Beat It, Essay: Not Quite Worth the Price of... Well, You Know

This is the first essay from my second pair of essays in my Media Aesthetics class. Not to brag, but I also got an A+ on these. This is actually probably the best long term academic essay work I've done in my entire school career thus far, which is why I am proud enough to share them with you guys.

Prompt: Watch a narrative movie for the first time - from a mise-en-scène point of view. Write a two page paper that explores in detail how miss-en-scène was used in two scenes, one from act one and one from act three.

When most people discuss the elements of mise-en-scène, they refer only to movies that handle them well – movies like American Beauty that have complete control over each minute element of the frame and have a total understanding of that element’s importance to the narrative. However, it is equally important to discuss movies in which the mise-en-scène elements are not handled properly for, while firm control can make a masterpiece, a loose grasp can be catastrophic and can even actively work against the narrative.

On March 22^nd, 2013, the film Admission was released. The film, a Tina Fey/Paul Rudd vehicle concerns the attempts of a Princeton admissions officer to get a gifted teen, Jeremiah Balakian, an acceptance – a teen that she believes to be her long-lost son. While the characters were likeable enough, and the plot fluffy and harmless, it was very clear that the director had very little understanding of the workings of mise-en-scène.

Take a scene from the first act of the film – Tina Fey’s character, Portia Nathan, is at home working on reading a stack of student essays when her coworker unexpectedly drops by, leaving her to watch over her two screaming toddlers while she runs to handle an emergency. The emotion at the center of the scene – Portia’s frustration at being pulled away from her work – is by no means complex, but is clumsily mishandled.

The lighting is a basic wash, with no additional technical elements other than those that indicated that it is, in fact, late at night. The scene was shot almost exclusively in a closed frame wide shot that was almost exclusively negative space. The actors were so small in frame, in fact, that it almost felt like watching a staged play from not too great seats. This, combined with the very simple lighting, effectively detaches the audience completely from feeling any sort of relationship with the character’s struggles.

The scene is set in an imposing Victorian mansion-like home that in no way reflected the character’s personality or sensibilities (in fact, in the very next scene, she mentions her joy at living a “simple life.”), and any feelings of comfort that could be used to indicate her desire to return to work are completely destroyed by the vivid orange color of the essay folders. Orange is one of the most jarring colors to the human eye, a fact that further alienates the audience from relating to the character. The only positive element is the costuming, which seems organic and natural to the characters in question, but the authenticity of the wardrobe only emphasizes how cut off one feels from the narrative.

The sound design was likewise lacking. There was not even a note of non-diegetic music to stir the audience’s emotions and the screaming of the children was somewhat muffled and nonthreatening, as if the foley artist accidentally left a sock on the microphone. The children that are supposed to annoy us end up feeling more like a background presence in the scene.

In short, what we have is a scene that is designed to make us feel at home, then pull us out of that feeling with discordant action. However the hopeless mismanagement of mise-en-scène elicits almost the exact opposite response. The opening “homey” shots are discomforting and the annoying children do not have enough force in the frame to have a true presence.

An emotionally charged scene from Act 3 fares slightly better, but still suffers from sloppy mise-en-scène. This is the scene in which Portia makes her arguments for accepting Jeremiah into Princeton. His grades are low, but he has proven himself to be a gifted prodigy. Portia must convince the firmly traditional Princeton Review Board to overlook his scores and admit him to the university over other, more qualified, applicants.

The lighting is once again a very simple wash, but in this case it is actually effective. Combined with the setting, a claustrophobic and drab white room, it evokes a sense of rigid compliance with norms, reflecting the environment into which Portia is presenting her case. The orange folders actually work in this scene, reflecting the discomfort and anxiety that she feels, and the costuming works in much the same way as the previously discussed scene. It is organic and believable, but nothing special.

The scene also features a fresh and clever use of open framing. When each applicant is being discussed, he or she can be seen waiting nervously behind the reviewers’ shoulders. This unique touch is inconsistent, however, and has much less emotional impact because not every applicant discussed appears, sometimes they appear too late or too early, and one even appears incongruously behind the wrong reviewer. This is tremendously distracting and bothersome, pulling focus away from this scene – one that the audience is supposed to be intensely invested in.

