Silent Hill movie

I might see this later today depending on weather, although it's looking like a possible Sunday/Monday showing for me.

Been seeing user reviews pop up and of course as I expected, there are people at Rotten Tomatoes giving it the ol' heave ho. Sometimes I wonder if people bitch about how lame a movie is just to be "cool" and "different" and just trash popular stuff.

Also, ComingSoon.net had interviews with both Christopher Gans and Radha Mitchell about the movie:

Quote:

Maybe the name Christophe Gans won't be immediately familiar, but anyone who saw his 2002 period horror piece Brotherhood of the Wolf won't forget that experience any time soon, because it was a truly original take on the horror film.

Since then, Gans has been working on a movie version of the video game Silent Hill, something he's been wanting to make since he first played the game years before making "Brotherhood". After years of hard work and months of CG touch-ups, the movie is finally ready to be seen by avid gaming enthusiasts, and ComingSoon.net had a chance to speak to the director, speaking to us from Toronto, where he was putting the final touches to the DVD and television versions, before returning home to France after almost two years in Canada working on the movie.

ComingSoon.net: You're still up in Toronto working on this movie?
Christophe Gans: We finished the movie just exactly eight days ago, because we have a lot of special effects hoping that everything will be perfect. It's always something with special effects movies. Eight days ago, I saw the film for the first time in one piece, and it was like, "Wow!"

CS: The last time we heard from you was with "Brotherhood of the Wolf", which came out in the States four years ago. Were you working on "Silent Hill" this whole time?
Gans: Actually, I played "Silent Hill" just one year before I did "Brotherhood of the Wolf," and I was talking with my producer, also the producer of "Brotherhood of the Wolf," about the idea of adapting this game on the big screen. For a long time, I wanted to make a horror movie, but it's difficult to come up with something really original. When I played "Silent Hill 1," I had the feeling that it was actually something that I didn't see before on the big screen. It was completely original.

CS: Was it hard to get the rights to it?
Gans: Yes, it was extremely difficult, because the game is Japanese, and the Japanese people aren't always willing to make deals. Sometimes, they can wait months, and in many cases, they wait years on these games. We were chasing the rights since the beginning, and we had no answer. We were sending tons of messages, Emails, and letters and no answer. And then, the second game came, and I played it and I was blown away, and again, I asked for the rights, and no answer. I knew that Miramax was also chasing the rights, Paramount, Sam Raimi, even the company of Tom Cruise was chasing the rights, and no one got answers. So I decided maybe it was not who was asking, but the way we were asking for the rights. Basically, I did a note of intention in video. I shot myself speaking to the camera, explaining why I wanted to do so badly this game on the big screen, and it was 37 minutes. I put Japanese subtitles, and I sent it to Tokyo; two months after, we had the rights.

CS: Did your previous experience in Japan, adapting "Crying Freeman," help your position in getting this adaptation?
Gans: Yeah, I know Japanese people, and I know that for them, politeness is very important. I think that's why we got the rights, because I showed some respect, and that's what they wanted. They also didn't want to sell the rights of the game have no involvement into the project. We didn't want to see the movie be completely disrespectful to the game. They wanted to find somebody who showed some big respect, and basically, I was that person. They were happy to work with us.

CS: Obviously, the second and maybe third game came out before you started this, so did you try to incorporate them into the movie or did you stick pretty closely to the first game?
Gans: When we started to think about the adaptation, we were very attracted by the idea to adapt the second game, because that's the best of the series. In the second game, there's a problem, because the town Silent Hill is just a background. It has nothing to do with the story. We realized it was impossible to tell that story and not explain why Silent Hill is this "Twilight Zone," that bizarre zone where different dimensions can cross. So we decided to go back to the first one, because in the first game, we have the explanation of why Silent Hill became that strange zone. But of course, we decided we will adapt the first game, but taking some things from the second game, using some of the narrative element of the third game, which is a sequel of the first one. I also wanted to use the way they were moving the camera from the fourth one, so basically, I decided to tell the story of the first one, but invite as much as possible the beautiful esthetic of the three other games.

