Monster Mash

Monsters, Inc.
Directors: Pete Docter, Lee Unrich, and David Silverman
Voice Talent: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly
Released: November 2, 2001
Viewed in theaters: November 3, 2001

Oscar nominations:

Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek)
Best Original Song - "If I Didn't Have You" by Randy Newman (won)
Best Score - Randy Newman (lost to Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
Best Sound Editing (lost to Pearl Harbor)

Monsters, Inc. is the reason I see all Pixar (or any other animated) movies at nine in the evening (or, at the very least on a weekday during the school year). Why, you ask? Well, because I did not have a good viewing experience seeing this and it has haunted me to this day that this was only the second time I've seen the movie. When this movie came out I was living in a small town that only had one theater (and not a very comfortable or big one at that). It was literally only one theater where only one movie played. (Some other films I saw at this theater include The Fellowship of the Ring (that was a big gamble for me as I knew it was a long-ass movie and I went in knowing nothing about Tolkien, so if I didn't like it, it was going to be a long and painful experience for me, but luckily I ended up really getting into the movie and was ready for the next installment when it ended!), A Beautiful Mind, I Am Sam, and Panic Room.

 So when this movie came out I saw it because, even though Pixar was quite young at this time (Monsters, Inc. is their fourth movie), I was a fan of the first two Toy Story movies. (I have never seen A Bug's Life). I honestly don't remember how crowded the theater was, but like I said, it was pretty small so even if the whole theater wasn't packed, that still makes a huge difference. I just remember there was some young kid (maybe two) who were talking/crying/ kicking my seat (they were seated behind me)/just basically annoying the sh*t out of me during the movie, hence making it hard to enjoy the movie so I've always associated this movie with negative thoughts and that's why I never revisited it until recently. I vowed to myself that I would never see another animated movie during the weekend or weekday when kids are out of school. Fast forward to two years later when I see Finding Nemo in a huge theater PACKED with screaming kids. Yeah, I'm an idiot who didn't follow my own advice. However, I saw Wall-E at nine in the evening; I saw Up at nine in the evening; I saw Toy Story 3 at nine in the evening; I saw How To Train Your Dragon and its sequel at nine in the evening; I saw Inside Out at nine in the evening; you get the picture.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally gave Monsters, Inc. a second chance because I really enjoyed it and it's a really cute movie. However, if you really stop to think about it, the basic premise is a little messed up. It's about a society of monsters who get their energy source from the screams of children, so every night they sneak into their rooms via their bedroom closet to scare the young children all over the world, then capture the screams of terrified children, bottling them up into a air-tight container (the screams, not the children!) Yeah, just a little messed up. However, this being a Pixar/Disney movie, it's a very cute and kid-friendly movie. Obviously.

The movie focuses on two monsters named Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan, or, as his friends call him, Sully (voiced by John Goodman) who work at the energy-producing factory, Monsters, Inc. in the town of Monstropolis. The company's motto is "We Scare Because We Care." They work on the scare floor, a huge room that has access to every bedroom closet door of all the children in the world, so, as you can imagine, there are millions upon millions of doors. There is a chart to keep track of where and when they've been and every child has their own "monster" so they always get scared by the same monster because they (the monsters) knows what each child is afraid of. I'm not really sure how they keep track of all the doors and who's been scared, but somehow they manage to keep it all organized. I don't know which is more convoluted: the scare floor in Monsters, Inc. or Riley's head in Inside Out!

Their job is to obtain the screams of children so that Monstropolis is able to function and be the bright and vibrant city that it is. Sully, a large purple and blue fuzzy monster with horns and a long tail is a scarer which means he goes into the bedrooms to scare the children while Mike, his assistant (basically a large green talking eyeball with arms and legs), gives him the stats and numbers he needs. Each scarer has their own assistant and there is a bit of a rivalry between the two top scarers, Sully and a sleazy chameleon-like monster who can blend in with his surroundings, Randall (voiced by Steve Buscemi).

