Poor Miss Liberty, you're always picked on by Hollywood. Know that for me, your loves lifting me higher.

I’ve gotten a few comments on my reviews in the past that look like this.

“This whole thing seems stupid, why waste your time upsetting the writer and the fans of the story, when different people have different opinions. The way this is written makes it look like you haven’t really paid much attention to it. Sorry I just don’t understand. I didn’t particularly want to watch it at first, and now I have- I am completely obsessed with it. I recommend it.”

beth

Why must you be an insufferable prick? Just enjoy the fucking movie and stop complaining about the plot holes. Better yet, write your own movie and see if you can make it without a single moment where somebody thinks it’s stupid or sees a flaw. If you’re so good at finding flaws, then you’d be perfect to write a book which lacks them. Seeing as how your a fucking genius.

Might I add the fact that there is magic in the first place is a huge fucking plot whole because magic isn’t even real. So, there. The article is much less shorter and a lot less whiny.

Lauren

These movies are science fiction designed for entertainment purposes. Why are you comparing what was intentionally designed to be fantasy to that of reality?

Lamby

These comments strike at the very heart of why it’s difficult for me to write these articles.  While I still feel that my opinion of Cloverfield is that it’s a shitty story I can’t exactly say that it was stupid.  My opinion of it may have been that it was stupid, or that while attempting to make something original they screwed it up by forgetting important things like character development, or plot development.  I could say that its use of Shaky-Cam ruined what could potentially have been a cinematically wonderful movie, or that the acting was wooden and at times unintentionally comical.

But I couldn’t say it was stupid, just my opinion of it.

After the monster starts his attack a group of people start moving deeper into danger, trying to reach the main characters not-girlfriend.  While his actions are stupid, they can be realistic given the movie.  While it may be stupid to charge toward a huge raging monster that has destroyed half the city for a girl that you last heard screaming in agony, it is something I could see a person doing.   Love is stupid.  It causes you to do stupid things.

I can’t say that the group following him loved the girl as much as he does.  So one might consider charging into danger for a person you hardly have feeling towards stupid, but once again, it can be realistic.  At times people will choose what is familiar yet dangerous, over being alone with an increased chance of safety.  This group, while not bound by any great love for each other, is the only people recognizable in a world that has (to them) stopped making sense.  I can easily see a person following along just because the fear of being detached from a recognizable face is crippling.

This isn't a screen grab. This was the actresses reaction to her own movie at the premiere.

Finally one would say that in the act of fleeing for your life, through harsh environments filled with debris, looters, a large monster and several but amazingly vicious monsters scurrying around all over the place, why would people continue to concern themselves with documenting everything on camera.  Especially when your hands could be better used towards navigating such hostile environments, or predisposed with survival, why would someone focus on …well camera focus.  I can agree that this movie took exception possibly to the edge if not beyond what is reasonable, but is it unreasonable?  This is the story of one group amongst countless thousands of survivors.  While it would be a bit uncharacteristic for the single group to; have the statue of liberty’s head land right in front of them, be present when the bridge was collapsed by a huge tentacle, have a member singled out and eaten by that large monster, end up in the military epicenter, and fly off on one of the few available army choppers, it is not outside the realm of possibilities. In a city of millions, of which hundreds of thousands of small groups of people trying to escape, of which thousands are actually filming the events that take place, it is possible that a single group is able to record the entire series of events, and that the same group could experience as much as they have, given the scale of the attack.

There were a few points of stupidity here and there, but to point them out would be nitpicking minutia.  The bottom line is that given the situation, I can’t say I would have acted any differently.  That is how I draw the line in the articles I review.  For the sake of storytelling I will accept a world in which a large monster from the ocean has ravaged most of New York City.  If in that same movie they tried to kill the monster by drowning it, that’s when I have to write an article.

And so we have a new segment to Movie Stupidity called “Watch This, Not That” or WTNT (What Nut) for short.  So without further ado, I give you: Watch This, Not That 1: Let the Right One In vs. Twilight.

Let The Right One In fills that need for a vampire based romance, without a whiny self narrative.  It’s about a young boy who meets a vampire and falls in love with her, despite the fact that she’s an evil monster.  The big difference here between LTROI and Twilight is that the vampire actually acts like a fucking vampire and not some puffed up Lite-Brite Ken Doll.  This really does make the movie all that much better.  The monsters act like monsters, rather than just crying about being a monster.  A 12 year old girl shows bigger “horror balls” than Edward could ever muster across all the upcoming sequels.

Now i’m aware there is an American version, but I’ve not watched it.  I can say that this Swedish version is pretty damned good.  It also makes the whole thing feel more real.  Nothing says sallow faced vampire like a European adolescent.  Eli kills people, and is horribly burned by the sun, because that’s just what vampires do.  It doesn’t stop Oskar from falling for her though.  This is how youthful love should be; awkward and terribly violent.

I am not saying LTROI does not have scenes of stupidity in it.  I’m just saying that given a comparison to Twilight, I’d say it’s a two percent to heavy cream ratio.  For instance at one point a man, given a set of reasonable indicators, is lead to believe that he is in fact facing a vampire.  When he goes to attack the vampire in her sanctuary however, he only brings along a small pocket knife.  Knowing that you’re going up against a vampire (even if you don’t believe in all the rumors) why you would show up with anything less than a wooden stake lined with silver, dipped in holy water, and sprinkled with garlic powder.

Then there is her father figure.  I say figure, because I’m not sure if they’re ever clear as to what he is.  The man goes out and butchers people, draining them of their blood so that he can bring it back to his daughter.  However the process is so long and the risk of being caught so great, that it doesn’t make sense why they aren’t using the naturally skilled night hunter to get her own meals.  It’s not like serial killer style murders is any less attention grabbing then a vampire attack so long as she agree to mess up the point of blood retrieval after she was done.

Yup. Super discreet he is.

Outside of these and a few more bits of stupidity that might spoil the movie more than I’d like to in this review.  I do know that people who read the novel, or read the forums, or just figured it out on their own, may realize a bit more truth about Eli than I’ve written about, but I still don’t think it diminishes from the story, or relationship shown therein.  You don’t have to point me to any books, but I will say that there are scenes in the movie that will make the viewer a bit confused and reasonably so.

Still, I would rather be confused about these subtle aspects than be confused about how a full town of ethnically diverse young men can all simultaneously be attracted to the same scrawny awkward stuttering new girl.  LTROI has quite a few awkward silent scenes in it that makes a person try to read what’s happening without words.  In Twilight the awkward pauses are all choreographed, and excruciating.  Yes you’re staring longingly into his eyes because you love him. Now can we please move on? You’ve been like in that fucking field of flowers for what feels like hours.

"Are you thinking about how much you love me?" "No i'm just saying 'Squeal like a pig!' over and over again in my head. You know, the usual."

