Joe brought The Reaping, which he'd gotten from NetFlix. He'd called Thursday and wondered if I might be intereted in seeing it. I hadn't heard anything about it, but I usually don't read much about movies I haven't see yet. Eats up too much time. I spend enough time reading about the movies I've just seen as it is. I told Joe I'd pretty much watch anything, at least once, and often I luck out and get something good to complain about in my blog. So, like Netflix, he is doing me a service and a favor. You can suspect some movies bad, based on public reaction, but sometimes you have to plop your own eyeballs on the screen to know you really don't want to waste your cold hard cash on that dvd. That's some practical shit right there. The Reaping is a 2007 movie by Stephen Hopkins. I didn't recognize the name from the label on the Netflix sleeve, but once I looked him up I found out I had seen a bit of his work before. He directed Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, followed by Predator 2, then some tv and Lost In Space (the movie), followed by more tv, notably some episodes of 24. I don't watch that series, way to serious. I do enjoy Predator 2 quite a bit and watch that once in a while. A big shout out to Danny Glover for his great preformance. The Reaping has Hillary Swank as an ex-minister who's lost her faith. Her husband and daughter were sacrificed by some ignorant primitive fucks in a third world shit hole who blamed them for the lack of water in their village. The drought happened after the missionaries came, they must be the reason it happened. Throat slittin' stage left. This seems to happen often enough that you'd think it would be best to stay the fuck out of those places. In a pendulum type of response Hillary's all sciencey now, teaches at LSU and debunks miracles. 48 so far. Some guy asks her to investigate the biblical plagues that are infesting his town. She takes her lab partner, and sure enough, they find a small town with a river that runs red with blood, maggots and flies in great numbers and a little girl who might be the anti-christ. Oh, crap. There's some interesting scenery to see as the story unfolds in the bayou backwaters of Louisiana. Some weird stuff happens. Nothing new in the story, evil against good. I don't think it was the greatest, it's about average. I guess the reason I didn't hear anything about it was it pretty much got panned off the stage. I don't normally care for the Rotten Tomatoes site but it scored a 9% over there. They rank all the critical reviews and 9% represents the good reviews. That's the lowest rating I've seen. I don't check them out very much so I miss a lot. It gets a 5.6 on the IMDb. I wouldn't give it more. And since there's really nothing outstanding or novel I don't figure that I need to get a copy now that I've seen it. Not so good for the economy but good for my pocket book.
I'm less certain that I wouldn't buy The Fall. It's the second movie from director Tarsem Singh, who created The Cell, the 2000 Jenifer Lopez movie about a serial killer. It has Vince Vaughn and Vincent D'onofrio. I have a copy but haven't seen it in a long time. It's a serial killer movie, not my favorite genre. Sperhauk suggests watching it with the isolated Howard Shore score instead of the dialog. Much more enjoyable. Using a red form fitting body suit and some wires Jennifer can travel into a serial killer's mind to save someone. Very visual but it's still a dark bleak serial killer story with lots of torture and violence. The story is somewhat more positive in The Fall. Set in 1920's Los Angeles we find a little girl in hospital with a broken arm. She fell. She meets Lee Pace, a stunt man in the hospital unable to feel his feet. He fell. He's also troubled by his break up with his girlfriend. He's unhappy and suicidal. At least he's not a serial killer, huh. He tells the little girl a story with adventure and romance and a mismash of characters and settings that partially reflect his state of mind. There's a lot of levels to the story but it's the settings that are the amazing thing about The Fall. Tarsem travels the globe to shoot scenes in unusual places. I recognized some places from my interest in odd buildings, and some were new to me. At times I wondered how something might look as LEGO, and other times I pocketed an idea for later.
The costumes are pretty wild at times. That's Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru in black on the left and her unmasked on the right. She was pretty delightful, just 6 at the time, a little girl from Romania. The interaction between Lee and her is the best part of the movie. Lee Pace I had seen in Wonderfalls and I know some people might be likin' him in Pushing Daises, which I have not seen. He made some movies I haven't seen either. Tarsem has a new picure in production which is due out this year. Maybe that will be interesting too. I'm glad I saw The Fall and I will keep an eye out for it when it gets cheap on dvd. The Cell is $5.49 at Amazon right now. You could probably get one for free if you just ask the right person. Just too damn far off the beam for most people.
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