You Might Not Have Seen It: John Woo's The Killer

You know in this day and age, I'm getting sick of action movies.  I know this is going to make me sound old, but seriously, action movies used to be so much better.  These days it's nothing.  No really, nothing.  No characters, no stakes, nothing to really make you care.  Just dumb vapid crap meant to just impress you with the pretty 'splosions, fast cars and women with no personality in skimpy outfits.  And I really want this to end.
Did we forget that half the fun of the "Die Hard" series was actually the character of John McClaine?  Or that editing doesn't mean cutting every two seconds to cover up lazy shot design?  Or even that  an action movie CAN have a good story?  Apparently!  So as I'd rather not stew on this throughout the whole review, I'd like to talk about one of my favorite action movies of all time, John Woo's "The Killer".
John Woo is a director that some of you may have heard of, he had a few big budget studio movies like the John Travolta/Nicolas Cage actioner "Face/off"  and the WWII film "Windtalkers".  But what got him noticed was he stylized Hong Kong action flicks such as "A Better Tomorrow 1&2", "Hard Boiled" and of course, "The Killer".
To explain why I love "The Killer" so much is both simple and at the same time tricky, but let's get the easy out of the way first.  The movie has a great story.  Action legend Chow Yun-Fat plays an assassin for the Triad, but he actually is not an evil psychopath, he has a moral code and during one of his hits, he ends up essentially blinding a young woman.  To make amends for this, he goes out of his way to try and make her life better, in the process falling in love with her, leading to him accepting one last job.  At the same time, there's a police detective (Danny Lee) that's trying to track him down and added to this the Triad now wants him dead since he wants out, and while this is all going on he and the detective begin to form a mutual respect and eventually friendship paid off on in the film's truly amazing climax.  The acting is superb on all fronts.  Chow Yun-Fat just owns this character from the word go, with an imposing presence during his gun fights, but during the character scenes an undeniable charisma that makes you like him despite how he earns a living because he literally just sees it as a job.  At the same time Danny Lee blends the right amount of determination and moral justice onto his character, not to mention that he and Chow Yun-Fat have great chemistry together and you really see a friendship develop between the two.  Not to mention the way the bad guys act just adds so much suspense to every encounter with them there is.  These are guys to do not mess around and you really want to see the heroes come out on top because they both have great motivations and because of the films shockingly brilliant climax has a huge amount of weight that the audience is greatly invested in.  Especially when the ending goes a different direction than what you'd think, but is much more fitting for the story.
And on top of all this, the great story, terrific acting, we have Woo's amazing direction.  There's an elegance to every scene and you can tell that every shot was planned, and every gun fight was staged so intensely and yet at the same time looks almost improvisational in how natural it feels.  Woo grabs the viewer from the word go and keeps you on the edge of your seat during all the intense action, which has such a frenzied chaos and yet isn't jarring, or over done, at the same time finding ways to let the audience breathe while still keeping a pace that is engaging and adding to the story and even more dramatic weight to each successive action sequence.  Plus this movie drips of nice mood and yeah, it's 80's-ness shows but that truly adds to how interesting a watch it is and it just feels so right.
The photography is gorgeous compliments of Wong Wing-Hang.  Creating a nicely morose color palate to give rise to that great atmosphere I was just talking about and the editing actually takes the time to let you see it and doesn't need to cut all the time to allow for a feeling of chaos and tension, just a well thought out and executed pace with cuts made when they are needed for dramatic effect, not to cover up directorial failings.  
There's nothing that Woo didn't think of for this movie.  It's just a classic of the entire action genre and I can't recommend it enough.  I actually showed this to a friend while re-watching it for this review and at one point he turned to me and ask:  "Why don't they make action movies like this anymore?"  I don't know, but I honestly think it has to do with the fact that action movies just seem lazier these days.  There's no passion to them and that doesn't make for an engaging movie.  "The Killer" is just a great film and if you claim yourself to be any kind of action movie fan, you owe it to yourself to see this movie.  You won't regret it.

