Halloween

Very few movies get me out to the theater for the midnight showing on opening night these days. But such was my love for the original Halloween, my reverence for the work of Donald Pleasence and John Carpenter, that I was excited to see the remake.

So there I was last night at midnight eagerly waiting to see Rob Zombies take on the film. I admit I had some reservations, Zombies skills thus far have been largely in making people squeamish and disturbed through scenes of pure brutality and stark questions about the dark, scary recesses of the HUMAN mind. Halloween, to me, has always been (yes I know it's a "slasher" flick) of the more subtle variety. Carpenter scared me more with the brilliantly crafted scenes of Meyers hiding just out of sight, in broad daylight and surrounded by leaves and an overcast sky. He built tension with Meyers staring up at Laurie Strode from the yard and then vanishing just as quickly. Carpenter is brilliant at that kind of tension. The killings in the first film were brutal enough, terrifying enough, but they accentuated the myth and the inherent evil that Meyers was built into, they weren't the center of the whole movie.

Anyway, I don't like cover bands much. And for a reason. Songs in their original form were written and sung for a specific reason by the artists. The tone and tempo of the music can evoke moods and feelings, can make you nostalgic or upbeat or sad or what have you. Songs, in total, are created to compliment the intention of a lyricist that has a vision of what the songs about. So when a cover band, no matter how talented, takes a great song and turns it into a punk piece, to me, something is lost in translation. The song no longer truly represents it's original intentions. So for classic songs, cherished songs, you shouldn't stray too far from the original work. Tweak it, adjust it, but don't throw it away and start again.

But that's a little bit what Halloween felt like to me. It felt like a cover piece by an extremely talented band, but not quite what it was meant to be. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Rob Zombies work--his camera work in this film was spectacular once again--but rewriting John Carpenter is a real tough task. Carpenter is a one of a kind writer/director. All other attempts to remake his films have been total disasters, culminating with last years abysmal The Fog. But Zombie felt up to it and took a shot, who can blame him, I'm sure he knows how talented he is.

But what should have been like a world-class, highly skilled artist adding a few brush strokes to a da vinci and trying to add his once-in-a-lifetime gift to a masterpiece instead became something like a skilled apprentice starting with a blank canvas and referencing a masterwork. There's elements left of Carpenters brilliance, there an essence of evil and terror and there are some spooky and gratifying shots, but overall Zombie is just not there yet as a writer and he strayed way too far from the original classic for my taste.

I don't want to spoil the film for you so I will avoid any specifics here. But it's safe, I hope, to tell you that Zombie has decided to give Michael Meyers a back-story here. The first hour plus is an origin piece and the bloody battle in Haddenfield is the end of the film and not the centerpiece. In a way it's a ballsy move and I respect the shot he took here, but in truth I preferred Meyers as a soulless and evil being with no explanation. Just an evil fucked up soul out for a murderous rampage, something inexplicable and all the more daunting because of the mystery. If you had to give Meyers a backstory and try to attribute some environmental reasons for his behavior what would you expect? A terrible upbringing, drunk father and stripper mother maybe? What's original about that? Lot's of run of the mill psychopaths are defined and created this way, tons of books and movies have done this and created killers using their shitty home lives as a backdrop. Why make Meyers a run of the mill serial killer? Why not just let it be that he was born evil and we just can't explain it? Isn't it scarier to believe that random evil souls can just be created and sort of fall into our laps form time to time? To me it is surely is.

Sure, Zombie does try to let us know that Michael Meyers is a 'perfect storm' of factors, some, presumably, just pure evil and some environmental. But that's just too much explanation for me, it wasn't needed.

Zombie also took liberties with Dr. Loomis, played brilliantly my Malcolm McDowell, and gave his character some unnerving qualites, had him attempt to capitalize on his work with Myers by publishing a book and hitting the lecture circuit. Where the original Loomis had an eerie connection with Myers, could see the pure evil within and was obsessed with what he considered to be an evil entity and not a man. The original Loomis came to be convinced that Myers must be destroyed. His connection to the evil within was frightening and powerful, intriguing and compelling--it convinced me that one or the other of them must die, both could not survive. If Myers was inexplicably evil then Loomis had some bit of inexplicable good in him. The Loomis character in Zombies version is not as compelling, not as convinced that he is dealing with evil and not man. Although I loved McDowell's performance I don't think his character was written well or gave him much to work with.

