We've moved into the last week of Scary Movie Month which means I need to get on the ball with my movie notes! We had a couple of, mmm, odd weeks... nothing that really hit right. But we made up for it with Buffy watching - we are finally moving through the last season!
Here's what we did watch:
Fright Night (2011 version)
Oh, what a disappointment. I'm not going to do a side-by-side comparison with the 1985 version, in part because it just fell through on pretty much everything but production values and visuals and also because I'm just not that much of a geek. But it wasn't as funny or as moving, and it gave its scares away too soon. Part of the enjoyment of the original is the "is he or isn't he" suspense. There was no suspense in this version. I thought it picked up at the end when we got to see more David Tennant, and I think there was some good visual stuff that stayed with me afterwards, but otherwise I would give it a pass.
Dead Alive (1992 - Peter Jackson - originally released as Braindead)
Whoa. Absolutely the most disgusting movie I have ever seen. Also incredibly funny. I would totally watch it again. Thankfully the gore is all pre-CGI so it's clearly fake and over-the-top. Otherwise I probably would have thrown up instead of just thinking I was going to. There's so much fantastic about this I don't know what to single out except maybe... zombie baby.
The Village (2004 - M. Night Shyamalan)
Another disappointment. This time because there was so much potential... great actors, beautifully shot, grand music, interesting ideas... and then it fell off the rails, storywise. And the problem with that in a suspense movie is that you then walk away thinking less of it as time goes on, instead of admiring it more and more as you think about it. There were hints to its flaws early on... we talk when watching movies at home and I asked about a couple of things that just didn't feel right... but I didn't realize it was going to fail itself as epically as it did. Sigh.
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959 - Ed Wood)
This one is often viewed as one of the worst movies ever. I think we thought that the kitschiness might make it amusing. Alas, no. Boring, yes. I kept falling asleep and finally gave up and went to bed. The Dude started practicing guitar and lost track of what was going on. And it was only 80 minutes long!
Thankfully things have started picking up again... full report after Halloween!
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