Even though the monsters who are scarers are big and imposing and have sharp teeth/claws/horns, the most amusing part of the movie is that children are considered toxic to the monster world so if something that belongs to them comes back to the monsters' world (or, God forbid, an actual living child being), they treat it as a risk and take it very seriously. When they enter a room, they will hop around, making sure not to touch or come into contact with any toys or clothes laying on the floor and they never physically touch the children, just scare them, capture the screams, and get out of there. We see what happens when one monster has a child's sock stuck to his back after coming back from a job and the CDA (Child Detection Agency) is called and they put everybody into lock down. The monsters who work for the CDA are all wearing haz-mat suits and helmets and carefully dispose of the sock (by blowing it up), then they shave the poor monster who accidentally brought back the sock and scrub him ten times over.  They went through all this trouble for a single sock, just imagine what would happen if an actual child made their way into Monstropolis!

And that is exactly what will happen. When Sully goes to deliver some important paperwork for Mike (he can't because he has a date with his girlfriend, Cecelia (Jennifer Tilly) a Medusa-inspired monster with snakes for her hair; I did love the scene where she tells Mike she's thinking of getting a haircut and all the snakes are very concerned about that), he sees a closet door is out and open. What he doesn't know is that Randall is the one who left the door activated because he is up to no good. He also leaves the door unattended so he doesn't know that Sully has gone through the door to check what's going on. This is where he meets "Boo" (because she likes yelling "Boo!"), a two-year-old child who takes a quick liking to Sully, calling him, "Kitty!"  (Though I don't think Sully looks like a cat...) When she grabs hold of Sully's tail, he quickly untangles herself from him and puts her back in her room and gets tangled in a bunch of her toys as he stumbles out of her room. He quickly disposes of all the objects (which includes a stuffed Nemo toy) by flushing them down a toilet. There is a great reveal when he turns away and the audience sees Boo is on his back.

Sully knows he has to send her back to her world, but Randall has already put away her door and I guess it would raise an alarm if Sully were to re-activate it because he doesn't want anyone (especially the CDA) to know that a toxic child is among them. He gets Mike involved and he starts freaking out and when Boo sneezes in his direction he sprays disinfect on his eye which turns it red and makes him dance around in agony. I admit, I laughed hard at that. It doesn't take long for Sully to realize that children (at least not this one) aren't toxic and they even realize that her laughter is quite strong and that all along they should have been capturing children's laughter instead of their screams.

Sully and Mike are determined to get Boo safely back to her home, which they do, but not without a few obstacles in their way. They have to go through this maze of thousands of doors which is a fun scene. It's very bittersweet when Sully finally has to say goodbye to Boo; they have to destroy her door once she's back in her house because she now knows about the Monster World and they can't have her making any contact with them. Even though we know Randall is the bad guy, there's also another twist of someone conspiring with him, but of course everything works out in the end and Sully even gets to visit Boo one last time after Mike fixed her door.

You think that would be the idea for the sequel; Sully visiting Boo every now and then and maybe getting into some shenanigans in the human world, but they went for a prequel for the second movie. I added Monsters' University to my Netflix queue after I saw the first movie and I think I enjoyed it more than I was expecting. Most people have this at the lower end of their Netflix rankings and while it wouldn't be near the top of mine, I thought it was quite delightful and I had fun watching it. Also,  my monster would be the dean of the university, Dean Hardscrabble who was voiced by Hellen Mirren. The design of that monster was nightmare fuel with her dragon wings and centipede legs...eesh!

Boston Strong

Patriots Day

Director: Peter Berg

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, Michelle Monaghan, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist

Released: December 21, 2016

This movie is based on the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, which I'm sure everyone remembers as it only happened a mere four years ago. I thought I remembered everything about this incident, but apparently not because there were things in the movie that I found myself going, "Wait, I thought it happened this way!" or "Wait, I don't remember that happening!" But I'll get to those later. Mark Wahlberg (a native Bostonian as you all know) does not play a real person, but his police officer character, Sergeant Tommy Sanders, is suppose to represent the everyman Boston police officer during this tragic event.