The Killer gets

5 awesome shoot outs out of 5

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 and The Hunger Games

We've been in an interesting time for bad movies, where it used to be luck of the draw if a critic had a bad one on their hands we've now been blessed with a consistent whipping boy for the past four years in the form of the "Twilight Saga"  based on a series of four books aimed at young adults, specifically tween aged girls.   While on the surface being harmless enough as a book, (apparently, I've never actually read them as, you know, I'm a guy.)  the films have been very harshly bashed for their terrible acting, bland direction, awful scripts (all written by the same screenwriter I might add.)  and a flat out horrible message for younger girls.  However, things are finally coming to a close, as last year saw the release of the fourth movie, and this year saw the release of the light at the end of the awful tunnel.
To go over why "Breaking Dawn Part 1" is a terrible movie would be like sounding off on the twilight check list.  So, allow me to make it more interesting by asking you to take a shot from whatever alcoholic beverage of your choosing as I run down my response to this movie.  This time around, worst female character ever Bella Swan has finally gotten her somewhat reluctant boyfriend Edward to marry her and all is right with the world.  But on the honeymoon when Bella says she wants to have sex with him BEFORE he turns her into a vampire, (yeah if you didn't know, Edward's a vampire and there's a love triangle involving another guy, Jacob, who is a werewolf.  if you didn't know this already, color me surprised.)  said sexual encounters end up with Bella getting pregnant with a vampire human hybrid and Jacob breaks off from his tribe to protect her from them, as the werewolves are pissed about this for a reason I'm still trying to figure out.
So the first big problem with this movie is the acting (take a shot).  Again Kristen Stewart plays the non entity that is Bella Swan and again all her scene are dull, emotionless and just making you wish the character had died in the last movie to end this series (take a shot).  Robert Pattinson returns as her boyfriend/husband that seems to be physically ill at her existence (take a shot) and proves that the only satisfying thing he's ever done in a movie is die (Seriously, I love "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" so much more now in hindsight).  No one in this movie acts, they more go through the motions while thinking about what this and the next movie's paychecks will net them.  The direction doesn't matter (take a shot) because the film maker is working with terrible material (take a shot) and the script is just awful (take a shot).  The movie really hammers home how pointless it is in this one because there was no reason for them split the fourth book into two parts, but Summit entertainment and Lionsgate would have lost their cash cow and that would be bad.  So horribly is this movie padded, that it is constantly clawing for the very right to exist.  It's a pointless movie plain and simple.  This is why I've never reviewed the "Twilight" movies, there is literally NOTHING new to say!  The movies are bad and there's only so many ways to say that.  So instead I'll just comment on what everyone has a problem with in these movies, it's terrible message.
Basically, when you get down to it, "Twilight" is a bad lifetime movie without the actual physical abuse.  It's all about how Bella loves Edward so much she marries him and wants to become a vampire to spend forever with him.  It's not so much that this is the idea that "Twilight" is selling as it is people looking a little too deeply into it.  My girl friend who HAS read the books pretty much summed up the whole thing like this:  They're about having a boyfriend.  That's it, it's basically a trashy romance novel without the sex instead opting for a wait until your married abstinence message.  I personally don't really see a lot of what people have issues with when I watch these things, but I will agree that Bella Swan is a terrible female role model.  She's just a horrible person, every action she does is selfish, all her justifications are despicable, and the way she treats people is just down right cruel.  I would actually love someone to remake this entire series without changing a thing except playing Bella's actions like SHE was the main villain.  That'd be an interesting movie in my book and you'd barely have to change a damn thing.  I bring all this up because I don't think younger girls should look up to this character, and now there is thankfully better one to fill the gap.
"The Hunger Games" is the Lionsgate follow up to the wild success of things like the "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" franchises with another this time trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins.  In it's story, set in a somewhat post apocalyptic America, the country has been divided into a bunch of different zones and each year one male and one female between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight to the death in what are known as the Hunger Games.  Our hero, Katniss Everdeen, has volunteered for the latest Games to save her sister.  In the lead up to the actual Games, she and her cohort Peeta are taken to the Capitol to promote themselves to get sponsors to help them out in the arena.
So at it's core the story is basically using the old gladiator games to make a deeper point gimmick and I feel it really works.  Not having an entirely original story doesn't instantly make a movie bad, but I'm already starting to hear some backlash much in the same vain as "Dances with Wolves" in space with this being a more watered down version of things like "Battle Royale".  I get that, I'm actually reading THAT book at the moment and when I went to "The Hunger Games" yeah it came to my mind, but really, this kind of plot is more about it's point than it's story.  "Battle Royale" was more making about about Japanese culture and the "entitlement" generation while "The Hunger Games" is more making points about things like The 1% and reality tv shows.  Even with all that it is a very well told version of said "unoriginal" story.  The characters are all fleshed out and all the main characters have interesting arcs sprinkled with fun supporting characters.
The director on this was Gary Ross, famous for "Pleasantville" and "Seabiscuit", and he really goes all in on this one.  He proves once again that he can get great performances out of great actors while at the same time making the movie interesting to look at... for the most part, but I'll get to that.  Jennifer Lawrence is Katniss, and once again proves that she's a truly incredible talent and I'm glad to see her getting more high profile work.  But the real show stealer, like always, is Woody Harrelson as a former Games survivor that's become a somewhat embittered drunk that's supposed to be Katniss and Peeta's mentor.  He's just great fun every time he's on screen.  In fact if I was to go on about how fun Stanley Tucci is as on of the hosts, or how great an over top caricature Elizabeth Banks turns in, but that would get really long and I have better things to talk about, just know that the acting in this movie is really entertaining.
Honestly I really liked this movie and the only real problems I have are nit picks like how the pacing at the beginning feels kind of rushed or how in some of the action scenes the shaky cam, while justified gets a little tiresome as it makes it hard to see what's happening, but those are just nit picks.  Overall the movie is great and knowing that it's roughly being marketed to the same demographic as "Twilight" is a real win in my book.  So while I'm giving "Twilight Saga: The Set Up for the next one" a total zero for just being a terrible movie.  I'm more than happy to give "The Hunger Games" a 4.5 on my scale.  It's a smart, interesting sci fi story with a great cast, don't miss this one.

