chitoryu15

Imagine, if you will, a film adaptation of a popular book that decides to make everything the opposite of how it is in the book. Now decide for yourself if that's the best idea you've had. Have you been drinking? You've probably been drinking.

Gone is the calculating genius Artemis Fowl, so physically scrawny that he can barely climb a ladder without hurting himself and speaking like an adult to the extent that he creeps people out. Gone is Artemis as a criminal mastermind arranging for the kidnapping of a fairy for ransom.

Instead, this Artemis has no idea that he's from a line of criminals. His FATHER is the one who believes in fairies, in fact, and he despite being a genius (he cloned a goat when he was 10!) he doesn't learn that his father is rumored to be a master thief until he hears about it on the news. Butler (who is now very insistent that he be called "Domovoi" or "Dom" and never be called "Butler") ends up being the one to tell him about the world of fairies and his father's research! He's also quite athletic and engages in two fight scenes.

The plot about the ransom is mutilated through the kidnapping of Fowl Sr. and the addition of a new MacGuffin stolen from the fairies that Opal Koboi (who wears a veil and voice changer through the entire movie) wants to destroy humanity. LEPrecon is involved in the search for it as well, so the entire kidnapping plot is just a sort of misunderstanding now.

There's strong evidence of massive changes to the plot; narration by Mulch Diggums (a rasping Josh Gad imitating Hagrid) as a framing device is necessary to keep it from being utterly incomprehensible, and there are still so many unexplained events and reveals of knowledge that it feels like vital scenes are simply missing, or that the same scene shot with two different scripts was badly stitched together. At one point you can see Opal's mouth just enough to tell that the actress was saying something entirely different in her monologue and has been dubbed over.

The characters are almost all nothing like their book counterparts. The scene of Butler (now joined by Action Artemis) fighting off the LEPrecon squad is shot and edited in a nauseating way with extreme ramping and bizarre choices of angles and violations of physics that make it seem like something from Spy Kids. There are questionable choices regarding CGI and green screen. I'm still not entirely sure how the ending actually occurred.

This movie feels like it was made out of spite, out of hatred for the Fowl fandom. It's so bad of an adaptation that it can only be deliberate sabotage.

Rockabilly Zombie Weekend is a labor of love. Tammy Bennett wrote the film from an idea she had while sitting on her couch, and began working with everyone she could to get her idea made into a full length movie. Jamie Velez-Soto helped her get on her feet when it came to making a movie, making a partnership of sorts. Cast and crewed entirely from local actors and crew members and shot entirely on location around the Central Florida area on a budget that doesn't make it into the millions, Rockabilly Zombie Weekend seems at first like a typical schlock gore film made in an actor's house and an empty section of field.

Instead, what occurs is something far bigger than one may expect.

The film is shot well, for one. The cameras are all high quality, but the DP and camera operators (a group that occasionally included the director himself to ensure maximum speed in resetting and shooting) all knew exactly what angles would ensure what needed to be seen was seen and what needed to be felt was felt.

While the CGI occasionally falls flat, it's almost entirely restricted to blood splatter and muzzle flash and never goes below the quality of The Walking Dead, which one should note is a critically acclaimed TV show. Effects from a zombie being set aflame to a truck crashing through a barn to a man being flung from the bed of a swerving pickup are all done with live stuntmen and practical effects. Even several bullet impacts are done with live blood and gore, making for a visceral experience.

"Visceral" is a good word to use in this case. Beyond the typical missing flesh and constant drool and vomit of black goop from the zombies mouths (and occasionally....other orifices), there's a gruesome closeup of a ripped-open torso and even a lost tooth, as well as a memorable scene involving a standup bass guitar.

Most importantly, though, the film is acted well. Jamie Velez-Soto is a master at getting what he wants out of his actors, even the amateurs and extras, and the film remains gripping and believable throughout. There's no clear cut good or bad characters, and the audience is never presented a survivor and told "This guy is mean and selfish and is going to betray everyone and die a karmic death." Like real people, every character has their good and bad sides. Some are better or worse than others (Woody, in particular, seems like the cool grandpa everyone wishes they had). Humor is apparent throughout the film, though in limited amounts; it generally pulls very few punches regarding the seriousness of the situation.

It's hard to decide on a favorite scene, but one of the tops comes early in the film: not going to spoil anything, but let's just say that there's little scarier about knowing that someone's in danger and never being able to see a thing.

Really, I'm at a loss. What can be said about a movie like Birdemic? All the reviews you can find detail the innumerable problems: the poor directing, the lack of consistent sound quality (including the famous "HI" from the waitress at the beginning), the crappy GIFs of birds sloppily pasted over the screen, which spit acidic orange juice and explode and make airplane noises, acting worse than the average porno, etc.

