In my apparent attempt to catch up on the worst movies of last year, we watched The Descent on Friday.

I'd heard it was that unique animal, a good horror movie. Also that it was all Grrl Power! and had a redemptive aspect. Each of these is untrue.

It was a slasher flick, a basic 10 Little Indians countdown. It set up like a mystery, but quickly turned into a blood-spattered gorefest. The mystery was sort of resolved: There's CHUD in them thar hills! But nothing else supported that. The CHUD hunted on the surface, but were blind. They'd evolved, but apparently sometime after Native Americans lived there (that's some damn quick evolution). And the Appalachians are geologically unstable.

Grrl Power, nsm. If you mean "Bicker, whine, scatter like geese when threatened, and fall down a lot," yeah, there was girl power. If you mean "There wasn't a male character in the movie," yeah, there was. Sure, he wasn't on screen, but he controlled what story there was. If you mean "Women kill a few things and each other," I disagree with you on the definition of Girl Power.

Redemptive ending? The protagonist murders someone and then fully loses her mind, locking out in a hallucination? Yeah, that's redemptive.

The most fun was the Paglian symbolism. Caves for the cthonian female nature. A big pond of blood, with two women fighting in the red tide (or bloodbath). Phallic penetrations. And when R asked "Does every car that's in a collision carry unsecured sharp-edged pipes on top?" I pointed out that the guy they punctured had been laying pipe in one of the women.

If I worked at it, I could make some parallels with Apocalypse Now, but that wouldn't be nice to either movie. Summary: Two cool shots, and no redemption for the director.

Huh. I loved The Descent.

I also loved The Descent and one of my hobbies is finding people who know nothing about it and getting them to watch it before they find about about the "chud". I think it would have been ten times scarier if I'd have gotten to watch it unspoiled.

I went to see Nightwatching, the new Peter Greenaway film last night. It starred Martin Freeman as Rembrandt, and told the story of the mysteries (and alleged consiracy) portrayed the painting the Nightwatch. It was incredibly text heavy for a Greenaway film and I found it a little hard to follow. (While Shakespeare was quoted several times, Greenaway hasn't caught the knack of calling a character by name when first addressed, and I was often wondering who was who.) It was quite sumptuous, but not as much as some of his other. It dragged for a while in the middle, but the ending was quite brilliant. One shocker was that someone I went to theatre school with was in the freaking film! I guess it was a Canadian/Dutch/English/Polish co-production and thusly had a representative cast.

Greenaway was present and spoke before and after the film. He does love to talk, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that he lectures somewhere. He spoke at length about Rembrandt (who he doesn't actually care for), about how film is incredibly dependent on text for a visual medium (he called LOTR and Harry Potter films illustrated books) and how he'd like to see that change, and he admonished Canada for not having any digitatal projection in cinemas.

I guess he gave quite a provocative talk at the art College on Friday night, which I was sad to have missed. My seatmates told me only two things about it (I was surrounded by art school teachers.) That he said he couldn't stand Mike Leigh's films and that he believed no one should be shooting on film anymore.

Oh, and in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince News, Jim Broadbent has been cast as Horace Slughorn. Which is kind of perfect. I think they might be running out of great British actors to cast in these films.

[link]

Darn, I was holding out hope for Bob Hoskins. But Broadbent would be good, too, if a bit tall for the role.

I think it would have been ten times scarier if I'd have gotten to watch it unspoiled.

I was actually unspoiled for that aspect of it.

I knew I'd read good comments about it here, so I know I'm going against the grain, but, no, this movie didn't redeem the director for Dog Soldiers one bit. Cruising around the series of interconnected tubes to recall why I wanted to see it, I discovered a theory that Sara kills them all. The "It's all in her head" theory. While this would give meaning to the movie, it's implausible (because in the theory it's the discovery of Juno and whazzisface's relationship that sends Sara over the edge), but it does indicate an audience desire for meaning.

Reading your LJ, though, P-C, reconciled me to one aspect of it: I thought the message was that if you commit adultery you should be incapacitated and left to Death By CHUD. But the interpretation that Sara did a Bad Thing and thus had to be punished is better.

that movie has ruined the word "citrus" for me.

New Coen Brothers movie trailer: [link]

The Descent is one of the best horror movies in recent years. I just posted about it earlier today, as it happens, on Whedonesque. [link]