Finally I’d say that the last thing LTROI has on Twilight is realism.  Now this sounds pretty pathetic considering it’s a vampire love story, but I have to say it’s true.   The world of Twilight, set in the overused blue green transfer effect and filled with Abercrombie and Fitch floor associates seems to be in a world of its own; distant, unrealistic, and down right gaudy.  It’s hard to relate with the characters, when the characters are more just cut outs from Tiger beat.  LTROI feels like it got its cast by stopping random people boarding a subway car.  In Twilight characters are either 2 dimensional demons or caring and compassionate.  Even the vampires really do have good intentions.  LTROI has no black and white.  Everything is set in the all expansive grey, where we all actually reside.

Accept for my landlords.  They’re pretty much dicks, through and through.

Today’s post comes from a good friend by the name of Tracy (totally not a chick) aka Metalbourne.    I’m a fan of pretty much every word he writes, even when he isn’t composing articles.  People who know him, knows that he doesn’t pull his punches. That’s why I’m thankful he lives on the complete opposite end of the country, because I don’t think he’d like the chick joke.

So enjoy Tracy’s article on 4th Kind.

(Oh and one last thing, these articles, much like my articles always contain spoilers.)

Plot Fragments: The Fourth Kind of Failure

I’m going to spoil it right away: Her husband killed himself. The sheriff shows her a picture of his bullet riddled head and a separate picture of a gun and we’re supposed to assume he killed himself.

I think he faked his death to get away from the insane bitch.

And that, right there, is The Fourth Kind in a nutshell. It is a movie about critical thinking where you are required to view the evidence and then make decisions on your own. I know this is the point of the movie because Leeloo Dallas Multipass climbs up on her soapbox right at the beginning and tells me that this is exactly what I am supposed to do.

I know you’ve already tabbed out and added this to your Netflix queue, but don’t, she’s not wearing that bandage bikini thing.

Milla Jovovich plays a psychologist named Abbey Tyler, who is trying to solve the double mystery of her husband’s death and why some people in the town of Nome, Alaska aren’t sleeping so well. You see, early on, we’re shown a scene of Tyler’s husband being brutally stabbed by an alien, but this is all a false memory. So, really, Tyler is just batshit insane. The perfect person to start hypnotizing people to find out why they’re not sleeping at night.

Everything goes well until the first guy she hypnotizes remembers something so terrible that he can’t describe it, and then goes home to kill his family and then himself. At this point, both the town sheriff and Tyler’s son ask in a passive aggressive tone, “How did your husband really die?”

Because, lets face it, hypnotizing a guy into killing himself is starting to look like her M.O. Sadly, the sheriff isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and lets her go. It would have been nice if this were a formulaic movie about a woman dubbed the “hypnosis murderer” and then has to clear her name by producing proof of aliens, but there’s a twist at the end and she actually is so insane that it’s rubbing off on everyone else.

Speaking of “everyone else,” another of her patients is at home, and calls Tyler up desperately wanting to be hypnotized. My guess is that he’s probably afraid that he’s too lazy to drive all the way home and kill his family after being hypnotized, so he wants to get it done right then and there so he can get around to the brutal murders before the momentum wears off.

Things go horribly wrong for the number two guy, as he is possessed by the aliens and made to levitate off the bed and scream a warning in moonspeak right before suffering a seizure so bad that his spine breaks. It’s actually pretty logical that, as a cover up for their dalliances with humans, the aliens would scare people away by doing something way more spectacular than whatever it is they were trying to cover up, because this is exactly the method that has worked for every Scooby Doo villain. Ever. That’ll show those meddling fucking kids!

I’m going to spoil something else here: There’s no trap or reveal where they pull off the rubber mask. As awesome as that would be, it just doesn’t happen. Instead, Tyler discovers that she’s been abducted also, has herself hypnotized, and then gets herself and her two kids abducted. The sheriff makes more comments about her husband, then breaks the news to her. Then the movie ends without resolving any of that. Seriously, it was glossed over just as well as I just did here.

Her daughter doesn’t come back from the abduction, and nobody cares except for a footnote at the end of the movie. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

Back to the critical thinking thing I was talking about earlier, Tyler video tapes her hypnosis sessions, and not only are these “actual recordings” played in the movie, the screen splits and the “actual video” plays alongside the dramatic reenactment. As if they’re trying to make the argument, “This is real! Why would we video tape it twice?” of course, my question is, “Why would you tape this travesty even once?”

But it’s okay, it’s all an exercise in critical thinking. Just so long as you don’t think about how you could be better spending your time.

Here’s something you could be spending your time doing: Watching a movie with real fucking aliens in it. In real life, every time someone says, “I have real video taped proof of aliens!” you know he’s actually saying, “I have five minutes of static I want you to watch,” and this movie follows that same trope to the letter. Every scene where there might be an alien, or even something interesting, is obscured by static. Just to be even bigger cockteases about it, anyone witnessing whatever is going on will exclaim about how spectacular it is. There’s no aliens seen ever in this movie. They’re as real as ghosts.

Even in the climax of the movie, Tyler shares her no-alien memory of the abduction in the form of a shot and an implied probing.

Not anal.

Oh! So maybe that’s why her daughter is abducted and never brought back! She’s half al– Nope. We never find out. That’s the end of it.

My guess is that after the abduction by aliens and presented with the choice of being reunited with her batshit crazy mom, she decides to stay with the aliens. Not wanting to care for the whining little brat, they drop her in the woods and she just makes a run for it. Whatever the decision is, the producers decided to stop paying her and wrote her out of the last ten minutes of the movie.

The entire movie is wrapped up in a scene where Tyler is being interviewed and the movie was her story. At the end we’re back to “real” tyler, a sort of frumpy looking skeleton in a wheelchair. Based on what I’ve seen of aliens, I can imagine why they found her attractive enough to inseminate. The camera pans over to her interviewer, who stares for several long seconds, and finally says, “Where the fuck is this story going?”

No, I’m just kidding. The idiot hung on her every word like a desperate guy hoping he’ll get laid. The movie ends with some audio recordings of 911 calls of ufo and alien sightings. Frankly, I didn’t even bother trying to find out if those were real or not.

Sadly, that’s all there is to this movie. The aliens are just as present as any kind of plot resolution. The one redeeming factor is that you can look at The Fourth Kind as a kind of satire about how people will believe almost anything so long as they’re shown a picture as proof. It doesn’t really matter what quality or how relevant the picture is, just so long as someone says, “This is the proof.” The only thing this movie is proof of is that you wasted time watching it. But, hey, Milla Jovovich wants you to make your own decision. (She doesn’t take her clothes off)

Journey with me, if you will, passed my writing desk and into my mind.  Seriously enough with the pancakes and blow jobs. I don’t have all day.  Are you with me? Excellent.  Recline in the comfy La-Z boy of my mind and hear the pitch.

Roots.  Yes, Alex Haley’s classic Saga of an American Family.  Only the whole story needs a bit of work.  For instance, who’s going to follow a story about a guy named Kunte?  Toby’s nice.  We’ll keep Toby.  Toby is washed ashore on the beaches of America after a savage mutiny aboard the pirate ship of which he was captain.  Now Roots chronicles the generations of a family struggling against oppression and despair in a bid to survive, but fuck that shit, I’m going to focus on the chase scenes.  Toby and his hot ass Latino sidechick Harriet Tubs make their way to the north, escaping a wily Master Lord Calvert with their hilarious antics.  A bunch of stuff happens, there are some explosions, and the movie culminates with Toby snapping John Wilkes Booth’s neck after an intense wire fight.  Sounds terrible, doesn’t it?

