Film Filter: Off - Sharknado

Film Filter: Off- This movie came up on Netflix's recently added category, and I wanted to peruse it to make sure I understood the premise properly.  Unfortunately, I had, and this movie is literally about a tornado of sharks.  Wow.

Pros- The only thing I could come up with was that Tara Reid's character wore a shirt baggy enough to cover her horrendous boob job.

Cons- Okay.  Let's pretend for a second that the TERRIBLE special effects and CGI didn't singlehandedly ruin this film, or that the lack of character development and sub-par acting didn't make this film laughable within the first three minutes.  Above and beyond all that, there are a plethora of unanswered questions, extraordinarily stupid and illogical moments, inconsistencies galore, and just plain old incorrect information.  Oy vey.  Methinks I should break this down by category.

• Inconsistencies galore- So, one minute the beach is in a full swing hurricane, and in the next shot the waves are calm.  One scene shows the characters in a monsoon, the next scene their hair is dry.  They are all in the house, and all of a sudden the windows burst with water and it starts to fill up to their waist.  As soon as they leave, however, there is less than an inch of water on the ground.  ?!  SPOILER ALERT- Fin can slice up a shark directly in half as it cascades from the sky at likely record speeds, but can't cut through it from the inside out without taking a painfully pansy-ish amount of time?  Lame.
• Just plain old incorrect information- Sharks, although given an unfair cinematic reputation, are not that aggressive.  They were, like, in two feet of water just eating people and attacking them at random.  Sharks don't play that way, homie.  At least, not in real life.  Also, these sharks were able to jump ridiculously high, when in reality only few species of shark can actually accomplish this feat.  One of the sharks conveniently landed on top of the vehicle they were driving, and was able to eat its way through the roof of the car and attack the passengers.  First of all, most breeds of shark can only cognitively function outside of water for between 3-7 minutes, and secondly (although I didn't crunch the numbers) I'm fairly certain that they don't possess the strength to eat through the entire roof of a Jeep.  Lastly, let's diffuse the tornado by throwing a bomb in it!  Wait, what?  Does that actually work?  That's a no.  And let's not forget the stupid shark in the retirement pool.  Sharks can't live in freshwater (unless they're Bull Sharks), let alone highly chlorinated, chemically infested, geriatric pee-ridden pool water.  Get your shit together, Sharknado researchers.  Were they all wasted when they laid out the story line, or did they just use a Magic 8 ball to guide their brilliant decisions?
• Stupid and illogical moments- So we're throwing bombs in tornados, and I'm just going to have to deal with that, but how in the hell does Matt's flight instructor get sucked up by the tornado through a window, when he and Nova were able to fly in a helicopter (UNBUCKLED) directly next to it without facing its repercussions?  Did they take their magic tornado repellant that morning or something?  I'm not buying it.  Plus, there are tons of moments where sharks "just so happen" to be falling from the sky in the correct manner and position to eat someone on the way down.  Does this strike anyone else as highly coincidental?  When the hero of the movie is climbing up the rope, a shark jumps (unusually high) and latches on to it.  Ummmm, no.  That wouldn't happen.  With the rope being that thin?  And why would the shark even want to?  Ay yay yay...  Last but not least, the odds of both Fin and Nova ending up in the belly of the same shark, unscathed and alive?  It's very biblically poignant, but come on.  Really?
• A plethora of unanswered questions- Where on earth did all of these sharks come from?  That was never really explained.  "Oh, it's just the storm"  No way, not buying it.  Plus they're way too aggressive.  At least in Deep Blue Sea there was a logical explanation for the unnecessary rage in the sharks.  I guess if I was floating around in a hurricane, and then a tornado, I'd be pissed too.  Why did Fin and his wife split up?  And WHY did he get back together with her at the end?  She was an irrational be-yotch who couldn't act her way out of a D-list, made for TV, sy-fy movie.  Literally.  

Wrap up- Clearly, I could go on for hours with this film's issues.  At the end of the day though, I have a really hard time believing that this movie was meant to be taken seriously.  If it was, god help the movie industry.

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Film Filter: Off - Paranormal Activity 3

Film Filter: Off- I have to admit that the first film had the element of intrigue because it was the first.  The second one was mildly interesting, as it leads into the story of the first one.  Did this film really need to made, though?  Really?

Pros- As I found with the other two movies, the acting in these films is very believable.  The character interactions feel very realistic, and even the children seem to have a very believable niche in the film, in terms of their characterization.
   If you're into the ever-so-slowly-built anticipation and suspense type of thrills, you will enjoy this franchise.  I will admit that it is effective in ways, but the manner in which this scare tactic should be used is the real key to building a successful film.  This film doesn't quite get there.
   Again, the analytic in me likes the expansion of the story, and the answers that are provided to fill in the gaps.  There comes a point, though, when stories don't likely need to be continued, and I fear this franchise will reach this point sooner than they will stop putting out movies.
   For any other "pros", check out my reviews of the first two films.  They're all kind of the same at this point.

