I caught a lot of crap at work for “liking” the Final Destination series. Primarily, this is coming from a guy who proclaims his favorite movie ever is the original Saw, so I consider his opinion moot. Given the unevenness of the series, I would say “tolerate” is a more appropriate verb for my feelings on these films. That seems fair since Final Destination films seem to range from pretty good, like the original, to the offensively stupid, such as a large chunk of part 3 and all of part 4. Since the various writers and directors of the previous four films seem to have moved on, Final Destination 5‘s writer Eric Heisserer and director Steven Quale have almost a blank canvas to create on.

The synopses part of these reviews almost seem rote now but if you’ve seen any of the previous films, you know the gist. In this case, Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) has a vision of a cataclysmic bridge collapse on the way to his company’s team building retreat. He manages to get everyone off the bus only for them all to get made dead via collapsing bridge decks, swinging suspension cables, or random sailboats. Fearing his premonition, Sam manages to get his girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell), friend Peter (Miles Fisher) and other company folk off the bridge before it collapses. From then, they all die. This is not a spoiler. This is expected for this type of film.

With five films in the can now, the main hook of the Final Destination series is undoubtedly the deaths and the almost far-fetched yet somewhat conceivable ways that people can die. On that front, FD5 is almost tame in respect to some of the other films as many of the deaths are fairly straight-forward bad luck such as the flying wrench to the skull or crushing blow to the head from Buddha. Only one sequence really sticks out as the typical Rube-Goldbergian style that the series is built on. This scene though in a gymnasium is full of misdirection and red herrings (not sure that this applies here but we’ll go with it) that make the final outcome completely out of the blue, especially since this part was featured heavily in the trailers.

In the review for FD3, I remarked: “it is clear for me that what makes a Final Destination good as opposed to just mediocre are the characters.” FD4 (or THE Final Destination if you must) was shit because it completely disregards characters entirely for stupid gross-out gory moments and deaths. FD5 though walks the thin line not seen since the second between characters you actually care about and over-the-top death scenes. Here we have a good few minutes to get introduced to the characters and their histories and dynamics before they are almost playing on death’s swing set. While it might seem minor, the fact that Sam and Molly are on the rocks or that Olivia is self-conscious about her glasses are far more beneficial than just padding the film’s runtime. Unlike the last film, we can connect with these characters to some extent and can appreciate their relationships or worries which make their inevitable deaths just a bit more impactful.

It certainly helps greatly that we have professional actors in the film as opposed to the bottom-of-the-casting-barrel detritus that turned up last time. I don’t know why but I am a fan of D’Agosto, probably stretching back to his performance in Election. #pbf’s unrequited love Emma Bell is no slouch either as the love interest and final girl of the group. And Jacqueline MacInnes Wood is quite fetching. And a good actress to boot! In fact, all of the cast including Courtney B. Vance and David Koechner are believable in their respective roles even though Vance’s random agent seems a bit ridiculous since he is trying to blame a natural bridge collapse on Sam.

Vance’s role seemed to be a not very well conceived callback to the first where Alex is suspected of involvement in the airplane blowing up. That worked, to an extent, in that film but the notion that a mild-mannered guy could cause a freak natural disaster bridge collapse is stretching things a bit. There are other underlying callbacks to the first with the mentions of Paris and occurrences of the number 180 but there was no moment where the survivors figured out how their situation tied into the first film which was almost a staple in this series (the last film notwithstanding to my recollection.) Yet, without giving too much away, the final sequence ties in nicely with Devon Sawa and Kerr Smith from the original in a way I was pretty happy with.

At this rate, there isn’t too much new that can be done with these films but I was pleasantly surprised with how effectively Heisserer and Quale are able to balance the characters with the expected death scenes. Given that this was an online rental, I did not have the benefit of 3D while watching it but the effects sans one dimension were great (especially with the opening bridge collapse) so I was not missing too much. If I had to pick, I’d probably put this entry on par with part 2. It’s amazing how having realistic, albeit someone douchey, characters can make a mindless movie like this so much more enjoyable.

In case it isn’t apparent, we at Movie Scum are big fans of David Fincher. He is, in my opinion, one of few standout directors currently working even if his resume does not have the broad appeal of a Spielberg or a Cameron. Perhaps it was my excitement upon hearing he was involved in the American version of The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo that drowned out any feeble complaints of another American remake of a foreign film. I have not read the Stieg Larsson novel nor seen the entire Swedish adaptation, so I bring no preconceived notions of the story to this film and can hopefully be as impartial as possible.

I don’t read a ton (read: any) books, thus I was largely unaware of Larsson’s trilogy until the original Swedish film debuted in 2009 to much acclaim. The bulk of the praise as I recall centered around Noomi Rapace‘s portrayal of the unstable, anti-social, brilliant researcher Lisbeth Salander to the point that there was some general worry due to the casting of Rooney Mara as Fincher’s Lisbeth. Mara showed her acting chops perfectly in the first segment of Fincher’s last film, Social Network, but would she be able to pull off this challenging role? And how does Daniel Craig as disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist factor into it? And will Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross win another Oscar for their score? So many questions. Let’s get to the answers.

