Evil Dead (2013)

I was kind of looking forward to this, and kind of not. I don’t have a very strong relationship with the original (the second is one of my favorites, but the first I’m a bit lukewarm about), so I was neither excited about a new version, nor afraid that director Fede Alvarez would shit all over my memories. I got a little more interested when a few people whose opinions I respect enjoyed it, but I still wasn’t completely turned on. I just wanted a decent horror flick, really, and had no hopes, fears, or aspirations beyond that.
And it is a decent horror flick. I’m not calling it a classic, but I enjoyed it very much. It’s bloody as hell (can’t remake The Evil Dead without a shitload of blood) and there are some quite good gore effects in it. I like it when Mia (Jane Levy) licks the box cutter, and when Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) splits Eric’s (Lou Taylor Pucci) hand with the crowbar, and the way Natalie’s arm just kinda drops off. I guess the whole “raining blood” bit at the end was designed to help get past the censors with an R rating, but it looked good.
The film had a decent atmosphere to it, I thought. And the cast, well, not much was expected of them, and when you don’t expect much you can’t be let down. The only one of them I’ve ever seen in anything else was Jessica Lucas (Olivia), who was also in Cloverfield. She’s a perfectly capable actress, although her character was also the least pleasant. Levy I thought did a fine job in the leading role; she’s not my favorite final girl ever or anything like that, but I liked her.
There were times I felt a bit let down. The idea of a character going through withdrawal was promising; I was hoping they’d get more mileage out of everyone assuming she was hallucinating than they did. There was a little bit of the characters turning on each other, but not much; they mostly stuck together, even when they were sniping at each other. I think Alvarez expected us to care a lot more about David (Shiloh Fernandez) and Mia’s relationship than we did. And of course the powers of the deadites and what it takes to kill them was pretty inconsistent, but you can blame that on Sam Raimi’s original: there are no rules in Evil Deadsville. Ditto for how people seem to be able to survive clearly terminal injuries.
I thought the best scene was the opening. A young woman in pretty bad shape is walking through the woods, gets grabbed by some backwoods bumpkins, wakes up tied to a post…and it turns out she’s a deadite. I wish she’d gotten to take a couple of people out before they set her on fire, but I thought it was a good scene. It’s nowhere near as bloody as what happens to our main cast, but there’s something about that turn, the victim being the monster, that appeals to me.

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MILD SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH:

There are nods to the original, but each is quite different from what happened in Raimi’s version. We still have the creepy-ass lullaby from the cellar, but this time it inspires one character to save another. Not one but two characters remove a hand, though neither bolts a chainsaw onto the stump (Mia might be doing something similar in the last scene...with all the blood it's hard to tell). The tree rape is not only intact, but made integral to the plot, and where Raimi played it as a big ugly joke, here it’s a deeply creepy and affecting moment, and it’s what really gets the ball rolling. We’ve even got our hero becoming possessed and then recovering. One of the drawings in the Necronomicon looks like the poster from the original film. And of course the stupid car turns up; it’s been abandoned near the cabin, and when we first see Mia, she’s sitting on the trunk.

* * * * * * *

You do miss Bruce Campbell while you watch this, but it’s important to remember that in the 1981 film Bruce wasn’t really Bruce yet. The guy we think of, the personality, the character of Ash that we all know and love, that guy didn’t show up ‘til the second film. In the first he’s pretty generic, outside of his willingness to injure himself. I’m not saying that Mia or any of the other characters are his equal, but the distance between 1981 Bruce Campbell and 2013 Jane Levy isn’t as wide as folks think.
I gave the original Evil Dead six stars, because it was creative and accomplished what it set out to accomplish. This one feels like a six as well, and for the same reasons. Alvarez wanted to make an homage that’s still very much his own film, and he did that. It’s better in some ways than the first, and worse in some ways, and I think on balance they come out pretty even. I can picture myself buying this, provided I can get it cheap. Now, if they decide to make a sequel that’s more like Raimi’s Evil Dead II, that’s when the pressure will really be on. Both Alvarez and Levy will have to step up their game, and goddamnit, there’d better be a chainsaw attached to her stump this time.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The gore effects, obviously. Alvarez knew that he wasn’t gonna succeed on plot or character development. He was gonna have to deliver on the violence, and he does.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: It’s funny, but most of the obvious complaints about the film seem to be "of course" things. I mean, it’s pretty unhinged, but of course it is; the characters are pretty shallow, but of course they are, etc. But one complaint that strikes me as being perfectly valid is that this is nowhere near as frantic as the original film, and I think it would have benefited from that old Raimi energy.

