Brian Vs. Movies

A Nightare On Elm Street (1984)

2013-10-27T22:38:00.001-05:00

I have a confession to make. I haven't been spreading my love equally across the great horror franchises. When I started this blog, I quickly reviewed a few of the original Nightmare movies, but I got distracted by shiny objects and never really got back on track. In the meantime, I have reviewed every single Friday the 13th and most of the Halloweens. Out of a sense of fairness, it is high time I returned to the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, and where else should I start, but with the original?

A Nightmare On Elm Street begins with a mysterious figure crafting an all-purpose murder glove in a boiler room somewhere. Coincidentally, Tina (Amanda Wyss) has a nightmare where she is chased by a mysterious figure wearing a murder glove! It's always nice when you don't have to wait for plot points to pay off. Tina runs from this creepy, fedora-and-ugly-sweater-wearing, razor-gloved meanie, but he catches up with her.

Maybe he just wants a hug

Right when he is about to kill her, Tina wakes up screaming in bed. It was just a dream! Except...her nightgown has slash marks in it, right where her nightmare man cut her! Dum-dah-DUMMMMMM!!! On a side note, teenagers wear nightgowns? Anyway, Tina's not the only teen having dreams like this. Her boyfriend, Rod (Jsu Garcia), her friend, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), and Nancy's boyfriend, Glen (Johnny Depp, in his film debut), have all been having nightmares; despite Tina being openly creeped out by her dream, none of her friends comes forward and admits to having similar nightmares because teenagers don't have empathy.

Or props that make sense in their scenes. What is with the birds by the boombox?

Since Tina makes such a big deal about her dream, Nancy and Glen agree to keep her company while her parents are out of town. Rod shows up, too, just in time for some sex scenes that sound remarkably like people trying very hard to sound like they're having all the sex in the world. After Rod finishes pleasing his woman, this happens:

He becomes the Magneto of flesh?

An invisible attacker slices the hell out of Tina and then, just for giggles, reverses her personal gravity; this was done presumably to force her family to clean her bloody footprints off the ceiling, which looks suspiciously like a deck. That's when things go a little crazy. The police, led by Nancy's estranged police lieutenant father (John Saxon), assume that Rod killed Tina (...on the ceiling...?) because he was the only one in the room. Rod eventually gets caught and winds up in prison, but not before admitting to Nancy that he has had nightmares about a man with a razor bladed murder glove. This blows Nancy's mind. To be fair, it should. That night, as she is dreaming, Nancy watches Mr. Razorfingers entering Rod's cell, preparing to kill. When she wakes, Nancy knows that Rod is in danger, but no one believes that an invisible dream monster is going to attack him. They should have, because Nancy was right. After this point, Nancy is a teen on a mission: stop this mysterious dream monster! Or at least find out who he is!

...before he falls through that latex wall and lands on her damn head!

The acting in A Nightmare On Elm Street is not very good. In the lead role, Heather Langenkamp is pretty awful and sadly doesn't die (or does she...?). She didn't annoy me, but she's not very likable and has trouble with any part of her character that can't be described as a "wet blanket." Amanda Wyss was a little better as Tina, although she was also pretty basic. Jsu Garcia was one-dimensional, but his one dimension was that of an insensitive rebel-type, and he did that fairly well. Johnny Depp wasn't much better, with some of his line readings (especially "WoooOOOOoooo") being painful to watch. On the bright side, his character didn't demand much acting, and Depp at least managed to get the most memorable death scene in the film.

If you're not going to be good in a movie, at least try to die well

Robert Englund spends most of this movie in the shadows as the evil Fred (not Freddy) Krueger. Freddy doesn't display his trademark humor or cackle much in this first entry, but I think some of the visuals with Freddy are at their most iconic here.

That's a great introduction shot

Still, Englund isn't at his best here, if only because the script is not sure what direction they want the character to go; Freddy is a presence in this movie more than he is an actual character. John Saxon actually headlined this movie, which is hilarious in retrospect. In turn, he was about as good as John Saxon normally is --- he's a perfectly acceptable B-movie actor. Rounding out the main cast, Ronee Blakley was absolutely horrible in every conceivable way as Nancy's alcoholic mother. In all fairness, her character is terrible. Still, Blakely should be able to act circles around Heather Lagenkamp (she is an Oscar nominee, after all), and that just doesn't happen here.

A Nightmare On Elm Street was written and directed by Wes Craven, after he read about (I shit you not) Asian Death Syndrome. The basic idea here is a chilling one: what if the danger in your dreams was real? As such, Craven goes out of his way to make a menacing villain, and he does so with some great visual scenes.

That's not Freddy. That's a subtle warning to not date Nancy.

As far as his direction of the actors goes, Craven did a pretty awful job. I honestly couldn't tell you if this cast had their lines memorized or were using cue cards. The pacing in the film is okay, but it's a little slow for a slasher movie. And that's what this is, oddly enough. There are elements in the plot that could have made this far more suspenseful and frightening, but Craven opted for a simpler (and dumber) take. I like the basic idea, but it's not very scary, exciting, or unpredictable, despite having the whole dream monster angle.

The special effects in A Nightmare On Elm Street had some definitely good moments, but it's pretty inconsistent overall. Glen and Tina's death scenes are pretty great, no doubt about it. I don't know what it is that makes them so memorable --- is it just the fact that they wind up on the ceiling? --- but they definitely stand out in the genre. I also really like the moments where the audience is aware of Freddy's presence, but Nancy is not, like when he pushes his face in the wall above her bed, or when she is sitting in the bathtub. Unfortunately, there are also moments like this:

Unless those are expanding dildos coming out from his shoulder, I'm not impressed

Why is it supposed to be frightening that Freddy can walk slowly with cut-rate Stretch Armstrong arms? There are other moments that are okay, but have definitely aged a bit over the years.

Is that supposed to be silly putty?

On the whole, though, I think the look and feel of the special effects scenes work pretty well, even twenty-nine years later.

What about the horror, though? For being a slasher movie, the Nightmare movies have always had a fairly low body count, and A Nightmare On Elm Street definitely sets that precedent. Four people officially die in this movie. Granted, two of those kills are pretty awesome, but...just four?!? LAME. Worse than the low blood and gore count is the fact that this film completely ignores the easiest and most fun possibility for horror: the dreams. Aside from a few bits with Nancy dreaming about Tina's talking corpse, the only dreamscape we see is Freddy's Land of Boiler Room Fun. Dreams offer so many possibilities and even one good, weird one would have made a huge difference to the tone of this movie. It might have even added *gasp* suspense to this slasher pic!

Don't get me wrong, A Nightmare On Elm Street is definitely better than most movies starring Freddy Krueger (noteworthy exception: Freddy Vs. Jason). I just had a memory of it being actually good instead of just promising. Really, how many horror franchises have a villain that has at least a kernel of justification in his back story? Yes, he was evil, but the dude got lynched --- that may not be the best reason to kill teenagers, but at least he has a small excuse. Unfortunately, most of the promising ideas aren't fully formed. What makes Freddy Krueger stand out from his slasher movie brethren is his personality, and that is sorely missing from this movie. Well, that and any logic whatsoever when it comes to when Freddy can kill you --- I'm pretty sure that only one person was actually asleep when they died, which makes no sense. Even considering its many shortcomings, A Nightmare On Elm Street does have a unique feel to it, which goes a long way for the discerning fan of 80s horror movies. Is it a classic? I wouldn't say that, but it has its moments.

The Devil Inside

2013-10-27T11:20:00.000-05:00

Warning: do not watch The Devil Inside hoping for a feature-film treatment for the 1988 INXS music video. I think we can all acknowledge the brilliance of such a film, especially when revisiting the source material:

Sadly, The Devil Inside is yet another recent found-footage horror movie, only this one focuses on the concept of possession and exorcism. As a bonus, this film is "inspired by true events," which is undoubtedly true, particularly if you consider the box-office success of The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity "true events." Let's face it: found-footage movies are rarely good, and exorcism movies are usually steaming piles. But when done right, a movie like this can really sneak up on you. Does The Devil Inside accomplish this? A thousand times, no. Spoiler: you shouldn't watch this movie, and I will discuss the ending.

The Devil Inside opens with some of the most hilarious bits of prologue I have ever seen. The filmmakers would like to make the audience aware that A) the Vatican does not authorize filming exorcisms B) the Vatican does not endorse this film and C) the Vatican did not aid in this film's completion. Each one of those claims is uniquely amusing. A) takes it for granted that the Vatican endorses exorcism, which I found hilarious...until I tried to dig up some facts on the issue. There don't seem to be any. I couldn't find anything that convinced me that the Vatican endorsed or condemned the practice, which was probably the most disturbing experience I had with this film. B) is funny because it's not like failing to gain the Pope's thumbs up has ever impacted any movie, ever. C) I enjoyed initially because I pictured some Cardinals or the Pope working as production assistants. However, the ending of this movie is so bad, it can be accurately stated that neither the Vatican nor the filmmakers aided in the completion of this film.

Above: a common reaction to paying close attention to this plot

Anyway, The Devil Inside begins with some crime scene footage, shot in the 1989. "I didn't know small town police stations video taped crime scene investigations," you might say. That's a good point, but if that is the last inconsistency you find in this movie, consider yourself blessedly ignorant. It seems that three priests were killed in an exorcism gone wrong, and the possessed woman was arrested. Oddly enough, she never made it to court because the Catholic Church shipped her off to Rome to live out her days in a special psychiatric hospital. Because that sometimes happens. Three days after the exorcism, the possessed woman's husband died, too. Spooky, right? Twenty years later, Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) has come to a very natural decision. She is going to help make a documentary about exorcisms and demonic possessions, and she is going to go to Italy with her cameraman, Michael (Ionut Grama) to learn more about mommy dearest. They immediately befriend a pair of rebel priests, Father Ben (Simon Quarterman) and Father David (Evan Helmuth), who actively engage in exorcisms.

Fact: suspect boards are essential to exorcising demons

Well, that was easy, right? Almost as easy as it is for Isabella to switch from wanting to learn about her disturbed/possessed mother to wanting these new friends to perform an exorcism on her. There is one slight problem, though: it seems that the Church does not sanction exorcisms unless the demonic possession can be scientifically proven. Let that sink in for a moment, file it away under "mock later," and continue on, because if you stop every time this movie is dumb, it will take days to finish. To illustrate their point, Fathers Ben and David take Isabella and her cameraman with to a real exorcism because of course they allow strangers to witness and document their incredibly secretive acts. It goes off pretty well, aside from the possessed woman (the prolific film contortionist Bonnie Morgan) gushing blood from her lady garden, saying nasty things and (not surprisingly, given the actress) making her body bend in ways it wasn't meant to. With that experience under their collective belts, proving that Isabella's mother (Suzan Crowley) is legitimately possessed and then exorcising her demon should be a piece of cake, right?

Somebody wants cake...!

If you've seen an exorcism movie before, you know damn well that any film's main exorcism is never that easy, and by now it should be obvious that The Devil Inside is not going to provide many surprises.

The acting in The Devil Inside is bland at best. Fernanda Andrade is mediocre in the lead role, but at least she is convincing as someone who doesn't really know much about exorcisms, which puts her on the same level as the audience. She plays frightened well enough, but her "Real World" confessional moments are pretty bad. Ionut Grama gets precious little screen time, since he is holding the camera for almost the entire movie, but his character was awful. You know who should never whine about people not liking them? Idiots who don't ever stop filming their friends in uncomfortable moments. If the script intended for this unseen character to be worth hating, it worked surprisingly well. Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth were both decent as exorcism priests, but they certainly don't steal any spotlights from the underwhelming main character. That just leaves the two possessed characters. Bonnie Morgan was easily my favorite actor in this film, although describing her work as "acting" may be a bit of an exaggeration.

"Unpleasantly twisting" is a bit more accurate

Still, her was the most effective part in the film, without a doubt. Suzan Crowley had the role of crazy possessed woman, and she hammed it up to the degree that the role (more or less) demanded. She wasn't bad, but this type of role has been done better elsewhere, so seeing a third-rate version was less than thrilling.

The Devil Inside was directed and co-written by William Brent Bell. What amazed me most about his direction in this movie is just how much filler there is. It feels like this movie is filled with about 40% B-roll footage, with the remainder being a blend of suspiciously familiar footage that could have come from any number of other exorcism movies and some shots of Bell's unappealing actors going through the motions. The acting in this movie, while not atrocious, isn't very good. The camera work in this movie is of the found footage variety, so that's not good, either. The pacing of this 83 minute film is slow and there are no surprises and there is no suspense. Bell did a bad job making a bad movie. Worse than the directing was the writing.

Yes, it's that bad

It was a generic exorcism script that added nothing new or exciting or vaguely interesting to set The Devil Inside apart in any way. Well, except maybe with its low quality. The whole story is filled with questionable "facts" and character motivations, but the absolute worst part of this film was the ending. With about ten minutes left in the film, it becomes clear that demons can switch the bodies they are possessing by breathing in another person's mouth. Wouldn't that be something covered earlier in the movie? In a better film, yes. Since it is very easy to walk up and breathe right into another person's open mouth (I must do it thirty times a day!), the demon is naturally jumping from body to body. The heroes get a demon-possessed body into a car and start driving to...the Vatican exorcism ER, I guess...when the demon possesses the driver, and drives the car into oncoming traffic, presumably killing everyone inside. The screen goes black. Now, that is a hilariously awful way to end a movie. Any movie. But then, before the credits roll, a title card comes up, telling the audience that the Rossi family case is still unresolved, and to check out a website for further developments in the case. If you go to the website now, it is offline, but more timely reviews describe it as a pretty generic movie site with the sort of material you might look for if you were deciding whether or not to go see the movie. Of course, since you are directed to check out the site after watching a bad movie with a hilariously stupid ending, that extra work is significantly more aggravating.

The Devil Inside would be a terrible movie, even without the comically misguided attempt at cross-platform marketing tacked on the end. The best thing about this movie was the sound effects when Bonnie Morgan was contorting herself. Unfortunately, there are 82 other minutes in this film. It's not a crime to make a familiar movie, but if you're going to rip someone else off, try to add something interesting to the mix. Make the demons talk like pirates or something; write the script in iambic pentameter; give the entire cast handlebar mustaches --- I don't care, just make your movie different enough to be worth remembering. All I will remember about The Devil Inside is the hilarious title cards before and after the movie.

Mama

2013-10-23T10:06:00.000-05:00

To put it plainly, the horror movie genre is very familiar with a fact that the rest of the world doesn't like to admit: children are scary as shit. They don't have to be evil, like in The Omen, or a sign of bad tidings, like the girls that are always singing "One, two, Freddy's coming for you." Even the best kids have moments where their innocence and lack of developed morals come together and make mature adults soil themselves. Very few filmmakers use that as the core concept of their film, but that is basically what you get in Mama.

Lucas's (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) twin brother, Jeffrey (also Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) went nuts after the 2008 stock market crash, killing several people at work and then returning home to murder his wife. No one ever saw Jeffrey or his two young daughters after that day, but they were presumed dead. Lucas was all like, "When you presume, you make a pres out of me and...okay that doesn't work with this one." He spent every dime he had paying bearded hillbillies (redundant, I know) to search the large, wooded area around Jeffrey's home for some signs of Jeffrey or his kids. After five long years, the searchers finally found Jeffrey's car, wrecked on the side of a hill, and a dilapidated horror movie cabin nearby. Inside, the searchers found childish drawings on the wall, along with a disgustingly large pile of cherry pits. Oh, and they found a two-headed Gollum lookalike that actually turned out to be Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse).

"Nasty little Hobbitses" - all of their dialogue, if I had any say in it

Naturally, Lucas was ecstatic to see his nieces again, even if they were feral, and he wanted to care for them. His hard-rocking girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) was less enthused, but went along with Lucas's wishes as best she could.

"Enthusiastically" would probably be overselling it

Since these children are obviously damaged, they initially spend their time in a psychiatric ward, under the care of Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash); Dr. Dreyfuss conducts many interviews and hypnosis therapies with Victoria and begins to learn about Mama. You see, Mama is who took care of the girls for five years. Mama protected them and loved them and, sometimes, scared them. At first, Dr. Dreyfuss believes that "Mama" is a persona that Victoria adapted to act as a mother figure to her and her younger sister, Lilly. But the more he hears, the less likely that seems to be. When it comes time for the girls to be released into private custody, Dreyfuss works out a deal that allows the girls to live with Lucas and Annabel in a large suburban home, free of charge --- as long as Dreyfuss continues to have regular access to the girls, so he can learn more about Mama. Even a doctor can tell the difference between an invisible friend and something...different. Unfortunately, the good doctor doesn't tell anyone else about his theories, which results in Lucas being attacked by something in the house and falling into a coma. That leaves Annabel on her own with two miniature people who have more in common with raccoons than her. And, of course, Mama is there, too...

I know it's the weird figure in the background that is supposed to be scary, but that kid's smile creeps me out

As far as the acting goes in Mama, I am happy to say that the children are pretty good. Their parts aren't very articulate, so it's not a breakthrough performance for either young actress, but so much of Mama depended on them being creepy and they totally pulled it off. Megan Charpentier, being the older sister, had more to do, and she did it well. She was creepy when she needed to be, she had some good screams, and her character's progression made sense. Isabelle Nélisse was surprisingly good at playing feral. It would have been easy for a kid her age to be hilariously bad in this role, especially since her character doesn't speak in sentences. Nélisse not only managed to avoid being bad with her dialogue, she did a great job with her physical acting in this movie. That is probably a big reason why she was the creepy kid in this movie.

It almost looks like she is pulling a corpse off the bed by the hair

How about the adults, though? Despite playing a dual role, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau spends an awful lot of time off-screen. I thought he was fine, but I don't know if he brought anything special to the role. Jessica Chastain was the main character, though, and she got to play the POV character in this movie. Chastain was fine. It's hard playing the adult in a movie where the goal is for the kids to stand out, but Chastain kept things fairly subtle. I got a little annoyed by her "What was that?!?" face always having a gaping mouth, and I thought it was funny how little her character, a professional musician, listened to music, but that's all I can really complain about.

Above: Chastain being startled by strange noises in the room. They came from your guitar, dummy.

Daniel Kash was less impressive as the cold and calculating psychiatrist, if only because he gave the role no depth. Speaking of one-dimensional characters, Jane Moffat was irritating as Aunt Jean; here is a character that loves the children, has a logical right to care for them, and would probably be a better parent than Lucas and Annabel, and what do we get? A straight up bitch. Such a missed opportunity.

I have to admit that I was impressed by first-time co-writer and director Andrés Muschietti. Mama looked quite good, from just a cinematography standpoint, but Muschietti also used some clever camera tricks. My personal favorite was a scene shot down a long hallway, allowing the audience to see into the girls' bedroom and another room simultaneously; the reveal at the end of that scene --- which you can see coming a mile away --- was damn well done, and effective, even if it was predictable. I thought the general story had a good core to it; Muschietti and his brother came up with the story and screenplay, with Luther creator Neil Cross polishing it for an English-speaking audience. There are some good semi-scary moments, but what I appreciated were the bits of unexpected tension. Annabel closing the closet door (of EVIL!!!) instead of opening it, Lilly crawling silently around the house, Victoria's scary eyes in the dark --- those are the bits I will remember most about Mama.

Is it against the rules for movie monsters to kill people wearing Misfits shirts? It should be.

That said, while there are many small moments that were great, the big scares in Mama didn't quite deliver. Is there suspense? Sure. Are there startling moments? Yes. But this film doesn't build on them, and the momentum from scene to scene often gets lost.

There are certainly some holes in the story, but they thankfully don't get too aggravating. Why would abandoned children eat a cherry that is rolled across the floor to them from an anonymous source? Because they are kids, and kids do dumb things. Okay, fine. Why would a character that wants to avoid pregnancy be worried enough to take a pregnancy test and then celebrate her non-pregnancy?

Who wouldn't want a little angel like this?

Why wouldn't she just be on the pill or have a nuva ring, or use condoms? Because...musicians are impulsive, short-sighted sluts? That's the subtext I'm reading. Why would a psychiatrist let people live in a home for free so he can observe the children, but not have any video surveillance cameras in or around the house? Because he is shockingly stupid? None of these are bad enough to ruin the story, but they are annoying.

You might have noticed that I haven't spoken much about the titular monster in Mama yet. That's because she's kind of terrible. Mama is actually used very well by the director, when the audience just catches a glimpse of her here and there. Unfortunately, the last act of the movie gives us a long, hard look at Mama, and it isn't pretty.

It's like "The Scream" came to life. Only uglier.

Part of the problem with Mama's character is that she is obviously mostly CGI in a movie without a huge budget. The other digital effects, particularly the weird moth-emitting wall spots, were solid, but Mama was left looking funny looking instead of frightening. If they make a sequel (and this film was certainly profitable enough to merit one), fixing Mama's character design needs to be a priority.

Mama is a well-made PG-13 haunted house-type movie. Given the rating and the first-time direction, I'm impressed. Could it have been better? Yes --- ratchet up the pacing a bit and/or make Mama look less stupid and you have something special. But for a slightly younger horror audience, this isn't bad.

Scream 2

2013-10-22T10:01:00.002-05:00

Scream was great. It mocked horror cliches, but also paid tribute to them; the script was sassy and clever; the villain had a fairly unique gimmick, but was still anonymous enough --- with an easily removed costume and small weapon --- for there to be a legitimate whodunnit mystery. All in all, it is a fun watch. Inevitably, a sequel was greenlit and filmed as soon as possible. Scream 2 came out less than a year after the original film, and expectations were high. How high? The female cast were featured in a Rolling Stone cover article:

With these choices, it is obvious that Tori Spelling should be on the magazine cover. Whaaaa...?!?

I don't really follow what exactly is supposed to be going on in that picture --- are they happily cleaning up after a triple homicide? --- but it does help prove one thing: when it comes to sequels, dumb things happen.

In an unusual bit of theatrical time-keeping, the events of Scream 2 takes place two years after Scream, even though the actual films were released less than a year apart. Sidney (Neve Campbell) is now in college and has a group of friends that have not tried to murder her (yet), just a reminder that college is way more fun than high school. Unfortunately for Sidney, heartless bitch/reporter Gail Weathers (Courteney Cox) wrote a book about the murders that took place in Scream and the book was turned into a movie called Stab that is just premiering. That means Sidney gets a lot of prank phone calls from people mimicking the killers. Thankfully, Sidney learned from her mistakes in the last film and nips that annoying subplot in the bud.

At the premiere of Stab --- the clips of which are pretty amusing --- the theater gives away promotional Ghostface costumes. That seems like a pretty good idea for about ten minutes, until one of the many people dressed as Ghostface commits a double homicide in the theater.

Worst. Glory hole. Ever.

Of course, since this is a horror sequel, that is only the beginning. Apparently, the killer is obsessed with the murders in Scream, which in turn makes the killing of Sidney a top priority. That also puts targets on the backs of all her friends, too.

Two out of three expendables characters in this scene realize it

With all that in mind, it occurs to Sidney and her friends that it is very likely that the killer has infiltrated their clique. But which one of them is the killer question mark/exclamation mark/question mark.

The acting in Scream 2 is all things to all people, if that means that it's a crap shoot. I actually thought Neve Campbell improved slightly in her return to the role of Sidney. It is difficult being a likable horror protagonist, but Campbell was able to portray a fairly intelligent and tough woman convincingly. Again. Of the returning characters, Courteney Cox saw the most positive change. This time, she actually shows human emotions and I wasn't necessarily hoping she would die. She also had the biggest character makeover of the group, so she didn't look quite as trashy in this film. Jamie Kennedy reprised his role as the movie-obsessed nerdling and shocked me again by being decently entertaining. If you cut the scene where he does mediocre impressions, I would even say that I liked him in this movie. David Arquette was okay, too, although I don't quite understand why the filmmakers chose to give him an exaggerated limp and Bob Dole hand. I guess it was a red herring, and they did give a line of dialogue to explain it, but Arquette isn't a good enough acgor to play disabled and not have it be hilarious.

"Everybody knows you never go full retard"

Of the newbies, Jerry O'Connell and Timothy Olyphant had the most screen time. O'Connell was a little vacant, but it fit his character. Olyphant does not play a lawman of any sort, and if you know his filmography at all, you know that is not a good sign. He gets to overact, which is fun enough to watch, but it wasn't anything special. Liev Schreiber didn't have any lines in Scream, so his character felt new in the sequel. Schreiber wasn't great. His character is tough to like, and Schreiber was charmless in a complex part. Elise Neal was inoffensive, but her character was extremely bland. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jada Pinkett Smith were both okay as dual screaming victims. Gellar's character was a little stupid, but not too annoying. Pinkett Smith was extremely obnoxious, combining knowitallism with being a person who talks throughout the movie in the theater.

I'm offended by stereotypes, too, Jada

Omar Epps didn't come off much better, with his main characteristics being insensitivity and cheapness, but he did have a hilariously stupid death scene, and that counts for something. Laurie Metcalf was annoying as the suspiciously high-profile actor playing a relatively minor character, in grand Scooby-Doo tradition. Rebecca Gayheart and Portia de Rossi were stereotypical sorority girls, although de Rossi's eyebrows did provide some of the film's biggest scares. In fact, all of the sorority girls were horrifically dull, with only Sarah Michelle Gellar achieving anything beyond "generically bitchy."

My favorites are "judging bitch" (back, right) and "smarmy bitch" (far right)

There are also some entertaining cameos. Pre-Dawson's Creek Joshua Jackson had a few solid lines in film class, and casting David Warner in a minor role was a nice nod to classic horror movies. But the most entertaining cameos belonged to the movie-within-a-movie, Stab. Heather Graham stretched her skills by playing a brainless blonde bimbo, and (following up on a gag in the first film) Tori Spelling played the movie version of Sidney. Both were chuckle-worthy, but Luke Wilson was hilarious in the two lines he had, doing a surprisingly good job mocking Skeet Ulrich in Scream.

Wes Craven returned to Scream 2 as director and writer Kevin Williamson also returned. With the creative forces behind the original film, as well as the surviving cast, all the pieces were in place to make Scream 2 a great sequel. That didn't quite happen, though. Craven did a solid job juggling a gigantic cast, and I thought the returning cast all acted better in this sequel...ignoring Arquette's limping. Thanks to the advent of Caller ID, though, the best part of Ghostface's routine --- the phone calls --- largely lost its effect. That meant that we had a silent killer that was missing his calling card.

Yes, that was bad. I'm sorry. You may resume.

Sure, there were a few phone calls, but most of them were blatant I-want-you-to-know-I'm-watching-you ploys, with only Gellar's scene actually involving tension or scares. Williamson's script, which was the driving force of Scream definitely feels less impressive in Scream 2. I realize that the script had to be written quickly, but this just feels lazy. There is less wittiness this time, and what smarts it has are largely recycled. Did you like the characters asking each other who the killer is, using traditional horror movie logic? Did you like the sassy female explaining how stupid horror movies are? Did you like the killer with an incredibly flimsy motive? Good, because Scream 2 gives you an extra helping of them.

Oh, you liked the phone scenes? Well...sorry about that.

The kills aren't very much fun, either. The sheer idiocy of Omar Epps' death --- the combination of stabbing through a stall and Omar having his face pressed right up to it AND doing the stabbing blind --- doesn't even compare to the boombox-toting hip hop dance troupe inadvertently covering up a murder on the quad. That was jaw-droppingly stupid. The script has all sorts of holes and terrible plot devices that stick out, scene after scene. My least favorite scene was the car scene. Craven does what he can to milk it of every ounce of suspense, but it's so horribly contrived that I just got mad and started rooting for the killer. Almost as bad is the "everyone with a cell phone must be tackled" scene, where the potential murder victims conveniently forget that the person they're looking for should have some sort of voice-altering device, along with a phone, in their hands. Ugh. And then there's the "subtle" clue that tips you off as to the identity of one of the killers. Oh! And the second killer? Yeah, I get the motivation, but if killer #2 is supposed to have killed more than one person in this movie, I'm calling bullshit. There are a few moments of amusing self-awareness, like the Stab clips and some of Randy's scenes, that feel smart and clever, but they are sadly rare. This script and plot, as a whole, kind of suck. They're not godawful, because horror fans know you can do much much much worse, but this was extremely disappointing, coming from the team that made the original so much fun.

The original Scream had some violence and gore, but the light tone kept it from feeling too explicit. Scream 2 doesn't really amp either up much. I would say there is a similar amount of gore (with the quad murder being the most gruesome) and only a few more kills. The set pieces for these scenes weren't that great, with the stage being the best of the bunch; I guess that makes the soundproofed room the worst, because they treated it like a maze instead of an auditory game of cat and mouse.

Look at Ghostface, Courteney. He's as afraid of you as you are of him.

I suppose that there is enough violence to keep audiences interested, with ten kills overall, but something is missing. Part of the problem is that some of the kills --- specifically the policemen --- seemed far too easy. Another is that some of the showcased kills feel a little cheap. I get it, serial killers don't have to be gentlemen, but at least three characters died while not looking at their killer. I probably wouldn't care about that if the kills were more memorable or if the script kept things funny, but that's what happens to horror movies when the plot leaves you bored: you start thinking. And that is rarely good for horror films.

"You know that thing where I frequently show off a movie camera? You probably shouldn't think too hard about that."

I don't know. I feel like I'm being too harsh on Scream 2. I didn't hate the movie. I was just expecting it to be a lot better. That was frustrating, because there are a few genuinely good moments in this movie, and I'm glad that the more obvious suspects weren't the killers. This is a mostly competent horror movie, I have to admit. I just didn't enjoy it much.

The Frighteners

2013-10-21T08:22:00.001-05:00

Fun fact: The Frighteners was the movie that convinced executives at Universal to offer director Peter Jackson the chance to make King Kong (2005). Why? I honestly do not know. The Frighteners is not a bad movie, but it doesn't scream "give me the keys to a blockbuster remake," does it? We're talking about a Michael J. Fox film where he neither travels through time nor is a werewolf --- hardly the sort of thing that makes you sit up and notice. And yet, there was something about this film that gave those movie execs faith in Peter Jackson's talent. Of course, those same bigwigs also chose to move scoot up the release date of this film from October (which makes sense for a movie about ghosts) to July (where it could get crushed by Summer blockbusters), so maybe the answer to this mystery is that Universal only hired idiots. Or, maybe The Frighteners is an underappreciated gem, a glimpse at what a moderately successful Jackson could do, back before The Lord of the Rings made him truly famous.

The Frighteners follows Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox), as he operates a low-rent ghost-busting business out of his (unfinished) home. Many of the locals consider Frank a con artist, and they're right --- just not in the way they think. Following a car accident that killed his wife, Frank gained the ability to see and speak to ghosts. In fact, a trio of ghosts --- disco gangster Cyrus (Chi McBride), classic nerd Stuart (Jim Fyfe), and Old West veteran The Judge (John Astin) --- are his only friends, as well as his business partners.

Frank sends his ectoplasmic buddies to haunt a place, and he shows up to "exorcise" them for a fee. Things start to get weird for Frank shortly after meeting Lucy (Trini Alvarado) and her awful husband, Ray (Peter Dobson); Ray drops dead and starts pestering Frank, so Frank starts spending time with Lucy, only to fall in love with her. Unfortunately, there seems to be a rogue ghost that is murdering folks around town. Even more unfortunately, the FBI believes that Frank is the killer. Worse still, the killer likes to mark his upcoming victims with a ghostly number on their forehead...and Lucy is lucky number forty-one.

Who can possibly clear Frank's name and save Lucy and the other innocent victims-to-be? Frank. It's obviously Frank. He's the only one who can talk to ghosts. Think about it.

The special effects in The Frighteners are probably the most memorable aspect of the film. They still look pretty good, even if the CGI is a little dated now. It just depends on how creative Peter Jackson & co. were. For instance, the whole killer-pressing-his-face-out-of-the-wall bit wasn't that great.

MJF realizing that they're aping A Nightmare on Elm Street 12 years too late

Unfortunately, that bit was used a lot. On the other hand, scenes that toyed with the idea of what ghosts could do or have done to them turned out much, much better. When I think of The Frighteners, my mind doesn't jump to the killer --- I think about when a ghost got a blast of bug spray through the face.

That sort of creativity overcomes some of the technical shortcomings of the FX in general. Granted, they aren't all examples of great special effects, but they are probably what you will remember about the film.

I will never forget shit stain Jake Busey face

The acting in The Frighteners is pretty much all over the place. Michael J. Fox doesn't play angsty very well, and a lot of his character's mannerisms bring Marty McFly to mind. He's still able to make the character likable, though, even when the script doesn't do him any favors. Trini Alvarado played a paper-thin character, and she didn't do it very well. I get it, her role was poorly written --- that doesn't excuse her lack of range. Of the ghosts, Chi McBride, Jim Fyfe, and John Astin probably got the most screen time, but the most entertaining one was definitely R. Lee Ermey playing a (surprise!) drill instructor. Yes, he's done this schtick before, but he does it well.

His likes could be "Blah, blah, blah, maggot!" and I'd still smile

I was surprised to find Jake Busey in a role that I liked him; he was completely over the top, but he doesn't play "convincingly human" well, so it fit him. Another pleasant surprise was Jeffrey Combs getting a chance at a memorable role outside of the Re-Animator series.

Above: Combs as "An asshole with an uzi" --- actual movie quote

Combs was my favorite character in the movie. His particular brand of crazy matched the tone of the film better than anyone else in the cast.

I'm not entirely convinced this isn't Combs' actual chest

I also enjoyed Peter Dobson in his role as a self-absorbed jerk. Like Ermey, Dobson doesn't stray far from his comfort zone, but there is no denying that he is good at what he does. It was also nice to see horror veteran Dee Wallace in a key role. She hams it up a bit, but I think she did well, given the lines she had.

Director and co-writer Peter Jackson made an unusual film in The Frighteners. It's not a straight-up horror movie, but it's not funny enough to succeed as a horror-comedy hybrid, either. The main reason for this is a dumb script.

I mean, how do they expect us to believe a dementor got from Azkaban to Australia?

Some of it can be seen in the little moments, like a flashback to Michael J. Fox's character --- an architect building his dream house --- playing basketball A) in a suit B) with bad 90s skater hair C) on a court he put in before he finished his house, because architects LOVE basketball courts and D) on what appears to be a regulation -height hoop, despite being approximately 4'6". Other times, the stupidity comes at you in the main plot, like when MJ figures out who killed his wife thirty minutes after the audience does --- and the film treats that moment like it's a revelation. Hell, you can argue that the entire climax at the abandoned hospital felt rushed and under-explained. If the script was wittier or funnier, the flaws in the plot wouldn't matter so much. But it's not and they do. Thankfully, Jackson knows how to film entertaining action sequences and goofball moments, or else this movie would be painful to watch. And if you were expecting the acting to save this movie from it's plot, then you aren't familiar with most of Peter Jackson's work. The Frighteners is at its best when it is being weird and goofy, but there's just not enough of those elements to make the movie stand out.

Chi McBride's last-ditch meeting to salvage the movie: everybody gets an afro

The Frighteners is undoubtedly a flawed movie. It's too kooky to be scary, but not funny enough to balance dozens of murders. The central concept is a solid one and Michael J. Fox and the ghosts are likable enough, but the picture doesn't gel as a whole. Even Danny Elfman's score feels a little scatterbrained. Is there a good idea for a movie here? Yes. Does The Frighteners pull it off? Not really, but it's not offensively bad. It's a good try that didn't quite work.

Am I the only one who watched Michael J. Fox's erratic driving in this movie and immediately blamed it on his Parkinson's? And then felt kind of bad?

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

2013-10-13T22:33:00.000-05:00

I was in the mood to to watch/mock a bad horror movie last night, and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark seemed like a pretty good option. It's a Katie Holmes vehicle, a remake, it has a first-time director, and a pretty awful title. It should be a shoe-in for a good drunken time, but it had a few surprises in store for me. First of all, the star of this movie is actually a little girl. It's rarely as much fun to brutally ridicule children as much as it is terrible adult actors with lopsided faces. Besides, I think we can all agree that children are creepy. Second of all, Guillermo Del Toro co-produced and co-wrote Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which implies a certain degree of creativity. So what's it to be? A spectacular crap-fest, or a creative mood piece?

Sally (Bailee Madison) is in the never-enviable position of being the young child being shuttled between self-absorbed divorced parents. Her mother has sent Sally to visit her dad, Alex (Guy Pearce), while he renovates a dilapidated New England mansion. And by "visit," I of course mean "live forever with" --- surprise! Alex isn't a very attentive parent, and his interest in Sally's happiness can best be described as "nonexistent."

Alex, envisioning his daughter's future bedroom

Making things even better for Sally, her dad is dating his interior designed, Kim (Katie Holmes), who feels very uncomfortable acting as a fill-in mother. But that's all okay, because they both more or less ignore her most of the time, which allows Sally to investigate the massive building and its surrounding land.

...which apparently includes parts of Narnia

While exploring, Sally discovers something in part of the overgrown garden. It is a skylight for the basement, which Alex and Kim had no idea existed. You see, the basement had been hidden by someone many years ago, when they put up a wall in front of the basement door. Why would anyone want to do such a thing?

Because they didn't want to see children going through what appears to be a doorway to Hell?

Well, when Sally goes down to the ancient basement, she hears her name being whispered. Some thing --- or things --- that sound like they have emphysema keep whispering for her to play with them. Their actual words are, "We're your friends. Come down to the basement and play with us." While that may ring all sorts of alarm bells in a reasonable person's head, Sally is an eight-year-old and, therefore, capable of an entirely different type of stupidity. Soon enough, the creatures are terrorizing Sally, and she can't get any adult to believe that there are evil faeries hunting her in the darkness.

Try shouting "I don't believe in faeries!" It would kill Tinkerbell.

And that is their biggest weakness: these creatures are sensitive to bright lights. But how hard is it to plunge an isolated old mansion into darkness? And what do they want when they finally get their tiny paws on Sally? They want to feast on her teeth.

Oh relax. You have another set to look forward to.

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the acting in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Bailee Madison did a solid job in the lead role. For child actors in horror movies, there is a fine line between acting scared and being extremely annoying, but Madison never really approached anything obnoxious. I thought she was pretty believable, even when making extremely poor choices.

Example: this is where she went potty

She wasn't a fantastic lead, but I'll take solid acting over overacting any day, especially with children. Aside from her lopsided smile, Katie Holmes was also pretty good as the most reasonable character in the movie. Her character was pretty bland, but I didn't mind watching her in this movie, which is as much as I am capable of complimenting her. Guy Pearce was capable as the father, in that I think he played the part that the script asked for, but his character was just awful. It's not just that he was an offensively bad (although, to be fair, not evil) father figure; he has a complete 180 toward the end of the movie, and it just doesn't work.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was the first (and so far, only) directorial effort by Troy Nixey. For a first effort, Nixey had an uphill battle. This is, at its core, a haunted house movie, which means it relies heavily on atmosphere and suspense --- two things that even veteran directors have trouble with. There are moments where he succeeds; the smaller-scale scares that leave something to the imagination are actually pretty good.

Two words: creepy hands

However, the script calls for a lot less mystery than I think this plot calls for. For being a movie about creatures in the dark, the audience gets to see an awful lot of the creatures in question. The special effects on these creatures are pretty good, but that's beside the point. If this isn't supposed to be a creature feature --- and it definitely isn't --- then why do we see so much of the things that are supposed to be scaring us in the dark?

"Bippity boppity bitch!"

That's a choice that I disagree with, but it doesn't make for a bad film. What dumbs this picture down a few notches is its inconsistency with regards to how it treats light. The sensitivity the devil faeries have for light ranges the gamut, from absolutely requiring deep, dark shadows to being able to hang out at a well-lit party (sitting in a potted plant, but still...). The cinematography doesn't help any. This should be a very, very dark film, from a lighting perspective. It's called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, but whenever the lights go out, it looks like a spotlight is shining in from outside. And once Katie Holmes' character buys into this whole shadow faery thing, she doesn't think to go out and buy a bunch of lamps or flashlights or anything? That's just stupid. The film's consistency and logic, as well as its look and feel, are definitely things the director is responsible for. I think Nixey had some good instincts in his first directorial effort, but some of the basics are lacking.

As a horror movie, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark doesn't have a lot of what genre fans typically look for in an R-rated flick. There is a bit of gruesome violence at the beginning of the movie; the prologue was pretty cool and even had me cringing a little. For the rest of the movie, though, there isn't much violence or gore to speak of. If you were looking for gratuitous nudity, I would like to point out that the heroine is a child, so...please stop.

This is not sexy

Still, this is more of a suspense-type horror, so sex and violence were never strong possibilities. Unfortunately, the suspense isn't too effective. It has creepy moments, especially in the first half, but the second half is full of mind-numbing stupidity. None of the characters, the monsters included, do anything even remotely logical. Here's just a small example of how frustrating this script is: little Sally has just fought off some faeries and has taken some pictures of them and has even crushed one; when her father dismisses her claims as an overactive imagination, she tries to find a photo to prove her case instead of the faery corpse she left in the damned bookcase. That's not the dumbest moment in this movie, mind you --- it's just one of the easiest to explain. When you add all that up, this isn't a very good horror movie. The acting of Bailee Madison goes a long way toward making this easier to watch, but it doesn't make up for a dumb script. If this was PG or PG-13, I would be a little more forgiving, but being rated R and missing out on anything on my horror checklist AND being stupid is just too much to overlook. It's not as bad as I thought a Katie Holmes movie would be, but it is definitely not very good.

Scream

2013-10-07T17:54:00.000-05:00

I didn't grow up in a family that watched horror movies. Aside from an occasional sleepover, I didn't watch horror movies until I was in college. The movie that convinced me that I was, maybe, missing something was Scream. Toward the end of my senior year in high school, a friend invited me over to watch a movie and she chose Scream. I agreed, but was wary. I wasn't trying to impress this girl, but I didn't want to embarrass myself either, by wetting my pants or shrieking like a schoolgirl. For some unfathomable reason, I just assumed those were the options open to me. But then I watched the movie and did not shriek --- it's none of your damn business about the pants-wetting --- but instead really enjoyed myself. Seventeen years and three sequels have passed since its release; how has Scream held up?

Scream opens with one of the more famous scenes in modern horror. Casey (Drew Barrymore) is home alone when she receives a phone call. Casey doesn't recognize the caller's voice, but he is playful and a little flirty, so she goes along with it. The caller asks what her favorite scary movie is (and she somehow didn't choose Poison Ivy?!?) and everyone is having a good time...until the caller lets it slip that he's watching Casey. In fact, the caller has captured her boyfriend and will kill him, unless Casey plays a sort of horror movie trivia game over the phone. How did she do? Let's just say that you don't want Casey on your Trivial Pursuit team.

"Orange! No, *sob* red!"

It seems that the brutal slaying of Casey and her boyfriend were not the first of their kind in this area; a year ago, Sydney's (Neve Campbell) mother had been murdered and the case became a media phenomenon. But, since high schoolers are sociopaths on their good days, Casey's presumed friends aren't terribly affected by the crime. Instead, Sydney and her boyfriend, Billy (Skeet Ulrich), are more worried about their sex-free relationship; Stuart (Matthew Lillard) and Tatum (Rose McGowan) are concerned over who can be more stereotypically 90s;

The answer is "nipples"

and the media-oversaturated Randy (Jamie Kennedy) sees the events as a direct parallel to horror movies. Against all odds, it turns out that Randy is right. The killer is following horror movie logic, which means that people who break the cardinal "rules" of slasher flicks (promiscuous teens, people who announce that they will "be right back" when going somewhere alone, etc.) will pay for their sins.

On the surface, Scream is kind of a sketchy idea. A horror movie about a killer who loves horror movies, and victims who are aware of horror movie cliches? There is a high potential for snottiness and finger-quotes irony in that pitch. Thankfully, director Wes Craven had already toyed with this notion in his last horror film, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and got that out of the way. Craven, along with writer Kevin Williamson, did a very good job keeping Scream from succumbing to its potential weaknesses. The script had clever dialogue and a reasonably likable (by horror standards) lead character. Craven directed his relatively young cast well, and none of the featured characters seemed terribly obnoxious or paper-thin.

Well, nobody was unusually obnoxious

There are several bits in this movie that Craven handles expertly. The opening scene is probably (and justifiably) the most famous, but pretty much every subsequent extended sequence with the killer is well-balanced and suspenseful. As a whole, the script's efforts to be funny undercut any prolonged attempt at creating atmosphere or a sinister tone, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Scream works because it is light and funny and because it plays along with the tropes that horror fans have known about for years. I revisited this film, expecting the movie to have aged noticeably, but the only things showing their age are some of the costume choices.

Her "Dancing in the Dark" outfit has aged better than this

Well, okay...there is one noticeably stupid moment in this movie: the killer attacking Sidney in the bathroom in the high school. For a killer that chose his moments pretty well in the rest of the movie, that just seemed gratuitous.

One of the things that separates Scream from its slasher movie brethren is its cast. In the 80s and early 90s, a lot of noteworthy actors started out in horror movies, but established talent didn't stick around. There isn't much prestige or acting challenge in the role of "Bust Campy Councilor #2." Thanks to its script, though, Scream was able to attract some reasonably well-known talent. The biggest name in the movie at the time (and even now) was Drew Barrymore, who was in the midst of her "bad girl" career renaissance. Even better than having a big name actress was the fact that Barrymore took a role similar to Janet Leigh's in Psycho; by taking a smaller, more memorable role and nailing it, Barrymore set Scream up for success. The rest of the cast is not quite as good, but not bad, either. Neve Campbell's character has some angst, but she wasn't out of her depth when articulating those emotions, or showing a reasonable amount of intelligence. I typically ignore people who clearly don't wash their hair in odd-numbered months, but Skeet Ulrich wasn't half bad either.

That shirt will get washed before that hair

Rose McGowan doesn't really do much, which is about par for course with her. I will give her credit for having the stupidest death in the movie; if your character is boring in a horror movie, it's good to strive for a memorable kill scene. She's really the worst actor in this movie, and that is shocking, given this cast. The typically obnoxious David Arquette comes off fairly cute and likable. Courteney Cox played a fairly one-dimensional character, but at least her character served a purpose in the plot.
Jamie Kennedy, who has never not been terrible, is actually okay; granted, he is just acting as a mouthpiece for the writer, pointing out all the horror movie cliches that Kevin Williamson wanted to mock, but credit where it's due. Why it was decided that Kennedy should wear pastel hush puppies and do Jerry Lewis impersonations, I do not know, but the 90s were a very ironic time. Even the always (ALWAYS!) annoying Matthew Lillard played his part well.

Maybe he should get stabbed in more movies?

There are a few teeny-tiny roles that are worth pointing out, as well. Henry Winkler had some lines and a death scene, even though his role was uncredited. Less obvious was Linda Blair's cameo, but the best bit part went to Wes Craven himself, as the Freddy Krueger-looking school janitor. That was great. Oh, and Liev Schreiber is also in the movie, but he doesn't actually say or do anything aside from glare, so he barely counts.

When it comes to the classic horror stuff, the sex and violence, Scream does some interesting things. This is a violent movie, no doubt. We see a few people getting disemboweled and there is a good amount of stabbing. In other words, a lot of fake blood was spilled in Scream.

The worst was the blood swirlie Campbell got

Maybe it's the humor in the script, or maybe it is the fact that most of the kills aren't especially ridiculous, aside from Rose McGowan's, but it just doesn't feel all that violent to me. Still, the blend of violence and humor keeps it interesting, even in the late-second-act wasteland that can drag down a lot of slasher pics. While there isn't any gratuitous nudity, the script does speak of the evils of teenage sex; somehow, the self-awareness of the script is almost as enjoyable as random boobage. The strangest thing about Scream is the fact that the killer is so bland. When you hear the voice over the telephone, he is charismatic, funny, and a little frightening. When you see Ghostface in the flesh, though, he's underwhelming.

Look at that face! It looks like he's apologizing!

Ghostface (Killah) isn't a bad villian, per say, but Scream isn't iconic because of him. Scream was a hit --- and is now working its way toward "classic" status --- because of the writing and the wit. That's not a knock on the series, by any means, but it is a knock on Ghostface.

All in all, I was genuinely impressed with how well Scream stood the test of time. Even though it has had three sequels and revitalized slashed movies in the late 90s, it still feels fresh. The writing is still fun, and even the presence of a moderately anonymous killer doesn't dampen its impact.

World War Z

2013-10-06T10:12:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Horror: Day 6

If you are a big fan of Max Brooks' sweeping zombie novel, World War Z, you should prepare yourself before watching World War Z. The film has absolutely nothing in common with the book, aside from a multi-national scope and the presence of zombies. If you watch zombie movies for creative and excessive amounts of gore, then you might want to slow your proverbial roll. These aren't your classic, slow-moving, flesh-falling-off-the-bone zombies and there is no channeling of Tom Savini with these special effects. So, that is what World War Z is not. What is it like?

Gerry (Brad Pitt) is just a normal guy, hanging out in a traffic jam with his wife (Mireille Enos) and kids, when the zombie apocalypse happens. That's not a euphemism for being stuck in traffic with small children. All of a sudden, the streets are filled with a raging mob that is becoming more and more undead with every passing moment.

You know, your basic zombie movie opening scene

Gerry survives Z-Day through a combination of cleverness and knowing somebody with a helicopter. I won't spoil the movie and tell you which is a better trait to have. The reason Gerry is valuable enough to save via airlift is because he is a retired UN investigator and one of his old work chums (Fana Mokoena) needs someone to discover the origin of the outbreak.

"Oh. That's all you need? Great."

And that's the premise. Gerry does some globetrotting, sees how different areas are handling the end of the world, and works his way towards a cure. If there is one.

The quality of the acting in World War Z boils down to how much you like Brad Pitt. That's not a knock on the other actors; Pitt is simply the only one with an emotional arc and more than ten minutes onscreen. As far as that goes, Pitt is solid. You can make an argument that he's a little bland here, but this isn't a character piece. It's a zombie movie, and he serves his purpose by giving the audience something to care about. Mireille Enos was okay as his worried wife, but her expectations for a husband in the post-apocalypse were a little unreasonable. If one of them had to work for a living in the real world, why wouldn't one of them have to work to keep them from un-living? Daniella Kertesz was better as Gerry's unwilling surgical patient, but her part was pretty basic.

It looks like Pitt is going to throw her at someone here, right?

Everyone else in the cast basically amounted to cameos. James Badge Dale was charismatic as a bad-ass soldier, but his part was super-brief. Matthew Fox might not have even had a line in the ten seconds I remember of him. David Morse managed a few lines before Gerry globe trotted elsewhere. Fana Mokoena had a bit more screen time than the others, but his character was just a boring bureaucrat.

Marc Forster directed World War Z, and he succeeded in one of the most important aspects of this film: the scope. The movie looks and feels big, as a global zombie epidemic movie should. Most zombie movies have a small scope --- a mall or a house, or the like --- because the costs associated with a large-scale apocalyptic film are so high. Forster did a good job upping the ante and making this feel appropriately large.

There are more zombies in this shot than in every Romero movie combined

Forster also did a good job making this movie look good in a variety of ways. The World Health Organization looked distinctly different from Jerusalem, which was significantly different than New York, etc. I thought the action looked pretty good, although there were no truly great action pieces. The special effects, which looked wretched in the trailer, actually worked well in the context of the film.

Surprise! This didn't look like crap in the movie!

My only real problem with Forster's direction is the huge change of tone and pacing in the film's final third. There has been a lot of press about that; apparently, the original ending was awful and this ending was the result of extensive rewrites and reshoots. I actually like this ending, but there is no denying that the difference is jarring. This was a tough project that was notoriously difficult to bring to the screen, and I think Forster delivered a movie that successfully avoided being a monstrous disappointment.

Speaking of disappointments, let's address how well World War Z fares as a zombie film. In short, not well. I don't have a problem with the fact that the zombies here are the fast variety, as opposed to the classic slow creatures from the book. These zombies like to run.

...and stage dive. Unsuccessfully.

Here's the thing, though. These zombies don't feel much like zombies. For starters, there aren't any outstanding examples of gore in this movie. The coolest bit of gore came from Brad Pitt chopping off a hand. That's fairly unusual in a zombie movie (the lack of gore, not the hand-chopping), but I'm sure there is a precedent for it. Not a good precedent, but a precedent. These zombies don't act like any movie zombies I have seen, either. Instead, they were clearly inspired by swarming insects.

Big insects, though. The kind you need a hatchet for.

That's actually a pretty clever idea. The overall effect was threatening and unsettling. They didn't feel like zombies, though. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but in a movie based on the highest-profile zombie novel ever (maybe?) and has a title that implies zombies...? These choices don't really make sense. I wouldn't mind so much if the movie worked around the Z-word --- 28 Days Later got away with a "rage virus," after all --- but the term "zombie" is front and center, even if the zombies in question are pretty uncommon.

Example: this is a buffet for "real" zombies

The most frustrating and rewarding parts of World War Z stem from the same ultimate cause: the script. Having read the book, I can assure you that the process of creating a screenplay from that source material would be very difficult. That this film has a coherent story is an accomplishment in and of itself. However, to get this much of a narrative, a lot of sacrifices had to be made. When you couple that with budget constraints, you end up with a finished product that bears almost nothing in common with World War Z. To be perfectly honest, the money spent securing the film rights to the book was a complete waste, as the finished product is unrecognizable from the source material.

And yet...World War Z manages to do zombies on a scale that we haven't seen before (at least, not done well). This is a flawed movie, no doubt, and a few well-placed and gory zombie kills would have gone a long way toward making this more fun to watch, but it's not bad. It wasn't the zombie epic I was hoping for, but it brought some new elements to the table that I thought worked out pretty well. Since the film grossed over half a billion dollars, we will probably (eventually) see a sequel pop up, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. It should probably add some gore, though.

C.H.U.D.

2013-10-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Horror: Day 5

Have you seen C.H.U.D.? Have you? I remember getting excited for this one the very moment my friend explained the acronym: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. Of course I want to watch a movie about C.H.U.D.s! Of course I want to discuss C.H.U.D.s! Who wouldn't?

C.H.U.D. begins the way you always knew, deep in your heart, that it had to begin: with a high-end photographer getting edgy, socially important photos from the safety of his apartment. Cooper (John Heard) is tired of taking fancy, well-paying fashion gigs, because professional photographers hate receiving monetary compensation out of proportion to the work they do. Cooper wants to track down some homeless people he photographed last year, but he can't track them down --- and he's looked everywhere in his apartment.

I'm saying you're an unsympathetic dick, dick.

Meanwhile, Police Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) is in charge of the worst police precinct in the world. That's not a plot point, it is just a conclusion I have reached from the fact that every police officer we see in this movie is either lazy, stupid, or a complete asshat.

...or all three

Captain Bosch is hushing up a series of missing persons cases, but one of them also happens to be his wife. That's right, Bosch is covering up disappearances that are similar to his wife's. No, he (probably) did not murder his wife. Even more meanwhile, there is a savvy crime beat reporter who asks the police clever questions, like "What's going on, Bosch?" The man is clearly driven to uncover an important story. Beyond meanwhile, over in Meanwhileington, a filthy, greasy ex-con (Daniel Stern), who is running a soup kitchen for the homeless, decides to report some of his regulars as missing persons.

"You forgot to describe me as 'probably contagious'"

How are these seemingly disparate plot threads united? By C.H.U.D.s, of course. It turns out that Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers are eating (hint: cannibalistic) people, especially those who wander too close to the sewers. Or, in the case of some of the homeless, those that choose to live in the sewers.

"Sure beats the coal mine we must have just emerged from"

But what does a C.H.U.D. look like? C.H.U.D.-ish? C.H.U.D.-derly? C.H.U.D.-tastic? All good guesses, and none of them are wrong. Specifically, though, they look like this:

Now, all we need to know is what is causing these C.H.U.D.s to C.H.U.D. (yes, C.H.U.D. is a noun and a verb), and why the government is covering up ~~our hot C.H.U.D. on C.H.U.D. action!~~ their existence!

Let's talk about the acting in C.H.U.D., shall we? There are some decent actors in this movie, after all. Jon Polito, John Goodman, and (to a far lesser extent) Jay Thomas all make early career appearances, but they are extremely bit parts.

Above: John Goodman, moments before the only time something in a movie ate him

The top-billed actor is actually John Heard. I don't know why that is, since he is the whiniest character in the film and does the least good. For my money, it is Daniel Stern's turn as AJ that deserved the limelight. Not only is he the most reasonable character in the movie --- not counting his grooming habits, obviously --- but he has his own name, AJ, tattooed on his arm.

There aren't many good shots of it, but here's a cropped version:

That's right. Not only does he have his own name as a prison tattoo, but it has lines coming out from it, like it's shining bright! I don't know who thought of that, or what it means, but I fucking love it! As far as his acting goes, Stern was competent in a movie full of awkward dialogue. Christopher Curry was pretty terrible as Bosch, but he rocks a pretty nice cop 'stache. I don't understand the early 80s and the insistence on giving Kim Greist work, but this is yet another movie that casts her as a supposedly beautiful and interesting love interest for the lead. I haven't seen it work yet, but at least I did get to see her sprayed with blood this time.

With that vacant expression, this looks more like hazing than horror

Rounding out the notable cast, Sam McMurray did what he does best --- he played an unsympathetic asshole, and he did it perfectly.

C.H.U.D. is the only movie Douglas Cheek ever directed. He apparently got the gig thanks to Daniel Stern and John Heard stumping for him. Whatever the cause, he didn't do a very good job. It's certainly not entirely his fault, but there isn't a single well-assembled scene in this movie. There is no suspense or terror or horror. Of course, this is a movie about Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, so it's probably pretty stupid. But that doesn't explain why my favorite scene in the entire film is this one:

AJ is being tailed by Alligator Shirt. AJ stops to make a call on a payphone. Alligator Shirt hangs up the phone before AJ can dial (it was a close tail), grabs the change, and then eats it. And then they just look at each other. Not a word has been said during this entire exchange.

I couldn't stop laughing. I actually rewound that part to make sure it really happened. Stern's puzzled look, paired with the blank smugness of Alligator Shirt was so beautifully awkward. I can guarantee that Cheek had something other than abject hilarity in mind when he filmed that scene. But it is really fair to lay all the blame on the director? After all, somebody wrote a script for this.

According to CHUDFacts (which is an interesting, if sad, read), large chunks of the movie were ad-libbed or rewritten by Daniel Stern and Christopher Curry (IMDb even lists them as uncredited writers). Given how it turned out, I wonder if this was anything like Sam Jackson signing on for Snakes on a Plane?

"We signed on to make a movie about Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, dammit!"

Whatever the reasoning or background, this is a pretty dumb script, and the main source of entertainment is from the fact that there are things called C.H.U.D.s in the movie.

This is a horror movie, though, and C.H.U.D. does have "cannibalistic" creatures in it...how good is this movie by horror standards? First of all, I am curious as to what makes these creatures cannibals. We don't see C.H.U.D.s eating other C.H.U.D.s, we see them eating people; sure, we later learn that C.H.U.D.s are mutated people (who somehow all mutate the same way), but doesn't the description of them as "humanoid" kind of negate the cannibalism? Am I being too nitpicky?

