Disappointing!

***click the image above for more photos***

Freddy Krueger has sliced and diced his way across Elm Street and the Dreamscape enough times to ingrain himself in pop culture, possibly forever. Despite this, it seems like many teens today are not actually familiar with his work. This was most likely the reason “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was remade. Unfortunately, director Samuel Bayer, known for his music videos, has created a tame version of the original fright flick that is easily the weakest film in the Elm Street franchise. Sorry “Final Nightmare,” there’s a new ‘champ’ in town.

If you don’t already know what the film is about, it involves a group of teenagers (Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy) who are stalked in their dreams by a horribly burned gerbil of a man wielding finger-knives and a Christmas sweater. Originally played by Robert Englund, Krueger was a sharp-tongued maniac with a playful sense of violence. Under the helm of Jackie Earle Haley, however, the remade killer lacks everything that made Krueger a fun and interesting villain. What’s worse is that he’s not scary in the slightest. Without all the one-liners Krueger was famous for, this film’s monster loses much of its insanity and reverts instead to a mopey caricature, lashing out at kids who can’t put up a real fight.

Most people probably won’t consider slashers or the slasher genre in general to be fun and playful, but they should. After all, they’re about teens running around, partying, having sex, making bad decisions, and then dying because of it all. These films are funny, sometimes stupid, and always gory. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is none of these things. From beginning to end, it’s all one big sob story you really don’t care to listen to. There is no emotion to connect with and none of the subversive elements that made the original series get under your skin. This is bare-bones Elm Street if there ever was one, stripped of everything, even scares.

Speaking of the film’s fright factor, there really isn’t one. Recycled moments from the original film are thrown out there, though they never last as long as they should. One scene does do its predecessor justice, and could have possibly set the scene for a great and gruesome movie, but in the end it stands alone.

Though the film isn’t scary, it might make you jump from sheer volume. All the pop-up scares are accompanied by excessively loud noises that force you to cringe. It is effective, at first, but quickly gets annoying. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, considering the fact that Michael Bay is one of the producers. And no, I don’t think that was below the belt.

This new version does prove effective in one sense, it reminds us how the classic stands on its own and needs no modern re-hashing.  Even Hollywood tricks and big budgets aren’t able to spin the story in a fresh, new way. This is unfortunate, and one can only hope that the remake won’t ruin the series for anyone unlucky enough to have it as an introduction to Freddy’s fucked up world.

After.Life is a movie about death, life, and the transition from life to death. We are introduced to Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) and Paul Coleman (Justin Long).  It is obvious Anna really is not happy with her life. She’s a school teacher who has a special student named Jack (Chandler Canterbury) who is a little disturbed.  Anna is heading to a funeral when we first meet the somewhat creepy undertaker, Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson). After the funeral, Anna goes to meet Paul at a local restaurant, where we learn that Paul is planning on proposing to Anna. Paul lures her to the restaurant by telling her he received a promotion which means he will have to move. Anna comes to the conclusion that  Paul is leaving her. Anna, upset and distraught, drives away in a bad thunderstorm with the rain coming down hard and is not really concentrating on what is happening around her – she tries to dial her cell phone,  not realizing that there’s a van in the other lane, and encounters a brilliant flash of light.

We cut to Anna waking up and wondering where she is,  the undertaker informs her that she is now dead. But, she’s wide awake and talking to him, wondering how she can be dead and still be talking to him. Deacon alerts her that he has a “gift” that allows him to help the recently deceased in their transition to the after life. Oh, to be so bold, director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo introduced the “I can talk to dead people” bit.

Paul  is searching for Anna, and has no idea what has happened to her.  Distraught, he goes to her school only to find out that she didn’t even show up for work. Paul turns to the one place he’d rather not go, Anna’s mothers house, and finds out from Anna’s mother- Beatrice (Celia Weston) that Anna was in a car accident and it was, of course, Paul’s fault for letting her drive in the bad storm.  Yep, more cheesy stereotyping – they went there!

