Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Sarah and I have a very specific set of personal biases to get out of the way:
1. Jeremy Renner
2. Jeremy Renner's ass

That being stated, we're fairly certain we're about to embark on the classic tales of "You're Hot, But Not Hot Enough to Excuse This" and "You're An Oscar Nominee, Why Are You Here?"

 

Directed by: Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, and Norwegian movies we can't pronounce)

Starring: Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton

Plot Summary: "I feel like we're super prepared for life, because we would never in a million years approach the 'free candy' van. And these kids never heard their own story to know the proper decision."

Yes, Renner and Arterton play the grown-up Hansel and Gretel from ye olde "Don't Take Candy From Strangers" fairytale, who famously hunt witches across the European(?) countryside to ensure no one else has to deal with that mess. But, hark! Something extra sinister is afoot! Children keep disappearing mysteriously, and all signs point to witchcraft, so it's up to Hansel and Gretel and their anachronistically complex weapons to save everyone. Evil Grand Witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) is trying to devour hearts in order to keep herself and her witch sisters invulnerable to human methods of killing them (fire), which would, of course, change the whole game. The kicker is that there's only one more heart they need for the ritual, one specific heart, which happens to belong to our dear Gretel. By the way, after being force-gorged on candy in the witch's cottage as a child, Hansel has developed diabetes -- the "sugar sickness" as they refer to it here -- and shoots himself up with insulin on the regular.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--"We're eight minutes in, and I already know this is going to be another edition of 'When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors.'"
--"Are we pretending to be in Germany? Is that what's up?" / "Gretel just said, 'I'll blow your sheriff's brains all over these f***in' hillibillies,' this cannot be Germany."
--"Of course that girl's not a witch. Real witches would've f***ed them up by now."
--"SHE HAS AN AUTOMATIC CROSSBOW!?"
--"Shillings? Is this England? Where are they?"
--"Someone needs to be punished for this movie."
--"Is your sugar low, sweetheart? Hansel, eat something! You need food with your shot!" / "He's gonna lose a leg, or at least a toe."
--"From what I figure, the real downfall for everyone is that there are no brains in the H&G company."
--"Gretel needs to learn to shoot bitches on sight. Seriously. Some sketchy a**hole strolls into your inn in the middle of a fiery witch battle? You shoot her. Obviously."
--"I wish this made less sense." / Less sense than what?"
--"I don't think we can trust this woman, but at least she got him half-naked and wet for us."
--"THEY HAVE A GATTLING GUN?! WHAT YEAR IS THIS? WHERE ARE THEY?"
--"They need him to be Hawkeye right now."
--"Quick poll, do we actually care about any of these people?" / "If your question means, 'Do we give a s*** that she dies,' the answer is no."
--"Hansel, you have done nothing this entire movie to make me believe you can successfully kill a witch."
--"No. This is not how diabetes works. I've seen enough diabetic seizures and meltdowns to know this is really not how the f*** it works."

"It's just kinda dull right now. I want some weird plot twist out of nowhere, like Gretel grows a penis or something."

You'd think that a movie with such an interesting premise -- yes, an interesting premise, because we thought it was a hysterical idea when we first heard about it, and far more sensical than Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires -- would hold our attention better. This is a standard case of dullness resulting from Too Much Crazy and not enough story, which makes the audience numb to the action-crammed sequences. The saving grace here is that the movie is only 88 minutes long, so kudos to the person/people astute enough to realize there was nothing to stretch out here. Sarah counted, and there were six big fight scenes in the span of 80 minutes. Plus, we can't even remember how many bodies straight-up exploded. Not all at once, either, but at some point in every fight, and then some. Hansel states that the ways to kill a witch are to cut off her head and set her on fire, but we only saw two (of at least twenty) witches go down like that.

Let's take a moment to point out that the first insulin shots were not administered until 1922. Hansel and Gretel also have a taser and automatic weaponry. However, this movie takes place in a time period when there was no running electricity, and suspected witches were still getting burned at the stake. Okay, carrying on.

"Why has there not been one single shot of Jeremy's ass?"
"I don't know, but on the plus side, this also means there haven't been any objectifying shots of Gemma. That's a bonus for women in action movies everywhere."

