|
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
In Larry Kasdan's Dreamcatcher Morgan Freeman plays R. Lee Ermey. Freeman's eyebrows appear in a smaller -- but still pivotal role. Freeman and Tommy Sizemore play men who are in the secret-alien-hunting wing of the military. I saw Dreamcatcher on Thursday March 27, 2003 at the Coronet on Geary in San Francisco at 3:30pm ($7). It was nice out, sunny and not too cool. I got a medium popcorn with butter (I usually don't get butter on it) and a medium Coke ($8).
Rain Man is a very special type of Rain Man though, because he has powers where he can read peoples' minds and some other stuff. He also has the power to give these powers to his friends. Among other things, the boys use their power to rescue another "retarded" kid, who fell down an open manhole cover in the middle of a forest. At the very beginning of the film, we see the adults using their powers: Tommy Jane is a therapist who in an attempt to circumvent the usual talk it out therapy, just tells his obese patient why he is eating himself to death, the patient, freaks breaks the couch and runs out the door. Jane pulls out a gun and is about to commit suicide when Jonesy, a college professor, calls up Jane and proposes a camping trip for the weekend. Jane's in. Now Jonesy, calls in a student and tells him that he could be kicked out for cheating on the test, and Jonesy, nice guy that he is, rips up the test and says, you were sick that day, you missed the test, write me a 3000 word essay on Nordic biographers who claim to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary -- or something. Jason Lee calls up Jonesy and says, hey dude, I got a weird feeling -- be careful. And Jonesy is like "of what?" and Lee says, cryptically, "I wish I knew... I wish I knew..." Jonesy goes and gets hit by a car and nearly dies. Meanwhile, Tim Olyphant uses his powers to help a woman find her lost keys, and he wins a date with her. Cut to six months later, our boys arrive all decked out in Abercrombie & Fitch cold weather gear, and some bags filled with beer and probably cans of chili. They reminisce about Rain Man some more and the next day Jane and Olyphant go to the General Store for beer and dogs. Lee and Jonesy are staked out in the woods hunting for dinner. Jonesy spots a deer through his telescopic lens and as he is about to shoot, he realizes the deer isn't a deer, but a middle aged fat man wearing a bright orange hat and vest. Here is where some spoilers start popping up. Jonesy helps the injured man to their cabin. Turns out the man ate some berries in the dark, he also begins to belch and fart a lot. The man has a hugely swollen chest. Lee shows up. Fart jokes abound. Jonesy and Lee help the man into bed.
Meanwhile, Jane and Olyphant are driving back to the cabin, when something in the road causes Jane to veer, spin out and flip their jeep into the woods. Olyphant has hurt his leg. Jane's hair is slightly mussed. Back at the cabin, Jonesy and Lee find bloody footprints leading from the room where the old man was to the bathroom. The man is making noises and Jonesy and Lee bust in. The man is dead. Blood and magic alien red powder are everywhere. The man is sitting on the toilet. Lee taps him and he falls off, he's dead and there's a huge, bloody red hole where the man's anus used to be. An evil space eel with approximately 140 sharp teeth has, literally, "ripped him a new one." The eel is in the toilet and Lee slams the lid shut and sits on it. The eel is pretty strong and keeps trying to bang out of it, Lee has to work to keep the lid down. Jonesy goes to the garage to get some duct tape. Lee has dropped his toothpicks on the ground and has to reach really far away to pick one up. Lee is always chewing on toothpicks, so of course, he risks letting the monster out of the toilet to pick up a toothpick. Lee is attacked, Jonesy returns all stoked because he's got the duct tape, then he sees Lee and the giant eel fighting. Lee is killed. Jonesy watches in disbelief. The eel slithers out of the bathroom and up the eel's host which is slightly bigger than the biggest man alive. The host looks like a slimy, evil E.T. or Gremlin. He explodes and turns into red dust fungus which Jonesy inhales. Now the evil space alien is inside -- and controlling -- Jonesy. Also, for no apparent reason whatsoever, Jonesy the space alien speaks in a British accent. Meanwhile, the thing that caused Jane and Olyphant to crash turns out to be a woman with the same condition as the old man. Olyphant stays with the woman by a campfire and Jane begins a nine mile walk to the cabin. Soon enough another space alien eats its way out of the woman's anus and attacks Olyphant's penis while he is urinating. There is a struggle and Olyphant realizes that fire kills or deters the aliens. Jonesy is snowmobiling his way to Boston. He stops and asks Olyphant which way is out. Through their telepathic powers the real Jonesy, who is still hiding in a remote part of his brain from the alien -- no, seriously -- communicates to Olyphant that Jonesy isn't Jonesy. Jonesy the space alien begins to destroy Olyphant because Olyphant won't tell him which way is out. The real Jonesy telepathically tells Olyphant to tell him what he wants to know or else the British Jonesy will kill him. Olyphant is spared. They are riding together on the snowmobile. Oh by the way, one of Olyphant's powers is that he knows where something is, he can follow a special path to where he wants to go. Anyway the evil Jonesy and Olyphant are not getting along and Olyphant says "bite my ball bag" or something, so Jonesy stops and says "'allo, 'allo, chip, chip I'll bite ye olde ball bag, and the rest of you too!" Jonesy turns into the super monster for a moment and eats Olyphant.
