Marcus: Starship Troopers (1997)

          New review, here we go. And wouldn't you know it, I'm at a loss.

          I'm not at a loss because I don't know what movie to review, as the title would indicate, nor am I at a loss because I don't have anything to say about the movie. It's just that, in the end, I'm not sure how I feel about "Starship Troopers." Is it good? Is it bad? Is it a masterfully crafted silly piece of drivel? Is it a poorly executed attempt at a modern masterpiece? The answer to these is the same answer to the question of why am I writing this review with my head covered in baby powder: I can never definitively say.

          Let's start by noting that the film was nominated for an Academy award for best visual effects. It lost to "Titanic," but what the hell didn't lose to "Titanic"? And the film does have some great effects ranging from vast and epic to personal and detailed. The film does a great job showing shots of both huge vistas of exploding starships and close-ups of a dude getting his brain sucked out of his head. That's what I respect so much about this movie, it seems to make excellent use of its budget and I really believe the setting and visuals.

          But at the same time, and here's where my inner conflict starts to occur, I still find it cheesy. I don't think there is any real reason to feel that way. The movie is dark, violent, gritty. But I still feel like, I don't know, it's goofy somehow. I think it stems from the choice of casting. You've got Casper the friendly Van Dien as Johnny Rico, the infantryman quickly rising through the ranks, and who's so soft spoken that even when he's shouting threats at you, you feel he's going to end by asking you if you'd like a glass of warm milk to help you get to sleep. Then you've got Denise Richards as Carmen Ibanez, who's supposed to be, like, totally smart or something, and, like, eligible to become a pilot, which is, like, totally a big deal. Then, what better actor to top off the leading cast of an interstellar war movie than musical theater/comedy phenom Neil Patrick Harris as Carl Jenkins. He's the braniac, the military intelligence officer, the one making the tough calls, though far removed from the field of battle. These three have vowed to always stay friends even though their jobs could leave them stationed billions of miles away from each other (which of course doesn't happen) which is sweetly naive, especially when the first message Carmen sends Johnny is a video saying she's breaking up with him.

          Michael Ironside is in it too, which is totally badass. He has a metal arm, which just exponentiates my last statement. But keep in mind, he's a supporting character in a movie where nearly every supporting character dies (What I'm trying to say is, he dies, but his death is also pretty badass).

          So here's the problem: usually I can weigh the pros and cons of a movie and still come out knowing whether or not I like it. In this case, I can say I enjoyed "Starship Troopers" but I don't know if it's in a mocking way or because it's legitimately awesome. It's all very confusing. I think it wanted to make something like "Aliens," but ended up more like "Mars Attacks!"

          So much inner turmoil... I need to go write in my journal, or make a magazine cutout collage or something.

Introducing: Emily

          We have a new contributor joining us here at Any Old Film. From now on expect to see some articles from another hilarious person, Emily. All of us who already write for this site are good friends with Emily and we know her addition to the team will not only make us stronger as a whole, but more diverse because up until now we've just been a band of four stinky dudes (seriously guys? I don't believe that none of you know where that stench is coming from and I swear I'll fight to my last breath discovering its horrendous source). We thank Emily for agreeing to join our cause here of voicing opinions while celebrating the world of cinema (even the movies we hate... Especially the movies we hate). Emily, welcome aboard, we know you'll be a great asset, we just hope you can stand the smell (WHERE THE HELL IS IT COMING FROM?!).

Marcus: Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror (1922)

Once a movie is by and large accepted as a classic, there is not much that it can do to reverse that decision. Sure, some movies don’t age as well as others, they lose their relevance or they make references to parts of an era that are long gone and forgotten. Keep in mind, though, that the film industry’s really only been around for about a hundred years, but in that time we’ve amassed quite a library of films that would be considered historically or aesthetically important. But there becomes a point where, no matter how groundbreaking a film is, no matter how revolutionary or insightful or heart-stoppingly wonderful a piece of cinema it is, it just becomes so dated that it affects how you watch it. You pop in The Godfather and it’s always going to have that strong message of the mixing of corruption and family and whatever else that movie’s about, but when you watch a “classic” that is clearly past its prime, the mere quality of its oldness becomes a noticeable factor in and of itself.

