After Midnight

Sometimes I really should listen when Netflix is like "You're not gonna like it." But sometimes you gotta throw caution to the wind, bite down on a stick, and watch the movie. Suffice it to say that in After Midnight, no one let it all hang down. Nor did anyone chug-a-lug and shout. Though had any of that occurred, the movie might have turned out better.

After Midnight is an anthology movie, à la Tales From The Crypt (the original one from 1972, so I sound cooler). There's the basic overarching story, Allison's Tale. Within this story, there are three short episodes: The Old Dark House, A Night On The Town, and All Night Messenger. I'm gonna go ahead and spoil the hell out of these stories, because there is no reason for you to waste your time seeing this movie. Trust me, it's not going to ruin anything for you.

The Old Dark House

A couple is out celebrating the husband's birthday. The wife laments that she wants to get her husband something better than the watch she has for him. After a walk, she asks him to take the long way home. Along the way, they pass an old house where it's rumored a bunch of people had their heads chopped off with garden shears (ooh, how scurry!). On cue, the cars driver-side tires blow out. The husband finds tacks in the road, and is convinced by his wife to head to the old house to see if they have a phone. Luckily, as they had driven past, a light in the upstairs room had been on and goes off, so they know somebody's home. When no one answers the door, the wife decides a little breaking and entering is in order, and why not. I mean if some jerk is gonna be home and not answer the door, they deserve to get their shit broken into. She crawls in through a window, but never opens the door for her husband. In a shocking turn of events (by which I mean the husband tries the knob), the front door is found to be unlocked. With the wife nowhere in sight, the husband does what anyone would do: traipses about the house like he owns the damn place, finding a bloody pearl necklace and knocking over a priceless table with several skulls on it covered in bugs. Stumbling towards the front door, a set of sliding doors opens to reveal the menacingly wrinkled killer, complete with garden shears. The doors slide shut, and while the husband is losing his shit out in the foyer, the camera pans around to reveal that the killer is actually a puppet operated by the wife. The whole stunt is part of the husband's birthday surprise. Really, what could go wrong here. If you guessed the husband having a fatal heart attack and ruining his birthday surprise, you'd only be half right. If you guessed everybody jumps out and yells surprise and the husband enjoys his birthday surprise, you're an idiot. Using the sword from the suit of armor in the foyer, he proceeds to chop his wife's head off in an attempt to kill the killer. Happy birthday indeed. So the lesson here is if you're thinking of doing something exciting for your spouse's birthday, try fancy underwear, or a nice dinner, or a massage, or an old fashioned. Avoid scary places and sharp objects. Cuz it's totally hilarious until someone gets stabbed. Especially because it'll probably be you.

A Night On The Town

There's no way to put this nicely: this story was dumb as shit. A quartet of teenage girls heads to the big city for a night of fun. As is typical, the girl least able to pull off being grown up is the one with the car that ruins it for everybody. So they get rejected from the club they're trying to sneak their way into. Then they get lost. Then they stop at a rundown gas station. Then they get accosted by a homeless-looking guy. I guess he can't really be homeless since he seems to live at the gas station with his three dogs: a dangerous looking German Shepherd (cringe), a frightening Doberman (cower), and, quite possibly the worst of the three, a giant fucking Irish Terrier (SHIT YOUR PANTS!). I'll give you a minute while you change into a fresh pair of drawers. So the not-homeless homeless guy tries to attack the girls. They kill him. His dogs take revenge, chasing the girls all over the damn place, until at last the girls blow up a bunch drums filled with flammable liquid conveniently left behind at the old run down mill of some kind....and then that's it. No ghost dogs, no the dogs made it out and are back for more. That's it. Oh, and the annoying girl who got everybody into trouble repeatedly? Yeah, she gets her comeuppance when she darts out of the car and is "eaten" by the dogs. I'm almost glad she did. Stupid twit. Next time she'll be more mature...or not, I guess.

