Nightmareless On Elm Street

Once upon a time in Springwood, Ohio, a child murderer got off on a technicality, so the parents of the community chased him into a boiler room and burned him alive. Years later, he returned in the dreams of their children: a horrid visage in his green and red sweater, brown hat, burned skin, and long blades sprouting out of his gloved hand. He'd torture, terrorize, and kill these children, and when they died in their dreams, they died in real life.

It was a beautiful story that went on for eight movies. It was called Nightmare On Elm Street and he was Freddy Krueger, and all was right with the world until someone decided to recreate it.

I am talking about the 2010 remake of Nightmare On Elm Street.


My problems with this movie:
1. The casting: Throughout the eight Nightmare movies and two spin-off TV shows, Freddy has always been played by Robert Englund and he owned that role. Anyone else playing Freddy is like your step-father asking you to call him "Dad" -- he can try all he likes, but it will never go over well. Jackie Haley is fantastic -- I love his character Guerrero on Human Target and I had to go looking for my socks after he rocked em off as Rorschach in Watchmen -- so it isn't that his feet aren't big enough to fill the shoes left by Englund, it's that they are the wrong shape.

2. The makeup: The scariest thing Freddy did was smile. He was always smiling -- if he was slicing you into bloody chunks, he was smiling, if he was scrapping his blades against a pipe as he stalked you through his nightmarish boiler room, he was smiling. He took so much pleasure in all his violence that it would get to you. This new Freddy doesn't smile. It may have been an acting choice by Jackie Haley, but it was probably because Freddy DOESN'T HAVE ANY FUCKING LIPS. They tried to make this new Freddy look more like a real burn victim, but he ends up looking like someone took a shaved chimp, someone of Asian decent, and Abe Sapien from Hellboy and forced them to have a fucked up three-way baby.

Old Freddy VS New Freddy









3. The plot: This marks the first Elm Street movie to out and out say that Freddy, pre-parental burning, was a child molester. In the '80s he was always just a child murderer: he killed them, but they never said anything about him touching their swimsuit areas. Somehow he was scarier when he stayed away from their no-no parts and just killed them. Maybe it's because when I think of a child molester, I think of a guy in big glasses, Members Only jacket, khaki pants, creepy mustache, and an unmarked white van: I could kick that guy's ass, no problem, and gladly, but some sick fuck who just straight up kills kids just to kill? Not so much.

4. The effects: The world of special effects has greatly improved since the '80s when Freddy first hit the scene, but these new dazzling effects somehow look even less real.

5. The scares: A character would walk around a corner and I knew Freddy would be there, and he'd be there. Predictable.

Things that were okay, I guess:
1. The casting: The girls in it were pretty.

2. The origins: The homages to the original film did make me geek out a little, but not much.

3. The plot: Even though it made him less scary, the whole Freddy-is-a-sex-offender angle was a new take on the series and I applaud the writers for trying to take a new approach to an old classic, even if it didn't work.

4. The effects: Freddy shoving his bladed fingers through someone's head has never looked so cool.

5. The scares: There were a couple of moments when a character would walk around a corner and I knew Freddy would be there, but they'd get around the corner and he wouldn't be there... but then they'd turn around and he'd be there. Surprising.

Your better off watching the original series. For some real chills, watch Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) followed by New Nightmare.

2.3 stars and an offer of free candy if you get in the back of my van.

P.S. The remake was made without Wes Craven's blessing. That right there should be enough to dissuade any horror fan.

Green Hornet

The Green Hornet has about as much intellectual stimulation as the popcorn I ate while watching it, but like the popcorn, it is buttery, delicious, and fun.

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, your average playboy millionaire who decides to start fighting crime after his father accuses him of being a failure and dies. Seth Rogen approaches the part with his normal stoner/slacker style, and for the most part, it works out well for him. Together with Kato, his right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime, he takes to the streets in a pimped-out Chrysler (yo dawg, I heard you like machine guns, so we put machine guns in your cars so you can kill while you drive), posing as a theatrical criminal in order to trick the underworld.

As funny as Seth Rogen is as the lazy and underachieving Britt Reid, that one trick pony only has so many performances left before audiences are going to get tired of rooting for the pudgy, Jewish, stoned underdog, but Green Hornet was a great first step away from the bong-boy and into a real action hero role. The few fight scenes he has, he literally kicks ass.

What was really surprising about Rogen in this picture was not his performance but just the fact that he was such a goddamn fucking workhorse. In addition to starring in it he co-wrote, co-produced, and even did some of the casting.