Enter “Nosferatu,” directed by a man named F.W. Murnau (the F.W. stands for Friedrich Wilhelm, but apparently even he thought it was too German to keep calling himself by his full name). You’ve probably never heard of F.W. because he’s been dead for quite some time. In fact, everyone involved with this movie is dead, many of them were dead by the time World War II broke out, and all of them were dead by the 70’s. Many of their children are probably dead as well. I know I’m painting a grim portrait, but it’s just to show you how absolutely old this movie is.

“Nosferatu” is consistently ranked among the top 100 films ever made by any magazine or institution who claims to give a damn about cinema, and to say the movie was a revolution for its time is completely true. F.W. Murnau not only wanted to show action, he wanted to show where it was happening. Setting plays a huge part in “Nosferatu” where it rarely did in films preceding it. Murnau sets up some artistically beautiful shots in his film, a method which at the time, really was groundbreaking.

So it was ahead of its time, but remember, its time was 1922. It’s gotten to the point where the technology available to make it (or lack thereof) is so prominent, it takes away from the experience. The film is so grainy and skippy and jumpy, it’s like a first date on the beach. And the actors! Oh the actors with their overacting! These are people who began their careers without the medium of film, so they learned the craft of stage acting and only stage acting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great way to perform when you have audience members half a mile away, but on film every action comes off as grandiose and every emotion is so overwrought. It’s not so much a Charlie Chaplin type of exaggeration, it’s more of a starved for attention exaggeration. Granted, these actors had to convey the language through their actions, because hey, silent film’s a bitch like that.

Still, none of this explains why when the film does cut to a block of text (a narration by an unseen character, or a page from a book, for example), it stays there for a full minute. It’s three sentences, honestly, I know the illiteracy rate was higher back then, but the people who could read should have been able to do so at more than a word a lifetime. It seems like we’re staring at these short, short pages of text for well longer than is required. And at one point it repeats! A second character reads from a book that had already been read, and yet the page comes up again, for the same amount of time as before. It’s the definition of redundant. I mean that the action demonstrates redundancy in its purest form, the page that was read twice didn’t actually have the definition of redundancy on it.

I can also appreciate the fact that this was made in a time where they must have still been experimenting with the concept of a film having a soundtrack. There is what I think can technically be called music playing, but it’s like someone let a toddler loose in a room with a piano and a one-string bass. There’s almost no point where the music adds to the scene at hand, nor does it correlate to the actions that are taking place on screen. It’s all just wandering notes. I like that there’s some sound, I just wish it wasn’t random sound. For a film that has the word "Symphony" in its subtitle, you'd expect the music not to suck so much.

Ok… ok deep breath. I’m getting too worked up about stuff that was really out of the foresight of the creators, it was no fault of their’s that the film wouldn’t live up to future standards. What’s important to remember is that for its time this was as good as it got. I need to focus on the positive. And boy oh boy is there one giant nose nugget of positive yet to pick.

Despite what I said about the acting, it does not apply to the antagonist of the film, Count Orlok (it’s actually supposed to be Dracula, but they couldn’t get the rights to that so shhhhh) played by a gentleman named Max Schreck (different spelling from the Christopher Walken character in Batman Returns, but allegedly the inspiration for it). Now, I know nothing about Max Schreck or his other work, but I can assume that he is either the greatest actor to have ever lived, or completely and utterly psychotic. If Bela Lugosi romanticized the vampire, that’s only because Max Schreck first presented the notion of a vampire as being creepy as Satan’s grundle. And really, when you’re perceived as being as creepy as Lucifer’s taint, you can really only go up from there. I’m confident that the image of Max Schreck as Orlok will haunt me for a good ten months, and even after it’s done haunting me, it’ll still be there, oh yes, he’ll be lurking down there in my mind with his wide, bulgy eyes with dark circles and his inhuman thinness and his… his long fingernails and weird turban thing he sometimes wears and his crooked, pointy teeth, and the way he walks without bending a single joint in his body and the way he always turns around to look behind him, with the eyes looking first, and then the rest of his head… so slooooowwwwly.

