Walk Hard (Possible Spoilers)

Apatow. That name now means hilarious comedy. When I heard that he was doing a parody film of the musician biopic option, I was excited. Then the trailers came out, and I wasn't excited anymore. It looked average and fairly obvious. One day I was browin' around on youtube and stumbled upon r-rated clips/songs and I really wanted to see it.

Walk Hard is the "real life" story of Dewey Cox. A musician who has done everything from Blues to Disco. His ups and downs and all the drugs and wives and musical cameo's inbetween.

This film, while offering some very good laughs, ends up falling short. There are jokes that it repeats over and over and it uses some fairly obvious jokes throughout (you see a clearly not 12 year old John C. Riley say "Ma. I'm just a 12 year old."). This movie really shines though when there are songs though. If this was just a soundtrack, it would be hilarlious. With several legitamately good songs and some very funny ones, it really does save this movie.

Another inspired about this movie is the casting. John C. Riley has done musical befores, but he has never really carried a movie on his shoulders like this, but he really does a great job. He plays every scene as if it was a real biopic. Riley understands that for this movie to work, it had to mimic the movies it is trying to as closely as possible and being the very good serious actor he is, he does nail it. Hell, he pulls out tears for when he regains his sense of smell in one of the more funny parts of the movies. Jenna Fischer has always been cute from The Office, but in this she is downright hot and does the same as Riley. Though they maybe delivering some rediculous dialouge, they deliver it with a sence of seriousness. In fact, everybody, except the "real musicians" are cast as if it were a real movie.

The direction is also spot on. The cinematography and direction are exactly like a real biopic. You know that look? The deep gold/red that seems to punctuate both Walk the Line and Ray (which is this mostly aimed at, even though there is a segment that takes down Bob Dylan). It is replicated perfectly.

In fact, this could be the films biggest downfall: it is too real. It feels as if it is biopic trying to be comedy instead of a comedy trying to be a biopic. While there are admittedly enough comical parts to keep one going on (their jabs at actual musicians is hilarious), there are no really big laughs. In fact, the parts that are supposed to be rediculous are the funniest moments other than the song. These rediculous moments you ask? They are whenever we see a famous musician being played by somebody who totally shouldn't (even though, if they ever did a Buddy Holly movie, Frankie Munez could be a good choice) play them. The best is The Beatles moment where they begin fighting. Of course, these moments rely on you knowing each different musician and how they were supposed to be.

In all, this was a disappointing film, but it does have its moments. You could do worse than this (like any other parody movie that seems to come out nowadays. CAN'T WAIT FOR "MEET THE SPARTANS!") but with these people behind the movie, you would expect more.

Enchanted

In film, it hasn't been cool be to happy for happiness' sake for a very long time. A fairy tale? No way can that be done. Not after Shrek. Well, Disney has retaliated back with a semi-parody/loving tribute to their own princess films.

Enchanted is about Giselle (Amy Adams) who is a princess who only wants to be married and share true love's first kiss. She sings songs with her animals and dances and lives in a tree and is a cartoon. One day she meets Prince Edward (James Marsden) and within that day they are to be married. Edward has an evil stepmother (Susan Saradon) who knows that when Edward gets married, she will no longer have power. Thus, she along with her cronie (Timothy Spall) send Giselle to New York. There she meets Robert Phillip (Patrick Dempsey) and her love with Edward is tested as she opens up his eyes and he opens up hers.

Every actor is clearly having the time of their life in this movie. I've never been a Patrick Dempsey fan, and I still feel he is the weakest link in this film. It isn't that he is bad, in fact he is very good. We see him go from an asshole to somebody we really do like and care about: I just hate his voice and think it is almost comically high pitched. Everyone else is reveling in playing their archetype of the princess genre. Susan Saradon has always been great at playing a bad girl and now she gets to play the ultimate evil woman. Timothy Spall should only play cowardly side kicks because he does very good everytime he does it. James Marsden plays Prince Edward with charm and a sence of idiocy that is exactly how a cartoon prince would appear in real life. Then their is Amy Adams as Giselle. From the moment you see her as a cartoon, you know you are going to love her. She is pretty, sweet and just adorable. From the first moment you see her you want to see her win and you never want to see her sad. She also has a pretty good singing voice.

Which is a great thing about this movie: the music. This is something that Shrek hasn't been able to properly parody yet, maybe their pop-music compliation soundtracks have been their way of trying to do that, but it hasn't worked. Disney has recruited Alan Menken again to do the music and he adds even more classics to Disney's repertoir. I will garuntee you that "True Love's First Kiss," "Happy Little Cleaning Song" (hilarious) and "How Does She Know You Love Her?" (once more, hilarious and parodies how musicals break out in movies while being an extremely charming song) will all be remembered for a long time after and will be playing in Fantasyland when you go to Disneyland.

This is a truly wonderful movie. Unlike the Shrek movies which have made their money on smashing this type of movie, Enchanted uses the cliches of the genre to generate their comedy and characters. It works great as we don't just like our main characters because they aren't anything like what we are used to, but we are reminded why princess movies from Disney are classics: it is because they are downright charming.

Sweeney Todd

I'm into theater. Most people(if not everyone) who read this know that. I first got a taste of Sweeney back when they did the concert version which I still love to this day. It was around that time when Burton was first attached to this project. Even then I thought that it would be a wonderful matchup between director and material. Then Burton left and returned to the project with post-Pirates of the Carribean Johnny Depp attached. I have lost a lot of respect for Depp after the last 2 Pirate movies, but this would be his next project and I was hoping that he would live up to when he was once great.

The story is about Sweeney Todd (Depp) who once went by the name Benjamin Barker. He used to have a beautiful wife and baby daughter, until a jealous judge (Alan Rickman) send Barker away and took on Barker's daughter as his own. Todd returns with one thing on his mind: revenege. He uses his old profession of a Barber to exact his revenge. He rents a room from Mrs. Lovitz (Helen Bonaman Carter). She loves Todd and will do anything for him, like bake his victims into pies.

Some people feel that Burton hasn't made a good movie for a very long time, I happen to disagree and really liked his "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Corpse Bride" but I believe he still hadn't reached the level of genious as Ed Wood all those years ago. For all those doubters, Burton has made his best film and it is a wonderful film. He uses every trick he has in his hat in this one. Great opening titles, witty dark humor, crazy blood, symbolism and a very dreary almost black and white look. It has his fingerprint all over it, but it has something that most of his movies don't: real emotion. The characters are not quirky for quirky's sake. In fact, there are really no quirky characters.

In fact, every actor has nailed down their character. Now, none of the adults are very good singers and being an actor and not singer, this doesn't bother me. Mainly because everybody is either good to great except Anthony. While, the kid playing Anthony has a great voice when they cut the song "Kiss Me" where he an Johana meet (Sweeney's daughter who gets almost no screen time in this), his eyebrows make the great love songs he sings somewhat creepy. That and he looks like a girl. Carter is very good as Mrs. Lovitz she plays up the fact that she is in love with Todd much more than any of the performances and it works very well. She isn't too funny and her british accent is impecible. Depp's performance is not the angry Todd that most poeple are used to on stage but it is a great performance. The sorrow that lies in his eyes is so powerful that you know why he is insane and you feel greatly for him. The way he does each song, how he bites each words. One moment that is so tiny that always fills me with his sorrow is the end of "No Place Like London" at the beginning of the movie. His voice cracks off and it is so sad and great. I would say that this is his best performance other than Gilbert Grape (Ed Wood might be better, I still haven't decided). The real stand out performance of this is Alan Rickman. He is creepy and very unsettling as Judge Turpin. He is a sexual beast and his duet with Todd, "Pretty Women" is probably the vocal highlight of the movie. Rickman better get an Oscar nom for this.

Now, be forewarned as I have seen people walk out of the movie for this reason: it is very bloody. When I say very bloody, I mean that there are only 3 or 4 parts that are bloody but when the blood flows it rushes like a river. The blood isn't very realistic though, so it never gets too crazy. Another thing is that when the blood flows, it flows differently depending on the person and is a character in itself. While it is very bloody, it is tastefully bloodsoaked because it serves as another character...sort of.

Other than my one problem of "Kiss Me" being cut, I loved this movie. In fact, I'm writing this after my second viewing. It is a excellent musical that has been worked into a very excellent movie that holds its ranking above the best of a very distinctive filmmaker (love him or hate him, everyone knows Burton). Definately one of my favorite films of the year.

I Am Legend

This movie has been done twice before: The Last Man on Earth (starring one of my favorites, Vincent Price) and The Omega Man (starring another of my favorites, Charelton Heston). Both of them were able to pull off the role in completely different ways. Vincent Price was able to pull it off in a creepy way and Heston in a badass way. So when I heard that this was being made by Will Smith, I automatically thought of the movie "I, Robot" which I really hated. Of course, I'm not familiar with the source material as I was with "I, Robot" so I decided to give this a shot.

The last man on earth is not alone. Robert Neville (Will Smith) was a scientist and a soldier before a vaccination to cure cancer was given out and ended up turning people into strange vampire... things. Now, Smith is just walking around Manhattan with his dog (who was adorable as a puppy by the way) going "crazy", trying to cure the virus, and live as normal a life as possible.

I love character driven films, I really do. I mean, I really liked "The Assassination of Jesse James" which was a 3 and a half hour movie with about 15 minutes of action and all and the rest was all character development. It was a brilliant film, and films about isolation and decents into maddness, I love. This movie though, this movie somehow made 1 hour and 45 minutes feel like 6 hours. The first 15 minutes hold promise, but the next 15 minutes are exactly the same, as are the following 15 minutes up until the final 15 minutes. Nothing ever freaking happens and, unlike Heston or Price, Smith is not able to hold this film from being boring.

Smith has become the biggest box office draw of the time. Stick this man in a movie and it is garunteed to get a giant box office, even if the movie isn't that good (Hitch). I do have a large like of Will Smith. I think we was great in Ali and does have a great charm and is very funny in the "Men in Black" films. As of late, I have been growing tired of him. He plays the same exact role in every single film. He is always the charming guy who cries at some point in this movie. In this movie, he cries a lot and is "charmingly funny" a lot. The schitck has gotten old for me and I want something new.

