Reviews

OK, there are some things that I simply do not understand about this movie. But before I get into that, let me say this: Timothée Chalamet turns in a wonderful performance. That's what the four stars are for. Armie Hammer? Sorry, but he is a typical blonde, wasp, block of wood. That's all I can say. The actors who played the parents? Well, they did the best they could with what they were given, which wasn't much.

Here's what I don't understand. What parents would approve of their child- who is a minor- having an affair with someone they have hired as an assistant, who is 30 years old? And right under their roof? I don't know if things are different in Italy, but here, in the United States, there is a term for what happens between the boy and the assistant. It's called statutory rape. Am I right, is it just me? How is this in any way acceptable ? It doesn't matter if the minor pursued the adult, the adult is supposed to know better. How is this acceptable? Also, did anyone find the way the director held the close up of Chalamet's anguished face **over the end credits** odd? What the hell was that about?

I she no tears over dad's speech to the boy at the end. Totally maudlin. The film is also too long. I felt like I'd been sitting there watching it for three hours.

Your mileage may vary. Peace.

A movie about a group of rich people vacationing in a fictitious country where the penalty for manslaughter is death, but for the right sum, you can pay to be cloned and have your clone executed instead. Make sense? No, but who cares? Certainly not the filmmakers.

There is no one to like, no one to root for, no one to identify with, and no explanation as to why the group of rich a**holes that Alexander Skarsgard-a writer looking for "inspiration"-and his wife encounter keep coming back to this little hellhole vacation spot. They seem to have formed a perverse cult around this process of cloning, but again you never understand why, or why they enjoy it. They all get to watch the graphic executions of their clones because, hey, they're all decadent super rich people and I *guess* this is what they get up to in their copious free time. Oh, there's also some drug tinged orgies that happen with a lot of bizarre visual effects and go on FAR too long because.. because... oh hell I don't know. At one point the others in the group turn against him when he tries to leave the island and try to shoot him because... oh right. I don't know that either. Some thing about "transformation through blood " which requires him to kill his own clone, who is brought in on a dog leash.

How Skarsgard, a decent actor, ended up in this, I also don't know. Pretty much all he does is look puzzled unless he's terrified or beating someone to a pulp. As for Mia Goth... you just want to slap the hell out of her for being so damned annoying. The movie doesn't end so much as it just stops. Is there a message? Who knows. Maybe that the rich can buy their way out of anything. The ONE interesting idea about identity that they brush up against is never explored and just left hanging.

Good premise at its core, abysmal execution. Somebody take away Brandon Cronenberg's camera until he knows better.

It is probably a testament to what a jaded woman I am that nothing in this movie drove me from the room, or even made me wince.

Since anyone reading this review already knows the premise of HC1, and HC2 as well, I'll skip it.

The problem is, the first film was the true novelty. And even then, once you get used to the repulsive-and stupid-premise, it's pretty standard, mad scientist fare. All this flick gives you is a more graphic version of how a person with no surgical "knowledge" would put together the so-called centipede. And frankly, so what? Since there are no real characters, and no narrative, what's at stake? Nothing. When Martin begins to knock his victim's teeth out with a hammer, I wondered, "Hm. It's black white, I wonder if that's chocolate syrup they're using for blood? I hope it was Hershey's." It's one fake atrocity after another, and you can just HEAR director Tom Six going, "Oh! Wait, and when the pregnant woman escapes and has the baby in the car, what if she SQUISHES the new born trying to hit the gas pedal! Oh my God, that will make people CRAZY!" "Oh, let's show the feces dripping off their faces, cool huh? I'll bet people will vomit!" Yeah, yeah. Not really.

When it's all so blatantly meaningless, when you really couldn't care less what happens to anybody, it doesn't matter what kind of weirdness you get up to, Mr. Six. It makes no damn difference. What you've got is a visual catalog of depraved stuff that isn't really all that convincing. This movie is so empty it is practically transparent. If your aim was to throw a bone to those "fans" of HC1 who complained it wasn't graphic enough, I think you've mainly failed. Maybe you shook up the the censors in England, and the people whose idea of violence is a Chuck Norris or Stallone flick, but a lot of us are over here are wondering why we sat through this. Go to a writing class, and get back to us.

