Unfinished Business

It was a slow weekend movie-wise so I figured I could spend today with some follow-up comments on things I've already reviewed.

In my review of the movie Hereafter, I said that I believed Matt Damon's character, psychic medium George Lonegan, was legitimately speaking to the dead. After a second viewing a few weeks back, I no longer believe that. I think he believes that he is and is truly tortured by his "ability" but seeing him again made me conclude that his supposed gift is a combination of incredible intuition, empathy and a very manageable condition caused by brain damage he received as a boy. You can tell this is true because he conducts his readings the same way that quack psychics do and knows his guesses are correct by picking up on very subtle clues given to him by his clients. This fits right in with the story since Hereafter isn't about the dead anyway but rather it's about the living and the way they deal with it. I'm sure you're all thrilled to read this since Hereafter was seen by pretty much no one so let's move on to something that's being seen by everyone. Well, more than the people that saw Hereafter anyway.

We're now three episodes into The Walking Dead and I can reasonably declare that this is the best show currently on television. I can't believe a story set in a supernatural world is ultimately driven by its human characters. The way in which the characters are unfolding reminds me of when Lost first started up. The people are more complex than they appear to be when you first see them. Even the abusive racist causes you to feel pity for him and his plight. It's a shame that the season is only six episodes long but, then again, Lost basically had six hours worth of compelling content every season that had to be stretched out to 20 hours so maybe this is a good thing. Have I mentioned movies about genetically engineered monsters? No? Well, as long as we're on the subject...

When I reviewed Splice, I couldn't bring myself to reveal the stupidest thing in the movie because it was part of the ending. Well, I've decided not to worry about this anymore and tell you how Splice was perfectly constructed to make me think I was as annoyed and pissed off as I could possibly only to bring me to a new level of annoyed and pissed off in the very next scene. If you ever intend to see Splice and don't want to know how it ends, read no further. Still here? Great.

Adrien Brody's character, Clive, decides that Dren, the human/animal hybrid he and his partner/lover Elsa (Sarah Polley) created, is irresistible and has sex with her. Elsa walks in on them because they're doing it in the middle of a damn barn and Clive discovers how difficult it is to justify to your girlfriend the fact that you were fucking something that's part scorpion. They decide the time has come to put Dren down but this turns out to be something of a chore because she A) flies away and B) turns male. No, what you just read was not a misprint. SHE TURNS MALE! I want to point out that I knew this was going to happen because a female slug they'd created earlier in the movie had turned male so maybe they should have figured it would happen to Dren but these characters are the stupidest people to ever earn the title "genius" so no, they didn't. Anyway, Dren's "Must destroy mankind" programming finally kicked in and he/she/whatever goes on a killing spree. Finally, he pins Elsa down and uses his brand new penis to rape her. While he's doing that, Clive bangs him in the head with a shovel but Dren uses his scorpion tail to sting Clive and they die together. Later, you see Elsa is now pregnant with Dren's child and she's going to have the baby for the purposes of science because, and I cannot stress this enough, she's fucking stupid. And THAT is the stupidest thing these people do.