I did something that I haven’t done in a few weeks - go to the movies.  Here’s what I saw:

Observe and Report - I’ve been chomping at the bit to see this film since I saw the trailer in front of Friday the 13th back in February, and it plays like Jody Hill’s Taxi Driver.  The movie is dark and uncomfortable and no character is legitimately likable but there is something sympathetic about the ’screw-up who wants to make good’ vibe that cuts through the crass and downright abominable presentation of the film.  Seth Rogen and Anna Faris do their jobs very well here, and Danny McBride’s brief appearance is hilarious.  Well-made, but messed up.

Fast And Furious - YES. Frivolous. Disposable. Pretty. Fun. Awesome.

As I watched the end of Fanboys last night (and there are SPOILERy things following hence), I thought to myself that The Phantom Menace was maybe what killed poor Linus, that maybe he’d have held on longer if he hadn’t seen it early and known what a departure from the Original Trilogy it was.

That musing aside, Fanboys isn’t a film about Star Wars.  Not really, though a comprehensive knowledge of both Star Wars and late-90s Internet culture are recommended to get maximum enjoyment out of the film.  It’s about a friendship between five people and the commonality that manages to bring them back together even when they’re scattered to the winds for months or years.  I have friends like that, who due to scheduling differences or distances don’t talk to me as often as I might like (and vice versa).  The movie’s not perfect, but it has some solid, geeky laughs and an emotional core that not many movies with its focus or budget successfully muster.  And Kristen Bell in a slave girl Leia outfit - that was pretty okay, too.

Last House On The Left is a pretty standard grindhouse remake - the film looks more attractive but is less impactful and I never find myself caring about that poor girl or what line the family is crossing.  Like When A Stranger Calls, the thing that gives the original power is the thing that everybody knows about already, and that really dilutes any attempt to recapture its vengeful goodness.  The sort of horror represented by Last House only really works when it has two key elements: empathy and catharsis.  This has neither.  There’s a glimmer of a cathartic moment, when John appears in the kitchen, claw hammer in hand, and helps his battered, terrified wife to her feet, but it’s too short and the audience has to wait too long for the payoff that inevitably comes from it.  Which is in fact my problem with most of the second half of the movie.  It should be twenty minutes shorter.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

In the theater last night, there were no fewer than 3 children that I estimated to be under 12 years of age, sitting dutifully with their parents.  This bothered me immediately, but really, really bothered me once I heard a little girl audibly ask “why the man was doing that” during the rape scene.  Which means the parents let her watch that scene without covering her eyes or removing her from the theater.

Seriously.

Fuck. You.

Is the world so desensitized to its own ugliness that any parent can walk into a theater with a little girl and think “She can handle the R-rated slasher movie.  Screw Hotel For Dogs or The Jonas Brothers.”  If that is your only viable choice for seeing a movie with your elementary-aged child, stay home and call Child goddamn Services to come pick the kids up.  Then you can watch whatever you want, you callous shits.

I think that Watchmen may be impossible to review.  I’ve read reviews praising what other reviews panned and damning what others deified.  I have friends who have seen it and loved it, loved it except for the ending, hated the whole thing, and a few who refuse to see the movie because they feel that making a film adaptation of Watchmen is misguided.

After having seen Watchmen myself, I have to cast my vote with the latter.  At least in the sense that the movie, as good as frequently is and as faithful to the text as it can be, is ultimately a gutless retelling of the comic’s plot that pares out the things that make Watchmen really resonate as a ‘graphic novel’ (or ‘maxi-series’, depending on when you first read it and in what format).

The sleek cinematography, complete with director Zack Snyder’s trademark fetishistic slo-mo, blood, violence and nudity are all present on film.  The pirate comic, the streetcorner, the backing material are mostly gone or severely diminished.  The first group are the things that I loved about Watchmen when I was ten years old.  The second are the things I like about the comic now.  I like the control and complexity in Moore’s script and in Gibbons’ layouts and pencils, things that are by the very dint of being filmed absent from the film.

Watchmen the film is ultimately a very slick looking, very bombastic presentation of all the things I loved when I was ten.  As a film adaptation of the main plot, it is entertaining; I don’t hate it.  The acting is mostly solid (with Malin Akerman being the weak link in that chain and Jackie Earle Haley and Billy Crudup both doing an particularly great job of bringing two very difficult characters to life), the action looks nice (and I’ve always secretly been a bit of a sucker for Snyder’s slow motion antics), but it’s hollow in comparison to its source - very much like the bulk of the Harry Potter films in a lot of ways.    I liked it.  I’ll watch it again.  It was entertaining.  But it doesn’t hold a candle to the original.

So, now that Pride and Prejudice is apparently public domain, we’re seeing some exciting projects come about: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I’ve already pre-ordered, and the space-alien horror flick Pride and Predator.  The movie, it’s going to be horrid, because there’s no way that it’s going to be the actual Predator.  Which got me thinking about what would be even better.