Oh, and for the director: YOU'RE NOT PAUL GREENGRASS! Shaking the camera does not make it "scary" nor does it build any tension. In fact, it just gives us a headache. Lucky for us, we don't have to put up with it since there are only three action scenes in the entire film, all of them poorly executed.

The man reason they don't click is because of all the crappy cgi that is in this film. Why do you need the main vampires CGI'd? It isn't even like what they look like is that un-human. They could have easily been done with makeup, and very cheaply also. You just need some white makeup that looks translucent. BAM! Damn, how hard is that? Even if they only had the main vampires. They had two different main vampires. That would have added some credibility to it instead of taking the audience out of it all with CGI flying this way and that way.

Honestly, I really disliked this movie. It is the first movie that I've ever walked out of to go to the bathroom halfway through. It took me about 5 minutes and guessed how much I had missed? 0. Nothing that contributed to the film. The second half of the film, I couldn't control my yawning. Don't get me started on the blatant 9/11 references OR the product placement (which was the exact same as "I, Robot": EVERYWHERE! Good thing I have a MAC, that way I can cure the world of vampires too!). If I was marketing this sucker the tagline would have been more informative: "The Last Man on Earth Is Boring As Hell."

No Country for Old Men

I actually heard about this movie about a year and a half ago. At the time I was going through a phase almost all modern film fans should go through - hunt down every single movie the Coen Brother's have made. So I checked IMDb, the idea was interesting, but I had just finished my viewing of most of their films (except Crimewave and Blood Simple, so sue me) and with The Ladykiller's being their most recent film, I wasn't expecting much. Then the reviews from the Toronto film festival came out. Then the trailer came out, and I didn't just want to see this movie I NEEDED to see it.

If it wouldn't piss some people off this could be my entire review:

Best Movie of the Decade Thus Far.

Thank god for the Coen's. They have made another classic and a simply great film all around. Even with a fairly basic plot: A man, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong. He takes the two million dollars and goes off to live a good life. Of course, he realizes that one person must have lived through it and not have gotten the money. Moss knows he is in for a difficult time, but he doesn't know how difficult. We then meet the one who got away: Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chigurh is a storm, a force of nature, wanting the money and only one can make it out of it all. Throughout the film we get updates on Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) as he follows their blood-ladden trail.

The Coen Brother's have constructed the next classic film. Their direction here is the best they have ever done. The cinematograhy here is incredibly beautiful, as you would expect from the Coen's. In fact, this is the only film where I have been so scared where I got chills. Chills literally ran up my spine and I jumped about a foot - even though I knew what was coming. That is the genius of the of the Coen's. At the beginning they tell you how Moss works and how Chigurh works, from there you can figure out everything that is going to happen and even when you see it coming, they build up the suspence to where it is almost intolerable which is then followed by violence that is almost as intolerable. This is all aided by the brilliant choice on their half to have no soundtrack playing. It is never a hinderance: it only helps, in a big bad way. Instead of the music building higher and higher cuing you how much time you have left until it happens, the Coen's put you right in the middle: you know what is going to happen, but you don't know when. The end is never clear who will win either: Moss or Chigurh.

Josh Brolin kicks some ass Llewelyn Moss. This has really been a break through year for Brolin with Grindhouse, In The Valley of Elah (didn't see it), American Gangster and now this. All of them he is incredibly bad ass. Here is very silent and calculating. He knows what he is facing, and he is trying to out do him. This would probably be a role that Brolin could get nominated for a Oscar for if he wasn't totally overshadowed by Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh.

You know those clip shows where they always show Hannibal Lector and Darth Vader? Add one more to that list. Anton Chigurh is the next film legend. He is a force of nature and Bardem adds so much power and danger to this role that everytime he is on screen you are scared for everybody else. Very few people see him without dying. You can notice that Bardem is shorter than some of the people he is playing opposite of, but you are never worried for him. One look into his eyes is to look into the eyes of someone who views human life as something useless, something that can be just tossed aside. He won't stop until he gets exactly what he wants. Even just hearing his footsteps inspires a sence of fear. Bardem has the Best Supporting Actor award locked up.

There has been some controversy surrounding the end of the film. I would not have had it any other way. If I made it, I could have done it differently, but I'm not a genious as the Coen's are. In fact, I felt the movie was even better for the choice that they made with the end. Yes, they messed with some big structure things in film, but they did it in a way that is brilliant and makes perfect sence and adds to the feeling it is trying to communicate.

Nothing has touched this film in quality so far. In fact, nothing has even seen its dust. Usually, I think less of a movie after a few days of seeing it (I'm writing this 4 days after I saw the movie for the first time) but this movie has not lost its impact.

The Coen's are back and thank God for them.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Look in any Entertainment magazine for the last few years and you will see this film under the "coming soon" section. The director had a problem getting the studio to release the picture that he wanted to be released instead of the western-shoot 'em up that they wanted. After much fighting from director Andrew Dominik and producer Brad Pitt, they released the version they originally shot. Once it was released there were mixed reviews some calling it overly long and others calling it a masterpiece.

This is the story of all the events in Jesse James' (Brad Pitt) life leading up to his murder by Robert Ford (Casey Affleck). It starts after James' last train robbery where they re-cruited a band of rag tag robbers to take over a train in this group is Charlie (Sam Rockwell) and Robert Ford (Casey Affleck). From the first moments we see that Robert Ford is obsessed with his heroes. He idolizes Jesse James and desparately wants to be like him. He knows all the similarities and he is just a slimey bag of uncertainty and want. We are also introduced to James in this scene and he is extremely charismatic and we know why he is the stuff the legends are made of. Throughout the film though we see James' decent into paranoia and Casey Afflecks realization that this god, is simply a man.

This is wonderfully portrayed by the two leads of the film: Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. I love Brad Pitt, I feel that he and George Clooney are the closest we have to the hey-days of old classic cinema. Brad Pitt is once more incredibly awesome in this film, even though he is sort of just playing a toned down version of Tyler Durden in this. He is cool, calm, but at the right times, he just snaps. There is one scene that exemplfies his paranoia and explosive personality. We also see him casually except that his life is soon going to be coming to and end and probably by Bob Ford. Casey Affleck, simply, this is his year. He stole "Ocean's 13" and is supposed to be incredibly good in "Gone Baby Gone." This role though, this is his Raging Bull role. The perfect matching of actor with role. We see his disdain of how Jesse James treats him and how this hero of his is just a man. He starts out with an underlying feeling of uncertainty that grows to the realization that to be what Jesse James is, which is what he clearly wants, that he has to do something more infamous than anything James' has done. He has to kill the unkillable: he has to kill Jesse James.

Their relationship actually invokes a very biblical relationship of Jesus and Judas. In fact, this is very much a religious metaphor of the film: Jesse James is a god to the American people and here comes this man who he sort of trusts. Then Ford decides to sell out to the law. The point is also driven even more to the point during a scene where James walks on a frozen lake speaking about suicide.

This was only Dominik's second film and he has created a very worthwile film that was worth it to fight for. In parts it is a revenge film, in parts it is a character study. He knows right where to put the camera and every scene is beautifully composed and the frame is always a treat to look for. Now, the criticism about this film being overly long is valid at some points. There are a few scenes that seem to go on a minute too long and you begin to be bored (this is a very rare occassion) and he cuts to the next scene making us compelled again. The problem is that these could have simply of been tightened up by trimming seconds off of some angles, but it is a rare occasion where it drags. It doesn't matter anymore once it gets to the fantastic assassination scene. He plays it like a classic Leone mexican stand off, except James doesn't have any weaponry and it is only sounds that would naturally exist in the room. The rattling of Ford's terrorfied gun. The slight breeze from the snow. It is an exceptionally crafted scene..

In fact, this is a very well crafted film that wants to be a masterpiece so badly but just falls short into being the best movie I've seen so far this year, and not the great american masterpiece which it tries to be. Of course, if Casey Affleck doesn't get an Oscar-nomination for this film he will be criminally robbed (not saying he should win yet, but he definately deserves a nod). I'm extremely glad I saw this movie in theaters, as I thought I would only be able to see it on DVD because of the limited release. Definately a great film, but only for people who can sit down and take in everything they are seeing.

Across the Universe

During the early days of The Beatles they released three movies, a cartoon show, a documentary about their unraveling and music that changed the world of rock and roll. Undeniably the most influential band on modern rock, The Beatles are legendary. always turning out good work and breaking up before they had a chance for things to go down hill.

Then, in the late 80's the rights of the songs fell out of the hands of McCartney and the rest of The Beatles and found themselves into the hands of Michael Jackson. MJ is fast for selling any Beatle song anybody wants to use very cheaply. This made it easy for Julie Taymor (Director of "Titus", "Frida" and the stage version of "The Lion King") to make this movie which is all about how many "Beatles" songs you can cram into one movie.

The plot is Jude (Jim Sturgess) is from Liverpool, London and he comes to America to find his dad. Ends up his dad is a janitor at Princeton. At Princeton Jude meets Max (Joe Anderson), a fun loving American who hates the war. Max has a sister named Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) who hates the war as well. Jude and Lucy fall in love once Lucy, Max and Jude move into an apartment with Sadie(Dana Fuches), JoJo (Martin Luther) and Prudence (T.V. Carpio) in New York. Max gets drafted into Vietnam. From there the plot goes all wackey with Drugs, Vietnam protests, Sadie going single from her band and one Beatles song after another.

The plot is no what matters in this film at all though. The usual case is that we get about a minute or two long scene and then another song. Now, this is would not necessarily be a bad thing if the story did have every cliche of the '60's. In fact, that doesn't even make it bad. What happens is that you only connect to your actors the way you connect to a cover band: it is okay, but you want the real thing. This has been the fundamental problem of all other Beatles movies: they have been disjointed with very little substance because they are all just built around the songs. Characters are named after songs and are in there literally for one song (Prudence) or the story will take a turn into the useless for another song (Mr. Kite).