Everyone else, to my knowledge portray real-life people. Before the day of the Marathon we are shown the home lives of a few different characters. Even though they tell us the last name of the family/person we're viewing, I didn't know who any of these people were. I didn't remember the names of the terrorist brothers, but once I saw the title card say, "Tsarnaev residence", I knew it was them because I remember them being Russian and sure enough we see them along with the older brother's wife (played by Melissa Benoist...who I did not recognize until the interrogation scene because she wears a hijab and that was the first time the camera lingers on her. I guess I forgot that the wife was American). We see a young married couple and a young Chinese man who's attending MIT and showing his parents his new car via his phone. I had no idea who these people were and thought maybe they were victims of the bombing. Well, they were victims, but they weren't the ones who were killed by the bomb like I had thought. I had to remind myself who died because I only remembered the police officer, who wasn't killed by the bomb, but who was killed the following night by one of the brothers, and an eight year old boy died from the blast. Two other young women also died from the blast. Except for the police officer, there is no mention of the deceased by name and they don't have anyone playing them which I thought was a smart choice. The only mention of the deceased is when the young boy who died is covered by a table cloth from a restaurant and they are unable to remove him until they are sure there isn't any bomb residue on him. I'm sure this happened in real life (otherwise why would it be in the movie?) and I can't imagine being the parents of that boy who took him to see the Boston Marathon, but weren't able to take him home because two low-lifes (one who has a young daughter!) took his life.

For two bombs going off, it is very fortunate that not more lives were lost that day. The majority of the devastation came from injuries, the severest being lost of limbs. The couple that is shown the night before the Marathon are actors playing a real life couple who both run the race every year and had to have their legs amputated. Saunders is near the finish line when both bombs go off (which were only 13 seconds apart...a fact I did not know) and his wife is also there because she had come down to bring him something. He will feel very guilty for putting her in harm's way, but she tells him it wasn't his fault. During all the commotion, the race is (surprisingly) still going on and runners are running into the confusion and they have to block the area.

John Goodman plays Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and Kevin Bacon plays Richard DesLauriers, special agent in the Boston field and both head the investigation to find out what happened. You get a glimpse of what happened behind the scenes. It seemed to happen really fast because the bombing happened on a Monday and by Friday the older brother was killed and the younger one was caught. But we see the process of trying to find out who set off the bombs is painstakingly slow as several people are scouring over security footage (and they used real footage) of every angle from where the bomb went off. Someone alerts the two men in charge when he sees footage of a young man in a white hat looking away from the camera (as though he knows a bomb is about to go off) a second before everyone else does. They try to find other angles where they can see "White Hat" and Saunders tells them which business security camera to look up and they find a few more angles of him as well as him standing next to someone wearing sunglasses and a black hat and holding a backpack (the older brother) who they assume are together and are the bombers. Even though they have clear photos, they can't find them in the criminal database as they have no records. Now what I didn't know is that the FBI agent did NOT want to release the photos of the suspects because if they were wrong and they weren't involved, they would be raked over the coals by the public. He wanted more evidence that these were the bombers. They just wanted a little more time to figure out, but then it turned out FOX News (of course it was FOX!) got a hold of the photos and were going to release them in a few hours, so they decided they would go ahead and release them before the media did so they could get them out there their way.

