Spike ,'Potential'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Van Helsing
Why did no one warn me that this movie was so, so awful?
ugh. i profusely apologize. that movie was awful. Hugh Jackman couldn't even save it for me and i adore him.
what i did watch tonight was I Am Sam for the first time. what a wonderful movie. Dakota Fanning is my favorite little girl ever.
When my brother saw Van Helsing, he hated it because it was so cheesy. I think you have to watch it, embracing the cheese, and that's when you realize that the cast and crew are embracing the cheese as well. Because it is cheesy. So cheesy it's silly. It's a silly, cheesy, funny movie.
Dakota Fanning is the adorablest.
If you're not expecting a cheesy movie, yeah, ouch.
But didn't they say? Obviously not clearly.
On the ORCA question, I can only assume pre-chomp Bo, no?
Eh, Charlotte was queen of pretentious early 70s films with lots of sex and nudity, and, on several occasions, Nazis. She was in ZARDOZ, for frell's sake, and, like Connery, she managed to move past it. She is the BOMB!
Granted, I get a lot of guilty pleasure out of pretentious early 70's movies with lots of sex and nudity. The Nazis I can take or leave.
But didn't they say? Obviously not clearly.
Well, at the beginning, it wasn't terribly clear that the over the top cheese was on purpose. I distinctly remember, because I couldn't stop laughing at it, and you kept telling me to be quiet. And then once the audience realized that it was really going to be that cheesy all the way through, on purpose, and Richard Roxburgh gets the gold star for making that clear, then everyone in the audience was giggling. Until everyone in the audience was like, wait, what? She's dead? How? When? Did he squish her? What? And then Kate's face was in the clouds, and everyone went back to giggling.
I've alwqays thought Bo Derek had a square, mannish face that I found unattractive. Charlotte Rampling is all woman, baby.
I could not have possibly set my expectations low enough for Van Helsing. Just... No.
Oh sure you could, Sean. I have faith in you.
Heh.
I think you have to watch it, embracing the cheese, and that's when you realize that the cast and crew are embracing the cheese as well. Because it is cheesy. So cheesy it's silly. It's a silly, cheesy, funny movie.
See, I never got this. It felt like the cast and crew were trying to present a relatively serious action movie and failing horribly. If they were embracing the cheese, they were doing a good job of hiding it from me. Perhaps they were brushing a little to close too the cheese while passing it in the hall, occaisionally daring to share a brief touch when alone in a shadowed alcove, but they certainly weren't doing it shamelessly for all to see.
Up next for Somers (Van Helsing director) and his production company - Flash Gordan.
So maybe Van Helsing was a dry run, as without Queen they are in for trouble.