PITCH BLACK
(2000)
Dir - David Twohy
Overall: MEH
The first in the Riddick trilogy, (all of which star Vin Diesel and were directed and co-written by David Twohy), Pitch Black is pure B-movie, sci-fi action schlock. Brim full of awful dialog, macho posturing, terrible special effects, tinted color pallets, and cliche character arcs, it goes by the books to a rather laughable extent. As a horror movie, it fairly enough kind of fits in and has as many lame, predictable jump scares as anything this side of The Conjuring. Diesel for his part seems fine on paper and fits the tag of this generations Arnold Schwartzenegger or Sylvester Stallone and to be fair, Pitch Black is probably just as silly as Cobra or Commando ever were. For the clear targeted audience who grew up on 80s action goofiness, this may come off as both a little too safe and formulaic while being exactly the right amount of safe and formulaic. Things blow up and characters yell a lot at cartoon monsters so it is what it is supposed to be.
THE ROOST
(2005)
Dir - Ti West
Overall: MEH
Ti West's filmography has consistently been various levels of disappointing, going all the way back to his full-length debut The Roost. Though each of his films finds a few unique ways to drop the ball from the last, West generally has the same problem with all his movies, being a terrible script loaded with inconsistencies. They also all have good ideas on paper, making the combination of what could work but never does all the more frustrating. The Roost begins very amusingly with West regular Tom Noonan playing a campy, late night Creature Features host, presenting the movie itself in a fun, forth wall breaking, almost grindhouse fashion. Once things kick into play though, the sluggish pacing, unlikable characters, multitude of arbitrary, violin screechy jump scares, and unfocused set-up where it is difficult to get our barrings as to where we actually are location wise from scene to scene make everything rather sloppy to say the least. Then near the end, we break back to our Zacherle-esque Noonan for a very confusing few minutes that becomes even more silly when the movie proper picks back up again. There are a lot of unnecessary elements like this going on in The Roost, where you are frequently asking yourself if what is happening in it really needs to be happening or makes the most sense. Which is also sadly a Ti West trademark.
(2007)
Dir - Robbie Banfitch
Overall: MEH
A School of Visual Arts, fifty-nine minute thesis project from filmmaker Robbie Banfitch, White Light is not bad coming from somebody who is cutting their teeth at the medium, but it is also far from good. It has the look and feel of a made-for-TV genre movie from the 1990s with natural lighting, poor sound design, and persistently obnoxious New Age music in virtually every scene. What is more distracting is the amateur-level performances, embarrassing melodrama, and poor pacing. While Connie Redna fairs comparatively better in the lead as a troubled woman experiencing waking nightmares who apparently suffered a miscarriage after being immaculately impregnated, Burnadair Lipscomb struggles the most from the material as Redna's best co-worker best friend, over-dramatizing her mannerisms and already stiff dialog to unintentionally comical extents. Banfitch stages several sequences without any sense of proper blocking, including a several minute, single shot of Redna retelling a dream that she had which is as exciting as it sounds. Despite its understandable shortcomings, the ethereal atmosphere is on point and there is at least a shred of an interesting idea here that could have worked far better in a more experienced writer/director's hands.
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