The only person shown being killed is Officer Sean Collier. Like the other characters the day before the bomb happened, we also get a glimpse into his life. I remember a police officer being killed by the suspected bombers, but I guess I thought it was from a shoot out. I didn't remember that he was sitting in his car in front of MIT and the younger brother came up to his car and motioned for him to roll down his window and when he did, he shot him and stole his gun. That's scary. The thing that shocked me the most from watching this was what happened next because I did not remember this AT ALL. In fact, I don't think I even knew about this until I watched the movie. This is when the young Chinese student comes into play. We see him in an earlier scene having dinner with a new friend and he's telling her what it's like living in a new country. I was wondering what he had to do with this story and this is when we find out. He's sitting in his car, looking at his phone, when the older brother comes up to his window and motions for him to roll it down. Both brothers hijack the car with their new gun and make Dun Meng, the young Chinese man drive them. This seems like a big part of the story, was it even in the news? How could I not know this happened? They make him get out of the driver's seat and into the passenger seat so the older brother can drive. As they're driving, they tell him that they bombed the Marathon and are planning to go to Manhattan and bomb Times Square. They also talked about 9/11 being an inside job by the government (now I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person...I am all about the JFK and TWA 800 conspiracies....but the 9/11 one, I never got that one).

Speaking of 9/11, we get a comment from a news reporter saying that the bombing is the worst act of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11 and I'm thinking, "What?" Because it seems like that's a pretty big gap between 2001 and 2013, but then I realized all the 40 million shootings in those years weren't linked to terrorism groups...we just have a bunch of idiots who live in this country. Before the race begins, there is a moment of silence for the victims of the Newtown, CT school shooting and I had to remind myself that had only happened four months prior and in just a few short hours they would have their own tragedy. I've seen the Boston Marathon bombing be compared to 9/11 on a few occasions and aside from the terrorism aspect and when they shut down the city of Boston that day (like when they shut down all the airports), I've never really understood that. I was reminded more of the Oklahoma City bombing. I am always amazed at the amount of people who refer to 9/11 as a "bombing". There were no bombs involved in 9/11! Let me tell you a true story....the week after 9/11 happened, my school had a banner saying something along the lines to donate blood or money for the victims of the 9/11 bombing. And I see it and I'm thinking, Huh...I don't remember any bombs being reported. Anyway, I'm getting way off topic...

The brothers stop at gas station for snacks and this is when Dun Meng makes his escape. He has already pleaded to be let go and they can have his money and car and he promises he won't tell anyone, but the brothers refuse. You know that since they have already told him who they are and what they plan to do, that they have no plans to keep him alive once they don't need him anymore and you know he knows this. While the younger brother is getting snacks, the older brother has the gun in the side pocket of the car and is looking out the window. We see Dung Meng getting ready to escape. Now I just thought he had to open the door and that was it, but he also had his seatbelt on, so that gave the bomber notice that his abductee was getting ready to leave, but luckily Meng manages to escape and runs to a gas station across the street and screams at the manager to call the police. When the police arrive, Meng tells them he was abducted by the two brothers who were involved in the Boston Marathon bombing and his phone is still in the car an they are able to track them down. Saunders tells Meng that he was very brave to do what he did and I have to agree...if I had done that, I would have over thought it and would end up dead. Meng was just sitting in his car playing with his phone when he was hijacked and I told myself that I would NEVER just sit alone in my car while on my phone. Well, just a couple days after I saw this, I found myself in a parking lot with my phone trying to locate a place I was looking for. Now it was broad daylight, but I still locked my car! So starting now I will NEVER sit in my car, night or day, and look at my phone!

When  the police locate the bothers, they have a big shootout and many bombs are involved so right there the police knew that they had plans to bomb other places. This is when the older brother is killed, which I remembered. What I don't remember is that the younger brother ran over him with the car! He was aiming at the police who had gotten a hold of the older brother, but jumped out of the way when the car came towards them. He gets away and the next day is devoted to looking for him which I remember, especially since I watched it on TV when they had located him in the boat. That would be so scary to be the guy who owns the boat and find the one person everybody in the city is looking for is hiding in your boat! In the film, the owner of the boat notices something wrong with his boat and calls the police, but I watched a documentary about this whole ordeal and they interviewed the guy and he said that he actually went up to his boat and saw the kid (I think he was sleeping?) and then called the police, but in the movie, it's Saunders who discovers him.

