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OK, ladies and gents, here is the first split rating.  It’s probably a “4″ cinematically, and a “7″ in-genre.  It also deserves more than a moviemath rundown.

First off, I’m taking the “based on a true story” bit off the table.  Completely.  Short of the disgusting marketing of actual video of a killing spree as “horror”, and (on the other extreme) Blair Witch doing a meta-media-take on the documentary business, it just gets shuffled off.  I ignored it for Wolf Creek.  I credit it in The Wicker Man (the original, damn it) for being an innovative lie, but that’s the exception.  If I had to weigh it, “Based on true events” it would probably count against the movie.  But I’ll ignore it.

I haven’t seen Hostel.  By choice.  I don’t go for torture-porn.  Wolf Creek is about as close as I’ve gotten, and that was because I was going in blind and deaf.    This film might, in torture, be closer to Hostel.  I don’t know.  So I’d have to sum this up as Wolf Creek meets The Wicker Man.

OK, I invoked The Wicker Man.  That’s like invoking Citizen Kane or the Beatles.  But it’s not an empty comparison, and Borderland effectively ups the ante from its inspiration: it shows a four-way intersection of Catholic, Southern Baptist, and Santeria faiths, with extreme pathos due to all the practitioners being equally benighted, with a liberal atheist whose character arc is the most compelling to me.  I seriously related with Ed.  The movie shows what I’m willing to confess, that the most liberal among us is hours away from taking up arms against a sea of tyranny.

What’s good?  That depends.  Cinematically,

0 stars as a presumptive exploitation base, with
+1 star for effective use of over-exposure, 16 mm (?) filmstock, and Avid skipframing as poor man’s horror devices.  It assures me that not a ton of money was wasted on this film.  Then,
+2 stars for quite competent acting, by everyone except Rider Strong, and
+2 stars for Sean fucking Astin going against type, probably to the benefit of his career, and winning the screen, seemingly being the only one in the bunch, including the director, who groks that banal evil is scarier than overplayed horror, with
-1 stars for corny musical stings

OK, that’s cinematically.  In-genre, I’ll forgive half the musical stings bit, which starts us at
4.5 stars, with
+1 stars for the male Americans (again, excepting Rider Strong), the Mexican female lead, and the priest and priestess being scorchingly hot while the thugs were inhumanly ugly, adding on
+1 stars for it not falling into the new cliche of everyone having to die, and
+1 stars for a truly scary window and rooftop scene, with
-.5 stars for the closing panels that show what happened to the characters afterwards.

Emotionally?  Taxing.  Really fucking taxing.  Horror review for me is an academic exercise, and usually I’m immune to the tropes of the genre, but this took its toll.  It has tremendously increased the standards from last year’s festival, where nothing was close to as good.  This is a good movie.  And a sincerely scary movie.  And a rather exploitative movie.  I don’t really like being wound around a director’s finger, but that’s what this movie did to me.  It’s going to steal sleep hours from me, and I don’t forgive that easily.  But it was my fucking choice to go see this nonsense and try to review it, so I really have no one else to blame.

Recommendation: Make up your own mind.  If you’re not disturbed by this movie, what the hell is wrong with you?

2 points for a 2-bit teen remake of Rear Window, with
+1 for David Morse creeping me the hell out, and
+1 for Carrie-Anne Moss playing a normal human being convincingly, and
+1 for dear lord is Sarah Roemer chaud

Recommendation: Steal it

I’ve seen this film at least half a dozen times.

5 point base for good political action thriller, with
+1 for not having to watch Rebecca Pidgeon in the Tia Texada role, and
+3 for Mametese, and
+1 for rewatchability, and a big
+1 for seeing Ed O’Neill hold his own against Bill Macy and Val Kilmer, but with
-4 points for suffering through Mamet directing Mametese dialogue

Recommendation: Buy it

4 stars for being a really good epic, with
+6 stars for special effects, with
-1 for the queen’s monologue, and
-1 for a disturbing rape scene, and
+.5, I guess, for her twisting the rapist’s words while she twists the sword, and
-1 for dead elephants, and
+1 for David Wenham, though
-.5 stars for criminally underutilizing him

Recommendation: Queue it

5 stars for better special effects than I expected, with
-1 stars for acting, and
-1 star for Jessica Alba’s acting, and
-1 star for Jessica Alba’s makeup, and
-1 because it deserves another knock, but with
+2 stars for being a comic book movie appropriate for kids

Recommendation: Ignore it

7 stars for what I guess people mean when they describe this film as having “visual poetry”, if that involves cherry blossoms, waves, and animals made of plants, with
-1 for my not grokking the story grammar, and
-1 for having a tough guy who talks like a wimp, and
-1 for not upsetting the genre enough to have him be a decent human being, and
-1 for the wife character, and
+.5 for the junkyard owner character and
+.5 for how the final suicide was cinematically handled

Recommendation: Ignore it

3 stars as a serviceable PG-13 horror movie, with
+2 stars for John Cusack carrying the whole damn thing, except for
-1 stars in the two places he drops the ball, with
+1 stars for the alternate endings, and
+1 stars because I was in a kind and generous mood

Recommendation: Steal it

God, where to start?  From zero, I guess, where exploitation cinema should always start.

+1 for Tarantino dialogue, and
+2 for Tarantino direction, and
+3 for casting Deluxe-process saturated red as a character who makes a high-impact cameo at the end of Act II, and
+1 for the bookending of “what it means to be a girl now” in contrapoint to “what it means to be a girl when tropes are upended”, with
+1 for Zoë Bell’s acting, and
+2 for her stunts, and
-1 for the telegraphing of the leg-out-the-window bit, with
+1 for Tarantino getting nuances out of Kurt Russell that I didn’t think possible, truncated to
9 stars because I refuse to give 10-star reviews in all but unreasonable circumstances.

Recommendation: Buy it

3 stars for being a ballsy and therefore uncomfortable documentary, with
+1 stars for the brilliant director of Boys Don’t Cry’s commentary (who reminds me so completely of my sister-in-law that it is bizzare), and
+3 stars for the subtle statement that the sedate and appropriate life of the private investigators would unreasonably get an NC-17 from the MPAA, and
-1 stars for John Waters trying to convince viewers that his movies should not receive NC-17 ratings

Recommendation: Queue it

5 stars for being a relevant biopic with
+1 stars for it being a woman, and
+3 stars for it being Cate Blanchett, whom I adore, and
+.5 stars for turning the gender relationships in the genre on their head, with
-2.5 stars for Joel Schumacher trying to be gritty and instead just being an ass.

Recommendation: Queue it

OK, here’s what I think I’ll do about movie reviews.  I’ll inline them in my blog.  I’ll tag them all “moviemath” for reasons that should become readily apparent.  I’ll try to avoid blatant spoilers, and be annoyingly concise, but at the same time try half-assedly to troll for dumb comments by passers-by.  But that’s between you and me, you being the dedicated mcgees.org reader.  The people whom I troll will be the Googlers.  If there’s anything really spoilerish, I’ll put it in the background color, so you’ll have to hit CTRL-A to read it.  That will lower my Google rating, but hey, life’s short, and spoilers suck.  So prepare to be inundated as I go over the films I’ve watched recently, then watch it slow to a trickle as it slows to match my viewing rate.  So, onwards and upwards.