——Boyz N the Hood——

(A-)

I liked this movie. It wasn’t anything special but it was well made and well written with a great message behind it. The opening shot of the zoom on the stop sign pretty much says it all, and the fact that it came out right before the LA riots I think speaks volumes of the point that Singleton is trying to get across. I think the film could be trimmed a little bit for cohesiveness (is the subplot for the main character getting laid really that important?) but overall a good movie.

——Battle Royale——

(A)

This is a great movie that everyone should see, but unfortunately it hasn’t been released in the US and probably won’t be any time soon, despite the fact that people like Tarantino love this movie (he’s even in some of the trailers). Fortunately you can find bootlegs and imports out there, which is how I got my copy. The picture and sound quality on my disk are both great, the only problem being that English is obviously the second language of the subtitle writer so some of the grammar isn’t all that great. Fortunately it isn’t so bad that you can’t watch the movie, and usually the errors are so minor that you would skip right over them like you would in an instant messenger conversation. (Although for some reason in the final scene of the film the grammar gets really funky, making the meaning of the directors cut only that much harder to figure out.) Unfortunately there are no subtitles for the extras, which is a shame since there is a whole second disk filled with lots of great stuff.

For those who don’t know, the film is about the future in Japan when students are skipping school in large numbers and have no respect whatsoever for adults. The government’s solution is to take problem classes and put them in a version of Survivor combined with the Most Dangerous Game, where seventh graders have to kill each other until only one is left. This is suppose to teach the winner to take pride in what they have or whatever; I think the point is mute when compared to the awesome film of teens killing each other a la Lord of the Flies and how they all deal with the game. The movie is surprisingly deep, way beyond just having kids kill each other, although it does have plenty of that to go around.

Although the girl who plays Go Go in Kill Bill only appears in Battle Royale for about five minutes, you can see why Tarantino picked her because in the time she’s on screen she steals the film. The fact that she can go from stabbing one boy in the crotch over and over in a fit of rage, to dying in the arms of another boy talking about how one has a crush on the other, and still keep it all serious shows the serious range of this actress. She’s awesome.

Also awesome is the class’s teacher. He’s hilarious. I repeat, he is hilarious. You have to watch this movie if just to see him react to the video he shows the class about how to play Battle Royale. Or to see him go off the deep end at the end of the movie. Or just to watch him eat cookies. You’ll laugh your ass off, trust me.

Like I noted above, this is the director’s cut, which doesn’t really differ much from the theatrical cut except for the fact that there are some scenes from a basketball game added that don’t really do much other than remind you of what the kids were like before they started killing each other, a flashback that explains why one girls is as crazy as she is, and three requiems at the end which only seem to make the message of the film that much more complex to follow. While I agree that all of these scenes were unnecessary for the theatrical cut, they do seem to add more thematically to the film than you might originally think, so I recommend you see this version. This movie kicks some major ass.

——Suspicion——

(B)

(Spoiler alert: Don’t read this review unless you’ve already seen the movie, since I’m pretty much only going to talk about the ending.)

This movie becomes less cool when you look back on it and realize that nothing actually happened throughout most of the movie. You kind of wish you could smack the wife around a little bit for thinking that her husband is a killer. Or you want to smack Cary Grant around for being such a slacker jerk. Or smack her around for being such an idiot for staying with someone she couldn’t trust. Or smack her for finding “monkey face” to be such an enjoyable term of endearment. Although, despite the fact that the ending is completely bogus, the ride getting there is actually pretty fun. Cary Grant as always is fantastic, the rest of the acting is great, and Hitchcock’s direction is also very solid. I just wish there was a twist at the end beyond the fact that Grant isn’t a murderer, he’s just a big loser.

——28 Days Later——

(A)

Still fantastic after the second viewing. Now this is how you make a horror movie. The film smartly uses a slow build up, lots of suspense, and real human relationships in order to pump up the horror instead of resorting to cheap scare tactics. All of the scenes that have to do with the military complex seem so horrible not just because of what happens, but because the movie up to that point has made you care about the characters with poignant human moments which hit you with much more power than you would have thought possible. Excellent movie.

——Rebecca——

(A-)

I was a little unsure about this movie, but it turned out to be a real delight. This is mostly because of the extreme use of melodrama, probably making this movie a whole lot funnier than it was originally meant to be, although Hitchcock obviously had a good sense of humor about the whole thing. Although Rebecca doesn’t make a single appearance in the film, her presence is felt everywhere and the mystery of who she really is is what drives the first two delightful acts of the film. Sadly, once the story behind Rebecca is finally revealed in the third act a lame and dull subplot drives the rest of the film, although the very ending switches back to that delightful melodramatic tone and ends quite appropriately with a moral uncertainty. Must see Hitchcock.

——Fulltime Killer——

(B)

This movie would be really great if it weren’t for a few minor structural problems. First of all, this is a minor complaint, but the story of this film is about two hitmen taking each other on, the new, bad, and flamboyant hotshot who wants a chance at the top spot going after the “good” professional go-to guy. Fine. But the point they are trying to make is that the bad one is sloppy while the good one is a hardened professional, and yet there is next to no difference in how the two of them do their hits aside from the fact that the bad one likes to wave his arms around in the air to draw attention to himself. Otherwise both have no problem killing in broad daylight in the middle of crowds.

