2014 In Film

[Dagger Dias]

Here's an update to the 2014 top grossing films listing....


1. Transformers: Age of Extinction
$1,087,404,499

2. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
$915,878,000

3. Guardians of the Galaxy
$772,730,696

4. Maleficent
$757,752,378

5. X-Men: Days of Future Past
$748,121,534

6. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
$714,202,848

7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
$714,083,572

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
$708,982,323

9. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
$708,835,589

10. Interstellar
$671,076,357



The Hobbit is still being shown in theaters. It still has to make $172,000,000 more money to pull off taking the #1 spot, but it's nice to see how much smaller the gap got. I doubt it will be playing in theaters much longer unfortunately.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

Unbroken

An uplifting and stark war drama, but I can see why Unbroken missed the boat for Oscar nominations. It's a good film with a solid cast, but there's nothing extraordinary about Unbroken, and if we're comparing 2014 war dramas, Fury is the better film, with a stronger cast.

Annie

I can see why Cameron Diaz received a Razzie for this one. Her performance isn't terrible, but her character is unbearably annoying and obnoxious for the majority of the film. Basically, Diaz is an over the top trainwreck and a trashy alcoholic, and I really tried throughout the movie, but I couldn't laugh at her performance.

As far as the movie itself goes, it's decent enough. You can see everything coming from a mile way with the predictable through the motions story, but I laughed a few times. Quvenzhané Wallis did a good job as Annie, and Jamie Foxx, Rose Byrne, and others deliver believable performances, so the vast majority of the cast is strong enough to ignore the obvious cliches and problems here.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown

Gets an 8/10 from me.

Definitely one of the better horror remakes I've seen over the years, and kudos for the breaking the fourth wall style of storytelling. They use a movie within a movie approach with actual footage from the 1976 original. I'll admit, the splicing technique (they show death scenes from the '76 film during The Phantom's killing spree) feels tedious in certain scenes, but it's something different, so Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (the director) deserves credit for taking the chance.

The story is loaded with depth to continue the mystery of The Phantom's whereabouts after the '76 film, and the main character (Jami) has a thorough backstory. To add to that, Charles B. Pierce's (the director of the 1976 film) son is used as a fictional character (Charles Pierce, Jr.) to help solve the mystery as a missing link.

The Phantom in the '76 film had an intimidating presence, but The Phantom in the remake is truly vicious, cold, mean, and nasty. And speaking of The Phantom.....

Spoiler

There's a double twist at the end, when Jami tries to escape The Phantom. Jami is on the ground, bleeding profusely, and two Phantoms show up to reveal a partnership between them. The first Phantom is the grandson of a forgotten victim from the first Phantom's killing spree. Long story short, the McCreedy family was furious, because no one remembers Hank's (the forgotten victim) death. He was obsessed with vengeance, so McCreedy (using his job as a Deputy to cover up his double life as The Phantom) started another killing spree to punish the town. And the second Phantom is Jami's boyfriend (he faked his death at the beginning of the movie).

The double-twist was a real shock, and the final scene of the movie with Jami leaving the town to start a new life is genuinely eerie. She's walking outside at her new college, and against the wall, you can see Jami's shadow and The Phantom's shadow side by side, and the screen suddenly cuts to the credits to end the movie.

It's a freaky visual, because the ending leaves the door open for two possibilities. 1) SOMEHOW, The Phantom(s) followed Jami, and he's stalking her, waiting for the right moment to attack. Or 2) The Phantom's shadow on the wall is a symbolic visual for the murders and The Phantom haunting Jami for the rest of her life.

I really enjoyed the movie, but the TTTDS 2014 features a few eye rolling slasher tropes (i.e. frantic, screaming women running aimlessly, with a sprinting Phantom in the background), but it's not enough to ruin the movie for me.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a bloody, gory, and brutal horror film, with a unique and inventive remake/sequel hybrid POV. It's a thought-provoking film, with an intriguing mystery behind The Phantom's identity. Is it possible for a return with The Phantom from the 1976 film? Is he a supernatural being? Is there a chance we're talking about a copycat killer, who's obsessed with the '76 film and the murders?

TTTDS 2014 tows the line with nostalgic winks to the '76 film and recreating certain death scenes from the original, but it's not a lazy shot for shot remake. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon crafts his own vision, while paying homage to the '76 film, and a nice touch from Gomez-Rejon to create a chilling and eerie atmosphere with nighttime shots of the empty town. Also, you won't see any real attempts for goofy comic relief (i.e. Deputy "Sparkplug" from the 1976 film) here.

TTTDS 2014 takes the time to cover a lot of ground from Charles B. Pierce's original, so technically you don't have to watch the '76 film to understand the remake. If you're looking for the major difference between the two, Pierce uses a faux documentary style of storytelling for his film, so you have to have a lot of patience to sit through it.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

The Signal

8/10.

I kind of forget about this one in the old Coming Attractions Thread.