The acting in this is fairly normal. Sadly, none of the two leads stick out and are the least interesting characters in the entire movie. Joe Anderson as Max is actually very charismatic and has the best singing song out of Jude, Lucy and him. He brings out the feelings every song is trying to get at. Most notably is "With A Little Help From My Friends" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun." The two best singers in the movie are given only two or three songs: Martin Luther as Jojo and Dana Fuches as Sadie (who isn't that sexy, but has an awesome voice). These two are rock stars and kick ass in their songs. Their duet during the break up of their band is the most energetic part of the film that actually works. Luther's rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was the 2nd best part of the film and is show stopping since it is all accustic and his vocals are so soft and sweet, just how the song is supposed to be. Fuches does a really really kick ass version of "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" and "Helter Skelter." The person who really stole this film for me though was, surprisingly, Bono as Ken Kasey with a different name. He sings "I Am The Walrus" and the rest of the sequence just... kicks ass and is the high light of the film and it also marks the moment the movie starts going down hill because it is immediately followed by Eddie Izzard's "Mr. Kite" which is undeniably a trip visually, but it is an absolute terrible cover. I didn't even recognize the song until I made out that he said the words "Mr. Kite." This is the moment the movie kicks it to just wanting it to be the visuals.

The visuals are mixed between two things: the music and the dialouge. The dialouge has no feeling to the camera. It drops dead. There is nothing original there. She does the basic "point the camera and shoot" technique or she re-creates a beatles album cover for a laugh. Then there is her visuals during the music. She undeniably has an eye for this sort of stuff as every visual is tantilizing to the eye, if challenging to the brain. The problem with her visuals is that they can become comical or it has nothing to do with the song, and she just thought the visuals synched up well with the beat of the song. Truthfully, the song that most shows her pluses and her minuses is the "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" sequence. It starts out amazing strong. A terrifiying visual of Uncle Sam reaching out to Max singing "I WANT YOU!" then he gets pulled inside for training and it is the same drill sergent for everyone and they all have very goofy makeup on and I couldn't help but laugh. I mean, it is terrible when you try to make the visuals for a song that she wants to be slow and moving and people start to laugh at it, of course, they could have been laughing at her complete lack of knowledge about what the song is ("I Want To Hold Your Hand"). Then there are her amazing sequences: I AM THE WALRUS. She literally takes us through an LSD trip. Bono starts off normally and then the visuals of his body start lagging behind where he is in real space, then he becomes all negative. It is an awesome trip and a really cool scene.

But for all of the good covers, there are 2 or 3 bad covers or songs that have no use other than to be there. For a great example of a terrible cover is the rendition of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" which she decided to turn into a slow emotional song and it just doesn't work. The other terrible cover is "Mr. Kite" while Eddie Izzard has never disappointed me, I hated this sequence and it just pissed me off. "Dear Prudence" isn't a bad cover, but it is a terrible sequence that just wastes time on a useless character. Pretty much, any time it focuses on Prudence it is useless. Another sequence that was stupid/cliched was the "Hey Jude" sequence which we had been waiting for the entire movie ended up... being just another musical sequence.

The Beatles always had bad taste in movies if their films accurately show what they liked in this film and the worst criticism that I could probably give it is that it is a film that the Beatles would have liked: aka very bright and crazy colors and something to look at while tripping.

5 Favorite Directors

1) Martin Scorcese, 2)Stanley Kubrick, 3)Alfred Hitchcock, 4)Quentin Tarantino and
5)Steven Spielberg


I have wanted to be a director since I was 12. So I have studied directors, their different styles and their influences over society. So, since I'm un-original, when Kyle did a blog about his favorite directors I decided to do my own, shorter, list. Here it is. This was very difficult each director I had to judge on how many of their films I've enjoyed, who I think is the best, and who has inspired me the most to be a director

5) Steven Spielberg:

This man has rocked since his first movie "Duel" and to this day the man continues making great films. Spielberg is probably the most known director in the world. Very little people know even what a director does, but everybody knows Spielberg. His name is synonomous with great films. He has done comedies ("The Terminal") to well... any other genre. Not only has he done every genre, but everytime he does he creates a great film, if not a classic, for each genre. He has created the two best World War II films ("Schindler's List", "Saving Private Ryan"), one of the best horror films ever ("Jaws"), the best action trilogy ever (Indiana Jones trilogy), and some of the best scifi films ever ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "E.T".) Even his "bad" films are extremely entertaining and the man seems to just turn crap into gold even this late in his career. I cannot simply wait for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

4) Quentin Tarantino

The early 90's showed a great outflowing of great young directors: Rich Linklater, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez and the Coen Brothers. Some were visually oriented (Robert Rodriguez), some were dialouge oriented (Kevin Smith, Rich Linklater) there were two that had both, the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. It was a hard choice for this slot between the two, but I made my choice and it is Tarantino because well... I just perfer Tarantino. This guy knows plot structure and he knows how to manipulate it and he knows how to write great dialouge. Every line he writes pops, it is lucky he has always had great actors to surround him. I mean, this is a guy who got Harvey Keitel to produce his first film ("Reservoir Dogs") because Keitel wanted to play a role in it so badly that he was willing to do whatever possible to get it made. His use of story structure is what gained him fame and what keeps him going today. In "Reservoir Dogs" he tells us the entire story in the first scene in what seems like a simple little discussion about pop culture. Then he tells the story in chunks and allows us to become more and more involved with these characters. Pulp Fiction mixes three different story lines at one time and what appears in one scene might be totally different than what it appears. Foxy Brown... was a regular movie and the Kill Bill debacle was just that... a debacle. Then he returned to form with "Death Proof" where he messed with the formula for a slasher film and created one intense second half.

3) Alfred Hitchcock

What is there to be said about a man who has film classes dedicated to his work. He always knows what to do with the camera and he creates deep solid characters. This is a man who did two films that are set in one room and made them incredibly scary. "Rear Window" in the hands of any other man would have failed miserably. It would have lost steam very early, but Hitchcock keeps us with the character, we know all that we know, until half way through where he shows us more than the main character. From that point on we are one step ahead and it makes us more terrified for our main character concluding in the explosive finale. In Pyscho we are watching a fairly basic crime thriller for the first 30 minutes until our main character and star, who we grow to love, is murdered in the shower sequence. From that point on we are left with who we think is a very nice guy left in a crappy situation. Hitchcock did have some failures in his early career and that is why he is so low on the list for this master.

2) Stanely Kubrick

Fans of literature who feel that books need to be directly translated should HATE this man. He made his career off of being an incredible director while "mutilating books." Truthfully, while his books are bad WORD FOR WORD translations, they are great thematic translations (except for "The Shining" but that is still an incredible movie). This is a man who turned a book about the realistic chances of a nuclear war to one of the best comedies of all time ("Dr. Strangelove") and took over "Spartacus" half way through and created one of the best epics of all time. He olds, in my opinion, the award for the best scifi movie of all time: "Clockwork Orange." All of his movies are dark facinating looks at strange circumstances surrounding regular people of the world they are in and the effects of the circumstances. It is always about the characters and he has done many awesome films and even though he went out with a failure (the soft core porno wrapped as a movie "Eyes Wide Shut") he will always be known as a pure and utter genious.

1) Martin Scorcese:

Yes, Scorcese began with two bad movies, but his career really began with "Mean Streets" the first of his unofficial italian gangster trilogy. Scorcese is best when he is given a character to get to deeply know. "Mean Streets" was all about somebody who wanted to be a gangster, but couldn't, "GoodFellas" was about a middle class gangster and "Casino" was about upper class gangsters. Even though he is known for his gangster films, his best film, which is also the best movie of all time in my opinion, is "Raging Bull." Scorcese crafted such a deeply tragic film about a man who will do whatever to become the middle-class champ and once he gets it, how his life no longer has a point. This is one of his 8 collaborations with DeNiro and it gave DeNiro one of his Oscars. This film expands on everything that Scorcese had set up with "Taxi Driver" another film. Both films work as great companion pieces with each other as well as "The Last King of Comedy" and "The Aviator" but niether of these films are as good. The reason "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" work so well together though, is it shows Scorcese's great symbolism. In "Raging Bull" each boxing scene symbolized the time in his life. In fact, the scene where he throws the fight was show with flames in front of the lenses to make it seem like he was boxing in his own hell. In "Taxi Driver" there is a scene where DeNiro is on the phone begging his girlfriend to come back to him and the camera quickly focuses on the hall next to him because the phone call was "too hard to watch."

So there they are, my 5 favorite directors of all time. Go out and rent a film of theirs.

My recommendations:

5 - Spielberg - "Schindler's List"

4 - Tarantino - "Reservoir Dogs"

3 - Hitchcock - "Rear Window"

2 - Kubrick - "A Clockwork Orange"

1 - Scorcese - "Raging Bull"

Evil Dead II

So I'm reviewing "Evil Dead II" before I review "The Evil Dead." Whatever, I watched it first out of my DVD's so far. Plus, this is the best out of this series and when I say that the "Evil Dead II" is the best out of the Evil Dead trilogy it means it is the strongest of awesome visual and hysterical orgasms. Simply.

This movie recaps the first movie with the first seven minutes but it cuts out the characters who aren't necessary to its story, needed to tell you that before we began. We are told Ash came up with his girlfriend, Linda, to an abandoned cabin for spring break. There Ash discovers a strange book: The Necronomicon Ex Mortus, roughly translated, book of the dead. He plays a recording of a professor speaking passages from it and quickly the demons come and seize Linda. The rest of the movie is a manic crazy comedy as Ash tries to survive killer trees, candarian demons, rednecks, his own hand and his decapitated girlfriend.

From beginning to end, "Evil Dead II" is a visual treat with twists and turns around every single corner. I promise you, that if you haven't already seen it, you have not seen anything like this movie before. All the transitions are fluid and keep the pace of the movie constantly speedy. There is so many gags and set pieces in this crazy movie, but it never feels rushed. Everything just organically arises from the problems and rules set earlier in the first movie (and this movie). There will not be a moment where you are bored and not just staring at the screen at the bright colors or blood and gore that flies across the screen.

