Horror Challenge #3: "Hellraiser: Revelations"

As you can probably tell from the poster, this movie was less than stellar.  I mean, Pinhead looks constipated, not scary.  Come on, people.  This movie has been universally panned by horror fans for being terrible, so I figured I'd finally get it over with and watch the dumb thing so I can get the worst movie of the challenge out of the way right at the beginning.  I expected less than nothing from this movie.

Probably because my expectations were so low, I actually found myself enjoying the beginning of this movie, and I even entertained a fleeting thought that this might not be as terrible as everyone said it was.  I mean, yeah, the actor who played Nico was horrendous (and no one bothered to tell his dumb ass how to pronounce "Tijuana," so he sounded like an idiot every time he said it, which by my count was like 742 times in the first 20 minutes of the movie) but the actor who played his friend, Steven, wasn't bad.  The two start the movie making a video of their road trip to Mexico, where they appear to have no plans except to get laid a lot, and then we discover they somehow stumbled upon the titular puzzle box which opens a gateway to hell in these movies, and being a couple of complete idiots, they of course open it, and bad things happen.  Then we're at some indeterminate date in the future, where they've both disappeared and all their families have left is the video of their road trip and the puzzle box, the implications of which they don't understand.

Now of course this movie is ripping off about a million other movies, but it still had some promise.  Making a "found footage" type Hellraiser film could have been pretty cool if people with, you know, talent had been making it.  As it is the only people in the movie who can really act are the guy who plays Steven and the girl who plays his sister, Emma.  Everyone else is pretty terrible, and they all do some of the stupidest things I've ever seen characters in a horror movie do (which is saying something) and when the movie starts to look like it was trying to copy the movie "Funny Games," I started to really get irritated.

I know the story is that Dimension studios had to make this installment in order to retain the rights to the Hellraiser franchise or something like that, but that doesn't excuse them from spending like, $12 to make a really shitty Hellraiser film when they could have done a lot better even with the resources they had.  Yes the actor playing Pinhead in this movie is horrible, but that's not my biggest problem.  the scenes with Steven and emma actually worked for me, and those two could have done a lot better if this were simply a better movie, but it was like the filmmakers didn't care, which pisses me off.  If you don't care, give the project to someone who does, someone who will actually TRY.  I know a lot of people don't like the later Hellraiser sequels, but I liked them all, and the franchise still had some promise lurking in it.  "Found Footage" type movies can be cheap without being horrible, and this movie could have been a lot better, which really irks me.  My friend said after watching this movie that we could have made a better one in the backyard, and I have to agree with him.

Horror Challenge #2: "Black Sunday"

This is a movie I've been meaning to check out for awhile (like, half of my life awhile).  It's famous among horror fans because its director, Mario Bava, is a legend in the genre (and even outside the genre) for his ability to create mood and evoke feelings.  Sometimes his movie are a miss for me, but I've heard so many good things about this one that I was counting on everyone to be right this time, and I wasn't disappointed.

The black and white cinematography is beautiful here, seriously, it adds a layer of mystery to the proceedings, and the proceedings are pretty gruesome.  A Witch and her Vampire cohort are being put to death with masks of Satan nailed over their faces as punishment for their evil deeds, and the Witch puts a curse on the villagers and her own brother, who is heading the mob to execute her (talk about sibling rivalry).  She curses him and his future generations, and he's all "STFU bitch, here, enjoy this mask we're going to nail into your face" and then they try to burn her to death, but the rain douses the flames (oops) so they seal her in a tomb counting on a cross to keep her trapped forever.  Fast forward two centuries, and the world's least reverent doctor is exploring her tomb and he destroys an old pipe organ with his cane (dickhead) and then just for good measure, he destroys the cross on her tomb as well (thanks a lot, dumbass) which allows her to send out her evil to try and resurrect herself and her brother (lover?  I dunno, this was a weird family, so maybe).

The plot is a little convoluted, but Barbara Steele, who plays both the evil Witch Asa and the young princess Katia in the present, upon whom Asa is trying to unleash her evil curse, manages to make it work.  Even with the black and white keeping this from being a sticky red bloodfest, there's still some gore and creepy scenes which gave me the willies (I don't like maggots or spiders, ew ew ew) and the scenes where the devil's masks are nailed over the faces of the evildoers (ouch) and the scenes where those same masks are pulled off (double ouch...and also ew) work for me.  Of course, most of the characters aren't any smarter than dumbass doctor dude who destroyed the cross and set the evil free, but I was still rooting for them, and that made the movie interesting.  I really enjoyed this one, and I'm glad I finally got a chance to see it.

