For all of it’s seriousness of subject matter and consequential award show pandering (Oprah’s a producer for fuck’s sake), Precious might be the funniest film I’ve ever seen.  I’m also not trying to be ironic when I say, with all seriousness, that Precious should be studied in film schools and academic circles as an example  of how NOT to direct film drama.  I’m usually not this harsh, but Lee Daniels is a cinematic conman.

Lets get something straight, there is nothing inherently funny about this film on paper.  I take no pleasure in laughing at a morbidly obese, physically, psychologically and sexually abused, borderline illiterate, HIV positive African American teenage girl who has 2 little children, one of which has Downs Syndrome.  Sheesh.   I’m not a monster and for the sake of the story that it’s trying to tell, I really wish I felt different.  It’s not that the narrative is problematic, but how it is being told is.  You’d either have to try really hard, and thus be satirical, or otherwise be grossly incompetent as a director to illicit any laughs from this material.  But my God, the laughs.   Any scene displaying any kind of physicality, whether it be watching Precious get hit in the head with a shoe, chased with a frying pan, her falling down the stairs, or stealing a bucket of fried chicken is executed with about as much subtlety as a Looney Toons cartoon.  Part of what makes these sequences so goddamn hilarious is that their intent to illicit responses of sympathy for Precious, and abhorrence for her surroundings and social standing, are so transparent that they fail to do anything but remind the viewer of the extent in which our emotions are being manipulated.  Obviously every film manipulates the audience to varying degrees but well directed films do so without you being aware that you’re being played.  It’s not enough that the lead character has to be poor, monstrously obese, and black for you to feel sympathy for her, Daniels literally has to have Precious’ abusive mother  attempt to drop a TV on her head from the 2nd floor.  Laughter is the only recourse because besides from turning it off, it’s the only way to combat the con that is being worked over you.  Despite the honest efforts of the actors, particularly Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique, the machinations of Daniel’s emotional manipulation are just too evident to be ignored. The only way Precious’ suffering could get any worse, and have us feel any more shared societal guilt,  was if the film had a twist ending and it was revealed that all the suffering you just witnessed was just a concentration camp prisoner’s dream.

If that’s not enough for me to convince you of Daniel’s directorial cluster fuck, consider the scenes involving Precious’ escape from reality through her day dreams.  I have nothing wrong with the idea that Precious would have to retreat into some safe haven, namely her imagination, in order to deal with such a shitty existence.  However, just like the scenes of Precious’ physical abuse, it produces only sudden bursts of gut busting laughter.  Scenes with her parading herself at a fashion show, or getting kissed by the boy she has a crush on, don’t really add anything to the narrative other than the unfortunate revelation that Precious, characterised in these sequences,  is actually quite unremarkable. The content of the day dreams are so cliché that they could be from a 16 year old white girl’s diary so why should I care that they belong to Precious?  I’m assuming Daniel’s is trying to say, “Hey guys, she’s like you and me”.  Well obviously dipshit, she’s a 16 year old girl, you’re not making Frankenstein.  It is also interesting to note that these sequences were a construction of Daniel’s as they did not exist in the script, or the novel with which it was based on.  Needless to say, these sequences could all be removed from the film and absolutely nothing would be missed in terms of narrative cohesion or character development.  Once again, they exist only to manipulate the audiences’ sympathies so that when we cut back to the suffering it just hurts to watch Precious be diagnosed with HIV all that much more.  Not for me though.  It’s still a laugh.

Here’s the thing.  Precious might succeed on some surface level as a fictional representation of social inequalities, but it just fails at being a complete film. Simple as that.  Frankly I don’t care about important messages in films, and the belief that message laden films are somehow more important than regular filmic escapism is just ignorant.  There is a standard in all genres and types of filmmaking, and success thus becomes relative to those genres. In the end Precious doesn’t really match any standard beyond what you might find in an after school TV special, save for the key performances.  With all being said, and as much as I condemn Daniels for his gross incompetence, I’m eternally thankful for it.

I really want to like Kick Ass much more than I do. I’m a sucker for comic book movies, and it’s rare and far between where one is made that is even worthwhile. In a way I just wish I hated it so I could just ignore it all together. It does far more right than wrong but what it does do wrong in my opinion shits over everything the film had going for it. When you think about that previous statement it doesn’t really sound that much different than most criticisms of superhero films, but lets put this into context. Kick Ass is a 40 million dollar super hero film made entirely outside of the Hollywood studio system which means no interference from executives, no worries about McDonald Happy Meal tie ins, and no other corporate meddling which often castrate projects like these. Essentially Matthew Vaughn had the opportunity to truly make a different comic book movie, and manages to do so for about an hour until deciding he’d rather just play it safe after all.