The sound likewise suffers from the somewhat muffled quality that invades the whole film and the music sputters and starts, halfheartedly punctuating the sad moments. Fey’s performance carries the entire emotion of the scene on its own, and while she does a commendable job, she is no match for the haphazard and awkward mise-en-scène that absolutely buries it.

While, it wasn’t necessarily a bad film, Admission sets an example for aspiring filmmakers everywhere. Even with strong performers and a mostly workable plot, it is exceedingly important to keep a firm grasp on every single mise-en-scène element. If they are ignored, they will rise up and work against you. And they will win. Incorrect handling of mise-en-scène can topple the emotional impact of a film, and it’s nearly impossible to recover from that.
Word Count: 1055

Something About Much Ado

Year: 2013
Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Fran Kranz
Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

When Sergio and I saw the trailer for Joss Whedon's Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing before The Great Gatsby, he leaned over and whispered "It looks like it was filmed in somebody's backyard." The thing is, it was.

Joss Whedon gathered a group of his friends at his home in Santa Monica and they spent twelve days shooting during his break from The Avengers, and it is very clear that they had a lot of fun. That sense of whimsy and friends just screwing around is present in every frame of Much Ado, one of Shakespeare's most domestic and low-key comedies.

Side Note: Whedon's wife suggested that, in lieu of taking a vacation for their twentieth wedding anniversary, he stay home and film this movie, which had long been a passion project of his. Wife of the Year Award right there.

Although summarizing the plot is somewhat of an undertaking, I shall give the short version. The Prince Don Pedro (Reed Diamond of Dollhouse), his brother Don John (Sean Maher of Firefly), and their friends Benedick (Alexis Denisof of Buffy and Angel) and Claudio (Fran Kranz of Dollhouse and The Cabin in the Woods) arrive home from the warfront and stay at the home of Leonato (Clark Gregg of The Avengers), his daughter Hero (Jillian Morgese of The Avengers), and her cousin Beatrice (Amy Acker of Angel, Dollhouse, and The Cabin in the Woods).

Side Note #2: Fran Kranz is a hunk, and Claudio's shirtless scene was absolutely a standout. In my research for this review, I realized that he played the weedy stoner (pun not intended, but I like it) in The Cabin in the Woods. I have no idea how he got so handsome but I would like a copy of his workout regimen.

Anyway, Claudio falls instantly in love with Hero, as men in Shakespeare's plays are wont to do. The Prince decides to woo Hero for him and speaks with her father, setting up their wedding for next week. Remember they just met. Anyway. Don John is a mustache-twirlingly evil man and he hates his brother with such a passion that he makes it his project to break Hero and Claudio apart.

And while the wedding arrangements are being, well, arranged, The Prince gets bored and decides to trick Beatrice and Benedick (both of whom view each other with frequently expressed contempt) into falling in love with each other, and enlists the rest of the household to help him out. The Prince is basically a twelve year old girl.

Hilarity ensues.

Obviously, because it's Shakespeare, the language proves a challenge, but Much Ado is one of Shakespeare's least linguistically complex plays and it's easy enough to understand that even kids would be able to grasp the basics of the situation. Amy Acker is certainly the best with the iambic pentameter dialogue, delivering her lines in a totally natural, modern woman type of way. Alexis Denisof is another standout and, since they are the closest to what we could consider leads in the film, this is a great benefit to both understanding and entertainment.

Totes adorbs. -William Shakespeare

Most of the other actors are game, but some struggle with the archaic wording. Reed Diamond especially sounds like he's chewing on molasses while trying to cough up a marble. Luckily he grows into it (either that or you get used to it) and you can sit back and enjoy the situations unraveling without wanting to take a hole punch to your eardrums.

Whedon was very faithful to the original text; The only alterations he made were some abridgments and one understandable switch ("If I do not love her, I am a Jew" to "...I am a fool"). Although another offensive line about Ethiop's is used to great effect in a visual gag.

And, like most textually faithful Shakespeare adaptations, this is where the comedy comes in full force. The visual comedy is tremendous, with some inspired slapstick on the parts of Acker and Denisof (man, that dude is spry), and sight gags involving iPhones and Sprinkles cupcakes. These touches save the film from being another plodding retread of a much-repeated story.