Horror Challenge #1:"Intruder" (2008)

So Netflix sometimes recommends movies to me, and this is one they've been bugging me to check out for awhile, so I decided to give it a try.  Honestly, it's got a micro budget, and you can tell because it looks like it was shot in someone's backyard and some of the acting leaves much to be desired, but the actress who plays the main character Lila does a good job.  Lila has been institutionalized for awhile, and today her boyfriend is here to pick her up because she's being released, and they go off on a romantic getaway in a secluded cabin in the dark, creepy woods where a couple disappeared last year and another couple just got murdered last week.  Sign me up for that trip!  Sounds like a nice, relaxing time for poor Lila, who has to deal with a stupid doofus of a boyfriend, plus her own mental issues, and we're never quite sure what's real and what's not because Lila's head is so messed up.  In the end I STILL wasn't sure exactly what happened, but it wasn't a bad way to spend an hour and a half, I liked Lila, the killer's clown mask was creepy, and there was enough gore and nudity to keep me entertained, so I admit, I had fun with this one.

Flight

I'll be honest with you, I wasn't exactly sure where this movie was headed, especially near the end when I wanted to climb through the screen and punch everyone onscreen.  I had to watch the movie trailer for this movie over and over during the Christmas season, because it was playing on the display TVs in the store where I worked, so that plus the fact that I love Denzel Washington prompted me to buy this movie as soon as it came out on DVD, but after I put it in, I became confused.  the story seemed to jump a little in the beginning, between Denzel Washington's pilot who was the main character of the film and some woman who wasn't really identified much, so I was confused, but I trusted the movie to sort things out, and it eventually did (up until the climax when I began to have those previously mentioned violent/homicidal feelings towards the characters and their asinine actions).

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I was conflicted about the ending for a bit, because honestly, whether the pilot was drunk or not, the fucking plane fell the hell apart and fell out of the sky, and he landed it while only killing a few people whereas none of the other pilots who attempted similar simulated situations could even manage to save one person on board  so while for purposes of the character's personal life I wanted him to get sober, I didn't think he should be held responsible for the damn engine practically falling out of the plane, but after letting it sit a bit in my mind, I'm ok with the movie ending the way that it did because I think he did the right thing for the right reasons.  He couldn't let Trina take the fall for his actions, whether he was an amazing pilot or not, and I really respect that and respect what he did.  I still think the people who, you know, caused a plane that was falling apart to be allowed to fly should be held responsible too, and I hope that happened as well, but I was really glad the main character got his life together in the end.

This movie was worth buying and I'm glad I finally got to see it.

This is what Love in Action Looks Like

WARNING: This review might be triggering for someone who has had bad experiences with ex-gay therapy.  Proceed with caution and be safe.

Damn that's a mouthful of a movie title.  But the movie itself, at just a little over an hour, is a good documentary that doesn't overstay its welcome.  The synopsis of the movie is this: In 2005, a teen was told by his parents that he was being sent to a camp that seeks to use "reparative therapy" to help people overcome their homosexuality.  He posted a bulletin on his Myspace page (remember Myspace?) telling his friends he was apprehensive about this experience, and his friends did some research, found the location of the camp, and then stood outside every day with protest signs and bullhorns for his entire 8 week stay, shouting messages of support to all the teens inside the camp who might not exactly want to be there.

I have a hard time being objective on this issue, where objectivity is defined as not having an opinion (at least that's how most people seem to define it when they leave me snotty comments telling me that I'm not objective) because of my own experiences with reparative therapy.  When I was seventeen, I was pretty messed up, and due to a lot of various situations, I ended up in a residential treatment program that focused on "reparative therapy" using "aversion therapy" techniques to help teens recognize the sins in their lives and avoid these sins in the future by controlling their sinful urges and behavior.  Homosexuality, or rather same sex attractions, were included on the list of sinful behaviors that this program sought to treat, along with drug and alcohol addiction.  What followed after I entered the program were some of the most harrowing months of my life, as I went through the program once, got released, and then totally lost it and wound up back in the program again.  Technically, I wasn't "forced" to go into the program, I chose to go in, but the issue of "choice" is muddled when you are in foster care and you're told that if you don't complete this program, you will be released from foster care and have to find your own place to live.  Have you ever lived on the street?  It's cold out there.

My concept of these "reparative therapy" programs doesn't seem to be the same as anyone else's, especially since there are so many different types of these programs, and I'm told that a lot of them aren't as bad as the one I attended.  The aspect of my particular program that sets it apart is its focus on "aversion therapy," which is therapy that serves to make an activity so unpleasant that it triggers a fearful response that makes a person avoid that behavior in the future.  In other words, trying to make someone associate behavior with bad things so they'll avoid the behavior.  For alcoholics, "aversion therapy" can include taking drugs that make it so that they vomit whenever they consume alcohol, so in the future they will choose to avoid alcohol because they associate it with getting sick.