Well imagine someone did that to the Three Musketeers, and to top it off put Tim Roth in a very silly hat.

17th Century France was well known for it's Polyurethane fiber mills.

The movie jumps right into the action, with the immediate death of D’artagnan’s parents at the hand of Febre (captain of the Cardinals guard) before the opening credits even start to roll.  I guess they wanted to jump right into the character development and story, and what better way to do it, than with the murder of some parents.  Worked for Batman!

D’artagnan is raised by Planchet, a former sword master who is known throughout the land as having worn the same exact outfit for 15 years or more.  This large, stocky, lumbering swordsman taught D’artagnan to sword fight in the same manner that he himself must have, through high flying acrobatic flips.

So D’artagnan goes to Paris to join up with the Musketeers with Planchet in tow, and along the way gets into a fight with 6 men in a tavern.  Planchet warned him that the place had bad food and bad company, but D’artagnan insists that he’s only going there for breakfast.  Didn’t the guy just tell you the food sucks?  After soundly whipping the men with the aforementioned acrobatics, one man holds Planchet hostage.  D’artagnan shows that his ability to think is as sharp as his blade by telling the hostage taker that he has six men outside.  I thought that the point of taking a hostage is for dealing with situations where you are facing overwhelming forces, but I guess the one guy able to easily beat six men isn’t enough to scare him.  It takes the threat of six more men outside.  He lets Planchet go, rather than bothering to actually look outside the window and see if there are in fact six men out there.

So as this goes on, we learn that the Cardinal is working on making the king look like an asshole in front of the king of England.  The Cardinal has also disbanded the Musketeers in order to ensure that his attempts would go unhindered.   Upon arriving in Paris, D’artagnan meets up with the other musketeers, who are so unimportant in this movie that it’s almost pointless to name them.  D’artagnan and the two or three musketeers end up saving Treville (the captain of the Musketeers, who was framed by Febre) from prison. D’artagnan accomplishes this by knocking on the door of the prison and offering the guards a huge barrel of wine.  When the guards realize this is probably a trap, he blows up the barrel which is in fact filled with explosives.  If he was going to just blow up the barrel anyway, why knock on the door?

Treville shows his leadership qualities by threatening to go directly to the king if they try to arrest him again.  Whoa Whoa, slow down there old timer.  There’s no reason to get crazy.  Maybe you should start the “resistance” off a bit slower like politely requesting the Cardinals guards not arrest all of your men without cause, or baking Febre  a cake with the words “Sorry we’ve had trouble becoming friends” written in icing on top.

Next the musketeers botch one of the Cardinals plans by foiling an attempted hobo coup, or at least, by transporting the king and the royal family to safety.  Now might be a good time to mention to the king that the Cardinal has disbanded the only group of people set to protect his life.  You know, while they’re protecting his life.  Maybe they could have even hinted at their ideas of the Cardinals intentions.  I guess that would make too much sense.

Later on after avoiding capture by the Cardinals guards, D’artagnan meets up with the Cardinal through a window (Batman?) threatens him (Batman?) and disappears without a trace (Batman!?).

It turns out Febre was in the Cardinals closet during the whole meeting.  When asked whether he wanted D’artagnan dead, the Cardinal said no, due to D’artagnan’s popularity with the king.  This is a classic stupid move that antagonists always go for in movies.  They always decide not to kill the guy who’s giving them the most problem, for some bullshit reason like he’s too popular, or he’s not a threat.  They knew where D’artagnan lives, and he returns there every night.  They have the power of the churches private army at their command, and they can’t figure out how to just kill a guy in his sleep.  The excuse regarding the king liking him too much is just rubbish.  Why would the king care about a single musketeer when he hasn’t cared about the disbanding and unlawful arrest of the entire personal guard?

D’artagnan flees Paris with the queen and a chambermaid in order to “call in the cavalry” but is pursued the entire way by an actual cavalry.  They shake off the pursuit, but are later on caught when D’artagnan decides that the best time to go skinny dipping is during an important quest while being hunted by an army of enemies.  While the Queen is being incarcerated, Febre actually proves that he knows what it means to be a musketeer by actually using a musket to shoot Treville.  D’artagnan returns to find the place in chaos, and rallies the musketeers to go save the queen.

The Musketeers must never have been involved in any military campaigns, because they make a few mistakes when storming the castle.  First, when storming a castle secretly at night, it is not a good idea to start screaming the charge while you’re still several hundred yards away.  That has a tendency to alert the guards with the canons on the wall.  After countless unnecessary musketeer deaths later, they arrive at the gate to find Planchet’s carriage waiting.  It’s funny that the carriage filled with explosives was able to make it to the gate without sustaining a scratch, but the musketeers lost half their men.

The musketeers all manually push the wagon around and towards the gate so that they can aim their canons.  While they’re doing this, musketeers are getting picked off left and right.  It might have made more sense to have parked the wagon backwards to begin with, or hell even had the canons pointing from the front of the wagon.  They finally blow a hole through the gate and rush in to attack the guards, all of whom have swords (rather than muskets) ready to meet them.  The queen and tavern wench decide to alert D’artagnan of their position by dropping a huge ass bust from the top of a 5 story high tower.  You’re doing a great job nearly killing the people who’ve come to rescue you.

D’artagnan believes the stairs take way too long to climb up, so he shoots a grappling hook (BATMAN?!) up to the top of the tower and climbs up. Guards at the top of the tower decide to repel down to sword fight him while hanging from ropes, rather than just shooting him.  Who taught the guards to fight while repelling?  How often does that need come up?  Why’d they even have the repelling equipment ready?

He reaches the top of the tower just in time to endanger the queen who is shot at by Febre.  Fortunately the tavern wench is there to take a bullet.  It’s also fortunate that she is bullet proof, considering as how she is not only alive after being shot, but that there is no lasting wound visible later.  Febre waits for D’artagnan to have a lengthy discussion with her, and chooses not to use that time to reload and shoot D’artagnan.  Now the fight is on.  They go down the easily accessible stairs, and arrive into what can only be described as a ladder factory.  Why is it whenever there is a sword fight in movies, they always have to be balanced on opposite ends of a seesaw?  A few minutes of really badly done wire fighting later and Febre decides to abandon all the skill he had shown at sword play until now, and just charge straight at D’artagnan with the sword pointed out.  He’s killed and they cut to the standard ending for these kinds of movies; a star wars coronation, and a wedding carriage rolling off into the sunset.

Aside from all the stupidity inherent in the movie, with the cliché responses and resolutions to obvious plot holes, The Musketeer commits a very serious crime.  They take a story, and gut everything that was good about it.  Then they add as much flash and fight’s as they can, without any regard to style or substance.  There are some amazing sword fights that can be achieved through standard fencing that don’t require kung fu mastery.  The movie is akin to adding Xtreme to the beginning of a word to make it sound more Xciting.  This movie is nine years old, and I’m sure Hollywood’s learned from its mistakes and won’t try to remake a classic so horribly again.