Not only is this movie an absolute trip, but it is hilarious. My personal favorite sequence involves Ash's fight with his hand which has become possessed by a bite from his ex-girlfriend. Of course, that isn't the only funny part. Now, not everyone is going to find it funny, but everyone should enjoy it. The comedy is very dark and arises from your ability to laugh at the ways people get attacked, dismembered, stabbed and killed.

The comedy could not have been sold by any other man that Bruce Campbell. My favorite actor of all time, Bruce Campbell has the chin and looks to be a hero and he steps up in spades. In the first movie, his character Ash was a whiney little bitch who was forced to become the hero after everybody turned into... well a candarian demon. This movie here though, this is where Ash becomes the Ash we all know and love. The bumbling hero that has know idea how to do anything but kick demon ass. His one liners are not in full swing in this movie, but they do start appearing. Most famously, "GROOVY!" Which is inserted in the perfect place.

All the great visuals though, those are in great supply from the master: Sam Raimi. The first movie put Raimi on the map as a great visionary, and this movie upped the antee. Truthfully, these are the best visuals that Raimi has ever produced. His direction is so powerful and just in your face that you have no choice but to be in shock by it. Every frame is filled with and there is almost always a joke at least in the back ground.

If you can't realize: I LOVE THIS MOVIE! Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY needs to at least see this film. If you don't like the comedy you will at least call it a visual treat. Everything is so well designed that damn... It is the perfect movie that makes me happy everytime I watch it no matter how pissed off I am.

Halloween Horror Reviews

Many people know that one of my favorite genres is horror. It was the first genre that I really got into and it lead me to my love of film. In fact, the movie that I consider being the steping stone into my love of movies is "The Creature From The Black Lagoon" when I watched the entire trilogy one night with my father on AMC's monsterfest (when it used to be good).

Many of my favorite films of all time are horror films and I always love to bust them out around this time. That, and usually there are some good horror films that come out this month. Sadly, the one I'm really looking forward to (Hatchet) was never in this area and will probably not be in this area. "30 Days of Night" is the only film that is a horror that comes out this month that I actually want to see.

So, I've decided, since I will be busting out my favorite horror films, whenever I watch one of them I will write a review of them. So, I shall note that if the film I'm reviewing is only on DVD or if it is theaters. Better yet even, if it is on DVD and getting a one night re-release somewhere close by (the only two I will possibly review that I know will be in theaters is Halloween 4 and 5).

So, enjoy my DVD reviews. I will also try to note which DVD I have and what I understand to be the best DVD.


Have a Happy Halloween,
Rob

5 Movies For The Rest Of The Year To See

So award season is just beginning and they are all starting to roll out.

Thus here is my top 5 movies to see for the rest of the year:

5) Beowulf:

I first heard about this movie two years ago. Pretty much that Crispin Glover would be playing Grendel and Angelina Jolie would be playing She in a new animated version of Beowulf. I was just excited to see that, but the thought of it being animated did not attract me at all. Then the movie was completed and I saw the trailer and heard the buzz. All I have to say is DAMN! When the trailer first began I was almost 100% convinced that everything being shown to me was live action. Then some, probably less rendered, material came on and it still looked incredible. I have read reports of people who said that they couldn't tell it was animated for about 10 minutes. I doubt it is true, but it looks like and incredible new step for animation and there are rumors of the Jusitce League movie being made that way. I believe this movie only focuses on Beowulf's struggles with Grendel and she and that they mess with the mythology a little bit, but I seriously cannot wait to see it.



4) American Gangster

I love gangster films. Denzel Washington is an incredible actor. Russel Crowe is an incredible actor. Ridley Scott kicks ass as a director. On top of everything this film about a black drug lord in the 70's being more powerful than the italian Mafia just looks incredible. It looks like a character driven gangster film as opposed to one that is all about the violence and the drugs, which many have become today. The gnagster genre has been one of the best in cinematic history giving us classics such as Public Enemy, Little Ceaser, The Godfather Parts I and II, and Goodfellas. Now a director who has never done a gangster film is taking the reins of one that has been in development hell for several years has seemed to have made another masterpiece for the genre. Can't wait.



3) There Will Be Blood

Truthfully, I'm not a big P.T. Anderson fan. Mainly, I dislike magnolia. It revels in its own strangeness, but I do feel that he knows exactly what he is doing. This movie though, this looks like this could be his best movie yet, and from the only 2 reviews of it that are out, it is supposed to the next american classic. The reviews have compared Daniel Days Lewis' performance in it to that of Orson Welle's in Citizen Kane and Robert DeNiro's in Raging Bull. Lewis has always been an incredible actor and if he is supplying the next great performance of film history, well, damn, I need to see that. On top of everything, the poster and the trailer are intense. It also stars the emo son from "Little Miss Sunshine" as a religios fanatic. This movie is all about oil and how one man will do anything to obtain the riches of oil.



2) The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford

Somebody who follows movie knews will know that this movie has been pretty much under the "COMING THIS YEAR" category for a while. It was shot. It was edited. It was four hours long. A four hour long western where it is pretty much talking? Well, that was not going to fly for a distributor. So for those years there have been many different editors and a constant struggle between the studio and the director to allow the director to tell his story. Before the final cut of the film was shown people were saying this could end up like Leone's "Once Upon A Time In America." Which had the same thing happen to it, cutting it down to a mess of a film, but when the director's cut surfaced, it was deemed a classic. There have been mixed reviews from viewers, but critics are eating this movie up and saying that Casey Affleck is a shoe-in for the supporting actor nomination.



1) No Country For Old Men

Here it is: the Coen Brother's newest film after their two flops "The Lady Killers" and "Intolerable Cruelty." From the looks of it, it could just be thier best movie yet. A man has found a large sum of money from a drug deal gone wrong and now a bunch of people are hunting him down and wanting to find him and kill him. Javier Bardem is scarey as shit in this movie. How do I know? I haven't seen the movie yet? Well, the man just scares the crap out of me in the trailer. I do not know somebody else who as actually given me that really creepy vibe just from a trailer, but damn does he do it. This movie looks really really awesome. I just can't freakin' wait.



So there it is. My top 5 for the rest of the year. For people wondering what are my top 5 so FAR this year here it is (no explanation on it, you can read the review).

1) Grindhouse

2) Knocked Up

3) Transformers

4) Superbad

5) Death at a Funeral

Good Luck Chuck

I remember when I first saw a trailer. It was R-rated. It was Dane Cook (I love Cook's stand up). It was Jessica Alba (I love Alba's body). It had a good premise and strangely enough, the first trailer was funny. Then rest of the trailers came out and I was no longer interested. So, when my friend gave me a call last night to go see it, I just wanted to see a movie. Thus, I watched it.

If you guys haven't seen the trailer... everywhere by now here is the plot:

Dane Cook plays Charlie. When he was younger he played spin the bottle, and the girl was crazy he had to go with. Thus he runs out and she casts a spell on him that the woman he would go out with would fall in love with and marry the person right after him.

Cut to him as an adult and his last girlfriend is getting married. At the wedding he meets Cam (Jessica Alba). She is a clutz, a peguin trainer/freak but for some reason he really likes her. Well, she is hot and very cut at the same time in this movie. Around this time he hears about him being a charm. The curse is true? So Charlie ends up banging every women he who wants him to. Four minute montage of Dane cook's ass and a lot of boobs. Well, he decides he really wants to go out with Cam. So he does, but he really needs to make 100% sure that it isn't true. From there on out it becomes the basic romantic comedy. Even ending with a plane scne that has become so popular since The Wedding Singer.

This movie really is just one of those movies where you aren't going to go around recommending it to people, but you aren't going to go around bashing it. It is just that type of movie where you sit down for an hour and a half and chuckle once in a while, have maybe... 2 good laughs, and just continue on with your life as if you had never seen the movie before. The best laughs involve Dane Cook in a penguin costume and the only actually belly laugh really funny moment of the film is during the credits involving Dane Cook and a stuffed penguin.

Cook and Alba both do fine jobs playing off of eachother. I actually felt that that is the reason that this film did not fall into an abysmal hell. They do genuinely have very good chemistry on the screen and work really when when they are playing opposite eachother. I mean, they both pretty much play themselves, but it is fine since it works in the movie. Then there is Dan Fogler who plays Cook's best friend, Stu. I hate this guy. In everything he does, I hate him. He is a wanna-be Belushi/Farrely and he is totaly retarded. His comedy is about on par with Dak Sheppard.

So, if you just want to blow an hour and a half of your life on this. It won't be a total waste, but it won't really be totally worth your money either. I would see it as a matinee if anything.

P.S. I also hated how this movie began. There was just something awkward about it. I'm not talking about the entire sequence I'm literally talking about the company logos and the title of the film. There was just a weird awkward chord that is struck with me and frankly, no me gusta.

Eastern Promises

Cronenberg had not made a good film since 1986's "The Fly."

Then Viggo Mortensen stepped into his life and since he has made two very good movies. The newest of which is Eastern Promises.

Eastern promises revolves around Anna (Naomi Watts), a mid-wife at the local hospital who recently had a miscarriage. One night a girl appears in the hospital and she is giving birth. The woman ends up dying, but the baby lives. Anna, in hopes for finding the babies home, takes the girl's Diary home. The girl's diary is in russian, so she asks her uncle to translate, which he refuses to do since she "robbed the dead." Anna finds the card for a restaurant in the diary. So, in hopes that it isn't just a restaurant she liked, Anna goes to the restaurant.

Which ends up to be owned by the russian mafia. On top of that, it ends up that the diary holds secrets about the russian mafia that they do not want out. All the while there is an up and coming mobster trying to get to be a full "vor" (member of the mafia), Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). He does what he is told most of the time, but he also does what he feels is best for the family or his situation.