Back at the funeral home, Eliot is injecting Anna with something to help her muscles relax while her mother comes in to see her daughter one last time. Beatrice, in a moment of humor that possibly wasn’t supposed to be, asks Anna if she thought about her mother before she “went and died”. Shortly after she leaves, Paul shows up and asks to see Anna one last time but is refused at the door by Eliot. Eliot lets him know that since he’s not family he can not view the body. Anna is once again awake and listening to what is transpiring upstairs. Elliot tries to deceive Anna, claiming it wasn’t Paul at the door, but Anna knows better.

Suspense was supposed to happen, fear, levity, all these things were supposed to happen, but After.Life fails to reach any kind of stability.  Sure, it has some moments that may leave a bit of a mark, but where the potential and execution meet is nowhere to be found.  It was sloppy film-making and mediocre entertainment.

The movie just kept getting more and more convoluted with twists and turns and cut-scenes, dream sequences, homages to past movies that made no sense and sprayed the screen with a confusing mess of a story.  It just keeps going and going, with no end in sight, and when you think it’s over, it’s not done yet! It just keeps attempting to add more and more to an already ridonkulous plot. It attempts to make sense by having different aspects of movies from the past all tied in; the movie’s most serious parts turned out to be humorous – taking the audience right out of the movie. I guess if you REALLY need to see Christina Ricci topless for a decent portion of the movie, it might be worth checking out, otherwise I would stay away.

After.Life proves what I have said throughout my existence; Death is the easy part, Life is what kills you.  I will admit, there was a guy a couple rows behind me who thought it was AWESOME, and his girlfriend asked him if they saw the same movie?!!?  I guess I wasn’t the only person who thought it was utter crap!

Repo Men is a futuristic sci-scare film that follows the life of a blue-collar company man working for a large corporation known as “The Union”.   His task is simple, if you have an organ resting in your body that was provided by his firm and you can’t make the payments on said organ, he “harvests” it back to the “The Union”.

Like all large corporations, or governments, you don’t just pop over and ask for an organ, first you meet with an “official” who sets up the paperwork – then you get the transplant, then, inevitably, you pay!  What’s that, can’t afford your payments, you say the check is in the mail, your dog ate your checkbook, Remy (Jude Law) doesn’t give a flying fig – that isn’t his department.  He is with retrieval, not billing – woe be the man who makes his professional acquaintance.  Once he shows up, you are gonna bleed.

Remy is partnered with Jake (Forrest Whitaker) who is a little more gritty than Remy, but enjoys what he does nonetheless. Both Remy and Jake work for a smarmy, no excuses boss, Frank (Liev Schreiber), who will talk you into wanting the organ, by talking you into purchasing it, but then waste little to no time to send out his Repo Men to recover it when you fall behind on your payments.  The irony of the heartless doling out hearts is cute, but not effective here.

Remy’s wife, Carol (Carice van Houten), wants Remy to move into sales for his safety and the well being of his family. But, Remy enjoys his job too much, still he wants to do what’s best for his family – so reluctantly Remy lets Jake know of his dilemma.   While on a successful hunt running down deadbeats, Remy lets Frank know of his intentions. So, Jake sets up one last repossession for Remy before he moves into sales, and Remy goes to the house of one of his heroes, T-Bone ( a cameo by the RZA).  When Remy attempts to take back T-Bone’s heart, something goes terribly wrong, and Remy’s equipment malfunctions and he gets the shock of the defibrillator himself.  Waking up in the hospital with The Union’s latest, top of the line heart, Remy knows this can’t be good.  It isn’t what he  wants, but quickly he discovers it is the only way that he can survive.

