Census Flashback: High School Mayhem

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

This week we’re anticipating Spider-Man: Homecoming, in which a high school kid suits up and fights crime. In honor of its release, I’ll be reviewing a Brad Pitt slasher about deadly crimes at a high school: Cutting Class. Does the Sexiest Man Alive have what it takes to STAY alive?

Year: 1989

Director: Rospo Pallenberg

Cast: Donovan Leitch, Jill Schoelen, Brad Pitt

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

1989 was the last gasp of the slasher golden age, churning out as many half-baked slice-em-ups as humanly possible, despite the MPAA’s crackdown on gory movies. The slashers of the year had essentially split into two camps: crazy last-ditch gimmicks and self-parody. While Cutting Class isn’t tonally tight or incisive like the far superior Return to Horror High, it’s certainly a flimsy stab at the latter.

One thing Cutting Class has going for it is its cast: almost every single person from the leads on down has had enough success to afford to include a headshot on their IMDb profile, a luxury very few Census Bloodbath entries can boast. That doesn’t mean they’re good, but at least they’re professional, and that definitely counts for something.

And also one of them is LITERALLY Brad Pitt.

Here is the plot those headshots are asked to play out. High school overachiever Paula Carson (Jill Schoelen of The Stepfather) has the house to herself when her D.A. dad (Martin Mull, who is incredible in a lot of things, but especially Clue, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Arrested Development) goes out for a weeklong hunting trip.

She wants to use this time for incessant studying, but her jock boyfriend Dwight (Brad F**king Pitt) has other ideas. She resists his libidinous advances, but agrees to get dragged into high school hijinks with their beer-swilling friends Gary (Mark Barnet) and Colleen (Brenda James). Unfortunately the people around her begin to disappear at the hands of an unseen murderer. Is it the creepy Brian (Donovan Leitch of The Blob), who was just released from a five year stint at a mental institution after cutting the brakes on his father’s car? The leering principal Mr. Dante (Roddy McDowall, having a great time)? The schizophrenic, philosophizing janitor Schultz (Robert Glaudini)?

Meanwhile, Martin Mull has been shot with an arrow, and spends literally the entire remainder of the film on an allegedly wacky quest to get back home through the swamp. You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d accidentally sat on your remote and changed the channel every 15 minutes or so.

Cue the tuba music.

Cutting Class’ wackiness is the only thing that differentiates it from the pack, but it’s also its downfall. Although there are mildly amusing interstitial scenes like a student haggling over a 50 cent ticket or the incredibly weird janitor smoking a joint, most of the comedy comes in the form of half-assed Breakfast Club antics that endlessly vomit forth with no sense of urgency. And then there’s Martin Mull over there, who seems to be wading through some kind of long-lost Caddyshack sequel.

All this unfunny business drastically undercuts the tension, and the kills are too few and far between (and mostly bloodless) to hold your attention. Cutting Class drifts like an unmoored yacht, smashing into scene after scene with brute force and no apparent direction until the final 20 minutes.

But oh, what a final 20 minutes they are! They pull out all the stops so smoothly it almost makes you feel as if the entire movie had been perfectly tuned to lead up to this sparkling crescendo (spoiler: it wasn’t). It’s ladled with so much bonkers 80’s cheese that it drowns out all the memories of anemic horror, inconsistent character motivations, and crushingly repetitive scenes of Paula trying to study.

If the entire movie matched the manic energy of the killer’s reveal (a bizarrely twisted explanatation that’s exactly what you expected but so much more, delivered with a Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 level of wooden fervor), the Saw-esque math problem death trap, and the battle in the woodshop, Cutting Class would be without a doubt the greatest slasher entry of the year.

Not that Jason Takes Manhattan was much competition.

Unfortunately, we do have that full hour of teenybopper nonsense to contend with. And while this cast is well above the standard for slashers at the time, that’s still a perilously low bar. Jill Schoelen, for one, delivers all her lines like she’s murmuring them in her sleep, and not even Brad Pitt shines. For one thing, his character is a raging asshole that he probably wouldn’t even be able to redeem now as a veteran actor. Seriously, Dwight is the freaking worst, and its hard to get on board with his late-film stint as the heroic boyfriend.

If an asshole saves the day and there’s nobody around who cares, is he still a hero?

Frankly, I wouldn’t care if you played hooky on Cutting Class. It’s a minor amusement from the dregs of the decade, and you definitely do worse, but it’s just not as fun as it wants to be. The flop sweat is overpowering, and only the most hardcore of Brad Pitt or slasher fans should consider making the approach.

Killer: Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch)

Final Girl: Paula Carson (Jill Schoelen)

Best Kill: The physical and motivationally preposterous scene where Coach Harris is bouncing idly on a trampoline until a flag is placed underneath him, on which he impales himself.

Sign of the Times: Brad Pitt gets third billing behind Jill Schoelen, for crying out loud.

Scariest Moment: Colleen sees her boyfriend killed in front of her and her screams are drowned out by the marching band.

