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Evil Dead 2 (1987) Review

There is nary a film saga in the horror genre more fun then the Evil Dead trilogy. With the first one being a benchmark of independent filmmaking and pretty good blend of camp and genuine horror, Evil Dead 2 had a lot to live up to. It does in every way though, and in the process of making this film Raimi created a classic for decades to come. As I just mentioned camp, right off the bat don’t expect this movie to be serious. It’s a horror COMEDY, but a little more subtle about it the Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead.

Evil Dead 2 “picks up” where the first left off, but not after retelling the first movie (this time with just Ash and his girlfriend) in the first 10 minutes. For those who don’t know, Ash and his girlfriend drive up to a cabin in the woods for a fun weekend together. While there, they find a recording that when they play back summons an evil spirit. This evil spirit possesses the girl and As has to kill her. Holed up in this cabin with no way to escape, Ash fights to survive and keep his insanity until two couples show up to invite more trouble.

Sam Raimi is a brilliant director, not necessarily because he’s great with actors (although to be fair he helped mold Bruce Campbell into a fairly decent one), but because of his brilliant camera and effects work. This movie looks really quite good, with camera angles that make me practically orgasm I love them so much. Raimi is the master of perpetuating mood, if that mood is right and Evil Dead 2 never looses that feeling of bat-shit insanity that Raimi intended. The lighting works extremely well too, with the woods being spooky and the film in general having that undeniably VHS era feel to it.

The effects are phenomenal, even when they suck. It makes me nostalgic for the era of practical effects (even if I was never there) because with the same budget, the cgi would have looked worse. Raimi uses stop motion at several points in the movie and stop motion at it’s worse still has a creepy vibe because of how disjointed it is. CGI when it’s low budget looks like shit, so even if stop-motion looks bad it’s still better. The blood, makeup and various body part movements look amazing, much better then the original. There are a few effects that don’t work that well and actually could have used some CG but there never going to pull you out of the movie.

Evil Dead 2 is a funny ass movie, but it still manages to pull off scares. You’ll be laughing at Ash one second, cheering him on the next and fearing for him the next. It’s really a roller coaster, but it does require you to understand what it’s trying to do. The story is generic, the acting is mediocre, and the inconsistent tone on top of that is what’s going to turn people off. However, if you go into Evil Dead expecting to not take it too seriously then the comedy will be all the funnier and the scares will be all the more unexpected.

Evil Dead 2 hits all the right marks for me. It pokes at horror tropes, exaggerates to the extreme, has beautiful cinematography and features a protagonist that I will forever root for. Ash is one of the world’s greatest badasses and the shit that he goes through in this night makes for some of the most unique viewing you will ever experience. If you’re looking for a fun Halloween movie to watch with your friends or without, then grab the popcorn and pop in Evil Dead 2! Evil Dead 2 is available on Netflix instant and Amazon Instant or your local video store (remember those?).

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ABCs of Death (2012) Review

 

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I have a feeling this review will be short, since with the 26 part anthology ABCs of Death, inconsistency kills a good chunk of analysis without looking at each individual part. Let me make this simple then. Don’t watch this movie. This shouldn’t have been a movie. This should have been a youtube channel of 26 different videos so you could watch just the good ones and not have to sit through the 25 others.

The biggest problem with ABCs is that the time for each vignette is too short. It takes a certain skill to cram a quality story into a couple minutes and a lot of the times it’s just hit or miss. This leads to rushed exposition, nonsensical plot twists, and overall confusion. However, for every one I want to see more time given to, there is a short I don’t want to see extended because of how batshit insane or stupid they are. A lot of the shorts are so incredibly stylized and zany in their “story” that it takes a very specific taste to like it. With a lot of these, a twist is needed at the end because typical climax isn’t exactly an option. This stems back all the way to the EC horror comics. However, most of these twists are FUCKING STUPID. The lack of world building aside, some of them are just terrible ideas.