Considering that I am not questioning them sharing the same wardrobe, the answer is "yes"

Anyway, while the title promises a fun horror experience for genre fans, there isn't much in the actual film itself. If you are a fan of gore, there is one shot of a wounded leg, blood spattering out of a shower drain, and a C.H.U.D. head gets sliced off with a sword (that was conveniently in an apartment). If you are into special effects, there still isn't much. The C.H.U.D. costumes are quite obviously just gloves and masks, so very little of them are show on-camera. For instance, this is the only unobscured shot of the C.H.U.D.s that ate John Goodman:

It's not bad, but if you have the C.H.U.D.s attacking a well-lit diner, we should see a little more. The only way a film can get away without showing much of its monsters is if it does a great job setting a tone of suspense; it also helps if the story provides a lot of darkness and shadows. This movie does neither. So, gore and special effects are underwhelming...what about sex and violence? Strikes three and four. Little of either to be seen, and if there was some, it would probably be pretty comical.

BUT.

I truly believe C.H.U.D. is worth watching. Is it dumb? Yes. Is it poorly made? Unapologetically so. Is it a little slow getting to the C.H.U.D.s? Definitely. Despite all that, I think this movie is a pretty fun watch. I might not recommend watching it alone and/or sober, but I think there is something lovably goofy at the core of this concept. (Hint: that "something" is the acronym C.H.U.D.)

Sinister

2013-10-04T14:25:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Horror: Day 4

"From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious"? Does that mean that Sinister is not a slasher film or remake, but *gasp* another new, suspense-driven horror flick? Well, that remains to be seen. I do like the change of pace we've seen over the last few years, away from cheap scares and toward better-acted and -directed horror films. I'm not saying that we're in a horror renaissance or anything --- a lot of crap movies are still being made --- but I am seeing more types of horror, with varying levels of quality, and I like that. Of course, these new IPs have already spawned multiple crappy sequels, but that's a problem for another time.

Ellison (Ethan Hawke) is a true-crime writer that is a few books past his prime. His specialty is to investigate cold cases and then speculate wildly, often throwing local police under the bus in the process.

His other hobbies include having the audience watch him watch something on the screen

If that doesn't make him charming enough, he is what all authors in movies are: a heavy drinker. Ellison has just moved his family, wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance), son Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario) and daughter Ashley (Clare Foley), into a new home in a small town where there is a major unsolved murder case. Four members of a family were found hanged to death in their backyard; the fifth member of the family, a young daughter, disappeared without a trace. There were no real clues in the case and no suspects. The upside to the murders is that Ellison got his house very cheap. That's right...he bought the murder house. Logically, that shouldn't make a difference. But in Sinister, it does. While investigating/moving his crap into the house, Ellison comes across a box of Super8 home movies.

"Super8 tapes...this will definitely help me with the murder that happened in 2011!"

Despite the odds of these tapes being useful, Ellison finds footage of the murder. Not the kind that points to a killer, mind you, but more like the snuff film variety. But there's more. There are three other tapes, showing three other family massacres, dating back to the mid-sixties. The more Ellison studies the films and investigates the different murder cases, the more Ellison notices similarities. These are all families being killed, there are no suspects or clues in any of the murders, and the youngest child in each family is never found. Oh, and a dude with a creepy face keeps showing up in the background of the scenes and in the drawings of the missing children.

Mr. Boogie appears to be naked

If that's not creepy enough for you, how about this?

He's being haunted by Slipknot?

But how can the same person have killed all those people over such a wide stretch of time? What is happening to the missing children? Are we looking at an elderly serial killer, or a legacy of murder being passed on from generation to generation? Or is it something more *groan* Sinister?

The acting in Sinister relies heavily on the performance of Ethan Hawke. That's not a huge surprise, since the movie is essentially watching him watch home movies. Hawke is pretty good, though; he's certainly not likable, but he did a good job showing fear slowly creep up. The rest of the family was an afterthought in the script, but it is worth noting that Juliet Rylance's character was right 100% of the time; she didn't have a juicy role, but there is something to be said for being the voice of logic and reason in a horror movie, even if it is a thankless task. The kids were just kids.

...and just kids are just creepy

Performance-wise, they were adequate. My only takaway is that Michael Hall D'Addario needs a damn haircut. Fred Dalton Thompson makes a brief appearance as an unfriendly sheriff, and I guess he was fine. I was a bit surprised to see James Ransone playing the part of the deputy; Ransone seems to specialize in weasely characters, so it was nice to see him try something new, even if his character wasn't particularly interesting. Slightly more effective was Vincent D'Onofrio's cameo as a college professor, if only because his post-Law & Order speech cadence really lends itself to somewhat windy knowitalls.

Sinister was directed and co-written by Scott Derrickson. His work in this film marks both the movie's strengths and weaknesses. On the plus side, Derrickson did a great job building up suspense and creating a creepy haunted house vibe. However, that is only effective because of how creepy the Super8 snuff films are and some impressive sound effects. The script itself is a bit of a mess, as it seems torn between wanting to be a true crime mystery with the haunted house being a side effect of Ellison's drinking and being a straight-up supernatural horror movie.

Similarly, is this frightening, or is she doing an impression of a handicapped person?

I thought the final decision as to what direction the movie was going in came too late, which makes some bits confusing in retrospect, unless you're satisfied with the explanation *waves hands* MAGIC. Derrickson is also not much of a stickler to details. For instance, all of the "Mr. Bogey" pictures looked like they were drawn by the same person, instead of by several different children, decades apart. And then there's Ellison's note-taking skills, where he wastes most of a page with a very basic question, just so the camera can see it being written. Those are fairly nit-picky problems, I know, but it's not like I'm asking where the killer found Super8 film to record the most recent killings. Oh, that's right: MAGIC.

Murder victims are the next howling wolves for hipster T-shirts

And that's really too bad. Sinister comes very, very close to being a cool movie. The home videos are disturbing. There is atmosphere and tension. The villain has a cool look to him. And then the story settles for a supernatural explanation and starts throwing in all sorts of cheap scares. You know what would have made this movie better? Not having a goddamned bogeyman as the culprit. Someone kidnapping small children, raising them to be killers, and then watching them pay it forward would have fit this movie far better than some sort of shadow demon that kills people because of arbitrary property lines (a much-abbreviated explanation, but essentially accurate). Still, just thinking about those 8mm videos creeps me out, so it's not a total loss.

Army of Darkness

2013-10-03T00:20:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Horror: Day 3

All right, now we're talking. After watching The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II on consecutive nights, now it is time for Army of Darkness, the third and possibly final entry in Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's Ash trilogy. This was the movie that I had some peripheral awareness of, even before I became a fan of horror movies, if only because this movie poster was on the back cover of every comic book I bought in 1992. One of my fondest Army of Darkness memories involves a few of my moderately normal friends in college asking me to choose what we watched on a movie night; they wanted "strange" things they hadn't seen before, and I chose Army of Darkness and Labyrinth. They were (obviously) excellent choices, but I don't recall receiving any standing ovations. Anyway, Evil Dead II has made me like it more and more with each viewing. Will the same go for Army of Darkness?

Last time we saw Ash (Bruce Campbell), he had been sucked into a void (along with his car) after he defeated the evil wood spirit/demon/thing that plagued the Evil Dead movies. When he landed on the other side of the void, he was in Medieval times and he was once again faced with possessed monsters. This time, though, they have a name: Deadites. While it is possible for Ash to find his way home again, it requires him to go into a haunted cemetery and retrieve the Necronomicon, which is the book Ash burned in the first film. All he has to do is brave the challenges ahead of him and say some magic words, and all will be right with the world. Since not much has gone right for Ash in the last few days (Is that math correct? Do the events of the first two movies take only about two days?), the Deadites rise up and mount a large-scale attack to retrieve the Necronomicon. Who will lead the miserably primitive Medieval peons against the Deadite army (of darkness)? The only man with balls big enough to carry a shotgun and a chainsaw hand, of course.

Pictured: General Ash and PFC Boom Stick

Army of Darkness stayed true to its acting roots, once again going out of its way to not try to impress audiences with the talent of its cast. This time around, Bruce Campbell got to be even more of a cartoon character, both with his physical humor and with the special effects.

Following true cartoon logic, shaking his head fixes this disfigurement

What I like best about Campbell's performance his fantastically over-macho swagger. This isn't something we've seen in the other Evil Dead movies, but it's a big part of what makes this one special. Embeth Davidtz plays Ash's love interest, and she gives the best performance of any female in this series so far. That's not saying much, and it's saying even less in AoD because Ash spends a hefty amount of time sharing the screen with evil versions of himself. Still, she was perfectly acceptable with only a few lines. Marcus Gilbert and Richard Grove were okay as the leaders of the non-Deadite forces, but neither really had much to do. Ian Abercrombie sounded as wise as his role required. Bridget Fonda has a brief cameo as Ash's dead girlfriend in a flashback, but she doesn't even get a line. Ted Raimi did a little better, playing three brief bit parts. There's not much to say about the acting outside of Campbell because the movie relies so heavily on him.

For the villain, they cast the only man who could hold his own against Bruce Campbell: Bruce Campbell

Sam Raimi returned as director and co-writer for a third round with Ash and the Deadites in Army of Darkness. By this point, Raimi had just had his first mainstream hit, Darkman, and got a substantially larger budget for this film as a result. With that in mind, a lot of his choices are curious. Why go the Jason and the Argonauts route with the skeleton army? Sure, I guess it looks cool, but it makes the inclusion of non-skeleton warriors --- who suddenly appear whenever there is a castle interior shot --- seem a little out of place.

None of these brave soldiers make it inside the castle gates

I would have thought the cost for the skeleton FX would be greater than costuming people (which he ended up doing, anyway). This movie is kind of like Baron Munchausen in that it is pretty obvious where the budget went, and it's not always clear if the cost was worth it. I'm not complaining, by any means, about Raimi's love of old-school special effects.

A rubber suit, water, a fog machine, with fake moss and rocks still make for fun scenes

He just made some unusual choices. Chief among those was making Army of Darkness skew heavily toward its comedic elements. It is strange to think of a sequel that purposely strays from the tone of its predecessor --- I can't imagine that happening today --- but I guess Raimi & co. had already gotten the ball rolling with Evil Dead II, so why not go all-out in the final chapter? Raimi's direction did a good job emphasizing the one-liners in the script, and he made the special effects look good. Beyond that, this movie just feels like he was having fun.

...or possibly on drugs

While I would probably categorize Army of Darkness as more of a comedy than a horror movie, it does have enough gross imagery to stay in the horror genre. One of the odder things about this movie, though, is its rating. Army of Darkness is rated "R." For a movie with relatively little gore (aside from some ridiculous over-use of fake blood in the beginning), no sex, and little profanity, that seems a bit harsh. If you just look at the stills, then sure, I can see Evil Ash looking a bit gross and scary.

But his grosses moment just had him trying to kiss a girl. That is a pretty soft "R." If I was making the movie and received that rating, I would have gone back and gored things up a bit to make the rating worthwhile.

In my "R" cutting, Bat-Deadite is touching her boobies

With its toned-down feel, how does Army of Darkness stack up? As far as horror-comedy blends go, it's one of the better ones. The lines are often corny, but they are classics worth memorizing. That doesn't make it a good horror movie, though. I find myself entertained by this movie every time I watch it, but I'm laughing at the same parts every time, with dwindling results.

"It's not THAT bad. Throw us a *bad pun*"

Maybe I need to watch this with a first-time viewer, to remember what it was like when "Groovy" and "Boom stick" were brand new to me. Will I watch Army of Darkness again? Absolutely. When I have kids, this will be one of the first "horror" movies they will see. Is it my favorite Evil Dead movie? Not anymore. That distinction now belongs to Evil Dead II.

Evil Dead 2

2013-10-02T08:45:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Horror: Day 2

Legend has it that director/co-writer Sam Raimi always had a plan to make a sequel to his surprise cult hit, The Evil Dead. I've seen it reported in a few places that he wanted to tell a story where Ash is transported to Medieval times, an idea that later became the story to Army of Darkness. So, if the third movie in the series used the idea that the director had for the second movie...what did he do with the actual sequel?

Evil Dead II picks up right where...well, where the other movie began. This time around, though, only Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his girlfriend, Linda (Denise Bixler), make the poor choice to spend the weekend in a cabin in the woods. This isn't a creepy, ramshackle cabin, though; it is well-furnished --- it even has a piano! --- and looks more like a vacation home than anything else. Not that Ash and Linda are renting it or anything; Ash is taking her there because it is "deserted." Essentially, Ash is an aspiring squatter. He then makes the mistake of playing an audio tape he finds on a desk in the cabin, where a professor of some sorts reads off his phonetic translation of the passages in the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, or the "Book of the Dead." Soon enough, an evil spirit possesses Linda, she get decapitated by Ash's shovel, and Ash is the last person standing, alone in the woods with some sort of woods demon out to get him. To this point, the story has been pretty much a highly edited (about six minutes long!) remake of the original movie. But then things start to get a little weird.

That's right: hillbilly-in-overalls weird

It turns out that the voice on the audio tape belonged to an archaeology professor who was working on a project to explain the Book of the Dead. His daughter, Annie (Sarah Berry), and her research partner, Ed (Richard Domeier), were on their way back from an excavation, where they had found the last pages of the book. Those pages contain spells that can ultimately destroy the evil spirit. Now, all we need is for Annie and her partner to get to the cabin, team up with Ash, and figure out how to stay alive long enough to do what needs to be done. The only problems are (in order):

the only bridge leading to or from the cabin has been wrecked by the demon spirit thing
Ash is a stranger, covered in blood and Annie's parents are missing
All they have to do is decode a dead language and apply that knowledge to the problem at hand

Oh, and Ash's hand has become possessed and is trying to kill him.

The acting in Evil Dead II is certainly not impressive at first glance, but Bruce Campbell's improvement is more noticeable if you compare it to his work in the previous film. This is less of a straight horror movie, as it has added a lot of broad slapstick comedy to the mix, and that plays to Campbell's strengths. Specifically, he does well with exaggerated expressions and hammy dialogue, so the cartoony sequences in the movie (especially Ash vs. his hand) are a lot of fun to watch.

"What's up, Doc?" would have fit this scene like a glove

Of the rest of the cast, I suppose longtime soap actress Kassie Wesley DePaiva is probably the most noteworthy; she didn't do a whole lot, but she was inoffensive. This was the only featured role Sarah Berry ever had --- her only other credit is as an extra in C.H.U.D. II - Bud the Chud ---but I thought she was pretty decent. There aren't a lot of good female roles in horror movies, especially in the 80s, but she was convincingly stubborn and strong. Ted Raimi, as is his usual schtick, played a small part in his brother's movie. This time, he played Henrietta, Annie's possessed mother. Ted doesn't really "act" in this movie, so much as he "lumbers around under a lot of makeup and costuming," but Henrietta is one of the more memorable monsters in the movie, so I guess all that thankless work was worthwhile.

Why is this not Ted Raimi's IMDb image?

Only one film bridges the gap between the Sam Raimi that made The Evil Dead and the one that made Evil Dead II, but it makes all the difference. Raimi is much more confident as a director and the overall feel of the film is less "amateurish" and more "professional with a low budget." The most obvious difference between the two films is the conscious choice to add a lot more comedy to Evil Dead II, and that was probably the right choice. Raimi has a talent for capturing comedy on camera, especially slightly awkward comedy, and this was his first true platform to show off that talent. I don't know if I would say that Raimi was any better at directing the cast in this film, but he and Bruce Campbell seemed to be working on the same comedic wavelength, if nothing else. The cinematography, while not spectacular, wasn't bad. The iconic POV shot of the evil woods demon thingie tearing through the woods made a return, and that was probably the most memorable bit of cinematography in the film. Raimi also did a good job capturing some truly weird and gross moments on film.

...sometimes bordering on cold-medicine-induced-nightmare moments

Evil Dead II may be going for laughs, but there are still enough horror tropes to satisfy most fans of the genre. If you're looking for fake blood, this has some of the more ridiculously over-the-top spurts of the 80s. I was a little surprised to notice that there is very little gore captured on-camera, though; the most gruesome scenes simply show blood spattering on something else, like the wall of the shed.

Remember those Gatorade "sweat" ads? Raimi missed an advertising tie-in.

If you're looking for special effects, the makeup and costumes for the possessed are pretty good. Some of the FX are simply claymation and are showing their age, but I'm pretty sure those FX were cheesy when the film was released, too. Still, they add to the goofy/surreal tone of the movie and I like them a hell of a lot more than late 80s CGI.

Can you imagine this with 80s CGI? Ugh. Now THAT'S gross.

Even though the gore was off-camera (or just goofy) and the special effects were more gross-looking than scary, Evil Dead II earned an "X" rating in America when it was released, for reasons I cannot understand. If they had recreated the rape tree scene from the first movie, that would make sense, but Kassie Wesley DePaiva's scene doesn't get sexual at all.

"NO RAPE TREE? NO X RATING! IT'S PRACTICALLY A RULE!"

In fact, Evil Dead II is generally less horrific than the original movie, despite the cast and director having more experience and money to work with. And yet, Evil Dead II is a much, much more entertaining movie on every other level. The characters are a lot less irritating, the story makes a little bit more sense, and the comic weirdness and goofiness that comes from a hero with a chainsaw hand all add up to something odd and unique. Ash may have been the main character in The Evil Dead, but the character that has become a cult icon doesn't appear until he grabs a chainsaw and shotgun.

Behold: Ash is born!

The first time I sat down to watch this film, I was eighteen. I hadn't gotten into horror yet, and didn't really understand the value of campiness or low-budget charm. However, when the movie finished, I turned to my friend and said, "I can't believe that I have to see the sequel now." Even though I didn't care for Evil Dead II at first glance, it still reeled me in and left me wanting to know more. Since then, it improves with every viewing. It's not quite up there with my absolute personal favorites, but I give it...

Oh, and I have come to a realization with the "is it a remake or a sequel" question that surrounds this movie. We don't actually see the Necronomicon after the six-minute recap at the beginning of the film, just the additional pages. It is entirely possible that the events of the first film could have happened (minus, I guess, the other two friends). So, aside from the recap --- which was necessary to explain what the hell was going on --- there is little to no remaking going on. Why did they film the recap instead of showing clips from the original film? Since it was made by a different production company, I will assume there was some sort of ownership issue.

The Evil Dead (1981)

2013-10-01T17:56:00.000-05:00

31 Days of Horror: Day 1

When I sat down to watch The Evil Dead recently, it was with the goal of re-watching the entire Evil Dead series, rather than enjoying the original film; it's not that I dislike the first entry in the series by any means, but Evil Dead II is a remake of the first film, and is funnier/gorier/awesomer. Ask anyone. After about fifteen minutes of The Evil Dead, though, I came to a realization: I have never seen this movie before. I don't know why I was so absolutely certain that I had seen this movie --- I would have sworn to having seen this, even at gunpoint --- but that shock did two things for me. First, it was a bit humbling to realize that I had missed a cult classic like this, especially since I enjoy its sequels so much. Second, it meant that I should probably reassess my presumptions about the film. So, here goes a review --- now, with fresh eyes!

The Evil Dead begins with five coeds on a trip to a remote cabin in the woods. And, by "remote cabin in the woods," I of course mean a traditional horror movie murder cabin. This place doesn't look relaxing or quaint.

Even odds on the lampshades being made from human skin

Whatever, this is a horror movie and unfortunate choices are bound to happen. When exploring this rustic cabin, the group discovers a trap door that leads to a dank basement. Now, as a horror movie viewer, you might imagine that the basement is going to have something scary in it. It's a reasonable assumption. However, the trap door has been fashioned so that you can chain it shut, which makes it --- and this is a best-case scenario, mind you --- a torture dungeon.

"Last one in is the gimp"

But, once again, horror movie logic dictates that the two men of the group, Scott (Richard DeManincor) and Ash (Bruce Campbell), go down to the creepy basement and explore. Surprisingly, it's not too bad down there. There's a few weapons, but nothing alarming. In fact, the most interesting thing they find is a weird book and an audio recording.