We all know how the story ends and the perpetrator is caught. The movie ends with the real footage of David Ortiz giving his speech at the April 20, 2013 Red Sox game against the Royals and we see the Mayor of Boston, Ed Davis, and other people who helped make Boston safe. Then we see clips of the real life couple who lost their legs talking as well as a father and son who were separated (who were also featured in the movie). I really didn't think it was necessary to have these talking heads in there because it felt like I was watching a documentary and an entire new movie was starting. This should have been in the special features portion of the DVD. And believe me, there are TONS of documentaries on the Boston Marathon bombing to watch if you want to find out the many stories that come from it. I think having the baseball speech was the perfect place to end it, as well as have the in memoriam photos of the four people who lost their lives. 

Don't Bug Me

Arachnophobia 

Director: Frank Marshall

Cast: Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, Harley Jane Kozak, Julians Sands

Released: July 18, 1990

"Arachnophobia" is a noun defined as the pathological fear or loathing of spiders. Even though I don't particularly care for spiders, I wouldn't say I have arachnophobia. If I see one on my wall or ceiling, I"ll just grab a plastic cup and trap it under there, then place a measuring cup over it to make sure the spider doesn't get out (I don't want it touching me!). I will either toss it down the toilet, or, if I'm feeling generous, I'll let it outside. My most recent "scary" encounter with a spider was about a year ago. I felt something on my leg and I just figured it was my cat's tail brushing up against my leg because that's what it felt like...but when I looked down, I saw a daddy-long-legs on my bare legs. OMG, I shrieked so loud and brushed that sucker off of me! Ughghghghg! I hate the feeling of creepy crawlies crawling on you! 

However, my most terrifying encounter with a spider happened when I was about six or seven years old. I was sitting in my bed, doing whatever (like I remember...this happened a long time ago! I was probably reading or playing with My Little Ponies because those were my toy of choice!) and I had my bedspread folded over. When I unfolded the bedspread, I saw, I swear to God, I am not making this up, the BIGGEST spider I have ever seen in my entire life. It was black and was about the size of a sand dollar and I remember it looking very shiny, like it had this sheen to it. But like I said, this happened so long ago that I may be remembering certain details wrong! Surprisingly, I remember being very calm and went down to the basement where my dad was and told him there was a spider on my bed and he came up and disposed of it for me. I'll have to ask him if he remembers this. I feel like if this spider was as big as I remember, there's no way he would be able to forget about it! 

But other than those two instances, I haven't had any really bad experiences with spiders. I had already seen this movie twice before (and I could have sworn it was rated R, but it's PG-13) but it still make me shriek out loud several times. I scared my cat, who was sitting next to me, the first time I shrieked. This is the beginning of the movie where an American photographer is in Venezuela taking photos of new species of insects British entomologist James Atherton (Julians Sands) hopes to find in the Amazon. They spray this gas up into a tree and all these different insects fall out and into jars that they have set up to collect them. They hear bigger thumps and notice a few spiders, quite large. The photographer asks Atherton if the spider is dead and he assures him it is and he gets really close to the spider with his camera and the spider jumps on the lens! OMG, that made me shriek so loud, thus scaring my poor cat! Then I screamed again, minutes later, when the photographer, who isn't feeling very well and has a fever, takes a nap in his sleeping bag. Unbeknownst to him, one of the new species of spiders has crawled and hidden in his bag and it crawls in his sleeping bag and I screamed when he felt something and opened his sleeping bag and sees the spider and it bites him on the leg. The guy dies and they think it was because of the fever.