If you’ve read the books or seen the original, from what I hear there will be few surprises in this version as it is rather faithful to the material. Blomkvist is hired by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate the forty-year-old murder of his granddaughter. Meanwhile, Salander is busy trying to make ends meet by her assigned duties of investigating and/or computer surveillance while battling a grotesque pig of a “guardian” who uses his control over her finances to some, well, rather horrible means. A long stretch of the film goes by with Blomkvist doing his thing and Salander doing hers (you can take that in a number of ways) before they finally join forces and discover that the murder of one lone girl ties in with a string of murders previously undetected.

All the talk of Fincher being a difficult director seem to be warranted (he even confirms as much in the commentary for Se7en) but the man certainly has a clear vision and is unstoppable at achieving it. Much like most of his work, Dragon Tattoo is a dark story with many heinous acts shown or spoken throughout. Yet, there is a sense of beauty in the visuals as Fincher and his DP Jeff Cronenweth use the slow pan of a room with pictures tacked on the wall or of the serene landscape to almost offset the horror in the story’s details. Much like Se7en, this film centers around the hunt for a serial killer but this is not an action-packed affair with shootouts and car chases throughout that would permeate such a film normally (although those do happen infrequently here). It is more of a quiet reflection on the dark side of human behavior and unraveling the mindset behind a man who can rape, murder, and dismember another human being.

If nothing else, Fincher is an actor’s director as I cannot recall a horribly miscast or performed character in any of his movies (yes, even the much maligned Alien entry). This film is no different with Craig, Plummer, and Stellan Skarsgård as another of the Vanger clan turning in superb performances that shy away from typical Hollywood style of overacting. Most of the performances are done well enough that sell the characters as real life people, not simply James Bond trying to portray a normal person. Mara though outdoes them all with her performance as Salander. The internet is rife with debate between Mara and Rapace as the better Salander. Again, having not seen the Swedish version in its entirety, I cannot comment so much other than to say Mara was fantastic. A nomination of some sort is required after seeing this seemingly normal girl envelope the role so much that she donned her own genuine body piercings and is able to simultaneously embody an apathetic woman toward life in general as well as a woman so determined that she will put herself in harm’s way to stop a murderer. The dynamic between Craig and Mara is surprisingly authentic and their interactions engross you more into the story.

If you’ve seen the assembly cut of Alien 3 or either version of Zodiac, you know that Fincher is no stranger to movies that are quite long. Dragon Tattoo takes the cake though with a more than two-and-a-half hour runtime that could have been easily excised if Fincher, or writer Steven Zaillian, had a bit more control over the story. The best part of the film is when Salander and Blomkvist are paired up investigating the murder of almost a dozen Swedish women from decades ago. Unfortunately, there is a lot of questionably important backstory to get through before that happens. Likewise, after the murder mystery is resolved, the film still has a quite unnecessarily long coda of Blomkvist regaining his reputation. This is the one thing that hurts the movie as the best part, namely the investigation, is bookended by portions may serve the characters’ and their arcs but disrupt the narrative to do so. I hear this is the same in the novel and the original film as well but a good portion of the runtime could have been trimmed from these outskirts which are neat, but nowhere near as entertaining as the main plot.

Even with the assembly of a great cast and bringing his talent to this film, Fincher’s Dragon Tattoo is bogged down by the underlying uneven story. Everything else is undoubtedly great including Reznor and Ross’ second collaboration together on the score. Despite the effort though, Dragon Tattoo is merely a solid film, not as spectacular as I had hoped.

Let me just start off by saying how thankful I am that there is not another colon before the ‘Ghost Protocol’ subtitle. I think that would irritate me beyond belief, potentially to the point of not even doing a review at all. Whew. Crisis averted. Now as far as big-budget action franchises go, M:I has always been all over the place for me (and a lot of folk by the ratings and reviews). The first had its moments but was decried by some for its handling of establish characters from the TV series. I didn’t care about that so much but it had long stretches of nothing that my 14-year-old brain didn’t like. M:I 2 was much the same but with far too little talky parts and far too many random explosions and whiplash-inducing edits. M:I 3 I rather liked but I’ve only ever seen that once, on TNT or something, at 3 in the morning. So I’m not too qualified to make a firm declaration on that one.

As Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol got underway at the helm of Brad Bird (you know, the awesome director from likely your favorite Pixar films) and Jeremy Renner joining the cast, I was tempted from the start. The initial, and somewhat ongoing, talk was that Renner’s character Brandt was likely to take over for Captain Insano himself for any future installments. Anything that results in less Tom Cruise in my life is always a good thing. Sadly, I did not get to see this in IMAX which means that I didn’t get the DKR prologue (damn!) nor to experience some of the moments that others raved about. I can certainly imagine that those scenes would have been quite amazing in IMAX but I don’t think that the lack of a super-huge screen detracted from my enjoyment … at least not as much as the story.

At the start. we find Ethan Hunt (Insano Cruise himself) stuck in a Russian prison as the team of Jane (Paula Patton) and Benji (the returning Simon Pegg) are attempting to break him out. Of course they succeed since the opening credits have not even begun and Hunt is quickly thrust into a mission to retrieve files from the Kremlin. Things go awry, the Kremlin blows up, and the US government initiates ‘Ghost Protocol’ which is not a version of Call of Duty, but the shuttering of IMF and basically stranding Hunt and his team on their own with a new IMF analyst, Brandt (Renner) tagging along.