The technicals are meh most of the time. The camerawork is typically fine, but the effects are rather lacking and the CGI has that overachieving indy filmmaker look to it. Not really much to say on that front. But here’s a fun drinking game for you and your of age friends. Take a drink every time you guess the word the letter stands for at the end of the short correctly. Man, by the end of the movie you’ll be FUCKING SOBER. The title cards make no goddamn sense most of the time and there are even times that some sketches would have been better off under other letters.

A is for Asinine, B is for Bullshit and C is for Completely mediocre. Those are the 3 categories each of the 26 shorts falls under. They’re rarely effective as horror (X), uncommonly effective as comedy (N, Q), and barely ever plain interesting to watch (S, U). These few shorts are not worth the rest of the hour and a half to get through and even if you’re the biggest horror fan ever, the tone is so inconsistent that you’re guaranteed to be unentertained 50% of the time. If you want to learn how to do and not do short films, then by all means start taking notes, but other then that ABCs of Death is another waste of time in the flood of horror anthology films coming out.

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) Review

An introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors who welcome him to the real world. -imdb.com

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is yet another coming-of-age film, this time not brought to us by John Hughes, but instead by Stephen Chbosky. Chbosky has taken his book and created a film that’s… different than the average teen movie. This is a coming of age film that reflects an entire years worth of growth, not a couple of days or random events. It departs from any semblance of a plot to show the arc of not just one character, but many. It shows real problems from a very specific perspective, and does so very seriously. It takes place not at the time it was released, but 15 years prior. All these things compound to create a film that stands out from its peers in its presentation, even if its themes and motifs are a mixture of Empire Records and The Breakfast Club.

The characters are all unique and easily attachable, partly because most of us have known people similar to them, but also because Chbosky takes advantage of every method he can to get you to like them and understand who they are. He uses snappy dialogue and even glorifying the two main supporting characters (Sam and Patrick) to get you to understand that they are awesome. This can be interpreted as a bad translation across mediums (which it is), but also as just Charlie’s perspective. He’s telling the story to us and since he saw them as these elite and special people, that’s how we see them. All the characters get quick simplistic introductions, either through exposition or key dialogue. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this, but for a character piece it could be considered a flaw. Any and all simplifications are easily compensated by the mostly strong and dynamic performances by the actors who all do their best to make their characters unique, even the purely cliché ones. The characters, particularly Charlie, are seemingly identifiable, because they would be in any other film, but this movie stands its ground and forces you to stop thinking of Charlie as the awkward kid that’s just like you were and instead as a person with his own severe problems. Odds are you won’t be able to identify with his life’s issues, as they are very specific and in fact all the characters here have rich white kid problems. That’s not to say that they don’t happen to other people, but if you’re not a middle class white person the chances of you identifying with these characters and their issues decreases drastically.

There is a years worth of story told here, which in a book is fine, but in a film requires more compression to get it into that 90 minute time slot. Perks picks up the pace by using mostly quick and snappy transitions to move between scenes that seem to have little correlation to each other. This actually works for the most part, as we understand the passage of time and the changes in the characters. These vignettes, for lack of a better term, that the film cuts between are merely presented, not really analyzed or gone into depth on. This is an unfortunate symptom of the compressed time, leaving you to do the analysis if you’re looking for anything more then reflection. Luckily the film knows this, and doesn’t try to do anything more then show you what’s going on. For the amount of plot it has to tell, Perks does a good job of getting that across. That is if you can call it a plot… Perks is more of a collage of different subplots, all with varying degrees of importance. The “main plot” is the romance between Charlie and Sam, but there are large chunks of the film that have little to do with that. This more aimless approach to traversing through a year may be off putting to some expecting a flat out “get to point B” plot or character arc.