So...it's a book about Megadeth?

Being curious youngsters, thy decide to sit and listen to the audio recording while flipping through the obviously-not-evil book. Ash's sister, Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), had had some weird premonitions of danger before they found the book, which culminated in her drawing hand getting possessed and making a truly dull pencil drawing.

Her possessed hand drew...Spongebob?

Of course, she doesn't tell anyone about this incident because HORROR MOVIE. Instead, she listens to the audio tape with the others. It seems that the book they found is a Book of the Dead, which has spells and incantations for all sorts of bad stuff, and the tape they found was the audiobook version of it. Why would somebody record spells on an audio tape? Maybe to allow underprivileged aspiring cult leaders to cast spells without having to learn demonic languages at Satan School? Anyway, Cheryl freaks out, runs into the woods, and winds up getting raped by the woods. What does that mean? It means just what it sounds like.

Not surprisingly, that makes a bit of an impression on Cheryl. However, she handles it in an somewhat surprising fashion: she gets possessed by a demon (or something) that has a fondness for skin-shredding. Whatever she has is contagious, too, because every member of the group demons-out at one point or another, except for Ash. Can Ash save his friends? Will they survive the night? Or will they all become *pause for effect* the evil dead?

It's not as bad as it looks. The heavy makeup ruins your complexion over time, but hey, you're dead.

The Evil Dead was twenty-year-old writer/director Sam Raimi's first movie (although IMDb does list some Super8 shorts he made as a teen), and it definitely has some rough edges. The dialogue is frequently stiff and unnatural. The cast tends to overact, even in the most basic scenes. The synth-heavy soundtrack only adds to the overall sense of cheesiness. The story doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, and there does not really seem to be much logic in who gets "infected" by demons and when.

And why is Ash's nemesis in this film bookcases?

And yet, that somehow doesn't really matter. Raimi put together a bizarre movie --- a horror film without an enemy to attack and overcome --- and he spiced up this unusual format with plenty of creative gore.

Raimi's sped-up POV-ish camera work for the forest demon-things is distinctive enough to make a movie with a LOT of stereotypical setup feel different. Is this great work from Raimi? No, but it is, at the very least, interesting...provided that you can get past the initial cheesiness.

The acting in The Evil Dead is pretty terrible, overall. A very young Bruce Campbell showed some charm, but his best moments were the less serious moments. It is also kind of cute listening to him without his trademark baritone.

Campbell, charting when his other testicle will drop

Richard DeManincor was pretty awful as Scott, but he also had the dumbest character in the movie, so it's probably not entirely his fault. Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, and Theresa Tilly don't really have many instances to be much better; at best they are damsels in distress, at worst they are cackling witches.

Acting isn't everything, though, in a horror movie. The ultimate question here is whether or not The Evil Dead provides a scary experience. And that answer is: kind of, I guess. There is certainly enough violence and gore to satisfy most fans of the genre.

Not much in terms of sex, which is probably for the best.

The makeup is actually pretty good in this movie. The special effects --- the ending melting scenes and the tree rape --- are not technically impressive, but they are pretty memorable.

Above: Not your standard monster death

Overall, The Evil Dead is a solid low-budget horror flick. It's not that scary, but it more than makes up for it in gore and strangeness. It is substantially different from Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, but that difference in tone is what makes this worth watching. Evil Dead II is so goofy, it is interesting and fun to see the same talent doing the same story with a different spin. It doesn't happen much, but The Evil Dead is a rare example of a movie that is definitely less impressive than its remakes, but still worth a watch.

31 Days of Horror '13

2013-10-01T01:00:00.000-05:00

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Once again, I am attempting to review a horror movie per day for the entire month of October. I've been especially lazy this year, so this will probably be end in failure; but what's October without a little failure?

FUCK YOU, HALLOWEEN

Now, I've been doing this a while, so a lot of the more obvious movie choices have already been done. But, year after year, I surprise myself with how much quality horror I have yet to see. My intended review queue this year is a little up in the air at the moment, but as long as naughty teens pay for their sins, I'll be happy.

Reviewed thus far:
The Evil Dead (1981)

Man of Steel

2013-07-19T23:35:00.000-05:00

I don't get all the hate heaped on Superman Returns. Granted, I don't think I've seen it since it was in theaters, but it's not a bad movie. If you want a bad movie based on a DC comic character, there are plenty to choose from --- ignoring the low-hanging fruit of Superman IV and Green Lantern, do you remember Steel? Superman Returns' only real crime was being a movie that didn't act as a proper tentpole for a franchise. It was designed to look and feel like a Richard Donner Super-film, and it succeeded in that regard. That doesn't make it very exciting to watch, maybe, but it wasn't bad. DC and the movie producers were not shy about their intentions for Man of Steel; if this movie was successful, it would be the first in a string of DC superhero movies, culminating in a Justice League film. Basically, they saw what Marvel did with The Avengers and thought, "We should probably do that, too."

Aside from Superman being a hitchhiking hobo and direction from Sucker Punch creator Zack Snyder, the trailer looks pretty good. I was curious as to whether or not they would explain what Superman uses to shave, since even flames don't affect his body hair, but that is a fairly minor point.

SPOILER ALERT: they don't

Man of Steel begins on the planet of Krypton. Actually, we spend a surprising amount of time on this world, following Jor-El (Russell Crowe), the preeminent bodybuilding scientist on the planet, as he tries to convince the ruling class that their world is going to end. They don't believe him, which turns out to mean absolutely nothing because they are promptly murdered by Krypton's preeminent shouting soldier, Zod (Michael Shannon).

"Kee-rist, Zod! Inside voices, please!"

So what's the point of these scenes? Well, Jor-El takes some desperate chances while Zod's forces battled the government; he grabs something of great importance to Krypton's people (a skull) and does something questionable with it (dissolves it over his infant son), because science. Sure of his apocalyptic conclusions, Jor violates almost every FAA rule and sends his baby boy to Earth, via rocket, all by his lonesome. And then Zod kills Jor and Krypton explodes. Not before Zod and his forces are overcome and punished by being trapped in another dimension, though.

Zod looks like the sort of guy who types with the caps lock key on

On Earth, that infant grows up to be Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), and his alien physiology makes him different from normal folks in a variety of ways: super-strength, heat vision, super-speed, etc. You know the super-drill.

Or maybe this super-drill is a little more angry than what you're used to

Clark was taught by his adoptive father (Kevin Costner) to keep his head low and hide his extraordinary abilities. The logic to this being that people fear what they do not understand and...um...a super being might get his feelings hurt? Whatever the reason, Clark grows up to be a do-gooding drifter, helping random people out whenever he can and then slinking off into the shadows before they can ask him any questions. Eventually, Zod and his minions come to Earth, looking for the son of Jor-El. Their entrance is dramatic, and they essentially offer to spare the Earth if their fellow Kryptonian turns himself over to Zod. But what does Zod really have in mind for the people of Earth? And what does this mean for Clark? Where does Clark fit in, as the child of two worlds? What kind of "man" is he? (The answer is "super.")

The acting in Man of Steel is all pretty much above-board. Henry Cavill carried the angst of his character very well; this is easily the best acting I've seen from him. Cavill also looks fairly tough, so the concept of him being able to punch through your face seems a little less far-fetched than some other actors who have played the part. While Cavill's Superman was certainly sympathetic --- I would argue he gave the most vulnerable Superman performance on film to date --- he doesn't show much personality beyond the angst; but that is more of a script issue than a fault in Cavill's portrayal.

"Alright Henry, for this scene, imagine that your iPod has nothing but Morrissey on it"

Superman's love interest, Lois Lane, is played by Amy Adams, and this is the best Lane we've seen on the big screen. She actually seems strong and intelligent, like an award-winning reporter should. Almost as important, her "plucky reporter" bit wasn't obnoxious. I thought Kevin Costner did a pretty good job as an overprotective parent; Costner can be a little one-dimensional in this role, but it was refreshing to see anyone in this movie look genuinely concerned over Superman's well-being.

"Son, just calm down...and please don't murder me and your mother"

I have some serious issues with the writing of his character, but Costner did a fine job acting. Diane Lane was also okay as Clark's mother, although her part is pretty conventional. I will say that it felt odd seeing her play a part that was a touch too old for her. Russell Crowe was good as Jor-El; he was suitably stoic when he played a hologram, but his action hero turn on Krypton seemed a little un-scientist-like. Still, he was in a lot more of the movie than I expected and wasn't bad by any means. Ayelet Zurer had a small part as Superman's Kryptonian mom, but it didn't really amount to much. Michael Shannon's work as Zod was tough for me to rate.

And, at times, identify

Yes, he was suitably intimidating. Yes, he provided a physical threat to Superman, something that most Superman villains do not do. I think my issue has less to do with Shannon's performance than with how the character was written; when given the opportunity, Shannon made this awful monster sympathetic --- but we have to wait almost the entire movie to get to that point. Until that moment of insight, he comes across as a gigantic asshole. Nothing more, nothing less. Antje Traue was Shannon's right-hand-woman, and she was decent; I liked what I saw, but she didn't really do much more than glare. Christopher Meloni had a fairly substantial part and he played an aggressive authority figure. Go figure. I like Meloni, but his movie roles have been pretty bland lately. Richard Schiff and Laurence Fishburne did very little aside from lending their familiar faces to bit parts.

I have to admit that Zack Snyder didn't do a terrible job directing Man of Steel. Snyder curbed his tendency to throw needless slow-motion in every scene and instead played to his strength: visuals. This is a fantastic-looking film. The set and costume designs were good, the cinematography felt epic, and the super-battles were suitably huge.

Above: epic super-fart

Snyder still can't direct his actors to do much more than shout, but that's less noticeable in a superhero movie. I did start to get bored during the action sequences, though. Superman and Zod knocked created a lot of collateral damage, but a lot of it looked awfully similar. The important thing is this: Snyder is a director with visual flair, and he made a gorgeous Superman movie. He didn't write the movie, though.

That was the work of David S. Goyer and, to a lesser extent, Christopher Nolan. This screenplay certainly achieved one of its goals; I can definitely see this film spawning sequels and tie-ins, just as Iron Man set the stage for the films leading to The Avengers. It also told a solid origin story and left some plot threads dangling that will doubtlessly be used in the inevitable sequel. From a branding perspective, I suppose this script also sets the DC movie universe apart from that of the Marvel universe; there is a distinct science fiction vibe to this superhero movie, and that could open a promising door to some of DC's other characters. Having said all that, I must admit that I didn't actually like the writing in Man of Steel. For every character that was done well (Lois Lane, Jor-El), there were three or four that took everything with straight-faced indifference. I don't blame the actors or the director for that. The script leaves very little for them to do, aside from pose and look upset. The worst case of this was Zod, who was a raving lunatic for 90% of the movie and then, finally, had a humanizing moment, although it came an hour too late to make up for his behavior in the rest of the film. But that's not the biggest problem with Man of Steel.

My biggest problem with Man of Steel is with the tone. To say that it is "dark" doesn't do it justice.

***SPOILER ALERT***

Superman's Earth-Dad straight up tells his son to not save people. Hell, his character basically commits tornado-assisted suicide just to teach his son a lesson. What's worse is the fact that our Superman-to-be lets it happen. He could have easily saved the life of his adoptive father, but he opts not to. That is not exactly the sort of thing you typically see in a movie with a hero in it, super or otherwise. Of course, the back story is also pretty bleak. The Kryptonians had colonies spread across the galaxy, equipped with terraformers to make hostile environments suitable for their settlers. When Krypton decided that they did not want to expand their empire, they ~~sent out a bus to pick everyone up and bring them home~~ cut off provisions to those colonies, and everybody died. Later, when Zod is preparing to end the human race by terraforming the planet, he ignores the fact that Kryptonians can, over time, get used to Earth without killing every living creature on the planet. Why? Because he would rather eliminate an entire species than be patient. Of course, he also could have used the terraformers on any of the other dozen former colonies that he visited, but that would have robbed him of the chance to destroy all human life. That's pretty bleak stuff. And then there are the approximately three million civilian casualties from the Superman/Zod battle. The city of Metropolis is ruined. Completely. Most of those collapsed buildings had to have people inside them, and that ignores all the people running for their lives as their world fell on top of them.

Yeah, hold on to your coat. That will help you.

Similarly, Smallville will take a decade to recover from Zod's visit. The nameless Asian city off the coast of where the terraformer was probably took a lot of damage in the form of tidal waves, too. Some people have issues with Superman killing Zod, but it makes sense in the context of this movie. Zod was going to kill those stupid people in the railway station, and Superman did all that he could to stop it, because those random people were more important than the several hundred he punched Zod through during their battle. Actually, I was a little surprised at Zod's execution, but there weren't many options, and that thematically confirmed Superman as a citizen of Earth. Still, the presumed off-camera body count in Man of Steel is mind-boggling. And that sort of destruction could work in another movie. But in a Superman movie...? I'm not so sure. Hell, I'm not sure that more than one of those depressing-ass factoids makes sense in a Superman movie, much less all of them. There is usually a sense of hope and optimism accompanying this character that can sometimes come across as corny Americana.

Not this time. Man of Steel feels like someone saw what a gritty tone did for the Batman franchise and decided "If they like gritty Batman, they'll love gritty Superman!" And I suppose they gave the people what they wanted, if the box office numbers are to be believed.

As a standalone film, Man of Steel is decent. It was a relief that this movie didn't completely suck, and I hope to see more DC movies in the future, thanks to the success of this film. Amy Adams and Henry Cavill are a solid core for this franchise and I wouldn't even mind Zack Snyder returning for another movie. I honestly believe that they're going in the wrong direction with this, though. Sequels have to up the ante, and the angst, death and destruction in this movie are already turned up to eleven. Man of Steel was well-executed and impressive, but the questionable thematic choices kept me from truly enjoying it.

Pacific Rim

2013-07-18T00:39:00.000-05:00

Finally! A Summer movie that motivated me to get on my butt and blog! In a Summer when the apocalypse is commonplace (off the top of my head, we're talking about Oblivion, After Earth, World War Z, and This is the End, although I am sure there are others) I have to admit that I was still unnaturally excited for Pacific Rim, which promised little aside from destruction --- destruction provided by giant robots fighting giant monsters, which brings with it awesomeness at almost a cellular level. That was not the only reason I was excited, though. This was another chance for director Guillermo del Toro to show once again why he is one of the greatest visual directors making movies today. And then I saw the trailer and started asking questions.

Did Idris Elba just give Bill Pullman's speech from Independence Day? Do we have to watch two people in spacesuits perform a synchronized dance instead of watching robots punching monsters in the junk? Is Charlie Hunnam going to be a muscular version of Sam Witwicky from the Transformers trilogy? If you need to know, basically, not really, and blessedly no, respectively.

Also, I can't be the only one who recognizes the old Fox Sunday football robots, right?

Pacific Rim opens with a voice-over from Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) bringing the audience up to speed. In the near future, a dimensional rift opens in the Pacific Ocean and huge alien monsters come through. These monsters are reminiscent of Japanese monsters movies, like Godzilla and Gamera, so they are called Kaiju, after that film subclass.

As you might expect, the Kaiju did some major damage, so the World Governments decided to team up and create the Jaeger program. Jaegers are gigantic fighting robots that are piloted by two humans, who share some sort of Vulcan mind meld in order to pilot their metal beast. For a while, the Jaegers worked. Category 1 and 2 Kaiju --- that's a rating system based on their size --- were easy pickings for these awesome anime mechs/rock 'em sock 'em robots.

If a punch to the face is badass, how much more amazing is a ROBOT punch to a MONSTER face?

In fact, our narrator, Raleigh was a Jaeger pilot with his brother. Unfortunately, they happened to be the first Jaeger to meet with a Category 3 Kaiju, and the brother was killed in action. Years have passed and the Jaeger program is on hard times. Their funding has been cut in favor of building large walls around major cities.

...which works out well

It is at this point that the Jaeger commander (Idris Elba) re-recruits Raleigh to join up with the much-depleted Jaeger corps. Thanks to his crack science team (composed of Charlie Day and Burn Gorman), he thinks there is a slim chance of being able to close the dimensional portal in a crazy, suicidal offensive maneuver. He needs Raleigh because he only has four Jaegers left, and Raleigh is the only living person who has ever piloted one of the models. But who will be his ~~soul-mate~~ co-pilot?

To find out, they endure several Dance Dance Revolution trials --- in spaaaace!

I always take the time to discuss the acting in the movies I review, but is that really necessary with Pacific Rim? It's really not, but I found the acting to be a pleasant surprise in a film that could have gotten away with a lot less in that area. Admittedly, Charlie Hunnam didn't "wow" in this role, thanks to a combination of dull dialogue and serving as a plot device. He wasn't bad, but he sure was bland. Idris Elba, on the other hand, did some of his best movie work to date (his television work is still far better, though); his character was kind of a mish-mash of other end-of-the-world authority figures, but Elba was still able to make the part a little interesting. Rinko Kikuchi was okay as Raleigh's partner; it can be tough making an introvert interesting in an action flick, but she was all right. I was pleasantly surprised by Charlie Day, if only because this is the furthest he has gone from his role on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

SCIENCE!

He was charming and fun, and I would love to see him stretch his acting chops more in the future. Burn Gorman wasn't as big of a surprise, but his portrayal of a scientist brought to mind Peter Lorre for reasons I cannot articulate, and that's probably not a bad thing. Ron Perlman , unsurprisingly, had a small part in Pacific Rim, since he and del Toro are such good buddies. Perlman's work here reminds us that he's not that good of an actor, just a good sport, willing to put on any makeup necessary to look cool.

Above: Perlman and two other actors. Get it? He's ugly.

Rounding out the cast, Clifton Collins Jr. and Max Martini were perfectly acceptable in small, decently likable parts. Robert Kazinsky was obnoxious as the Jaeger equivalent of Iceman from Top Gun. That may be the point of his character, but Val Kilmer sure was cooler.

How do they expect to play beach volleyball and high-five wearing that?

Most of the time, when I discuss movie direction, I focus on the camera work and the actor performances. For Pacific Rim, though, so much of the movie was CGI that I am taking a different approach. I really enjoy the work of director/co- writer Guillermo del Toro, if only from a visual standpoint, but I like what he did with the humans in this film.

He scared them.

They could have easily been an afterthought, or worse --- an irritant, like those awful Witwickys. Instead, del Toro introduced a reasonable amount of drama and character beats to a story that is essentially "punch monster in the face" for 85 pages.

Don't forget the four pages of "science-y doodads"

I was actually impressed that the story wasn't as predictable as I had assumed it would be; there was no unnecessary love story and the obvious choice for a sacrificial character was ignored. Visually, this film was stunning. The amount of detail that went into the set, robot, and monster designs was astounding.

Del Toro clearly put a lot of his efforts into the look and feel of this film, and it showed. This felt like a plausible world, where giant robots had been fighting and breaking and being repaired for over a decade. The script isn't very clever and del Toro still has not managed to really nail interpersonal scenes, but his work with broad visual concepts is impressive and exciting.

"Robots and monsters fighting in space" exciting? Yes. A thousand times, yes.

What is it about Pacific Rim that excited me, where others failed? There have been so many movies lately that have shown vast urban environments being absolutely wrecked --- what makes this any different than, say, Man of Steel? I think the biggest difference is in scale. Because the robots and monsters are so gigantic, the camera is pulled far enough away for audiences to really notice and appreciate everything being smashed to bits. That scale also seems to imply and accept large numbers of civilian casualties in a way that is expected and not ignored. It isn't just that, though; several battles take place in the ocean and are still a blast to watch.

