31 Days of Horror: Gerald's Game

Mr. Popper's Penguins

Directed by Mark Waters.

2011. Rated PG, 94 minutes.
Cast:
Jim Carrey
Carla Gugino
Angela Lansbury
Clark Gregg
Ophelia Lovibond
Madeline Carroll
Maxwell Perry Cotton
Jeffrey Tambor
David Krumholtz
Philip Baker Hall
William Charles Mitchell
Dominic Chianese

Mr. Popper (Carrey) grew up mostly without his father. His dad was a globetrotting scientist who spent far more time abroad than with his little boy. Unsurprisingly, Popper isn’t too broken up when he learns his old man has died while off in Antarctica. However, Poppa Popper did leave his son something: a pack of penguins. There are six of them, to be exact. Junior fitting them into his life is a bit tricky. He has an ex-wife (Gugino) he still has a thing for, and two kids he gets every other weekend. He is also a high-octane, very successful real estate buyer. It’s a job that demands lots of time. So do the penguins. Popper trying to juggle the birds, his job, and his family ensues. Oh, he also tries to win back his ex and buy legendary restaurant Tavern on the Green from Ms. Van Gundy (Lansbury), its very grumpy owner.

If you guessed this is all pretty innocuous stuff, you guessed right. The nearly endless stream of poop jokes is as risqué as it gets. Other than that, we get the normal stuff about a dad not quite understanding his kids and Popper bonding with both, the children and the penguins. Yes, there are lessons to be learned. In addition, Carrey gives us a bit of the physical humor he’s known for. Splice in some cgi of the penguins performing some amazing feats and we get one big ball of cuteness.

Of course, there has to be a villain. In this case, one is manufactured out of the guy who wants to take the penguins to the zoo (Gregg). The three old guys Popper works for aren’t quite evil, but are certainly on the negative side of the ledger. In none of their cases do we really hate them, therefore the movie doesn’t generate sufficient tension. It moseys along sweetly, but doesn’t thrill us no matter what stunts the birds pull off. Cruella De Ville would’ve been a welcome addition to the cast of characters, a marked improvement over the ultra-bland zoo guy.

As family friendly time passers go, you could do worse than Mr. Popper’s Penguins. It gives us enough laughs not to be a drag. It also moves quickly enough, careful not to overstay its welcome. It clocks in a little over 90 minutes. On the other hand, it doesn’t do anything unexpected. MPP is content to fit snugly within the mold of the many kiddie comedies we’ve seen before. It gives us no more or less than we expect.

Sucker Punch

Directed by Zack Snyder.

2011. Rated PG-13, 110 minutes.
Cast:
Emily Browning
Abbie Cornish
Jena Malone
Vanessa Hudgens
Jamie Chung
Carla Gugino
Oscar Isaac
Scott Glenn
Gerard Plunkett

After her mother dies, Baby Doll (Browning) is attacked by her stepdad. Obviously, it was a struggle for him to wait until his wife kicked because he goes on the prowl moments after the funeral. Apparently finding Baby Doll a bit more of a struggle than he wants just then, or perhaps saving her for later, he manages to lock her in her room and then starts in on her younger, much smaller sister. Since our heroine can’t let stepdad get his satisfaction she gets out of the room and gets a loaded gun and confronts this clown. Just to show she’s serious, Baby Doll fires off a warning shot. Oops. Little sis winds up all dead and stuff over in a corner. Daddy Dearest then has BD hauled off to an insane asylum run by some shady characters. He even slips the guy in charge a few extra bucks to make sure she gets lobotomized in five days. I hate when that happens.

All of this takes place before and right after the opening credits. Truthfully, only the end result is relevant. The elaborate set up is interesting, but unnecessary. She could’ve simply been perceived as crazy and arrived at exactly the same place. However, elaborately is the only way this movie does anything. Not surprising since it has the same director, it has a look reminiscent of 300 with nearly as much slo-mo, super slo-mo and bullet-time effects. The heavy metal soundtrack blares brazenly while things onscreen hiss, boom, shatter and pop. All the while, the camera follows a team of girls draped in fetishistic and/or militaristic garb and kicking all sorts of robot tail. If you let it, it can be big fun. That is, until you get to the end wonder what you just watched.

Speaking wondering what you just watched, where do the robots come from? Well, shortly and suddenly our insane asylum transforms into a brothel. I’ll let you figure out the how and why of that one on your own. Anyoo, BD is made to dance. In a total shock for this movie, there’s no pole involved. Still, when she dances everyone in her onscreen audience is so mesmerized they cease all bodily function except for watching her. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we never see BD dance. Along with her, we enter the dreamworld in the trance she falls into. Here, she receives orders from Wise Man (Glenn) about the next object she tries to obtain by fighting her and the team’s way through hordes of robots. By the way, if you couldn’t figure it out the team is made up of other girls in the looney bin. Each object gets the whole crew closer to escape from the real asylum. Get it? The actual connection is made a little better than that, but it’s still convoluted.