Weirdest Moment: Roddy McDowall’s final onscreen appearance is during a backstage auditorium chase scene where Brad Pitt walks in on him trying on a powdered wig full of fruit.

Champion Dialogue: “Have you ever felt my tingle?”

Body Count: 7

1. Mr. Conklin is baked in a kiln.
2. Gary has his throat slit.
3. Colleen is killed offscreen.
4. Mrs. Knocht has her head slammed into the copy machine.
5. Coach Harris is impaled on an American flag.
6. Mr. Glynn is axed to death.
7. Bryan has the short end of a hammer buried in his head and is buzz sawed in the back.

TL;DR: Cutting Class is a mildly bemusing but gormless slasher that's at least slightly redeemed by its bonkers ending.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1099

Ain't It Funny In A Rich Man's World

Year: 2015

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt

Run Time: 2 hours 10 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Three of Michael Lewis’ books  have been made into movies. The Blind Side was a stultifying ordeal, and Moneyball was… OK, I’ve never seen Moneyball. But the fact remains that these are very serious, Oscar-nominated-type dramas. So, who would you get to direct the next one, about the people who bet against the housing market before its collapse in 2008? Someone prestigious, probably. Richard Linklater? Ridley Scott? The Academy’s class pet, Alenjandro G. Iñárritu? Those are all fine choices, but the director the producers attached has made all the difference: Adam McKay.

Yes, the man helming this economic Oscarbait is none other than the director of Anchorman, Stepbrothers, and The Other Guys, not to mention the co-creator of Funny or Die. We now live in a world where it actually would have made sense if Will Ferrell had cameoed in The Big Short. Even more incredible, McKay is probably the best decision they could have made.

The worst is dyeing Ryan Gosling’s hair, but let’s find it in our hearts to forgive them.

Let’s get into it, shall we? In The Big Short, hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovers that the housing market is an enormous bubble, ready to burst at any moment. He creates a system that allows him to short the market, betting against its success. The banks think he’s crazy and graciously accept his free money. However, others catch wind of his scheme and think he might be onto something, including Deutsche Bank bond salesman Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), mercurial hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell), and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), two young hedge funders who team up with their retired mentor Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt). They too decide to short the market and wait patiently for the whole thing to collapse.

It’s about as morally dubious as it sounds.

The Big Short has two major hurdles. First, people could give half a crap about economics. Second, this is entirely based on a true story, one which is as open-ended and multifaceted as that nasty reality thing tends to be. The first is handled with aplomb, utilizing a Brechtian approach to engage the audience with its less-than appealing content. By that, I mean the movie – via the supple mouthpiece of Ryan Gosling – speaks directly to the audience, explaining the necessary information with some truly great cutaway gags and first-person comments on how the story actually played out.

This could easily have become a played-out gimmick, but it stays fresh and light, transforming hard economic theory into light, playful banter. Unfortunately, this freshness doesn’t necessarily apply to the “realistic” faux-documentary shooting style, in which the handheld photography, rack focuses, and quick pans get old faster than a ripe pear. It’s not too pervasive an issue, and you do get familiar enough with the aesthetic to just ignore it. But the cinema verite approach doesn’t exactly mesh with the Brechtian meta humor, which utilizes the artifice of film in a surreal and enlightening way, something that’s harder to highlight when the images are straining so hard to be gritty and real. It’s kind of like if someone hired the cinematographer from Precious to shoot a Muppet movie. It just doesn’t gel.

So yes, I’ll knock off a point or two for that, but it’s where The Big Short overcomes its second hurdle that the film really blossoms. As a plot, the film is pretty straightforward. Men predict, investigate, and outsmart the housing crisis. There’s not a lot of humanity there. Obviously a cast almost exclusively composed of awards season heavy hitters helps out some (Carell is probably the biggest takeaway as a man hiding his shattered soul beneath a shell of sheer bravado, but Pitt is an excellent conduit for both comic relief and serious political themes, Gosling is sharp and snappy as our de facto narrator, relative newcomers Magaro and Wittrock hold their own, and Bale does his Bale thing politely in the corner), but where The Big Short really hits its mark is in depicting the culture AROUND the housing bubble.

You know, the one that doesn’t exactly hit the jackpot during the whole shebang.

The film builds its real story in the nooks and crannies around the A-plot, especially in the transitions between years leading to the collapse. Every single edit in these interstitial scenes is fixated on one thing, highlighting the vacant, shallow, consumerist pop culture that has distracted everybody from their impending doom. [MEDIUM SPOILERS Their construction blends perfectly with the celebrity cameos that are used to explain economic theories. They function both as fun gags and an indictment of a culture that needs this kind of thing to be able to notice the hard facts.] It’s a lacerating satire that brings a dry textbook to life in the middle of a doomed culture. The Big Short is nothing less than an economic horror film, and an extremely effective one at that.