Jay Chou, who is apparently a huge pop star over in Taiwan, plays Kato, Britt Reid's right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime. As Kato (the part formerly played by Bruce Lee), Jay takes the term "action star" and punches it straight in the balls and makes it his bitch. I hope to see more of him. He made a great straight man for Rogen's goofball antics.

The movie has lots of laughs, goes for gizzard when it comes to fight sequences, and the black Chrysler they drive around in, dubbed Black Beauty, just about made me jizz all over the already-sticky theater floor.

While it may not be the kind of flick that makes you think, it did prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I need a tiny Asian sidekick.

3.5 Stars.

Full Frontal Disappointment

I am sorry I haven't been posting movie reviews as often as I was before. It's because I fell into a hole, a hole scientists call the first 7 seasons of The X-Files.

How was I to get myself out of this hole? How was I to return to my endearing trait of obsessively watching movies? The answer was simple. "No shit," I hear you say. "Just watch the X-Files movie."

That is stupid! If we were in the same room, I would point and laugh at you for being so stupid. The obvious answer was to watch a movie starring David Duchovny, kind of like how heroin addicts ween themselves off the H by doing meth.

My Netflix Instant choices were limited in the way of Duchovny. My options were Return To Me, a romantic comedy where Duchovny falls in love with Minnie Driver, or Full Frontal. I choose Full Frontal because it had a better name, and because I didn't feel like watching someone fall in love with Minnie Driver because NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO LOVE MINNIE DRIVER BUT ME!

I should have attempted to keep the raging beast that is my jealousy under control and watched Return To Me, as Full Frontal was a waste of time.

It is the story of several Hollywood types and how their lives crisscross, shot in a documentary style. So it's Crash, but without the depth brought on by racial overtones, and shot in a documentary style.

The movie tries to provide us with a window into the lives of these characters, and it does this well with the natural light, hand held cameras, and the improvisations of the actors. The problem is that it's done too well: it's just like real life, but the problem is that real life is boring. I don't want to see David Hyde Peirce get fired and then go home and have a beer, I want to see him get fired and then get mud on his nice new slacks when a cab drives too close to the curb and splashes a puddle on him. I want to see him get fired and then go fuck a whore. I want to see him get fired, slam his badge down on a desk and shout "FUCK YOU, I PLAY BY MY OWN RULES AND I AM GOING TO FIND THAT BOMB."

The movie looked so good on paper: Steven Soderbergh directing (Oceans 11, 12 and 13), Julia Roberts (Eat Pray Love), David Hyde Pierce (Fraiser), David Duchvony, and a whole slew of other notable actors from TV and movies, but it just didn't pan out on screen.

It was boring, and to top it all off David Duchovny wasn't even on screen for that long, and most of his dialogue was him trying to convince a masseuses to give him a happy ending while he wears a plastic bag over his head (and before you ask, no, they don't show us that scene).

2.5 stars.

I'm going to go see if Agent Scully has given birth to that alien baby yet.

Black Swan

I am, sad to say, your typical American movie-goer. Give me blood, blades, and babes and I will happily sit and munch on over-buttered popcorn 'til my lungs grow too fat to breathe. Give me a plot more complex than a bus that can't stop because it has a bomb on it and I start getting a headache and looking at my watch.

I saw Black Swan and did not look at my watch once.

I know that sounds like I am comparing the cerebral art work that is Black Swan to that of the mental pig slop that is Speed, but that is not what I mean. I mean that I was so enraptured by this film, my head was so filled with the plot twists and the visual symphony of it all, that I had no time for an ache and no thought of my watch.

College theses will be written about this movie, DVD copies will circulate around film school classes like wildfire. It is a movie that deserves to be studied.

Natalie Portman (Garden State, the Star Wars films that must not be named) plays Nina the ballerina, a fragile young woman who has just been cast in Swan Lake as the graceful and poised White Swan and as the lustful and dark Black Swan, a role she has trouble getting into, until her own dark side boils and rises to the top. Portman plays the part with frightening accuracy and sensitivity.

That is the plot in its simplest form, but there is so much more, so many subplots with their own layers of subtext. Watching the movie is like playing with those Russian dolls: every time you peel back a layer you find another doll staring at you.

The movie is dark, but not "dark" as in "twisted," but "dark" as in the way night feels.

Director Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, The Fountain, Requiem for A Dream ) uses all the senses to paint a magnificent picture; his use of light and dark, CGI, mirrors, music, and makeup all weave together seamlessly to transport you into the world of one persons mental breakdown.

