Horror Movie Month - Triangle

Triangle (2009)
The Stars - Melissa George, Michael Dorman, Liam Hemsworth
The Gist - A group of friends embark on a Saturday afternoon yachting trip. The weather is perfect until they suddenly hit an electric storm which capsizes their yacht. Luckily (or unluckily) for them, a cruise liner comes to the rescue. After boarding it, they come to the realization that the liner is apparently deserted. However, weirdo Jess (George) experiences deja vu and insists she has been aboard that exact ship before.
The Scares - The movie is not scary at all. It is, however, probably the best movie I've watched during my horror movie month (with the possible exception of Trick 'r Treat, but I had already seen that). The movie is complex and endlessly watchable. It's refreshingly smart and mysterious and the story is just plain excellent. It reminds me of this wonderful sci-fi movie I love called Timecrimes with its complicated, superbly written screenplay and excellent performances. It's a perfecly paced, intricate, wonderful film.
The Body Count - Well, that's a little hard to say. For the sake of argument, we'll go 7.
The Grade - B+ (although I could be persuaded on a good day to say A-)

Horror Movie Month - The Killer Inside Me

The Killer Inside Me (2010)
The Stars - Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Elias Koteas, Simon Baker, Bill Pullman
The Gist - First off, this isn't a horror movie, per se, but there is tons of violence and a pretty big body count, and it is a HORRIBLE movie, so it counts. Affleck plays Lou Ford, a polite, mild-mannered deputy sherrif in a small Texas town. He has a steady girlfriend (Hudson) and is liked by everyone. Soon, however, he becomes involved in a sadomasichistic relationship with a prostitute (Alba) which sparks some sort of inner sickness. The two of them plot to blackmail a local tycoon but things backfire and Ford ends up murdering Joyce and the tycoons dumb son Elmer (I get why he murdered Elmer but I still really don't know why he murders Joyce... it just seems all kinds of stupid). Anyway, he thinks he's getting away with murder but, really, he's insane so people begin to suspect him and then he starts killing more and more people while slowly going more and more insane. Listen, this movie is completely unnecessary and I'm not just saying that because it's insanely violent. It's just an exercise in disappointment. Everyone is saying the book on which its based is a classic and I have no doubt that's true but this movie is, I guess, not adapted well at all. Alba and Hudson (two actresses who I don't normally care for) are both rather impressive. Affleck's performance is extraordinary and I can't say a bad thing about that but the movie just did nothing for me at all. It's messy and incoherent and just plain bad.
The Scares - None.
THe Body Count - Six, maybe seven. Still not sure if the ending was real or all in his head (leaning towards the latter).
The Grade - D+ (and it's only getting that high because, like I said, Affleck is excellent).

Horror Movie Month - When a Stranger Calls

When a Stranger Calls (1979)
The Stars - Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Tony Beckley
The Gist - A babysitter begins receiving menacing phone calls from a man simply asking, "Did you check the children?" After the police trace the call, they discover it's being made from inside the house. The man eventually gets arrested and sent to an insane asylum but seven years later breaks free. After stalking a woman he meets at a bar, he tracks down the original baby-sitter, now married with kids of her own, and returns to terrify her some more.
The Scares - I added this movie to my netflix queue on a whim and guess what? I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The beginning and the end are terribly well done and actually damn scary. The middle is a little plodding and boring but what more do you want from a horror movie? I don't know if it's because I'm a paranoid crazy person and imagine that someone is going to break into my house when I'm here alone or what, but the beginning and end actually were quite scary to me (and I don't scare easily). I wish the movie would have ended three minutes sooner but overall, I thought it was damn good.
The Body Count - Only 3.
The Grade - B

Horror Movie Month - April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day (1986)
The Stars - Deborah Foreman, Jay Baker, Deborah Goodrich, Ken Olandt, Amy Steel, Clayton Rohner
The Gist - A group of college friends gather at one of their friends mansion on a remote island during April Fool's weekend. The only way off or on the island is by ferry and it doesn't run on the weekends. A few harmless April Fool pranks turn super serious when the party animal college kids start ending up dead, one by one. Of course, there is a terrible twist ending which all but ruins a perfectly fine slasher movie.
The Scares - Again, not scary per se, but there are a few parts that are a little on the intense side (notibly the scene in the well and the second scene in the basement). Other than that, it's mostly formulaic.
The Body Count - I should really just give the ending away, right? Most people who wanted to see this movie probably say it by now. So, 7 bodies but, then, really 0 bodies.
The Grade - C-... maybe it would have been higher if the ending didn't suck so bad.

