Category Archives: Capsules

Capsules

CAPSULE: VANISHING ON 7th STREET (2010)

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DIRECTED BY:  Brad Anderson

FEATURING: Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, , Jordan Trovillion

PLOT: Several people take refuge in a city tavern when Detroit is inexplicably

Still from Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

plunged into darkness; simultaneously, most of the city’s population has mysteriously vanished.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  Vanishing On 7th Street is a straightforward sci-fi horror flick.  The premise is uniquely weird, but the movie itself is not.

COMMENTS:  Something unknown has struck the city of Detroit.  Something just … well just awful!  All the lights have gone out, but batteries, small generators, and solar cells still work.  Except that capacitor function is mysteriously waning, and there is dramatically less and less sunlight every day.

Even more disturbing is the fact that nearly everyone has suddenly vanished into thin air leaving only clothing and synthetic personal effects behind, such as eyeglasses, pacemakers and false teeth.  Suits and dresses lie empty, still bearing the shapes of the people who were wearing them, right where they stood or sat when they disappeared.  Driver-less vehicles careen into obstacles and un-piloted planes fall from the sky.

A brightly lit bar on 7th Street that is still powered thanks to a backup generator draws several people who survived the vanishing.  It seems to be the only reserve generator still running, and it is starting to die despite adequate fuel.

What is this inky blackness that is spreading like a kerosene slick, slithering out of cracks and crevices, creeping up from grates, and oozing into open spaces where it devours people?

7th Street has a lot of potential, but the filmmakers try to make the characters “accessible” by having them behave irrationally.  Ironically, it’s therefore difficult to have empathy for them. This is not the fault of the actors, who all deliver competent performances.

A lot of film time that could be devoted to exploring the vanishing phenomenon and to other, even scarier scenarios is wasted with senseless action, bickering and characters waxing maudlin.  The survivors spend a lot of time arguing and doing very stupid, counterproductive things.

Disappointingly, they fail to do the obvious.  Despite the fact that light is protecting them from the darkness, it never occurs to them to build a raging bonfire.  Desperately scavenging old batteries, they never have a flash of insight to raid the Duracell racks at the nearest Walgreens.  One day I would like to see brighter, more pragmatic people being challenged in a horror movie.

On the other hand, if something really happened such as what we see depicted in Vanishing On 7th Street, the film’s participants would probably be typical, given the cross section of the population I observe daily who cannot complete a simple ATM transaction in under 15 minutes.  Perhaps merit in the choice of characters depends upon whether one expects good drama or fictional “documentary.”

The story in Vanishing has a few plot holes, but the basic idea is good and creepy.  Despite wishing I had a fast forward button handy at times, the film mostly kept my attention and gave me goosebumps.

You may not find Vanishing On 7th Street to be the most thoughtful horror movie you have ever seen, but it is still fun.  It is worth a peek for any but the most discriminating horror fans.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“What’s especially maddening about Vanishing on 7th Street is that there are some interesting elements to the film; they just get completely overlooked by the story. Much of the movie is kind of a weird version of the rapture, but its religious imagery is perfunctory and without any real thought behind it.”–Sean Gandert, Paste Magazine (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982)

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DIRECTED BY: , Frank Oz

FEATURING: , Frank Oz (puppeteering); Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw (voice acting)

PLOT: A meek Gelfling sets out on a journey to fulfill the prophecy that he will heal the Dark Crystal.

Still from The Dark Crystal (1982)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  With its advanced puppetry and dazzling color, The Dark Crystal is a visually spectacular movie.  The standard-issue quest story, however, is nothing unusual; just recycled Tolkien, watered down for kids.

