Overrated Movies: Dance of the Dead.

Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but high praise for this movie. They called it the next best thing for zombie films since Shaun of the Dead. And since I love zombies, and Shaun of the Dead is one of my all-time favorite movies, I had to check it out. And… well… uh…

Dance of the Dead has a pretty simple concept (and even a good one). On the night of the Prom, the dead rise from the grave and start eating people. And with the giant buffet waiting for them at the Prom, the only people left to stop them are the ones who didn’t go or couldn’t make it to the dance (for whatever reason). And it has the whole Breakfast Club ensemble, from the nerds to the cheerleaders to the punk rockers and the rebels.

Along with Shaun, the other movie that I heard this get compared to a lot was Return of the Living Dead. And that scared me, because I freakin hate Return of the Living Dead. It’s the bottom of the barrel on zombie movies and, to me, a disgrace to the genre. And unfortunately, Dance of the Dead was way more like Return than Shaun.

The best parts of the movie were the parts without the zombies, and for a zombie movie, that’s not a good thing. The opening bits with the character interactions were good and relatable, and all these are what reminded me of Shaun of the Dead. But once the zombies start up, that all seems to dumb down a lot and just get silly. My other favorite part was anything with the Gravedigger.

But with the actual zombies, everything was wrong. Let me just say that the second I heard them moaning for “Brains,” the movie started to go down on my rating scale (zombies cannot talk, nor do they prefer brains over any other part of the body). Then they did the next annoying thing, which is that just because you decapitate a zombie does not mean it is dead. What? Of course it does! Separation of the brain from the body equals zombie death! And this also means that if you cut off a limb or whatever, that said limb (whether it be legs, hands, etc.) should stop moving. Both of those things were two major issues that made me really hate Return of the Living Dead. But then we get to some other dumb stuff in the movie. Apparently these zombies can break down an engine or drive cars, but they can’t open a front door or break through a window. Oh, and punk rock music makes them stop attacking…. Huh?

There are so many things that bugged me about this movie. Even outside the zombie stuff and just under the actions of the characters, it just kept falling further and further into the realm of nonsensical and over-the-top silliness. Even the gore (which was plentiful) was just way too fake and over-the-top for my taste. The movie did get a few tiny chuckles out of me, though that was more toward the beginning. And as much as it set up all the characters and relationships in the first 10 or 15 minutes, I really didn’t care too much about who lived or died, which takes away most of the suspense. Even the awesome set up of a big epic zombie battle was just a set up for an ultimate let down (it’s like the final Twilight book all over again). Not to mention the movie was mostly predictable. So I hate to be against the norm on this movie, but that’s just how it is. This is not the next coming of Shaun of the Dead. This is just a slightly better done version of Return of the Living Dead.

The Zed Word

(P.S. Ironic rating, huh?).

Overrated Movies: Enter the Dragon.

So I finally got around to seeing Enter the Dragon for the first time. And I’ve got to say, while I respect Bruce Lee as a Martial Artist and also respect the film for its cultural breakthrough, I felt it a bit overrated. For those that don’t know, the movie is about three fighters who are handpicked by Han (Shih Kien) to visit a remote island for a special fighting tournament that is secretly a cover for an opium den. First is Lee (Bruce Lee), a Shaolin monk asked to check into the opium den and bring down Han. Second is Roper (John Saxon), a businessman who is in some debt trouble and owes a lot of money to some bad people. And third is Williams (Jim Kelly), your basic black 1970s stereotype.

Let me start there, really, with the characters. Han, the film’s villain, is pretty much absurd. He talks like William Shatner and acts like a bad James Bond-villain rip-off (white cat and missing hand included). Hell, Williams even says at one point that he seems straight out of a comic book. And while we’re on the subject of Williams, I realize that this was the 70s, but good Lord, could they have added any more black stereotypes into the one character? He was the very definition of ‘token black guy’. Lee and Roper, on the other hand, were actually pretty good characters.

As for how they acted, outside of Han’s Shatner-esque abilities (which I’ll get to a little more in a minute), Bruce Lee acted fine… when he wasn’t fighting. In fact, I really liked his characterizations when he was just being normal. But when he fought, it was so over-the-top and exaggerated that it was ridiculous—though I do understand that a lot of it is part of what makes Bruce Lee a classic figure in martial arts films.

