where: UA EMERY BAY STADIUM 10 in Emeryville, CA
when: Monday, October 4th, 2010
show: 7:50 p.m.
costs: $10.75 Ticket + $1.00 3.40 oz. Peanut M & M's ( Dollar Candy Monday with a movie watcher rewards card ) + $4.75 small Diet Coke + $5.00 Carquinez Bridge Toll = $21.50
auditorium: 8
seat: 5th row, 12th column
synopsis: Emily ( Renee Zellweger ), a social worker for child services, suspects that a girl, Lilith ( Jodelle Ferland ), is a victim of child abuse. Against better judgment, she assumes temporary custody of Lilith. But bad things soon start to happen.
noteworthy scenes: 1.) Thirty-nine cases; 2.) Bar; 3.) File review; 4.) Appointment day; 5.) "Daddy's little girl routine"; 6.) "They hate me"; 7.) Detective Barron's ( Ian McShane ) office; 8.) Basement; 9.) School bus; 10.) 'Phone call; 11.) Oven; 12.) Hospital; 13.) County shelter; 14.) "Safe, supportive environment"; 15.) "Your new beginning"; 16.) House inspection; 17.) Group counseling; 18.) Murderer; 19.) "You're one person, you can't save the world"; 20.) "I wanted to know about you"; 21.) Chinese restaurant; 22.) "She's lying;" 23.) Collapse; 24.) "It was a man"; 25.) "NO" answers; 26.) Hornets; 27.) "You think it's my fault"; 28.) "Something came through that door"; 29.) Psychiatric hospital; 30.) Housecleaning; 31.) "I must have dreamt it"; 32.) "Walk the talk"; 33.) Why, Emily; 34.) Elevator; 35.) "'Not a demon"; 36.) Locks; 37.) "No state of mind to be here"; 38.) "Don't ignore me"; 39.) The closet; 40.) The chase; 41.) Inside the car; 42.) Good news; 43.) "One option"; 44.) Television; 45.) Cafeteria; 46.) Recording; 47.) The plan; 48.) Scattered files; 49.) Parking garage; 50.) "Don't yell at me"; 51.) The bedroom; 52.) Chamomile tea; 53.) "That was mean"; 54.) "The part of you that's her"; 55.) "Are you scared"; and 56.) The escape.
audience reaction: The four or five people in the audience with me seemed to like it.
recommendation: It was okay. This is another one of those "brat-from-hell" kind of movie. It only has one scary scene: The Closet Scene. Go see this movie only if you like watching topless scenes of Bradley Cooper. Otherwise, wait for this to come out as a rental.
spoiler alert! The alarm clock was a cheap, senseless scare tactic to pull on the audience. Wind-up alarm clocks need rewinding at least once a day. And its alarm is only on a twelve-hour cycle. When Emily was finally able to go back to the house for inspection, it was already more than a day after the incident had occurred. At which time, the alarm clock would have already wound-down to a complete stop and its alarm would have already turned-off. If I had hornets crawling out of me like that, I would have reacted in a more pained and a more animated way than what "topless guy" Bradley Cooper showed for the camera. How could he talk normally when his jaw was just recently dislocated? Barricading the door was, indeed, an exercise in futility because other-worldly entities can open locked doors. How and why did Emily's co-workers disappear so fast--boy! talk about clocking-out on a TGIF. Why do they use metal eating utensils in a facility for the criminally-insane? I don't want to sound sexist, but women love to talk a lot; so, why did Emily not notice that her cell phone had been missing from her bag all that time? All of those ground-up sleeping pills in the chamomile tea would make for one bitter brew. So, why didn't Lilith show the appropriate facial expression after she drank it? Since this movie is essentially about demon-possession, Emily will never find herself "out of the water" because the demon can always find another innocent victim to possess so it can hunt down and settle the score with her sooner or later. She had better know of a good exorcist!
fyi: I know for a fact that other-worldly entities can open locked doors because I saw it happen twice back when I was a little boy living with my family in Kidapawan, Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines.
One day when I was still in Grade One, a classmate of mine bragged that he was able to stay awake all night long. I decided that I could do the same, too. Back then, everybody in my family slept in one big bedroom. That night, I forced myself to lay awake in bed. My bed was positioned along the wall that has the door. My parents always made it a habit to lock the door before we all went to bed. The lock was a simple piece of wood with a nail in its center and which was turned halfway clockwise to engage it to the catch so that it wouldn't be opened from the outside. Sometime after midnight when everyone else was fast asleep, I saw the lock turn, and the door slowly opened by itself. Then, a shadowy figure of a short, skinny man with short hair glided slowly into the room and headed straight to the foot of my parents' bed. Then, it stopped and looked up at the altar above my parents' heads and fixed its gaze on the Veronica's Veil portrait of Jesus Christ hanging on the wall. And, with its gaze still fixed on the image of Jesus Christ, it slowly floated back the way it came. And the door slowly closed after it had exited the bedroom and the lock engaged itself to its catch.
At another time, my sisters and I visited a friend's house which was built near the creek and just about two blocks away from our own house. We were in a bedroom playing a game of Jack Stones. All of a sudden, the bedroom door made a noise and its zinc barrel bolt lock unbolted itself at the same time that it gave off a red spark. Then, the door just flew open, much to our consternation!
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When I was a Grade Five pupil at the Ateneo De Davao Elementary Department in Matina, Davao City, Mindanao, Philippines, I was distracted from following along with the class lesson as something was buzzing around very near to my right ear. I tried to wave it away as it was making it difficult for me to concentrate on what I was reading. It landed in my ear. I grabbed it with my right hand, thinking that it was just a fly. But I was wrong. It was a bee! And it stung me. Soon, my hand swelled-up and looked like a boxing glove.
word of advice: Don't take your work home with you.
tidbits: Earlier in the day, I visited my friend, Hector, in Oakland, CA. His son and I watched STAN LEE's SUPER HUMANS on YouTube. The segments that we watched were the one on the Samurai man with the fastest reaction time and the Monkey Man of India who learned how to climb by hanging-out with monkeys. Later on, I cooked dinner for everyone. I served them spaghetti made with hot Italian sausage, two cans of Del Monte sauce and two packages of pasta. They never had spaghetti made with Italian sausage before, but they liked it.
I played a practical joke on Hector when I went out into the driveway to hose down my car. I put a "Viva, Mexico" sticker on his SUV's back window. They're all Puerto Ricans. But whenever they start speaking in Spanish at a level that I cannot comprehend, I would always exclaim, Viva, Mexico y Viva La Raza, tambien. Otra vez! And I would say the same thing, too, whenever anyone of their relatives would give them a call on the 'phone.
After the movie, I swung by my former place of employment in North Oakland just to say "Hi!" to everybody. I haven't worked there in over ten months because of my chronic foot pain. While I was there, I decided to buy a bar soap, a belt, and a neck pillow.
Note: Earlier today, in the pre-dawn of Oct. 7th, I tried to do a correction on this blog and ended-up deleting the whole thing, instead!