There’s been a lot of online squabbling about Roger Ebert’s criticism of the film, where he objects to the film on moral grounds. Fanboys just think he doesn’t get it. I don’t really agree with any judgment of moral values concerning comic books, but that doesn’t mean he is completely wrong. Ebert echoes my problem of the film when he questions what exactly it is satirizing . Is it a satire on comic books, comic book movies, or our own expectations of what those things are meant to be, look like, sound like, etc? I guess so, but it’s hard to really accept that when your main character throws out a mantra as a contradictory as “With no power comes no responsibility…except that’s not true”. That’s a cock tease, pure and simple and it’s really annoying as a viewer. The whole premise of the film is that it’s insane to actually attempt to become a real world superhero. The first half of the film supports this thesis as the protagonist literally gets the shit kicked out of him while attempting to be a hero, and only really attains notoriety for being an online freak show, rather than through any feats of strength. Kick Ass as a character is essentially a joke; a wannabee Peter Parker who pretends to be gay in order to get into the pants of his high school crush. It’s a great deconstruction of the superhero archetype, for the period that it lasts at least. The other supporting superheroes all contribute to this deconstruction in varying degrees, the most noteworthy being Nicholas Cage’s homicidal take on Batman. He looks like he belongs in a modern day Batman film, yet he delivers his lines in the Adam West Batman cadence. Easily the film’s greatest contribution to cinematic history. Then you have Hit Girl, but I don’t really give a shit talking about how revolutionary an idea her character is. She’s a 12 year old girl who kills mobsters with crazy ninja-like skills and says “cock” and “cunt”. Yeah I guess so. She just kind of reminds me of what the character of Poochie was intended to be like in the Itchy and Scratchy show, just trying way too hard to be Xtreme. Not to say that she doesn’t add to the satire, but all of her hard edged-ness is kind of ruined when you think of her as a rapping kung-fu dog. So lets get to the reason why this all just goes to hell.

I won’t spoil too much for you, but long story short it jut becomes every single other comic book movie that you’ve ever seen. The heroes overcome the impossible by doing the impossible, and the one’s that die do so heroically instead of just catching a bullet to the head. Some might say “But Andrew, it’s not supposed to be realistic, it’s a comic book movie.” Fuck you. The damn movie spent an hour or so telling me otherwise. Yeah the idea of super heroes is fantastic in nature, so when you put it in a real world setting where they shouldn’t even exist they should be bound to the laws of that world. That means the guy who lies about being gay just to fuck someone shouldn’t get the girl in the end because it’s a repulsive thing to do, and you shouldn’t be able to figure out how to use a jet pack armed with twin mounted gattling guns over the course of an hour and save the day. In the end it’s still about getting the girl and being the hero and that’s makes it just really too damn mediocre to care or talk about in any more depth. Since this was a shorter review than usual, enjoy what would be the greatest superhero film of all time.

Predator 2 doesn’t get the respect it deserves.  Nowadays everyone loves to gloat about how much they all love the original and rightfully so.  As far as Schwarzenegger action vehicles from the 80’s it’s managed to hold up incredibly well.  Especially when you compare it to stuff like Red Heat or The Running Man.  The holy trinity of Schwarzenegger action films for me will always be Terminator, Predator, and Commando, however, mention Predator 2 in the same sentence as the original and for some reason the Schwarzenegger faithful will accuse you of heresy.  I really don’t understand the criticism, and whenever I’ve asked  someone to explain why they dislike it so much they can never formulate an argument more complex than it sucks because we get Danny Glover in place of Arnold.  The truth is that instead of getting Arnold’s character Dutch from the original film, we’re given Danny Glover’s detective Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon films.  How’s that for rebutting the argument?  I fucking love Predator 2 and so should you.  Here’s why:

1: Opening Sequence
The image fades in as the camera tracks over a span of jungle trees.  The density of the jungle lessens as the camera passes over the summit of the hill to reveal the hazy city of Los Angeles circa 1997; the fucking future.  What proceeds is a 7 minute opening shoot-out between Sergeant Roger Murtaugh (somehow) of the LAPD and the most crazed, coked-up Columbian drug lords ever put to screen.  I mean they fucking  use cocaine to relieve the pain of their gunshot wounds.  Oh, and then the predator shows up and skins the Columbians.  It’s the kind of scene that Paul Verhoeven would be proud of.  It’s a perfect introduction of both character and setting, and also lets the audience know that its got all the balls of the original, without needing Arnold.  It’s brilliant.

2:Cast
You’ve already heard what I think about Danny Glover.  Instead of trying to find someone to out arnold Arnold, they were smart enough to hire an actor.  Glover’s performance  just makes you believe that he can take on drug lords and investigate predator murders in his spare time.  It’s as if the film takes place in the Lethal Weapon world before Glover got “to old for this shit”. So if you got your Arnold role covered, how do you wind down the rest of the ensemble to compete with Jesse Ventura, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, and all the other nut-jobs?  You get Bill Paxton and Gary fucking Busey.  Everyone thinks that Gary Busey’s well documented insanity is something that has emerged over the last decade or so, perhaps as a direct result of starring in such c direct to DVD classics like The Gingerdead Man.  I submit to you this compilation of some of Busey’s inspired, method acting approach to working on Predator 2.  The 2:20 mark is where things get intense.

Holy shit.  Not much else to say there.  As for Paxton, he plays his usual cocksure caricature that you’ve seen in Aliens and True Lies to great effect.  However,  the true unsung acting hero in Predator 2 is Kevin Peter Hall.  In case you don’t know,  he donned the predator costume in both films.  All those subtleties in the predator’s movements and mannerisms that have contributed to the enduring popularity of the character are Hall’s doing. After all  it’s been mimicked in every subsequent shitty Alien vs Predator film, but his performance will always be the standard.

3: Action Set Pieces
This pretty much stems from the first point.  Aside from the opening sequence, I count 7 action set pieces of varying complexities and duration, concluding with the film’s mind blowing reveal.  After the opening, the Predator picks off both Jamaican and Columbian gangs in a high rise apartment building whilst interrupting a voodoo ceremony, he then kills a cop, then a Jamaican drug lord, then a bunch of armed people on a subway, then another cop, then a whole room of CIA operatives in a refrigerated slaughterhouse,  and then it proceeds to fight Danny Glover for 20minutes, all the way from the high rises of LA to the bowels of the predator’s subterranean ship.  I’ll put any one of those sequences against the best of them in the first film.  Not all of them are large fight choreography extravaganzas either.  In those cases what you don’t see is the violence, just a trickle of blood falling on concrete, a severed head dangling from the Predator’s hand as it walks away, or the ripping out of someone’s spine far off in the shadows.  So I’ll just stop these run-on sentences and leave it at it’s the balls.

