RED (2010)

Tagline: Still armed. Still dangerous. Still got it.

Curiosity: It’s like The Expendables but with a more critically acclaimed cast.

Plot: Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a retired black-ops CIA agent looking for love. He’s developed a phone relationship with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) and wants to take it to the next level. They have so much in common, and while Moses doesn’t want to rush things, he really does think, deep down in that place he refuses to admit exists, that he could love and be loved. Be known. Be held.

Anyway, then some dudes show up with machine guns and blow the fuck out of his house, so he kills them dead and then meets up with his retired super spy friends and they have cool super spy adventures while making cracks about whippersnappers.

Thoughts: While the angles are different, The Expendables and RED are fairly similar movies about old hands kicking ass in a kitschy fashion. But RED can’t step Expendables’ groove. For all its flaws, that movie was just too great. And while it was certainly a dumb movie, it never felt dumbed-down. RED, meanwhile, spells out every location and plot change to an obnoxious degree. It tries so hard to be a silly, over-the-top spy thriller, whereas Expendables just is without resorting to pretensions.

RED has a solid cast though. Not Dolph Lundgren-good, but still pretty good. Willis is, of course, badass. That’s kind of what he does. Parker and Helen Mirren are to RED what Mickey Rourke was to Expendables – way better than their respective films probably deserve. And you know what, I like Karl Urban. Dude rocked it in Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and, uh, Pathfinder, and he goes blow for blow with Willis, and that guy has left many a Hans Gruber dead in his wake.

But man was I let down by Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich. Freeman phones it in, although his character is a big deus ex machina anyway. Malkovich is meant to be the comedic relief as a drugged out retired agent, but his role becomes tiresome quickly.

nd the same goes for the film overall. RED isn’t particularly funny or action-packed. It’s a solid afternoon movie, the kind you watch once and then never think about again, but that’s it.

Reflection: I’m kind of annoyed Brian Cox isn’t on the movie poster. He’s so much better than Freeman here AND his character is more important. WTF?

Push (2009)

Tagline: One push can change everything. [DO YOU GET IT?!]

Curiosity: I like Chris Evans. Dude needs to be in more good movies.

Plot: Spurred by Nazi research, the word’s super-powers have been cultivating psychic armies for decades. They have various abilities – telekinesis, mind-reading, some shit where you scream really loud and people’s brains explode – but when certain psychics prove too powerful to control, the U.S. government steps in and neutralizes them. What a bunch of dicks. This policy leads to the death of the father of Nick (Evans) and the abduction of the mother of Cassie (Dakota Fanning). The two meet by fate in China and begin a rebellion.

Thoughts: Push could be a great TV show. It has enough characters and plot points to sustain a couple of seasons. But as a movie, it hurts. The film tries to cram in as many plot points and rules as it can, but given that the film ends on an unsatisfying ending meant to set up a sequel that’ll probably never happen, that might not have been such a great. The movie bullshits it way through how psychics work, introduces more rules than it needs, and then peters out in the last 30 minutes.

Oh but I love the cast, sort of. I’ve been a supporter of Evans since Sunshine and Fantastic Four, flawed films bolstered by his acting. Fanning shows a talent beyond her years. But Djimon Hounsou can’t satisfy the demands of his role as the bad guy, and Camilla Belle’s character stops her from doing a whole lot.

The script itself is trash. The dialogue is cliché, the pacing is a bit too slow, and the story needs to be less obsessed with introducing superpowers. At the very least, the film needs to shave off 10, maybe 20 minutes, because there’s a certain point where I got sick of watching the filmmakers force and then violate a series of rules on how psychics work. Push has some neat effects and story ideas, but it doesn’t add up to anything consequential.

Reflection: For a movie about dudes throwing guns at each other, this sure was boring.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

Tagline: Mo’ demons, mo’ problems.

Curiosity: I closed the store tonight and have to open tomorrow. I needed to do something in between the two.

Plot: Part prequel, part sequel, Paranormal Activity 2 focuses on Kristi (Sprague Grayden), sister of Katie (Katie Featherston) from the original, and her family. Kristi and her husband Dan (Brian Boland) just had a boy, named Hunter. Dan in turn has a daughter from a previous marriage named Ali (Molly Ephraim). The film follows the same documentary style of the original, with the Dan installing a thorough video surveillance system after their home is burglarized (OR IS IT DEMONIZED?!).

Anyway, weird shit happens.

Thoughts: As far as unnecessary sequels go, Paranormal Activity 2 works. Depending on your perspective, it either advances the mythology of the original, or tacks on extra detail we don’t really need. I lean towards the latter, even though the film is generally solid. This sequel is stuck in a weird spot, because it has some great scenes and the acting one-ups the original, but in order to understand the ending, you need to have seen the first film. Which in turn means acknowledging that the movie recycles almost everything.

