The Twilight Zone: Original Series

Over the July 4th long weekend, the SyFy network (they changed it from SciFi to give it more cache with the young people…no) had the good graces to air a 48-hour-long Twilight Zone marathon. I had no plans for that weekend, so imagine my glee at the realization that I could indeed sit in my pjs in various rooms of the house, watching episode after creepy episode, taking breaks for food. Also, I had the ability to DVR the episodes that would air when I was asleep. Amazing.
I had seen most of the episodes before, but more than a couple of them rang a little too true to present time. Some things, they say, never change. Many episodes of TZ deal with mob mentality, created by members of a community turning on each other based on their fear of the unknown. Generally, it was due to the threat of nuclear war (only one small bomb shelter in a neighborhood) or of hostile visitors from outer space (your neighbor has been acting strangely, so surely must be working with the invaders). It was a crazed marriage of McCarthyism and Cold War mania. Were we to make new episodes, the same mob mentality would be present, I’m sure, but would be provoked by the threat of terrorism.
Then there are the inanimate objects that control the world stories. Talking Tina, who will put children off dolls forever is probably the most terrifying. But of course there is the camera that shows you the future, and the ring that saves a small town. Or the “tiny versions of people” stories, occasionally flipped into “giant versions of people.” And the dead people who don’t understand that they’re dead, and so on. And let me tell you, most of these are truly frightening.
One of the joys, to me at least, of watching The Twilight Zone, is getting to play the “hey, that’s (blank), from (TV show, movie, etc.)! What are they doing here???” Elizabeth Montgomery, of adorably-nosed Bewitched fame, is here playing a soldier (!) opposite a mightily young Charles Bronson. And Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird is around, disappearing into a better world beneath her swimming pool. The most fun sighting, of course, has to be the outrageously handsome young William Shatner, both when he spies “something on the wing!” and when he is learning his future from a napkin dispenser. The list is long.
Rod Serling, the creator, writer, and narrator, was a pioneer in the industry. He dared to tackle subjects that had been largely untouched by the mainstream media. Racism, deformity, paranoia, war flashbacks, and religious cults all made it into the Twilight Zone. He was also able to take some of the greatest fears of humans and turn them into a “what if” teleplay. What if you walked up the stairs to your apartment to find someone else’s name on the door? What if you were the only person alive in the world? What if you woke up in the wrong year, the wrong decade? He plugged into all of those and created sheer terror for 22 minutes.
One of Serling’s ballsier moves was writing an episode called “Death’s Head Revisited.” It is an episode that I had not seen previously, and watched almost entirely with my jaw on the floor, and with a boulder in my stomach. It was aired first in 1961, not 20 years after WWII, and deals with a former SS officer who has come to visit Dachau, where he “worked,” to admire his old surroundings. He is greeted by ghosts of his victims. To say more would be giving away too much, but I will let you know that I really felt a little ill watching it.
Every once in a while, though, Serling gives us a break and hands us a little love story. The point of the Twilight Zone is that something can be just a little bit unfamiliar, but that tiny change envelops the whole world. For example, there is the author who is having an affair…with a character from a play he wrote who came to life. Or the meek bank teller (Dick York from Bewitched) who can hear people’s thoughts and turns that ability into a first date with a cute girl. So it’s not all horror and nightmares.
So I spent an absurd number of hours making myself afraid over the course of a few days. But I have just checked, and indeed, the entirety of The Twilight Zone: The Original Series, is on Netflix Instant. So do yourself a favor and take it all
in. But feel free to take your time.

**A small but imnportant note: a few of the episodes in season 2 were shot on video, as opposed to film, for monetary purposes, but it was decided, rightly so, that it looked terrible. Just an FYI, if you're watching an episode and think it looks like a crappy daytime soap opera...it's because it does. Sadly, there are six whole episodes like this, and it's really a bummer. Totally ruins the experience. But they are very obviously different, so just skip 'em. They are not, however, consecutive. Eesh.

Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen is back, guys. In a big way. This is the days of yore Allen, winking and magical. The instant his familiar opening credits rolled, jazz playing, white lettering on a black screen, I was smiling and settling into my seat. I was ready for Paris from the man who shows that cities can be just as gorgeous as the leading lady, if not more. The last time I recall Allen putting Paris in his movies was with Everyone Says I Love You, his whimsical musical from 1996, almost a generation ago. It was a beautiful setting then, but here it becomes a character in its own right. The whole opening sequence is lingering shots of Paris, in sunlight, in rain, at night, and you (I, at least) cannot help but be seized by the desire to jump into the screen and eat baguettes alongside beautiful people.
The story here is of an American screenwriter/hopeful novelist, Gil, played brilliantly by Owen Wilson. I know, not exactly the actor that springs to mind when looking for a Woody Allen-esque character. But he dives in headfirst, and is all nerves and excitement, awkward and charming. Gil is engaged to Inez, played by the lovely Rachel McAdams (Rachel McHottie, if you will), whose father has business in Paris, which is why everyone’s there. Inez, though very pretty, is essentially an irritating shrew, and it is unclear why Gil is with her at all. But that is easily glossed over, as this is not her movie.
Gil finds that rather than spending any amount of time with Inez and her toxic friend Paul (Michael Sheen, gloriously pompous, arguing with Carla Bruni playing a museum guide), he’d like to walk around the city and learn it for himself.
Here’s where the magic comes in. When the clock strikes midnight, a car pulls up, picks up Gil, and takes him to a party. At this party, he is accosted by Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill), who introduces him to her husband, Scott. Gil is, understandably, gobsmacked, and no less so when he recognizes the man at the piano as Cole Porter. But he goes along with it, as any self-respecting artist would. Best of all, he meets his idol, a Mr. Ernest Hemingway, played perfectly and at full speed by Corey Stoll of the dreadful Law and Order LA.
So it goes that every night in Paris, Gil is transported to Paris in the 1920’s, which to him has always seemed a magical time. There is, naturally, a love interest who is not his overbearing fiancée. Happily, the woman in question is played by Marion Cotillard, outrageously beautiful and sweet. When we first meet her, she is Picasso’s mistress, and Gil has his first meeting with her after agreeing to bring his novel to Gertrude Stein for her to look over. Insanity! What better, more hilarious casting could there be than Kathy Bates as Gertude Stein???? I challenge you, Dear Reader, to beat that. Well, maybe Adrien Brody as Dali. YES.
Thankfully, we are allowed to simply bask in the beauty of the movie, as the “how” of the time-travel is never explained. Why should it be? Inez remains a mystery to me, though I suppose it is funny enough to have her wonder why her fiancé is applying cologne, if all he is planning to do is walk around and write. Never mind, though. Just see the film.

The Normal Heart

Tonight, I cried over spilled milk. Thrown milk, really. And after that milk was splashed across the floor, I didn’t stop crying until I was standing on line for the bathroom.
Allow me to present a scenario to you: There is a play on Broadway. It is about the founding of GMHC and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in America. When presented with this scenario, I, in my infinite wisdom, decided that I should probably go to this play by myself. As in, not in the company of anybody that I call friends or family. Here’s why that was incredibly faulty logic: there was no one to peel me from my seat at the end and no one to carry my limp, broken, cried-out body home.
The Normal Heart, originally produced in 1985 at the Public Theater in New York City, is the story of Ned Weeks (based largely on Larry Kramer, the playwright), a gay man in NYC who wants someone to pay attention to the fact that all of his friends are dying. He wants the Times to write about it, he wants the mayor (Koch, remember him?) to help him, he wants his brother to lend his lofty lawyer name to the cause, and he wants his friends who are still alive to come out of the closet and fight.
Ned, played with tenderness and fragility by Joe Mantello, is a loud, neurotic, fiercely opinionated Jewish man with a volcanic temper that works against him, as hard as he fights to make it work for him. He loves a good argument, as well as a bad one. Weakness is unforgivable in his eyes, but his weaknesses are all too visible to the audience.
Ellen Barkin, my beautiful Ellen Barkin, makes her Broadway debut as Dr. Emma Brookner, a Polio-stricken wheelchair-bound doctor who seeks desperately for answers. She diagnoses many many men with an unnamed disease, a cureless disease, and helplessly watches them die. During the second act, she has a scene that is so powerful and stunning, so full of anger and pain, I stopped breathing. She unleashes the fury of Hell at a government goon, spewing venom at the President (Reagan, who, let’s recall, is NOT actually the saint he’s been made to look like recently), and all the while, is unable to use her whole body AND is facing straight at the audience. Balls, ladies and gentlemen. Balls.
The cast here is so good that it’s almost silly, as well as being pretty surprising. Jim Parsons, of The Big Bang Theory (CBS sitcom) fame, is a highlight as a supporting character, Jimmy Boatwright, a self-proclaimed Southern bitch and quiet activist. Lee Pace, from Pushing Daisies (super fun series, Netflix) is Bruce, a handsome banker who remains in the closet but does his damndest to get the message out. His last big speech is outrageous, and elicited gasps from the audience. And John Benjamin Hickey, who I know hardly at all, is brilliant as Felix, Ned’s closeted partner, who one day finds a purple bruise on his foot.
Though the play was written in and was about the 1980’s, there is so much in it that rings true now. Though the virus has been isolated and there are now medications to slow the effects, there is still no cure. There are still people who oppose handing out condoms or educating children and adults about the disease and prevention. There are now tens of millions of people living with HIV and AIDS across the world. There is still not enough funding, there are not enough doctors, and not enough help.
Why did I cry at this show? Why did so many others? Was it because I hate death? Because the prospect of losing love in such a manner is horrifying to me? Because though I was very young at the time, I remember that my mother’s friends kept dying? If you do not get a chance to see this amazing show, which is open until July 10th, buy the book. I am out of a job right now, but was determined to see this play any way I could. I came out of it with a fire in my belly. It awoke something in me that I didn’t realize I was missing.

