Jacques98

What happened to movies that asked original questions? They were replaced by laughable pseudo-"dark physiology" films like Session 9. They were replaced by unoriginal Kubrick rip-offs like Irreversible. They were replaced by kindergarten-shallow surrealist attempts like The Fountain. They were replaced by generic by-the-numbers "thought provoking" Hollywood blockbusters like District 9. They were replaced by emo films about sex-deprived middle-aged men like Watchmen. They were replaced by boring, shallow Oscar bait like There Will Be Blood. They were replaced by shock films made by little boys that couldn't get a girlfriend, got a couple years older, and made a movie about it like Deadgirl. And if this website didn't limit the amount of words in this review, I'd list at least 50 more movies in this paragraph. I'm no pretentious prick or anything, but, folks, seriously: Either, (1) humanity is made up consecutively of second-grade English class idiots, (2), I'm a super genius, or, (3), most movies are pathetic excuses of cinema and storytelling. (In case you're one of the idiots I'm talking about, #3 was the correct answer, by the way.) But, it's our lucky day: Antichrist is far from shallow. In fact, it's pretty much loaded. It's a smart movie. But that's about it. As a story, it's pretty generic and formulaic. The brains: Antichrist asks the questions: "What if Satan, not God, created the earth?" And, "If that is so, what would that entail for the human race?" You don't have to be religious to ponder questions like this. The film often substitutes "God" and "Satan" for morality and immorality; for normalcy and chaos; for purpose and nihilism; for normalcy (Freud) and anti-normalcy (the subconscious). Personally, it's nice to see a film take psychology out of the middle-school philology class level that most movies use, and bring it into the real world, showcased through realistic characters. This is less a movie about people trying to find God (or Satan), and more a movie about two people trying to understand the nature of pain and grief and cruelty on an epic level. It's not another cliché "Human nature is EVIL!!!" film. It's a film that asks WHY human nature is evil. The brain that WOULD NOT DIE: As smart as Antichrist really is, it's, sadly, also pretty retarded. The overall story is just the basic beginning: hook/middle: plot/end: climax that they taught you back in middle school. The ending scene before the Epilogue is so cliché, it was basically copy/passed from The Shining, High Tension, Saw II, and every other humanistic horror movie ever. It makes me wonder how a writer/director like Lars von Trier can be smart enough to make a movie that's . . . well, actually smart, but still make that same movie that is this . . . well, childish. Also, I should note a couple other things. The movie tries to say something about sex and sexuality, but that entire subplot becomes a cliché quick. There are thousands of movies that deal with sexuality, and anyone who generally thinks they have something original to say on the subject should be pointed and laughed at. The movie literally opens up with shots of a middle-aged man's butt, graphically constricting and flapping in a close-up sex scene. His ball sack flaps into frame next. How's that for cinematic maturity? I don't know about you, but artistic gay porn without any reason whatsoever just isn't my thing. In American Pie, whatever. In a horror-drama about the evil of human nature, it's hard not to just dismiss Lars von Trier as a horny 13-year-old boy that can't get a girlfriend. Stephen King explored many of the same EXACT sexual scenes in his book Gerald's Game, which came out decades before this movie. But where Antichrist uses sex for purposeless filler, Gerald's Game uses sex to explain real honest events that happen every day. That'd the difference between a hack and a storyteller. The violence is average. Much less than you've seen in any of the recent Saw or Hostel movies. I don't even know why Lars von Trier made such a pathetic attempt to add such cheesy shock-violence that wasn't shocking into this movie anyway. He defended himself in one interview by calling it "artistic honesty". As if people really get bolted through the ankle every day in real life. Yeah, honesty. Right. Uh-huh. The cinematography, which everyone is raving about for some stupid reason, is . . . pretty typical. Yeah, yeah—you have your black-and-white slow-mo scene (Sin City) and your choppy scenes (Saw) and your wide shot scenes (A Clockwork Orange) and your blurry scenes (umm, every cheesy horror movie ever) and so on. There's nothing new about this directing whatsoever. It's just a mash-up of everyone else. What's the big deal? And my final thoughts on the overall movie, I'll repeat that: What's the big deal? 6/10 Postscript: Okay. Okay. I liked it. I liked it a lot. But you didn't really expect me to admit that in a review, did you?

If a middle-aged man were to walk outside his house right now in a chicken suit and started attacking small children, a lot of people would say he lacks maturity. Or, perhaps, that he's a pervert. If he sustained his attack long enough, he'd be on the news, and the police would come, handcuff him, and laugh in the guy's face. Lack of maturity is something that is obviously negative in out society. What I find interesting, though, is: what is labeled as immaturity in real life is labeled as sublime quirkiness on the movie screen. Sometimes. Other times, in case of shows like The Wiggles, immaturity is labeled as stupid. Other times, in case of comedies, immaturity is labeled as hilarious. Other times, in case of books like Naked Lunch, immaturity is labeled as offensive. Other times, in case of movies like Trainspotting, immaturity is just generic, boring, and I've seen this so many times I know exactly what's going to happen in five minutes, oh look! I was right.

I'll just get right to my point. Trainspotting is one of the most unoriginal movies I've ever seen in my life. From the opening surrealist toilet scene (which was used in everything from video games to books to artwork to cartoons long before Trainspotting was even an idea in the writer's head) to the childish DRUGS ARE REALLY, REALLY BAD!!! ending and everything between those two points.

The nihilistic characters are trite and safe, copy/pasted from some MTV reality show that contains 2% reality and 98% what looks cool. Their generic nihilistic actions are so safe, most eight-year-old boys would think they're lame, but, for some reason, the middle-aged crowd calls them "intelligent". The entire drug-addiction plot line plays out exactly like it did in that DRUGS ARE REALLY, REALLY BAD!!! video you had to watch in high school health class.

My point? It takes a lot more to shock people than a couple kids playing around in a toilet. There is absolutely nothing disturbing here whatsoever. Why? Because this is the pansy crap we see every single anti-drug movie ever made. It's so unabashedly unoriginal, I fail to see how anyone can even call it art, being that the definition of art is "an original body or work" . . .

The cinematography is generic, and is only even slightly inspired when it rips-off Kubrick. The acting is generic, being that I don't think it's hard for a young twenty-something to act as a young twenty-something. I don't even know why they even bothered giving the characters names, because they completely lack any sort of identity that real people have. The only identity they have is that, they're boring, flat, copy/paste characters who are addicted to heroin . . . and they do heroin . . . yeah. And even if people say this lack of identity originality is the point of the movie—which it's not—then I'll say back, Brent Easton Ellis' novel Less Than Zero did that exact thing ten years before this movie came out and seven years before Welsh's book came out, and it did it infinitely better and more realistically than either one.

If you liked Trainspotting, I pity you.

2/10

When you ask most people the one major aspect that encompasses most children's fiction, most will tell you: "A simplistic story; be it in black-and-white morality, or in an A to B plot structure." Ironically, this definition also describes what critics and viewers both hail as one of the most disturbing movies ever made: Irreversible—and that's why I find the film lacking.

If you know the film's title, then you also know it's one of the (handful) of movies that tells the story backwards. Though there were several lesser known films to do this long before the turn of the century, the one popular example is Memento. The one major difference here is, Memento was essentially just Happy Candy Land Rainforest Rainbow Ride, filled with trite, clean characters, and trite, safe, generic conflicts. When I first started viewing Irreversible, my only thought was: "Dude, this is Memento for adults! Thank God SOMEONE used the telling-the-story-backwards idea with an actually good story." And that's partly true . . .

Irreversible does have some of the rawest, unexplained perverse human behavior every filmed—that is, in the first half hour. Because the movie is reversed, the characters brutal actions aren't explained until the midpoint of the movie, and, until that point, it's downright awesome. You're led to believe the characters are nihilists, causing this mayhem for no reason at all. The gritty environment (Rectum, the hotel, the tunnel) is genuinely gritty—not that cheap gangster shoot-'em-up atmosphere you see in generic crime movies. Then the bad storytelling ax falls and I felt cheated.

After the over-hyped rape scene, the entire movie falls into predictable slasher-revenge-angst plot line; or just downright boring horror. The actions are explained as being revenge for rape (ala The Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, Straw Dogs, etc., etc.) and the awesomeness of nihilism ends and the cliché storytelling begins. Point blank: the original body of work we're led to believe the movies is, now is revealed as an unoriginal slasher flick. It's like ordering an expensive gourmet Italian pizza, eating a couple bites, and finding out it's really just frozen Save-A-Lot pizza from the local dollar store. And don't even get me started on the so-cliché-I-laughed-out-loud pregnancy test ending . . .

Speaking of the rape scene: it's pretty generic. According to a quick IMDb.com search, there are more than 2,206 movies with a rape plot line, and if I were to do a more advanced search, that number would likely triple. Yes, kids, rape is a disturbing and terrible thing in real life, and I am in no means patronizing the real life event. But, folks, WE'VE SEEN IT IN MOVIES THOUSANDS OF TIMES. What's the big deal? You act as if Irreversible invented the scene or something. It's not any more disturbing or graphic or more weighted than any other rape scene ever filmed.

The cinematography is cute. Spinning cameras, 2001: A Space Odyssey rip-off stylizing and music. I'm sure on a pretentious level this has a deep meaning (time and space and human insight—oh my!—as if we haven't heard that before!), but I'll just take it for face value and call it what it is. Cute cinematography that is both innovative and neat. But calling it "deep" is beyond melodramatic.

So.

Is Irreversible an enjoyable movie? Sure. I guess. It's okay. Watch it on Friday night, go to bed, and, unless you're a pretentious prick, I guarantee you won't remember when you wake up Saturday morning . . . but it killed some time, right?

5/10

Here is the only point I want to get across in this entire review: Watching Mulholland Dr. made me feel like an adult forced to see a children's film.

For every 1 parent that takes their toddler to see an adult (aka, violent or sexual) film, there are 10 parents that silently that scream foul. Perhaps, in the social safety of their own home, on their computer, they'll type up a bitter "Middle-Age Angst Comment" on their message board of choice. Perhaps, if they're pseudo-intellectual, they'll type of a cute little review of the film and self-publish it on all the websites like the one I'm using right now. Either way, their predictable message is always the same: "Movies ruin kids' innocence! (Even if I saw A Clockwork Orange when I was 3, and it didn't affect me one bit, they will HURT your children!)" I'm not here to debate this (unintentionally hilarious) group of parents, but, rather, I want to use their argument to help illustrate my point about Mulholland Dr.

Mulholland Dr. made me feel like an adult forced to see a children's film. Instead of destroying my innocence and adding complexity to my thinking (as the loss of innocence always does), I feel like it made me just a little bit dumber.

First of all, do not assume I'm one of the thousands of people who didn't understand this film. I got it. I understood it. Before attempting to write this review, I even read official sites and threads dedicated to understanding it, just to make sure I wasn't missing any of the "brilliance". I didn't.

Like all surrealist films, Mulholland Dr. is childish in concept. At root value, it uses the exact same plot as The Wizard of Oz, but adds some sex to make it seem more "mature". The only thing that makes the film hard to understand is the stupid scenes where David Lynch uses cheap camera/storytelling tricks to force confusion. Or, to force weirdness, if you prefer that word.

Think of the entire film way. Someone tells you that they hid a dildo in a box, somewhere in the United States. Then they tell you to find it. They give you a couple vague clues hidden in a film, and you're off.

