My Review: The Three Musketeers

I went to see this movie on a whim. I have never read the book or have seen any other film adaptations of the story, and I never watched the trailer, so I had no idea what this movie was about. I just saw that it had a really cool cast, and I had to go downtown to go to Target anyway, so I decided to see a movie as well. I actually ended up liking it. I thought that it was a really fun movie that is good for people of all ages. There were a few kids in the movie theater and they all seemed to be having a good time. I have no idea if this movie is a faithful adaptation of the book or just an interpretation, but the story is about a young man named D'Artagnan who wants to become a musketeer, so he travels to Paris where he meets three men who were once the great Three Musketeers who fought for France. Athos (played by Matthew Macfadyen, who has the greatest speaking voice...) is now a drunk, Aramis works for the city giving out citations, and Porthos has a sugar mama to pay for his fancy clothes. D'Artagnan ends up joining up with the three of them to get back the queen's necklace after it has been stolen by Athos's old flame Milady, who along with the Cardinal, plans to start a war by making the king think that the queen is having an affair with Orlando Bloom. There is a lot more to the story, but that is it in a nutshell. Like I said before, I love the cast for this movie. I love that Orlando Bloom is playing a bad guy, and this movie also features actors I really like including Christoph Waltz, Juno Temple, and Mads Mikkelsen. I don't know what it is about Mads Mikkelsen, but for some reason I find him incredibly sexy. I swear if you ever see a smile from him in a movie that is bigger than his little smirk, the earth would implode. He is always super serious! I thought that Milla Jovovich looked stunning in all of her costumes, and I don't know the actor was who played the king, but I thought he did a great job in that role. They king is kind of a rediculous character, but it adds great comic effect to the film. This movie definitely wasn't perfect, but I liked it enough to go see a sequel. From that ending, it appears that another movie is going to be made...My rating: 7/10

Horror-A-Day: Day Twenty Two

I loved this movie! I didn't expect it to be nearly as good as Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, but it really was! It has some pretty terrible acting, but it makes up for that with a good story and some GREAT gore effects. It is about scientists who are trying to find a cure for the zombie problem. They are doing so at a military base, so they have to deal with these asshole army guys. I love the whole Frankenstein-esque aspect to the story. The head scientist (who they appropriately call Dr. Frankenstein) is learning that zombies can be taught things, with his main subject being a zombie called Bub. Bub reminded me a lot of Frankenstein's monster, and the scenes where the doctor is teaching him things reminds me a lot of the scene from Bride of Frankenstein with the creature and the blind hermit. The doctor even has the zombie saying a few words in this movie! This movie also has some great gore! There are quite a few scenes of people getting torn apart by zombies. I also love all of the parts where you see the zombies after they have been operated on. Like the severed head that can still movie its mouth, or the zombie that has no head, and is just a body with a brain. Love it! I also love the different zombies you see when the huge crowd gets into the military base. You see a clown zombie, a bride zombie, and a ballerina zombie. Awesome!

Spotlight On: Brad Dourif

Brad Dourif is a great character actor who has appeared in several awesome films, including many horror films. He has had a wide variety of interesting roles, including films where he does great voice over work. Here are some of my favorites of his roles.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Dourif received an Oscar nomination for his first films role as Billy Bibbit. Dourif is fantastic in this movie as a stuttering mental patient who is driven to suicide by the evil Nurse Rachet. I love him in the scene where she finds him with that woman and she threatens to tell his mother. You can watch it HERE

Child's Play/ Child's Play 2/Child's Play 3/ Bride of Chucky/ Seed of Chucky

Here Dourif plays Charles Lee Ray, a serial killer who uses voodoo to put his soul in the body of a Good Guy doll.  He then goes on a crime spree as the killer doll Chucky! I love his voice for Chucky, he has the best evil laugh!





Trauma

In Dario Argento's Trauma, Dourif plays a former doctor who was driven a little crazy after making a mistake while delivering a baby.



Urban Legend
He just makes a little cameo and this movie, but it is, in my opinion, the most memorable scene in the entire movie. Love it!



The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers/ The Return of the King

In the last two Lord of the Rings movies, Dourif plays Grima Wormtongue. He is a creepy dude who works for Saruman and worked as an advisor to the king of Rohan, while also manipulating him. He also has a bit of a think for the lovely Eowyn.


Deadwood

My dad loves this show, so he has the entire series on DVD. I was bored one day and decided to watch it, and I got a pleasant surprise when I saw Brad Dourif as Doc Cochran. Along with Al Swearingen, he became one of my favorite characters from the show.



Halloween

While Rob Zombie's Halloween isn't perfect, he did makes some great casting choices. First being Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Loomis, and second being Brad Dourif as Sheriff Brackett.



Upcoming: According to his IMDb page, he has a whole buttload of movies coming out, but the one that I am most interested in seeing is this movie called Gingerclown where he is credited as Worm Creature. WTF?

