The Wicker Man

Oldest Child Deathrage has been home from college this summer. About a month ago, she adopted a pit bull. He's awfully sweet, but he's very large and awkward. Joyfully bounding through the penthouse and across several pieces of furniture, he knocked a full glass of fruit juice into a tub containing Oldest Child Deathrage's DVDs. After threatening to murder her pet, we cleaned up the mess. In the bottom of the tub of DVDs was Nicolas Cage's remake of the 1970s cult classic The Wicker Man. I had not seen this film, and was very excited to watch it with Oldest Child Deathrage. She was having no part of it. She claims to have watched it many times at college, ridiculing it with her drunk college friends. I don't know where she would learn such behavior. I shrieked, "Watch this terrible movie with me!". She said no. I shrieked, "You don't love this family!", to which she said that I was right and went to her room to watch Pretty Woman. I don't understand children nowadays.

Anyway, The Wicker Man stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, and it is the story of grieving parents in Venice being haunted by the apparition of their dead daughter, I think, or something suspiciously similar to that. Here's a clip:

Then Nicolas Cage and his distractingly wispy Just-For-Men'ed hair travels to an island inhabited by a cult of vaguely threatening women wearing cable-knit sweaters, which sort of looks like a coven of Coldwater Creek witches. Then he breaks several laws, some of which include trespassing, breaking and entering, and stealing several bicycles. Here's a clip:

There's something about a missing child, some bees, and jars filled with fetusy liquids. That's really about it. Neil Labute directs in a painterly style; sort of like what would happen if Maxfield Parrish directed a nymphy J. Crew ad. It's dreadful, but not as bad as I'd hoped. I watched The Wicker Man on a fruit-flavored DVD.