Last night we decided to head (further) downtown for some shoppin’ and some eatin’ and a movie. We picked up a new backpack for me at MEC, had dinner and some new beer (both very good) at Smokeless Joe’s, and went to see The Descent (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the Paramount theatre. Nellie and I were attracted to it by the good reviews it’s gotten to date, and by the reputation it’s garnered for being scary. We weren’t disappointed.

There were three parts: standard setup, claustrophobic tension and violent mayhem. It didn’t lapse into any silly horror movie clichés, nor into any female horror movie stereotypes (there were no major males characters). They used a few standard horror movie devices (e.g., panning shots as a person backs up toward a dark corner), but sparingly. All in all, I’d recommend it…if you’re ok with scary movies. Oh, and enclosed spaces; I don’t consider myself claustrophobic, but some of the scenes where they’re crawling through tiny passages made my freaking skin crawl.

Oh, and one final note: if you’re just going to talk with your two friends at cocktail-party volume throughout the entire film — as the trio of chattering assholes behind us did — do the rest of society a favour: wait for the DVD and watch it at home.

.:.

Then we came home and watched a schmaltzy, sappy, dorky movie…a Christmas movie, in fact: Noel (imdb | rotten tomatoes). I have no idea why, nor am I even sure why it was on our Zip list. Nellie thinks it was a film festival movie. In any case, avoid this one if you can.

[tags]descent movie, noel movie[/tags]