Whiteout (2009)

I thought this was going to be an all out horror movie when I went in to see it. I mean, it was horror to some extent. But not in the way I expected. This is not quite a slasher flick, but there is blood. If anything, I'd call it a whodunit, with some slasher and cat-and-mouse aspects thrown in for good measure.

So it didn't help matters that the movie is called "冰天血地" in Chinese. Now, my Chinese isn't the best. I tend to just put the characters I know together and make what I want out of them. To me, 冰天血地 says "icy day blood place". This gave me the idea that the movie would be spooky. It wasn't.

It's a thriller, really, set in the Arctic. Or Antarctica. I honestly didn't care which. It was bloody cold, wherever it was.

Come to think of it, it would have to be Antarctica. The Aurora Australis came up a couple of times during the movie.

That's neither here nor there, though. It's cold.

Kate Beckinsale plays a US Marshal, Carrie Stetko, based at this remote workstation in Antarctica. The father/Sheriff from Picket Fences, Tom Skerritt, plays the station's doctor - John Fury (now there's a name). They both seem desperate to get off the ice, and the last flight out is just days away. You just know that's not going to happen...

In comes a dead body. Located in the middle of nowhere, Carrie insists foul play is at work. As she digs deeper, identifying the body and seeking out those he should have been accompanying, Carrie finds there may be a motive to want the person dead. You know what, the more I write about it, the more I wonder why I think you care.

It wasn't excruciating to sit through this movie, but there was just nothing that held my attention well enough for me to be able to say it was good. It may just be me, but when you see a crazed killer - regardless of the weapon they're wielding - chasing the main heroine through a building, through the snow... wherever... you just know they're not going to catch them. Unless the crazed killer actually gets the star, these scenes don't tend to do much for me.

Not to mention the big revelation at the end came as no surprise to me. I'm not claiming to be some sort of Columbo or Jessica Fletcher, but you see a couple of these movies and you do get a feel for what's a red herring and what you should be looking out for. There aren't many clues as to what the revelation will be, but that's part of what makes it so obvious.

It's not exactly a fast-paced movie season, so Whiteout probably isn't the worst movie out right now. I didn't walk out feeling particularly satisfied, but it wasn't a lackluster effort either. The acting was believable, the visuals were great. They made a point of letting you know how brutal the cold can be, and I do believe it... I just don't care.

Seriously... You Could Do Worse

I'm not even going to pretend I'm qualified. I didn't go to film school, nor did I spend my childhood sneaking into R rated movies with the sole intention of seeing Kubrick's latest masterpeice. I snuck into R rated movies to see boobies, just like everybody else. I didn't knock about at film festivals during my younger years with hippie parents selling John Wayne shirts. I don't even know if that's a thing people do or not...

You can jump onto different websites where the reviewers talk about the cinemegraphy, the score and such. Those dudes are knowledgeable. Good for them. A movie's Director of Photography doesn't really make a difference to me. I'll sleep well tonight without ever knowing his name. At the end of the day, I'm watching a movie to be entertained and this tends to rely on just a few things: was the story good, were the actors good, was it put together well?

I mean, I know that every person who contributes to a movie is important. But I'm not going to make a big deal about a film's score unless it truly irks me. If the boom mic comes smashing down on an actor's head - and it ended up on film - I may say something about it. Unless the dude holding the camera has Parkingson's Disease, I would just assume anything out of the ordinary he does is intentional.

I'll watch foreign films, but I'm not so hung up on the idea of a foreign film that I'm going to pretend to love every one I see... because, seriously, most of them bore the crap out of me. While many have some moments of brilliance - most of them could have been told in 30 seconds (those bunny reenactments could do the trick).

So what I think my point is: I watch a lot of movies; isn't that enough? No, of course it isn't. But read my reviews anyway. You'll feel good about yourself if you do.