Bridesmaids came out in May and stormed the box office making it one of the best box office and critical hits of the year. While easily marked as a “chick flick” it stands on its own as a comic movie that simply has a nearly all female cast. I don’t really see a need try to slight it or downplay it with a goofy sub-genre label.

Now I didn’t think it was nearly as funny as many made it out to be, it’s got plenty of laughs and is a solid movie from start to finish. Kristen Wiig continues her Hollywood streak to the top as Annie, who’s a bit down on her luck. Her start up bakery went out of business, she’s wallowing around in a crap relationship and then her best friend Lillian gets engaged which puts a huge strain on their long relationship. As the Maid of Honor, Annie is put up against some stressful planning, monetary commitments and a cat fight for Lillian’s Best Friend status. Annie basically hits her bottom with every relationship in her life and has to take control of her life again and realize everyone is fighting the same battles to be happy.

It’s not all about Wiig’s character though, the rest of Lillian’s bridal party (Melissa McCarthy in particular) really makes the movie. It becomes an ensemble movie as each milestone to the wedding day becomes a disaster. With a runtime of 2 hours being a bit much, the movie is well paced and moves along without hitting on any terrible cliches that would have bogged down the journey. Not the best comedy ever, but this will be looked on favorable for years to come.

It’s taken me far too long, but I’ve finally seen The Human Centipede. One of the most disturbing ideas for a horror movie, this one made some serious waves when it came out. A mad doctor surgically grafting 3 people anus to mouth for the sole purpose of making his dream lifeform become reality. See? That’s a hell of a sell right there for a horror movie.

Some smart decisions by writer/director Tom Six were made on this project. It must have been really tough to get financing to make this movie, the basic premise is enough to make people ask if you’re nuts. He got really lucky with casting the doctor, he completely makes the movie beliveable (the girls at the start are terrible). With that in mind, the movie isn’t graphic in the slightest. There’s nothing overtly gruesome, there are far more violent and gory films all over the place. Just the idea is enough to make people nervous and seeing the human centipede with bandages sells it completely to the audience. It’s an emotionally traumatic vibe being thrown out to you, it doesn’t need to show you everything. The surgery is done almost completely off screen and there is only one “feeding” scene that is much worse in your head than what’s on the screen. It reminds me a lot of the chainsaw in the bathroom scene of Scareface, where you don’t see the violence, just blood hitting the wall; the audio completely sells the horror to you. This makes the movie much easier to handle and greatly expands the audience who would be able to sit through it. The set up for the movie is a complete cliche, 2 girls get a flat tire in the middle of the woods and go looking for help and meet the wrong guy! But once they get to the house, you forget all about that piece you’ve seen a million times before and are totally on board for what happens.

I really didn’t like the end though. It just defied all sorts of logic for me as the sheer chance of revenge is right there but gets skirted for no reason than to set up a cliffhanger/bummer of a final shot. The brilliance was cut off right there in my view. I think any horror fan should see it, there aren’t that many pictures that successfully turn the genre on its ear like this.