MI-5

Holy cow. Where to even begin?? It is SO gratifying to watch something with so many brains, so much talent, enormous balls, and no stick-thin women.
Granted, I have only watched the very first episode so far, but I have zero doubt that I will not come down from this TV high until the whole thing’s over.
Here in the USA, we have crime shows up the wazoo. What we don’t have are crime shows which, in their very first episode, have pro-lifers as the most wanted people in town. But that is episode one of MI-5, the story of a few agents in the British Security Service.
Shot, and set, in 2002, this show begins firmly in a post-9/11 world. Muslim radicals are the big bad guys. However, there are also the pro-lifers to worry about. A crazy Florida lady has slipped past the authorities and traveled to England to continue the work that her husband began. Twenty bombs have been set loose in England, all to kill doctors who perform abortions. So now MI-5 has the unpleasant task of finding them.
I said it has talent: Matthew Macfadyen (Pride and Prejudice, Incendiary, Death at a Funeral) plays Tom, a lead agent, but his girlfriend knows him as Matthew…awkward. Keeley Hawes (Death at a Funeral, ShakepeaRE-told, and married to Macfadyen) and her obscene cheekbones plays Zoe, the resident beautiful agent. Americans play the aggressive assholes. Noted.
To see a show about a nut-balls American made by Brits is humbling, to say the least. That they share my (pardon the expression) values (sorry, I couldn’t think of another way) is not the important part. The important part is that watching this confirmed for me just how ridiculous these fundamentalists really are. Equating abortion to shooting children in a schoolyard? Killing people in the name of protecting life? Absurd. The big lesson here, that people forget too often, is that flying planes into buildings is not the only way that terrorism works.

Expedition Week on NatGeo

Discovery Channel has Shark Week. National Geographic (who now call themselves Nat Geo, for that hip and trendy vibe…) has Expedition Week, which is clearly out to kick Shark Week’s ass. So they started it with a show about sharks. But there are also shows on the “real” Jack the Ripper and ancient Egyptian artifacts and cave jumping. So which show did I decide to watch? Eating With Cannibals. Yes.
Quick side note: there was a warning title card at the beginning of the show. The odd thing is that it said nothing of the images of dead bodies to come, of which there were a few. No, this card was warning us in case the sight of a few swinging breasts would put us off our dinner. Boobs, not bodies. I found this hilarious.
Piers Gibbon, a handsome British journalist, not to be confused with Piers Morgan, the pompous and saggy British “journalist”/fame hound, wants to know about cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, because apparently it was not uncommon rather recently. So off we go to PNG, a place, he says, that is sometimes called 9090, in reference to the temperature and humidity level. There is dangerous terrain to be crossed, crocodiles not to be eaten by, and several tribes who swear up and down that cannibalism is over. Gibbon focuses mainly on the Biami tribe, who are said to be great warriors, and to have been one of the most cannibalistic tribes in the area. Using a translator, Gibbon asks Tikikawa, the last living “song leader,” who would find and accuse people of witchcraft, about the tribe’s past, whether cannibalism exists today, and what the reasons for it were. The answers he receives, from the Biami tribe as well as others, are the same. Cannibalism no longer takes place in that area, but when it did, it was never about being in need of food. There was always revenge behind it; if a neighboring village had stolen one of their people, one would be stolen and eaten in return. If a woman spoke badly of her husband, she would be killed and eaten upon his death. And finally, if the song leader was told by the spirits that someone was practicing sorcery, the sorcerer had to be killed and eaten. FYI, I learned that human meat, both male and female, tastes like pig meat. Gibbon learns this little factoid while eating a pig that he has just helped to carve. Incidentally, a human gets carved the same as a pig. And it’s easier to carry half a dead man than a whole one, so bring a buddy. Sorry.
Watching this show, I initially felt a little disgusted and freaked out. But over the course of the hour, a change came over me. Not that I have the urge to run out and purchase a nice juicy human haunch for dinner, but that cannibalism is so freakish and taboo to us because of the society we live in. We have laws and cops and prisons. The Biami tribe does not. They do, however, have Christianity, which the pastor of the village credited with bringing an end to cannibalism. He himself, before the missionaries came to town, had killed, cooked and eaten human beings.
It’s important, I believe, for Americans to have access to this kind of information. We are, even if we don’t like to admit it, largely a xenophobic society, and learning about cultures so far from our own can be helpful in broadening our horizons. I am not suggesting that cannibalism become the norm in this country, only that one man’s grisly murder is another man’s casting off of evil spirits.
I feel a yen for strawberries.

