Z/Web

Author: David Cronenberg

Director: David Cronenberg

Weird story of a psychologically damaged woman who produces a brood of deformed offspring which do her unconscious bidding (similar to the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet in that emotions cause action). Of course, we don’t know that until the very end. Most of the movie deals with the treatment of pyschological trauma. That’s very interesting, but it doesn’t connect with the brood at all, giving us two very different films in one, which doesn’t work. And all the psycho-babble stuff, while interesting, is pointless as the woman has a physiological problem. No explanation is given about the woman’s ability to produce the brood, but I liked the ominous ending where it looks like her daughter is going to inherit her ability (which she apparently inherited from her mother).

After battling all season long to be the two teams left in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup (the oldest soccer tournament in the U.S., founded in 1914), Chicago and Miami deserved to be here. With great chances at both ends in the first half, the Fire finally managed to sneak one in the final seconds on a terrific break by Razov and Stoitchkov, where Razov unselfishly passed up his chance to score by giving it to the wide-open Bulgarian. In the second half one expected Miami to come out fighting, but it was all Chicago, culminating in a penalty kick call. It was up to Razov to score but Nick Romando, Miami’s little goalkeeper, blocked the shot, keeping Miami in the game. He made another terrific save a few minutes later. It seemed like nothing Chicago could do would increase the score — and so Miami’s Marshall cleverly put the ball in his own net to save them the trouble. With just minutes left and two goals down, it seemed impossible for Miami to come back, but in a frenetic goal mouth scramble they managed to snag a late goal. Seconds later, however, the final whistle was blown and Chicago, for the second time in their short history, had won the U.S. Open Cup (and $100,000 in prize money). Final: 2-1 Chicago.

Another one of IFC’s horror classics, and this one is pretty good. Based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, this is about a genius medical student who invents a way to “re-animate” the dead — though they mostly turn out to be violent zombie-like creatures. Done with a nice touch of humor, but it’s the goriest film I’ve ever seen — really disgusting, especially the final 15 minutes, set in the hospital morgue, and filled with dozens of horrible corpses brought back to life. Not really scary, just ugly. Though Mischief and Mayhem loved the noisy cat-killing scene. ;-) And I can’t fail to mention the repetitive music which gets really annoying as it’s a blatant rip-off of Bernard Hermann’s classic Psycho score, and totally inappropriate (this is not a psychological thriller). The music during the opening credits had some humor to it, which was ideal.

After a goalless first half it looked like this derby might be a lackluster 1-0 game. But Milan, after being dominated in the first half, came out with fire in their belly and possessed the ball and attacked non-stop for fifteen minutes. That run was capped by Ambrosini’s header in the 60th minute, and one minute later Shevchenko scored off a great Boban cross. Suddenly, in the span of a minute and a half, Juventus was down by two goals! But Juventus is infamous for being a team that doesn’t give up. A quarter of an hour later, just minutes after being put in the game, French striker Trezeguet (who scored the winner in France’s Euro 2000 win this summer) headed the ball into the back of the net. It still looked like Juventus was heading for a defeat, however, as the game entered injury time. Then, one minute in, making the coach look like a genius, substitute Antonio Conte scored a fantastic cross-court shot that just missed the keeper’s outstretched fingers. And that was the way it finished, 2-2.