Judging from that movie poster, and the way movies like this usually turn out, we figured we'd have to endure some good old fashioned, there's-no-way-she-can-fight-in-that-outfit displays of Sexy Action Heroine. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find that despite the medieval-ish setting, there was only one naked woman, it wasn't Arterton, and the nudity had context (Hansel's love interest, Mina, a good witch, swims with him in a magic healing spring after he's injured.)

Speaking of Mina, here's where an age-old fairytale trope comes in: Good witches are pretty, and bad witches are ugly. Hansel meets Mina because the townspeople are about to drown her for witchcraft without any proof, and Hansel argues her case. You can tell a witch just by looking at her because the dark magic corrupts their features; a witch has black teeth, pale, veiny skin, and jacked-up eyes, he tells the people, so pretty Mina is set free. This is part of why evil Muriel's plan is so dangerous: that invulnerability ritual restores her beauty, so she can infiltrate wherever she likes. Pretty people get nicer treatment, an unfortunate fact.

The Best Part: Like we said, Mina got Hansel's clothes off. Yes, we're hypocrites about the objectification thing. No, we don't care. There's a lot of lost man-ogling time to make up in action cinema.

Also, Hansel and Gretel were trailed by a teenage fanboy who kept a scrapbook of all their adventures -- he'd totally run a "f***yeahhanselandgretel" Tumblr if it were 2013 -- and wanted to become a witch-hunter himself. The boy's enthusiasm was adorable, and Hansel and Gretel took him under their wing without reservations. 

The Worst Part: The story would've benefitted from more development. #actionmovieproblems

We give Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters a solid D. You might even hear from these fairytale siblings again, if rumors about a sequel are true.

(Poster and trailer © Paramount Pictures)

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

I don't think Sarah and I have ever been at such a loss. We watched this over a week ago and couldn't figure out what to say until yesterday. We still aren't sure what happened here.

(Here are our thoughts on the original seed, the ugly middle child no one wanted, and the drug-addled brother no one mentions at family gatherings.)



Directed By: Bill Condon (Kinsey, Dreamgirls)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner
Plot Summary: "Oh, she thinks she threw up because of the chicken? Ha. No, Bella, it's not the chicken. You f***ing WISH it was the chicken."

Watch the trailer. That's all you need to know at this point.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--"Did she just say, 'Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies?'" / "She must not have read Bridge to Terabithia."
--"Come on, Edward, you can't hunt in a crowded theater during Nosferatu. That's just mean." / "Or brilliant."
--"Damn, this is a pretty wedding."
--"STEPHENIE F***ING MEYER!"
--"I don't think Jacob made it to the ceremony. We would've noticed the lone shirtless man standing in the back, flexing for no reason."
--"This is surreal, even for Twilight. Seriously, this feels crazy."
--"I don't understand how so many people are concerned for her life when she clearly isn't."
--"Wait, was that all?! I thought it was supposed to be on the verge of an R rating for that scene!"
--"Why don't they just have sex in the water if they're doing all this swimming? He won't hurt her like that, will he?"
--"Here's where Stephenie Meyer would like to discuss Planned Parenthood."
--"Why do the wolves talk like Thor?"
--"Bella looks like she's been doing some serious smack." / "Is there such a thing as non-serious smack?"
--"That was the worst thing that's ever happened in a Twilight movie."
--"Did Carlisle just buy a gynecology office to put in his house?"
--"Ha, they think 'Renesmee' is bad? Ask Albus Severus Potter about that one."
--"WHAT THE F***?!"
--"Seriously, Edward, is this faster than a knife?"

"AAAAAHHHH THERE IS PLACENTA ON HIS FACE -- IN HIS MOUTH -- OH, GOD!!!"

If you ever want to scare a girl into not getting pregnant, make her watch this movie. It contains the most traumatic pregnancy and birth scenes either of us have ever watched. It was sheer horror.

That being said, there are a lot of pro-life/pro-choice debates being thrown around here, and Stephenie Meyer sidesteps the two by making it Bella's choice to endure the potentially-fatal pregnancy. Bella and Rosalie want the baby delivered at all costs -- the main cost being Bella's life, which Bella has been trying to throw away since day one. She's going to hold on as long as she can, then try to be saved at the last minute by Edward turning her. Edward, Alice and Jacob want the demon-fetus aborted immediately, because it's quickly killing Bella from the inside out, and Edward won't love it -- let alone accept it -- if it takes her away from him. He has stated numerous times that she's his "reason for existing," after all.