Two of the most laugh-out-loud funny scenes of the movie revolve around the inept constable Dogberry (Nathan Fillion of Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog) and his partner Verges (Tom Lenk of Buffy, Cabin in the Woods, and my wedding fantasies). These characters are the comic relief (from the other comedy) and their timing is impeccable. Also in on the fun are the two watchmen, played by Brian McElhany and Nick Kocher (of the web comedy duo BriTANicK who have worked with both Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillion previously). I seriously can't get enough of their timing, and I'm just gonna move on before I say "timing" again.

Now it's time to talk about another standout, Jillian Morgese. Her story is one for the film history books.  A struggling New York actor, she got a job as an extra on the set of The Avengers as a waitress in the scene where the city is being destroyed by an army of rampaging aliens. Joss Whedon asked her if she could be scared. She said yes. He asked if she could break down and cry. Of course.

"Now I just need you to look back at the destruction and give up on your life."

She impressed Whedon so much that he cast her as Hero in his film. And it's easy to see what he saw. She has an inherent star quality that just draws you in. As Hero, she is meek and virginal and she is totally believable in those qualities, but her manner has such a strong presence that your eye is drawn to her in every scene she appears in.

Good job, Mr. Whedon.

The film is shot in slick black and white, with classy white fadeouts in between each act. The production values are incredible considering that it was shot for approximately the price of a Big Mac. The one element that isn't as consistently strong as the rest is the camera work, which is mostly fine but occasionally shudders as if the cameraman tripped and nobody bothered to fix it.

However, this doesn't happen quite enough to be a major flaw, and the movie is a lot of fun for Shakespeare and Whedonverse fans alike. It doesn't take itself seriously at all, so it's hard to ascribe monumental artistic value to it, but it is a project of such unflagging joy that it's almost impossible not to like.

TL;DR: Much Ado About Nothing is a piece of fluff, but is one of the best modernizations of Shakespeare to date.
Rating: 7/10
Should I Spend Money On This? Yes, because Joss Whedon and his friends doing anything is worth a peek.
Word Count: 1161

CinemaBeach: Slasher 101

Here is my first Killer Waves post!

I'm very excited!

Read it!

Love me!

Hello everyone!

My name is Brennan Klein, and I have been appointed as the new curator for this blog and, let me tell you, I could not be more excited. Horror movies are my bread and butter. I see a new horror film about once a week and rewatch old ones even more frequently. It all started when I was a little high school student and decided to watch Scream for the first time. I loved it, but there was a wealth of references to 80′s slasher films I hadn’t seen. To catch up, I watchedHalloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th, as well as all of their sequels (which frequently numbered into the double digits). I was hooked. Then I dove deep into the forgotten realms of 80′s horror and never looked back.

Although slasher films are the apple of my eye, I love all horror so this blog won’t just be psycho killers brandishing edged weapons. I’ve got so much gut-munching, chest-bursting, demon-exorcising joy to share with you guys, and I couldn’t be happier.

My plans so far include a couple recurring features like The Slash Register, a feature dedicated to my beloved slasher films of yesteryear and Cinema du Mort, which will focus exclusively on foreign releases. Also in progress are Where Are They Now? features, Best/Worst Lists, Director/Actor Showcases, Genre Studies, and much much more. I’m also very willing to tackle any requests. There is no film so bad that I won’t watch it, and I would welcome any audience suggestions for reviews or feature pieces.

I’m in the middle of watching five movies this weekend, so I’ll have a lot of articles coming down the pike, including my first Slash Register, dusting off a couple of old cult movies from the late 80′s.

To get everybody up to speed, I’ve included a brief(ish) history of the slasher film as well as a glossary of terms that I will be using throughout my articles.

Slasher Movie 101

We begin our journey in the late 1800′s in Paris. (Seriously). 1897 saw the opening of a theater the likes of which France had never seen before and never would again. The Grand Guignol specialized in naturalistic horror shows with notoriously bloody climaxes, attempting to display showers of gore in as realistic a manner as possible. Naturally (due to the secret fascination with blood and human misfortune that all people harbor¹), the shows were a huge hit with Parisian audiences, but declined in popularity following the atrocities of the Second World War. A battle weary public had seen their fill of gore and the Grand Guignol closed its doors in 1962.

But, like the unstoppable killers that would come about two decades in the future, the genre wouldn’t take death for an answer. The spirit of gory horror made its way across Europe and landed in the cinemas of Italy just one year later in 1963. The Italian giallo movement, began (by most accounts) with Mario Bava. The giallo films (named after the Italian word for “yellow” – the color of the covers of Italian thriller novels – the closest American analogue is pulp fiction crime stories) were gruesome murder mysteries that generally followed a black gloved killer dispatching a slew of beauties in eerily beautiful ways, often eschewing narrative continuity for phantasmagorical atmosphere.

