terror awaits you...INSIDE!

So what is "too far?" I'm talking with movies. Where do you draw the line? For me personally, it's when something goes from entertainment, to gratuitus shock value. the one and only time i got up and walked out of a film was The Hills Have Eyes. When a mother is being raped by a mutant, who then puts a gun to the forehead of her infant, thats where i draw my line. But that movie was a huge hit, so obviously everyone has a different line. For me it's when kids are put in needless danger in films. not only is it a tired cliche (how many times can the action hero's son or daughter REALLY get kidnapped) but in the case of hills have eyes, it went much to far over the edge.
With that in mind, prepair yourself for the most depraved, the most vile, gory, inhumane SICK motion picture i have ever seen in my life. It's also a masterpiece of timing, suspence, and craftsmanship. INSIDE. A french thriller that was a sensation in it's native europe, tried briefly to get released here in the states, but the M.P.A.A. now famously said that there is no amount of editing that can save this film from an N.C.-17 (the kiss of death rating if a distributer wants to make any kind of money off of it). So it's relegated to dvd, though thankfully unedited.
The film opens with a car crash. or rather, the immediate aftermath. a woman sits in the drivers seat, airbag deployed, she's bloody and bruised. The camera slowly pans over to her husband in the passenger seat who's obviously not as lucky as she was. she wakes up and looks down....at her unborn child. she's pregnant. we flash forward some time. It's christmas eve in Paris, and riots have taken over the metropolitan areas (a nice touch that both alianates our main character, but also sets the film in the very real here and now) and our very pregnant lead is biting her time till she's induced, scheduled for the next day. She's alone, her husband now dead. Things couldn't really get any worse for her, you'd think. An unnamed woman shows up, demanding that her baby rightfully belongs to HER, and that she'll do anything to get it. anything.

It's a simple enough premis, basically a home invasion horror film (panic room and vacancy are both stellar examples of the sub genre) but this film belongs in a class all it's own. Once the deaths start occuring (you'd be suprised at how high the body count gets) you'll watch (or not watch) in awe as the unflinching camera lingers on the morbid details. Details such as the geisure of blood spraying out of the neck of a victim stabbed with knitting needles, and splashing all over the family photo's hung on the wall. Or a pair of scissors stuck into a victims hand, pinning them to the door so they can't escape. Or a gunshot wound thats probably the most horrifying thing i've ever seen (it oozes, a LOT) As the deaths stack up so do the questions. Why does this woman want the baby so bad? why does she keep claiming it's "hers.?" Everything is revealed in a sinister final that recalls a Grimm Fairytale. complete with ironic twist that answers everything in a satisfying little conclusion.
The Villaness, never named, is an astounding presence of intimidation. take for example a sequence where our hero is sitting watching television. some crappy christmas special (they even have em even in france!) it's dark, theres only the light from the television. we sit and watch as she watches. for an uncomfortably long time. then, slowly, if your paying attention, you see something...a figure. it's the villan slowly creeping up on her. closer, closer still untill she's standing an imposing 6 feet tall right behind her, smelling her, lightly brushing her hair. then, slowly, just as our victim-to-be starts to sense soemthing, the figure slowly slids back into the darkness. The killer is in the house. we see her again shortly after looking through a window. it's all the more creepy that she has the power to slip in and out of the house at will.

Here is an example of a film that is graphic, easily the most graphic i've seen in my life, but it's not ABOUT the gore like it's american Hostel and Saw compatriots. This is about the characters first, and it shows just as much blood and guts as there would be if it was actually happening.It's horrifying in that its all too real a situation. You read about stuff like this in the news. But where the grizzly details are skimmed over, here they are shown matter of factly. Instead of a quick blurb by the newscaster about the victim, we have time to live with the people that are affected, time to actually care about them. This is a film i can't quite recomend. If you watch it, you'll think i was crazy to even suggest you do. All i can do is tell you that if you want to be truely frightend, and observe an unflinching portrait of pure evil, watch INSIDE...if you can.

