Dog soldiers

This is the kind of movie is ok to watch only if you have a very sharp sense of humor.

The characters
The bad guy:  He is an army captain with a surprisingly cute face for a villain.

He is introduced in a forest, at night, doing some test with probably a military academy student. He asks the soldier to shoot a dog for no apparent reason, because, you know, army people are all psychopaths, then he shoots the dog himself just to make a point, because people who hurt puppies are naughty. In the end we hate him because he is ready to kill people - quite a surprise from an army man.


The good guy: We are introduced with this guy from the beginning, running through the woods, beating up some guys which indicates that he is strong and agile and he should be admired. His refusal to shoot the dog - obviously thrown in there for the female audience, because most women are repressed lesbians and thus they tend to admire men who are pussies - indicate that this army thing might not be for him, you know with all that 'following orders without questions' thing the army is about. The darkness only lets us guess his features, later revealed to be ugly as fuck - male directors tending to confuse ugliness with being tough (damn you, Schwarzeneger!).

Doesn't do much except being rebellious just for the fuck of it and survive in the end.

The rest: The men are living proof that army hair could make anyone shit ugly, or that ugly = tough was really a criteria. All white men. Makes it harder for everyone to know who is getting killed first. One woman. White. Uninteresting.

The confusion: The small group of soldiers wonder in the woods, doing something tactical against AWACS. Whatever the fuck that is, they are not enemies because the soldiers have blank bullets. Later turns out it was some kind of exercise for an obscure purpose nobody ever reveals. Generally, the presence of everybody there is obscure, except for the bad guy.

The dialogue: Whoever wrote this script would make millions curing insomnia. It is so boring, your mind wonders away after the first 3 lines. It is like watching a movie in a language you are just learning. You understand the words, you can swear you know the meaning, but after they shut up you realize you have no idea what the fuck was said.

The special effects: When you only have a budget for rubber monster suits, film everything in the dark, show only parts of the suit while moving the camera around and everything will be fine.

The stupidity: If you have a sense of humor, once the battle starts, you will piss your pants. 
One of the soldiers runs into a think branch. The branch runs all the way through him - because that can totally happen. Yeah... Then some creature cuts this other guy's belly with surgical precision, cutting through skin, fat and muscle, about 40 cm wide, which causes the guy's unscratched intestines to burst out. No worries though, it seems if that ever happens to you, you can just put them back in, bandage your belly tight and you can walk for kilometers, ride in a jeep, have a dog pull your bandage for 5 minutes and be just fine. Then, somebody with no medical experience and anatomy knowledge can put you back together using super glue. Isn't life just wonderful?

In a life threatening situation, if you are in a car, get off, break into a house, heat up some food, then decide you need to ride to the next town or village. Then go to your car, and if you see it broken by the monsters you were running away from, it means you are in this stupid movie. Then wait another couple of hours for wolf men to attack before deciding to tell everyone there is another car in the garage. If you have a sliding lock, use that to keep out the monsters. Worked for these guys.
All through the house attack part, the monsters seem to have very little problem getting in and slaughter everyone but, for some reason, they just quit. While waiting for the hounds from hell to attack them the third time, the woman decides she should play the piano because... something. Her weapon of choice against werewolves is a flashlight. Which, nota bene, fucking works! (later, we find out she is one of the wolves, which explains some stuff)

The plot: A rebellious soldier has a fight with a captain. One month later they meet again in the woods, there are werewolves that killed captain's troupe and injured him. Woman shows up, soldiers run, wolves attack, soldiers fight, captain becomes werewolf, woman becomes werewolf, more fighting, all wolves die, only the good guy survives. The end.

Wolfman

This is the kind of movie that is ok to watch when you really have no other alternative.

Characters:
Male hero: Ugly as shit, portrayed as a lame actor in a dusty theater doing Hamlet. Drinking party boy, feeling bored with his life and all the pussies waving their tits in front of him.

You already know some deep shit is going to happen to him that will change his life philosophy. We are also introduced in some obscure old family drama, gradually revealed during the movie, that I could have bet it is something unrealistic and stupid. Turns out I was right.

Female hero: Portrayed as a tight-ass ugly woman engaged to be married. She says something supposed to be intuitive - actually idiotic - to let us know something deep is hiding behind that stuff.

I could have bet that by the end of the movie she will show some skin and her hair will be messy and she would have magically became beautiful. Some time into the movie it seemed it was going my way,

 but at the end I was only half right: there was messy hair, unnecessary cleavage bur the guys in the makeup department didn't go nearly as far as I would have thought.

So I guess it was the "British women look dull but they are interesting" kind of point.


Settings: Action is supposed to take place sometimes in the 1800's or some shit like that.Still, everybody has perfect teeth, perfect manicure and there is not a single woman with a mustache in the whole movie, even the old or poor ones.

Fashion: Retro clothing with a goth accent or something some fashion student in his first year of practice thought they were wearing those days.

Special effects: In the 2000's, it seems all movies mus have special effects, no matter what is it about. The fantasy genre is filled with unnecessary scenes that seem cut from some computer game intro. I guess if you are a fan of that, is ok, but how much computer generated blood can you watch being splatted over a wooden-texture without yawning, now, really? I mean, that shit was cool when The mummy came out but, since then, it kinda lived it's life and we should all give it a brake and only take it out when it's presence is really demanded.

Description of the movie in one word: stereotypes. Aside from the main characters, the fashion, the housing, the dark light, there are shit loads of them: the guy with the Irish accent drinking in the local inn, the indie servant with the grey beard,

the Romanian speaking gipsy fortune teller, the Hamlet theater play, the constable with a big mustache and little understanding of reason and logic, the villagers with torches and shotguns, the ignorant priest with the Satan alarm.. you name it, it was there. 20 minutes through the movie I expected a black guy to be hanged somewhere in there. Stonehenge was in it for fucks sake!

The plot: Guy finds out his brother has been killed in mysterious circumstances, "investigates" the death, gets bitten by a werewolf, becomes one, gets killed. The end.