CS: So the time it took you to get the rights actually ended up being a good thing, since it gave you more stuff to work from?
Gans: Oh, absolutely. Each time you're taking some time to do something, it's for the better. At the moment when you decide to do it, I think it's important to live on the energy. This film has been done like one straight line. When we decided when it was the moment to do it. It was July 2004 when we started talking about it, and in December 2004, I came to Toronto and I started shooting in April 2005. I finished shooting in July 2005, and the movie's going to be released now. It's less than two years to just do the job, and I think that's interesting to live on the energy. Especially for a game like that, I think it was good to mature it and just think about it. When I decided to do the film, I didn't necessarily play the game again. Sometime, I was just playing a little, but I didn't try to play again, because I just wanted to make the movie with all the memories that I brought back from the game. When I showed the film the first time to the creator of the series, Akira Yamooka, he was blown away by the precision of each detail. He asked if I played the game again, and I said, "No, I didn't have to because playing your game is like going to a foreign country and bringing back so many memories about each detail." Adapting a game is not like adapting a book. When you're adapting a book, you're building your adaptation on the feeling you had while you were reading the book, but when you're adapting a game, you're talking about your own experience into a virtual world. You're talking about your memories, about life experience. It was very different.

CS: Roger Avary did some rewrites on "Crying Freeman" and he also wrote this script. Did you bring him onto the project?
Gans: Yes, because I've known Roger Avary for a long time. He's a very good friend, a very talented screenwriter, and he's also a really obsessive gamer. I think it was important to get as many gamers as we can to adapt this film, and we had three working on the script: Roger, a friend of mine who was also a director in France and also a big gamer, and myself. We were basically three screenwriters, three directors and three gamers trying to adapt "Silent Hill." Why? Because we tried to find a collective way to describe that journey in Silent Hill. For each of us, it was a different journey, even though we went to the same place, and we brought back some very precise memories about it. We tried to compare these different memories, to try to find a collective way to tell this story. When you want to do the adaptation of a game, you have to figure that each gamer has a different version of the game in his mind. It's a subjective experience, so if you want to make something which actually can satisfy these gamers, you have to find a collective way to tell this story.

CS: How much gameplay is incorporated into the movie, and what is there to offer gamers and make them want to go see a game they've played on the big screen?
Gans: "Silent Hill" is a good example of a game which is not a big gameplay experience. Basically, you have to walk or run, and you have to find clues to find your way out of the town. It's not like a game based on reflex; it's much more the feeling you have and the way you dive into the atmosphere of the game. Actually, "Silent Hill" is one of the games that you can really adapt well, because it's not only about the gameplay. I'll say that a good gameplay is one that can invite the imagination and the intelligence of the gamer. What is important in Silent Hill is that constantly you're trying to imagine what happens, and the game is constantly playing with your imagination, and a good movie can do that also. Hitchcock was working before video game existed, but when you're seeing his film and the way he's playing with the intelligence of the audience, he's doing something attractive. I don't think that cinema and game are so completely different, and I think it's stupid to think that the game is only a way to move your fingers on the joypad. I think that games are a much more noble experience than that. Of course, when you're playing a shooting game, it's only about your reflex, and I think it would be difficult to adapt a shooting game, but with "Silent Hill" is not a problem.

CS: I read that you did most of the creatures practically on the set rather than CG.
Gans: Except the bugs. It's difficult to have [people dressed like] bugs. All the creatures are on the set played by dancers. For each creature, we tried to figure a different kind of movement. Of course, we were basing the concept of the creatures on what we could see in the game. For example, one of the creatures is played by a hip-hop dancer, another one is played by a very small Japanese dancer, and another is played by the choreographer himself. We tried to invent for each creature, a different type of movement. For me, it's important because the creatures in "Silent Hill" are disturbing. You enter into a room and you have something in the middle of the room, naked and screaming, and it's so disturbing. If you want to achieve that on screen, it's impossible to go CG. It was important to have the monsters on the set, so the actors could see and play with the monster.

CS: Was this in response to "Brotherhood of the Wolf" where the monster was mostly CG and some people didn't think it looked very real?
Gans: When we did the monster of "Brotherhood of the Wolf," we were very inexperienced. It's crazy to say, but it was the first monster movie made in France, and we learned a lot from our mistakes, and I realized if you want to have something interesting, first you must have something on the set in front of the actor. You must have an actor or a dancer playing the monster, and then you must enhance it in post-production. That's basically what we did. It's true that I learned a lot about how to do a monster from the mistakes I did on "Brotherhood of the Wolf."

CS: Which was the most challenging creature to bring to life?
Gans: Ah, ha ha. I think the most challenging is the armless monster that the fans call "straightjacket." It's a guy trapped in his own skin, like in a straightjacket. We did that with a costume, and it was played by the hip hop dancer, and then in postproduction, we stretched him, we slightly changed the proportion of his legs and torso, and I think it's quite amazing to see the result on the screen. Actually, each monster was a challenge, because each monster is very different. I also like very much the nurses, they're super-buxom nurses with no faces. That was also very interesting. We used lap dancers and jazz dancers to achieve that, and it was quite difficult.

CS: I noticed that there are a lot of women in "Silent Hill." Was there something symbolic about that?
Gans: Actually, when we decided to adapt the first game, we decided to have the hero of the first game, a guy named Harry Mason, but when we put him on the paper and tried to be very close to the original character of the game, we noticed that he was almost never acting like a man, but much more like a woman. When we decided to make him a woman, we realized that all the game was filled with women. It was almost like a complete feminine world, so then we realized that it was very interesting that "Silent Hill" was dealing with such issues as motherhood, sisterhood, immaculate conception, and we realized that was a good angle to make the film. It started as a convenient thing, making the character female, but then it became the structure of the project, and we realized that "Silent Hill" was a feminine dimension.

CS: Were there any requests to try to make this a PG-13 movie?
Gans: No, no, no. I said that I'd do the film only if the movie is R-rated. If you try to make me do a PG-13 than I will not do the film, because I knew that it would be impossible to deal with PG-13, simply because of the story of the little girl who created Silent Hill. We know that this little girl had been horribly tortured, so I knew that issue would make the movie a R-rated experience.

CS: One of the big things in the news these days is how studios aren't screening genre movies for critics or journalists anymore. Do you have any thoughts about this because you spent so much time working on this, and you obviously want people to see your work?
Gans: I have to say something that maybe you don't know about me. I was a journalist myself. I was a film critic before I became a director. What's happening today is very complicated, because of the Web. In this case, we finished the film very late, but it's true that most of the studios are concerned by the fact that they can't control the information on the Web. I think that it's going to be more and more a problem in the next few years.

CS: I've talked to a few other horror directors in the last few months who are pretty upset that their movies aren't being shown to the genre journalists who might actually appreciate their work.
Gans: Simply because it's adapted from Silent Hill, it's very original. At the same time, Sony Tristar Pictures can do what they want. They have put one third of the budget, and their way to market the film is their way, and I have to respect that, and that's all. In France, just a few days ago, we have shown the film to the critics and there was no problem, and I know that today, they're showing the film to the critics in UK. It's not a problem, but simply, in America, the way to market a movie is very different from the rest of the world, and I have to respect that.

CS: Speaking of marketing, one of the things that has really been amazing is the poster, which has become a popular target for graffiti artists. Have you seen any of that?
Gans: Yeah, it's cool! I love that! The first person who was blown away by that was Jodelle Ferland, who played the little girl in the film. She went through New York and she saw all the graffiti on her face. She's ten, and for her, it was amazing. That's a movie from an interactive medium, and I think it's important to think that what we're doing exists on different media. "Silent Hill" is a multimedia creation. Today, it's a movie, but tomorrow it's going to be a cartoon, and then it will be a new game. We are working on multimedia ground and we have to play with that.

CS: If "Silent Hill" beats "Scary Movie 4" this weekend, do you think your movie will be spoofed in "Scary Movie 5"?
Gans: Oh, absolutely! I hope so. I think it's legitimate to think that if "Silent Hill" is a success, I will see some interesting parody in the next "Scary Movie." As I say, it's a multimedia experience, so why not parody? I have nothing against it, just that it's treated with respect and intelligence, that's all that we hope.

CS: Any idea what you're doing next?
Gans: I'm working on an adaptation of another game, which is very different atmosphere. It's going to be so different from "Silent Hill." (He wouldn't say which game it was, as much as I tried to coax him to tell.)

CS: But are you just writing that or will you direct it as well?
Gans: Yeah, I will have to direct it very soon. They want me to start the shoot next March, because they also want that I do the sequel of "Silent Hill" if this movie is very successful. But it's okay, I'm very happy to work.

CS: Why do you think so many other French directors have had problems breaking into Hollywood here?
Gans: It depends on the project. In the glorious days of the old Hollywood, in the '30s, there were plenty of French and German directors working very successfully in Hollywood, because they were working on good films. If you're coming with a formulaic movie, I don't think you can enjoy success, but if you're coming with something really different, I think that people will notice, especially in genre. I think that "Silent Hill" is expected, because people know that it's an original movie. I can say that simply because I have not created the original concept, so I'm something like the illustrator of this concept, but everybody knows that the concept in the game was so absolutely original that it's interesting. That's what I hope.

CS: Where do you see your place in French cinema these days?
Gans: Oh, I have no place in French cinema. I'm an outsider. I'm not working in my own language. I did one film in French, "Brotherhood of the Wolf," and I could not do another movie in France, even if that was a huge success everywhere in the world, including in France of course, it was impossible for me to build another movie after this one. I'm working in English, so that's why it's difficult for me to think that I have any place in French cinema, because for me, everything is about the language.

CS: Were you surprised by how well "Brotherhood of the Wolf" was received here in the States?
Gans: I was intrigued and at the same time, I was pleased. Basically, "Brotherhood of the Wolf" was a little like a Hong Kong film, like an exotic experience, and I understand why people are so fond of this film. I like that, because myself, I like to watch Hong Kong films and movies from India, and what I enjoy is the experience of the exoticism.

CS: I originally saw "Brotherhood" at the Ziegfield in New York on a weekday afternoon. I was in that huge theatre with less than 20 people, and it was amazing experience seeing it on that big screen.
Gans: When I'm doing a movie, I hope people will come and dive into the sound and the color. I was born in 1960, and I remember very well how it was to go to films, when you were enjoying James Bond and the latest big war movie or Western from Hollywood. Basically, the cinema must be an experience. I showed "Silent Hill" to a bunch of people five days ago, and I know that they were pretty amazed, but it was difficult for them to find the words. Some of them were pretty shocked and fascinated. I think it's important that we don't see a movie that we can rationalize after the film's finished. That's what I tried to do with "Brotherhood of the Wolf" and with "Silent Hill," and I hope that people will feel like that.

And Mitchell's:

Quote:

This Friday, TriStar Pictures brings Silent Hill to the big screen. The video game adaptation takes place in an eerie deserted community with a brooding past. Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) and her young daughter, Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), get caught up in its disturbing dark secret after arriving in town. The two cross into another dimension that sends them on a journey where they face horrific creatures in a fog of uncertainty and mystery. It becomes a frightening trip as they try to get back to the real world and the life they once knew.

The movie script was so scary that Radha Mitchell couldn't finish reading it the first time she picked it up. It didn't take her long to realize the story had already made a lasting impression on her.

She said, "The script itself was very disturbing. I started reading it and I had to put it down. It was too creepy for me to get through it at night. I picked up the script and finished it the next day. Images in the story stayed in my mind. Over the next week I would sort of have a flash of one of the monsters from the film when I was cleaning my teeth. The fact that it haunted me in that way made me know that there was something in that script that was going to affect people. It was an important story."

Another reason Mitchell decided to act in the film was because the character she plays allows the viewers to get a glimpse of the powerful bond between a mother and child. Da Silva is portrayed as a woman with a strong determination to overcome horrific circumstances she faces to save her daughter. It is an unyielding role that is respected universally.

Some of the stunts she performed in the movie were a little unnerving to the talented actress. There was one particular scene that required Mitchell to make a precarious jump to reach safety. She had to land on metal planks to keep from falling a great distance to the ground. A harness she wore provided her with a degree of safety.

"It was a huge drop below me and there was no rehearsal for that. It was kind of intimidating and exciting. I was strapped into this harness and I had to jump between the planks. You can see on my face trepidation and fear; it was real."

The cast enjoyed playing the game when not filming on the set.

"I hadn't played the game before we started shooting, but after we started shooting the film; I started playing it. We all had a copy of the game in our trailers. We'd get caught up in it and they'd be calling you to set, and you're like, 'Hang on I'm coming.' It's the kind of game that you don't want to put down once you get into it," said Mitchell.

The cast and crew of Silent Hill come from diverse backgrounds. The U.S., Australia, France, U.K., and Canada are all represented throughout the set.

Mitchell said, "I'm used to that in a lot of ways. A lot of films that you see these days are set in one place and shot in another. There are actors from different countries working on them. You learn so much about yourself and about people when you do that. In this case there were a lot of Canadian and European actors. That created a certain kind of feeling for the story. The director (Christophe Gans) is French. The mood and look of the movie is very French. It's actually quite sophisticated for this kind of film."

Mitchell just finished working on another movie called Rogue. The Greg McLean thriller is about a riverboat tour captain, Kate (Mitchell), and an American journalist (Michael Vartan) battling a giant crocodile in a desolate area in Australia. The actress had never been to that part of the continent.

She said, "I had never been to the Northern Territory which is where the movie was shot. The Northern Territory, I think, has the smallest population in the whole of Australia. I don't know exactly what the statistics are, but basically there is nobody there. We were shooting in the middle of these national parks with all these live crocodiles swimming around us. Basically, a lot of the film was shot in the boat. My job was to drive this boat around to find live crocodiles to act with. It was quite an adventure. I learned a lot about Australia. Even though I'm Australian; I'd never been there. I learned so much about Australia's history. Some of our history isn't so great. A lot of the stuff we try to ignore, but in these remote areas you see it really clearly."

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I'm seeing it tonight with a few people.

I saw the rotten tomatoes reviews too. I like this one in particular... makes the guy sound like an idiot.

Originally Posted by Rotten Tomatoes User

I sat down at the advanced screening of the movie, eagarly awaiting for the movie to begin. And lets just say, being a fan of the games I was excited to see how the movie would be adapted to the big screen.

Originally Posted by Rotten Tomatoes User

Let me summerize the plot. Woman loses child. Woman goes to Silent Hill to look for child. Woman gets chased from one place to another running away from demons. Woman meets female cop. Woman and female cop do some more running... ...Rather then letting this crap of a movie just die, they set up a required sequel

Originally Posted by Rotten Tomatoes User

Now, yes before you go on I understand that most horror movies invove people running from things. But the things in this movie our main character is running from are not even scary. The 'fiend' (as the people in the movie call it) is a shirtless man with a metal triangle over his head who carries a big sword but walks REALLY slowly and can't hit anything.

So this guy is a fan of the games? Hmm... thats intresting... intresting how he acts like he's never seen pyramid head before...

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah I read that one. I think the guy is a moron. Everyone's entitled to their opinion I understand, but this guy seems to be trashing the movie just because it's a game adaptation.

I don't expect oscar winning reviews, but some people seem to be dismissing this as a flop just because and not have any founding to back it up.

I just wonder what the game he's working on next is... I'm curious as hell about that.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yahoos Movies currently has average reviews listed at B. Not to shabby.

Meta Critic's average is at 8.3 of 10 right now too... not bad.

Lol, I just find it humorous that he pokes sticks at Pyramid Head like some osrt of alein entity in the movie, and yet claims to be a fan of the series. It's a great "I'm talking out of my ass" statement.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

eFilmCritic's has it being a piss-poor movie. 50% (at the time I saw it) vote for worth a look and 50% vote for bad movie. He even trashes it further. I don't know why people think they have to be cool and trash shit because of it being a game movie. (He even admitted that games don't need to be put on celluoid)

Weather's clearing up some so I may go see it in a few hours at the mall, might try and find a copy of Silent Hill 4 at EB after I see the movie.

edit: LOL @ some of the reviews at Yahoo! The ones who gave it an F don't really give good backing on why they gave it an F. Especially that one fucktwit that was like "GO FUCK YOURSELF IN THE ASS RIGHT NOW IF YOU LIKED THIS PIECE OF SHIT MOVIE!!!!1111!!@@@!212121!"

I was speaking idiomatically.

Is it really hard to believe that the movie just sucks.

How ya doing, buddy?

Is it hard for you to not troll.

The movie may be bad, but when most of the reviews I've seen shit on it don't go into why they feel it's bad or talk in all caps, credibility sort of falls down the drain.

FELIPE NO

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/...VIEWS/60421001

Originally Posted by Roger Ebert

Perhaps those who have played the game will understand the movie, and enjoy it. Speaking of synapses, another member of that panel discussion at Boulder was Dr. Leonard Shlain, chairman of laparoscopic surgery at California Pacific Medical Center, and an author whose book Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light makes you think that if anyone could understand "Silent Hill," he could.

Dr. Shlain made the most interesting comment on the panel. He said they took some four and five year-olds and gave them video games and asked them to figure out how to play them without instructions. Then they watched their brain activity with real-time monitors. "At first, when they were figuring out the games," he said, "the whole brain lit up. But by the time they knew how to play the games, the brain went dark, except for one little point." Walking out after "Silent Hill," I thought of that lonely pilot light, and I understood why I failed to understand the movie. My damn brain lit up too much.

*cough*whataprick*cough*

Ebert always gets hung up on one little detail or another in his negative reviews, and he forgets to actually review the film. His review is essentially "I DUNT GET IT. YOU GAMARZ ARE STUPID LOSERS."

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

People are nuts, this was a great movie. I may not be a big SH fan but I am a horror fan so it was great to see a horror movie this dark, twisted, gory and creepy at the same time.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, last hyped up horror film I went to was Hostel. I won't see it again. It was mediocre at best. Other than that, I can't recall in recent memory a horror movie I've seen on the "silver screen."

Debating if I should go see this. First showing is in an hour and a half. Inclined to go see it more and more as I sit here. In fact... I think I will.

Reviews are too damned muddled. There is a lot of deep-seeded hatred of VG Movies. I am not a fan of *how they turn out* as opposed to hating them. I'll give this R-rated horror movie a shot. Most horror flicks don't have the balls to cap off PG-13. We'll take a look at this. Hopefully it'll be better than Hostel. Hostel wasn't a waste of my money per se, but I was disappointed. The hype left things... Stilted.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Too many people are saying the movie's ending is a cliffhanger, and that couldn't be further from the truth. The problem is that people simply don't understand the movie, and want more hollywood-style closure. As more reviews pile in, it just seems that people can't wrap their heads around the story, and therefore, hate it.

I'm starting to like it more and more as I think about the story and as everything settles in my brain. I'm starting to analyze a few things and have some more impressions and feedback for ya'll.

I'll put spoiler tags on these just in case people dont want to read any of it before seeing the film.

Spoiler:

- My biggest complaint, and by far the biggest disappointment for me and everyone else is that Pyramid Head is only in 2 scenes in the whole film. He does a few really cool things, and when he's on screen, it's AMAZING. However, that's it. He was over-hyped, and unfortunately, doesn't make more appearances. It's almost like he was put in JUST for fans to have orgasms, and didn't further the plot. He wasn't truly explained aside from the fact that he is just another part of Alessa's nightmare.

- As I mentioned in a previous post, the role of Dhalia is pretty much reversed. In the game, she's evil. In the movie, she's semi-good. The bad guy in this movie is Christabella, and it's her cult that wrecks shit up. I thought it was a neat little deviation from the games, but it had me confused.

- Lisa the nurse was a pretty useless cameo. It was great to see her on the big screen, but like Pyramid Head, it just seems like she was thrown in there for fans.

- The absolute worst part of this movie is how the "truth" is revealed. Rose runs down the hospital hallway into a room and is absorbed with white light. Then, we hear little Alessa say "congratulations, i will now tell you the truth." After that, it's like, 7 minutes of backstory on Silent Hill, what happened to Alessa, etc.

What I would have liked to see happen, and what I think would have been more effective and made the narrative more enjoyable, is if they had shown that in the very beginning. Just to kinda get the brain working. I think Christopher Gans forgot that this was a film and not a game. In the game, that would have worked fine, but it simply took me out of the film.

The movie felt almost too much like the game, which isn't really a bad thing. It was startling how much it felt like the game in many ways. In some ways, it translated well to the screen. In some ways, not so well.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Sounds like this movie actually sucks, and I am disappointed. I think I will see it, but I am no longer in a rush to go and see it anymore. A part of me knew it wasn't going to possibly get good reviews.

I'm wondering what the reviews would have been like if it were not a video game adaptation. Not so much that I feel critics are just biased but rather I feel they misunderstand parts or, instead of thinking the plot through, automatically assume that the plot cannot be deciphered without having played the game.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Any review that is a grammatical jumble of shit like this

Quote:

"GO FUCK YOURSELF IN THE ASS RIGHT NOW IF YOU LIKED THIS PIECE OF SHIT MOVIE!!!!1111!!@@@!212121!"

shouldn't be taken seriously. Those are just the Halo guys venting that they didn't get a movie first.

Double Post:
This should calm your fears. I always appreciated Moriarty's reviews in Aint It Cool, and this one quells any fears I have left.

http://aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=23088

He has no knowledge of the game series, but he applauds it for replicating the style of Argento's films. I'm sold.

I've just know confirmed I'll be attending the 3:15pm showing.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Yeah, what Sprouticus said is kinda true. Gans made the movie like a game; he didn't explain that the Town is alive, it has a past. If Alessa story was the 'fire' then the Town itself was the 'fuel'. Like Pyramid Head for exemple wasn't part of THIS specific story, they are part of the Town's history.

Spoiler:

Somebody asked about the ending.

'Dark Alessa' took over Sharon, which was her own self and decided to continue on with Rose since Dahlia hadn't tried to stop the 'Cult' thirty years ago. 'Mother is God in the eyes of a child.' So Alessa and Sharon never left Silent Hill so to speak. They are in their own private Heaven now.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Quote:

Sounds like this movie actually sucks, and I am disappointed. I think I will see it.

Well, I'm reading over some of these fan reviews, and I read the full Ebert review. There aren't many that don't reference the game or the fact that the film sprung from a game. Hardly anyone is looking at this as a stand alone film, which it is. Of course it was adapted, but that should not be a factor of critique. None of these reviews, positive or negative, are exactly reliable.

What I'm gathering from all the early reviews is that the look is fantastic, the dialogue boarders on being bad, and the plot forces you to work things out on your own. Not that you have to have had played the game to figure things out, I'm sure it's very possible from the content of the movie. The tone most people have who are voicing that complaint sound as if they don't care enough to try, ambiguous narrative is simply not there thing.

Anyways, I had figured as much from the trailers, no new info here. I already had a good idea what I'm walking into, what I want to see is a review on how the movie feels, how successfully atmosphere is created.

How ya doing, buddy?

So... you people are only going to acknowledge the reviews that agree with what you want the movie to be? Don't you people understand what the word BIAS is? I want the movie to be good - but a bad movie is a bad movie. I'll let you know what it is when I see it tonight.

For the people that bash Roger Ebert because he's saying that the movie the general public has yet to see and is too narrowminded to even fathom that the movie could be awful is that Ebert has long been a supporter of such strange fare as Mulholland Drive and City Of Lost Children.

How ya doing, buddy?

Ebert has a way of taking either it floated my boat or it didn't and turning it into an essay. The man is well spoken but rarely objective from what I've read. I don't disrespect the guy but I never write off a film if he doesn't recommend it.

No, there are two critic reviews out (brought to our attention in this thread, anyway), and a bunch of pounded out paragraphs from a bunch of pre screening audience members. And like I said, the ones that focus on the factor that this is a video game adaptation, I can't take those seriously. Glowing review or panning one, give me your thoughts on it as a movie and leave the game side alone.

The Ain't It Cool review posted actually is more for what I'm looking for. Which is surprising given that I've seen more than a couple really bias opinions out of that site in the past.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Some of Ebert's negative reviews in general seem to be mastubatory. The whole "didn't get it" thing is a nice cop-out for being too lazy to try to figure it out an partially because they've already dismissed the movie.

I still haven't seen it, so I can't say that for sure, but I would imagine some convoluted films in the past got better reviews, perhaps just because they were convoluted.

Donnie Darko, anyone.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by a_zuki

Ebert has a way of taking either it floated my boat or it didn't and turning it into an essay. The man is well spoken but rarely objective from what I've read. I don't disrespect the guy but I never write off a film if he doesn't recommend it.

Which is the correct way to look at things. People that say Ebert "just doesn't get it" are people who don't understand film in the slightest.

Originally Posted by a_gerontophile

The whole "didn't get it" thing is a nice cop-out for being too lazy to try to figure it out an partially because they've already dismissed the movie.

Originally Posted by Roger Ebert

This is a movie to surrender yourself to. If you require logic, see something else. "Mulholland Drive" works directly on the emotions, like music. Individual scenes play well by themselves, as they do in dreams, but they don't connect in a way that makes sense--again, like dreams.

Originally Posted by Roger Ebert

Of modern filmmakers, Werner Herzog is the most visionary and the most obsessed with great themes. Little wonder that he has directed many operas. He does not want to tell a plotted story or record amusing dialog; he wants to lift us up into realms of wonder. Only a handful of modern films share the audacity of his vision; I think of “2001: A Space Odyssey'' and “Apocalypse Now.'' Among active directors, the one who seems as messianic is Oliver Stone. There is a kind of saintly madness in the way they talk about their work; they cannot be bothered with conventional success, because they reach for transcendence.

Originally Posted by Roger Ebert

In the version according to Jodorowsky, the West is peopled largely with corpses of men and animals and the survivors are gross, obscene caricatures who follow phony gospel-mongers and practice slavery. When El Topo moves out of this world, he goes first to do battle with the Four Masters of the Desert (who have black-magic connotations probably inspired by the work of Aleister Crawley), and later to help free a colony of deformed and incestuously mutated cripples.

(sic)

"El Topo" is a movie it's very hard to be sure about after a single viewing. It weaves a web about you, and you're left with two impulses. One is to accept it on its own terms, as a complex fantasy that uses violence as the most convenient cinematic shorthand for human power relationships. The other is to reject it as the work of a cynic, who is simply supplying more jolts and shocks per minute than most filmmakers. The first impulse seems sounder to me, because if Jodorowsky were simply in the blood-and-gut sweepstakes he could have make a much simpler, less ambitious movie that would have had the violence of "El Topo" but not its uncanny resonance.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Wow, win.

Actually, I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me here.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Just saw it. Wow! I freakin' loved it! But I'm also a SH fan. I really don't think this movie is for poeple that have never played the games before. Nobody should go into this expecting a scary movie. It's more of a modern macabre movie which features horror elements. It's easily the best videogame movie ever made, but that's not saying much if you don't play games.


To those that have seen it:

Spoiler:

I found this movie much easier to understand than SH1. People shouldn't be confused, is it really that hard to understand that they never leave their own world at the end?