4:  Ending
Thinking that he has finally defeated the Predator, Murtaugh turns around only to find himself out numbered and outgunned by a whole entourage of predators.  They look on him as a worthy opponent, and let him leave.  Before doing so, the eldest predator throws him an old musket hand gun  as a souvenir, the date 1715 inscribed on its side.  Scoff all you want, but that scene elevates the character of the predator beyond a mere sci-fi alien.  It suggests a larger story and a history that we can only begin to imagine where predators showed up all throughout mankind’s evolution to continually test their mettle.  It should have been the beginning of something much greater, but we all know how that turned out.  Thank you very much Paul W.S. Anderson.

5: Stephen Hopkins
I haven’t really talked at all about the director Stephen Hopkins.  Prior to Predator 2 he made Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, one of the series’ lesser sequels.  Since then his most famous film is the big screen adaptation of Lost in Space, a film that tried to make the case for Matt Leblanc as an action hero.  It didn’t work out in case you’re not aware.  Predator 2 however, gives the man an infinite pass of credibility.  The greatest testament to his skill as a director would be that the film feels like it takes place in the same world as the first film.  There are no great deviations in tone, structure, or style from the first film, but it’s just different enough to not be a retread.  That’s a pretty significant accomplishment.

Predator 2 came at the tail end of the great action film boom of the 1980’s.  It’s a period I greatly miss, and one that has been tarnished unfairly by current states of political correctness and hipster irony.  Unfortunately there just doesn’t seem to be any room for any studio financed,  large budget, R rated action films anymore.  Everything is PG-13 and you can’t get away with characters calling each other a” bunch of slack jawed faggots”.  Did we lose some kind of intergalactic war?

A DVD release of experimental filmmaker Francois Miron’s hallucinatory shorts? Yes please! Go order a copy right now, even if you don’t like experimental films. The disc is $25 and you can get it directly from his website Filmgrafix Productions

And for those in the Montreal area there’s a DVD launch today at the Cinematheque Quebecoise starting at 5:30 followed by a screening of Miron’s feature debut The 4th Life and his shorts.

Here’s an excerpt from The 4th Life:

Shutter Island is a good film.  It’s not a particularly memorable movie, nor is it anything that we haven’t seen before, but when Scorsese is involved you’ll at least know that it’s going to be made with a certain level of quality that is inherent just by Scorsese’s affiliation.  I usually tend to avoid talking about big, prestige films made by movie gods.  What is there to say about Scorsese that hasn’t already been said?  Even on his worst day he is still the man, and I am but a lowly cretin rummaging through his garbage at night.   I find it hard to talk shit about the man because it’s like turning your mother into the police after she stabs you.  You just gotta let that shit go.  I guess the main problem I have with Scorsese’s cinematic output post Casino, is that he’s become a big time studio filmmaker characterised by casting big stars, and working with large budgets.   I really don’t mind this, he’s earned the right to make whatever he wants, but there is one constant throughout that I just don’t understand:  Leonardo Dicaprio.

This is what Scorsese has to say about Dicaprio, taken from a recent Esquire article.  (I don’t advocate reading Esquire):

Commitment. Adventurousness. A sense of truth. An ability to hold the screen. These are among the rare qualities that make Leo Dicaprio an essential actor.  There’s an old phrase that certainly applies to Leo: The camera loves him. In other words, his presence before the camera magnetizes us instantly, draws us into a mystery, compels us to follow him… He is absolutely essential to me, to all of us, and essential to the history of movies.

Really?  Essential to the history of movies?  Who am I to argue but I just don’t see it.  Dicaprio is not a bad actor, but I can think of tons of far more deserving and capable young actors that fill Scorsese’s criteria far more effectively.  More so, the guy just doesn’t hold his own when working onscreen with far better actors.  See Gangs of New York and Daniel Day Lewis to get the gist of what I’m saying.  In Shutter Island you have a similar problem and I think it comes down to his face.  You can always tell what Dicaprio’s character is thinking because he just grimaces so goddamn much when he plays anything else other than a pretty boy.   He translates toughness by squinting his eyes and furrowing his brow with one days’ growth of beard stubble.   Look at that still above the review if you don’t believe me.   I get it, you’re intense.  What else can you do?  In hindsight, although he isn’t as grossly miscast in Shutter Island than in say Gangs,  his melodramatic tendencies give away too much too early on in the film.  I won’t spoil the twist, but Dicaprio’s performance allows you to see the mechanics of the screenplay a little too clearly.   He seems more suited to the silent film era than anything else.  As I said, I can’t pretend to know more than Scorsese does and this is more of a rant on the insistence that Dicaprio is somehow an essential actor.  The man bangs supermodels left and right.  I just don’t buy it. More on the supermodels later on.

If you haven’t seen a Scorsese film then you have a problem and I have no idea what you are doing reading this, but if you have you know what you’re in for stylistically.  If there is one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s the man’s ability to compose shots and move a camera.  I’ve read that Scorsese made this film as an homage to Kubrick’s The Shinning.  You can’t help but get a little excited by that prospect.  The most effective moments in the film are when Scorsese channels Kubrick’s cold, calculated compositions in the context of setting up the film’s more supernatural elements.   The homage is quite blatant and actually works very well.   Unfortunatel,y the narrative shifts about half way through and Scorsese ditches the Overlook Hotel overtones and goes into Shyamalan twist-ending territory.  It’s too bad, really.  There are some really great performances from essentially every cast member other than Dicaprio.  So much so that I was far more interested in the secondary characters and was disappointed that the film choose to have Dicaprio carry most of the film.  I’m complaining about a lot of things that aren’t entirely based on a qualitative assessment of the film.  I guess I was just hoping for a Scorsese horror film through and through, rather than the cinematic cock tease that the movie ends up becoming.   At the end of the day, you can say much more than I have about the film. I just don’t really care enough about the movie to get into any more detail over what works vs. what doesn’t.  I will say however that the first 20 minutes are probably the best bit of filmmaking Scorsese has done in the last 15 years.