The intertwining subplots are an attempt to show that every person has a story. That each student in the hallway and each fan in a crowd is a person with their own problems and own lives. Sometimes it takes a wallflower to see that or the forced clashing of people, like in The Breakfast Club. As I stated before, you have to be within a certain range of people to specifically identify with Charlie and his problems, but a lot of the themes and details surrounding Charlie are what are going to get you to attach to this movie. The concept of the past always affecting you is strongly represented by the Aunt Helen “subplot.” There are the usual high school tropes such as being an outsider, those cliché people that always pop up even in real life, and those school events that are all awkward. These are mainstays of the genre and emotional reaction is instinct, even if we understand how cliché they are. And of course, with all of these movies there’s the “getting away from it all.” Characters throwing away their problems for a carefree laugh with their friends. No past, no future, just a tunnel in-between the two where you are as big as you want to be, even infinite. That’s what being a teen is about. Facing that maturity of adult life and turning away from it, because fuck it you can.

Those internal feelings and experiences of what it’s like to be a teen, to go through high school, to leave high school, and all the times in-between are what make this movie special. It doesn’t hit every universal mark though. While its 90s setting does make it more timeless and cross-generational, it can be off-putting to the current generation who never had those big phones or even used a cassette. The more mature issues it tackles, such as mental illness, child abuse, and homophobia can be alienating as well to anyone whose life wasn’t as dramatic as that. A film like The Breakfast Club will work better on these people because the issues tackled are more basic, but Perks, when it hits home with its audience will surpass others because the issues are more intimate and thus, emotion-evoking.

On an exterior front it’s average because it’s appealing to a specific audience and its conflicted attempts to attract a larger one ultimately fail . On an interior level though, as a reflection (not an analysis, or a dissection, but a reflection) it succeeds better than any other film for its true audience. If you can identify with those feelings, if you knew people like that, if you’ve dealt with these issues then this will have the nostalgic and emotional power of every John Hughes film combined. I dealt with those issues, I felt that way, I knew people like that and I was that observer. Perks doesn’t hit every mark for me, but it hits enough that it pushes itself above the rest and makes the viewing experience one of the most powerful I’ve ever had. Watch it and figure it out for yourself, but if you find yourself discussing afterwards not the general themes, but instead whether or not it portrayed PTSD properly, then this movie wasn’t intended for you.

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The Breakfast Club (1985) review

John Hughes follow-up to Sixteen Candles is my favorite film of his, The Breakfast Club. Breakfast Club stands out above the rest of the Brat-Pack movies and amongst 80s comedies in general as being, above all else, a character study. Over the course of the movie we grow attached to these five kids, because we can all identify at some level with them and their issues.

Breakfast Club on a technical level is nothing spectacular. It’s not terrible, but don’t expect anything flashy. Then again, there really doesn’t need to be anything flashy. The atmosphere is well created and suits the movies more toned down story, even if there a few Hughes style goofy moments. The soundtrack and score are notable for the songs selected and their placement. Dramatic music is used when it should to, ironicly, add realism and fun ‘80s songs are used when they should. The theme “Don’t You (Forget about Me)” is especially appropriate to the themes and concepts in the movie and besides that, it’s just a flat out good song. These kids don’t want to be forgotten, not by the people around them, but by themselves as they enter life and that’s a very powerful and pertinent message.

Our five stars are all stereotypes, seemingly, and they are as such. Molly Ringwald is Claire, the popular Prom Queen. Anthony Michael Hall is Brian, a (big shocker) total nerd. Emilio Estevez is the wrestling jock Andrew. Judd Nelson is the roustabout Bender and Ally Sheedy plays the quiet outcast Allison. These stereotypes are gathered together in detention and as it very slowly passes for them and for the audience (props to Hughes for that pacing) we discover things about them that reveal that they are more then just clichés and have more in common then they think. The playful antics and revealing dialogue are mostly set in motion by Bender, whose chaotic rebellion against all around asshole Mr. Vernon is actually almost tragic to watch. Bender’s desperation to fight against a world that has treated him like shit forces him into uncomfortable situations with Mr. Vernon, who has the power of being an adult and isn’t afraid to use it. Mr. Vernon is like the worst case scenario for how to grow up, in complete disillusionment about his past and has a one-track mind on his goals and his future alone. Thanks to this, the other kids end up having little resistance to Bender’s games, especially when they start to trust each other more. And trust each other they do, having heart to heart talks about parents, social standing, and even economic class.

