The most impressive thing about “Monsters” is that it was made on a limited budget.
The plot involves alien creatures crashing in
Bizarre as this sounds, the facts of the film are used purely as window dressing for a story about an unappealing duo, coming together as a couple (though the actors are married in real life, you'd never notice).
Millions dead and military and ecological chaos is just there to bring, to these very noticeably (all the more so in their "exotic" jungle locale) wealthy white folks together who Armond White does not inaccurately describe as "[those] who resemble Cameron Diaz and Ethan Coen wannabes, the kind of hipsters you see at the Independent Film Awards."
Though White's relationship to these "hipsters" in his criticism can often border a pathological resentment; they occupy the same shadowy monstrous/inhuman place that the Hollywood system occupies in the criticism of Jonathan Rosenbaum, to be fair.
Godzilla films have typically long involved romance sub-plots; the handsome scientist and the general’s daughter, the plucky reporter and cop in over his head, etc.
I always wondered what the purpose of these insect like figures scurrying beneath the legs of titans, was.
Do we really require these man-like puppets to add a “human core” to the impossible events?
I used to love these old monster flicks but I couldn’t tell you the names of any characters that were less than 50 feet tall.
They were not important to me as a viewer, and with a few exceptions in the sci-fi disaster genre it is humanity and our frail and petty desires which rightly take backseat as the monster/invasion/devastation/events begin and social well-being and selflessness replace individual concerns.
“Monsters” despite it’s title, tries for a reversal of a mechanism it does not fully understand (like similar dismal indie apocalypse “Time Of The Wolf), and is more interested in scenic road movie ambiance than action, horror, adventure, pathos, or being interesting.
The leads are unappealing; the boarder crossing metaphor was more half baked than “Sleep Dealer”, and the scenery and backdrop more appealing than anything that happens.
“Monsters” would be better if the leads had more personality than spoiled and out of touch or bland and generic, because this just leaves us waiting for “Monsters” who seldom appear.
Even if I were of the mind to agree with the consensus that monsters are better heard not seen (which I am not) there are better works featuring off camera scares like “
That being said for the budget this is impressive. If director Gareth Edwards had even twice the funds he had here (still lower than the average film of it's type) the mind boggles at what he might be able to produce.
Crafting the sfx himself, he cuts out the middle man who are largely responsible for most high grossing films for the last few decades, and that would be the special effects and CGI teams.
The Ray Harryhausen’s of today are more anonymous today then ever before, but as technology becomes increasingly available these guys who can already cook themselves what Michael Bay has to order.
Greater availability and cheaper tech will hopefully allow these animators and designers to take the reigns from their lessers and let their imaginations run wild.
As a portent of genre cinema to come “Monsters” is excellent food for thought even if its not there quite yet.
Micheal Winterbottom's first film comes years after Greg Araki's "The Living End" and "Thelma And Louise", but where the later lead to some kind of bittersweet empowerment, the former film always existed in relation to society at large (usually depicted as angry rednecks).
In fact the naturalistic cinematography, cruelty, and intensity of performances also fit the 
Funny, frantic, visually daring (especially for a first film) "Butterfly Kiss" lives in a world of it's own, soaking in the calm and scenic warmth of heads pressed against car windows, even if the cars have day old corpses in the trunk.
Directed By Guy Ritchie
Paradoxically a British director has given us the most Americanized Sherlock Holmes ever (a character who has had nearly 200 film adaptations-more than any other fictional character to date).
I might have enjoyed this more had they simply not called it "Sherlock Holmes" and just thought up another name for this Victorian 
I was entertained I can't say I wasn't. 
The story finds Holmes dealing with the wicked Lord 
Only Holmes can stop him, but he is more distracted by the fact that Watson is moving out their bachelor pad, crying in so many words that "Yoko is breaking up the band". 
Together with his off and on, American thief 
But 
Guy Ritchie seemed like he had a good time, but this wasn't just an updated more modern version of a classic 
Who could we get to solve the case of the false advertisement? I know, maybe Sherlock Holmes!
And I doubt he would do much bare knuckle brawling and split second super-hero calculations to do it.