The review is now over, and I’m going to go off on a tangent right now.  In reality the whole reasoning behind a review on Shutter Island is just to have an excuse to express this theory I’ve developed over the past 4 collaborations between Scorsese and Dicaprio.  Martin Scorsese is 5’4” tall.  Leonardo Dicaprio’s supermodel ex- girlfriends Gisele and Bar Raefeli are 5’11”, and 5’8” respectively.  That is all.

I remember the night as though it was yesterday, December 26^th 2006.  Whilst my brother and I sat down to enjoy a snifter of porto, we thought to ourselves what better way to wind down the day than to enjoy a movie.  What could possibly go wrong?  Lady In The Water is what went wrong, and it set in motion what was to be a brief stay in the hospital for yours truly.

So far I’ve reviewed a lot of “shitty” movies, but in doing so I’ve always looked for something worthy of critical reassessment, the silver lining to the shit cloud as it were.  I can say with as much certainty as I can possibly muster that Lady In The Water offers no such lining, and in reality is the worst film ever made by anyone from this galaxy.  All you really have to do is look at the opening scene of the film; it basically serves as the shit-prism in which everything else can be viewed.   Apartment building superintendent Cleveland Heep, played by Paul Giamatti, attempts to crush a bug under the sink while a family cowers in the background, screaming in terror as he tries to smash the bug.  It’s filmed in one continues take, and it goes on forever, and you really do think that it’s a joke.  Everything from the overtly stereotypical Mexican family wailing in horror at the violence being committed in front of them to a fucking bug, to Paul Giamatti’s incomprehensibly awkward Porky Pig stutter, to the camera’s static position and insistence that what you are seeing is somehow significant, all led me to believe at the time that the film was a parody.  Whether people are aware of this or not, the opening scene of every film is the most important; it sets up the tone and the visual language which will inform the rest of the film.  Think of The Godfather, The Dark Knight, Pulp Fiction, etc.  In a way this scene does just exactly that, just not in the way that benefits the narrative.  What it sets up is the same sense of disbelief that you will continuously encounter throughout the film over how goddamn stupid every single writing and directorial decision truly is.

Seeing as though I hate this film I won’t bother producing my own plot synopsis. I’ll just steal it from IMDB.

Apartment building superintendent Cleveland Heep rescues what he thinks is a young woman from the pool he maintains. When he discovers that she is actually a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the journey back to her home, he works with his tenants to protect his new friend from the creatures that are determined to keep her in our world.

That’s the plot, and in reading such a concise write up you can see that it actually isn’t bad at all, perhaps even original.  And herein lays the root of every single, cringe worthy moment in the film.  M. Night Shyamalan is so concerned with setting up a mythos to his self-constructed fairy tale that he confuses bad ideas with originality, bloating a simple idea for no other reason than to stroke his own ego as cinematic auteur.  You want proof?  The name of the mythical nymph that he saves from the pool is “Story”.  How meta.  Oh, and he also casts himself ala Hitchcock as a writer, who will one day write a book that changes the world.  You gotta be fucking kidding me.   It’s filled with horrible plot contrivances like this, but I digress.  This isn’t a review as much as it is an account of the violent bodily reaction I had to it.  There are just way too many instances of utterly offensive stupidity to fit in this measly review.  Also I find that talking about this film at length gives it too much credit.  Watching it was a waste of time, writing about it is almost a bigger waste.   I have a bad habit of not turning off movies that I don’t like because I always try and give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maybe, there will be something worthwhile.  By the end of the film I needed my whole body to hate this thing, so much so that I noticed a slight discomfort forming in my chest.  I thought nothing of it, and I went to be bed.

In the morning the pain hadn’t gone away, but had gotten worse.  Sharp stabbing pains in my chest, pains in my upper arm, I thought I might have had, or was presently having a heart attack.  I went to the clinic, they sent me to the emergency room as a precaution were they plugged me up to all kinds of Weapon-X styled machinery to measure any fluctuations in my heart beat patterns.  On day two they gave me an angiogram where they injected a dye into my blood stream and tracked the flow via a real time x-ray machine.  They tried to inject the dye several times through my arm; thankfully it worked in the last attempt.  Otherwise,  it would have had to go through an artery in my groin.

SO.  Turns out I didn’t have a heart attack, or any blocked arteries.  What I had was a virus called pericarditis which inflames the heart muscle, thus explaining the constant pain.  They put me on anti-inflammatory and eventually it all went away after a few months, with a follow up 6 months later just to make sure that it had been eradicated.  Like with many illnesses, it’s difficult to pinpoint the specific moment where one comes into contact with the contagion.  However, I don’t think that there is any question as to how I got sick; this movie is a fucking disease riddled, prostitute corpse that molested me for 2 hours, thus transferring the virus.  I don’t care if the science doesn’t add up. I know that I was the picture of health beforehand.

