Christmas movies
You're reading Mikko Saari's blog Life and opinions. This entry was written 12/27/2004, at 15:25.
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Christmas was movie time, with lots of time and movies to watch. Christmas in general was fun, with traditions upheld. Good food, tons of candy, lots of clever gifts... What else do you need in the end?
Village of the Damned is a new version of a movie from 1960. I find it hard to believe the movie was made in 1995, it has a bad eighties look in it. It isn't the sharpest of movies, but entertaining enough to be watched once. It's about a village, where every inhabitant blacks out one day. After that many women are pregnant and give birth to weird babies. The plot works, but I've seen better. As an interesting fact you might be interested to know that this was Christopher Reeve's last movie before his fatal riding accident. I'm quite sure he won't be remembered from his part in this movie!
Creepshow was another Christmas gift from my brother, though this one was from last year. We finally got around and watched it. Two-hour length has kept us away... It has five stories in the style of old horror comics, all written by Stephen King. King also stars in one of the clips, making it clear it's better for him to be an author. Leslie Nielsen makes a curious appearance in a rather serious role in perhaps the best story of the all. Unfortunately that story is somewhat marred by silly undead, but it's still weird in a good way. Seeing Nielsen so serious must have something to do with it. Not a classic, but ok for seeing once.
Deathwatch was a rented flick. Behind the silly name lies a horror movie set in the trenches of World War I. I like that, as the First World War was in many ways an interesting war and is a lot more fresh as the second one. In this movie group of British soldiers find a German trench where evil things happen. It's an European movie with crappy ratings in IMDB, but I enjoyed it. The trench is a creepy place with lots of rats, mud and rain. We were surprised (in a positive way) to notice Andy Serkis (aka Gollum) in the cast, his character was pleasantly insane. Jamie Bell does a good lead role as a young kid. The movie reeks atmosphere and metaphor and the WWI setting is quite fresh indeed.
Schoolday of the Dead aka Shisha no gakuensai was an important film: it proves that all Asian horror movies aren't good. It had a confusing plot, which made some sense in the end but still felt pretentious and artificial. The movie wasn't scary, just somewhat silly.
The Office Christmas special, in the other hand, was absolutely brilliant. One of our favourite shows got a good end. I got the Office boxed set as a gift from Johanna, so we'll be watching the show second time soon. It's certainly worth another round. I've also ordered the Black Books box, which actually has lots of episodes we haven't even seen yet. I'm looking forward to returning to our favourite book seller.
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Comments
The original Village of the Damned was a great movie and creepier. Carpenter was gonna do the rework in the 80s, but he cancelled it because he was really busy, but the movie did have an 80s look, maybe Carpenter wanted to make up its lost time, but it should've been done earlier though. It came out as a disappoinment at the box office. In the original recipe, the kids were all killed by the bomb at the end, and was followed three years later by its semi-sequel, Children of the Damned, which didn't do well either, but still entertaining. In the update version, one kid survived and left the story open for the sequel, which never came.
Posted by: Maribel at September 29, 2005 10:12 PM