ax2groin Reviews

The Family Man (2000)

Moralistic Trash, not fit for free-thinking consumption.

[1/10 · 21 June 2001]

Hmm, where to begin. I was on a plane. I knew that I didn't want to sleep for another couple hours. And, I wasn't up for reading. That pretty much sums up why I watched this movie, because no other set of circumstances would have induced me to do so.

This film can pretty much be summed up by the moralism: "Family life is the greatest life you can have." Everything in the movie leads up to this point, and it is painfully obvious from the get go (hey, look at the title). The concept is interesting, because who hasn't wondered "What if I went back and did things differently?". The premise here has Nicolas Cage's character transported into the life today that he would be leading if he hadn't dumped his girlfriend to go to London on his stepladder to being the head of some major corporation. This involves a couple kids and a house in the burbs. The whole condition of this change, however, is that he is stuck in it until he realizes that this is the life he absolutely wants, deep down inside. Then, in the end, it all gets taken away and he has to figure out what to do. The wrap-around, which sends him in the end to the old girlfriend's apartment, is utterly pathetic and absolutely unrealistic.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with love and intimate relationships, and even people seeing their lives somehow fulfilled by having children. For me, I just get sick of the idea that this is the ONLY way to live a fulfilling life, which is really the message of the film. I also do not honestly believe that this IS a fulfilling life to live, because people are not defined by who they reproduce, but by what they do themselves. This film really raises to the level of highest merit the idea that you completely bend your life to such a set-up. Not that this guy's life was worth a spit to begin with, his type should be fed to starving animals. But, moralistic pictures like this are best avoided, for fear that they might pique one's frustrations at the problems of this society enough to force you into more drastic measures.

I suffered through this film so that you don't have to. I would never subject myself to this film again, and my already low respect for Cage just dropped lower ("Face/Off" was a plus). Next time I'm on a long flight, I'll have to keep this film in mind when I make my decision about whether to watch or not. There are some films which just should NOT be seen.

Return of the Evil Dead (1973)

Yet another worthless sequel.

[3/10 · 21 June 2001]

There is a bit of a spoiler below, which could ruin the surprise of the ONE unexpected and truly funny scene in this film. There is also information about the first film in this series.

I caught this film on DVD, which someone gave as a gift to my roommate. It came as a set together with the first film in the "Blind Dead" series.

This movie was certainly much worse than the first, "La Noche del Terror Ciego". In addition, many of the features of the first movie were changed significantly. To boot, the movie was dubbed in English (the first was subtitled), which I tend to find distracting.

The concept behind the series is that in the distant past a local branch of the Knights Templar was involved in heinous and secret rituals. Upon discovery of these crimes, the local peasantry put the Templars to death in such a manner that their eyes can no longer be used, thus preventing them from returning from Hell to exact their revenge. We then jump to modern times where because of some event, the Templars arise from the dead to exact their revenge upon the villagers whose ancestors messed them up in the first place. Of course, since the undead knights have no eyes, they can only find their victims when they make some sort of noise.

The Templars were a secretive order, from about the 12th century, coming out of the Crusades. They were only around for about 150 years, before they were suppressed in the early 1300s by the Pope and others. Because they were secretive, there were always rumors about their ceremonies, particularly for initiation. Also, because of the way the society was organized, you didn't necessarily have church officials overseeing things, which meant they didn't have an inside man when things heated up. And, because of the nature of their trials, they were tortured into confessions. The order was strongest in France, but did exist in Portugal and Spain, where the movies take place.

Where the first movie had a virgin sacrifice and knights drinking the blood directly from the body of the virgin (breast shots here, of course, this is a horror film after all), and then, once the knights come back to life, they attack their victims by eating them alive and sucking their blood; in this sequel, this all disappears. You still have the same scene (redone, not the same footage) of them sacrificing the virgin, but they drain the blood into a bowl and drink it from that. Thus, when they come back, they just hack people up with their swords or claw people to death, which I have to say is a much less effective means of disturbing your audience. There's also a time problem: in the first film the dating is much closer to the Templars, where here they are now saying it is the 500 anniversary of the peasants burning these guys at the stake, which would date it around 1473. And the way that the Templars lose their eyes is much less interesting as well. In the first, they have them pecked out by crows. Now they are simply burned out, and in quite a ridiculous manner.

Oh yeah, and maybe it was just me, but there seemed to be a lot of people from the first movie reappearing in this film (despite having died). Not really a problem, since the movie is completely different and not a sequel in the sense of a continuation, but odd none-the-less.

The highlight of this movie is the rich fellow who uses a child to distract the undead while he makes a break for the jeep. The child's father had already been suckered by this rich man into making an attempt to get the jeep, so he walks out and tells her to find her father. It comes somewhat out of the blue, and is easily the funniest scene in the film. Of course, why the child doesn't die at this point is beyond me, and disappointed for horror fans.

I couldn't possibly recommend this film to anyone. It isn't so bad that it becomes funny, so it just ends up being a mediocre horror film. The bulk of the film has several people holed up in a church, each making various attempts to go it alone in order to escape the blind dead who have them surrounded. When the film ends, you are not surprised at the outcome at all; in fact, quite disappointed. If you are into the novelty of seeing a Spanish horror film, see the first movie, which at least has some innovative ideas and not so expected outcomes.