Bava’s film Sei donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black Lace) is an influential early example, depicting the murders of fashion models in Rome. Not to be outdone, other filmmakers followed suit releasing similar films with equally unwieldy and intriguing titles like Angelo Dorigo’s Assassino senza volto (The Killer Without a Face), Lucio Fulci’sNon si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture a Duckling), Bava’s own Reazione a catena (Twitch of the Death Nerve), and reached a peak with Dario Argento’s genre-bending supernatural masterpiece Suspiria.

Strangely, the massive Italian craze didn’t cross the pond to the Americas in any real way for quite some time. Perhaps one reason for this was that studios were already preoccupied with copying Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 megablockbusterPsycho. Although very chaste by today’s standards, Hitchcock’s masterpiece shocked audiences and sent competitors clambering for more.

After about five years or so, the genre settled down and went mostly dormant until a pair of two releases in 1974, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in America and Bob Clark’s² Black Christmas in Canada. Both films could now be considered proto-slashers. Although they don’t quite adhere to the now established formula (And how could they? It wouldn’t be invented for another half a decade), both films featured a young cast being murdered one by one by a psycho. Most importantly, the only survivor is a girl who in the third act fights valiantly for her life and just barely escapes.

The nascent genre again hibernated until John Carpenter’s low budget horror picture Halloween in 1978, a film which for years was the most profitable film in history. The first prominent American film to be heavily influenced by the gialli, the central figure of Michael Myers is a faceless killer, the embodiment of pure evil with nary a trace of humanity. In fact, in the film he is only credited as The Shape.

This film, among numerous other influences, unintentionally cemented in one of the central tenets of slasher mythology. If you have sex, you will die. However, despite being a box office smash, one of the few masterpieces of the genre, and featuring the impeccable Jamie Lee Curtis in her first role, this was a very personal film and as such did not specifically ignite the slasher craze.

That film would be 1980′s Friday the 13th, a grubby little shocker directed by ex-soft core porn producer Sean S. Cunningham. It didn’t have much in the way of plot, characterization, dialogue, or even lighting, but what it did have was an unforgettable series of gore effects cooked up by make-up effects maestro Tom Savini, who had previously worked on George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. It was nothing more than a cheap rip-off of Halloween (despite my deep love for the franchise, this is undoubtedly so), but audiences went bananas and within a year, slasher films were running headlong into their Golden Age.

From 1981 to 1984, slasher movies were produced at unprecedented rates, all trying to grab their slice of the pie from what turned out to be an enormous audience pool of genre goodwill. 1980 saw Jamie Lee Curtis helm two more Canadian features, Prom Night and Terror Train. 1981 had seen enough slasher films already that an early parody of the genre, Student Bodies, was released. Also that year came the first sequel to a major hit in Friday the 13th Part 2. The success of that film ignited more major franchises starting with Halloween II coming later that same year. Gore pictures accompanied every holiday from the already mentioned Black Christmas and Halloween to New Year’s Evil, Graduation Day, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me, and even April Fool’s Day.

Jason was already killing in earnest, and Michael was on his way to building up a franchise when 1984 saw an increase in denouncements of the genre’s immorality as well as the rise of the “Video Nasties”³ censorship movement in Britain. Paramount called a truce, releasing Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and declaring Jason officially kaput. The genre was pretty much bankrupt for ideas anyway at that point in the decade and had begun floundering to diminishing returns.

That would all turn around later that same year when horror maven Wes Craven introduced dream demon Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street, the most baroquely European slasher film the market had seen in years and a massive success (In fact, the releasing company New Line Entertainment became known as “The House That Freddy Built”). The still warm bodies of the slashers had suddenly been resurrected, only this time many films incorporated paranormal elements. Freddy had opened up a new frontier on which the slashers could coast for another four years or so. This Supernatural Era saw Jason rise from the dead (Paramount quickly reneged on that pesky “final” business), Michael befall a druid curse, and Freddy rapidly transform from a dark murderer to a clownish prankster in a series of increasingly inane sequels (bar A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, one of the best slasher followups of the decade).

