Starring Madison Charap, Troy Taylor, Ryan Larson, P.J. Palmer, Tim Baldini
Directed by Ted Nicolaou
Expectations: I hate Blair Witch, so a rip-off probably isn’t much better.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
“I love all the ghosts.”
That is one character’s protective mantra throughout the film and it became mine as I tried valiantly to remain conscious through the film’s running time. The funny thing though is that I actually enjoyed watching The St. Francisville Experiment for the most part, it’s just that so little happens and the characters far too uninteresting to make for an overall pleasing film. So why would I enjoy watching something like this? Well, because I’m a cinematic masochist of course, but besides that if you buy into it just enough it’s pretty easy to have fun with it. I can imagine a group of thirteen-year-old girls renting this for a slumber party and having an absolute ball.
The premise here is simple: there’s a haunted mansion and a film producer has rounded up four college students to go in with cameras and try to document some ghost activity. Everything is presented as if it were a real documentary; there are no opening credits and the film is all shot on handheld video cameras. Anyone that actually watches the movie shouldn’t be fooled past ten or fifteen minutes in, but at least initially it does a good job of selling the documentary “found footage” idea of the picture. Not that that’s original or anything. This film exists purely to shamelessly rip off the success of The Blair Witch Project. That film dropped the year before and Full Moon and company were quick to spring on its success. From my limited research into the found footage genre, this seems to be the first rip-off released after Blair Witch too, so if that truly is the case, you have to give Full Moon credit for moving faster than anyone else.
There isn’t much in the way of rules for what movies we review here at Silver Emulsion. Nevertheless, there are certain genres that get more attention than others. Anyone familiar with this site will be aware of the plethora of horror and martial arts films, and I would feel remiss if I didn’t add anything to these categories.
Quite some time ago I saw Blood: The Last Vampire. Back then, I felt it was average at best and wholly forgettable, at which point I promptly forgot everything about it. Years later, I watched Blood+, the TV series based upon the movie, and I thought about going back and watching the original again to see if it filled in any blanks or added anything new to the story. I never got around to doing it until I started talking to Will about this site, and that led to the aforementioned desire to give it a horror anime review. Suddenly, I had another reason to get off my duff and re-watch Blood. And now that I have, I’m not quite sure why I was so dismissive of it.
AKA Word Wars – Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Circuit
Starring Joe Edley, Matt Graham, Marlon Hill, Joel Sherman
Directed by Eric Chaikin & Julian Petrillo
Expectations: Moderate. I heard somewhere this was good. That was years ago though, so I don’t remember where or any specifics.
I generally take a few notes while watching a film. Depending on the amount of strange occurrences or abstract thoughts I have, I might take a lot of notes. For Word Wars, a movie all about words and their usage within the surprisingly competitive game of Scrabble, I took only two notes. The first was, “Total nerd out,” and the second was, “An alternate title could be Nerd Wars.” The nerd quotient is definitely off the charts, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable to watch. It should probably be noted that I self-identify as a nerd, so I’m allowed to call a nerd a nerd without any fear of vengeful repercussions.
Word Wars follows four men who are among the best in the Scrabble field. Three of the guys travel together and are tenuous friends, constantly on each other’s nerves. The fourth man is the reigning champion, a feat that the others attribute to his daily Tai Chi routines and generally calm demeanor. But this year will be different: the combatants have trained, the calisthenics are done and now they are poised to strike! Hide your anagrams, hide your synonyms, and hide your antonyms too, cuz they scrabblin’ errbody out here.
I enjoyed watching Word Wars quite a bit, as in addition to the narrative surrounding the National tournament that the film and its subjects are working towards, there is a bit of a Trekkies vibe where the nerds are so intensely obsessed with their sub-culture that they can only come off as funny to an outsider. No disrespect intended, but some of the situations just demand a laugh. The only problem I have with it as a documentary is that it doesn’t really say anything of note. It follows the guys well, and it’s made with precision and skill, but there’s never anything resembling a point to it all for the viewer. To the men featured, there’s a genuine goal of winning the National tournament and the $25,000 prize, but the audience is left wanting something beyond that. It hurts the film in an overall sense, but as it stands it’s still pretty entertaining.