I’m not a Shyamalan hater.  The Sixth Sense is an effective ghost story, Unbreakable is a highly original take on superheroes, but that’s about as far as I can go in supporting his filmography.  The quality of his films seems to be directly proportional to the growth of his ego as a “writer/director/producer”.  Not many filmmakers get a marquee title above the actors’ names in the promotion for their films, and it’s gotten to his head.  He has the chops to develop concepts that regardless of execution are at least attempts at originality.  He should just learn when to shut the fuck up and maybe direct from another writer’s script whose head isn’t as far up his own ass.

Oh and that header is an actual line of a dialogue from the film.  Check mate Shyamalan.

Yeah, so that review is the first thing we’ve posted in over 2 months. You all might be wondering what we’ve been up to. Wait, does anyone still check this site out? If not, we only have outselves to blame. In the next month expect an overhaul of the short film section to include a few older projects, some more reviews, and a brand new project to premiere very shortly! (Thats what we’ve been up to, mostly).

So stay tuned, you 3 people.

Halloween 2
Written and Directed by Rob Zombie
Cinematography by Brandon Trost
Editing by Glenn Garland & Joel T Pashby.
CAST: Scout Taylor Compton, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, Tyler Mane

Let me start off by saying that I don’t envy Rob Zombie.  To many the thought of remaking John Carpenter’s original Halloween was, and still is sacrilege. Strange when you consider that the same community has no qualms with all of the shitty inferior sequels that have damaged the memory of the original Halloween far more than anything Zombie has done.  As a result, regardless of how you feel about Zombie as a filmmaker he’s been walking around with a bullseye on his head as soon as his name was attached to the project. Things didn’t get any easier once people realized that Zombie had taken their idealized image of an ethereal, faceless Michael Myers and stuck him in a trailer park with a bunch of rednecks to grow up in.  All of the classic Myers mysterious phantom evil was explained away and given a real world origin.  Oh and he cast his fucking annoying wife in it.  Needless to say the purists were unimpressed. I for one felt that the film was not so easy to dismiss. Sure it wouldn’t have hurt if he curtailed his liberal use of the word “fuck” but I will argue that of all of the numerous remakes of classic horror films in the last 10 years, Zombie’s first half of Halloween is the most cinematically experimental meditation on pop culture serial killers since Wes Craven’s The Final Nightmare.  Yeah yeah, Unmasked: The Rise of Leslie Vernon might be a better film to reference but fuck mockumentaries.  Anyone with a mini-DV camera can pull that shit off.   Unfortunately the 2nd half of the film plays it safe and reverts into full-on remake mode, whereupon Zombie feels it necessary to revere the original shot for shot.  In a way it’s almost an apology for trying to make his own film and it’s pretty infuriating to watch Zombie castrate his initial approach.  As a result you got the sense that if Zombie had another crack at the series he’d get the chance to make his own Halloween.

Halloween 2 opens with probably the worst scene of Zombie’s career, and naturally, his wife is in it.   In the scene a young Michael tells his mother that he had a dream of his mother leading a white horse looking all glowing white and angelic.  The dialogue exchange is laughably corny and when coming out of mother and son’s mouths, entirely insincere.  I started to squirm in my seat; perhaps I was wrong about the previous film and Zombie’s abilities. Thankfully adult Myers shows up in a hospital recovery ward and proceeds to stab a nurse in the head over a dozen times.  Now here’s the point.  I bet when first reading my explanation of that scene you were horrified, but then, you started to laugh at the thought of how ridiculous it sounds.  Once the laughter subsides you remember that fuck, this isn’t funny.  Most slasher films don’t want you to get to this level of realization.   Simply put, it takes the fun out of the violence.  Myer’s explosions of cruelty and blunt force trauma are prolonged and staged to the point where his actions evolve beyond murder as entertainment in a horror film.  In doing so Zombie communicates the complete and utter destructive force that the act of murder represents.  There is nothing sexy about the violence, and it punishes you for expecting it. So lets cut to the chase and say quite simply that Halloween 2 is wholly Zombie’s film.  There’s not a shred of anything Carpenter in this film and it is stronger for it. Let me count the ways.

For starters, I’ve always thought to myself when I was wee lad, what do killers like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees do when it isn’t a Halloween or a Friday the 13th?  Most of the time they happen to be dead until the night before, or they wake up from a coma, or some equally lazy plot contrivance.  Well Michael Myers in Zombie’s world walks around as a longhaired bearded hobo.  He survives off the land, and for the most part just wants to be left alone.  It’s peculiar feeling to watch Michael Myers walk alone in a field in the daylight towards Haddonfield. It’s a visual motif, which Zombie frequently uses up until Halloween day.  It’s a weird, almost private moment in which the viewer is looking at Myers as something other than just a killing machine.  It’s not sympathetic in any way, but it encapsulates Zombie’s entire approach to the film and characters; to make you look at these characters from a different perspective than we are used to.  All of this points to the question of what drives Myers, but thankfully it isn’t fully answered.   Zombie’s explanation of Myer’s psychosis is an abstraction itself.  We get scenes of Myers interacting with his dead mother leading a white horse, saying very little thankfully, and a macabre last supper attended by Myers, some weirdo ghouls, and his sister Laurie.  They aren’t the most complex visual metaphors possible, but what was the last slasher film that even attempted anything remotely resembling metaphor?  And therein lies the films greatest strength, and also it’s greatest weakness.

Zombie’s H2 is filled with great ideas but they don’t always gel as a cohesive whole.  The film can be divided up into three narratives streams:
1: Myers’ journey back to Haddonfield for his final confrontation with his sister
2: Laurie’s struggle to overcome the emotional and physical trauma she endured in the last film, as well as attempt to re-integrate into a surrogate household, all of whom were affected by the events of the first film.
3. Dr. Loomis’ attempt to capitalize on his new found fame through a tell-all book that ends up having serious ramifications for Laurie.