I will just address my only problem with the movie right here, since it is a problem with the script. There are two moments in the movie that they unviel something big about a character. Something that should and WOULD change everything that is going on in this movie, but it doesn't. Those two really facts that are presented as important information end up simply being useless and one ends up creating a little bit of confusion at the end. Which, admittedly could have been what Cronenberg was going for, but I really felt detracted from this otherwise very straight forward film.

All of the acting was very good. Watts does a fine job as usual. If it wasn't for The Ring 2 I would say she always delivers a good, to very good performance and she does it once more. In fact, I would say this one is a very good performance. There is a want for that child that she lost which builds for her want for the baby to have a good life. Mortensen delivers his usual stoic performance, but he rocks at it and here is a total badass in no matter what he is doing, so it is perfectly fine by me. I hope he finally gets a oscar nod for this, but I highly doubt it. The other notable person here is Vincent Cassell. Cassell plays the son of the mob boss and he is a slimey little worm. Around papa he is a coward, around everyone else he flaunts the fact that his dad is high up in the vor.

This movie is definately Cronenberg's style. Not his old style, while that is still there, his new style is definately toned down. He is now relying even more on the actors before. While his old films where very much about excessive amounts of gore and monsters that oozed sexuality, his new ones have short spurts of violence until it builds to the big violent moment in the film, and this moment is just... wow. Cronenberg cuts out all sound but the punches and the slices from the film and it has an incredible effect. It is one of the most powerful, painful fight scenes I've ever seen. You will feel every hit, every cut and it will leave you with that feeling for a while after the movie.

This is the first movie that people are saying that can rack up some nods, and it is really good. Except for two flaws that I felt detracted from the film, this movie works in almost all of the bits. In fact, when those 2 things are unvield, it really works and you are excited to see how it develops, but it never does. One, in fact, never needed to be stated because it was brought out in the actors performance before hand. Since this is a legitamate movie in our region, it is bound to not be in the area long, so see it soon.

Death at a Funeral

Even though I love spoilers, I hate them for comedies and thank god I had not known basically... anything about this movie before I saw it. I had heard about it on Aint It Cool News and had watched one trailer. Mainly, I was sold to go see just because Frank Oz freakin' kicks ass, but after his "Stepford Wives" remake I was wondering if he could back pedal to his great off-beat comedies again.

And boy did he. In a big way. This movie will have you laughing from the opening credits until the image of the film. It is a hilarious little England-set comedy.

I can't really explain the plot here because there really isn't one. This is an ensemble character movie. Basically, Daniel (Matthew Macfayden) is trying to have a nice funeral for his older brother and things just keep getting worse and worse and worse. That is all I would ever want to tell you because that is about all I knew. Well, I knew phrases about two big gags, but they don't give it a way: "A disgusting picture involving a midget" and "An LSD trip."

This movie has a great cast of people that I was not familiar with before except for three people, one of which is the person who steals every single scene he is in. Matthew Macfayden plays the son of the father who the funeral is for. He is planning on moving out with his wife, and he is trying to write a book. He is the straight man of the movie and he works very well. Bad shit just keeps getting piled on him as the events unfold and shit hits the fan. Peter Dinklage plays the midget in the movie, as mentioned above, and he is damn funny. He is coldly manipulative and insulting and he is hilarious. Rupert Graves plays Daniel's brother, Robert. He is a great writer, but he is also selfish and stuck up. Pretty much, everyone does a fine job of bringing their character to life and they all have very funny moments. There is one man though, one man that takes the entire movie and runs with his scenes making you constantly wanting to see him again and that is Alan Tudyk as Simon. You see, Simon thought he took a valium for a headache which ended up to actually be acid and for the rest of the funeral, he is tripping balls. I won't say what he does but damn... it is funny. I do really like this guy in the stuff I've seen him in (Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball, the E! executive in Knocked Up and a doctor in 3:10 to Yuma) and I want to see him in more.

Frank Oz has got it back. After a little slip up with "The Steppford Wives" he has returned to the movies he rocks at making. This movie reminds me the most of "What About Bob?" out of his films, but with the British accents everything seem refreshing and new. I cannot wait to see Oz's next movie.

This movie was really hilarious and owns the rights as the 2nd movie to make me fall out of my seat. I won't tell you when, just go see the damn movie. It is playing at the Varsity as we speak so go!

3:10 to Yuma

"The western is dead." Many people have said it, and it has been 100% true. The last good western was Sam Raimi's "The Quick and the Dead." 12 years is much too long for a genre that gave us such great films as "Once Upon a Time in the West," "High Noon," and "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." This year seems to be a return to this genre with "The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford," "There Will Be Blood" (not a western in the traditional sence of gunslingers, but still, set in the old west), "No Country for Old Men" (a modern day western) and "3:10 To Yuma."

How could I not want to see a movie starring two of the best actors right now sparring off against eachother? Especially since it is by the director of "Walk the Line" which I thought was very good. So, I paid my 5 bucks (in gift certificates) to the worst theater around, the Cinemark, and watched Crowe and Bale play off of eachother.

The movie's story is about a man, Ben Wade (Russel Crowe), a prolific murderer and robber. He gets himself caught and needs to be escorted to a train, the 3:10 to Yuma to be exact. Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a poor rancher who needs money, joins the group that is to escort him to the train. The race is on as Wade's gang [led by his number 2, Charlie Prince (Ben Foster)] tries to catch up to them and get their leader free.

This is a fairly straightforward story to set up what is really a movie about characters. Ben Wade and Dan Evans to be exact. Even more exactly: Christian Bale and Russel Crowe. Once more, both these actors create great, depth filled characters. Crowe's Wade is a gentleman, a genuinely persuading guy, but underneath it all there is something that you can't quite put your finger on that makes him untrustworthy. Then, there are the moments he snaps and you know why he is untrustworthy: he is calculating and brutal. His straightforwardness is his way of brutally taking you down emtionally and his strength and percision with a revolver is his way of brutally killing you. Then there is Dan Evans. Dan Evans is just going for what is best in his family, no matter what the cost is. It is the only reason he is doing this, and when he is faced with difficult decisions he will always make the best one for his family, but it cannot be against the law. The scenes where these two talk with eachother, hell, when they just look at eachother are electrifying two men who have different morals but the same basic ideal of that they know what they want and will go about it their way. It is just electrifying.

James Magnold knows exactly how to capture performances. His characters are always extremely well defined and he can build a level of excitement. My problem with his directing though is that whenever it goes into action he pulls what many inexperienced action directors do: kick it to shakey cam. Unlike Paul Greengrass or Spielberg, he doesn't know how to use it properly. In fact, I was hoping the last sequence would be very suspenful, much like the sequence when Tuco and Blondie re-meet near the end of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." Sadly, it was just a big ol' action sequence. Not that wasn't a good action sequence, since the stakes are so high in this last scene it keeps our heart pumping, but that is all that pushes that scene along.

This movie is a awesome for watching two great actors spar off, but if you are looking for really original action, or suspensful action that westerns are known for, count it out. Still, definately check out this movie. It is a very good kick off to what is looking be an awesome award season.

Ratatouille

I missed this movie upon its original release, and after great reviews I was disappointed. Then, the wonderful State Theater decided to put it back in theaters. Awesome. So, I got a haircut down the street and walked over and caught a showing of it.

And I was very glad I did. Not only was this movie very funny, but it was also full of heart. You know, the type of movie that Pixar is great at. In fact, all of Pixar's movies that I have seen (the only one I haven't is Cars) they have all been very good. You know why? Because they don't greenlight movies for the money, but because they want to tell a story.

Thier newest film, which will probably win Best Animated Feature this year (only movie I can see beating it out is Beowulf, which I haven't seen yet but it looks awesome), is about a little rat named Remy (Patton Oswald) who lives in the country with his family and friends. He isn't completely happy though, because, you see, his nose is super developed and his great passion is food. Not rat food, but real legitamate food. So, when he ends up in France he goes to the retaurant where his favorite chef used to cook before, after the disappointment of losing two stars off his five stars because of a scathing review of critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole). It just so happens that on the same day, a new person has been hired that day. His name is Liguini (Lou Romano) and he is a terrible cook, but he wants to be good. When he and Remy meet, they form a partnership and restore the glory of the once great restaurant. As they are on their rise to fame though, many problems arise.

The voice acting in this is spot on. Everybody nails a perfect french accent. Especially Janeano Garofolo, who sounds nothing like herself... at all. I was constantly stuck by it. Patton Oswald gives a performance with more substance than just laughs for once, and I was very surprised. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the man's stand up and when he is in different TV shows, but I never thought he would be able to be that good. I cannot give him all the credit for the performance though, about half the time Remy is on screen he is saying nothing and the animators did an incredible job at bringing realistic emotions to the rat.

Speaking of the animation. It was the best I've ever seen. Simply watching these gorgously rendered visuals appear on screen was enough of a treat. There is incredible detail in every frame. It had a different feeling to it than anything else that had been done before. What I really must tell you is that there was some food that looked as if it was real. The amount of time they put into making sure that everything looked as real as it possibly could really paid off.

It could have only been done with the best animator on the scene right now: Brad Bird. This man seems to be able to make anything that is animated great. The Iron Giant: Great. The Incredibles: Great. Now Ratatouille. I really loved his style in this one especially. His camera movements were so elegant and very powerfully moving. No matter what if it was people chasing the rats or if it was an emotional scene, he captured every beat. The moments I especially loved was when he did the visual representations of the tastes. They were exciting, experimental and like a sence of discovery.

Ratatouille is really one of the best animated films I've ever seen and I can't wait to see Brad Bird's next film.

P.S. Sorry for the long delay on my reviews. I have about 2 more coming up: one for 3:10 to Yuma and one for Death at a Funeral.

Watchmen - The Script Review - Spoilers

For every medium there are different works that change the entire industry. Plays have Shakespeare. Films have The Jazz Singer, Birth of a Nation, and Citizen Kane. Comics have Watchmen.

