So I have to ask then: When trying to re-convey the lessons taught by the Nazis to future generations, why must film make their evil laughable? Does film have the opposite intention, maybe of creating more genocides so they can more movies decrying them without actually doing anything to stop the ones that are occurring or prevent them from happening at all? This particular evil Nazi (Capt. Von Berkow) fits every stereotype of being an evil, sadistic lunatic delighting in the agony of others. He forces betrayal, mutilates people, shoots people in the back, rapes, and mugs at the camera, all with a big smile. This negates any power the character might have had, any lesson we the audience might have learned from him. He ends up a caricature of what he’s supposed to be, and ending up feeling like comic relief gone horribly, horribly wrong. He was a stupid, flat character.

For that matter, none of the characters had anything to them. They go through horrific event after horrific event and are ultimately the same for it. You just almost died after getting shot by Nazis? Continue thinking life is stupid! You just got raped by the Big Bad? Continuing thinking life is swell! Your wife/mother just died in the snow? Forget she ever existed! For the love of all things good in the world, stop acting like Legos! Wait, sorry. Start acting like Legos. Those have more personality.

Another point, one tangentially related. So you want to emphasise your Big Bad is the biggest and baddest of them all? Good for you, you go for it. However, if you must use rape to do it, at least do it well. I’m not saying graphically show each and every step of the raping process – that’s missing the point too. But have something other than big smiles all around afterwards. Have the rapee affected by the trauma. Have a character change. Show, don’t tell. This is one of my pet peeves as having a bad rape scene in a film legitimately does harm. Society as a whole may understand that rape is bad, but individuals? Not as much. So if you must use rape – which can be a powerful element in a story – do it correctly.

What I learned from movie: No matter how bad Nazis are, Basques are worse. Also, sheep are bloody important.

We find two women (Helen and Madeline) in their constant quest for youth and beauty and the man (Ernest) who gets caught in the middle. Madeline stole Helen’s fiancee (Ernest), and spent twelve years plotting revenge while Madeline (Madeline) enjoyed plotting revenge against her (Helen) just because she could. Yes, yes, it doesn’t project women in a very positive light, emphasising the pettyness of their quibble, but I don’t see that as the point. The point of the film as I see it is to emphasise the hilarity of a quest for eternal youth, which all the age-reducing cremes and surgeries are. These two women find a potion that will allow them to be young forever. Hilarity ensues.

Sure, the quest for eternal youth may not sound all that hilarious, but that’s the thing about black comedy, what makes it golden. There’s humour where there should be none. I think that’s what really bothers me about a lot of slice of life movies. I can’t accept anyone would actually watch that type of movie, and keep expecting something to happen when nothing ever will. Hilarity ensues.

I really enjoyed Bruce Willis in this. I think this is the first movie I’ve seen him in where he isn’t speaking in monotones the whole time, and he is quite funnywhen not speaking in monotones. I also think Meyl Streep is scary-looking, but that gives her an endearing kind of comedy just on her own. So I liked the actors.

Overall, I was quite pleasantly surprised by “Death Becomes Her.” It was highly entertaining.

I think it is very important that I point out that I enjoy this movie for reasons I don’t fully understand. Perhaps it’s because there are more female characters than male (vapid though most of them may be). Perhaps it’s because I enjoy the setting. Perhaps it is entirely Captain Shakespeare’s fault. Does it really matter? The point is that I’m pointing out what I dislike about it with love in my heart. Because there should be more romances like this where the female does at some point have character (even if it flies out the window early on). There should be more epic fairy tales that aren’t Cinderella. And there should be more dead princes providing the audience with their cues.

See, my usual problem with romances is that nobody ever really has a character. It’s all “Ah. I’m the male and you’re the female. We must be each other’s love interests.” This is annoying. Sure, in reality there may be character-less people who still have lots of sex, but those people are rare and no one really likes them anyway. Most people do have an interesting character, something to set them apart. Not so in film. In “Stardust,” though, there is an attempt to alleviate that. The main protagonists do have characters (at least for a bit before they fall into generic romance niches). The multitude of heroes and villains scattered throughout the film have characters, and we see enough of them to be intrigued and to enjoy what we see. When you have a witch queen, an evil prince, and a flamboyantly gay pirate scattered throughout the world, you will inevitably have fun.