Orphan

Don’t text and drive.
First things first: Second-rate horror movies should have an hour-long limit. Because honestly, unless it’s The Omen or something, long exposition and drawn out climactic scenes are a snore. And that, unfortunately, is what happened here. Everyone knows the plot going in, right? It’s called Orphan, so it’s clearly about a deranged child. So, where the hell is the deranged child? Oh, she’s not showing up for about 30 minutes? Movie fail.
The opening scene here is pretty gnarly. I won’t ruin it for you, but suffice it to say, the couple at the center of the movie, played by Vera Farmiga and Pete Sarsgaard, are looking to expand their family. They’ve already got two children, a 12-or-so-year-old son and a 5-or-so-year-old daughter, who is deaf and happens to be beyond adorable. Let’s hope the kid never saw the finished product.
The exposition, as I said, goes way overboard. There’s a whole lot of backstory: drinking problems, a pond, a moron of a husband, really big windows, and an orphanage with no information on where their wards come from. Oopsie daisies.
So, after way too long, we meet the psycho, Esther, who has been shipped in shipped in from a Russian orphanage, and of course she’s sweet as blueberry pie. And she’s got quite the artistic streak. But she dresses funny, watches Mommy and Daddy get naughty in the kitchen (gross, guys, think of the food) and carries an old Bible around, so naturally she gets picked on by the Mean Girl. The instant that Esther stares down Mean Girl, we wave goodbye to Meanie. It’s been fun, but this is your last scene. My roommate made a comment while we were watching that she was glad that at least this chick is just a killer, and there’s no demonic nonsense going on. Good, old-fashioned psychopath slay fest.
The thing about horror movies that always gets to me is that it’s SO OBVIOUS what’s going on, but only one person ever realizes it, and NO ONE EVER BELIEVES THEM. Drives me bonkers. So here, Mom knows what’s up, as do the kids, actually, but they’ve been terrorized into silence, and Dad is the foolish drone with no clue. Oh, and then there’s that ending…
It’s actually a pretty fun movie, in spite of its running too long. The violence is more up-close and personal than in most recent non-Saw movies, so prep for that, if that’s a problem. And don’t play on the monkey bars. You never know who’s watching…