For the program that I was in, without getting too graphic, "aversion therapy" for same sex attractions included forcing us to sit with our hands folded as if in prayer while we watched slideshows of photos with same sex couples together, and squeezing our hands together tighter with each image shown, so that our hands ached by the end of the exercise, with the result that we associated seeing such pictures with feeling pain.  We were also forced to split up into opposite sex pairs and the girls were forced to lie on the floor and the boys were forced to lie on top of us and we had to make eye contact and lie there for a predetermined amount of time until they let us get up.  If we broke eye contact, we had to start over.  The guy on top of me kept crying, and every time he'd blink and I'd start crying too, since I'm a sympathetic crier, and we'd have to start over every time.  I have no idea how long it took for us to pass this exercise.  It seemed like hours.  I learned to have a poker face and not show emotion.  It helped me get by.

I'm not telling you any of this to shock you, I'm simply trying to explain why it irritates me when people say that I'm not "objective" about this issue.  Of course I'm not "objective" about a practice that has caused such harm in my life.  I think these therapy programs are harmful, and that this harm can last long after the program ends.  I know for myself, it's been thirteen years since I went through this program, and I still have a hard time making eye contact with people, especially during intimate situations like kissing or sex.  I still can't hold hands with someone (even someone of the opposite sex) with our fingers entwined because it makes me freak out.  Even when these programs aren't as scary as the one I attended (and I haven't told you half of what went on in there, believe me) I believe that telling a teenager that feelings of love are sinful can be harmful.  The last thing I'd ever want my kid to feel is ashamed, and I don't get why someone would want to make their kid feel ashamed of having romantic feelings for someone.  That can really mess with someone's head and have far-reaching repercussions.

I'm telling you all this because I want you to understand the background I carry with me whenever I watch a movie like this.  I don't really like the term "baggage" because it implies something that a person is willingly carrying that could be discarded at any moment if the person choose to let go of it.  This is my background, it happened to me, and it's a part of me just like all the good experiences that have happened in my life are a part of me as well.  It has shaped my life and my opinions, and that's the way it is.  Yes, I'm predisposed to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the idea of parents sending their kid to a therapy program to try and cure the kid of being gay.  This doesn't mean I don't understand why a parent might do such a thing.  Parents who genuinely think that homosexuality is a set of sinful behaviors that can condemn a person to hell might be terrified that this could happen to their child.  They don't want their kid to go to hell, so they try to fix the problem and help their kids.  I get that.  Just because I don't agree doesn't mean that I can't empathize and understand why a parent would send their kid to a therapy program like this.

This movie takes the view that this kind of therapy is wrong and harmful, but it doesn't blast everyone who believes in such therapy as evil.  It might be a little more one-sided than other movies, but it has a short running time, and it doesn't present as much information on either side as it could.  The (fictional) movie "Save Me" presents more of both sides, though it, too, comes to the conclusion that these "ex-gay therapy" programs aren't the best idea.  This movie gives a lot of interviews with a lot of interactive elements, such as having the blog entries typed onscreen as we watch.  That was enjoyable and helped engage me in the story. I liked this movie overall, thought it ended on a positive note, and wouldn't mind watching it again.

Serenity

I love this movie.  My friend bought it for me on DVD for my birthday back in 2007, and I watched it back then with her, and it blew us both away.  It's got a lot of action but it's also good at tackling deeper issues.  I hear a lot of people didn't like this movie, and they piss and moan about it, particularly because many people think you can't understand this movie unless you've watched the show "Firefly" first (which was canceled after only one season and which shows what happens before the events of this movie).  I know this is a bullshit claim, however, because I've never watched "Firefly" and I understand "Serenity" perfectly.  I'm sure that watching "Firefly" would give me depth of knowledge and background, but it's definitely not a requirement for understanding this movie.  I submit that most people would get this movie if they watched it, because the principles it discusses are relevant even if it is fiction.  The government thinks it can improve people by meddling into their lives?  That doesn't happen today?  The government isn't above killing undesirables in order to preserve the "peace"?  Where have I seen that before?  The quote River says; "Old men covered in blood.  they're drowning in it, but it never touches them"?  Doesn't that sound like some "old men" I could name who are responsible for many deaths even though blood technically never touched their hands?  Listen, I think this movie is worth watching.  It hasn't lost any of its power in the years since I first saw it.  If you don't like it, fine, but don't hand me a line of BS about how no one "really understands" it unless they watched the TV show first, so the movie is "worthless."  This movie is FAR from worthless.  Jerks.

Gentleman's Agreement

I saw this movie when I was 8 years old and I didn't understand it exactly.  I got the basic concept, but I didn't understand the central conflict between the reporter and his fiancee until I watched the movie again last night (that's due to a benefit of 23 more years worth of experience, I suspect).  this movie is kind of talky but well worth watching.  It has parallels even today in people who consider themselves not prejudiced but who sit by and allow prejudice to continue without speaking out against it.