I've been laid up with a nasty cold this past couple of days, and the only thing I can do is lie down and watch TV, so...
Grave Encounters is another in the endless line of "found footage" films that have saturated the market. The early part of the film is a clever --and very nasty-- spoof of "ghost/myth hunter" TV shows. The middle part of the film pretends to further develop the characters, though none of them rises above a common hollywood stereotype. The last third of the film is when the action finally gets going, and after wading through all of that tedium, it's simply not enough. Even the film's "signature scare" (a sudden distortion of the ghostly faces only faintly reminiscent of Munch's The Scream if it were run through a distortion filter) simply has no impact; you've been numbed to near-sleep by this point. By the end, you welcome the fate handed to the characters and only wish the ghosts had done the job much sooner.
The film is only worth it for the first 20-30 minutes when they are viciously lampooning a certain type of show and a specific character on one of those shows. Otherwise, skip to the nap.
Session 9 is, apparently, where David Caruso's career went to die. Which is sad, because this is a pretty good psychological thriller masquerading as a ghost story. The characters are developed just well enough to help the story along. The plot actually manages to do two "Sixth Sense" type reveals in a short time frame without seeming contrived, and that easily makes up for the fact that it drags just a tiny bit too much.
Recommended, for fans of psychological thrillers masquerading as ghost stories.
Paranormal Activity 4 is... at least one film too many. The latest in a franchise that seems to have turbo-charged the "found footage" genre when the first film came out, it simply drives home the point that any sense of originality ended with the first movie. While each successive movie recycled nearly every trick from the first one, the first three told a (mostly) coherent story about a coven of witches and the demon child they're seeking to raise. This film has nothing to add to that story, and it's at this point that you realize two things: one, this is one of the dumber movie demons ever and two, you find yourself rooting for him nonetheless.
Recommended only as a drinking game with friends, or if they ever make an MST3K version of it.
Grave Encounters is another in the endless line of "found footage" films that have saturated the market. The early part of the film is a clever --and very nasty-- spoof of "ghost/myth hunter" TV shows. The middle part of the film pretends to further develop the characters, though none of them rises above a common hollywood stereotype. The last third of the film is when the action finally gets going, and after wading through all of that tedium, it's simply not enough. Even the film's "signature scare" (a sudden distortion of the ghostly faces only faintly reminiscent of Munch's The Scream if it were run through a distortion filter) simply has no impact; you've been numbed to near-sleep by this point. By the end, you welcome the fate handed to the characters and only wish the ghosts had done the job much sooner.
The film is only worth it for the first 20-30 minutes when they are viciously lampooning a certain type of show and a specific character on one of those shows. Otherwise, skip to the nap.
Session 9 is, apparently, where David Caruso's career went to die. Which is sad, because this is a pretty good psychological thriller masquerading as a ghost story. The characters are developed just well enough to help the story along. The plot actually manages to do two "Sixth Sense" type reveals in a short time frame without seeming contrived, and that easily makes up for the fact that it drags just a tiny bit too much.
Recommended, for fans of psychological thrillers masquerading as ghost stories.
Paranormal Activity 4 is... at least one film too many. The latest in a franchise that seems to have turbo-charged the "found footage" genre when the first film came out, it simply drives home the point that any sense of originality ended with the first movie. While each successive movie recycled nearly every trick from the first one, the first three told a (mostly) coherent story about a coven of witches and the demon child they're seeking to raise. This film has nothing to add to that story, and it's at this point that you realize two things: one, this is one of the dumber movie demons ever and two, you find yourself rooting for him nonetheless.
Recommended only as a drinking game with friends, or if they ever make an MST3K version of it.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould