Countdown to Hallows' Eve #3: Exorcise Your Rights

Welcome back, Kotter! And other Hallowed Readers and Ticketholders! It's time once again for time to move closer to All Hallow's Eve. Wait. It's time for time? I don't have time for all of this philosophical redundancy! I need to get some more cobwebs cleared off of my interwebs so I can keep this Countdown event going!

Speaking of webs, here's a little piece of inter-cobwebbery I spun back on June 26, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #48: Exorcise your Rights): Anyone remember The Exorcist? With Linda Blair's spinning head, the horrible make-up, and that infamous green vomit, it's pretty unforgettable. But it seems that Hollywood's way of remembering something as legendary as The Exorcist is to do a bunch of remakes, which try in vain to keep the poor quality and vomit to a minimum while still turning heads (and stomachs).

But what eventually followed was The Exorcism of Emily Rose; a re-imagining of The Exorcist (and this time Hollywood actually means it to be a re-imagining, rather than just using the word to avoid saying "remake" for the thousandth time). Rather than having an entire film that focuses on the usual plot mechanics of possession and exorcism, The Exorcism of Emily Rose takes place after a possessed girl dies, supposedly at the hands of the hack Exorcist trying to save her soul.
Yes, there are hints of said plot mechanics peppered here and there as a flashback narrative, but The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a courtroom drama at heart.
Enter two powerful British actors: Tom Wilkinson (as the Exorcist on trial for Emily Rose's murder), and Laura Linney (as the quick-witted defense attorney who takes his case as the means to a career boost, pretending to care and going through the litigatory motions that her character goes through so well). As usually happens in movies of this type, those who first pretend to care end up caring the most, and an interesting trial ensues that pits common belief against the potential reality of faith. Tragic, heartwarming, scary, well-written, well-acted, and, most importantly (I'll say it again), interesting.
A+

If the Lyric Fits #1:
"It makes my eyes bleed every time I turn around.
How will they all feel when I bring them to the ground?
And I said....
I walk for miles inside this pit of danger.
I've swallowed down a thousand years of anger.
The weight of the world is falling on my shoulders.
A place where no one follows me;
I walk alone." -Saliva, 'I Walk Alone'

I also promised you an extra, double-dose of multiple personality disorder after my retro-view of High Tension last issue, and here it is, straight FROM July 15, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #42: The Notorious MPD): Today, I look at movies made obvious and predictable by their blatant abuse of that not-so-secret Secret Window plot twist: trauma-induced multiple personality disorder.

In The Machinist, Christian Bale is a factory worker who hasn't slept in at least a year and is reduced to an obscenely anorexic 107 pounds by the elasticity of 8mm film. How Bale's character is still alive under these circumstances can only be explained by the old "it's a movie" excuse, but how he is imagining a co-worker (played by TV extra John Sharian, who looks like an imposing mix of Michael Chiklis and Brian Dennehy) whom he blames for the misfortune of all around him is much easier to believe.
After the paranoia, workplace injury, and a strange game of hangman, he realizes that (surprise?!) he is the imagined co-worker, driver of an imagined car that was wrecked in a long-ago accident, created to cope with the guilt of killing a woman (his imagined waitress at the airport coffee lounge) and her son in a hit and run (the aforementioned accident). The build-up and requisite faux jerkaround are nice and watchable, but the ending is almost non-existently flat and makes no sense. A good cut-and-paste genre to get the movie industry to its next paycheck, but unlike naked women, once you've seen one, you don't really want to see the rest of them.
D+

In Hide and Seek, Robert De Niro stars as a father who takes his traumatized daughter (Dakota Fanning) to his country house for a fresh start after her mother's death. Fanning's character comes home one day with an imaginary friend named Charlie, who begins writing accusatory messages to De Niro on the bathroom wall and killing all of the neighbors. The jerkaround is made more bearable this time by the appeal of Fanning and De Niro as the too-picture-perfect father and daughter. But De Niro comes off as a tantrum-throwing child with a gun while trying to play the maniacal, possessive, homicidal Charlie. This turn of events isn't helped any by the detail that De Niro's character developed the Charlie personality in response to his wife's cheating. And much worse, there are five different versions of the movie. I wouldn't want to watch this crap five times, even if I had four other personalities to watch it for me.
F

If the Lyric Fits #2:
"Shapes of every size
move behind my eyes.
Doors inside my head
bolted from within.
Every drop of flame
lights a candle in
memory of the one
who lived inside my skin"
-Audioslave, "Shadow on the Sun"

Stay hallowed and keep counting the days because next time, it's going down.

SW@,
the Ticketmaster,
DJ Timedrop,
Shawwwwwwwn Spensah,
Jonah,
and any of my other personalities I neglected to mention,
out.