The Beyond

If you were to ask me what my personal favorite genre of movies is, I'd probably have to go with Horror, at least as I am currently writing this.  This probably isn't that much of a shock considering how much I like to bring the genre up in my previous reviews and the fact that I get so infuriated by the recent string of horror remakes.  (As an aside, I have recently seen that god awful remake posing as a prequel for John Carpenter's excellent version of "The Thing" and I almost reviewed that instead but all I could say was FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!  It's terrible plain and simple and I want people to know that they must avoid it like the plague.  Buy, yes BUY the John Carpenter version to show Universal Studios how ashamed they should be for green lighting that movie.)  On the subject of remakes, a thing that one might note about this string of them is that before it was american horror films from the 80's, it was remakes of foreign and specifically Japanese horror films.  I mention this because right in that time I was really starting to hit my main interest in horror and finding this out interested me in horror fodder from other countries, and thus I found the wondrous world of Euro-Horror.   Most of what I have watched is from England, with things like Hammer, and Italy, thus bringing us to today's movie, Lucio Fulchi's "The Beyond".

Fulchi didn't really make too many waves over here in the states until his film "Zombi 2" known here simply as "Zombie" an unofficial sequel to the European cut of George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" (Called "Zombi" in Europe hence why there isn't a "Zombi" 1 as pretty much all the home media for "Dawn" has simply kept the title.)  Jumping on the success he had there he very quickly became a horror guy through and through with titles like "City of the Living Dead" and "The Beyond".

"The Beyond" is actually my favorite piece of Fulchi's work, but it has taken me forever to track down a copy for my home collection.  Upon my first viewing of the film I immediately went out to get it, but the anchor bay edition I wanted had gone out of print, and all the remaining copies were far too expensive for my poor high school self.  Now, thanks to the grace of someone not knowing what they had, I picked up a copy for a steal at my local haunt for used DVD's and thus this review is born.

So, plot!  A woman buys a hotel in in Louisiana to renovate and re-open, not aware that it's actually built over one of the seven gateways into hell and when the wall blocking the gate way is torn down, well, really bad stuff happens.  It's odd that I pick this as my favorite out of Fulchi's work because the movie is kind of a mess.  The script likes to meander around with no real rhyme or reason, featuring a lot of horror set pieces that, while well done and creepy, don't really seem to be there for any good reason.

It feels weird and at times disjointed, not helped by the age old problem that many Italian horror films featured both American and Italian actors speaking English, but several of the Italian actors were re-dubbed due to not actually knowing English that well or to speaking it with a thick accent, the effect of this just really brings you out of the movie but strangely, this movie just works for me.  It's just drips creepy mood and atmosphere, not to mention its just terrifying imagery.

In the scheme of things, "The Beyond" is basically Fulchi doing another movie about the living dead, and as far as zombie fare goes, it's solid.  The dead get up and shamble about, people can't kill them without destroying the head, etc.  It sports some pretty well done zombie make ups and the gore effects that come with that territory are well executed and impressive.  The only real flaw is the story and pacing.  It's clear fulchi was all about the set pieces and because of that, the story gets to hang with several scene that consist of clunky exposition and a few moments that really feel like they're in their to pad the run time.  I mean, I've crucified other movies for this kind of problem mercilessly and yet I really like this one.  Why is that?  

