moonisgod

I love biopics and this one is one of the best I've seen. The story of Bob Crane, even if you aren't too familiar with Hogan's Heroes, is engrossing and the cinematography plays well with it. It starts out as a crisp, clean sit-com like atmosphere with bright colors and geometric patterns and then devolves into a dark world of bars and apartments, hand held, shaky cameras and jumbled action.

The acting is top-notch, especially Kinnear and DaFoe as a sick team of thrill seekers. Throughout the film Kinnear plays Crane as constantly denying his obsession, which could only work with an actor so well known for his good-guy roles. DaFoe is creepy, much like his Green Goblin in Spider-man, at one point understanding the next vindictive and bitter.

Crane's son is trying to discredit the film on his website (which oddly enough exploits his dad's life by selling glimpses to the treasure trove of pornography that Crane produced in his life), but for the most part I feel his protestations are ungrounded. Sure, the film was over-looked by the Academy but it doesn't mean that the movie isn't worth watching.

Well worth buying, or at least renting. As far as biopics go, this could be one of the best.

Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn seems to have blew its wad on the monster effects and ignored crucial things like pacing, storytelling, dialogue and continuity. The big monster effect looks great, but that's no reason to watch this film, since you have to wade through a story that tells like molasses. For every minute of action (the aliens attacking the old people, the little kid fighting the alien in the attic) you get about 8 minutes where nothing of interest happening (the kid wandering blankly through his own basement, the uncle questioning the kid about monster movies, the excruciatingly drawn out scenes of the preparations for the old people's lunch party). It's like the movie runs out of gas then picks back up then slows down again.

The movie doesn't endear itself to you from the start, with the first four characters we are introduced to getting eaten within the first 5 minutes. The characters you like die and the ones you hoped would die don't. Also, the exterior shots of the house look to be bad (really bad and obvious) Claymation and I was just hoping for Davey and Goliath to walk through.

On the whole, though, the film wasn't too bad, which is as wishy-washy and answer as you could possibly get from a review. Entertaining, low-quality, but not the worst film I have ever seen.

Oh, and the goofy guy in overalls's hair length changes from scene to scene. It really makes the movie.

As a film itself, Ginger Snaps is an ok one, technically. The cinematography is a breath of fresh air from the dull, predictable shots that are used as standards nowadays. It's something I noticed early on, and if it stood out that much, it has to be good. The acting is a little stiff and/or bad sometimes (I see Mimi Rogers underacting a little too often and Katharine Isabelle going over-the-top way too often), but Emily Perkins did an incredible job. See this movie for no other reason but her.

Besides those good qualities, I found the movie to be a let down. It seemed to promise a good time, but never really payed off. The werewolf (looks like a dog) puppet did a great job of staying immobile most of the time the camera was on it (ala "Elves" and "Hobgoblins") and when it did move, it did so off camera. If anything, it seems like a cop out by the director; this film had such promise! It was torn between a regular old werewolf movie and the bonds between two sisters, a plot that we were unfortunately thrust into and doesn't really go anywhere. "You'll take it and you'll like it, movie-goers." Questions go unanswered, characters disappear, and nothing seems to be consistent at all through the whole film. Plus there are stretches of time where you don't care for any characters and just wish the whole film had ended early.

Bah.

A little too much like "An American Werewolf in Paris," except "Ginger Snaps" happily did not make the same error of relying on computer generated images. Some parts were good, some characters were good (others just grotesquely bad stereotypes), some dialogue was good, but nothing was ever consistent. You don't rejoice while watching this movie-you just sit through it.