Two problems: (1) Why should you even care? It's a dildo. That's exactly how I felt about this film. Why should I even care about these characters? They're just flat characters presented in a way that will eventually shock the viewer with David Lynch's oh-so-horrifying portrayal of a sexual topic that is about as common and accepted in the real word as "Racism is BAD!" There's nothing to care about here. It's sex. How many times have I seen cliché sex scenes in a movie? Thousands, millions. I just don't care. (2) This method of mystery is childish. In Mulholland Dr., Lynch does not create a complex story whatsoever; he just creates a story that is visually hard to follow. If you showed me a picture of a walrus zoomed up close, I wouldn't know what it was. If you create a typical Wizard of Oz rip-off, place the camera just off-center, obscuring the important bits, I don't know what it is. That doesn't mean it's complex. It means it's childish. It's just a child that steals another child's lunch money and plays Keep Away with it.

This is why Mulholland Dr. offers absolutely nothing original. It's a story that has been done before; it is just filmed a little out of focus. This kind of pseudo-originality is even less complex than Tarantino, who is a director who I only bring up because he seems to be hated a lot by Lynch fans, for whatever reason. Tarantino takes unoriginal concepts and pumps them up with original scenes and ideas and stories. Lynch just takes unoriginal stories and makes them a little blurry.

Regardless of the predicable story, the film is pathetic, even on a visual level. The acting is hokey, which is something that I think Lynch intends, but it only adds to the children's film concept. Hokey doesn't equal weird; it just equals: "Dude, seriously, when are you going to grow up . . . ?" Also, it's boring as hell. I can be patient if the story is original, but when you know everything that is going to happen, and have seen every scene before, I just don't care. Because of this, Mulholland Dr. was one of the most boring films I've ever seen. Not to mention that Lynch takes his blessed time by having characters stare at each other stupidly, like they're auditioning for a bad parody of Napoleon Dynamite.

In conclusion, let me say this: I can't tell the difference between directors anymore. I watch audio commentaries every time they're available on a DVD, whether I liked the movie or not. There may be a few exceptions, but 99% of directors say the same things. They look the same. They wear the same glasses. They have the same ideas on what is good. They all appear to have an understanding of what is "cliché", but there is always a plethora of clichés in their films. They all have the nonconformist attitude, but they all make the same unoriginal movies.

David Lynch is supposedly one of the most brilliant and weird directors in history. Maybe the popular opinion backs up that statement. Maybe the critics back up that opinion. But, really, folks, David Lynch is just a face in the crowd of surrealist directors. With Mulholland Dr., he adds absolutely nothing new to the table. Because of his popularity, all he does is sit a little higher at the table than the no-name directors that did what he did, long before he did, much better than he did.

2/10

Lore: Two scared little girls, desperate, trying to find their way back home after being lost. Literature: The concept of catharsis; the emotional scarring of the observer. Artistry: Expression, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful. Then, somehow . . .

Reality: Genuine emotion. Realistic events. Something so far removed from a fictional environment, it strikes you on a level beyond something happening on a screen, and feels as if it's a memory. An experience.

Of all the qualities of perfection in storytelling that Martyrs has, it's that last quality that sets it apart from the crowd. While hundreds, maybe thousands, of films before it reached a level of art house perfection in both storytelling and aesthetic, I can count the films that achieve both those AND are still a genuine portrayal of reality on one hand.

The story of Martyrs, point blank, is the most original horror stories in decades. In the second opening sequence alone, you're hit over the head with so much original plotting, it will throw you into a state of disbelief. I won't ruin the opening twist, but I will say this. I'm someone who sits in a movie and literally counts the number of clichés, because I'm so bored of the predictable story. I watch over 800 movies a year, read over 250 books a year, write negative reviews on nearly everything I just mentioned, and simply put: I have never once in my life seen the unpredictable directions the Martyrs plot takes. Things that would be major plot twists in any other movie are just scene transitions here, because the story is so unpredictable and original.

Taking that last paragraph further, I'd like to also add this. The reason the Martyrs story is as original as it is, is because it's fully grounded in reality. It doesn't play off literary clichés (also called literary "rules"). The story follows the same narrative that real life would. The characters do the same things real people would. There is no beginning, middle, and an end. There is no defended good-bad conflict. There is no foreshadowing, no doomsday atmosphere, no perfectly contrasted shock value. Martyrs is too real and too honest to form-fit to the clichéd storytelling methods they teach in middle school. And that is why it's so emotionally powerful.

But as pretentious as all this may sound, it's not. Martyrs is one of the few movies where they could literally not cut out of a minute of runtime without affecting the story. The pacing is fast, and something interesting happens every minute of that pace. I'm personally sick of the recent outbreak of slow-burn "boring = good" horror movies, because, while they sometimes are good, they seem to be the only thing anyone makes anymore. With the exception of Saw and Inside, I can't remember a recent horror movie's pacing being this satisfyingly relentless. While I'd be hard pressed to call this movie "entertaining" in the traditional sense, it never once lost my interest, even for a few seconds, yet it retained more intelligence and quality than any slow-burn film I've ever seen.

The on-screen gore, contrary to anything you've heard, is minimal. If you're a squeamish middle-aged woman with a background in a violent home, then, yes, this will be unbearable to watch. But if you're just an average seasoned horror fan, I doubt you'll even notice the gore level. I'm shocked to see so many horror sites being so squeamish as to say this is actually a gory film. It isn't. The on-screen gore never once reaches the level of the average Saw film, not even close. And, honestly, the brutality isn't anything to brag to your friends about, either. I see reviews saying this is harder to watch than Inside, and that's purely ludicrous. Inside has to be one of the absolute bloodiest movies of all time; Martyrs just has a couple spurts of it here and there. But that isn't criticism in any way. Martyrs doesn't need to be gory to have the emotional impact that it does. It shows true black-and-white desperation to a degree no film before it has ever accomplished, and I find that more significant than bloodshed when telling this story.

Some people complain about the second half of the film, and I can somewhat understand why. When I first finished Martyrs, at 3am two days ago, I couldn't contemplate what I had just seen. My initial reaction was the entire movie was absolute stupid, because the ending went in a direction I wasn't expecting. As you can see by my positive score, 48 hours and a second viewing later, I've given enough thought into the ending to fully grasp the intelligence behind it.*SPOILERS* The film is not saying that humans can see the "other world" through extensive pain. It's simply saying that there are a group of people, the cult portrayed in the film, that believe that. The last line of dialogue—"keep doubting"—heavily implies that Anna saw nothing on the "other side", and that her suffering, and the cult's purpose, was utterly meaningless. *END SPOILERS* When viewing the ending this way, it's far from cheesy or pseudo-intellectual.

Martyrs redefines what the horror genre, and cinema in general, can accomplish. It goes beyond literary rules and shows honest reality at its most menacing. It's a far cry from the unrealistic "persevere, try your best, and you'll reach your goals" message that we all tell our kids, but never really believe ourselves. It shows strong people who, despite their absolute greatest efforts, became victims. And then goes even further, with a truly original story. What all of this amounts to is an emotional journey that some people, such as myself, and hopefully you, will never forget. What more is there to ask for from cinema?

10/10

I grew up on horror anthologies. Be it a book of horror short stories, or be it TV series like The Twilight Zone—I loved, and still love, good horror anthologies. When I heard about Fear(s) of the Dark, I'm not going to lie, I wasn't very intrigued. Mainly because horror anthologies, lately, have been totally worthless. Where originality and truly weirdly captivating ideas used to be, now horror anthologies are just filled with genre clichés. But I gave Fear(s) of the Dark a try anyway. As negative as I am about the entertainment industry, I still have a blind faith that someone, anyone other than myself and a select few of my favorite authors/directors, can come up with an original and captivating story. And I had my faith crushed.

Fear(s) of the Dark starts out fine. Not great, but fine. The first segment, which entails a semi-unique story of a man and his bug problems, isn't amazing by any means, but it's by far the best you get from Fear(s) of the Dark. After that decent segment, there is absolutely nothing else worth watching. The other five stories are all either painfully clichéd, or they're done in such a way that they're so utterly boring, they're nearly impossible to watch. Some of them, such as the one about the alligator, are just pointless. They're equivalent of someone verbally telling you the plot outline of a Dora the Explorer episode: yes, technically, they're defined as a story, but in reality they're not. There's no significance.

Speaking of Dora the Explorer, another major problem with this anthology is the unabashed lack of maturity. Just like in every cliché horror movie, there's severed heads and boobs in Fear(s) of the Dark, but there is NOTHING mature about the stories behind the "mature" images. Everything about the stories are simplistic and juvenile. It's become a pop fad with generic "dark" fantasy authors/directors like Neil Gaiman and Guillermo del Toro to take a child's fairy tale and reimaging them for grown-ups. But what these writers—and I am in no way limiting this statement to the two I mentioned above—fail to realize is, adding violence and some heavy themes done not make a child's story mature. The best example of this is the new film Watchmen, which reminded me of an episode of The Wiggles with a few spurts of generic blood-spray. I honestly felt like I was watching a little kid's movie. Heavy themes and "graphic" images don't make something mature. What makes something mature is the nature in which the story is told. If you were to cut someone's arm off in real life, the nature is brutal and sick. If you cut someone's arm off in a movie, the nature is generally taken as fun PG-13 gore. The motives are what makes something mature. And fantasy writers don't understand that. The writers of Fear(s) of the Dark understand it even less. And it shows.

The art is pretty decent, I guess. I didn't see anything too amazing about it, but it certainly wasn't bad. It's no better or worse than you'd see in your average graphic novel. I'm sure these artists could do better, but I'm not going to complain about it. What I am going to complain about, though, is the subtitles. The version I got had yellow subtitles, and I could read every word fine, but there's the problem: reading takes away from the movie A LOT. I love a lot of foreign films, so using subtitles is my second nature, and I've never once complained about subtitles in any of the foreign films I've seen. But with Fear(s) of the Dark, the movie forces you to be reading when you should be concentrating on the artwork. At least five times, I had to rewind and re-watch a scene because I was reading the subtitles and a major plot point happened on screen, and I missed it totally. This becomes very annoying very fast. A few times, I thought I might as well just turn the movie off because the effort it took to concentrate on the art and on the subtitles at the same time was not nearly worth the payoff. Another problem with the execution of the film is the pathetic starving-artist monologues between each segment. Well, let me take that back: Another problem with the execution of the film is the pathetic execution in general, highlighted by the pathetic starving-artist monologues between each segment.

And finally, we get to the blatant lack of entertainment value. This is by far THE least interesting animated film I have ever watched in my life. I fell asleep and had to rewind nearly ten times. It came to the point where I literally had to stand up and walk around just to stay awake for the ending of the film. There is no excuse for a movie, any movie, to be this utterly boring. The reasons it's boring is because, (1), the lack of originality, thus the lack of captivation, and, (2), because the artists focus so much on their average artwork, that the storytelling is oftentimes put on second burner, or just forgotten about completely.

I could be frilly and come up with a creative way to end this review, but I'm not going to. I'm going to put as much effort in this concussion as the artists put into this film: Fear(s) of the Dark is bad. Don't watch it.

(Do I sound like a kindergartener when I put my final opinion in that shallow of a statement? So do the artists when they put their art in this shallow of a movie.) 2/10

Ever since I was a little kid, I was obsessed with reading pulp horror. I've read more from the genre than anyone I personally know. Being a soon-to-be-published author myself, I've learned more about the genre by constantly reading than by any writing seminar I've ever been to. For those who don't read, by simple definition, pulp horror is: a story that is genuinely terrifying and thrilling, but purposely lacks any forced literary moral. Stephen King is pretty much the poster-child of this style of writing. With all of that said, when The Silence of the Lambs, the novel, was released and received mass critical acclaim for being the "perfect" horror-thriller, even being the major genre-whore that I am, I could really care less. Why? Simple because I'd read so many books EXACTLY like it, I had no interest. A few years later, when the movie was released, I felt the exact same way. This is why I've waited so long to view this "impossible-to-miss!" film. Because I knew it was just more of the same. When I finally decided to force myself to watch it, I found my gut instinct was underestimating. The Silence of the Lambs is not only just more of the same unoriginal story that we've all heard so many times that it's second nature to us, it's also cheesy, immature, over-glamorized, and, in the end, completely laughable. And here is why . . .

First and foremost: The Silence of the Lambs is, unarguably, 100% unoriginal. There is not a single original—or even creative—concept in the entire runtime of the film. This paragraph of my review is not my opinion. The way I view the world has no bearing on what has or hasn't been done in storytelling before. Saying that it's my opinion that The Silence of the Lambs is unoriginal is equivalent to saying that it's my opinion that the sky is blue. And just as childish. With that said, I can literally point you, scene-by-scene, to where every single idea in The Silence of the Lambs has been written and filmed in the past. Dressed to Kill, for a major example. From the formula, to the characters, to the situations, to the set-up: it's all, unarguably, one giant genre cliché. And, as I said, I can point to every movie, every book that has used the EXACT scenes in the past. This isn't just a coincidence; it's an unabashed lack of creativity and intelligence from the writer. Just more of the same cliché Hollywood and pulp fiction conventions we've seen all our lives. All the standard clichés are here, folks: romantic subplot, tension at the agency, troubled childhoods, etc., etc., etc.

Hannibal Lector himself is, admittedly by the author, nothing but a mash-up of various fictional and real-life serial killers. The two most obvious fictional killers he unabashedly rips-off are Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1974) and Mark Lewis (Peeping Tom, 1960). Leatherface's actions (cannibal, wears victim's faces) + Lewis's mind (pretentious, psychiatrist, study's human behavior, kills people to study reactions, gives long speeches about serial killers, has a supposed vast knowledge of the human mind) = Hannibal Lector. There is not a single character trait that Lector has that wasn't done nearly 40 years before he was written. Again, a kindergarten lack of creativity. I honestly don't even know how his character got past copyright laws.

Not to mention Hannibal's cheesy persona. He pronounces "liver" with slurping sounds at the end. So did 3-year-olds, but I don't cower in fear of them. He never actually DOES anything on-screen, except talk. And talk. And when he does talk, he talks with the pseudo-intelligence of a high-school dropout who took a semester of psychology. Why? Because his psychological knowledge is laughably limited, and sometimes incorrect all together. He's supposed to be this oh-so-evil genius, but all he ever does is quote cliché phrases from dumbed-down Freud. He knows NOTHING about psychology. The pathetic writers just wrote enough cliché psychobabble between his laugh-out-loud cheesy slurping sounds to make it seem like he knew at least as much about the human mind as the average middle-school student. And then, just like all over-glamorized Hollywood, every time Hannibal is on the screen they point the camera up at his face with light shining behind his head as he stares at the ceiling without blinking. That's not good acting. That's made-for-TV directing they use in low-budget Jesus movies. Hannibal Lector is nothing but an awkward middle-aged man who is obsessed with talking and breaking copyright laws. How is that unnerving? If I met him, I'd laugh in his face and tell him to grow up.

So, at root value, I'm just trying to ask: What is so great about this movie? It's a generic crime thriller. It opens up with a generic cop-meets-killer scene, and ends with a generic cheesy-killer-in-the-house scene. Everything in between is exactly what you'd expect from an over-glamorized generic Hollywood thriller. It has NO significance whatsoever when it comes to originality. And as far as entertainment value goes, I don't see what's so entertaining in watching a middle-age man talk for an hour on end. If that entertains you, I pity you.

Oh my God! This movie TERRIFIED me! Why? Because an awkward middle-aged man pronounced "liver" like a 3-year-old.

I'll say the same thing to those of you who gave this movie a high score as I'd say to Hannibal Lector: GROW UP.

2/10

When I think of horror, truly genuine horror, not the cheap stuff that teenage girls scream-giggle-giggle at, it's almost always something hyper-realistic. Do not misunderstand me. I'm not contradicting H.P. Lovecraft when he stated that "horror and fantasy are only separated by a stream of black water", but I am saying it's a narrow-minded view. Fantasy worlds that we do not understand will always scare some of us, but there will also always be a group of people who find all unrealistic horror completely laughable. In the exact opposite sense, I've never once heard a person say that the premises behind truly realistic horror films were laughable. Ironically, realistic horror is scarce. Perhaps it's because we live in a time where modern directors saw The Omen when they were 2-years-old, their underdeveloped minds mistook cheese for terror, and now they live and breathe to pump the horror genre full of crappy, unoriginal movies like The Unborn or A Tale of Two Sisters. Thus, whenever I see a truly realistic horror film, regardless of its quality, I can't help but take it at least twice as seriously as I would yet another "Oh there's a cheesy demon! Let's get naked then do some insanely stupid thing and get killed!" film. In other words: Cannibal Holocaust is far from a great film in terms of quality, but the fact it's actually realistic gives it weight, and makes it worth watching.

The first time I attempted to watch Cannibal Holocaust, I'll admit I was bored to the point of tears. It just seemed like a toned-down, less entertaining version of The Temple of Doom. I turned it off 15 minutes in. The next day came, and I reluctantly decided to force myself to sit through the other 70 minutes of the film. This time, it caught my attention immediately. The boring faux-documentary set-up blended into an infinitely more interesting study of human nature.

While most films that "study" human nature really just end up repeating elementary facts that we knew before we were old enough to get into PG-rated movies, there is quite a bit more intelligence here. Instead of typically displaying the entire modern society (or just the American society) as evil, Cannibal Holocaust accurately depicts the mental breakdown of the young live-for-the-moment mind. In 2009, that's something I've rarely seen. In 1980, I'm pretty sure it was an original concept to display on film. Also, what makes Cannibal Holocaust infinitely more realistic to Battle Royale or Lord of the Flies is that it NEVER uses extremes. While the former two works that I listed lump the entire human race together into a single idealistic gobbledygook character type, Cannibal Holocaust does the opposite and presents good, bad, AND everything in between through diverse, realistic character traits. This is why Cannibal Holocaust is so intelligent in presenting the whole cliché "human nature is to kill" concept.

As for the quality . . . Well, people have accurately said that the acting (from the older people) isn't great. The four (young) central characters all act realistically, and are portrayed realistically. However, I didn't find the acting bad enough to be distracting at any point in the film. Some of the gore effects are outdated, but, again, I didn't feel it took away from the story unless you allow it to.

The gore is minimal at best. Some would go as far as to say it isn't there at all. There are a few generic, non-graphic Hollywood rape scenes, a few infamous animal killings, and a few human lacerations, but that's about it. It's nothing you haven't seen hundreds of times before. A lot like A Clockwork Orange and Natural Born Killers, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how this film was labeled as insanely violent, much less violent/gory at all. The small amount of gore that was there was simply generic, and done in a non-graphic way. I'm someone who is very sensitive to graphic gore, and I found everything in this movie below the level of violence in the average R-rated movie. Compared to any given Saw film, Cannibal Holocaust just looks bloodless. I am not complaining about this, however. Just stating the fact. The movie did not need more gore for any reason, and I blame the lack of it only on the silly infamous hype.

Overall, I found Cannibal Holocaust a very entertaining and thought-provoking experience. I watched it with low expectations and had an absolute blast. One of the most fun movies I've ever watched alone. Regardless of my tastes, however, it is impossible to deny the territory and importance of this film on the horror genre. It forces you out of your face fantasy world and rubs your face in the filth of the real world . . . even if that filth isn't really that disturbing.

6/10

Hypocrites. You know what the term means. The modest Christian girl that gave you the you're-a-piece-of-ungodly-filth look whenever you slyly grab a feel of your girlfriend's breast, then you found out a few weeks later that the oh-so-modest Christian girl is pregnant (. . . for the third time). Whether it's mature or not, these sort of simple character contradictions make us angry. If someone judges us, then contradicts their own standard, it's nearly impossible for us not to slap their flaw in their face. It's human nature. In a way, that's how I feel reviewing Baghead. Part of me wants to forgive the films faults and admit that I deep-down somewhat enjoyed it, then the other part of me wants to beat its face bloody for its blatant hypocrisy.

From the opening scene alone, the Duplass brothers make it clear that this is a parody of pretentious indie films. They laugh at the idea that everything low-budget is automatically a work of art. They buddy-slap each other on the arm and chuckle at how many pretentious indie films, labeled as art, just downright suck. For this, I cheered. Finally, I thought, someone has the balls to head-on assault the fine-cinema-whores. This feeling of satisfaction lasted until about 30 minutes into the film.

And then I found out that Baghead was pregnant for the third time. And I was mad.

Most of the dialogue in Baghead is improved. I have nothing against this, and for the most part, it worked decently. It certainly added freshness to the stale paint-by-the-numbers horror dialogue we could all recite in a coma if we had to. But then again, the dialogue is far anything special. This isn't Quentin Tarantino, by a long shot. I don't even remember a single line from Baghead, much less praise it for coming up with godly improvised dialogue. In reality, anyone and their half-drunk friends could say the things these characters say. It's a little fresh, but it's nothing special. That's where the first strike of hypocrisy comes in. It's impossible to overlook that the Duplass brothers, who just parodied the pretentiousness of indie films 30-minutes before, now expect to be praised for coming up with some average dialogue that they seem to think is the height of creativity.

Likewise, the plot is . . . well, okay, there isn't any real plot, and that's the point. Again, the idea of someone running around with a bag on their head and trying to scare you is fresh, but it's far from special or original or even creative. The movie has a very loose non-plot structure, but when you look at it overall, you see Baghead just treads the same exact cliché ground horror movies have treaded for years. All the predictable clichés are here. Topless girls, romantic subplots, lost friends, phone line cuts, car dismantling . . . need I go on, or can you fill in the rest on your own? As with the dialogue, the story structure is presented in a semi-fresh way, but it's still exactly the same thing you've seen thousands of times. If a 12-year-old were to write this story in an English paper, it would get a C- for lack of creativity. So, then, why do we praise this movie made by grown men? The Duplass brothers could think of a much more original story, but they don't. They, just like Hollywood, don't feel like putting out the effort to think of something we haven't heard a thousand times. Or even a hundred times.

I read a comment on one site that said this film was infinitely funnier than the big-budget Hollywood production Tropic Thunder. First, the falsity of that comment made me laugh harder than Baghead did. Second, based on comments like those, it seems the audience that liked Baghead simply liked it because it was low-budget. Close-minded, immature, childish thinking at its most extreme level: If it's indie, it's art; if it's Hollywood, it's crap—no exceptions. I put that statement on the same level of intelligence as I put: If I eat an apple a day, I won't get cancer; if I eat a muffin a day, I'll die of AIDS—no exception. Neither statement reflects reality.

What I'm trying to get across is this. Baghead is fresher and slightly more fun than most big-budget horror productions anymore, but that doesn't mean it's good. And that certainly doesn't make it art. When a 12-year-old kid writes this, it's lack of creativity. When two pretentious indie film makers write this, it's art. Uh-huh. If that's true, I might as well take some crayons, draw a few squiggles on a piece of white paper, put on my suit and tie, and, by God, I'm an artist. Pay me. I put as much effort into that crayon drawing as the Duplass brothers put into this story. So pay me, indie art fans. Pay me. I'm an artist. I swear I'm an artist.

2/10

With about 70% of older horror films, it's honestly hard for me to tell what "horror" films were meant to be comedy, and which were meant to scare me. Because the 70s were loaded with laugh-out-loud unintentional cheese films like Phantasm and The Omen, it's certainly not hard to see the natural evolution of horror films in the 80s. The 80s shifted from horror films intending to scare to horror films intending to make people laugh. Instead of trying to scare people with clichés, 80s horror took clichés and made people laugh at their predictability. Sadly, after you've seen this laugh-at-the-thing-that-would-have-scared-you-in-the-70s formula repeated over and over again, it stopped being funny really quickly, not to mention became as predictable as the movies it parodied. I've literally seen hundreds of 80s horror-comedies, and of them all, I can only pick out one or two that was genuinely funny or entertaining. The Evil Dead, for example, understood how to be genuinely comedic and still retain the horror elements. Night of the Creeps, however, is just . . . the same thing.

If you've seen any 80s horror comedy, you've seen Night of the Creeps. Yes, it has a few comedic moments that set it apart from the crowd for a few seconds, but they're few and far between. The Star Wars parody in the opening was pretty clever, but after that Night of the Creeps just becomes like all the other 80s horror-comedies. It repeats the same lines, same pseudo-scares, same jokes, same clichés, same plot, same EVERYTHING.

The main character is romantically challenged—really, who would have guessed? Have you ever seen an 80s horror-comedy where the main character is anything BUT a romantically/sexually challenged male? Over 90% of the movie is absolutely nothing but this cliché kid trying to figure out his pathetic relationship problems. It isn't funny, it's boring. I've seen the plot before in everything from 60s sitcoms to Dear Abby columns in the local newspaper. I can really care less.

When the action starts, it's just a bunch of generic head-shots, then the movie goes right back to the boring, cliché dork drama. The "gore" is all done in PG-style cut-off scenes, so don't even expect any on-screen blood to make the movie more enjoyable. It starts out as a painfully forgettable movie, then quickly turns into a movie that I literally could not force myself to watch again.

What else is there to say? If you grew up in the 80s, I can understand how this film may be nostalgic to you. I won't rain on your parade. If you watched this with youthful innocence as a kid, I'm not going to rain on your starry-eyed nostalgic parade. However, if you didn't grown up in the 80s, you'll have seen this material literally thousands of times in other 80s films and in the countless return-to-fun-horror films of the 2000s. By today's standards, Night of the Creeps is little more than a TV-PG-rated Disney Channel movie.

0/10

Let me ask you a question. What year is it? Most of you would say 2009. Let me ask another question. How long did it take you to recall that it was 2009? Most of you would say that you didn't even have to think about it—you just knew. Now that we have the year settled, I'm going to change topics for a paragraph, and then I'm going to return to my original statement.

Desensitization, as dictionary-defined, is: the elimination or reduction of natural or acquired reactivity or sensitivity to an external stimulus. Or in other words: being exposed to something so much that you can genuinely care less about it. I think a good example of this is the sickening feeling you get when you listen to a song repeatedly, day after day, years on end. Eventually over time, even if it's a great song, just hearing it will make you cringe. And even if your desensitization never gets to that extreme, given that your life hasn't profoundly changed, the song will never have the same emotional impact on you as it did the first time you heard it. This is why we listen to hundreds of thousands of different songs in our lifetimes.

The two statements I made above—the year and the fact we listen to a lot of different songs—seem kindergarten to us. Common sense. And maybe to us, the viewers, they are. But, for the love of God, why don't filmmakers understand them? We live in 2009. The simplistic ghost story, like The Unborn, has been around even before semi-modern society. It has been a filmed concept since 1896 (The House of the Devil). We've had over 120 years of desensitization to the filmed subject matter. The only people who will find it scary are the pre-teen girls who peed their pants during Juno. (Teehee-hee. That off-screen birth scene got the best of me, hehe.) The only people who will find it interesting are the people who have lower standards for film than the standards a severely starving whore has with men.

In case you missed the trailer, the story is a mash-up of Japanese gobbledygook and (unintentional) American cheese-horror. Scene by scene, it is the same exact plot as: The Ring, The Grudge, Mirrors, Dark Water, The Omen, One Missed Call, Candyman, The I Don't Care, Stop Making These Stupid Movies, Urban Legends, Darkness Falls, The Why Did I Sit through That for the Hundredth Time, Session 9, etc., etc. The Unborn isn't homage. It isn't a work of art that we should all try to find something good in, as Roger Ebert would say. The Unborn is a 2-year-old effort from a man who just wants to pick up a paycheck handed to him by Juno-fearing teen girls and pansy-minded "I don't care about originality!" horror fans that end up committing suicide by the age of 40. There is not a single scene in the movie that isn't a cliché in some shape of form. This just makes the entire movie a self-parody of how low the horror genre has become. And if you somehow don't believe that, I can tell you firsthand that I heard more laughter in my theater with this "horror" movie than I've ever heard during a comedy in my life.

Because of this unabashed lack of originality, creativity, or even lesser-used clichés, The Unborn is painfully boring. I started to fall asleep, then stopped myself so I could write this review, close to ten times—I counted. The plot pulls along on autopilot through the most generic horror plot you can think of. If there is even a single scene, a single line of dialogue, a single MOMENT that you have never seen before, you are not even a casual horror fan.

The other problem with The Unborn is the blatant stupidity of the entire thing. Believe in ghosts or not, I have yet to read or watch a single account that has ever been this laughably stupid. The Unborn mixes unknowledgeable clichés about religion to create possibly the stupidest plot in horror history. It's all the plots from the movies I listed above mixed together, then dumbed-down even further than they already were.

I paid $2 to view this movie. After viewing it, I wouldn't watch it again unless they paid ME at least $100. If there is a single movie in the history of cinema that perfectly displays every single thing that is wrong with movies, regardless of genre . . . it's Fernando Meirelles's Blindness. The Unborn comes in a close second.

0/10

* Note: Yes, I read the graphic novel; no, I do not consider it perfection. This is not a biased Watchmen-comic fanboy review, nor a review from someone unappreciative of the original story.

Adoptions and remakes are always severely patronized. When we view them, we always have an image of the original version laced in gold in the back of our heads, with the label of PERFECTION hanging over that image. When someone interprets that original version of a story into another field of art, or reinterprets it into the same field of art, we go in unconsciously thinking that there is NO WAY it will affect us as powerfully as the original did. This alone is stupid. If you look at past novel-to-film adoptions, a lot of them have far surpassed the original text. The biggest example is A Clockwork Orange. The original novel was just another cliché the-government-is-evil novel with a cute spin on morality tied into the ending. The film, however, nearly single-handedly created the surrealist genre in cinema and minimized a lot of the cliché plot points. Just because a movie is based on a novel does not mean it has to be bad. However, if there is a flaw in the reinterpretation, we say it's the loss of the translation, but we never stop and accuse the original version of that flaw, even if that's where the flaw originated. Viola, Watchmen.

If there is anything the film version of Watchmen does, it shows the gaping flaws in the original graphic novel. Zack Snyder is taking a lot of critical trashing—some of which he deserves—from the group of people who saw their nostalgic childhood memories/fantasies torn apart on the movie screen. But what that group of people fail to realize is that Snyder didn't change . . . well, anything at all, except the ending. He left out trivial scenes and bits of dialogue for the sake of time, but he pretty much copy/pasted everything in the graphic novel to the screen. That's something that can be proved on close examination of the two works. So there are only two reasons for people to dislike this movie: the actual story from the graphic novel, and the modern visual presentation.

As I stated earlier, a lot of negative reviews from the fanboys are (correctly) trashing their beloved graphic novel without even realizing it. The biggest problem that is obvious in both the film and novel is that the underline story of the Watchmen is just seen-this-before. The graphic novel wasn't unoriginal in the sense than you could predict every plot point, but it was unoriginal in the sense that when you look back, you see how typical the grand picture is. In both movie and novel, the ending is the cheesy and predicable reversal-of-expectations that has been done for hundreds of years. It's something you expect from a 5th grade creative writing session, not something from a said-to-be literary genius like Alan Moore. A lot of other plot points were directly ripped-off of Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes. Even the so-called "deep" themes are just clichés. You've heard them all before in high school psychology class. We understand the world is a bad place. We've understood it when we were 4-years-old and our grandmothers got ran over by a semi. Yet Moore carries his writing as if he's saying something completely new. Furthermore, the graphic novel and movie both reek of blatant immaturity. 1000-foot blue penises. Some of the most laughable costume choices ever drawn. The immature idea that something has to be laced with violence and sex or it isn't a mature piece of art. All the movie did was bring these flaws to the screen and expose them. These aren't Snyder's flaws, these are Moore's.

Now for Snyder. First and foremost, Watchmen should have never been entrusted to him. Period. Watchmen should have been treated like The Godfather. Instead, it got the treatment of the Spider-Man 3 outtakes. As a visionary director, Snyder is perfect when he's working on movies like 300. He has an infinite amount of talent with brining style and freshness to generic action scenes that you've literally seen thousands of times. This is why 300 worked so well. 300 was a pointless action movie, and it never tried to be anything else. Watchmen is the equal opposite. The heavy themes or nihilism and pessimism are almost made laughable in the film version of Watchmen. It's as if Snyder couldn't decide if he wanted to be a pretentious old man or a crowd-pleasing hack. And he isn't experienced enough or talented enough to attempt both at the same time. Also, his overuse of CGI literally turns entire portions of the film into a bad Disney Channel cartoon. This is partly due to Moore's immaturity, but Snyder's CGI just emphasizes it to the point I felt like I was watching Horton Hears a Who more than once.

As for the level of violence and sex: both were mild. The reason I mention it is because so many reviews are complaining about generic gore scenes, or a single breast shot, which I find downright funny. The average T-rated (13+) video game has more blood/violence than Watchmen^4. I can name several PG-rated films with more nudity. Grow up, folks.

Every factor I just listed is why Watchmen fails as a movie, and is underwhelming as a novel. The movie does absolutely nothing but rip open the mild bleeding wounds the novel had. It dumbs down an already semi-unoriginal story. It takes the boring dialogue scenes in the novel and turns them tedious and impossible-to-sit-through. It takes the downplayed childish elements in the novel and parades them in front of the camera. It turns the stylish art direction of the novel into a cheap live-action cartoon.

The Watchmen underwhelmed me in the first place. Now I just sit and laugh at them. Again: Grow up, folks.

2/10

There is one thing that I've rarely heard anyone point out about the generic list of "BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME". You know what they are. No matter what organization or website lists them, the list is almost always the same. And the one thing that the supposed elite movies of all time share in common: As far as story, they're all average. Not a single one of them has even a single scene of outstanding originality, or even flirts with it, for that matter. They're all generic paint-by-the-number dramas filled with pretty moving pictures and filled with people who can pretend to be someone else fairly well. But as far as story goes, these movies are all empty. There are a few exceptions—Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, a couple others—but that is a standard rule. The obsession with unoriginality that the pretentious men and women who chose what films are the best has always bothered me. And what better illustrates this than The Godfather? It is nothing but a generic crime drama, yet it's considered one of the greatest movies of all time? Something just seems wrong with that. Something seems wrong with the idea that the men who truly stand up and make original cinema get pushed to hell by critics, while a generic crime movie sits on the throne of God.

Perhaps the perfect-scored reviews of The Godfather are right. On a technical level, on a storytelling level, on an acting level, The Godfather is perfection. The directing and production value so far surpasses everything from the early 70s, it's almost unbelievable. The storytelling is done flawlessly. I cannot think of a single 70s film where every single kill has so much value and weight. The acting is the stuff of legends. I will give The Godfather all of this credit, because it earns it. But . . .

But none of that dismisses the fact that it is still simply a generic crime drama. No matter how well-done this story is told, it's a story that you've heard long before it was released. Unlike the modern gangster cinema, such as Ichi the Killer or Reservoir Dogs, The Godfather offers nothing new, even for its time. I understand that those examples I just listed are both meant to be taken as over-the-top and unrealistic, but my point still stands. People have created far more original and entertaining crime dramas than The Godfather. There is one subplot that I give this film some creative credit for—the horse—but beside that, this is just copy/paste plotting. If they had used the creativity of this scene more often throughout the movie, this truly would deserve the over-hyped credit it gets. Just because something is realistic does not mean it has to be unoriginal. Personally, I am Italian, and I have heard hundreds of real-life mob stories from my cousins, and they're all infinitely more interesting/creative than anything this film even touched. There is no excuse for The Godfather being as dry as it is.