This is the crux of what make John Hughes movies special. They deal with issues we have all dealt with as teenagers. Whether you were one in the 80s, 90s, 00s, or now you can identify with at least one of the characters and all of the issues. We’ve all felt that rebellion against our parents, we’ve all seen or been part of that segregation in schools into clichés. Even economic class is something we’ve felt when somebody else gets that new tech and we don’t get to have it, or vice versa. As the characters in Breakfast Club discover these things about each other, so do we about ourselves. And it really makes you think. Think about what you’re parents were like as teens. Think about that jock that bullies you, that punk that you avoid, that weirdo you ignore. It’s universal to every generation and to a teenager of this and any time, these problems are equivalent to any issues an adult has. These things are our world and for an hour and a half, we have the equivalent of group therapy with these characters. While the other Hughes films touch on these issues, it’s this film that stops and dwells on them and that’s why I believe that The Breakfast Club will carry on for years as not just a snapshot of one generation, but a reflection of them all. It’s thanks to the excellent writing and the honest portrayal of the actors, bringing in what I’m sure are their own insecurities to their characters, that Hughes pulls it off.

However, not all of the film is somber reflection. The comedy works well when it’s on screen, particularly the witty dialogue that I commented on in Sixteen Candles. There are also almost set pieces of comedy that all serve to help the characters do what teens do best, let loose and forget their issues. It’s a funny movie, but it’s not as humorous as some of the other films, so don’t expect big laughs.

The Breakfast Club, while the pinnacle of Hughes work quality-wise, is not necessarily his most popular one, but it definitely deserves a watch if you haven’t. As stated perhaps too much before, it’s really a film that can be and should be seen by people over the age of 15. Its appealing characters and bits of comedy will draw in most, and even provide nostalgia for some. All in all, this is a film that makes me wish there was teen comedy character study for my generation, but alas when was the last time there was a teen comedy that was even close to good? (Mean Girls doesn’t count!)

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Sixteen Candles (1984) Review


On the eve of her sister’s wedding, suburban teenager Samantha (Molly Ringwald) suffers silently as her family forgets her birthday. Even worse, some total dork (Anthony Michael Hall) keeps propositioning her with sophomoric innuendo when she really craves romantic attention from high-school hunk Jake (Michael Schoeffling).-Rotten Tomatoes

Sixteen Candles is the first in the series of films written and directed by John Hughes that left and continues to leave a permanent mark on pop culture. It’s one of the weaker entries, but it’s by no means a bad film. The writing, acting, directing, and humor are all strong, just not as strong as they could be, or compared to the follow-ups.

Molly Ringwald plays the lovelorn, slightly dorky teenager Samantha who, despite being an identifiable character, is not a fantasy fulfillment for the audience. She brings her persona to the role, and performs admirably, putting any modern day cliché (cough cough Bella) to shame. The rest of the characters are… ok. The acting is adequate, but a majority of the characters are stereotypes, at least to start with. As we get to know them we find that they are very much not cardboard cutouts, but sometimes the acting can’t support these role changes, particularly with Jake, the love interest. Another… almost awkward stereotype comes in the caricature of an Asian that is Duck. As the film progresses he becomes more human, but that doesn’t mean the first half of his scenes aren’t uncomfortable to sit through. The other notable Brat Pack role in this movie is Anthony Michael Hall as The Geek, a role he repeats and refines as his career goes on. His cocky but lovable character is a great example of part of this film’s appeal. We all knew people in school and our life like the people in this fictional school and fictional life. From the comic relief to the leads, we all knew these characters in some form, perhaps one that was perhaps less exaggerated. Except the chick from Poltergeist. No one is as awesome as her.

