Happy Halloween, Part III

On this, the third Halloween since I started this blog, I'm reviewing not one, not two, but THREE totally '80s, cheesy, "atomic" horror, B-movie spoofs. There's also pictures of my son wearing his Lil' Frankie costume for the third year in a row and the Jack O'Lanterns that I freehanded (so don't judge my witch too harshly).

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (one and a half stars total) was my personal favorite of the bunch, despite the fact that I gave it the lowest rating. I don't think I've ever pointed out here that my "scientific method" for reviewing movies may subjectively rate craftsmanship, but it has no bearing on transcendental qualities, or unquantifiable sentimentalities. Just because I consider my favorite movie of all time to be a five star movie doesn't mean that any of my other favorites deserve the same rating. Killer Klowns (1988) doesn't sound like it would be a scary movie, it isn't really meant to be a scary movie, and yet, if watched with a certain state of mind, it becomes scary for fleeting moments. Its creators, the Chiodo brothers, also did the special effects on Elf (2003) and Team America: World Police (2004). It stars John Vernon, the bad guy from such silly classics as Animal House (1978), Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) and Ernest Goes to Camp (1987). The theme song was written and performed by The Dickies, the first California punk band to be signed to a major record label. I'd go on but there's nothing I can say that's going to change anyone's mind about this movie.

The longer I watched Night of the Comet (two stars total), the less I liked it. You know a movie's bad when it has to use a cover version of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" instead of the original. It stars Catherine Mary Stewart, who was also the leading lady on The Last Starfighter (1984) and Weekend at Bernie's (1989). She plays an independently minded 18-year-old that works at L.A.'s historic El Rey theater, loves arcade games, and knows more useless trivia about Superman than her boyfriend, who becomes breakfast for a zombie the morning after a comet that killed the dinosaurs passes by Earth again. For me, the real star of the show was Kelli Maroney, the leading lady from Chopping Mall (1986), as the bubblegum-popping, younger sister. I defy you to name another movie where violence is so casually domesticized as in this one's line that goes "the MAC-10 submachine gun was practically designed for housewives." Ah, the Reagan years. I honestly do miss some '80s styles, not the shoulder pads, but definitely the big hair. Despite the fashion revival that's happening right now, Halloween is my only chance to see the best outfits from yesteryear, the oversize button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up under colorful vests. Wait a minute, maybe I'm thinking of the early '90s.

Tremors (three and a half stars total) The early '90s kinda blend with the late '80s in my mind, hence the reason that Tremors (1990) can be considered totally '80s. I mean, it's got Kevin Bacon, isn't that good enough? He did Flatliners the same year as this movie, but over the last decade he's done almost all thrillers. I was living out of country when Wild Things (1998) and Stir of Echoes (1999) came out and I still haven't seen them, but I thought Bacon definitely brought his dark Everyman thing to Mystic River (2003) and The Woodsman (2004). Anyway, you gotta love him for doing Tremors, because he didn't have to and it appears as though he had fun. Granted, it's beautiful country, he gets to do an accent, cuss up a storm, be the hero and get the girl. The only other familiar faces are the dad from Family Ties (1982-1989), the grandpa from the 3 Ninjas (1991-1997) series, and Reba McEntire as a survivalist gun nut. You gotta love survivalists, (at least you do in this movie, along with the harmonica, because they play a lot of it). The moral to the story happens to be the same as the Boy Scout motto, "be prepared." It got me wondering how many people would be able to handle heavy machinery in a pinch. It's a good skill to have in creature features where characters are cut off from the rest of the world.

Recent Psychological Thrillers I Just Saw for the First Time

"In his essay The 'Uncanny,' published at the end of the first world war, Sigmund Freud first discussed the relationship of the castration complex to macabre fantasy stories. In Freud's view, the doppelganger (the basis of all monster images) is a defense mechanism; the unconscious mind, sensing a mortal danger to the ego, eye, limb, or genital, creates an imaginative stand-in for the threatened part." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 76)

May (two and a half stars total) I've heard a psychological explanation for feeling uncomfortable around people with physical defects (amputation; blindness; cerebral palsy) which is that they make you subconsciously consider the possibility of sustaining similar defects yourself. You've probably heard that obesity and smoking are considered contagious because people feel more comfortable with their own bad habits when they have friends or neighbors with similar habits. May (2002) is all about social anxieties, like whether or not desperate advances from a gay coworker (a goth Anna Faris) can turn you gay too, whether or not it's a faux-pas to make out while watching horror movies, whether or not you should even admit to watching horror movies (Jeremy Sisto, better known as Elton on Clueless). I have a lazy eye that I know has bothered people and a teddy bear that I treat with the same respect I would a living person, so you'd think that May's eyepatch and talking doll collection would hit home for me. However, I find eyepatches and dolls just as creepy as the next person (according to this movie, talking dolls sound like glass breaking). It's perfectly natural to put yourself into fictional stories (actually, that's the whole point), but the only part of me that I could see in May was her choice in stereo equipment. Have you ever watched a movie where a character wears an outfit that you also happen to own or a scene is filmed in your hometown - perhaps down your street or at a restaurant you frequent? My coinkydink connection isn't that rare, but it turns out I have the exact same Sony boombox that May plays at her veterinary clinic (yay for me and product placement). Speaking of her job though, I would never try to compensate for a lack of human interaction by caring for animals. If you're the kind of person that need lots of attention, maybe a cat's not the best pet for you. I'm not saying that cats don't love their owners, they just do it on their own timetable, and they can't defend themselves as well as humans against sudden, violent outbursts. So to all you cool cats and kittens out there, stay away from May.

"In a horror movie-esque situation, even when the axe is about to drop, don't let the intensity get to you. Because in a horror movie, once people start to pick at each other, those same people start to get picked off. Maybe killers' dislike for fights stems from an unpleasant home life during childhood. Most murderers grew up in less than ideal situations, and arguing mothers and fathers top the list of Reasons to Become a Murderous Psycho. Alternatively, it could be a dislike for loud noises (although they've picked a strange profession if they dislike screaming)." (Meredith O'Hayre, The Scream Queen's Survival Guide, p. 146)