Originally released as a twelve-part miniseries, Watchmen did something crazy: it gave great complex pysches to each of its characters, all while being politically relevant. Time magazine even listed it as one of the 100 best novels of last century - it was the only comic to be on the list.

Well, right after this comic came out, the movie of it was greenlit. Right after it was greenlit, visionary filmmaker Terry Gilliam took the project over. He worked on it long, and he worked on it hard but he just couldn't do it. He was famously quoted as saying that he would only do it as a 12 part television mini-series, which was a no go.

After that, great filmmaker Paul Greengrass took the project over. He had begun casting and was very far into pre-production. So far, to the point of having people from Aint It Cool News to show up at their pre-production offices and having a website. For some reason, this also ended up being debunked.

Then came 300. It was the largest grossing R-Rated film of all time, and it was very cheaply made. The director, Zack Snyder, was a very avid Watchmen fan. So much so, that he lobbied WB to let him make the movie. The first image of what we should expect from the film was inbedded in the red-band trailer for 300.

Well, I have one of his drafts (the first one the writer he chose did for him), and let me tell you this: It is close to the best adaptation we are going to get.

For those of you NOT familiar with Watchmen, it is about a group of superheros who have since been outlawed as the result of a policemen strike. It has been a while since they are out of commission. The only ones that are still allowed to legally work as heros are Dr. Manhattan (a man who can do anything and is going out with another ex-superhero, Laurie Jupiter) and the Comedian (a big, burly, brass man who is a top government employee). There is only one TRUE vigilante: RORSCHACH. He is a mentally unstable vigilante who calls his mask "his face," doesn't speak in full sentances, and will go to any length to find out what he wants. When the Comedian is killed, Rorschach enlists the help of his old companion, Dan Drieberg aka Nite Owl II, to solve the mystery of a "mask killer."

Truthfully, if you have read the comic book, you have pretty much read a much expanded version of this script. Missing from the comic book is the original group of Superhero's that aren't alive anymore. Pretty much, if a Superhero from the original doesn't help with the basic plot, they have been cut out. Which, truthfully, while it adds much more character to the comic it was not a very big deal here. We don't have the Crimebusters here either. We have "the Watchmen" and "the new Watchmen" people who have read the comic know that these are just different names. While, the Crimebusters are almost cut completely out, the 3 important ones still exist: Hollis Mason, Sally Jupiter and Edward Blake(the Comedian). "The Black Frieghter" is not in it either, but the news stand man is in there a little more. In fact, they decided that for sequences like that, that they would go universal and show soldiers and civilians from around the world worrying about the world. Personally, I thought that was a nice touch to link the entire world together, instead of just making it an american story.

My only complaint is the end, but it is very minor. If you have heard about this script, you know that Dr. Manhattan is harnessed and is made to look like he kills 3 million people, as opposed to the fake giant alien squid thing. Now, this works just as well truthfully. In fact, it drives home the idea that Dr. Manhattan is the linchpin to World Peace. I'm not saying I perfer it better, because I don't. We are not going to see the mass of mangled bodies, but I do like it. Another difference is that Dan kills Veidt. Which, in the flow of the script, works. Nothing changes the final message of the film, and gives a nice character arc to Dan.

Everything else is pretty much there, except shortened, but in a 2 hour movie, none of it feels rushed. It all clicks. In fact, I actually really loved this script and knowing that Synder is making it even MORE truthful to the comic book (The recent set pics of Manhattan shaking hands with JFK are NOT a scene in the movie, but it is in the comic) makes me realize this: on 3/9/09 we are in for one hell of a movie. Truthfully, it could end up as the best comic book movie to date.

Halloween (Minor Spoilers)

"Love Hurts." I think that that song accurately describes this movie to me. I love the original. I love what Rob Zombie has done before hand. I was even able to find enjoyment out of Halloween 2-7 (not Ressurection though). But this.... this was like watching my girlfriend cheat on me with a retarded hick with a giant labido.

As you know, this is a "re-telling" of the story of Michael Meyers. Truly, "re-telling" isn't the word. Raping? Yes. That is it. We begin the first part of the movie with Michael (Daeg Faerch). He has a hick redneck family. His sister is a whore, his dad is dead, his step-dad is an alcoholic who likes to beat him, his mother is a stripper, and they have a nice little baby. Well, mean ol' nasty kids tease Michael and he gets angry. So he decides to upgrade from murdering little animals to one of the kids who called his mommy a whore (thank god no pissing on a body). The one day, Halloween to be exact, well, he doesn't get to go trick or treating. That, well, that is over the line. So he kills step-dad, his sister and her boyfriend that she is boinking (who is wearing the William Shatner mask! OMG!) His mom comes home and sees him, Michael gets arrested and put in a pyschiatric ward.

There we meet Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). He is studying Michael and trying to get through to him. Suddenly Michael stops talking and kills a nurse when he is left alone with her. Cut to 15 years later. Loomis is still obsessed with Michael, but now he has made a book to cash in on it.

Then, on Halloween night, for no reason at all, they decide to move Michael to a different area... in the middle of the night... And we see that he is a GIANT. He kills everyone, even the guy who was always nice to him and is the one that finally made Michael be a shut off (that is right. Somebody actually pushes him to that level... but he does it nicely. He tells Michael to shut himself off from the rest of the world. To exist only in his head and thus Michael never speaks). Then Michael returns to Haddonfield to find his little sister. That is Laurie Strode, she is a babysitting and her friends are all sleeping with other guys, while Laurie watches some kids. So Michael tracks them down one by one to try to get to Laurie. Then there is the end... which I won't unviel because it IS fairly shocking if you are a Halloween fan. Something I didn't think the Weinstien's would want to do with the potential for this to be a series.

If any of you read my script review you know that I had some major problems with the script. Well, Zombie corrected them, but some are replaced by incredibly stupid ideas and he cut out some of my favorite pieces in the movie. Sorry, it is a Halloween movie, I at least wanted to see ONE P.O.V. shot that I was promised from the script. Also, I loved the murder scene with the little girls, which is cut out (sort of, it is re-worked to the bully killing). Then there are things that when I read in the script, I didn't have a problem with them, but had MAJOR problems with them in this film. Of course, Zombie also didn't get rid of Loomis' swearing which killed me a little bit more each time. One thing that I liked in the film that hadn't been introduced in any other version is Loomis' strange sort of... frienship with Michael. Which would have played off well, if they didn't have the line in there to point it out "Michael, you have sort of become... my best friend. Which shows you how fucked up my life is." I hate hate hate that line, but I did like the emotion from McDowell near the end.

Then I just straight up had problems with Zombie's direction, which I never thought I would say. His films have all been about shock value, but there has always been a build up to the violence. Not here. Suspence? Zombie says "FUCK THAT! LETS DO THAT COOL THING WHERE HE BLARE MUSIC REALLY LOUD IN AND HAVE SOMETHING RANDOMLY APPEAR ON SCREEN!" Useless... He was developing into such a fine filmmaker and I can't believe that this was his follow up.

I mean, there is really no point for there to be suspence though because since the movie moves so fast (but feels so damn slow) we have no character development. There are only two characters who are really in the entire movie and that is Michael and Loomis. Michael is played by two people in this movie: Daeg Faerch (Young) and Tyler Mane (Old). Daeg Faerch is terrible. He doesn't know how to walk a fine line between "I'm sweet" and "I'm insane." He is either one or the other. The kid also looks like he has down syndrome and is a little overweight which makes me go: How the hell did he turn into Tyler Mane? The kid from the beginning is short, overweight and terrible. Then there is old Michael: GIANT, MUSCULAR and okay. Luckily, he has no dialouge. There is still an embarrassing scene between him and Laurie. Scout Taylor-Compton takes on the role of Laurie in this movie and does, actually a fine job. She isn't given very much screen time but in the time she develops a very likable character, but when Michael is being depicted as sort of likable in the movie and loving her... well... we don't really feel scared for her. Malcolm McDowell turns in a good performance as Loomis, but not as good as he should have. It is probably because of the dialouge which, at times, was very NOT Loomis.

Oh right, I also didn't mention that the soundtrack, which has greatly enhanced Zombie's past films here is well... attrocious. While, the parts of the original score that he did use are fine, the songs he puts in are terrible. There is literally a montage before Michael kills his family where it cuts between him sitting looking out all sad, his mom stripping, and his step dad drunk... all to the song "LOVE HURTS." It is the worst moment in the film and, in any other movie would have had me laughing at how bad it was, but with this movie, it just had me angry.

Zombie has failed... and failed big time. Earlier today I sent Moriatry, of AICN, to actually give the film a chance since his review was a hate filled rant... but now I realize that that is the only reaction that should be come of this film. It doesn't just fail as a remake, but fails simply as movie.

Halo: UPDATE and SCRIPT REVIEW

P.T. Anderson, Uwe Boll, crap: all words that come to mind when one thinks of video game adapations. For some reason, nobody has found the way to do a good one yet, even though some will argue Silent Hill (which I still have not seen). So when PETER JACKSON said he would be producing a Halo movie with WETA technology and a script by Alex Garland (28 Days Later) back in 2004, the worlds first good video game movie looked as if it would be GREAT.

Jackson went on to hire a first time director: Neill Blomkamp was when problems first arrived. Well, it wasn't that he was a first time director, it was that Jackson asked for too much money for either studio that was making it to produce it. Thus Halo seemed to never be made... but Jackson kept plugging on and developing the film until they found a new distributor.

Well, with Halo 3 coming out very soon, Blomkamp was given the chance to make live action short films showing his vision for Halo...

And it is incredible. It reminds me of Terminator 2, and that is a very good thing. He has made two, and in the 2nd... well... you just have to check them out.

Arm's Race: Blomkamp's first Halo short.


