The MacGuffin

Valhalla Rising:

Pros
*Competent production values
*Good, even beautiful (though not unique) photography
*By no means a masterwork of technical filmmaking, but is probably passable enough to get a solid A in a film production course

Cons
*Historically inaccurate (takes place in 1000 AD; Crusades didn’t start until the close of that century)
*Racially…confused? Maybe? If you go by Netflix’s summary, it’s a terribly racist film.
*Confusing and contradictory plot
*Lacking any conflict, resulting from the structure

Allen Almachar: Bridesmaids (2011) stars the comedian Kristen Wiig, who, for the last couple of years, has been one of the funniest people around, and perhaps one of the last reasons to still watch Saturday Night Live. I for one, am glad to see her finally take the lead role in this film. Here, she plays the lovelorn ex-baker/current jewelry saleswoman Annie. Annie has had bad luck in love and life, with a failed bakery on her resume and brother/sister roommates who seem to be a little closer than is appropriate.

Every Saturday night The Tomb of Terror opens, unleashing reviews of the obscure and the classic in horror cinema.

Zombie films are possibly the most popular sub-genre in horror. It seems that every week a new title comes out in theaters or straight-to-DVD featuring zombies as the monsters. I’m not as big of a fan of zombie films as many because they all seem a little too similar. People trapped somewhere with zombies trying to get at them. Cue the “people are the real monsters” sentiment and have the characters act like jerks to each other for an hour before the zombies rip them all apart. That’s not to say I dislike all zombie films. I’m a fan of the early works of George Romero, and The Return of the Living Dead is in my top three horror films of all time. I just get sick of low-budget filmmakers pumping out the same zombie scenarios over and over again just because it’s a cheap monster to pull off. You can’t make a convincing werewolf for anything less than a few thousand bucks, but a zombie? All you need are raggedy clothes and some red food coloring. Back in 1985, director Stuart Gordon (Stuck) made a low-budget zombie film that aimed to do something different. Instead of riffing on Romero, he set about to make a horror/comedy in the mold of Frankenstein, the original Hollywood zombie.

I have been an avid fan of Judd Apatow’s ever since he produced one of the best TV shows of all time, Freaks and Geeks. I’ve loved nearly everything he’s directed or produced in the years since. Superbad is one of my favorite films of all time. The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Pineapple Express are some of the best comedies of the last ten years. Audiences seemed to agree with me on Apatow up until around 2009. None of his films since then have made as much money as those early hits, and aren’t as well regarded. Many people have seen them as more of the same, similar premises featuring all of the same actors. Apatow’s new film as producer, Bridesmaids, comes out today and seems to be made to answer the criticism of his past work. Gone are Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, and in their places is a group of very funny women. The film also sees Apatow re-team with Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, now a director, and the end result is the best film he’s been involved with since Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

It’s hard to separate Mel Gibson from the man he plays in Jodie Foster’s The Beaver (2011). Here is an actor who was once on top of the world, a strong leading man with infinite charisma, charm, and likeability. An award-winning filmmaker, there was a point in time when Gibson could do no wrong. Boy, have things changed quickly since. Bouts with alcoholism, arrests, and outlandish remarks have sent his career on a downward spiral that would be near impossible for anyone else to crawl out from. When I heard about the premise of the film—involving a man fighting his way out of depression through the use of a stuffed beaver puppet—I almost groaned at its absurdity. After seeing the film, though, I was almost shocked by how effective it actually was. And it’s because of Gibson; perhaps no one else in the world could have played this role.

Thor (2011) is a film that I walked into wanting to like, I really did. I was hoping to see a slam bang, no holds barred superhero movie with lots of fun action set pieces, and for a while there, that’s exactly what I got. However, I came to realize something as I sat through director Kenneth Branagh’s movie, something that made me feel very discouraged. What I came to realize was: this film actually assumes that its audience is stupid. Believe me, for a film in which a mythic God gets thrown down from the heavens to become stranded on an isolated planet requires just a little suspension of disbelief, but the amount of twists and turns that the characters in this film take is simply baffling. There doesn’t seem to be a thread of continuity anywhere amongst these people; it seems the only reason the actors do what they do is because…well…I’m not so sure.

Every Saturday night The Tomb of Terror opens, unleashing reviews of the obscure and the classic in horror cinema.

It can be a lonely existence being a film fan. While other people have successful relationships or careers, we spend hours alone with characters that will never exist outside of their filmed story. We obsess over the tiniest of details, but no one thinks you’re great when you whip out a random bit of movie trivia. If you score a touchdown then you’re an athlete, if you know where George Lucas got the title THX-1138 from then you’re a nerd. This is why when we film fans find someone with similar sensibilities we want to spend a lot of time pouring over movies with them. I recently found someone like this. His name is Eric Binford, and he’s the main character of the horror film Fade to Black (1980). He loves films with all his heart and no one understands him. For the first thirty minutes of Fade to Black, I fell in love with Eric’s story, but after that the film loses track of its main character amidst murder set pieces and gonzo logic.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is one of the best films I’ve seen in a really long time. Combine Earnest Goes to Camp with Friday the 13th and you’ll have this masterpiece. Tucker is the more macho of two hillbilly best friends, and he’s a really nice guy who has spent his entire life savings on a vacation home—a super rundown cabin in the woods where he and his best friend Dale can drink beer, go fishin’, and just get away from it all. These college kids have shown up and are ruining things. Eight frat/sorority kids go to the woods to drink and have sex (like most college kids do in the movies). There’s the standard campfire legend of “killers in the woods” to set the stage, and then the kids decide to go skinny dipping. One girl falls off a rock and knocks herself out. These two hillbillies who are vacationing in the area and happen to be fishing in the area see she hasn’t come up for air and rescue her. The frat kids think the hillbillies have captured their friend and they go after them.

Every Saturday night The Tomb of Terror opens, unleashing reviews of the obscure and the classic in horror cinema.

Slasher films are one of my favorite horror subgenres. They aren’t particularly deep films, but they are usually full of the best gore effects and have a sense of fun about them. One interesting part of slasher films is that, on paper, every one is the same. A mysterious killer picks off teenagers as they engage in sex, drugs, and bad manners in some isolated location. What separates the good from the rest is how it changes this simple formula. Someone dies who you don’t expect? “Awesome.” The identity of the killer is a genuine surprise and not a cheat? “Wow.” Someone gets cut in half with a machete while doing a handstand? “This is the greatest movie ever made!” Little tweaks can make all the difference between a Black Christmas (1974) and a Halloween 5. This week’s film, The Dorm That Dripped Blood, sticks stubbornly to every formula in the slasher book, offering little in the way ingenuity or surprise.

In 2001, the original The Fast and The Furious film started a storyline involving an undercover cop and an ex-con and the unlikely friendship they formed. It also left the storyline open until 2009’s Fast and Furious reunited undercover-cop-turned-FBI-agent Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) with the criminal car jockey Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel). Now, in 2011, as Fast Five begins, anti-hero Toretto is on his way to prison when O’Connor—no longer a federal agent—and Toretto’s sister, Mia, break him out in transit. After that, O’Connor and Mia split their own way, moving country to country to avoid the feds. They eventually find their way to Brazil, where they are reunited with an old friend set to pull off a job to earn some money. Toretto shows up to help with the job, but things go bad, leaving the trio not only on the lam from the law but the local drug lord. To make things worse, the FBI. has decided to send out its top agent, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), to track them down, and Hobbs always gets his man. In order to escape, O’Connor and Toretto have to pull one last job and recruit people they’ve worked with on each of the previous films.