Fuck.

This movie details what happens on your typical trip to the mall on Christmas Eve.  Parking is horrible, the stores are packed, you almost always run into someone you didn’t feel like talking to, and you are attacked by a gang of hoodlums in a crowded parking lot who then shoot a security guard and chase you down as the “sole” witness.  So it’s a pretty typical outing really.  Something they decided to make a movie about.

Hiding behind a bloody scrap of paper would not have been the dumbest thing she's done in the movie.

So let me start off by saying that this movie wasn’t made by some college students as a drunken prank.  You’ll understand why I have to point this out shortly, but I want you to resolve that in your mind.  It has Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy 2, Pans Labyrinth) listed as the Executive Producer, and leads by Kim Basinger (Batman, LA Confidential) and Lukas Haas (Witness, Brick).   I know good actors play terrible roles, but I needed you to understand that this movie wasn’t an attempt at humor.

We start the movie with Kim Basinger playing the role of Della, a stay at home mom who seems to have trouble maintaining said home.  Her husband comes home to see the house a complete mess, and starts to get abusive.  Now I will never condone violence against a woman.   In the nine years I’ve known my wife, I’ve hardly ever told her to shut up, let alone become violent, and I think a man that does harm to a woman is not a man.  That being said, the house was a fucking mess.  She has two adult children with functional arms and legs.  There really was no excuse.

Anyway, we’ve set the premise for her being unhappy, her husband being abusive, and her kids being spoiled to shit.   I say they’re spoiled because while she’s getting threatened by her husband, her kids are sitting on the steps watching the entire time.  You’d think that they’re showing concern, but as soon as she gets them upstairs, their only concern is whether or not Santa will be bringing home a Wii.  Later on they steal the cookies she leaves for Santa. What lovable little shits.

Leaving to buy gift wrap from a mall on Christmas Eve  (rather than just picking some up quickly from a small shop), she arrives to find a packed parking lot.  She stops and asks a cop where she can park, and he gives her an obvious answer of “Farther out.”  She then asks if he means “Over there?” pointing…farther out.  What part of the answer was not understood? At this point i’m really having trouble deciding whether Della is depressed, or just retarded.  Later on when confronted with the choice of Milk Chocolate or Dark Chocolate biscotti, she chooses none of the above.  That answers my question.  Only a retard would pick anything but milk chocolate.

She sees a car has taken up two parking spots and decides to leave a message on it, calling him a selfish jerk.  Honestly, there’s no fucking excuse for that kind of potty mouth.  When she returns from her shopping and arrives at her car, she is confronted by the offending cars owners, Chucky and the gang.  You have Chucky the white guy who is the ring leader, Hughie the black guy, Tomas the Spanish guy, and Vingh the Asian.  I’m surprised they didn’t have a guy in a wheel chair to cover all their bases.

Chucky and the Planeteer’s begin to harass Della who finds this to be the perfect time to fight back.  But as I mentioned earlier, a security guard stops by, gets into the thick of it, and gets shot in the head.   How did Chucky get by all these years without shooting people in the head if he’s going to kill a guy, simply because someone left a barely offensive note on his car?

By the way we learn a great deal about Chucky through that conversation.  He has no parents and has named himself, the world is his bitch, and he has not yet earned the right to call Hughie a “nigga”.  I wasn’t aware that’s something you could earn!  I wonder if you need some sort of certification that the Devry Institute might soon be offering.

Hop in. I've got Slim Whitman on the 8-track. Thinking about bursting some Martian heads. It'll be nice.

Della hops into her car and floors it.  Apparently something she could have done all along.    Rather than going back to the overly populated mall, where her close proximity to hundreds of people might keep her reasonably safe, she goes for the open road: The empty, dark, and wooded road.  And so the pursuit begins.  She’s got a great lead on them, as it’s taken the Planeteer’s half an hour to realize that she’s gone, before they give pursuit.  You’d be wrong however, because they’re always just a few blocks back.  Della does her best getting lost on a road completely devoid of other traffic, which she’s traveled hundreds of times before and crashes into a huge pile of logs.  Women drivers, ‘m I right?

The gang is still several blocks away, giving her plenty of opportunity to hide, but she tries to start the car back up, and ends up settling for taking a toolbox into the woods.  Rather than doing the rational thing of running as fast as she can into the woods, or towards any form of safety, Della decides to hang out only a few feet away from where she’s parked, and watch for the gang’s arrival.

The gang arrives and starts to shout that Della has no where to go.  Really, she has nowhere to go?  I’m pretty sure there’s a huge fucking forest behind her.  Chucky has also promised Hughie that they’d get to drink beers and swim in the Atlantic.  I guess that shines a bit more light on their unspoken relationship.  Hell I wish they were gay for each other! It’d at least add a bit more dimension to their characters.  Della decides she’s heard enough and makes a break for it by unnecessarily climbing a ladder to nowhere.  The hunt is on as Chucky shouts to Della that they’ll find her.  Actually throughout the entire movie, he shouts as he’s chasing her.  I guess it’s more fun when your prey knows exactly where you are at all times.

They actually catch her, and this is the point where she should normally have been raped and/or killed in no particular order, but she actually escapes.  They’ve got her cornered in the foundation of a semi built home, surrounded by 4 men, and she escapes.  ”How?” you might ask? Well because an argument sparks up between Chucky and Tomas regarding whether or not it’s proper to beat a person you’re about to rape and kill.  While they’re arguing, Della pulls a wrench out of her toolbox, knocks Tomas to the floor and somehow manages to snap Hughie’s neck with a single swing.

You’d think they’d be immediately on her, but no they decide to hang out for a while and assess the situation.  They do somehow catch up with her though.  Even though she’s been running for approximately five minutes while they’ve been standing still, they’re immediately on top of her. After a cursory search, they give up the chase and return to dance their cares away in mourning of their lost compatriot.  How will they track her without the power of Earth?  (Okay, I promise you that was the last Captain Planet reference)

I was wondering how they kept running into Della, but at this point you find out how.  Surprisingly it’s not because Della’s carrying around a huge tool box filled with jangly bits of metal, but because Chucky is actually Wolverine.  It’s all starting to make sense!  The missing parents, the world being his bitch, the leadership of a gang of misfit teens… and now he displays his ability to track her by smell.  He smells “her sweat and blood”, and can follow her through the dark woods with the skill of a tracker you wouldn’t consider existed in a boy that grew up on the mean streets of suburbia.

Maybe it’s not so hard to find her because, for a second time, she’d stopped to watch them rather than getting the fuck out of there.  Della also takes a break to read a  letter from her daughter.  She reads a god damn letter from her daughter while being chased by murderers!  This time, while two of the members are distracted by the ghost of Hughie, Tomas gets away from the group and runs afoul a wily Della.  She beats and stabs him to death with a tire cross.

