Change Your Image
FilmWatcher
Reviews
The Mist (2007)
A Potentially Good B Film, With Intriguing Premise....Ruined
**This comment has spoilers starting with the second paragraph.** Readers of Stephen King's novellas will remember The Mist as an especially chilling and intriguing thought experiment. How will a random group of people react when confronted with an utterly alien threat, which traps them together in an enclosed place by surprise, one from which there seems no possible escape, and thus makes them confront not only the danger but all the kinds of fears, hopes, and weaknesses human beings have? Other commenters, such as the featured 23 November 2007, have already discussed the good acting, dialog, editing, and tension buildup of what promises to be a solid and actually thoughtful B-movie.
However, Frank Darabont's oh-so-stylishly nihilistic ending destroys the movie, a big alien-bug foot (or Monty Python Foot?) crunching the story. Now nihilistic-type endings can work well, as in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), with the last two survivors of the Antarctic station facing each other in fear, or George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), in which the last human survivor is mistakenly shot by the police.
Both bring the overwhelming danger to an end that makes the perceptive viewer confront horror that a merely-worldly horizon can't process; Carpenter with isolated, terrified and mutually suspicious survivors, and Romero with a man whose best shot ends with that most real of all possibilities, a random mistake.
In this case, however, it's just too much. The survivors have sacrificed and suffered suitably; all have been forced to confront danger (the monsters), evil (Mrs. Carmody's twisting of religion in brutal, murderous fashion to assuage her fear), random losses (Drayton's wife and the broken window), and the costs of trying to survive (the loss of Ollie Weeks and two others getting to the car). They drive along. They see more monsters, destruction, and death. And they run out of gas.
People have suffered, made mistakes, and died. No one could accuse Darabont, five minutes before the end, of having pulled punches in portraying King's story faithfully and with skill. No one would accuse him of a pollyanna ending if even he had Drayton & Co say try to leave the gas-empty land rover--and some of them die running to the end of the Mist that they don't know is right in front of them. Or if he had preserved King's chilling and uncertain original ending, of Drayton & co. hearing the word "Hartford" in radio static and holding it as their word of hope as they drive on.
But to have Drayton, the lead character, despair, at that last moment, and kill all these survivors, including his son, before leaving the car to die and instead being saved, sorry. That's the sledgehammer blow that ruins it. It's over the top and too much. This story is about some people staying rational through it all, confronting the range of human emotions and weaknesses one would expect in such a situation, and trying. This ending is gratuitously nihilistic and ruins the story.
So I say without hesitation: don't waste your time on this movie. Shame on Frank Darabont for taking a thoughtful, intriguing novella and ruining it as a film.
Muggsy (1976)
A 'serious' show, and one traumatic scene remembered
I didn't remember the name of this show, which I watched as a child, until I came across it recently on a site for 70's live action Saturday-morning shows. I remember "Muggsy" to be a generally decent show with likable characters. But it had one traumatic scene I remember very vividly, that IMO wasn't appropriate for Saturday morning.
As a previous user noted, this was a 'serious' Saturday morning show for somewhat older viewers. But some of us under 10 were watching. There was an episode where someone's mother--maybe Clytemnestra's mother? (Obviously not Nick and Muggsy's mom) gets hit and killed by a car. The mother had red or brown hair, pulled in a bun like the headmistress on "The Facts of Life."
They actually portrayed the death. They showed the woman crossing the street carrying bags of groceries and a car hits her in the crosswalk. There was a very convincing out-the-windshield view of the woman screaming as she's hit, the bags of groceries flying. Then they show her laying dead on the pavement, with groceries scattered all over.
That scene traumatized me terribly. For months I lived in cold fear that my mom would die whenever she left the house. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying shows shouldn't deal with hard realities of life. And again, Muggsy and Nick were likable, sympathetic characters, and the show was decent. I think estimating 5 out of 10 stars is fair based upon that much memory. But the death of a character was kind of a rough thing to be actually *showing* in live-action on Saturday morning.
