Mini Reviews - North Country, The Day After Tomorrow, Saw 2, Lost Season 1

Well, I have finally seen some flicks and feel I am once again slightly overdue for mini reviews. The DVD player is on the fritz, and we are using a backup of crappy quality, so it has curtailed our viewing a bit. Not to mention just a general lack of time, though, for no real reason. This past week I saw The Day After Tomorrow, North Country, and Saw II, and I also watched the final set of episodes of Lost, Season 1.

Shall we?

The Day After Tomorrow (Emmerich, 2004)
A doomsday movie where only one man (Dennis Quaid) knows the truth and no one will listen to him (oops that's all doomsday movies). Only he has the answer to saving people at the dawn of a new ice age.
I think it was inevitable that I watch this at some point, even though I have read so many horrible reviews. (One was even written by my sister for a science journal.) But I have to say, it wasn't all that horrible. Neither was it good enough for me to say I liked it. It just had too many problems. The implausible science of the storm itself didn't even bother me. I mean some things just went beyond my ability to suspend disbelief: people outrun an instant frost, a woman waits for an ambulance in an affected area, and it arrives (but where will it go?), escaped wolves are able to survive outside in temperatures that in a matter of hours (maybe minutes) had frozen the sea. And unintentially funny was the scene in which Quaid marched past the Statue of Liberty en route from DC to New York City. Sorry, but isn't the statue sort of out toward the Atlantic? The worst part though was that about two thirds through the movie, I just stopped caring. Until then, despite all the flaws, the movie had been quite a thrill-ride.

North Country (Caro, 2005)
Charlize Theron is a female mine-worker who, fed up with the out-of-control sexual harrassment going on, begins a class action lawsuit against the mine company.
Niki Caro (director) takes on another feminist story, though this one is just not as effective for me as Whale Rider was. This was pretty rough viewing, but you know the funny thing? I think it is even rougher for men. Men with consciences at least. My dad refused to watch it altogether. My husband wanted to see it, but was sickened while watching it. He commented that "there is something wrong with men." It must be difficult to face some of the attrocities done by your own kind. Even though the movie was feminist, moving, and could bring something about the struggle of woman to the consciousness of man, I just didn't love it. Some of the scenes didn't work for me, and some of the acting & dialog just didn't ring true.

Saw II (Bousman, 2005)
Along the lines of the first movie, some people wake to find they are players in a gruesome game that will most likely end in their deaths. What are they willing to do to survive?
The first one wasn't great. It started in an interesting place, but just didn't catch hold of me. But for some reason I was still compelled to watch the second one. I should have known better. This one wasn't even nearly as interesting as the first. Though the movie has this air of trying to achieve credibility, the characters come off as hokey and their character-changing decisions come on suddenly and with little motivation (a la Anakin to Vader in SW3). By the end, I had become so detached from what I was watching that I was thinking about what crap would be thrust upon us in the inevitable Saw3. That said, the gore was truly horrifying. This is another film in a new wave of horror that (together with movies like High Tension, Saw 1, and various Asian horror flicks) is upping the ante on what we are seeing on the screen. What I want to know is, who thinks of these things? What tremendous nightmares they must have!

Lost, Season 1 (Abrams, 2004)
A TV series about a group of plane crash survivors who must adapt to live on a strange, supernatural island.
Ok, ok, we are so behind, I know. But we have rented, and this week finally finished viewing, the entire first season of Lost. Initially I watched it only because my husband was so into it. It was weird, there were more questions than answers, and I wasn't sure I got the point of it all. But after a few episodes I began to let go, and I maybe didn't get it but woah did it get me! Nothing seems ever to be answered on this island, and the longer we are there, the more mysterious it becomes. But if you resist your urge to know all the answers and have all mysteries solved, you may get caught like I, and millions like me worldwide, have. And you might just begin to see its brilliance. It's like Lord of the Flies meets The X-Files and it's oh so addictive. My only question now is how will I survive until Season 2 comes out on DVD later this year? What will I do without my weekly Lost marathons (there is generally 4 episodes per disc), and has anyone been taping the episodes so I can catch up? Course not. No one uses VCRs anymore. Sigh.


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