Paranormal Activity 2 boasts better special effects, but considering the original was essentially a home movie, that doesn’t say much. If anything, I want to know why this version cost $3 million, when writer/director Oren Peli made the original on like $15,000. And there are some great scares, even though most of them are of the “gotcha” variety. A “gotcha” scare is whenever something loud and unexpected happens. It takes advantage of a bodily reaction to noise. Our bodies flood with adrenaline with a start, preparing for a fight or flight scenario. You can’t exactly turn that off. While 2 thankfully spreads these moments out, it’s still a little cheap, especially since the movie fails to recreate the sparse atmosphere of the original.

Paranormal Activity gradually builds in intensity until shit gets real. 2 hits a wall and goes “Eh, fuck it. Let’s get this over with.” It’s a shame because the cast is better this time around. The original certainly had problems, like superfluous supporting roles and a bum ending as far as the wide release is concerned. But it still haunts. I don’t see myself watching 2 again.

Reflection: Also, it’s totally bullshit when they reference the Clash of the Titans remake. This movie is supposed to be set in 2006. CONTINUITY ERROR YOU GUYS.

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Tagline: It’s like Batman!

Curiosity: I bought this movie specifically because my girlfriend Michelle said Zorro sucks. Boy did I show her!

Plot: In the 19th century, Zorro (Anthony Hopkins, because why not?) kicks the dickens out of the Spaniards on behalf of Californians everywhere and then hurries home to his family. It’s totally awesome and hi-larious until the Spaniards, led by Don Rafael (Stuart Wilson), show up, murderize Zorro’s wife, steal his daughter, and burn his house down. Zorro celebrates by rotting in prison for 20 years.

Then Antonio Banderas shows up, Zorro gets his shit together, and they kick butt again!

Thoughts: I’m going to make the following concessions about Zorro, in fairness to my girlfriend. It’s silly that none of the leads are Hispanic (Well, besides Matt Lescher as the psycho-crazy Harrison Love, but he’s supposed to be white). Banderas is the first Spanish actor to play Zorro, who’s supposed to be a Spaniard… except he’s technically playing Zorro II, who’s supposed to be Californian. Catherine Zeta-Jones does a good job with the accent as Zorro’s daughter, but Hopkins is clearly playing himself with a tan. The plot gets a little nonsensical at times, and the running time is a bit bloated.

But this is an action/comedy with explosions and swords and Antonio Banderas! Dude gets along with everybody. His scenes with Hopkins are funny; his work with Zeta-Jones smolders. Smolders! What’s great about Zorro is that he’s exactly like Batman (OK, Bob Kane probably ripped off Zorro…), only fun. And not campy fun either. The character plays with his foes, making fools out of them. Accordingly, this movie delivers plenty of physical comedy courtesy of Banderas. My only regret is that Robert Rodriguez, who was slated to direct, dropped out over budgetary issues, only to have his successor, Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Edge of Darkness) get like twice the money Rodriguez originally asked for.

Reflection: This movie made like $250 million. Take that, Michelle!

Star Wars Uncut (2010)

Tagline: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Curiosity: Some folks from Vimeo remade Star Wars (Or Episode IV/A New Hope or whatever the hell we’re supposed to call it now) by stitching together 15-second homemade recreations. People then voted online to select the best submissions. The result is essentially a real life Be Kind Rewind.

Plot: Really? You don’t know the plot to Star Wars? Basically, a whiney farm boy, a whiney princess, an old guy, a super cool cowboy and his best friend who is also a dog/bear/gorilla thingy, and their two gay robots fight imperialism… IN OUTER SPACE. Some of them use this thing called “the force.” It’s kind of like Neo in The Matrix. The farm boy studies magic from the old guy, like Harry Potter and Dumbledore but with swords instead of fake Latin phrases. It kicks off an epic trilogy. Sort of like a sci-fi Lord of the Rings. It’s kind of like the Masters of the Universe of the ’70s, now that I think about it. And it has that guy from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

Thoughts: With all of the remakes I’m dreading (Total Recall, The Toxic Avenger, freaking Spider-Man), you’d think I’d be against anyone touching the original Star Wars trilogy. Hell, after the remastered editions and the “new trilogy,” I’ve been burned out on Star Wars for the last few years. But mastermind Casey Pugh and a massive group of loyal fans have created something charmingly low tech and humorously faithful. By breaking New Hope up into 15 second clips, this adaptation made me realize that the entire movie is one big iconic quote fest. New Hope is a film I’ve seen countless times. It’s ingrained in my DNA. So it was fun for me to watch this fan film and try to figure out what was going on. Sometimes the shots that make no got-damn sense are just as compelling as the ones that do.