He is sent back to his small home town of Canaima, California along with the spider that hitches a ride in the coffin. The spider makes its way outside where it is captured by a crow who drops dead after the spider bites it and it ends up in the woods near a house with a barn. The Jennings family from San Francisco is moving into this house. Ross (Jeff Daniels) is a doctor who has moved to the small town to take over the practice of the aging town doctor, Dr. Metcalf. He has moved here with his wife, Molly (Harley Jane Kozak - yeah, I've never heard of her either) and his kids, Shelley and Tommy. We learn very quickly that Ross has arachnophobia when his son tells him there's a spider in one of the moving boxes and he has his wife come and deal with it. She tells them that the spider is more afraid of them than they are of it. She lifts it up with a magazine and carries it to the barn. Well, guess who else decided to make its home in the barn? The venomous Venezuelan spider. There is an odd scene of the two spiders rubbing legs together as they have fallen in love and now are going to procreate (ugh!). A huge web is spun in the barn and hundred of eggs are hatched :::shudder:::

Molly, who is a photographer, has found the web and takes photos of it, thinking it's beautiful. It is quite an impressive web. She also takes Ross to see it, thinking it might be good therapy for his fear of spiders. His fear goes back all the way to when he was two years old. He claims he remembers being in his crib in his diaper and a spider crawling along his bare skin, paralyzing him with fear and he has never gotten over his arachnophobia. As he's looking at the web, the ladder breaks and he falls into it and a DEAD RAT is revealed to be caught in the web. The Jennings are laughing about the whole incident, but I would be a little concerned that there's a dead rat in the web...spiders aren't suppose to eat rats! That would send alarm bells off in me!

Ross finds out that Dr. Metcalf has decided not to retire and wants to keep his practice so this means that Dr. Jennings only has one patient, an older woman who is a retired teacher. He (half-jokingly) tells his wife he hopes she has a lot of things wrong with her, but she turns out to be quite healthy. She was on heart medication, but he tells her she doesn't need it anymore. When she is found dead in her house a few days later, he admits he took her off the pills and Dr. Metcalf blames her death on that, but Ross is adamant that she didn't need them anymore and wants an autopsy but Dr. Metcalf refuses. Even though she was technically Dr. Jenning's patient at the time, Dr. Metcalf says he has seniority over him since she was his patient much longer than she was Jenning's patient. What actually happened was she was bitten by a spider offspring that had crawled up her lamp and bit her hand when she reached to turn it off. There was a close call earlier when the spider was crawling on the couch her cat was sitting on and she scooped her up just before the spider reached her. There's also a scene earlier when the Venezuelan spider has just gotten out of the coffin and there's a cat hissing at it and a dog barking at it. I was so worried for all the cats and dogs in this movie the first time I saw this, but the only animal that dies is the crow...oh, and the rat found in the web. I can handle that, but I would have been so upset if any dogs or cats had died!

Ross gets more patients when the high school football coach wants him to give his players physicals. During a football game, a spider crawls into one of the player's helmets (after crawling on the bleachers and a handful of people unknowingly having close calls with it) and when the teen is called to be in the game, he puts on his helmet only to collapse seconds after being tackled. He is pronounced dead at the scene and everyone is confused because the tackle wasn't that hard. Can you imagine being the guy who tackled him, thinking you killed somebody? I would never play football again if I were him! Again, Ross is refused an autopsy of the young man. He has been given the unfortunate nickname "Dr. Death" since all his patients have died after being treated by him.

The next victim is Dr. Metcalf himself when a spider crawls into one of his slippers as he's walking on the treadmill. He's going to take a shower and is about to walk to the bathroom when his wife tells him that the floor is cold and he should put on his slippers....so his wife basically killed him! He puts on the slippers, and, you guessed it, is dead seconds later. Ross and the police arrive at the Metcalf house. Mrs. Metcalf tells them her husband had complained about a spider bite, but one of the police officers thinks he died of cardiac arrest since he had just been on the treadmill. Ross finally gets to have an autopsy performed and the cause of death was caused by an excess amount of venom. Ross wants the two other bodies exhumed so they can see if they were also killed because of spider bites and finds out, indeed, they were. 

He gets in touch with Atherton who says that Canaima sounds familiar to him. Ross soon finds out that the photographer who died on a recent trip to Venezuela was from the same small town and they also find out he died from a poisonous spider bite instead of a fever.

