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pecadillo
My short temper is, I think, quite justifiable.
Reviews
Cursed (2005)
Awful
Christina Ricci seems to have finally realized that, at the rate of her forehead's growth, she will be able to pass as a Metallunan by her 26th year, and has resigned herself to movies about monsters, freaks, and crazy people. Lucky for her, this one has a lot from all three categories.
In it, she plays Ellie, the elder of a pair of orphaned siblings with freakish facial proportions who live in their parent's home in Hollywood; we know this because the Hollywood sign is flashed on screen every few minutes for the duration of the movie for reasons no sane, mortal mind should think too hard about. Ellie works at a TV station with an uncommonly unpleasant and hostile colleague named Joanie, who has, surprisingly, never had to deal with a restraining order; in her off hours, helps her boyfriend, Jake, a young man of equally non-euclidean facial geometry, with the preparation of his movie-themed club. When she is not doing either of those things, she is driving her little brother, Jimmy, around and wrinkling her forehead at the tales of his high school troubles.
Jimmy is picked on and harassed by his school's current That Boy Who Got Held Back About Ten Years, whom most people simply call 'Bo' because they are lazy, and also made a little uncomfortable by his aura of abject failure, and anyway there'll be another one along just as soon as this one realizes that he can just DROP OUT. Bo takes an interest in torturing Jimmy, no doubt for his ridiculously tiny ears (I know they made me wanna punch something), and his interest in the one girl that Bo would be pursuing, were he legally allowed to do so. Bo also is a gung-ho captain of the wrestling team, and has an unhealthy obsession with accusing other boys of being gay. This will be important for later (NO PEEKING!).
One night while Ellie is driving Jimmy and his dog, Zipper, around and around, they are involved in a two-car-plus-animal accident during which the occupant of the other car is dragged off by some unknown hairy beast and they are both bitten. Suddenly, the movie's overly-banal plot is thrown off-course into a world of unknown possibilities, minor characters start being killed and maimed, and weird things start happening to Ellie and Jimmy. YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHERE THIS IS HEADED! No, seriously!
I'm not going to spoil the end, except to say that everyone learns a valuable lesson about family, self-esteem, placing your life in the hands of the internet, and how a werewolf in the grip of a full moon maintains enough manual dexterity to flip someone the bird.
*** It killed time OK.
Troll 2 (1990)
One awful film deserves another
I ran across this movie on TV during a recent bout of insomnia, and the only thing it accomplished was to put me to sleep.
The plot, as far as I can tell (and I am NOT going to try watching it again), is that a family of robots is participating in a home-exchange program, and will be spending their vacation at the house of their exchange family. Unfortunately for the robot family, their exchange family is actually actually a pack of very short cannibals who like to wear cheap latex monster masks, and who have some kind of obsession with green slime, specifically, getting their victims to eat the green slime. I think.
Anyway, on their drive over -- after a truly emotional robot argument between the robot father and his robot daughter over her choice in boyfriends -- the youngest robot son thinks he sees his grandfather standing on the side of the road, and convinces the family to stop and pull over. Grandfather warns him of the monster-masked monsters lurking in their new town, and then the shrooms wear off and he turns back into a smelly, surly hobo. Then some stuff happens, and the family arrives at their destination, where, upon noticing how deserted it looks, the robot father makes the astute observation that, "country folk go to bed at this time of night", then takes advantage of the bright, mid-afternoon sun to drive the rest of the way to their vacation-home.
Once there, they meet the family that will be driving to their home, and the youngest son receives a threat, which triggers another episode wherein he believes the ghost of his Grandfather has returned and is telling him to pee on everybody's dinner. Stupid robot.
Shortly after this, I fell into the sweet embrace of sleep, and only awoke at the end, where the monsters and their leader -- an incomplete MtF transsexual -- are defeated by a lot of scowling, and, to be honest, I don't think the ending would have made any more sense if I'd been awake for all of it. ...Oh yes, I am leaving out the super-super twist-ending, because if you are that interested in the story, you deserve to have to sit through the whole freakin' movie, you twit.
1/10, but only because there is no 0 option.
Love Object (2003)
I expected a comedy
That's possibly the worst frame of mind to watch this movie with.
The cable company's description (paraphrased): "Guy thinks his love doll has become jealous"
What conclusions could be drawn from that? It's vague enough to cover just about any kind of film. I'm hip, I'm aware of Real Dolls and their like, as well as their obsessive owners, the webpages said owners make for their "girls" -- and the websites of Doll "surgeons" -- people whose job is to fix the often grotesque injuries inflicted on these silicone surrogates. And I find the whole scene indescribably hilarious and creepy.
'Of course', I thought to myself after reading the description. 'Doll fixation is ripe for comedy. This movie is a comedy: it's a love triangle consisting of a socially-clumsy guy, his Doll(which is strangely aware/alive-like), and the living, breathing girl of his dreams/"the other woman".'
Stupid, stupid me.
"Love Object" is not a comedy. It is, at best, a series of scenes strung together in such a way as to lend fantastic support to the claim that some people just aren't fit to be with, well, /other people/.
The film does have some funny moments -- mostly about the guy and his especially quiet "girlfriend" -- but is in all other aspects a suspense/horror film -- and I'd have liked it a lot more if it had been able to be more than one of those at a time. At any given point in the movie, there is the feeling that it is either trying to be funny, or trying to be upsetting -- and, aside from a few moments where things fall into place perfectly, it does neither particularly well.
Notes:
- If Gunther van Hagen's "Body Worlds" exhibit made you uncomfortable, you may not want to watch this movie. Or maybe you would.
- That Nikki is such a creepy, creepy looking doll only serves to show how utterly pathetic the male lead is. Even for a fake woman, she looks AWFUL.
5/10: It was better than the average schlock, and had some good scenes.