All Night Messenger

In an interesting bit of movie trivia, Marg Helgenberger (of CSI fame) stars in this tale alongside her future ex-husband Alan Rosenberg. According to the Wikiz, they were married in 1989, the year this movie was made, so they were either already married, or would soon be married. How touching. Anyway, back to the exciting stuff....after I tell you about this story. Gotcha! Helgenberger plays an answering service operator with a broken leg (skiing accident) who sits in front of one of those old switch boards with the giant headphone plug holes (perhaps this made more sense back in the late 80's than it does today). Taking over the night shift, she's repeatedly called by a creeper (Rosenberg) who initially leaves a message for a famous actress or model or something who has hired the answering service. Then he ratchets up the creeper vibe by calling back repeatedly. Eventually, it's revealed he's camped out in a phone booth outside the actress's apartment, and he sneaks in and strangles her with the phone cord. Then he sets his sights on Helgenberger. He kills the answering service's owner (also with a phone cord), calls from the lobby of the building where the answering service is, and manages to make her kill the security guard with a broken crutch (yeah, one of those I stabbed you once in a pretty innocuous place but obviously punctured a vital artery/organ because you died in five seconds kills). The last time she answers the phone, the creeper, who apparently is really the Phone Cord Strangler is sitting behind her...apparently there's a random phone right next to the phone switch board. I'm thinking the guy that put this one together really had a phone boner. More than the dude that made Phone Booth. Serious phone boner. Probably creams his pants every time he watches that Saved By The Bell episode where Zack borrows his dad's cell phone. "Oooh, brick phone. Yeah, you take that call. Ye---gggg...I'm spent."

Allison's Tale

This is the story that wraps around the other three. We start off at community college, or some school of that caliber. Allison and her friend Cheryl are headed to their first day of Psych 102, The Psychology of Fear (dun-dun-duhnnununununuh). Allison's got a bad feeling about the class, but goes anyway. In the first lesson, the professor, one googly-eyed Edward Derek, proceeds to explain his plan of involving the class in fear experiments as opposed to just tedious book work. For his first jaunt into Fearland, he busts out a revolver, loads a bullet into it, spins the chamber, and proceeds to put it to the head of the smarmy jock in the front row who is not afraid of anything. So the jock pees his pants (cuz peein' your pants is cool) and runs out of the class vowing revenge. He then proceeds to shoot himself in the head, but it turns out the bullet was a blank, the blood was a squib (a miniature explosive, not a Harry Potter squib) and he's not dead at all. Although he probably will be soon since the wall is now covered in fake blood. The next day, a dejected Derek gives the class a list of books to read, because after threatening to kill a student, he's still gainfully employed but can't teach the class the way he wanted to. I suppose it could have been a complaint from a disgruntled janitor who had to clean the mess up. Ahh, the shit you could get away with in the late 80's. So after relating his regret at this course correction (see what I did there?), he invites the students to his house for extracurricular excursions into Fearland. Later at his house, Allison, Cheryl, and a handful of other students are invited to share scary stories. Derek's tale is The Old Dark House. Another student relates A Night On The Town, which he heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, so it has to be true. Cheryl shares All Night Messenger, which she had been reluctant to share because of how much it scared her to think about it, though she's probably the only one. All the while, strange things keep happening: the power goes out, it gets cold in the house, Derek's googly eyes keep looking like they'd prefer to jump out of his skull and strut about the room. And Allison keeps expressing an unknown fear that Derek seems to know about, encouraging her to "tell her story." As the final tale wraps up, Derek heads down to the basement to check on the furnace, and finds the jock from earlier has broken into his house. The jock strings him up by his feet and threatens to kill Derek with an ax. The jock creates a ring of fire around Derek (Ring Of Fire, After Midnight, somebody's a big fan of classic rock) that he eventually swings free of. Derek then takes the ax and proceeds to kill the jock. Then he catches on fire and keeps hacking away at the jock. Then Cheryl and Allison try to leave, but Cheryl is sucked into the fire. Yep, lifted off her feet and pulled into the blaze for no apparent reason. Allison then begins to run through the house trying to escape, but keeps ending up in the settings for each of the stories, being chased by Derek, who has transformed into an extra from Jason and the Argonauts (skeleton) with an ax. After stumbling through each tale, Allison is cornered by Skele-Derek and just as the ax is about to split her skull in twain, she wakes up from the horrible dream and heads to school. There, she and her friend Cheryl are heading to their first day of Psych 102, The Psychologt of Fear! (Go ahead and read that course title in a scary voice. Whatever your best is, it's probably scarier than this movie).