Remy’s life falls completely to shit after he gets a new heart, his wife has kicked him out of his house, won’t let him speak to his son, and hands him his first Late Notice of payment on his new heart. Remy attempts to make the money for payments by returning to work for The Union as a salesman.  Sales isn’t his strong spot, so he takes back to the streets as a repo man. From there, the story takes a predictable turn as Remy becomes the hunted.  While on the run, Remy encounters a woman that he’s seen only once before, Beth (Alice Braga), and decides to help her out of a bad situation. This is where the movie begins to intensify, and more of the action begins to happen. We follow Remy and Beth on the run from various Repo Men The Union sends after them.

The film never explains time or location, maybe by design to add the authenticity, but it fails to pull that off.  The action scenes are few and far between, and the character development is almost non-existent. The plot was choppy and hard to follow – simply because there was NO definition of time lapsed throughout the movie. The violence was graphic, BUT if you don’t believe there would be scenes of graphic violence in this movie I have NO idea what the hell you thought you were going to be watching. The movie was long, I almost fell asleep and I drank a friggin’ Red Bull before I went in the theater.

Repo Men really didn’t have much to offer anyone, and I wish I could have gone and repo’d my money back! I won’t spoil anything for those who want to go see it, and if you do WOW, but the ending of the movie made a bad movie worse! I feel there were a couple humorous lines and one scene of decent action that gave the movie at least something to enjoy; but in a movie that runs almost 2 hours, 5 minutes that doesn’t make up the slack.

I was expecting SLC Punk meets London, but what I got was as disappointing as British cuisine.

It was like some kind of homo-erotic Oliver Twist story with limited violence.  I was expecting London to be dripping with blood, and for the most part – all we got was American Crayfish and junkies strewn about with some Russian mobsters and the occasional awkward moments of, I guess it was supposed to be tension?  Who knows, and the killah of RocknRolla, there is going to be a sequel!  The Real RocknRolla – at the end this is revealed, and I was thinking, no thanks, I just wasted time and money THINKING I was going to be learning about this amazing idiot.  Jeremy Piven and Gerard Butler can’t pull this script out of the Thames, I only hope Sherlock Holmes is much better, Guy Ritchie.

Yes, ok, I will give you it had some interesting concept cinematography, but the overall package was thrown together with no symphonic balance.  Even the soundtrack sucked the big one, with the exception of the title song – and then, just barely.  The whole movie I was BEGGING for someone to kill the “RocknRolla” – who by the way was essentially an after-thought waif with so little class he might as well have been telling pimps how to run underage hoes for ACORN.

There was one cool scene, reminiscent of a Spenser, Robert B. Parker novel, where a foot chase actually winded the pursuers and pursued and you could feel it, unlike a typical Hollywood script where no one runs out of bullets, misses a high-octane shift or runs out of energy.  So, I liked that bit, but it was a two-hour movie that should have been 90 minutes at best.  I was initially bummed I missed this in theaters – this might be your thing if you like British gangster flicks lacking oomph.

“Nothing but a complete Hershey’s squirt…”

Ye ‘ol Storyline

This ‘comedy’ tells us the story of Marc Pease (Jason Schwartzman); grown man living life vicariously through recollections of youthful glory. Eight years out of high school, he’s still living in yester year—high school delusions. He even dates a 17 year-old –like, yuck! Over the course of a day, events come to a head. While watching from the sidelines as his former teacher/mentor, Mr. Gribble (Ben Stiller) oversees the opening night of a high school musical, Pease has an epiphany. Through a cathartic, hilarious process, he finally exorcises his demons and realizes there’s more to life than the roar of greasepaint and the smell of a Broadway crowd or is there…zzzzzz, I long for the sweet, sweet release of death.

The storyline is what killed the video star here. So good, this flick should have gone straight to braille!

The Cast and Crew

Ben Stiller, Anna Kendrick and Jason Schwartzman put their best foot forward, but there lies the problem. Once you become a ‘star’ the audience starts expect what kind of role you’ll be playing in the film they’re about to watcg –I know, I know, not always true, but it’s tough to breakout of this unless you’re a champion actor and you really, really know your craft. I would say Schwartzman is the only one that comes close. Stiller is good for comedy, but that’s about it – never go fully retarded. I’m going to say all the talent brought their “a-game,” but the script was just too light. No major conflict. No major love affair. Nothing really gained nor lost. Borefest ’09, right here people.

