Dead By Dawn

Year: 1987

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Let's get this out of the way first. Evil Dead 2 is not a remake. There has been a long-standing debate over the nature of this six-years-later sequel because it takes place in the same cabin in the woods and opens with a truncated, reshot version of events from The Evil Dead, replacing Ash Williams' (Bruce Campbell) four friends with just one - his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler).

This was shot out of necessity because the company that owned the rights to the original film wouldn't allow them to use footage from it to open their film. Studios are dumb. Always have been, always will be. But that doesn't change the fact that, but for ten minutes in the beginning, this sequel is its own entirely unique movie. So there.

My sentiments exactly, severed hand.

As you can probably surmise from that screenshot, Evil Dead 2 has somewhat more of a sense of humor than its fairly straight-laced precursor (and more of a budget, but that's a different story entirely). The elements of the original are still intact - zooming Steadicam shots, explosively creative and zany editing and performances, and an Amazon sized river of blood and guts. But all of it is approached from the angle of outright slapstick comedy, complete with pratfalls and silly sound effects.

This is where Sam Raimi really hit his stride tonally and discovered his talents for perfectly treading the line between the two genres, making this film the high water mark against which all subsequent cross-genre attempts would be measured. I've included it on my Top Horror Comedies list at the number 3 spot and I always urge anybody who hasn't seen it to immediately find a way to get it onto their TV screens.

But I can never escape the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I just like the original a little bit better. I'm in a staggering minority here, but the lo-fi cheesefest of The Evil Dead is right up my alley, especially in terms of the gore effects which are of course present in abundance in the sequel, but more specifically comedic and less grounded in tactile physicality than the first.

I mean, yes. Here we have a ballet dancing demon, a headless body brandishing a chainsaw, eyeballs flying into mouths, spurts of blood in every color of the rainbow, and plenty of sticky grossness. It's frankly incredible. But it's more glossy and slick than the DIY gore of the glory days. I just don't adore it with my entire heart the same way I love the fleshy tackiness of what came before. 

Although it's hard to hate the goo. I'm not complaining here.

That's a really minor argument and it has no impact on the quality of this film. It actually helps this film achieve its perfect tonal balance, but I guess that tone is slightly off center from the bulls-eye on my own personal dartboard.

But enough about the first one! This is the sequel! And it has more money and more humor, so let's not get bogged down in petty nitpicking.

The entire first half of the film (minus the recap opening) is basically a one man show as Bruce Campbell fights the zombiefied Linda and, later, his own hand and mugs at the camera something fierce. Ash is of necessity more fleshed out in this film, so he really settles into the character and turns him into the zany badass that would go down in history as one of the most iconic horror heroes of all time.

I have his bumper sticker on my car, even.

I don't even remember why I was complaining about this film. Everything pales in comparison to the chainsaw hand.

The second half throws him in with a whole crop of new blood bags. I mean, friends. There's Annie (Sarah Berry), the knowledgeable daughter of the demonologist who owns the cabin; her boyfriend Ed (Richard Domeier) who says about three lines before he's thrown onto the chopping block; Jake (Dan Hicks), their hillbilly guide through the forest; and Bobbie Joe (Kassie Wesley), his skanky girlfriend who is attacked by the forest in a much less rapey scene, presumably to make up for the last film's sins.

It's at this point that the film slows down somewhat as it enters its plot phase. But the film never loses its humor, all the way to the very end. All in all it's a plenty terrific zombie movie, one of the best of the business. This is the film that planted Sam Raimi firmly into the horror pantheon without question and ignited the roaring fire of support many horror fans for his entire filmography.

One of the best horror sequels to ever be released and a perfect example of the horror comedy. A hit in the cult market. Hilarious, groundbreaking, and genre-defining. Not bad for a low budget feature starring nobody you know.

Pictured: Sam Raimi - Actual Magical Witch

TL;DR: Evil Dead 2 doesn't have the grubby charm of the first film, but makes up for it with a perfect blend of comedy and gross-out horror.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 879

Reviews In This Series

The Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981)

Evil Dead 2 (Raimi, 1987)
Army of Darkness (Raimi, 1992)
Evil Dead (Alvarez, 2013)

The Cabin In The Woods

Year: 1981

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In preparation for what is shaping up to be a pretty darn cool essay, I've been rewatching Sam Raimi's quintessential horror series, The Evil Dead. This is a film series that would change horror as we knew it, create a massive moral uproar, and ignite a cult following that pulses steadily to this day.

