THE THING (1982)

A lone commercial towing spaceship carrying twenty million tons of mineral ore travels through the vast openness of space.  What?  Oh, sorry, wrong movie.  A lone Alaskan Malamute runs across the vast openness of Antarctica.  Right behind him is a Norwegian helicopter with a guy hanging out the side shooting at him.  The dog manages to make it to an American research station.  As the Americans run out to see what all the ruckus is the helicopter lands and one of the Norwegians drops a grenade that kills him and blows up the helicopter.  Unfazed, the other Norwegian starts shooting at the dog.  Hitting an American instead.  The Americans return fire killing the Norwegian.

Understandably, the Americans are freaked out by all of this.  They can't raise anybody on the radio, so they send a few guys over to the Norwegian base to get some answers, but they only find more questions when they discover that the base has recently burned to the ground and the bodies all show signs of physical trauma.  Even more bad news comes in the form of a freaky humanoid corpse with two faces!

So begins what is quite possibly John Carpenter's greatest film.  And that's saying something from the guy who directed HALLOWEEN, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and PRINCE OF DARKNESS.  Over the years I've seen THE THING many, many times and it never fails to grab me.  There's just something about the idea of 1) being in a dangerous situation in a completely secluded place like Antarctica 2) literally having no idea who to trust 3) knowing that the fate of the entire human species rests in the hands of you completely killing this Thing from another world and 4) there's almost a 100% chance that you're going to die.  It's horrifying...to think about how to express all of that on the screen, but somehow Carpenter does just that.  Right from the opening scene, THE THING grabs your attention and it never lets go.  Sometimes I like put myself in the place of a character in a movie and when I think about that heart defibrillator scene...holy fook!  The sudden realization that you're way in over you're head and there is something from another planet trying to kill you!  That scene ranks right up there with the chestburster scene in ALIEN.

I cannot say enough good things about THE THING.  Excellent ensemble acting, creepy atmosphere, quick pace, massively influential special effects that are still to this day jaw-dropping and some of the best lighting I've ever seen.  Honestly, THE THING should have received a number of Oscar nominations and not just for the visual stuff.  The editing on this film is brilliant.  There's literally no wasted time.

If you're a horror fan, then it is required viewing.  While watching it again for this review I couldn't help but think how interesting it would be if somebody was to make a prequel telling the exciting story of the alien takeover of the Norwegian base...oh wait.  A good prequel telling the exciting story of the alien takeover of the Norwegian base.  While they're at it, somebody should make a prequel to ALIENS showing the colonists on LV-426 fighting the aliens.

Original - The Thing From Another World (1951)
Prequel to the remake - The Thing (2011)

CHILDREN OF MEN (2006)

In the year 2027, the world has been stricken with two horrible afflictions.  In the first, all women have become infertile.  Without a baby being born in 18 years humans have lost all hope and everything has turned into chaos.  The second even more disastrous problem is cameras can no longer stand still.  They have to move all the time.  Even when it's not an action shot and it's just two people standing still talking about something serious, the camera is compelled to jiggle around all over the joint.  It's distracting, heartbreaking and sad, sad, sad.

For some reason the people in this movie don't even seem concerned about the punch drunk cameras.  Instead they selfishly spend all of their time trying to get a recently discovered pregnant woman to safety.  That's a lot harder than it sounds because Britain (where the film is located) is now the only functioning government left in the world, but just barely.  For the most part the entire country has turned into a George Orwell police state nightmare.  Former activist Clive Owen is recruited against his will by his ex-wife (Julianne Moore) into helping a young girl get to the "Human Project", another activist group that is rumored to have scientists specializing in infertility.  Stuff happens and next thing Owen knows he's in the thick of it with people from all sides trying to kill him.

I enjoyed CHILDREN OF MEN.  The story is interesting, the pace is good and some of the action sequences were impressively filmed.  But that goddamn camera was too much for me.  Purposely raw documentary style camerawork is okay for short periods of time.  When Takashi Miike used it briefly in 2003's YAKUZA DEMON with the rain splattering on the camera lens is was awesome (also his budget was probably 1/60th of what they used here), but in CHILDREN OF MEN the entire movie is filmed that way and it gets old quick.  I'm sure some people enjoy it and praise how it transports the viewer into the disorder of the the film, but to me it was just distracting.   After awhile I found myself paying more attention to the corners of the screen than the action on the screen.

Worth a watch, but I wish the story had been introduced a little better at the beginning, the overall story darker and the camerawork steadier.  Seeing Michael Caine playing air guitar to a bastardized version of Aphex Twin's "Omgyjya Switch 7" was pretty funny though.