The Dark Knight

so you all know by now that this film is in fact the second comming. so instead of writing a traditional review, i'll just give you a quick pro and con list.

PRO
-it demands your attention from frame one. there is not one scene that is fluff or padding, every line of dialogue serves a specific purpose. thus the film is long, butdoesn't overstay it's welcome. it's 2 and a half hours and needed every second of it, not a minute more.
- The Joker is the best villan seen on film since hannibal Lecture. He's the first villan who actually delivers in every way possible. He threatens to blow up a hospital? done. He say's he'll make a pencil dissapear...done. He says he'll get rid of Batman...
- the action was all clear and expertly choreographed. Unlike the first film, which was a jumbled mess of nonsense when it came to the hand to hand battles, here everything is fluid and hartd hitting, and easy to follow. You watch in awe as batman uses the most minimal amount of effort required to put down the villans, and it's a thing of imposing brutal beauty when he attacks.
-Harvy dent/two face was the most complete character in the film. He's given the biggest and smoothest story arc, and is actually given the most character developement out of anyone. My heart broke when he...well, ends up the way he does. And i accepted the rather extreem transition his character goes through.

CONS
-Rachel Daws. Her character is basically there to serve the plot and nothing else, and though they DO take care of her pointless part during the second act, Maggy Gylenhaul is ugly, and i mean that in every sense of the word, though i suppose she's better than Katie Holmes, who was thankfully off somewhere talking to aliens with suri and tom.
- Morgan freemans character seems to pick and choose where his "moral code" starts and stops and it seemed a bit wishy-washy, especially toward the end. but i suppose i can see why director/writer Nolan wanted to keep the amount of characters to a minimum, it's just a shame Lucious seemed to pick the short end of the stick.
-after a certain someone gets knocked off, i wanted to see more of the emotional aftermath, but everyone, especially bruce wayne, seem to get over it pretty quickly. as in, one 4 minute scene later and it's all but forgotten by everyone. that is the one aspect of the film that i felt should have slowed down and taken the time to analyze. All well.

Mama Mia!

this will be short and sweet. Like the movie itself. ok, so here it is folks, you like abba? you'll love this. if your just ok with ABBA, then you'll probably still love this, but if you hate abba, then this is not for you. This is one of those situations where it works for those that like what it is, and wont work for those that don't. Get it? it's like, if you like horror movies, then you'll love the exorcist, but if you don't like horror movies, no matter how good it's made, you won't like the exorcist. Same here. That being said i love abba and LOVED this. What i was most suprosed by was how messy the movie was. the dialogue all sounded imporvised. when the characters were drinking, which was often, they REALLY seemed drunk, flubbing lines left and right and missing their marks and generally having a good time. thats the key here, everyone seemed to be having so much fun getting plastered and sunburned on the greek isles that it's infectious. So it doesn't have the crisp choreography of Chicago, or the perfectly timed plot structure of Hairspray (which i loved but WAS clearly edited to death in postproduction to the point that you can tell) this film comes off more like they showed up, had a blast, filmed everything, and made of it what they could after the fact. that being said, Meryl Streep acts her butt off (singing the winner takes it all in ONE TAKE on a seaside cliff at sunset in 5 minutes of perfect cinematic joy) and can actually sing VERY well, she's not just servicable, unlike Pierce Brosnan who does scrape by, mostly due to the meager song selection he's (wisely) given. Amanda Seyfried, my jesus, is awsome!!!! she reminds me of a young lily tomln from 9 to 5, or a sexier luciel ball. and she can sing. You'll forget she was dumb mean girl #2 in MEAN GIRLS, or her turn as an ill fated boozing sexpot on the most amazing television show ever VERONICA MARS. She ownes this role, and cry's on demand several times, giving Streep a run for her oscar earning money! I loved it. You may or may not, but if you will or wond, you already know.