Considering the film is 90 minutes long, it’s insane how many people contributed 15-second clips. There’s a lot of repetition, though. Pretty much anytime people try to include a pop cultural riff, they fail, either because so many folks do it (Too many Star Trek and Simpsons references. Come on, nerds, try harder!), or because they force a reference in without actually making a joke (Clerks, Space Balls). It’s the Date Movie approach to filmmaking. Also, the CGI scenes look like crap (Just like in the real movies!).

Still, though, the film overall is a humorous tribute. Here are my top five favorite parts:

1. Anything involving children, animals, or both, which is the exact opposite of what I look for in “real” movies. The only thing better than Han Solo and Chewbacca is Han Solo as a little kid and Chewbacca as a dog.
2. Anything with stop-motion or hand-drawn animation.
3. Anytime someone impersonates Chewbacca.
4. The first time Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000 show up as C-3PO and R2-D2.
5. Han shoots first!
   
   

The movie is an amazing hodgepodge of animation and home video. The special effects vary greatly, which is neat. The audio varies too, which is frustrating. But it’s a fun curio, a nice reminder that a long time ago, before all the cash-ins, we all loved Star Wars.

Click here to watch the full film.

Reflection: That’s it, I’m gonna make a tribute film to The Marine.

Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

The Crazies (2010)

Tagline: Fear they neighbor.

Curiosity: It’s a remake of a George Romero film and got decent reviews. Also, I had a chance to watch it for free.

Plot: Officer Good Guy (Timothy Olyphant) is having a grand old time at a baseball game when a weird guy with a shotgun walks on to the field. The sheriff tries to talk the guy down, assuming he’s drunk, but when he cocks the gun and points it at Officer GG, homeboy acts in self-defense and blows him away. Needless to say, Weird Guy’s family is bummed out over this occurrence, and things get extra awkward for GG when the toxicology report reveals that Weird Guy’s blood alcohol level was 0.0.

Meanwhile, Officer Good Guy’s wife, Dr. Lady (Radha Mitchell), examines a creepy farmer. She thinks he’s OK, but she’s wrong. So wrong that Creepy Farmer sets his house on fire and kills his family. Dr. Lady sucks at being a doctor.

As more and more of the townsfolk start going psycho-crazy, it’s up to Officer Good Guy, Dr. Lady, and their disposable friends to figure out what's going on.

Thoughts: If I had paid to watch The Crazies, I suppose I would have been perturbed over its content. It’s not as gory as the trailer had hinted, and the script is more like a template than an original story. In fact, the script is frustrating in almost every possible way. [SPOILER] People are going crazy from a fast-acting virus/chemical thinger, but it seems to work at 1/10^th speed on key characters [/SPOILER]. Locations picked for scares just seem stupid, like an extended scene where the characters get trapped inside a car wash. Maybe it’s because I worked at a car wash when I was 14, but they’re not the all-encompassing Saw-like death traps that horror films make them out to be. They’re designed specifically so cars can get off the tracks, forward or backward. Also, there should be like, I don’t know, 30 emergency exits sprinkled throughout. This crap didn’t work in The Final Destination, it doesn’t work here. Also, do they even have touch car washes anymore? Shit wrecks paint jobs. Perhaps that’s the real scare?

Sorry. Sorry. Anyhoozle, the leads are generally likeable, but their scenes are so rote. Put it another way: I care about the characters that die, but I do not care about the ones that live. Maybe if the film delivered in gore, I’d be more forgiving. But outside of two pretty scenes, the film just doesn’t go there.

I will say this, though: Director Breck Eisner pulls off this one neat-o trick. See, the townsfolk are insane murderers, but when left alone, they just kind of walk around silently like pod people. There’s a scene where Dr. Lady is saying goodbye to her house. She walks into the nursery for her unborn child and starts giving this monologue about “what could have been.” It’s a pretty wistful monologue… except it’s not technically a monologue, as there is a woman standing in the corner, silently staring at her. It’s such a simple, understated scare – Eisner doesn’t punctuate the scene with ridiculously loud audio. He just slowly pans over and lets the audience realize that something freaky is going on mere seconds before it occurs to the character. I feel bad for spoiling this scene because I think it’s the best in the film.

Or, it would be if Eisner didn’t recycle the trick over and over again. By the end of the film, what was once clever in its subtlety becomes annoying in its repetition. Which I suppose describes The Crazies in general. There are some cool scenes, but they don’t add up to a good movie.