Some will argue that The Godfather is meant to be a drama about family life, not a thriller about crime. If that is true, and it may hold some truth, then The Godfather excels. Somewhat. As far as realistic emotion of family life, it's pretty solid and mildly cliché-defying. But it's nothing you haven't seen before, and seen with more compelling presentation.

The other major flaw that is inevitable to ignore is the pure boredom that sets in every thirty minutes. I've read reviews stating that this modern generation simply can't relate to gangster films, thus it's boring. I've read reviews stating that the plot is generic, thus it's boring. Etc., etc., etc. All these may be valid reasons, but I think the point is this: The Godfather IS boring. It's filled with pointless conversation scenes that add nothing to the overall film or the generic plot or the drama, so what's the point of even including them? Pretentious-minded reviewers say that the viewer needs to be patient . . . Patient for what? Unlike Ridley Scott's Alien, there is rarely any payoff after the endless buildup in The Godfather. There is no entertainment value. While I'm completely fine with a film lacking entertainment value in order to show honest desperation or to intentionally offend, The Godfather does neither. All the reviews stating that this is a violent movie can be ignored. There is far more graphic violence in PG- and PG-13-rated movies of the past two years than this.

With all the valid flaws I just listed, anyone calling this movie absolutely flawless is in denial. Or just has extremely low standards. While The Godfather is compelling and has masterful plotting and directing, it is simply just another face in the unoriginal crowd when you look at the big picture.

Perhaps it was very influential in cinema—why should that effect how you personally view the film? Just because pretentious "film buffs" claim it's flawless, can you really not think of a single film that you enjoyed more? "CLASSIC" is just a word slapped onto films that critics are brainwashed into appreciating. It has no bearing on the true artistic or emotional value. It really shouldn't even have any bearing on public opinion, but it does. Imagine with me a world where The Godfather had been critically hated. Do you really think it would still receive the high public ratings that it has now? I highly doubt it. No one makes up their own mind anymore; anyone who does is considered a mindless shock jock, no matter how valid their reasoning is. While the best reasoning I have read for why The Godfather—other than the generic "good plot, good acting, etc."—is considered so great is, "BECAUSE IT IS. SHUT UP." Maybe what they're really trying to say is, "I have no idea why it's good, I've just been told so, and I forced myself to believe it."

4/10

If there is anything that I learned from my midget ex-girlfriend with blue hair, it's that most relationships people get themselves into are a complete waste of their time. Similarly, so are most movies about relationships. Why? Because as genuine and compelling as the main character's emotions seem on screen, it is almost always hallow, conventional, and, in the end, completely predictable. Movies turn love into a stage-play, in which the viewer says "Aw! That was cute!", claps, then walks away and forgets all about it. I can count the movie/books that portray love accurately, in its full non-cliché way, understanding that it means something different to everyone, on one hand. I find is amusing when people who gush about a certain romantic film, then try to form-fit their emotions around it. Or, vice versa, try to form-fit their emotions into a movie that is a total black-and-white cliché like Badlands. I'm not saying every single person is going to find nothing compelling about Badlands. I found it compelling at certain points—that's human. I also realized there wasn't a single moment of the film that wasn't a generic Hollywood convention—that's intelligence.

A friend of mine once told me once, in defense of the entire romantic genre: "I love romantic movies. Who cares if they're unoriginal? Love is unoriginal." As true as this statement is, the original way love is PRESENTED and how REALISTICALLY love is presented is where I place my harsh criticism. With Badlands, the overall story is a complete rip-off of Tarzan to Bonnie and Clyde to everything in between. The only thing that has even slightly changed here is the background, and even that has been used in other generic romantic films before it. The outcome of the movie is completely predicable, as is the rest of the film. Even for its release date, Badlands is so predictable, the way it unfolds is completely second nature to the viewer. There is no suspense or mystery: more than once I knew what was going to happen in 20 minutes from the scene I was watching, right down to the last detail. There is simply no excuse for a film being this basic and unoriginal. You cannot argue with me that romantic films can't be original, because they can. And when they are, that makes them infinitely better. When Bonnie and Clyde first came out, it wasn't a copy/paste plot, it was something new. Something controversial. Because of that, it still has had a major influence on pop culture today, while Badlands is nearly obscure.

Due to this predictable plot line, Badlands is possibly one of the most boring movies I've ever witnessed. I struggled to even stay awake, and giving it my attention was a downright chore. There are a few unimpressive action scenes thrown in, but even they are few and far between. Most of the runtime is spent with the characters staring at each other as if they were dying animals with mild retardation. There is absolutely no emotion here, and I fail to see how this can be touching, much less life-changing, as some have said.

But it seems that is the best the "renegade artists" can think of: Staring. Staring = love. I've written about it in a handful of other reviews, and I'm sure I'll write about it in hundreds more in the future. Staring. Instead of actually trying to create a visible emotional bond, Badlands resorts to the same method as every other cliché romantic film. Staring. "Stare at me, I'll stare at you, and the audience will think we're in love, it works every time, because I have absolutely no idea how to show genuine expressions of love on film. So let's just stare." I'm sick of it. I don't have time for it. If I wanted to watch people stare at each other, I would adopt a couple kids with Down syndrome. But I didn't, I just wanted to be entertained by a movie. And do you know what is sadder than any of this? I just had to write and entire paragraph complaining about something as seemingly irrelevant as staring. If that doesn't tell you that this movie is worthless, I don't know what else will.

Back on the Down syndrome subject, it seems that both main characters have it. As Forest Gump would later prove, cliché characters with "slow" speaking patterns never fail to pull at the audience's heartstrings. When someone can't come up with a character that actually has a personality, NEVER FEAR! Retardation is here! Though the characters in Badlands aren't necessarily mentally handicapped, they act like it. Slow speech, lack of moral judgment, lack of social judgment, lack of maturity—yes, you've seen these characters in thousands of other movies. Usually I would use the metaphor that these characters are about as interesting as a dying tree, but I'll give them a little more credit. They do have a few pseudo-weird actions throughout. Thus, they're about as interesting as dying trees wearing sweater vests.

No matter what good I try to find in Badlands, I simply can't. It is a 100% unoriginal mash-up of movies that came before it. Every character is a shallow Hollywood cliché, even for the time this film was made. Every compelling scene is, really, just hollow because it fails to recognize how real love works. It's more than staring. It's more than a few melodramatic "We fell in love . . ." monologues. Love isn't black-and-white, copy/paste. It's sad to see it portrayed so shallowly, then gain such a cult following.

Don't listen to the hyper-emotional teenage girls, or the divorced middle-aged women, or the pseudo-sensitive boyfriends: Badlands is not a genuine love story. It's a stale Hollywood excuse of a love story. Imagine the relationship between your great- great-grandparents. If they still even remember each other's names, then that's about how much genuine emotion is in this film.

0/10

Critics are amusing. Most of them are desperate middle-aged men with about as much personality as a dying animal. Because of these traits, it's obvious the kinds of films they will life and the kinds they won't. Anything with originality, anything that breaks the mold, anything with a punk edge is immediately labeled as trash. Anything with pretty moving pictures, anything with a hollow plot, anything with a cliché moral, anything with solid acting is immediately labeled as brilliant. They're also years behind the times. When a truly original movie is first released, they almost always trash it, then, half a lifetime later finally give it the credit it deserves. This cycle never breaks. If critics were politicians, their first priority would be how pretty America looks in the eyes of the world while ignoring the core issues. So when you see two middle-aged men come on TV and proclaim their critics, then further proclaim that Peeping Tom is an "exciting, original, daring" film, it's historically proved that there is a good chance they used to hate it. But if they were wrong then, what makes you think they are right now? Critics are a spineless paradox within a spineless paradox. I can't even take them seriously anymore. However, it seems that their influence is the reason Peeping Tom is so well-received by today's audiences. Here is why they're wrong. Again.

Think about how many times have you've heard this plot: A man is obsessed with studying a certain aspect of human psychology, thus he kills unsuspecting women to further his studies. He is psychologically unstable himself, and the story arcs into a person-vs.-self as he faces his own demons. Then, without spoiling anything, insert the most predictable/cliché solution to this problem at the generic climax. Suicide. Who would have guessed?

I could list a lot of '40s novels that repeated that tired formula, as well as quite a few '50s movies. There is nothing, not a single thing, about Peeping Tom that is even a mildly original idea. Not only that, but even the execution of the film is a copy/paste rip-off of Hitchcock and some Italian directors such as Dario Argento. It's a generic serial killer movie, with some minor Giallo influence. Maybe this just sounds like pretentious film buff jargon, but what I mean to say is: Peeping Tom is a generic serial killer movie with pseudo-originality. I give it some minor credit for not being as cliché as it could have been, but, really, who cares? If you've seen one movie like this, you've seen them all.

The other glaring problem Peeping Tom has is the overt lack of any entertainment value whatsoever. The plot plays out predictably, and if you don't know everything that is going to happen after the first 5 minutes, I feel sorry for your lack of intelligence. The plot just chugs along with predictable plot point after predictable plot point, with absolutely nothing interesting happening whatsoever. There is even a hilarious love interest convention added in. It's reminiscent of the absurd romance between King Kong and Ann Darrow. The main difference is, here, the love subplot is just thrown in to move along the predictable plot to get to the predictable ending. Without the love subplot, there would be no reason for the killer to face his demons, and without that there would be no cliché storyline—and how could we live without that? This eventually leads to the unintentional laugh-out-loud scene where the killer says, "Don't look afraid! If you don't, I won't kill you!" I'm sorry, but that has to be THE single most melodramatic line in cinema history. I don't care how pseudo-creative the idea of a man killing to examine fear is, it's absolutely stupid. I would call Peeping Tom a comedy if it weren't so painfully boring.

And, my God, it's boring. The director simply could not think of a more boring way to flesh out this boring plot. Most of the screen time is devoted to a mild-mannered killer staring at his films with an oh-so-dramatic look on his face. The build up for kills almost always lasts close to 15 minutes of pure dead-time where the women do some of the stupidest things imaginable. One of them even dances. It was so embarrassingly stupid I could hardly even look at the screen. In another scene, police stand around and make bad jokes over a dead body until one of them melodramatically says, with pure '30s cheese flair, "Let's not forget there's still a maniac on the loose!" Really, could the logic in this movie possibly get more stupid? It acts as if every human being has the intelligence level of a cartoon character. And yet we complain Napoleon Dynamite is stupid, but this is "fine cinema"?

Overall, Peeping Tom is a waste of your time. If serial killers entertain you, go watch an episode of CSI. You'll get the same exact plot as you get here, but with infinitely more entertainment value and intelligence. Either way, I really just would like to know how many times the serial killer plot can be repeated, rehashed, remade, repeated, repeated, repeated until people finally get sick of it.

In other words: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.

Did you laugh at that? I'm pretty sure you didn't. Why didn't you laugh at that? Because that joke has been repeated so many times it lost all humorous value to us. It's been repeated so many times, a lot of us don't even understand how it's a joke anymore. Peeping Tom is no different. By the year 1960, people had heard the plot so many times they didn't care anymore. By 2009, I don't even know why this movie is still even known, while much more original and intelligent movies are tossed aside as "trash".

0/10

In the sad little world of critical reviews, both professional and written by jobless house-husbands, the words "MASTERPIECE" and "CLASSIC" are always used to mask any disappointments a film may have. When you go to a fine restaurant and spend half your paycheck on a piece of meat, you unconsciously force yourself into denial that that piece of meat is the best you've ever eaten. Even if you would have been more content with McDonald's. Why? Because you just spent half your paycheck on it, and some French guy somewhere says it's fine meat, thus you have to agree. You HAVE to. You're unwilling to admit your disappointment. You tell yourself that your taste buds just aren't evolved enough, even though that is just stupid. It works the same way with movies. Once you've seen 500 pages of perfect reviews, read that the film received 100% rating from professional critics, admitting to yourself that you weren't content with the film isn't easy. It's even harder to admit it to other people. It's nearly impossible to write a review stating it. This opening paragraph can apply to thousands of movies. But this is how I felt about The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It wasn't bad, but it lacked the full contentment I expected.