But that’s not to say the action was bad. In fact, I thought most of the action was actually really good (when I wasn’t laughing at what probably wasn’t meant to be funny). Like I said before, I do respect Bruce Lee as a martial artist. He’s pretty damn good (which is probably an understatement from other things I’ve read). There were just moments where you could tell it was fake, such as when it didn’t exactly show the hits, or the camera cut just at the right moment so that you could see a foot coming into view from off screen to touch somebody’s face (with a loud ‘smack’ sound). Or sometimes there were moments when it was clear there wasn’t any contact, but it was acted out like a hit anyway. However, the final fight at the end in the hall of mirrors was freakin brilliant, and probably one of my favorite fight scene moments now.

For the plot, I really couldn’t help but think, the entire time I was watching, of Mortal Kombat. I know MK came later, but I the whole time I was thinking “wow, did they rip off this movie.” I didn’t find out until afterward that MK purposefully based itself heavily on Enter the Dragon. I mean, I could probably write an entire post on their similarities, but I won’t.

But let’s get to the bigger reasons as to why I feel the movie is overrated. Again, I realize the movie was made in the 70s, but it just looked awful. I’ve seen better visual work from 50s films. And then the sound mixing was doubly terrible. And there was a reason that I felt while watching that the entire movie sounded as if the whole thing was dubbed over… because it was. The movie was filmed silently, and everything (including dialogue and sound effects) were dubbed over in post-production. It was incredibly distracting, though. And this was part of the reason for the Shatner-esque acting. Shih Kien didn’t know English, so he just mouthed the lines and somebody else voiced him.

Overall, while I do feel the movie is overrated, I still think it was entertaining enough and good. It just wasn’t great, in my opinion. There was too much poor quality, cliché, and cheesiness. But it does make me want to check out other Bruce Lee films. So unlike some of my other “Overrated Movies” posts, wherein I gave incredibly low scores, this movie is still going to get a pretty good scoring. In fact, here it is.

I Am McLovin!

Overrated Movies: The Descent.

So I gave it another shot and tried to like it. I really did (tried, not liked it). And while Shea over at Unheralded will highly disagree with this entire post, I gotta say the second viewing didn’t help a whole lot (though it did a little).

One year after a horrible car accident kills her family, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) reunites with her risk-taking friends to go on a spelunking adventure in America. However, one wrong thing after another happens, all escalating to the point where they all get attacked by blind, cave-dwelling monsters (AKA Gollums) that want to do nothing but eat them.

I’ll start off with the good things about this movie, some of which I didn’t come to appreciate until this second viewing (I first saw it in theater when it first came out 3 years ago. I saw it for the second time just a while ago). First, the movie had some really great shots pre-cave (and even some really cool shots within the cave, as well). And once they were in the cave, the way the director played with light and darkness was amazing. Seriously, I did love how the only light ever shown while in the cave was light created by the characters (a similar technique was done in the opening scene of Saw 3, which I enjoyed). There was never any added light. If it didn’t come from the characters, it was pitch black in that spot.

Also, the movie did have some really tense scenes. The pre-Gollums scenes in the cave where it was just woman versus nature were great, specifically the horribly claustrophobic body-sized crawlspace scene. I felt the tension for that one in theater, and I felt it again on the second viewing. Though this time, I did appreciate the Gollums a bit more. They were creepy looking, and they weren’t overly reliant on CGI, which is rare these days.

But now for the bad. I think the biggest problem I have for the movie is the characters. Really, the only character’s name I ever remembered was Juno, but I just re-dubbed her as Asian Leader Bitch. In fact, I basically re-dubbed them all. Besides her, there was The Depressed Main Character, Young Immature Risk-Taker, Hot Yet Rarely Shown, The Other One, and Annoying Know-It-All Panicker With A Thick Upper Lip (I know… that one’s a bit long). There are six main girls (I’m relatively sure… they all kind of blend together), and only half of them really have any sort of personality… though, unfortunately, part of that personality is “annoying.” What I’m getting at is that I didn’t care for any them, which is bad for a horror movie. If you don’t care for the characters, then their deaths are meaningless to me (and most of them were).

Not to mention they were mostly idiots (which is depressing, considering two are major risk-takers and should know better; one is an English teacher, which is insulting to me; and one is about to be a doctor). After they find out that these things only know you’re there if you make a noise, at least one of them decides to make loud noises at all times, especially Annoying Know-It-All Panicker With A Thick Upper Lip. Seriously, if you’re walking around a corner to check if a vicious auditory hunter is on the other side, you do not jump and go “AH!” upon looking. And if a bunch are in the room with you, you do not scream “RUN!” as none of them should attack if they don’t hear you in the first place (I’m talking about you, here, Asian Leader Bitch). And speaking of badly written scripts, there was one bit of dialogue I thought worthy of mentioning that I had a bit of a chuckle at. One of the women is like "I'm telling you, I saw somebody! I could describe what I saw EXACTLY." And another asked her to, so she responded "It was a man!" Yeah... how exact and specific.