Horror-A-Day: Day Twenty One/ My Review: Paranormal Activity 3

I thought for sure that this movie was going to end in the big house fire that Katie talked about in the first film! That was a pretty big plot point in that movie. She talked about how her house burned down when she was a kid and she lost everything, I thought that since this was a prequel to that, that it would get incorporated into this film. But...I was wrong. Anyways, this movie is about Katie and her younger sister Kristi when they were kids. Kristi has this imaginary friend named Toby. As soon as an imaginary friend was mentioned, I knew that it was going to be the demon. I'm sure that everyone figured that out right away. Anyways, this movie had its freaky moments. The first thing that made me jump was when their mom popped out of the closet wearing the mask. That startled me a bit... I thought that they camera on top of the fan was pretty cool. The panning motion is really effective in horror movies. When it pans and we see someone under a sheet in the livingroom, and then it pans to the babysitter in the kitchen, and then it pans to see noone in the livingroom, and then pans back to see the person under the sheet standing behind the babysitter. I thought that that was really cool. A better example would be in the movie The Orphanage when the main woman is playing the knock on the wall game. That is my favorite scene in that movie. Anyways, back to this movie. So, there are three cameras set up in the house, one in the mom's room, one in the girls' room, and one in the kitchen that pans to also see the living room. Nothing ever really happens in the mom's room, so all of the action is in the kitchen and the girls' room, since Toby lives in this little room that they have in their bedroom. So, all this crazy stuff happens, including a game of Bloody Mary that ends in Katie and her mom's boyfriend's friend getting freaked out. I was kind of disappointed that they didn't use the Bloody Mary game from the movie trailer. WTF!?! Anyways, so the mom doesn't believe any of it until she goes in the kitchen and all of the tables and chairs fall from the ceiling. Then, they go to the girls' grandma's house, and that is where even more crazy stuff happens. I was really disappointed in this ending. I was starting to think that this movie was actually pretty interesting, and then they had to ruin it with a shitty ending. So...the grandma is a witch? A witch that controls this demon named Toby? For starters, what kind of name is Toby for a demon? Secondly, why the hell did they have to bring witches into it? Third, why was Katie suddenly a demon at the end? She was a demon for like two seconds and then changed back. Fourth, how do the girls not remember any of this? I would certainly remember if a goddamn ghost/demon/whatever suddenly picked me up by my hair! This was a movie that had the potential to be good, but was ruined by a dumb ending. My rating 6/10

Horror-A-Day: Day Twenty

So far it seemed like I watched the good Argento movies last year, and the shitty ones this year. Now I have finally watched one that I kind of liked. It is about a young girl played by Jennifer Connelly (in her first starring role) who has the ability to telepathically communicate with insects. This comes in handy when other girls near her boarding school, including her roommate, get murdered. She works with this bug scientist to try to find their bodies using a certain type of fly. This movie got off to a good start and kind of dragged for a while in the middle, but the ending was nuts! It turns out that the killer is this deformed little boy named Patua! The part where he was going after Jennifer while she was in the boat was freaking me out! Patua is freaky looking!

American Horror Story Episode 3: Murder House

Okay, so one of my questions from last week was answered. This week we learned the relationship between Constance and the maid. In 1983, Constance shot Moira in the eye after finding her husband trying to rape her. So, that is the reason why she has a bad eye. Later in the episode, we also see her grave so the maid is really a ghost. Something that I found really interesting is that the detective saw her as young too. So do all men see her that way? In episode 2 I don't think that Tate saw her as young, but I could be wrong. You barely saw Tate in this episode. You only saw him twice. Once when Violet was smoking and then you saw a glimpse of him when Constance was looking in the window. I swear the two of them have some sort of connection. I'm thinking that he is her son. She did mention that although she had several children with downs syndrome, that she did have one "perfect" baby. I'm kind of thinking that it is Tate.
So anyways, instead of answering all of my questions, this episode left me with more. We got an appearance by another ghost. She is the ghost of the woman who first lived in that house. We see a huge wound on the back of her head, so I'm assuming that she was murdered by her crazy husband. Also, we get another appearance by Kate Mara, who plays the girl that the husband had an affair with. We learn that she didn't get the abortion and that she wants to tell Vivien that she is pregnant. Well, Larry the burn victim takes care of that problem because he KILLS HER!!! I couldn't believe it! He comes out of nowhere and hits her over the head with a shovel!!! Here is my face when that happened...

So, Larry buries her and that is how they find Moira's grave. Crazy crazy episode! I can not wait until next week! Here is what I'm hoping for next week: more scenes of Tate and Violet, an explanation for the leather-wearing guy from episode 1, an explanation of the relationship between Tate and Constance, a confirmation of whether or not all men see Moira as young, and a giant rock to fall on the husband's head (not killing him, but hurting him!), an explanation about the ghost from the 20s (or was it 30s?), and also I think that it would be cool to have Kate Mara's character come back as a ghost (hey, it worked for Moira...)

Horror-A-Day: Day Nineteen

I actually found this movie pretty interesting. It is about a man named Jamie (played by Jim Sturgess) who is depressed and really self conscious about his face. This is because he has a large heart shaped birthmark that covers a good portion of his face as well as his arm. He starts to notice this gang of people with demon faces (although they look more like lizards to me). After they kill his mom, he meets a man called Papa B, who I am assuming is supposed to be the devil. Papa B says that he will get rid of his birthmark in exchange for him spreading a little chaos. Jamie agrees, thinking that he will only have to do graffiti. So, Papa B sets Jamie on fire and the next morning he wakes up and peels his burned skin off, revealing a markless face. So, with his new face he finally gets enough confidence to talk to this pretty model/ delivery girl that he had been crushing on. He eventually finds out that it is not graffiti that Papa B wants. Instead, he wants Jamie to cut the heart out of someone and place it on the steps of a church by midnight. It is extremely hard for him, but he does it, and by the next day he seems to get over it just fine. I won't spoil the ending of the movie, but I'll say that I'm kind of iffy about it. I normally HATE this kind of ending because I think that it is taking the easy way out, but for this movie I think that it sort of works.