Awesome Movie

As Good As It Gets

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The Faculty (1998): Dir: Robert Rodriguez / Cast: Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Josh Hartnett, Laura Harris, Clea DuVall: Suppose to represent false identities where aliens poise as teachers for no real reason other than these films love picking on teenagers. It feels like an attack on teachers and authority with the students retaliating at these aliens poised as teachers. Why don't the aliens just stick to the old fashion stealing of the lunch money? These aliens constantly drink water as their source of life. Somebody needs to get them drunk. That ought to screw with their world domination plan. Elijah Wood plays a wiz kid who senses that something is wrong. Laura Harris plays a sunny girl who tries desperately to fit in. Josh Hartnett sells illegal items. Jordana Brewster rounds out the cast discovering a body in an office closet. Lame plot followed by routine hack fest where teenagers become cafeteria food to aliens. It is as juvenile as a horror film can get and contains as much stupidity as the screenwriter can pack in. Directed by Robert Rodriguez who applies the same graphic action that ran rampant throughout his From Dusk Till Dawn, with fine visual effects but acting is bad. For a superior recommendation I recommend the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was much more fun and inventive. Pointless blood and guts should be avoided by everyone, including aliens. Score: 3 / 10

This is a decent high school horror with a mix of up and coming actors and established stars. From the writer of Scream and the director of From Dusk Til Dawn, while not quite the classic this film had a lot to recommend it and is worth a watch.Aliens or parasites or alien parasites, it doesn't really matter are trying to take over the world one school at a time. In Herrington High School Josh Harnett (sporting a left over Jim Carey haircut from Dumb and Dumber) leads a plucky band of misfits (featuring hobbits, girl-racers and that guy from that thing) on a quest to rid their school of water obsessed body snatchers.Featured on Episode 64 of The Emerald Reprobates Podcast.

Do you remember the jazz age? We had such high ideals then. We were going to push through things with music, push through social ills push through corrupt prohibition laws, with music we were going to push through the very surface of reality to new truth. How far have we fallen? The days of swing and hop-head trumpet solos are long long gone. It's not The Faculty's fault, not at all, this chump change sh*t ball movie is merely a symptom of our great decline. If you are a fan of this movie, my review is not your fault, don't take it personally, you don't need to defend this movie nor your favoring of this movie. A body just get's tired is all, see, after a while, just can't go on anymore.

One of the problems of coming up with a story is coming up with an original story . In fact there's no such thing as an original story since long before my lifetime so the problem is trying to bring an unoriginal story to the table and developing in an entirely new way . What about a new spin on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS ? How about setting it in an American high school and doing everything in a post modernist manner where the characters refer to all these alien infiltration movies ? If that isn't bad enough get Robert Rodriguez to direct it and you'll have a recipe for disaster I'm happy to report that years after THE FACULTY was produced it's far from a disaster but it suffers from two slight problems that it can't overcome . First of all the story is too overly familiar to be entirely successful . The 1978 remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS really surpassed the original and the terrifying premise was developed to its full potential and isn't a film you'll forget in a hurray . Compared to that masterpiece anything else is going to be lacking in comparison . Secondly there was a whole slew of movies in the 1990s either written by or inspired by screenwriter Kevin Williamson like SCREAM where smart ass teenagers find themselves in the same situation as other cinematic teenagers have been and feel the need to reference this . This fad died out as quickly as it appeared which means there's a very dated quality in watching these type of films almost twenty years later Not to be totally negative it is one of Rodriguez better films and he resists the temptation to bring stupid humour and unneeded gore to the movie . In fact the lack of gore makes it a strangely likable film in an era where horror films revolve around torture porn . The likability extends to the characters where even the rebellious drug dealing bad kid is a good kid at heart and seizes the opportunity to save the day . Compare this to the anti-heroes of ATTACK THE BLOCK who are total and absolute scum throughout the entire narrative and you notice the world of difference . . One thing Rodriguez could have done a bit better is bring a sense of crushing fear that seems to be missing here . That said as a sci-fi horror movie there's been a lot worse before or since this one