If you’ve seen Alias, any James Bond film, or most any other “spy/covert action” movie, you could probably guess there is a deranged man with a major weapon that requires the team to travel to exotic locales to track down clues and contacts and ultimately stop World War III. As far as the story goes, there really is not a lot of new ground broken in this installment sadly. Please do not mistake the rote steps I described for boring as writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec use those genre tentpoles as effectively as possible while transitioning between the exposition and the action very seemlessly. Unlike another recent action-y/spy thriller Salt, the big sequences and showdowns feel naturally inserted into the story instead of a loose plot written around said sequences.

Bird as director deserves a lot of credit for this as well. Perhaps the many years managing the doubtlessly painstaking process of an average Pixar film is a much better training camp for action directors than say, music videos and commercials. Ghost Protocol is almost the antithesis of a Michael Bay film as you actually have a firm grasp of the setting and the blocking so you can tell what the hell is going on. Those transitions between the dialogue and the action and then back again are quite fluid for lack of a better word which is more desirable than the typical “throw in as many cuts as possible to confuse the audience into liking it” sense that seems to permeate action films nowadays.

Since 1996, Cruise has been the face of the M:I series so that sadly has not changed for now but he does well-enough with his smarmy, smug persona to pull off Hunt as well as before. Patton has a few decent scenes but nothing too spectacular. The main standouts for the cast are Pegg and Renner, and that statement might be only slightly partial since I am a fan of both. Pegg does little wrong (I haven’t seen Paul so I can’t say no wrong) so his portrayal of the new field agent Benji is just the right amount of smart and confident with a bit of naivete to him that serves as a great comedic foil for the mostly stone-serious cast. Renner may be among those serious characters but I’ve liked the guy in everything I’ve seen him in and he is quite versatile as an actor with action, drama, and a hint of facetiousness coming through here. While the villains are too blase to remember their names, the dynamic from the ex-IMF team as a whole made up for them. And Anil Kapor was excellent, although not too important in the grand scheme of things.

As a whole, Ghost Protocol doesn’t come together quite as well as I remember the last installment and it may not stick out as a great action film along the lines of Die Hard. But that’s no bother. The pedestrian story aside, there is more than enough here to satisfy with some great performances by Pegg and Renner as well as the type of pacing and structure that action films should strive to abide by.

Look, I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent deflated U.S. currency to see this big-budget teenage soap opera in theaters. Well, no, I am a bit ashamed. But that won’t deter me from finishing up the series that has pained my sensibilities for years now. Bella and Jacob are all grown-up, Edward is technically still a creepy old man, and no one ever seemed to ponder whether or not a vampire can knock-up an awkward teenage girl. Now, the world knows the truth as Breaking Dawn: Part I attempts to lay the old vampire-human sex myth to rest once and for all and so the women in the house can get their fix for pale vamp-y boy or ripped, shirtless wolf-y boy.

So, it appears that ‘Team Jacob’ is not going to be able to pull off a stunning upset in the bottom of the ninth as Bella (Kristen Stewart) is uterus-deep in wedding planning and other such shenanigans for her pending nuptials to Edward (Robert Pattinson). Yes, kids, let this be a lesson to you courtesy of Stephanie Meyer: follow, stalk, and mostly be a jackass to a girl but as long as you have pale skin and dreamy hair, you’re a shoe-in. The wedding seems to act as a manner of reintroducing old friends (poor Anna Kendrick!) and introducting new superfluous-for-now plot points (Maggie Grace looking quite creepy!) but mostly to affirm that Edward is dreamy, and perfect, and has great hair, and … anyways. They tie the knot, have a few awkward/embarrassing moments like any family occasion, and set off on their honeymoon to some random island with a beautiful house that would be toothpicks in a tsunami. ::Spoiler:: No such tsunami happens while Edward and Bella are vacationing there. ::snaps fingers::

After a hilariously over-the-top sex scene their first night (I hear the book is as bad), Bella is bruised and battered as Edward is either really good in the sack or really bad at containing his temper. There are shelters for you, Bella. They spend the next eternity in movie time sitting around, swimming, playing chess, and … bam! Bella’s pregnant! To Forks they return where no one has any idea of how that could happen or what to do next but Bella insists on keeping the baby even though it is breaking bones, feeding off her internal organs or something, and apparently applying quite effective makeup to show the emaciated girl. Jacob (Taylor Lautner) learns of about her “condition” to which the rest of the wolve-y clan aren’t keen about. Jacob breaks from the pack to protect Bella from the hostile shape-shifters while Bella continues to succumb to the demon-ish baby thing inside of her. If you’ve read the books, you know the rest. If not, the rest is actually kind of cool.

