laylor Blog

Under discussion:

The Happening  (2008)

I have to say that this is a really bad, bad movie BUT I enjoyed it. It was hilarious, unintentionally I'm guessing. Everything from the dialogue to Mark Walhberg's tortured perfomance had me laughing. There are quite a few quotable lines from this movie: "She's going to the town of Princeton" = hilarious! Poor Zooey Deschanel is just drowning in this movie, as well. I have never seen such bad acting from her and it was slightly depressing. The deaths are kind of cool, considering the rest of the story is so silly people killing themselves is the main thing you have to look forward to. I kept wondering: What will he think of next?! It's pretty creative. I'm not going to get into it but there is a scene with two lions that is just ridiculous. It's cool and gratuitous (which is fun) but it's so awkwardly presented (seemingly tacked on only to assure an R rating) that I just had to laugh. People running away from the wind does not inspire dread but confused glances and giggles. Almost everyone in the theatre I was in was in stitches and some older gentleman, on his way out said: "Ugh, more like the Crappening". Well said. He looked generally upset to have spent $9.99 while I, on the other hand, forsee Midnight Movie potential for this film and will most likely see it again and again and...

Under discussion:

Ghost Rider  (2007)

I had an assignment to do for my Western Cinema class which was to pick a film that immediately did not seem like a Western but has elements of it at it's core. Rather than do the obvious and pick Serenity I picked another obvious film: Ghost Rider. The first time I watched it, I thought it was ridiculous. I thought that Wes Bentley was extremely miscast and not at all threatening, I thought Donal Logue's character was random and not given enough to do and I didn't like Eva Mendez very much either. After multiple viewings (for the essay) I softened a bit and while I still think those things, there are positive parts of the movie as well. Peter Fonda doing a pretty okay impression of his father, the action is pretty good (although it does take quite awhile to get to any real hint of a threat), Sam Elliot is awesome as always and I actually liked Cage's performance. I had my doubts about him at first because he's usually so hammy and distracting he sinks the picture right along with him but he actually pulled it off. I don't see myself watching this ever again, as I watched it around 4 times in the span of two weeks, but it's not the worst movie out there by any means and its an alright ride while you're watching it.