Well, while it has flaws that I could understand some people being unable to overlook, it has numerous set pieces that I really dig, but acknowledge just come out of nowhere sometimes.  Like the film's infamous spider sequence.  It's really well done, but it brings the movie to a screeching halt saying "Look!  Creepy spiders!".  It's a well built scene that is genuinely weird and creepy, not to mention has a well done pace in it's own right.  I really can't fully explain what it is about this movie that just does it for me other than the way it looks and it's amazingly good climax.  It's just a moody flick, with some real interesting horror scenes and while it's technical failings are rather large when you think about it, I just can't help it.  This movie, for me at least, really works and I highly recommend it.  Hey, what do you have to lose?  I can promise you won't see anything quite like it coming out in the near future.

3 out of 5.

Drive, Another Earth, and My Thoughts on the Indie Scene

In my time as a movie buff, I have taken some pretty interesting stances on certain celluloid issues, from my position that "Sucker Punch" is neither the god awfully piece of work its haters say it is, nor the masterpiece its defenders claim it to be, but simply an "ok" action flick; to the fact that I find "Dances with Wolves" to probably the most overrated piece of media in existence.  And today, I get to lay down yet another one, I have a particular dislike for the current independent film industry.  STOP!  Let me clarify!  I don't HATE it, but I really don't think it's some seminal area of film making, good things do come out of it, but like Hollywood, it has it's share of indefensible total crap.  Allow me to explain with two examples, both from last year, and both technically independent works i.e. they were done without the aide of the big Hollywood studios during production.
The first is the movie "Another Earth".  This movie embodies absolutely EVERYTHING I despise about the indie scene.  It's a movie that has a decent enough premise, in this case that a second version of Earth has appeared in the solar system and it appears to be a very similar version of our own.  Cool premise, right?  It's why I watched it.  But that's not what it's really about, no, it's about a girl that got drunk and killed a man's family in a car accident and how she deal with her crime and makes penance for it.  I can't tell you how awful I found this movie, it reeks of self indulgence that's just clawing for any reason to exist outside that fact.  This movie has a principle protagonist that is in EVERY scene, and this main actress (Brit Marling)was also the co-writer of the script, so there is no defending that point.  This was her trying to create a vehicle for herself to show off her "acting" and I can't describe how horribly she fails.  First of all, there are many many scenes where she's just sitting there doing nothing, well, not NOTHING per say, but they are clearly scenes there to "enhance" her character but, since she's kind of bland all over, they just end up being padding.  Added to all this, the script seems to try and  play her off as likable and sympathetic but given the actions she takes in the movie, I really don't want to sympathize with her, what she does gets down right cruel!
Not to mention that this movie is about as interestingly shot as a TV sitcom.  It's just a bunch of close ups and some coverage shots to mix it up between the pretentious shots of our oh so likable main character walking in front of an effect shot of the second Earth while talking heads drone about its existence's implications.  This brings us to the big flaw of the movie for me.  Yeah I know I said that the actor co-writing the script bugged me but that's just because it felt like she was trying to bite of more than she could chew, actors can write and act in things very well, Simon Pegg springs to mind here.  No, the big flaw I have with this movie is how it handles its main theme, Existentialism.
I don't really have time to go into too much detail on it, as it is a big philosophical principle, but I'm just going to say this:  If your movie is an existentialist work, it had damn well explore the implications of that well and that is no simple task.  This movie fails in it miserably as what it's trying to explore is with a poorly performed character that does some out right horrible stuff.  This is a common trap for lazy writers that deal with Existentialism, and I'm frankly sick of it.  But what really gets my teeth grinding about something like this is how the protagonist is usually played off, they are just depressed.  Now, this doesn't instantly bad, a character coming out of an existential depression can make for  a good story, hell it's basically a good part of the plot to "Clerks", a personal favorite of mine!  But here, like most others, the character just never evolves, never become all that interesting, and just basically spends the movie say "Oh life is awful and I'm terrible and poor pitiful me."  This is one of the things I despise most about the indie scene as a whole, it's a lot of people that are just making less stellar versions of things that have worked before, and maybe adding in things that they heard vaguely from their Philosophy 101 class to make it sound like their shallow movie is somehow deep and moving.  However, this isn't always the case.  One of the best films of last year was the art house crime thriller "Drive".
"Drive" gets everything right.  It's fantastically shot, amazingly well directed and perfectly acted.  In it Ryan Gosling plays a mechanic/part time stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, and is actually never given an identity outside simply Driver.  He begins to form a bond with a female tenant of his apartment building and decides to help her fresh out of prison husband with one last job and then things go south fast.  Already that plot sounds like something that isn't even remotely original and yeah, it's not, but that's where the execution comes in.
This movie is less about the action, though it does go there in its own way, but it's all about mood.  It has a very hazy atmosphere and actually feels like a bit of a send up of Tony Scott's "True Romance" (yes, I know it was a Tarantino script, don't correct me, I'm meaning the director here, who had more say on shot design.)  This is helped by the amazing cast, from Gosling's almost emotionless, yet utterly human Driver.  To  Albert Brooks' absolutely jaw dropping turn as one of the gangsters (I'm not joking when I say he was totally snubbed by the Oscars.)  Plus, I'm seriously not exaggerating when I say this is one of the most amazing well shot and edited movies I've seen in a long time.  It's just that rare movie that you watch and it just washes over you with how good it is, and you have to keep reminding yourself that it's basically got the plot of a low budget movie that Canon might have released in the mid 80's.
It also proves my point, both movies do actually.  The independent film industry can produce truly amazing work like "Drive" that just proves even if you have an unoriginal story, you can always leave your own touch on it, while "Another Earth" just proves that even without the constraints of a major studio watering everything down, you can still produce a total turd.  And as a last little bit of food for thought, next time you want to bash Hollywood as soul less and all about the effects unlike Independent films, consider this:  The "Star Wars" prequels are technically independent films.