It’s funny, it’s terrifying, and it’s utterly unique, a combination it never could have accomplished without a director like Adam McKay. He balances his tones with impressive acuity, imbuing even generic-sounding scenes with an idiosyncratic twist. Perhaps the single best moment in the film is a scene as simple as a set of people leaving a convention. Observing the differences in their appearance, demeanor, and the cars they drive provides an eerily stunning insight into their characters and their world. It’s a film littered with gems like these, and because of that it’s without a doubt the best based-on-a-true-story flick of the year.

TL;DR: The Big Short is a captivating, innovative exploration of a seemingly dry concept.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 968

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Year: 2011

Director: Terrence Malick

Cast: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn

Run Time: 2 hours 19 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

There are two schools of thought when it comes to viewing most arthouse films. There's the "this movie changed my life," and the "this movie ruined my life." I hate to go against film student credo, but I tend to fall into the latter category more often than not. Sure, I like myself some Jean-Luc Godard from time to time, but I will always grab American Pie from the stack instead of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's not even a contest.

Maybe it's because my film analysis skills haven't fully developed yet. I will concede that that's a possibility. Or maybe it's because some films are so unbelievably pretentious that their intense need to prove something to themselves chokes out their narrative landscape. Enter The Tree of Life.

Terrence Malick's 2011 film is a remarkable effort that heroically strains to push the envelope and fill itself with Important Meaning, in the process giving itself a hernia.

Actual footage of the universe not giving a crap.

Insofar as The Tree of Life is "about" a story rather than a series of theological ephemera, it is mostly about middle-aged Jack (Sean Penn) remembering his boyhood in Waco, Texas (his younger self is played by Hunter McCracken). Living with his brothers under the stern rule of their unloving, taskmaster father (Brad Pitt) and guided by their ethereal, caring mother (Jessica Chastain), they... do some things. 

It's basically Boyhood with less narrative drive and more pit stops for quasi-evangelical soliloquies. As the family goes about their daily lives (and exactly how many films do we need about white dudes coming of age in Texas?), the film explores its overarching themes of choosing the path of grace over the path of human nature, the idea of how a loving God could allow bad things to happen to good people, and the motif that Terrence Malick is the goddamn best living director on the planet, no contest, look at him go.

When he's not preening in the mirror, he briefly looks back at the action to shout "More ambiguity!" then retires to his trailer with a bagel, leaving the camera on an extended shot of some rocks, or maybe a mysterious light blob.

OK, fine, maybe I'm being facetious, but still.

I will give this to The Tree of Life: It's one of the most visually ambitious motion pictures I've ever seen. The mostly handheld camera bobs and sways, inhabiting the space of its world with a kinetic urgency and, in one truly memorable moment, peering into a doorway while following the mother down the hallway. In this way, the camera adds meaning to the actions around it, exploring the world that the characters inhabit rather than necessarily being tethered to them.

Where the power of this style wanes is in the filmmakers' frequent use of jump cuts to the same angle, which assuredly hold some private meaning to Malick himself, but mostly look like they're feebly trying to disguise a lack of decent coverage. The frequent cuts to black also contribute to the film's jittery, overwhelmingly distracted aesthetic. It's very challenging cinematography, and a little to drunk on its own sense of artistic purpose to be truly watchable.

And for better or for worse, The Tree of Life explodes the very idea of narrative cinema. Exhaustively extended visual and spiritual symbolism abounds, to the point that the narrative hardly sticks to one's mind for lack of earning itself any decent screentime. In one dangerously long sequence obliquely depicting the creation of life, the film sloughs off its characters, slams Lady Gaga music video aesthetics into a 2001: A Space Odyssey framework, tosses in some Turok-reminiscent CGI dinosaurs, and culminates in what seems to be a bafflingly laborious Planet Earth episode.

Well, at the very least it's the easiest paycheck Brad Pitt has ever gotten.

In one scene, the children jump around in the cloud of gas as a truck sprays DDT up and down the suburban block. Considering that this film is heavily based on Malick's own childhood, this might actually explain a lot of the imagery.

This "pictures first, questions never" style holds a lot of meaning for some people, but I am unfortunately not one of them. It's frequently tedious and occasionally beautiful, but always inscrutable. Jessica Chastain holds her own as character that's more metaphorical construct than human woman, but Sean Penn is utterly wasted in a useless bookending role, and Brad Pitt is no more and no less than what he needs to be.

The Tree of Life might hold the answers of the universe for all I know, but as a piece of narrative cinema, it is bankrupt. If you're the type who like to crack open your skull and pour some trippy arthouse cinema right down your mind hole, go for it. But if you're an American Pie guy/gal like me, skip it.

TL;DR: The Tree of Life is an overlong, overheated arthouse flick with some admittedly beautiful imagery.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 856

Culture Clash

Year: 2006
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza
Run Time: 2 hours 23 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

The story of the Tower of Babel goes as follows:

Once upon a time, everyone on Earth spoke the same language. Settlers in the land of Shinar sought to build a city with a tower reaching into the sky, so their people would never be separated. God looked out upon the construction and realized that there was nothing the people couldn't do if they worked together. He wasn't a big fan of that, so he cast a god spell on them, scattering the builders across the Earth and bestowing them with different languages so they couldn't understand one another or work together ever again. Google Translate having not been invented yet, the construction of the tower was halted and the city became known as Babel, which is now our word for an incomprehensible mash of language.