The film’s set in a two day span, a snapshot of a turning point in Samantha’s life. This form allows more emphasis to be put on characters and not narrative, and is quite familiar for those who are Kevin Smith fans. The film is the epitome of the 80s, from the clichés, to the clothes and settings, to the soundtrack, and to the pop culture references. Pop culture references are common in this movie, particularly auditory cues from various TV shows. This type of gag is probably best used in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but it works ok here. That’s not all this movie has going for it though, with its witty dialogue being the best used and most effective of its humor. It’s only passably realistic, but it serves its purpose in that it makes you laugh.

The movie’s nostalgic feel, stereotypes, clichés, identifiable characters, loose narrative, and humor and swirl together to make this realistic, yet unrealistic, atmosphere. It feels like a movie, but it also to a lesser degree, feels like reality. You pass off the cartoony sound effects and Dragnet music because you’re charmed by this movie. Charmed by the world that Hughes creates. An everyman’s world where your teenage years come back to life, or go down an alternate path (depending on your age). It’s hard to describe for those who have never seen a Hughes movie before, but it’s unique and memorable above all else. Even wanna-be Hughes movies, like Better Off Dead, can’t pull off that blend of honesty and humor, and it’s really a credit to the strong writing and directing.

The ending of this movie feels… odd in that it’s a happily ever after ending. It’s more neatly wrapped together then other Hughes films, and for a newer generation that can be hard to accept. The honesty of the movie that transcends generations seems to stop at the ending for me and for my generation. This film’s subtle message of “It can get better” that’s really just created by having a happy ending is hard to accept for us because we are so used to harsh endings. Even if things turn out ok, there are still problems to be dealt with. That seems to be the burden of our generation. We have a hard time accepting that happy ending when we can flip on our computers and see that it’s all a lie. We have to have YouTube videos of celebrities reminding us that “It Gets Better” because we have such a hard time believing it. Unfortunately, our movies, TV shows, etc… are not giving us this message like they used to. In fact there really isn’t a teen movie that embodies this generation like Hughes did for the 80s or Empire Records and a few others did for the 90s. The closest we have is Perks of Being a Wallflower, but even that deals with issues too… shall we say mature, for the average teenager. No instead we are spoon-fed terrible horror and action movies, with the occasional comedy that’s actually intended for adults. It’s a sad state we live in, but hopefully one that will be alleviated in some upcoming cultural shift of tides.

Back to Sixteen Candles (oh yeah that was a thing), it’s a movie that’s worth watching. Worth buying. Worth watching over and over again. Worth showing to your kids and grand kids and so on. It’s a movie that every teen should watch and perhaps out of the handful of Hughes films, one that everyone should watch. The plot itself deals with a girl’s crush, so it may be boring to a male audience, but I highly doubt it. It has plenty of male conflict and lowest denominator humor to keep almost everyone satisfied. It’s a light comedy, not too raunchy, not too high brow, and is sure to appeal to the teenager inside (or outside) of you. It leaves you wanting more, and luckily there is. May the 80s live on!

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Much Ado about Nothing (2012) review

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A modern retelling of Shakespeare’s classic comedy about two pairs of lovers with different takes on romance and a way with words. -imdb.com

Joss Whedon’s Much Ado about Nothing is Whedon’s pallet-cleansing follow-up to The Avengers, and it achieves this, not just for Whedon, but for the audience as well. The film was shot over 12 days at Whedon’s home, but the quaint location is rarely an interference, and when it is it’s played for laughs. The film sticks with the original dialogue, trimming some monologues and excess conversations, but nothing’s lost in plot or character motivation. Whedon very cleverly turns a couple of the monologues into songs, which are surprisingly smooth and suave, adding to the films atmosphere.

