The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Laughter

I recently watched one of the funniest comedies I have ever seen. It's called Silent Hill. Full of slapstick, witty banter, and funny monsters, this movie will engage, enlighten, and entertain even the most stoic of persons.

Rose Saliva has a problem. Her daughter, Sharon has taken to sleepwalking to a cliff every night. Instead of simply locking her doors, or setting up some kind of alarm system, she decides the best course of action would be to take Share to the sleepy little town that's been giving her nightmares: Silent Hill. Just before the turn off for Silent Hill, Rose decides to stop off at a dank Rest Station to ask for directions. A hot lesbian cop tries hitting on Rose and although you can see her momentarily mull the offer, she decides to head for Silent Hill at a break neck speed, with Copper hot on her tail. This becomes a theme throughout the picture.

Before arriving in town, Rose sees a ghostly figure in the road way. Since she's going nearly 90 MPH, she decides to slam on the brakes and jerk the steering wheel causing the Jeep to skid out of control and into a barrier, knocking herself unconsciouss. She wakes to a beautiful ashy, smokey morning and finds Share is missing. She wanders into town pushing old bag ladies around in search of her daughter.

Rose slowly learns that Silent Hill is not a normal town. Something she apparently already learned as she surfed the net before she left, but somehow forgot in transit. The town alternates between daylight and darkness, the darkness brought on by wailing air raid sirens and strange, lonely creatures looking for love in all the wrong places. Rose is so closed minded she screams in the poor creatures faces and runs away. She encounters small babies that she kicks away, a janitor with broken legs tied up to his head, a man with a pyramid for a head that's looking to take a wife, and so on.

With Copper's help they track Share to an old church where they meet the nice lady dictator who enjoys burning people alive. This is because her minions so enjoy it. When the people demand it, you must deliver. That's what I always say. Anyway, as Rose goes to meet a tiny demon in hopes of exchanging her soul for her daughter, Dictator decides Copper would make a nice lunch and burns her at the stake. This makes the dirty townspeople whoop it up. It's been such a long time since they had a little roast pig.

Oh yeah, in a subplot that is highly memorable, Rose's husband, Mr. Rose, is searching for his wife--never mind his daughter--in Silent Hill. Only, this Silent Hill is very different: no smokey, ashy air, no dirty townspeople. Just Rose's Jeep and a shady cop who knows more than he's willing to share. Probably because he doesn't really know, he just thinks he does.

Anyway, Rose encounters some Nurses who want to cut her then suture her up again and a tiny, childish demon who wants the Dictator to be her mother. I won't spoil the ending, but sufficed to say mother is reunited with daughter and demon is reunited with Dictator all in the name of gore and violence.

I give this movie a B+ for hilarious banter between Rose and various characters (particularly a scene involving Rose, Copper, Ron Howard's Daughter and a randomly placed swinging vine), great special effects (you mean, the old bag lady is really beautiful Deborah Kara Unger?? No way!), and a demon who looks like a child (and acts like it too, the spoiled brat!).

A Ground-Shaking Good Time

This weekend I watched the most delightful movie about ravenous earth monsters with a blood lust for humans that I've ever seen. It's called Tremors. The story goes like this: in a desolate Nevada town named Perfection, probably since it's nestled in a water-starved valley between mountains and a cliff, the local residents start dying one by one. Considering the entire population is around 10 people, this becomes quite alarming. Now, you'd think that perhaps the local bigot finally blew his lid due to the extreme isolation, but no. Actually the increasingly violent and gruesome deaths are caused by huge, blind, stinky worms that live underground. They can sense vibrations as the towns people run about to and fro. They also have cognitive learning abilities, something the regular towns people seem to have been born without. So as the towns people learn they must get off the ground, the earth monsters (or Graboids, as they are lovingly called) learn how to destroy whatever it is the delicious humans have climbed upon, thus securing one more meal in their quest for constant food. They also have multiple tentacles with grabby mouths that snake out of the gapping hole in their heads.

Luckily, the towns people have Valentine and Earl (Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward), the local gay handymen who live, work and travel together to help solve the Mystery of the Graboid. Luckily for them, they stumble upon a plucky 45 year old geology student, Rhonda, spending her days and nights researching and analyzing the perplexing Mystery of the Seismograph. Then there's Burt and Heather, the local gun enthusiasts, who have a difficult time listening, but can wield a gun like no other. The rest of the cast who isn't dead early on includes Walter, the Chinese shop owner (and only businessowner in town, I'm guessing), Melvin, the local teen bully who has neither parents nor peers to bully, Nancy, the mother of pogo-sticking Mindy, Miguel, the token Hispanic dude, and Nestor, the town dumb ass.

Besides roll-in-the-aisles-with-laughter banter between the stressed-out towns people, the movie is loaded with intense action sequences featuring some of the finest puppetry and animatronic effects ever captured on film, balanced by sweet and tender love scenes featuring one hot threesome between Val, Earl and Rhonda as they're stranded on a rock outcrop over night. Luckily Rhonda finds some poles nearby and they vault their way to freedom (much to the delight of Val and Earl). In another scene after a Graboid makes for a game of Grabass with Rhonda, but grabs only her pleated pants, Val stares lovingly at her panties while sloppily applying gore makeup to her legs. These scenes show that even in a time of crisis, fun can be had at the expense of all.

I won't give away the farm (they all live, except poor, poor Walter) and spoil the fun for you (they kill the last of 4 by running it off a cliff), but I highly recommend investing 96 minutes of your time into a family friendly tale about love, loss, diversity, tolerance and humongous earth worms. A-