Like everyone else, I feel that there should have been more Pyramid Head. But I don't feel that he was just there as a nod to the fans. The way I interperet it is that PH castes judgement and punishes the guilty. Notice when he appears for the first time in the film, he appears right after Rose breaks down and starts crying, almost giving up. PH appears in order to punish her for her sin of failure, for being too weak to find Sharon. Since Sharon is the center of Rose's world, her subconscious desires only death if Rose cannot have Sharon back. At that point in the film, Rose was having serious doubt about ever finding Sharon, thus PH was summoned. It can also be seen as Alessa trying to punish Rose for failure or for not loving Sharon enough to continue on.

The second time PH appears he is trying to punish the cult, however their faith "saves" them. Their combined subconcious belief in the church's sanctuary proves just powerful enough to counter Alessa's power, thus another method of revenge must be found. Alessa uses Rose to get the darkness into the church so that she may appear and exact her revenge. Since Alessa is able to appear herself, there is no real need for PH at the end, although that would have been a very appropriate time for him to appear.

A few other points:
-I disliked the whole "Congradulation! Here's the truth!" scene, but it did help clarify some things. Did anyone else pick up on that Janitor thing? Nuts.

-I enjoyed the whole reversal of the cult and Dhalia. The "righteous" end up getting punished themselves by the demons they caused. Wonderful.

-The movie wasn't very scary, but I'm not complaining. It was fun, and that's all that really matters. Though putting Rose in the handcuffs for the an early 1/5 of the movie helped create a little more tension. I was all like "god damn, will you get out of those handcuffs already!". The only thing that made me mad is the fact that Rose never takes any maps, she always just looks at them. "Left, right, left, left" What is this, a videogame code?

-Gucci's a jerk.

-Sean Bean's character seemed almost unessecary. His whole subplot was there simply to break up the movie. But I did feel a little sad for him at the end, too bad he can't join Rose and Sharon in their "heaven".

-Those credits rocked! Coolest credits ever. The effect made it seem very videogame-like, almost like a sneak peek at what a PS3 SH will be...


I hope the DVD has a shit ton of extras, like maybe an alternate "Cybil lives" ending.

How ya doing, buddy?

I wouldn't say it's the correct way, it's the natural way which is why I'm not slighting him. In his review of this film, he doesn't state, "Here's what the movie is trying to do, here's how successful it is at it," he instead says, "I shrugged my shoulders at people after the movie because the movie didn't make me care enough to treat it thoughtfully."

Most critiques are going to be subjective, the only way to use them is to find an author who seems to have similar sensibilities and to see if they describe what you're looking for out of a film.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I saw it.

Pretty good, maybe an 8/10.

The only problem was that it fell out of the "silent hill" style at the end, it kinda lost its way. Too much standard human gore, the atmosphere was gone, it just seemed like an emo kid's sketchbook (or Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez).

However, the first 2/3rds felt SO MUCH like the games, it was incredible. Gans matched the camera movements of SH1 (game) perfectly. Like how you run down the alleys in the beginning of the game and the camera follows you from on top of a building.

The characters followed clues just like you would in the game.

In essence, I don't consider it a good "movie," but as a recreation of the game, the first 2/3 were spot-on fantastic.

HERE'S SOMETHING THAT'S KINDA MEAN:

In the credits at the end, they credit ONLY Jeff Danna for the "music," while the entire soundtrack was essentially Akira Yamaoka's work. The only credit for Yamaoka was as "Executive Producer" and they list some of his individual songs at the very, very, very end of the credits.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by a_jazzman

I saw it.

Pretty good, maybe an 8/10.

The only problem was that it fell out of the "silent hill" style at the end, it kinda lost its way. Too much standard human gore, the atmosphere was gone, it just seemed like an emo kid's sketchbook (or Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez).

However, the first 2/3rds felt SO MUCH like the games, it was incredible. Gans matched the camera movements of SH1 (game) perfectly. Like how you run down the alleys in the beginning of the game and the camera follows you from on top of a building.

The characters followed clues just like you would in the game.

In essence, I don't consider it a good "movie," but as a recreation of the game, the first 2/3 were spot-on fantastic.

HERE'S SOMETHING THAT'S KINDA MEAN:

In the credits at the end, they credit ONLY Jeff Danna for the "music," while the entire soundtrack was essentially Akira Yamaoka's work. The only credit for Yamaoka was as "Executive Producer" and they list some of his individual songs at the very, very, very end of the credits.

He gets credit for all the pieces at the end. Stay through the whole credits.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by a_nutsack

Is it really hard to believe that the movie just sucks.

Is that a question? No, it's not is it? You = failed.

Jam it back in, in the dark.