Movie Night With Agent York (#1/15)
Welcome to the first of a fifteen part series where I briefly rate Mr. Francis York Morgan's favorite movies as laid out in his monologues (dialogues?) as told in Deadly Premonition culminating long-awaited, never expected sequel due July 10th.
Now Playing: Arachnophobia (1990)
Expectations: Oh boy. None, really. Frank Marshall sucks a whole hell of a lot and doesn't usually direct movies. Then again neither did his wife, Kathleen Kennedy, but that hasn't stopped either of them from reaching peak Hollywood clout. The only movie of his I'd seen before was Congo and I still don't forgive Aaron for picking it. Congo somehow managed to make an ape laser fight on a river of lava boring and really, don't that tell all?
Reality: Goddamnit York. We're not off to a great start. Halfway through the movie I was begging for the human characters to jump into a spider's mouth. Jeff Daniels plays an asshole new-in-town doctor from San Francisco who bitches about an elderly doctor not giving up his spot despite his very understandable stated reason for not retiring: all his friends are dead and he has nothing else in life. You know those movies where the dad is too much of a wage slave and he ends up showing his family how much he cares at the end by throwing his yuppie cell phone out the window? Yeah, he doesn't do that. He just moves back to San Francisco and drinks expensive wine.
Slowly... much too slowly, I realized that the spiders are never going to be larger than tarantula sized. Which is a bit sad as a tarantula owner because knowing how much energy most tarantulas actually have to spend in a day is quite comforting. Anyways, apparently they spent the money instead on importing and training ACTUAL DAMN SPIDERS from New Zealand whilst taking the utmost care to keep them happy despite not actually being able to ship them back afterwards. Supposedly the spiders were subjected to a rigorous slew of tests for general aptitude, leg count, physical agility, speed, endurance, strength, and finally a swimsuit/talent competition. I only told one lie in that sentence.
The movie's fine, I guess. It really does imply there will at least be a giant spider but there's not. Actually, they get smaller as the movie progresses. A bigger sin is misusing John Goodman as just some guy who shows up for a collective 15 minutes or so. At some point I was beginning to hope John Goodman would be the big bad spider at the end but oh well, perish the thought. Ultimately, it also utterly fails the horror movie test of "If I take away the scary is there still an interesting story going on?"
Aight, I'm done with Frank Marshall and his peanut gallery crew. See you tomorrow where I review my life choices. Also Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!! (1978) Isn't that right, Zach?
Welcome to the first of a fifteen part series where I briefly rate Mr. Francis York Morgan's favorite movies as laid out in his monologues (dialogues?) as told in Deadly Premonition culminating long-awaited, never expected sequel due July 10th.
Now Playing: Arachnophobia (1990)
Expectations: Oh boy. None, really. Frank Marshall sucks a whole hell of a lot and doesn't usually direct movies. Then again neither did his wife, Kathleen Kennedy, but that hasn't stopped either of them from reaching peak Hollywood clout. The only movie of his I'd seen before was Congo and I still don't forgive Aaron for picking it. Congo somehow managed to make an ape laser fight on a river of lava boring and really, don't that tell all?
Reality: Goddamnit York. We're not off to a great start. Halfway through the movie I was begging for the human characters to jump into a spider's mouth. Jeff Daniels plays an asshole new-in-town doctor from San Francisco who bitches about an elderly doctor not giving up his spot despite his very understandable stated reason for not retiring: all his friends are dead and he has nothing else in life. You know those movies where the dad is too much of a wage slave and he ends up showing his family how much he cares at the end by throwing his yuppie cell phone out the window? Yeah, he doesn't do that. He just moves back to San Francisco and drinks expensive wine.
Slowly... much too slowly, I realized that the spiders are never going to be larger than tarantula sized. Which is a bit sad as a tarantula owner because knowing how much energy most tarantulas actually have to spend in a day is quite comforting. Anyways, apparently they spent the money instead on importing and training ACTUAL DAMN SPIDERS from New Zealand whilst taking the utmost care to keep them happy despite not actually being able to ship them back afterwards. Supposedly the spiders were subjected to a rigorous slew of tests for general aptitude, leg count, physical agility, speed, endurance, strength, and finally a swimsuit/talent competition. I only told one lie in that sentence.
The movie's fine, I guess. It really does imply there will at least be a giant spider but there's not. Actually, they get smaller as the movie progresses. A bigger sin is misusing John Goodman as just some guy who shows up for a collective 15 minutes or so. At some point I was beginning to hope John Goodman would be the big bad spider at the end but oh well, perish the thought. Ultimately, it also utterly fails the horror movie test of "If I take away the scary is there still an interesting story going on?"
Aight, I'm done with Frank Marshall and his peanut gallery crew. See you tomorrow where I review my life choices. Also Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!! (1978) Isn't that right, Zach?
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