Perhaps it’s because I just watched the horrid New Moon, or maybe it’s Opposite Day, or it’s possible that I’m just clinically insane but I actually kind of dug BD:P1. Most of it at least. From the male perspective, the most painful part is the first half or so. I understand that after three mostly unbearable films with the will-she-or-won’t-she affair between Bella and Edward, there needed to be some celebratory event. But, just like most family gatherings I attend, the wedding and its aftermath goes on far too long with little to occupy yourself other than copious amounts of alcohol. When Edward and Bella (why don’t they have a cool compound name like Bedward by now?) head off to the secluded island, the story drags like a tantrum-prone four-year-old in the checkout line but most everyone else wanted to see them get it on. For a movie that clocks in at just under two hours, I can think of a good fifteen to twenty minutes that should have been trimmed from this section.

When Bedward return after learning of the growing spawn, the otherwise overqualified director Bill Condon takes the movie into a bunch of wacky, yet ultimately interesting directions. I can’t really tell if there was a strong anti-abortion agenda present in the film as almost everyone is urging Bella to get “that thing” out of her or if Bella was just being her typical, insipid self and refusing to listen to the voice of reason that the child is killing her, inside and out. Stewart starts off the film much more attractive than I’ve previously found her before but ends looking like a poor woman struck down with some incredibly debilitating illness courtesy of some quite good makeup and CGI. And shockingly, Stewart is mostly up to the task excepting the typical stutter and awkwardness that her character is built upon. Honestly though, the majority of the other characters come off as bossy, assy, or just plain hateful which makes her almost seem like the sane one.

As Tabitha touched on in her review, there was a great deal of emotional impact that could have been harvested from the story as Bella is dying as a child/whatever is growing but most of that seemed to be jettisoned for Jacob scowling, Edward scowling, or random and insultingly-stupid wolf growl to human voice dubbing. Even the experience that Bella goes through is mostly extrapolated from everyone else’s reactions to her, which I guess is in keeping with the spirit of the rest of the series since she has very little defining character traits of her own. Bella does step out of her drab shell though to make things awkward as she remarks to Jacob “it feels complete when you’re here” in front of her new family and … HER NEW HUSBAND. I thought we were past this by now.

This series has chronically suffered from not-good acting but things were a bit better this time around. Pattinson has become better each film through heavy makeup, Stewart isn’t quite as irritating as the first couple films, and it even features more Billy Burke and Sara Clark! Yay for that! The rest of the Cullen clan are merely bystanders in their own house but there was nothing too incredibly off-putting here. Except Lautner. I thought the kid was okay before but maybe that was just when he had hair and no six-pack abdomen. He’s probably too focused on whatever crap movie he’s starring in at this point anyway.

I’ve already written way too much about this movie than I intended but it is pretty damn entertaining once we get past the lovey-dovey aspect of the story. Even without an external threat like the last film, Breaking Dawn: Part I is thus far the best in the series. Don’t get me wrong. It’s no American Beauty or Halloween, but something that I can possibly see myself watching (and fast-fowarding through) at home.

To prepare for the upcoming “Epic Finchercast,” I revisited Alien 3, or Alien Cubed if you so prefer, since I haven’t seen it since the early 90s after its debut on HBO. Since I was but maybe 10 or 11 at the time, I cannot hold myself too accountable for my disdain for this film since of course, at the time, I had not yet experienced Se7en, Zodiac, or Social Network. On the surface, Alien Cubed is a decent follow-up to the Alien saga. When viewed with the rest of director David Fincher‘s body of work, this was just the beginning.

The main consternation of Alien 3 seems to be around the death of Newt and Hicks. Now, I love Aliens (and Michael Biehn) just as much as the next guy and at the time I was sad to see them perish off-camera in rather rudimentary ways. But as the crew’s ship crash lands onto a Company-owned maximum-security prison/iron works/whatever, this time I began to see why that decision was made. Hicks was basically incapacitated and Newt, while cute and all, was still just a pesky pre-teen girl that would have otherwise been surrounded by the rapists and murderers on Fury 161. It’s tough to say but those characters had outlived their usefulness but Ripley, of course, has not.

Say what you want about the Alien series proper as a whole, but Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has always been the backbone and Alien 3 shows exactly why. As she is told by the medical officer Clemens (Charles Dance) that her companions have perished, Ripley still has the nagging thought that an alien is behind their demise even though she is curiously restrained in explaining that. After the bodies of Newt and Hicks are cremated and a rescue team has been summoned, Ripley receives confirmation that an alien was on-board and has likely infiltrated the small camp of prisoners and corrections officers.

Having watched the theatrical cut and the “assembly cut” back-to-back, the omissions that were made are puzzling. Even knowing about the longer, fuller cut in advance, the theatrical version seems either far too sloppily edited or too truncated to do the film any justice. Out of the twenty five remaining in the facility, only a handful are ever given any characterization (such as Charles Dutton‘s Dillion) or even names (like the survivor Morse) in the regular cut, leading to the bulk of the film just an alien chasing random dudes down dimly-yellow-tinged hallways. The “assembly cut” or as close to Fincher’s director’s cut that we will likely receive is about twenty five minute longer and features not only more prominent characterizations of the important inmates but also a quite enthralling plot point that was completely omitted from the final film.