BY 1988 however, the MPAA had all but neutered the genre and 1989 saw the release of some of the most putrid pictures of all time, including Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, and the infamous Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.

Michael wasn’t dead yet, and marched right on into Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (It’s always a bad sign when they stop numbering these things) but New Line knew a lost cause when they saw one and immediately scrapped their hero with Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. Jason belly flopped so hard that Paramount sold the franchise off and he wouldn’t be heard from until years later with another quickly shot off franchise ender, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. The name Friday the 13th had such little cachet by that point that the producers had to bank on Jason’s popularity alone to sell it. Thus the slasher genre entered the bleakest period yet with all three major franchises forgoing numbers and hope.

The first franchise revival (the world “final” began to lose all meaning for genre buffs) came in the form of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, a magnificent meta sequel in which Freddy comes into the real world to attack the filmmakers who created him, which barely made a blip on the radar. Undeterred, Wes Craven tried again and found success in 1996′s Scream, written by Kevin Williamson, a hit meta slasher satire that brought the genre back in full force, fraught with self aware in-jokes and meta commentary, forgoing gore for winking chuckles and starlets in bras.

In 1997, the Postmodern Age saw Kevin Williamson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer brought to life. 1998 brought back Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, the fan consensus best sequel of that franchise (with Kevin Williamson in the producer’s seat). It was truly the age of Kevin Williamson as that same year’s Scream 2 was an even bigger success than its precursor and the genre merrily rolled along once more until 2000.

Then the 2000′s. The 2000′s were a rough time for everyone’s favorite psycho killers. Jason X bounced in and out of theaters in 2001 as a largely unsuccessful appetizer for Freddy vs. Jason in 2003. Admittedly, this film made boatloads of money and was the highest grossing film in both franchises, but a single success in an entire decade is nothing to bring out the ticker tape for. The New Millenium horror environment was more focused on Japanese remakes, found footage, and the second coming of zombies to pay attention to the grubby little cash-in films about people stabbing each other with sharp things. The closest the decade got to the horror of the mid-80′s was the high concept, low class Final Destination franchise.

After a decade or so on the backburner, people started to feel nostalgic for the simplicity of the olden days and thus the Great Remake Bonanza began, seeing franchises revived left and right with Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Wes Craven’s Scream 4, as well as reimaginings of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, Prom Night and even My Bloody Valentine. Although some were box office successes, critics and audiences alike remained unimpressed.

The modern slasher has thankfully moved on from remake culture, opting to take Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s ball of self-referential postmodern meta pastiche pictures and run with it. These pictures are some of the most fun and bloody films yet and films like Adam Green’s Hatchet franchise (starring Kane Hodder, who played Jason 4 times over two decades), The Cabin in the Woods, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, and You’re Next (slated for release this August) are once again being made by directors not for the cash, but for the love of the genre and that is a wonderful place for the genre to be.

Note: This is but a surface level look at a genre teeming with surprises around every corner. I mostly focused on the Holy Trinity (Freddy, Jason, and Michael), because they were decent indicators of the trends taking place at the time. There are many more great (and many many more terrible) movies than I have mentioned here, and the goal of theSlash Register is to take a look at those.

—————————

Footnotes:

¹ This is nothing to worry about. It is an ineradicable aspect of human nature that we are fascinated by scenes of carnage. This is why people slow down to catch glimpses of an accident on the side of the freeway. It is neither morally wrong nor right, merely a universal truth. I’ll probably release an article later elaborating on the philosophies on the moralities of horror.

² Yes, that Bob Clark. Famed director of A Christmas Story. This provides me an endless source of amusement.

³ More on that later

Slasher Glossary

Final Girl: The one girl who inevitably survives the film. There is always a Final Girl. If a man survives, it is invariably because a girl is also still alive.

Expendable Meat: Characters that are given nothing more than a name and a basic character trait (ie. prankster, jock, mechanic) and are only there to be killed.

Meet the Meat: A scene in the first act where the expendable characters are lined up and introduced through heavy-handed dialogue.

Final Girl Sequence: A scene in the third act (or sometimes the entire third act) in which the Final Girl and the killer duke it out in a big showdown.

Tableau of Horrors: A scene in which the Final Girl discovers the artfully arranged bodies of her friends as she is running from the killer. They drop down from doorways and pop out of closets, seemingly of their own bidding.

