SpaceGypsies

Placeholder for caption that doesn't even suggest a spoiler. You're welcome.

To say that Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, Lost) and Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods is a horror movie doesn’t do it justice. It’s a gross oversimplification of the broader concept. Before I proceed, permit me to clarify that I’m under no delusions like “The Cabin in the Woods isn’t a horror movie”. It most definitely is a horror movie and a fairly gory one at that. People die. Gratuitously. Be sure that Goddard’s decision to conceal the more grizzly details of certain deaths serves only to preserve the viewer’s sensitivity to such things for the biggest punch when it really mattered. Think of it like giving up coffee for 30 days so that on the 31st, when you drink three pots in a single hour, you see God. This isn’t a criticism, mind you. I simply feel compelled to emphasize the bloody nature of this movie to disspell any notion that it will be a Whedonesque flick in the campy Buffy/Angel style of  horror. To be honest, I expected The Cabin in the Woods to lean toward being viscerally sterile. While it isn’t High Tension or Hostel, it’s also not good, clean, prime-time-television fun.

Now that I’ve told you what this movie isn’t, I’ll tell you what it is. The Cabin in the Woods is a heavily layered movie which tells a story that’s far deeper than “these people over here want to do despicable things to those people over there.” Dare I say its an intelligent horror movie. Almost immediately, the viewer is presented with disparate but internally consistent elements. What I appreciated was that the meaning of these disparate elements wasn’t immediately handed to the viewer on a silver platter in bite-sized pieces. I had time to ponder them and develop my own Theory of Everything before the explanations began to roll in. This movie clearly isn’t a Masterpiece Theater mystery and it’s entirely likely that you’ll have narrowed what’s going on to one of two options by the time the puzzle starts filling in. Despite that, quite literally anything can happen until the very last line of dialog.

Fans of horror will appreciate this movie for it’s creative fusion of thematic elements and a sense of self-awareness not seen since Scream (1996). Whedon devotees will recognize this  self-awareness as well as the  rapid-fire, apropos-yet-witty dialog. Also, fans of Dollhouse will love that Fran Kranz got the opportunity to shine (and shine he did!), though fans of Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy) will be disappointed in the scarcity of shirtless scenes.

I really wish I could tell you more about this movie but I can’t without including spoilers. In fact, as I was thinking about how I hadn’t seen a single trailer for this movie, it struck me that any trailer would necessarily either (a) be devoid of spoilers but completely misrepresent the movie or (b) accurately represent the movie while simultaneously negating any need to actually see it. This is a brilliant film so the idea of spoiling anything and, as a result, dampening the initial journey of discovery makes me sad. If you’re inclined to see The Cabin in the Woods, then do so in a theater on the big screen and do it before someone blows the secrets for you. Seriously.

 5 out of 5!

In 2007, a movie named Sunshine slipped past me with little ado. Having just watched it –  and let me state this unequivocally – I would classify Sunshine as one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last 10 years and one of only a small handful that I wanted to watch again immediately after it finished.

Sunshine stars, among others, Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, and Mark Strong as members of a mission sent to restart our dying sun. If you smirk at Sunshine‘s setup one more time, I’ll slap that smirk off your face and send you to bed without dinner. From across the internet. Yes; there’s a stench emanating from Sunshine‘s premise that smells alarmingly similar to The Core but I assure you, the premise of this movie is irrelevant.  The premise serves only to isolate the crew in a very dangerous and inhospitable place. The acting and the masterful story telling are the thing. Sunshine is a genuinely good movie with believable characters and no manufactured melodrama. It doesn’t rely on a soundtrack by Aerosmith and cheesy montages to lend gravity to character deaths.  It doesn’t need to. The barely contained emotion conveyed by the cast of Sunshine lends each event all the gravity it needs.  Contained because these are professionals chosen expressly for their capacity to execute a very specific responsibility but barely so because they are still humans bearing an impossible burden.

A screencap for the ladies: Robert Capa (played by Cillian Murphy) records a message for his family.

So why was Sunshine largely ignored? In a word, flavor.  Sunshine expresses itself much more like an art film than your typical Hollywood sci-fi/thriller.  The pacing and writing challenge what we’ve become accustomed to for a film of this genre, making it very easy for someone to issue a premature “tl:dr”* and move on. Understand, I’m not saying that Sunshine has returned to <sarcasm> the golden age of movie pacing from the ’70s</sarcasm>. I’m saying that Sunshine recognizes that you can use negative space to express details that do not then need to be manhandled by the writer and thrust upon the unsuspecting head and shoulders of the viewer though dialogue that might as well start with, “in case you’re too stupid to figure out what you just saw”.  It embraces the idea that pictures really can speak a thousand words and that some times “show me” works better than “tell me”. Sunshine even challenges the boundaries of its genre through judicious use of obscuring visual effects that *GASP* actually leave something to the imagination.