Way back when, before James Franco the Dumb and , before Drag Me To Hell and Spider-Man, Sam Raimi was a young buck with a couple bucks and the determination to make a movie out of it. That movie was The Evil Dead, a horror film with a fairly straightforward premise - five college students spend Spring Break in a remote cabin in the woods where they unwittingly release a horde of Candarian demons that begin to kill and possess them one by one.

You might raise an eyebrow at the whole "demon possession" angle when the poster and fanbase so adamantly insist that it's a zombie movie. Well, you might as well pluck that eyebrow out because human logic has no place in the realm of Raimi.

Our lovely demon zombie beautician would gladly help you with the tweezers.

The Evil Dead is the story of five young men and women: Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), his best friend Scotty (Richard DeManincor), and Scotty's girlfriend Shelly (Theresa Tilly). I listed no personality traits because there are very few discernible personality traits between the five of them.

Scotty's kind of a douche and Ash is the protagonist. That's about it for character development. So, with a bare bones plot and paper characters, what is it that makes this film so dreadfully important?

I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader.

Behind it all was a young auteur with a lot of talent and something to prove, and from that was born one of the single greatest creative downpours the genre had seen thus far. I'm talking upside down, sideways, crossways camera, I'm talking rapid-fire editing and extreme close-ups, I'm talking zooming improvised Steadicam shots and madcap wall-to-wall sound design.

Sam Raimi blanketed the entire film with his gleeful and energetically creative approach to filmmaking and it's grubby, kinetic, exciting, and unlike anything anybody had ever seen before. The Evil Dead is an unrelenting assault on the senses that is like sweet rain to the genre faithful.

Show this image to any self-respecting horror fan and their pulse will skyrocket. Seriously. Try it.

No, it's not a comedy. That kind of thing wouldn't happen for a while. Although he's frequently lauded for his perfect blend of horror and comedy, Raimi made his start here with a straight genre piece and it is beautiful. And who needs Three Stooges routines when we have unreserved melodrama and geysers of blood?

With this film, Raimi took everything about the increasingly nihilistic horror genre of the 70's and pushed everything to their over-the-top extremes, resulting in a film that is so ebulliently gory and cheesy and disgustingly hilariously bad-good that it transcends its low budget limitations to become something much larger than itself, an utterly perfect genre film.

Because no, it isn't perfect. To be blunt, the film looks like crap. All the Blu-Ray wrangling and color correcting in the world can't change that. The sound is fuzzy and occasionally poorly dubbed. There's a wildly ill-advised rape scene that is almost unwatchable and landed the film on the infamous Video Nasties list in the UK.

[Side bar: I'm not trying to justify this scene at all. Sometimes, there's no accounting for taste. But, to be fair, many first-time horror auteurs will do all they can to shock the audience in whatever is the most depraved manner they can conceive. Wes Craven did it with The Last House on the Left, and Raimi is no different. This leads to some terrible storytelling decisions, but they just need to get it out of their system. Raimi has since expressed his regret at that scene, and let's put a pin in that for now. Rape in horror cinema is about to get its own overlong article, so stick around.]

If you dare.

At any rate, the surface crappiness is heaven for genre fans because it's a filmmaker's playground. Not having to worry about production values allows a lot more breathing room for experimentation, the type of which led to this cavalcade of ingenious and inventive cinematic designs.

And it doesn't hurt that the gore technicians really knew what they were doing. It's impossibly colorful and gooey, fake enough that it doesn't revolt the audience, but real enough to propel the sense of danger through the roof. A scene involving a pencil and an ankle is one of the most memorable gore sequences in my history of the genre and that's before the really good stuff even starts to happen.

Pictured: Good stuff

Raimi's is a world without rules. Things shift from shot to shot, the powers any of the possessed display vary from moment to moment, and whatever is happening in the current scene is sure to be completely divorced in context from the next, all to maximize the disorienting terror of trying to survive the night surrounded by unknowable evil.

The demons could easily kill Ash and devour him chilled with a side of rice, but they instead spend their time playing with him like cats with a particularly fat and delicious mouse. And that's exactly what Raimi does to his audience, poking and prodding us to see how far he can make us bend.

