Only Psychopaths Are Free

Evil Dead

Anyone who read my muddled list of favorite films knows that “Evil Dead II” is one of my favorite movies. To quote myself: “[it is] is the most awesome shit ever, and that’s about all you need to say.” Yep that sums it up. So naturally when I heard of the newest installment of what is perhaps my favorite franchises, I danced.

It’s important as well to note my relationship with the original film, “The Evil Dead”, of which this new film is a remake. I was originally introduced to the series through “Army of Darkness” and went backwards from there. So, one rainy night I snuggled up all alone in my dark basement, popped in a DVD of “The Evil Dead” and sat in rabid anticipation of what was sure to be another hilarious slapstick horror comedy.

I was caught off guard to say the least. I refuse to re-watch “The Evil Dead” ever again. Not because I’m afraid of it, but because I don’t want to taint the original effect it had on me. I have never been more frightened by a film in my life. The pacing, the originality, and most of all the inventive low budget aesthetic created a terrifying experience. To this day, it is still the only time I can recall a film actually scaring me.

Anyway, on to the remake. I didn’t expect to be scared by it, because the surprise factor of the original was no longer present, nor was the novelty. I did however expect an intense, gory, well made movie that could hopefully stand up to the rest of the series.

So, did the film succeed? Well… yes and no.

Read More

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Many have said that “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is a “Breakfast Club” for a new generation. I don’t think that’s necessarily something to aspire to, considering that the John Hughes “classic” is a shallow attempt to validate teen angst and shove children’s book level morals up the audience’s nose.

Still, I understand the comparison. Both try to provide insight into the adolescent mind, and create something relatable for their core audience, while holding a nostalgic relevance to the older generations. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” seems to be trying to remind me what it was like to be 15 again.

Except here’s the problem. Teen angst isn’t that interesting.

The film centers on Charlie (Logan Lerman) a shy and nervous 14 year old entering his first day of high school. Charlie is the wallflower of the film’s title. He doesn’t raise his hand in class, and has no social life. His only friend blew his brains out the year before.

This last detail brings up a major problem of “Perks” which is it’s use of heavy melodrama, much of which is casually brushed over, rendering it irrelevant. I suppose this wouldn’t be much a problem if the film wasn’t so overtly attempting to be “powerful”.

Read More

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

This movie is so awesome.

There’s really not much to say honestly. Literally everything you need to know is in the title of the film and it’s rating. The story focuses on Hansel and Gretel, from the Grimm fairy tale, once they’ve grown up into badass mercenary witch hunters. The movie is a hard R. So it’s violent.

If you like B-Movies, this is your flick. If you like action, pulpiness, trolls, boobs, fire, monsters, magic, flying, Peter Stormare, steampunk weaponry, more monsters, cheesy one liners and total, abject stupidity this movie is a must see.

Seriously, I love “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters”. I just like saying the title. “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters”. It’s so ridiculous, and it has literally no aspirations of being good. It reminds me of something Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson would have done back in their early days, though it’s risky to predict that this director, Tommy Wirkola, will ascend to those lofty heights. But Wirkola clearly understands the fundamentals of filmmaking and doesn’t try to make this a good movie, opting for fun instead. The movie knows what it is and it knows what it needs to deliver.

The action is technically amazing, the effects are good, the movie is funny and surprisingly well acted. The story concept is so old school in it’s hokey, old timey, drive in chic appeal. File it next to “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”, another ludicrously dumb movie that had no aspirations beyond blood and cool action. I wish we had more exploitative action movies like this, instead of the Luc Besson, Jason Statham garbage that we see multiple times a year.

That’s about all that needs to be said. There is not one legitimate discussion to be had about a movie like this, and nor should there be. If you have 90 minutes to kill, go watch this movie. It’s a blast.

4 out of 5 stars

Les Miserables

Let’s talk about Tom Hooper, the Academy Award winning director of “The Kings Speech”, which also won Best Picture and a slew of other Oscars, as well as the Emmy winning HBO Miniseries “John Adams”. He also directed “The Damned United” which was probably his best film, but no Americans watched it because fuck soccer, right?

