This week we soldier on without Damion as Douglas and I talk about Asburgers and how it conquers love or something like that as we watch Max Mayer’s Adam.

Show Notes

What We Watched
[00:01:23] Andrew:Lesbian Vampire Killers, Big Fan, Primal Fear, A Perfect Getaway, Throne of Blood, Madadayo
[00:10:27] Douglas:Harvey, Eagle vs. Shark, The Last House on the Left, Limits of Control, Primer, Across the Universe, Fired Up!

News
Avatar Sequels (maybe Trilogy) will be happening for sure [00:18:22]
Warner Bros. get the rights to remake Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance [00:21:48]
Sam Raimi leaves Spiderman, Spidey to be made gritty and rebooted for 2012 [00:23:19]
Conan leaves NBC after being shifted for Leno [00:30:55]
Sherlock Holmes 2 definitely shooting this summer/ RDJ will not be a Space Cowboy [00:35:27]
Sarsgaard now in Green Lantern, will be villain [00:38:54]

Trailers
The A Team [00:40:18]
The Ghost Writer [00:43:38]
Extra Chat: Girl on the Train and Chloe [00:47:17]

Review: Adam (2009) [00:50:53]

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So here is Raimi’s return to the horror genre of filmmaking. Mrs. Ganush [Lorna Raver] comes to Christine Brown [Alison Lohman], a loan officer at the bank, for a third extension on her mortgage and Christine declines her request which means that Mrs. Ganush will lose her home. After a huge scene in the bank which puts Mrs. Ganush in a position of shame everything seems to have ended and both women will deal with their own lives. However, later that evening Mrs. Ganush attacks Christine in the car park and curses Christine with a powerful curse that will end in her being dragged to hell by a demon.

The film follows Christine throughout the period of the next three days as she deals with this curse and tries her hardest to reverse the curse and make the demon not take her away. All of this sounds like a really generic horror story, but in the hands of Sam Raimi makes it so much better. Watching the trailer I was interested but at the same time could see where the movie seemed like the everyday horror movie that would make me fall asleep ten minutes in and I would regret going to when it was over. However, Raimi delivered something that made me actually scared and laughing hilariously throughout the movie. I loved it. For any fan of The Evil Dead franchise this movie is a must watch. There are so many scenes which are so over the top hilarious and at the same time downright freaky if you were to take it all seriously. For instance the scene where Mrs. Ganush attacks Christine in the parking lot starts out being completely freaky with a the old lady scaring you but as the scene progresses Raimi weaves in so many well placed physical gags that you can’t help but find it all disgusting and hilarious all at the same time.

My favourite scene in the entire film has to be the Séance scene where Christine tries to bring the demon forth so as to appease it and stop it from coming for her soul on the third day. I don’t want to spoil anything but as I said before if you’ve seen Evil Dead, more specifically Evil Dead 2, this scene plays so much like a lot of scenes in that movie.

The only weak point I found in the movie was the acting of Alison Lohman and Justin Long. Justin Long has become a favourite of mine for his comedic acting, but here in this movie where he’s asked to be taken as a serious boyfriend character nearly every piece of dialogue that comes from him is just so poorly delivered and unbelievable. Alison Lohman like Justin Long gives a lacking performance I believe, except when she’s being thrown around her room by the demon. I feel like I may have preferred Raimi’s first choice for the role, Ellen Page, who turned down the role of Christine Brown when it was offered to her. Now please don’t understand me, I’m not saying that this movie needed an “honest to blog” character, but I honestly believe that Ellen Page is a good actress and would have been able to add to the film how Alison Lohman was unable to.

Raimi’s direction in the movie was perfect. I loved that whenever we had a huge action scene the camera angles would get all skewed and have a feel where we were unsure of what was about to happen. I loved the amplification of all the background noises in the initial points of the curse where we would hear the pans clanging in the kitchen loud enough to drown out an airplane engine and things like that.

The best part of this movie has to be the writing though. The screenplay written by Sam and Ivan Raimi was almost flawless. The dialogue had a few problems, which were amplified by the poor acting, but the progression of the plot throughout the movie kept you engaged perfectly thorough the runtime of the film. And I think that Raimi made the perfect decision of ending the film the way he did, definitely something you don’t see often enough. Something about seeing that and then seeing that ending followed by the credits just made me not want to leave me seat. I had to sit down for a minute just feeling the awesome of the movie that I just experienced.

In the end I think there is something for everyone over the ages of 13. This movie is worth seeing twice, so head out to the theatre and give it a shot.

IMDB says 8.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes say 93%

I say 9.0/10