We watched the movie Flight on DVD which Stacey got through Netflix. I was very interested to see it when it was in theaters but I didn't get the chance. I always like Denzel Washington and Robert Zemeckis, the director, has given us such classics as the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump and Castaway (also about ten thousand CG motion capture movies which I haven't seen). Flight was very very good. The basic story is that Denzel Washington is a pilot who (sort-of mostly) lands a plane in a field after the plane starts an uncontrollable descent. Because of his smart maneuvering only six people died. This is tragic, of course, but had he not tried what he did and succeeded everyone probably would've died instead of just six people. He is hailed as a hero until it comes out that he was drunk and high while flying the plane. We follow Denzel through the rest of the movie as he fights his addictions while simultaneously pushing away anyone who cares about him and wants to help. It's heartbreaking because you want him to succeed in battling his demons even though time after time he fails and succumbs to drugs and drinking. I would definitely recommend Flight, it's a very powerful and well-acted story.
This past weekend we went to see the Evil Dead remake. I was excited to see it because I love the original Bruce Campbell/Sam Raimi series. However I knew this would be different. When Sam Raimi made the first Evil Dead he had intended it to be a straight-forward horror film about five college-age friends who go to an abandoned cabin and inadvertently release Sumerian (I think they were Sumerian, at least) demons that then possess and kill the friends one by one until the last one is left to battle the Deadites (as they later became known in Army of Darkness). However the budget was so limited and the acting was so cheesy that it came across as a horror/comedy hybrid. It became such a cult hit that when they did the sequel, they dropped all pretense of trying to be serious and made it an over the top comedy/horror movie on purpose this time. This new Evil Dead remake was going to stay in the same vein as the original, except this time they would have the budget to do the special effects as realistically as possible (well, when we're talking about talking about fantastical horror that's a tall order) to make it just a horror film. I was kind of excited to see how this would play out, but a little bummed that there wouldn't be any comedy elements like the original series. The movie follows the same basic premise of the original Evil Dead. There are minor differences here and there, but it's mostly the same story. One of the big deviations is that there is no central hero in the story like Bruce Campbell's Ash in the original. One of the characters has some of the same characteristics of Ash in the role that they eventually play, but the circumstances are very different. If all that sounds very vague it's because I'm avoiding spoilers here. Also in that same vein the ending is very different from the original, but again, no info on that to avoid spoilers. Overall I liked it. I still like the original series better, but that's because I'm not a very big fan of horror movies in general. I mostly like horror when it is joined with another genre, ie Shaun of the Dead (horror/comedy) or John Carpenter's The Thing (horror/sci-fi). The other times I like horror-type movies is when they are within the zombie or monster movie sub-genres (if those aren't really sub-genres then they are now). Otherwise I steer clear of the torture-porn/demon-possession/haunting/thriller horror movies that are common today.
In connection with the Evil Dead I recently watched Re-Animator on Amazon Prime. In doing research for the history of Evil Dead, Wikipedia mentioned that there had been a comic book crossover between the Evil Dead and Re-Animator. I had put Re-Animator on my watchlist for Amazon Prime a while back because I had heard it was a very good zombie/horror movie. Then when I read that it was similar to Evil Dead and that it was based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft I really wanted to see it. Full disclosure, I haven't actually read anything by Lovecraft but what I have read about him and his stories has been fascinating. I have an anthology of his best known work sitting on my bookshelf, but it hasn't been opened yet, though I hope to change that in the future. So I watched the movie and it was deliciously 80's-tastic. I can see the comparisons to the Evil Dead, because the special effects are very very dated by today's standards, and the acting is barely believable. It seems like it could've been along the same lines as the original Evil Dead, where they set out to make a horror movie but due to budget constraints and limited acting range it came across as humorous, whether intended or not. It basically come across as a very fun, campy, zombie movie. It's not necessarily a traditional zombie movie, but the dead do come back to life, albeit without a taste for human flesh and/or brains. I enjoyed it quite a bit and would recommend it to anyone who likes zombie movies and over the top 80's movies.
The last thing on my list is a TV show. Stacey had borrowed the DVD set of the first season of Girls from a friend. Girls is a new show on HBO about, yes, you guessed it, girls. It follows four early to mid-twenty-somethings as they live their lives in New York City. They all have the requisite identity and social issues and we watch them try to deal with all of these issues each episode. That may sound jaded and dismissive of me, implying that these aren't serious/important things. On the contrary these are very serious issues that I'm sure every young woman goes through (I can't really speak to this since I am not a female, nor do I play one on TV) but I feel like shows/movies focusing on these topics have been played out. Of course you can call bullshit because I watch comic book and action movies where basically the same thing happens in every movie, but those movies are where my interests are, so it's more entertaining to me. I don't necessarily dislike the show, but it's not something I'm going to go out of my way to watch either. The thing that I don't really like about it is the same thing that rubbed me the wrong way when I watched a few episodes of The West Wing: no one talks the way characters on these shows talk and no one is that quippy in real life. It's like the show is trying too hard to seem smart and savvy and appeal to a certain demographic (apparently New York hipsters, in the case of Girls). I realize that many people swear by The West Wing, and probably the same for Girls. Again, I don't dislike either of these shows, but they're just not shows that I can personally identify with or get into. I'm sure they are good at what they are trying to do, but I'm not interested in what they are trying to do.
Hopefully you enjoyed my insights (I can call them that, right?) into the recent movies and solitary new TV show I've seen within the past few weeks. That's it. I'm out, until next time.