The Evil Dead is my favorite of the franchise for its no-holds-barred low budget mayhem, providing everything I've ever wanted a cult film to give to me. It's no Rosemary's Baby. Hell, it's no Devil's Due. But it revels in its lowly station and provided a jolt of life to horror, paving the way for cult favorites like Re-Animator and From Beyond and inspiring mainstream filmmakers to newer and greater heights.

By pushing the limits of the genre, this twisted little bugger changed it forever. And that was just the very beginning of a long career in filmmaking for one Mr. Raimi. Evil Dead is everything.

TL;DR: The Evil Dead is ecstatically gross, silly, and wonderful.

Rating: 10/10

Word Count: 1068

Reviews In This Series

The Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981)

Evil Dead 2 (Raimi, 1987)

Army of Darkness (Raimi, 1992)

Evil Dead (Alvarez, 2013)

Best Picture Roundup: Siri Not Siri

I actually watched another Best Picture nominee! This might be the highest proportion of contenders I've seen in any Oscar year!

...I'm not a great film major.

Year: 2013

Director: Spike Jonze

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams

Run Time: 2 hours 6 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Before I dive into some of the harder to swallow nominees like Dallas Buyers Club or 12 Years a Slave, I thought it best to start with the soft, pastel embrace of Her, Spike Jonze's tale of love in the not too distant future. A strangely divisive movie, this love it or hate it story details a future world in which a newly divorced man, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).

That's about all there is to the plot, really. Chris Pratt magically appears (inexplicably dressed like Ron Swanson) in a couple scenes because he is contractually obligated to show up in the exact places you'd least expect him. Also Theodore's friend Amy (Amy Adams) has troubles with her husband (Matt Letscher), a man who proves that no matter how much things change, douchebaggery is eternal.

Although it doesn't commit the Wolf of Wall Street sin of stretching a diaphanous plot to an unbearable three hours, it can hardly make it to two without tearing somewhat, despite the strengths of the screenplay and performances.

Although any movie with Amy Adams deserves at least two hours of your time.

Largely a one man show, Her relies entirely on credible interactions between one man and a disembodied voice and Phoenix sells it utterly, packaging it all in a man full of tics and an invisible complete backstory hidden behind every gesture and expression. Not to be petty, but he certainly deserved that acting nomination far more than Leo ever did. Sorry, Shannon.

Johansson also does a terrific job, exuding effortless Rashida Jones charm and singlehandedly steering a script that loses track of her character around the beginning of Act Three. All without being onscreen for a single second! It's hard to synthesize naturalistic emotions on a soundstage stool clutching a bottle of mineral water, but she owns it.

And oh, the production design! All creamy pastels and just a touch beyond modern architecture, Her imagines a future seamlessly attached to the direction of the world as we are living it. The set design is soft, smooth, tactile, and pleasant - the exact culmination of a society that is slowly collapsing inward as people find newer and newer ways to ignore each other.

And what else could this film possibly be about but the way in which modern technology provides us enough comfort to ignore those niggling feelings like loneliness or unfulfillment? Don't get me wrong, I love technology. But there people who use it as a crutch to avoid ever having to interact with people and, well, the metaphor isn't too difficult to unpack.

Nope. Nothing metaphorical here.

What Her does best is casual and relaxed world building, one of my favorite elements of sci-fi/futuristic films. Only one of the technological advancements of this future is important to the story, but there's enough information in the dialogue and background to provide a complete and credible universe for this technology to exist within.

I guess I'm just a sucker for well thought out alternate universes. But the way Theodore's video games can interact seamlessly with his AI and his desktop files makes me yearn just a little bit. Really incredible production design that was put together with great care and love makes me proud.

But anyway. The rest of the movie. There's some great cinematography at work here that actually enhances the story instead of clouding it with artsy squartsy nonsense (although it does have its fair share of inscrutable visual symbolism) and the screenplay is sprinkled with Oscar bait nuggets of wisdom tailor made for inspirational Tumblr blogs.

The third act is where things begin to unfortunately unravel. The enjoyable premise loses a lot of its flair past the 90 minute mark and begins to drag as the plot scrambles to find an ending (which I won't spoil here but I will say that the company that makes the OS's should prepare for a hell of a class action suit).