Emphasis on story/plot has died out over the years. In 2009, top critics put only slightly more emphasis on it as they put on the color of the main character's shirt. Perhaps this is why we see movies, forget about them, go see another one just like the last one, forget about it: repeat the same hollow cycle until we die. Aristotle put story at the center of all fictional work; modern critics put cinematography and acting at the center. Whether you side with an ancient dead guy or bitter middle-aged men devoid of sex lives, it's hard to deny that the latter mindset just leads to pretty moving pictures and eventually is completely forgettable. That is the main flaw I had with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

While this film has purely awesome moving pictures (more on that later), the plot is weak. In fact, it's so weak and so predictable that I found that I could quickly care less about anything happening. For the film's credit, I will say that the predictable linier plot did have some quirky variation, and added scenes that you wouldn't normally expect in a Western. However, the fact that the driving force of this epic film is nothing but a cliché treasure hunt is the reason I found it so lacking. Couldn't the writers have been a little more creative? If they had been, this would have been an absolute perfect film. If they had been, there would be nothing for me to criticize. Even those who already find this a perfect film, can you really deny that a little more creativity would have made it even more perfect? Furthermore, the Civil War scenes pumped an even more annoying vibe into The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly because they were just copy/pasted from generic war films. They added nothing but another layer of seen-this-thousand-times to a generic plot that was already getting annoying because I've seen it a thousand times. And none of this criticism is from a modern standpoint. Everything I just criticized was unoriginal in its time.

What was good was the ugly. You've read this part in hundreds of other reviews, so I'm not going to take much time here. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly perfected true grit like never before. That's where the credit lies. From rugged faces to rugged deserts to rugged clothing to rugged buildings to rugged camera style, nothing was left of the sanitized world we live in. Some people criticize the realism of this and the realism of other aspects of the film, to which I say: I just don't care. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly can be taken as a mature fantasy set in a overdone western world—what's wrong with that? People also criticize the film by saying it's not as good as its prequels, which is a matter of taste. However, it isn't a matter of taste that the prequels didn't even come close to the epic scope or raw grit of this film. They didn't have the brutal nihilism of the characters. They were more polished, with tight conventional plotting and less overt backdrops.

Another incorrect criticism of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is that it is nothing but a macho, quirky, masculinity-fest with no bearing on the realistic world. Those people make me laugh. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly pretty much singlehandedly brought the nameless antihero into cinema. While this character really gets annoying in modern films, he works here because he was one of the first, as well as one of the best. While I will agree that he has little bearing on real life, it's the secondary characters that break the cliché. The title of the film as well as the film itself both illustrate the opposite that the typical period western would illustrate: the world is not black-and-white. Good doesn't always win. People can stand on both sides of the moral line. Good guys can do immoral things. It's here that the true underline genius comes out, because this is something even modern filmmakers don't understand.

Overall, there is nothing I can say to shake people from the belief that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the best film ever made. Be it due to nostalgia, or be it due to a level of depth I missed, I can't change that. I'm not trying to. But I just want to say that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is typical in some aspects. In others, it's legend. I just refuse to give it a perfect score because it's a supposed "CLASSIC".

6/10

There is a major difference between having respect for a film and being truly captivated by a film. Respect is simply realizing the importance a film had to cinema, or a certain genre, and admiring it for what it was in its time. Captivation is when you watch a film and are truly amazed by what you have just witnessed: in result, you think about it for days; you buy wallpaper with the main character printed on it; you give it a perfect score; it becomes a part of your life. With that said, let me briefly talk about the two main groups that make up the Halloween fan-base.

Group (1) watched the film when they were 4-years-old or when it first came out, went in their pants, and then childishly force the biased idea that it's THE scariest movie of all time into the heads of everyone who is even a mild horror fan. Because of nostalgia, they ignore the fact that Halloween is just a generic killer-in-the-house movie, even in its time, and place it high above anything and everything that has come out in the horror genre afterward. It doesn't matter how original or intelligent a modern horror movie is, in their mind, by God, it can't touch Halloween. Funny, though, if you ask them "Why?", they can never answer you. Group (2) watched the film in their teen years, thought in the back of their heads that Halloween was nothing special, but gave it perfect scores out of pure respect and duty. Group (3) is rare, but it's the few who saw it recently and genuinely thought it was a superior film, without being biased by positive scores. Group (4), which I include myself in, is completely middle-ground. They realize the most of the film is nothing special, but there are enough cool elements to keep them from saying its pure crap.

The reason I bring up the fans is because it's a subject that no one really wants to talk about, but a subject that is very important when analyzing the film. With millions of "Perfect!" opinions beating down on you, honestly realizing the mediocrity of Halloween isn't an easy thing to write in a review.

The main reason Halloween isn't as great as it's hyped to be is the core story. A juggernaut killer kills. Point blank: it's generic, unoriginal, and just downright boring, even in its time. As citation, the year before Halloween came out, Stephen King expressed in an introduction that he was sick of "generic killers" and that he could "write this in" his "sleep". (Note: This was not in response to Halloween or any other movie, but his personal feelings.) When I look at Halloween as a story and as a story alone, I cannot give it any credit whatsoever. It's pathetic. It's painfully unoriginal. Much more complex and original horror stories were told in the '70s. For one, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ('74). Another, Alien ('79). Another, The Shining novel ('77). Another, Carrie ('76). Halloween, in comparison to its peers, is just primitive in the way of plot, and that's the main reason I cannot give it a higher score. Some inaccurately credit it for starting the slasher sub-genre, but because it didn't, I can't even give it story credit for that.

However, the reason I don't dismiss the movie as a total waste of time is because of the atmosphere and directing. John Carpenter doesn't quite reach the perfection here with these two elements that he later reached with The Thing, but it's still impossible to ignore how superior they are in Halloween. The opening sequence with Michael as a child is absolutely brilliant. It pays homage to Black Christmas ('74) by doing a first-person view of the killer, then takes it even further with a third-person view afterward. The Halloween night atmosphere isn't quite done to absolute nostalgic perfection, but it's done better than any other movie I've seen. The camera angles, the reveals of the killer, the shadowed faces—all clichés to us now, but this was the movie where most of them originated. And it did all of this without cheese. This aria is where Halloween deserves its credit.

With that said, Halloween really isn't scary at all unless you grew up with it. Even in its time, it was a generic killer-in-the-house film, and, as I've read some reviews state, it wasn't scary even on its release night. As for gore, I'm not even sure I saw a single drop of blood in the entire film, and that got a little cheesy. The acting is also borderline cheesy at points, but nothing too distracting. What is distracting, however, is the lack of action for most of the screen time does get very boring. It is obvious Carpenter is trying to make up care for the characters by showing up drawn-out bits of their lives, but that doesn't work because they're all just cardboard, personality-less people. Halloween does get boring.

I never write reviews based on my respect of a film, but rather on my view of a film. Halloween deserves the credit it receives. I won't deny that. What I will deny is that this is the scariest movie of all time, or even one of them. What I will deny is that this is the be-all-end-all horror movie, because there are far more intelligent and original horror movies out there. What I will deny is that Halloween is the ascension to heaven that the brainwashed fanboys make it out to be.

3/10

What do the words "Crushing Disappointment" mean to you personally? Think about that one for a second. Certainly in your long list of disappointments, there is bound to be a new release film you saw that didn't fit the awesome-amazing-godly vision you anticipated in your head. However, reading reviews of older films, I rarely see this term used. If someone dislikes an older film, they say something like: "It's just the most overrated movie of all time." But very rarely do I ever see anyone have the audacity to say an older film is completely worthless, then give an intelligent reasoning for their opinion, even if they were completely disappointed with the older film. Maybe this is because we as a society have some sort of ludicrous respect for older films, even when they don't deserve it. Though I was not completely disappointed with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—far from it—I will give intelligent reasoning as to why those blind-eyed by nostalgia need to realize this film has not aged in golden perfection. Also, I'll try to help those who were completely disappointed with this film to understand why it isn't total trash.

Because I lived in a semi-sheltered household, I didn't grow up on horror movies. In my recent years, I count this as a blessing, because I can review films without any nostalgic bias whatsoever. Nostalgia is the problem with so many reviews I read of this movie. Someone who saw The Texas Chain Saw Mass cure at the age of 5 and went in their pants is going to grow up proclaiming to the masses that it is "THE scariest movie of all time!" While, in opposite, a 20-year-old man viewing the film for the first time is going to say that "Hostel was more terrifying than this cheesy crap!" because Hostel is more modern and he can relate to it more. It's all a matter of perspective. Personally, I didn't see anything scary about this movie whatsoever. I can, however, see how someone would think that. Just because something is old and was effective to an older audience does not mean it's effective to a modern audience. If you want to live in absurd denial that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the scariest movie of all time, no exceptions, then may I ask who is being more immature: you, or the "kids" you claim no nothing about horror?

In the opposite spectrum, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is in the top 5 most important horror films of all time, like it or not. That isn't an opinion. In its time, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was a purely original idea, and to this day there has never been a film like it. While some will argue that it's far "inferior" to the "superior" remakes, they fail to see that the original was far more groundbreaking. The remakes strayed from the original plot and pumped it full of clichés. The original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre gave built a far more complete atmosphere and refused to explain any of the events that transpired in the film, except in the opening monologue. This is a far more original form of storytelling, and, to me, and most other people, is far more effective. It is inarguably more realistic.

But what The Texas Chain Saw Massacre doesn't have is flawless production value. Compared to movies today, this is almost like watching an indie YouTube video. The production value has aged, and it's important to understand that. Hooper's directing is still very technical and well-done, but that just can't blot out the deeply aged edge. For example, it's very obvious that Hooper was trying to shoot for a PG-rating initially. The lack of on-screen gore is very annoying at times, because by today's standards, it's incredibly tame, even if it was on-screen. Also, the acting from the secondary characters is very unbelievable, even laughable, at points. I personally can appreciate all this lack of polish, because it's far more unsealing than the clean-cut politically-correct remakes.

Overall, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre may not hold up to the blockbuster status, but it doesn't have to. It wasn't meant to. It was one of the first examples of pure, raw, anti-stylistic intensity captured on film. That's what its legacy is built around. That's why The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was so important in its time.

Like it or not, find it cheesy or unnerving, find it scary or laughable, you can't deny that the film still has something that very few other movies—modern or not—don't have. Intensity. Uncertainty. Confusion. Originality. Even if you find the film purely disappointing, can you name a whole lot of other horror movies that have these characteristics? I can count them on one hand. And The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the granddaddy of them all.

7/10

Indie filmmakers and big-name Hollywood screenwriters have one thing in common: Neither of them even tries anymore.

Or, more accurately, neither of them even tries to come up with a plot. If they're making a comedy, they just use an overabundance of generic sex jokes and have some nerdy teens do predictable off-the-wall things. If they're making an action film, they form a generic main character, give him a clichéd reason to care about him, and insert some explosions between his melodramatic scenes. If they're making a horror film, they just create a generic plot line for whatever sub-genre they're trying to appease. For this review, however, let's look at psychological horror. The generic formula for psychological horror films: A sole event takes place (i.e. a death, a job, a problem in school), which the mentally unstable main character is caught up in, then finds out the event had/has some sort of "dark" psychological back-story, then the movie comes crashing down with the main character finally realizes his true mental state. Think how many movies that describes. I can think of about 30 off the top of my head. I'm sure there is even more. And Session 9 is just another one.