Carlisle notifies Bella that the venom probably won't be enough in the eleventh hour, and Bella just shrugs it off and tells Edward he has to accept life without her. (EXCUSE ME?! We've sat through at least six hours of you two proclaiming how you can't live without each other! In fact, two movies ago, EDWARD TRIED TO KILL HIMSELF because he thought you were dead! Maybe it's because neither Sarah nor I are mothers, but seriously, what is that bulls***?!) We respect Bella not wanting to kill her baby/demon-fetus, but there's also an argument for Edward's perspective here, which is that Bella's life is more important. Anyway, the movie quite obviously brings up a lot of sticky issues, but at least both sides are somewhat represented here, as opposed to the Mormon Values party Meyer's been staging the entire time.

The Best Part: Charlie Swan (Billy Burke) has been wrestling with Bella's relationship with Edward from the start, and his struggle to let her go makes us so sad for him. Especially when Bella gets pregnant and gives birth in the span of a month without Charlie knowing. Bella makes up some story about going to a treatment facility in Switzerland because she's been struck with some mysterious illness, but really, what were they planning on telling Bella's family once she was turned? As Jacob says (and this is probably the best thing Jacob's ever said because of the matter-of-fact way he says it), "Maybe they'll say she got hit by a car. Fell off a cliff."

The Worst Part: There is a segment where the wolf pack, all in wolf form, argues telepathically over what to do about Bella's and Edward's spawn, which they can't allow to exist. The scene itself is inexplicable. Why are they all speaking to each other as wolves when they're in an utterly secluded area? Why was the voice-over work for this so hilariously horrendous, causing them all to sound like steroid-ridden monsters at the top of somebody's beanstalk? Wouldn't it have been cheaper on the studio to just have them meet up as humans? Who let this leave the editing room?

We give Breaking Dawn: Part 1 a D. It was either a great modern horror movie, or a wretched social commentary about feminism and the pro-choice argument, but we don't think either of those outcomes was the intention.

Jasmyn: "See, Deathly Hallows decides to be two movies, and we get 2.5 hours of epic quality each. This s*** just went bonkers for an hour and a half, and then it's gonna do it again."

PS: Check out our baby Facebook page and 'Like' Camp or Crap? if you haven't already! You can also 'Like' us from the "Camp or Crap? on Facebook" sidebar to the right of the blog.

(Poster and trailer © Summit Entertainment)

Queen of the Damned

When we were in middle school, and MTV announced that Aaliyah had been killed in a plane crash (the day school started), our 6th grade hearts collectively wept. In particular, I remember showing up to class and the first thing anyone said to me was, "Did you hear what happened to Aaliyah?!" So, because Queen of the Damned was released 6 months later, there was a frame at the end that said, "In memory of Aaliyah." That was a good thing to do, but... it's tragic that this awful piece of work is her legacy.



Directed By: Michael Rymer (Battlestar Galactica)
Starring: Stuart Townsend, Marguerite Moreau and Aaliyah
Plot Summary: "I don't get why anything in particular is happening. I mean, I get that they have to stop Akasha from sucking the world dry. That's a legitimate problem. But everything else is just... what?"

Queen of the Damned is adapted from Anne Rice's third novel in The Vampire Chronicles series. And, since Anne Rice is regarded as the master of all modern vampires and the series has 10 or so books to its name, the novel simply HAS to make more sense than this movie does. Neither Sarah nor I have read Rice's work, but we have the feeling that, as is the case with so many adaptations, certain things from the novel were left out, which would've made this sentimental piece of crap coherent.

Sarah: "I have a few choice words for Anne Rice."
Me: "Sarah, Stephenie Meyer is not Anne Rice's fault!"

