Angel - Season 5
8.0
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TV Season
Having been handed the reins to the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart at the climax of season...
Ace On The House
Podcast
Before becoming a comedian, Adam Carolla was a hammer-swinging, ditch-digging carpenter. Now, Adam's...
Gente de bien (2014)
2.0
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Movie
Gente de bien (English: "Decent people") is a 2014 French-Colombian drama film written and directed...
carpenter latin america social realism working class employer employee relationship
Angel - Season 3
7.9
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TV Season
After Angel spends time at a monastery in Sri Lanka mourning Buffy's death, he returns to Los...
JT (287 KP) rated The Ward (2010) in Movies
Mar 16, 2020
I’m a big fan of his work, but that is his early work with the likes of Halloween and The Thing as my personal favourites, but here Carpenter’s trademark suspense is all but lost in a story that is as predictable as it is stupid.
After setting fire to a barn Kristen (Amber Heard) is sent to a mental hospital, where she is terrorised by a ghost, a hidden past his reflected upon but never fully delved into. There is of course more to it than that, and Heard spends a vast majority of the time either locked in her room or trying to escape while at the same time piecing the puzzle together with the help of some of her fellow inmates.
Carpenter’s use of the wide camera angle is effective in places, and the long cold corridors of the ward are enough to give anyone the chills. However, it is not built on in any way and all the suspense is somewhat lost by the poor acting and monotonous build-up to the next potential terrifying scene. When the ghost is revealed it is, to be honest laughable and not in the least bit frightening which is probably one of the main downfalls of the film.
The twist ending is anything but predictable and you could have spotted it a mile off, it’s a poor effort this perhaps not helped in the writing department, but Carpenter is one of the masters of horror but here he hasn’t even bothered to turn up.
Sarah (7798 KP) rated The Ward (2010) in Movies
Nov 9, 2019
This film might have been made in 2010, but it looks a lot more like it was filmed when the film is actually set in the 60s. And I don't mean from a realism point of view either. It looks and feels that bad, the effects are awful - admittedly this is kind of explained during the ending but for me it was still no excuse for shoddy physical effects. Amber Heard is actually okay in this but sadly the rest of the cast are rather unremarkable. The wonderful Jared Harris is definitely underused. The whole film relies on poor effects and predictable and rather pathetic jump scares that aren't even scary. The horror aspect of this film is sadly lacking.
I didn't see the ending coming, but even when it did this sort of storyline has been done in much bigger and better films. And the final scene was rather pathetic and obvious.
Overall a very poor return for John Carpenter.
Awix (3310 KP) rated Village of the Damned (1995) in Movies
Nov 16, 2019
Released in 1995, this is very much The Midwich Cuckoos for the X Files generation, but ends up just another signpost marking the decline of John Carpenter as a film-maker worth paying attention to. The sad thing is that he really does seem familiar with both the original British film and the source novel (elements of the book missing from the 1960 film reappear here) and is obviously trying to do his best to honour them, but where John Wyndham is chillingly subtle and understated, John Carpenter is just walloping the audience with a succession of predictable set-piece 'shocks'. Reasonable CGI but overall it looks cheap and unconvincing; some reasonable performances from an interesting cast, but there's a limit to what they can do with such a duff script.
Christine (1983)
7.2
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Movie Watch
Unpopular nerd Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon) buys a 1958 Plymouth Fury, which he names Christine....
Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense: Collected Poems
Book
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...' wrote Lewis Carroll,...