SUPER NERVOUS SUNDAY REVIEWS!

I start my new job tomorrow morning. Normally, this calls for little more than a clean shirt and a shave, but for the first time in about four years I really want to excel at my new position, so I am actually really nervous. To expel this nervous energy, I am now blogging.

MOVIE REVIEWS:

ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)



I rewatched Rosemary's Baby this week for the first time since high school. I wasn't planning to, but the lovely girl who returns my affections had never seen it and so it was rented. My initial viewing was met with a mixed reaction. While obviously a quality production, the film left me cold at the age of 16. At the age of 26, however, I found myself incredibly affected.

Rosemary's Baby is a classic, and you certainly don't need yet another film critic (not that I define myself as such) telling you the same. Critics have a tendency to build certain films up too much. The Exorcist, for example, is a film that a lot of people claim is "the scariest movie ever made." But to modern audiences, "scary" is frequently equated with "gory," or at least "shocking." While the crucifix scene is still pretty fucked up, the actual horror in the film comes from the mundane, particularly the mother's plight of knowing her child is sick, but finding herself incapable of helping her in any tangible way.

Rosemary's Baby, unlike The Exorcist, has no shocking moments of violence for modern audiences to latch on to. At its heart, it's simply the story of a woman who's pregnancy is... wrong. She isn't gaining weight. She's in inexplicable pain. And all the people who should be in her corner - her husband, her doctor - refuse to listen to her. It's like they want her to suffer, and she just can't figure out why. By the time she comes to the conclusion that there is a very real plot against her, she can't get anyone to see her side of the scenario. "But there are plots against people, aren't there?" she asks a disbelieving doctor, to which even his objective mindset has to agree. Yes, there are, but most of us have never actually seen one.

Pregnancy is scary without the threat of cultists. A person's body goes through unusual changes, and every little thing can seem to threaten the health of not just the conscious adult, but an innocent unborn child as well. Seeing Mia Farrow wasting away when she should be at her most vital is painful to watch, but in the best way possible. An adult would have to be completely heartless not to die a little inside with every passing scene. It's emotionally devastating in a way that few horror films even attempt in this day and age, and a must watch if you haven't, or were a little too young to appreciate it the first time out.

NEVER BACK DOWN (2008)



"Who knew?" is the question I asked myself after watching Never Back Down, a blink-and-you-missed-it release from earlier this year. Little more than The Karate Kid with mixed-martial arts as a plot synopsis, the resulting film is a clever take on the familiar American fight genre. New kid in town, has something to prove (mostly to himself), gets his ass handed to him by some jerk dating the girl he likes, takes martial arts classes from a wise master with a troubled past of his own, eventually learns to control his anger and loses his desire for a rematch, but eventually finds himself in the ring against his will. Been there, done that, and too cool to wear the t-shirt, right?

But it's the smaller moments that make Never Back Down worth watching. The screenwriter, Chris Hauty (whose only other IMDb credit is Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco), knows his stuff. His script hits all the familiar beats that resonate on an emotional level, but when he finds one that has become a cliche, he hits it from the side. The moment where the hero forgives the girl who has wronged him because she too has a troubled past? Well, he's smart enough to know that she's using her backstory as an excuse, forcing her to actually earn his trust through her actions. That works. I'm also fond of the final fight, an underground tournament where we know our hero and our villain will duke it out in the final round, only for their names to be called in the first elimination round. It's simple change, but so logical that it borders on profound. The odds would are equally good that in a tournament they'd fight early on. But by the time it registers, they pull a switcheroo. The hero's generic name was actually called as a result of typo, and we're going to have to wait a while longer. Clever. Not ingenious, but clever, and this kind of storytelling keeps the audience on their toes in what should be well-trod territory.

Never Back Down is not the best movie of the year; not by a long shot. But it may turn out to be the most surprising. I popped the DVD in expecting a one-star movie at best, and ejected it having watched a solid and entertaining three-star film instead. Well worth a rental, believe you me.