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, right. Tom Hooper sucks. He is a pretentious and boring director who in general is not good at his job. I’ve ranted often about how overrated “The Kings Speech” is, but if one wants proof of just how dull Hooper is they should watch his latest film, “Les Miserables”.

What I mean by this is that, unless you are a masochist, you should stay as far away from this movie as possible. Yeah, I know it got nominated for Best Picture. But, anyone worth their salt should know by now that the Academy is a den of self congratulating idiots. These are the people who nominated average to horrible movies like “The Help”, “The Blind Side” and “Crash”. But, I digress. This isn’t an Oscars rant, it’s a review. So let’s explore what makes “Les Miserables” such an excruciatingly bad film.

First, let’s address exactly what Hooper does wrong here from a directorial standpoint. He has a pompous style that lacks any substance. Hooper bombards the viewer with so much stuff that none of it registers. There is no subtlety. This is a movie that wants to make you cry, but the movie never shuts up and lets the audience think. It’s so overstimulating it becomes flat.

Secondly, for some reason, in Tom Hooper’s mind, artsy cinematography is a simple formula consisting of two shots: Slow, wide angle tracking shots and canted angles. This movie is proof that nice sets, costumes and cameras all go to waste when the director is incompetent. Canted angles don’t make something edgy, or stylish. They require reason. All things in film require a reason. If Hooper was trying to portray that Jean Valjean’s perspective on life was skewed, perhaps a canted angle would work, though even then it’d be kind of stupid. But at least it’d make sense. The camera tilts so much in this film that I think the cinematographer must have been drunk.

Read More

Prometheus

I figured it was finally time to review this one.

For many, one of the year’s largest disappointments was Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus”. The anticipation from the film community was palpably high, and perhaps over done. But then again this was the Alien prequel from the original director, with Damon Lindlelof (“Lost”) writing and an all-star cast! There was no way this wasn’t going to be a great movie.

But, I must admit, I was disappointed. Then again how could I not be? This was Scott’s first foray into science fiction since “Blade Runner”, which just so happens to be my favorite movie of all time. “Blade Runner” is a movie that literally changed my life, so there was really no way “Prometheus” could ever live up to my expectations. But…

“Prometheus” was the best film of 2012.

Read More

Christopher Nolan’s Major Flaw.

I really like Christopher Nolan. He has committed himself to telling original stories in a way that keeps them mainstream and accessible, yet structures them in a nearly avant garde way. It’s quite the balancing act, and I believe it could possibly lead to him becoming one of the great directors of all time. But he’s got work to do. First of all, the fact his films are so easy to follow is a testament to his ability but also to his lack of philosophical vision. Maybe he doesn’t want to be complex, there’s not much money in density and confusion. But even the best mainstream directors in history like Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Scorsese have made movies where there is a sense of meaning, but it’s not clear what that meaning is. As Roger Ebert has said that a great film should leave you unsure of what you’ve seen. According to Ebert “You know for sure what you’ve seen after one viewing of a shallow one.”

But I think narrative maturity will come with time, and if it doesn’t, Nolan can be happy being another in a long line of James Cameron’s and Cecil B. DeMille’s. And this isn’t a bad thing and those are two directors whose company is pretty esteemed. But would Nolan rather make one of the best films of all time or one of the highest grossing films of all time? Why not both, I suppose. But the answer should be the first one. However, beyond finding the right story for the job, Nolan has one major, inexplicably Oscar-nominated, flaw that could potentially keep him from ever making his masterpiece: Bad cinematography.

Yes he’s had some nice shots in his movies I suppose, and I think his director of photography Wally Pfister is talented. The shots always look… nice, when it comes to color and focus. But they are rarely anything special. In fact often it’s downright bad.