Duplicity

Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! Let’s go for a ride! And what better way to ride than by following Clive Owen and Julia Roberts?? For those of you who think you don’t like Clive Owen, stop reading now, close the site, and never return. For those of you who think you don’t like Julia Roberts…I get it. But stick with her here. She’s all grown up now, not just a gorgeous toothy gal with great cheekbones.
This sparkling duo has some serious chemistry. It’s nice to see Jules play off a man who doesn’t seem overpowered by her (Jude Law in Closer, anyone? Puh-lease, she’d eat him alive), and Clive (also Closer, where he DID eat poor little Law alive) has the chops. In that mostly soggy film, he managed to make Ms Roberts look small and helpless. In Duplicity, he turns her into an animal.
This is a caper, one of my very favorite film genres. Think fast-paced dialogue, intrigue, and steamy off screen sex. Think Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (Bringing up Baby, BEST), or…Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday, SO GREAT), and Barbara Stanwyck (The Lady Eve, Ball of Fire). But here, our caper is jet-set, the intrigue is multi-national, and some of the dialogue would make a lady blush. But not too pink, since it’s PG-13, but still manages to be pretty great. How does that happen???
The plot centers on a product in the works by a major toiletries company, and the race with their rival company to showcase it. The opening credits contain a hilarious slow-motion rain-soaked throwdown between the rival CEOs, played with full gonzo effect by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson.
Our lead characters, Ray and Claire, have a cute first meeting with an unfortunate end, and over the course of the movie, they will meet in a similar fashion several more times. But we quickly grock that they’re working together…or are they? See, at first meeting, she’s in the CIA and he’s deep in MI-6, so they’ve both been trained to assume they’re being played. But that’s where the snappy dialogue comes in, see? Because in the present, they’re both retired and working security at the opposing firms. With a slight caveat, being that they’re on the same side…or are they????
Even the supporting cast is super. There’s even a little True Blood reunion! Denis O’Hare, the Vampire King of Mississippi, runs Ray’s crew of wily geeks, and Carrie Preston, Arlene on the show, plays Barbara Bofferd, a hapless target of Ray’s. Giamatti, as per always, devours the screen, but he’s allowed, it’s that kind of movie.
This film is perfectly delightful. We get to look at Clive Owen (shirt open, no tie, bam!) for two hours, we get to look at Julia Roberts and her bizarre football player-looking manner of walking for two hours, we get to wake up in Rome, Dubai, and London, and spend a lot of time in New York. And we get to have a rollicking good time doing all of it. What’s better than that??

The Warriors

CAN YOU DIG IT???????? Yes, I can. But Cyrus, the asker of this question, wasn’t asking me. He was asking the gangs of New York City at the truce he pulled together that was supposed to be weapon-free. But if that went as planned, we’d have no movie. The Warriors, a total gem from 1979, is the dark and stormy tale of the title gang, falsely accused of murder, trying to make their way home without getting knocked off by their rival gangs, who have all banded together this once to wipe them out. They begin in the Bronx, at the foiled gang summit, and have to make it, any way they can, to Coney Island, slipping by their enemies, both the gangs and the police, every step of the way. Doesn’t work every time. This is dirty New York, one that has been largely wiped out in favor of towering glass and pink brick. We are treated to secret meetings under the bridge, fights (beautifully directed) in filthy bathrooms, and the most whiny-voiced gang leader of all time, The Rogues’ psychotic Luther. “Waaaarriors….come out to plaaayyyyyaaaaaayyyyy.” CREEP CITY. Upping the ante for our title boys even more is the unseen but for her mouth radio announcer who gets updates on their travails and sends them out over the airwaves so the Warriors know where they stand. The image most seared into my brain from The Warriors is the sequence that introduces us to the gangs as they approach the truce. These gangs are in full costume, be it leather vests, overalls, or baseball uniforms, bat included. There is something undeniably powerful about it, but also terrifying. Director Walter Hill has managed to combine the right amounts of stark drama and pulpy thrills into a cult favorite. Those men in the pinstripes and cleats? Those are not your friends.

Faerie Tale Theatre/The Alice Miniseries

Do you have a child? Were you once a child? Were you around in the 1980s? If so, you either know and treasure these gems, or should be ashamed not to.
This series, fully titled “Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre” started production in 1982 for Showtime, and continued cranking out amazing live action versions of classic faerie stories through 1987. It provided enormous entertainment for me and my parents when I was a child, when we got our hands on VHS copies of them. The series also contributed to one of the cutest stories about my childhood, in which I was asked by someone, “How does a fairytale begin?” and I responded with, “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall.” Doesn’t get much cuter than that, folks.
Seriously, though, these tales were burned deep into my brain, and I continue to use them as reference points. They are also completely packed to the brim with celebrities, and many of my favorite memories of some of them are from this series. My first loves were Treat Williams, as the prince in The Little Mermaid, which is one of the saddest, most heart-breaking episodes here, and Christopher Reeve as the prince in Sleeping Beauty, which had me green with envy of Bernadette Peters. My first role model, in a way, was Ellen Barkin as The Princess Who Had Never Laughed, with her crooked face and pretty hair. Teri Garr as the prin-CESS (watch and understand) in The Frog Prince opposite Robin Williams made me long for a golden ball just like hers. Jeff Goldblum was the funniest Big Bad Wolf in history, scaring Billy Crystal and Fred Willard in the Three Little Pigs, and Susan Sarandon and Klaus Kinski made me and my mother weep every time we watched Beauty and the Beast.
Some other names you might recognize: Vanessa Redgrave, Vincent Price, Matthew Broderick, Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Liza Minelli, Carol Kane, Mick Jagger, Gregory Hines, and so many more.
At some point, the VHS copies burned out, so I went on amazon and found the whole damned set, which I now guard with my life. Please follow suit. Your children (inner and actual) will thank you. Or just ask to borrow them. I’m willing to share.
In the same vein, check out the TV movie from 1985 of Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, which is one of the greatest tellings of that story ever…told. What’s scarier than a Jabberwocky, not to mention Carol Channing singing about jam? And what’s better than Ringo Starr as the Mock Turtle and Sammy Davis Jr as the hookah-smoking caterpillar??? It’s 474503 times better than Tim Burton’s remake, which please remember, I did not hate.
Go relive my childhood. 

