Ah, summer. A season of overblown budgets and extravagant productions. For movie goers everywhere, this three and a half month stretch is what they have waited for all year. So as always, the prediction for this summer is: Hollywood makes oodles of money. Over these next few months, this column will be examining the phenomena of counter programming and how well it stacks up to the popcorn flick of the week.

This week: Sex and The City vs. The Strangers vs. Stuck

Sex and the City

Well, let’s get Sex and the City out of the way. They screened it the same night as The Strangers and I sure as hell wasn’t driving a 97 mile round trip to see a flick I knew I would find mediocre or flat out hate. I’ve seen, I think, two episodes of the show and was pretty indifferent with it. From what I’ve heard, the film goes from being tolerable in the first hour to a bloated episode for the last hour and a half. Yes, that would put Sex and the City around the two and a half hour mark. For a show that could do anything that it wanted and practically had no restrictions (since it was on HBO), I was told it certainly doesn’t cover any new ground or does anything… cinematic.

---

The Strangers

About two months ago, I finally got a chance to catch Them (Ils), which was definitely one of the best genre films I’ve seen in a while. It gave me that palm-sweating, tension wrought film I’ve been waiting a while for (can’t even remember the last time I could’ve complimented a film as such) while having strong performances and having a great style.

After watching Them, the first thing that popped into my mind was, “Whatever happened to that Strangers flick? That’s a remake of this, right?”

It’s true, these two films are basically the same. I’d be hard pressed to find someone that couldn’t see that, let alone feel that they were both inspired by the same “true story.” And while I do feel Them is a far better film all around, that doesn’t leave The Strangers without its merits.

The film really excels at being a tense exercise in survival horror for the first half. We have the inner turmoil of the two characters on display, having just had a disagreement of sorts, ending with James (Speedman) calling his friend Mike (Glenn Howerton, or as I exclaimed to fellow B-D writer Tex Massacre after the screening was over, freakin’ Dennis from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) for a lift from the family’s vacation home, leaving Kristen (Tyler) there by herself. Then, the outer turmoil comes into play, as the couple’s effort to make up in the best way possible is interrupted by a knock at the door, which shortly thereafter turns into a full-on home invasion.

And I have to give credit where credit is due on the cinematography: Peter Sova really did some great work here. He used foreground and background techniques to really capture the feel of John Carpenter’s Halloween (which you can catch instances of in the trailer). Predominately though, I got a Shield vibe from most of the film and thats definitely not a bad thing. Not quite as gritty but definitely on its way.

And after all of that good will is set up, Bryan Bertino’s script seems to squander it in spades halfway through the flick. We get this scene where the two characters decide to venture to the backyard to find some means of communication with the outside word, which makes sense. Leaving a character behind with no weapons, in a house where a main entrance is busted in, does not make sense. And then, all of a sudden, when the second character ventures out into the backyard there’s a trench. Right smack dab in the middle of the backyard. Where was that five minutes ago? And on top of this whole sequence being very cliche, it also feels very dragged out. I could’ve swore they were out there for about half an hour, when in actuality, it was maybe fifteen minutes.

For a film that’s been sitting on the shelf since last year, it’s not halfway bad. It certainly didn’t deserve that sort of neglect, especially since we’ve already had plenty of horror clunkers comes out already this year. I don’t know if its worth throwing down $9 on the theatre counter for, but its amusing enough and at least worth a rental.

---

Stuck

I am, unashamedly, a Stuart Gordon fan. Re-Animator and From Beyond are both horror staples in my eyes, with Dagon having the potential to be a cult classic of the decade. Even his lesser fare, such as Castle Freak and Dolls, is entertaining, albeit very silly and mindless. Gordon occasionally ventures outside of the genre, to varying results. Not many people are familiar with these films, but if you’re a genre fan, you’ve surely sat through Space Truckers, Edmond and/or Fortress. None of them redefined my childhood like his script for Honey, I Shrunk The Kids did but they all certainly have their charms about them.

Stuck, which premiered at TIFF last year, was a film that I had heard a lot of good word-of-mouth about. I was told if I went in expecting a dark thriller rather than a gory horror romp like Gordon’s more prominent films, I’d enjoy myself. When it was announced that the film would be part of the Florida Film Festival this year, I jumped at the chance to watch it on the big screen because up until this point, I hadn’t seen a Gordon film on its theatrical run. And as much as I wanted Stuck to be a brilliant and engaging film, it was, for lack of a better phrase, extremely stupid.