There's several problems inherent in being in love with the device that's in charge of your entire computer.

Her always operates at a base level of pleasantness that it rarely departs from, but it finds it difficult to be both pleasant and meaningful for the entirety of the run time, although it does come close. I certainly enjoyed it and would recommend it, but maybe it's not such an important film as all that, despite the many high quality efforts put into its production.

TL;DR: Her is a tad overlong but never unpleasant.

Rating: 7/10

Did It Deserve Best Picture? Probably not, but it was an interesting piece of intellectual cinematic fluff.

Word Count: 833

Beat It, Essay: Music Is For The Birds

I've been taking a Music in Film class! I had to write an essay about a film score and because I have an insatiable need to stick it to the man, I wrote about The Birds, which has not a single note of written orchestration. Pray for me.

Update: For those of you who found this through Google, I got an "A" on the paper, so it's actually a solid model. Good luck!

The Prompt

Discuss the role of music in a single film created in 1970 or before.

The famed film composer Bernard Hermann is quite well known for having created some of the most memorable film scores in human history. After scoring the indelible classic Citizen Kane, his career took him even further when he was asked to pen the compositions for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. His use of shrill dissonance and solely string instrumentation was tremendously beneficial in putting the audience in the mindset of a psychotic killer. The theme for the shower scene is perhaps one of the most well-known film compositions in the entire world.

But one of Hermann’s other great compositional triumphs is hardly even a score at all, at least in the traditional sense. When he was asked to develop the sound for Hitchcock’s horror follow-up The Birds, he made the ingenious decision not to include a single piece of non-diegetic music. This worked perfectly because The Birds made a habit out of defying audience expectations: The plot of the entire first act is a decoy, turning what seemed like a screwball romantic comedy on its head once the first bird attacked. The Birds also exhibited an entirely unprecedented level of gore for the time, rendered in beautiful full color.

In every regard, The Birds was pushing the envelope and Hermann recognized the importance of keeping that quality consistent within the score. Where the audience, after decades of movie watching was expecting either a lush post-romantic score (assuming a romance) or a dissonant modern score (assuming a horror), what they got instead was absolutely nothing. Due to the almost unconscious nature of film music, most audience members wouldn’t have actively recognized the lack of a score but it would have continuously registered in the back of their minds, creating an unbearable psychological tension during the first act of the film, even before anything goes wrong.

This is where Hermann’s genius works its magic. Despite its technical lack of instrumentation, his silences work in the exact same manner as a traditional film score, playing with the audience’s preconceived notions of certain styles, motifs, and instrumental colors and their meanings within the context of cinema. A traditional film might use a sultry sax to signify a sexual scenario or a sweeping orchestra to denote an astounding act of heroism because it effortlessly puts the audience in the right mindset thanks to their experiences with similar techniques in previous films. It is this exact prior experience that Hermann exploits to create the oppressive atmosphere that haunts the entirety of the film.

Some might argue that Hermann’s work on The Birds isn’t a true score, but that is ignoring its base nature as a way of using music to manipulate an audience’s emotions. That is, in fact, exactly what Hermann is doing here, but simply in a wildly alternative format. And that argument ignores the presence of source music and sound composition, all of which was carefully selected by the composer himself for maximum effect and terror. Although sound design is somewhat out of the scope of this essay, Hermann’s use of flapping wings, clacking beaks, and avian squawks provides an unsettling rhythm and quasi-score of its own.

The two most important musical moments of the film are source music, impeccably chosen to break the silence at the two most opportune times to set the opposing tones of the beginning and middle of the film. The first, Debussy’s “Arabesque No. 1 in E” can be heard on the radio during the first, romantic, portion of the film. It highlights the elegant nature of Tippi Hedren’s character Melanie Daniels as well as the wistful romance with which she approaches her life. This song choice is immensely important because it comes early on in the film, lulling the audience into a false sense of security, both in terms of film composition (having heard an expected classical composition early on would make it that much more unbearable during the absence of regular score) and of movie tone (one of pure classical romance and the innocence of the era).

However, that security is shattered with the startling placement of the next musical piece. After already having an uncomfortable encounter with the business end of a seagull, Melanie Daniels is on edge and taking a smoke break outside of the local elementary school while she is waiting for her friend – a teacher – to get off of work.