Final Scores:

Another Earth: 0 out of 5

Drive:  5 out of 5

Up coming schedule.

So yeah, it's been awhile, I've been taking time to try and figure out more that I want to do with this little project I give some time to.  Mostly what direction I want to take it, while commenting on current movies is one way to take this, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to find new things to say about them without having more means to get to the theater are a frequent basis, and since that isn't quite doable for me, I'm deciding to fully go into the you may not have seen it aspect about obscure movie.  After all, most of the time those are the kinds of movies I most enjoy tracking down, and if that's the case, I'll review them in full and speak my peace, good or bad and tell you where to find it if I'm recommending it.  However, I think some guidelines and the like are in order, as well as some comments on things that have been brought up that haven't had any follow up as yet.  First, last Halloween, I promised a top 10 of my favorite horror movies to end out the event, and I was planning on it.  However, in actually sitting down to write them, I kept wanting to go on and on about each film in turn to a point where I might as well have made a full review, as such that's my plan for this October, coupled with a list that would run with what I think should be a separate list for BEST Horror films, because to me, and many others, BEST and FAVORITE are two different things and I'm going to try and keep things on the lists totally separate.  Second, one thing I have been ask constantly as both a movie fan in general and someone that writes reviews, is what my favorite movie(s) is(are).  I"m going to answer that question, with a list of my personal Top 25, with one review at a fairly regular interval counting down from number 25 on down to number one, and like the Halloween horror countdowns, all will be full reviews.  Next, on my facebook page, I mentioned that I was planning on doing something related to the movie "Drive", and I am.  I'm working on it, part of why is that I'm using it and the movie "Another Earth" to share my thought on the current indie movie scene, and that will be posted Thursday (3/8/12) morning for sure.

Now for some guidelines about what will be reviewed on here, the obscure.  The perfect example of the type of thing that I'll end up reviewing on here is the previously reviewed "Guyver 2: Dark Heroes", an American movie, based on an animated show, based on a Japanese comic book.  But that doesn't mean I'll just do American films, anything Foreign, Cult, Indie, or just not often thought of anymore.  Basically, if the popular consciousness doesn't really know about it, it's fair game.  Occasionally, I'll review something current or mainstream Hollywood, but there are only so many ways I can say that Michael Bay sucks before it gets old, even for me.    I'm also letting it be known, that I'm more than open to recommendations, suggestions or, if you're so inclined challenges.  I have a pretty good bad movie tolerance I've built up so I'll gladly review whatever.  With one exception,  I won't review porn.  If that's something you want, take the suggestion else where or just do it yourself, but all I could really say in a review is best summed up like this:  "It's porn, it did/didn't do something for me, and if you're into this/that/the other thing, it'll probably work out all right for you.  Otherwise, if I can find it, I'll do it.

Another thing I'm going to start doing is post a rough schedule as to what particular movie I will be review that week.  So starting now, here is roughly my review schedule for the next six weeks following the above mentioned review:

- The Beyond
-A Better Tomorrow (possibly as another double with the recent remake)
-Delicatessen
-Cannibal the musical
-Malibu Express
-Miller's Crossing

The 10 worst horror movies I’ve seen

So, Halloween has come and gone, and already things are beginning to look a lot like Christmas again… So without further ado, and since I want Halloween to gain a little more steam, let’s keep talking about horror movies.  Now I’ve mentioned some good or at least enjoyable horror titles, but some people have always asked me which ones I like the least…  Ok, most of the time the just want to know what ones I hate the most and so here it is.  Some may be a little predicable, as I’ve probably talked about them before, but I’m laying it down on the line.  The rules are simple, one movie per franchise, only one remake, and I have to have actually sat through the whole movie at least once.  Now, with all that aside, lets start off with something that will probably piss people off.