So there you have it, After Midnight. I'm sure you're frightened out of your mind at this point, so I'll give you a few minutes to collect your thoughts...OK, time's up. So yeah, pretty lackluster film. Not horrible quality for late 80's, but horrible quality for anything resembling a scary movie. I suppose it's possible I'm just far too used to the horror movies of recent years, so I don't scare easily. Perhaps this film was quite scary in 1989 and struck fear in watchers in the same way that Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven struck fear into the hearts of 19th century simpletons. But really, 5 years after Nightmare on Elm Street, you're gonna have to aim a little higher. And how about we take it easy on the "it was all a dream" endings. For serial.

Book em, Pearlo:

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Green Day
	Song:	Longview
	Album:	Dookie

Buried

Holy crap. Normally I'd wait a day or two before I threw out my crappy review of a movie, but this one kind of sticks with you, so I feel like I need to go ahead and get this one out.

The basic premise of this movie, as one Lane Staley so eloquently put it, is about a "man in the box." That man is Paul Conroy, played by Ryan Reynolds. Conroy awakens to find himself trapped in a wooden coffin after a convoy he's a part of is ambushed in Iraq. Having only a lighter, some anxiety pills, and a flask of booze,  he does what any of us would do in that situation: he flips his shit. 

As he's trying to figure out what's going on, a cellphone that has been left in the coffin with him begins to ring.  Because the language on the phone is Arabic, he's at the mercy of the phone and can do nothing more than send and receive calls and videos. As with most movie cellphones, this one is capable of multiple feats that no ordinary cellphone can accomplish: it will ring forever before going to voicemail, but only right before it was about to be answered; instead of the normal battery indicator, it has a magical one where each bar of life blinks several times before winking out; without moving, cell signal can be great for over 10 minutes and then die completely. I was beginning to wonder if maybe he'd been shafted with AT&T's service, but this is Iraq. So chances are it was IT&T.

So Paul begins calling everyone conceivable to try and get himself out of the coffin. He calls 911 in Ohio, who can't do much for him what with being in OHIO; he calls his wife at home, but keeps getting the machine; he calls a random woman who apparently knows his wife, but she gives him shit because he's freaking out on the phone. Eventually, he manages to get hold of the FBI, who begins to interrogate him before the signal dies. His next contact is with the State Department. They put him through to Dan Brenner, a contact in Iraq who specializes in resolving hostage/kidnapping situations, who tells Paul he's going to work to get him out, giving him the name and personal information about someone they helped save earlier to convince Paul that he's more than just some schlub no one cares about saving. 

In the meantime, the people who've kidnapped Paul have contacted him and demanded he use the phone to make a ransom video requesting $5 million. As we all know, and are reminded every single time the bad guy in a movie demands money, the US does not negotiate with terrorists, so he's screwed there. The ransom is eventually dropped down to $1 million, but 1/5th of zero chance in hell, oddly enough, is still zero chance in hell. They threaten a woman who was in the same convoy as Paul, convincing him to make the video. Paul makes the video, passes out for a bit, has a snake crawl up his pants, nearly sets the coffin on fire trying to kill the snake, all only to find out that the money didn't come in time, he's a minor YouTube celebrity, and, in a new video he's sent, the woman is killed. Paul watches the video, vomits, and passes out for a bit. 

Paul wakes up to a call from the Personnel Director at his employer (one of the people he'd called earlier) who empathizes with Paul, and then proceeds to record Paul being retroactively fired for fraternizing with the woman he just watched be killed. Since, as far as the company is concerned, Paul was fired that morning before the "situation" occurred, they are no longer responsible for anything if/when Paul dies. After the area where Paul's coffin is location is bombed in an attempt to kill the insurgents who kidnapped him, the coffin begins to leak sand. Sensing his death approaching, Paul records a will with the phone, leaving his meager possessions to his wife and son. 

Because Paul apparently won the shittiest lottery in the world that day, at least one of the kidnappers survives and demands he send them a video of him cutting off his finger for his freedom. If he refuses to harm himself, because they've taken his wallet and his driver's license, they will find and harm his family. With the little power the phone has left, Paul records himself cutting off his pinky finger. With this final act, Paul feels he's at least saved his family, regardless of what happens to him.