Really, get your hands on Sunshine and watch it.  I can’t promise you’ll come out the other end as enthusiastic as I am but I’m fairly certain you won’t walk away wanting 107 minutes of your life back.

*too long, don’t read

In browsing the event list early on Friday, I excavated a panel entitled “Pet Psychic Gallery Reading” which piqued my interest as well as hopes of seeing at least one person take it entirely too seriously.  When I arrived at the scheduled room, my hopes were dashed as I discovered that the panel was canceled.  In it’s stead, I chose a demonology panel hosted by one John Zaffis, the self-styled “Godfather of Demonology”.  No, really.  The Power Point presentation that we never saw due to technical difficulties and which was replaced with a live question and answer session had a title page which read just that: “John Zaffis, Godfather of Demonology”.  Apparently, Mr. Zaffis is a person of some importance in the demonology community — a fact of which I, like some brave soul who actually spoke up about it, was ignorant prior to attending his panel because I am not, myself, a demonologist.  I am aware of this now, however, because of how uppity Mr. Zaffis became when someone asked him, “have you written any books on the subject”.  Also, because Mr. Zaffis tapped into his inner prima donna, I shall henceforth refer to him as Johnny.

I’ll be honest; when I first selected this panel, it was because I hoped to bear witness to blatant statements of absurdity.  Surprisingly enough, I find myself without tale of fantastic foolishness.  In fact, Johnny was quite reasonable once he stopped humiliating his audience.  I stopped waiting for an opportunity to laugh at him the moment he acknowledged the role of mental illness in cases of possession.  If one reasonable statement isn’t enough to make you question your skepticism let me add that he has a background in engineering.  Sure, the fact that he entertains questions like, “why is the veil thinning” push me back in the other direction but considering that his specialty is demonology, a field entirely predicated upon world religion and events heretofore empirically unprovable, I’d say his presentation of the topic was pretty damn reasonable.

Did I enjoy it?  Yes though, amazingly enough, not for the reasons I had originally hoped.  In fact, I’d go back just to ask some questions and I wouldn’t even have the intention of being an interruption.  The PARA-Track would do well to keep booking such knowledgeable souls to helm their panels in the future.

The panel on spontaneous human combustion, hosted by “Paranormal” Sarah Harmon, was a different situation all together.  If I took one thing away from the panel on Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC), it was a refined ability to ask “what do you think”.  I’ll make more sense of that in a second.  Until then, let me review what she did wrong.

Thou shalt not abuse PowerPoint and use it as a crutch to prop up your poor presenting skills. This was one of the most boring presentations I’d ever seen and I’ve been through over 200 credit hours of college courses officially making me a connoisseur of boring presentations.  Let me put that another way: my wife slept through the entire presentation that she wanted to see on people spontaneously lighting on fire and burning to a pile of ashes.  The last thing you want to use PowerPoint for is as a replacement for note cards.  Write it down on the damn three-by-fives and leave the lights ON until you need to show everyone a gruesome picture.

Thou shalt present thyself as an authority on thy presentation topic. Remember “what do you think”?  Well, that’s how every point in her presentation ended.  Do you want to know what I think, Paranormal Sarah?  I think I want your expert opinion on the subject.  I think I want the opinions of people who have studied the subject extensively.  That’s what I think.

Thou shalt not depend on thy audience for expert speculations on thy presentation topic. Each time we reached a SHC paradox, we got an “are there any biologists here”, “are there any morticians here”, or “are there any nuclear physicists here” as appropriate to the aspect of SHC that Paranormal Sarah had no information to present to us. Asking your audience for feedback on occasion is one thing, but the sheer frequency of these questions to the relatively empty, unengaged room, just got silly after awhile.

I can’t blame all of this on Paranormal Sarah, however.  I made a mistake too.  I made a big mistake.  My mistake was not googling Paranormal Sarah before attending her panel or I’d have found this little gem on her flickr page:

“Sarah Harmon, also known as “Paranormal Sarah” is currently an active Parapsychology researcher and furthering her studies as a Forensic Psychology major. Paranormal Sarah, a gypsy by birth, has immersed herself and is affluent in reading bones, using Palmistry, providing energy and psychic readings, as well as specializing in psychometry to deliver accurate clairvoyant information. Paranormal Sarah is an intuitive medium and energy healer that uses her abilities to help clients in spiritual growth and awareness.”

