So, this week was called “For The Love Of God, Why Are We Doing This?! Why messing with DNA is a bad idea”. Five films dedicated to demonstrating how genetic engineering was going to be a big mistake, and just how big a mistake it would be. We went out on Friday night, so the first movie had to wait until Saturday. We didn’t even get to do Pizza Night until Saturday, too.
We started off watching Gattaca. It seemed interesting enough, some time in the future where people could genetically engineer out any faults from their unborn children so they can be the best. Then a naturally-born guy takes over the identity of one of them so he can try and realise his dreams. But in reality the main character seems pretty boring and his voice is so monotonous. The fact that almost all of the start of the film is narrated by said monotonous voice meant that we shut it off after about 20 minutes.
After that little bit of a false start we moved on to Black Sheep (my choice). A New Zealander goes back to his old family sheep farm, that he hasn’t been to in a long time, to sell off his share of ownership to his sheep-breeding brother. While there he finds out that his brother is trying to breed a super sheep and in doing so has infected the sheep in such a way that they get a hunger for human flesh.
I watched this a few years ago when it first came out on dvd and loved it. It’s such wonderful schlocky horror movie that you can’t help but laugh at, even with the gruesome parts. The actors were pretty good too, and you could tell that everyone was having a good time. It does take a little while to get going, though. At one point Ben whinged that he was bored and I told him to be patient, and he ended up cracking up over some of the scenes. Maybe if we’d been more patient with Gattaca we’d have finished watching it, but we’ve gotten a bit impatient with movies since we’ve been watching them regularly; we try to give them a fair go (Gattaca was probably the shortest we’ve watched before changing it over), but if they don’t grab us then we move on. Plenty more films to watch. I’m glad Ben seemed to enjoy Black Sheep, because sometimes I am not quite sure what he likes, so I worry about making a wrong decision and making him sit through something he doesn’t care about. Sometimes I do it anyway because I love to watch terrible things, but it is good to get things right on occasion.
On Sunday I watched Jurassic Park, or at least most of it. I’m sure most of you know the plot. Some rich guy builds an amusement park after somehow managing to get the DNA of various dinosaurs and cloning them. Somehow. He then invites some Dinosaur Sciencey People (that’s definitely the technical term) and a Chaos Theory Mathematical Dude to check it out before it opens, but something goes wrong and the dinosaurs are able to roam about and kill people.
I tried to watch this when I was younger and couldn’t deal with it, so I was a bit reserved when it came to watching it now. But at the same time I figured there was no harm in it really, because if I didn’t like it I could always turn it off. It was ok. I had it playing on the computer while I did other stuff, and it didn’t really grab my attention that much so I wouldn’t call it a great movie. But then again, I also didn’t finish it. I had full intention of watching it all, but it was getting late and I should have gone to bed early anyway, so I had to shut it off about half an hour before the end. Maybe the end makes it all worthwhile, who knows? I guess I should probably watch that bit so I can see that they all make it out alive. By the way, in writing this, I came up with a few fairly obvious plot holes that Ben explained away with “…magic?” I know that recreating Dinosaurs to put into an amusement park is not the most realistic of situations, but it still irritates me when plot holes are that obvious. I guess I’ll probably finish watching it eventually, but I doubt I’ll watch the sequels.
The other films suggested this week were Splice and The Fly. I have a deep instinctive fear of The Fly, so I refused point blank to watch it. Instead we watched Robocop because I downloaded it for way back in week four. It was, uh… interesting to say the least. Next week is more French cinema, so get your berets and cigarettes ready.