Meanwhile, Jane arrives at the cabin, sees the destruction, gets telepathic info from the real Jonesy, who is locked in a dusty file room of his own brain, torches the place, grabs some skis and takes off to stop the evil British Jonesy, the space alien. Meanwhile, at the secret military base camp, the army has rounded up and quarantined all those infected by the red alien powder. Freeman and his eyebrows are retiring, but Freeman has turned a bit fatalistic and insane, from leading the anti-alien branch of the army for 25 years. Tom Sizemore is prepped to take over. Some private made a blunder and Freeman shoots his finger off. Freeman gives his gun to Sizemore -- Sizemore is touched because it's the gun that John Wayne had given to Freeman. Jane is captured by the army and brought to quarantine, he reads Freeman's and Sizemore's' minds and proves to Sizemore that Freeman (who now wants to murder all those in quarantine even though it is likely that many will survive) is insane. He also tells Sizemore the names of his daughter and wife and all that other stuff to prove to Sizemore that he can read minds, and that Jonesy -- the real Jonesy, the one locked in the filing room) is telling him what's going on. Meanwhile, the real Jonesy has taken some important boxes of files in his brain and moved them into another room of his brain and locked himself in, so the evil British alien Jonesy can't get in there to find out that the real Jonesy is communicating to Jane what is going on. By now Jonesy is off the snowmobile. He's killed a trucker and turned the trucker's dog, Ike, into an incubator for his evil space spawn. After the truck runs out of gas, Jonesy flags down a cop, kills him, puts Ike in the back seat and gets back on the road to Boston. Sizemore and Jane bust out of the secret army camp to stop Jonesy, Freeman is pissed, gets in a helicopter and takes off after them. How does he know where they are? Freeman has put a homing device in John Wayne's gun! Hot! Jane learns that Jonesy U.K. and Ike are headed for Boston's water reservoir. The evil plan is to put alien babies (now incubating inside Ike) into the water. Holy shit! Jane tells Sizemore they have to stop on the way and pick up... the Rain Man. Rain Man (an unrecognizable Donnie Wahlberg) lives with his mom, and is dying of cancer. Turns out Rain Man knew all of this was going to happen. He caused Jonesy to be hit by the car in order to postpone their trip so that they could be there to save the world when the British space aliens attempted to destroy the earth. He gave them all their powers when they were kids so that they'd be ready to save the world now. At the reservoir, Jonesy can't get in the office because the door is locked. So he breaks the thin glass which is most of the door. They are up above the reservoir, no one is around, they're in the woods. They have a lock on the door to the office which has access to the reservoir. But why bother when the whole top half of the door is one-sixteenth of an inch thick glass? Anyway, Sizemore, Jane and Rain Man arrive -- as does Freeman in the helicopter. Freeman machine guns down Sizemore, but not before Sizemore gets off enough rounds to crash and kill Freeman. Jane and Rain Man are hiding in the snow -- I think they were making a fort. Rain Man is in his pajamas and has a Scooby-Doo lunch box with his meds in it. Jane heads toward the office. Evil Jonesy has the manhole cover open (all major metropolitan reservoirs are accessed by a manhole cover in an office that is as easy to break into as an abandoned car in a junk yard). Ike is dead, his anus an open wound, an evil space eel slithers around and lays eggs. Jane enters shoots and kills the eel. He tells Jonesy he thinks he's going to have to kill him because he's not sure he's Jonesy. The evil giant E.T. alien comes out of Jonesy and is about to kill Jane (the real Jonesy is lying by the manhole cover injured), who has run out of bullets! Holy shit!
Meanwhile, a tiny, just hatched sperm eel is headed towards the manhole cover. Rain Man enters -- with his Scooby-Doo lunchbox! He is going to sacrifice his life to save the world (which he knew he would one day be able to do). He confronts Giant British E.T. and E.T. cuts into Rain Man with giant scissor claws. Rain Man is down -- but not out. Rain Man turns into a slightly different giant alien and kills E.T.U.K.! Jane isn't sure that Jonesy is really Jonesy -- until Jonesy stomps on the sperm eel just as it is about to squiggle down the open manhole! Jonesy and Jane smile at each other and express feelings of relief. Fade to black. Crank rock music. Roll credits. This film is ridiculous, of course, but it's somewhat entertaining on a schlocky/campy horror level. It has a little bit of Signs in it -- I hated Signs, but Signs took itself way too seriously -- this film almost satirizes Signs. I think the makers weren't sure if they wanted to rip-off Signs or make fun of it. Cleverly, they were able to do both. The pinnacle of this type of film is the much-maligned and misunderstood Lake Placid. Lake Placid is shorter, sillier and more over the top. It's perfect modern schlock-camp chiller-diller. Also, before this film we were shown a short computer animated film called Animatrix. Made by the Wachowski Bros, Larry and Andy, of Matrix fame, this short deals with the same kind of themes. I didn't realize, for sure, until this was over that it wasn't the opening of Dreamcatcher. You know, like maybe Dreamcatcher was a like a dream that was based on a computer game. I don't know if Animatrix plays before Dreamcatcher everywhere, so check your local listings if you care. Cast Official Site: dreamcatchermovie.com At imdb.com Find showtimes near you and see trailers. Buy the Stephen King book -- no do it. Buy the James Newton Howard score. Buy the poster. Buy the Secret Garden album, Dreamcatcher (this is completely unrelated to the film). Check out Kenny Rogers' Dreamcatcher Entertainment (apparently Kenny has named his company "Dreamcatcher").
|