COMMENTS: The Dark Crystal may be the most elaborate puppet show ever staged. There are no human actors in the film, and the sets—from the spiny castle rising from a bleak landscape to the twisted interior corridors of the Skeksis’ lair to the forests of walking plants—are all fairy tale artifice, storybook illustrations adapted into three-dimensional scenery. A menagerie of imaginatively designed creatures parade in front of these beautifully textured backdrops. Most impressive are the evil Skeksis, hunched bipeds who simultaneously resemble reptiles, dinosaurs and birds of prey. They are opposed by the gentle Mystics, four armed, droning sloths with kind wizardly faces, and Gelflings, the “human” characters, who look like an experiment in breeding J.R.R. Tolkien’s elves with chimpanzees from The Planet of the Apes. The meticulously molded puppets–each turkey-faced Skeksis’ beak is individually gnarled—have expressive eyes, and their jaws move when they speak. The rest of the puppet faces, however, are immobile; so despite the minute detailing, the mix of animatronics with static features makes the creatures overall appearance unreal and somewhat uncanny—maybe even “weird.” (The fact that the puppets move at about three-quarters the speed of a human actor, while seriously hampering the action sequences, also adds to the movie’s artificial reality).

The simplistic, muted emotions conveyed by the creatures’ features aren’t terribly jarring, however, because their puppet shells are inhabited by one-dimensional characters. Lack of character depth isn’t a problem for the villainous Skeksis. It’s fun (and even a bit nightmarish) to watch them squabbling among each other, engaging in strange rituals and speaking in individualized voices which run the gamut from dusty croaks to throaty grunts to sinister whines. The flatness does become an issue when it comes to our Gelfling heroes, however; Chosen One Jen, and his eventual companion Kira, are simply bland, projecting little individuality or complexity. The pair are mild and fearful, but more competent than they realize, so they are effective as surrogates for the children in the audience. Adults, however, will have are hard time drumming up much enthusiasm for these two meek ciphers, especially since the outcome of their quest is literally foreordained (is there ever a salvation prophecy in a fantasy movie that the heroes don’t manage to fulfill?).

Jen the reluctant Hobbit (I mean, Gelfling) must return a Ring (I mean, a broken shard of the crystal) to the heart of Mordor (I mean, the castle of the Skeksis), while being stalked on his journey by a skulking Gollum (I mean, the banished Skeksis Chancellor). This basic story structure is enough to enthrall kids, but the best we adults can say about it is that it’s comfortably familiar, and that the plot never distracts us from looking at the pretty pictures. And there are some memorable moments to behold: the ritual opening with the Skeksis gathered around the glowing purple Crystal, absorbing its power; the Gelflings floating downstream through a storybook forest; the caravan of Mystics trudging across a desert at sunset. If you had those moments imprinted on you as a child, you’re likely to remember The Dark Crystal as a fantasy masterpiece; if you see it for the first time as an adult, you’ll see an impressive puppet show, and maybe wish that you could go back in time to an innocent age when it would have been pure magic to behold.

The unsung hero of The Dark Crystal is illustrator Brian Froud, who was responsible for the creature designs. Jim Henson would team up with Froud again in 1986 for Labyrinth, a more complex, allegorical story that mixed puppets with live actors Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“As narrative, the incidents in The Dark Crystal are unremarkable; as the excuse for special effects, fanciful decor and eccentric characters, they do nicely enough. Here, as in such ambitious films as Blade Runner and Diva, texture is more important than text. “–Richard Corliss, Time (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Trip Carter,” who remembered this [as well as Labyrinth] as “overflowing with weirdness.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE CASSEROLE MASTERS (200?)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: J. William Carter (Billy Carter?)

FEATURING: Billy Carter, Larry McKellen, Bobby Cilantro, Stevie Dawson, Jimmy Howitzer

PLOT: None.

Still from The Casserole Masters

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST It’s certainly weird enough, but, although some of the animated sequences show talent, the live-action sequences are too amateurish, and more annoying than bizarre.