Horror Movie Month - Trick 'r Treat

Trick 'r Treat (2008)
The Stars - Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker, Brian Cox
The Gist - The film is really four Halloween related stories that weave together and tell the tale of a single night of trick or treating and partying in a small town. Among the stories: Baker plays a twisted principal who takes trick or treating rules VERY seriously, Paquin plays a virginal young woman trying to find the perfect date for a party and Cox gets terrorized inside his own home. Sam, a tiny "child" in orange clothes and a creepy burlap sack shaped like a pumpkin tie the stories together.
The Scares - It's not scary at all but it is quite good.
The Body Count - Including flashbacks, I'm going to go with 20 although I lost count during a particularly bloody scene.
The Grade - B+

Horror Movie Month - Let Me In

Let Me In (2010)
The Stars - Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas with a pretty righteous mustache.
The Gist - Director Matt Reeves remakes the beloved (by everyone but me, apparently) Swedish Let the Right One, a story of a bullied 12 year old boy who befriends his new neighbor, a girl who only comes out at night. I may be in the minority here, but I think the remake is even better the original. The original was all, "Look, it's snowy and dark in Sweden and life sucks and this movie is just a moody, long, boring take on friendship and loneliness with a really great ending." Well, Reeves took the best parts of the original and made it even better. And guess what? Things actually happen in this version! There's action and I didn't even almost fall asleep like I did with the original (and this is coming from someone who loves nothing more than a good 4 hour movie... that's how boring I felt the original was).
The Scares - There is one scene in particular (involving Elias Koteas with his brilliant mustache going into a bathroom looking for Chloe Moretz's Abby) that is pretty freaking intense.
The Body Count - 10!
The Grade - B

Horror Movie Month - The Funhouse

The Funhouse (1981)
The Stars - Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, Largo Woodruff, Miles Chapin, Shawn Carson
The Gist - Four teenagers double date to a carnival with a bad reputation. Seems last year in a nearby town, two girls went missing. Instead of leaving the carnival at the end of the night, they decide to spend the night inside the funhouse instead. They begin by fooling around but eventually witness a murder and then have to try to escape the funhouse while fending off crazy carnies.
The Scares - It's not scary, per se. Especially compared to director Tobe Hooper's previous effort - the best horror movie of all time - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Still, The Funhouse is a cult classic for a reason and it's fun as hell to watch. The acting (mostly unknowns) is better than it has to be. The movie is fast paced and exciting.
The Body Count - 6.
The Grade - B+

Horror Movie Month: Sorority Row

Sorority Row (2009)
The Stars - Briana Evigan, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung, Leah Pipes, Audrina Patridge, and Carrie Fisher
The Gist - A group of sorority sisters decide to prank their sister Megan's (Patridge) cheating boyfriend by making him believe he accidentally murdered Megan. They take her "body" to an old mine shaft where they will drop it in a mine for it to never be discovered. None of these girls are smart enough to figure out that this most certainly will not end well. The prank escalates and Megan really ends up dead. Eight months later, they begin receiving mysterious texts surrounding that night. Is Megan back or does someone else know what they've done?
The Scares - There are none, really. I mean, there are parts that will make you jump if you scare easily (I don't) and you might actually be frightened if you've never seen a horror movie before in your life. Mostly, it's cliched teenage horror movie as usual. There is one death scene in particular that is pretty amusing but other than that it's the same old, same old.
The Body Count - A whopping 12!
The Grade - D+... Fisher and Pipes are really the only good things about it. They are both bad ass bitches (I mean that as a compliment)!