Spoiler time: Shortly after Paul cuts off his finger, he receives a frantic call from Dan saying that they had captured an insurgent who was leading them to an American who'd been buried alive. They're hurrying to the location to save Paul. In the middle of the call, Paul's wife finally returns his call, having left her cellphone at home. He happily tells her they're coming to get him, he's going to be OK and he'll see her soon. He transfers back to Dan as they're digging the coffin up. Paul's time is running out because the coffin has nearly filled with sand. The tension builds until, as we hear over the phone, the insurgent has led them to Mike, the person Dan told Paul he'd saved earlier to win Paul's confidence. The coffin isn't Paul's. As the last bit of sand fills the coffin, Dan apologizes for getting Paul's hopes up and not being able to save him.

Spoiler over. The movie is actually pretty good once it gets going. Think of it starting out like Castaway, except Wilson is a Zippo lighter. But then it turns into Phone Booth, but with a better actor and storyline. And a coffin. Initially, I thought this was going to be a bit of a snoozer because it did take so long to get moving, but by the end, there have been so many ups and downs that you really feel for Ryan Reynolds' character. You're rooting for him to be saved, even as it seems death is mere moments away. It's pretty impressive that beyond the video of the woman and the voices over the phone, Reynolds is the only person in the film and yet it manages to not get old. Paul, as a random contractor caught in the middle of  the Iraq conflict's aftermath, could be anyone, which makes it all the easier to put yourself in his shoes.

The movie does take a few moments about halfway through to recognize some of the inherent issues with a coffin movie: there's a limited supply of oxygen in the box, the occupant is breathing heavily and suffers from anxiety, and is perpetually using a Zippo to give himself light to see by. I'm sure somewhere, somebody far more anal than myself has done the calculations necessary to determine if there would be sufficient oxygen for everything that went on, but really, who cares. It's a movie. That's like getting all worked up about the phone being able to do stuff a normal phone doesn't do...wait...dammit...

So all in all, a very good, thrilling, edge of the seat film. I'm sure some people will be put off by the lack of real explosions, non-existent CG, the fact that it's not a remake, or because the movie actually dares to have a plot. But those people are dumb and deserve to be shunned. Shun them, Ron Perlman.

Chris

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Ellie Goulding
	Song:	Lights
	Album:	Lights

Rubber

So outside of the name of the movie making it sound dirtier than it actually is, I wasn't quite sure what to expect with Rubber. I mean, the basic premise is an anthropomorphic tire with psychokinetic abilities terrorizes everyone. Really, who wouldn't want to watch a movie with a plot summary like that? I'm sure you're having a hard time reading the rest of this post because you feel the immediate need to go watch it. 

Well, if you're still here, I congratulate you on your self control. I'm also going to go ahead and let you know:  there really is no good reason to watch this movie. Netflix has it categorized as a Comedy. Not only that, a French Comedy. So going by genre, you'd expect a bunch of surrendering, snooty french accents, and disdain for Americans. Or maybe that would be an American French Comedy. Either way, I'm not sure what was supposed to be funny, really. I didn't laugh hardly at all. I mean, looking around, it seems the idea was this movie was supposed to satirize gory horror movies and their audiences, but I guess I missed it. Sometimes I wonder if people who review movies take a movie like this, don't understand a damn thing that happened, and give it a high rating because obviously if they didn't understand it, there must have been some deep hidden meaning that elevates the movie above the common film. Apparently, everyone is a high-school English teacher. Oh, and I'm also unsure why it's classified as French since outside of the director and the leading lady, most everybody else in the movie was not French, or at least didn't give the impression they were French.

So we open with a police car swerving down a gravel road hitting roughly a dozen randomly place table chairs. The car stops, a policeman gets out of the trunk, retrieves a glass of water from the driver, and proceeds to deliver a short dissertation to the camera on the concept of "No Reason" and movies. His examples include why was E.T. brown (which, if I was a deep movie analyzer, I'd say was not for no reason, but to exemplify the plight of African-Americans in society...but I'm not), why is the President assassinated in JFK (because that's what happened in real life, and it would be weird to make a serious movie about the JFK assassination where he lives), as well as why don't we see people in Texas Chainsaw Massacre go to the bathroom or wash their hands (because that would be fuckin' boring and it's hard to take a pee break when Leatherface is sawing your legs off). Then he explains that this movie is "an homage" to "No Reason," which I guess all the chairs and trunk stuff is supposed to warn the viewer about. Anyway, after this speech, he pours the glass of water out, gets back in the trunk, and the car drives off. As the view shifts, it turns out that while he might have been addressing the viewer, he was also addressing a small crowd of spectators who are then handed binoculars to watch the "movie" by an assistant of some kind who's been waiting patiently for the policeman to finish.

