Falling Debris

My name is Robert Anhalt and what you are about to read is real. I recently sat down to watch the "biopic" on alien abductions, The Fourth Kind.

I don't know about anyone else, but I know that this is definitely not a documentary and/or biopic. It's a completely fictional story about alien abductions, and not very good ones at that.

Mila Jovovich opens as herself and attempts to convince the audience that everything they are about to witness is either real or adaptations of real events. The entire film is a blend of known actors portraying roles and acting out what appears to be a narrative, with spliced in "real footage" from patient interviews and cop car cameras. The real footage adds captions, strange sound effects and even manufactured distortion to make it seem like something (extraterrestrial) is interfering with the recording. Dr. Abigail Tyler (Jovovich) interviews psychiatric patients who display symptoms of "alien abduction", the fourth kind of close encounters, while being part of the mystery herself. The patients recall vivid dreams, scream in horror and even channel alien voices under hypnosis - luckily on camera, otherwise we wouldn't believe it.

Where the movie really goes wrong is that it's not even a narrative. It's not a documentary. It's not a biopic. It's not even a fraction of these things. Writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi must have had his own encounter with craziness to believe that this was a good idea. The whole thing occurs in Alaska, where no one is going to look up the so-called "documented" cases of alien encounters. The names were changed from the original victims, but making it Alaska inserts a futility that would not be felt if it was encounters in New York City.

Within the first third of the movie, one of Dr. Tyler's patients holds his family at gunpoint and commits murder/suicide, visualized with a mix of re-enactment, actual footage and Dr. Tyler's perspective, all in a 24-esque split screen. This unique, albeit confusing style, is never repeated in the movie, which makes it horribly inconsistent. It's downright difficult to call it a movie because it has no structure. At some point, Tyler pieces together that the alien language spoken by patients is actually ancient Sumerian, which hints at an alien presence on Earth 8,000 years ago. It's very Stargate in that it wants to imply an alien presence in ancient cultures, but does it at the level of a bad History-channel documentary.

I'm truly sorry that I actually watched this twice. It's an awful movie that has nothing going for it besides some slightly disturbing "real" interviews. This is not how you get people interested in close encounters again. If this is any attempt to garner attraction to this pseudo-science, much like ghost EVPs did after all those TV shows and movies, then Olatunde Osunsanmi should have taken either a cinematic or documentary approach, not both. It infringes on my enjoyment of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and will never see the light of day again. Good night, you piece of trash film.

This was on the Trailer Park a while back and I only recently got to see it. Two comedic geniuses collaborate to bring one of the year's most theatrical cinematic comedies, Whatever Works.

Whatever Works is brought to us by New York film staple Woody Allen, known for art house romantic comedies like Annie Hall and Manhattan, and stars Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame.

The film is the first person narrative of Boris Yelnikoff, a seemingly unemployed urban philosopher who teaches kids chess in his free time. Boris has had an underwhelming life and it's left him with a nihilistic outlook on life. His misanthropic attitude leaves him unenthused with his friends and lovers, so much so that he seeks intellectual camaraderie with the audience, breaking the fourth wall in the process. Perhaps it's just the nature of this Woody Allen "theater piece", or perhaps the ability to see us is because of his attempted suicide.

Boris is accidentally visited by a wayward young girl who left her home and family in the South to follow her dreams of living in the big city. While he finds the prospect of having company absolutely preposterous, he can't help but find some compassion and bring her in. As she settles in and begins looking for honest work, Boris begins to admit that he has an irrational, emotional attachment to her. They begin a relationship, but that's soon disrupted by typical Allen love triangles and unexpected character developments.

It's refreshing to see a Woody Allen film that doesn't involve him at all, but it's clear that Boris is yet another interpretation of himself. The April-May relationships and awkward love triangles are a beautiful thing of ShShakespeare, but Allen makes them an awkward thing that may make it difficult for general audiences who expect romantic comedies à la the Hughs Grant and Jackman. Don't let the geriatric protagonist fool you, it's for all audience ages, but this is mainly going to score with Woody Allen and Larry David fans.

I've been waiting to review this movie for almost a year and there are rarely times that I feel the restrictions of being an American audience, but it looks like it's finally time to take a look at Franklyn.

Franklyn is a UK film that apparently few have heard of, even though I originally saw the trailer on Apple.com. It's an extremely dichotic sci-fi / mumblecore drama that is hard to understand, thus hard to explain. Nothing really serves and an introduction to the plot, but you can immediately identify that at least some of the film occurs in London, following the separate lives of Emilia, Milo and Peter, as well as Jonathan Preest, a denizen of fictional Meanwhile City.

As good as I was hoping this film would be, the continuity leaves everything to be desired. I know it's multiple simultaneous stories like Crash, but many scenes are a few minutes long and cut to an unrelated scene. There's no transition, just hard cuts to completely unrelated content.

Meanwhile City appears to be straight out of Dark City, a large, dystopian version of Victorian England, with huge skyscrapers and a missing sun. It's not completely uncivilized, but there's no explanation of this fictional realm and how it ties into the real world. The mystery of it all comes together in the last half hour or so, when you start realizing that things aren't as cool as they appear.