At some point later in the episode, the daughter of the dead woman wants to see the body, but the morgue won't let her in until Nick comes and offers to accompany her. Presumably the idea was that a child deserves to have closure to such a tragedy like anyone else, and shouldn't be denied it. Nick helps her just like he and Muggsy help each other. Which are good points that go with the show's storyline of showing young people dealing with tough aspects of life.
The Shape of Things to Come (1979)
Hilariously awful space dreck
What's most striking about this hilariously awful film is that someone actually thought that it was worth putting up money to make it. Two years after Star Wars and Close Encounters, someone actually felt that terrible dialogue and direction foisted upon decent actors like Jack Palance and Barry Morse, special effects out of a high school film class, a cheesily overwrought synthesizer score, and clunky 50's toy-robot villains would make for a worthwhile movie.
I recently saw it with the benefit of fast forward (as another commenter said, the only way to watch this film) and have to wonder if it's really a parody. Everything about it is so stereotypically and perfectly awful, one wonders if the director was pulling a stunt like Princeton physicist Alan Sokal's hoax "postmodern physics" article in a doofy po-mo "science" journal.
But Carol Lynley looks great, as does the Canadian National Exhibition complex in Toronto lit from behind.
Signs (2002)
A stylish film that argues its theology poorly
Contains Spoilers "Signs" is a chilling, suspenseful, and thoughtful film that ultimately does not satisfy. Director Shyamalan's point is that even in the face of incomprehensibly heartbreaking tragedy, or utterly alien threat, one should not lose faith that a higher Power is at work. A higher power that is lovingly weaving all of the details of life--from small oddities to life-shattering suffering--into a plan for one's happiness and fulfillment.
Theologians call this Divine Providence, which is of course a weighty subject. A film that attempts to demonstrate it in action, and show how lives are changed and bettered through it--in this case Mel Gibson's Graham Hess--needs to marshal the evidence carefully and convincingly. The elements of the film all need to be successfully constructed in order for the argument not to seem forced and heavy-handed. Shyamalan only partially succeeds at these endeavors, and as a result this stylistically excellent film falls short at the end.
As viewers of the Sixth Sense knew coming in, Shyamalan can create the sense of the numinous--the idea that otherworldly powers, benevolent or threatening, infuses the daily world--extremely well. Shadows move under doors, corn stalks rustle, characters listen tensely, and the viewer is on the edge of his seat. Signs does not disappoint in this regard.
The characters must also be convincing, and they are. Gibson's Hess is suitably bitter and brooding, but lovingly devoted to the family; Phoenix's Merrill is the sort of dopey yet loyal and caring brother; and Culkin's Morgan and Breslin's Bo are emotionally engaging. Others have noted Shyamalan's ability to get excellent performances out of child actors, this film is no exception.
Shyamalan also creates suspense by only developing slowly what the real threat is. Are the crop-circle artists human or otherworldly? What is it lurking around the farm--something natural or supernatural? The types of fear are mingled well, and distinguished as the film progresses. The real threat is natural--hostile aliens--while the real hope of life and happiness--is divine.
But the plot is weak, and the ending in particular strains credibility. Why does an alien, whose species are compared to Olympic gymnasts in their agility, stand around like a statue in the Hess' living room waiting for Merrill to bash its brains in? As noted above, why on earth does a species vulnerable to water invade precipitation-prone earth, and in the buff at that? The similarity to the Wicked Witch of the West, also noted above, undermined some of the suspense. For crying out loud, is *that* what we were scared of? Just turn on the garden hose!
A cast and a director this good needed a better ending. Shyamalan wanted to show how every detail he chose contributed to the final victory--Bo's water obsession, Merrill's baseball successes and failure, Morgan's asthma, and Colleen Hess' dying words. But he forces them together, and thus undermines the credibility needed to demonstrate higher power at work. Those of us who already believe in higher providential power share Shyamalan's view of things, but this film may not convince many others due to the weaknesses noted.