The Covenant
Oh goodness. Where to begin? This is not an Oscar contender by any means, but it is a supernatural feast for the eyes. Four privileged, private school guys played by (in order of reasons to watch this movie ) Taylor Kitsch, Steven Straight, Chace Crawford, and (sorry) Toby Hemingway, are the latest heirs in a deeply rooted, northeastern, WITCHY brotherhood going about their studies generally inconspicuously when a new boy (Sebastian Stan aka Bucky from Captain America) transfers in and shakes everything up. When strange occurrences draw attention to their warlock lore, the original four question each other and some bromantic melodrama ensues. Once they’ve discerned it’s not one of them wreaking havoc on the town, their attention turns to Bucky, who has been conveniently scarce yet present at the scenes of the incidents. As you could probably guess, Bucky is a descendant of a fifth and semi-rival line of witches come to fuck shit up and take his place among them… or perhaps in place of them. His shows of power make no attempt to hide his power and he quickly turns all his devious attention on the strongest and oldest of the four, a hispanic Taylor Lautner look-a-like (main character and second hottest reason to watch this movie). Bucky uses Kitsch and Lautner’s girlfriends, Jessica Lucas and Laura Ramsey (of She’s the Man) as bait for the boys and unleashes an absolutely HEINOUS curse on them, covering them in thousands of spiders resulting in debilitating bites and hysteria. This spidey tactic is beyond deplorable and anyone with an extreme arachna-version should look away during these scenes. I hate spiders and they got to me. There are a few creepy moments and jumpy-outy shots that are disconcerting, but nothing terribly scary. You can definitely tell this is from the producer’s of Underworld from the general atmosphere and they borrowed a few famous shots from themselves. Of course everything comes to a head when Bucky and Lautner face off which is actually a pretty well choreographed fight scene, and it garnered the best lines of the movie (see below). Everything is righted in this little rainy world when Bucky is banished and the town in general is none the wiser. If I were one of the girlfriends, I don’t know if I could continue seeing either of the boys, but they were hot enough that i’d consider it. If you’re bored and it’s on, it’ll pass the time. Everyone’s generally attractive yet not overwhelmingly memorable. We watched it for Kitsch and his exceptional muscle tone and regretted nothing. Comparisons were drawn between this and Twilight and we feel this would have done better had been released later; It was ahead of it’s time with it’s supernatural teen melodrama.
Best Lines (All delivered by the silly silly Sebastian Stan):
“Ooooo WITCHY!” & my absolute favorite “Imma make you my WIOTCH!” Oh god. That one actually elicited a verbal “Wat!? He did not just say… omg.” and both have now been fondly adopted as a part of our official apartment vernacular.
John Carter
Continuing our Kitsch flicks, we went right along to John Carter. Back when this movie was just a vague red poster emblazoned with a cryptic “JC” we were intrigued. When It was given a full name and short preview, we were excited and agreed to see it. That’s where the praise ends. Granted, upon initial theater viewing, Mr. Kitsch was not yet known to us as anything more than an attractive native of sorts so we while we went in with excited curiosity, there was no hormonal drive In place. The first 45 minutes to an hour are great. The archetypal man out of time and place adventure set on what comes to be known as Mars complete with a cast of cryptic bad guys (Mark Strong), strange alien creatures, and a lovely (VERY humanoid) leading lady (Lynn Collins). As is true in any story of this type once Carter gets his footing on the alien planet, his drive focuses on the lady and now that I think about it, he really didn’t seem that concerned with getting back home passed the 15 minute mark. Way to drop the ball John… Oh well, he didn’t really have anything to go back to anyway. Somewhere around the hour mark I completely lose interest. I honestly can’t tell you why, it just loses me. It’s got action, adventure, character development and adequate dialogue it just tries to be more than it is I think. I perk up again for the Gladiator-esque battle near the end but once it’s over and we all know all he has left to do is claim the girl and stop the wedding I just want him to get there and it be done already. As this movie came back on our radar with the Kitsch resurgence I was willing to give it a second viewing thinking perhaps I had written it off unfairly or that I would have some new appreciation for it for Taylor… But alas, I still don’t care. I don’t DISlike this movie, I just don’t need to see it again. Here’s what I will take with me from John Carter: The excellent preview song Peter Gabriel’s cover of Arcade Fire’s My Body is a Cage, Mars’ amazing dog creature Woola, and Taylor Kitsch’s superb physique. Oh and as usual, Mark Strong is a dick. Dude, you’re type cast, but you make me hate you so well. See it, don’t see it, you’re life won’t be changed either way, but definitely listen to that song … now.
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