The clue to solving the "locked room mystery" in Session 9 (three and a half stars total) comes in the form of advice given by the first victim (played by the coach from Glory Road) to the new kid (played by the shoplifter in Empire Records) on an asbestos cleanup crew: "Just have an exit plan, dude. You stick with this job long enough, it'll mess you up, man. It gets inside you - the stress." Interestingly, the character mentions stress over the threat of asbestos exposure, but that's the tip off. I don't mention this to spoil the plot for anyone, just to show that it's a tightly woven plot and it's the little things that you glance over that come back around. Most mysteries aren't fun the second time around because they hinge entirely on the ending, but that's not the case with Session 9 (2001). I used to hate old Matlock (1986) and Perry Mason (1957) episodes where you'd think you had it figured out only for them to introduce to a brand-new character in the last five minutes and reveal that they were the killer instead. Session 9 is a "locked room mystery" and that means that the killer HAS to be one the few characters present all along. What's more, the "locked room" in this mystery is the real-life, isolated and empty Danvers State Insane Asylum (pictured above), birthplace of the pre-frontal lobotomy. Five years after Session 9 was filmed there, it was partially demolished to be rebuilt as apartments, but those caught fire the very next year. Ominous history, wouldn't you agree? In my parents' hometown, there used to be an old, abandoned hospital on a hilltop, smack dab in the center of town (that's my brother pictured below, trespassing with me on the roof). Just like the hospital in the movie, ours was a public health hazard, a hideout for the homeless and a gallery for gang graffiti. We used to brave broken glass and the threat of a police record to secretly explore this dark, deserted dungeon. As a dumb kid, I never considered the possibility of falling or getting beat up without anyone to rescue us or know where to look for our bodies. Now I'm wondering if there were any other dumb kids that might have died there and continue to haunt that hillside to this day (insert scary noise here).

Marlon Brando, Mad Scientist

"By the mid-1920s, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol of Paris had achieved a worldwide reputation for its repertory of short, horrific plays that subjected human characters to the same kind of exaggerated violence that was formerly the province of the little guignol, or Punch-and-Judy show. The difference was that the 'big puppets' bled, or convincingly seemed to. The Grand Guignol was founded in 1897 (a benchmark year for horror, with the publication of Dracula, the exhibition of Philip Burnes-Jones' painting The Vampire, and - incidentally - the coining of the term 'psychoanalysis') by Oscar Méténier, a playwright and former police clerk. Méténier had cofounded an earlier avant-garde venture, Théâtre-Libre, which had produced some of his sensational and sordid playlets. The brief sketches presented life at its most squalid, utilizing the language of the streets and the most unsavory situations and characters possible . . . Since naturalism was deemed to be 'scientific,' Méténier's excursions into the lower and criminal classes were permissable for bourgeois audiences, who could vicariously contemplate base humanity - and their own baser selves - from a fashionable remove." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 55)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (three and a half stars total) Celebrate Columbus Day with a United Nations negotiator (how perfect is that?) whose plane crashes while headed west overseas. Edward Douglas, originally shipwrecked Edward Prendick in the 1896 book by H.G. Wells, expected to meet with foreign diplomats but was introduced to "new men" instead. Christopher Columbus expected to initiate a trade route but ran over the "New World" instead. They both learned the hard way that all disappointment stems from unmet expectations. Just as contemporary school teachers seem to hate Columbus, critics and the Razzies hated this third film adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996; the centennial anniversary of the book). Perhaps their disappointment stems from unmet expectations for stars like Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, the $40 million budget or a script that was continually tinkered with until the end of shooting. I had no expectations for the movie, no knowledge of the book and apparently I had nothing better going on because I enjoyed it all, even fifteen years after it was released in theaters. I didn't expect to hear Deep Forest, an electronic world music group I listened to in high school, nor did I expect to hear Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" performed by or for monkey-men. I didn't expect to see Fairuza Balk, an actress that's creeped me out since Disney's Return to Oz (1985). You may remember her as the bad witch from The Craft (1996 was a busy year for her). Back to those top-billed actors mentioned above, I never could've expected to see Marlon Brando in a dress or Val Kilmer doing an impersonation of Marlon Brando in a dress - in the same movie. Now those are some MAD scientists, and they're probably as scary as Columbus was to Native Americans.

Recent Werewolf Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

Ginger Snaps (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to werewolf movie mythology - replacing silver bullets with drug injection as a means to end the werewolf curse

Not until I watched the movie did I realize that the title's a simple sentence, not a reference to cookies. It's a testament to its cleverness that at first I didn't like Ginger's (as in the one who snaps) younger sister, Brigitte (B for short), but by the end she was my favorite character and my sole (as in old soul) reason to seek out the sequels. She's mature beyond her years, and while we're on the subject, her lack of a menstrual cycle. She's so loyal to her sister, it's criminal. She's goth without wearing any makeup or intentionally being a bad student. Her bedroom is an unfinished basement decorated with Polaroids of fake deaths acted out by her and her sister, each picture stuck to the wall with black, electric tape. This movie has a couple of the most disturbing things I've ever been confronted with in a horror movie, and neither of them have anything to do with fake deaths. I'm referring to blood in urine (I get sick just considering it) and having more than a half dozen teats like a dog (for the first time - a practical purpose for nudity in a horror movie). Blech. Another horror staple since the '60s that gets an intelligent twist here is stoner humor. Normally it feels tacked on for the "coolness" factor, but this time it's an actual stoner that almost saves the day. Until Ginger snaps on him.

Skinwalkers (two and a half stars total)
Contribution to werewolf movie mythology - yee nadlooshi, the Navajo name for werewolves

Worst. Dialogue. Ever. But if you can get past the setup, you're in for a few fun twists. "Luke, I am your father," should give you everything you need to make an informed decision. Sometimes you hear a piece of fiction described as "crossing multiple genres" or "hard to peg," but Skinwalkers (2006) is easily a western, werewolves-at-war, horror-fantasy, family, action movie. If that sounds hokey to you, it's because it is. But if you like formulaic Chuck Norris TV shows or highly conceptual John Carpenter movies, here's some more cartoonish violence for you (from the producers of Resident Evil, 2002 and Wrong Turn, 2003). The practical effects look better than anything on Underworld (2003) plus the bad guys still wear black leather. The main difference between this movie and others of its kind is that there's daylight in this one, except for when that red moon screensaver pops up. When the small-town shootout on Main Street is over, you can hear - you're not going to believe this - birds chirping. I figured the forest looked a little too green to have been filmed on location in my native state of New Mexico, and I was right. What both of the movies reviewed in this post share in common, besides being about werewolves, is Canadian heritage. Ontario, to be more specific.

Classic Vampire Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

In general, there are three different looks for vampires. Each of the movies reviewed below depicts a different one. The first is the most human, both in terms of normal dress and appearance, but also in its desire to regain full humanity. The second is not quite human and may include claws or fangs that grow, distorted facial features and fur or wings, even when not shapeshifting. The third is the most monstrous and may stand taller than a human, with or without a conehead, or appear reptilian (like a chupacabra or a snake).