The story follows three young MIT students/best friends. Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Hayley (Olivia Cooke) are a couple, and Jonah (Beau Knapp) is kind of on the outside as a third wheel, because half the story focuses on Nic and Hayley's relationship, and what happens, when they decide to go their separate ways.

Anyway, Nic, Hayley, and Jonah are on a road trip, but they decide to take a detour to track down a rival hacker. They trace his location to an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, but they can't find the hacker. Nic, Hayley, and Jonah realize they walked right into a trap, but they're abducted by an unseen force before they have a chance to escape.

Eventually, Nic awakes in a research facility, and a doctor wearing a hazmat suit (Laurence Fishburne) asks him a series of questions. Hayley is in a coma, and Jonah is stuck in a separate room. Nic fights for answers, but he runs into a bigger problem, when he escapes the facility with Hayley (she's still in a coma).

Honestly, I didn't expect anything from The Signal, but I found a nice surprise. The movie is one big mind-fuck, because it's hard to tell what's going on. Are Nic, Hayley, and Jonah the victims of alien abduction? Why is Fisburne clearly lying to Nic? Are they trapped in some sort of experimental annex? Is Fisuburne using Nic and the others as lab rats to run some kind of test?

At times, I believed the abduction was one big hoax. This is all some kind of experiment, with Nic, Hayley, and Jonah as the test subjects, because everything is WAY too convenient, but a series of bizarre occurrences raise too many questions that are hard to ignore.

The Signal keeps you guessing until the final moments of the movie, and a few bonus points for a pair of solid performances from Thwaites, Cooke, and Knapp. To add to that, Thwaites and Cooke did a good job of delivering believable boyfriend/girlfriend chemistry in a broken relationship, because after the abduction, you can tell they're both terrified at the thought of losing each other, and Nic realizes he made a mistake (he wanted to break up with Hayley) earlier in the movie, so he fights for his second chance.

The big reveal behind Fisburne's character is kind of lame, but The Signal is definitely worth a try, if you're into alien abduction films. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi/thriller with a good amount of surprising twists and turns, and the grand finale is a real nail-biter.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

The Pyramid- 2/10

After watching the trailer, I could see this coming, but stupid characters are a big problem in The Pyramid. Yeah, let's risk our lives for a rover, because we don't want to upset NASA, and let's ignore a pyramid worker suffering a nasty and potentially fatal infection from toxic air inside the pyramid.

Truth be told, The Pyramid had a nice head start, but the movie quickly devolves into a mess after the first twenty minutes.

Spoiler

When it comes to certain horror films, less is more nine times out of ten, especially found-footage films. Overexposure is a big problem here. I don't have a problem with director Grégory Levasseur revealing the cat creatures inside the pyramid, but he crossed the line with Anubis.

Long story short, Anubis stalks the archaeologists and the camera crew throughout the film, but you don’t actually see Anubis until the end, and that’s a good thing. You hear the echoing roars in the pyramid, and Anubis kills an Egyptian solider, but they only show the soldier’s demise, when Anubis literally snaps his body in half. Also, they only show Anubis’ bloody hand, when he decides to rip Denis O’Hare’s heart out of his chest. Again, you don’t actually see Anubis‘ body.

Of course, Levasseur ruins everything, when he decides to reveal Anubis from head to toe during the finale. The CGI is fucking terrible. Anubis is supposed to be this imposing and intimidating figure, but the awful CGI killed the mystique for me. To draw a similar comparison, think about the horrendous CGI for The Rock’s half human, half scorpion creature form in The Mummy Returns.

I’m not a fan of the series overall, but Toby, the invisible demon from the Paranormal Activity films is a good example. Footprints, shadows, and small clues. That’s it. They never reveal Toby’s true form throughout the series, because when you open the curtain, there’s no more guessing and the mystique is dead. They could reveal Toby as an eight-foot-tall demon, with six bulging eyeballs, a spiky horn for a nose, scaly skin, fangs for teeth, and to top it off, pus oozing from every inch of his body. It doesn’t matter. When you finally see the horrifying creature, it's just another hideous monster in a long line of hideous horror movie monsters.

To add insult to injury, a lit road flare to the face incapacitates Anubis during a struggle. A fucking road flare stops Anubis, an ancient Egyptian deity? Unbelievable.

It’s hard to forget about a few noticeable plot holes. HOW did the solider enter the pyramid? A cave-in blocked the only entrance/exit, so how did the soldier enter the pyramid?

The dialogue is atrocious, and the poor lighting? Yikes. It’s another found-footage conundrum, because when you’re watching a found-footage film, you’re supposed to put yourself in a “IT’S REAL!” mindset. I’m watching a recorded tape, with real people, and they’re on a real expedition. They’re in a pyramid buried underneath the Egyptian desert, so if you’re seeing everything through the main character’s eyes, it’s supposed to be a dark and murky journey. But at the same time, and I’m not exaggerating here, you can barely see what’s going on in certain scenes.

Apparently, the DVD and the Blu-Ray for The Pyramid feature an extended ending. Although, in the grand scheme of things, I’m not sure if an extended ending will make a big difference for this stinker.