored and decided to stop in at the video store down the street to see if I could cure said boredom. Walking around aimlessly, I spot the box. It says it has Jesus and the hot chick from Doomsday in it. Ok. That sounds interesting. And it was directed by the guy who did The Hitcher, not sure if they mean the original or the remake, and I didn't look any further into it. I took it home with me. What's the worst that could happen? A movie I've never heard of by a director who made a movie I liked staring an actor I like. Sounds good to me.

Is it as good as the soup I had for dinner, or as so-so as the sandwich and should I look for further analogies in my meals? How would it compare to the applesauce I made, or even the water I was drinking. Am I making you hungry yet? Hungry for action? Starving for suspense? Good.

Highwaymen is a demolition derby for the most part. Five years ago some nutjob killed Jesus' wife with a 72 El Dorado. And not in the Dr Horrible Capt-Hammer-threw-a-car-at-my-head kind of way. He ran her over on the side of the road. This is apparently the sort of thing that this guy does. Jesus, aka Rennie, is trying to find this guy. Molly, the chick from Doomsday, just sort of happens to get caught up in this whole mess...well, along with a state traffic investigator that is.

There is an instant urge to look to The Hitcher for comparison. Not because the two are very similar, because really they aren't. Sure, there are some superficial similarities. Open roads, cars, killers without a reason. I think it would be fair to say that Highwaymen does draw some inspiration from The Hitcher. The two movies also share a director, which is a much better reason for the comparison. And, I think it's easy to say that The Hitcher is the better movie. Not just the plot, but the way it unfolds, the way it builds suspense.

Which isn't to say that Highwaymen isn't suspenseful. It is. The story is unique and intriguing. The characters are fairly shallow, but the connection between them all is well played out. The acting is good, especially that of Caviezel and Mitra. The story itself is just a little weak. It takes too many leaps of faith to get to that ending. Too many coincidences. The movie collapses under the weight of those questions. It was just like the sandwich.

Banshees are cool. There should be more banshee movies...

When watching nearly any modern horror movie you can figure out pretty quickly, if not who is going to survive, at least who will survive the longest. For example, in the movie there will be a completely useless guy, some jock who is a complete jerk, looking out only for himself. He will horde supplies or try to sleep with someone else's girlfriend. In the end, he will die, but not right away. He will be one of the last ones to die. So, for almost the entire movie you will watch the movie hoping, waiting, praying for this dipshit to die.

It's a cliche. In horror movies, it's no less a guaruntee than dying if you have sex. Frankly, if you like everyone, you sympathize when they die. However, if you don't like one or some of the characters, you sympathize with the killer, at least for a while. And, when you sympathize with the killer, you don't mind watching people die for a hour and a half.

By having this detestable person around, you can also allow the audience to believe that he might have a hand in the killing, throwing doubt and confusion into the story.

It can also be the sign of a weak writer creating a very shallow character.

However, if that character dies first, well, it doesn't exactly mean that the writer is any better.

Take Shrooms for example, a group of five American students go to Ireland to take shrooms. You have the harmless stoner and his girlfriend, the jock and his girlfriend, the blond 'good girl' and the Irishman she happens to like.While hunting for the magic mushrooms, the good girl trips and finds a slightly more magical mushroom. One that is often lethal, but that the druids used to see the future and give them strength and other mystical things. It doesn't kill her, but she starts to have visions, apparently foreseeing the future and many of her friend's deaths.

I'd wanted to see Shrooms for some time. I think it was the poster that did it for me. And, it's a watchable movie. I mean, it's better than the likes of Yeti. The actors are pretty good. Lindsey Haun (currently of Haun Solo (nice voice, boring music, 7th Fall was a little better) which I think might be the best band name that I've seen lately, but then again, I'm a fucking nerd), is good as 'good girl' Tara. She spends half of her scenes having seizures in the mud while having visions, and it's her performance that ultimately carries the movie. It's Tara's story.

The biggest problem I have with the movie, really, is the ending. It's horrifyingly predictable. And while they do their best not to telegraph it, it's as inevitable as Christmas. You just know it's coming. I can think of a couple of endings that would have been more intersting and less predictable. A banshee, for example. Maybe I should make a banshee movie. That would be pretty cool. I could call it Unsilent Night, that way it would be offensive to viewers based on content and English majors based on the title.

Back to Shrooms though, I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie. It's not that it was bad...it just wasn't good.

I totally used woefully...TWICE...in one paragraph!

If you wandered aimlessly around the country for two years, and then through your own hubris ended up dead in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, do you think anyone would make a movie about you?

So, what makes the story of Chris McCandles so film worthy?

Ok, I live in Detroit. What if someone came to Detroit and got shot...in a bad neighborhood...and knowing that they were going into a bad neighborhood...and they didn't really have a reason to be there aside from not having a reason to be anywhere else either? Isn't that essentially what McCandles (aka Alexander Supertramp) did?

After graduating from Emory, Chris takes off on a cross country trip, ditching his car, burning his money and living as a tramp. Basically taking odd jobs and hitch hiking. He dreams of going to Alaska and severing his ties to society.  Along the way he meets a couple of hippies, a grain elevator operator and an old man.

Sean Penn's adaptation of the book by the same name is woefully inadequate to really tell the story of Alexander Supertramp, aka Chris McCandles. Penn does very little to really show the dangers that McCandles faced and how woefully unprepared he was for the journey he undertook. Penn glances over these things, choosing only to show bits and pieces of the trip taken by this boy. And while the film may leave some with a warm and fuzzy feeling, the truth is that it fails as a narrative. There is no real story here. There is no character development. There are no lessons learned. There is no climax. It's a meandering look at two years in the life of one person.

The thing that stands out about the book isn't that Chris, aka Alex, wanders off to quote Jack London and Thoreau. It's the impact that the young man has on the people he meets. That he met so many people who thought so highly of him is the real story. Don't take that as some backhanded insult either. I mean it. His interactions with people and the stories he left behind of the lives he touched, that's his real legacy. And, the truth is, his story is better suited to more of an oral biography. Let the characters tell the story. Use voice overs to talk about the character and flesh out Chris' life story. One of the best and most touching parts of the movie is the narration of his sister, played by Jena Malone. Use more of that to bring to life this character who didn't keep detailed enough journals to know what he was really thinking about. Let Wayne and Ron and Jan talk about the character and his impact on them. That's the real story, not that some idealistic twit wandered off into the wilderness of Alaska with a bag of rice, a .22 and a book on edible plants hoping to survive.