What I’m trying to say is that, despite its age, “Nosferatu” will still give you a good scare, or at least creep you out, and you should definitely give it a chance, but prepare to have the image of Orlok tattooed in your dreams for a while afterwards, probably accompanied by some shitty music.

Marcus: Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

One would think that horror is derived from the overall mood and tone of a scenario. The story must ooze terror in order for the audience to be immersed in it. Surely you couldn’t scare someone by sticking to the bare bones, the most banal rules that constitute the foundation of horror movie scare tactics. One would think that, but as the Paranormal Activity franchise shows one (for the second time now), one would be wrong and one should pay attention because THERE IS A DOOR OPENING ON ITS OWN VOLITION BEHIND ONE!

Yes, apparently scary movies no longer need to take place somewhere scary, or have the atmosphere of scariness about them. Really all you need is what I like to call the “Boo” factor. I call it this because “boo” is the appropriate thing to shout both as someone trying to deliver a sudden scare and as a disappointed audience member watching this movie.

Let’s face it, relying solely on sudden scares is almost as bad as Eli Roth’s “Gore = Scary” approach that I’ve discussed before. You can’t assume that one element, whether it be gore or sudden “boo” moments are going to carry the premise of a horror movie on its own. There’s a difference between showing a silent empty room for a minute and a half then having a door slam off camera and showing a deformed silhouette approach a sleeping girl who’s staying the night in a haunted castle. Both build tension, but one doesn’t technically do anything except make you wait for what you’re certain will eventually happen. If sudden loud smashes and bangs in the middle of the night is all it takes to entertain you, then move to Detroit.

Let’s look at it another way. Look around you right now. Are you near a door or manhole cover? I guarantee that if I suddenly burst through it right now and shouted, “Free cheesecake!” I’d make your heart jump, if only for a split second, because you wouldn’t have been expecting that. Our brains are hard wired with the fight or flight defense mechanism to make us pump out adrenaline when something surprises us. But with every split second of panic that such a moment causes, there’s the several seconds of realization immediately afterwards where you say, oh, it’s just free cheesecake, nothing scary actually happened. Most of “Paranormal Activity 2” is basically tricking you into thinking you’re scared when really it’s just playing on your basic human reflexes.

Now to be fair, there are some moments of the film that are truly disquieting. The setting may be the extremely modernized household of the extremely affluent Rey family, and is in no way scary in and of itself. But this fact is quickly erased when we see that most of the events take place at night! Ooooooooh… at niiiiiiight! And the climactic scene takes place in the basement, which could be correctly described as cluttered! Ooooooooh… cluuuuuuterrrrred! Messssssyyyyyy! Boogady boogady boo! Ok so the setting isn’t all that scary, despite the darkness and clutter, but it is admittedly unnerving in its simplicity. For one, the central problem of the film is that the evil spirit is after the newborn baby, a terrifying notion for any new parent. Again, it’s the film playing off human instincts, the parental instinct, but even the sight of the little tyke’s mobile spinning by itself or seeing him being slowly dragged across the length of his crib even set my hairs on end.

And to give credit where credit is due, I will admit there were some “boo” scenes that made me shit my pants, but I think I can attribute that more to the experimentation with my daily dosage of Metamucil. The scene that got me most was one that starts out so unassuming because it’s in the middle of the day. The mother is enjoying her coffee alone in the kitchen and she hears a small creaking noise like a particularly rotund person alighting upon a wicker fiddleback (Or a fatty sitting on a chair). But I reassured myself that nothing bad was going to happen because it was the middle of the day and all the bad things happen at n-

But I didn’t finish this thought because then all the kitchen cabinets exploded open and my testicles flew up and lodged in my sinuses, on the way knocking my heart into a comatose rest. So I applaud “Paranormal Activity 2” for that truly unexpected moment, and assure you that I will be expecting full compensation for my dry cleaning bill that week.