But does this movie really deserve review? A review of a movie implies that it is.....well, a professional film. Birdemic is listed on a site alongside The Godfather and Avatar, and it received a theatrical release. But it doesn't seem right. This movie simply does not exist in the same realm as what anyone would call a "movie." It dips down into the 90s era of home movies, manufactured by a few high schoolers in the summer with a pirated copy of Adobe Aftereffects.

What I'm saying is that to review this film on IMDb almost implies that it deserves being on the same 1 to 10 rating scale used for the rest of the films on this site. The rating scale doesn't apply because it's just not made like a movie.

If there was a way to vote 0 on a movie here, I wouldn't give it a 0. I'm not entirely sure if I could give it a negative score. This is a movie that seems to transcend a scale made for professional entertainment, mostly because it is NOT a professional film. It's a home movie stretched out to 85 minutes. 85 gay, gay minutes.

Sam Mraovich is a hairdresser and real estate salesman, but his big dream is to be a Hollywood star (living in the area will do that to you). In order to accomplish this dream, Mraovich has made Ben & Arthur his magnum opus. Not simply content to direct or act in his star-making role, he has chosen to be the director, producer, executive producer (don't ask how that works), writer, music director, editor, cinematographer, casting director, and lead actor in his film.

Mraovich is not the first man to make a film this way: El Mariachi by Robert Rodriguez was famously made without a crew, the actors and Rodriguez himself taking over the various duties in their effort to make a low budget film. But while El Mariachi was made by a man who had been making movies since childhood and had dedicated himself to the technical crafts that augmented his natural creativity (and thus became a brilliant success and turned him into a big name Hollywood player), Ben & Arthur is made out of ego. Sam Mraovich wanted fame. So he made.....this.

Ben & Arthur is the story of two gay men who want to get married, only to be stymied by Ben's marriage to a woman to hide his true sexual orientation and Arthur's psychotic Christian fundamentalist brother. The basics behind the plot are not awful, and could be made into a dramatic film. Ben & Arthur does not do this.

The Sony VX2000 video camera this was filmed on is not a bad camera, certainly not a bad camera for the home video market in 2002. But this was intended to be a direct-to-DVD film, not a home movie. Sam Mraovich was badly overextending himself in this choice of camera, as it doesn't even come close to reaching the level of the cheap cameras used for typical low budget films (mostly in that it's a camcorder, not film). It doesn't help that he uses what appears to be entirely ambient lighting (that there isn't even a section for the electrical department in the credits lends credence to this suggestion) and fails to properly focus his camera or adjust for lighting. It's not uncommon for a scene to have lighting of a completely different color and brightness every time it switches angles. One shot of Ben in bed as the film comes to its horrifying climax demonstrates why "Hollywood darkness" is meant to be used: the room is almost pitch black, and the full Youtube copy of the film (among many snarky annotations) makes sure to note what the scene is showing because it's otherwise nothing but a mess of various shades of gray.

The cinematography would be bad....if it was there. Many of the scenes seem as if Mraovich literally put the camera on the tripod and jumped in front of it to act. The actors who played Victor and the PI are both listed as cinematographers, which suggests that they simply handled the camera in place of Mraovich whenever they weren't in the shot and/or he didn't feel like doing it himself. The scenes are not set up with any respect to the camera, and it doesn't seem like Mraovich ever bothered to do more than one or two takes, let alone get masters and close-ups of the same scene to have plenty of footage to work with. At least one scene is shot with Ben & Arthur talking as the cameraman wanders around and between them with the camera on his shoulder. They had nothing but a tripod to steady the camera, so any shots that couldn't be done with it are shaky and nasty.

So that covers the look of the movie, and what drops it firmly into home movie category. Sound? Forget it. Everything was shot with the camera microphone (indeed, there likely wasn't any equipment used in the filming other than the Sony and the tripod), so while the dialogue and sound effects are understandable it all sounds terrible. The film opens with a cheery rendition of "The Entertainer" as Mraovich's name flashes almost a dozen times through the opening credits, which are placed in front of a background that resembles one of the acid trips that plays on Windows Media Player in time to the music. The music that plays in the actual movie (the few times any plays) is a generic keyboard tune out of a bad 80s action film.

The acting is handled woodenly and sloppily, with messed up takes being left in and actors obviously reading from off-screen (or in the case of the lawyer, on-screen) scripts. The plot is even worse; gays and Christians alike respond to their problems with murder and property damage, and the film is written from an extremely biased viewpoint that turns the religious into evil, bigoted monsters while inadvertently stereotyping gays as flouncy, sex-crazed psychos. Plot holes, continuity errors, and nonsensical events and plans abound (like making a plot to use holy water to cure Arthur of his gayness, and then just taping the bottle to his door and expecting something to happen). Other reviews mention the palm trees of Vermont and the FedEx plane, but they don't mention how the gun that Ben takes from his ex-wife turns into Victor's gun (a very obvious water pistol) while Victor still has it, the gun changing hands with each shot in the finale.

Speaking of the finale, it's horrible. Your mind will not make it out alive.

Watch this movie with friends. And carefully.