Since I have watched an ungodly amount of Fincher films in the past month, it is easy to see the visual style that he would hold onto with following films. The low- and high-angled shots, the yellow hues that permeate, and even the emphasis on character rather than flashy visuals that would define him almost two decades later are present in Fincher’s debut film. Sadly, that mostly holds true for the “assembly cut” rather than the theatrical version since a good chunk of the story was left out in the latter version. Even the other little details like the grimy set-pieces or the ruthless anonymous thugs speak toward Fincher’s other works and they certainly stand out here as Fincher seems to be more interested in the visual than the constantly changing narrative.

Even though it has been largely criticized by the movie-watching community, Alien 3 is a worthy follow-up to James Cameron’s Aliens in that it is almost completely different in its execution. Aliens was more focused on non-stop action whereas Alien 3 is more of a melding of its two predecessors. There are many horror-esque moments especially as the prisoners do not know about the threat but yet still many action sequences such as the alien chasing men through endless corridors, all while it is scaling walls and ceilings. Those chase scenes close to the finale, and even those throughout the film, are captured with almost a raw intensity that defy you to be nonchalant during them. Even the assembly cut ending which still has Ripley sacrificing herself is more impactful as the queen does not bust out just before. It not only is more fitting for the ending of a Fincher film but also makes Ripley’s journey more impactful.

There’s tons of stuff to beat this movie up on from the cruddy CGI to the underdeveloped characters but Alien 3 was nowhere near as abysmal as I feared it would be. The assembly cut is the one to watch if you have the chance but even through the studio fuckery, the theatrical cut is still a pretty powerful film on its own, and one that tries to stand up to its bigger brothers in the franchise.

You might have noticed that it was over a year ago that I reviewed the first and third parts of the Twilight soap opera, err … saga, but not this one. That isn’t by accident nor is it entirely due to my extreme laziness. As much as I kind of liked Eclipse and was sort of okay with Twilight, this movie did absolutely nothing for me to the extent that I wished to rewatch and review it. Yet, the gap in reviews for the series has constantly bugged me and with a forthcoming review for the newest installment (hopefully not by myself), I figured I would suffer for the loyal fan or two that we still have and watch New Moon. And I hate myself for it.

Look, I know that the first movie was nothing great or special to the population at large (excepting certain groups of course). The dialogue is trite, the acting is not very good (or downright horrid, K-Stew!), and it is merely an inconsequential teenage love affair that happens to feature “vampires.” Yet, even with all of that going against it, Twilight is probably close to ranking as a guilty pleasure just because I love the cinematography and the music. Oh, and Billy Burke. He’s pretty awesome too. Yet, the producers of New Moon seemed to extract from my dreams what I liked about the first and exclude those from this film because … hey, this isn’t a series for me.

The stupid teenage angst is still front-and-center with the awkwardly non-descript Bella (Kristen Stewart) smitten with her “vampire” beau Edward (Robert Pattinson) to the detriment of everyone else in her life. On her birthday, she attends a celebration of sorts at the Cullens’ which threatens to turn interesting after she gets a papercut and blood-thirsty Jasper lunges after her. Sadly, he does not succeed and Bella is still breathing afterwards. In turn, Edward decides that she is in danger around them and the vampire clan move off to sunny southern California or wherever leaving her behind. She fills the Edward-shaped void in her life with Jacob (Taylor Lautner) since he’s around, young, naive, and has a pretty nice six-pack if I do say so.

Imagine Bella’s heartbreak (!) when Jacob abandons her to run around half-naked with a bunch of other guys in the woods. I mean, it’s not like she’s bothered to cultivate any other emotional connections with anyone else other than a vampire and a shape-shifting wolf boy. So anyways, Jacob alludes to Edward that Bella is dead to which the distraught Edward decides to out himself as a vampire to provoke some the Godfather mafia of the vampire world. Oh, and there’s a few fleeting scenes of Victoria coming back to Forks to kill Bella but that makes up no more than ten minutes or so of this unbearably long film.

Replacing Catherine Hardwicke in the director’s chair this go-around is Chris Weitz, who is competent enough but has nowhere near the skill to make me remotely care about these stock characters and asinine situations. Or at least, he has nothing to distract me from them. Even worse though is the script from Melissa Rosenberg, who I can’t really fault based on the source material, because … nothing freakin’ happens other than Bella being a tease to Jacob and pouting over Edward. You could say the same thing about the first in which the main threat didn’t meet the core cast until the final twenty minutes or so but at least there was a threat. As I mentioned, Victoria and the other guy appear but their appearances are very brief and never really consequential to the story. Instead, we are treated to Bella acting like a damn fool just to have hallucinations of Edward saying “Bitch, please!” or something. And don’t get me started on the lazy and completely inept narration as Bella emails Alice at a non-functional address as a poor attempt to give her any sort of depth.

The final act if you can call it that is nothing more than the movie trying to interject some sense of tension or tragedy into the story. It’s sad that I don’t really care if Edward kills himself or Bella dies so that didn’t really register and it served more as (from what I hear) set up for following stories than anything noteworthy here. It was quite funny though when head vampy Aro (Michael Sheen) looks into Bella’s thoughts and remarks “I see nothing” since it perfectly describes Bella as a character who is defined only by whoever she happens to be around at the time. K-Stew’s performance doesn’t help as she’s just as frustratingly bad as the first film. I’ve seen Adventureland at least and know that she is capable of more but this character isn’t helping her portfolio. Pattinson is barely in the movie and Lautner swings from bad to decent pretty easily. And there is a severe lack of both Billy Burke and Anna Kendrick this time around so no acting points for you movie!