There are many funny aspects in this thing, to be sure. Or maybe the word I'm searching for is silly. Evidently, the garage where Martin works and collects his victims is like the roach motel -- people drive in but they don't drive out, and NOBODY seems to notice. Each one of his victims is shot, and beat over the head with a crowbar multiple times, and yet they survive to be stitched together. For some reason Martin likes applying sandpaper to his penis, but hey! It's all understandable because daddy raped him when he was a kid. I'm surprised Six bothered with that cliché at all, since he doesn't bother to explain anything else. This movie is like an amateur effort at writing porn--you make SOME pretense at a story so it doesn't read like, "This guy comes into the room and starts ****ing the woman tied up on the bed," but you know, you kinda rush through the details to get to the sex. Six's whole motivation was the grisly creation of the human centipede, and it shows.

Epic fail. Take off the cowboy hat, stop smirking, make a decent movie, and try to hide your contempt for your audience. Jeez.

Drug addiction: no frills, no pretty people, no accents to make it seem somehow exotic to us Americans, just unremitting, unvarnished reality, and three hapless souls sinking to oblivion. That's all, folks! And to say it's hard to watch is an understatement. It's like being beaten with a rubber hose on the inside.

There are thousands of reviews, so I'll skip the particulars. The cast is superb. How Ellen Bursten did not walk away with an Oscar, I don't know. Maybe it was just too little of a film. What a completely fearless, harrowing performance.

You'll never look at a refrigerator the same way again.

Maybe the older I get, the less patience I have with people who do willfully, stupid things. Having said that, I can't fault the acting or direction of this film. The cast is very good, Penn obviously knows how to direct his actors, the vistas are magnificent. The problem for me is, the central character is someone who is smart enough to know better, but goes ahead and does the stupid thing anyway. I try to chalk it up to youth, but the scope of the lead character's stupidity is so great, I find myself unable to do it. OK, I think. Maybe when I was 21, I would have done something like that, given his family life. But the answer always comes back, "Hell, no. I wasn't even that stupid at twelve." Christopher McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch ) has a mommy and daddy (played by Marcia Gay Hardon & William Hurt) who fought a lot while he was growing up. That's unfortunate. He graduates college and decides most people lead empty lives. Hey, what a concept. And because he must have a tremendous amount of rage towards mom and dad, he decides to hell with it all, tears up his credit card and money or gives it away ( OK, that's kind of cool ) , and thinks, screw it! He's going on the road! A free spirit! What is his ultimate goal? Alaska! Why? Who knows? Maybe it's because that's as far away as he can get from mom and dad, who despite the fact they fought like cats and dogs, are totally anguished over the disappearance of their son. Who never, never tells them where he went, or communicates with them once. He never even tells his sister, the person he supposedly loves, what he intends to do. So he's not just stupid, he's unforgiving. Yay. So this over privileged, clueless 21 year old with a liking for Thoreau & Byron (who probably wouldn't have been caught dead in Alaska, at least, not THAT unprepared) sets off on his trek for a very cold place, and on the way, behold, he encounters a bunch of colorful eccentrics, whose lives he touches, briefly and magically, and then he flits away, because he is, after all . .a free spirit. Evidently, someone has neglected to tell Chris the 1960s are over, because he even gives himself a wifty, 1960s name: Super Tramp. Eventually, Chris gets to Alaska, and the guy who drops him off as far into the wilderness as he'll dare to go says to him, "I'll see you in the spring, if you're still alive." Does that faze Chris? No, because someone kind of, SORT of told him how to smoke moose meat. The wonders of nature await! Besides, all he has to do is cross that little creek. Of course, during the spring melt, the thing becomes a raging river, trapping him on the what turns out to be the wrong side of where he should be. Oops. He finds an abandoned bus to live in, and botches smoking his moose meat, because maggots take over VERY quickly. Not to worry! He's got his little "Local Flora and Fauna" book, so he can live off fruits and roots and plants that aren't poisonous. Except he really sucks at using the book and he DOES end up eating a highly toxic plant, and in his starved condition, he doesn't last too much longer after that. He is so sick at the end even a grizzly bear turns his nose up at him. I'm supposed to feel sorry for this guy? He was just as self indulgent and selfish as the world he choose to reject, and being clueless, nature culled him from the herd. End of story.