The Social Network

Or: Okay, Rooney Mara, I will allow you to play Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
All the best picture of the year talk surrounding The Social Network is no joke. It just may be. It's fresh, relevant, fast-paced, witty, clever, funny and a damn good movie. When I first heard they were making a movie about facebook, I thought it was a stupid idea. Then that first trailer came out, you know, the ominous one with the acapella version of "Creep" playing? That got me interested. Then, of course, the buzz started. But The Social Network isn't just about facebook. It is, of course, a movie that defines a generation but it is also about a lot of topics that are much more simple: power, backstabbing, manipulation, betrayal.
The Social Network stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, a brilliantly intellectual Harvard under grad who has absolutely no social skills whatsoever. It's a little ironic that someone who has no idea how to interact with people in real life created the most interactive social site of all time. In the beginning of the film, Mark gets dumped by his Boston University girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara). And he gets dumped in a sort of spectacular fashion. After a back and forth that lasts nearly 10 minutes, Erica ends things by saying, "You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a geek. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." And so the relationship is over. Mark isn't so happy and he goes back to his dorm room and writes a lot of mean things about Erica and her bra size on livejournal. Then, while all the rest of Harvard is partying the night away, Mark and his geek friends create the precursor to facebook - facemash - in which they put pictures of two Harvard girls side by side and make guys pick who is hotter.
Mark and his friends crash the Harvard server and gain a lot of notoriety. A pair of super rich, rowing twins named Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer) hire Mark to program a website for them. The idea the Winklevi, if you will, have is to create an elite Harvard dating site called Harvard connection. Mark takes the idea back to his one and only friend Eduardo (played to utter perfection by future Spiderman Andrew Garfield) and they use it as a basis for facebook.
So that's the basic story. But the filmmaking is so damn good that it turns a simple story of a nerd who created a website into a thrilling masterpiece of cinema. The story flips around from those days in 2003 and 2004 when facebook was created to two seperate lawsuits Mark is involved in, one involving Eduardo who was hardcore screwed and one involving the Winklevi, who are clearly not happy with Mark. The filmmaking is so damn perfect that it elevates an already incredible script into something you might want to call "perfection." Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin are at the top of their games and together, they are amazing.
The cast is nothing short of amazing either. Rooney Mara manages to break hearts and steal scenes with her limited screentime and it's refreshing to me. I've been underwhelmed by her previous work, but here, she proves to me that she is able to handle a bigger role (Lisbeth!). I am now truly excited to see what she brings to that role. Justin Timberlake shows up about halfway through the movie as Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, who all but seduces Zuckerberg into a world of beautiful women, hot night clubs and lots and lots of money. He's a sweet talking charmer who is also a paranoid liar, but Timberlake nails it. Armie Hammer plays the Winklevoss twins so perfectly. I know a lot of it is screen magic but he's better than he needs to be. I don't know how Fincher made him play twins but then again, this is a man who put Brad Pitt's face on a baby so I trust that he knows what he's doing. Jesse Eisenberg finally, finally, FINALLY got a role worthy of his talents. He's always been a wisecracking, indie fixture who was enjoyable to watch but here he becomes something so much more. He is perfection as the complicated Zuckerberg who seems like a total douche one minute and a misunderstood genius the next. But, I think, best in show has got to go to Andrew Garfield. I haven't been so impressed by a performance all year long. He's got the perfect amount of everything needed to pull off the role of the likeable best friend who gets royally screwed. Plus, he gets to deliver the movie's best line. "Lawyer up, asshole, cause I'm not coming for my 30 percent. I'm coming for everything."
All in all, The Social Network is the kind of highly entertaining, highly enjoyable masterpiece of a movie that only comes along once in a blue moon.
Grade: A

Horror Movie Month - Blood Creek

Blood Creek (2009)
The Stars - Henry Cavill, Dominic Purcell, Emma Booth, Michael Fassbender, Shea Whigham (!!!).
The Gist - Epic Nazi zombies!! Sounds awesome, right? Well, totally wrong! It's actually kind of awful. Cavill and Purcell star as super hot brothers who set out to kill a creepy family living in the middle of nowhere who kidnapped Purcell's Victor and held him captive for two years. Said family hasn't aged in 80 years because they are holding a Nazi zombie prisoner in their barn. When he breaks free, all hell breaks loose. Blah blah, Shea Whigham is shirtless. Other than that, it's a total waste of your time.
The Scares - There are none.
The Body Count - 7... and a whole lot of pigs, horses and dogs, too.
The Grade - F

Horror Movie Month - Splinter (2008)

Splinter
The Stars - Shea Whigham (!!!), Paulo Costanzo, Jill Wagner, Rachel Kerbs
The Gist - A young couple (Costanzo and Wagner) set out for a romantic camping trip to celebrate their anniversary. Problems ensue and soon they are being held hostage by a sexy, badass escaped convict (Whigham) and his drug-addled girlfriend (Kerbs). When their car begins to overheat, they make a pit stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere where they become trapped, surrounded and hunted by some sort of strange zombie-esque splinter parasite.
The Scares - There aren't really any... at all. Maybe it's because I don't scare easily, not sure, but there wasn't a single thing in the entire movie I found scary. That being said, the movie itself isn't bad. It's fast-paced and it's fun and the characters are actually pretty well-crafted and not at all as stupid as most characters in horror movies. Of course, Shea Whigham is super hot.
The Body Count - Only 4... but then, there are only really 6 people in the entire movie.
The Grade - C+