As I said, pretty much anything that I could give faint praise to the first film for has been left out here. Other than Bella and Jacob’s bonding sessions and the revelation that Jacob’s crew are werewolf-things, there is nothing necessary in this story. The Cullens leave town but return before the end, Edward ditches Bella but then asks her to marry him in the final seconds, and Victoria is still out for Bella’s blood when it’s all said and done. If you were to watch just the first and third films, there would be very little questions or confusion because this film is so useless. I can’t quite give it the crap category solely for the fact that my crap-o-meter is probably out of whack still from Halloween: Resurrection but this is easily the worst film in the franchise thus far. That should be damning enough.

After the last creatively bankrupt installment of this franchise, it’s no wonder that the Weinstein boys decided to go back to the drawing board and reboot the Michael Myers saga with Rob Zombie‘s version of Halloween. Or is it a remake? Or a re-imagining? Much like the most recent Nightmare on Elm Street film, I was confused as to the point of it all. Are we trying to fill in needless backstory about Myers and his upbringing? Are we updating the tale for a more contemporary potty-mouthed audience? Does anyone have a clue at this point?

You can probably give a brief summary of the original film in one not-so-brief sentence: Michael Myers is a messed-up little kid who kills his sister, gets sent away to the nuthouse but breaks out, and then tries to kill his younger sister many years later. In fact, that same synopsis is true for this film even though you would have to make a few inserts between commas here and there to get the gist of this film. Here we learn that Michael is not some normal-ish kid who simply snaps but is raised in an environment that guarantees an outcome of either loose or psychotic depending on the gender of the child. You’d like to think that Deborah Myers (Sheri Moon Zombie) was trying hard to raise her kids right but then you are reminded that she is a stripper and is voluntarily living with an abusive asshat. You might even feel a tinge of sympathy for Michael up until he butchers a rat off-camera in the first few moments and increases his violence thereafter.

Once the initial Halloween deed is done and Michael is found guilty of murder, Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) is assigned to his rehabilitation but after a few violent outbursts and a decade and a half later, Loomis resigns having failed to elicit even a rudimentary response out of the now gargantuan Myers. Depending on which version you watch, Michael escapes somehow and treks back to Haddonfield to find Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) for some snuggle time. Or maybe to kill her. Or maybe not. Who the hell knows?

Now, before I go all crazy negative, I will point out some of the things in Zombie’s Halloween that I like. Visually it is quite good and I hear that is the common thread between other Zombie-directed films (this being the only one I’ve seen, I’m merely going off the consensus). The direction, mostly, is spot on with little dispute from myself and most of the actors are quite good considering they are merely playing stereotypes of previously named folk in other films. Even though I didn’t care for the identical score from the first repurposed for this installment, especially in inappropriate times, the music was good as well. But sadly, for all the praise I can give to the production design or the acting, the story is the weakest link by far.

It almost seems that during the writing phase, Zombie was torn between a retelling of the original Halloween night with its subsequent aftermath and a pretty straight-forward remake of the original complete with the same characters and even identical lines of dialogue here and there. Unwilling or unable to pick between either, these two incomplete films are haphazardly sewn together into one really odd narrative to make a full movie out of. Even more sad is that it still runs way too long for a slasher film, especially considering that our final girl does not show up until almost halfway into the film.

The most aggravating thing about Zombie’s Halloween is that I see where either part of the story could have become a decent movie if separated from the other. Truthfully, I would much rather have seen a feature-length version of Michael stalking Laurie since that is where Zombie really showed the most promise with brutal attacks, not-as-hackneyed moments, and even a healthy bit of nudity (including from Danielle Harris!). My main issue with the front half of the film is that all of the characters are one-dimensional assholes with nary a redeeming quality between them. Laurie and her friends weren’t that well-drawn either but at least they were somewhat sympathetic even though I wanted to murder someone listening to their insipid dialogue about cheerleading or boyfriends or sex. If anything, for that half of the film, Zombie needed a Debra Hill for the adolescent teenage speak but he apparently went at it alone leading to some irritating results.

For every two things I liked, there were three that I did not, including the pointless trucker (Ken Foree!), the random hook-up in the Myers’ house, or the time period ambiguous settings. If he were not so beholden to throw in as many remembrances or re-stagings of the original, Zombie might have made a pretty decent entry in the Halloween franchise. But, the bifurcated nature of the story plus the horrendously drawn-out chase scenes between Michael and Laurie really distract from any enjoyment that may be obtained otherwise. But hey, at least it’s better than Busta Rhymes in Resurrection. At least Zombie has that in his corner.

I was quite disappointed when Attack the Block did not receive a proper screening anywhere close to the Movie Scum headquarters, especially after hearing so much advance acclaim from the gazillion festivals and select screenings it had. Yet, the film is now in reach at your local Redbox or Blockbuster and I highly recommend a viewing for many of the same reasons given before: this is flat out a fun movie experience.