During this scene, the children’s choir is singing “Rissle-dy Rossle-dy,” a derivation of a traditional Scottish folk song while black crows slowly gather on a playground behind an unsuspecting Melanie. 

This comes after a long period in which the film has been utterly devoid of music and the innocence and joy of the song provides a modicum of relief in the listener. That is, until the murder of crows begins to roost. With the arrival of each additional crow and the threat of an impending attack, the children’s song grows more and more eerie, replacing the pleasant tone with the terrible potential of the slaughter of unaware innocents.

This is the most effective scene in the whole film, entirely because of Hermann’s unprecedented skill in using music (and its absence) to manipulate an audience. It’s absolutely brilliant, using the infrequent source music and ample expectations due to cinematic precedents in order to to play the audience like a fiddle – another alternative form of orchestration. Hermann will forever be remembered for his contributions to Kane and Psycho, but The Birds is a sonic experience of unparalleled skill so subtle that it will rarely be appreciated to the extent that it deserves.

What should be one of the most memorable scores in human history will perhaps never attain such status due to the completely subliminal effect it creates. Nobody even realizes that it exists! That is the beauty of Hermann’s work on this film and it’s certainly no mistake that he was paid the full salary of a traditional composer.

Word Count: 1047

200th Postaversary!

Hello everybody! Guess what! This is my 200th blog post on Popcorn Culture!

I started this blog in mid-June in 2013 because it was summer and I was searching for something creative to do. It's been massively rewarding for me and although I've been so busy these past couple months with some really intense classes, I make it a priority to keep posting as often as possible. And so far, every movie I've seen since that day in June has made it onto this blog! (Except for, oddly, The Exorcist, which somehow slipped through the cracks. I don't know what happened. I apologize to all of you who avidly watch my "Coming Soon" widget. It can't be helped.)

Since that fateful day, I have reviewed 174 films, 130 of which were horror films! At least I tried paying attention to other genres. Good hustle, Brennan.

Out of those reviews, the most were (obviously) from this decade, but the 2000's and the 1980's come in a close second thanks to my Census Bloodbath and J-Horrorthon features.

And I was prone most often to giving out ratings of 6 or 7 (they tied for first with 37 each), but let the record show that I gave good reviews more often than bad ones, despite what Sergio might think about me.

And in my time at Popcorn Culture, I have written 237,313 words! That's an average of 1,192.5 words per post!

A moment of silence for my tired typing fingers.

But it all goes to show how much thought and devotion I put into everything I do here. I really really love this blog and I'm happy every time anyone so much as looks at one of my posts. I really appreciate people being interested in what I have to say and I work hard to make sure that everything I write is of the highest quality I can provide.

Obviously I'm not gonna be on my game every day out of the year, but I really appreciate every second of time anybody has spent reading this blog. It really means a lot to me and I strive to make that content worthwhile.

If nobody minds, I'd like to take a minute to talk about what film, horror, and this blog mean to me.

It's personal post time. Come at me, bro!

Way back when I was applying for colleges, I was a theatre kid looking for a theatre major but all of a sudden, the summer before senior year, a switch flipped inside me. I had begun to direct short plays in class, and discovered that I had a talent and a passion for creating new worlds.

My plays notably had the most thorough and involved set design of every class. Where other plays would just set up some black IKEA tables and chairs, mine would be full rooms with keepsakes, decorations, colors, and three dimensional interior design. The amount of time and energy I spent on assembling decorations for a room that doesn't even exist got me to thinking.

My quasi-OCD commitment to organization and exact detail made me light up any time I got a chance to dive into a new world full of new people and experiences I had never met and would never have. Combined with my newfound passion for the horror genre, I realized I needed to go into film.
I still love the theatre, but film gives me a lot more license for creation, which is something I discovered I had a drive for.

I'm not gonna fake modesty - what's the point?

I'm a smart guy. So now and then as I'm going through my film classes I have to sit back and think about what this career direction means to me. Why should I be doing this when I can devote myself to some other discipline that can actually make an impact on the world, like medicine or law?

But when I think about it, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. And I realized that art and entertainment are more important than they seem at first glance. Sure, Hollywood can be superficial and wicked, but entertainment is a necessary and vital part of the human experience that can be traced back to the very origins of human society.