10.    The Blair Witch Project.  Those that want to call me evil for adding this movie on here can frankly kiss my ass for all I care.  This is one of those movies where the hype and its clever viral marketing were I think WAY more interesting than the actual movie.  Though to give it credit, it was in interesting idea and in theory a good way to execute it.  What bugged me was that when I looked at the movie, I never really found it all that interesting.  I honestly found it to be really really dull.  None of the scares did anything for me and I just honestly didn’t see what the big deal was.  In the interest of fairness to all it did for the modern horror film AND the independent film industry it only barely makes the list, but being very very boring, and most importantly, NOT SCARY AT ALL… is a really disappointing thing for a horror film to be, and I just couldn’t not put this movie on the list.

9. The Happening.  Yeeeah.  This probably isn’t that much of a shock, if you are a living breathing human you know that this movie is terrible.  All you have to do is watch the trailer and you have all the worthwhile scenes of the movie.  Again it was, sort of an interesting idea, but the movie is just so laughably awful that it just mystifies you that the same guy behind something really good like “The Sixth Sense” would makes something this incompetent.  It’s just one dumb terrible idea after another and on top of all that, we have weak acting, just plain sloppy direction that makes this movie an utter joke.  And that’s the main reason it’s on the list, it’s just so insanely bad that it’s hilarious, only I don’t find it nearly as entertaining as say “Battlefield Earth”, but it comes awful close.  How can you possibly take something as stupid as Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg talking to a plastic plant at all seriously?

8. Friday the 13^th Part 8: Jason Take Manhattan.  THE TITLE!  SHE LIES!!!  In case you don’t want to take my word for it, this movie’s the lowest grossing of all the films in the series AND it was the last straw for Paramount studios as they unloaded the franchise off to New Line because of it.  So what makes this one the worst of Jason’s hacky- slashy- kill- the- pretty- young people outings?  One, it’s really dumb.  I mean the other movies were never masterpieces, but they were at least enjoyable or at the very least not instantly making you roll your eyes, but the moment the movie hits about the five minute mark, you know exactly two things are certain, one, this movie was seriously trimmed down to get an R rating, leading, plot holes and lots of deaths off camera.  But most importantly, you realize that the title, implying that Jason Voorhees is going to go on a massive rampage through New York city, was a cheat.  Yes, the last 15 minutes or so have Jason in NYC but he barely does anything once he’s there.  Also, this is the longest film in the franchise, clocking in at about an hour and 40 minutes, leaving us with about an hour and a half of nothing but a bunch of dumb teenagers on a boat.  Otherwise, it’s just a really bad slasher.  It’s totally generic and never reaches the heights of camp or make up effects the previous movies had.  I honestly think the only curiosity about this movie is that it’s Kelly Hu’s first major movie, and she’s not in it that much.  It’s just a stupid, misleading snooze-fest from start to finish.  Some fans really dislike “Jason Goes To Hell” for a lot of reasons, most of which I can understand if I don’t wholly agree with, but seriously, following this movie, you have to admit they at least tried something interesting.

7. Breeders.  This is just porn.  It’s porn trying to pretend that it’s an actual horror movie.  That’s it.  The premise is that there are a bunch of rapes that happen involving pretty women being attack by a guy in a bad rubber suit… I mean an alien.  That’s really all there is to this movies, there’s supposed to be this on going investigation thing to tie it all together, but the actual point of the movie is to get attractive women naked for no real reason, that’s it.  The box actually tries to sell the movie as a serious horror film, and that’s actually the reason I picked it up.  I figured if nothing else it’d be cheesy, but I actually felt pretty dirty after watching it.  It just likes to always take things that one extra step too far into just too uncomfortable to be sexy, but not intelligent or even just tasteful enough to be anything other than just total smut.  I have nothing against smutty movies for the sake of smutty movies, but this just wanted in vain to sell itself as something more.  But it’s just smut.  It’s not sexy, it’s just icky and stupid.