Are you ready?

ALIENS VS. PREDATOR VS. PRIDE VS. PREJUDICE

Wow, it’s been awhile, yeah?  And it’s not that the horror well has been dry, either, just that I haven’t been writing about them.  So, let’s do a rapid fire thing to get caught up, shall we?

The Unborn: “Nazis always make a movie better,” a friend of mine told me recently.  When she said that, I immediately threw this movie in her face.  A concentration camp ghost story with deep roots in Jewish mythology certainly sounds cool.  It doesn’t hurt that Odette Yustman is absolutely gorgeous, either.  Except that Yustman, while beautiful, is less lifelike on screen than the lowest common denominator of Jessica Biel and Diane Kruger, and David Goyer directing David Goyer’s script has never worked as well as it should have.  Goyer, like George Lucas, works best when there are people around to tell him his ideas are bad.  The Unborn should have been better than it was, but was maddeningly forgettable.

My Bloody Valentine In 3D: YES.  I don’t go in for gimmick movies a lot, and I certainly have remake reservations a lot of the time, but the sheer reveling that this movie does in its gimmicky remakery makes me love it a bit.  It will probably play much differently when I watch it at home without the pickaxe (or naked girls, or shotguns, or human jaws) coming through the screen at me, but this is one of those ‘they got it right’ movies for me in the sense that it’s a great thrill ride with lots of blood.

Friday The 13th: The first 20 minutes of this movie are fucking gold.  Fried gold, in fact, to abuse the Internet vernacular.  And then it stops being good very abruptly.  The latter part of the film has no panache, and malicious redneck fast-running Jason is a bit unforgivable to the purist in me.  Yes, ladies, I know that Jared Padalecki is pretty.  I know, Veronica Mars fans, that Dick Casablancas gets speared through the head. But neither of those things is enough to make the movie click.

The Uninvited: A completely lackluster Korean horror remake.  Don’t bother.

A Haunting In Connecticutt: When was the last time one of these ‘based on a true story’ things was actually good?  Was it the original Amityville?  Probably.

Me: Wait, did that ad seriously try to use Tool Academy to promote Watchmen?

Also Me: I’m afraid it did.  You really shouldn’t go and see this movie, Jeff.

Me: Wait a second.  If the Doctor Manhattan condoms didn’t make me swear off the movie -

Also Me: And the Nite-Owl brand coffee.

Me: I don’t mind the Nite-Owl brand coffee. It’s a movie prop, and the design of it doesn’t suck.  And I’ve always liked the scene in the comics that it calls back to.

Also Me: Whatever.  What about all the toys?  Don’t you think Alan Moore is spinning in his grave?

Me: A) Alan Moore isn’t dead.

Also Me: That doesn’t mean he isn’t in a grave right now.

Me: You know, I never thought about it like that.  B) At first, I was kind of telling myself that the toys were enjoyably ironic.  But really, like this Tool Academy spot and the condoms et al, the toys seem in aggregate to be the result of a scattershot attempt to market something that the marketers don’t really get.

Also Me: Zack Snyder keeps saying that he gets Watchmen.

Me: But he never says what he gets about it, does he?  Early on in college, I played that game with Ulysses all the time to make girls think I was insightful.  And it worked, so good on Snyder, maybe.

Also Me: I really don’t think you should see this movie.  You’re going to regret it.

Me: I don’t know….

TO BE CONTINUED

Keanu Reeves and Joseph Lawrence in a buddy action comedy.

Reeves is the hard-boiled mentor, Lawrence the brash young upstart.

Plot? Doesn’t matter.

Title: Whoa.

Think about it for five minutes.

Now voice your assent in the comments.

Listen, I know all three of you reading this probably already subscribe to Chris Sims’s blog, but on the off chance that you don’t, you need to check out his latest post, which is guaranteed to crack the Internet in half.  I have no words.  None.

Word to the wise: Chris is talking about the most recent issue of Tarot, which means that the post is extremely unsafe for work.  And for your sanity.  Read it and then come back.

Think about this: Of the ten thousand plus visits that Chris has gotten for this post, at least a tenth of these people have clicked through because someone told them it was “the hottest thing ever.”

Think About It, Won’t You?

You know, those awesome homemade magazines that have all but vanished now that we all have blogs?  My friends and co-bloggers at Alert Nerd still produce a quarterly (mostly) zine we call Grok.  And it’s awesome.

This issue’s theme is Nameless Horror, and there’s lots of mythos and monsters, but also the dread of picking a screen name and the specter of a committed relationship.  There’s also this thing I wrote about my ride-along with some real-life ghost hunters. And some insane nightmare fuel from Internet pal Stephen Graham Jones.

Go ahead and give Grok a read.  At the very least, print it out and use its 69 jam-packed pages as a weapon or a pillow.  We know it’s tough out on the streets.