Entertainment may be a diversion that is unnecessary for life, but it is vital for a healthy mood and development of the mind. Entertainment at its foundation is a distraction from the drudgery and rigors of day-to-day life. And at its pinnacle, it is a medium through which we can learn different perspectives on the world and begin a conversation about non day-to-day issues that are important for the world and the community.

Film has the power to open our eyes to the truth about the world. It has the power to change a mind. Or, at the very least, it can make us laugh, cry, or feel. Anything. In modern society, we don't have a lot of outlets for emotion and film, television, and music are an essential part of maintaining contact with ourselves.

And yeah. Some of it is just dumb diversion. But who doesn't need that every once in a while?

So yes. Entertainment is important. And by writing about it, engaging with it, and creating it, I can add to the conversation rather than just consuming.

So what of horror, my chosen genre?

I'm still working out with myself exactly what draws me irrevocably to the notorious horror genre, but it is in large part due to the fact that anything can happen. In my mind, horror is a kind of dark fantasy, permitting the nightmare world of our subconscious to come to the forefront.

Good horror tells us something about ourselves, whether it is how we might react in a certain situation or our secret dark, dangerous desires. More often than any other genre, horror depicts the truths of the human condition because it isn't afraid to delve into that dark, terrifying pool of the human psyche.

Even the dumbest B-movies tend to have more psychological impact jammed inside than your average Hollywood flick. Horror is a place where we can explore stories and themes that nobody really wants to talk about and that's wildly important.

It's also a cathartic way to face our fears and, at its most basic level, a wonderful adrenaline rush.

That's where I've gotten so far, but I'm sure I'll have more to say once I have a chance to mull it over ad nauseum.

Whatever the reason, I am very grateful for my rapidly growing little (mostly) horror culture blog. It has provided me with hours of constructive entertainment and a lot of opportunities I might not have had before.

It's a chance to sort out my opinions and a forum to share the things that I love!

Most importantly, it's absolutely lovely to have a channel where I can practice being funny and developing a voice and have people read it! Writing every day has greatly improved my language skills, made 700 word essays a much less daunting task (writing a 700 word essay the day after writing a 2000 word slasher review just doesn't seem as challenging), and has forced me to think out my arguments here and in the real world.

Through this blog I've made new friends (shoutout to Carolann if you're reading this!), seen movies I never thought I'd watch, learned a lot about film as well as myself, and just had an all around good time.

It's a real gift being able to rite about something that you love and I hope everybody has a chance to do something like this at some point in their lives (In fact, it's free! Why not try it out?).

Last but not least, I would just like to give a great big thank you to everybody who's stuck it out with me. Thank you for reading and thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate what you've done for me and, should you start something like this of your own, I would gladly devour each and every word of what you produce.

Happy 200th!
Word Count: 1364

Best Picture Roundup: And None For Gretchen Wieners

Although I certainly enjoyed the Academy Awards this time around, I have done a shockingly dismal job as a film major, having only watched one of the nominees for best picture. Although I'm generally in disagreement with the Academy about what movies deserve the prize (far too many of the nine nominees had no beheadings), it's still important to know the state of cinema in 2013, the year in which I started my reviewing in earnest.

So, in order to right my wrongs, I'll be spending some time catching myself up so I can at least complain about the Best Picture nominees with the added comfort of knowing what I'm talking about. And, oh look! Here comes the first one down the pike!

Year: 2013

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie

Run Time: 3 hours

MPAA Rating: R

The Wolf of Wall Street is the true story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a sleazy stockbroker who made his fortune selling penny stocks through... illicit means. His favorite hobbies are snorting coke, banging hookers, and/or snorting coke off of hookers. For three hours.

I know I notoriously bag on any movie longer than, say, 17 minutes, but give me a break. The film is entirely rising action. Endless debauchery and F-words (which tend to blend together after a while - every single person I talked to about seeing this movie mentioned that it holds the record for most F-bombs, but honestly it's less about the density of cursing than it is about the sheer volume of the movie) are all fine and dandy, but if that's all your film has to offer with no coherent or consistent conflict.

It's just three solid hours of drugs and whores and then it ends.

I know, I know. It's based on a true story. But you know the thing with true stories about rich guys? There's no consequences. That's the way real life goes, kids. And it doesn't make for interesting movies.

