APOCALYPTO

I've always said, if there really was such a thing as a Star Trek like holodeck, I'd probably never leave it.

There was a time in my teens when I would have just inhabited Middle-Earth.

I recently upgraded to "The Works" with cable, so that is a bit of a time wasting danger. There is a plethora of movies that I never had access to before. But just like when I go into a video store like Westside Video, I'm stumped by what I want to watch. Movies that I almost went to the theater to see, suddenly aren't appealing.

Watched APOCALYPTO.

***(SPOILERS)***

Got to give Mel credit for attempting unusual things.

I must be really jaded, because all the blood letting wasn't as bad as I expected.

It was interesting the way he did it, though.

A slow, in real time sacrifice, from the victim's viewpoint, looking upside down as the knife descends, eviscerates, lifting the still beating heart, then the axe descending, the rolling of the horizon as the head comes off.

Umm, Mel.

You got a problem. You seem to really like this kind of thing. Whipping, evisceration, and other such tortures seem to be a theme in your movies. Makes me wonder if you wear a hair-shirt in real life (you really must be punished, you bad boy).

I said I was jaded, but I pretty much cringed. Won't be recommending it to my wife.

Anyway, the rest of the movie could just as easily been called, "A Run Through the Jungle."

There was a real Peril's of Pauline element to the wife in the deep hole, pregnant, struggling for food and water, then a flood, and then...gasp, a baby being born in the flood, holding the baby and the child over the water...and on and on.

Oh, and the son's 'native' getup was just too cute for words. A little Aztec cherub.

I think Mel missed his calling as a silent film director. He must have given directions to the inhabitants of the city something like this: "O.K. Look really, really evil and degenerate."

The evil, sly, crafty looks of the 'king' and the 'priest' weren't exactly subtle either.

I liked the arrival of the white man at the end, though, signaling the doom of the Aztecs.