The Third Wheel: Luke Wilson is a bumbling cubicle slave who is determined to go on a date with the sexy and successful Denise Richards.  Everyone in his office, including Ben Affleck (who is at his douche with a goatee best) is pulling for him and even have a party where they place bets on, like, whether or not he will get laid or something like that.  But then, on their date, Luke Wilson hits this crazy homeless guy (played by the movie’s screenwriter, Jay Lacopo) with his car.  This is where we started to fast forward.  The guy is fine, but wants money for his crystal animals that were broken in the accident, so he gets in the car with them.  As far as I could tell, the guy keeps showing up wherever they are on their date and putting salt in the Luke Wilson’s already meager game.  Then Matt Damon makes a cameo as Denise Richards’ ex-boyfriend.  I watched this part on regular speed.  I love me some Good Will Hunting-era Damon.  Then I guess they probably fall in love or something and there is a quirky break dance scene while the credits roll.

I don’t like Denise Richards, but I can tolerate her.  She has a weird robot face and I find her to be a bad actress.  Young Luke Wilson I can more than tolerate.  He is gorgeous.  Superdouche Ben Affleck I LOVE.  Jay Lacopo, who you have never heard of and went ahead and wrote a huge part for himself in his own movie, is INTOLERABLE.  I literally could not even stand to look at his face.  Is he supposed to be crazy?  Retarded?  Homeless?  I don’t even know.  He’s just wearing some stupid beanie with a perpetually confused look on his face and you just know he was so fucking satisfied with himself.  HATE YOU.  FAST FORWARD.

The Breed: A group of sexy friends, played by actors who are a good decade older than their characters are supposed to be, find themselves in a remote cabin being attacked by rabid(?) dogs all while two of them are brothers who have both fucked Michelle Rodriguez.  Questions this raises:

1. Are the dogs rabid?  Did we fast forward through that part?  Because without a good reason presented, I really don’t want to watch dogs get hit with baseball bats.

2. Did this blonde suck someone off to get this part?  She’s some utterly noncute version of Amy Pohler and did not want to look at her face.

3. How much does it suck to be Kate Hudson’s unfamous brother who looks vaguely like Steven Weber?

4. Is Michelle Rodriguez sexy?  I’m kind of scared of her.

Henry Poole Is Here: Luke Wilson, 10 years later!  I was on board with this one from the beginning.  Luke’s aged a little, but isn’t Verizon Commercial Fat yet.  He  buys a house and intends to drink himself to death.  I can get behind this idea.  But then his weird neighbor decides she can see Jesus in the stucco of his house and he goes on a walk with her other neighbor Radha Mitchell (whose daughter who has that weird movie quirk where she doesn’t talk until, like whatever yawn) and then I guess it was like, he has cancer (OR LUKEMIA, the prospect of which I could not stop giggling about) and thinks he’s going to die but I think maybe the Jesus water stain saves him or maybe he just stops drinking I really don’t know PEACE OUT.

I’m pretty sure that I had this terrifying but kind of bitchin’ dream because last night I watched the Dennis Quaid direct-to-DVD horror/thriller Horsemen.

Though the movie is decidedly lame with lots of stupid scenes that borrow heavily from good movies (spoiler alert, Ziyi Zhang does not make a very good Hannibal Lecter), it was notable for how horrifyingly gruesome it was.  Honestly, I can’t understand why the movie never made it to theatres because I thought people loved that shit.  I’m not usually squeamish (Hostel?  Oh please.  Ho hum) but this was seriously stomach churning.

What Horsemen does is take one somewhat obscure and really icky subculture, suspension, wrestle it from the hands of people for whom body piercing is not “extreme” enough and probably didn’t get enough attention as teenagers (including Criss Angel) and turn it into some really creepy scary gory death scenes.  Like, really gross.  Apparently nightmare-inducing gross.  Really, these scenes are the only notable thing about the movie.  The dialogue is weak, the story is predictable apart from the twist which is somewhat interesting but does not at all make up for the rest of the movie that is a gaping [edit: there is supposed to be another word here but I can't remember what it was supposed to be...I am not a very good proofreader] occasionally punctuated by vomit.

