I’ve been looking forward to Shane Acker’s9 for well over a year now, and going into this year it was easily in the top handful of films that I was most anticipating. I probably set my expectations far too high, especially for a first time feature film director who was seemingly working in the delicate realm of children’s horror films. And while 9 didn’t meet my expectations, oh man did it come freaking close.
One thing I was not expecting is that 9 is a very simple, straight forward narrative. Not much in the way of deep themes and moral lessons for the kiddies. Oh sure, they are present and there even is a nice montage that explains how much greedy humans are at fault for the destruction of the world but that is hardly the focus of the film. This is a very simply plotted action film that most assuredly will scare the pants off your kids if you bring them to it. And they aren’t the only ones, as I’m quite sure the crazy cobra spider-thing with the disturbing baby doll head (The Seamstress) will haunt my dreams well into the next decade.
Which reminds me, the character design in the film is freaking amazing. Our protagonists are both strangely adorable and tenderly kick-ass at the same time, making it easy to see why Acker has been so quick to latch on to the term stitchpunk for the film. But that is just the beginning, the villains from The Cat Beast to the weird bat-bird (The Winged Beast) to said dream haunter to the Fabricator are all nightmarishly awesome. Whomever ends up making action figures for this film totally has my money, because I want to own every single character from this film.
Oh yes, for those of you insane enough to bring your kids to this film I give you a word of warning. 9 makes Bambi look like Swedish massage. You’ve got biological warfare, AT-AT’s blowing people to pieces, suicide and you even have something that RIPS YOUR SOUL OUT OF YOUR BODY!!! There is a reason this film is PG-13, because it will scare the shit out of you. Yes you, the adult. So don’t drag your 6 year old to this.
9 opens at the Lagoon Cinema on Wednesday September 9th.
I’ve been wanting to give people a heads up on the various odd or seemingly interesting films that will be coming out in the future with out having to invest too much time in the process. While I watch as many new releases as anyone, the focus of the site is to find movies already released for people to discover. But there are always movies that might fly under the radar, so One to Watch is a simple series devoted to promoting new films that might end up at the end of the long tail.
Normally I would have a long and completely unnecessary introduction before I dive into one of my reviews. I do this for several reasons, as primarily it provides me with an opportunity to write about whatever I choose and then hopefully find a novel way of tying it to the movie I watched and am reviewing. I like to think of it as flexing my creative muscles, but Anna pretty much thinks it is me showing off.
The other reason I write my reviews this way is because I want to use a style that is different then anything else you might have read. My experiences tie heavily into how I view a film, and by providing you the reader with insight into them it is my hope that it present you with a unique opportunity to see just what makes my brain tick. Or maybe not. It isn’t much more then a theory at this point.
But Starcrash is an entirely different animal then most of the other films I have watched for this site. For one, it stars David Hasselhoff, a man who I am powerless to resist. His very presence turns even the worst film or television show into an irresistible elixir. I knew going in to this screening there was no way I could ever hate this film, but what I was not expecting to endure what I could only describe as an utterly transcendent experience.
Part of the reason why I started this site was not only to search out smaller and unknown art films, but to watch some fairly unknown crappy films as well. With my recent run of slightly high-brow fair I felt it was time to change pace a bit and given in to my most base instincts. That usually means terrible science fiction films.
So next weeks review will focus on Starcrash, the 1979 Italian space epic starring Christopher Plummer. Yes, that Christopher Plummer. It also co-stars David Hasselhoff. Yup, The Hoff pre-drunken home videos, pre-naked photo shoots drapped in puppies, and pre-Knight Rider.
But is it from a time when he Hoff was pre-awesome? Only time will tell.
It isn’t often that I struggle to think of an adequate and fitting intro for one of my reviews. I take a lot of pride in trying to find interesting, odd and hopefully unique ways of introducing a reader to the review I am writing. Now sure, sometime I will have the occasional beef with writer’s block but it has yet to result in anything more then a rather minor skirmish with frustration. Often times it even allows me to look at my review from a slightly altered perspective, and that is all that I need to connect with the proper delivery system. But as I write this review I am sitting here, humbly before you, with nothing to offer. Not even a single solitary rambling take that inexplicably turns into a bridge for my review.
Sure, I could tell you about how I went to watch The Strangers this evening, and rather then enjoying the film, I found the most entertaining moment of the entire 90 minutes was when I watched Derek Jeter making a drunken fool out of himself in the theater lobby. I could tell you about that, but since last week’s intro was about my less then eloquent brush with Eddie Izzard it would feel hopelessly like a retread of my previous intro. Kind of like how it felt watching The Strangers.
I’ve been looking forward to Shane Acker’s 9 for well over a year now, and going into this year it was easily in the top handful of films that I was most anticipating. I probably set my expectations far too high, especially for a first time feature film director who was seemingly working in the delicate realm of children’s horror films. And while 9 didn’t meet my expectations, oh man did it come freaking close.
Normally I would have a long and completely unnecessary introduction before I dive into one of my reviews. I do this for several reasons, as primarily it provides me with an opportunity to write about whatever I choose and then hopefully find a novel way of tying it to the movie I watched and am reviewing. I like to think of it as flexing my creative muscles, but Anna pretty much thinks it is me showing off.
It isn’t often that I struggle to think of an adequate and fitting intro for one of my reviews. I take a lot of pride in trying to find interesting, odd and hopefully unique ways of introducing a reader to the review I am writing. Now sure, sometime I will have the occasional beef with writer’s block but it has yet to result in anything more then a rather minor skirmish with frustration. Often times it even allows me to look at my review from a slightly altered perspective, and that is all that I need to connect with the proper delivery system. But as I write this review I am sitting here, humbly before you, with nothing to offer. Not even a single solitary rambling take that inexplicably turns into a bridge for my review.
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