The rest of the cast is OK, not great, not bad. Really not all that essential. Scout Taylor-Compton was a bit of a disappointment as Laurie Strode, I just didn't think she pulled off the terrified for her life teenager as well as Jamie Lee Curtis did. Curtis had a way of showing us this very primal fear, this thing that morphs into a survival instinct, you could see it in her eyes. Compton is a competent performer and plays the whole bookish, good girl thing well. But she never taps into that primal terror, never shows us this unexpected strength that Curtis did.

The film is full of clever shots, holy shit moments, things that are absolutely creepy. Zombie is deft at creating scenes that look scary, like Myers peering from a window on an overcast night with leaves swirling around him, scary scenes. But in my mind those scenes were done for him and all he had to do was stand on the shoulders of John Carpenter to create them. I mean, how hard is it to take Myers, a fall night, some leaves and an old house and make something LOOK scary. I'll bet half of you could do it. The trick is to take the slam dunk scary shots Carpenter gave you and do more with them. And the hard part is building suspense and creating a character that scares you. Making a hero so reluctant in Loomis that we know he's not acting to be heroic but rather that he feels he has no choice, it's self-preservation, it's trying to stop a town from being slaughtered. It's a gnawing feeling that Myers must be removed from the earth, those are the compelling reasons Loomis acts. I didn't get that sense this time, never really fel the obsession or bizarre connection between the two.

When I left the movie I didn't hate it, and I still don't. I think it was a Hell of a try and there's some really excellent stuff in there. I did feel a little too much like it was a Devils Rejects spin-off, I think I have the whole white-trash vibe understood now, let's get back to something supernatural, eh?

If you loved the original and are familiar with Carpenters assorted works and love them, you're not gonna be happy with this. If you can view it like it's a different movie, sort of set aside your memories of the original, you can enjoy it. There's enough good work and direction to make it enjoyable, enough Rob Zombie exploring the inherent evil in people to be compelling. It's really a mixed bag of a movie. Not enough wrong with it to hate, not enough right with it to believe they nailed a remake of a brilliant classic. It may seem like a chicken shit answer but the movie left me conflicted; not loving it, not hating it, but certainly able to appreciate it. Rob Zombie has some awesome skill, I look forward to his next outing. A for effort here, if you don't mind tossing out the original, go see this one.

But next Halloween, with the lights off and the leaves swirling around my own house, will I reach for my DVD of Rob Zombies Halloween? Hell no. I'll stick in the 1978 original. For me, Halloween is not Halloween without Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence and the kind of soulless evil that only John Carpenter can master.

New Comment Policy

OK, thanks to spammers and a few select geeks, MovieMojo is going to have a new comment policy. I love comments, please leave them, but you are going to have to enter a visual code and they will be moderated.

I know, it sounds like a hassle, but no more so than weeding through 50 spam posts. Anyway, it's not that hard. The final straw was some asshat dork leaving a shitty comment that no one cares about. I had to delete it, look at his dorky face, and return to the blog. I decided to turn on moderation.

The Invasion

I guess Nicole Kidman is jealous that her ex, Tom Cruise, is beating her down the "career suicide" slide. If you're Kidman and you want to destroy what's left of your carrer but you also don't want to join a cult full of bat-shit crazy people to do it, what to do? Make movies like The Invasion, that's what.

Can't wait for that Nicole Kidman box-set in Walmart: The Invasion, Bewitched, The Interpreter, The Stepford Wives and Cold Mountain. All for 9.99! It's been an extremely unfortunate path that the lovely, talented Kidman has taken lately. It's been a long, long time since the Others, hasn't it?

I don't even know where to begin with this thing. It's just a god-awful mess from start to finish. Among the noteable accomplishments of the film:

1. Managed to make Daniel Craig look like a giant, dorky tool

2. Managed to squeeze in that "Dog's can tell the difference when they sniff an alien" thing, for the 10,000th time in movie history.

