If I had kids, I just don’t think I’d take them to see this movie.  We’re talking about MY imaginary kids, mind you.  So they’re probably already taking antidepressants.  “Here, kids, watch this movie.  It’ll teach how much life sucks.”  Also, I don’t think they need the idea put into their heads that whenever they leave the room, their toys are coming to life.  That was a personal phobia of my own when I was little.  I had nightmares that my Shogun Warriors came to life and tried to make me eat their choking-hazard parts.  You don’t need to psycho-analyze that for me, by the way.

I don’t want to turn anyone off of the movie.  It’s very moving and entertaining.  If you like Pixar, you’ll dig it.  If you don’t like Pixar, you’re a heartless shell of human being.  You make the choice.

If you do pick it up, don’t miss the short animated feature, Night & Day.  Or, Day & Night.  One of those.  Great stuff.

I’m outa here.

What can I say about Wholly Moses?  How about nothing.

Human Centipede is a . . .

No, hold on, I really should say something about Wholly Moses.  How about this;  Wholly Moses is one of the worst movies I have ever watched.  I have watched A LOT of movies.  So, I guess you do have to give it credit for that.  Making my all time worst movies list is not an easy feat to pull off.  In fact, I don’t even have such a list.  Thanks to this movie, I do now.  Wholly Moses is currently holding strong at the first position.

Moving right along, if you haven’t heard of Human Centipede, it’s a much hyped horror movie in which a mad scientist kidnaps several people and constructs a “human centipede” by surgically connecting them ass to mouth.  It breaks down like this:  Segment #1 eats some food, shits it out into segment #2, who then digests it, and shits it out into segment #3, who then just shits it out.  I hope my technical, medical jargon didn’t lose anyone.

All of this shitting and eating of shit, by the way, is never portrayed in the movie.  (Believe me, I’m not complaining.)  The ass-to-mouth business is also pretty tame.  Bandages cover everything, so there’s little gross out factor at work their either.  In fact, there’s hardly anything bad in this movie at all other than the core idea.  I’m not even sure why the doc wanted to do this experiment in the first place.  As near as I can tell, he had some dogs that died and I think he maybe just needed a new pet around the house.  We do see a scene where he tries to teach the human centipede to fetch, so I think I might be onto something.

Honestly, I was expecting more segments in the centipede; at least five or six people.  Three people seemed a little thin to me.  And the guy in position #1 kept getting on my nerves.  All he did was complain constantly.  On and on, blah blah blah.  I think that’s a time when you really have to be a “the glass is half full” kind of person.  At least he didn’t have to eat anyone else’s shit.  You might think I’m being hard on him, but I’ll bet good money that segments #2 and #3 envied the hell out of him.  And when there’s someone in the world who envies you, things can’t be all bad.

For the movie itself, I can’t recommend it as entertainment in the normal sense.  But I will say that it could make a great party movie.  The look on others’ faces while they watch it would be worth the price of a rental alone.  Also, it could spark some great dialogue among spectators.  For instance, if you were making human centipede, who would you include?  I’d have to go with the old standard of Jane Seymour, Andrew Dice Clay, and Cindy Williams.  Come one, what else are they doing these days?

Stay tuned this coming week for my reaction to Toy Story 3.

And what better way to continue the Thanksgiving festivities than by settling with with a couple of holiday features.  Tonight, my good friend, the dreaded Kingmob, and I, will be screening Wholly Moses (Starring Dudley Moore) and the Human Centipede (starring a human centipede).  There will be lots of drinking involved, followed by bad religious jokes, followed by hot centipede-on-centipede action.  Then we’re going to watch the movies.  Ha!  Just kidding.  It promises to be a great time, and I sincerely hope I don’t hurl.

Aren’t you sad that you can’t join us, Internet?  I feel for you, so here’s a taste of what you’ll be missing.

(Moses-wise, not Centipede.  Perfectly safe to watch, I swear.)

If you’re currently watching AMC’s The Walking Dead, but you haven’t read the comic series it’s based upon, this past week’s episode captures the feel of the comic perfectly.  That might be because it was written by series creator, Robert Kirkman.  As a man whose never written for television before, he comes out with both shotguns blasting and taking no prisoners.  That doesn’t make much sense, I know.  Suffice to say, he did a fantastic job.  Per usual, much of the episode is entirely new material, diverging significantly from the original story.  I can only imagine how strange it must be for Kirkman to go back and rewrite his own story with new characters and plot twists.  Although, they’re his characters and he knows them characters thoroughly.  It must also be a great opportunity to flesh them out even further.  (No pun intended.)

Everything I love about the comic was there in that episode.  At first I was hesitant about the direction they were taking with the show.  Now I’m very excited by the new elements they’re bringing in.  I’m able to rediscover the story without simply sitting through an overly faithful rehash of events I’ve already read about.  As long as the quality is there, I don’t care where they take it.

The show does have a tendency to indulge in melodrama from time to time.  I think when you’re dealing with a zombie show created for mass appeal, the sentimentality is going to be hard to avoid.  I’ll be happy if they keep it to a minimum without dipping back into moments like Rick’s “I’m going to tell my wife about Dwayne” speech from episode 2.  He never did tell his wife about Dwayne, did he?

Rick’s full of shit.

WARNING: This will make you laugh out loud.