For starters, one most applaud Zombie for even attempting anything resembling a complex narrative structure in a slasher film.  The problem is that the Loomis storyline is the weakest of the film.  In fact, it’s kind of unnecessary.  If it wasn’t for Malcolm McDowell always welcome presence it could have sunk the entire film.  His story never really connects with what else is happening in the film until the last 20 minutes.  Loomis is too segregated from Laurie and Michael.   Instead he is immersed in his own world of celebrity book signings and late night talk show appearances.  Although the book does play significantly into Laurie’s character development, you get the sense that it could have been as easily accomplished in a single scene cameo with Loomis. It’s unfortunate, but once again, Zombie has enough sense to cast good character actors even in bit parts to at least make it interesting.

Speaking of great character actors, Brad Dourif’s portrayal of Sheriff Brackett, and his attempt to forge and maintain some semblance of familial stability after the events of the first film is fucking heartbreaking. It adds even more weight to the violence and in doing so we give a shit about Laurie, and especially Annie, and Brackett.  When was the last tim eyou didn’t want someone in a slasher film to die?  That’s usually the whole point isn’t it?  Kill off the annoying prankster and stuck-up debutant so that the audience will cheer when their heads roll.  Not the case here.  This isn’t a “fun” slasher film by any means.  Both Danielle Harris and Dourif’s performances are standouts in the film without whom, combined with the problems of Loomis’ narrative, would have probably sunk the film entirely.

The one thing I have always admired about Zombie’s work is his visual style.  He never frames his images for visual effects or jump out scares.  The compositions are always meant to convey something larger about the narrative, the characters, or the violence itself.  Take a look at the agonizingly long-take crane-shot in a scene in House of a Thousand Corpses to show the execution of a police officer, or the Sam Peckinpah styled climax to Devil’s Rejects.  He is obviously educated in cinematic stylistics beyond that of typical horror film conventions.  It’s something that has continued throughout into his Halloween films, but I do have to say I think he got fucked in this film.  Not that the compositions are any less striking, in fact they are among some of Zombie’s most compelling images, but someone fell asleep at the wheel of the blowup from Super 16mm source negative to the 35 mm answer print.  I know there is always a grain issue when blowing up from the 16 mm but it’s almost unbearable in certain scenes.  I know Zombie used the same process for Devil’s Reject’s that served him well, so I must put the blame on the film’s DP, Brandon Trost.  The guy is only a year older than I am, (son of a bitch) and he’s somehow shot over 50 fucking movies!  I guess the point that I’m trying to make here is that the grain and degrading of the image has no real function in the film.  It might feel “gritty” but it undermines Zombie’s carefully composed shots and in fact tends to just blur a lot of the night photography, which comprises a lot of the film.  I think this will definitely be limited in the transfer to DVD and HD, but in the mean time, not so impressed with Mr. Trost.

Halloween 2, although flawed, is the work of a modern horror auteur.  Can you name 3 modern horror directors who possess any singular aesthetic or narrative style though out each of their subsequent films?  We don’t live in an age of Carpenters, Cronenbergs, or Romeros any longer.  Every horror fan pines for those types of filmmakers, the ones that say “Fuck off, I’m going to make the film that I want to make”. The problem is that the same people who yearn for the good ole days of the original Halloween just want to see that same film, over and over again.  Rob Zombie makes Rob Zombie movies.  That’s not to say that you have to like the man or his films, but he is truer to the spirit of those past filmmakers than any other working American horror director today.  Make no mistake, I recognize the problems in his work, and I really wish he’d direct from a better writer’s script, but I have to respect his complete disregard for audience expectation.  And for those out there, who bitch about the sanctity of the original Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Friday the 13th, grow up.  You can always pop in the original movie and wash away the worries that Rob Zombie and the remake Gestapo have raped your childhood.