If you enjoy words and people watching, you’ll probably get your fair share of enjoyment out of Word Wars. It isn’t the most interesting documentary, but it’s never dry or boring. The men featured are characters enough to make every scene well worth watching.
This is the second in a three-post series where I share my school reports from my first real film class, Film History. These were the first serious writings I did on film, and they offer a look back at the foundations that would eventually lead me to start writing reviews here at Silver Emulsion. I recently found them in a box while preparing to move, and I hope they are as entertaining to you as they are to me (they won’t be). These were written about twelve years ago during the Fall of the year 2000, when I was a spry nineteen years old. I will be re-creating the documents with the same formatting and images to the best of my abilities with the WordPress editor. Also, I’m leaving in any grammar errors or other things that I might want to change. It’s all about posterity and not falling into the George Lucas trap. Anyway, enjoy! Maybe.
Dancer in the Dark
A film by Lars Von Trier
Dancer in the Dark is not a film for everyone. It’s tone is dark. It’s all handheld digital video. There aren’t any big name stars in it. And it’s a musical. Any one of these factors would turn most mainstream people off to this film, even before stepping foot into the cinema. But those people that never see Dancer in the Dark will be missing out on what I feel to be the best new film I have seen this year.
Starring Evan McGuire, Christen Mooney, Brendan Gleeson, Mick Lally, Liam Hourican, Paul Tylak, Michael McGrath, Paul Young
Directed by Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey
Expectations: Low. It doesn’t look like something I’d care about.
I think this one is more of a case of “not for me” than actual poor quality. I’m unable to tell definitively, but for my money The Secret of Kells was long, boring and somewhat harsh on the eyes. Strong words for a film that garnered high praise from nearly all critics, and earned a coveted Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Let’s start with the long, boring part. The Secret of Kells is only just over an hour in length, but it feels like three. I was unable to engage with the story right from the get-go so that’s probably why the damn thing felt so long. I tried though, Lord did I try, but at nearly every turn I was bored. There are some genuinely great moments sprinkled here and there, but by the time they arrived I was already so checked out they failed to truly resonate.
And now for the visuals. I get what they were going for: taking influence from the art of the time the story depicts (the 7th century) and running wild with it. This is a fantastic idea and has worked well for films previous, but the thing is that The Secret of Kells actually looks more like something from the workshop of Genndy Tartakovsky, the man behind Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory. I’ve only watched Samurai Jack in any real sense, and I absolutely love that show. What’s interesting about that is that I love it in spite of its art style and character design. I’m not especially fond of the art overall, but the great characters and the level of filmmaking skill and inventiveness exhibited in Samurai Jack is amazing, impressive and thoroughly entertaining. When The Secret of Kells looks pretty much exactly like that, but features little to none of these positives, I can’t help but be bored.
Film is a visual medium and visual aesthetics are one of my most important criteria for liking a film. I didn’t care for the visuals, so it was really hard to get through this one. The film did completely enthrall my cat though, so that’s something. I don’t think it’s so much that The Secret of Kells is a bad movie, but that I just couldn’t connect with it. It is impressive that a small, independent studio can crank out an animated film of this technical quality though. Watch the trailer and if the visuals don’t bother you, you just might get a good time out of this one. All others, look elsewhere.
Will, on March 27, 2012, 5:20 am
Starring Madison Charap, Troy Taylor, Ryan Larson, P.J. Palmer, Tim Baldini
Stephen, on March 21, 2012, 5:20 am
Starring Youki Kudoh, Saemi Nakamura, Joe Romersa
AKA Word Wars – Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Circuit
Starring Evan McGuire, Christen Mooney, Brendan Gleeson, Mick Lally, Liam Hourican, Paul Tylak, Michael McGrath, Paul Young
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