I didn't get "action fatigue" watching Pacific Rim because it was fun and each battle did something else spectacular and over-the-top. There was also enough wanton destruction to spread it fairly evenly over the entire film. This isn't a back-loaded action movie where the cool stuff is all at the end --- some of the coolest scenes come during the opening voice-over. If I am going to be perfectly honest, Pacific Rim scratches an itch I have had since childhood. I played with Transformers and Voltron and build huge Lego things for them to smash. While I have seen a lot (almost too much) CGI destruction of late, this is a film that captures the fun of playing with toys that are clearly scaled differently than everything else in your toy box. Is Pacific Rim derivative? Well, yes. At its core, this is a classic kaiju movie done right, combined with combat mechs that animes seem to love so much and a large enough budget to make everything look good. This movie owes a lot to many sources, but this is clearly a movie that loves what it is imitating, and even improves on its influences. In a Summer of sequels, reboots, and outright flops, Pacific Rim stands out for being something I will be able to watch over and over, regardless of sobriety.

The Good Thief

2013-05-08T21:40:00.000-05:00

I hadn't seen The Good Thief in many years when I stumbled across it on Netflix recently. My recollection of it was pretty foggy; I recalled a distinctly European vibe and being surprised that Nick Nolte was capable of entertaining me without a mug shot. As it turns out, The Good Thief is a remake of a Melville noir, Bob le Flambeur. I haven't seen that yet, but that trivia nugget was enough to pique my curiosity. Did I like this film so long ago because Nick Nolte was awesome, or because there was a heavy dose of French cool in the story? Not that it matters, I suppose, as long as it's good.

The plot of The Good Thief is nothing new, even considering the fact that this is a remake. Bob (Nick Nolte) is a retired thief that has given up the fast-paced life of criminal intrigue for a dull retirement, filled with needle drugs and compulsive gambling. But he was a really good thief, even if he has been arrested six times; he's kind of like a Danny Ocean with bad habits, if that clarifies things at all.

This is Bob's ~~Eleven~~ Seven

Even though he has been out of the game for years, his police nemesis, Roger (Tchéky Karyo), has made a habt of checking in on Bob, to keep him on the straight and narrow. But when Bob inevitably gambles his last dime (or ruble or franc or whatever) away, he is desperate enough to entertain an impossible robbery. All he needs is the right crew and a plan. It could be a very cut-and-dry plot, if not for the inclusion of one x-factor: a girl.

The Good Thief is not the sort of move that is going to have overwhelming performances. For the most part, the cast is comprised of little-known actors and the director leans toward subtler forms of expression. That said, this is easily one of the best performances of Nick Nolte's career. He is perfectly aged for the role of the seasoned clever guy who has been through rough times. Hell, his glass-shards-in-gravel voice alone would highlight the film, but Nolte also managed to make excellent use of his nonverbal scenes. I get why he wasn't nominated for an Oscar for this (it was a relatively tough year), but he is damn good here.

Doesn't he look like someone who's been in prison six times?

The rest of the cast is less impressive. Nutsa Kukhianidze was okay as the lost and manipulative Anne, but I think a role this manipulative could have been done better. Still, she managed to convey illicit sexuality and heartbreaking innocence at the same time, so I can't legitimately claim that she did a bad job.

Mostly because lingerie doesn't hide nipples

Tchéky Karyo was solid as the obsessive cop; I liked that he was not clearly outsmarted by Bob, but he didn't really have much of a personality to counter the charm of Nolte's Bob. Saïd Taghmaoui, Ouassini Embarek, Gérard Darmon, and Emir Kusturica were fine is basic-level roles. Embarek was not very impressive, but his Judas-esque part didn't require much from him. Oh, and for some reason, Ralph Fiennes plays an uncredited role as a shady art dealer. He was pretty good; I don't know why he was left uncredited, since he was featured in the trailers.

"You think that's weird? Look at the painting I'm holding!"

Neil Jordan directed The Good Thief, and it is clear that he was interested in trying some new ideas. The cinematography is, as a whole, unimpressive. It does, however, have some odd moments where the frame rate seems to drop well below that standard 24fps. It's like Jordan is trying to convey a slow passage of time, but his method is the exact opposite film technique that would result in slow-motion. I didn't like it, but it was an interesting (if choppy) try. Aside from that, there are not a lot of surprises here, from a direction standpoint. Jordan gets an excellent performance from his lead actor, while the rest of the cast is fairly sketchy.

Nobody (except possibly Franco-Judas) was bad, but most of the characters felt underdeveloped and devoid of personality.

The strange thing about The Good Thief is that it is, at its core, a heist movie. Despite that, the main character isn't really involved in the heist. That can work (as in Ocean's Eleven), but you really need to invest in the theft and not the character at that point. That doesn't happen here. Not only is the audience primarily interested in Nolte's character, but so is the camera; we follow Bob gambling while the heist is taking place. That should plainly say something about the story, but I don't think it is conveyed well in this movie.

Also lacking: fashion

There is plenty to enjoy with The Good Thief, though. Nolte was surprisingly charming in the gruffest manner possible. I liked the relationship between Bob and Anne, even if it was all sorts of shades of grey. I also enjoyed the friendly rivalry between Bob and Roger; it is an under-used movie subplot, and was one fun character (the cop) away from being fantastic.

To Nolte: "Do you want to do all the work in this scene?"

The idea behind the heist is a clever execution of feints and counter-feints. Unfortunately, the movie is a little under-paced and the ending --- while clever --- is more cerebral than emotional or sensational. In other words, it's cute, but I was expecting more.

Iron Sky

2013-03-16T18:09:00.000-05:00

Over the past few weeks, I have reviewed nothing but the 2012 Oscar nominees. I need a break, and I am dubbing that break "Iron Sky." I stumbled across this movie thanks to Netflix, and IMDb claimed that people who liked Iron Sky also liked the Men in Black trilogy, Galaxy Quest, Dredd and, uh, Tank Girl. Those are surprisingly likable "similar to" picks, so I decided to read up on Iron Sky a little. I got as far as the first half of the first sentence of the Netflix description before I hit "play."

Secret moon Nazis attacking Earth? That sounds positively amazing. Sign me up.

The year is 2018, because this is a historical document from our future. Take note, students! America has sent a manned flight to the moon because the President, a Sarah Palin analogue (Stephanie Paul), decided that the easiest way to gain minority support was to send a black astronaut to the moon. I don't necessarily follow that logic, but in all fairness, the film doesn't address how successful that plan is. It should be noted that the astronauts did not land on the sunny, closer side of the moon; they landed near the dark side of the moon. That turns out to be a bad idea, for reasons that do not include prog rock or laser shows.

Yes, that is an astronaut being executed by a Nazi stormtrooper

It seems that the Nazis sent a group to colonize the moon in the last days of World War II because of course they did. In the intervening 70 years, they have built an advanced society that honestly believes that they are going to invade the Earth and bring peace to the planet.

How? Military-grade cleavage.

Apparently, there has been some disconnect over the years between the military branch of the moon Nazis and the propaganda branch. Klaus (Götz Otto), the heir apparent to the Moon Führer (played by Udo Kier because why not?), is well aware of the horrors that the Nazis will drop on Earth, but his prospective love interest/Earth expert/propaganda teacher, Renate (Julia Dietze), actually believes that Nazis will improve the world. She believes that the Nazis were well-loved, and references the "ten-minute" film tribute, The Great Dictator, as proof. However, once the Nazis are face-to-face with modern Americans, they realize that they might be a little outclassed; the surviving astronaut's smartphone is a more powerful computing device than the room-sized computers that the Nazis have.

Of course all Nazi scientists look like Einstein

To gain the necessary knowledge and materials to conquer the world, Renate and Klaus head to Earth. But how will Renate react when she sees that the world isn't eagerly awaiting the return of the Nazis with open arms? And what will happen when Klaus decides to rain hellfire from space?

Answer: B-movie space battles, that's what

When you watch a movie about Moon Nazis, you can be reasonably sure that the acting will not be a main priority. To its credit, Iron Sky's acting isn't painfully bad. Julia Dietze is actually pretty decent as Renate, even though her character is (arguably) the stupidest person in the film. She had a silly role and didn't do it half-assed, so kudos to her. How dumb was her part? She was undressed by a depressurized hull.

Dietze's role was pretty thankless, but the rest of the cast had even less to work with. Christopher Kirby got to speak in stereotypical black slang and was the butt of very generic black jokes. It gets worse when his character is Aryan-ized; if you thought the jokes about black people were weak, wait until you get the jokes about someone who used to be black.

"Nein! I do not want to wait for pain!"

Götz Otto was mediocre as the main villain; he was unlikable enough, but the gags kept him from coming across as truly evil. Udo Kier was actually a pretty good choice to play a creepy German character, but his part was small and underwhelming. Stephanie Paul was...well, she was an obvious analogue to Sarah Palin, so your appreciation of her depends on how funny you find broadly drawn Palin jokes.

I am jealous that Fake Palin talks to holograms, though

Rounding out the cast, Peta Sergeant was almost fun as a somewhat skanky political advisor. Almost.

The main problem for most of the cast was that the script for Iron Sky is pretty awful. There's not much you can do when you're in a movie about Moon Nazis and the film isn't very much fun. The script is certainly to blame for most of that --- the "jokes" barely deserve finger quotations, much less actual ones --- but the general plot was also underwhelming. Iron Sky is about Moon Nazis invading Earth. There is no excuse for extended chunks of boredom. And yet, the audience is subjected to sub-SNL-quality political satire to fill the gaps between astronauts getting shot and space battles.

YOU HAVE STORM TROOPERS! JUST INVADE, ALREADY!

That is, ultimately, the worst thing about Iron Sky: it should be a lot of fun, but it thinks it is being clever. It is not clever in the least. Director and co-writer Timo Vuorensola is mostly to blame for this clusterfuck, but when you have characters acting like complete jackasses, with zero chance of any comedic return, that blame deserves to be spread out a little.

I was legitimately excited to watch Iron Sky, and the first few scenes on the moon didn't disappoint. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is fairly slow and tedious. I wasn't looking for Shakespeare, but I was hoping for something gleefully stupid. Instead, Iron Sky is filled with characters trying to be funny, but not quite understanding how to make that happen. You might think that such a drab effort would sour me on stupid Nazi movies, but that is not the case. In fact, one of the worst movie studios working today managed to make a far more amusing stupid Nazi movie at almost the exact same time as Iron Sky...and I'll review it tomorrow. Meanwhile, Iron Sky gets a little credit for its premise and the opening scenes, but it was a sincere disappointment from a "laugh and drink to this" perspective.

Zero Dark Thirty

2013-03-15T18:52:00.001-05:00

Of all the Oscar-nominated films of 2012, none was as controversial as Zero Dark Thirty. There were a few different reasons for this (most of which boils down to election-year political babbling), but the element that received the most discussion --- intelligent or otherwise --- revolved around the film's portrayal of torture as an effective interrogation tactic. I certainly will not be as eloquent as some of those articles, but I will try to address the issue in a small way. First things first, though. I went in to Zero Dark Thirty as the final film in a marathon of Best Picture nominees. I had high hopes, even though I wasn't in love with Kathryn Bigelow's last film, The Hurt Locker. I heard that this was a film that asked a lot of tough questions and did not give comforting answers. America has been fighting its War on Terror for over a decade now, and we still haven't gotten a movie that (in my mind, anyway) makes an awesome statement about it. It may be a lot to ask of a movie, but that was what I was hoping for with Zero Dark Thirty.

Zero Dark Thirty is the somewhat true-ish tale of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden ~~(played by the always delightful Ryan Reynolds)~~. Maya (Jessica Chastain) is a fresh CIA recruit in 2003, newly assigned to the task force that is trying to track down Bin Laden. Right out of the gate, Maya is confronted with the harsh reality of torture. One of her new coworkers, Dan (Jason Clarke), spends a good amount of time at a Black Box site, interrogating detainees. Dan and his subordinates threaten, badger, and offer the occasional kindness in their quest for information --- aaand they also torture the shit out of their prisoners, too. Waterboarding, humiliation, sensory deprivation, and just general abuse are some of the more colorful ways Dan elicits information.

Above: Dan, scraping some "torture juice" off his shoes

While no one is willing to dish on Osama Bin Laden, Dan and Maya managed to trick one detainee into naming a courier that delivers messages to Bin Laden. In and of itself, that little morsel of information doesn't mean much, but over the next few years, Maya is able to piece together a small piece of the larger picture. If she is correct, and this courier is trusted with an important job, then that means he actually meets with the elusive Osama Bin Laden. If that is true, then all Maya needs to do is track down this courier (who she does not have a picture or real name of) to find Bin Laden. It's as easy as combing through literally tons of intelligence reports for a single clue over an eight-year span, while negotiating changing political and professional priorities and surviving a terrorist bombing.

She went in a novice and left a female David Caruso. YEAAAAHHHH!

If nothing else, Kathryn Bigelow does an excellent job subverting expectations with Zero Dark Thirty. This is less of a war movie or a manhunt than it is a police procedural. In that regard, it's a pretty solid one. Jessica Chastain fills the role of the obsessive person who just knows that they're right capably, and Bigelow does a good job making her look like the most capable person in the room at any given time. When it finally gets to be Zero Dark Fifteen-ish, Bigelow shifts gears and reminds audiences that she knows how to add tension to military scenes.

What I found most interesting about Bigelow's approach to the material was that it felt surprisingly light on judgement. The torture scenes seemed to affect the characters just as much as suicide bombers, or the final assault on Bin Laden's complex. This could easily have been a propaganda piece, like The Green Berets, but Zero Dark Thirty strove for a much more documentary feel.

As a movie that is, essentially, a procedural with documentary tones to it, Zero Dark Thirty is not a great spotlight for acting. Jessica Chastain was pretty good as the emotional core of the film, but even her fairly rounded character exhibited frustration more than anything else. She did morph into a convincingly bad-ass intelligence agent, but I felt that the personal investment of the character --- which was mind-numbingly large --- didn't translate into her performance.

Jason Clarke was impressive in a supporting role; the more I see of Clarke, the more I like him and truly believe that he's close to a breakout role. He had one of the more despicable parts in the film, but he gave it some unexpected humanity, too. Most of the rest of the film was filled with bit parts, and many of them were played by character actors. Still, in the cast of thousands, there were some familiar faces. On the political side of the plot, Kyle Chandler was (once again) a bureaucrat, Mark Strong was a sneakier type of bureaucrat, James Gandolfini was kind of a military bureaucrat, and John Barrowman essentially acted as Jessica Chastain's hype man with his sole line. All of those are good actors, but only Mark Strong had an opportunity to show off any (which he did). On Maya's team, Harold Perrineau made a very brief and very welcome appearance and Jennifer Ehle was pretty good as the intelligence character that always seemed to be wrong. When the story turned to the military side of things, Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton were the face of the strike team. Pratt was surprisingly engaging as a slight goofball, while Edgerton played his part more through glaring than with dialogue.

Their haircuts match their characters

Okay, I've covered the plot, the direction and the acting. What about all that torture? On the one hand, I can agree (to an extent) with the argument that acceptance can be construed as condoning. I honestly don't get where people are coming from when they say that the overall message here is that torture was necessary to find Bin Laden. At worst, this film takes an indifferent stance on the issue. Of course, the message is not that torture did no good, either; information gleaned through torture did eventually lead to the film's climax, but the methods are not shown as heroic or even necessary evils. As with so much of Zero Dark Thirty, it would be so much easier to derive meaning and intent if this film had given in to machismo or back-patting nationalism. Instead, the audience is subjected to extended periods of unpleasantness as the detainees are tortured on-screen. If there is a message in Zero Dark Thirty about torture, I would argue that it is closer to "torture sure is messed up, right?" than anything else.

I was not sure how I felt about Zero Dark Thirty when it ended. It certainly did not live up to my expectations, but that is not a bad thing. This was a substantially different film than I was expecting, and I respected the emotionally-neutral choice of tone. I would have preferred something that asked questions instead of simply reported issues, but that would have fundamentally altered Bigelow's documentary-feel. I wish it had felt more immediate, though. I was so separated from the emotions of these characters that the exits of Kyle Chandler and Jennifer Ehle had no impact on me, much less anything that happened to Jessica Chastain. Everything just felt too impersonal. That can happen in procedural dramas, but the main character's charisma or brilliance helps keep things exciting as the audience is drip-fed clues. Chastain was at her best in conference room scenes, convincing bureaucrats to believe her.

There was a shocking amount of whatever you want to call this

For Zero Dark Thirty to work as a procedural, her best scenes needed to be her putting the pieces of the puzzle together. This is a movie that could have done more, but also could have been truly insufferable. Instead, it landed somewhere in the middle for me.

Silver Linings Playbook

2013-03-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't thrilled with the 2012 Best Picture Oscar nominees. I really liked Django Unchained and Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Argo was also very good, but the rest underwhelmed me. I've never been a huge fan of David O. Russell. I've always found Bradley Cooper a little annoying. I hate Chris Tucker. Suffice to say, I wasn't looking forward to Silver Linings Playbook very much. Luckily, I really enjoy Jennifer Lawrence, and this is the role she won her Best Actress award for. Will that be enough to make this worthwhile for my admittedly subjective tastes?

Do you like stories about people with psychiatric disorders? Are you tired of watching Mad Love over and over again to get your bipolar disorder film fix? Then I have a movie for you! Silver Linings Playbook follows Pat (Bradley Cooper) as he recovers from a mental breakdown that led to him losing his job and wife. Pat's bipolar disorder was treated in a psychiatric institution until his mother, Dolores (Jacki Weaver), took legal custody of him. Now, Pat is living at home with his parents until he can convince his estranged wife that he has changed enough for her to take him back.

"That sounds like a pretty terrible plan"

To do this, Pat has been working out and has decided to read all the books his wife is teaching at her high school. Unfortunately, she has a restraining order in place, so it's a little difficult for him to show off his ~~insane plan~~ growth. That's where Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) comes in. She is also a little crazy, but in a I've-just-been-widowed-so-I'm-having-sex way. The pair bond over medications and being the disappointments of their respective families and eventually come to an agreement. If Pat is really going to convince his wife that he has changed, he needs to do something that requires dedication and is far outside his comfort zone.

Considering that wearing garbage is something he's okay with, that could take some work

Tiffany needs a partner for an upcoming dance recital and promises to sneak Pat's wife some letters if he works with her. Now, spending a lot of time dancing with an attractive woman who is fifteen years your junior may not sound like the best way to convince your wife to forgive you, but keep in mind that everyone in this story is a little crazy.

The age difference doesn't bother anyone else? Nobody?

The acting in Silver Linings Playbook is universally good. I'm not a fan of Bradley Cooper, but he played his bipolar character convincingly and I didn't feel pandered or preached to. I didn't like his character --- everything from his motives, to the way he reacted to his parents, to his emotional triggers annoyed me --- but none of that his the fault of the actor. This is easily the best work I have seen from Cooper to date.

ACTING!

Thankfully, Jennifer Lawrence was amazing. I thought she showed a very realistic dose of "everyday crazy" and came across as a believable, natural character. She delivered most of the best lines in the film and had the most impressive character arc. Lawrence is the difference between this being a mediocre character piece and being a Best Picture contender.

You don't think Bradley Cooper can carry a prestige picture, do you?

One of the biggest surprises in this film was Robert DeNiro's best work in at least a decade (is it bad that The Score is the last thing I remember him being decent in?). I'm not entirely sure what was behind his character (undiagnosed OCD is my best guess), but DeNiro was vulnerable and energetic. Jacki Weaver was pretty good in an underdeveloped role; I like Weaver, but I think her Best Supporting Actress nod has more to do with it being a thin category than thanks to her work. If she had five more minutes of solid screen time, I am sure she could have changed my mind. The biggest surprise for me was the fact that Chris Tucker was actually pretty good and not at all annoying.

"I didn't think it was possible either"

The rest of the supporting cast was decent, but nothing particularly impressive. Veteran Bollywood actor Anupam Kher made an appearance as a pretty well-adjusted therapist, John Ortiz was okay as a supposedly "normal" guy that was acting a little crazy, and Julia Stiles was convincing as a horrific bitch.