House of Dracula (three stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - Dracula seeks out a scientific cure for vampirism

Two years after Frankenstein's monster met the Wolf Man, they met Dracula for the second time in the House of Dracula (1945). It was the last "serious" Universal horror movie before the Abbott and Costello series (1948-1955). While it was the second time for John Carradine to play Dracula and Glenn Strange to play Frankenstein's monster, the only actor returning to a title role that had originally starred them was the (1941) Wolf Man's Lon Chaney, Jr. The real scene stealer though is an even lesser-known actress, Jane Adams, playing a beautiful lab assistant with a painful deformity. The way they reveal her hunchback is shocking enough that looking back, you might think she jumped out screaming, but all they do is show her face first and then zoom out. I'll never understand why Dr. Edelmann's hair has to get messy when he becomes a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like mad scientist. Nor will I ever understand why people get so excited for classic character team-ups or company crossovers, either on film or where they're the most popular, in comic books. I'll take my Godzilla without King Kong, my Superman without Muhammad Ali and my Aliens without Predators, thank you very much.

Mark of the Vampire (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a spoof of the Bela Lugosi vampire image (ironically by Lugosi himself, almost without speaking AND 60 years before Tim Burton's biopic, Ed Wood, which depicts a pathetic yet proud Lugosi in his, ahem, "twilight" years)

Say what you will about the twist ending. I loved it. I loved Lionel Barrymore's hammy acting, the foggy cemetery where a woman's nightgown gets caught on the ground directly above a grave and the scene of a vampire outside the window peering in. I loved seeing a roach infestation in a bed and a wall crawling with tarantulas. As much as I hated the Universal monster homage, Van Helsing (2004), I loved finding out that one of its unconvincing computer-generated images was possibly inspired by a very realistic effects shot in Mark of the Vampire (1935). I'm referring to a dress that transforms into giant, bat wings, worn by one of Dracula's brides in Van Helsing, or in the case of Mark of the Vampire, by Count Mora's daughter, Luna. Carroll Borland perfected the attractive-repulsive look for a vampiress at least three years before Morticia Addams appeared in The New Yorker magazine as a cartoon strip character and almost twenty years before Vampira became TV's first horror host on an ABC affiliate in LA.

Nosferatu (four stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - only a woman who is "pure in heart" can defeat a vampire, and she does this by keeping him out past sunrise

"If I were to make over the film, I should depict Nosferatu (1922) . . . not as terrible and fantastic but on the contrary in the guise of an inoffensive young man, charming and most obliging. I should like it to be only on the basis of very mild indications, in the beginning, that any anxiety should be aroused, and in the spectator's mind before being aroused in the hero's. Likewise, wouldn't it be much more frightening if he were first presented to the woman in such a charming aspect? It is a kiss that is to be transformed into a bite . . . It might be rather startling, furthermore, for the vampire to yield to the woman's charms, forget the hour . . . I can easily see him appearing a a hideous monster to everyone, and charming only in the eyes of the young woman, a voluntary, fascinated victim . . . He should become less and less horrible until he really becomes the delightful person whose mere appearance he only took on at first. And it is this delightful person that the cock's crow must kill." (Nobel Prizer winner for literature, André Gide, journal entry, February 27, 1928, as quoted by David J Skal in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, 1993)

Recent Vampire Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

"How many vampires do you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the most dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fixed as they are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired and speaking in the manner they have always understood and valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible and without value. One evening a vampire rises and realizes what he has feared perhaps for decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost. That whatever style or fashion or shape of existence made immortality attractive to him has been swept off the face of the earth. And nothing remains to offer freedom from despair except the act of killing. And that vampire goes out to die. No one will find his remains. No one will know where he has gone. And often no one around him - should he seek the company of other vampires - no one will know that he is in despair. He will have ceased long ago to speak of himself or of anything. He will vanish." (Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire, 1976)

Daybreakers (four stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - a world where vampires are the majority and humans are an endangered species

Basically, what we've got here is the reverse of Richard Matheson's sci-fi/horror book, I Am Legend (1954). The whole point of that title (and what was missing from the 2007 movie adaptation) is that humans come to realize they're a greater threat to vampires than vampires are to them. Instead of a sunlight-immune female vampire sent to spy on the only living human, we get a sensitive male vampire who's invited to the human's secret hideout. Willem Dafoe is a former vampire/born again human that has stumbled upon the cure for vampirism (exposure to sunlight minus oxygen for bursting into flames), but he's comic relief, not the Vincent Price or Will Smith lead character. That part goes to Ethan Hawke, a resentful vampire who's ironically still working on a synthetic replacement for human blood. I agree with most of the reviewers on IMDb that the conceptual world of Daybreakers is its most interesting aspect. Unlike I Am Legend, it's not a post-apocalyptic world and the streets are not empty during the day (tinted car windows, wide brim hats and sunglasses go from pimp to purposeful). When I first watched Ethan Hawke's other movie, Gattaca (1997), I hated to see it end because I wanted to hang out a bit longer in its near-future world with zoot suits and self-driving cars. Same goes for Daybreakers (I hated to see its ending because of the cheesy slo-mo and pounding score as well). All you get to see is that coffee shops would serve blood au lait and the homeless population would die real quick without safe shelter, but I could spend all day thinking of ways in which a world full of vampires would be different. Take accidental death and disease out of the question and the healthcare and insurance industries would be gone. Fitness gyms, food and agriculture too, except livestock might still be used for blood, but most country fields would be left overgrown. How would people entertain themselves without drugs or alchohol? What would there even be to escape from if they didn't have to plan for retirement and they couldn't procreate? I know - they would worry about the possibility of starvation without death, which is actually what the movie is about.

Let Me In (three and a half stars total)
Contribution to vampire movie mythology - what happens when vampires try to ingest food and go where they're not invited

Like it or not, one of the great and terrible rites of passage in mortality is puberty. What would it do to a person, psychologically speaking, to live forever without ever experiencing those pesky hormones, eternally damned in what is commonly referred to as "the awkward stage?" That, ladies and gentlemen, is horror. The concept of an old vampire trapped in the body of a young girl is not new. It went mainstream with the book, Interview with the Vampire (1976) and even before Dracula was published (1897, exactly 25 years before), it was featured in Carmilla (1872). Nothing is really new in Let Me In, but what can you expect from a remake? Yet that's precisely why I wanted to see it. I had to know if it would have more music (it telegraphs everything, but the '80s soundtrack includes Freur's "Doot Doot"), if it would have better special effects (except for the car wreck, it has worse, actually), stronger actors (I'll come back to this) or more exposition (the storyline just jumps back and forth this time around). I could be a whiner and complain that they left out my favorite scene (the cat attack) from the original Swedish movie. What I'd rather point out though, isn't the remake itself, but the perspective I brought to it. Having heard that it's a faithful adaptation, I was free to ignore minor plot points and focus on the characters. "The father" figure, played by Richard Jenkins, exhibited more the humanity of getting old and tired, coming to terms with it and embracing death. Was he the vampire's first familiar, or did he see that he was part of a centuries-old cycle? Chloë Moretz acts more like an old lady than her vampire predecessor, Lina Leandersson. Her fictional maturity may go a little unnoticed at first, next to Kodi Smit-McPhee, seeing as how girls tend to mature faster than boys. Back to my question up top, what would happen if two prepubescent kids met at the same age, but only one grew up? How would that play into the relationship? That's something I didn't think about before. Nor did I catch a possible moral to the story - don't put cardboard up in your windows lest you look suspicious to police investigators.

