Movies By Month: November 2011

Paranormal Activity 3:  2011 horror film directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman and starring Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown, Lauren Bittner, and Christopher Nicholas Smith.   It’s similar to the first, and I’m assuming also to the second.  Are there ghosts?  Let’s set up some night vision cameras and find out!  The twist with this one is the little girl with an imaginary friend.  As a former little girl with an imaginary friend, it freaked me out on that level.  But aside from a few jumps and some surprisingly good acting on the part of Csengery, it was kind of forgettable.  Decent, but not great.

Attack the Block:  2011 British sci fi thriller directed by Joe Cornish and starring Jodie Whittaker and John Boyega.  Sam (Whittaker) is returning to her apartment complex after work when she’s mugged by a group of teenage boys.  In the middle of the attack, a strange object plummets from the sky, giving Sam time to escape.  Moses (Boyega), the leader of the gang, goes to investigate and is himself attacked by a strange creature.  They manage to kill it, but other larger creatures are soon on their tail.  Since it turns out they live in the same complex as Sam, she’s soon dragged into the fight and must work with her former muggers if they’re going to survive the alien invasion.

          It’s funny and exciting and scary and interesting and I loved it and you should see it.  The acting is pretty fair, the aliens are realistic enough to be scary but not gross or ridiculous, the pacing is excellent, and there’s a cameo by Nick Frost!  Seriously, SEE IT.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:  1954 Disney adventure movie directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Peter Lorre, and Paul Lukas.  It’s based on the Jules Verne novel, you know the drill:  some dudes are on a mission to find a giant sea monster when their ship is destroyed, they’re rescued by Captain Nemo who turns out to be master of the submarine that’s being mistaken for said sea monster.  Because he’s sinking ships.  Because he’s totally nuts.

          Douglas is great.  He’s at the height of his vigorousness, he gets drunk with the ship’s pet seal and plays a ukulele made out of a sea turtle.  Just delightful.  And Mason brings his freakish seriousness to the role, which gives it a little more heft than your average Disney movie.  As a child I was hugely into live-action Disney movies of this era, both musical and non-musical, and this one definitely holds up to viewing as an adult.  Assuming you share the same proclivity.

Rocket Science:  2007 dramedy directed by Jeffrey Blitz and starring Reece Thompson, Anna Kendrick, Nicholas D’Agosto, Vincent Piazza, and Aaron Yoo.  Hal Hefner is a sweet kid with a stutter, an unbalanced klepto older brother, and a crush on Ginny, his high school’s rock star debater.  Under the tutelage of Ginny he ends up learning about the awkwardness of crushes and first kisses and emotional revenge.  Oh, high school.  I found the music almost oppressively indie twee (thanks a lot, Clem Snide), and the narration a little much at times.  But Kendrick’s Six-of-Blossom-like speech pattern was adorable, and Piazza is f-ing brilliant as Hal’s older brother.  Overall it’s an OK movie with a few perfect scenes.  And it made me want to be 15 again just long enough to awkwardly and frantically run down a high school hallway.

Breaking Dawn, Part 1:  2011 young adult vampire drama, you already know all this.  I have no excuse.  I would just like to point out that we all have our guilty pleasures, and this is my most shameful.  They’re totally ridiculous movies with little redeeming value and I enjoy them immensely.  Deal with it.

Season of the Witch:  2011 supernatural action movie directed by Dominic Sena and starring Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, and Claire Foy.  Yet another Black Plague-era witchy movie.  Cage and Perlman are knights escorting a prisoner of the church to some monks so they can perform a ritual that will supposedly end the plague.  But is the girl a witch or a scapegoat? 

          I was feeling ambivalent about everything else in my Instant queue, so I thought what the hell.  Why not.  It was surprisingly not totally awful.  I mean, it certainly wasn’t good, and you should keep in mind that I enjoy ridiculous action movies.  I will say that Black Death is better, but that shouldn’t surprise you.  Who do you want to see as a medieval knight fighting the forces of darkness:  Sean Bean or Nic Cage’s terrible hair?  

Badlands:  1973 crime drama directed by Terrence Malick and starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.  Loosely based on the real-life spree killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the film follows teen couple and mass murderers Holly and Kit as they traipse around South Dakota messing people up.  Think Swiss Family Robinson meets Bonnie and Clyde: building tree forts and laying snares and killing the law.  It was visually beautiful, the music was appropriately weird, and the acting seemed to lack . . . pizazz?  I guess?  But perhaps that’s because they’re supposed to be misanthropic teens?  Dunno.  It was fine.  Fun fact for West Wing fans: Kit puts his jacket on the same way Josiah Bartlett does.