The "movie" begins with Robert, the tire and main character, who from here on I'll refer to us Rubby. Why? No Reason. So Rubby begins life as a discarded tire in a junk pile. As he works out rolling on his own, he runs over a water bottle, then a scorpion. When he tries to run over a beer bottle, however, he finds it doesn't yield quite so easily. So, Rubby begins to quiver and the most annoying cicada noise sound effect ever let's us know that he's using his psychokinesis. The beer bottle shatters. Next, an aluminum can is taken down. Then a bunny, then a bird. Now that Rubby is on a roll (haha!), he's made his way to the road and spies a pretty girl driving an old VW convertible. Using Rubby's mind powers, he stalls her car, but as he's rolling to take his prize, he's struck from behind by a pickup driver. No worse for wear, Rubby dusts himself off and chases after his new lady love. When he passes by the truck driver getting gas down the road, Rubby uses his mental (steel-belted radial?) powers and pops the truck drivers melon à la Scanners.

While all this is going on, we randomly cut back to the spectators, who appear to be movie audience stereotypes. There's the movie buff know-it-alls, the annoying teenagers, the father and son, and an old guy in a wheelchair. There's a handful of other people, but for the most part they're pretty irrelevant. For the most part, they're just providing the random thoughts that go through one's mind while watching a movie such as Rubber.

So Rubby tracks Sheila, who from here on I'll refer to as Mrs. Pilkington. Why? No Reason. Mrs. Pilkington has gotten a room at a motel, and apparently left the door ajar. So Rubby (and the spectators) get a free show (which I'm not going to really complain too much about, regardless of the irrelevance and unnecessary nature of the scene). When Mrs. Pilkington gets out of the shower, she shuts the door in Rubby's face (tread?). Somehow, Rubby either breaks into or rents the room next door and proceeds to watch TV with the volume up too high.

The next day, Rubby is in the shower when housekeeping shows up. Figuring some jerk has made a mess of the room with this tire, she tosses Rubby out and begins cleaning the room. The motel owner's kid see Rubby get back up, go into the hotel room, and close the door where he, you guessed it, explodes the housekeeper's head. When Mrs. Pilkington heads to the pool for a quick 15 second swim, Rubby follows. When she leaves, he rolls into the pool and promptly sinks and begins to reflect on his life thus far. This provides a bit of discussion for the spectators.

Speaking of the spectators, since they're following the "movie" in real time, they've been out in the desert for several days. After several complaints of hunger, the assistant from earlier (for No Reason, Dr. Goggles) drops off a whole turkey for the spectators to eat. He also rented a room at the hotel and prepared the turkey from scratch (read: alive) for the spectators. Little do they know, the turkey has been poisoned as part of some master plan. So as they're watching Rubby soak at the bottom of the pool and the discovery of the headless housekeeping lady, they all begin to get stomach cramps, with the exception of the old guy in the wheel chair, who I'm going to refer to as Wheels (N.R.). Wheels didn't eat the turkey, so he survives and promises to finish watching the "movie" to put the other dying spectators at ease. 

So back to the motel. The police officer from earlier, Lieutenant Chad (from here on, Lord Chadwick), proceeds to tell everyone they've done a great job and they're free to go home since the spectators are dead. With them dead, the "movie" is over. Everyone looks at him like he's crazy, what with his "this is not real life" nonsense. To prove that it's not real, Lord Chadwick has one of the other officers shoot him repeatedly, which does not hurt him at all. He then tells them to wake up the housekeeper, since she's not really dead, just acting. When they tell him they obviously can't wake her up, Dr. Goggles informs him that one of the spectators is still alive, so the "movie" must keep going. Quite disappointed, Lord Chadwick resumes where he left off, interviewing the motel owner about the housekeeper. Rubby then pops the motel owner's head and runs off.

There should probably be some kind of spoiler alert below, but really, its a "horror" film. If you can't guess what's going to happen, you need to watch more horror movies.