At first glance, it seems that Jonathan Preest (Ryan Phillipe, the guy in the mask) is some sort of Batman vigilante; he even narrates like in a graphic novel. The mask and costume are actually quite catching, as it leaves everything up to body language. But he's completely unremarkable and doesn't appear to be very useful to the side of justice. It's a shame that the film was executed like a written story. I'd like to read a novelization of Franklyn, but this is just a jumbled mess.

Addressing one of the most important issues, I have no idea who or what Franklyn actually is. I don't think anyone actually speaks the name throughout the entire film. I take that back, someone reads a note and asks, "Who's Franklyn?" Well said. If this review is in any way useless and hard to read, imagine watching the film. I must have watched it at least three times and have no idea what else to say about it.

This is a little later than I wanted it to be, but it’s more thematic if I publish this… at night. Last week (and again tonight), I saw the biggest guerilla-style horror film since The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity.

It all started in 2007, when Oren Peli wrangled up a couple thousand dollars to film a scary movie with two people in a house with a single camera. The final product screened at Screamfest 2007 and went completely silent until September 2009. The primary trailer contained more footage of the audience watching and jumping in terror, which generated an unexpected buzz. Eventful ran a promotion requiring one million votes before Paranormal Activity would have a wide release. It was seen as a way to accurately save money on their distribution to only cities that would see it, but it took only a week to break that goal. After seeing it, it's certain that the guerilla viral marketing matches the cinematic style of the film.

Katie and her boyfriend Micah (mee-kah) are a live-in couple in San Diego who appear to have some… paranormal activity… in the house. Not much is actually explained, we just get that Micah purchases a high-end video camera to document the experience. Micah seeks to debunk the activity through his scientific methods (videotape and my favorite, Firewire) to maintain his role as "the man of the house". He specifically states that he is going to kick this thing's ass, with no real plan other than to use his high-end camera as an excuse to make 'home movies' with his girlfriend.

It's when Michah starts using more invasive experiments in order to prove or disprove the activity that things start getting worse. They capture more and more evidence of a malevolent spirit and attempt to get rid of it. It seems like Micah (or the creator of the film) has watched too many of the recent paranormal investigation shows and mashed the techniques up. Powder on the floor, high gain microphones and even Hasbro-trademakred Ouija boards capture evidence inconsistent with any one idea within paranormal lore.

It gets to the point where it becomes obvious that the spirit is attached to Katie. It physically interacts with her and even influences her actions, while giving subtle hints that Micah is the one that isn't welcome. In supernatural studies, there's little else this could be than an incubus. It wants her, one way or the other, and definitely has the ability to follow through with that.

What makes this so effective is that the real threat isn't what we see, but what we don't see. Much like the "unseen character", the paranormal activity is performed by an invisible force, which forces our imaginations to create what isn't there, and in the safety of the home. Given the public's short notice exposure to the nature of the film, the general idea going in is that it's a real documentary. The film thanks the police department for letting them use the footage, but people die in it. If Paramount found a way to market and put snuff into theaters, that would a landmark.

Much like with these first-person perspective films (Blair Witch, Cloverfield), the translation from big screen to home video probably won't be successful. This film really has to be seen in the theater, where you don't feel as naturally safe as you do in your own home.

An entire hour of discussion can be found at the podcast.

It wouldn't be Halloween without at least one horror review. Luckily, it's not just horror we have, it's an actual Halloween season movie, Trick 'r Treat.

This movie has been through the distribution equivalent of 'development hell', as it was produced 2 years ago and only now released. Obviously, it has a time sensitive release window, not that stops Rob Zombie's summer release of H2. Having a first-time director probably doesn't help the release schedule, but it looks like WB only trusted it enough for a straight to video.

Instead of recent seasonal horror films that are more slasher/monster related, this follows the tradition of Halloween story telling and incorporating multiple stories around a common theme (Halloween, duh). Much like the pulp fiction horror flicks of the '80s like Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt, these stories start with an innocuous plot and end with a surprising twist.

Not only does it take place during Halloween, but it directly uses the traditions of jack 'o laterns, poisoned candy and monsters. Sometimes the traditions are treated as silly nonsense, but not following the rules can certainly lead to unfortunate outcomes.

There's no real famous actors in the film besides Dylan Baker and Anna Paquin, but that's a strategic move to avoid the pitfall of many recent failed horror flicks. Notable faces takes people out of the experience and they usually want to steal the show.

And yes, the scary child thing on the poster does make an appearance and even shows his face. It's kinda silly and hearkens to a particular Halloween horror film. More than just a scary character, he acts as the 'spirit' of Halloween that takes revenge on anyone not following the traditions.

This is one of the best actual Halloween movies made in recent years. It's low on violence and gore, but is full of suspense and even a few laughs (tricks and treats!). Good thing it's already on home video by now, so you can rent it and watch it with friends for your party.

We're not just getting one horror review, we're getting two. And next week, it's Paranormal Activity!