Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Sad movie testimony

So far this trip, we've watched four movies, all of which we had at least some reason to believe might be decent (or better):

Attack Girls Swim Team Vs. the Undead
Pathfinder
Twilight
The Zombie Diaries

The middle two played in theaters all over the U.S. The first is, as you might expect, Japanese, and the last is British.

Of these, the best, and the only one I can in any way recommend, is Attack Girls. Though low-budget, nonsensical, and frequently offensive on multiple fronts, it nonetheless has a pulsing weird rhythm that at times leaves you saying "WTF?!?" in a mostly good way.

Pathfinder was dark and hard to follow and way too predictable, though its transformation at the end into a quasi/proto feminist statement was something we had actually believed so stupid that we were (incorrectly) sure the film would avoid it.

Zombie Diaries was simply dull, a Blair Witch zombie flick with little style or terror to redeem it.

Which leaves, of course, Twilight, easily the biggest hit of the group. I know a lot of people liked it a great deal, but really, it sucked. Pouty girl you can't like meets pouty boy who looks like a girl and who is also unlikeable. Everyone thinks they're hot. They end up together, their love too intense for words or even a kiss. Many people get hurt. Not for one second in this movie did I care at all for any of the characters or find it in any way interesting. The only things that kept me going were our group's constant moans and laughter and the (incorrect) belief that surely it couldn't be this bad.

I'm definitely hoping the next crop of DVDs will be better. I can blame only myself, however, because, amazingly, I own all of these. Yikes!

2 comments:

Michelle said...

You just don't get it..you have to pretend you are an outcast teenage virgin who thinks that long, lingering gazes are true love, then, you throw in a lovely Robert Pattinson/Cedric Diggory/Edward Cullen, who is pretty enough to be a girl, thus, non-threatening to said virgin, and you toss in a shirtless, hunky James, who makes you want to be bitten and you have a romantic love fest...Plus, who wouldn't want to be told that you were so special you were a "personal heroin" to the vampire. You just gotta believe.....

Mark said...

I completely and utterly lack the capacity for that belief.

Labels

Blog Archive