Jump Scare: A cheap scare tactic where something unexpected is shown to make the audience shriek. It’s scary in the moment, but doesn’t make for lasting impressions except for in very special cases.

Spring-Loaded Cat: An especially egregious jump scare in which a cat jumps at the protagonist from offscreen.

Body Count Padding: Characters introduced in the middle of the film for the sole purpose of seeing them die.

Thanks to everybody who stuck with me through this inordinately long article, I promise everything else will make a lot more sense from here on out. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Word Count: 2573

CinemaBeach: Bye Bye, Bayou

Hatchet III

Year: 2013

Director: BJ McDonnell

Cast: Danielle Harris, Kane Hodder, Zach Galligan

Run Time: 1 hour, 22 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

Since 2006, Adam Green’s Hatchet movies have been the go-to source for old school American horror. The legend of Victor Crowley has seen a veritable who’s who of horror veterans including Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street), Joshua Leonard (The Blair Witch Project), Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destination), AJ Bowen (You’re Next, A Horrible Way to Die), Danielle Harris (Halloween 4, Halloween 5, both Rob Zombie remakes), and of course Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees in four consecutive films) as the murderous Victor Crowley.

And that’s the short list. I cut many actors out so as not to bore you with a laundry list of films. Obviously the franchise is very in touch with its roots, and the (supposed) end to this trilogy is no different. Danielle Harris and Kane Hodder both return for Hatchet III, alongside Derek Mears (the Friday the 13th remake), Zach Galligan (Gremlins, Gremlins 2), and Caroline Williams (Halloween II, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, Leprechaun 3).This film isn’t messing around, and it has no prentensions that anybody would want to see it except for its cavalcade of in-jokes and fountains of blood. That is all it does, but there is no doubt it does them well.

The most surprising thing about Hatchet III is its integrity concerning its predecessors. Written again by Adam Green and directed by BJ McDonnell (who worked closely with Green on the previous two films), this film works in much the same way the other two did – mixing offbeat meta humor that manages not to be too on the nose (jokes about “contrived decision making” and reusing actors that are somehow subtle enough not to bludgeon the audience) with masterpiece practical effects – and here’s the kicker – no CGI was used for any of the gore effects in the entire trilogy.

The entire notoriously bloodthirsty franchise features horrific, stomach-turning sequences of bones being crushed, jaws ripped off, skulls split in half, and violence too intense to even describe without putting a NSFW tag on this post, and all of this was achieved with prosthetics, make-up, latex, and silicone. What is lacks in artistic merit it makes up for in pure foolhardy skill.

The plot follows Marybeth Dunston (Harris), the only survivor of two blood baths perpetrated by local urban legend Victor Crowley (Hodder), a deformed boy who was bullied by teens who accidentally set his house on fire, killing his father, and who now seeks revenge on those who enter his New Orleans swamp. Most recently, she has shot, chainsawed, and otherwise incapacitated Mr. Crowley and is arrested when she wanders into the local police station covered in blood, toting a shotgun, and muttering something about “I killed him.”

The paramedics arrive to find a massacre on Honey Island Swamp and Victor Crowley winds up on the mortician’s table. As it turns out, he’s not quite dead (apparently he’s a ghost who is doomed to regenerate and repeat his night of sorrow every time the sun goes down) and Randy the paramedic (Sean Whalen) ends up on the wrong end of an autopsy. The rest of his team manage to call for backup before getting summarily slaughtered (a good seven deaths in about thirty seconds – I had been trying to write down how each person had died before this point and quickly decided to just give up).

A team of officers led by SWAT commander Hawes (Mears) and featuring the least odious comic relief character in history (Cody Blue Snider) attempt to find the perpetrator of the carnage as Marybeth is enlisted by the sheriff’s ex-wife (Williams), a reporter with a strong fascination with the Crowley legend, to help end the torment once and for all. You see, Marybeth is the only living relative of one of the boys on whom Crowley wants revenge and to defeat him,  she (and only she) needs to present Crowley with what he wants – the body of his father.

The theme of the film (Yes, it has a theme. How quaint!) is being unable to escape your destiny and the film drives that point in with a sledgehammer. One of the most likable characters is given the most gruesome death of all three movies just to show that nobody is safe, and that this film is the end-all (unless, of course, they make another). It is bleak and it is brutal, but it is also a solid horror picture that features, among other things, Kane Hodder’s ability to vomit on cue and two ex-Jasons squaring off against one another. It is scary, bloody, silly, and although it is almost by necessity weaker than its two previous entries, it is one of the best ways to end (maybe) a beloved cult franchise.

