Tag Archives: Plex

Black Sheep (2006)

You know how sometimes the plot of a movie goes in so many different directions that you can tell the person (or more likely “people”, and probably in serial rather than parallel) had no idea what they were doing, and just kept throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what would stick, with the result that basically nothing sticks and the movie makes no sense whatsoever?

Apparently, in New Zealand, you can do that and it all weaves back together and every part of it makes sense. …well, okay, no, that is an exaggeration at best. But enough of it comes together and what remains is funny enough that you can ignore the plot holes. Well, also arguably I should not generalize to everything they make, but at least for Black Sheep, it’s all true.

It’s like this: two brothers, unalike dignity, in fair Aotearoa, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where ovine blood makes civil hands unclean[1]. …but I suppose I should say more. See, the grudge between them is over the murder of Henry’s sheep and also, due to the gory shock and unrelated timing of the event, over Henry’s subsequent ovinophobia. Unfortunately, the day fifteen years later that Henry shows up to finally wash his hands of the relationship (and the massive sheep farm that he owns a 50% share of) is the day his brother has set aside to reveal his new breed of sheep upon the world.

This is unfortunate because the disgraced geneticist that has assisted him with a unique (or, depending upon your perspective, distressingly common) form of animal husbandry has also been performing her own experiments in what I choose to believe was a method of keep meat fresh for the longest period possible. If you guessed “zombie sheep that are still alive even after being dressed and hung on meathooks, but also one of the experimental animals escaped and spread the, er, modification to the herds at large”, then, well, I really painted an evocative picture in the first place, and go me! Or you’re an uncommonly good guesser.

The thing is, there’s so much more to it than just that, and most of it chuckleworthy. Also, there are multiple instances of unnecessary to the story rabbit dismemberment. I wonder if it’s lingering resentment over Night of the Lepus? But whatever, the point is, the movie is mostly good, mostly funny, and has more subplots than you can shake a pointed stick at.

[1] There’s no reason for this, and yet here we are.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari

I can say with a high degree of confidence that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the first movie I’ve seen that is over 100 years old. I mean to say “seen for the first time”, but there’s a near certainty that it’s also the first movie I’ve seen of that age, period. So that’s something!

Here’s what I like about it: it’s terribly modern. It opens on two men on a bench. The old man says he was driven from his home by spirits, and the young one responds with, essentially, “You think that’s bad? My fiancee and I (here she walks by in a long white dress? night gown?, in a complete daze, as if to emphasize his sentence) were just subjected to a traveling carnival!” And okay, there’s more to it than that, but the whole story of Caligari and his cabinet (that is, wooden box) and the man inside who has been asleep for 25 years and can now tell the future (barkers Caligari, so you know it must be true)  and the series of murders that follows, it’s all told in this dreamlike atmosphere, and on twisted, confusing, dreamlike sets. Sure, you know Caligari is the bad guy and his pawn? accomplice? Cesare is the murderer, but the plot spins in so many directions that it’s possible to continuously speculate about what will happen next.

In conclusion, I don’t think it’s fair to say that all old movies are as good as or better than new ones. But once a movie is still widely known and available to be seen past its century mark, yeah, there’s no surprise that it’s a good one, and that it’s still just as relatable to a modern audience. Pity I didn’t watch the 4K remaster that I understand exists.

Oh, caveat: the music was mostly a terrible fit for the plot and ongoing events on screen, and that hurts a silent film a lot. Eventually I was able to mostly tune it out, at least.

Hatchet

So there I was, ready to watch the second movie in Joe Bob’s slumber sleepover thingummy that aired a week or so ago, when I find out, oops, it’s Hatchet Four in disguise, and here I am never having watched Hatchets One through Three. And, in maybe the least likely turn of events in streaming history, all of them are available on services I already have!

Well, okay, not quite. The first one was on Plex, which I understood to be a way to stream things you have the data file from your data repository to your screen, but apparently they also have a commercial service with random shows and movies on it as well? Which is weird, but unedited plus commercials is as good as I was going to get.[1]

Hatchet, then, is the story of Victor Crowley, a deformed backwoods mutant with a tragic past who is now maybe a ghost or maybe just still alive, but either way, he doesn’t like it when you go to his part of the swamps outside New Orleans. Which is exactly what an old touristy Midwestern couple, a Girls Gone Wild knockoff producer and his marks, a couple of guys in town for Mardi Gras, a sullen girl with her own agenda, and their spooky nighttime ghost tour guide do. So, y’know, big mistake.

Consequences include body parts flying everywhere, multiple alligator attacks, enough breasts to believe this could have been made in the ’80s, blood sprays upwards of 20 yards, and laughs every couple of minutes. I know I was just complaining about what makes a horror movie also a comedy (and more to the point what doesn’t), but this is just one step shy of being a snarky self-aware post-Scream horror movie, except that nobody winks at the camera even once. There are trope jokes everywhere, there’s just not anybody using the script to say see, look at this trope! I have three sequels to get through over the next not very many days, and I really hope this trendline continues.

[1] Unless I had remembered earlier than two thirds of the way through the movie that I’m pretty sure I have this one on DVD (or maybe Blu-ray, who knows?). I miss when there was a wall of movies I could look at before making mistakes like this.