In reality, I could end this review with that. Session 9 is just another predictable, generic, typical, unoriginal, cliché psychological horror film. There is nothing else to review, really. If you've seen one cow, you don't need someone to describe in detail what a different cow looks like—give or take trivial details, they're all exactly the same. If you have some sort of stupid desire to waste your life on viewing a carbon copy of 30 films you've already seen (which were all carbon copies of each other to begin with), then watch Session 9. If you have any intelligence at all, don't watch Session 9. There isn't any more to be said. However . . .

There are even more problems here. The biggest one, second only to the unabashed unoriginality, is the sheer boredom of the film. This is mainly due to the fact you know everything that is going to happen in the opening 10 seconds. When you know what's going to happen, how can you NOT be bored? But, to add to that, the pacing is so slow it's nearly unbearable. The dialogue is unintentionally hilarious at points, but it's still some of the driest and most uninteresting dialogue I've ever heard in my life. And dialogue is over 3/4th of film.

The other major problem is the stupidity of the plot in the first place. It amuses me how many writers/directors uses cliché psychological plot points, but they don't even understand them. I think they just watched Fight Club or Se7en, went in their pants out of amazement, and decided to copy those ideas and paste them into their own script. But beside that, the psychological elements are so obviously innocent it had me laughing out loud. This movie has been called "thinking man's horror", and that is about the equivalent of calling the SpongeBob Halloween episode "thinking man's horror". They both present about the same amount of thought-provoking ideas, morals, and clever plotting.

Beyond that, Session 9 uses every horror cliché ever used, and it adds yet another layer of cheese to the plot. Generators fail right at the most tense moments—who would have guessed? All the characters have some sort of generic dark past and/or disorder—who would have guessed? For a movie that tries to take itself so seriously, all these Hollywood conventions suck any realism out of the film completely.

Because of all these factors I just listed, Session 9 is the single most laughable horror film I've seen in years. I'm sorry, but there is nothing scary about a cheesy plot that I've literally seen hundreds of times, pumped to overflowing with absolute stupidity and cliché conventions. I call that comedy.

0/10

I realize the idea of taking Star Wars, interbreeding it with one of Dario Argento's cheese-films, and putting an intoxicated spin on the whole thing may sound like a pretty cool idea. In 2009, the weirder the idea, the greater the appeal to the "open-minded" emo kids. In 1979, I'm the idea also appealed to the acid-induced "free-spirited" 10-year-old hippie boys. My point is, no matter what generation you grew up in, there has always been and always will be those who think that they can be nonconformists by throwing out every rule and making their own rules . . . thus, paradoxically, conforming. I can't help but relate this attitude to Phantasm. It tries so hard to be different from the rest, but in the end, it's just another bucket of horror clichés. Maybe the bucket is painted a different color—yellow blood, perhaps—but the contents are exactly the same as all the other generic horror films from the 70s.

A concept that few people really understand: When weird is the norm, it isn't weird anymore.

That concept is the problem that I always have with movies like Phantasm. The fans and the modern critics always site them as coming up with original ideas, when in reality, they're just cliché ideas presented in a weird light. Every single "weird" occurrence in Phantasm was unabashedly copy/pasted from Star Wars, Argento movies, 40s horror movies, and classic sci-fi novels. There wasn't a single "weird" scene in this movie that I haven't seen in entertainment before '79. For example, the silver sphere IS unarguably the lightsaber training bot in the original Star Wars. The hooded midgets in the end are also unarguably the Jawas from the original Star Wars. The fly was used before in various Stephen King short stories and various 40s movies. Etc., Etc. It would take me pages to list every single instance Phantasm ripped-off other movies/books, but it pretty much amounts to the entire movie. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise is a fanboy, blinded by his nostalgic first viewing of this film as an adolescent, then growing up thinking "Those were the good old' days , when horror . . ." for no other reason than it was his first exposure to horror. Anyone who enjoys horror films that are actually scary, aren't overflowing with cheese, and actually have some sort intelligence, this is the last place to look.

Despite what the old men who grew up with this film will tell you, it is not scary, gory, or weird. It's just another generic paint-by-the-numbers horror film. The acting is pathetic. The special effects are pure cheese—fugitively and literally (referencing the yellow blood). The story is done with go-anywhere-do-anything surrealism—which has recently been popularized by the author Neil Gaiman—which works in children's movies, but here is just unintentionally ludicrous. People have complained Phantasm makes no sense, but they fail to realize that's the immature point behind the movie. It's meant to be nothing more than a bunch of pseudo -weird scenes that it ripped-off from other (superior) movies. It's ironic, maybe even hypocritical, that older horror fans claim Phantasm as part of "the good days of horror", when "there was a story, not just gore and nudity." Phantasm has no story. In its time, it was just an acid trip, and a vehicle to display what was considered over-the-top gore/nudity in the '70s. In its generation, it was far more mindless than what is claimed as mindless today.

Some cite the music as great: it's really just okay. It is atmospheric like the music in Suspiria and Halloween, but it can't stand up to either, really. Also, the acting, like everything else, is laughable. Another problem is the lack of entertainment value. I fell asleep four times.

I'm not sure what my overall thoughts on Phantasm were, because as soon as I write the last sentence of this review I'll forgot entirely about it. It's just a generic horror film with "weird" aspects copy/pasted from other films. And it cannot be defended by saying that it's intended to be cheesy, because that is not the intention of the film. If that's what we classify as original, intelligent horror that is deserving of a fond place in our hearts . . . there's no hope for us as horror fans. And even less hope of the genre progressing any further in the future.

(1) Cheese oozing out of severed fingers, and fugitively out of the plot line. Or, (2) A genuinely scary, original horror movie that you can talk to the outside world about without feeling immature and stupid.

It's your choice.

2/10

Imagine with me for a second. You're on a blind date. It ends up being the perfect date. A ridiculously sexy woman, at your all-time favorite place to eat. For the first half hour, the date goes great. You can really connect with this woman, and she seems into you, too. Then just before the food is served, she gets up, walks over to you, and—BAM!—out of nowhere, she kicks you in the groin. Over and over again. She professes that she has hated your utter being all along. You'd get up and walk away, right? Maybe file a lawsuit? Well, you can't walk away. You can't because you have to write a review. That's exactly how I feel right now typing this about Desperado. The first half hour of the film is great: great action, great pulp dialogue scenes, great sense of style. Then out of nowhere, Rodriguez feels the need to add a cliché, predictable revenge plot line and focus the other 3/4s of the movie about it. I felt betrayed. I wished I could turn it off, but, alas, I couldn't otherwise I couldn't be typing this. I wasted my time. I struggled hard to even stay awake. How could a promising director like Rodriguez take such a promising beginning, then completely ruin it by forcing a severely predictable plot into the awesome pointless action?

People compare Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino as if their names and movies are interchangeable, and that's an absolute joke. Though they contentiously work together, Rodriguez never has and—judging by the synopsizes for his upcoming films—never will understand originality, whereas Tarantino has proved himself to be the exact opposite. I've never once seen a Rodriguez film that underlines this fact more than Desperado. The plot line is beyond unoriginal, and passes into the so-cliché-it's-laughable territory. Am I really the only person who is sick of revenge movies that all follow through exactly the same way, with the exact same scenes, and the exact same endings? If you've seen one, you've seen them all. There is no reason to watch this movie, because there is absolutely nothing you haven't seen before, and seen better. Go do the laundry or something.

This painfully unoriginal, formulaic plot line is why the entertainment value comes to a screeching halt mid-movie. Instead of continuing the nihilistic mass gunfights—FUN—Rodriguez does what he does best, and adds a cliché plot that amounts to about as much entertainment value as a staring at a dead tree stump—NOT FUN. It's almost humorous, the joke that Tarantino's character says has a more complex plot than the film itself.

And if creating a fun action movie wasn't the point here, may I ask what was? Nihilism is something that filmmakers don't understand, but it's something that the audience of this particular film wants. We didn't come to see a great opening, then a boring paint-by-the-numbers plot line unravel. As stylish and cool as this movie may be, it fails understand its target audience. Again, nihilism is something Quentin Tarantino has always understood, and it's most evident in Pulp Fiction. As much as these two work together, why can't Rodriguez just . . . get it? There is absolutely no excuse for him not to think of more original plots, and, if not, then understand and give his audience the nihilism it wants. Instead, he just rolls around in Hollywood clichés and puts out safe, predictable movies. What a sad waste of talent.

The only sole good thing I can say about Desperado is that the Mexican setting is pretty cool. It's filmed well. And that's all.

Overall, Desperado is one of those watch-once-then-forget-about movies, if not a little lower. It isn't the absolute worst movie out there, but it isn't anything that it could have been. It isn't fun enough to be a midnight movie with friends, and it isn't original enough to be taken as a serious story. It's just middle ground average. If I even remember a single generic scene in an hour from now, I'll be surprised.

0/10

* Just to get this out of the way: I did not view this in 3D, thus cannot comment on that aspect.

When you go and see a PG-rated animate film, what do you expect? A few laughs, a fun main character, something to keep your kid's attention, a creative story, and, possibly, that nostalgic feeling of childish wonder. Fantasy writers seem to think they understand this wonder-filled feeling more than anyone else, and thus I've yet to see a single fantasy writer who didn't pump out a generic coming-of-age, horror-teamed, Disney Land-inspired children's book at least once before the end of their career. Neal Gaiman, the writer of the original Coraline children's book, is no exception. He's also no exception to the unwritten rule among such generic fantasy writers that this children's book that I just described has be as unoriginal and predicable as humanly possible, otherwise it's too much for the children reading it to comprehend. Or, more likely, they just lack a single creative idea within their heads. I've read a lot of Gaiman books before, and this lack of imagination seems to be something that is contentious among all his works. Simply put, I could write up a page-long list of other authors that pre-date Gaiman and write the exact same stories he does, and they all think they're oh-so-original. I can also come up with a page-long list of movies that pre-date Coraline, but tell the exact same story. Is it so much to ask for a little creativity these days?

The setting for Coraline, the film, is completely generic for modern fairy tales like this. A big house. Coraline, the character, is also completely generic. An adventurous little girl with a slight punk edge. The secondary character, again, are all generic. Weird little boy, cat, unloving parents, fortunetelling old ladies, acrobatic old man. So, from the set-up alone, it's impossible to ignore how cliché and imaginationless Coraline, the film, really is. You've seen this a thousand times. You saw it with Alice in Wonderland, you saw it with Narnia, you saw it with The Corpse Bride . . . and if I had to, I could list at least thirty more. This is completely, wholesale unoriginal material, and that's apparent from the first five minutes.

The story is even more generic. It's Hansel and Gretel, minus Hansel. The generic main character finds a wonderful place filled with everything she lacked at home, and then things go wrong. Oh my! Who would have guessed?! I realize I'm criticizing this movie from the point-of-view of the bitter old man that I am at heart, but even my little sister, who I took to see this, admitted Coraline was completely predictable and forgettable. It's exactly what you expect. If fantasy writers understand children as well as they think they do, then why don't they give them a little more credit that they know what stories are repeated to the point of nausea? Seriously. In my theater alone, I heard countless little kids telling their parents how bored they were. At least half the families there left the theater before the last thirty minutes. If you want horror-themed animated movies that aren't just rehashes of the same predictable plot, I suggest A Nightmare Before Christmas (obviously) and Monster House (severely underrated).

Another problem with the boring factor. The movie repeats itself constantly, and you'll see the same exact scenes play out at least three times each by the closing credits. It drags on and on.

Coraline does have some entertainment value, and I will give it that much credit. The first thirty minutes were very well-done, if not severely predictable, like the rest of the film. The animation is well-done, if not average for the bar set by Tim Burton animated movies. The animation does have a slight unique rag-doll quality that was pretty cute for the first ten minutes. Some of the sub-plots are very interesting to watch. But none of this makes this memorable. It will pass time without too much problem, but it's nothing you're going to remember the rest of your life, because, as I said, the story is so unoriginal.