But wasn’t my dream so fucked up?!

Nazi zombies getting killed with chainsaws? Yes, please!

Thanks, Rush Blogg!

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 year old boy living in what seems to be the projects of a cold and dreary Swedish town (are there Swedish towns that are not like this?).  For some reason, despite his small stature and oh-so-flattering white blonde Dutch boy hair, he is bullied by the other boys in his class and, because he has no father figure in his life, can’t bring himself to stand up to them.  One cold and dreary evening in the courtyard of his horribly depressing apartment complex, he meets the beautiful but strange Eli (Lena Leandersson) and they form a tenative friendship.

Meanwhile, their sleepy (and cold and dreary) town is falling victim to a rash of inexplicable murders in which the victims are suspended upside down and their blood drained.  Oskar is morbidly fascinated by this turn of events – until he realizes that Eli is causing them because she is, in fact, a vampire.

The unfortunate thing about this movie seems to be that there are two films here that appeal to different sensibilities.  First, the element of two innocent children who are on the fringes of society developing a bond of trust and friendship and experiencing tenative intimacy.  The second is a gruesome vampire story with attack scenes that verge on cartoonish in their use of CGI and buckets of blood.  Though the movie is very pretty, it’s hard to not be taken out of the story and forget your admiration for the velvety cool colors and the wide-eyed beauty of the littlest vampire when someone is being attacked by computer generated cats.  I think less ambition in terms of the violence could have served the film well, though overall it was very well done and genuinely creepy.

It wasn’t flawless and it didn’t reinvent the genre, but The Strangers was solidly scary with above average art direction and surprisingly beautiful cinematography.  As the debut feature for writer/director Bryan Bertino (who, by the way, is decidedly sexy himself) it’s really impressive. 

One of the awesome things that Bertino does is nearly make you forget you’re about to see a horror movie for the first 20-25 minutes.  Instead, Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) are returning to the family summer home after a wedding at which they had somewhat of a falling out.  But in the throes of their conflict, they are interrupted by a loud knock.  The movie then proceeds to be wholly creepy, with 3 masked strangers (ooh!  like the title!) appearing at the house to stalk, scare and torture the couple for the next hour. This hour includes at least 3 really good, well-placed shock moments that made me literally jump out of my seat and either gasp or yell.  And I definitely wasn’t the only one in the theatre that was freaked out.

Of course, the movie did suffer from some stereotypical horror movie pitfalls (e.g., me wanting to scream “TURN AROUND!!” or “WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING INTO THE GARAGE??!??”), a few of which were pretty distracting and unrealistic, even in light of the crisis Kristen and James were facing.  But between the OMG moments and the dark, neutral, contrastingly pretty cinematography (and pretty Liv Tyler and her disgustingly pretty hair), I had a really good time at The Strangers and hope that Bryan “sexy” Bertino gets to direct something else.

A footnote: supposedly the movie was based on “true events,” and all internet sources (OK, just Wikipedia) point to the Keddie Cabin murders, but this could have just been added by someone who wanted publicity for their Keddie Cabin documentary.  I dunno, but that’s a scary story too, so check out the site if you’re morbid like me.

What should I do if someone invited me to see a movie and I suggest like 3 or 4 good movies that are out that I want to see (like Eastern Promises or The Brave One or Into the Wild) and he comes back with “Let’s see Resident Evil“?

Confused in California

Dear Confused,

The only thing to say in a case like this is:

“You know, I really don’t think this is going to work out.  Good luck in all your future shitty zombie movie starring Milla Jovovich who seems like she could be a total badass but isn’t and Ali Larter who can’t extricate herself from sci-fi/horror because she couldn’t act her way out of a paperbag or some other cliche so you’ll be disappointed when she doesn’t get her creepy eyes eaten by either evil crows or zombies endeavors.”

Either that or get really really high before you go.*

*Please note that FilmFemme.com does not condone the use of illegal drugs for any reason other than watching movies based on video games.