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Halloween Season Movies with Great Stories

Since Halloween is quickly approaching and TV is boasting hours of  every Friday the 13th movie ever made (who knew that they would reach the double digits?), I got to thinking about horror/suspense movies with really great stories.  Sure, I can go for a good thrasher – but when you combine that with a kick-ass story or a really good plot twist well…that’s a reason to have popcorn – with extra butter!  So, here’s my opinion of five great Halloween season flicks:

SPOILERS INCLUDED

5. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) – This movie scared the beguses out of me. Plus, the story is actually plausible. The cold unexplored antarctic is the perfect backdrop for unknown alien-like things to happen, as well as the classic human foible of losing trust in our fellow-man in dire circumstances. Kurt Russell is at the peak of his most macho phase in his career and Wilford Brimley is well…Wilford Brimley – before he made all his friends in Cocoon. Plus, it’s kind of bloody and gooey and gross.

4. The Exorcist (1973) – Talk about gross. Linda Blair and the green pea soup has made this flick famous, but it’s also grounded in such strong storytelling that you’re left wondering if something like it could really happen. The priest and his mother issues is an added bonus. And Ellen Burstyn’s look of horror is classic.  I made the mistake of seeing it with my older brother (granted, I was like fourteen and it was a late night showing), and I kept my eyes covered almost the entire time. And I was awake all night. Watching it as an adult, I still feel like a kid and shade my eyes whenever she spews that soup. Gross.

3. The Others (2001) – Wow. The story of this movie is pretty fantastic. Although the pacing hits some speed bumps in the middle. I still don’t understand the appearance and then disappearance of the father/husband. And I’m still in doubt about the children’s “condition”.  I wish Kidman demonstrated a little bit more madness before the big reveal, but perhaps the  beauty of the film is her subtlety. Anyway, the story rocks.

2. Scream (1996) – The first one. Or should I say, the good one. This flick is funny! How many horror movies can you say are funny – on purpose? This is it! It’s so good that you can ignore David Arquette acting like a doufus – again. You’re so busy laughing that Neve Campbell’s famous “my life sucks so I must pout” look that she formed while on PARTY OF FIVE isn’t so annoying when you see her being chased by her crazy classmates.  And who can forget Drew Barrymore getting murdered within the first three minutes – that really starts things off with a bang!

1. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – Classic! I saw this on the big screen while I was in college and saw the beauty of Roman Polanski’s directing. The camera angles in this film force the audience to comply. It’s powerful, powerful directing. Plus, Ruth Gordon is irresistible as the devil’s right hand helper. She makes the whole film. It’s a good story about entitlement and want and how having the devil’s baby is better than no baby at all, well…at least to Mia Farrow.

What’s your favorite Halloween season flick?

Please Give on DVD – Please Watch

Katherine Keener plays Kate, a Manhattanite wife and mother of a certain age who is facing an unsatisfying life in Nicole Holofcener’s, Please Give. Yeah, this theme is played over and over in Holofcener’s other work Lovely & Amazing, Friends With Money – also starring Keener – but it is because of Keener that the viewer doesn’t feel bored or frustrated with what could be an already played out story. Keener possesses the uncanny ability to portray bitchy with the perfect amount of vulnerability. It’s pretty miraculous and makes her the go-to-actor that she is.  Whether she’s playing the author Harper Lee opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote or the Bohemian grandmother girlfriend of Steve Carell in The Forty Year Old Virgin, Keener pulls it off with her delicately balancing emotions.

The incredibly underrated Oliver Platt (The Big C) plays her husband and the scenes the two have together are a master class in acting. They truly react, not act when they are together. It’s just too bad this movie was in theaters for about a second and then quickly disappeared. But the good news is that it’s now available on DVD. Netflix it today.

The Social Network – Don’t Believe The Hype

What’s the solution to getting dumped? Create a website where you can talk about people and never have to talk to them. That’s the lesson in the highly hyped movie The Social Network.

The movie opens with the now famous Mark Zuckerberg (nicely played by Jesse Eisenberg) getting dumped by a very pretty young girl, Erica (Rooney Mara – the new Girl With The Dragon Tattoo). You can’t help but think – this socially stunted, boardering on rude, incredibly awkward guy actually has a girlfriend? He actually found someone who wants to spend time with an emotionally halted nerd who’s obviously clueless when it comes to human beings (mainly girls), but a genius when it comes to calculus? Are the poor girls at Harvard that desperate? Eww.

