Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
I saw two movies this weekend, both undone by serious overplotting. I’m reviewing A Cure For Wellness here, but I’ll get to The Mummy all in good time. The difference between these movies is that The Mummy is mostly bad throughout, and for a number of reasons. A Cure For Wellness doesn’t become bad overall, but the plotting ruins what starts as a good movie.
If there’s one single thing about movie marketing I absolutely cannot stand, it’s the bait and switch. It usually happens when either the studio knows they have a dog on their hands through test marketing, or they find themselves with a movie on their hands that defies a target market. I remember there was a big stink from fans of the 2012 movie John Carter, based on the John Carter of Mars series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, because of a weak and ineffective marketing campaign. The trouble here was with the movie, a wretched piece of badly written drivel. When movies can spend close to $100 million alone on marketing, sometimes a movie is just so poor that the studio cuts its losses and declines to throw good money after bad. An example of not knowing who to market to is the recent movie A Monster Calls, with an ad campaign that tried to appeal to the same crowd as those who loved The Iron Giant and The BFG. Last night’s movie, Shut In, is a classic example of marketing bait and switch.
I get that it seems redundant to review old movies, but then again, “movie reviews” is a catch all term, right? I probably won’t make a habit of this, but who knows! Right now, it’s more of a thought exercise for me, having not seen this particular movie in about 20 years. I felt that had put enough distance between myself and it so that even if it wasn’t exactly “new to me”, watching David Cronenberg’s 1979 move The Brood in 2016 might allow me to see it with a different set of sensibilities. I know back then I didn’t so much absorb movies as I try to these days, I was more of a casual watcher.
Few movies are so inconsistent in tone that I’m compelled to comment about that one aspect, but such is The Voices, staring Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool, Self/Less), Gemma Arterton (Byzantium), and Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air, Pitch Perfect). I stumbled across this the other week, and was intrigued by the premise, and the fact it seemed like an odd choice for Reynolds, whom I consider a solid lead actor. The poster itself sets up a quirky, offbeat black comedy, but like many posters that try to sell a different kind of product to the public, this one is grossly misleading.
I’m not exactly sure which came first of Mickey Keating’s Carnage Park and Darling, but I know they were filmed fairly close together, and are wildly different from each other. It’s fair to speculate that while Keating’s still finding his feet, he has the potential to become a “name” director in a few years.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 