Well, once again, my hopes for a decent alien invasion have been flushed down the toilet by this weekend’s opening of Skyline.  Looks like it’s a pretty miserable affair.  Is it really that difficult to make a large scale aliens-attack-the-shit-out-of-us movie that doesn’t suck?  Apparently it is.

Now, we have the trailer for Battle: Los Angeles.  It looks promising, so my fingers are crossed.

It’s a good sign that Michelle Rodriguez is in it.  I bet her resume just says, ” Badass bitch with a gun – any questions?”  I’m almost certain that if aliens attacked us for real, Michelle Rodriguez would be drafted to a special government task force for the kicking of alien ass.  Her and Danny Trejo.  Although, I don’t think Danny has fought aliens as of yet.  So this is something that desperately needs to happen.  I’m going to call Danny’s agent right now.

By the way, do not read anything about Triangle before watching it.  Except, of course, for this vague and mysterious post.  Don’t even look at the description on the dvd, or on Netflix, depending on where you’re getting it from.  Go into this one completely ignorant.  The way I go into most situations.  I can’t always recommend that approach.  But here, it’s not only okay, it’s essential.

Oh, I suppose I could tell you about the storm and the weird dreams.  There’s also a big ship.  Seagulls become pretty important, so keep an eye on them.  They can be omens of things to come.

I’m just getting ominous so it’s time to go.  Go, go, watch.  In the meantime, I’ll finish up Chris Smith’s first feature, Creep, and tell you about it in a couple days.

Later!

But here’s the short.  Watch it.  It’s good for you.

The best I can offer up is some movie news that I am very excited about.  Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.  This will be the first big budget film dealing with Lovecraft’s cosmological mythos.  It’s got great people behind it, so it shouldn’t disappoint.  The novella, though a great story, is pretty dry stuff.  As far as I’m concerned, they can do whatever they want with it as long as they stay true to the initial premise.  I just want to see a Shoggoth eat a penguin.

Them (2006, France).  No, this isn’t that movie about giant ants.  This is a thriller about serial killings in Romania.  And, with that, I can’t really give too much else away.  Just that this one is a rare treat, not to be missed by fans of suspense.  Like Carpenter’s Halloween, Them creates an almost unbearable tension right from the start.  Most impressively, the film manages to maintain that tension until the end credits.  There’s a suspenseful opening, followed by about fifteen minutes of story and character setup, and then it’s back to the races.  I can’t help but feel that there’s also some homage to early Tobe Hooper going on.  The “based on a true story” nonsense at the top (which I don’t think it was) and the camera work and use of sound throughout the last half all bear the Tobe Hooper stamp on them.  I have little else to say except that this is available on Netflix streaming and you should all watch it now.

Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland (2010).  I thought this would suck but it didn’t.  I can’t recommend it because most people seem to hate it.  I’m not sure why, though.  I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy most of Tim Burton’s movies.  I enjoyed it more than Batman but less than Sweeny Todd if that helps.  I think most people expect Alice to be told in a very specific way.  It’s one of those sacred cows where any deviation from the traditional story’s path arouses immediate disapproval.  People need to go back and re-read their Alice.  Burton’s film is actually a retelling of Through the Looking Glass, the second part of the Alice saga.  It doesn’t bother me in the least that Burton took liberties with it because Through the Looking Glass is one boring piece of work.  The biggest flaw here was in the title.  They should have called it The Return of Alice, or some shit like that, so the general public could feel that their silly institution wasn’t being violated.  The film turns out to be a very entertaining, special effects driven adventure.  Perfect for HD viewing.  Which is great, since this one is also available for streaming through Netflix.

Hard Revenge Milly (2008, Japan).  This one is for the gore hounds.  Oh, but what entertaining gore is it.  Milly takes place in a Mad Max inspired, post apocalyptic Japan.  It’s a straight forward revenge tale in which Milly hunts down the criminals who killed her family.  It stands apart due to the fact that it’s less than an hour long.  More of short film than a feature, it’s that very brevity that makes the plot so streamlined.  And yet, it never feels rushed.  Most of the film takes place as Milly is waiting at an abandoned factory for the killers to arrive.  We get the build up of waiting, followed by the payoff of the final showdown, all in the same amount of time it takes most films to set up the third act.  Milly is also full of dark humor and some truly innovative, over-the-top violence.  A good time for all.  Go watch this now.  It can be streamed through Netflix, as can the sequel, Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody battle.  I can’t recommend the sequel, however.  It’s a full length movie that fails to recreate what made the first movie work.  There’s too little action, which is uninspired to begin with.  The effects are cheap and the story is dismal.  Stick with the shorter original.

Dead Man’s Shoes (2004, UK).  This film is the direct opposite of Hard Revenge Milly.  A serious, realistic study of revenge that is a near perfect example of the Klingon proverb, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”  (Yes, I know it’s not really a Klingon proverb.  I have to put that in their so Spacecase doesn’t correct me later.)  The story is about a soldier who returns home when his brother is being tormented by local thugs.  He sets out to torment them in return.  To give anything else away would be unforgivable.  Rest assured that this not another thriller or violence happy gore fest.  The violence here is very real and so are the repercussions.  This is a deeply moving film about love and redemption.  You won’t be able to stop thinking about it for days.

Oh, thank God, I’m done.  I heard the mailman deliver what I believe to be my copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops.  That was like an hour ago.  I’ve been sitting here losing my mind.  Oh, great.  Now I have to go to the bathroom as well.  Sorry, you didn’t need to know that.  I have to go.  I mean, I really have to go.