'80s Western Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

"All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream." (T.K. Whipple, Study Out the Land, quoted at the front of Lonesome Dove, 1985)

"I've always wanted to do something like this . . . bring back the balls of the Western but also taint it with this absurdity and anything goes." (Josh Brolin in an interview with Robert K. Elder, Wizard: The Magazine of Comics, Entertainment and Pop Culture, July 2010)

I just started Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning book which was adapted into the TV miniseries, Lonesome Dove (three and a half stars total). I was surprised to learn that Larry McMurtry also wrote the books which were adapted into the movies Hud (1963), The Last Picture Show (1971), Terms of Endearment (1983), their various sequels, and most recently, the Oscar-winning screenplay for E. Annie Proux's Brokeback Mountain (2005). It's also noteworthy to me that the two main stars of Lonesome Dove (1989) went on to make the two best western movies so far in the new millennium - Robert Duvall in Open Range and Tommy Lee Jones in The Missing (both 2003). I've always liked Diane Lane but until now, I'd never seen her in anything worth sharing. Finally I have proof that she's better than the roles she's taken since Lonesome Dove. Speaking of Diane Lane's character, I never realized how much of a staple the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold is in the Western genre. When it was first announced that Megan Fox would play the romantic interest of Jonah Hex (out in theaters June 18), I was a little upset that the best way they could think to squeeze her in was by making her a prostitute. Turns out that might be the only historically accurate part of that movie (minus the Moulin Rouge meets MTV costume). Tying the second quote above into Lonesome Dove, there's a scene where cattle get struck by lightning and their horns glow blue. I'm not sure if that actually occurs in nature, or if it's just "absurdity and anything goes" like Jonah Hex. If you're not too upset by that, or by a slo-mo snake attack, or by a story where all the men solicit the same prostitute, then you'll enjoy Lonesome Dove just fine.

Haven't I Seen This Somewhere Else?

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (three and a half stars total) didn't look good when I first saw the trailer. I wasn't familiar with the children's book it's based on. I couldn't see Bill Hader (Adventureland, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian) as a leading man and I hadn't been impressed by Anna Faris in her leading roles (Smiley Face, The House Bunny). The character designs looked to be ripped off of the Muppets. I couldn't tell if it was about another child prodigy (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Meet the Robinsons) or if it was another tired disaster spoof (Chicken Little, Horton Hears a Who!). Then the critics loved it and my coworkers who saw it loved it and my wife read the book in the bookstore and liked it. Today my wife got a free copy in the mail through her blog. She gets packages everyday but it's usually stuff I wouldn't buy on my own so I don't feel like we're saving any money. I won't go as far as saying that I would've bought Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but it's definitely worth a rental. It turns out there's nothing else like it, not even the book on which it's based. At its core, it's the age-old story of a son trying to make his father proud, but it also has a romance that doesn't feel tacked on or cliché. The obese mayor and the machine with a mind of its own reminded me of WALL-E and the translation device for the dad reminded me of Up but my only real complaint would be all the neon colors and shading. This motion picture is more about the motion than the pictures anyway. Watch the main character bounce from object to object inside the spaghetti tornado (or in the Jell-O castle for that matter). My two-year-old son enjoyed naming the different kinds of food ("Bacon! Hot dogs! Pizza!") as they rained down from the sky. Last but not least, listen for the nerdy dialogue. I'm glad we own the movie because I think I missed some one-liners.

Thankfully Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs isn't one of them, but have you ever noticed that computer animated movies are released around the same time in thematic pairs?

1. Insects - Antz versus A Bug's Life (both 1998)
2. Underwater - Finding Nemo (2003) versus Shark Tale (2004)
3. Fairy tales - Shrek 2 (2004) versus Hoodwinked! (2005) and Happily N'Ever After (2006)
4. Man versus beast - Open Season versus Over the Hedge versus The Wild (all 2006)
5. Penguins - Happy Feet (2006) versus Surf's Up (2007)
6. Rodents - Flushed Away (2006) versus Ratatouille (2007) versus The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
7. Post-apocalyptic worlds - Battle for Terra (2007) versus Delgo (2008) or WALL-E (2008) versus Tim Burton's 9 (2009)
8. Rockets - Fly Me to the Moon versus Space Chimps (both 2008)
9. Secret agents - Bolt (2008) versus G-Force (2009)
10. Supervillains - Despicable Me versus Oobermind (both 2010)

Wes Craven Versus Remake

The Last House on the Left (1972; one and a half stars total) claims on its opening credits to be based on a true story: "The names have been changed to protect those still living." The girl at the video store told me it's based on Ingmar Bergman's arthouse cinema classic, The Virgin Spring (1960). Turns out even that movie was based on the 13th century Swedish ballad "Töres dotter i Wänge." So truth or fiction, poetic justice has been and will always be relevant in the collective conscience, and as The Last House on the Left and its remake show (see below), it will continue to get uglier with "evolving standards of decency." If I'm beginning to sound preachy, I'm just mimicking the movie's beginning, when a teenage hippie argues with her mother about foul language and the women's liberation movement. The moral to the story is obviously to listen to your parents and watch who you hang around, but the worst horrors don't happen on the wrong side of the tracks. That's why I think the title should have been changed from The Last House on the Left to Right Outside Your Door. (Another title could have been A Game of Cat and Mouse, suggesting a debate over which characters are cats and which are mice.) I always thought the infamous rape and murder scene in the woods happened at night, but no, it happens in broad daylight, complemented by a goofy but very '70s banjo and kazoo soundtrack. Until one of the girls arrives at a cemetery, there's nothing to let on that you're watching a horror movie. The look and sound is more like Easy Rider (1969) or TV's Dukes of Hazzard (1979). It actually works as a perfect transition between Deliverance (1972), released a month earlier, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), which I believe may have been partly inspired, or at least made possible by The Last House on the Last Left.