That’s what this movie is, after all. It’s fun. The world is fun, the premise is fun, it’s just fun. If you look at it too closely, it’s easy to nitpick, but take it for what it is, and it is highly enjoyable. I would go so far as to say it is a good romance. Maybe. I’m sticking with fantasy.

I didn’t get it. I didn’t see why “Wrath of Khan” is considered such a good movie. Yes, I enjoyed it, but it all seemed a bit thrown together and muddled to me. Perhaps it’s that I don’t have a serious background in the lore and therefore can’t immediately identify that the random Guy Who Gets Killed is in fact Peter Preston and is apparently awesome. I can agree that some knowledge being required to fully understand a film isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, when to actually understand the villain, his background and motivations, I have to have seen one specific episode of TOS that aired in 1967, I think it’s a bit exorbitant. Yes, I know your target audience is Trekkies, but for the generic sci-fi fan, it gets a bit confusing. I just felt…lost in the lore I didn’t know. Maybe that’s how the general audience feels when confronted with something like “Contact.”

So I didn’t much care for Khan. I don’t like Kirk. I like Spock though…usually. I liked him a lot in the series. I like McCoy too, though mostly for his banter with Spock or Kirk. I thought the writing was mediocre, though (“Revenge is a dish best served cold, and space is really cold.” Really?). I also got confused with the maguffin (the Genesis device-thingy). I understand that it rewrites things on a molecular level in order to make them different elements (defying conservation of matter, but hey), but how do you support Terran life on a planet that is not Earth? How does the Genesis majigger make water (a non-organic compound)? For that matter, how did it make a planet? And why wasn’t Spock rewritten instead of coming back to life? Then again, I’m trying to apply my science to a universe that has thunder in space. Zombie Spock will be fine.

“The Land That Has Dinosaurs And Stuff” tended to go around in circles, which was really annoying (I had my annoying metre set really low specifically for this). The scenes were disjointed or served no real purpose, the sidekicks were annoying, and no one really had much character development. I think it really got me, though, when there was a review of stuff we’d seen in the past hour right at the end of the movie. It was as if Mr. Bluth was concerned we’d forgotten we were supposed to be happy for the dinosaurs. Don’t worry, I’m very happy the dinosaurs now live in a valley so that the next time the volcano erupts, all that ash will fall in there, thus ruining the pretty forever. Yup yup yup!

Actually, the whole movie struck me as being like one of those old Disney follow-the-animal-and-narrate-its-activities movies. You know, the boring ones. It also looked like “The Lion King” in parts and high octane nightmare fuel in others (SHARPTOOTH DEVOURS YOU!). I didn’t mind the old animation style, even if it did make Littlefoot look like Mickey Mouse and the dinosaurs alternate in size from house cats to actual dinosaurs. No wait, I did mind that last bit. That was annoying.

Overall, I’m left with the question of how did this ever do well enough to get twelve sequels and a TV series? Sure, it’s dinosaurs, but is that really enough to make oodles of money and bleed the merit of this film out from its screaming marrow?

My inner child says yes, and that she would like more dinosaurs now.

>> Kick Quouar.

> That’s really not a nice thing to do. She tells you so.

>> Search desperately for an exit.

> There are no exits. Face it, you’re being railroaded.

>> Fine. Go see what’s wrong with Quouar.

> “I’m so glad you asked!” She immediately perks up, but is still sad. “I was so bored. Bored to tears, you might say.”

>> …

> What? I didn’t come up with the phrase.

>> …ask what was so boring.

> “Watching Jeremy Irons eat breakfast and realise that was the point.”

>> …look for an escape.

