Dead Fall:
2012 crime drama directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky and starring Eric Bana, Olivia
Wilde, Charlie Hunnam, Kate Mara, Sissy Spacek, and Kris Kristofferson. Addison (Bana) and Liza (Wilde) are siblings
on the lam after a casino heist, and when their car crashes and a run-in with a
state trooper goes sour they decide to split up and meet in Canada. So Addison heads off into the frozen woods,
and Liza is picked up hitchhiking by Jay (Hunnam), who has just been released
from prison. Sparks fly, and suddenly
Liza’s creepy attachment to her brother/father figure is thrown into
question. Meanwhile, state troopers are
closing in on both siblings, and a confrontation looms.
It
was decent. I was drawn to it for the
Hunnam and the Spacek and the Mara of it all, and they did not disappoint. I still don’t get why everyone is so nuts
about Olivia Wilde, but she was fine.
There were no major twists, a few unbelievable but forgivable turns, it
didn’t annoy me, and dear god Charlie Hunnam.
Just damn.
Iron Man: 2008 action movie directed by Jon Favreau and
starring Robert Downey, Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow,
and Shaun Toub. Tony Stark, the
charismatic head of the defense contractor Stark Industries, is in Afghanistan
showing off some fun new missiles when he’s kidnapped by the terrorist group
Ten Rings. He’s injured in the process,
and a fellow prisoner grafts an electromagnet to Stark’s chest to keep shrapnel
shards from penetrating his heart. When
he’s well enough, Ten Rings demand he build weapons for them. Instead he creates this fancy arc reactor for
his heart and a suit of robotic armor, escapes, and wrecks all their shit. When he returns home he decides to shift his
company away from the arms trade, much to his partner’s chagrin. He retires to his personal workshop and
improves the suit, just in time to fight another battle with Ten Rings, but now
he has an angry board of trustees and the U.S. government on his ass. Being an entrepreneurial genius playboy must
be so tiring, right?
It’s
pretty cute; a serviceable action movie with good exposition and impressive
action sequences. The chemistry between
RDJ and Paltrow rings true and the character of Tony Stark is sufficiently
charming yet vulnerable enough to keep one engaged when things start to drag.
Iron Man 2: 2010 action movie directed by Jon Favreau and
starring Robert Downey, Jr., Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Rockwell, Mickey
Rourke and Scarlett Johansson. It’s six
months later, Stark has come out as Iron Man, the Armed Forces are salivating
(and holding congressional hearings) over the thought of getting their
bureaucratic hands on the technology, the palladium core in the arc reactor
that’s keeping Stark alive is also slowly poisoning him, and a Russian with
terrible hair has a serious vendetta and is looking for a
robot-suit-on-robot-suit showdown. Plus
ScarJo.
Second
verse, same as the first. I think I liked
this one a little more. Rourke pulls off
the scheming, crazy scientist thing rather well, Johansson is a badass, and I
was surprised but not disappointed with the Cheadle-Howard switcheroo. If you liked any of the Avengers-related
movies then give both of these a shot.
Child’s Play 2: 1990 horror movie directed by John Lafia and
starring Alex Vincent, Christine Elise, Brad Dourif, Gerrit Graham, and Jenny
Agutter. In the first movie, a dying
serial killer transferred his spirit into a doll, which young Andy Barclay then
received as a gift from his mother. The
Chucky doll goes on a murderous rampage, set on transferring his spirit again
into poor Andy. The first movie ends
(SPOILER!) with Chucky getting shot and theoretically killed by one of his
former accomplices. The sequel begins
with Andy (Vincent) being adopted - his mother was locked up in a mental ward
after testifying that Chucky was real. He’s
settling into life with his foster parents and new stepsister Kyle (Elise) when
Chucky returns to exact revenge and start that whole spirit-transfer nonsense
up again.
I haven’t seen the original since I
was a kid, but I feel like this is fairly similar. At this point the Child’s Play franchise takes on it’s slightly more comedic bent, so
keep that in mind if you have strong feelings about the comedy horror
subgenre. I liked it, but largely
because I liked the first movie and very much enjoy Christine Elise, who you
may remember from such TV programs as Beverly
Hills 90210 (Emily Valentine 4-EVA!) or ER.
Darkness Falls: 2003 horror movie directed by Jonathan
Liebesman and starring Chaney Kley, Lee Cormie, and Emma Caulfield. The sleepy Eastern Seaboard hamlet of
Darkness Falls is home to the legend of the Tooth Fairy, a woman who was
murdered by an angry mob and now returns as an angry ghost whenever a child in
the town loses a tooth. If you catch a
glimpse of her you are cursed, and she will hunt you down with no regard for
collateral damage. When Kyle (Kley) was
a teenager, he was unlucky enough to look upon her creepy visage and in her
rampage the Tooth Fairy killed his mother.
Twelve years later, Caitlin (Caulfield) tracks Kyle down because her
little brother has suddenly developed a severe phobia of the dark, and didn’t .
. . wasn’t there . . . something about Kyle being carted off to a mental
institution because of a similar thing?
Kyle reluctantly returns to Darkness Falls and discovers that young
Michael (Cormie) has also been marked by the Tooth Fairy, who has been waiting
to exact her vengeance on them both.
I realize that attempting to
apply logic to a supernatural horror film is a fool’s errand, but there was a
lot of stupid happening in this movie. I
don’t get the Tooth Fairy’s whole deal.
Does she just leave after she kills a kid who sees her? And if Kyle has eluded her for this long does
that mean she’s been hanging around for a decade? Does she travel, or can she only kill within
county limits? And the whole threat in
this movie (her ability to kill only in the dark) seems to be possible only due to the convergence of a thunderstorm
and this town’s shitty wiring. It’s
fine, but a little boring. I mostly
watched it because I love Emma Caulfield.
It might be nice to revisit around Halloween if I need something
mindless to watch. Maybe don’t go to
great lengths to seek it out.
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