The Last House on the Left (2008; three and a half stars total) Newer ain't always better, but in this case it was. The title makes more sense to the story because it's the directions a family uses to get to their vacation home, then later it's the directions the family's daughter, Mari, gives to her kidnappers to get herself that much closer to home. The tone is established right from the opening night scene by a dirty joke between two cops, who are killed minutes later, after a jump scene and some taunting about being one of the them being a family man. That is the last time the bad guys are shown joking around with their victims. From that point on they're strictly business, angrily dealing with being sidetracked by some teenage girls who actually look like teenage girls this time around. You may recognize the actresses playing Mari and Paige from Aquamarine (2006) and Superbad (2007), respectively. The Last House on the Left remake has less exploitation and more tension. The shower scene gets traded for a pool scene. The mom's seduction of one of the bad guys gets traded for garbage disposal entrapment. The dad's chainsaw gets traded for surgical paralysis (oh, and a microwave). The first half of the movie still takes place in broad daylight but it gets darker as things get worse, ending in a rainstorm with thunder for a soundtrack and flashes of lightning to see what's going on. The characters are updated by more than cell phones and political correctness, although it is interesting to note that the lesbian from the original, shown on the same level as ex-cons, is missing from the remake. I couldn't believe that Mari's character would follow a drug dealer into a shady apartment building like before but now it's noble when she gets out of the car to check on a friend. Her update as a swim champ gives her jumping into the lake more meaning. The updated reason the kidnappers look for help is because they're hurt, not because they're stranded, and then Mari's dad being an M.D. becomes more meaningful also. The reason the kidnapper's son gets sick has nothing to do with drug withdrawal (although there are drugs in the movie), but from his realization of who's house he's in. The reason Mari's parents bring her body in on the couch has more meaning because has to do with the best plot twist ever. Finally, the remake has NO BOOBY TRAPS.

'70s Horror(?) Movie I Just Saw for the First Time

A Clockwork Orange (three and a half stars total) Pornographic. Sacreligious. Smug. However, reading the unabridged novel helps. If you've read the previously omitted 21st chapter of Anthony Burgess's novel, A Clockwork Orange (1962), I'll say that the film adaptation is halfway between George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971) and American Graffiti (1973) because it's a disturbing dystopia on the one hand, but you know at least one kid eventually gets out of town. If you're unaware of that redeeming final chapter, I'll say that the film's somewhere between One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (coincidentally another 1962 novel; its film adaptation was released in 1975) and Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). What's scary is that the gang uniforms in A Clockwork Orange (1971) were still considered cool almost a decade later in The Warriors (1979). What's scary is that the modern design in A Clockwork Orange looks like IKEA does right now. Perhaps you don't think the films I've listed here are scary, but they deal more directly with the issues that scare people deep down than any of the other films I've reviewed so far this month. Horror is inhumanity with a glossy veneer (and a "Guinness World Record for being the first movie in media history using the Dolby Sound system" - Wikipedia). Horror is insanity that's applauded and made mainstream. Like Hollywood in general.

Monster Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

Creature from the Black Lagoon (three and a half stars total) The scariest episode I remember from The X-Files TV show was "The Host" (1994). It featured a half-man/half-tapeworm monster and took the old alligators-in-the-sewers urban legend to a whole new level. I don't think it was a rip-off of The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) but both share an affinity for evolutionary possiblities and the monsters look like cousins. If anything, the latter is the rip-off, combining the story from King Kong (1933) with the underwater ballet fad of the the period - actress/swimmer Esther Williams had just released Dangerous When Wet (1953) and Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). And the rip-offs just keep coming - a part of the John Williams' Jaws (1975) score sounds identical to one of the themes in Creature from the Black Lagoon. I wouldn't hold these comparisons against anyone. They're more like homages or updates to timeless ideas. The Gill-man (an affectionate name for the creature) was a great idea. He was the last of the Universal monsters and he saved the brand from bland sequels and a six-year stretch of Abbot and Costello parodies. He spawned two sequels, one marking the debut of Clint Eastwood. In the Gill-man's first movie, he may have had a greater percentage of screen time than any of the other Universal monsters in their first movies. That's counting the repetitive claws-coming-out-of-the-water shots though. So it's not a perfect movie, but it IS a perfect drive-in B-movie.

Godzilla/Gojira (two and a half stars total) Speaking of Universal monsters, did you know that there were two Dracula movies filmed simultaneously? Drácula (1931), the Spanish language version, used the same costumes, script and sets at night but had the advantage of being twelve hours behind in schedule so its crew could "improve" on the experience of the English version's. If only the American re-release, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) was as good as the Japanese original, Gojira (1954). The two versions are as different as watching a movie is from reading a plot summary online. They're also as similar. In the original, the monster appears sooner, there's a message about peace and learning in the wake of destruction and last but not least, there's a love story. In the edited version, you get bug-eyed Raymond Burr (Perry Mason) reporting on the monster, the destruction and the love triangle, although I'm sure that last one falls out of the scope of his foreign correspondence. His character is primer for The Ugly American political novel released a couple of years later (1958). Gill-man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Toho Company's Big Five (Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, and Rodan) all wear rubber suits and move slowly, but only Gill-man steals the ladies away to his secret cave, so he gets my vote for best giant animal whose prehistoric habitat/hibernation is disturbed by capitalist human civilization.

'20s Horror Movie I Just Saw For the First Time

The Phantom of the Opera (three and a half stars total) Between Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) and Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd (2007), horror-musicals that are both gory and full of singing are on the rise. The 50+ screen and stage adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera book (1909) tend to be either more about the music or the gore, but the 1925 film hits you over the head with both. What I mean by that is most audiences at the time of release were unprepared for the make up of Lon Chaney Sr. His lipless skull-like face, sunken eyes, protruding cheekbones, and nose pinned back, is supposed to be the most accurate depiction of the character from the book. As for the music, on the version I found (part of the Mill Creek Horror Classics 50-Movie Pack), Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony No. 8 in B minor is played over and over ad nauseum. Apparently different premieres in 1925 each used different scores, most of them from Faust, but I've noticed most silent-era scores were more repetitive than those today. Here's my trick for avoiding that on DVD - certain to appall traditional cinephiles - I watch in fast forward. The great thing is, you don't miss any dialogue because it's all on cue cards and they hold those long enough to still read on fast forward. Call me A.D.D. Accuse me of being a lazy critic. Tell me everything I'm supposedly missing out on. I don't care. On my last DVD player, I could even watch non-silent films without missing dialogue because the subtitles would still display in fast forward. But I digress. Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera was obviously a logistical and technical achievement. There were so many extras (ballerinas, masked ball attendees and the mob at the end). The booby traps in the dungeon were worthy of Indiana Jones. There were over fifteen minutes of color footage . . . in 1925. That's almost fifteen years before The Wizard of Oz! To fans of gore, and even fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber's adaptation, see where it all began.