The very hefty Shakespearean lines are carried well by the actors. Now before all the English majors jump down my throat, let me explain. The Shakespearean dialect is that of a stage, it’s grandiose and explanatory of characters emotions. It is extremely out of place not only in film, but especially in modern film. To use this dialogue is extremely difficult, unless you are merely translating the stage version to film, grandiose style and all. This is how most Shakespeare movies have been done, and in particular the works of Kenneth Branagh, who also directed a version of Much Ado about Nothing. The films are colorful, spectacular and while they do use the medium of film to their advantage, they use it mostly to add to the story. Whedon manages to fit the story into the medium of film, turning the larger-then-life stage version into a quieter, smaller, and by default more realistic version, which is what your average movie-goer expects to see from the type of story being told.
The actors treat the dialogue with the greatest of nonchalance, acting exactly as if the words they saying are natural and only occasionally bringing the tropes of stage acting in to accent a few of the jokes that require such. This blend works well, compensating for some of the aimless silliness that makes up the original and has been lost here due to the format, script, etc…

Whedon’s challenge when making this movie was to get you to ignore the location, budget, and dialogue and get you to focus on the characters and what they are feeling. With the help of the aforementioned acting, Whedon also has put this movie out in black and white, giving the film the slightest of a noir feel to it, but not too much so since the movie rarely has black and white lighting to it. The noir feel teams up and even helps the interjected mafia replacement setting feel all the more natural. What the black and white does is it takes your eyes away from the environment and focus on the actors. After all, it’s hard to pay attention to the colors of Whedon’s walls, or expect the vibrancy of a Branagh movie if there are no colors to begin with. What you can focus on is the ever moving Alexis Denisof, whose long monologues are a good example of why parts of this movie don’t work.

Alexis Denisof as Benedict does a great job, with the scenes between him and Amy Acker (Beatrice) having all the chemistry of their days back on Angel. However, during the long monologues he has fussing over his feelings, it gets hard to follow along, mainly due to his inability to hold your attention. This is partially due to his limitations as an actor, but also due to the inability to be as grandiose as Branagh and grab the audience with his presence, which would have been possible in a more stage-like version. It’s times like these when the limited charisma of the actors can’t push the monologues and dialogue in an interesting way, and the film slows down tremendously. However, these scenes are few and far between and easily compensated for by their performances when it comes to the humor.

The humor in this movie is brilliant, mainly for how basic it is. There are plenty of extremely clever gags inserted in, but for the most part the humor is very basic. It still works though, due to how unexpected it is with none of the slapstick or character reactions being what you would expect to see in even a comedy of Shakespeare’s. The actors still pull off the original wit of the dialogue well, but I found myself laughing more at the inserted humor, a testament to Whedon’s abilities to write humor around serious subject matter… or shall we say slightly more serious subject matter. I will not spoil the funnier parts of the movie, but the highlight of the film is most certainly Nathan Fillion and his merry band of police-men. Every scene they’re in has a brilliant blend of the original and new humor, and the movie is worth watching just for that. On occasion the bad guys are overly EVIL, but it’s by no means a betrayal of the original since Jon the Bastard was a mustache twirling fiend to start with.

Overall, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado about Nothing is a wonderfully funny and small film, a perfect pallet-cleanser from the mega-blockbusters Hollywood is rolling out today. It’s spectacular at times, but not overly spectacular. It has a story to tell and it tells it, but with a few stops to smell the roses along the way. Due to this, I’m saddened it doesn’t have a wider release, since I’m sure it would make money (Whedon’s name alone is enough to bump this far above being considered an average independent film), but just not enough as another showing of Iron Man 3, hence no theater chains picking it up.

It’s important that audiences have a light movie, and on top of that, a small one. The Great Gatsby could have benefited from this type of filmmaking, since that story was tailor-made for a slightly higher budget version of this film, but alas it became nothing more then a 3D tye-dye Dicaprio love-fest with a pop soundtrack. For now it seems I’m going to have to settle for crossing my fingers and hoping that Redbox or Netflix will pick it up out of mercy.

I recommend this film to any fan of Shakespeare, theater, dramas, those who hate the average comedy that comes out these days, and of course those looking for something different, but not too risky, to spend some time with. However, I must warn Whedon fanboys and girls to not see this movie purely because of him, because while it has his fingerprints on it, it most certainly is not Buffy saying shakespeare. If it’s at a theater near you, defiantly go and see it, and try to bring as many people as possible, as it’s sure to spark some fun conversation.