Ross's daughter has a sleepover at her friend's house and he tells the girls if they see any spiders, to run away. We get a scene of the girls scaring each other with spider riddles and songs, and of course, we see a spider slowly making its way down on its web-making material (whatever you call that!). The girls never even notice the spider (and why would they notice such a small creature?), but a doll laying around near them OPENS ITS EYES when the spider descends down. Um, how the hell did a doll manage to open its eyes on its own?? Is this doll related to Chucky or something? Geeze, that was almost creepier than anything with spiders in this movie. There's also another scene where Ross is checking his kids' room to make sure there are no spiders in sight. He checks under the bed and around the room and claims the rooms are "all cleared". Does he really think those rooms are cleared of spiders? Does he know how small spiders are and they can easily hide in every nook and cranny? That would be terrifying if there were spiders around that could kill people within minutes. I'm surprised the entire town wasn't quarantined! 

By this time there are so many spiders that an exterminator named Delbert (John Goodman) is called. His company is called Bugs-B-Gone. This movie is classified as a comedy-horror and he provides most, if not all the comedy moments. He doesn't seem to be a very good exterminator, though, because instead of spraying the chemicals in the rooms where people claim they saw spiders, he just looks around and says, "No spiders here." He does this in the bathroom of the high school coach. The coach's daughter had been taking a shower and she's closing her eyes as she's washing her hair and a spider is crawling along on the curtain rod, then it FALLS ON HER FACE! :::Shudder::: For some reason, she doesn't even notice there's a spider on her face...and she wasn't even under the nozzle! I would understand if she was standing under the water and didn't notice it. The spider crawls down her body and she only notices it when it's on her foot and screams. When Delbert comes to the house, he just looks behind the toilet, but doesn't do a good job because we see that one is hiding behind there!

Atherton sees the photograph of the web that Molly took that's in Ross's waiting room and wants to be taken to the barn because he knows that's where the nest is. He recognizes the web as the same one the photographer took in Venezuela. He goes inside the barn, knowing full well how dangerous these spiders are and knowing he's entering their domain and ends up getting attacked and killed by the OG spider. Delbert later comes into the barn (smartly wearing protective gear...I don't know why EVERYBODY didn't cover themselves from head to toe in hazmat suits) and finds Atherton's body wrapped in the web material. He arrives not long after the spider attacked Atherton so I don't know how the hell he got wrapped up so quickly!

Ross needs to urgently ask the undertaker a question, but his phone is off the hook because he and his wife want to watch Wheel of Fortune without any interruptions. They also make popcorn to snack on while watching it. He arrives at the house to find both of them dead. I understood why the wife died because we see her reaching for a handful of popcorn (while her eyes are on the TV screen, of course!) and there's a spider in the bowl she grabs. So she must have eaten the spider and died from its toxins...but then how did her husband die? Unless the spider bit her hand, she shrieked and flung her hands and the spider ended up on her husband and bit him too? I guess that makes more sense....but you never see how they were killed, just that they're dead when Ross arrives at their house.

Now knowing that the nest is in his barn, he knows he must go back and kill the "Queen". His house is crawling with spiders and he's trying to get his family out. There's a nice little '80s/'90s cultural reference with Family Ties being on TV and they see a spider crawling down the screen on Michael J. Fox's (aka Alex P. Keaton....yeah, I watched Family Ties!) face. Ross tries to kill the main spider but even throwing it into the fire proves to be unsuccessful as it just leaps out back at him! He ends up shooting a nail at it with his nail gun and all this nasty liquid comes oozing out of it. But before that there was this scene that made me jump out of my skin! He sees the spider go through a pipe and is waiting at the other end with a lighter and a can of bug spray so he can light the spider on fire when it comes out the other end, but he waits and waits and nothing happens. When he takes down the flame, the spider comes rushing past him and jumps on his face! OMG, that scared me so much. I feel like spiders should not be this smart!

I found this movie to be more on the horror side, than on the comedy side! I definitely jumped and shrieked more than I laughed! In fact, I don't think I ever actually laughed! I may not have arachnophobia and I prefer to keep it that way....just keep the spiders away from me!