Based on a true story (which you can read about here), Stuck tells the story of two people’s fates who become stuck together. Mena Suvari stars as Brandi, a nurse at a retirement home. After being told that a promotion could be coming her way soon, she goes out and celebrates with her boyfriend, her co-worker and a whole lot of X. While driving home, she hits Tom (Stephen Rea), down-on-his-luck middle aged man who has just become homeless recently. Frightened and frantic, she drives home with him stuck in the windshield and leaves him there to die overnight. A rational person would have brought him to a hospital but she’s up for a promotion and, damn it, nothing is going to stop her.

I usually find myself forgiving a certain level of stupidity on a character’s part in any film, especially it spins off the inciting incident. But, the characters in Stuck were wholly written to do the exact opposite of what a person with a functioning brain would do. I can forgive not bringing Tom to a hospital because, otherwise, we wouldn’t have a film (Then again, when I dislike a film this much, I’d rather it not have been made in the first place). But Brandi wakes up the next morning and gives off the impression that she actually could drive her car to work. She then continually a) says something completely inappropriate for the scene (which often resulted in unintentional humor) or b) keeps leaving an opportunity for Tom to escape.

Speaking of Tom, his character is, by far, the most unevenly written thing in the whole script. First off, we know nothing about Tom, except that he became homeless recently and is down on his luck. And while I feel movies in this day and age explain too much, Stuck explains too little about Tom and I felt no emotional attachment to him. He become strangely annoying, which is how Brandi thought of him (He was, after all, staying alive so she could not get her promotion). For a character that I was suppose to feel sympathetic for, the film did an awful job of presenting him. This is a man who got told not to honk the horn in the car (though someone could hear him and they could potentially save his life) and then didn’t do it for the rest of the film, despite Brandi not being home for most of the day. It’s almost like he wanted to not be saved.

While Tom lie in the windshield, dying, the oddest thing happened: Tom grew an adamantium skeleton. He, in fact, became Wolverine and began healing himself at a rapid rate. The film is based on true story and I knew that they would take some liberties but Tom’s ability to heal went far beyond my suspension of believe and drove the film into self-parody towards the final act. Tom has one (possibly two) broken legs, his entire body is cut up and bruised and, to top it off, he has a windshield wiper stuck in his stomach. Yet, he pulls the wiper out of his stomach (which would have killed him almost instantly), crawls into the car, makes a splint for his leg and attempts to escape the garage on foot. All in under 24 hours from the time of the accident. Now, I’m no doctor but I would prescribe 100mg of Common Sense for Gordon and writer John Strysik if they think they can pull that over on a intelligent audience. Tom is not John Rambo; he’s a frail homeless man.

If I had to say something positive about Stuck, it would be that it definitely sets up and portrays its social commentary in a very palpable way. The story is essentially about two low-income people who become “stuck” within the system. Brandi’s whole lack of common sense is attributed to the promotion and pay raise dangled in front of her, despite the fact that her own behavior in the situation does surprise her. She is basically holding herself back. Tom, on the other hand, is expendable and shows his low self-esteem in how he lets the bureaucracy involved in job hunting hold him down. He, however, develops a lust for life when he realizes that his own is in the utmost peril.

For all these reasons, Stuck is extremely uneven. I’m still confused as to whether Gordon wanted a really dark comedy or a straight horror film. There’s not enough unintentional humor to really make this campy enough to watch again for all the wrong reasons and its certainly not terrifying or suspenseful enough to make it required genre viewing. As it stands, Stuck is probably my least favorite Gordon film to date. Here’s hoping he gets House of Re-Animator off the ground.

---

Verdict: Sex in the City. No doubt about it. Even if its just a very long episode and doesn’t seem to be getting rave reviews. Women will come out for this like horny men flock to free trials on pay sites. It’s like Star Wars for women (I’m predicting a glow-in-the-dark dildo duel somewhere in there). The competition for May really wasn’t as fierce as predicted, with Speed Racer being the first big flop and Prince Caspian not making the huge numbers The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe did back in 2005. Iron Man is proving to have nice long legs and if Paramount keeps at it, it could potentially be the first flick to join the $300 club this summer. Indiana Jones was the only real counter programming for this weekend (the sad truth is that horror = epic fail during the summer) and while people showed up by the boatload last weekend, they didn’t like it as much as the original three so only time will tell.