For set design, Bryony Foster needs a big Ck “hats off.” All the shots were setup nice with the colors and scenery chosen. I’m curious what they paid the poor soul because this looked like a cheap overall production.

The Good, Bad and Indifferent

The good thing here is another independent was made. On that note, the bad thing is…another independent was made. This type of movie tends to lock in the notion independent movies just aren’t worth the risk to watch, so why bother? If you were told Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction could be made for $8M and gross $250M world wide – would you risk investing in it? Now, after reading the script, if you were a suit running a studio, you probably would give the green light. Probably laugh at someone telling you $250M would be made, but give the go ahead to shoot the darn thing – just to shut up that assistant bucking for the scraps at your teat.  Now, I would be willing to bet my ’82 civic, Star Wars collection of yellowed bed sheets and my pig named Little Rat that the script for this movie sucked right outta the gate. You can make a bad movie from a good script, but you can’t make a good movie from a bad script.

The overall production was fine. Again, big talent needs a big script to execute great acting or the film will go down in flames. Imagine a major ball player at your local batting cages. How weird would that be, huh? I’m not saying you need a $40M budget either. I’m the biggest fan of $5M and under projects; it shows ya “what ya really got.” Strong scripts + strong performers = strong box office returns and/or overall returns i.e. Sideways and Little Miss. Sunshine once everyone takes a chance to see what the Oscars are talking about.

The Bottom Line

Don’t waste your time. It just stunk.

“What happens in Paris, stays in Paris . . . as the champagne cork takes out my left eye.

Storyline:  A romantic drama set in the ‘20s, Paris, where the son of a courtesan retreats into a fantasy world after being forced to end his relationship with the older woman who educated him in the ways of love.

The Cast:  Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates, Rupert Friend (and he’s no friend I tell ya!)  Poor, poor Michelle.  She should have waited for another comeback role.  This one bit the big one, chewed it up, poo’d out the goods and up grew a twig tree from the seed.  The story was weak.  The scenes were drab.  The dialogue was forgettable.  Kathy Bates was also not a good choice.  Her sheer presence is just too strong.  She steam rolls over everyone.  She needs to be in a vampire series or something.  Someone give Alan Ball a ring, Kathy needs to show up as a trampy cougar vamp on True Blood—now that’s the ticket! The cast was just poorly directed and this crew should have never been put together.  Unbelievable.  Very forgettable…

(more…)

Revolutionary Road is a period piece, taking place in 1950′s America, and is adapted from the novel by Richard Yates. It should have remained in novel form. The story revolved around a married couple who become disenchanted with suburban life, living the rut called the American Dream. In an attempt to change it up, they decide to move to Paris, but two things stand in their way – a lucrative promotion, and the possibility of a newborn to bring their family to five.

Leonardo DiCaprio (Frank Wheeler) and Kate Winslet (April Wheeler) bring their dynamic chemistry back from their pairing in Titanic. The acting was fantastic. Both actors bring out the subtle nuances of emotions as if they really feel them. And DiCaprio has the market cornered on blind rage. I can’t think of another actor off the top of my head that can do that as powerful as he can.

The only odd thing that stuck out was that April Wheeler, a housewife and mother of two, seemed to be constantly bereft of her children. Their presence was barely felt throughout the movie. You weren’t even aware they HAD children until about the thirty minute mark, and even then (at least for me) you think they’re neighborhood children. I guess it was so we could better focus on the Wheeler adults, but it felt more like the family was a sham. If the kids were going to be nonexistent anyway, Director Sam Mendes should have had them written out of the script altogether.

Unfortunately, good chemistry and great acting can’t do anything for a paltry story. You can’t polish a turd, as they say. Avoid at all costs.