Reviews

Some might find My Sister Eileen a bit trite and old fashioned, but if you're in the right mood, it's easy to fall under its spell. There are tons of well executed song and dance numbers and Bob Fosse fans will be delighted to see him turn up in large supporting role. Betty Garrett is wonderfully funny as Ruth, an Ohio native who moves to New York with her sister, Eileen (Janet Leigh) to make a career as a writer. She falls for a magazine editor (Jack Lemmon) and Eileen attracts two men who are willing to fight for her.

The score might not be quite as memorable or bouncy as Wonderful Town (which was also based on the same source material), but it's not bad and Garrett and Leigh show genuine vocal chops.

Rarely have I ever felt a film deserves merely one star, but when you're bringing as little to the plate as Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 does, it's hard to find much to recommend about it.

After surviving his moral wounds from the last sequel, Ricky now spends his days in a hospital with his brain surrounded in some sort of bizarre fish bowl looking thing and, now, he's got a psychic link with a blind girl who is all sorts of insufferable and annoying. As expected, he wakes up and breaks out of his prison just in time for Christmas and starts killing people in a variety of uninspired, suspense-free ways.

Besides a few trippy dream sequences sprinkled throughout the film, this one is a big bore. Part 2 looks like Citizen Kane compared to this.

Much like other sexploitation films of this period, looking back on them can be quaint. They have plenty of nudity, but it's not as if they ever get into hardcore sex. This adaptation of Dorian Gray promises tons of sex and depravity, but its fairly chaste when all is said and done. What's most surprising about it is that it's not a half bad adaptation of the Oscar Wilde story from which it's based.

Helmut Berger plays Dorian Gray, an impossibly beautiful young man who falls for an actress named Sybil, but as he starts to make it way up through the London society crowd, he no longer has much use for Sybil and after he discards her, she kills herself. This leads Dorian to harden and only rely on his looks until people begin to get suspicious as to why he never seems to age after many years. Perhaps the secret involves a painting hidden away in his attic.

Despite adding in some sex and nudity to spice things up, this version of Dorian Gray plays out, more or less, like the original story. It might dwell in the sexual depravity a bit more than most adaptations, but at least it works for the story it's telling. It's a bit slow at times, but at least it's trying to tell a somewhat interesting story.

The Slumber Party Massacre series will never be known as one of the most life changing horror franchises of all time. They're mindless fun at best and Slumber Party Massacre III attempts to do something slightly different by keeping the gratuitous boob shots and gore, but taking away a lot of the fun.

The basic set up is typical slasher stuff with a group of girls hanging out on a beach and getting ready for a big sleepover at one of their parents' houses that night. They're semi-stalked by a creepy guy and, on the way back to the house, one of the friends is murdered. Obviously, once the party kicks off, a few boys show up to crash the party and check out the girls dancing in their underwear (and less) and the killer decides to crash it, too.

Unlike the first two films in the series, there's an element of whodunit mystery here. Could the killer be the aforementioned creepy beach guy with the ponytail? Perhaps the nosy neighbor across the street who spies on the girls with a telescope and seems really interested in checking out the house to see if he wants to buy it? Or maybe it's one of the goofy guys who have showed up to crash the party? This element does help it stick out from the other two films and keeps things pretty fun at first.

It's only once the killer is revealed that things take a slightly darker turn and it begins to feel more home invasion than slasher. If you're into that sort of thing, maybe you'll enjoy it, but I found it left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.

By the time you get to the 5th installment of a franchise, it's easy for things to get stale and tired and feel repetitive, so it's great when a franchise continues to try new things this late into the series. Series creator and writer, Don Mancini, finally steps into the director's chair for Seed of Chucky and proves that he's not only a capable director, but a rather unique one as well.

The story picks up with Chucky and Tiffany's baby, Glenn, being used in a carnival sideshow. He breaks out and follows his parents to Hollywood where they're being used in a film based on their crime sprees. The film also stars Jennifer Tilly who seems to be having the time of her life sending up herself and Hollywood in general. Obviously, Chucky and Tiffany and resurrected and resume their killing sprees with an added dose of family drama thrown into the mix.

The entire film has an excitingly fun and campy vibe throughout and the pacing of the film never eases up. It's one of the most thoroughly enjoyable horror/slasher films of the decade in which it was released. Many have complained that the franchise finally went full on satire here, but it's an exciting and interesting new direction and I didn't mind it one bit. The jokes are legitimately funny and it still offers up some gory set pieces. Mancini also deserves mad props for hiring frequent De Palma composer, Pino Donaggio, to compose an incredibly lush score for the film.

Sibling rivalry will always be an endlessly fascinating topic and never as fascinating as it is in Georgia. Two sisters both make a living as a singers, but the difference is that one (Georgia) can sing and has made a name for herself for it and the other can't (Sadie) and mostly tours dive bars in between drug addictions and boyfriends.

What Sadie lacks in pitch and intonation, she makes up for in sheer passion and commitment (as opposed to Georgia's beautiful, but cold performances), but that can only get you so far, especially when your famous sister isn't willing to help you and you're constantly riding along on her coattails.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham give career best performances here, gamely showcasing the resentment that can grow between two family members when they don't take your advice or try harder to help you. They're not afraid to wallow in bitter, cringe-y territory.

If we're being honest, Screen Gems isn't known for churning out the world's best horror movies. Most of them feel undercooked to the point of tedium or, even worse, neutered to hell and back. The Possession of Hannah Grace falls somewhere in the middle. It's neither a total disaster nor a rare triumph for the studio a la The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Hannah Grace keeps things nicely subtle for the first half hour of its run time with creaking doors, motion-sensored lights lights going on and off, and strange bumps in the night. It loses something when it starts turning into an Asian ghost story-inspired contortionist fest.