Family Friendly Versus Universally Friendly

"...a PG-rated film with no nudity except for a bra strap, and no jokes at all about bodily functions. What's even more amazing, Paul Blart: Mall Cop isn't "wholesome" as a code word for "boring." It's as slam-bang preposterous as any R-rated comedy you can name. It's just that Paul Blart and the film's other characters don't feel the need to use the f-word as the building block of every sentence." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, January 14, 2009)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (two stars total) I agree with the Roger Ebert quote above but I want to take a detour before I come back to it. I know that a lot of people lost hope for America when this movie was the highest grossing at the box office two weekends in a row. I personally lost hope for America a couple of years ago when A Night at the Museum became the second highest grossing of 2006. Granted, I'm not the world's biggest Ben Stiller fan (or of slapstick in general), but would someone please explain to me how and why these movies are so popular? I asked my coworker, who tried to explain that "you can't get mad at a family friendly movie." My response: "SINCE WHEN?" Since when did it become an issue of rights? Since when did "family friendly" become synonymous with "politically correct?" There's a saying that goes something like, "if you're young and republican, you have no heart, but if you're old and a democrat, then you have no brains." I admit, that has nothing to do with Paul Blart, but it may parallel how some people treat movies LIKE Paul Blart. Why do people say, "I don't want to think - I just want to be entertained," as if those two things are mutually exclusive? I'll tell you what's exclusive - "R-rated comedy," to return to the Roger Ebert quote. Paul Blart didn't make me think, but it did entertain, and I'm not excusing that, but there are worse problems to have. If it felt padded (and it did), it wasn't because the writers were indulging their own (boundary-pushing) cleverness. It was because they settled for a movie that's stereotypically "all heart and no brains." Here's what I already wrote on my 11/26/08 post:

"...there's a HUGE difference between "kid-friendly" and "all ages." "Kid-friendly" equals kiddie, and those kinds of movies should NEVER be made - not for kids, not for adults, not for the mentally challenged. "All ages" means ages 1-100 and enjoyable for kids on one level, teens on another, adults on their own level, and seniors on yet another level. "Intended for mature audiences" is just as bad as "kid-friendly" in my mind, because both cases are exclusive. Why limit your audience? Sure, sex sells, but that's a cop-out. Work harder! Be inclusive, not exclusive. Make more money that way."

Up (three and a half stars total) After my son was born, we started going to the drive-in to see movies so we could take him with us. In the beginning, he would fall asleep in his car seat before we even arrived and then sleep through a double feature. About a year ago, he started waking up during the first movie and wanted to play with the buttons and knobs on the dashboard, making it impossible to pay attention to the screen. For those of you that are only reading this review to know how a kid might like Up, you'll be interested to know that it's the first drive-in movie my son has stayed awake all the way through AND sat quietly watching. He liked all the balloons and dogs, and he would say those words whenever either appeared. My wife didn't think the movie was kid-friendly because people actually die (offscreen, of course) but I reminded her of Bambi. I personally feel this latest Pixar movie has all the good and the bad of the last Pixar movie, WALL-E. What was bad about WALL-E, you ask? It's a personal pet peeve - I don't expect others to agree with me, but I'm really bored by big, busy, fate-of-the-entire-world-in-the-hero's-hands, fight scenes/finales. I don't like runarounds on a spaceship, or in an underground nuclear facility, surrounded by an evil army (that goes for talking dogs), but I know that Hollywood LOVES them. I like one-on-one fistfights or car chases between two drivers. More isn't always better in my book. OK, with that out of the way, would you like to know what's good? Well, let's just say that I'm one of those people that prefers the first half of WALL-E to the the second half. There's just so much sheer humanity expressed by a couple of robots WITHOUT dialogue, and the same thing goes for Up. The first 10-15 minutes make you want to cry, or at least consider that inside every grumpy old man there's a boy with a dream, and if you've never considered it before, perhaps the reason old men are grumpy could be the loss of wives, childhood heroes, or life in general. After watching Up, I realized that what's sadder than becoming a widower is getting sent to a rest home, and being brushed aside by others is what old men and little boys share in common. When the movie's protagonist realizes the same thing, even endangered birds get rescued.

Oh No He Didn't (Beware of Spoilers)

Taken (three and a half stars total) and another thriller, The International, came out two weeks apart and both featured one-man armies, one versus the black market and the other against the white-collared market. The former title has gone on to make over five times as much money, despite receiving a lesser cumulative rating from critics. I haven't seen the latter, but I'd like to if just for Clive and Naomi. Why are audiences more interested in putting the smack down on kidnappers than bankers right now...? That's a rhetorical question, as I haven't seen the other movie to give further commentary, but I wonder. Taken is like the Bourne series if Bourne had a kid. The difference is that after Bourne's girlfriend got killed, he still had an identity to find and the exotic settings increased and got staged better. Taken shows you a Paris you don't want to sight-see, and metaphorically it shows that America still has a chip on its shoulder against France. There's no scenery that isn't either dark or intentionally dull. Some of the editing was too choppy for me and I could have done without the first half hour because it's all in the trailer anyway. There are many "oh no he didn't" scenes, but the most character-defining comes when (spoiler) he shoots the guy's wife at the dinner table. I think that's how the rest of the world sees America. Then there's the one guy's plea that "it's just business" and the sheik's willingness to sacrifice all his bodyguards rather than give a daughter back to her father. That's how America sees the rest of the world. Am I taking this too far? Would you rather I just admit to enjoying a movie that's about nothing more than killing for at least an hour straight? Would I be a better father if I trained myself to combat terrorists for a decade or more while my child grows to adulthood with their stepfather? Tough questions, but just remember - it's only an action movie, right?