3 days later, after a murderous spree that has left dozens of headless bodies in his wake, Rubby is finally found by police. A plan is hatched to use an explosives-rigged mannequin (who I'm going to call TNTina) to take him out. Mrs. Pilkington is brought in to provide the voice for the TNTina. As Mrs. Pilkington and Lord Chadwick are fighting back and forth to try and get Rubby to detonate TNTina, Wheels interrupts them to ask them why they don't hurry things along, and perhaps go with a different method of disposing of Rubby, such as a well placed bazooka shot. Apparently, Wheels is supposed to be either an armchair director or just director in general who's here to provide a better way to make the "movie." When TNTina's head gets popped and she doesn't explode, Lord Chadwick takes matters into his own hands and kills Rubby with a shotgun, depositing him at Wheels' feet. Wheels, upset that the "movie" can't end this way, sees a tricycle emerge from the trailer where Rubby had been. Rubby, as Wheels points out, has been reincarnated as a tricycle, which I guess makes him Tubby now. Wheels ends up being Tubby's first victim. Tubby then drives off down the road, collecting other tires in his wake. 

So now that you're sitting here wondering what the fuck you just read, you can rest assured you're feeling about the same thing as the folks that bailed after the intro and watched the movie. For a movie that prides itself as dedicated to "No Reason" and events occurring for "No Reason" in films, that's pretty much what it leaves you with in respect to why you should watch it: No Reason. The movie isn't bad, it's not some no-budget handy-cam filmed crapfest. It's just pointless. I will say the exploding heads are pretty impressive, since most of them looked to be non-CG special effects. So basically, if you plan on watching this movie, go into it with zero expectation, otherwise you'll probably be quite disappointed. And if the movie somehow meets your expectations, you might need to seek professional help.

Final results:

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Yoshida Brothers
	Song:	Kodo (Inside The Sun Remix)
	Album:	Best of Yoshida Brothers

TiMER

Having scrolled past TiMER repeatedly on Netflix, I finally had the opportunity to watch it with my wife one evening. The premise seemed pretty interesting: in the not-too-distant future, a new technology allows a digital timer to be implanted on your wrist that counts down the years, days, minues, hours, and seconds until you'll meet your soul mate. When your eyes lock, the TiMER goes off and you live happily ever after.

Just a quick warning, I'm going to probably give away some major plot points, and spoil the ending, because quite frankly the movie spoiled the ending for me and I'd be remiss not sharing. You've been warned.

The story follows Oona and Steph, who are stepsisters. Steph's TiMER is counting down, but Oona's is blank, meaning that her soul mate isn't also wearing a TiMER. Fearing that she'll miss out (because she's rapidly approaching 30 and, apparently, spinsterhood, because no one over 30 is worth marrying), she takes every man she feels remotely attracted to in to have a TiMER installed, but none of them are Mr. Right. One day, Oona meets Mikey, a local grocery clerk with 4 months left on his TiMER. She falls for him but knows that they can't be together. However, she is fairly easily convinced that because there is no chance that they'll be together, they can totally just have sex and be fuck buddies. There's no chance for a big letdown, because the TiMER has already let them down. Hooray for consequence free boot-knockin. All's going well until Mikey reveals that his TiMER is a fake. Suddenly Oona wonders if maybe Mikey is the one, but he refuses to get a TiMER because he feels that it takes the excitement out of life knowing what's going to happen, a point he tries to convince Oona of. So she gives him the coldest of shoulders for being a lying jerk.

Running along side this story, Oona and Steph's younger brother has just gotten his TiMER, which has become a rite of passage. So much for a car and a learner's permit. Their brother's TiMER pops up with a relatively short time window, making both of them jealous. Over the course of the rest of the film, their mother plans for a meeting between their brother and a lovely young girl around the time his TiMER is set to go off. But, shocker, they aren't true loves. Spoiler here: Turns out his true love is their housekeeper's daughter. What with being white enough to have a housekeeper, this puts quite the crimp in everyone's plans. But hey, it's the modern age, so his mom decides to suck up her obvious disdain for the woman who cleans her toilets' daughter's class level and support her son's budding relationship that he ultimately had no choice about in the first place. Cue the hilarious learning-to-speak-Spanish-to-show-your-acceptance-of-the-inevitable zaniness. The should make a TV show about that...maybe they could get Rob Schneider to star, that guy'll be in just about anything...