Blomkamp's 2nd Halo short:


Well, I have got my hands on the first draft of the script, which, while much have been changed supposedly, there are plot points taken from it. The draft is dated 2005, so yes, it is pretty old. I will review this though in its full form, since I have no idea how much has been changed. SPOILERS:

The film opens with a flash back of Master Chief's. It is Reach and there is a large battle between Spartans (super soliders for Earth) and Elites (super soliders for the Covenant). Spartans are being killed in mass amounts. We then cut back to the modern day. The covenant has taken over a space ship called "The Pillar of Autumn." Well, they are taking it over fast. Captain Keyes, the commander of The Pillar of Autumn, unlocks Chief from the cryogenic sleep he is in. They do this so Chief can take Cortana (the ships computer) away from danger because if the covenant find it they would have directions to Earth... which is 360 degrees of bad.

So Chief breaks his way out of the Pillar of Autumn, with a bunch of other soldiers. They land on an alien world. There they are tracked down and action scene after action scene happens. In between one of the action scenes above ground, they find out that the planet is called HALO and it is religious to the Covenant. It was built by "the Forerunners" aka their gods. Halo is highly religious because well... it is the biggest baddest weapon ever created. So they get a grand idea, to go underground to find the control room of Halo and find out some information that really doesn't matter.

Once they get underground, they fight a bunch of Covenant warriors. Then they split up. While they split up, something terrible attacks the troops. Leaving them all dead.

Meanwhile, Master Chief and Cortana make their way to the controll room while kidding baddies. They get there and for some, unexplained reason, it sucks Cortana in and makes her "drunk with power." Chief sees the same world from the beginning except that there is a strange vegetation everywhere. This is the flood. It is a virus thing that swarms in numbers and digs into people, taking over their body.

Chief snaps back to reality, and now Cortana is seemingly dead, but he still takes the chip with him again. Chief then makes his way out while killing covenant and the flood.

Out of no where, Cortana returns and tells him that nothing short of apocalypse will get rid of the Flood. Chief meets the one person who is still alive on the surface, a pilot, who says that if you blow up the crashed Pillar of Autumn it will destroy Halo. Well, they do it and the only people left is Master Chief and Cortana...

BUT WAIT! They see a covenant ship and talking about going back to Earth. SEQUEL!

Not to mention there is a little thing at the end involving a "sentinal." Which are these things that are underground that is like HAL but they are more evil and fly around.

This script, if you couldn't tell by now, is VERY disappointing. Especially coming from the guy who wrote 28 Days Later. You would figure that theyere would be great character development, story and dialouge. But nope! The dialouge in this is cringe worthy with everyline. One such bit that sticks out to me is when a character that serves no purpose to the plot but to be an asshole named Captain Silva is blaming Chief for the deaths on Reach.

Cortana: Don't listen to him. He can't blame those deaths on you.

Chief: Why not? I do.

That is a lot like much of the dialouge. Really terrible dialouge that one expects to find in... well... a video game. In fact, it takes the exact same twists and turns of the video game (as I understand. I've never played it in story mode). It at least feels like it. Since I would say a good, two-thirds of the script is action sequences.

Which is the scripts redeeming quality. The action is awesome and everything a Halo fan wants to see. What is your favorite weapon and or vehicle? Well, I garuntee you it is in it. There are a lot of great set pieces in this that just... well... rock. My favorite being a fight with Ghosts involved. The problem though, is that once they get underground, which takes up a good third of the script, the action is not as exciting as in the first half until what SHOULD be the climax. The last sequence involves blood, guns, a warthog and a lot of explosions (but the way they find the warthog is stupid). But after that we have another 10 pages of action and the resolution of the film is about 2 pages, one of which being the set up for the sequel.

This entire movie actually reads as if it is one giant action sequence with horrible dialouge and story that unfolds terribly. I wish we could have seen a Halo movie of the critically hailed "Fall of Reach" but what we have is a very shallow movie that, if made in its current state, will be about as entertaining as the first Resident Evil film. Which isn't a terrible thing, that movie is simply entertaining but there are extremely stupid parts of the story and dialouge.

This script, if used in its state, would have demolished the hope for a finally great video game movie. Luckily, they have had 2 re-writes which hopefully take some good things about this and added a lot of better dialouge and story elements.

The Maltese Falcon: An Interesting Tale of the Times

"The stuff that dreams are made up." One of the only original lines from the 1941 version of Dashiell Hammet's classic mystery tale. Not many people know there were 2 other film versions before this one, one in 1931 by the same name and one in 1936 entitled "Satan Met A Lady." Recently, WB had the genious idea to release all three films in one DVD set, and guess what has two thumbs and got it for his birthday? If you said "Rob" that is correct.

The 1941 version has always been a much by myself since I saw it when I was about ten. One day I was sick from school with nothing to do, so I started flipping through the channels to discover that this old movie my dad had recently been talking about was on.

It was "The Maltese Falcon." From beginning to end I was hooked on every line, every movement, and every actor. This eventually led me to finding one of my favorite genres: Film Noir.

So when I got this DVD, I was intrigued? What would the differences be in each movie? Will they be vast, or will the others just be not as well done tellings of the novel. So I popped it in.

While watching the DVD's I realized that each film represented a distinct time in film history, and each had their own certain charm to it.

The first film I watched was the 1931 version of the film. It starred Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly (more commonly known as Brigid O'Shaugnessy). It was a bit jarring at first to be watching this film, because, well, it was much like the 1941 film. It had much of the same dialouge and was a very faithful adaptation of the book. Of course, none of the acting was as good. I mean, come on, famous version put John Huston on the map as a great director, Humphrey Bogart on the map as a leading man, Sydney Greenstreet on the map as.... Sydney Greenstreet and who can forget Peter Lorre's powerful thrust into mainstream film. But there were still two large differences, both stemming from the fact that the movie was made pre-code.

For those of you who don't know what "pre-code" means, I shall inform you. Well, very simply, it means a film made before the Hays Code took effect in 1934. What is the Hays Code? Well, it was created by the catholic church in responce to the large amount of sexual innuendos and violence that was in films during the 1920's. The 20's of course was a large time of organized crime and sexual freedom, which was largely reflected in the films of that time that made heros out of gangsters. The Catholic Church got sick of all this riff-raff and made it a law that a film must follow a certain amount of guidelines that included no blood, no sexual references and pretty much nothing bad. In 1967, as films went underground, the code was abolished for MPAA (which we now use today).

Pre-code films are often characterized by their more sexual feelings to them, and the '31 version of The Maltese Falcon has that. Bebe Daniels is seen without any clothing twice, but only from mid-cleavage up. She is much more sexually explict making broad, brazen attempts at Spade. Also, a part from the original book that does not remain in the famous film is in this film, because it was made pre-code. The scene involves Spade taking Miss Shaugnessy to the kitchen and making her strip to make sure she isn't hiding anything. While, in the '31 version she obeys and gets down to her underwear, the sequence is missing from Huston's film.

The most apparant thing about the original is an epilouge that is tacked onto the end from any other version. It involves Spade visting Shaugnessy when she is in jail. They are still in love, but Spade knows that she broke the law. The most daring moment of this film though, is when it is unvieled that Shaugnessy is pregnant with Sam's child. This would have been out of the deal of the fim had been made during the code years. It was against the Catholic church, and incredibly unheard of.

Another interesting aspect is that studios, back when the first film was made, were afraid that people wouldn't see a movie if the main character isn't likable, which in the book he is not. Thus, in the original film, Spade is played much more as a happy go lucky playboy rather than a man who wants whatever he can get as long as it helps him. He is hadsome, peppy, cracking jokes, and beaming through much of the movie. Not Spade, but Spade back then was not acceptable to the studio who needed to cash in on their star.

Then, after the code was instated, another Dashiell Hammett movie came out: THE THIN MAN. It is a tale of who rich socialities that solve a crime. It quickly became a very popular film series and WB needed a way to make money off of this. Then they remembered "hey, we have this movie here called 'The Maltese Falcon' which was written by Hammet also."

The problem was that "The Thin Man" was a comedy and that "The Maltese Falcon" was a hardboiled private eye film. So they changed around the premise to fit what they were looking for at the time, which was the next "Thin Man."

The Maltese Falcon quickly became a jewel encrusted horn. While the studio wanted this film to be big, and believed in it, they wanted to distance it from its counterpart that flopped at the box office 5 years earlier. All of the names were changed. The story behind the horn didn't change much, it just was a different object and thus, the name needed changing. Which led to it being titled "Satan Met A Lady."

While this title, in the original context of the book, would only really apply to Shaugnessy, in this version it applied to another: Gutman.

For comedic effect, they changed Gutman to a woman and made Cairo a large british man.

In fact, everything was played to comic effect in this film. Mostly broad slapstick, but the moments it really soars is when they get into some dark puns and the such. Once again, Spade was played as a playboy, but even more this time. In fact, to the point where he is hitting on a girl while he is on a date.

They also increased the role of his secretary to make her more of his romantic counterpart, thus making them a duo solving crime and in love at the same time, just as in "The Thin Man."

Then came 1941, which is historically considered a great year for film because it was the introduction of two, incredibly influetial young filmmakers: Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) and John Huston with The Maltese Falcon. Both filmmakers had never done anything in their life, but the studios were loking for young blood. They were looking for the next generation of filmmakers because the audience wanted something fresh and new.

Welles and Huston were both famous before they had done their breakthrough film. Huston was known for writing screenplays. Mainly Huston, pre-Falcon, would siimply write play and book adaptations. Welles, of course, was famous for his Mercury theater troop that performed radio plays. Most famously, they performed a live broadcast of "War of the Worlds" which caused mass panic throughout America because it was broadcast as if it were a news program (it is, in my opinion, the best of his work).

The studios that year decided to take huge chances by banking on these new directors with seemingly un-bankable images. Welles was given the better deal out of the two film makers since he directed, produced, co-wrote (evidently, evidence has said that it is a possiblity that he plagarized much of the film) and even starred. This was unheard of when the film was being made. Hell, it is almost unheard of today!

Then there was Huston, who was famously the protege of the great John Ford. In fact, without John Ford "The Maltese Falcon" would have never happened. You see, Huston was looking for a film project to direct and he wanted it to be something powerful and fresh. Something that nobody had seen before. John Ford read the novel and told Huston to "shoot the book." So one weekend, Huston went to his typist and told her to transcribe the book to movie form, and she did.

