laraemeadows Blog

Under discussion:

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End  (2007)

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is chalked full; full of action, full of sub-plots, full of mistakes and full of fun.  It reminds me a little of when I was 12 years old and ate an entire chocolate bunny.  I didn’t regret how yummy and delicious it was, but the stomach ache didn’t feel so good. 

After promising his father he would save him from servitude to Davey Jones, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) sets forth a plan to save him.  At the same time the council of pirate lords needs to convene to save pirates from extermination.  Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), sentenced to suffer in Davey Jones’ locker, is one of the pirate lords and therefore must be saved so the pirate council can be called.  There is much back stabbing, personal motivations and tons of attempted plot twists.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End has an endless number of betrayals.  There are several negotiation scenes, especially at the beginning of the movie, which are confusing, and who is doing what to whom is unclear.  The negotiation scenes are convoluted and I could smell the gears in my head starting to smoke as they continued on.   The confusing nature of the bargaining left me wondering who I should be rooting for in the movie.

There is a great amount of computer effects in the movie and often the effects are wonderfully believable.  Davey Jones’s face, with the exception of his eyes, is completely computer generated.  It is hard to make a mystical creature seem realistic but the animators made the kraken face not only believable, but magical.

Even though some of the effects are wonderful there is a great deal of problems, as well.   In many of the scenes the real characters are surrounded by computer generated characters.  I haven’t seen effects of this quality since the Brownies in Willow.   It is a big part of the movie and they should have spent a little more time and money to make the extra characters look better and more believable.

The actors in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End didn’t shame themselves, but they didn’t make it into LaRae’s Book of Fantastic Acting, either.   Often, the writing makes the scenes downright trite, and the acting is the only thing that saves it from being monstrously stupid.  The acting, equally, can make a well written scene of eye rolling quality.

Johnny Depp perfectly revives Jack Sparrow.  The always nearly-drunken state Sparrow wanders around in as he spouts wild wit walks the fence between brilliance and clown school.  In At Worlds End, Depp often falls on both sides of the fence and sometimes both at once.   Many of the scenes he is in feel like set ups for dumb jokes, and if those jokes are good enough one time, they are good enough twice (a problem throughout the movie.)  Depp has a hard time pulling off the second joke as easily as he did the first, or giving it that something special that makes it rise above the first gag.

The secondary characters have a lot more face time in At World’s End and they make great use of it.  They may be what lengthens the movie, but I laughed more at them than I did at the main characters.

By far, the best character in the movie is Jack.  Not Sparrow, Monkey.  Jack the Monkey may have been a cheap gag, and I don’t care.  He is adorable and every scene he is in made me laugh.   There is a scene where he is sitting next to two of the secondary characters and I couldn’t see them because I was so focused on how cute he was. 

For all of its faults, the end of the movie finally gets to what we really wanted to see, swashbuckling goodness.  There are sword fights, cannon fights, and banter.  What is a pirate movie without explosions and stabbings, really?  Finally, the betrayals are explained, characters make choices, and lives are changed.   It almost makes the rest of the movie worth seeing, almost.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is way too long, has way too many subplots and there weren’t enough laughs or action to make it a must see but the problems don’t make it a must miss.

Under discussion:

Severance  (2006)

Severance: the movie that tells us what happens when you take the characters from The Office, send them on a team building holiday and throw in some eastern European serial killers.  A little quirky, and even though the humor/horror mix is just a little off, Severance is still a pretty fun movie. 

International contractor, Palisades Defense, sends seven of their employees on a team building excursion in Eastern Europe.  When the road is blocked, on sage advice of the boss, the employees abandon the motor-coach and head down a heavily wooded road to find their luxury lodge.   Little do they know a killer is waiting around the corner, bent on killing each of them.   In proper British style, victims die with a stiff upper lip and killers kill in ridiculous ways.   Don’t worry though, not everyone rolls over and accepts their fate.

Severance’s biggest problem is that it can’t really decide if it is a dark comedy or a horror movie with brief moments of levity.  There are a lot of bloody scenes but I can’t think of an explicit death scene.  Just before the death, the camera pulls away and sometimes returns just after the death, so it doesn’t feel like a strict horror.   There are a lot of attempts at comedy but only a few will leave you laughing out loud, so it doesn’t feel like a sinister comedy.  Director/writer Christopher Smith and writers Toby Stephens and James Moran would have benefited from having an accomplished comedic writer there to touch up the scenes that were attempting humor.

Severance isn’t completely void of humor.   There is a scene that will redefine the expression “Heads will roll.”  Later in the movie, there is a scene that made me laugh so hard at the misfortunes of the killer.  The end of the movie made me laugh with reckless abandon.  The scene that takes the cake involves a mini-fridge, a shoe and slippery fingers.  I didn’t want to laugh, because it was just wrong, but I couldn’t help it!  After the movie is over, stick around for the credits; they are brief but the character names of the bad guys are funny enough to make the credits worth watching.