I have a theory that the production of the 2006 Best Picture-nominated film Babel went a little something like that story. It's a perplexing mash of loosely-connected storytelling, simultaneously thrumming with a conspicuously ham-fisted moral and a set of incomprehensible private musings of its own. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (of this year's Best Picture, Birdman), Babel is a bewildering clutter, but it's not without its charms.

Sexy grey Brad Pitt is probably the least of its charms, so that's saying something.

The story of Babel goes as follows:

1) In Morocco, two young boys play with their father's gun, shooting it at passing cars. After they hit a tour bus an injure a woman inside, the corrupt local policemen pursue their family. And Brennan writes a strongly-worded letter to their parents.

2) In Morocco, unhappily married couple Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) go on vacation in an attempt to move past the unfortunate death of their young son. After Susan is shot by a stray bullet through the window of their tour bus, they spend several days in a nearby town awaiting the arrival of the proper medical authorities. Susan spends pretty much the whole time lying on the floor unconscious. Surprisingly, Cate Blanchett does not win an Oscar for this role.

3) In America, Richard and Susan's kids are left to the care of their Mexican nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza). When their trip is extended by an unfortunate bullet wound, she is forced to take them with her to her son's wedding down in Mexico. They spend a blissful day together, marred by a conflict with the immigration authorities on the way back home. George Bush is unharmed.

4) In Japan, deaf teen Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi of Pacific Rim) attempts a sexual awakening, but finds that very few older men are interested in her insatiable lust. This is before Instagram was invented, so you can understand her pain. 

So what we get from all of this is... that Alejandro Iñárritu really likes Crash. In all seriousness though, Babel takes after its namesake: Each of the linked stories (The Japan story is dubiously connected to Morocco through Chieko's father) paints a larger picture, that of two different cultures combatting one another, causing issues through lack of compassion and understanding. Basically, it's the cinematic explanation for why we never built that damn tower.

It's those teens with their swingsets and their premarital sex. Ruining it for us all.

The problem with the interconnected stories is that they intersect at such few and inconsistent points, it raises the question of why they felt the need to even try in the first place. Those first three stories go  together pretty strong, but the Japan angle is barely hanging on by a thread. In any other film, I'd say yank that plot out like a loose tooth, but unfortunately Chieko's story is one of the most interesting in the whole kaboodle.

Of all the culture clashes we see throughout the film, Chieko's is the only one that takes place within one umbrella culture. She and the people she struggles with are all Japanese, united under one language and set of traditions. However, her deafness creates a whole new subculture that bumps and grinds against her superculture. Chieko's story is by far the most intriguing to watch play out, second only to Amelia's, which has the most pathos thanks to the director's intimate understanding of the Mexican culture.

With the two strongest stories muscling for screentime in the wings, Babel keeps returning to damn Morocco, with poor Cate Blanchett lying wanly on her rug while Brad Pitt looks angsty and artily bedraggled. It's Oscarbait so pure and undiluted, it makes me a little sick to my stomach.

He's got the shakes. This must be his first time.

There are fantastic parts of Babel. Much of the sound design involved in painting Chieko's world, for instance, or the fleshed-out arc of Amelia's story that rips your heart to shreds. But the film as a whole is unfairly bogged down with an imbalanced focus on the least interesting facets of its narrative, its deliberate pacing, and its startlingly devoted propensity for handheld camerawork.

And don't even get me started on the plot twists that splatter out of the third act like the last of the whipped cream in the tube. They're almost amusingly banal, as if they had gotten M. Night Shyamalan's accountant brother to write them. I won't give anything away, but imagine that the ending of The Sixth Sense was "Bruce Willis was a doctor and his storyline took place five minutes before the other one." It's not a good look.

But really, Babel hits where it counts. I wish it were a little more focused, or maybe that Amelia and Chieko got films of their own instead of being forced to fight to the death with the hyperbolically duller storylines. But all in all, it's not a waste of time. If you're looking to watch an Important movie, Babel will certainly have you covered. And at least you can comfort yourself with Brad Pitt's face while you ignore everything coming out of his mouth.

Kind of like in World War Z!

TL;DR: Babel is a decent prestige drama, but has an unfortunate predilection for its least interesting storylines.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1049

Friends With Benefits

With the mass appeal of Friends, everybody wanted to jump on the bandwagon. A guest appearance next to the most famous sitcom "family" in the world could launch anybody's star into the atmosphere. Over its decade long history, plenty of big stars have come and gone in the purple apartment, but here are some of my favorites.

The Top Ten Friends Guest Stars

#10 Jill Goodacre as Jill Goodacre (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with the Blackout" (S1:E7)

One of the few "big name" stars of the first season, Jill Goodacre got in on the fun before the world even knew how game-changing the show was eventually going to be. A model with very few acting credits to her name, she brought a friendly charisma to her cameo in one of the funniest Chandler storylines of the first season (except for Janice, of course).