Look up “parapsychology” on wikipedia if you’re not familiar with it.  This is not the résumé of a scientist.  In fact, this is the résumé I’d have expected for someone hosting a panel with a title that went something like “Pet Psychic Gallery Reading.”

Lorenzo Lamas leads a seal team to destroy a ship carrying illegal weapons. The weapons dealer and his crew try to escape to a nearby island only to discover that the island is overrun with…wait for it…velociraptors. Now for those of you already familiar with his body of work, I have but to invoke the name “Lorenzo Lamas” to precisely describe the level of excellence this movie promises to deliver. For those not familiar, you’re about to get a crash course in Lorenzo Lamas 101.

Lately, there’s been a recurring theme in my life I am bound to entitle “bad post-production CGI gunshot wounds.” It started with Katee Sackhoff’s The Last Sentinel, produced amid filming of Battlestar Galactica where, after every gunshot wound to the head, I was less inclined to remark “you shot Marvin the the face!!” and more inclined to wonder why Marvin’s head was packed with hot pink lipstick in the first place. This unfortunate trend continues now with Raptor Island.

RAPTORSPLOSION!! (from SomethingAwful.com)

Post-production would seem to wish that we believe these dinosaurs are surrounded with an invisible bubblegum force field which pops on impact, seemingly protecting them from gunfire as evidenced by their utter lack of reaction upon taking full clips to the neck and upturned ass all at point blank range. If this island was home to a handful of dinosaurs, I might be able to overlook certain details like the notorious absence of prey animals that would be necessary to sustain such large predators. We don’t have just a handful of dinosaurs, however. What we have is a hollowed out yet still active volcano which houses hundreds of raptors. And a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

When the volcano begins erupting, it becomes a race to reach the extraction point! …or not… With clouds of volcanic ash being belched up into the sky and the threat of magma boiling up from the earth and covering the entire island, dinosaurs hunting him, and a terrorist still on the loose, Lorenzo decides that it’s a great time to hole up in a wrecked aircraft and chat at which point they decide their best course of action is to return to the dinosaur spawning point and place some charges in hopes of wounding some of the dinosaurs so they’re too busy eating their own to go hunting only the charges blow a hole in the volcano that releases magma that starts flowing everywhere and the helicopter comes to pick up Lorenzo but misses him in the dark and Lorenzo, being a good SEAL doesn’t have any flares so he can’t signal the helicopter but the helicopter picks up his beacon and comes back to pick him up and the movie ends with the dinosaurs all swimming off the island because Raptor Island 2 is a really great idea.

I feel dirty.

Greetings and salutations, dear friends.  I’d like to introduce myself as that guy from the Old Spice commercials but since that so directly contradicts reality, I’ll instead introduce myself as your resident pulp sci-fi critic.  Movie studios have produced a cornucopia of movies which transcend mediocrity and achieve greatness by being unintentionally hilarious.  I am a traveler in search of new experiences, a hunter seeking buried treasure, a seriously unwell individual that actually enjoys watching this drek.  I seek out these turds and polish them to a high-gloss sheen so that hopefully, I can show you what beauty I see.

In other words, I watch the crap so you don’t have to.

As with most shamefully terrible yet amusing films, the full impact of the plot is most enjoyed in its most compact form: a lone sniper from an unspecified US military organization is caught in a trap laid out by a terrorist who he thought was a man he was saving from the terrorists and suffers what would otherwise be a fatal wound were it not for an experimental medical procedure which inexplicably teleports him to a planet called Mars, existing in another solar system, where he is befriended by a warlike but noble tribe of lizard people (after using his new-found super strength to save them from an assault by a swarm of giant insects) who capture the Princess of Mars (Academy-Award Nominee* Traci Lords) and bring her before their king who forces everyone to fight in gladiatorial combat at which point we run into the terrorist again who damages the atmospheric generator, forcing our hero to manually activate the Big Red Button ™ that starts the backup atmospheric generator and saves the planet from suffocation in reverse Total Recall style.

You have to appreciate any medical device that teleports you to another solar system on a misfire.  That’s like buying a microwave oven that, when it breaks, turns into a trebuchet and kills you with dinner.  I think that part of this movie’s charm lies in the CGI sequences that take me back to the height of mid 90s computerized effects and Traci Lords’s one-size-fits-all pout.  Part of me hopes for a sequel but the rest knows it would never be as “good.”

* Oh, I’m sorry, X-Rated Critics Organization Nominee, 1985. My bad.