She runs away again but once more decides to stop!  First she stops to scream at God to let her see her children again.  Shortly thereafter she decides to pee in a stream.  That’s right, Kim Basinger the lead actress and one of the producers of the movie, felt that it would be a good idea to “pop a squat” in the middle of an icy brook while being chased by killers.  Chucky sure enough catches up once more (making it the 5th time this movie) but is unable to land a shot with his gun from 5 feet away.  You should have used those claws Wolvie.

Della makes it to the top of a hill, but the remaining two are afraid to pursue her.  Chucky demands Vingh go up there and that he’d work his way around the side (all very loudly).  They get into an argument over Vingh’s hurt feelings, but in the end they decide to separate, since that worked out so well for Tomas earlier.  Want to guess what happens next?  Yep, Vingh is killed by Della.  Specifically he’s slowly stabbed through the neck with a screw driver that she had hidden in her sleeve.  I don’t exactly know why she hid it in her sleeve, considering as how it wasn’t like she was tricking him into a false sense of comfort.  She jumped on his back and stabbed him in the neck.  There’s nothing discreet about that.

Finally it’s just Della and Chucky, and maybe that’s the way they planned it all along.  Chucky pulls another talent from his arsenal. Ladies man.  Part psycho analyst, part Rico Suave, he gently caresses Della’s location out of her.  A romantic tussle commences, and it’s all going well for old Charles until Della throws a flair into his face, knocks his gun out of his hand, and shoots him in the chest.  I guess it serves him right for assuming the best way to woo a woman is to start off the process by threatening to kill her children. Hell, I learned that lesson half way through high school.

Yeah, sure take a nap. Nothing going on right now to worry about.

Della heads for home and upon her arrival tucks the kids in to bed, gives them a kiss good night, and then points a gun at her husbands face.   While the credits roll you are left wondering what the point was of getting the kids comfortable for the night before blowing a hole through her husband.  They don’t show her shooting him, so maybe she just threatens him with a gun.  Who knows? It doesn’t really matter since it’s just another failed attempt at shocking the audience, or an inability to create closure to a situation where characters are so two dimensional.

I guess this movie would fall under the subgenre of a Chase Thriller, whose vaulted ranks are filled with academy nominees such as Surviving the Game, Wrong Turn, and Gymkata.  It’s almost as if the writers had an inability to multitask their characters.  They couldn’t build on character development, and keep the actors moving at the same time.  So they had to force periods throughout the movie where everyone just stands around talking.  In order to explain away why a chase could have such scenes they built ridiculous mechanisms for the gang’s impossible ability to always catch up to their prey, and once more lose her.  I just don’t understand how you can get so many “creative” people to work towards the same bad idea.   Oh right…money.

Also the website was really just a word document with the words www.fuckingawesomemoviewebsiteanddragonballzfanfic.com at the top.

Also I’m pretty sure we only had a single standalone Apple IIe in the school with no functional word processing and internet.

I am terrible at false memories.

Twenty years later I saw Twilight and decided, hey I should make a stupid blog that no one will read and make fun of it.  Thus Movie Stupidity was born.  Now like a semi-retarded boxer who has been punched one too many times, I come back to the ring and offer you my review of New Moon.

(For those of you offended, by my statements please realize that my grandmother is semi-retarded and we’ve punched her one too many times, so that should justify things.)

For mortal enemies, they sure do love rubbing butts.

New Moon actually takes a stab at one of my major complaints in movies, but at the same time fails horribly.  If a plan fails, try it again.  Chances are there were a few things that got in your way the first time, that might not be present a second time around.  In the first movie, trying to push Bella away in order to protect her, failed when Ed Cullen kept having his pants tighten every time she pulled a Glade Plug-in.

This time around Ed teams up with Jacob (her Native American side ass) and Charlie (her I can’t think of a humorous adjective father) and they all get in the spirit of trying to abandon her.  The timing is all wrong though.  I can understand preventing a relationship that you know will be disastrous from happening, but why dump a girl and assume that by doing so you’re protecting her.  Especially considering there is still a blood thirsty vampire with a vendetta prowling the area, and your girlfriend has quite the habit of attracting blood thirsty vampires with vendettas.  But more on this later.  Let’s break down some of the events of the movie.

After a short dream sequence, the movie starts off with a disgruntled Bella driving her beat up truck to school.  She makes sure to change the channel as news of Missing hikers comes on.  They’re presumed dead and hunts are underway for wild animals.  This apparently doesn’t sound familiar at all to Bella.  It’s not like she’s been in a situation where wild beast like attacks occurred, mysteriously killing the inhabitants of a town that rarely sees death.

She meets up with Edward, and shortly after Jacob drops by to give her a gift.  Thanks for the dream catcher.  If that hasn’t established that Jacob is a Native American then he should have arrived in full war paint, riding a bareback stallion. He might as well have given her a casino.

Edward asks why he’s not allowed to give her a gift and she informs him that it’s because she has nothing to give him.  I’m pretty sure that’s not how birthday gifts work, but what the fuck, you could always get him a CD from FYE.  Maybe some more eyeliner.   Later on that night, Bella attends a vampire birthday party and accidentally cuts herself , sending Jasper into a blood fueled frenzy.  Edwards response is to Force Palm  her in the sternum throwing her twelve feet back into a table full of glass.  You know…for her safety.

No it's cool, this is much safer than a paper cut.

She’s patched up in Dr. Carlisle’s (head vamp) office which is decorated by lovely images of demons torturing humans.  Good job showing the world that you’re not a creepy vampire doctor.   Here he explains that Edward is not changing her into a vampire because he fears for her soul.  This is something I just don’t understand about vampires.  They know that fantastical things beyond the knowledge of human kind is possible, while at the same time knowing that, more often than not, humans get it all wrong.

So why subscribe not only to a belief in the mortal soul, but that it is a damnable object, subject to the gospel defined by humans.  If you know that it is within your power to decide on whether eating humans is either good or evil, than why assume that you are damned given that you can actively choose to be good.  I could understand if vampirism changed who you were, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.  It just changes your appetite.  A vampire obviously has a choice of what he will do, and it just so happens that most vampires choose to kill and eat humans.  They chose to be dicks about the whole thing.

The next day Bella goes home and prints out a digital picture of her and Edward.  She then proceeds to fold herself out of the printed picture before scrap booking it.  Were I a standard user, I would say this doesn’t make sense. Being a tech guy by trade, I can say that folding the printout of a digital photo rather than just simply cropping it isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve seen.  Par for the course in fact.  So we’ll let that one go.

Shortly thereafter Edward leads her into the woods, dumps her, asks her not to do anything dangerous, and then disappears into the woods without even watching her.  She’s in the damn woods! Even if you don’t think a vampire is out to get her you must have heard of the missing and probably dead hikers whose numbers keep rising!  She’s returned to safety, but spends the better half of a year staring out of a window and having irrationally loud night terrors.  I mean granted she did get attacked and nearly killed by a vampire in the last movie, but they seem to have established that the dreams started with her being dumped, and it’s not like she was caught completely by surprise at the fact that vampires were trying to kill her.