> There isn’t one. HA! She goes back to talking. “That’s my problem with slice of life films. I don’t see why I should care about this one person’s mundane struggle. I think their life is stupid and their complaints are petty, but you’re still making me watch them for two hours. A movie needs an antagonist, and…explosions! Yeah! Lotsa explosions!”

>> Blow up Quouar.

> Ooo, you’re going to regret trying that. She dodges the C4, then goes back to talking. “This movie was all about a set of boring, but still creepy twins. And I hated them. I wanted them both to die because they were both jerks. The actual jerk is obvious. The other twin (I think his name was Beverly) for being complicit in all things. And also because he has creepy fetishes that I had to watch him indulge. I don’t care if this was the best Canadian film of 1988. I don’t care how many awards people got. It was really boring!”

>> Point out that she recognised the greatness inherent in some other movies she thought were boring like “The Road.”

> “That was different. It wasn’t a rom com without the com (I think). This was watching a man struggle with his identity. And it was boring.

>> Hypocrite.

> “Jerk.” An exit opens.

>> Run away.

> You run through the exit and are blown up. Play again? (Y/N)

Horrible, you ask? But Quouar, you’ll say, I thought you loved Tim Burton and Danny Elfman and Johnny Depp and all that lot. And that is true. However, admiring a group of artists does not preclude being critical of their work. If anything, it makes it more important as it solidifies why you like their work in the first place. To be sure, I didn’t like this. Yes, it was pretty and had the creepy atmosphere and equally creepy music, but I got a distinct impression that there was no real idea of what the point the team was trying to convey was supposed to be.

We are initially introduced to Ichabod Crane who is working as a constable bound and determined to introduce the scientific method into 1799 New York. Everyone else is quite skeptical and finds throwing people into iron maidens much more fun, and so he is sent to Sleepy Hollow to try and introduce science there. He is told the story of the Headless Horseman, is rightfully skeptical, but then eventually runs into the Horseman and is instantly converted to the idea that he is the spawn of Hell. No real explanation. All his years of careful logic and childhood trauma at the hands of faith thrown out the window because the plot says so. That really bothered me. It seemed like a fundamental derailing of the character for him to suddenly accept that there is no logical explanation, that science can do nothing, and that they are all being hunted by a demon from the pits of Hell. It was just wrong that a character with so much backstory in reason is suddenly thrown into faith.

The film seems to teeter-totter on the line between reason and faith the whole time, not sure what it wants the ultimate explanation to be until the very end when everyone is a witch and the oldest witch is dragged off to be Christopher Walken’s love interest (complete with more blood!). The potential for a reasonable explanation is there all along, but instead, the film drives Ichabod from his desire to entire the new and modern 19th century and sends him instead back to the 11th for his explanations. A witch did it, the movie says, pointing us to a cardboard villain.

But I think what bothered me even more was the motivation of the villain. She wanted money, I understand that, and so took this circuitous route to obtain a small fortune through a chain of wills. But here’s the thing. Women couldn’t inherit all of their deceased husband’s property, and I’m fairly certain a woman couldn’t inherit her step-daughter’s property at all. So while the motivation for wealth is understandable, she would have been better off conducting petty theft with her horseman. But then, the horseman himself was superfluous much of the time. We see that the witch has no problem with murder, and ultimately, some of the murders would have been easier if she had just chopped off the person’s head herself while dressed up like the horseman.

But that’d be reasonable.

I don’t know if this is a direct parody of “Dawn of the Dead” as I haven’t seen that one either. But even if it isn’t, I found “Shaun of the Dead” highly entertaining with its genre-blind (or maybe even savvy; he rides that line) protagonist, bumbling over-eager sidekick, and absurd love interest. It was silly, but you could see the fondness of the parody. Especially with Queen. Yes, the Queen is good.

((AN: Sorry, that’s all I’ve got. I don’t feel too well today.))