Think back to when we (proverbially speaking of course) were kids and there were globs of adolescent empowerment films about kids saving the day while the adults were just sitting on their thumbs. Writer and director Joe Cornish is clearly a member of that generation as the best description I can give of this film is The Goonies meets Alien. Set in a not-so-nice part of downtown London, our core cast consists of a gaggle of delinquent youths, some legitimately of the tougher sort, some not. The gang, led by Moses(!) (John Boyega) holds up the meek and defenseless Sam (Jodie Whittaker) on her way back to her block, otherwise known as an apartment building for all us ignorant American-types.

The mugging is interrupted by a projectile that destroys a car nearby and Moses is attacked while scrounging in the car by an unknown creature. Moses, not the kind willing to turn the other cheek, hunts down the being and kills it. The group brings it to Ron (Nick Frost) in an attempt to identify it as a hairless orangutan or something else. While there, they top off with ample amounts of weed since Ron runs the cannabis business inside the block for Hi-Hatz. It is not too long after that more things fall from the sky right outside the building and the tough youngsters suit up to wage war. Little did they know they were up against a few dozen feisty aliens who target the kids wherever they may go.

I’ll warn you now that you may want to turn your subtitles on while watching this. I blame equal parts poor sound design (the music drowns out the dialogue in quite a few places) and some contemporary English slang that I was quizzical on until I had the proper context. Nevertheless, Cornish quite effectively crafts the characters by way of these terms unbeknownst to a guy like me. I’m no expert and this may or may not be representative of the linguistics of London’s young adults but the many dialogue exchanges (especially in the early parts of the film) feel genuine, especially with the delivery from all of the actors. Seriously, the cultural barrier may be a factor, but there is not a single performance that I doubted during the film.

Even though the film takes place entirely in a single building and in its immediate surroundings, it is quite an adventure as the group of kids are chased around from floor to floor, apartment to apartment, with little down time in the mix. What down time there is usually provides some quick comedic bits especially with Ron and Brewis as they sit and ponder an alien invasion while getting stoned or the preteen troublemakers Probs and Mayhem as they desperately try to keep up their delinquency with the big boys. The rest of the time though is used to effectively weave elements of action, sci-fi, and horror all together as those darn aliens creep up at the most inopportune times.

I must give Cornish and the special effects teams mounds of credit for the aliens as well. Their design is very minimalist yet effectively menacing and creepy especially as you see their pronounced features in the backgrounds of dimly-lit hallways or outside of windows. There are quite a few moments that, while not “scary” per se, are very tense with the monsters popping out after the group. While some of the cast is either in too few scenes to make a difference, there are many characters that stick out, either with random quips or complete character arcs. Of all, Boyega as Moses is one of the more compelling written and performed characters in a while as he gradually learns to embrace responsibility and self-sacrifice.

There is a ton more that I quite enjoyed in this film that I just briefly touched on, but suffice to say, all of the hype and acclaim that Attack the Block received is well-deserved. As a bonus, you can even make an effective drinking game out of the abundance of times bruv, fam, or innit are said.

October may be over but sadly I still have a few more of these movies to suffer through. After watching Halloween: Resurrection, I began to yearn for the unoriginal simplicity of H20 or the complete and utter nonsense of Parts 5 and 6. Resurrection is the worst type of horror movie: it offers nothing of value to the franchise or the genre as a whole and it all around sucks complete ass. This movie (among others no doubt) is why horror films are seen as cheap, disposable, and worthless. In fact, there aren’t any better adjectives to describe this monstrosity.

The first ever free pass I received for a movie was for this one courtesy of a local defunct radio station. Shame on them. In fairness, I was almost excited about a new entry in the Michael Myers saga since my tastes weren’t refined enough to recognize H20 as the derivative mess it is. Yet, as I sat in a theater with hundreds of other free ticket winners, I began to see the error in my ways. Where the previous Halloween sequels can be attributed to studio perseverance for a quick money grab, at least they at least tried to tie in with the rest of the movies (Halloween III not withstanding). I cannot levy any such admiration to this piece.

The pretty conclusive ending of the last film is explained away in awkward exposition that Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis; only in the film for fifteen minutes!) actually killed a paramedic who Michael dressed up like himself. As such, Laurie has been checked into a nuthouse where she sits comatose taking pills and staring out a window. Except for the night that He comes. And by He, I don’t mean Jesus. Laurie is made dead through stupid actions of her own and Michael walks away to his creepy theme music. Logically, since Michael has ALWAYS gone after family, you’d think he’d be gunning for John, Laurie’s son from H20. Josh Harnett was probably too busy to degrade himself with crap like this so that’s a no go.

Instead, we are introduced to Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) from ‘Dangertainment’ who ropes in a half-dozen dumb-shit college kids to peruse around the Myers’ house (the traditional Myers’ house that is) on Halloween for a live broadcast on the web. There’s a free-spirit chick, a wild-and-crazy chick, the bad-boy, the Rookie-of-the-year, and the final girl. Let’s just say that most meet their demise at the hands of Michael’s rage since they are … squatting in his house? The hell?