As it turns out, doing dangerous things causes Bella to hallucinate about Edward.  Unless they’re suggesting that he has a separate power completely unrelated to his current power, and yet able to affect Bella who has been hitherto unreceptive.  Her attempts form a closer bond with Jacob as she spends the remainder of the year rebuilding a motorcycle in order to seek out thrills. Shortly after his intentions become more than platonic, he goes into an apparent rage and disappears from her life.  Seeking him out she eventually is lead to discover that Jacob and his pack are actually werewolves and that they’ve been hunting Jessica the Vvampire (the extra v is for Vendetta!)  Charlie believing it to be wolves that are attacking humans goes out on a hunt for them.  Mind you, a full hunting party is unable to find one single giant wolf print in sodden ground.  

When Bella first sees the wolf pack, a pack of wolves that stand taller than most adult men, and who only attack vampires, her first reaction is to assume they’re just big wolves.  The suspension of disbelief is unbearable.  If you live in a world were Vampires are commonplace enough that a mythos has been built around them, than that same level of information should be available regarding werewolves.  Writers in movies seem to have a fear that their characters may jump to conclusions.  Perhaps I’m wrong, but was I to live in a world where I routinely interacted with vampires, then were I confronted with elephant sized wolves prowling the woods, I could safely assume the existence of werewolves.

Continuing her pursuit of adventure, Bella goes cliff diving.   She just so happens to dive into the same spot of ocean as Veronica, but Veronica chooses not to attack.  Perhaps it is due to Jacobs’s presence in his vulnerable human form that scares her away.  I’m sure a werewolf is quite dexterous in the ocean with its doggy paddle.  Arriving at home Bella discovers Alice (Ed’s vamp sister-ish) came back to discover whether or not Bella has killed herself, as her Future Site power showed her diving off a cliff.  Rather than call the family and inform them that Bella is okay, they decide to brew up a cup of coffee, and wait for Jacob to spoil things by accidentally suggesting Bella has committed suicide to Edward.  The classic stage is set for a Romeo and Juliet ending, were William Shakespeare to have been repeatedly beaten over the head with a shovel.  Ed decides that rather than possible further investigation of his loves death, that it is safe to assume through inference that she’s killed herself, and that he should follow suit.

Alice and Bella travel to Rome to stop Edward from seeking a death sentence from the Vulturi.  Edward is rejected for his initial request, but he plans on having himself killed, by violating vampire law and exposing himself to humans.  As if Italians haven’t seen a scrawny pasty guy all glammed up and shiny before.   Alice decides at the last stroke, that she will not be able to continue because…

If Ed reads Alice’s mind, he will believe she’s lying about Bella being alive, and rush to his suicide.

I just don’t understand this at all.  Maybe it’s a vampire ability to be able to lie so well that you can actually make yourself believe it.  I know there’s a lot to be said about denial, but there’s a pretty damn strong distinction between not wanting something to be true, and not believing it to be.  Especially when your mind is an open book to others.  I cannot lie in my mind, and make myself not realize I’m lying.

We’re unfortunately saved from a Romeo and Juliet ending, as right before he fully exposes himself (although he did catch the eye of a little girl) Bella reaches him.  The Vulturi still want him dead though for revealing himself to Bella.  Something you would have thought they’d have checked for when he initially asked for euthanasia.  As a fight commences Alice saves the day by pointing out that her future site predicted that Bella will one day become a vampire herself.

Aro demonstrates a Classic Vampire Wedgie Shift. Caius's vampire power is pretending not to notice. Who invited Suri Cruise to the party?

As they leave a group of tourists are lead into the room to be devoured by the Vulturi.   Men, women, and children are lead to their slaughter, and the biggest amount of action against it, is a slight shifting of Bella’s arm to suggest she doesn’t agree.  I know I should only be pointing things out that are stupid, but what a horrible retch of a selfish bitch, allowing hundreds if not thousands of innocent people be slaughtered daily without informing the authorities.  Fuck you Bella! There I said it.

Upon arriving home, Bella takes up a vote for if she’ll be turned into a vamp herself, and by a slim majority she wins.  Jasper actually says “It would be nice to not want to kill you all the time.”  Amen brother! My sentiments exactly.  So now that she’s got Edward by his glittery marbles, there is no way for him to back out, but at the last minute Ed throws a curveball.  He says he’ll only turn her into a vampire if she agrees to marry him!  Roll Credits.

From the look on her face, you could tell this was an announcement that came with both shock, and possible concern from Bella.  True she’s been asking Ed to kill her and turn her into a vampire the entire damn movie, but marriage?  That’s a little bit too permanent!

What else can I say about Twilight, that I haven’t already said in agonizing length?  I enjoyed watching the first movie more than this one, because as my wife (vampire god bless her) put it “I was hoping for more Vampire on Werewolf action.”  The repeated allusions to Romeo and Juliet are almost offensive.   For the past year now, the one steady stream of traffic to my site, and emails sent out to me, have been regarding my original article on Twilight.  I guess there are a lot of hard core fans out there that really connect with this story.  Maybe it’s the choice between “love of something dangerous” or “settling for something safer”, that strikes home.  Maybe it’s the idolization of a pasty loner type.  Whatever the case may be, I can’t find a feel for it.  Frankly, the whole thing is just stupid.

You can print out your own papercraft popcorn box!

Click Here for your very own Paper Craft Popcorn Template!

Frontragous!

Backtastic!

edit: I’ll probably clean this all up a bit and put up some assembly instructions when i’m good and damn well ready!

That is where The Strangers fails. It’s 85 minutes long and contains less meat than a guy who walks into a bar and says ouch.

I hate when things are promoted as being Inspired by True Events. It’s such a vague term that you might as well say 300 was Inspired by True Events. That includes battle wizards, 12 foot tall persian emperors, and spending a full day to build a wall of dead men for the sole purpose of crushing 1 enemy. Were the actions taken by the characters in The Strangers based on what really happened, then maybe it was less the murderers that did them in, but more a process of natural selection.

Oh look they're caught. Great job showing the end of the movie in a promo poster. Now I can avoid the 95% of the movie that lead up to that point.

In The Strangers, three people show up at a couples house, scare them a lot, and then stab them to death. What I did there is cover every single intricacy of the movie in a single sentence. I know i said i’d only talk about the stupidity found in a movie, but I’m finding it really hard to classify this as a movie. Movies should be stories, and not just a series of events that takes place.
“I walked to the mail box and sent a letter.” See that’s not a movie either, but if you can classify The Strangers as a movie then my sentence could work as one as well. We could call it The Journey.

So James (Scott Speedman) proposes to Kristen (Liv Tyler) at a friends wedding only to reject him.  You can tell shes said no by the fact that she expresses her emotions through blinking them out in Morse code.   She tells him she’s not ready, and they head off to his family cabin together where he had planned a romantic evening.  I too find my mom and dads house to be the most sensual of locals…

Around  1:30 am there is a knock at the door properly cock blocking James who had to by that point have put up with several hours of awkward blinking.  A girl at the door veiled in darkness asks if Tamara is home.  Not the creepiest of lines I might add, but since she’s hard to hear it almost sounds like she’s asking if Tamar’s home.  Random strangers in the middle of the night is one thing, but when they start bandying about Muslim sounding names it’s time to call the cops.