The predominant theme of this fable is the impermanence of life and the loss we suffer because of it. If you've read anything about Eastern religion, you will be very familiar with the ideas of impermanence and the futility of trying to hang on to anything, but as Westerners, some of us may be unprepared for the way this theme slowly creeps over us during this story. After thirty minutes in, I realized I was in for a hard ride emotionally.

This is one of the most lovely and melancholy movies I have ever sat through.

The story is narrated by both Benjamin and the love of his life, Daisey, while she is on her death bed in a New Orleans hospital, with the help of Ben's diary. And a very bad storm is on the way.

I have heard comparisons of this movie to Forrest Gump. No, no, no and no. I'm not denying Hanks was good in the film, but it was totally contrived. Ben isn't present at a dozen history making events. In fact, the beauty of Ben's life is its simplicity.

Ever since I first heard of the premise of Benjamin Button, I wondered this: What happens to him in the end? Sure, aging backwards sounds great at first, and it is. 80. . . 70. . .60. . .50. . .40. . .30. . .20. . .then what? The human brain becomes fully mature at 20 or so, and at its peak at around 21 or 25. Beyond that, what happens to Ben? At some point he will start to lose his life memories, not because his brain is degenerating, but because it is devolving, along with the rest of him. In stead of being able to accumulate more and more knowledge, or even hang onto it, that knowledge, along with all those memories, will just . . .go. They'll evaporate. Just who will he be at ten? At five? Will he devolve into a infant, a fetus, then. . .what, pop out of existence? What a horrible fate. More horrible than old age, really, because my grandfather died at 94, with all his faculties and memories intact. He could add a column of numbers faster than I could enter them into a calculator and used gloat over this. He died quickly, of a stroke, one day.

And so it is. Ben simply regresses into childhood, with no memory of his great love, his encounter with a German submarine, his adopted mother, his friends, his own daughter, or anything at all. And it's not a blissful forgetting. Ben is frightened and confused as a child, sometimes hostile, full of behavioral problems arising from the strange shadows in his consciousness. Somewhere in the corner of his brain is the phantom of an entire existence, but what was it? He doesn't know. He can never know. He experiences a kind dementia, then devolves to a toddler. As an infant his little body simply fails, and he mercifully dies in the arms of his devoted ex-wife, then an old woman. "He opened his eyes at the end, and looked at me. And I knew he knew *who* I was."

Technically, the movie is a marvel, and Brad Pitt turns in a very understated and heartfelt performance. But you won't be marveling at the backwards aging Brad Pitt, you'll be immersed in the unfolding of Ben's life, the wonderful fable of the backwards running clock supposedly installed in New York's Grand Central Station, and the final image of Huricane Katrina's rising water, washing away the artifacts of a life.

I thought this movie was stupid back when I saw it. It doesn't get any less stupid with time.

Plot: USA gets over run by Russians. Intrepid bunch of young'uns fight them in Colorado.

It's hard to say what's more stupid. . .the notion of America being invaded by Russia or the sight of Soviet tanks rolling over the mountains of Colorado, or the cast.

The cast. C. Thomas Howell as gritty Wolverine.. Lea Thompson as tragic Wolverine. Charlie Sheen as pain in the ass Wolverine. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey! And let's state the obvious: any minute you expect them to throw off their camouflage and mambo. . .though of course DIRTY DANCING was three years after this opus.

If you don't know what a Wolverine is, please. Experience RED DAWN for yourself and find out.

And absolutely everyone in this movie is a stereotype. . .EVERYONE, Russian or American or Cuban. But then again, this thing was directed by three fisted he-man John Milius, so there you go.

Anyhow, it's good for some yucks if not out right hysteria.

Actually not bad at all. The movie comes after the truly sad period at Disney during the 1970s--recycled characters AND animation from past films. (shudder) It's too depressing.

Most say that the studio really began to get its groove back with the GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE, 1986, but I really think the start of the renaissance was THE FOX AND THE HOUND. The lush backgrounds are reminiscent of BAMBI (and hard-core fans will see two tips of the hat to BAMBI --NOT recycled animation) and I think the characters of Copper, Tod, and Widow Tweed are beautifully animated.

The story involves the friendship between a fox cub and a puppy destined to be a hunting dog, and of course, things go to hell, and partially resolve at the end.

Some people have commented the level of violence may be too much when these two grow up and face off, but frankly, unless you have a VERY impressionable young kid you really don't have to worry. Don't get me wrong -- the fight scenes are harrowing, especially when a wounded grizzly bear is thrown into the mix--but I think it just adds to the drama.