SCORE: 6/10

The Master (2012)

This film seems to have divided people quite a lot. Many folks waxed poetic about it upon its release, and several critics named it their #1 film of 2012. And yet, there was a lot of negative press about it, as well, mostly about it not really going anywhere and the characters ending up essentially in the place they started.
I can’t agree with that point. Freddie, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, does seem to have changed a bit by the end of the film. I think he hates himself less. I think he’s trying to learn to make himself happy, and that this is the point of the scene with the lady he met in the pub right at the end. Now, if Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his wife Peggy (Amy Adams) have changed, it’s only to the extent that they’ve become even more insular and paranoid, but the story isn’t about them, it’s about Freddie. Well, in so far as the story is really about anything.
It is certainly true that not much happens, or more precisely, that none of the stuff that happens seems to mean anything. I suppose there’s a lot of symbolism I’m not catching when, for example, Freddie rides the motorcycle too far across the desert, but I’m not especially clever so for me that scene is just kinda there, you know? And why does Dodd’s daughter Elizabeth come on to Freddie, and then pretend that Freddie’s into her, and then nothing ever comes of that? The movie keeps giving hints of subplots that vanish.
All three main actors got Oscar nominations, and totally deserved them. It’s no surprise how good Hoffman was, of course, but Phoenix really surprised me. Even the bits where he seemed to be channeling Popeye were good. Adams is a favorite, and one of the most talented actresses out there. Her character is actually kinda scary. I’m not sure why. She never harms anyone, or threatens anyone overtly, but she does give the impression of being very dangerous somehow. The scene where she’s reading pornography to Freddie is really hard to watch. She's intelligent and focused, while her husband is prone to drink and excess. It's even implied, briefly, that she does the actual writing, and he takes her dictation: there's a scene where she's declaiming, and he's typing, and when she stops talking, he stops typing. Perhaps I misinterpreted that, but the movie makes it quite clear that she's an equal partner at least, and possibly even pulling his strings (though the fact that Freddie is still around after she explicitly wants him gone might idicate otherwise).
But she’s the third wheel. It’s really a love story between Freddie and Dodd, and those scenes, for the most part, really work. When Phoenix and Hoffman are on screen together, this is a great movie. I feel like I could put together a 25-minute set of clips from this that I’d be willing to just watch over and over again. Plus, the film looks amazing. I read that Paul Thomas Anderson put the actual film stock through some unusual chemical process that I didn’t understand, but I know it worked. This is one extremely bright movie, you know? Like, if there’s sunlight in a scene, you feel like the sun is actually shining on you. The images are incredibly crisp. There’s one shot that’s used several times, of the ocean as seen looking over the back of a ship, that’s incredible. I could watch 90 minutes of that, really. I might enjoy it more than I did the film.
See, like I say, there are great moments. Dodd’s first examination of Freddie stands out, as does the bit where Peggy’s asking Freddie to change the color of her eyes. And the scene where Freddie finally goes back to the love of his life is very good. But here’s the thing: those scenes are beautifully written and shot, and yet they don’t make me feel anything. This is a really beautiful movie, but also a terribly empty one. To be honest, I really feel like Anderson wasted these three tremendous performances; how could they be so good, and yet so unaffecting?
Too few great moments, or more accurately, too many meaningless moments between them. Too little emotional impact. I’m glad I watched it, because I would hate to have missed the best bits, but they don’t save the picture. It’s beautiful and cold and I’ll never watch it again.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Phoenix. I knew he was a decent actor, but I had no idea he could do this. I haven’t seen Lincoln so I can’t say he was robbed of the Oscar, but I can say that if he’d won it, that would have been fine with me.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I feel like I’ve been watching a sport I don’t know the rules of. It starred the best players in the world and they accomplished amazing feats, and I just didn’t understand any of it.

SCORE: 6/10

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

I’ve never read any of the Scott Pilgrim comics, and I’ve never played the game, so I don’t know how this movie works as an adaptation. I have to take it on its own merits, and let me say, I dig it.
I watched this movie some time ago and enjoyed it. I decided on a re-watch now to reacquaint myself with the work Edgar Wright has done without Simon Pegg, since Pegg’s work without Wright has been…well, to be charitable, I haven’t enjoyed it much. They're together again now, with their new movie (The World's End) in theaters next month. Of course, my principal preparation for that will be Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and a Spaced marathon, but Scott Pilgrim seemed like a necessary warm-up as well. The reason is that this movie makes two things perfectly clear: 1) Wright and Pegg are better together, and 2) if you’re only gonna have one, make it Wright.
This movie is nowhere near as good as Shaun or Spaced, obviously, since nothing in the whole world is. But it’s still a damned good time, very much on par with Hot Fuzz. Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim himself) isn’t as entertaining a leading man as Pegg, but I like Cera and don’t really get the backlash against him, though to be fair he hasn’t really had a chance to wear out his welcome with me, since I’ve only seen him in this and Arrested Development. But I think he’s got a certain charm and a solid comic delivery. I admit that by the end of the movie his lack of chin was beginning to bother me, but otherwise I was happy with him.
I’m a little hot and cold on Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona), and my view of her changes not only film to film but scene to scene. One minute I adore her, and the next I can't stand her. I’m not sure what it is about her; I just can’t seem to latch on, one way or the other, but certainly there are moments in this film where I totally get why Scott's so hooked on her.
The evil exes were okay. The cameos by the Human Torch (evil ex #2) and Superman (evil ex #3) were interesting mostly because they are who they are. Satya Bhabha is okay as Matthew Patel, evil ex #1, but what I really liked about that scene was the "Demon Hipster Chick" that multiplied all around him. That was a pretty cool effect. Mae Whitman also did a decent job as Roxy Richter (evil ex #4), but her character was a bit of a jokey stereotype. And then the Japanese twins (evil exes 5&6) never really get any characterization at all. I never really got caught up in any of them, but then, you don't have a lot of time to, do you? They show up and get turned to coins pretty quickly, except for Jason Schwartzman. He's a very effective Big Bad, and it does feel pretty good when Scott (and Ramona and Knives) finally take him down. Annoying little prick.
Anna Kendrick (Scott’s sister) is always worth watching, even when whatever she’s in totally isn’t (which is usually the case). She’s a better actress than she ever gets credit for. I’ve never seen Ellen Wong in anything else, but she’s almost the class of the supporting cast, and totally pulls off playing 17 at 25. I really liked her as Knives, though I’m glad they went with the ending they did instead of the one where Scott ends up with her. It’s just more satisfying, and anyway, I think it would damage her character if, after learning to assert herself, she had taken him back. Scott’s bandmates are good, too, and I found myself wanting to attend a Sex Bob-Omb show, or at least to hang out and get drunk with them. The scenes where they all just hang out and either jam or say stupid things to each other are great.
And as for Kieran Culkin's performance as Wallace, well, more on him at the end.
Wright’s really the star of the film, though. In the first place, he co-wrote it with Michael Bacall. It’s a solid script, with plenty of funny moments and a few good semi-serious ones, but no actually serious ones (which would not have suited the mood of the film at all). I really like the bit where Scott is dead, and the bit where Ramona delivers him the package, and the bit with the tea. Especially well-written are Kendrick's and Culkin’s lines, moreso even than Cera’s.
And Wright's direction is very strong, as well. He does so many interesting things with this movie visually, from the evil exes turning into coins when Scott defeats them, to the crazy Mortal Kombat-like action, to the transitions from one scene to the next. The fights are well-put-together, which is as it should be. It turns out that Wright’s fight coordinator and stunt coordinator are both veterans of Jackie Chan movies. And of course if there’s one thing you can count on with an Edgar Wright project, it’s that he’s taken a lot of care with the music. The film looks great and sounds great; more than that, it doesn’t look like any other film. It isn’t at the same level as, say, Inception visually, I don't mean to say that, but it is very much its own picture, and it’s sure nice to look at. And, as is also typical of Wright’s films, it’s never in a hurry and it's never boring.
Anyway, I find that I liked this more on a second watch, and might actually buy a copy of it. In fact, I think I'll put it on again right now. And I am now totally psyched for The World's End.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Kieran Culkin. I assume he’s related to that annoying kid from that ridiculously over-praised movie (although he looks more like Daniel Radcliffe than he does the other guy), but I don’t care. His is the performance that really stands out. The snarky gay roommate has become a bit of a trope, and it’s often a bit tired, but Culkin is excellent. Every word, every expression on his face, he gets every drop out of. I was far more in love with him than I ever was with Ramona.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM:

PUNCH THE AIR MOMENT: "We are Sex Bob-Omb and we're here to watch Scott Pilgrim kick your teeth in! One-two-three-four!" I have a small crush on Kim (Alison Pill).

SCORE: 7/10, but I expect it'll gain another star upon further re-watches.