The hype surrounding this movie is truly ridiculous. David Fincher (Benjamin Button, Zodiac, Fight Club) is a good director and Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, American President, A Few Good Men) is a decent screenwriter. But the combination of these talents does not automatically propel this movie to extraordinary. The acting is solid. But my biggest complaint is that Zuckerberg is at one moment a shy, awkward geek and the next is a sharp-tongued, assertive and aggressive tyrant. This is made possible by the incredibly unrealistic dialogue that has made Aaron Sorkin famous. The lines are cutting and entertaining, but totally unrelatable when it comes to character growth and transition.  This was a criticism for all those West Wing Episodes with the fast walking that was parodied on Mad TV. Hilarious by the way.  But then there is the greed and corruption that steps in the story with the appearance of Scott Parker, (Justin Timberlake) the founder of Napster that highlights the earning potential of the little website that talks at people.

Don’t get me wrong, I use Facebook. It’s been nice to let people know little snippets of what is happening in my life. But I also don’t have hundreds or thousand of “friends”. I think South Park explains and treats the issue best in the episode YOU HAVE 0 FRIENDS, more than I ever could in a blog post.

But I will admit, although an avid user, I am weary of social media. I am weary that these horny guys from Harvard – some of the brightest students in the country – didn’t want to work on their communication skills. They just wanted to find an easier way to talk about people and not to people. I am leary that this easy way out results in a blurred sense of right and wrong. Especially in the wake of Rutger’s University student, Tyler Clementi killing himself after his roommate posted footage of him being with another man on the Internet.  I know…I know…Rutgers University is reaching to prove my point.  But still…it’s worth thinking about…and still heartbreaking.

Don’t believe the hype that this movie is a journey in the revolution in communication. The Social Network is a story in just how far we have all come from actually speaking to others…now we just announce.

Britney On Glee – Oops They Did A Sloppy Show

It’s Britney B*tch! But…hum…do we care? Last night Gleeks around the country sat by their TV’s to watch the long-awaited Britney Spears episode on Glee, hoping not to be disappointed. Unfortunately, the episode is not only enormously disappointing but it’s…well…sloppy…really sloppy.

Where are the characters? Where is the delightful reiteration/propulsion of plot through song? Where are the writers? It is almost as if the idea of doing Britney’s songs totally overshadowed any storytelling once so ever. Although it is fun to pick out the contestants of another Fox show So You Think You Can Dance in the dance company, it doesn’t make up for the lack of good story.

The story is so far gone that some scenes end with a big WTF? Kurt is sent to the principal’s office. And? Artie and Finn suddenly are back on the football team? Really? And then there’s the terrible state of Rachel, finding solace in a 10-year-old Britney song? Ick. It doesn’t help matters that the pressure of starring in an innovative show only makes the star Lea Michele lose so much weight that she now actually appears older on screen.  Again. Ick.

Please Glee, don’t lose your way. Stay creative. You had us at the first audition. You had us at the moment Sue sat down with her special sister. You had us at the first note of a Journey song. Don’t fall victim of making the show strictly a vehicle for guest stars. The Britney episode was entertaining, but please get back to the great writing with emotionally invested characters. Enough with the gimmicks.

But the show does have my favorite line to date – “This room looks like that room on that spaceship when I got probed.”

Too Fat For Fifteen – An Unfortunate Lesson

The Style Network has carved a niche in presenting provocative shows about self-esteem and being overweight.  The serial show Ruby is the most popular, dealing with the life of a 500+ pound woman trying to lose weight. Watching Ruby Gettinger struggle to learn to eat healthy and to find the source of her pain that has caused her to be overweight all of her adult life has been heartwrenching to witness.

But it is the show Too Fat For Fifteen that is the most painful to watch. Obese kids ranging from ages 11 to 17 are sent to a special school in North Carolina to learn to lose weight and still keep up their skills academically.  The stories the producers have carved out for these kids and their families tugs the heart strings and incites some really strong anger.

An 11 year old girl weighing over 200 lbs. must experience her first time away from her family. A 14 year old boy coming in at close to 400 lbs. learns that the masterful manipulation he has used on his mother, doesn’t work at the camp. And at last, a 17 year girl turns out to be the largest and heaviest student the camp has ever had – weighing in at over 500 lbs. It is a sad, sad situation. The stories are so honest, you want to crawl into the TV and slap some sense into these kids AND their parents.

It is on purpose that the parents of these kids are depicted as clueless oafs, whining that they want the best for their kids, yet don’t learn the “program” that the kids follow and are at least 50 lbs. overweight themselves. It’s on purpose the producers follow the kids on home visits and have the audience witness all the learning and hard work of the students be sucked down the drain at the first meal they are fed at home.

The storytelling of this show is definitely moving. However, I can’t help but wonder if it can sustain. What I mean is, the show does a great job of sucking you in. You want these kids to succeed – in their weight loss and academically. But with all the obstacles that lie in their way – unsupportive home environments, no self-motivation, no ability to face the pain as to why they over eat – the viewer can’t help but feel their stories won’t have a happy ending. And we all want a happy ending, right?

Or maybe that’s the ultimate lesson of their stories – the unfortunate realization that these kids will not overcome what life and their parents have given them. Heartbreaking.