Directed by Sam Firstenberg Written by James R. Silke Cinematography by David Gurfinkel Editing by Mark Helfrich CAST: Sho Kosugi, Arthur Roberts, Ashley Ferrare, Kane Kosugi Goddamn I miss the 80’s. It’s not the clothes or the music that I give a crap about, it’s the ninjas. That’s right, ninjas: the finest of all Japanese cultural exports. From the ages of 5 to 8, all I wanted to do in life was to be a ninja, but not just any ninja. While all the kids in the schoolyard were talking about how badass Raphael and Michelangelo were, I just scoffed quietly, hooked my thumbs in the pockets of my pleather pants and walked away. You heard me right, and I have the photographic evidence to prove the pants too. I could afford to be a pretentious douche at such a young age because I knew that ninjas were more than animated turtles, they were real. The only proof I needed was a movie called Revenge of the Ninja, and a man named Sho Kosugi. There’s no way I can talk about this film from an objective point of view. It’s responsible for fucking me up pretty substantially when I was a kid to the extent that my brothers and I would throw blinding ninja powder into each others’ faces whenever one of us had let our ninja guard down. Although we didn’t have access to the secret chemical compound of real ninja blinding powder, baby powder served as a good alternative. Then there was the endless array of self-forged cardboard weaponry and Sears purchased ninja costumes, all arranged to Sho Kosugi ninja specifications. I took this shit VERY seriously. So I’m throwing objectivity out the window on this one and stating with empirical fact that Revenge of the Ninja is the definitive American made ninja film, PERIOD. Here’s why. The plot of the film is quite simple but classic nonetheless: Cho Osaki attempts to escape his awesome ninja past after his family is wiped out by rival ninjas. He escapes to America, taking his infant son with him in hopes of starting a new, non-ninja life in the US by running a Japanese doll gallery. Little does he know but his best friend Braden is using the gallery as a front to smuggle heroin into the country, hidden inside the Japanese dolls. When it is revealed that his best friend is responsible for the heroin trafficking as well as being a ninja himself, capable of hypnosis and robot diversions (I’ll explain later), our hero must take up arms one last time. After all, only a ninja can stop a ninja. I’m not going to waste any time talking about the “problems” that the film has specifically in terms of representing any non-ninja characters, whether they be minorities or women, but who gives a shit. Political correctness has no place in a ninja movie and besides it was the 80’s. It was a different time; some would say a more glorious time when people weren’t so worried about offending every cross section of society with a movie. Anyway, back to the topic of the film’s greatness. As far as action sequences go, the film is relentless. In the first couple of minutes, an entire family is wiped out by a dozen ninjas and a five year old gets a shuriken (ninja star to you laymen) in the forehead. Even by today’s standards that’s a ballsy opening. You’d think that both director Sam Firstenberg and star and martial arts choreographer Kosugi would take a break in the pacing after that one but no, for the next hour and twenty minutes if ninja’s aren’t fighting each other they’re kicking the shit out of mobsters, drowning coked-up lovers in a hot tub, and beating up countless goons who just don’t know who they’re dealing with. As Braden so eloquently puts it to the mob boss who has screwed him out of a drug payment, “Don’t fuck with the Japanese”. Indeed Braden, indeed. Unlike the legions of 80’s action films, specifically those produced by the Cannon Film Group that have been forever relegated to obscurity in gas station bargain VHS bins, Revenge is unique in that it is readily available on DVD. I would argue that this decision to “save” the film is a direct result of the quality and frequency of said action sequences. Not every sequence is a complete classic, but I dare anyone to find a better ninja climax. The final rooftop battle between Braden and Cho, a showdown that has been building up for the previous hour and 20, lasts almost 10 minutes! That’s an absurd length of time for two guys battling on a single rooftop. Kosugi and Firstenberg milk the sequence for all it’s worth, making the combatants display an array of weaponry, ranging from swords to hidden flame throwers; choreographed acrobatics that border on the absurd; and finally, the appearance of the Braden-bot (remember that robot I mentioned earlier?) The look of disbelief and pure ninja rage on Cho’s face on as the robot decoy is revealed to him is one of the standout moments of film. You just know that Braden has fucked up for the last time. Just in case you haven’t been entirely sold on how awesome this film, is I’m going to go ahead and make the claim that Chris Nolan ripped off one sequence towards the end of Revenge and incorporated it into the opening robbery sequence of The Dark Knight. I don’t care if people call me a complete idiot. Look for yourself. Simply amazing. As great as the action sequences are, they owe as much to Firstenberg and Kosugi as they do to the film’s musical composer Rob Walsh. All good action films should make you want to punch someone in the face while watching them, and Walsh’s score contributes a great deal to that sentiment. It quite simply is one of the greatest synth-scores ever made. Out of all of the hyperbolic statements in this review, I’ll stand by this one as indisputable. Now, just to ground everything before I end off here. I’m not an idiot. There is a long tradition of ninjas in Japanese martial arts films. So the question is, whether this film measures up to those films in terms of overall quality. In the context of ninja bad-assery? Yes. In overall cinematic quality? Probably not. Unfortunately, it seems to be a lot easier for a ninja film to become dated when it’s set in 1980’s California rather than 14th century feudal Japan. Somehow kimonos and ninja gear remain timeless while sweatpants and teased hair just seem out of place. Furthermore, to suggest that Firstenberg possessed a greater grasp on ninjas than Japanese filmmakers prior to Revenge would be a slap in the face to ninjas everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I love Firstenberg, Kosugi and Revenge and not even from an ironic 80’s cheese point of view. Ultimately, it’s a solid action film that is competently staged and totally self aware of what it is, and not in that post-modern bullshit way either. It’s just balls-out, ninja’s kicking the shit out of everyone they come across. There’s no way that can ever get old.

Directed by Marcus Nispel
Written by Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, Mark Wheaton
Cinematography by Daniel C. Pearl
Editing by Ken Blackwell
CAST: Jared Padalecki, Amanda Righetti, Danielle Panabacker, Derek Mears

Man, are we ever inconsistent here at Phase-Four. We promise reviews and web serials and can’t deliver on any of them. Things will change; jobs will be lost and then you will all wish we had lives to go back to. In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t really care to review films that many would consider “worth” reviewing. Don’t get me wrong, I can turn on the film snobbery at a moment’s notice, but this is not the time, and this is not the film. So here we go, Friday the 13th.

Let me start by saying that I love the Friday the 13th series even though, let’s face it horror fans, it’s an unoriginal cockroach of a franchise whose only lasting imprint on film history is Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask. It never had the originality of its predecessors such as Black Christmas, Halloween, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so why bother even reviewing it? Well, there are two things the series has done, and arguably done better than any other slasher film series: tits and kills. That’s it. That’s the secret formula to the success of the series and also why it has endeared itself to so many. Some will say that this convention is standard among all slasher films, but none have done it with as much perverse glee, or creative brutality as the Friday the 13th series (all right all right, Nightmare on Elm Street probably holds the edge on “creative” kills). Case in point, my all time favorite kill in any horror film from F13th part IV: The Final Chapter:

Ahhh. There’s just a certain “je ne sais quoi” about the series that speaks to its fans. As a result the series defies conventional criticism; you can’t kill it with bad reviews or claims of indecency, or letter writing campaigns to Paramount studios. It’s as indestructible as Jason Voorhees himself. If not even the appeals of Siskel and Ebert can stop the franchise, you know that there is something special going on. What most film reviewers forget or just simply choose to ignore, as it is too frightful a prospect to their profession, is that any qualitative summation of the film should be based on the film’s elaborate staging of sex and/or deaths. Now the ultimate question: how does it rate on the F13th sexy-kill-o-meter? Well, it’s no Final Chapter (see above link), but it delivers the goods from the get go and keeps a fairly steady progression of boobs and mayhem until the very end; no psychic battles (see part 7 for you newbies) or gimmicky locales, just straight ahead back to basics Voorhees.