Plus we already had one Great Gatsby.

The filmmakers' personal goal seemed to be to cram the film with as many offensive lines as possible. Any group of people who could be even tangentially considered a minority could find something to hate in this film, but this is a film about awful people, so I guess that gets a pass.

What doesn't get a pass is the awkward and jarring editing style that somehow manages to start scenes too late yet still make them go on for far too long. Honestly, I have no idea what black magic the editors performed to get this combination, but it was obviously too powerful for such inexperienced mages and things got out of hand.

I'm just gonna get all my complaining out here before we get to the good parts (Of which there are actually several. I mean, it's not like Scorsese is new to this). First off, Matthew McConaughey was entirely useless to the plot, which is not something the promotional material and excessive use of that dumb chest beating song would have you believe. 

And perhaps I'm just irritated at his douchey behavior at the Oscars (in which he pretty much thanked Matthew McConaughey for his Best Actor award), but I could have done without him entirely. Although he did turn in a better performance in ten minutes than the entire rest of the cast could manage in three hours. Not that anybody was particularly bad, just turning in a lot of workmanlike performances.

Quite literally, in some cases.

And I'm sorry, but Jonah Hill using an accent does not mean he turned in a game-changing performance. His Best Supporting Actor spot should have gone to Sarah Paulson. 

She needed to get in there somewhere.

Also there was some terrible CGI in a sailboat scene that temporarily convinced me I was playing a 90's computer game: Yacht Tycoon or something like that.

Or Sims: Orgy.

OK, it's out of my system.

Turns out there's a good side to this whole mess! Who knew?

Several of the debauching scenes are actually quite entertaining, most notably what I like to call the Quaalude Interlude, in which Hill and DiCaprio make the freshman mistake of taking a few too many pills because the first ones didn't kick in soon enough.

Again, it was far too long, but at least it was hilarious.

And when the film is subtle, it really works. One of my favorite elements was the way Wolf of Wall Street used pop music to imply the passage of time rather than obvious methods like title cards (thankfully, because a title card early on in the film looked like it was pasted on using Windows Movie Maker).

Also I loved the use of an unreliable narrator that manages to both humanize and demonize Jordan Belfort simultaneously. I dunno if that makes sense. You just gotta see it. Or don't. See it if you have the attention span. Otherwise, steer clear like it spat on your mama.

Also, there were a lot of shots from the backs of people's heads. I'm sure this has some very symbolic and deep meaning, but for the life of me, I can't tease that one out. If you can think of something, keep me posted.

Maybe the cinematographer was a parrot and was just used to being on people's shoulders.

TL;DR: The Wolf of Wall Street is entertaining enough, but hardly worth the three hour trek.

Rating: 6/10

Did It Deserve Best Picture? Naw, but it didn't win so I'm not gonna rub it in.

Word Count: 932

And The Oscar Goes To...

Year: 1998

Director: Jamie Blanks

Cast: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

For the entirety of Urban Legend, all I could think about was how the pretty-boy teen star in front of me has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards tonight.

He was unfortunately snubbed for Best Actor in 1998.

I've been missing the slasher genre after a personal drought that feels like a hundred years. I haven't seen a solid slice 'n dice since the first week of January and I was really feeling it. I know that might be hard to understand, but for me slasher movies are the equivalent of Vitamin D. You don't need it every day but if you go without it too long you start to get pale and shaky.

Luckily my reintroduction to the genre came in such a perfectly crappy 90's package.

Remember when Scream happened? And suddenly every slasher film had to have a postmodern meta script? Well, most of those were written by Kevin Williamson who admittedly wasn't the most skilled screenwriter in the world. But Urban Legend is one of the first Williamson-style slashers to be produced without so much as a sidelong glance from the man himself and the absence is striking.

Replacing the "we are living a slasher movie" idea from Scream with "we are living an urban legend" sounds like an interesting idea at first, but the filmmakers don't seem to realize that what they're satirizing isn't actually a legitimate storytelling technique with more generic principles than "this totally happened to a friend of a friend."

Although I do know several people who succumbed to Didn't Check the Back Seat-itis.

But nevertheless the sassy self-aware teens are back, this time led by Parker Riley (Michael Rosenbaum), a douchey frat boy who's planning a party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a mythical dorm massacre on campus (aka Randy). 