I had heard this movie was a mind fuck: I went in expecting my brain to be battered with metaphors and abstract representation like it was when I watched Mulholland Dr.(that movie DID give me a headache) but it wasn't, it was chased by sexual energy as it was led through a psychological maze that was complicated enough to keep the mind reeling but straightforward enough that it never got too lost.

I will see it again.

5 stars

Oh, and it has this awesome lesbian scene in it.

Tron: Legacy

I saw Tron: Legacy in 3D at a midnight screening and HOLY FUCK IT WAS NEAT-O.

Now, I am a bit of a geek (if by "a bit of a geek," you mean "a huge mega-geek"), so I get all tingly in my pants any time Hollywood tosses a bone to anything remotely nerdy. I mean, I saw G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in theaters, I paid money to see it. If knowing is half the battle, I really hope the other half has nothing to do with Marlon Wayans.

So needless to say I got doe-eyed and hopeful when I heard they had a new Tron on the table and my little nerd heart got excited when it heard that Jeff Bridges would be returning and other parts of my body got excited when I saw Olivia Wilde in her Tron suit.

Jeff Bridges returns, playing the charismatic, kinda hippy-ish and goofy The Dude, I mean The Dude plays Kevin Flynn, I mean Kevin Flynn is The Dude, I mean...Jeff Bridges is awesome.

It has been awhile since Kevin Flynn got downloaded onto a computer, he has started a hugely successful software business and has had a kid, Sam, but he disappears one night and no one can find him.

Twenty-years-later Sam is played by Garrett Hedlund. Sam is kind of a bitter about the whole being-abandoned-by-his-father thing and Hedlund plays him with a nice touch of anger and rebellion.

Sam gets sucked into the grid, just like his father, and,just like his father, is forced to play in "the Games." If you saw the first Tron, you remember that "the Games" was when they would force you to throw discs at your opponent or ride around on a crappy CGI motorcycle. It's pretty much the same in the new Tron except A BILLION TIMES MORE AWESOME because they are all amped up on new technology and in 3D.

Sam meets a guy who looks exactly like his father, except it isn't his father, it is a clone his father created named Clu (played by Jeff Bridges.) Clu runs the grid and guess what? He is evil.

Sam gets rescued by Quorra, a bad ass and kind of dorky program played by Olivia Wilde who is a bad ass dork. She takes him to his real father who has been hiding for 20 years after Clu betrayed him and trapped him in the computer.

The script is very well done: action packed, thought provoking, funny. The club scene (where Daft Punk makes a cameo) had me laughing like a madman and the fight scenes took my breath away. They didn't play up the romantic sparks between Sam and Quorra, which actually gave it some room to grow.

The special effects, like I said, were awesome. the only thing that didn't quite click was Clu, who was played by the 60-year-old Jeff Bridges but digitally altered to look like the 30-year-old Jeff Bridges, it is pretty good, but something just felt off and was just a tad creepy, but then again Clu is the bad guy so maybe it is a good thing that he is just a bit off and creepy.

Daft Punk did the soundtrack. I am not too wild about electronica, if my music doesn't have an electric guitar or a singer who drinks Jack Daniels I tend to tune out, but Daft Punk is a rare exception to this rule as their beats are hypnotic, tantalizing, and -- given that most of the movie takes place inside a computer -- entirely fitting.

The movie is amazing: the combination of great acting, fantastic story, and mind blowing special effects make for a heady brew of joy juice. I only hope Disney doesn't fuck it up by doing direct-to-DVD sequels or a shitty animated series or something.

4.6 Discs.

Wax On Waxworks

I have a very limited budget; actually, to have a budget you have to have money, so I have neither. My movie viewing selection is pretty much limited to what ever is on Netflix Instant, so I can watch all the crap movies I want (which would explain why I watched Timerider: The Adventures of Lyle Swan) but every once in awhile I stumble on some forgotten gem, something that was too weird or wonderful to have lasted for very long in the minds of the general masses.

I present to you two such movies, Waxworks and Waxworks II: Lost In Time.

(It should pretty much go without saying that my review of Waxworks II will essentially spoil the ending to Waxworks. I highly recommend you watch the movies anyway because they are awesome.)

In Waxworks, Mark, Sarah, and their rich, posh, preppy friends get invited to a waxworks museum that has opened up in the middle of the neighborhood, in the middle of the night. The place is run by Mr. Lincoln (played by David Warner, who is the Alan Rickman you get when you can't afford Alan Rickman)and a tiny dwarf (played by the little person who played Alf on "ALF.") Mark and Sarah quickly discover that when you step beyond the velvet rope, the wax scenes become real and you are suddenly mug to mug with a werewolf or Dracula or a zombie.

