Patrick McGoohan and Michael Ironside are so perfect. Every time I watch Scanners, though, I wish Stephen Lack was more than an intense pair of eyes.
Anyway, it's a touchstone. Everything from Eleven's bloody nose to TV Frank's You were scanning me weren't you? You were trying to make my head explode, you freaked-out maniac!
During the end credits the name Andy Serkis popped up next to the picture of Ulysses Clawe, and my poor dumb brain spent a split second wondering why they used motion capture for that guy.
Deliberately pulpy, sometimes a bit goofy, but almost never cheesy. It's a fine balance, and one that allows the operatic stuff to work really well. That's really all the shading I need in my Star Wars.
P.S. Dear Mr. Lucas, please remove Hayden Christensen and the Jar-Jars from the end of this movie at your earliest possible convenience. Thanks.
A tedious family of wealthy idiots gets what is coming to it at the hands of a woman who isn't afraid to use her ankles to get what she wants.
It's a little too stiff-necked and self-consciously archetypal for the melodrama to work in my eyes. It sort of works as a horror, with the femme fatale (vampire) exerting an pull over her victim so strong as to be inexplicable.
And that's sort of a problem - we never really…