There is an attempt at a back-story, but that’s just an excuse to make sure this movie didn’t just become an hour and a half of those prank mazes on the internet where a scary face pops up when you’re almost done.

The overall effect of “Paranormal Activity 2” is strong but basic. It’s a very innovative in how it presents the story (as was the first film). We are observing from a set of security cameras. We are in no way immersed in the story, in fact, we’re about as removed as you can get. The movie tries to pull us in with the handicam approach, like we’re the ones stuck in the house, but it never really effectively sinks in. We’re far removed from what we’re seeing, and as such can only be scared by loud noises that a film should be above having to resort to so much. You will get scared watching this movie, but after you’ve calmed down, you’ll realize you were not impressed by it because it is frightening only in the dictionary definition of the word.

Sam: Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes! (1978)

           Many things inspire films. For some, inspiration comes from an event in one’s life that needs to be expressed for cathartic relief. For others, inspiration comes from dendrites connecting what you see to various emotions. In the case of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” inspiration came from looking around a prop room and grabbing the first five things filmmakers John De Bello and Costa Dillon saw. Now if I have set this up as a negative review, do not be fooled. I have never seen a finer film then this cult classic. So, now for the plot.
           Giant man-eating tomatoes. Done.
           There’s no love story, there’s very little back-story, there’s no STORY, and random elements are constantly thrown in. For instance, in one scene a man assassinates various people and is eaten by the giant, killer fruits. Was he ever introduced before? No. Was he significant to the demise of the killer tomatoes? Not in the least. His presence in the film was a total non sequitur. Eventually, some similar characters begin to reoccur from scene to scene and it becomes clear that there is some group of people trying to stop the tomato invasion. However, overall, there is about as little in the plot department as there is going on in John Bobbitt’s pants. What is most shocking is that this was actually based on an earlier student film by John De Bello of even poorer quality.
           I truly, to this day, wonder if there was any acting being done in the film. If so, it must just be so good that its subtlety shot right over my head. The person who comes closest to actually mimicking human emotion is supporting actor George Wilson. If you were thinking of the secondary character from the novel The Great Gatsby then you would be absolutely correct; it is, in fact, a fictional character from the 1920’s who steps up to play this role.
           In terms of directing and general production, the movie was made on $90,000 and what is essentially a super 8 camera. The special effects are either worse than a film by Ed D. Wood Jr. or completely nonexistent. The director made a bold choice by using the “point the camera at the actors and yell action” method. The sets are…just real places, absolutely nothing fabricated. And, to top all this off, there’s a musical number in the middle of the bloody film. WHOSE CREATIVE DECISION WAS THAT? One character sings a song directly to the camera and then it is never referenced later. I would like to think this is what a film by Temple Grandin would be like. I apologize to Ms. Grandin for that remark; she could make a far better film.
           So, if I rant so much about the major flaring cracks of this film, why did I say it wasn’t bad? There is certain point where a film can amass such a huge cult that regardless of the quality, it’s an instant classic. That’s exactly what this film is. It’s cheap, terrible, and such a treat to watch. I have never been happier watching a movie, partially because I had just shot up. But even though I was chock-full o’heroin, the mind numbing campyness of the damn thing made it far too enjoyable for a film made on $90,000. Suck it Avatar! To most accurately sum up the film, it gave me the ultimate feeling of schadenfreude. This is to say the film was like watching someone fail for eighty-seven minutes and knowing I could never do anything so poorly. Finally, the film teaches us that there is cheap art and that something doesn’t have to be good to be…good. What rings most true is that lycopene kills.