COMMENTS: I’m going to resist the temptation to start out this review with quips at the expense of the makers of The Casserole Masters, and instead give you some useful advice (for a change). Load up the movie (embedded below) and immediately skip to 24:30 for a short lecture by “Molcok the Owl” on the afterlife. It sounds like footage from a Scientology question and answer session, as the mild-mannered, mystical bird describes his visit to the interstellar Hall of Mirrors, a journey illustrated with swirling psychedelic patterns and egg-shaped spacecraft and sausages. If you enjoyed that, and maybe even if you didn’t, skip forward again to 52:05 (you’ll know you’re at the right spot when you see the proscenium floating in a blood red sky) for the strangest video Christmas card ever filmed, scored to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and featuring a silent snowy forest, kaleidoscopic peppermint colored backgrounds, festive mushrooms, and a vintage Santa who bleeds from his eyes. These two short worthwhile segments, both animated, rescue The Casserole Masters from the “beware” rating it would otherwise earn. If I had tried to watch Masters from the beginning, without being obliged to review it, I would have given up within five minutes, because the rest of  the movie looks like home video of some Dadaist frat boys noodling around on a Saturday afternoon. Recurring characters include a guy with a magic-marker mustache, Burger King crown, and a lobotomized smile, and another character who repeatedly babbles about being Batman; they stand in a room and giggle stupidly and howl abuse at each other. All voices are electronically speeded up or slowed down to maximize the irritation factor. The largest role goes to a sheriff with a shaving cream beard who delivers monologues praising religion and denouncing drugs, and plays a “knife game” with a tied-up prostitute in pasties and plastic trash-bag panties. An authority figure preaching virtue while practicing depravity: yawn. For the climax we learn the casserole recipe, which involves tentacles in oil and a wiener. The live-action segments look like footage Harmony Korine rejected for Trash Humpers as too repetitive and annoying. And yet, as insufferable as the live action scenes are, the “animated” sequences—which are just cutout images manipulated very simply, but effectively, with zooms and pans to create the illusion of movement—are interesting, reminiscent of a slower paced, weirder, and less witty iteration of Terry Gilliam‘s animation work for Monty Python. The animations are scattered throughout the movie, sometimes laid over the filmed material, but Casserole only heats up in those two extended segments cited above. Stretching for something else to praise, I’ll mention that the synthesized score by Blue Fiction is actually very good. Still, there’s about ten minutes of worthwhile material buried inside of seventy minutes of avant-garde dreck. It may work reasonably well as background wallpaper for an acid trip, though, which may well be Casserole Masters intended route of ingestion.

We’ve embedded the video below for your convenience, but we found the playback on blip.tv to be sporadic, particularly if you try to use the slider to fast forward the movie. If you’re having trouble watching the embedded video you can try viewing it on the Casserole Masters homepage. It may also help playback if you let the file load on the page for a while before hitting “play.” Good luck!

Capsules

CAPSULE: SMASH CUT (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Lee Demarbre

FEATURING: , Sasha Grey, Jesse Buck, Michael Berryman,

PLOT: An incompetent horror director discovers he can make realistic gore effects by killing his critics and co-workers and using their severed body parts as special effects.

Still from Smash Cut (2009)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: With Smash Cut, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter auteur Lee Demarbre pulls back the weirdness and takes a step towards the conventional (to the extent that a comedic tribute to Herschel Gordon Lewis’ cheesy gore films, featuring a main character who considers a dead stripper in the trunk of his car to be his muse, can be considered mainstream). The results are, frankly, a little boring, though camp gorehounds might find some entertainment here.