David O. Russell directed the film and adapted the screenplay for Silver Linings Playbook. He obviously did a good job with the actors, even if you ignore all the accolades the cast received. Just getting DeNiro to wake up and act in a film these days shows impressive pull with a cast, and turning Bradley Cooper into a viable lead character was equally impressive.

*** cue sheepish grin ***

As far as the rest of the movie, I though Russell did a solid job. The script was a little too heavy-handed for my liking --- did everyone have to display a degree of "crazy"? --- but the script was reasonably smart. I felt that the turning point was telegraphed, and I would have preferred for it to be less obvious when Pat worked everything out in his head, but he handled the emotions in the story well enough for that to balance out.

It would have been nice if the plot was surprising at all. This isn't necessarily as formulaic as your typical rom-com, but it's not far off. For a script that could occasionally be very witty, the plot was pretty conventional.

A romantic movie with a diner scene. How novel.

That familiarity is Silver Linings Playbook's biggest obstacle. This movie wants to stand tall as a realistic and funny movie about people functioning with psychological disorders, but it is so eerily reminiscent of other movies about so many other things (Garden State, My Best Friend's Wedding, Timecop, etc.) that it feels like a bit of a rehash. That doesn't make it bad, and Jennifer Lawrence alone makes this worth watching, but a more unique plot and a more lovable main character would have gone a long way toward making Silver Linings Playbook more special.

Life of Pi

2013-03-14T00:44:00.000-05:00

I am a man of peculiar tastes. I am more than willing to sit through a horrible B-movie to enjoy a single scene, but there are some talented filmmakers out there that I tend to ignore, for no particular reason. Ang Lee is a good example of this. I have liked --- or at least been interested by --- every film of his I have seen to date, but when he puts out a new movie, for some reason I do not make an effort to see it. I do the same thing with Pixar movies, even though I always end up loving them. Again, in some ways, I am very odd.
In fact, the only reason I have seen Life of Pi is because I caught a marathon of this year's Best Picture nominees. There are not a lot of acclaimed films that I have no desire to see, but I will admit that I wasn't looking forward to this one. So, how wrong was I?

Life of Pi is the story of a guy telling a story to another guy, who will turn the whole thing into a book. No...strike that. While technically true, that is merely the framework of this tale --- and I use "tale" for a reason. This is the impossible story of Pi (Suraj Sharma). Pi and his family were traveling by ship to Canada (along with their collection of zoo animals) when a freak storm hit and sank the ship, because God hates Canada. Pi survives the storm and reaches a lifeboat, but his is not the lone survivor. A wounded zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and Richard Parker (a Bengal tiger) all managed to squeeze into the lifeboat with Pi.

It helps that Pi is 2' tall

Not surprisingly, that status quo doesn't last long; the survivors are quickly reduced to Pi and Richard Parker. Now, all that Pi needs to do is survive on a lifeboat with a hungry tiger in the middle of the ocean, until he can make it to land. That may sound like the makings of a claustrophobic action spectacular, but the ocean is a really big place.

Judging from this, it might be a while

The acting in Life of Pi is understated. Irrfan Khan made for a fine narrator, and his impassive descriptions only emphasized the strangeness of what he described. Rafe Spall does not do much as the writer who is listening to Adult Pi tell his tale, but he provides as three-dimensional of a character as you're going to get with so few lines in the script; it's not tough work, but he plays his part. The bulk of the work is done by Suraj Sharma, as Pi in the story. As the only true character in the film, there is a lot depending on Sharma. He is not outstanding here, but he was likable.

To put it another way, there is an awful lot of this.

It would be easy to compare this shipwrecked character with that of Tom Hanks' in Cast Away, but this is not a character study, it is essentially a fairy tale and that does not typically lead to outstanding acting. Still, the camera is almost always on Sharma and the film doesn't suffer for it. The rest of the cast is barely anything more than a few cameos, culminating in "hey, is that Gérard Depardieu?" Yes, it is. And then he's gone.

His last words: "Depardon't do it!"

Life of Pi was directed by Ang Lee, and it shows, although not in a flashy way. That's not really how Ang Lee movies work. The cinematography is lovely, the acting is understated, the theme has a bit of psychology to it, and the pacing is...well, a little leisurely. If you are familiar with Lee's work, all of that is to be expected. The man is nothing, if not consistent in those regards. I will admit that I was impressed by just how visually impressive this film was. You might not expect much to excite your senses with a guy on a boat for 2+ hours, but Life of Pi was surprisingly dazzling.

While this isn't the first time Lee has worked extensively with CGI, I thought the animals and the myriad oddities in the script all looked fantastic. I liked that the film didn't get over-dramatic or strive for an epic feel. Ang Lee had a clear idea of what tone would work for this story, and he stuck with it. A less assured director might have tried to force a more pronounced emotional struggle for the main character, but Lee stuck with the book's subtler plot and it paid off. I also have to credit Lee for his use of 3D in the film. It's not splashy, exploitative stuff --- the 3D is used to make the unique visuals more spectacular.

Which is good, because 3D of floating gets old FAST

Having said all that, Life of Pi was pretty good, but I wasn't thrilled by it. I feel the same way about a lot of Ang Lee's films, so it might just be me; I can appreciate the man's craftsmanship, but I've never really loved anything he's done. If I had to give a reason for that, it would be the pacing. As pretty as this movie was, it never excited me because it always felt like I had at least another hour of the movie left. This is a well-made and polished movie, but I prefer movies with a bit more flair, even if they are more distinctly flawed.

Yes, I accused this movie of having no flair

Speaking of flaws, I noticed some buzz around this movie, concerning its ending. I wouldn't really call it a "twist" ending, but I can understand some people feeling that it cheapened the story as a whole.

Like a plot where someone starves, but also sometimes has dozens of fish

Any time you can dismiss a movie by saying "It was all complete bullshit," you run that risk. Personally, I liked the ending. I thought it salvaged the entire movie. Until that point, I was impressed by the technical aspects of the film, but did not particularly care about any of the characters. The ending is what makes it personal, which provides all of the payoff. For me, that was enough to make me like (but not love) this movie.

On a side note, how strange is it that Roger Ebert can make absolutely no mention of the ending of Life of Pi in his 4-star review, but he shat a brick about the ending of The Usual Suspects? They are, essentially, the same plot device, right?

Beasts of the Southern Wild

2013-03-08T23:28:00.002-06:00

So. Child actors. They're typically kind of crappy, right? Really, until the Culkin clan arrived, were there any reliably decent child actors? Sure, every so often you would see a kid in a role that suited them well, but for every Oscar nominee, there were about a dozen Young Ron Howards. Even today, we seem to have only one or two impressive child actors each decade, and are still cursed with an unfortunate amount of Jake Lloyds and Jonathan Lipnickis. Every so often, awards programs find a child actor that they decide to fawn over, and Beasts of the Southern Wild was this year's choice. Before you sit down to watch this film, you should ask yourself: Am I prepared to watch a movie about a six year-old girl? Hint: you should be.

Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) lives in part of the Louisiana bayou called The Bathtub. This is a community that lives on the wet side of a levee, with no roads or electricity or government or just about anything you would expect to find in an American community. Hushpuppy lives with her daddy, Wink (Dwight Henry). Well, they live by each other; each one has a dilapidated trailer, propped up by debris so they don't flood.

But they still make sure to wear matching clothes every day

Wink and all the adults in the Bathtub are usually drunk, and when Wink vanishes for a few days, Hushpuppy --- a six year-old --- doesn't make a big deal out of it and takes care of herself. In case you were wondering, that involves eating cat food as part of her every day living. Existing outside of society can't last forever, though. The aftermath of a hurricane (I'm pretty sure it's Katrina, but it could have realistically been any of the six that have hit the area since then) ensures the intervention of the civilized world, and Wink's declining health complicates matters. Still, if you're going to find a silver lining, having a child narrate your story is as good of a start as you can get. There might be one slight stumbling block for that happy ending, though: namely, this nightmare beast:

What? You don't know an auroch when you see one?

Beasts of the Southern Wild is the first major directorial effort from Benh Zeitlin, as well as the first major motion picture developed by any member of the Court 13 collective of filmmakers. As far as directorial debuts go, this is a pretty good one. Zeitlin captured a subculture in America that has rarely (if ever) been captured before. In a Google Earth world, it can sometimes be astounding to see what exists within the borders of the "civilized" world; in some ways, this movie feels like it is taking place in an anthropological nature preserve.

Look, a porcupine house, in its natural environment!

Zeitlin's camerawork starts out annoyingly shaky, thanks to the hand-held nature of it, but evened out as the film progressed. By the end of the film, I was more impressed by the stark shots more than the nauseating beginning.

It's like Mad Max: On Water

What impressed me most, though, was how well Zeitlin handled the talent. There are no seasoned actors in this film. What you see are raw amateurs at work. But Zeitlin makes them work, and work extremely well. Wallis gave a pretty good performance for a six year-old, but her voice-over work was inspired. The fact that Wallis looked so good --- and she definitely did --- is in no small part thanks to his editing.

The difference between this and awesome: voice-over

Speaking of the editing, I really liked how Zeitlin handled edits from a storytelling perspective. Just take the scene where Hushpuppy recalls her mother --- that scene made me giggle with joy from a film fan's perspective. It wasn't flashy. It was just perfectly effective for what it needed to be.

The big story with the acting in Beasts of the Southern Wild is Quvenzhané Wallis, and justifiably so. The movie focuses on her, and she carries it with ease. I do not typically hype child acting, but the overall affect of her performance is staggering here. From a strictly "acting" perspective, Wallis was pretty good. She emoted and seemed to do what the scenes required of her.

Above: not really acting

The voice-over she provided, though, just killed me. That is the backbone of this film, and she was heart-breakingly good when you combined those two elements. I would argue that Zeitlin deserves more accolades than Wallis for her performance, but the bottom line is that she was pretty great. It helps that Dwight Henry gave one of the rawest performances I can remember seeing. I can't imagine his part being played by someone with more polish, though. Henry played a complex character well, conveying his love, terror, and pride in surprisingly deep ways.

Who's the man? I'M THE MAN!!!

One of his more out-of-left-field effective scenes was in the "Beast it" scene, where he initially appears inexplicably abusive, but it eventually turns into a triumph orgy. The rest of the cast, while numerous, doesn't really impact the story at all, so I'm leaving them out of it.

In may ways, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a sad bastard movie. It is designed to make you cry, and it probably will make you tear up. This culture appears to be living in a dump AND a 200-year time warp at the same time. Just making a documentary about these people and the pride with which they live their lives would have been heartbreaking. When you add in a small child narrator and a dad character with health problems, that sadness is a foregone conclusion.

It's just too heavy for Superman to lift

BUT. BUT. BUT. Thanks to the sad bastardization of the story, there is also a silver lining. That child narrator also provides a touching amount of innocence and hope to a story that could have just been Requiem For a Dream-depressing. That little bit of innocence --- and this is not exactly a movie that wears rose-colored goggles --- makes up for a lot of otherwise hopeless moments. I wouldn't go so far as to call this movie "uplifting," but it doesn't suck the life out of you, despite the subject matter. This may have been one of the lesser-known Oscar nominees this year, but it was certainly deserving. The acting was impressive and urgent, the direction was smart, and the story was unlike just about anything else in theaters this year.

No other film mastered the art of Farmstock Fones

The only missteps this movie makes are fairly big ones. First and foremost, the foreshadowing of the aurochs never pays off. I get it. The aurochs symbolize fill in the blank. They are pointless and clumsy in the big scheme of things. They could have been completely omitted and affected the emotional and story arcs not at all. I also would have liked more time in that strip club, because that scene had much more potential than it got to display. In short, if the aurochs thing actually had a payoff, this movie might have been great. As it is, this is very good, with a few heavy-handed moments (the aurochs) that would have been better spent elsewhere (at the strip club). It is still very effective and worth seeing.

This is the song I had stuck in my head while reviewing this movie. I think it's pretty apt.

Lincoln

2013-03-02T17:00:00.000-06:00

Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis working together on a film about one of the greatest Americans that ever lived? Yeah, that sounds like a prestige picture. Lincoln boasts not only (arguably) the best director and (unarguably) the best actor working in Hollywood right now, but one of the greatest supporting casts ever assembled for a simple (read: not epic) film. Of the ten top-billed actors on Lincoln's IMDb page, there are a total of 16 Oscar nominations (with 6 wins) and 28 Golden Globe nominations (with 5 wins); only Bruce McGill has not been nominated for an Oscar or Globe. If you wanted acting credibility, you got it in spades with Lincoln. But does the movie live up to its pedigree?

Lincoln is a tad deceiving as a title; this isn't so much a biopic as it is a chronicle of President Abraham Lincoln's (Daniel Day-Lewis) struggle to get the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution passed while simultaneously ending the Civil War, the bloodiest war Earth had seen up to that point. For those of you who are not history buffs (America, I'm looking at you), the 13th Amendment made slavery illegal in the United States. Sure, Lincoln had freed all the slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation, but the legal grounds by which he did so were shaky, at best. Lincoln wanted to ensure that his actions had some sort of long-lasting effect that would not be overturned in a court of appeals. It's a pretty cool thing to be the guy who freed the slaves, but nobody wants to be the guy who freed the slaves only long enough for them to bleed in battle for him.

Even a great hat can't distract from that, Mr. President

Unfortunately, his window of opportunity was closing fast. The Confederacy was weakening. It was only a matter of time before they were completely defeated. But once the Confederate states rejoined the Union, the chances of passing an anti-slavery amendment would be nil. Not only would there be pro-slavery Southerners voting, but much of the support for anti-slavery legislation was garnered from the belief that repealing slavery would end the war faster; with the war over, racism would win the day. That left Lincoln with one chance. Assuming everyone in his political party would vote for him (which was a stretch), the 13th Amendment was still a few votes shy of passing --- but there were several men in the opposing party that had lost their elections and were just waiting to be replaced. If Lincoln's men could convince enough of these lame ducks --- and his own party --- to vote for the amendment, history could be made. And, as luck would have it, there was one more date available for a Congressional vote before all the peace hits the fan!

"What will it take to get your vote? A threesome is not off the table."

The acting in Lincoln is, not surprisingly, excellent. Daniel Day-Lewis is THE thespian stud of our times, and he brought his A-game here. Day-Lewis went against the traditional interpretation of the character by making him slouch, feel old, and speak with a soft tone, but he also managed to demand all of the attention in every scene he was in. As luck would have it, that is practically every single scene in the film. I think some of my favorite moments were the scenes where he relied on nonverbals. This is a fairly talky character, so having the quiet moments as highlights is just a testament to Day-Lewis' acting prowess.

Example: right here, Lincoln was this close to killing everyone in a 30 foot radius

Leading the exemplary supporting cast was Tommy Lee Jones, who played a perennially cranky character. Shock! I love it when Jones gets a role that lends itself to his acerbic delivery, and this is easily one of his best.

Sally Field played Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln, who is known historically for being a bit crazy. Field managed that well enough, but I didn't think her role was anything special.

Buck up, Sally. Sulking is not attractive in any time period.

Despite that, Field did a lot with the part and was surprisingly magnetic onscreen. David Strathairn was good as the eternally exasperated William "I Heart Alaska" Seward. He didn't really have much room to grow as a character, but served well as a mouthpiece to the logistics Lincoln was facing. James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson played the three men tasked with drumming up support among the opposition; all three are fine actors, but I would have preferred it if Spader wasn't the one doing most of the work here.

Spader, realizing that this role has nothing to do with deviant sex acts

Hal Holbrook was fine as an obstacle for Lincoln to overcome, although I think this role was a little underdeveloped. Speaking of which, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a waste of space as Lincoln's eldest son. One of these days, JGL will play a big role in a big movie --- it's inevitable, given his talent and the people he works with --- but the whiny, over-privileged son of the president is not that role.

"What if I tried pouting more?"

Rounding out the cast, Lee Pace was solid in the strawman role of "that really racist guy." This is the first time I have seen Pace play an unlikable character, and he did so reasonably well.

Lincoln was the result of director Steven Spielberg teaming up with Tony Kushner, king of the difficult-subject-screenplay. With regards to the direction, Spielberg nailed all the technical aspects. Design, costumes, filling the cast with nary a bad actor, etc. --- Spielberg is too big of a director to accept anything but the best in these regards. While he has never been the strongest director in terms of cinematography, Spielberg still managed to snag several memorable shots of an American icon.

He also handled the actors quite well. Having a great cast obviously helps with that, but Day-Lewis, Jones, and Field were all deserving of their award nominations, and Spielberg was ultimately responsible for that.

I think Kushner did a solid job with the plot and the dialogue. Both Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) had some fantastic lines, and transforming this political issue into an interesting story was an impressive feat. Lincoln is missing something, though. I want to say that it is something immaterial, like "heart," but I can do better than that. This is a smart script, no doubt. It is just not an emotional one. American culture has reached a point where racism is justly vilified. It definitely still exists, but racists are generally acknowledged as assholes, as they should be.

"Amend that. It should read 'total fucking assholes'"

This might have been a brave film as late as 1975, but in 2012, the subject matter isn't compelling enough on its own. This needed an emotional anchor to twist the audience's stomach in knots while we waited for the inevitable, and that was lacking. There were some attempts. Thaddeus Stevens' change of policy was intriguing, but underdeveloped. Abraham and Mary Todd shared a scene where they got to bare their souls, but it wasn't nearly enough to warm an otherwise cold story.

"You act like a little culture will kill you!"

The fault is not Kushner's alone, of course. Lincoln has been Spielberg's baby for years, and he managed to put out a smart, well-acted and -directed film without that crucial element that makes you cry at the end.

I was expecting a lot from Lincoln, and only got most of what I hoped for. This is technically a better film that Spielberg's last effort, War Horse, but that movie drew me in, despite my objections. Lincoln is more cerebral, but leaves emotions at the door, and that turned out to ultimately be a mistake. Even without something tugging at my heartstrings, it is hard to dismiss Daniel Day-Lewis reinventing an American icon. With all the good and the not-quite-bad, Lincoln gets

Les Misérables (2012)

2013-03-01T21:24:00.001-06:00

Let me start by professing my cultural ignorance when it comes to musicals. My top three musicals are South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. My least favorite musicals are Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Chicago and Rent. Suffice to say, if you are a fan of movie musicals, then my opinion may mean nothing to you. I normally wouldn't go out of my way to watch this movie, but Les Mis is apparently the most successful musical of all time and I knew nothing about it. Musicals may not be my cup of tea, but that sort of gap in my knowledge is inexcusable. And who knows? Maybe I'll be one of the millions who love Les Misérables.

Les Misérables is the first musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel to reach the big screen, although there have been a few dramatic big screen adaptations already. In other words, if you don't know the story by now, SPOILER ALERT. The story begins in 19th century France with Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a convict whose crime was stealing bread for a starving child. After serving a mere nineteen years for his crime, Valjean is paroled by Javert (Russell Crowe), the French equivalent of Boss Godfrey. Valjean quickly realizes that there are not many opportunities out there for someone who's spent more of his adult life in prison than free, so he chooses to skip bail and start a new life with a new name. Years later, Valjean is living under an assumed name and is living the good life; he is a factory owner and the mayor of a town.

I wonder if he ran on a "tough on crime" platform?

In his factory, one of his workers, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), is fired. Why? As far as I can tell, it is because A) she won't sleep with the foreman and B) she has a child, to whom she sends a sizable chunk of her paycheck. Neither reason would pass muster nowadays, so I'm not exactly sure why being a parent mattered. Whatever the reason, Fantine is fired and quickly starts selling parts of her body for cash; her hair and teeth are the first to go, but it isn't long before she is a bald, toothless prostitute.

Why so glum? Now you don't have to brush your hair or teeth!