6. Devil.  Oh god this movie was torture to sit through!  There are bad horror movies, and then there are bad horror movies that like to slap you in the face with how much they suck every five minutes.  The premise of this movie makes no sense at all!  The idea that the DEVIL is going to show he is there to punish the wicked, by choosing to out right murder a bunch of people in an elevator, is about as clichéd as you get.  Then “Devil” decides to go that extra step with terrible and predictable dialogue, and the fact that about half way through, you realize that THE DEVIL(!) probably has much better targets.  Think about it, if the whole point of Satan offing all these people, is to prove to an unbelieving population he exists, wouldn’t it be better to say, kill a genocidal dictator?  Or a serial killer?  A cult leader praising a false idol?  I know the barest minimum of Christian theology and I was calling BS on this entire plot.  It’s like a bad “Twilight Zone” episode from that last attempt of resurrecting the series.  Again, I’d heard this was laughably bad ala “The Happening”, but God!  This was just insulting to all of our intelligence and I’m frankly glad it only had luke warm box office returns.

5. Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) *SIGH* yeah I don’t think this surprise anyone.  I really don’t have much else to add to what I’ve already said.  Basically I tried to separate my opinion about how it would size up on it’s own merits, and it still failed miserably as a horror movie, with all the call backs to the original movie just making me wish I was watching that instead.  I honestly hated this movie so much that even seeing clips in other reviews just makes me cringe.  I cannot stress how much I would love my $10 back from sitting through this movie.  As I have said many many many times, the only good thing about this movie, is that Jackie Earl Haley looks like he could be a good replacement for Robert Englund as Freddy Kruger, if only they could give him a script that was actually worth a damn.

4. Through the Eyes of a Stranger.  I got this movie in a boxed set with a bunch of horror films used for about $10.  It was one of those things that I just decided to watch on a lark one night and now it’s number four here.  This is an entire movie that works on its main character being a hypocritical idiot.  There’s a serial killer on the loose, she’s a reporter that’s made it quite clear to everyone that they should report ANY suspicious activity to the police, and all she does is play detective.  Hypocrisy on the character aside, this movie is just dull.  Its suspense is nonexistent and it may as well be telegraphing its climax with big flashy neon lights from the start.  It’s just a pointless, idiotic waste of an hour and a half.

3. Dario Argento’s Phantom of the Opera.  This is a two-for of disappointing.  It’s a director I really enjoy doing a terrible version of one of my favorite books.  I’m fairly forgiving when it comes to adaptations of novels, but when you take liberties that totally miss the point of the story that’s another thing entirely.  I was thinking someone that’s as much as of a visuals oriented director as him could really make something of this movie, but the set’s looked cheap, the phantom was just all wrong, and it just didn’t have any of the heart of the original story.  I cannot adequately describe the utter painfulness sitting through this load of crap.  It’s only an hour and a half of pure what the hell, and it’s not nearly as style as his other works like “Opera” or “Deep Red”.  This was just pointless, Julien Sands was actually not that bad in it though, again a better script would have been appreciated.

2. The Fourth Kind.  This is basically if you took “Paranormal Activity” or, well, “The Blair Witch” project and failed at knowing at all how these kinds of movies actually work.  I honestly don’t think of this as one movie, it’s more like two half movies squished together that are kind of telling the same story.   One half is a truly hilariously awful found footage movie, and the other a bland lifeless Hollywood version with a truly terrible lead actress (though it is Milla Jovovich, I don’t think they cast her for her acting ability.)  This is just a horribly dull and lifeless movie, that tries and fails to use a gimmick that has become a hot idea in recent days, but on top of that it’s just stupid.  It’s a poorly made movie, plain and simple.  It scores so high on this list because anyone that has the faintest idea of how to make a movie at all wouldn’t do ANY of the things they do in this one.

1. Hostel 2.  I FUCKING HATE THE HOSTEL MOVIES!!!  I really do!  I may despise the great majority of the “Saw” movies, but at least they tried to be something more than start torture porn.  Good god these movies are just awful.  They’re just so in your face about absolutely everything, and yet all they do is hold nothing but contempt for the audience.  And the sequel especially is guilty of this.  I can’t tell you how angry this movie gets me.  It’s just dumb, exploitive movie, with horrendous acting and some of the most unlikable characters I’ve ever seen in anything.  IT’s not even that I’m angry that this movie was sick, it’s more that I just hate when a horror movie purely thinks gore is what makes something scary.  Slasher movies, while they would fail or get predictable sometimes, at least made some attempt to build suspense, and “Saw” at least tried to have a story.  “Hostel 2” is just a pure mean spirited middle finger to horror fans from Eli Roth, and I honestly can’t do justice to how much I hate this movie without just ranting endlessly about the whole thing, and I honestly don’t feel like giving it that much thought.  It’s that bad.

So there it is.  The horror movie I absolutely hate the most.  Next time let’s get a little more fun, I’ll list out my all time favorite horror movies.   Until then folks!