#9 Giovanni Ribisi as Frank Buffay, Jr. (Total Episodes: 9)

First Appearance: "The One with the Bullies" (S2:E21)
Last Appearance: "The One Where Ross is Fine" (S10:E2)

Although Giovanni Ribisi has had roles in popular movies as widely varied as Lost in Translation, Avatar, and Ted, he will always be remembered, at least by me, as Phoebe's spacey brother Frank. Ribisi's startlingly odd performance provided an edginess to the show that certainly helped to propel it through its second season into its Golden Age.

#8 Morgan Fairchild as Nora Bing (Total Episodes: 5)

First Appearance: "The One with Mrs. Bing" (S1:E11)
Last Appearance: "The One After I Do" (S8:E1)

Morgan Fairchild is just plain regal is what she is. A television queen in her domain, she brings a smoky sensuality and riveting force to her character, Chandler's romance novel-writing mother. Her innate sexual power provides a hilarious antithesis to her son's gawky fumbling and self doubt.

#7 Alec Baldwin as Parker (Total Episodes: 2)

First Appearance: "The One with the Tea Leaves" (S8:E17)
Last Appearance: "The One in Massapequa" (S8:E18)

People were surprised when Alec Baldwin displayed his comedy prowess by starring in the class A sitcom 30 Rock, but they really shouldn't have been. Not when he proved it so extensively in season eight as Parker, Phoebe's endlessly enthusiastic and bubbly boyfriend. Some guest stars were just that - celebrities showing up on the show to play around. But by his second and final episode Alec Baldwin found himself fitting into the show's sharp comedy style like a glove.

#6 David Arquette as Malcolm (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with the Jam" (S3:E3)

I have a perhaps unhealthy obsession with David Arquette. But don't let the fact that I own a framed picture of him and keep it on my bedside table distract you from his amusing cameo as a stalker who mistakes Phoebe for her twin sister Ursula. Despite his relationship with co-star Courteney Cox, he has a goofy chemistry with Lisa Kudrow that keeps the episode fresh and light, keeping the comedy at the forefront in what could have been an unintentionally dark subplot.

#5 Paul Rudd as Mike Hannigan (Total Episodes: 18)

First Appearance: "The One with the Pediatrician" (S9:E3)
Last Appearance: "The Last One: Part 2" (S10:E20)

Who doesn't love Paul Rudd? Phoebe Buffay certainly does and she married him to prove it! Although he was introduced late in the show, Rudd's character Mike is so endearing that by the end of the show he feels like part of the gang, a Herculean feat considering what a pop culture titan Friends had become by the end of its run.

#4 Brad Pitt as Will Colbert (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with the Rumor" (S8:E9)

Although in retrospect it's a little bleak, the then-married Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston had a lot of fun as he played Will Colbert, an ex-fat high school classmate of Rachel's who hated her guts. Although their contentious split made her a tabloid superstar, it does somewhat diminish the humor although it's still a great inside joke in context.

#3 Jennifer Coolidge as Amanda Buffamonteezi (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with Ross's Tan" (S10:E3)

Jennifer Coolidge has the Midas touch for comedy, turning everything she's in to gold. Not that Friends needed it, but her one episode stint as Amanda, an egocentric old roommate of Phoebe and Monica's who has developed a hilariously fake British accent. Seeing her dance with wild abandon is worth every cent it takes to buy a TV to watch it on.

#2 Bruce Willis as Paul Stevens (Total Episodes: 3)

First Appearance: "The One Where Ross Meets Elizabeth's Dad" (S6:E21)
Last Appearance: "The One with the Ring" (S6:E23)

Bruce Willis actually appeared on the show for free because he lost a bet to Matthew Perry on the set of The Whole Nine Yards. If that's not the most awesome story you've ever heard, I envy your life. His stint as the manly father of the student Ross is dating is one of his best comedy roles as he reveals his emotionally stunted inner self. Paul's the man!

#1 Danny DeVito as Roy (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One Where the Stripper Cries" (S10:E11)

If there ever was a role Danny DeVito was born for, it's... Well, it's Frank Reynolds in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But his role as Phoebe's bachelor party stripper is a close second. Please, invite him to all my future events.

Word Count: 916

Splatter University V: A New Beginning

Here we are again at the start of yet another promising and terrifying semester for Yours Truly. To cope with the sheer amount of work I have looming in the distance (including six consecutive 12-hour weekend shoots), what else is there to do but write reviews of crap we watched in my horror class (for which I am now TAing - the student has become the master)? And so it goes.

Warlock

Year: 1989

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Julian Sands, Lori Singer, Richard E. Grant

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Dave Twohy, the director of the Riddick trilogy wrote the screenplay for this late 80's fantasy horror picture shortly after graduating from California State University, Long Beach. Evidently he was too lazy to return to his alma mater and talk about his early career. For that reason, there shall be no further mention of him in this blog.

