Pre-Emptive Critics: A sampling

 The Rite

  In 2005, I saw “The Haunting of Emily Rose” with some friends and secretly rejoiced that it was too ridiculous to be unnerving. On another occasion, perhaps a year later, I was at a sleepover with the same friends where a few people settled on watching “The Exorcist.” I decided I’d just sleep. Fat chance. I proceeded to wake up every 15 minutes to piercing, demonic shrieks and possessed children whipping their hair (and entire torsos) back and forth.

     Perhaps this is the reason I hold no desire to see “The Rite,” starring academy award-winner Anthony Hopkins and a fairly attractive Colin O’Donoghue. This exorcism movie claims to be inspired by true events and the research of exorcisms in the Vatican by journalist Matt Baglio.

    The trailer begins with the words:

    “In 2007, the Vatican’s chief exorcist revealed an initiative to install an exorcist in every diocese worldwide. Three days later, the Vatican denied the story.”

    Let’s break this down. I did not realize that “chief exorcist” was an official title in the Vatican, nor that every diocese was in need of one, but sure. And whether or not all of this is based on a true story, I’d be quite interested to hear what the Catholic church has to say about exorcist films.

    The tag-line for the movie is: “you can only defeat it when you believe.” Okay. What? Why would you need to defeat something you did not believe in?

    An exorcism can only be revamped so many times. I am pre-emptively annoyed with this film.

– noelle.johansen@aggiemail.usu.edu

IpMan 2

    What do you get when you combine poorly choreographed karate, speedy punching and knife fights that curiously never include bloodshed? “Ip Man 2.”

    The trailer to this action film did not entice me to watch the movie. It certainly left me curious about why this sequel exists. That “2” at the end of the title means someone thought the first flick was good enough to need a follow up.

    Though I was viewing the clip on a 3-by-5 inch portion of my computer screen, I am quite confident I saw several “punches” that stopped about two inches from the victim’s actual face.

    If I were to guess the plot of the movie, I cannot get much further than that there is a group of guys who really like to quickly slap and punch each other. They like it so much that they find about four or five different settings to do basically the same fight. One scene included a floating object that most closely resembled a shipping carton. Another fight got pretty serious with some rectangular knifes. But there was no visible blood after any knife-to-skin contact.

    In the big finale, they appear to take all their fighting practice into a wrestling ring. Usually such a setting would involve a one-on-one fight. But hey, this is “Ip Man 2,” they follow their own rules. About 20 men start martial art-dancing at each other in an angry fashion. I am not sure who won the battle, but I will probably never spend two hours of my life finding out.

– natashabodily@gmail.com

The Mechanist

   For those of you who revel in James Bond movies, “Mission Impossible” or even the almost-good “Predators”, be prepared for disappointment. The life of a hitman takes an interesting turn as he goes from being the hunter to the hunted in a movie that has no plotline, no character development and apparently, no need for actors who know the definition of acting.

    This movie appears to be another excuse for two scruffy men to run around in dirty clothes, shooting impressive weaponry and mass-explosion devices. If you took a few cavemen, put them in spandex, handed them guns and told them to hunt each other, you’d have the plot of this movie.

    Every shot of the trailer is of two men running around exploding things, scaling walls and grunting in deep voices with complete lack of expression. What happened to the classy men, doing their work with style? The clean-cut tuxedos have been replaced with the idea that Good and Evil can’t seem to take time to do a quick shave in the morning.

    Watching this trailer made me question the future of our society. However, the logic seems to stick. If pop culture demands colorless characters with no personality and no emotion just like the popular “Twilight” saga, why not in your every day action-packed thriller? The only problem is the “thrill” seems to have been taken out, leaving the audience only with the action.

    It’s sure to be a heart-jerker full of tissue wads and blood splatters. I pre-emptively hate this movie.

– jessica.black@aggiemail.usu.edu