LISTS: #14 on my Favorites of the Teens (so far)

The Crow (1994)

In 1994 I was sort of in my prime (or at my worst, depending on how you look at it), and I was a little bit obsessed with this movie. It was so dark, so violent, and had such a great soundtrack (two decades later I would probably still identify this as my favorite soundtrack), and was based on a cult comic book that I had loved. And of course the spectre of Brandon Lee hung heavy over it. It’s one of the epochal movies of my life, really.
Now that I can look back on it with a bit more maturity and more experience of how good movies can be, I don’t love it quite as much as I used to, but you know what? I do still love it. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t even as close to perfect as I used to think it was, but it’s still a damned good picture. I love the Detroit that Alex Proyas and his design team have created; it’s a very proto-Dark City, a hint of what they would eventually be capable of. And while the fire effects may look a little dated now, the city itself is utterly gorgeous. Every set in this movie is so carefully and beautifully constructed. If I had a house, I would set aside one room that was wallpapered just with stills of the sets in this film.
Lee was young and inexperienced, but certainly had a presence to him. And Proyas knew exactly what to do when making a movie centered on an inexperienced lead actor: surround him with a cast of solid character actors, who will support but not overwhelm him. The supporting cast in this movie is tremendous, especially Ernie Hudson as Albrecht. He never really got the parts he deserved (picked a bad time to be black in Hollywood, I guess), but he was never better than he is here. That man was born to play a world-weary cop with a heart of gold, I guess. Michael Wincott is extremely memorable (if occasionally a little over-the-top) as the Big Bad, Top Dollar. He has some clunky lines to deliver, but also a few great ones (“I think we broke this one” always appealed to me), and is one of my very favorite film villains. I’ve always hated child actors, but Rochelle Davis (Sarah) completely fails to annoy me; I actually find myself wishing she had kept acting.
Anna Thomson is good as Sarah’s mother; she’s always had a knack for playing weak women who are fundamentally decent but a bit overrun by the wickedness of the world. It’s a strange sort of role to specialize in, but nobody does it better. Tony Todd (Grange) probably started being scary in junior high school and just keeps getting better at it, and Jon Polito is as good as sleazy back-alley characters ever get.
And then there’s the murderous gang. Laurence Mason and Michael Massee, as Tin Tin and Funboy, have some nice moments, and Angel David is very entertaining, if a bit unhinged, as Skank. His “I feel like a little worm on a big fuckin’ hook” is a good line, and his memorial soliloquy for T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly) is one of the movie’s best bits. I like to think, watching Top Dollar just staring and grinning at him, that the reaction is Wincott’s genuine bemusement at his behavior. And of course Kelly is one of my all-time favorite actors. I’ve always loved him in everything he’s done, and he has the most memorable moment of this movie:

I knew I knew you, I knew I knew you. But you ain't you. You can't be you. We put you through the window. There ain't no coming back. This is the really real world, there ain't no coming back. We killed you dead, there ain't no coming back! There ain't no coming back! There ain't no coming back!

As I mentioned, the soundtrack is deservedly legendary. You’ve got Trent Reznor, in his first step towards becoming an Oscar-winning composer, covering a Joy Division classic. You’ve got the best songs that Stone Temple Pilots, Medicine, and Thrill Kill Kult ever did (and in the case of the latter, that’s really saying something). The Cure’s “Burn” is an archetypal movie song, and excellent contributions are made by The Jesus & Mary Chain and others. Even For Love Not Lisa is great here. The last song, the closing credits song, “It Won’t Rain All the Time,” is terrible, but otherwise it’s a tremendous collection of music.
It can be hard to see the movies that have mattered in my life through other eyes. I was watching this and trying to imagine what I would think of it if I’d never seen it before, and it wasn’t easy. I finally decided that I would have been torn between 6-7/10. The pluses are a very strong cast, decent action sequences, atmosphere, and music. The minuses are a script that, while it has sparkling moments, is grotesquely heavy-handed in places (Wincott being the main victim here), a leading man who wasn’t bad but wasn’t great, and Bai Ling hanging around with nothing much to do but be pretty and menacing (and not always succeeding).
But you know what? I’m not watching this for the first time. I watched it for the first time in 1994, and it meant something to me, and it still does. I’m not blind to its flaws, I don’t give it ten stars or even nine, though I’m tempted, but it remains very much a favorite.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: When Albrecht has his gun on Eric and says, “You move and you’re dead!” and Eric answers, “I’m dead and I move.” Of all the clever lines in the film (and there are many), that was always my favorite.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Wincott’s impression of the wounded crow (“Caw caw BANG fuck I’m dead!”) always aggravated me. They gave him some crap lines in this, and that’s the worst of them.

SCORE: 8/10, and a high eight, at that.