Overall, Sucker Punch is a fun looking mess. The visuals are a treat, but the pieces to the story don’t quite fit in a cohesive manner. First off, there are too many of them. A surplus of things that could’ve been discarded are kept. Conversely, we get the feeling plenty of things that should’ve been kept are thrown out. Second, none of the characters are written well enough for us to really care what happens to them. They’re just mannequins in the window striking poses appropriate for the gear they’re wearing. Worst of all, the movie is horribly inconsistent about what happens to people in the room when BD dances. Who is and isn’t effected changes based on what’s convenient for the plot at any given moment. Finally, I have a question. Why on God’s green earth did Zack Snyder allow Carla Gugino to keep going with her ridiculously bad Russian accent after the first day of shooting? For that alone, he should be sucker punched.

Faster

Directed by George Tillman Jr.
2010. Rated R, 98 minutes.
Cast:
Dwayne Johnson
Billy Bob Thornton
Carla Gugino
Oliver Jackson-Cohen
Moon Bloodgod
Michael Irby
Mike Epps
Tom Berenger
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Driver (Johnson) gets out of prison today. There’s no one at the gate to pick him up. Instead, he hoofs it to the nearest junkyard where someone has left him a car with a gun stashed under the seat. His first order of business is to drive to a local business office and shoot some poor schlub in the head before he can even get out of his cubicle. Nice. Before you go thinking Driver is a random nut job about to kill everyone in the joint, he only pops the one guy and calmly walks out. It seems this dude had it coming. We learn pretty quickly that Driver’s brother was murdered by some double-crossers after a bank robbery and cubicle man was somehow involved. We can easily figure out now that Driver’s out of jail, a lot of people have it coming.

Since the law frowns upon vigilante justice, no matter how scummy the victims, there have to be police officers trying to stop Driver. Cicero (Gugino) is working the case. Just so we know how tough she is, she huffs out straight talk while keeping her hands on her hips. Reluctantly, she allows Cop (Thornton) to work with her. The first thing we find out about Cop is he’s got a drug habit. He also sucks as a dad. Hey, that’s a hard job. Trust me. The two of them trying to track down Driver as he wastes one sleaze bucket after another ensues. Oh, I almost forgot something. Someone who knows what’s going on has hired Killer (Jackson-Cohen), a hitman. Okay, so there wasn’t much thought put into the names in this movie. Anyhoo, not only does Driver have some killin’ to do, he’s being chased by Cop and Killer. Poor guy.

In case you’re still not sure, let me make this perfectly clear. This is an action flick, no more no less. If you want deep metaphors and explorations of the human spirit, look elsewhere. If you want to see The Rock kick some ass, get your popcorn and beverage of choice and enjoy. One of the reasons he became a superstar is because men lived vicariously through his wrestling persona. Whe he first broke into movies, that whole act transferred seamlessly to the big screen. In recent years, he’s headlined a few kiddie-flicks and basically lampooned his own image. Sure, these movies made a lot of money, but the people who made him a star stayed away in droves. They couldn’t smell what The Rock was cooking. Faster returns him to the mold in which he was cast: action hero.

None of what I’ve written should be construed as a pitch to make you believe this is the greatest movie ever. It is not. It is deeply flawed. For one, it would be a completely different film if Cicero asks a question at the beginning of the movie, like she was supposed to, instead of waiting until the end. She didn’t, and we got this. It is a dumb action flick. That doesn’t matter. What does is that it’s fun, brutal, fast, faster.

MY SCORE: 7/10

The Unborn

Directed by David S. Goyer.
2009. Rated PG-13, 89 minutes.
Cast:
Odette Yustman
Meagan Good
Jane Alexander
Gary Oldman
Carla Gugino
Idris Elba
James Remar
Ethan Cutkosky

Plot: After a succession of nightmares, ghastly visions and strange occurrences, Casey (Yustman) tries to find out what's after her, before it's too late.

The Good: As with a few other of 2009's scare flicks, Drag Me to Hell and The Uninvited, in particular, we get some excellently horrific visuals. These, along with the overall dark mood keeps us interested. The story efficiently moves us along until we get to a nice twist and a solid ending.

The Bad: Cliches abound, making it fairly predictable. It doesn't help that it's essentially a mish-mash of at least a dozen other horror movies, The Exorcist and The Grudge, most recognizably. Also, the closer we get to the end, the more silliness it indulges in. Finally, it's got a pretty good cast, but forgets to use them relegating players like Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino and Idris Elba to parts not necessarily requiring great talent.

The Ugly: I spent too much time amazed how much our star, Odette Yustman, resembles Megan Fox.

Recommendation: If you're into horror flicks, this isn't a bad choice. It's not great, but not terrible, either. In fact, it's pretty much average in every way. Sadly, even that is better than most movies in the genre. If you're not into horror movies, skip it.

The Opposite View: David Stratton, The Australian

What the Internet Says: 4.5/10 on imdb.com (1/27/10), 12% on rottentomatoes.com, 30/100 on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 5.5/10