The "messages" are all good. . .the most important one being that blind hatred either cripples you or eventually gets you killed.

The only thing I didn't like is the truly awful songs. Thank God there's only three of them. Otherwise, I would highly recommend THE FOX AND THE HOUND.

I saw this flick at the NYC Horror Film Festival. When I first heard about it I thought, "A horror film featuring a white rapper? What a crappy idea." Well, it was great.

"Rapturious" is a white kid with dreadlocks--a talented up and coming rapper--with a nasty drug habit and a really interesting prior existence. We find out in a pre-credit sequence that doesn't even seem like it belongs in the rest of the film that in the late 1800s he was a notorious serial killer and rapist. The law finally catches up with him and they hang him from a tree. The whole sequence was shot in a real, dusty little ghost town in Arizona, where the buildings still stand. Very creepy, and very dislocating.

Flash forward to the present where Rapturious (played by Robert Oppel) tries a brand new drug given to him by his dealer (Hoya Guerra). He immediately starts having what he *thinks* are hallucinations caused by the drug in which he murders people and is told by a demonic voice "WE'VE FOUND YOU, DEADMAN." What the poor kid doesn't know is that his soul managed to escape from hell after his execution (during an interview with a very nasty Demon, whose name escapes me), and evidently, he's been taking refuge in unborn babies since then, this being his latest rebirth. But the long arm of demonic justice has finally reached out, and they are by God determined to drag this errant soul back to his sentence in the Inferno.

So it's a game of cat and mouse throughout the whole story, as the demons--some in human disguise-try to net him.

We've seen it before, but the neat thing about this movie is the casting, and the terrific, urban feel. It was all shot in New York City and Queens. . .and Brooklyn, it looked like to me, and it just has the right street feeling.

The cast is great. Robert Oppel is perfect as Rapturious. Classic tough guy with a sad childhood, which one black rapper accuses him of milking too much for his music. Even though you never get inside this guy very much he has a very edgy, sympathetic vibe, so you like him. This is a role Johnny Depp would have had before he broke out.

Amin Joseph, who plays the closest thing Rapturious has to a friend, is so good he doesn't even come off as an actor. Hoya Guerra, as the drug dealer, almost steals the movie at one point, in a scene where he's sitting in his seedy apartment, watching one of those awful Mondo Cane movies on his TV, laughing hysterically and repeatedly exclaiming "GET TH' F**K OUTTA HERE!" while slurping down what looks like a bowl of beans. There's a short scene in a bar where a fat Italian guy (Sal Argano) sits and rants about how Coney Island is being over run by "wiggers," white kids who dress like black kids, that is absolutely priceless. I don't know where writer/director Kamal Ahmed found his cast, but they worked great for him.

Horror fans will love Debbie Rochon as Rapturious's agent and they'll also love Joe Bob Briggs, who plays aslightly off center psychiatrist at Belle View and who. . .well, I'll let the movie hold *some* surprises, but I will say he has the best line in the flick.

I guess this will go direct to video--I hope not, I think it deserves a theatrical release--but one way or another, it's really worth seeing.

Oh, c'mon, everybody, where is the love? First of all, when you slide some title off the shelf that never made it to theatrical release with a cover that features Dennis Hopper staring out at you in all his squinty-eyed, slightly soulful I-Am-a-Raving-Lunatic intensity. . .brace yourself for the possibility that you may be making a terrible mistake.

Since the plot and writing credits have been hashed out already, I wont go into them, except to say I haven't seen so many people frothing at the mouth over a movie since they announced Michael Keaton was playing BATMAN way back in 1989.

Sure very little of it made any sense, but was it fun watching Dennis Hopper rip his own face off? Sure! There was a pretty woman for the men to look at, a hunky guy for the ladies to look at, a decent cast, sadistic prison guards, a crazed warden, bogus science, a corrupt politician, a real electric chair, an autopsy, brain maggots, falling brains. . .my gosh. Fun galore on an evening when you've got nothing better to do. Are these my standards for great movies? No, but I didn't rent this title to see a great movie, or even a good movie. But my idea of a totally irredeemable piece of crap is NAIL GUN MASSACRE. So I'll save my venom. Couple of stars for the rating, at least.