Cons- The beginning of the movie was slightly hard to follow through it's time changes, but once the time stamps started occurring on the film, it cleared everything up.  Maybe it had just been so long since  I had seen the other two, and knowing that this one is a prequel that took place when Katie and Krista where kids, I was confused to see them as adults.
   As soon as the movie started taking place in 1988, it was a little odd to me that Dennis was so gung-ho on filming everything.  In the first film, Micah gets a camera and is oddly obsessed with filming, and the second one uses security cameras.  It makes a bit more sense when the audience realizes that Dennis is a videographer, but why would he waste his resources filming random things in the house?  Eventually, enough evidence presents itself for him to want to document things, but at the beginning of the film it doesn't seem logical to me that he's wasting film on pointless things.
   This.  Film.  Is. So.  Slow.  In the one hour and forty some odd minutes of its runtime, we learn probably three things total.  And most of that information is awarded toward the end of the film.  When you're creating the first film in a series, by all means, build the suspense and make us wait for it.  But in the third installment?  Please.  We're invested this time for the information.  Not the 72 minutes of pointless footage that includes a swinging lamp that bursts and a young girl standing in her mom's bedroom for three hours.  Not to mention, when information is disclosed, it is mighty difficult to decipher it.  I could figure out the connections between the witches and the markings and the house, but the whole wedding/first boy in the family really went over my head.  When you line it all up from film to film it makes sense, but it took awhile for me.
   There are multiple opportunities for there to have been frightening moments that were not properly taken advantage of.  Examples being the Bloody Mary scene, and the baby-sitter in the kitchen.  There was something that occurred, yes, but was it scary?  Eh...not so much.  There is a difference, to me, between a truly frightening moment, and something that seems scarier than it is because in contrast to the slow paced, boring scenes that take up 92% of the film it stands out.  Anything would be scary in contrast to, well, nothing happening.  I know some argue that this movie is able to deliver scares by not really doing anything but playing on people's fears of what goes bump in the night, and to a degree they have a point.  If you want to save the money to see it in theaters, though, I'll show up in your bedroom and scare you for a dollar.  Way cheaper.

Wrap up- This movie does a good job of creating suspense, and never fulfilling its promise of delivering anything actually scary.  It's literally an hour and a half of waiting to be scared, and then watching the credits and saying, "Oh.  Really?  That's it?".  Le sigh.  I would say I have high hopes for 4 & 5, but based on eviews of the new one, I might just quit while I'm ahead.  Er, behind.  Whatever.

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Film Filter: Off - The Ninth Gate

Film Filter: Off- As you will likely know if you've followed my blog, I'm pretty enthralled with theological or satanic movies.  This clearly falls into that category, and it features Johnny Depp, so how could I say no?

Pros- Well, Johnny Depp, for one.  Although I wasn't in love with this film, he does a solid job portraying the self-serving books dealer who's in it for the money.  He finds ways to fit some quirky humor into the role at times as well which, with a movie over two hours in length, is arguably necessary.

   Despite the fact that the movie itself is so long, the pacing seemed pretty smooth.  There weren't any parts of the film that dragged, and the few times that you sensed the movie was following a predictable pattern, they found a way to make slight changes that threw you off.

   The idea of devil worshipping and idolatry is not new, but the way this one played out was slightly different.  I definitely liked that there were three books, and there were puzzle pieces hidden within them.  It made it more interesting and complex.  It also added obstacles, as the book itself was too precious for any of the owners to part with, making Depp's character have to work for the information.

   By the time the film was coming to a close, I hope most audience members realized the film, and particularly the woman, was going in one of two directions.  I thought it was definitely interesting which direction was taken, as it was not the predictable ending that I assumed it would be.  It was a gratifying in ways, but not in others.  Definitely points for going against the grain, though.

Cons- The music.  Oh, God, that music.  I have no idea who scored this film, but there were parts of it that were literally laughable because of the score.  Bad, bad, bad.  There were one or two parts where I did feel that the music did enhance the scene, with some light, minor piano nuances, but those were much too few and far between.

   The fight scenes.  Really, 1999?  Is that all you've got?  It was very poorly done, and because the rest of the movie wasn't so, it made it stand out in a less than favorable way.  Lucky for me, there were only a handful of fight scenes throughout the whole thing, so the suffering was minimal.

   Awkward levitation.  Was that absolutely necessary?  I mean, clearly she's getting from point A to point B way sooner than humans can, so can't she just teleport?  Or just show up there in the scene?  It's fine that she can levitate, and I get that it puts a sort of tangible awareness to her non-humanness, but if you can't make it look right then I wouldn't bother.  We're an adult audience, we can figure it out without seeing horrible special effects that ruin the magic of her presence.

   The ending left some questions.  I would research this further or read the book if you're confused.  It helps.

Wrap up- I can't say my first tackled film of 2014 was a hit.  It definitely had some massive potential, but too many tiny flaws blew it for the movie as a whole.  This film is whole-heartedly so-so.

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