I'd rather talk about Steve Miner, anyway. This man resolutely refuses to leave the hallowed halls of crap horror and has thus ended up on this blog more than any other director save Wes Craven. Although Miner is certainly less talented than Ol' W. C. (as House and Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D can attest), he is always a welcome presence around these here parts.

The plot goes like this - an evil Warlock (Julian Sands) is imprisoned in the 16th Century and the unpredictable magic he uses to procure his escape lands him smack dab in the middle of 20th Century Los Angeles - 1988 to be precise. Although perhaps we need not be so precise, considering that the girl who lives in the apartment he crash lands into looks like a cross between Run Lola Run and LeeLoo from The Fifth Element.

I don't normally post screencaps in mini reviews, but come on. How could I deprive the world of this?

She teams up with a 16th Century warrior (Richard E. Grant) sent to defeat the Warlock in order to lift the curse of aging he has placed on her. Also, there's a whole thing about uniting the separated thirds of an ancient tome that will reveal the true name of God, which - if uttered backwards - can undo Creation.

It's a whole thing, I won't get into it.

Original fantasy horror like this would soon be lining video store shelves in the early 90's (Leprechaun, anyone?), but Warlock is better than most. Sure, it's a hunk of cheese big enough to trap Mickey Mouse, but it's such a loveably batty and low rent thriller that it never fails to charm.

And for once in this kind of film the comic relief consistently lands, making up greatly for the tepid horror (which falls flat in spite of some frankly terrific original ideas). In fact, it can hardly be distinguished as a horror film what with the brightly lit setpieces and largely inconspicuous music. Only one scene can be counted as truly horrific, but it's a doozy - genre veteran Mary Woronov is possessed by some sort of orgasm devil and it is grand and melodramatic in the best way.

All in all, it made me excited to watch more crappy DTV horror, which is always a good(ish) time for me.

One last thing before we go: Apparently God's true name is Rakisha, which seems a little ghetto for an omnipotent deity but you won't catch me complaining.

Rating: 7/10

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Year: 1992

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves

Run Time: 2 hours 8 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Why oh why does this kind of thing keep happening? The Dracula story is over and done, simple as that. The story is centered around a real estate agent and hops back and forth between Britain and Transylvania so many times that the characters spend more time traveling that actually doing anything. All the sex in the world couldn't spice that narrative up.

Sorry, I've been sitting on that one for a while now.

At least Francis Ford Coppola's retread of the classic work has a daring visual aesthetic that challenges and creates a thoroughly moody and lovely horror backdrop. Unfortunately I am not the type of film major that can be won over with visuals alone, practical effects or not (and yes, this film displays a truly impressive amount of in-camera effects - in fact, all visual effects but a screechingly obviously fake blue flame were done the old fashioned way and it's a major credit to Coppola that he stuck through such an arduous task around the beginning of the mainstream acceptance of computer generated imaging).

So yes. Visuals. And effects. Yay. And an immense theatricality which would be welcome in a movie with literally any other cast. Gary Oldman fares well as the aged and decrepit Count Dracula, but mysteriously falls flat as the handsome young swain he becomes. Winona Ryder fumbles hopelessly at the role of Mina and Keanu Reeves just plain never was going to work, was he?

Although he is perhaps the only actor alive at the time who could convincingly portray just how unfathomably stupid the character of Jonathan Harker really is.

It really doesn't help that Van Helsing was played by Anthony Hopkins in one of the first of his many subpar post-Silence of the Lambs roles. If every Van Helsing scene in the film was cut, it would still make just as much sense. And it would still be too long.

In a just world, Coppola's vision of a bloody, sexy, colorful, melodramatic Dracula would have been a smash success, but so many of the pieces fail to fall into place that the film is stuffy by the first minute and dull by the halfway point. A swing and a miss.

Rating: 6/10

Interview with the Vampire

Year: 1994

Director: Neil Jordan

Cast: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst

Run Time: 2 hours 3 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I watched this film for the first time in class on Monday. It's really quite interesting to see how many plot and character elements were lifted wholesale from this film and the novel it's based on to piece together the literary wreckage that is the Twilight franchise. But enough of that. It's uncouth to kick a franchise when it's down, no matter how repugnant or obnoxious it may be.

The most important takeaway from this film is that Kirsten Dunst is a BABY. Here I was obliviously expecting her to be a love interest, not having noticed the year on the back of the DVD case. But no. She may as well be a fetus. It's insane.

Interview with the Vampire tells the story of one Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt), a grieving American colonist who succumbs to the curse of vampirism as offered by the fiery Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise). Louis struggles to accept his newfound thirst for sexy sexy blood and manages to avoid killing actual humans for a while, but finds that his Cullen-ness doesn't pay off in the long run. 

Also Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt's hair colors are switched for this film and it trips me out something fierce.

The two enter a loving partnership long-term companionship that leads them across America and eventually to the creation of a vampire child, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst). Basically the first act is Dracula and the second act is a vampire version of The Kids Are All Right.

And the third act is Harry Potter Book Five, all angsty and brooding.