Man and Boy (there is only one person with a name) are faced with a world that is utterly dead around them. All life was wiped out by some unnamed apocalypse (my guess is nuclear armageddon, but your guess is as good as mine), and now it grows colder and greyer as ash falls from the skies. Deciding that this is unsurvivable, Man takes Boy and goes south, hoping desperately that there is food and warmth there. Instead, they find cannibals, savages, and insanity wherever they go, though with a few bits of luck here and there.

We see Man’s love for Boy repeated over and over in strange ways. Man teaches Boy to fear everyone, hoarde everything, and above all else, know how to commit suicide. Considering that this is a world where many people are legitimately trying to eat those around them (at one point, we see people being farmed for their limbs), this paranoia and desire to teach Boy how to protect himself is vital. So why is this love? Man and Boy are each other’s sole reason for existence. Each continuously reassures the other that if he were to die, the one still remaining would kill himself and follow. The one bullet remaining in Man’s gun is saved for when there is no way to rescue Boy from the agony he is about to suffer at the hands of cannibals. Boy is terrified of death, but recognises it as necessary. Ultimately, he takes everything Man taught him and does use it, though not as Man had intended, instead, putting aside paranoia to truly see how much he did love his father and what his father had done and sacrificed for him.

There is also a more sinister love, but love nonetheless, and that is the love of survival. Everyone clings to life, though they have little hope and even less of a chance to die in peace. The old man Man and Boy share their food with has no chance of being safe from bandits, let alone dying in peace, yet he treks on, defending himself as best he can. The bandits and cannibals survive and perhaps even thrive by sacrificing their humanity to their love of life. And in the end, we see both loves come full circle with the love of life being what saves Boy from his love of Man.

This was a film with a certain power to it. It had no real plot, no true characters other than Man and Boy, yet we are shown humanity at its purest – both the good and the evil. We are given a vision of the world when it all goes to hell, and that vision is both sobering and beautiful simultaneously.

I liked it.

In any case, a documentary crew followed Marjoe as he went from congregation to congregation, never using the same sermon twice. In front of his audience, he is exactly what you would expect an evangelical preacher to be – boisterous, showmanny, asking for money, obnoxious. He dances and prances before his crowd, invigorating them with cries of “Hallelujah!” “Praise the Lord!” and “Je-ESUS!” before asking them to contribute to whatever he deems would get the most money from that particular crowd, usually focusing on ending drug addiction. He heals them, brings them to God Convulsions (my name for them, I don’t know the official term), has them speaking in tongues, and all using only the power of his voice and the desire of the people to believe. For they honestly do believe in what he is saying, that the Holy Ghost is there with them, that Jesus is touching them all, that God loves each and every one of them and will return their investment in Marjoe a hundredfold.

Of course, the true irony is that this sudden renewal of faith and the reaffirmations that there is an all-mighty, loving God come from a man who states quite clearly that he has never believed any of what he says, and that he sees evangelical preaching as a business, nothing more. He’s aware of the effect that he has on people, and milks it for all its worth. The shots of money being given freely and with what is almost certainly gratitude and love, then being counted arbitrarily were powerful, at least to me. But then again, I believe in religion even if I don’t believe in what the religion is teaching.

Make no mistake, though, there is some vague justification for Marjoe’s actions. His parents trained him to be a child preacher, and with the help of some well-placed abuse, he was an ordained minister at 4, teaching everyone about the sin that was cigarette smoking and not having a good Christian mother like his. He was manipulated and used, and clearly, that rubbed off on his future, teaching that that was part of life as far as religion was concerned. But as he says himself, his childhood cannot justify everything, and that is ultimately why he is giving up preaching.

Still, as a film showing the inside of evangelists and (to a certain extent) the prosperity doctrine, it’s quite effective. The people in the audience truly believe, yet have that faith manipulated into giving money to individuals, not causes. We see that each evangelist has it down to a tee, each with their own strategy of getting and keeping money while maintaining that faith. Though this was made almost 40 years ago, its message that evangelism and those who preach a prosperity doctrine are corrupt and unhealthy is still relevant.