Read More

The Watch

Low expectations are a blessing sometimes. In the case of “The Watch”, a film that many critics hated, I was caught off guard by how funny the movie was, and it almost made the movie more enjoyable, the fact that it wasn’t absolute shit.

Is “The Watch” on par with Jean Luc Godard? No. Is it on par with classic comedies like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”? “The Watch” falls into the category that many films from it’s scribe Seth Rogen tend to, gleefully stupid and immature. Just the way it should be. It takes a certain kind of talent to make a film this dumb. In fact it takes intelligence. Look at “The Big Lebowski”. It’s arguably the dumbest group of characters and plot devices ever assembled, and that is what makes it sublime brilliance.

Read More

A Response to The Greatest Films of All Time

NOTE: I’d like to please inform you that much of what I’ve written in this article no longer reflects my opinion. The content of each review and the opening paragraphs still do, but the lists themselves have changed over the past year. Click HERE for an updated list.

______________________________________________________________

Beware, beginning this article may be hazardous to your health. This is a long one people. But I like to think it’s interesting. It’s about something highly interesting to me, hopefully you find the content as interesting to read as I do to think about. I need an editor.

A couple weeks back Sight and Sound released their decennial top ten movies of all time list, the most revered “best of” list around. It polls all the important critics in the world, as well as a separate top ten for all the film directors in the world. Why I wasn’t mailed a ballot is beyond me since I meet criteria for both polls. But I’ll set aside my scorn. Sight and Sound is more trusted than the AFI 100 because it includes films from all countries not just America, which allows in some films that are absolutely essential. It’s especially more reliable than the IMBD Top 250 which loses all credibility with it’s top slot still belonging to “The Shawshank Redemption”, as well as having “Inception”, “The Dark Knight Rises”, “The Matrix” and “Fight Club” in the top twenty. It’s a flavor of the month list, where Sight and Sound is all about time honored brilliance, respecting art from all decades and recognizing what films really matter. So why then was I so infuriated by the new list? Perhaps it’s that film critics as a whole seem TOO into movie history. Now it’s not bad to know the classics, I try to watch as many older films as I can but three silent films? In the top ten all time?

Let’s break something down people, film has been around since the late 1800s, meaning we’ve got over 100 years of this awesome movie fad the kids keep talking about. Silent film as we know it makes up essentially a decade and half of this period from “Birth of a Nation” until they died out after “The Jazz Singer”. We must give these pioneers their due yes, but when you realize the NEWEST PICTURE IN THE TOP TEN CAME OUT IN 1968 there’s a problem. How did not one of Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Herzog, Altman, Forman, Soderbergh, Fincher, Scott , Alomodovar, Aronofsky, Lynch, Nolan, Malick, The Coens, Kar-Wai, Thomas Anderson, Payne, Lee (Ang or Spike), Miike, Von Trier, Tarantino or Eastwood not crack the top ten? Some of those revered names aren’t in the top 50. It was then I realized none of this mattered. The critics of the world are trapped in their mindset of schooling, the pictures of the last 50 years will someday get their due, perhaps in about four decades. It was this moment when I decided greatest films lists are pointless.

So without further ado here are my votes for the ten greatest films of all time:

Read More

The Dark Knight Rises

The failure of “The Dark Knight Rises” is that it hasn’t left much of a lasting feeling with me. This is a pretty minor quibble really, the only movies that leave big impressions are the truly great ones, like “Prometheus” which left me feeling just… empty, or the truly bad ones, like “The Hangover Pt. II” or “The Hunger Games” which I walked out of angry. But it does make my approach to reviewing it much more clinical than I first thought it would be. Is the movie good? Yeah it’s pretty good. What’s good about it? Lots of things, but unlike it’s predecessors there’s no particular aspect of it that jumps out at you (i.e Heath Ledger’s Joker).

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that “The Dark Knight Rises” is a very complete film. It’s well made, and much better paced than the first two. This is the first of the series that didn’t feel too long. The plot is immaculately conceived and locks in place well with “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”, giving the entire series a sense of closure.

Read More