COMMENTS: The one-sentence plot synopsis tells you all you need to know; there are very few story surprises as Smash Cut unspools.  You can figure out that the diabolical director starts to enjoy killing as his megalomania grows, finds it increasingly difficult to cover his tracks as the bodies pile up, and is eventually thwarted by the clean-cut young heroes. Since we know what’s coming, it’s crucial that Smash Cut deliver on the gags (especially the weird gags), and unfortunately this is where the movie falls down on the job. The best parts are the two films-within-the-film, perhaps because they push their deranged style to its limits and stay true to their own madness. The first is director and future serial killer Abel Whitman’s trashterpiece Terror Toy, featuring a ragdoll clown murdering a busty psychiatrist with an ink pen and one of the worst “dangling eyeball” scenes you’ll ever witness. The second featurette is a silent art film created as a mousetrap to try to play on the felonious filmmaker’s sense of guilt. In between those two highlights are some interesting, mildly absurd touches—for example, a “suicide” by harpoon and a minor character who sets army men on fire—and a lot of deliberately unconvincing, campy gore effects (though the scene where Abel extracts eyeballs with a box cutter delivers a significant cringe factor). The acting is inconsistent, which is not necessarily a problem in the overall spoofy enterprise, but Continue reading CAPSULE: SMASH CUT (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: SUPER (2010)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Ellen Page, , Liv Tyler, Nathan Fillion

PLOT: A schlub of a fry cook (Wilson) takes drastic action after his wife (Tyler) leaves him for her drug dealer (Bacon), deciding to become a superhero called “The Crimson Bolt” to win her back. Teaming up with a lively comic store clerk (Page), he experiences the pain and very real violence that isn’t detailed in the comic books he reads.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s yet another “regular guy becomes a superhero” story, equally mixing dark humor and gritty drama while throwing in some comic book action segments. It stands out for its more realistic portrayal of the premise and unexpectedly unsettling moments, but never exceeds “offbeat” on the Weird-o-meter.

COMMENTS: At its core, Super offers nothing new. After a life-changing event, a “normal” loser realizes how easily he can dress up in a funny costume and run around at night surprising “bad guys” with a blunt weapon. Wearing a mask and taking out his frustration with his own bad luck in life makes him feel powerful and gives him a new perspective, etc, but he also learns that being a fake superhero has real-life consequences. It’s only the bleakly comic tone set against hyper-realistic violence that makes the film stand out from an over-slicked, stylized effort like Kick-Ass.

Attempting to balance kooky jokes and drug-fueled shootouts, writer/director James Gunn capriciously changes moods from scene to scene. One moment Rainn Wilson is delivering delightfully deadpan narration, and the next he’s unleashing a crazed fury indicative of a truly unsettled mind.  One moment Ellen Page is excitedly extolling the fun of superhero-dom, and the next she’s purposefully crushing someone’s legs with a car.  Kevin Bacon cracks wise over a strange breakfast of scrambled eggs, and later encourages his seriously drugged-up girlfriend to give herself over to a horny drug lord.  There is a constant tugging at the audience’s emotions and affections, and honestly, my nerves.  I was more often uncomfortable or just turned off by the proceedings, especially when the unnecessary religious angle was added followed by a stupid attempt to give Page and Wilson a romance.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find Super very funny at times, primarily a result of the talented cast.  Wilson has his share of cute, quirky moments, while Nathan Fillion’s all-too-short appearance as a Christian TV superhero is gleefully hammy. Bacon impressed me with an unexpectedly entertaining performance. It’s really Page who stands out though, infusing comic nerd Libby (aka “Boltie”) with as much bubbly enthusiasm as she does unhinged sadism.  Boltie’s more outspoken and petty than the Crimson Bolt, and just as easily incited to violence, serving as whatever the opposite of a “conscience” would be.

Super never finds its footing, resulting in an uneven attempt at a realistic superhero movie, though I’m sure Gunn was aiming for a unique and more in-depth exploration of the concept. It’s primarily a comedy, but the heavy doses of drugs, violence, and relationship drama make for a confusing watch.  Some of the action sequences are exciting, but more often than not they feel out of place.  It’s watchable for the cast (especially the ever-likable Page), but doesn’t excel in any other area, except perhaps for a very cool animated opening credits sequence.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In the end, this diffuse and off-balance film—one that weirdly combines cardboard characters and emotional urgency, high conceptualism and visceral rawness—does come together, albeit in a strange, and strangely fitting, way.”—Nathan Heller, Slate.com (contemporaneous)

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