Shay Mitchell is a likable enough heroine even though her backstory seems shoehorned in and a bit awkward. The film is never truly scary, but it speeds along at a nice enough clip so that you don't feel like you're wasting too much of your time.

It could be better, but knowing Screen Gems, it could have been a lot worse. The R rating seems almost like an afterthought since none of the deaths in the film are what one would call gory besides a grisly opening sequence and, although, the titular character spends most of her screen time completely nude, she's usually bathed in shadows to keep from seeing any real nudity.

After watching the disappointing David Gordon Green's Halloween, I decided to rewatch this 1998 sequel that has a vaguely similar premise - Laurie Strode confronts the man who terrorized her as a teenager.

I hadn't seen the film since it was first released in the summer of '98 and I remember enjoying it, but certain things really bothered me. The cinematography was too glossy and bland, the music score was cribbed from Marco Beltrami's work from the Scream films (among others), Michael's mask kept changing throughout (and even worse - none of the masks look even remotely scary), and the film felt like it was in a bit too much of a hurry to get where it was going and could have benefited from a slightly slower pace at times.

Upon re-watching it, all these things still bother me. Halloween H20 is far from a perfect film, but it's certainly a hell of a lot better than David Gordon Green's Halloween.

Case in point: Laurie Strode. Green's film has Laurie depicted as a nutty recluse who lives out in the wood, fires guns, booby traps her house, and alienates her family because Michael Myers might, one day, return. This Laurie is murky at best. We never get to really sit down and talk with her about her past, therefore, we can't really understand why she's so insane. She's fairly unlikable and uninteresting to watch. You don't see a character grow or mature. She's fixed in stone and nothing will change her, even when Michael does actually return. She's a fighter from the get go and you never have any sense that she's not strong enough to win in the end.

In Halloween H20, Laurie has changed her name and gone into hiding as a teacher at an elite prep school in California. She's self-medicating with pills and booze and startling overprotective and smothering with her son. She's even in a relationship with a kindly guidance counselor at the school. This is a Laurie who's fighting to keep it together. She's on the run and active. For me, this Laurie represents most survivors of PTSD. They're not stuck in a shack somewhere. They're among us, hoping that we don't see how messed up they really are. It's far more powerful to see someone scared of breaking down at any minute. Jamie Lee Curtis' performance in this is easily some of her best work.

Director Steve Miner understands suspense from his work in the early Friday the 13th sequels and he brings his craft to several nail-biting sequences. The grand finale when Laurie turns the tables on Michael could stand to be extended a bit more, but it's a genuinely exciting and satisfying conclusion to the franchise (if you simply pretend Resurrection never happened like most sane people).

H20 is most definitely worth another look.

Maybe I went in with too much hype, but if everyone hadn't been building it up as a grand "return to form", maybe I wouldn't have been as disappointed. David Gordon Green's Halloween promised to go back to the roots of the series and disregard all the cheesy sequels that came after John Carpenter's original.

They did get a few things right - they brought back John Carpenter to do the film's score and he does a splendid job. Michael looks better than he has in years with a mask that actually looks like the one from the original film and has a lankier frame than some of the more stocky stuntman types that have played the role in the sequels. Jamie Lee Curtis has also returned and she seems game for just about anything and her good will goes a long way, but not far enough.

After perhaps the least interesting opening sequence of the entire franchise, Halloween picks up with Laurie Strode who's now pushing 60, living in seclusion, and obsessed with the return of Michael Myers. For her, it's not a question of if Michael will come back to Haddonfield, but a question of when. Two slightly annoying British podcasters have managed to find her and want her for an interview. We learn that Laurie's been married a few times, lost custody of her daughter, and seems to be on shaky ground with both daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter.

Of course, Michael escapes during a hospital transfer and starts terrorizing Haddonfield again. Will Laurie be able to stop him? Will you even care since all the characters are as hollow as jack-o-lanterns?

If this film was just another run of the mill sequel in the franchise, one could say it's certainly a few notches above Resurrection or The Curse of Michael Myers, but the pretensions of the filmmakers made it clear that this was going to be something different and something more in tone with the original. Unfortunately, it's not. Far from it. If you switched Michael's mask out with a hockey mask, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was one of the later, less interesting Friday the 13th sequel.

While Michael has always been a soulless killing machine, he only killed if you were in the way or he needed something from you. This time, he goes out of his way to kill random people for no reason except to appease gorehounds.

When he finally does get around to terrorizing our new main characters, there's no suspense, because they've been so poorly developed to the point where most of them might as well not even have names. The only character who stands out in any way is Vicky - Laurie's granddaughter's sassy BFF and babysitter. Perhaps this is a testament to the skills of actress Virginia Gardner who's able to make this cardboard cutout even remotely endearing. If you don't mind, I'd rather imagine a film with her as lead "Final Girl."

To make matters worse, there's an incredibly lousy twist that seems to only exist as a lazy excuse to get Michael to Laurie's booby trapped house for the big showdown.

Despite a great music score, nice look for Myers, and the return of Curtis, this new Halloween has very little to keep one interested and it's definitely this year's Emperor's New Clothes of horror films.

Ask any of my friends - I'm not an easy cry. I managed to get through Titanic, The Notebook, etc., but this one got to me. Edgerton's thoughtful direction and genius casting help bring this true story to life. Lucas Hedges proves that he's one of the finest, most sensitive young actors working today and this might be one of his best yet. Nothing feels overdone or too cheesy and manages to steer clear of a lot of "Oscar bait" scenes and performances.

It helps that it sticks pretty closely to the true story it's based on, which lends it a nice sense of credibility that most films of this type simply don't have.

Boy Erased should be required viewing for families of gay teens. It has the power to teach empathy and compassion. I definitely recommend it.