The studios were now putting an incredible amount of faith in two, until now, unproven directors with scripts where the main character was unlikable. In fact, there is a big similarity between Kane and Spade in being that they are always looking for a way to make more money. Other than that, Spade is a very different character from Kane. Spade does not care about his women, he will just use them for sex or to find out the case in the end. He isn't afraid to threaten a woman and you never, ever see Spade happy. He is always dead focused on his objective and the wheels are always turning in his head.

Originally the studio wanted to hire a different man that Bogart to play Spade, but Ford always knew that Bogart was the one, and he was right. It was a breakout role that shot him to the top of the Hollywood. This film was not only the launching pad for Bogart though. It also introduced the world to the great Sydney Greenstreet. Greenstreet had never done a film before this and was incredibly worried about how he would be recieved in it. All those worries were put to rest later that year though, when he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Gutman. This is also the film that made people aware of little bugeyed Peter Lorre. 3 stars were in the makings with film, and were only solidified with their next film they all did together: arguably the best film of all time, "Casablanca."

"The Maltese Falcon" has gone on to be an extremely influential film. Not only did it provide the film achetype of the hero, it also almost single handedly created the Film Noir genre. If you were to watch the direction, it is only the first films to use the stark contrasting shadows and it was one of the first movies to always stay one step ahead of its actors.

Such a classic story has taken us through such classic and famous moments in film history, and will remain as one of the greats for centuries to come.

"Rob Zombie's Halloween" Script Review (and a little more) SPOILERS!!!!!!!

Aw... remakes of classic horror films. Some are entertaining (Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Dawn of the Dead), two are better (The Hills Have Eyes/The Thing), but most are downright terrible (see all the others). With the success of all of these remakes, we were bound to see something that should have never EVER have happened (other than the shot-for-shot Psycho massacre) and that was a remake of HALLOWEEN. John Carpenter's classic that is widely regarded the best horror film of all time (other than Psycho), and definately the most influential horror film of all time.

In 1977, John Carpenter set out to make a film that nobody had ever seen: a movie about babysitters having sex and getting murdered by an embodiment of pure evil. Yes it sounds cheesy. Yes, Jason has done more films with same plot. But this was the first. There were only two films out at the time with comprable plots: Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both of them featuring extremely real killers in the middle of no where. Carpenter and his writing partner, Debra Hill, took this idea of somebody who could realistically be other there but set him right in the middle of suburbia. A killer right in the homes of the people who were watching? It was a terrorfying idea. Especially when the killer began as one of them, and without any warning at all snapped. Carpenter spent time developing every character so when it finally gets to the killings near the end, it is terrofying and almost as if you are watching people you know get murdered. The movie wasn't about blood and guts, it was about character and suspence with a killer that had no explanation. Halloween II explained that the main character was Michael's only sibling alive, but it kept the same feeling of the original and just made it slightly more gorey. The sequels... we don't need to talk about those.

Then, in the 90's the world had a falling out of any good horror. All we were recieved was Scream and some low budget hilarious splatter films from Peter Jackson. By the end though, the horror world heard echos of a film made by Universal and written and directed by singer/songwriter and horror movie geek: Rob Zombie. This film was entitled House of 1,000 Corpses and was causing huge controversy.

First of all, it was rated NC-17 by the MPAA, one of the first horror movies in a while to do that (now adays they shoot for NC-17 and release that as the UNRATED cut). Script changes were made throughout the production and it had gone over schedule and over budget. When they recieved the NC-17 rating, Universal dropped the picture and decided not to release it.

With such a tantalizing name as "House of 1,000 Corpses" and by such a loved metal singer, people were anxious to see the movie.

2003, a great company named Lion Gates Film picked it up and distributed it. The movie was met with bad reviews and bad fan reactions. Until it was released on VHS and DVD. It was there that the film gained momentum and grew a large cult following. The crazy characters and the feeling as if you are watching a nightmare. It was bound to happen, and this reviewer was sucked into it.... but not originally.

First I had to see "The Devil's Rejects" which was Zombie's sequel to it. He did away with all the fantasy aspects and created one of (if not THE) best horror film of the decade so far. It was disturbing, refreshing, and felt like a great 70's film. It had the music, the editing, and the story build up of a great throw back to when horror was great.

So when it was announced he would be directing the remake of Halloween, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, it was Halloween! HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?! On the other hand, Zombie had stated his love for the film many times before being hired to the project. And a remake of one of my all time favorite movies of all time (Dawn of the Dead) had been pulled off very well with somebody who had a fresh eye to it. Zombie was also able to change his style with every movie so far, so I was contented.

Until I heard he had messed it up with his script. It was basically said that the script would be in 3 parts: Michael PRE-Asylum, Michael IN asylum and "the night HE came home." Okay okay, So I could live with that as long as he didn't mess with the story that much. Maybe he would show his family being worried because he never talks and seems very removed, then show Loomis becoming obsessed with him, so on and so forth.

Details about the script started being released and, to say the least, I was unhappy.

Then I was ecstatic to get my hands on the script. This was the first time I got a script that was hadn't been made yet, that, and the film wasn't even in production! So I was going to be able to sort of see how this remake of a film that I hold in such high regards was going to be done (note: this film is more a remake of parts I and II).

So how is it and how does it stack up against the feel of the original?

(NOTE: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS AND IS OF AN EXTREMELY EARLY DRAFT)

Well... just okay.

What Zombie has really done here is shaped a film that is more a prequel to his character Otis Driftwood than to Michael Meyers. It is all about how Michael's family was a bunch of rednecks and hicks and how he was abused and hated his family.
You see, his motehr is a stripper, his real father is dead, his sister is always banging her boyfriend, and his step father abuses. Poor Michael. So sad for him.

In the very first scene in the film we see how he is already messed up as he takes out pictures of animals he has killed, plays audio of it, and masterbates in his room with "Black Sabbath" posters, cause he is evil, ya know.


We also see his school life. Michael is picked on and treated really terrible.

At school, children make fun of his mom for being a stripper and Michael snaps, beating the shit out of them. The principle finds pictures of Michael's mom that Michael has written very not nice things about her on (calling her a "whore" and a "slut"). They decide to send Michael off to a pyschiatric ward.


The next day is Halloween. After school, he follows two little girls home wearing his clown mask and takes them on a "short cut" and kills both of them. I absolutely loved this scene for two reasons: the way it was intended to be shot was from first person of Michael for a very long time, which is a Halloween trademark and it created a great deal of suspence. Michael also had NO reason to kill the little girls, except because he had a bad day, but that clearly isn't the motivation behind this. Once again, extremely Michael... then Zombie went his redneck way again and had Michael piss on their dead bodies... which killed that entire scene.

That night he is stuck at home with a clown mask, his sister fucking her boyfriend and his drunk stepdad. His mom isn't there cause she is off stripping. Michael gets the idea to kill them all. This scene, I loved from beginning to end. It does what a remake should do: stick to the original, but up the antee. It even supplies the orgin for the mask (his sister's boyfriend is wearing it when they have sex... not as stupid as it sounds when I type it here). This is, once again, first person up until the actual moment of the killings and it is really a great scene.

His mother returns home that night to see Michael covered in blood with a knife and the family dead. He is off to funny farm.

This first section of the film is what I have my main problems with. Simply for this reason: There is way too much to explain why Michael is a killing machine. Yes, the killing of the little girls is uncalled for, but that is it. Michael is a killing machine, trying to wipe out his family and whoever gets in his way of doing so. He has no explanation. He wasn't beaten, his mom wasn't a stripper. He grew up in a middle class family with middle class values. I mean, we see his parents come back in fancy clothing in the opening scene of the original. That is what has always been most scary about Michael, he comes from a neighborhood that most people do.

There he is looked over by Dr. Loomis. The scenes between Michael and Loomis are great and pop and sizzle. They are creepy and great. What Michael says, which isn't much, is creepy and very good.

We then get a montage of Michael growing up and Dr. Loomis becoming more and more aware that Michael is the embodiment of pure evil.

Michael is grown up and we discover that he has made a mask for every feeling he has... which gets to my problems with Loomis. Loomis is a dignified character that uses elegant words to express his feelings and what he is thinking. He would never say a line "even a mask for when he has to shit." Which is A) A stupid idea and B) A terrible line for Loomis. Loomis even says "fuck." I couldn't believe it. It was jarring because he had some very good dialouge, but there are moments that Zombie could do away with.

Then there is the night that Michael escapes from the Asylum. It is fast, brutal, but once more, because of something Zombie added, it is kills the mood of the scene. The way he does it is begin with a rape of a retarded girl that makes Michael very angry and he kills the two guys... as if he is doing it for good. This isn't the Michael who "has been looking forward to this date" this is a good michael who is doing the right thing... sort of. It really makes him an anti-hero in this scene, which Michael is not.

Then we get to the "night when he came home." Remember the original movie? Condence it all down to 30 to 45 minutes. Everything is the same, except without the creepy appearances of Michael. He comes and he reaks hell. Once more, Zombie knows how to create a really good, Halloween scene and then kill it.

The big climax is not just bad, it is laughable. You see, in an earlier scene when he was a child we see Michael connecting to a baby that he calls "Boo." Guess who "boo" grew up to be? That is right, Laurie Strode. It is a very good moment in the opening of the movie. Very nice foreshadowing of what is to come, but then it is blown to hell. When Michael finally confronts Laurie he starts saying "Boo" over and over again. Nothing more, nothing less. Just "Boo" "Boo" "Boo" "Boo" it is embarrassing. Especially when Michael basically begins to cry.

The film ends the same way as the original, except with home movie footage of Michael at the end.

So that is it, Rob Zombie's Halloween. Personally, there are many moments that I really liked in the script and that if Zombie cuts out certain things, will make the movie much better. He also better adapt Carpenter's style to the best of his abilities. I know that Zombie has kept the red-neck family thing, but hopefully it pans out better on the screen.

See ya next friday when he comes home once more.