In the meantime, Steph meets Dan, a widower without a TiMER. They end up clicking and fall for each other, even though Steph's TiMER still has 10+ years left on it. And obviously, since Dan lacks a TiMER, he's not Steph's soul mate. But, as their relationship grows, Steph begins to question whether it's worth the wait.

So, with both Steph and Oona deciding that they've found someone they love regardless of what the TiMERs do and do not say, they resolve to have them removed. Steph goes first, and while Oona is preparing to have her's removed, the technicians explain that the TiMER, once removed, can never be re-attached and causes the soul mate's TiMER to blank out, meaning they won't know when they meet. Unsurprisingly, Steph is rather annoyed that they waited until after her's had been removed. Just as Oona's is about to come off, it suddenly comes to life with less than 24 hours, which happens to coincide with Oona's 30th birthday. Ultimately, Oona lays in bed all day and let's the TiMER's end time pass. After avoiding all human contact, she heads off to her death-is-right-around-the-corner 30th birthday party, where Steph plans to introduce her to Dan.

OK, so big spoiler time. If you want to skip this and go to the recommendation, just scroll down to the red Post-spoileration. But feel free to note the koala-punching.


Typing it out, it seems like the ending should have been much more obvious. I missed it, and quite frankly it made me want to punch a koala:

Not because I didn't see what was coming, but because what was coming was the worst-case scenario ending in a movie that up to that point had been somewhat hopeful in showing that even when we know we're not destined to be with someone, we can form a relationship that still results in happiness.

In case it hasn't become grossly apparent by this point, Dan, who had just recently gotten a TiMER, ends up being Oona's soul mate. Their eyes lock at the party and their TiMERs go off. So, even though they've never met, and Oona subsequently has her TiMER removed, she's already been told that Dan is the man for her, so she goes to meet him. The end.

So let's recap:

• Oona has no time, so she finds someone she falls in love with, which turns out to be a sham. But because he doesn't have a TiMER, maybe he's the one. Should she take a chance?
• Steph, who has a time, finds someone she falls in love with without having to wait another third of her life. Should she take a chance?
• Everybody comes to the same conclusion: fuck this TiMER shit, let's take a chance...except Oona wimps out when her TiMER starts up. Steph is now stranded with no TiMER and thus no warning when she meets her soul mate. But she's got Dan, who's still pretty awesome.
• Even though she has a time now, Oona ignores it, making keeping the TiMER pointless. So fuck it...but wait...ehh fuck it.
• Oona meets Dan, her soul mate. She borks her stepsister, who's supported the shit out of her during her whiny "why don't I have a true love" phase, square in the pooper by stealing the man she loves, but it's cool because she can totally just wait for her TiMER to go---oh wait, no she can't. She drops the guy she was in love with and spent the whole film building a relationship with, but he was young, so obviously she would have had to kick him to the curb when he passed his prime in a year or two anyway, so no great loss there. 

What. The. Fuck. No seriously. You get strung along for this whole movie, led to believe that even though science can do the hard work, life's better if you just wing it and fall in love on your own, only to have your heroine cave, screw over everybody you were now rooting for to be happy in spite of some setbacks, and then just kind of leave it hanging with "at least everything will work out for them because they're soul mates, right?" No, fuck that. This movie should not have ended this way. I literally sat and stared at the TV for several minutes during and after the credits had finished wondering who the fuck had just kicked me in the balls and hadn't had the decency to give me a heads up first. 

Post-spoileration (it's OK, you can open your eyes now):

So I'm not sure if this was the plan all along, but as you can tell, the ending is still a bit of a sticking point for me. So my recommendation here is watch the movie, because it's a pretty good sci-fi tinged romantic comedy. There are some funny bits, the movie moves along quite well, and it's well acted. You definitely care what happens to the characters. But stop watching right about the last 20 minutes. Then turn it off and imagine any ending you want. Pick one: aliens descend with the intention of eating everyone, which is only discovered after deciphering their innocuously titled cookbook; everybody rides off into the sunset to fight injustice another day; the troupe of lovable animals gets home safely; hell, the dish runs away with the fucking spoon. Any ending you can imagine has to be better than the actual ending of this movie. Goddammit, where's that koala...

BTW, just to explain, this is a composite rating: The majority of the movie gets 4 Ron Perlmans, but the ending get -1 Ron Perlman. So overall, 3 Ron Perlmans.

Chris

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Barenaked Ladies
	Song:	Enid
	Album:	Gordon