Andy Nyman, who plays Gordon, was my favorite male character.  Gordon is an annoyingly optimistic character, much to the chagrin of the other Palisades employees.  He tries to make every negative a positive.  I wanted to strangle him about three minutes into the movie.  I think he was fantastically written.   I believe that the writers were trying to make him painfully cheery and they accomplished their goal with flying colors. 

There is a moderate amount of creativity in the kill scenes.   They took all of the instruments of death they could think of, threw out the quiet ones, tossed the ones that wouldn’t create a mess, and scrapped the Plain-Janes, and were left with a collection of mercenary style implements of doom!  Sure, there are knives and guns, but the kill scenes that use the classics aren’t done in the same-old ways.  There is a scene where hundreds of people are killed and I snickered, rolled my eyes and finally gave into the laughter pushing its way up!

I wish there had been a little bit more attention to the actual deaths of the characters.  As I mentioned above, I can’t remember a single scene where you actually see someone die.  I feel a little funny saying this, but it’s a horror movie, show us the money.  I can’t believe that someone is actually dead unless we see them dead.  In the horror movie rules it goes, 1. Never say “I’ll be right back.” 2. Never investigate a weird or strange noise, especially alone, and 3. Don’t assume they are dead unless you see them dead, and maybe even not then.  How can I believe that the killers actually killed the victim if you aren’t following the rules?

As always, I love it when there are bad ass bitches in horror movies that refuse to wait for some man to save them and Severance has its share of whoop-ass women!  Not all the women survive but their attempts at survival are memorable and commendable. 

This movie would benefit from a re-visitation by someone a little more skilled at finding the proper mix of humor and horror.  This may be the only time you hear this from me but I can’t wait until an American film maker finds the time to remake this movie.  Even still, Severance is worth seeing, flaws and all.

Under discussion:

28 Weeks Later  (2007)

28 Weeks Later is the sequel to 2003’s 28 Days Later.  28 Weeks Later accomplishes the rare sequel feat of being an interesting movie on its own and still having the essence of the first movie. 

Tammy and Andy are sent to repopulate Britain and reunite with their father Don, after the people infected by the rage virus die of starvation.  An unfortunate break in security causes a re-infection and the re-inhabitants are left to try to survive.  Many of the character’s past and current situations haunt them during their quest for survival.   Meanwhile, the American military, which has been charged with the well being of the people who are repopulating, is making decisions about their lives without their permission. 

I was impressed that 28 Weeks Later could stand alone as a movie.   28 Weeks Later’s antagonist is less the zombies and more the interpersonal and policy problems.  Dad, mom, son, daughter, military, and humanity all struggle against each other to find the proper balance and to figure out the most humane solution to the infection problem.   The writers’ (Rowan Joffe,Enrique Lopez Lavigne, Jaun Carolos Fresnadillo and Jesus Olmo) decision to abandon the characters in the previous story line and pick up with new characters makes it easy for a viewer who missed Days still understand Weeks.  For those of us who had seen Days, Weeks did not forsake its predecessor.   Weeks uses many of the storytelling elements of the previous movie.  The music, some of the themes and a lot of the visuals are taken directly from the previous movie.  It has the proper mix of novelty and familiarity.

Robert Carlyle plays Don, the dad, with an emotional precision unusual to zombie movies.  Don’s character is multi-faceted, with surprising depth.  There is an apology scene when he must essentially beg for forgiveness from someone who probably should not forgive him.  His admissions are heartfelt and his emotions honest.  He leaves you wondering what you would do in the same situation; another feeling you almost never get in a zombie movie.

The writers also did a great job of figuring out how work in British people who had never been in contact with the infected.  Sent away on a school trip, the children, Tammy (Imogen Poots) and her little brother Andy (Makintosh Muggleton) had no exposure to the infected or the horrors they caused.  It was a fantastic way to introduce characters who would be horrified and have no jading. 

Imogen Poots is remarkable as Tammy because of her ability to go a little bit crazy and also to stay strong in the face of what they to endure to survive.   There is a scene in the dark near the end of the movie that could have gone a little cheeseball if Poots wasn’t able to restrain her emotions to a controlled frenzy. 

For sheer pinchability, Jeremy Renner takes the cake.  Renner plays Doyle, a soldier in the protecting American Army.  His character faces a unique moral dilemma in the film, first be a soldier or first be a person.  For a soldier he is incredibly tender and sweet.  I wanted to cuddle him. 

Like in all zombie movies, there is a great deal of “what the heck” moments.  As my friend Eric says, “The military treats every problem like a nail because they only have a hammer.”  The short sided policies of the military are stunning and they do a great number of downright stupid things.  In one scene they lock the front door but don’t lock the back door.  In the military’s defense, no one else in the room encouraged the closing and locking of the back door either.   People succumb to the infection much faster than in the first movie.   The “twist” of the movie can be figured out if you understand foreshadowing and can count to three.  The flaws weren’t enough to make 28 Weeks Later unenjoyable.

 I had real fears that this movie would try to play too much on the heart strings, using the children for false suspense or drama.  Much to my surprise and glee, 28 Weeks Later did not put its predecessor to shame.