Something is 
As a 
Before and after I watched Richard Stanley's documentary about Haitian vodou (or "voodoo" anglicised), "The White Darkness" I was bombarded with a reel to reel stream of corpses and rubble on CNN and most major news channels.
I had wanted to see the movie for some time now, out of nerdy interest in Haiti Ive had since I was boy (I even wrote a short story once called "Bwa Kayiman" 
Their Revolution was the only successful slave rebellion in human history (unless you include the Moses story or "Gladiator"). 
And the practitioners of vodou believe like conservative evangelical paranoiacs Pat Robertson that their religion played a role in their victory. 
Where they differ, is that for Robertson everything outside of Christianity is basically paganism which is defacto satanism, while for vodouists the ceremenoy that night was a prayer like any other that would have been made in a time of need (unlike most prayer's it happened to be work). 
This argument is not isolated though, as Christian missionaries and a military Col. in charge of humanitarian aid (who lost his job as result of this film) echo Robertson's statements and brazenly go so far as to say their jobs are one and the same; that their can be no true democracy without Christianity. 
Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, depending in large on foreign aid to sustain themselves. 
Vodou's syncrenetic relationship with Catholicism abides these challenges, where Lao spirits sever as stand-in's for Catholic saints, allowing them to publicly function as Catholics if need be, but preserve among themselves their own traditions and meanings. 
Richard Stanley as a director of horror and sci-fi seems well aware of the cultural associations westerners apply to the religion; zombie's, voodoo dolls, and ritual sacrifice, etc, and so illuminates the impartial narrator normal to documentaries.
My first exposure to voodoo and I suspect that of most people comes from things like the "based-on-true-events" b-horror movie "The Serpent And The Rainbow", the Bond film featuring Paul Mcartney's only good post-Beatles song "Live and Let Die", and my personal favorite (and Halloween costume I could never get together) the satirical Jim Crow from "The Invisibles".
In the white darkness (a title loaded with double meanings) Stanley, gives the words only to Haitian vodouists and Haitian occupying American missionaries and soldiers. 
Stanley does not interview non-vodouist Haitian's nor does he look at non-Haitian vodouist's, which might have made the film more well-rounded and balanced in a traditional way if he had (correction: there is one Haitian historian in the bunch). 
However, what makes this a film and not a history channel program is it's choice not to do just that. 
Stanely looks at the ritual's in Herzogian fashion attempting to capture their drama, energy (after all Lao is energy), beauty, and horror which at times almost threatens to sensationalize the film. 
Like Jean Rouch's similar ethnographic study "The Mad Masters" it walks a fine line between illumination and distortion. 
Fortunately the various priests, healer's and drummer's (dance and music are integral to ritual life) we meet ground the film into a series easy to understand cultural vignettes.
Stanley cleverly edits together perspectives of the Christians and the Vodouists, to create it's own syncretic clashing of images and words echoing the way the religion has structured itself around it's colonial history. 
Eisenstein would be proud of this kind of montage that is in the truest sense a clash of ideas. 
There are many beautiful landscape shots letting us breath in the tranquil beauty of the island, luring us into a soft trance, before dragging us into a drum circle full of chants and exaltation's, likened by one participant as being similar to "time-travel". 
Richard Stanley will likely be remembered more for his horror, and sf, like his South-African demon hunt "Dust Devil", but from this documentary he seems a multi-talented guy, every bit the auteur with realism as he is with fantasy. 
Not the first filmmaker to attempt to broach this subject, American experimental film pioneer Maya Deren created both a well regarded book and a film on the subject called "Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti", which I will be tracking down some and am curious to see how they will stack up together. 
There is no shortage of horrible images still coming across the screen from the Haiti of today, and though their are probably better films from and about the country, it was fascinating and ominous to see the living, vibrant, completely unique corner of the earth that is still present somewhere beneath the rubble. 
If your in the mood for exploring other routes to spirituality and looking at something else besides real-time long-suffering, relax and let Stanley's white darkness envelop you.
It's cooler in the shade anyway, and in vodou tempreture of spirit, particularly "coolness", is of high value. 