Reflection: This carwash bullshit has got to stop, people.

Slumber Party Massacre 3 (1990)

Tagline: It’s Driller Time… and This Bit’s For You!

Curiosity: It came bundled with the other Massacre movies.

Plot: Jackie (Keely Christian) has the house all to herself this weekend, so she decides to have a party. She invites all of her closest friends… and this fat douchebag named Duncan (David Greenlee). They enjoy pizza and beer and whatever.

Then a dude with a giant power drill shows up and murders them all.

Thoughts: While it starts off promisingly by introducing a weird sense of humor, mostly courtesy of awkward neighbor Morgan (Michael Harris) and NOT that fat fuck Duncan (He’s meant to be the comic relief, but he got-damn does that guy suck ass), Slumber Party Massacre 3 is in some way even worse than the first sequel. At least that movie was maintained the same consistent level of crappiness. 3 goes from promising to offensive.

Now, horror movies are meant to shock. I don’t mean to come off as a prude, but the tone the film takes made me uncomfortable. The original was a black comedy, so while it introduced some obvious symbolism with the Driller Killer’s drill being, ya know, a phallus penetrating young ladies, it was never treated too darkly. This movie, however, makes the symbolism even more obvious, to the point that the killer’s attacks double as rapes. Which means the film spends up to 30 minutes showing us, the audience, repeated rape scenes.

And these are sloppily assembled rape scenes at that. This film looks so cheap that the actors don’t bother using live power tools – it’s obvious that the drills and chainsaws aren’t even on, with live sounds dubbed in. It looks so cheap. And while I guess I can justify the filmmakers being too cheap to pay for fake drills, it’s not that hard to fake a real chainsaw. Just take the chain off. The formula behind the Slumber Party Massacre series petered out painfully here, but at least I’ll always have the original.

Reflection: Also, the first one at least justified the nudity. 3’s “let’s have a striptease contest” idea is just stupid.

Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987)

Tagline: Let’s take a shit on Joe Pelone’s childhood.

Curiosity: I hated this movie so much when I was a kid. But it came bundled with Slumber Party Massacre so…

Plot: Courtney (Crystal Bernand, Wings) is a well-liked teen. Her high school crush Matt (Patrick Lowe) seems interested in her. Her band, which sounds like The Bangles which really means they sound like The Hollies with female harmonies, is starting to come together. And now she’s going to take a weekend vacation with them to celebrate her birthday. Yep, everything is totally awesome for Courtney.Then a dude with a giant power drill (Atanas Ilitch) shows up and murders them all.

Thoughts: Man, fuck this movie. Slumber Party Massacre 2 completely loses sight of what made the original film so great. Slumber Party Massacre was an uncomplicated slasher flick that doubled as a dark comedy. It offered simple thrills, if you wanted them, but it was also pretty darn funny, all but guaranteeing itself a cult-following. The sequel, however, gets everything wrong.

The original was a crowd-pleaser, dishing out nudity and gore right away. The sequel doesn’t get to the murderizing until the final 30 minutes. While it offers a few bogus “dream sequence” scares, they’re all stupid. Courtney bites into a sandwich and thinks it’s a hand! SpoOoOoky! The film tries to push this “is it real or imaginary” angle by implying that Courtney is insane, which I honesty buy because A) she has some pretty intense/idiotic hallucinations and B) it’s the only way I can accept that the killer is a leather-clad rock ‘n’ roller with a guitar/drill. I feel like producer Roger Corman sat down with writer/director Deborah Brock and was like, “What do kids like? Rock ‘n’ roll, right? Put that in there!” The Driller Killer is so cartoonishly designed to seem cool that he just looks pathetic.

Slumber Party Massacre 2 cribs moves from Rocky Horror Picture Show and A Nightmare on Elm Street (and shamelessly plugs Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, another Corman production starring The Ramones. Broke actually went on to make a sequel to it, and it was just as crappy as this movie), but it never coheres into the sort of sexy/creepy/fun set-up of those films. While there are cool/graphic kills late in the film, overall it is neither scary nor kitschy enough to function as a horror or comedy film. And that ’80s soundtrack hurts, man.

Also, there aren’t enough boobs.

Reflection: If I was Courtney’s friend… wait, no. We would never be friends. Bitch is crazy.

Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Tagline: Close your eyes for a second... and sleep forever.

Curiosity: This one is another childhood classic.

Plot: Typical naked lusty teen Trish (Michele Michaels) is having a party and invites her basketball teammates over for a night of smoking, drinking, and talking about boys. Her teammate Val (Robin Stille) doesn’t go, though. She dominates the basketball court, but she doesn’t how to handle the court… of conversation. That’s OK by Trish and her friends, though. They still light up a couple of doobies and have fun.