Lestat (Townsend) awakens from deep sleep because he hears some random garage band playing goth-ish metal in his house. Where the hell did they come from, and how did they just set up shop on his estate? Lestat decides that he'll join them, and because he's bored, he reveals himself as a vampire to the public. The public's like, "Oh, sweet! A real vampire! This band's groupies die, like, ALL the time, but we're just gonna go with it!" Lestat knows that living his life out in the open will piss off the other vampires, and since he has a deathwish, he taunts them all to come to the concert in Death Valley so they can kill him. There's also a supernatural investigator named Jesse (Moreau), who is the most annoying, nonsensical, monotone girl who could've been in this movie. (Except, of course, the Queen of the Annoying, Nonsensical and Monotone Girls, Bella Swan.) Jesse follows Lestat around for reasons we can't decipher, except that she digs dying violently.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--"How is this crowd laughing at him saying, 'I was just catching my breakfast?' THAT'S MURDER, GUYS!"
--"I'm amused that there is a very distinct 'Dracula' accent. Like, not really Romania, but like 1930s Hollywood Dracula."
--"Why is this happening? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"
--"She couldn't have at least put dark circles around her eyes if she was trying to pass in this vampire club?"
--"That's some Mortal Kombat s***!!! FINISH HIM!!!"

"Okay, I don't think he's hot enough to make up for how little sense this makes."

It should be said that we've both seen this movie multiple times. At no point has it ever become more coherent. Lestat narrates the tale, which helps a lot. If you had to watch this movie without his insight, you would start hitting yourself over the head with the nearest blunt object in order to knock some sense back into things. Lestat wanders the earth as a deadly vampire with a wink, which is to say that Stuart Townsend plays him with a healthy dose of self-awareness. The same can't be said for most of the other people in this movie, whose flat, developmentally-challenged characters have no distinct personalities except for Stupid and Ancient Vampire.

Aaliyah's character, Akasha, who is awakened by Lestat's music, is the mother of all vampires. (Which begs the question... how the hell did she become a vampire in the first place? What came first, the chicken or the egg!?) Her goal is to take over the world, living openly as a vampire goddess, drinking everyone dry. Which falls under the personality category of Stupid AND Ancient Vampire: She first appears as a statue, which she became because she got too greedy and decimated the blood supply the LAST time she walked the earth. WHAT??? How would you not learn from those previous errors? How would you continue without a sustainability plan? Who's running your cabinet, the Republican party?!

The Best Part: Townsend, no question. He takes Lestat's identity seriously, but Lestat doesn't take being a vampire seriously, so it all works together to create a cheeky sense of humor about the situation.

The Worst Part: We've seen this movie together at least 3 times and still don't understand it. Nobody's motives have reason, except maybe Lestat's deathwish, because eternity would be an excessive amount of time to spend alone. The rest is a maudlin, over-stylized music video.

Queen of the Damned gets a D-. For "terribleness and being horrid," as Sarah puts it.

(Poster and trailer © Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.)

The Faculty

As we mentioned in "Our Mission Statement," Sarah and I (Jasmyn) have very different movie collections. Sarah hadn't seen this movie before. I have, several times over, because I first saw it when I was 12 and became obsessed with its ridiculousness. However, this is one of those movie moments where we reach a fork in the road.



Directed By: Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Sin City)
Starring: Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett and Clea DuVall, among others
Plot Summary: "Are they using crack to kill the aliens?!"

Sarah, not being a fan of horror movies, does not feel qualified to judge this particular flick. She said it was like A Walk To Remember and Twilight combined. It was already bad, but made worse by the big-name ensemble cast (seriously, Jon Stewart and Salma Hayek are here, too) that did not deliver. Also, Sarah does NOT like surprises, and while I'm used to the jolts of this movie, for Sarah it was, well... surprising. The ear-invading parasites, the eye-stabbing, and the fingers and decapitated head that crawled away after they got chopped off, for example, were major issues.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--Lots of shrieking on Sarah's part
--Hysterical laughter on my part
--"THIS IS SO DISGUSTING!"
--"This isn't going to turn out well for him, is it?"
--"NO NO NO, RUN RUN RUN!!!"

I know this movie's questionable. I'm the one who added it to our blogging queue and shoved it in front of Speed Racer because I felt nostalgic. Anyway, I think there are plenty of redeemable qualities in this movie. Casey (Elijah Wood), as an unlikely little hero fighting against insane odds (cough -- FRODO -- cough), handles the "let's recap so the audience is up to speed" exposition in the middle of the movie perfectly. Plus, he has a line that I remembered for a long time afterwards, during subsequent viewings of alien invasion movies:

"If you were going to take over the world, would you blow up the White House, Independence Day style... or would you sneak in through the back door?"