Argo see this movie now!

Argo
Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Victor Garber, John Goodman, Alan Alda
Released: October 12, 2012
Viewed in theaters: November 5, 2012

Ben Affleck, I forgive you. I forgive you for Pearl Harbor, for Gigli, for Daredevil. (I would forgive you for Armageddon, but, uh, I kinda like that movie). I forgive you for your relationships with, ugh, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez. Even during your not so great moments, I have always liked you...perhaps even a little more than your BFF, Matt. How can you not like somebody who was in the music video for After 7's "Can't Stop" and who settled down with Jennifer Garner, an actress I like (and how nice of you to give a role in your new movie to her television father!) Plus with each movie you direct, I like it better than the last one!

I know Ben Affleck isn't reading this, but perhaps I have the attention of you, dear reader, and if you have not seen this movie, then I very much urge you to (Ar)go see it now! It's based on a true story, that, to be honest with you, I had never heard of until recently when I was listening to a few podcasts that were talking about this film and that's how I became aware of the movie and the events that happened on which it's based.

It's a small, but remarkable story within the Iran hostage crisis which started on November 4, 1979 when militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran because the U.S. supported the recently overthrown Shah. There's a brief history lesson as a prologue to the movie which makes things very helpful and easier to understand. It's a scary scene because there's a mob of militants and when you see they have broken the gates and are coming into the building, you feel their fear. Classified documents are being destroyed and shredded as fast as they can, tear gas canisters are being thrown at the militants, the Embassy staff are concerned about the Iranians who are already there to apply for U.S. Visas.

Since there's no place to escape, most of the Embassy are taken as hostages, but six manage to escape before the mob makes it in the building and find refugee in the home of the Canadian ambassador (played by (real life Canadian!) Victor Garber) and his wife and Iranian housekeeper, who suspects that his house guests are hiding out since they have been there two months and never go out.

Affleck plays CIA specialist Tony Mendez who is in charge of getting the six of them out of the country safely. A couple of ideas are thrown out on the table but none of them seem plausible. When Tony is watching Planet of the Apes with his son, he gets the idea to pose as a Hollywood associate producer and create fake names and Hollywood professions for the six hostages for them to be a Hollywood production team scouting out different areas for a sci-fi movie they are making, Argo. Tony believes this is the best bad idea they have.

With the help of a big shot Hollywood producer (Alan Arkin) and John Chambers, the makeup artist for Planet of the Apes who has worked with the CIA before (John Goodman), Tony picks out a script and gives each hostage a name and profession - scriptwriter, location scout, director, etc. Even though the movie is fake (well, the script was real!), and will never be made (let's face it - this movie is way more interesting than what the actual Argo would have been!), they still want everything to look as authentic as possible. While the producer is more concerned about choosing a script that would be a hit ("If I'm making a fake movie, I want a fake hit!"), Mendez chooses a script that calls for a location that could be set in the Middle East and Argo, a sci-fi fantasy movie that calls for a desert location, is their best bet for that. They also set up a casting party and an ad and article in Variety.

Also with the help from the CIA and Canadian government, Tony gets six fake passports. Their biggest obstacle will be getting past airport security. When a person enters the country they are given a white copy of their documented flight while the airport keeps the yellow copy so they can check when the person flew in. The six Americans are given (fake) white documents, but Tony instructs them to play dumb and tell the airport employees they don't know why they don't have them.

Even though I already knew the outcome of the story, they still did a great job of keeping you in suspense and on the edge of your seat. I haven't felt my heart pound that fast since I watched an episode of Breaking Bad! (Speaking of which, Bryan Cranston, Walter White himself, is in this movie!) In an odd way, I was reminded of United 93 in that both movies are based on true events and even though one movie has a successful ending and the other has a tragic ending, both movies made you worried (or hopeful in the case of United 93) that the opposite of what really happened would be the outcome.

I predict a Best Picture nod come Oscar season!