His sassy self-aware friends include Paul (Jared Leto), an intrepid student reporter who doesn't let pesky ethics get in the way of a good story aka Gale Weathers; Damon (Joshua Jackson), the douchey prankster aka Stu; Sasha (Tara Reid back when she was making theatrical releases - remember that?), a college radio host and slut about town aka Tatum; Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayhart) the perky girl with huge eyes and an equally huge crush on Paul aka... Rebecca Gayheart in Scream 2; and her best friend Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt), the innocent heroine aka Sidney Prescott but with less personality traits.

It's telling as to the film's overall quality that Tara Reid is actually a better actress than Alicia Witt.

Luckily there's two sturdy genre mainstays on hand in the form of Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) and Danielle Harris (eternal Halloween Final Girl) to class up the proceedings a little bit.

Like they needed to.

Basically what happens is they all wander around their Hogwarts-sized campus and get killed in a variety of ways, all inspired by various urban legends. In between killings, there's pop culture references that range from obnoxious but fun (Joshua Jackson's car plays the Dawson's Creek theme song) to actually quite sweet (the resident security guard (Loretta Devine) is inspired to greatness by Foxy Brown).

And although nearly every single plot point is either predictable (Sergio guessed the killer about halfway through the film - faster than yours truly even! Cheers to Sergio.) or unfathomably dumb (the Final Girl has an urban legend-related backstory, the killer gives a Motive Powerpoint Presentation), the gore is nearly nonexistent, and the acting is bargain basement quality, it's a wonderful trip to the depths of the mid-90's postmodern horror period.

It's dumb, it's campy, people die, and everybody has a good time. The middle tends to drag, but it's an exciting look into the mechanics of the genre.

A quick discussion about the ending: Highlight for spoilers [REBECCA GAYHEART IS THE KILLER. Who knew? I figured it wouldn't be a woman because I'd have heard about it before now but no! It is! I mean her motive is basically "I want to bone Jared Leto" but who doesn't? As far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty solid reason to do anything. Anyway, female killers are a rarity and I always appreciate a break from formula. Thank you, dumb movie, for not being as dumb as I thought you would be!]

You'd be surprised what you can hide underneath a bulky coat.

I wouldn't really suggest this film to anybody either older or younger than myself, but this is the perfect nostalgic visit to the decade in which I grew up. Also Jared Leto. Who is the reason I wrote this in the first place. (Coming full circle, guys!)

Here's where it gets deep. Although Leto started out as a forgettable teen star in dumb post-Williamson slasher films, he is now up for one of the most prestigious awards in Hollywood. It's a testament to practice, hard work, and never demeaning where you are now. You might think you suck, or that your job is too menial or beneath you. 

But never forget that this is where you come from. Once you get there, you'll realize that where you are now was essential training in getting where you want to be. You can rise above your current status, you just have to keep chugging. 

Then, one day, you will be as pretty as Jared Leto.

Killer: [Brenda Bates (Rebecca Gayheart)]

Final Girl: Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt)

Best Kill: Dean Adams (John Neville) gets his ankles slashed like one of my favorite urban legends and then is impaled on those "DO NOT ENTER" car spikes, thereby proving my fears about those things are legitimate.

Sign of the Times: Every frame of every second owes its entire existence to the Kevin Williamson Dynasty.

Scariest Moment: The opening scene - always check the back seat. And never listen to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" when the phrase "Turn around" is ironic.

Weirdest Moment: Tara Reid fellates a microphone to illustrate her point - but she's hosting a radio show so nobody can see it.

Champion Dialogue: "He's most likely shacked up in some motel with a girl. Or a guy... Farm animal... Whatever!"

Body Count: 9; also a dog.

1. Michelle is beheaded with a battle axe from the backseat of her car.
2. Damon is hung from a tree and dropped onto a car windshield.
3. Tosh is strangled and has her wrists cut.
4. Dean's heel is slit and then he's run over by a car and impaled on tire spikes.
5. Parker is force fed pop rocks and drain cleaner.
6. Radio Man is strangled.
7. Sasha is stabbed and beheaded.
8. Professor Wexler is stabbed to death.
9. Creepy Janitor dies in a car crash. 

TL;DR: Urban Legend is a dumb postmodern slasher movie, but it's just what I needed after a long drought.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count:1150