3. Rammed in the droll, boring and sanctimonious dinner conversation, carried out by elites who try to make the case that humans, why, humans don't even belong in the world! So vile are they, say the intellectuals, the academics, so vile we may be better off if aliens did conquer us!

Aside from being painfully predictable the movie just seemed half-hearted and lazy. The writers try to advance this point that if aliens took over our bodies maybe our wars would stop and we'd be nicer and blah, blah, you know the routine. So fine, if that's your point, if you have to explore that, then explore it. Let's look in detail at the concept, which has shades of communism, and deal with it. No? What's that? Let's just sprinkle in one obnoxious dinner conversation, mention Iraq 200 times and somehow work in a few references to Darfur and then drop it. Until the end, when humans win, then we can have Kidman gaze at the newspaper and wonder if she should have surrendered. Because humans are so, you know, atrocious. Except for Academics and Hollywood elitists, who are clearly more enlightened and should be spared from any alien virus because they're fine the way they are.

How lazy and what a rip-off. Explore your agenda or don't. But to just throw it out there, never develop it and wash your hands of it is just lazy. It's also cowardly because if the writer, Dave Who-Gives-A-Fuck-you'll-never-hear-it-again, had made a convincing argument than we would naturally have to spend the rest of the movie rooting against Kidman and for the aliens, right? Doesn't that sound fun.

It's just a terrible film, with terrible writing and terrible characters. If you look closely you can tell that everyone in the movie knows they're covered in turd. They ust shuffle through this mess and hope to make 10 more movies that move this shlock as far down the list of IMDB credits as possible.

One thing that happened here that was odd: To me, in my opinion, they managed to make Kidman look way hotter than she has in years. I don't know if she had a boob job or what, but they're pretty prominent here. In some cases almost comically so, like her boobs come into the picture before anything else.

The only thing Kidman can take from this piece of shit movie: At least you found a stylist and wardrobe person that make you look amazingly hot. They made her look 25 again. Although, that would mean she'd have more time to churn out movies like this, so it's really a lose, lose.

Avoid this thing at all costs. In fact, if the movie you want to see is positioned in such a way that you have to walk past the screen that Invasion is playing on, come back later. You should be safe in 4 to 6 hours when this thing ends it craptacular run on the big screen and gets pulled.

Superbad

Is it even possible, after seeing this movie, to resist the headline "Super Bad is Super Good"? I don't know, I'm struggling with it.

The first 1/2 hour of this movie is so funny, and had me laughing so hard, that at one point I recall thinking that there was no way to sustain that pace. It couldn't possibly be that funny for that long, it was going to devolve into something that sucked, I was sure. Especially with all the locker room jokes that were somehow, miraculously made funny again. I giggled like a 7th grader, laughed uproariously and finally, left the movie with a stitch in my side.

Superbad was written by the team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. You'd know Rogen if you saw his picture, he was the sissy friend in You me and Dupree with the naggy wife, he was in Knocked Up, and now he's written that funniest thing I've seen in years. This is really the first thing noteworthy that Goldberg has written, but he's sure to get plenty of chances now as this movie did very well so far, grossing more than 30 million in its opening weekend.

The strange thing about the movie is that you know it shouldn't be that funny, it's not an intellectual kind of clever, or even word play at all, it's just beat you over the head crudeness that somehow works.

Superbad works because of Jonah Hill. Make no mistake about it, Jonah Hill is hysterical, has flawless timing, a great dead-pan and when he needs to can be a very sympathetic character. And he just looks funny. How else can I say that? He doesn't need to resort to physical comedy all that much, though he does on occasion, but he has an expressive face and he works it well.

That's not to say that Michael Cera isn't great as Evan or that Christopher Mintz-Plasse doesn't work as Fogell. Both of them are great, but the cold, hard truth is that finding a quiet reflective sort of do-gooder to play the fat kids moral compass wouldn't be that hard, nor would replacing Fogell with some other geek, they're everywhere. But Jonah Hill is something special. Superbad is the lowest form of humor, if you're measuring on an intellectual scale, but it's brilliant in it's execution and delivery.

