9. Pontypool

Pontypool
Bruce McDonald, 2009

A morning radio host (Stephen McHattie) and his crew begin to receive reports of an epidemic of violent insanity, which begins to move closer and closer to their studio. . .

Wow. The first forty-five minutes of this movie are perfect. Utterly, impeccably flawless. That the second half can't live up to the first is inevitable, but the fall-off is not nearly as severe as it could have been. In a way, it's almost like there are two different movies - the first is a tense, claustrophobic thriller, while the second is slightly more comedic and considerably more conceptually ambitious. Once the fantastic central idea is revealed (and I won't spoil it here, despite the fact that just about every review or synopsis you come across most likely will), the filmmakers suddenly have a wealth of interesting material to play with, and it's enough to make up for the fact that the movie isn't as scary as it was, or that the exposition gets kind of clunky, or that the only real action sequence in the whole production has a really, really awkward edit right in the middle of it.

The real stars of Pontypool, however are. . .well, the stars. The actors. The entire movie, barring the first scene, takes place inside the broadcast studio, and much of it occurs on the air. Initially, I began to wonder why they didn't just make a radio show of it instead of a movie (apparently, they did both) - but then I began to notice all of the little details that the actors were displaying non-verbally. The story seems tailor-made for radio, but the actors bring so much to the table on a visual level that it would be a real tragedy to lose that dimension. This one's really something special.

9/10 (and I'll probably bump it up a notch after I let it stew for a bit).

PS - Pontypool is something special for an entirely unrelated reason as well - it's my 2000th movie! That's 2000 movies seen and scored, and while it pales in comparison to, say, Roger Ebert's lifetime viewing record, I'm pretty pleased.