I realize this review is going to be unpopular, and, quite honestly, I don't care. I have standards, and I'm not going to lower them just because this is a children's film. I've seen countless children's films with originality and real imagination, but Coraline just doesn't have any. It's generic coming-of-age horror with a generic character and a generic moral that you've heard in fairy tales before you were old enough to talk. So, really, what's the big deal? What is everyone raving about? Even if you were to only focus on the positive, it's hard to ignore that hollow feeling in your gut. The one that comes when you realize the movie you think you enjoy is just another generic rehash. That certainly isn't the magical feeling you're supposed to get when you watch children's movies, now is it?

3/10

In complete opposite mentality of Taxi Driver, no one challenges things anymore. If a movie wins a few Oscars and is labeled as a "classic", the title sticks and everyone must bow down to it. If someone challenges this title—even so much as asks, "Why is it a classic?"—they're ironically turned into a laughable fool by fools laughing. The paradoxical problem with this is that no one can really defend the so-called classics. All you ever hear in the defense of films like Taxi Driver when criticism arises is a list of the film's awards, or a list of the film's critical acclaim, or just, "It's a classic, so shut up!" There have been far more original, thought-provoking, well-made movies that never even get the public's attention, much less won overrated Oscars. When people challenge the so-called classics with this fact, the notion is never entertained, and oftentimes foolishly laughed at or stupidly dismissed as childish or immature. With everything I just said as a backbone, I'm about to challenge the "classic" Taxi Driver. If you're open-minded you'll give this review a chance. If you have the arrogant mentality of a whiney 4-year-old—"It's a classic, that's all there is to it!"—then don't even bother reading any further. There is no hope for your immature intellect.

First and foremost, Taxi Driver is not a completely worthless film. I'm not even going to try to argue that. It has had had a major influence on the way open-world movies and video games have been made, and possibly even invented the subgenre. Taxi Driver creates a realistic world, fills it with faceless scum characters, and openly lets the main character interact with them in a completely non-linear way. Some people find this completely boring, others find it completely genius. The entire film is hinged on if or if not you can emotionally relate to the main character. If so, these opening scenes of him interacting with his environment will likely captivate you. If not, these scenes will likely put you to sleep—every single time you attempt to watch it. Stating and argument on whether or not Taxi Driver is boring or not is completely pointless because it's completely opinion-based. Personally, however, I was bored out of my godforsaken mind until the last thirty minutes of the film. Movies have presented loneliness much better, in much more effective ways than this. Another 70s film, Straw Dogs, for example, examines realistic human emotion with much more depth.

DeNiro's acting is average at best, unless you're really studying so closely it's ridicules. If DeNiro wasn't so famous, no one, not a single review, would even mention his acting whatsoever. The character he plays is also completely average. Some people state that he has mental disabilities; if so, I didn't even notice. He was an average, typical, lonely character and nothing more. The majority of his time on screen he's staring at the walls or staring out his windshield—that's not psychologically deep, it's typical. There is nothing, not one thing, psychologically deep about the main character. It literally makes me laugh every time I hear people calling the character of Travis "one of the most accurate psychological characters ever portrayed". If so, Napoleon Dynamite is the next Freud. Neither Travis nor Napoleon do anything whatsoever except stare at things. And we all can learn so much about the human condition from that.

An actual story doesn't even develop until the last thirty minutes of the film. Though it is somewhat nostalgic, it's a pretty typical example of 70s "shock value" that is about as shocking to us today as watching a dead tree stump rot. At least it didn't have a cliché, non-graphic rape scene like the hundred other 70s movies just like it—I'll give Taxi Driver that credit. The final action scene is PG-13 at worst by today's standards, but it does give some much-needed diversity to the film. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the structure of Taxi driver—open-world, followed by a mini subplot—was a pretty fresh and creative idea for its time. It's almost prolific, considering the thousands of movies and video games that came out after it with the same style. But it's executed terribly here. Travis just repeats the same lines. He never really examines human nature or human behavior. It just gets old fast. The writers could have done so much more with this formula, but their lack of creativity and imagination is absolutely ridicules.

Overall, while the formula Taxi Driver follows is essential, the overall film is bland and forgettable. There were so many missed opportunities to bring true depth and insight into the film, but the writers didn't take them. The lack of any story at all gets very annoying very fast, mainly due to the average main character, played with an average performance. But I guess that is the moral of this non-story that all future directors should take note on: meritocracy wins over the imaginationless critics. And spineless viewers agree with every word they say.

4/10

I should have gone with my gut instinct and used the 2 hours and 57 minutes and the $10 that I used on this film to go to the bowling alley and stare awkwardly at senior citizens. I would have gotten infinitely more from that experience than I got from Gran Torino.

Exactly as to be expected with these types of "fine cinema" films, Gran Torino uses up the majority of its runtime watching an old man walk around and talk. It uses a very little—honestly, next-to-none—of its runtime actually telling a STORY. (I put that in all caps because it's something I'll reference again in this review.) To give Gran Torino a little bit of credit, I these boring talking scenes aren't nearly as boring as I expected. While most modern so-called "action" movies focus on nothing but watching middle-aged men talk about a 1-dementional plot that the average person could come up with in a coma, Gran Torino does the exact same thing, but with an older man, who is a little more interesting than the norm. I give the movie that. And that's all I give it. For the typical drama that it was, it had a couple cute lines of dialogue. I'm not going to rave about Clint Eastwood's acting, because, honestly, I didn't see anything special about it. There's nothing impressive about an old man playing and old man. You might as well have asked Clint Eastwood to play Clint Eastwood, and people would literally bathe him in Oscars and perfect-score reviews for it. So, in other words, what I'm trying to say is this. Gran Torino isn't the worst movie I've seen by a long shot. An old man giving out cliché speeches is cooler than a middle-aged man complaining about his wife, but that doesn't mean it's good.

In fact, Gran Torino really isn't really good at all. People will only see it as good because it's watchable, and most people can't even remember the last movie they saw that didn't bore them to utter tears. The entertainment industry as a whole has sunk so low that movies like this stand out as something that passes time. If a movie can pass time without putting you to sleep, then, by God, it's good. No, it's great. No, it's one of the best movies you've ever seen in your life! Forgive me, but I'm not quite that easily influenced. Just because Gran Torino passed time without boring me too much, I'm not going to give it a good review. Why? Because at heart, it's just another cliché, pansy excuse at a heartfelt life-changing movie, and I'm sick of the same godforsaken story every time I walk into my godforsaken movie theater. (Replace "godforsaken" with your preferred choice of harsh language that this site censors.) If I sound angry, it's because I am. I read somewhere that a lady threw up due to the heavy use of racial slurs in this film. That didn't bother me. What bothered me is that I'm sick of movies like this getting produced, and I'm even sicker of them getting good scores.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about STORY. Does anyone reading this even know that that ancient term means? There was once a time when movies actually had a STORY to tell, not just some average acting praised up to the point absurdity. STORY is the sole thing that Gran Torino doesn't have, and it makes it soulless. It makes it forgettable. If there is any "deep morality" is Gran Torino, it's not the cliché sayings about life/death that Eastwood wanted us to talk away from it. No, it's the satire in us sitting and watching people talk for 2 hours and 57 minutes without a single plot point until the last half hour. Then, even when there is a plot, it's a pathetic cliché. It's almost humorous to me. Mid-way through the movie I got a phone call on my cell from a friend. What that call made me realize is that I have a life with people more interesting to talk to than Gran Torino even knew how to present. Instead of living my life, I was sitting there watching clichés live theirs on a screen. Do I sound like a rambling old man? Maybe. But, whippersnapper, I have a point: What is the point of watching a movie if it doesn't show us something we can't see/hear walking down the street? That's the killing blow in Gran Torino. It has no story. It has nothing to say we can't hear in the car driving home. Is it completely devoid of all entertainment value? No. In the end, is it pointless? Absolutely.

When the 1-demntional plot eventually happens, it's completely throw-away. Without spoiling the predictable ending, Gran Torino is one of the many modern films that builds racial tension to the breaking point, then spews out clichés at the climax. If the climax had ended on a more original note, it would have not only gotten a higher score for me, but it would have been much more thought-provoking. Also, on a much less stern note, the racial jokes really stopped being funny after the third time Clint repeated each of them. By the 15th time he repeated each of them, they became just downright immature and lacked any creativity at all.

I'll conclude with one of the "deep morals" Gran Torino teaches. Ironically, instead of having its self-proclaimed balls, it plays into every safe, unoriginal idea that every movie just like it uses. As much as Clint's character (and movie) spouts off about not being a pansy, Gran Torino within itself is nothing but a "25-year-old virgin that gets confessions by holding the hands of old ladies." Instead of having the balls to be different, Gran Torino is just another face in the unoriginal crowd. Oh, the irony. Or more accurately: Oh, the hypocrisy.

2/10

* Just to get this out of the way: Just because I give this a low score does NOT mean it isn't an enjoyable movie. It simply means it's inferior to other movies.

1970s horror cinema seemed to be in conflict with itself. It's obvious that a lot of horror directors of the time wanted to make serious, mature, realistic, truly terrifying pieces— Straw Dogs, Alien, The Exorcist. It's also obvious that a lot of horror directors of the time wanted to make immature, cheesy, ridicules pieces—Suspiria, The Omen, The Wizard of Gore. It's almost impossible to believe the two polar opposites could come out of the same decade. But I guess every generation has filmmakers who grow up and those that don't. With all of that said, The Wizard of Gore is the only movie in the latter group that I can actually find pretty cool. It's no masterpiece. I'm not even sure it's even worth a watch, but if you do watch it, it's not that bad.

The plot is very creative for a 70s movie, and that threw me off guard. I was planning on typing this section of the review ranting about how unoriginal the movie was, but I can't do that, for which I'm grateful. The first 20 minutes are an absolute blast. However, sadly, after that point the plot takes a predictable average-man-turned-detective turn strait into a pit of boredom. The scenes that were initially pretty cool just turned repetitious and even a little annoying as they replayed over and over again throughout the movie. By the end of the movie, you'll easily start to see that you've just watched a predictable episode of The Twilight Zone, complete with cheesy reversal-of-expectations ending. The acting is laughable, as you probably expected. It's really saddening how such a great premise received such terrible execution.

Speaking of executions—how was the gore? Well, first and foremost, the gore effects are some of the worst I've ever personally seen in a 70s movie. People are replaced by obvious mannequins. The blood looks more like ultra-red clown paint than realistic plasma. Guts are represented by what appears to be red and black wads of paper and look about as much like real organs as jelly doughnuts do. The actually amount and intensity of the gore isn't even that special. This is an exploitation film, so, obviously there is going to be a decent amount, but it's nothing compared to today's standards whatsoever. The pretentious losers who call this the goriest movie of all time, or even one of them, really need to watch popular movies. Just because a movie is obscure like this one does not mean it's gory. Just because a movie is popular doesn't mean it's made by weak pansies. In this case, that generalization I just made proves true.

But regardless of all that, this is still a decently fun movie. It isn't going to make you throw up, but it will make you laugh, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you're a hardcore horror fan that must see any and all horror films, this isn't going to be the worst you see. If you're just a casual viewer, there is no reason for you to even waste your time here. Go watch a Takashi Miike movie—like Gozu—and you'll get the same experience, but with a much better story and much better production value. If you want over-the-top gore in similar style, check out Brain Dead. There is just no reason to watch this movie unless you absolutely are forcing yourself to do so.

Overall, The Wizard of Gore is fun, but not fun enough. It's gory, but not gory enough. The story is creative, but quickly falls into clichés. I give it credit for trying, and I'm glad I viewed it, but it's no classic. Then again, neither are most of the movies that are labeled such.

1/10