Sara Watches Stuff

On a superficial, deeply gay level, the reason I watched Byzantium is that Gemma Arterton is out of this world gorgeous and she spends chunk of this movie wearing lingerie and killing people (not necessarily at the same time).  The movie itself is a softer, quieter take on the traditional vampire story. Two vampire sisters tackle the world together, attempting to remain undiscovered. Neil Jordan, who directed it, also adapted Interview with a Vampire and while I haven’t seen that one, I’ve heard they share a lot of the same DNA. It’s beautifully shot, and the balance between period segments and the modern day is nicely done so that it isn’t overwhelmingly a period drama. All that said, there are times when it feels overwhelmingly like something else: a teenage melodrama. It’s definitely not a byproduct of the story’s feminine energy, but rather of how the material is handled - centuries old characters act, at times, like fifteen year olds and their views of romance ar...

October horror madness continues with something from 2013. Ah, 2013. The year I graduated, and the height of the unnecessarily 3D movie. Texas Chainsaw 3D is the epitome of that redundancy - there is literally no reason for this movie to be in 3D. There is some blood that flies and at one point someone throws a chainsaw. That's the quality of 3D movie we were pumping out in 2013. For all its flaws, I love the original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's a great example of the Big Fucked Up Family movie. For some reason, I was under the impression that this Alexandra Daddario led movie was the remake, rather than a direct sequel. If you ignore the fact that none of it makes sense temporally, it's a pretty interesting way of doing the usual "same idea but this time 3D" sequel. Daddario plays Heather, who as a baby was taken from the Sawyer household as the town's citizens set upon them in vengeance for their penchant for murder (Leatherface, most notoriously)...

I feel like I speak a lot about psychological thrillers set at dinner parties. It’s easy to see why they're so popular, and I've written about before - they're an easy and effective set up, with minimal exposition, that throws our characters into a situation together and allows for the weird shit to go down. In  Coherence,  a comet is passing overhead, and weird shit goes down. It’s hard to talk thoroughly about this movie without going into spoiler territory, but I’d say that if you’re a fan of when movies get a little pseudo-science and quasi-cerebral, you'll probably get into Coherence . I'm trying to draw comparisons: the most obvious comparison is to another recent dinner party thriller, The Invitation , which I haven't posted my review for yet. It also very strongly evoked the movie Triangle for me, which you'll probably like if you get into this one or vice versa. It's like a time travel movie for people who don't want to watch a time trave...