Mark and Sarah beat it out of there before the monsters get the best of them, but they are followed by the disembodied hand of one of the aforementioned zombies.

And so ends Waxworks.

Waxworks II: Lost In Time picks up from there. Sarah gets followed home by the zombie hand and it beats her father to death with a hammer. Sadly the police, lawyers, and other members of the legal system don't really buy into the whole "wax figures came to life and killed my father" defense. After finding a compass that allows them to travel through time, it is up to Mark and Sarah to track down some evidence that will prove they are telling the truth.

The Waxworks movies are that rare blend of horror and comedy, giggles and guts; it reminded me of the first time I watched Evil Dead 2. Also, how many movies can you think of that have sword fights, zombies, Godzilla, and aliens?

In both movies the various wax scenes and moments in time come off as a little spoofy, but only a little. It is more like the director, Anthony Hickox, wanted to do tiny remakes of various horror and sci-fi movies but just didn't have the budget. They are funny, but kind of loving in a way.

None of the actors in either movie (with the notable exceptions of David Warner, David Carradine, and Bruce Campbell) went on to anything bigger than an episode of "Law and Order" and the director and writer Anthony Hickox's big follow-up was Hellraiser 3. Still, for a brief moment, they gathered to make something kind of hilarious and totally weird.

3.9 Stars

A Double Feature In Three Dimensions

Little known fact: any two movies at the theater can be a double feature as long as you sneak into one of them.



Tangled is the story of Rapunzel... sort of. Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) has lived her entire life in a secret tower, and her only friends are her pet chameleon and Mother Gothel, a woman Rapunzel believes is her mother, but is a mean bitch who has kept the girl hidden away because of the healing powers her hair possesses. Her curiosity gets the better of her when she meets Flynn, a robber on the run from the law, together they venture to the kingdom to see the floating lights that appear every year on her birthday.

The movie is very entertaining, especially the chameleon and the palace guard horse that tracks the lead characters like a bloodhound (not a metaphor.)

The songs are completely forgettable, and I am being literal: I cannot remember a single lyric from any one of the songs. They aren't even long enough to be considered real songs, it's like the music guy at Disney realized he'd forgotten to write any songs before the thing went into production and so he jotted the lyrics down on a napkin during a twenty-minute lunch break.

Disney finally proves that it is still in the fucking game when it comes to animation. For many long years, anything Disney did kind of got steam-rolled under the mighty Pixar machine, and while Tangled isn't quite as good as Wall-E or Toy Story, it is miles above some of the direct-to-DVD schlock Disney has been pumping out like toxic sludge. For once the 3D actually enhanced the quality, embedding the watcher in the scenery instead of just presenting it.

The cast was par, as in not sub-par, except Zachery Levi (Chuck), who voiced Flynn, he brought the comedy up to another level. His every line had me giggling, his timing and delivery are priceless.

Tangled gets 3.8 stars.

Up next is Megamind.

Megamind (Will Ferrell, Elf, Anchorman, SNL) is an alien who was sent to Earth as a baby when his planet was blown into chunks. Unfortunately his spaceship lands, not in Kansas, but in a prison, and the inmates raise him to be a villain. He does the usual evil-doer things, has a lair, a Minion (David Cross, Year One, Kung Fu Panda)and his enemy, superhero Megaman (voiced by Brad Pitt, Ocean's 11-13.) When Megamind destroys Megaman, what will he do? How will his life change? When he looks in the mirror will he like the giant blue head that stares back at him?

I love any movie that lets you peek behind the cape and get a look at the real person and their life, whether it is Megamind or Watchmen or... well, I guess it is really only the two, but still, it is incredibly interesting to see how these people tick.

The awkward social mess that Will Ferrell usually lends itself very well to this animated caper. If it had been live action and he had been playing some kind of football star, I am sure I would have been throwing things at the screen, but as an animated super villain with a giant blue head, he had me laughing.

Tina Fey, who plays the love interest Roxanne Ricthi, is freaking hilarious. I cannot say that enough, she is freaking hilarious.

In fact, they are all freaking hilarious: Jonah Jill, David Cross, all of them except Brad Pitt. Maybe his character wasn't meant to be funny, maybe it just wasn't great writing, or maybe it was just bad acting; either way it felt like Brad phoned it in a little with that one.

The animation is good, not great, but better than most of the other animated movies Dreamworks spits out. The 3D didn't really add anything to it, but seeing as how I didn't pay for my ticket, I'll let that slide.

Megamind gets 3.6 stars