Feast (2005)

the audience applauded

I'll tell you why so serious

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Love the concept here - a fun flick about survival. Project Greenlight's biggest success.

Various people are spending a regular night at a low life bar. Hero (Eric Dane) comes in totting a shotgun warning of a monster. He is killed right away. His wife Heroine (Navi Rawat) tries to organize the people in a defense. Tuffy (Krista Allen) is Cody's mom. Jason Mewes gets his face ripped off. There are Bozo (Balthazar Getty), Coach (Henry Rollins), Beer Guy (Judah Friedlander), Hot Wheels (Josh Zuckerman), waitress Honey Pie (Jenny Wade), Drunk Girl (Chauntae Davis), and Harley Mom (Diane Ayala Goldner).This puts a bunch of standard characters in a standard horror situation. It's quite deliberate and somewhat effective. It has a few comedic scenes that kinda works. It's not a masterpiece but horror fans will get something out of this striped-down indie.

If you liked Dusk Till Dawn and/or Demon Knight, this is movie is worth the watch. The gore is plentiful, the blood is abundant and the bits of dark humor are well placed. The greatest part of the movie is that it never takes itself too seriously. This movie floated under the radar but deserves the attention. If you are a horror movie buff, or looking for something interesting to check out, this is the one to watch. It is good to note that this film spawned two sequels, so someone out there wanted to see more. This movie has that cult vibe, full of wicked one liners, and gruesomely creative scenes that will leave you obligated to share around the water cooler at work.Put on the popcorn, sit back and enjoy this bloody good romp.

This one is another stinker, a flick just as bad as Bad Santa, but also one that I had to review for two, rather three, reasons. First, everything is bad here, or at least mediocre, so it could well be slated as a mandatory viewing for film students, so they'll have a good inventory of everything they'll have to avoid while doing their own flicks. Second, as it happened with BS, there was an excellent idea for a plot here but, contrary to BS's producers--who were obviously aware they could rise the brow level of the thing a few notches, but which they didn't do, either because of intellectual laziness or they just thought it could damage its chances in an too-easy-to-content market—these ones here were completely oblivious to the fact that there was actually a good film there, somewhere. Think Michael Moore...The third thing is, I have seen so much praise upon it here that I saw as my moral duty to set things straight by saying, yes, this is a real stinko; period.Plot line: a dozen people are besieged in a rat hole of a bar in the midst of the Arizona desert by a "family" of beasts who seem to have originated in some genetics experiment gone wrong--a weird mix of cattle, coyote and even a bit, it seems, of an intelligent biped well known to us--where they are killed one by one while they try the most hare-brained schemes to escape. The stupidity of the whole plot appears clear considering that these losers are trapped in the best possible place to execute an easy, slick, escape. See: Bar, alcohol, fire...do these words mean anything to them? Absolutely no; instead, they spend their time and energies firing wildly, randomly, their guns to no avail, while the monsters laugh at them--with the only exception of the family baby, which almost requires a M-1 to trespass--all this while anyone with half a brain could have told them they just needed big torches & cocktails Molotov; then they get out holding the torches in a protective ring around them, ready to throw the Molotovs at any beast trying to break in (the beasts got to fear fire, as fire has the nasty habit of breaking organic matter into basic chemical components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc). That's why I said Moore would have gone nuts with such a script as he would have seen it as a masterfully comment on the fixation of his countrymen with guns, as all what these people get by firing them is making their situation worse. On top of that, those who finally escape do it without firing a shot. Did I say Moore would have gone nuts with such a plot, as it shows that people obsessed with guns develop a tunnel vision, become single minded and dumb? But those who made the flick weren't certainly thinking about it, or they didn't even want to have anything to do with such an idea, which is even worse.Then there is the cinematographic work itself, where everything is bad or putrid, in first place the direction. When you have a dozen or more characters shown at the beginning with a presentation card you have to be a really great filmmaker to get away with it and the characters have to be really memorable. But Gulager is not Leone and Feast is not GBU, so the effect is completely the opposite: we lose all interest in following, exploring, these characters, we disconnect ourselves from them and just expect them to follow their cues. This is not a bad idea after all, considering that a) they are unlikable, even more so in the midst of a crisis and b) There is no real character development here; the mean of the beginning will keep mean to the end and so the coward, the disenchanted, the cynic, the opportunist, etc. Just cardboard cuts, nothing more, with hip aliases to boot: Boss Man, Harley Mom, you get the idea. As there is no real script either--just a chaotic sequence of random acts of violence verbal or physical, and plentiful display of gore—there is neither a plot development to speak of, or a pace, or even a mood or atmosphere. Horrible things keep happening, that's all. About the camera work, the only thing you can say about it is that it will always be in the best possible spot to catch the gore and violence in all their beauty and glory—guy gets eye gouged out; gal gets, ahem, molested by a beast; gal gets her leg amputated, and so on. You only need to be aware that all this is just special effects to get yourself completely numb to these scenes, which is the easiest thing to do after all considering that everything is bad, so there's never ever, real Suspension of Disbelief to speak of here.If you are a regular viewer, don't waste your time watching this one; better use those 93 min. doing something more pleasurable--like picking a fight with your Black Belt holding neighbor for ex. Now, if you are really interested in film making, do yourself a favor and watch it, study it, because in it you'll find everything you must NOT do if you ever want to become successful.BTW, why I'm not surprised to see that those who praise Feast to the skies also consider that Evil Dead crapfest a masterpiece?