OK. So three engaging friends take a vacation in the Autralian outback. The car breaks down in the middle of freaking nowhere--and in the outback, every place you are is NOWHERE--and along comes the helpful country person who turns out to be not so helpful.

Sure you've seen it all before. But have you seen it set in Australia? Probably not, but it doesn't matter, because this flick is ultimately not satisfying, because there is no triumph at the end. Psychopath horribly tortures victims, one by one, boom, end of story. So what? Note to writer/director Greg McLean and other writer/directors of horror flicks: If you're going to put your protagonists through 17 different kinds of hell, you better give your audience some release at the end. Otherwise, they feel cheated. It's great to scare the hell out of people, but give them a resolution. That the universe is an indifferent grinding machine that eats you up and spits you out again with no regard for justice. . .well, this we already knew before we went to see the movie. We don't really see horror movies to be reminded that all is chaos. On the contrary; we go because we get a neat little morality tale. People do horrible things, but in the end, some brave, resourceful man or woman does them in.

Victims being led off like lambs to slaughter is part of this genre. But so is the final reckoning, when the victim stands up on his or her hind legs and effectively fights back. This is not to say you can't buck the system and try something new, but let's face it, bleak endings are not new, and are usually the mark of someone who is still rather young, and who thinks that the pointlessness of it all is a brand new concept.

It's not. It's just terribly disappointing, and makes you more inclined to shrug off the movie.

Anyhow, Nathan Phillips, Kestie Morassi, and Cassandra Magrath are very good as the hapless victims, and John Jarratt plays Mick Taylor, a truly frightening movie monster that probably would have been enshrined along with Hannibal Lector had the movie been better.

Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson play Paxton and Josh, two collage grads who are going on a last sex and drug binge through Europe before going back to the US and going into law school and getting trapped in a life of privilege and excess that most people in the world can only dream about. Poor Lads! Who can blame them for wanting to get down with their decadent selves? These two are the classic Ugly Americans.

With their brash ways and million $$ mega watt smiles, they stand out among the inhabitants of Eastern Europe like. . .Americans.

So, these fellows are assholes.

For the first half of the story, it's all fun and games.

While back packing it through Europe they encounter a wild and crazy guy named Ole from Iceland, (played by Eythor Gudjonsson, who surely must have studied Steve Martin) and they all embark on an adventure in New Amsterdam. While there, some Euro-trash type points them to a town in Slovakia where when women hear American accents, they fall over on their backs and beg for sex. Sound too good to be true? It is, because this is a horror film, where trips gone horribly wrong rule. Huzzah! We're off on the road to. . well, SOMETHING-vania. And like any country ending in "vania," you can bet it's got some nasty pitfalls.

At first, it's great. The Hostel, far from being some dirty, dingy little flea trap, is in a gorgeous, building reeking of old European charm, where you MUST have roommates, but it so happens they're female with large breasts who are constantly changing their clothes and urging you to join them in the coed spa downstairs where men and woman can sit around and sweat au natural. Before you know it, they're all in bed together and it seems the boys have found Nirvana. Sound too good to be true? It is, because this is a horror movie, and if someone is having great sex, can a grisly death be far behind? Pretty soon though, they wake up after making the sign of the Two-backed Beast all night long with their sexy (if slightly off girlfriends) minus Ole, and that's when things start to go seriously wrong. Our boys aren't without a conscience or feelings of affection for Ole, so there follows a fruitless search during which Paxton and Josh are drugged by the girls one night at a club. Paxton wakes up on the floor of the bathroom in the club, but the hapless Josh (the more "sensitive" of the two, on the rebound after a broken love affair) wakes up handcuffed to a chair in what seems to be a filthy dungeon, naked except for his briefs. A man dressed as a surgeon enters the room, says he's always wanted to perform surgery, and you can imagine the rest.

In the mean time, Paxton twigs to the fact something is terribly wrong and becomes obsessed with finding his friend. He goes to the police, who of course, do nothing except take note of the missing American and then he reluctantly enlists the aid of the two women, because he simply knows no one else to turn to.

Girlfriend leads him directly into the Belly of the Beast, laughingly telling him as he's being dragged away that she'll get great money for him.

He is dragged through the dungeon, where he gets (along with with us) subliminal glimpses of people in different rooms being horribly mutilated. He is chained to a chair, in a room, and we know he is destined to get the same treatment as his friend.