More importantly the ending starts to fall apart because of one incomprehensible decision of the writer to suddenly have the cop, who up to this point has been a minor character, lose his job because (I guess) he went insane, and he decides to write a book (why?) about the two killers but can’t finish it until he knows what really happened to them, leading to a forced “he’s told this guy died, but really the other guy got it” ending. Why the writer decided to add this completely unnecessary plot element is beyond me; the only thing I can think of is that he wrote himself into a corner and this was the only way he could think to get himself out of it.

Otherwise, though, the movie was a complete delight to watch. A cool (but flawed) Hong Kong action film (where the dialog, interestingly enough, is for the most part Japanese and English, not Chinese) about two hitmen squaring off, and the woman caught in the middle.

——The Texas Chainsaw Massacre——

(C)

What is interesting about this movie is that it actually doesn’t completely suck. There are actually some moments in the film where it really works and is actually terrifying. Unfortunately those few great moments are surrounded with questionable choices that instantly make you want to ask, “Why did they remake this again?”

First of all there is the documentary aspect that opens the film. Unlike the spooky, all-suggestion opening sequence of the original (which is arguably the most terrifying section of the movie) that sets the stage for the film, the opening of the remake is an actual Blair Witch type documentary that shows way too much and tells way too little. This sort of sets the stage for the rest of the film. (Bonus points though for bringing back John Laroquette to do the voice over.)

The original is so great in that Tobe Hooper completely embraces the less-is-more philosophy to such a great effect that when you come out of the theater you just assume that there was way more gore than there actually is (which is next to none). Everything there is suggestion and great film making. Here they follow the Michael Bay school of film making (he just happens to be a producer) of more of more has to be MORE, where you are shown just about every disgusting, disturbing thing you can think of without actually having any real substance behind it. It’s all too much, too over the top and theatrical that you can’t really believe any of it.

(Note too that Leatherface comes on screen way too early and has too much screen time too quickly. Whereas in the original you only had brief glimpses of him until the third act, here you even get to go into his workshop and see how he works within like the first half-hour.)

The story doesn’t work as well as the original either. To be quick, in the original the set up is quite organic and believable. Here everything is completely random and over the top. At least a hundred times you want to yell at the screen to tell the characters how stupid they are being. In the original I never had that problem. But what should I expect: the teens don’t even feel like real characters.

What’s good? Well when the movie finally just turns into a chase movie, in that Jessica Biel has escaped all of the lame characters and is now on her own trying to escape Leatherface, the movie becomes quite thrilling and scary. Yeah there is lame Hollywood things all over the place (she hides and tries to be quiet, but rats are crawling all over her; just about everything that happens in the predictable meat packaging plant climax) but for some reason a big guy wearing someone else’s skin for a face and waving around a chainsaw is damn scary, no matter what else surrounds that.

(Also, it should be noted that Jessica Biel is in a tight, tight white tank top for the entirety of the film, and is frequently wet, which ain’t a bad thing.)

——A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge——

(D)

One way to appreciate the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is to watch this. Man this is lame. But then you have to figure that any movie that tries to make a terrifying scene out of a song bird flying around the house attacking people (not thousands like in Hitchcock’s The Birds, but a SINGLE bird) is going to suck. This movie has one of the sorriest body counts ever in a slasher film (I think only three people die) and the plot is as weak as they come. The idea is actually kind of cool (Freddy is trying to take over a human body so he can start killing again) and yet everything else about it is poorly executed and blows. What happened to him attacking people in their dreams? That isn’t there. Instead only the main character has nightmares, and almost no one dies because of them. Not to mention the fact that his dreams are LAME. No lamer than Freddy though. His idea of being scary is to swipe his arm across the table, pushing all of your shit onto the floor. Oooo…don’t break my shit Freddy, please, no! The one bright spot is when the main character starts transforming into Freddy for the first time, because it is the only place in the movie that is even remotely scary (and there is some good makeup involved). Otherwise this sequel makes the original look like a Kubrick film. (Interestingly enough, Wes Craven had nothing to do with this, and it shows.)

——Jackie Brown——

(A-)

I, like a lot of people, didn’t like this film the first time around. It seemed stupid and slow and a real let down from the kinetic Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. I think the first viewing suffers a lot from expectations though. Because Pam Grier is in it (in a film called Jackie Brown, nonetheless, so similar to Foxy Brown) you expect it to be an exploitation flick. Because it is a Tarantino film you expect the weird story structure and ultra-violence which isn’t there. And even more importantly, you look at the plot and become disappointed because there isn’t a lot really there.

What you see upon the second viewing though is that the plot is almost unimportant in Jackie Brown, and that the real interesting parts come in developing the characters. It is almost like watching another movie, the experience is so different. Without having to worry about the plot you notice things you never saw before, and begin to appreciate the great character studies developed by every actor. This is a very mature film, about human relationships which is so well done that no one does anything that the don’t earn. Pam Grier and Robert Forrester are especially great and powerful with their performances. The movie still feels a little bloated, but to those who’ve only seen the film once and didn’t like it, I suggest you give the film another shot.