Hatchet III is only for the most invested of horror viewers, but if you fall into that category it’s definitely worth it and, for this reviewer at least, it’ll be hard to say goodbye to Victor Crowley.

With a concise 82 minute run time, this films tears through the plot so it can get to the killings – and what a gloriously rendered series of killings it is. This film is only for the steely genre faithful, but the gore is over-the-top, almost too realistic, and tremendously fun if you’re into that sort of thing.

Body Count: About 30, but some come so fast it could be even more. That's an average of two deaths every five minutes.

TL;DR: Hatchet III is more of the same bloody mayhem, only for the most hardcore fans of the genre.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Pay for This? I can think of maybe only one person reading this who might even be able to stomach the gore in this film - even Kyla, a veteran like myself, had trouble sitting through it. So maybe not.

Word Count: 1008

Min(ion)ority Report

Year: 2013
Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Cast: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Benjamin Bratt
Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

We're not even pretending that people care about things that aren't minions anymore.

Now let's make this very clear - this movie is definitely for kids. Forgive me for laughing like a lunatic during Gru's scene in the wig shop. Or awww-ing with the rest of them at anything the minions did - which was a lot this time around, Illumination Entertainment knows what's up.

Despicable Me 2 picks up within a year of its 2010 predecessor and Gru (Carell) has turned from the Dark Side of supervillainy to father the three adorable little girls who have stolen his heart. Aside from a subplot involving Gru being overprotective of the oldest, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), these girls are shunted aside for most of the movie so we can watch minion antics.

Honestly, this is great. You go, minions. Do your minion thing.

Gru is contacted by the Anti-Villain League because, as an ex-villain himself, he is the perfect man to go undercover and discover who stole a secret transformative serum that turns adorable little animals into ruthless killers. It's basically a G-rated version of the Hannibal Lecter/FBI thing. What follows is a stock spy narrative in which red herrings are tossed halfheartedly about and Gru grows closer with his partner, Lucy (Wiig).

Really the plot doesn't matter except as a framework for us to watch the lovable Gru and his incompetent minions interact with the world in ways that sometimes veer in the too-childish fart jokes direction but frequently shine with more wit than is necessary for a kid's movie. Now, it's no Billy Wilder screenplay, but it's harmless and doesn't actually feel like a sequel. This movie, aside for a few character details could absolutely work as a standalone and that is one of its greatest strengths. It just doesn't feel like a followup to the beloved Despicable Me, and thus isn't beholden to comparison, which would only do it harm.

Watching the film is like blowing a soap bubble. It'll pop soon enough and you'll never think about it again, but you can't help but gaze in wonder at its ascent into the sky. The tangible joy behind the creation of this film is even enough to justify the creation of a character that could only be a ploy to sell more plushies.

Sergio wants me to mention that they're Laker colors.

Unfortunately, plumbing the depths of this film does not yield pleasant discoveries. The film's villain is a grotesque Mexican stereotype that isn't necessarily offensive but is so knife edge close to crossing the line that it can be rather distracting at times. Also featured is a somewhat less contentious (if only because he's in less of the movie) Asian stereotype played by Ken Jeong, who is one role away from being cast as a poorly driving, violin playing mathematician.

But by far the single worst element in the film is one that is only featured prominently in two scenes, but both flies in the face of the original movie (the only time I'll directly compare the two) and is just small-minded. The youngest daughter, Agnes (Elsie Fisher) is rehearsing for her school's Mother's Day pageant and laments the fact that she doesn't have a mother.

Never mind the fact that her real mother abandoned her, and she adores Gru as her father, a fact which is explicitly stated later in the movie. She is not complete without a female influence in her life and, as a gay man, it is heartbreaking to see this idea make its way onto the big screen and into kids' minds. The scene is meant to be a setup for Gru's eventual romance (Spoilers? No.) but the film veers from peddling mildly un-PC racial sterotypes to straight up pointing at single fathers or gay dads and saying "You're inadequate."

Despite its two major flaws, Despicable Me 2 is too earnest and well-meaning to be truly malicious and is still a completely watchable and, at times, quite funny film. I would rate it 7/10, but I do have to dock a point out of fairness to my people.