Robert Rodriguez will later be well-known for the outrageous violence he throws into his work (did anyone else see Johnny Depp's blind gunfight after getting his eyeballs drilled out in Once Upon a Time In Mexico?), but The Faculty was clearly one of his earliest movies. When the alien mother finally shows up, in the form of a fanged worm from animatronic hell, it's laughable. In fact, Sarah was no longer freaked by the creature at that point. The tiny ones crawling into people's faces were another story.

The Best Part: The method used to destroy the aliens is a homemade speed/cocaine combo created in Zeke's (Josh Hartnett's) basement. It is, as his character explains, a diuretic, so it dries out the water-based invaders almost instantly. In one scene, where the crew of teen misfits must prove to each other that they have not been taken over, what do they do? They snort the white powder, kept in Bic pen capsules. Casey proceeds to giggle and freak out on Zeke's sofa.

Stan: "What the hell is wrong with him?"
Zeke: "He's tweaking, man! LET HIM F***ING TWEAK!!!"

The Worst Part: The dialogue, while being half-decent for what it is (and legitimately funny in some parts) is very obviously part of the screenwriter's attempt to make the movie edgy. But I have to admit, one of my favorite worst lines in a movie is delivered near the end, as Casey prepares to finally stab the alien mother:

"Guaranteed to JACK YOU UP!"

Sarah gives The Faculty a C, and while she says she'd need to see it again so that she's not completely taken aback by all the crazy, she can't see it getting higher than that. I, however, give it a solid, campy B. I think it falls under the "cult classic" category, along with several other deliciously bad movies that are on our collective horizons.

(Poster and trailer © Dimension Films)

The Fog (2005)

Sarah hadn't seen this movie yet. However, I (Jasmyn) actually saw this in theaters with my mom and aunt, because the three of us thought Tom Welling was the hottest thing to come into existence since the sun. But here's a Fun Fact: He's not worth seeing this.



Directed by: Rupert Wainwright (Stigmata, MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" video)
Starring: Tom Welling, Maggie Grace and Selma Blair
Plot Summary: "Is their go-to thing, 'Okay, we don't have a plot, so let's show a picture of the water?'"

Within the first minute -- the FIRST MINUTE -- I was laughing and Sarah was screaming, "This is so bad!" It starts out with something vaguely resembling backstory, then transitions into a shot of the water with Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Goin' Down" playing over it. WTF?! Never mind the fact that this is the only pop song in the entire movie, and therefore sticks out like a sore thumb before you even realize you're not going to hear any more of this music. It's nowhere near the biggest problem.

Observations Made As We Watched:
--"Did he just say the fog couldn't get in the freezer?"
--"Not enough people have died yet."
--"Is the fog going to drive the truck now?"
--"What the f***?!"

"I don't understand who we're supposed to care about in this movie."

Tom Welling covers the "strong guy" role decently. We all know Selma Blair doesn't get the greatest roles, even though she's been in the game for 15 years. But Maggie Grace, who plays the completely disinteresting protagonist, Elizabeth, is like a soggy loaf of bread. There's not a single actor in this movie who seems to have been hired exclusively for their talent, but she was the worst. If you make a terrible movie with terrible dialogue recited by actors who can't make you care, there's nothing to watch.

There are ghosts of murdered people from yesteryear coming out of the fog to wreak vengeance on the descendants of the people who murdered them. A good concept? Yes. This could've been a wonderfully creepy ghost story. But it wasn't. The plot of this movie is incomprehensible, especially because of the ending that completely destroys whatever sense the movie was attempting to make.

The Best Part: We watched a DVRed episode of Jeopardy after the credits rolled to get some brain cells back.

The Worst Part: Everything involving Elizabeth, which was basically the whole plot.

This was the worst movie Sarah has seen thus far, and almost the worst I've ever seen (there's another dumbf*** horror movie taking its place for #1, which we will review in the future).
For being a rancid piece of meat that was marinated in cat piss, we give this movie an F.

PS: Sarah has been screaming "WHY WAS IT SO BAD?!" for the past hour.

(Poster and trailer © MGM Studios, Inc.)