The Long, Hot Summer

We all agree that Paul Newman was one of the two most breathtakingly gorgeous men to ever walk the earth, yes? Good. The other, for those of you not in the know, was Gregory Peck. See "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Cape Fear," and "Roman Holiday" to prove it.
The set of The Long, Hot Summer is where Mr Newman met his second wife, Joanne Woodward. They went on to become one of Hollywood's longest-lasting couples, only parting when he very sadly died in 2008. So big cheers to this movie for creating big love.
The Netflix blurb for the film said "smoldering," "farmhand," and "Paul Newman," so I was a fan from the get-go. It is a mashing together of a couple of Faulkner tales, made into one pretty glorious movie. We have the glistening mansion in a tiny town in the sweltering South. We have Newman as a traveling man with a dangerous past, and Woodward as the long-suffering, unmarried daughter of her power-drunk, raging father, played by a Mr. Orson Welles, ooh la la.
Ben Quick, Newman's character, has been run out of his previous town, for reasons that will come back during the course of the film. He rangles a job at the Vernon farm, handily belonging to Mr Vernon, natch, who also owns most of the towns' businesses. There is a jealous son, a dizzy young wife, a comic relief love interest (Angela Lansbury, not 90), and the serious daughter, Clara, who rebuffs Quick's advances like has a disease.
As in all (most?) movies set in the rural South, the scenery is a character in and of itself. Huge white houses, glass porch tables laden with lemonade and iced tea, and Main Street, strewn with men in worker gear, downing beers to stay cool. It is a little bit beautiful.

127 Hours

First, let me thank the people who asked when I was going to start posting again. I took a little break, it's true, due to motivational challenges :). But having people ask about it was awesome, so hugs to you.

Yes, this is the movie about the guy who chopped his arm off. But let me be clear when I tell you that it so much more than just that. Danny Boyle, the gleefully zany director who gave us Trainspotting (perfect), 28 Days Later (perfect, too), and Slumdog Millionaire (...not perfect, but pretty great), is back, and in a whole new universe. He has moved to the American West, and taken his two favorite cinematographers with him, which is a risky move, but well worth it.
I myself have never been to Colorado, and am the first to admit that wide open spaces and vast rocky terrain are not friends of mine. The wide shots in this film confirmed my suspicions: nature is bloody terrifying.
Once again, Mr. James Franco (who I thought did a fine job at the Oscars, all you snarky-pants folks!) hauls out his soul for a part. He plays Aron Ralston, the real-life mountain-climber, mountain-biker, and general thrill-seeker who had the gall to go leaping around in a canyon without telling his mother, or anyone else, where he was going. FAIL. The first 3rd or so of the movie is just Franco going wild on a bike on the rocks, picking up a couple of cute girls (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn), and doing a lot of joyful shrieking. Then he gets stuck. And then things get really crazy.
Ralston's past, both far and near, is revealed to us through hazy, swift flashbacks brought on by fear and hunger. There is his childhood, spent climbing with his father (Treat Williams) and picking on his sister. There is a beautiful girl (Clemence Poesy). We watch him struggle and scream, fight for his life and grimly accept his near-certain death. We watch him check his watch, ticking away the hours, the days. The decision that he ultimately makes seems to come from pure adrenaline and an absolute refusal of defeat.
All right, let's talk about THE BIG SCENE. It is very big and very icky. It is also very short, about 2 minutes, but you feel every blessed second of it. When I saw it, I had my hands over my ears, since sounds are more revolting to me than sights. Here's a rundown of other reactions in my audience: outright screaming, knee-hugging, under-seat-hiding, gagging, and popcorn-bag-exploding. Let that be your guide.