January 3rd, 2007
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Dayton, 2006
Little Miss Sunshine is one of the most acclaimed movies of the year, there is no denying that, but there was something missing in it for me. It’s not that I thought it was a bad movie, but I just felt constantly ‘irked’ by it. Maybe it was the ‘quirkiness’ I didn’t like, as I’ve never been a fan of the new ‘quirky comedy’ genre. I really don’t know what it was, but there was something constantly bothering me about the movie and I found myself becoming annoyed by the very existence of various characters.
I grew extremely tired of seeing the grandpa, the little girl and the nihilistic boy. Was it casting? Was it the writing? I can’t figure it out. I didn’t mind the suicidal intellectual or even the mother and father, but those other three characters constantly were on my nerves. It wasn’t like they were funny or making me laugh and I didn’t really find that their ‘weirdness’ was contributing to the story either. They were just there, not doing much of anything, and I didn’t like them. Maybe it was those massive glasses the girl had.
There were a few funny jokes in the movie that made me laugh, like when they are pulled over by the cop who asks to inspect their trunk, but the operative word is ‘few’ as the rest of the movie often just goes so far over the top that it passes the threshold where it can be considered comedy and it enters a world of, “Should I laugh or be horrified?” Carrying a dead body in your trunk? That’s a bit more than dysfunctional, if you ask me. As a dysfunctional family type movie it didn’t really appeal to me either because there were just too many extremes to the point where I didn’t take the family seriously. A suicidal man, a kid who doesn’t talk, an obsessive motivational speaker and a sex obsessed 70 year old man? If I want dysfunctional family, I’ll check out The Squid and the Whale, because this one is just too unrealistic for me to sympathize with.
The ending is supposed to be where the family finally comes together, but I didn’t find it particularly touching or funny and it was even predicable. As soon as we see what the other girls look like, we know that the girl with the glasses is going to lose and that the family will pull together to somehow support her. And once again the movie goes entirely over the top when this happens. Some say this is cute, but I say that I would probably still kill myself if I were the suicidal guy and I saw that that was my family.
The movie did have a nice soundtrack and I didn’t mind the direction either, but I simply didn’t find it to be one of the best movies of the year. If anything, I thought it was mediocre, over the top, not really that funny and most importantly something about it irked me to the point that I wouldn’t want to watch it again. I am not saying that you shouldn’t see it, because almost everyone else loves it, but for some reason the movie didn’t click with me at all. Maybe it’s because I just don’t like quirky comedies in general, but Little Miss Sunshine didn’t shine for me at all.
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THE DESCENT
Marshall, 2006
I’m usually not a big fan of the horror genre. Horror movies are typically filled with clichés, terrible performances, horrendous direction, ect. It’s rare that I will see any one of the dozens of horror movies coming out these days. However, I decided to check out The Descent because it had really good reviews and because it comes from the director of Dog Soldiers, a straight to DVD horror movie that happens to be a guilty pleasure of mine. As it so happens, The Descent turned out to be one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in years.
What I liked best about it was it avoids many dangerous conventions that other horror movies so easily fall prey to. For example, instead of having the cliché of “group of guys and their girlfriends are out in a forest and the black guy gets killed first”, they have an all female cast. Other than an extremely short lived character at the beginning of the movie is a guy, everyone else is female. Because of this, the movie avoids a tonne of clichés including females having to constantly be rescued by guys. No, in The Descent these girls are tough.
In addition to the interesting idea of having an all female cast, The Descent makes a wonderful decision to not reveal any of the ‘monsters’ for nearly an hour. This way the movie is able to slowly build suspense, and I thought the way the first half of the movie is simply dedicated to showing how far the woman are going into the Earth was great. The further they go the darker it gets and the more tension builds. Instead of just having a bunch of jump scares, The Descent scares you because of the suspense that is built as well as the element of the unknown. Sure, a ghost is scary but it’s really just a ghost. A masked killer is scary, but he’s just a guy with a mask and a knife. The Descent is horrifying because the audience doesn’t know what in the world those creatures in the cave are. The unknown is often what is scariest to us, and The Descent capitalizes on this marvelously.
I should also give props to the incredibly creepy way in which the creatures are revealed. While it may not have been a highlight to others, I really appreciated the way in which we are introduced to the monsters. When the action really gets going it never lets up. The terrified characters stumble deeper and deeper into a lair of hell and death and suddenly they aren’t just stuck in a cave anymore. They are fighting for their lives. Lots of legitimate scares and tension follow all the way through to the end, but the end is what I’m unsure about. Without giving it away, was it really worth having that whole scene right before the last shot? The jury is still out.
But ultimately I thought The Descent was an excellent example of what a horror movie should be. It avoids many pitfalls and cliché traps, does a great job at building tension, and knows exactly how and when to reveal ‘the creature’ The best horror movie in recent years, and one of my favorites movies overall of 2006. See it, even if you aren’t a fan of horror like me!
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