The dogs ate my assignment

At 1 p.m. today, while I was watching men in skirts toss telephone poles end over end, spookyfruit told me he wanted me to post a full report. I meant to. I got back to monshu's in plenty of time, but there was an escapist movie on SciFi that I ended up watching to the end. Damn, I wish I had that time back! Typical incoherent crap. But the title of next film, Dog Soldiers, piqued me, so I thought I'd hang around long enough to figure out what it was. By 10:15, I was hooked and my next hour and forty-five minutes were spoken for.

Remarkably good werewolf movie. It may owe a lot to Predator, but I wouldn't know because I never saw it. A squad of British soldiers on training exercises in Scotland (in a piece of inspired casting, played by the sleepy archduchy Luxemburg) spend the night fending off an unexpected and vicious enemy. Some of the things this movie gets right:

• The soldiers are extremely convincing. They talk, joke, respond, and behave exactly the way I think real soldiers would. (Not that I'd know, but versimilitude counts.) One is the stereotypical gung-ho commando character, but even he registers as a person and not a cliche.
• The pacing is excellent. Builds tension effectively and releases it explosively.
• There is some dark humour, but with the exception of one or two missteps, it's welcomely understated. No one has any hokey Schwarzeneggerish lines and the tension is relieved at times, but never broken and the winking at the audience is subtle enough (e.g. one of the enlisted men is named "Bruce Campbell") that you don't catch it until later.
• Exposition, while not as minimal as it could be, is kept in check; you don't get the feeling that the writers are worried about losing the slowest member of the audience.
• There is refreshingly little CGI. The old-fashioned animatronics and body suits, even if they verge on looking a little cheesy at times, still kick the ass of cheesy digital effects. (I fully expected that one day the CGI of this era will be looked back upon the way we do Japanese monster movie sets and suits.)
• Basically, the fimmakers did what we want all thrillers to do but which most fail miserably at: They breathed new life into stock situations.

Looking back over the list, it doesn't seem like getting these things right should be so hard. But they must be or we wouldn't have crap like Th13teen Ghosts.

Oh, a couple notes on casting. The hero is played by the star of the diverting gay bedroom farce Bedrooms and Hallways. I gained new respect for someone who could go from being a wishy-washy urban fag in that film to a determined professional soldier in this one. Then I read his bio on the IMDB and found out that he debuted in a role as a ruthless gangster. One of the other major characters is played by the son of Jon "The Third Doctor" Pertwee. I first realised I was getting old when I noticed how many men my age or younger were looking attractive. The fact that I distrusted my identification of the actor because he was born in 1964 and the character just looked so much older than me confirms it.