I gave Halloween III the crap category but I almost feel bad about that now. Perhaps there should be different tiers of crap: Tier 1 is almost passable like H3; Tier 4 or so would be where Halloween: Resurrection falls. There is absolutely nothing in this film that can change my mind. From the thoughtless shift from killing family to protecting property(?), to the wretched characters who fail to stick out in any way other than annoying and soon to be dead, to the abundance of Busta Rhymes, this film would probably take itself to the barn and shoot itself if it could. Even director Rick Rosenthal (of the not good, but nowhere near as bad H2) can inject anything of note into the painfully long runtime that cannot be seen in any bargain-bin horror film with a masked killer.

Even the fact that Michael Myers is so watered down in this installment is abundantly clear as he simply walks away after being chastised by Freddie who thinks he is just a random tech hand. The Michael Myers of old would have cut that sucker into a few dozen pieces before but maybe old age has gotten to him as he simply turns around and walks away. And good for us! Otherwise we wouldn’t be treated to Rhymes’ frequent utterances of “damn” and “fuck” and not to mention “Trick or Treat Motherfucker!” As a side note, it pissed me off the most that it cannot keep with the simple aspects of the series such as the always present rain on Halloween Eve. With the exception of H3, all other Myers-based Halloween films have rain on October 30th but apparently I as a 12-year-old was able to pick up on trends better than anyone involved here.

Maybe there was supposed to be some social commentary on the emerging trend of reality television but that was clearly not on the forefront of the production. If anything, we learned that Myers is probably not on a rampage because of a lack of protein or lack of sex but more likely due to a lack of not-dumbshit people surrounding him. Everyone in this movie deserved to die and maybe the character of Myers was simply trying to stop the audience from enduring any more of these films. I guess he didn’t take into account Rob Zombie. Damn!

Halloween H20 holds a special distinction for being the only DVD I own from a different country. I’m not really sure why I bought it on a trip to Germany over ten years ago since I cannot play it on a normal DVD player and my German is so shoddy now that I would need the dub track. But regardless, I have it on German DVD. I figured starting out the review with a random anecdote would be fine since this is more a technically-competent but superfluous anecdote than a real film in the Halloween series.

Even though Part 5 and 6 had their rough patches here and there, both films had their strong points in the ongoing Michael Myers saga. Halloween 4 was just all around excellent. Yet this Scream-derived soulless grab for nostalgia has the balls to say that everything after Myers and Loomis went up in flames at the end of Part 2 never happened. The main response used against those decrying remakes and reboots is “It’s not like a remake destroys the original.” That certainly is true but H20 does its damnedest to try to erase the old-fashioned slasher films of the 80s and replace them with polished, Creed-filled movies like this. That irritates me.

Now, that isn’t to say that H20 is without merit. Jamie Lee Curtis returning to commemorate the original’s twentieth anniversary was a nice touch as well as the other references and callbacks to the first film. But this one spends three-quarters of its runtime sloppily tracing the structure of the original with some post-modern horror moments sprinkled in occasionally. Say what you will about Druid rituals and random tattoos but at least the preceding films tried something a bit different instead of just rehashing the same stuff but not even close in its effectiveness.

As much as I love it, Scream and its successes pretty much killed the Halloween franchise. Even though it was a slasher film with visible fingerprints from the original Halloween, Scream and this series should not come close to intersecting. Yet, the main problem I have with H20 is that it does not gently merge the existing elements of the series with the popular self-aware teen talk of the 90s as much as it barrels into it. The opening scene (featuring Marion Stephens even though she was barely a bit player before) that is mostly divorced from the rest of the story reeks of studios chasing the money with attractive TV actors and a few false scares but little else. The rest of the film plays out more like a high school drama production of John Carpenter’s Halloween with some hip and edgy dialogue and a puzzling inclusion of a movie that basically acknowledges that Halloween is a movie.

Curtis’ Laurie has significantly more to do this time compared to her last Halloween film but this Laurie never really comes across as genuine like some of the previous characters. Josh Harnett (in his debut film) and Michelle Williams try to class the place up with some decent characters and above-average acting. But their other friends are horribly stock and exist only to give Michael something to do. And this features LL Cool J who was not bad per se (at least not the worst rapper to appear in the series) but was saddled with a stupid and ultimately worthless character as the posh private school’s inattentive security guard. I feel bad for Adam Arkin the most since he is only around to extract exposition from Laurie and get stabbed in the back ala Random Nurse #3 from the second film.

The final act though has some great moments as Laurie goes batshit crazy and locks herself in the compound, calling for Michael. Sadly, this lasts all of about thirty seconds before Michael attacks, Laurie responds and then runs and hides. Perhaps this was a much longer sequence but the film’s impossibly short length leads you to believe that there was a lot cut as the bigwigs demanded less boring stuff like talking or stalking and more action. Another sad casualty of the film was the score by John Ottman which is sliced and diced and intertwined with Marco Beltrami’s Scream music that it is impossible to appreciate. That is if you aren’t a nerd like me and own Ottman’s sadly out-of-print score. I took that CD with me to Germany as well.

Director Steve Miner did exactly what he was hired by the Weinsteins at Dimension to do: make a Scream-esque Halloween movie. Yet, doing so strips any remaining originality from the series and reverts it to just another Scream copycat. At least someone had the foresight to “try” and make this the final film in its closing scene. Yet, I still have Halloween: Resurrection to watch so that was clearly as miscalculated as the rest of this film.