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thingmakersback (1442)
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Not Great But Good
What an Odd Film
I Don't Care For It
Pretty Good
Another Jungle Movie with a Sci-Fi Element
Well, That Was Kinda Fun
The La Jetée Connection...
Well, I Did Watch it...
Cthulhu - (actual release year = 2007)
Surprisingly Close Adaptation...
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Odd. i don't recall any gruesome gore till near the end... So I suppose, you watched most of it and were surprised, as many of us were, when it suddenly turned nasty.
There are a good number of fairly ridiculous elements in the movie, if you stop to think about it. But, many are possibly explained by the fact that most of our background is not reliable... The game of "telephone" referenced when the previous guy briefs our protagonist.
BUT. If the monsters nearly escape and are only stopped by a pistol in the hands of one of the watchers, how has this worked for 75 years? One watcher in each tower, sleeping 1/3 of the time and subject to injury and illness or intoxication... And before the invention of the Phalanx guns? AND What's with a couple of BRIGADES of mounted cavalry in the 1940s? And how'd they get them down there? I'm sure someone will make a list of the problems, but I still like it.
That's how I remember it.
You should have a look at The Entity. It hasn't got a lot of complexity and it pretends to be based on fact, but it is a pretty solid film about a woman, Barbara Hershey, tormented by an invisible something...
The recent Invisible Man bears no more resemblance to it than to the original Invisible Man movie or the book.
Well, based on the Wolf Man, not someone I would trust to do Dracula... But... What he says is not without merit. The original Dracula -
1890s Modern Englishmen with medical science, telegraphy and using what amounts to good detective work... Supplemented by the metaphysical knowledge of Van Helsing and the stalwart Mina Harker's blood tie to the monster - Fight a creepy and crafty old world foreign predator with certain supernatural powers. Bearing in mind that Dracula's stated intent is to set himself up in England for the "new blood".
It is straight out of the novel that Dracula is not a romantic character (The concept grew with the stage play and movies and was first turned into the character seeking his reincarnated lost love by Richard Matheson for the Dan Curtis film). He's not as obviously vile as Nosferatu, but he is a nasty foreign predator. Writing a version of this in modern times (Sorry, Dark Shadows) requires: No cape, no lightning, fog still seems useful, and no wolves... But - If he's supernatural and not just another boring serial killer then his capabilities and liabilities from the novel really need to be used - some, if not all.
I seriously doubt that the idea of a vile immigrant threat would be salable today, so the character's outsider nature might just be that he is a virtually immortal predator/parasite feeding on the human race while trying to blend in well enough not to be identified.
A documentary that, by its very nature, could not exist makes for a very amusing time travel story...
It is pretty well done. There is the inherent problem of the one man in his basement inventing something that teams of people in advanced facilities cannot... But this is a familiar trope, best dealt with in Primer (still the best time machine film ever made) and not a major issue here.
I'll admit I was annoyed when an early reference to nuclear research in the '30s - Manhattan Project eras described it as fusion not fission - slightly amplified by the mention of Hiroshima being accompanied by video of a later H-bomb test... But, as this is not directly related to the premise, it is a minor point.
Well, it's hard to see either this movie or The Invisible Man as relating to the old Universal properties. That last, 2010, Wolfman, wasn't great, but I can see how they might have intended to tie it into a revived series of Universal monster movies.
This one is just another take on the werewolf. Nothing special, just not good enough for me to recommend.
The sound and vision effects to depict enhanced senses were mostly good. What annoyed me was when loud thumping sounds are revealed to be a tiny spider upstairs. That is just silly. But the rest? Fine. And the wolf-man-vision is great. I am so tired of things like the creature vision in Wolfen or even Predator, that universally seems less clear and detailed than ordinary human vision.
But if they do it they will have to totally miss the point of Bizarro. Bizarro and all about it exist for two reasons. Pure silly jokes about oppositeness... And the basic notion of live and let live, because Bizarro means well and exists because of an accident, for which he holds little animus.
Well, both movies are rather sabotaged by awful screenplays. This one is less annoying because: a) It is a solid half hour shorter. b) It is obviously a weirdly dry parody... I mean, it starts off with Kong having fallen a thousand feet and the only damage to be repaired is his BROKEN HEART.
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