Popcorn Flick Meets UNICEF Commercial

"I know some people don't like the film for very complicated reasons, and some people adore it for very simple reasons. I'm very, very proud to have achieved that." (Best Director winner Danny Boyle, Time, March 2, 2009)

"In addition, non-American writers are the perfect surface upon which to project our desire for the style and persona we associate with old-fashioned greatness. One hesitates to invoke the dread word "colonialism" here, but sometimes you've got to call a Mayflower a Mayflower. How else, really, to explain the reverse condescension that allows us to applaud pompous nonsense in the work of a Polish poet that would be rightly skewered if it came from an American?" (David Orr, The New York Times Book Review, February 22, 2009)


Slumdog Millionaire (three and a half stars total) asks the question: would Pretty Woman have been any more realistic if Richard Gere had met Julia Roberts as a child, before getting separated from her for many years, and they reunited before he got rich? Little kids playing cricket and pickpocketing at the Taj Mahal may have a new setting for their fairy tale, but that doesn't move the 2009 Best Picture any closer to real life. I personally don't care if Bollywood is melodramatic and full of music, I just wish the Oscar-winning music in Slumdog had sounded less like that of a cheesy Hollywood action/comedy/romance popcorn flick. I love M.I.A. (you can find "Paper Planes" on "My Top Twenty Songs of the Last Two Years" post from 9/9/08), but here she was too distracting from what she accompanied on the screen. It reminded me of the music from another Best Picture winner, Crash. I enjoyed everything about that film except for the wannabe controversial Arabic Raï style in the music. It didn't fit. There, I said it. The world can disagree with me. And here's another unpopular opinion: I hate Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? but once again, it's because of the distracting music. Fortunately, Slumdog isn't just an extended episode of Millionaire (scenes of torture, statutory rape, and kidnapping homeless babies prevent that). Unfortunately, Jason Bateman (Hancock, Juno) did not play the film's game show host like I thought, but isn't the resemblance uncanny? I'm trying to think of other epic romances that go back to childhood, but none spring to mind at the moment. I know Slumdog's a ripoff, but of what? And I wonder how many Slumdog impersonators we'll see over the next few years. The film itself hearkens back to City of God and True Romance. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for cheesy Hollywood action/comedy/romance popcorn flicks where the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, I just felt like Slumdog was trying too hard to be that plus something else, and the tug of war wore me out. Anyway, the film does ask some important questions, like how many rings do you have your cell phone set to before it kicks to voicemail? You never know when someone may call you to be their lifeline, but it will probably happen when you've left your phone in the car.

Precursor to the Modern Slasher Film

"Ten little Soldier boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Soldier boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Soldier boys traveling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Soldier boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Soldier boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Soldier boys going in for law;
One got into Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Soldier boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Soldier boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Soldier boys playing with a gun;
One shot the other and then there was One.
One little Soldier boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

And Then There Were None (three and a half stars total) There is a character in Friday the 13th (the original) that is named after Agatha Christie and her all-time best-selling mystery novel, And Then There Were None (1940; adapted 13 times as a movie or on TV). The first big screen adaptation (1945) just happened to be the next DVD on my online rental queue, so it was the first movie I saw after watching the new remake of Friday the 13th. It's a proto-slasher film because it features a multitude of characters of different stereotypes, all stranded in an exotic location (a desert island as opposed to a campground in the woods), who die one at a time by various, creative means. The killer is always present (either lurking unseen or unrevealed till the end) and only strikes when someone leaves the group and goes off alone. There's even a modus operandi or calling card, as the killer sets up each death to match the ones in the above poem, Ten Little Indians. In the book, everyone dies but they spared two characters in the movie for that "Hollywood ending." I became really engrossed in the intricate plot, the new surprise ending seems preferable to the original, and the most annoying character was the first to die, so all in all, a highly recommended movie (if you don't mind black and white). Here are some newer, color, "killer" movies (and B-movies that I've been thinking about lately):

1. Black Christmas (1974) technically, the first suburban slasher film (released the same year as the "rural slasher" Texas Chainsaw Massacre and four years before the original Halloween), directed by the guy that did A Christmas Story; and featuring the scariest eye through the peephole reference to And Then There Were None

2. April Fool's Day (1986) one of the best slasher films I've seen, which follows And There Were None's plot pretty closely

3. Dr. Otto and the Riddle of The Gloom Beam (1986) not a slasher film, but still dark comedy about a guy from a bad childhood who wants to kill everyone; who says Jim Varney only makes Ernest movies?

4. Summer School (1987) not a slasher movie either, but has a great homage to '80s gore makeup artists à la Friday the 13th

5. Cry_Wolf (2005) the best recent slasher movie I've seen, with only two kills and a PG-13 rating

OUT TODAY ON DVD: CHOKE & HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE

Book Versus Movie

I did skim the book He's Just Not That Into You (three and a half stars total) when a coworker left it on her desk. The movie's better, probably longer to watch than the book is to read, but at least it's not as repetitive. And it's got a soundtrack too - Talking Heads, Lily Allen, Human League, and The Cure. My favorite part was the background clip and plot connection with one of my favorite movies of all time, Some Kind of Wonderful. The real question is whether the movie offers anything more for guys who already know everything from the book, and the answer is probably not. I still enjoyed it, but only in the same way I enjoy well-acted infomercials. The faux-testimonials after each of the movie's "chapter intros" are the funniest bits of the whole thing. As an aside, if you saw Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting (I never can remember that title), then you know that his true strength is comedy and he should just give up drama (especially romance), except for directing things like Gone Baby Gone. Alas, his character was Mr. Mopey here.

What was most difficult for me was keeping track of all the characters (I had to make a chart while watching both versions of The Women too). I found it easiest to do this by noting who made more public displays of affection (marriage, talking on the phone, sensitivity) versus who made more private displays of affection (sex, housechores, honesty). For the record, I personally don't believe that one type of affection is more important than another, but different people prioritize differently. If it helps or at the very least entertains you, here is my official He's Just Not That Into You character breakdown: there were nine main characters, four men and five women, but we'll cut Drew Barrymore because her character doesn't do anything, which leaves us with an even eight. I divided the remaining characters into four groups of two people each (if you want to draw your own table, it's just a square with two columns and two rows). I put the men on the left column and the women on the right column, those who emphasized public displays of affection on the top row and those who emphasized private displays of affection on the bottom. If I've lost you by this point, you can appreciate how most guys feel trying to make logical sense of most chick flicks. It's funny (and not just for the obvious "I made a nerdy chart" reason) to note that none of the characters in the same axis really interact with each other, only with people in others.

