Some movies

I've watched some movies lately thanks to some post-holiday gift card usage. One I really liked, one I liked but didn't get, and one was pretty stupid but filled with things I like yet I still didn't really like it at all.

Slither is a light-hearted monster flick, with alien lifeforms dropping onto the planet via a chunk of meotorite. From there they take a semi-bad husband's body hostage, using him to procreate little alien slugs. The film rarely takes itself seriously, but one thing it does take is itself and its gross-out gore to the edge. Which I loved. And though there's some usage of heavy CGI, the filmmakers went the smart route and kept things classic. The Grant monster, by the end of the movie, is such a piece of marvelous work that I found it hard to look away from such an ugly thing. It's very high on the creepy factor, but again, it's not a scary flick. And yes, I'm a Nathan Fillion fanboy, but there's a lot of other great people in Slither. Namely Elizabeth Banks and Tania Saulnier.

I'd been told over and over that I should see Night Watch, that it was a film I'd really enjoy. Guess what? It is. It's that classic tale of light versus dark, literally. There's the Day Watch and the Night Watch, vampires and shape-shifting guardians. Evil voodoo. The gloom. Things of that nature. Plus, a stupid boy who is clearly more than he appears to be. Visually, the movie is gorgeous. I really wished there had been more parts from the past because it looked like such a world of grim epic fantasy that, for a moment, my heart lifted and all was right in the world. Unfortunately, I watched it without the subtitles (I know, Night Watch sin!!!) so I was both confused and a little put off by the dubbing. So I liked it, and will watch it again, hopefully figuring out some of the things I did not get. But come on folks, a guy pulled his spine out to use it as a sword. It doesn't get any better than that.

And lastly, we have Feast, a Project Greenlight product. The premise is quite simple: a miscellaneous scraggle of strangers are trapped in a dive bar as hungry monsters try to eat them all mean like. And that's it. Characters in the film are one-shotted via pause-the-film techniques which lead to bio sheets. Kind of lazy. Also misleading, which I guess was the point. Like Slither, Feast doesn't take itself seriously. But unlike Slither, Feast is a bad movie. There's little room for acting besides screaming and dying. The gore is over-the-top, as is expected, but I just didn't find most of it believable. Or enjoyable. Characters come and go, and it wasn't until 3/4s of the way through that we're shown who exactly we should be voting for. I wanted Jay (snoochie-boochies) to save the day. Alas, he kicked it pretty early. Don't worry, nothing I write here will ruin the movie. And don't get me wrong, I love monster flicks (see Slither; gawd, I really do love that film), but these monsters were pointlessly absurd. No explanation, not even half an attempt to give them some sort of cause for being. Sure, we're told why they're angry, but not why they live. To its credit, Feast does have some good commentary to listen to, which is much better than actually listening to the film's dialogue. In the end, I'm just glad this one came packaged for free with Slither. Ah...Slither...swoons eternally...