I'm really avoiding intense analysis of the film because it is a towering obelisk of pop romantic filmmaking. Interesting and pretty to look at, but lacking the depth that (possibly? I wouldn't know) might be contained in the books.

It's largely entertaining for what it is, although it does drag in it's second hour. Man, do I loathe second hours.

And I might just have to create a new custom tag for my blog posts - "homoerotic vampire movies" - because this is the most recent in a string of many, starting with The Lost Boys. Remember how the brothers in that film couldn't talk without staring into each others' eyes with the intensity of a thousand suns? Well Brad Pitt speaks directly into Antonio Banderas' mouth.

It's pretty hot.

The end.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1387

Diplomatic Immunity

Year: 2013

Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz
Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A good sign that this film has been in Production Hell for far too long - there are about eleven different logos displayed before the movie starts.

World War Z's now notorious production process involved numerous rewrites, additional shooting, a complete rework of the original ending, director/cast/writer musical chairs, and just a whole lot of Hollywood red tape that would pretty much guarantee a supremely uneven film. So you can imagine my surprise when it turned out that World War Z is actually pretty solid. 

Now it is by no means a new direction for the genre, but its success hinges on one thing - fast zombies are freaking terrifying. Goodness knows why we've spent so much time with the sluggish shambling ones. We've already sucked that juicebox dry, and there's something wicked unsettling about the feeling of a thousand twitching sprinters coming your way.

You might have a helicopter, but they have hella zombies.

World War Z follows the adventures of an ex-UN investigator, Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) as he tries to save his family from this year's, what, seventh zombie apocalypse? Thanks to his old connections, he gets his wife (Mireille Enos) and his poorly acted and thankfully mostly offscreen children (Abigail Hargrove and Sterling Jerins) to safety on an aircraft carrier 100 miles from the coast.

Poorly Acted Child #2: (somehow shrieking and deadpanning simultaneously) Daddy I'm scared!

Audience Member: Oh shut up!

I feel you, man.

But his superiors aren't about to let nonessential personnel on board without compensation and Lane is sent to South Korea to accompany Dr. Andrew Fassbach (Elyes Gabel, who is another Game of Throne pursuing a cinematic career) as he attempts to discover the source of the virus - Patient Zero. Unfortunately, Fassbach slips on a banana peel (you watch the movie and tell me that doesn't happen) and is incapacitated, sending Lane slingshotting across the globe in search of an answer.

On his travels, he encounters a toothless man, an Israeli soldier whose name I forget but whose hair is reminiscent of Sinnead O'Connor, zombie apocalypse grocery shopping, and inexplicable giant 1990's cell phones.

Nothing Compares 2 Emergency First Aid at 20,000 Feet

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the movie is that there is no possibility whatsoever that Gerry Lane will die. I mean, he's Brad Pitt. When his character is put in mortal danger, this lessens the overall impact somewhat, but hey, it's a Hollywood movie. We want and expect our protagonists to survive. In that nature, and in some other aspects of the plot, the movie is relatively predictable. It follows all the beats one would typically expect of a zombie movie without really transcending them in any way.

However, the movie is so relentless and pounding that the audience mostly just gets swept up in the action. At the heart of it all, World War Z is hair-raising. Sure, it may lack the social commentary or overall philosophy of a Dawn of the Dead. It's not going to be remembered years from now as a classic of the genre. But the truth is, I came in as a hardened genre fan expecting to be cynical and disappointed and was served up some action setpieces that can only be described as "awesome."

Large scale zombie mayhem. What more could anybody ask for?

It's hard to not be entertained by the gee whiz action spectacle, even if it never really does get you thinking. And despite its weaknesses, the film does have quite a few strengths to its name as well.

The plot does focus on a single family, but at the beginning of the second act, it expands its scope globally and we get to see how the rest of the world has reacted to the crisis, from India to Israel to South Korea to Canada and Wales. Grand scale reactions to the virus are highly uncommon in zombie films and greatly intriguing. This film does everything I always The Purge to do with its central concept.

The aspect I was most impressed with from a filmmaking standpoint was the editing. From a great  rule-setting sequence in which a child's toy counts down the time it takes for a bite victim to "turn" to an utterly gorgeous shot that follows a zombie's path from a helicopter back to our protagonists (setting the scene and establishing the relative locations of every important character) to a really cool opening montage to a rather excellent bit of business with a shopping cart, the editing was the strongest and most consistent single technical element throughout the film.

Maybe it's just an action movie.

Maybe there's more brains in the zombies' stomachs than there are in the screenplay.

Maybe there is no high philosophy behind the production.

Those aren't necessarily flaws to begin with for a movie like this, but they're insignificant when compared to the one key flaw; one that permeates the celluloid like the zombie plague itself.

Brad Pitt really needs to cut his hair.

TL;DR: World War Z might be different from (and less intelligent than) the book, but it gives you all it has and presents a not half bad post-Danny Boyle zombie thriller.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money on This? Yes, because it's better than most of the hodgepodge of a summer season this is turning out to be.