Also there's two Pitbull songs in it. Minus 1,000,000 points.

TL;DR: Although it walks a tightrope in terms of being politically correct, Despicable Me 2 is solid and clever children's entertainment.
Rating: 6/10
Should I Spend Money on This? Yes because minions.
Word Count: 756

Beat It, Essay: Life's a Happy Song

This is the second half of my award-winning first essay pairing from my Media Aesthetics class.

Prompt: Write a two page paper that identifies the theme and chronicles the arc of the lead character in one of your favorite narrative movies, act by act. 

One of my favorite movies of all time is, no joke, 2011’s The Muppets, starring Jason Segel and Amy Adams. What made me fall in love with the film is that, despite being a saccharine sweet, squeaky-clean kids movie, it was simultaneously a well-constructed, very mature and thoughtful tale about the process of growing up and becoming your own person (not to mention that it was filled with loads of meta humor, for which I have an enormous soft spot). Underneath The Muppets’ broad strokes and bright colors are threads of tender and heartfelt explorations of the pitfalls and difficulties of the transition to adulthood that, when woven together, form a tapestry of subtext and elucidate the film’s main theme: Part of growing up is letting the people you care about do the same.

            In Act One, Gary (born and raised in Smalltown, USA), Mary, his girlfriend of ten years, and his younger (Muppet) brother Walter discover that it is up to them to help the Muppets raise enough money to save their studio from a corrupt oil tycoon. Gary is wholeheartedly supportive of his little brother, even taking him on his and Mary’s anniversary trip to Los Angeles. He’s perpetually cheerful (in his own words “Everything is great, Everything is grand”) and perfectly comfortable to be living in complete stasis. He’s lived in the same town his entire life, he’s had the same gorgeous girl by his side in a pleasant, but completely undynamic relationship (it is implied that he and Mary have done little more than hold hands for the entire decade of their relationship), and he’s always lived with and taken care of his little brother.

            In Act Two, the Muppets are preparing for their variety show with Walter and Gary leading the charge. Suddenly Gary’s worldview begins to change. The world is not immutable. There are many, many thousands of moving parts and he is only one of them. The world around him is constantly shifting – his classic heroes the Muppets are now forgotten relics of time gone by, and his simple ideas about what constitutes a happy relationship are being tested mightily. As he’s been throwing himself wholeheartedly into helping his little brother and the Muppets (without a second thought as to the implications of his generosity), Mary is feeling ignored and left out on her own anniversary trip. Gary is still trying to retain his childlike sense of altruism but the dirty, busy world of Los Angeles is pulling him in all directions, and he loses focus of his priorities due to his sense of duty to society in general.

            All is lost when, on the night of the big performance, Mary abruptly takes a bus back home, forcing Gary to reflect upon his own actions and their implications. In the musical number “Man or Muppet,” he is torn between the love of his life, and his childlike attachment to the Muppets and his little brother, who is proving himself as an individual during his aid of the Muppets, but whom he still views as a small child who needs to be coddled and protected.

            In Act Three, Gary returns home to prove to Mary that she is the most important person in his life and Walter blossoms as a performer completely without his brother’s help, saving the show and launching the Muppets’ popularity into the stratosphere. Gary has learned that by accepting his adult responsibility to his own life and saving his relationship with the woman he loves, he has allowed Walter to do the same, growing up and saving his true love – the Muppets.

            Gary’s process of growing up was long-delayed and difficult but finally completed, culminating in his engagement. His character arc perfectly reflected the movie’s major theme. Moving on and allowing his brother to take control of his own life allowed both men to flourish as individuals. Without accepting his responsibilities of adulthood, Gary never would have succeeded in any of his goals, remained in a permanent state of stasis, and essentially ruined his love life, the careers of the Muppets, and the well being of his brother. This is a harsh truth that The Muppets relays with respect and subtlety, and that is why it’s one of my all-time favorites. 
Word Count: 768

Your Call is Important to Us, Please Stay on the Line

Hi all! I currently have three articles making their way through the pipes at CinemaBeach. So I consider my job of writing an article a day pretty well taken care of. However, I have to send the articles through an editor who looks over and publishes them on his own time, so I can't control when they're released. Unfortunately today does not seem to be one of those days. In the meantime, please enjoy these screenshots from the final scene of 1980's Friday the 13th, in which the nurse is clearly played by Taylor Swift.

Word Count: 95

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