Rather than be alarmed at all, they decide to split up.  That would be the first time in this movie in which James decides the best thing to do in an uncomfortable and possibly dangerous situation is to leave.  Seriously though, if that hadn’t put their creeped out factor at least into code yellow, than they’re made of tougher material than me and my wife.  Maybe we can’t fully appreciate the desire for cigarettes since we don’t smoke.  But it would probably take a serious coke addiction to drive my wife to allowing me to run off to the store when there are weirdos out and about.  Even then she’d want to come with.

Sure enough when James leaves, our friend returns louder and more persistent.  Kristen plugs her phone in to charge but doesn’t make a call from it.  Even though cell phones can both charge and make calls when plugged in.  She uses the home phone to call James back and alert him, but the line goes dead.  She still doesn’t use the plugged in cell phone, to call the cops.

She’s obviously creeped out enough to grab a knife, but apparently not so much that she’s willing to keep track of the one form of communication to the outside world.  Checking the window she find a pleasant looking fellow standing there and wearing a cloth sack mask.  At that point any rational person should shit their pants.  But seeing the recently locked front door slowly open, she slowly and quietly walks towards it to peak through and find yet another creepy masked friend at the door.

By the way, the cell phone was thrown into the fireplace.  Not that she smelled it or anything, because the smell of plastic burning is reminiscent like sweet autumn hickory.

With them now obviously in the house, and Kristen backed into a huddled mass of blood and broken glass, in comes James, or as I like to call him Ol’ Doubtin’ Tommy.  ”Are you sure you saw someone staring at you through the window?” No she’s just so fucking distraught about making you look like an asshole that she’s completely imagined it.

dude she's totally faking it...

He then proceeds to do such a minimal search of the house, that he couldn’t have found a misplaced couch.  I do the same kind of search for my 2 year old daughter when we play hide and seek and I don’t actually want to find her (Sorry if you read this in a few years sweety, but it’s true. You kinda suck at Hide and Seek.)

He’s decided that it’s impossible for anyone to have been in the house.  Even though Kristen had locked the door earlier and found it opened shortly after.   Seeing that there is someone outside staring at the house, and that she doesn’t match the description of a large dude with a sack over his head, he also decides the best course of action is to not call the cops.  Instead he walks out to confront her.  Maybe i’m less of a man, but I wouldn’t have gone out there. Even had my wife demanded it.  Go see what they want? Fuck you, let the cops ask them.  That makes it a second time he leaves his girlfriend alone and defenseless by the way.

So upon returning he too finds his cell phone out of commission.  Thats when he says one of the dumbest things I’ve heard in a movie.  ”I don’t understand; I checked the whole house.”   Really James?  There couldn’t be any possibility that they just didn’t happen to be in the house during your cursory inspection, but could with a such great preponderance of evidence to the fact, have entered both before and after?  I do have to give it to the Murderous Strangers though.  Man they are light on their feet.  I can’t get a glass of water in my apartment with the sound of creaking being heard throughout each room.   I can’t imagine how they pull it off in such a rustic cabin.

All is in order though.  For James has a shotgun.  He doesn’t know how to use it, and he has to scramble for the bullets, but there’s nothing to worry about.  Once you get past loading the gun its as simple as …well point and shoot.  So when Mr. Bags starts slamming through the front door with an axe, and you’re 3 feet away, and all he has to do is shoot the fucking door, he somehow misses.  I repeat, with a buck shot rifle, standing three feet away from a door in which the perpetrator is standing directly in front of, with a large fucking hole in it (courtesy of the axe that had just created it) he is somehow able to miss.

But not to worry he has a plan.  It’s actually a good plan.  Turn off the lights to a room, face the only entrance, behind a structure with your back to the wall and your gun pointed forward.  Well with the exception of shooting his brother in the face.  But hey that happens.   It is especially likely to happen when you arrive at a house and have a brick thrown at your car, find the property torn apart, and decide to nonchalantly walk into the shit storm of a situation.  Why wasn’t his brothers first reaction to call the cops, or better yet, just get the fuck out of there.  No he decides to walk right into the house and give it a tour.

It’s tragic shooting your brother in the face, but why give up your secure position?  It’s not like you’re going to have to worry about running into another brother.  How many family members can you accidentally shoot?  Even if that number is as high as 3 you’ve at least increased your odds of finding a phone on their headless bodies (Which they fail to look for on his brother.)

Rather than stay comfortable and safe inside their house with their backs to the wall and boxes full of shot gun shells at their feet, they decide to go for the tool shed and radio for help.  James decides that it is once more the best decision he can possibly make to leave his defenseless girlfriend alone, outside, surrounded by three murderers.  I guess that was the safer option.  He’s not going to try to hide her of course, even though he grew up in the house and must know every facet of it.  No, it’s best to leave her right next to the open sliding glass door, while he moves away into the dark unknown with the only means of protection at their disposal, to the room which he knows the murderers have already been in.  I’m starting to see why she said “No”.

So off he sets into the dark, with no flashlight, to stealthily make his way to the shack clad in his bright white shirt.  Kristen does her best to prepare for the worst by repeatedly covering her eyes and not wearing any shoes.  When her husband-not-to-be ends up cold cocked (slightly different than cock blocked, but in a way not really) by one of the killers, she decides a stupid plan can only work better if set upon by a person even less prepared or familiar with the environment.  She actually does get all the way to the shed, which appears to be filled with a single well lit radio, and heaping mounds of nearly empty metal pails with jangly bits of metal in them.

A bunch of stuff happens, and she’s found by the killers hiding is a broom closet with a door who’s slats are so widely separated that its almost comical to have a door there in the first place.

The two are bound to chairs, and stabbed one by one, until they’re deadish.  First James, then Kristen, then my eyeballs by my own fingers for having wasted my time watching this.

In a last ditch effort to understand what it's like to be a wife Kristen finally gets around to CLEANING THOSE GOD DAMNED FILTHY FLOORS!

In conclusion, I have to wonder not about the strangers intentions, but their methods.  Sure their brutal murder and night of scaring the shit out of people was an ultimate success.  But their night would have been disastrous had their intended victims been even remotely intelligent.  Hell they would have been ruined by a family that decides keep their cell phones in their pockets, or calls 911 when harassed in the middle of the night.  Maybe they didn’t just attack because they were home.  Maybe they did their homework and realized that they were just doing their part in evolution to “cull the herd”.  Maybe their explanation to James and Kristen regarding their reasons as “because you were home” was just overly simplified for their benefit.  They were seconds away from whipping out the Venn Diagrams.  Whatever the case may be, I say good riddance.

