where: EDWARDS FAIRFIELD STADIUM 16 in Fairfield, CA
when: Friday, August 7th, 2009
show: 1:40 pm
costs: $7.50 Ticket + $1.00 Fancy California Mix ( smuggled-in ) = $8.50
auditorium: 9
seat: 4th row, 7th column
synopsis: A couple, Cliff and Cydney ( Steve Zahn and Mila Jovovich ), are in Hawaii for their honeymoon at a time when another vacationing newlywed couple just got murdered by a serial killer. Soon, they encounter two other couples, either one of which could just be the murderers that the cops are looking for. As they go further and further away from civilization on their hike through the wilderness, paranoia sets in and makes it hard for one couple to decide whom to trust. And the murderers are just waiting for an opportune moment to strike again.
noteworthy scenes: 1.) The wedding scene; 2.) The gorgeous dead-end; 3. ) The Oahu Daily News; 4.) The hitch-hiking couple, Kale and Cleo ( Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton ); 5.) At the waterfall with Nick and Gina ( Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez ); 6.) Meeting up with Kale and Cleo again; 7.) The lost permits; 8.) The talk between Cydney and Gina; 9.) The store employee; 10.) The goat; 11.) The police capture; 12.) The pictures; 13.) Flashbacks; 14.) The knife fight; 15.) The ax; 16.) Phone call to "Woody;" 17.) The metal plate; 18.) The chase; 19.) The kayakers; and 20.) The helicopter.
audience reaction: I didn't hear any kind of verbal reaction from the others in the audience.
recommendation: I didn't particularly like this movie although it has plot twists. You may or may not like this movie if you go see it.
spoiler alert! The goat, an Angora, is non-native to the region--but, then again, so are the white couples in this movie. I'm from a tropical region, so I know what a tropical goat looks like--and I can bleat like one, too! The "flashbacks" were a lazy way of tying-up the loose ends in this movie. It's hard to believe that a store employee would be dedicated enough to customer service to actually go on a potentially dangerous trail just to hand over the permits that some tourists accidentally left behind. Why do you think stores have a "lost and found" bin/drawer for? What happened to all the left-over meat? Surely, I can't be expected to believe that four people ate all that meat in one sitting! The incriminating evidence were planted without the use of gloves, so it would be easy to lift fingerprints from them and discover who one of the killers was. Even though Gina was butt-naked in an earlier scene, she had reservations when it came to using her shirt as a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood. You cannot run normally with a knife wound through the side of your thigh. Cliff's ghastly knife wound didn't produce the requisite amount of blood that such a wound would normally yield. I guess Hawaii is not enough of an exotic locale because parts of this movie were filmed in Puerto Rico and Jamaica!
fyi: There are feral pigs in Hawaii. The scriptwriter should have substituted a pig for the goat in a particular scene, instead.
When I vacationed in the northern part of the Philippines some years ago, my cousin's employee took me out to lunch. He ordered for me this Ilocano dish, a green bitter broth that the natives call, Papa'it ( pronounced: Pa-pa, it ) . I ate it as an act of courtesy to my host. Later that night while sitting at the dinner table, I recounted to my cousin, Nong Eddie, how I politely forced myself to eat that broth at lunchtime. He asked me if I knew what I ate. I told him, No, and to please tell me. "Well," he said, "He ( the employee ) made you eat Goat Shit!" I almost vomited both lunch and dinner right there and then! The valuable lesson that I learned that night was, to paraphrase: When in Ilocos, don't eat what the Ilocanos eat.
Again, back in sixth grade at Rizal Memorial Colleges, Elementary Department, I took a short-cut across a little farm after school on my way to my mom's office building for the ride home. Out in the field was a male goat grazing by itself. Since I know how to bleat like a goat, I decided to bleat out a greeting to the goat. It bleated back, then it sported a huge erection! I don't know what I said in goat language, but I ran out of there since there was nothing worse for me at that moment than to have a horny goat hot on my trail!
word of advice: Looks can be deceiving.
tidbits: My suggestions for an alternate title would be: The Bad Dentist Strikes Again and The Trail-Hiking Clueless City Folks.
One of these days, I'm going to vacation in Hawaii. And, once there, I'll dress up like a native and have unsuspecting white tourists pose with me for a fee since they wouldn't be able to tell the difference--we all look the same, after all! Yeah, right ....
This particular bit is a continuation of the one from the previous post: After the North West Airlines plane left Japan en route for the port of entry, Hawaii, I developed a stomach "condition" because I was not accustomed to the western-style food served on the plane. I wanted to go to the toilet to relieve myself. But if I did go, the other passengers would have known what I did in there based on the time I would have spent inside the toilet. So, to keep from being embarrassed, I kept it in. It was one L...O...N...G flight from that point on! The first thing that I did when we got to Hawaii was to find and use a toilet. I almost missed the flight to San Francisco, CA, because I was just so "busy" in there, and because I was fascinated by the hand dryer --what an ignoramus I was. My younger brother had to come in to let me know that the plane was about to take off.
P.S. I'm sorry that I took longer than usual to post my reviews for these two movies. But I was busy brushing up on my Eschatological knowledge in preparation for the upcoming movie, 2012.