Never mind the plot, if I try to sum it up, you'll think it's just dumb. It's not that important anyway, it's simple and really just a vehicle for exploring Seth's (Jonah Hill) desperate desire to get laid, drunk and generally end his high school career on a cool note.

Go see Superbad, it's truly worth it. Superbad is super good! There, I said it.

J.K. Rowling and Artistic Convictions

I saw an interview with J.k. Rowling the other day and came away more impressed with her than I already was. She stated that during initial talks to make movies from her books she insisted on keeping keeping most/all creative control. She said she would rather that they not be made into movies at all if they weren't going to stay true to her books and be patient enough for her to finish the Harry Potter series on her terms.

As a movie fan and someone that absolutely loved the Harry Potter books, I can barely grasp the enormity of that statement. She would rather they never become movies if her vision of the Harry Potter series isn't the one on screen. Are you listening Stephen King?

Hello, Stephen King, did you hear that? Did you hear what an author with great vision, great passion and conviction says when a movie studio tries to translate her work to the screen? Do it right or don't do it.

Imagine the risks taken on both sides here. What if the movie studio agreed to surrender to Rowling's demand for creative and content control and the woman then went totally off the rails? What if you're 4 movies into a 7 part cash cow and Rowling's decides to give Harry and Hermione a sex scene. Or she has Harry wake up and it's all been a normal boy dreaming. I know, a horrible thought, but what if? What's a studio do then?

What if Rowling got hit by a bus and there was no book 6 or 7.

And for Rowlings part, think of how hard it must be to author 7 wonderful books and then oversee a movie studio trying to create what's in your head? And to risk millions upon millions by saying "If it takes me 3 years to finish book 7, then that's what it takes. You don't get to find some writer to hurry up a movie for you because the market demands it. You make them on my terms or don't make them."

Awesome. Amazing. And the result is equally awesome. The movies, no matter who you talk to, look and feel exactly like what you were seeing in your minds eye as you read the books. They're equal measures wonderment, happiness, youthful nostalgia and dread.

What an incredible author, what incredible movies and what a fine example to every other author to learn from. Cherish your work, love it, control it. If you're going to make a movie, make it live and breath in your world. Don't let some Hollywood hack tear apart your creation.

Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling are shining examples of what's right in the literary and cinema worlds. Proof that a synergy can be formed with great fiction and great film. I am confident the final 2 movies will be extraordinary and am equally confident that HArry Potter will live as a beloved fairy tale for 100 years.

Congratulations to Rowling and everyone involved in those films. To all those authors who will sell out and allow their creations to be destroyed in the coming years, shame on you. You've seen it done right, seen it work, and now there's no excuse.

Rush Hour 3

You know what? And this may shock some of you, especially those that know me and know how much fun I had at Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2, but here goes: I am not going to see this movie. That's right, maybe on video, but I will not see Rush Hour 3 in theaters.

I just know it's going to be stale, I know it's going to recycle a bunch of old jokes, I am afraid it will stain the other two for me. I truly feel this is one too many. When I was younger, I wouldn't have cared as much, if I enjoyed something and you wanted to feed me more of the same, I'd take it! But now, knowing that there are so many films more deserving of my attention and my ten bucks, I just feel like rehashing this shtick one more time is going to be painful to watch.

Yeah, OK, it seems hypocritical, even to me. Isn't this the guy that watched all 6 Rocky movies? That reveled in the excessive explosions and falling bodies in every Rambo? The guy that watched all the Dirty HArry movies, several times? Yep, guilty.

And now I am calling for originality! What gives? I can't really explain it. The thought of watching Chris Tucker make faces and of watching Jackie Chan not fit in just seems so 'blah' to me at this point. There will be no meaningful plot, just a Pink Pantheresque caper of some sort, designed to let Jackie Chan kick some ass to let Chris Tucker get his kicked. Blah. Chan will be uncool and unhip, Tucker will gleefully point that out and ridicule him. Blah. I'm sorry, I can't do this one.