Space madness is a common theme in sci-fi thrillers.  It happens when you realize that you’re alone in the universe, have your planet crop dusted with anti depressants, journey beyond the end of the universe into hell, or it could stem from the  attraction of a single button.  A beautiful shiny button.  A jolly candy-like button.

Gravity in Action!

In Pandorum it occurs when you’ve been in suspended animation for an overly extended period of time.  For me “Pandorum” set in right around the point I realized that I’d just paid 23 bucks for this piece of shit on Blue Ray.

Obviously not designed by Apple

So the Earth is in turmoil.  Over population has reached an all time high, and 1 ship is sent out to colonize a planet 123 light years away.  With a population in the many billions, it didn’t make sense to them to possibly send multiple ships.  The ship contains 60,000 frozen bodies, is the size a small city, and has enough walking distance that it could take a person a full day to get from one end to another.  And there is only a 3 person crew at any given time controlling the whole damn thing.  Three people.  That’s it.

Even given the preexisting knowledge that there is a malady that causes people to randomly go insane, they put 3 people in charge of the whole shebang.   The world’s best scientists and planners, out of a world so technologically advanced that they could build this Noah’s Ark of a ship, and they decide to skimp on the crew.

Well as the journey progresses the world kind of blows up.  They don’t explain how it happens, but they suggest that the actual planet no longer exists.  The theories proposed by the characters are Nuclear War (which…I guess has the ability to blow up an entire fucking planet and not just mess up its surface) and a Meteor (If only Bruce Willis was still around to save the day.)  My theories of what happened are much more viable.

Pew Pew

 Now the movie begins with two crew members waking up from their popsicle sleep to find that the ships fucked up.  The doors are locked, the power is cycling on and off, and the sleeping quarters doesn’t even have a proper shower or coffee pot.  So the two crew members split up.  One will go through the intricate tube filled vents trying to make his way out through the claustrophobic isolation to confront god knows what can be on the opposite side of the door.   The other guy decides to hang out in the room, and draw lines on a map which the other guy can’t see.

Shortly thereafter Bower (the unlucky explorer) finds out that there are hot ninjas on the ship that know how to set a trap, and evil looking spider monkey mutants that eat people.  We’ll get back to these guys in a second.  The point is Bower must make it to the reactor to restart the engine before it shuts down completely.  Along the way he encounters a few survivors who assist him in his journey.  As they make their journey they are constantly avoiding a horribly painful murder at the hands of mutants.  One survivor is Sheppard, played by the guy from the Boondock Saints (oh shit “And Sheppard’s we shall be” get it?), and he dies a horrible death 2 minutes after he’s introduced.  Maybe if Boondock Saints 2 hadn’t sucked so hard he could have had a longer cameo.

Next we have Manh, who is an exceptionally agile martial artist, even though his job on the ship was agriculture.  This actually makes sense, because as we know, All Chinese people know Karate.  Even the farmers.  He also has scars all over his body, which appear so old they could not have been received through his journeys on the ship.  Has the farming business not gotten slightly less violent in the 22 century?

Then there’s Nadia who we were introduced to earlier in the film.  She’s also a super ninja, even though she’s German, and a genetic biologist.  She’s been setting traps for mutants using human cadavers, and trying to steal boots even though the ones she’s wearing are perfectly fine.  You know women and their shoes.

Leland was a later acquisition to the team.  He’s been eating people to survive.  Probably because on a ship of 60,000 people looking to colonize a planet, food is scarce.  He’s also fucking nuts, and did his best to recreate the story of what went wrong on the ship using images he carved into the wall surface, much like the kids from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

It turns out that upon news of the Earth blowing up (or something) one of the 3 person crew went nutso, and killed the other two.  Then had his fun waking and killing the other crew.  He then went back to sleep and took a nice long nap.  Over time I guess some passengers woke up and due to a drug they were being fed that helped them adapt to their environment they adapted to the ship.  They became scavenging blood thirsty mutants, with extreme levels of strength, dexterity and pain resistance. All traits necessary to adapt to an environment where you have to open pods filled with sleeping defenseless people and eat them.

And so the Fellowship travels to the nuclear reactor, which also is the den of said mutants, in order to restart it.  This act (which requires a nuclear physicist) is done, by turning a crank until the percentage reaches 100% and pressing the on button.  Well at least they didn’t make working with nuclear reactors that impact the fate of the human world overly complex. Tada! The lights are on, the doors are working, and a few hundred mutants are instantly blasted to dust.

Now while this has been happening Payton, our cozy cartographer, has been visited by the ghost of Christmas past, in the form of James from Twilight.  Turns out Gallo (James) is fucking nuts, which isn’t too hard to catch on early, since he comes into the Payton’s room naked and covered in goo.  In fact of all the questions Payton asks Gallo on his arrival, I’m kind of surprised that “Why are you naked?” didn’t come up.  But as it turns out Gallo is just Tyler Durden.  I mean Gallo is the imagined version of a younger Payton, and Payton is Gallo all grown up after years of slowly torturing his crew mates.  The age difference in age suggests he’s been at it for a solid 30 years.  That’s a long time of fucking with people.  Bower comes to realize this on his journey and races back to put an end to Payton, while experiencing Pandorum himself. 

Along the way Manh goes one on one with the Chief mutant and ends up finishing him off, but is sliced to death by a child mutant afterword.  Why would you drop your weapon when confronted by a child mutant?  It’s like hugging baby scorpions.  Just kill the little shit.  That’s another thing that bothers me about the mutants.  Their abilities vary so drastically throughout the movie.   At one point it takes 3 people to unendingly stab one until it finally dies, and then they are able to run away from the 20 that show up.  The mutants will always choose the easier target, even if it means giving up chasing their living prey, but at the end, the Chieftain’s passes a spear back to Manh so that they can fight like men and mutants should.  Manh’s able to take on the Chief single handedly, but the kid mutant moves faster than can be seen by the naked eye.

The final confrontation goes down between Bower and Payton.  Payton unveils that the ship has already landed on the new world, by opening the windows blast doors and showing them to be underwater.  The ship apparently made a water landing 900 years ago.  Over the course of the conflict Bower puts a small crack in the ships windshield.  I guess there is no debris in space, because the glass starts to spider crack and blows out under the pressure of the water.  Payton and Nadia board a sleeping pod and blast off towards the surface while the rest of the ship is drowned in water.  The ships computers feel that when there is a hull breach, it is a better idea to blast all fucking pods out into the vacuum of space, rather than just close the huge metallic blast doors that we just saw covering the glass.  It works out to their advantage as all the pods come to the surface of a beautiful tropical alien planet.

I’d like to say that throughout watching the movie I wasn’t bothered too much by all of the stupidity.   It is reasonably fast paced, and it’s fun watching ninjas fighting mutants regardless of their sketchy origin.  But it leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you’re done.  The sheer scale of what was trying to be achieved by the inhabitants of the movie seems at such great odds with the idiocy in implementing them.   And the failure of their attempts (the crazy captain and the mutants) seems at such odds to the endless possible reasons why the mission should have failed.   Then again, you wouldn’t think an experienced naval captain could crash a titanic ship into a chunk of ice on a calm ocean.