LISTS: #20 on my Favorites of the Nineties

May (2002)

I love this. It's an ugly-duckling movie, a romantic (very dark) comedy that's funny and sad and touching (with just a few hints at carnage to come) until you hit the 1:06 mark, when it suddenly turns into a horror film. It's as if you're watching Sixteen Candles and then suddenly someone replaces the last reel with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
This is a real star turn for Angela Bettis, who is one of my favorite horror actresses. She is the most sympathetic killer in slasher film history. She's just a sweet, sad, lonely girl, whose only ambition is to be liked, and who is destined to be disappointed in even that simple and pathetic desire. And it isn't that the people around her are bad people. The movie dodges the Cinderella clichés; there are no wicked step-sisters in this (although May's mother is pretty damned creepy), and May's own expectations and behavior are as much to blame for her problems as any character flaws in the people around her. Still, you're hoping for the best for her, hoping that Adam (Jeremy Sisto) and Polly (Anna Faris) will somehow muster the extra understanding May needs. “This is a damaged girl, and she requires a little extra effort,” you find yourself saying, “but maybe she's worth it. Give her a chance.” That's what happens when you watch this; you just keep thinking, “Why won't anyone be her friend? I would be her friend. I would be nice to her.” Although I say this having something of a history of relationships with troubled people, so maybe that's just my own inclination and not everyone will feel that way.
Anyway, yeah, it's the kind of part that could easily, in the hands of an inferior actress, become campy and silly. If May had been played by just about anyone else, the movie would have been a ridiculous failure, but she's so genuine in it that she breaks your heart. I mean, she is seriously creepy in places, but mostly she's so hopeful and clumsy that her disappointments hurt to watch. This is one of those movies that is only as good as its star, and Bettis really elevates it. As I say, this is a star turn for her.
Or, more accurately, it would have been a star turn if anyone had ever actually seen the movie. Word of mouth killed this picture, I think because it's so genre-defying. Horror fans hated it because the first 1:06 is (as noted above) a sort of dark romantic comedy. They didn't wanna wait that long for the bloodshed to begin. And non-horror fans, who appreciated the beginning of the movie, all went “Aaaaaauuuggghhhh!!!” and ran screaming from the last twenty minutes, which include a couple of seriously gruesome bits.
Critics didn't seem to know what to make of it (nearly every review included a variation on the phrase “This is not really a horror movie,” but no one could offer a coherent explanation of exactly what it was), and bad buzz from the teeny-boppers (“Gawd, it was so boring” from the slasher crowd, “Ewww, it was so gross” from the guttersnipes) killed it. A few reviews were positive: Roger Ebert liked it, and the Village Voice saw the beauty in it, but mostly it got either trashed or ignored. I'd like to think of it as a movie that has something for everyone, but instead it seemed to be a movie that pissed everyone off. Maybe the swing was too wide for most folks to handle. It's more challenging than most horror films (which is to say challenging), and requires more of an emotional investment. Maybe some folks were turned off by that.
Lucky McKee's direction in his debut is pretty good, and his script is excellent. He has never equaled this since, but I'm still hoping. Sisto is really very good as the boy May falls for. You expect Adam to just use May and toss her aside, and for that to be what sets her off, but McKee is a better writer than that. Adam is a good guy who genuinely likes May but gets deeply (and justifiably) creeped out by her, and Sisto plays him with a great deal of depth and charm. Faris isn't bad as the co-worker/possible love interest. She's a great comic actress, and it would be hard to take her seriously in a dramatic role, but McKee has written a fairly light, semi-humorous part that suits her; she basically flirts and makes jokes while all the dramatic heavy lifting is done by Bettis and Sisto, who are better suited to the task. The supporting cast is a little flat (except for the thirty seconds of Nora Zehetner we get), but there's very little screen time for anyone but our main three actors, so it doesn't matter much.
Our young century has produced some good horror films and some bad horror films, and I haven't yet made my list of the top ten, but when I do, this one has a real chance to be on it. And Angela Bettis, she'll always be on my list.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: When Adam shows May the gory, weird film he's made of two lovers (non-euphemistically) eating each other, and asks what she thinks of it. "It's sweet," she says. "Sweet?" he asks, surprised. "Yes," she says, "I don't think she could've got his finger off in one bite, though. That part seemed a little farfetched." It's a perfect little capsule.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I don't know why McKee starts with the shot of May standing bleeding and screaming in front of her mirror. I think it takes away a little from the movie. There's no reason to show us where we're going before we get there, right?

SCORE: 8/10

LISTS: #25 on my Favorites of the Naughts