For the uninitiated, all F13s follows a very simple story structure: sexy teens arrive at a summer camp for a weekend of debauchery, only to be massacred one by one by a deformed drowning victim once thought dead with mother issues, leaving the most virtuous characters (typically a scared, screaming, semi-clothed virgin running around the woods) to fend off the monster with her chastity. There have been variations on this structure, most notably a trip to New York City and outer space, but it has essentially stayed the same for the past 30 years, and this film is no different. This isn’t really a remake but more of a condensation of select narrative elements from the first four films, wherein Jason still exhibited characteristics of a human being and not a super-powered zombie, which has been the norm for the last 7 films. That’s enough of a back-story for those new to the series, so let’s get to what we all come to these films for. First off: sex. Before I begin let me just say that I’m not talking about sex and nudity as they relate to an overall state of “sexiness”. Nudity and sex in these films provide an immediate visual gratification providing the instantaneous response of “Sweet. Boobs!” It’s a typical adolescent response that we have all been conditioned to suppress, but we’re all still thinking it, so no need to get offended or pretend that it’s not true. The sex scenes in F13th aren’t erotica, but they’re not porn either; the “money shot” is always met with a machete to the taint (see F13th part 3). I’ll have more on the topic of porn a little bit later. So yeah, the film delivers on nice looking breasts of various shapes, naked and clothed alike. Someone has pointed out to me that it looks as if the filmmakers attempted to illustrate the history of the breast from all F13ths into this one film; from the 70’s natural droop to the silicone implants of today. I have chosen to believe that this is so because it’s just too awesome a theory to discredit. For this reason alone the film gets full marks in the nudie column of my F13th report card.

So what about the kills? In the past we’ve seen a knife to the back of the throat while eating a banana, being smashed up against a tree while hiding in a sleeping bag, smashing a face frozen by nitroglycerin against a table, and a cleaver to the face of a paraplegic who then gets thrown down a flight of stairs while still sitting in his wheelchair. Those are some big shoes to fill, and in a way the film can’t really compete with such an extensive backlog of kills without falling into homage territory. Unfortunately, most of the “holy shit!” kills bring to mind past films and that’s all fine, but in the end it leaves most seasoned Friday fans with a binderdundat sentiment. However, that doesn’t mean that the film fails on the killing front. While the killing set pieces are not the most creative, they are among some of the more brutal in the series. Many of the set pieces possess a kind of intimacy between killer and victim that shockingly, makes the series almost scary again. You heard me right; they found a way to make the 12th film in the ongoing series a horror film again and not just a boobs and blood parade. Of all of the things that I was expecting, nay demanding, this was something that I didn’t think was possible. However, I can’t end this discussion on kills without mentioning, in specific detail, one kill that encapsulates the whole point of this review.

SPOLIERS:
Jason stalks a topless swimmer in broad daylight. She attempts to hide from him by swimming underneath the dock. She hears heavy footsteps above her; through the cracks we see Jason slowly scanning the waterline. He sees nothing and turns away, his footsteps seemingly fading in the distance. A look of relief comes over her face. Suddenly Jason’s machete comes down through the boards of the dock, stabbing her through the top of her head, killing her instantly. He lifts his still impaled machete out of the boards; her body bobs out of the water showing her breasts one last time as he retracts the machete from her head. Just in case you missed them.

In that 15 second shot you have all the elements of the series. I really don’t think there is anywhere else to go in terms of kills in this series. It has to be the peak.

While many have criticized the series for its apparent coda of sex=death, I’ve always thought that such a critique was giving the filmmakers way too much credit. In a way it’s much too clever, it posits the belief that these films possess a critical worldview, which is ridiculous. I think there is a simpler coda and it’s one that explains why these films continue to endure, and why we love them; STUPDITY=DEATH. Watching F13th is a communal experience where most of the fun comes from shouting at the screen to people who can’t hear you, telling them to “Don’t go into the woods you jerk he just killed all of your friends!” or “Stop eating that banana you fucking hippie, he’s right behind you!” and so forth. You laugh at the bad dialogue, the bad acting, and it’s comforting to be smarter than the characters in the film. It’s unintentional slapstick brought on by budget constraints and bad filmmaking. Interestingly enough, the newer films have attempted to mimic this crudeness because, at least in my opinion, it’s what people respond to. Being legitimately scary has become an afterthought in the series seeing as though we know who will be dead from the minute they show up on screen. If the film manages to produce a scare or two then it’s all the better for it, but more than anything else it’s about shutting your brain off, and indulging in sex and death with friends. If you’ve noticed I haven’t mentioned any of the actors or filmmakers involved in this film or its predecessors, its because it isn’t really worthwhile to mention them in the context of a F13th film; they are all on board to make FRIDAY THE 13TH, there can be no real sense of authorship after 11 sequels. There are no true alternate versions or “re-imagining” of the series because it’s structure doesn’t allow for it. It just is what it is. You either accept it and love it, or accept it and avoid it. It’s like a Big Mac. Sure it’s not good for me and there are things I could consume that would improve my overall wellbeing but fuck it, its Friday the 13th and sometimes we all want/need to see pretty people get killed with a machete.