But no--what follows is an immensely satisfying turning of the tables by Paxton, an exhilarating escape, and The Revalation: It wasn't all just pointless torture. It was an outfit run by an organization called Elite Hunting. For many thousands of dollars you can slowly or quickly kill a person of the nationality of your choice. Americans are the biggest prizes and the most costly of all victims: $25,000.

Paxton's escape is damned exciting. . .I was cheering so hard for him I was having trouble staying in my seat.

All the reviews of this movie I've read say you can't root for Paxton and Josh, but I disagree totally. Yes, they're assholes, but lots of people are assholes at 21 years of age. And I disagree that they're unredeemable assholes. Josh has a sort of sweet, forlorn quality, and Paxton actually ends up doing a heroic turn at the end of the story. When he could have escaped, free and clear, he hears the screams of an Asian girl being tortured. He goes back down into the slaughter house, kills he tormentor, and brings her out. YES!! That's our boy!. . .although not before performing some interesting eye surgery.

I've also read that the movie is misogynistic. I disagree again.This movie takes a dim view of everyone: men, women AND children. Wait until you meet the darling little gang of street kids.

The production values are very nice, the cast is unknown (at least to me) and very good, and there's a nice feeling of paranoia throughout. Almost everyone the Americans meet is in on the plot to process people through the killing machine.

Oh..and I think the hype is over done. I actually went in nervous, thinking I was going to see things I'd not seen before. It didn't happen, even though I was highly entertained.

Also, there is a disturbing political subtext in the flick. You can read into it or not, it may or may not have been intended, but it is most definitely there. You can't help leaving the theater thinking, "Holy crap--are we THAT disliked by the world now?" Make of it what you may. . .and check it out.

Okay, now, I know there are millions of Americans who believe in The Rapture: that moment when all people born again in Christ will be raptured up to meet God and all the rest of humanity will be left on earth to perish in plagues and fire and the heartbreak of psoriasis as the Antichrist battles it out with Jesus (in an uncharacteristically warlike mode). And I know the books were best sellers. . .among believers, anyway. And I mean no disrespect to all that.

But I have to say, they stuffed this movie into a sack and beat it with the Suck Stick.

I'm sure the books are much better. Really.

The plot needs no reprising. If you've watched this movie, chances are you read the book. I may be one of the only people on earth who actually watched this just for the sheer bad-moving-making experience, and I wasn't disappointed. Especially not by Kirk Cameron, the creepy little "Growing Pains" gremlin, who came of age on that show, found Christ, and decided that the SHOW should reflect his Christian values. Well, Kirk, your career has gone to the dogs, but now you can be happy that you're spreading the word of God in movies so bad, they never even make it to theatrical release. Well, that's not strictly true: I guess this was the only movie ever made that went to DVD FIRST, with a voucher for a free viewing of the movie when it was briefly released in theaters! I still have the voucher! How many people do you suppose showed up? I don't know about you, but it never came to my town. Of course, I live in NYC, where we Godless liberals sit around tearing pages out of the bible and use them to roll joints. So there you go. In fact, I'll bet out of three million people on Manhattan Island, not one would be raptured.

Check out the supplementary materials on the DVD, where you'll learn the creepy behind the scenes details of these movies. . .the CAST and CREW all must be of the same religious mindset. They don't come right out and say this, but listen closely to what the filmmakers say. It's like a bunch of Pod People got together to make a Pod movie. How creepazoid is that? Honestly, this stuff just preaches to the converted, doesn't it? Can you imagine anyone who DOESN'T subscribe to the whole apocalypse thing watching this, slapping his forehead and saying, "HOLY HOOVER DAM! I better get saved PRONTO!" Anyhow, I'm hooked. I gotta see the rest of these Christian fiasco movies, especially the one with Gary Busey, which I think is TRIBULATIONS. At least Busey has an excuse for taking the part.. . .he cracked his head on some pavement when he crashed his motorcycle.

Oy.

Oh, and one more thing. What's with all the shots of poor,innocent dogs whimpering, their leashes dragging uselessly along the ground, because their owners have been called to heaven? What's up with that? Are we supposed to feel badly for the dogs, and if we do, what are we to make of God? Doesn't it IRK people that there's no room in heaven for man's best friend? Foo.

This is one more reason I'm agnostic. Good night and good luck.