And this leads to another issue. Towards the very end of the movie, the Gollums start breaking their own rules. A lot of things can happen in a horror movie that breaks boundaries, but the bad guys should never break their own rules. The Gollums are supposed to be auditory predators, yet they make moves and attacks that should not be possible if all they can do is hear (over half the attacks would have involved them having to see their victims). It was ridiculous.

The gore was pretty good, and there were some gross-out moments (like the broken leg fix). But it did get over-the-top at one critical moment, which would be the blood pool. Even if these creatures killed and ate a bunch of people and/or animals in that cave, there would not be a pool of blood that massive right there… unless they specifically drain blood into a pit for later use, but I seriously doubt it.

So the movie did go up a couple notches for me from my first viewing due to some really cool shots and light/dark effects (among a few other things), but the negatives still far outweigh the positives. And there is a sequel coming out, though I figure it’ll follow in the footsteps of horror sequels past and be worse. I guess I’ll wait and see. I usually love movies produced by Lionsgate (especially horror), but I still don’t think this movie deserves all the praise it received.

Feed Me, Seymour!

Overrated Movies: Gosford Park.

Warning: Minor Alluded Spoiler (as to who dies, not to who kills).

I had thought about doing a Top 10 for Overrated Movies, but felt it might be better to just do a recurring article and do one at a time. So that brings us to this movie: Gosford Park. I had the (dis)pleasure of watching this movie for the first time last night (I DVR’d it off IFC). Gosford Park is about…um… absolutely nothing up until somebody gets killed about an hour and a half into the movie. Okay, honestly, it’s about a bunch of rich English aristocrats (and Ryan Phillippe) and their servants who all get together at this mansion to go shooting/hunting. When one of them dies, it turns into a (relatively boring and slightly predictable) who-dun-it.

So this movie has a massive cast full of top-notch actors: Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Stephen Fry, Geraldine Somerville, Emily Watson, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi, Ryan Phillippe, and a whole bunch of others. As I’ve joked, Ryan Phillippe seems to be the most out of place (and he’s not even the only American in the movie. Bob Balaban plays an American movie producer/director, and even he seems like he could be there. Ryan Phillippe’s character just seems to be like a random red herring that normally wouldn’t be there otherwise).

Anyway… so the movie starts off with this young woman (I didn’t really bother to learn anybody’s names, because not only did they change once they got to the mansion, but there were too many people to bother remembering), going out into the rain to help Maggie Smith’s character open a thermos. Yeah. I’m not kidding. So then they get to the mansion and everybody meets up, they talk in quiet voices about stuff you can’t understand and move on to the next person before you can get a grasp on what was being said. Then they cook dinner and then eat it. And the process cycles for the next hour and a half. And then Dumbledore dies TWICE. Then what has to be the most incompetent detective (Stephen Fry) shows up (though he was one of my favorite parts of the movie, albeit insanely out of place).

The movie was incredibly obvious as to whom at least one of the killers was. The other was what I like to call a ‘pull-out-your-ass’ ending. These types of twist endings are those that leave absolutely no clues for the reader or watcher to pick up on to figure it out, and then pull this random ending out their ass so they can point and laugh at you because they pulled a fast one on you, when in reality, there is no respect for that type of ending. For shame, Robert Altman… for shame.

So yeah… incredibly boring and pointless first half (save for a few key scenes in dropping ‘killer’ hints) that you can’t even understand. Then a really random second half that is only made up for by the funny and random Stephen Fry. I know this movie was supposed to be this social commentary thing, but I didn’t even care for it as that, and I like movies with social commentary. I can’t believe this movie won Best Original Screenplay over Memento (or, hell, even Amélie or The Royal Tenenbaums… neither of which I’ve seen, but I’m sure both are much better movies). I can’t believe I’m about to use the following rating… as even Stephen Fry’s short character appearance couldn’t make me watch this again.

She's Gone From Suck to Blow!

(P.S. I think it’s funny how at least half the cast has either been in, is related to somebody who has been in, or is somehow linked to Harry Potter. Gotta love British ensemble casts).