Then a dude with a giant power drill (Michael Villella) shows up and murders them all.

Thoughts: My best friend in middle school was this cat named Rob. His mother was way more lenient than mine when it came to movies, so we spent many an afternoon renting horror movies. Let’s face it; when you’re 12, a title like Slumber Party Massacre is going to grab you. At the time, I found the film titillating and frightening. Death by power drill is a bad way to go. Also, there are boobs.

I hadn’t seen the film in maybe 12 years or so, hadn’t really considered it until its recent re-release on DVD. A few reviews talked up the film’s touches of feminism and humor, to a point where it over-intellectualized what I remembered as a fairly straightforward slasher flick. Also, there are boobs. So I was shocked to find out that, yeah, Slumber Party Massacre is actually a lot smarter than the typical Halloween rip-off.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t follow conventions. It still has a typical plot – promiscuous teens get picked off by a psycho killer. And the gore is pretty tame compared to the recent works of Eli Roth, Ti West, and Alexandre Aja. But that’s part of what helps the film succeed. It’s not bogged down by aged effects and never tips its hand straight into the horror genre. It’s really more of a black comedy. I can’t believe I remembered the scene where a girl keeps almost discovering a dead body in a refrigerator all these years later, but it turns out this is one of the film’s most iconic scenes. Other parts are legitimately scary, like the implied drill attacks. Villella spends most of the movie lingering in the margins. He only gets one scene with dialogue, but he makes it count. He's damn creepy telling the girls that his murder spree is an act of love, and he does this weird thing where he cocks his head around like a bird.

Arguments for the film’s feminist bent are valid too. The movie flips plenty of conventions, both for horror films and societal norms. Women are the ones with stereotypically masculine jobs (gym coach, carpenter, electrician). Men are the ones who die horrible, protracted deaths while the women get off relatively easy. And the symbolism of the ending, not to get all spoiler-y, is so forehead-slappingly obvious that it becomes awesome. Yeah, this was a Roger Corman feature, but director Amy Holden Jones (she also wrote Beethoven and Mystic Pizza AND worked on Taxi Driver) and writer Rita Mae Brown infuse the movie with way more quality than such a feature probably deserves. Also, there are boobs.

Reflection: Jones turned down E.T. to make this movie.

Legendary (2010)

Tagline: Some legends are born out of struggle.

Curiosity: The Marine. ’Nuff said.

Plot: Cal (Devon Graye) is a scrawny, dorky nerd-geek. I mean, he wears glasses! But he wants to be a manly man like his ne’er-do-well brother Mike (John Cena) and deceased father by becoming a wrestler. Against the wishes of his angsty mother (Patricia Clarkson), he contacts Mike and together they start training for wrastlin’. Danny Glover shows up as a magical black guy on occasion to say stuff like “Some legends are made from the sweat of men who rise to the problems of their day” or some shit.

Thoughts: Folks, my college roommates and I are huge fans of the international hit The Marine. We originally went to see it as a joke, but it’s actually one of the best action flicks of all time. It made me swear allegiance to Cena. And while that fandom was rewarded by Cena’s next flick, 12 Rounds, Legendary has left me questioning my life’s ambitions. The film has a made-for-TV quality that permeates its every aspect.

The dialogue is hammy and clunky throughout. I sometimes wonder if the writer John Posey knows what young people sound like. Romantic interest Luli (Madeleine Martin) is meant to be alternative or goth or whatever, and plenty of people comment on how she is thoroughly weird, but ultimately she’s just a pale kid with black hair. Everything she says and does is exactly like all the other Southern teens in town. The film also wastes obvious talents like Clarkson (The Green Mile, The Untouchables) and Glover (Predator 2… and some other stuff). Clarkson is reduced to screaming and crying all the time; Glover sadly gets the worst dialogue. That dude was in Angels in the Outfield, Be Kind Rewind, and The Royal Tenenbaums. He deserves better. This role should have been given to Ric Flair.

Still, the emotional core of the movie lies in Cal and Mike’s relationship, and Graye and Cena deliver. It helps that they kind of look like they could be brothers, but the scenes where they talk about wrestling have a believable warmth to them. That said, watching Cena here is painful in places. Acting is sort of like tennis; you need to be with people of your own ability. Clarkson acts with her entire body; Cena says words. Their scenes together feel… uneven. Still, the film generally sticks to Cena’s strengths. He can fight and be angry. But I think someone needs to take advantage of his comedic chops soon.

Reflection: I don’t think I’m going to buy Fred: The Movie. OR WILL I?