Word Count: 918

Archive: November 17, 2012

10 Famous Actors You Didn’t Know Were in Slasher Movies

Crispin Glover

Famous for: Back to the Future, River’s Edge, Charlie’s Angels

Skeleton in the Closet: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984)

That’s right, Marty McFly’s father was a victim in Jason’s third (and definitely not final) bloodbath. Released but one year before Back to the Future, F13 4 featured Crispin Glover as Jimmy Mortimer, the virginal nerd who suffers from a relatively unique party foul - death by corkscrew.

Also check out this scene from the movie in which he proves firmly that this movie is set in the 80’s.

Corey Feldman 

Famous for: Stand By Me, The Goonies, The Lost Boys

Skeleton in the Closet: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984)

This was one star-studded movie. Corey Feldman, one of the 80’s biggest child stars originated the role of Tommy Jarvis, the only character to defeat Jason three consecutive times - this kid’s a big deal. After witnessing Jason’s latest murder spree, Tommy pulls a Britney, shaving his head, and going after the big man with his own machete.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Famous for: (500) Days of Summer, Inception, Looper, The Dark Night Rises

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

Filmed during the height of his 3rd Rock From the Sun fame, indie darling Joseph Gordon-Levitt had a stint as bad boy hockey player (I know, right?) Jimmy Howell in this sequel to Halloween II (nevermind the fact that there were four installments to the series in between the two films). I don’t want to post a picture and run the risk of causing this blog to become R-rated, but let’s just say he has an ice skate rather unceremoniously jammed into his face.

Kevin Bacon

Famous for: Mystic River, Apollo 13, Footloose, Animal House

Skeleton in the Closet: Friday the 13th (1980)

Kevin Bacon’s character, Jeff the horndog camp counselor was one of the first people to learn that the health insurance plan at Camp Crystal Lake doesn’t cover being impaled with an arrow.

Laurence Fishburne

Famous for: The Matrix Trilogy

Skeleton in the Closet: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors(1987)

Before Morpheus was committed to his quest to find The One who could defeat the Matrix, he was a sassy orderly at the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital in Springwood Ohio, caring for the last of the Elm Street children. It was a very challenging position that involved delivering medication, enforcing lights out policy, and trying to protect the kids from being carved up by a clownishly wisecracking Freddy Krueger.

Jason Alexander

Famous for: Seinfeld

Skeleton in the Closet: The Burning (1981)

HAIR. BASEBALL. In 1981’s little-known slasher gem, The Burning, our friend best know as George Costanza could be seen as the resident cool guy at Camp Stonewater before the teenage populace was hunted down one by one (and occasionally by the raftful) by the Cropsy killer.

Paul Rudd

Famous for: Clueless, The 40-Year Old Virgin, Role Models, I Love You, Man

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Oh, the things I would do for this man. Paul Rudd starred as a grown up Tommy Doyle, the babysittee from 1978’s Halloween. This was the last movie in the series before installments 3 to 6 were retconned by Halloween H20. Side note: Evidently the key to surviving a horror movie if you’re male is to be named Tommy. Take notes.

Johnny Depp

Famous for: 21 Jump Street, Pirates of the Caribbean, all Tim Burton movies, Sexiest Man Alive 2003 & 2009

Skeleton in the Closet: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Also starring: Glorious Depp Midriff. Before his fame began by wearing pale makeup and funny hats, Johnny Depp played the sexually frustrated jock boyfriend of the main character, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp). I bet she’s really regretting the fact that her character turned down his advances. Even though sex=death in these kind of movies, it’d probably be worth it.

Brad Pitt

Famous for: Thelma & Louise, Seven, Interview with the Vampire, Ocean’s 11, Fight Club, Sexiest Man Alive 1995 & 2000

Skeleton in the Closet: Cutting Class (1989)

Don’t watch this movie. Seriously, I tried. The light filtering is all off and it all looks grubby and terrible. However, it’s a fun slasher romp for any Brad Pitt completist.

George Clooney

Famous for: ER, Batman & Robin, Leatherheads, Up in the Air, The Descendants, Sexiest Man Alive 1997 & 2006

Skeleton in the Closet: Return to Horror High (1987)

It is probably worth noting that the only three men to have ever been voted People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive twice are all on this list.

Make of that what you will.

George has a small role as the actor hired for his looks who leaves the movie set, only to be brutally murdered in an abandoned classroom.

Bonus Actress: Vanna White

Famous for: Wheel of Fortune

Skeleton in the Closet: Graduation Day (1981)

Vanna White had a minor role in Troma’s slasher snoozefest Graduation Day. Although this movie has one of the more bizarre endings of any film of the time period, it drags due to an 8-minute long rockabilly/roller disco break, awkward pacing, and weak kill scenes. Not to mention that in nearly every shot she is seen in, Vanna White is facing AWAY from the camera.

The funniest part of the movie is actually the DVD intro on the anniversary edition in which Troma executive Lloyd Kaufman says that his hat probably fell off because “[his] head is too big from giving so much head.”

This actually happened.

Word Count: 963