Axis I: Men in Public
Kevin Connolly - the real estate agent; calls girls he's into and/or tries to move in with them
Bradley Cooper - the cheater; all ulterior motives

Axis II: Women in Public
Jennifer Aniston - suppresses what she wants for herself
Jennifer Connelly - never questions what her partner really wants

Axis III: Men in Private
Ben Affleck - won't settle down, but will listen when spoken to and do the dishes
Justin Long - the bartender; both the most likable and least believable character; I don't however believe that honesty and sensitivity have to be mutually exclusive

Axis IV: Women in Private
Ginnifer Goodwin - the main girl; desperate, desperate, desperate, to the point of public humiliation
Scarlett Johansson - prefers sex and honesty to respect for marriage and sensitivity, at least until the end (sorry, PLOT SPOILER)

Art House Versus Art House

My coworker can't understand how Woody Allen is successful. My reply was that he always makes back more than he spends and he's constantly working. You know Vicky Cristina Barcelona (three and a half stars total) was shot luxiously on location in Spain, yet cheaply because it's so windy in the beginning that it looks and feels like a home video. The audiobook-sounding narration is annoying at first but then welcome comic relief later on when the story gets serious. Woody Allen's comedy is difficult for people because he is so serious. His only movies that I like are the ones he's not in, but even when he's missing, he always gets an actor to play him, like Jason Biggs in Anything Else (2003) or in this case, Rebecca Hall's Vicky. One good thing about Woody's grave seriousness is his reverent attention to music. Between the jazz in Zelig (1983) and the opera in Match Point (2005), I can't say enough about the way Woody uses music. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, it sounds like the singer or guitarist is sitting right next to you. Music is very important in this movie, but never as the background. It's more like a constant third character as it only plays when there are two main characters interacting. "Granda" by Emilio de Benito brought a big smile to my face everytime it was played, which is saying something, because whereas I love flamenco, I hate repetition. Javier Bardem's bad, patchy beard may be a step up or down from Miami Vice, depending on how lazy a fashion victim you want to be. A slightly bucktoothed Scarlett Johansson looks a child in this movie. Last note on physical appearances - was it conscious decision of Woody's to make Vicky's husband is shorter than her? I'll wrap it up by saying that the themes are honesty versus commitment and the moral to the story is don't marry someone who hates your friends.

Indie darling Rachel Getting Married (two stars total) is as exciting as loading a dishwasher. No more, no less. If you judge a movie by how quiet it starts, then you will know everything there is to know about this movie within the first three minutes of the opening credits. Something you should know about me is that I love music when it's playing in the other room. I like it when it's in the same space as me also, on my headphones or in the car, but I like it even better when it's playing down the hall, out the window, or the way it perpetually plays in this movie, but not as background music (just as in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, although less intimately and more noisily). Rachel Getting Married is the classic prodigal son story, albeit with a daughter and not a son and the party thrown is not for the wayward one but for the good girl's wedding. All the media hype may be about Anne Hathaway's performance, but the movie is still about the Rachel character getting married. You may ask, do families like this really exist? Is there another movie that plays jazz back to back with psychadelic rock, or slick, commercial R&B back to back with cowboy poetry? And what's up with the military guy who videotapes everything? One reason to watch this movie is that Debra Winger as the mom uses the physical violence you might have liked to see in Terms of Endearment (1983). One reason to avoid this movie is that it's like watching someone else's wedding video. Even if you feel like a member of this family by the end of the movie, it's still not your wedding video, so neither the emotional involvement nor technical perfection is reason enough to watch. Vicky ends well messily while Rachel has a Hollywood ending without being "Hollywood."

Bond Formula Versus the New Movie

Quantum of Solace (three and a half stars total) I think I liked the new Bond movie even better than the last one. The main character seems more sure of who he is and what needs to be done. I prefer the new, up close and personal, choreographed fight scenes over the classic, panoramic armies exploding of yesteryear. And the best part of the new movie is the part that's not in there - the afterglow bed scene (oh yes, there's some bare back kissing, but not played out, laying in bed). Accuse me of not being a purist, I know I'm not. But at least I hold a grudge that Daniel Craig doesn't have dark hair. Anyway, on with the "James Bond Formula":

1. Traditional Theme, Logo, Single Shot, and Blood - yes, but just at the end(?)

2. Bond Almost Dies - yes, the opening, hillside, car chase that tops Goldeneye's

3. Title - yes, I suppose the title could have many, different meanings

4. Opening Credits - yes, silhouettes of nubile women, but more desert than anything else

5. Movie Theme Song - yes, but not same title as the movie; the lead singer of Oasis complained that Americans did it this time, but has that really been the first time? Jack White and Alicia Keys melded two styles so completely that it gives hope for the future of music

6. Briefing of Mission - yes/abduction and murder from within the organization

7. Toyland - yes, but not FOR Bond to take with him; I'm referring to the Minority Report-style office desks and satellite phone screens

8. Exotic Locations - yes, Haiti, Cairo, and Bolivia

9. "Bond, James Bond" - no, but maybe I just missed it

10. Casino Gamble - no, that would have been seriously redundant after the last movie

11. Game of Skill - no, the substitute of another game didn't even come into play; you could count the opera/tele-conference he interrupts or the eco-fundraiser for at least requiring a tuxedo

12. Henchmen - yes, and the fight right before he meets the Bond Girl reminded me a lot of the cramped slugfests in The Bourne Supremacy

13. Bond Girl - yes, and I can't remember a Latina ever before

14. Company of the Bad Girl - no, there are only two girls, both on his side

15. Sexually Hinted Female Name - yes, Strawberry Fields

16. American Agent - yes, the same guy from Casino Royale, who I like

17. Enemy Spots Bond - yes, he gets ID'd with help from the bad CIA guy

18. Chase - yes, by land, sea, and air

19. Russian Writer's Name - I don't know my authors; the Bond Girl is the daughter of a Russian

20. Fallen Comrade - yes, both Mathis and Ms. Fields

21. Bad Guy's Headquarters Found - yes, in the middle of the desert

22. Bad Guy's Nasty Pet - no, just the General's nasty habits

23. Battle Armies - no, thank goodness; I refer now to Clerk's discussion of Star Wars' stormtrooper recruitment and the mass civilian casualties in the destruction of the Death Star

24. Bond and Company Captured - no, but Bond coaches on how to kill

25. Bond Left to Die - no, but one bad guy still reveals his whole evil plan

26. Bond Saves Self and Bond Girl - yes, in a blaze of glory, yet a somehow anticlimactic ending

27. Final Combat - yes, both Bond and the Bond Girl gets their vengeance

28. Cynical Eulogy - yes, there's something about a drink but it's not laugh-out-loud funny or even smile-worthy; I have to admit, this newest Bond has almost none of the humor of the others

29. Destruction of Bad Guy's Headquarters - yes, but it starts during fighting

30. Secondary Combat - yes, if you call ordering someone to sit down at gunpoint a form of combat; the dismissal of the Canadian agent is slightly amusing, but definitely not humorous

31. Taking the High Road - no, Bond and Bond Girl are neither retrieved in an exotic or unusual manner, nor do they need any help getting home

32. Bond Has the Bond Girl - NO, can you believe it?????

According to my table of the previous movies (see my 11/3/08 post), Quantum of Solace was more faithful to "James Bond Formula" (20 out of 32) than On Her Majesty's Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only, or The Living Daylights