10 underrated horror movies. Part 2

5. Leviathan.  This is one of many many “Alien” knock off, but honestly, this one is pretty much my favorite.  It’s about a mining team on the body of the ocean, that’s being lead by Robocop.  (ok, it’s just Robocop actor Peter Weller, but that just sounds way more funny and awesome.)  They find a sunken Russia battleship and on board is an experiment in human genetics to make a race of fish people… Really.  All hell breaks loose and it’s up to Robocop, Winston from “Ghostbusters” and a cute British woman to bring down the evil fish man creature before it can make it to the surface.  Yeah it sounds silly, but the movie actually takes itself pretty seriously, and that’s always welcome.  Yeah, if you’re petty you’ll just thumb your nose and dismiss this movie as an “Alien” clone, and yeah, it pretty isn’t hiding that, but at the same time it’s a really good monster flick.  The main attraction here is some above par acting, and really really good special effects from the late great Stan Winston.  Seriously, this movie is available to stream on Netflix, and it is well worth the hour and a half, you will not be disappointed.

4. The Burning.  This to me is the best straight forward slasher movie.  It has a great set up, in the form of Cropsy, a man burned in a prank gone wrong.  It has very likable characters including a VERY young Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld” fame, great make up effects from the make up genius Tom Savini.  It does that one thing you almost never see in the typical slasher movie, it gives you very VERY likable characters.  These characters actually feel like real people, and seeing them get killed actually makes you feel so sorry for them.  It’s how I’d like them to always be done.  It’s well paced, fun, interesting and it has a great story idea.  As a slasher movie, it’s really hard to find anything wrong with it.  IT just working really well and you should give it a look.

3. Opera.  I’m am a HUGE HUGE fan of Dario Argento’s older work.  His newer stuff has been pretty hit or miss with me, but back in the day, he made some damn good ones.  Opera is one such movie, think of it as kind of a version of “Phantom of the Opera” where the psycho is stalking the young singer… and then forcing her to watch him kill people.  No, I’m not even kidding about the forcing part, one of the most horrific images ever, he tapes sewing needles to her eye lids, so she can’t look away.  Added to that the music is really impressive, and it does one of the better takes on the classic story.  If you’re looking for a something kind of weird, but still awesome, “Opera” is that movie.  Pick it up, it’ll make a great double feature with “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”.

2. The Exocist 3.  This movie is just great.  No, I’m not kidding.  This movie is simply amazing.  It’s a great character study, at the center of which is the always amazing George C. Scott.  Brad Doriff, plays an imprisoned mental patient.  The movie has a great mystery at the center of it.  And holy shit, I cannot stress how hauntingly beautiful this movie is.  Taking place after the original “The Exocist”, this installment has had a somewhat a checkered past.  IT was written and directed by original author William Peter Blatty, who based most of the plot off his novel “Legion”  (Yes, like that terrible Paul Bettany movie I’ve previously reviewed.  Don’t even go there.)  However, during production, the producers figured, ‘Hey, this is a sequel, but it doesn’t have an exorcism in it… WE NEED TO FIX THAT!’  And to whatever idiot thought that, you deserve whatever is waiting for you in the dumb ideas circle of hell.  That aside, and the fact that the exorcism at the end comes pretty much out of nowhere, this movie is still amazing.  People want an unheard of horror movie?  THIS ONE!  It’s just a freaking amazing.  The only thing keeping it from number one, is that, well, most critics put it as there number one.  Because it’s being more and more discovered thanks to that, I’m giving it the second spot.  I feel that if I’m making an underrated list, I should give number one to a movie that I keep hearing people haven’t even HEARD of.  So without further ado…

1. Dog Soldiers.  This is a great horror movie.  It’s about a group of British soldiers that get ambushed by werewolves and have to hold up in an isolated cottage.  This movie has everything.  It’s that rare movie that is self aware, but in a good way.  Everytime the guys come up with an idea that might save them, something come up that keeps it from happening.  This movie is just amazing.  It has awesome effects, a fun story, and some seriously, SERIOUSLY good acting.  It’s just perfect.  It’s fun, it can be scary when it needs to be, and it just leaves you feeling so good after seeing it.  Seriously, if you can’t have fun seeing a movie that has a hard core commando guy getting into a fist fight with a werewolf, I don’t ever want to know you.  This should be the top of your list if you haven’t seen it yet.  It’s just awesome.

So that's my list, and it was hard to simply narrow it down.  Maybe next year I"ll do more movies next year.  Next time though, the bad news.  I count down the 10 worst horror movies I've ever seen.  Stay tuned!