Taken separately I like both Chan and Tucker. Chris Tucker is a great visual actor, he has hysterical faces and, sort of like Jackie Gleason in his prime, knows how to react to something and not always be the instigator. He can be funny, visually with his quasi-feminine mannerisms and voice, juxtaposed with his dangerous job and macho persona. Likewise Chan can be hysterical with his faces and is entertaining visually. But let's face it, there's only so many times he can try to punch a guy in the face, miss and hit a wall or some other hard object, wince and shake his hand really fast and have it be funny.

The irony here is this: These movies make a living comparing and contrasting two guys that are supposed to be polar opposites. But in reality they are identical performers, relying on sight gags and funny faces to butter their bread. The sure to be terrible plot and horrible over the top bad guys aren't really even needed. I mean, who really cares what has these two all worked up this time. This is straight ahead, ake two guys that are opposite, stick them both out of their element, and watch the hilarity.

Come on, there's only so many versions of country boy goes big city you can handle. In Rush Hour Chan was the proverbial fish out of water in America. In Rush Hour Two Tucker was the fish out of water. Now they're both out of water! With both of them out of the water it'll be anyone paying 10 bucks a seat for this that's all wet.

Transformers

It's been a long, long time since I posted here. What can I say, life happens. Anyway, and this is late since it's been out a while, I finally saw Transformers.

Michael Bay is such an interesting director, an enigma really, because you want to love, he does so much right, but soooo much wrong. His movies are a balancing act, like getting a great meal with terrible service, you're left unsure how you should feel about the restaurant.

That's Transformers: a great meal with shitty service. The movie is visually awesome, the special effects are great, the robots cool and sleek. Everything Bay does visually works well. It's fun to look at. Add to that Shia LeBouf, who has a dry witted coolness about that I love, and you have great food.

Now, Megan Fox, the smoking hot love interest, does not turn in the performance of the century here. The storyline is incredibly weak and the love story so clumsy and ham-handed it's almost laugh out loud funny at times. Then there's this ridiculous attempt to surprise us, and LeBouf's character, with Mikaela's (Megan Fox)"I come from the wrong side of the tracks but I'm a good person" story. And LeBouf, who is supposed to be blind with love (and lust) is so stupid that he can't see past her criminal father and her tiny arrest record. IT's not just cliche, it's absurd!

It's like someone said "Megan's character isn't complex enough. You there, mopping the floor, put that down and write me a back story! Quick!" The whole convoluted, set-him-up-for-massive=guilt-later thing is over in minutes and this sad attempt at character building takes place in roughly 10 sentences. It's awkward, out of place in the film, done before and not needed.

Then there's two attempts to satire the police for reasons unknown to anyone. First a weird, rather stupid detective that appears in the beginning--he is, for no reason at all, like some idiot cop from the worst Saturday Night Live sketch ever. And later, John Turturro takes his turn as an obsessed, stupid and slightly mean Federal Agent. Again, out of place and ham-handed. It actually took away a great deal from the movie for me. This quirky agent reminded me a lot of the bizarre FBI Agent in the Frighteners with Michael J. Fox. In that movie, it worked perfectly and fit right in, in this one Turturros character is a sore thumb.

So, the story is the bad service.

Now what do I think of the movie? Well, it's a Michael Bay tradition to capture something pretty on screen, having a knack for creating dramatic moments with his direction, or, as in Armageddon and parts of Pearl Harbor, perfectly capturing a piece of Americana and making us a little nostalgic. It's also a tradition to screw it up with crappy dialogue, terrible attempts at love stories and weak plot lines. Never mind dynamic, growing characters, they do not exist in his world.

So I knew what I was getting into. For me, the service was so bad that it took away from the great food. It left me feeling OK, I could have eaten somewhere else cheaper and faster. For kids it'll be fun and it's worth seeing for the effects, but it could have been a whole lot better. I would say I came away disappointed. But the sad truth is, I will dine in the Michael Bay restaurant again, his visuals are too good and most of his films are too much fun not to.