The next thing you know, Fantine is dying. Jean "I'm totally not Jean Valjean" Valjean and Javert discover her, and Valjean takes her to the hospital and promises to take care of her daughter Cosette if worse comes to worse. In a movie called "The Miserable," I wonder how likely that outcome is? Simultaneously, Valjean learns that someone (specifically, not Hugh Jackman) has been arrested and is sentenced to die for being Jean Valjean. Because he's a master of planning ahead, Valjean reveals himself to the court and basically says "Yeah, yeah, I'll serve my sentence," and then tells the dying Fantine that he'll be the father to her child. Those two don't go hand in hand, so when Javert shows up to arrest him, Valjean fights and escapes, finds the child, and takes her with him to live a new life under yet another identity.

You know a kid's got a tough life when this guy is the less creepy option

We then jump forward in time again, until Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) is an eligible young lady. Unfortunately, she falls in love with a French radical in the 1830s. While her love seems doomed, Javert is seen sniffing around their neighborhood for Valjean once more. Toss in some an unrequited love, a dirty kid, and some comic relief, and this decades-long plot is ready to come to a head. And if you want to know the effect of open sewage on gunshot wounds, this movie might not be the most scientifically accurate.

Little known fact: Valjean dips everyone he carries in open sewage. It's a fetish.

Here's a factoid that everyone who talks about this production of Les Misérables cannot help mentioning: the cast sang each take live, with only piano accompaniment. Most musicals record their soundtrack several weeks ahead of time and later mime their performances for the movie cameras. In other words, the actors of Les Mis had a better opportunity for onscreen chemistry because they had the freedom to change things up from take to take. Did they make the most of it? Well, I have to admit that the emoting in this film is pretty good. Hugh Jackman did a reasonably fine job in the acting department; his character goes through the most changes and Jackman doesn't ever seem silly in the process. Russell Crowe played "stern" capably, although I would argue that this is one of his more wooden performances, overall.

Russell Crowe: making movies, making songs and fightin' around the world

Anne Hathaway was a scene-stealer with limited screen time, even though I really didn't like her character at all. Who sells their teeth before their flesh, anyway? And why does anyone want to buy her teeth? Sure, Hathaway seems to have roughly five rows in her mouth, but that's just weird. I'm not a huge Amanda Seyfried fan, but she played her (to be fair, totally bland) role well. I don't know what it is about Eddie Redmayne, but his face genuinely bothers me in this movie; I think it has something to do with his awful brushed-forward/There's-Something-About-Mary-gel-scene haircut. He's okay as a youngster rebelling and falling in love. The more I see of Sacha Baron Cohen, the less impressed I am by him. He's not bad or annoying in this movie, but he doesn't seem to have the ability to play anything resembling human. I liked Helena Bonham Carter well enough, though, and the two paired up decently well. I was impressed by Samantha Barks, even though her part was fairly small.

...and, apparently, underclothed

But Les Misérables is a musical! What about the singing? I would have to say that the best singers in the cast were the supporting women. Hathaway and Barks were pretty impressive, and Seyfried was pretty good except for too much vibrato in her falsetto. I didn't care for Hugh Jackman's songs. He's a bit too "musical theater" for my tastes. And yes, I know that this film is probably the best place for someone with a musical theater background, but that doesn't change how much I liked him. I was surprised to hear how strong Crowe's voice was, until I remembered he had a finger-quotes rock band. Bonham-Carter and Baron Cohen were comedy relief, so their voices were intentionally at odds with everything around them; I wasn't a big fan, but they served their purpose.

Their purpose: to look like a Christmas hangover

Tom Hooper chose Les Mis as his directorial follow up to The King's Speech. He could have gone for another British period piece, but he chose to bring a musical that is entirely singing to the big screen instead. This is only the second film of his I've seen, but I'm going to go ahead and say that Hooper is a pretty damned good director. The choice to not pre-record the vocals was interesting, and I think he got some of the best acting-while-singing I've ever seen. The camerawork was very good and the set designs were impressive. Since the film jumps around so much in time, there were a lot of different sets, and each one looked great.

I'm pretty sure this building was only in about 15 seconds of film

From what I can tell, Hooper did an admirable job bringing this huge musical to the big screen. Too bad I didn't like it. Despite that, the final scene still hit me like a ton of bricks, out of absolutely nowhere, which just goes to show how effective Hooper is at working his script.

So, I didn't like Les Misérables. The directing was good, the acting was fine, and I liked some of the singing (just not particularly the two male leads). What's my problem, then? If I had to narrow it down to one reason, it would have to be the songs. I didn't really like any of them. There were a few snippets, here and there, that I enjoyed --- Anne Hathaway's signature song, and the beginning to the love song of Cosette and Marius --- but they served as segues to larger medleys that I didn't care for. My overwhelming impression of the songs in this musical was "Shouldn't these rhyme more?" My imagination tried to help fix the songs, too, by pairing any line ending with "gone" or "on" with "like Jean Valjean." Not surprisingly, it didn't help. It also doesn't help that the entire film is sung, so I could not truly enjoy the downtime between medleys, either.

I also had some major problems with the story. Ignoring Javert's insatiable bloodlust for Valjean --- which seems more than a little out of proportion, especially given all the other criminals Javert had met that were worse --- still leaves me with points that I just couldn't comprehend. Fantine's storyline confused the hell out of me. I think she was fired from her crap job because she had a child; this somehow turns into accusations of prostitution, which still should be nobody's business but hers and the police; once she's out on the street, Fantine almost immediately contracts a fatal dose of prostitution. I think that's the gist of her story, but the logic behind it escapes me. Almost as bad was the little revolutionary street rat, ~~Aladdin~~ Gavroche. That little shit caused more trouble than anyone else in the movie (with the possible exception of that loaf of bread Valjean stole before the first scene). This film would have 70% fewer casualties if he hadn't essentially shamed the rebels into fighting to the death. I also don't understand Javert's motivation when he pinned a medal on Gavroche's corpse; for someone who viewed crime as black and white, that felt very uncharacteristic.

For the record, cute girls in newsboy clothes are hot, while revolutionary boys with girl hair are little shits

Obviously, I am only speaking for myself. Countless people have seen and heard this musical and love it to shreds; if there is going to be a movie that satisfies that audience, this is it. I can appreciate the work that went into this production, and the craftsmanship of Tom Hooper and the cast is undeniable. It just didn't tickle my fancy. If you're into musicals, you'll probably dig this one. If not, then this won't change your mind. If you're somewhere in-between, I think the artistry will win you over. But for me, it falls into the realm of barely worth watching.

Why didn't I like the songs? I think I just have a problem with people singing different songs at each other:

Brian's Best and Worst of 2012

2013-02-24T19:23:00.002-06:00

This is not an end-of-the-year list. I forfeited that right when I didn't make this at the end of 2012. I never get the chance to see all the biggest movies of the year in time for the end of the year anyway, so I am continuing my annual tradition of posting my own "best of" just before the Oscars. That is not because the Oscars (don't call them Academy Awards this year!) are the end-all, be-all of movie awards. They're just the biggest, and nothing good ever comes out in January or February, so it's okay to still focus on the previous year's releases.

I'm not a Top Ten sorta guy, though. These are just my personal and highly subjective choices for the best and worst of the year.

What was considered for this list? Obviously, the movies of 2012 that I have already reviewed up to this point. I do cram in a lot of movies right before the Oscars, too, and am suffering a backlog of recent reviews. Here's what I watched before coming out with this list:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Alex Cross. The Amazing Spider-Man. Amour. Argo. ATM. The Avengers. Battleship. Beasts of the Southern Wild. Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The Bourne Legacy. Brave. The Cabin in the Woods. Coriolanus. The Dark Knight Rises. The Devil Inside. Django Unchained. Dredd. Drew Peterson: Untouchable. The Expendables 2. FDR: American Badass. Flight. The FP. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Goon. The Grey. Haywire. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The Hunger Games. Iron Sky. John Carter. Lawless. Les Miserables. Life of Pi. Lincoln. Lockout. Looper. Moonrise Kingdom. Nazis at the Center of the Earth. Prometheus. The Raven. Red Tails. Resident Evil: Retribution. Seven Psychopaths. Silent House. Silver Linings Playbook. Skyfall. Total Recall (2012). Underworld: Awakening. V/H/S. The Woman in Black. Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Bit Character
While Michael Fassbender's charming/bad-ass turn in Haywire shouldn't be ignored --- he would make a good 007 if we were in the market for a new one --- nothing amused me as much as Jason Schwartzman in Moonrise Kingdom. A lot of actors (okay, maybe not Bill Murray) merely play "dry" when working with Wes Anderson, but Schwartzman embraces the dry humor with just enough excitement to make him stand out, even in the most star-studded cast.

This needs to be a mass-produced Halloween costume

Worst Supporting Actress
There were some pretty good possibilities in this category in 2012. Catherine Dent was noticeably bad in the noticeably bad Drew Peterson: Untouchable. Perhaps one of the lovely ladies from Battleship? No, I'm going to have to go with Bingbing Li in Resident Evil: Retribution. She was so bad that all of her dialogue was redubbed. In a Resident Evil movie, a franchise famous for not giving a crap about acting or coherence. Ouch.

But hey, she can do...this. That's something.

Best Supporting Actress
Look, I know that Anne Hathaway is going to win everything for Les Miserables. And maybe she should; she was good in a I'm-singing-at-the-camera sort of way. That's not my style, though. That's why my favorite this year was Judi Dench in Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It's been a while since I've seen Dench play anything but a cold-hearted bureaucrat, and it was a pleasure to watch her in a warm, relatable role. Definitely the best part of a quality ensemble cast.

Promo for M: Lost in Delhi

Worst Supporting Actor
This was a tough one. I seriously hated a lot of supporting actors this year. 50% of the enormous cast from V/H/S were annoying douchebags. The Ionut Grama was annoying in the truly awful The Devil Inside. And how about Frank Grillo as the jackass who bitches about everything and fixes nothing in The Grey? All are compelling choices, but I have to go with someone who has been irritating me for most of the year: Rafe Spall as the world's stupidest biologist in Prometheus.

You see a creepy alien and you smile and get close? Death is too good for you, sir.

Best Supporting Actor
There were a lot of supporting actor roles that I loved from the past year: Javier Bardem in Skyfall, Sam Rockwell in Seven Psychopaths, Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, CGI Hulk from The Avengers, Michael Fassbender in Prometheus, etc. The runner-up is definitely Fran Kranz as the best stoner in movie history in Cabin in the Woods. As good as all those guys were this year, I can't overlook just how much I enjoyed Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained. Is the role similar to his character from Inglorious Basterds? To an extent, although I would argue switching the good/bad dynamic makes it different enough. I just can't get over Waltz speaking Tarantino's dialogue, though --- they're so damn good together!

You're welcome. Next round's on you.

Worst Actress
I'm going to go with the tough-as-nails Gina Coreno in Haywire for this one. What makes her worse than any of the lead actresses wearing tight leather and shooting stuff this year? Coreno had some amazing fight scenes in Haywire, but the movie didn't work because she gave an awful performance, even with the benefit of a good director. If she was even halfway competent, she would have been on my shortlist for Best Actress. THAT's how bad she is.

Example: I'm pretty sure this scene was supposed to be all dialogue

Best Actress
This one was easy. Jennifer Lawrence in ~~The Hunger Games~~ Silver Linings Playbook. She carried that movie, and she wasn't even the main character. She was funny, had levels and development, and showed some heart? Come on! What's not to love? Besides, what are the other choices this year? Jessica Chastain? Ugh. Pass. This is the second time I've given this completely nonexistent and useless award to Lawrence, and it's getting to the point where I might actually watch movies because I have faith in the starring actress. That's a big deal.

I like the scenes where Bradley Cooper is blurred best

Worst Actor
For as many bad movies as I watched this year, there were not many lead acting roles that I absolutely hated. Sure, Rob Lowe was hilariously bad in his SNL-sketch-gone-horribly-wrong portrayal of a Chicagoan in Drew Peterson: Untouchable, but at least Lowe outperformed the material. Taylor Kitsch --- who isn't really a bad actor --- played a role that emphasized all of his shortcomings in Battleship. When your character is frequently described as being smart or talented, you should probably not come off as a complete moron, even when defeating board game-obsessed aliens.

That had better be your agent on the phone

Best Actor
This was a rough year for outstanding lead actor roles. Of the nine Best Picture Oscar nods, only three of the films had Best Actor nominations! I think 2012 was far stronger in the Supporting Actor category than the Lead Actor one. Yes, Denzel Washington was terrific in Flight. But the character and actor I would choose to watch or listen to again would be Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln. I've always liked Lincoln as a historical figure, but Day-Lewis was perfectly cunning and warm; he commanded the screen with a soft voice, stooped posture, and anecdotes where other actors would have gone in a completely different direction. Making America's (arguably) most legendary President into a human again was rather impressive.

The President apparently disagrees. Or smells a fart.

Best Director
This is less about who was the best and more about what directors I liked that didn't have huge flaws in their finished products. I love Quentin Tarantino, but Django Unchained needed a damn editor. Cabin in the Woods was great, but Drew Goddard managed to make a great horror movie that was missing scares. Competence narrows down the field considerably. While Ben Affleck did a great job with the humor and pacing of Argo, I'm going to go with Sam Mendes and Skyfall. He made a James Bond movie that was actually a legitimate film! I don't like it because I'm comparing it to Bond movies --- I like it because it's awesome! This is the first time anyone has tried to make a James Bond flick with character development, good cinematography and very good acting, and he was still able to film some great action sequences. Mendes' work is sorely underrated on Skyfall. Any decent director can make a prestige picture look good; making a series known for corny action and one-liners into an actually good movie in far more difficult.

Worst Director
There are movies that never had a chance of being good, and then there are the blockbusters that failed, in large part due to their direction. Peter Berg took a stupid concept and did a terrible job with it, and Battleship was the nauseating result. Timur Bekmambetov did a decent job with his cast, but pieced together a soulless abomination that sucked harder than any Twilight movie: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The absolute worst direction this year, though, had to be Rob Cohen's work in Alex Cross. He made a police procedural that was less competent than a third-rate CSI knockoff AND the acting wasn't great AND the editing was occasionally incoherent. Stick to Vin Diesel movies, Mr. Cohen.

Biggest Disappointment
There were a lot of choices this year, primarily with sequels and reboots, but the one that stuck to me was Prometheus. It's not bad, but it is intentionally obtuse and refuses to deliver on anything that its shared universe with the Aliens franchise has to offer. Again, it isn't awful, but I was expecting a hell of a lot more.

These guys? Seriously --- fuck these guys.

Biggest Surprise
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the year was me not noticing Joseph Gordon-Levitt's makeup while I was watching Looper, but as far as feature films go, Dredd is the winner. It should have been bad. It's a remake of a crappy movie, and it has a lead actor who specializes in not emoting. And yet, Dredd managed to get its core concept just right. I was hoping for a movie so-good-it's-bad, but ended up genuinely enjoying it.

...because this is totally sweet

Bottom 5 Movies
5. Iron Sky - How do you screw up a movie about Nazis living on the dark side of the Moon? By assuming that the concept was funny enough to last for an entire movie. This one had promise, but then dropped the ball when it tried to be clever, funny, or serious. So, yeah, it sucks.

Above: my reaction

4. Battleship - I still have trouble understanding how this made it past the conceptual stage. A board game about stealth transformed into an alien invasion action movie? The guy who came up with that concept must have balls the size of Death Stars. Battleship must have run an "obnoxious actors wanted" ad in Variety, too, because the supporting cast is about two peanuts shy of being 100% crap.

John Carter vs. Master Chief?

3. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - I like the source material and the director, and yet this turned out to be an unholy mess. I am okay with the chocie to not play this concept for laughs. I am not okay with it feeling like it was 2/3 exposition, 1/3 Abraham Lincoln running on top of a herd of stampeding animals. Be funny or be darkly awesome. Anything else is failure.

Get it? The bad guy's using the horse as a pommel --- you know what? Screw this movie.

2. The Devil Inside - Possession horror movies are oftentimes terrible. With the advent of the found-footage horror sub-genre, possession movies have gotten a little worse. The Devil Inside has a lame concept, irrational characters, and poor direction; none of those earmark it for being hate-worthy. What separates it from the pack is its ending. This is the worst film ending I have seen since the director's cut of The Butterfly Effect. I only wish The Devil Inside strangled Ashton Kutcher, too.

This for ninety minutes would have made for a better film

1. ATM - This is the single dumbest concept for a film I have seen in a long time --- and I watched FDR: American Badass and Nazis From the Center of the Earth this year. There are no redeeming qualities with this film, and then it gave me a nosebleed by inferring that the villain --- who had the most unbelievably idiotic victims I have ever seen on film --- was some sort of criminal mastermind. Crap...I'm bleeding out my eyes now, just thinking about it.

They're looking at the world's largest bottle of scotch, AKA what you need to get through this movie

Top 10 Movies:
10. Lincoln - I absolutely love Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones in this film. My biggest concern was how it would handle the whole "vampire hunter" angle, but I think Spielberg addressed the issue subtly.

9. Seven Psychopaths - Not a perfect movie by any means, but I adore the dialogue and I thought the supporting cast was stellar. There are not many scripts that give Sam Rockwell license to be as crazy as he can be, but he was so odd that Christopher Walken looked...well, not normal, but sane by comparison.

8. Looper - I was concerned when this movie was being advertised. Not only did it have a weird time travel concept at its core, but it contended that the Future Mob had sole control over time travel. Add that to the incomprehensible choice to cover Joseph Gordon-Levitt's face in silly putty to look absolutely nothing like a young Bruce Willis, and this looked like a movie destined for the "mock" pile. Looper surprised me, though. It made some interesting and tough choices with its characters and delivered a movie intriguing enough for me to stop focusing on JGL's makeup.

Clever fan poster found on the Looper tumblr

7. Beasts of the Southern Wild - When you take semi-Artsy direction and some of the rawest acting talent around, you run a chance of creating something truly special. This was easily the Academy Award-nominated film that I connected to best on an emotional level, and I am so disassociated with these characters that I cannot believe I live in the same country where it was shot. And the editing and post-production work needed to make 6 year-old Quvenzhané Wallis this great was beyond impressive.

6. Argo - It is difficult to make a movie about a historical event suspenseful. It's almost as hard to pace it well. Ben Affleck managed to do both, and he still balanced it with humor.

This guy says he was in Argo. I don't recall, but it's an awesome pic

5. The Dark Knight Rises - A fitting end to Christopher Nolan's trilogy, this was everything needed to thematically bring Batman's story to a close. Bane was not quite as classic as Heath Ledger's Joker, but Tom Hardy was good enough to make me forget about the Joker while I was watching --- and that is damn impressive. If this had more Batman and less Bruce Wayne, it might have been perfect. It will tide me over until the next reboot (I'm calling 2017 right now).

4. The Cabin in the Woods - This was such a fantastic homage to the horror genre that I can overlook the fact that it is not scary in the least bit. A smart script that goes in directions that you would not guess from the promos and a great script make this a personal favorite.

This movie also finally gives stoners their own action hero

3. The Avengers - I'm a huge fan of the Marvel super hero movies, so the one where all the heroes team up and are directed by Joss Whedon, with a script he co-wrote? Yeah, this was a no-brainer. What makes it special, though, are the unexpectedly great moments, like when Hulk smashes Loki. More of this, please.

Do you have this poster? It was free w/purchase of the Blu-Ray. FYI.

2. Skyfall - This is easily the best James Bond movie since Connery got bored with the role. It has the best direction and cinematography of any Bond movie, and the best villain in decades. This is the James Bond movie to show to people who (somehow) don't like James Bond.

Fan art poster taken from here

1. Django Unchained- Yes, it could have been better with thirty minutes less run-time, but Django scratched so many itches that this year's film crop failed to. It was gory as hell, it had Tarantino's famously foul humor, and universally good acting. There were a few movies about slavery in 2012, but this was the film that was fun to watch and I will come back to time and time again. Bless your enormous chin (which houses your ego), Quentin Tarantino!

Sorry. This was better than any Django posters I could find