daha1120 Reviews

A History of Violence (2005)

Not Cronenberg's Worst But Getting There

[4/10 · 4 February 2022]

Bland, contrived, and dumbed down. William Hurt's oscar winning turn reminds me of Al Pacino in Gigli and my wife points out one of the major plot points is suspiciously similar to what's going on in Cool as Ice starring Vanilla Ice. Both of these other movies are far more entertaining than A History of Violence.

Evil Dead (2013)

So Not Groovy

[1/10 · 29 April 2013]

Now I'm not one of those people who automatically writes off remakes. There are plenty of remakes, including a handful of horror remakes, that I would say manage to be a marked improvement over the original. The Thing (best horror remake ever), The Hills Have Eyes (not great, but still better than Wes Craven's) even Dawn of the Dead (I realize many horror fans would call that sacrilege, but its just a fact. The original had a terrible color scheme, terrible acting and was just all around Romero's weakest zombie opera until the extremely regrettable Diary of the Dead, while the remake of Dawn was really the pinnacle of the short- lived fast zombie fad.) However, this was one of the worst horror remakes I've bothered to check out. And its not because its not graphic enough (a concept more foreign to me than the director of this movie.) If modern torture porn has taught us anything, its that convincingly painful visuals aren't enough. It takes grit, imagination and a certain hard energy to really get under the skin and into the mind of its viewers. And this had none of those things. It was far too slick to feel real, the demon voices were not nearly weird and disturbing enough no matter how hard they tried to ripoff The Exorcist, and the acting was far too flat to sell either the demonic possessions or the terror that the non demonic characters were supposedly experiencing. Now I used to consider the acting to be the weakest part of the original Evil Dead, but as I was trudging through this drek, I came to find myself missing even the most obnoxious performances from the classic. Beyond that, this movie was just dumb, dumb, dumb. The original, while not being the most tightly constructed or intellectually satisfying piece of horror ever, at least didn't contain any plot holes that were too horribly glaring. This movie just didn't make sense on any level. First of all, the reason that they're in this ridiculously creepy cabin is because the main girl is trying to quit heroin cold turkey. In order to design a more terrible place to go through withdrawal, you'd have to be H.R. Giger. Then, when they find blood under the rug and a basement full of dead cats, they still don't leave. Now in the first movie, there's nothing that amiss about the cabin, and the demons are awoken when they unwittingly play a tape with the incantation. In this, the one guy looks through the book, sees a bunch of warnings covering up the words of the incantation so he pulls the old leave tracing trick to reveal them and then says them out loud even though no one else is around. Really? Who would do that? And the stupidity doesn't stop with the characters being almost cruelly moronic, it extends to other plot points as well. Such as the fact that their in a decrepit cabin in the middle of the woods, yet they're using things such as electric meat cutters and hot water. These things are totally out of place and are painfully contrived to setup the gratuitous carnage that the director was hoping would carry this turd through. Forget the fact that its more humorless than the original, as humor really didn't become as much of an element until the sequels anyway. This just needed to be effective in some way, any way, and it truly wasn't. I realize Sam Raimi wanted to finally make some real money off of the Evil Dead name, but as a producer, he could have demanded better than this. And the reason he didn't wasn't because he's lost his knack for horror (the last movie he directed was Drag Me to Hell, which was only rated PG-13 and was way more effective than this gorefest.) Groovy this is not.

House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

passable sleaze

[7/10 · 23 April 2013]

It would be unfair to call this a knockoff of Last House on the Left because its pretty different, besides David Hess basically reprising his role from that movie and the themes of sexual degradation. This seemed to be more an attempt to turn Last House into its own sub-genre, Hessplotation lets call it. But whereas the rape in Last House was really really really far away from ever being mistaken for sexy, this movie was generally putting titillation ahead of torture. It really was shot well and some of the acting was surprisingly good, but the twist was insulting and the gore pathetic. On the other hand, if you're looking for a movie from 1980 that perfectly evokes the spirit of the 70's, you'd be hard pressed to do better than this. Best paired with bumps of coke off the end of a blade.

Slaughter High (1986)

April fools!

[25 February 2013]

This was sort of a British attempt to make a Troma style slasher, in that its a slasher with elements of nerd revenge and all of the British actors are attempting to affect awkward New Jersey accents. The kill scenes are all pretty cool, the nudity is more disturbing than sexy, and everyone dies. So in many ways this is actually a bit more satisfying than your standard "virgin lives" slasher. Knowing that the guy who played Simon committed suicide shortly after production on this wrapped up gives this sleazy piece of trash an unsettling weight. According to other cast members, he was very odd and depressed during the whole shooting to the point everyone just thought he was going "method." Also strange is how little is known about the weird theme song that appears, as Manfredini claims it was added in after he submitted his final score, and the original recording was has been lost for many years. Its pretty rockin though. All in all, one of the worthier slashers from the 80s.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

The only mystery here is why I even bothered with this tripe

[3/10 · 24 February 2013]

Somehow this confusingly butchered mess is generally considered to be some of Lynchs best work alongside Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, while Wild at Heart, one of his films that will actually stand the test of time, is, for the time being, probably his most widely dismissed. While Wild at Heart applies liberal experimentalism to the technical aspects of the film, it allows for a mercifully comprehensible plot (his only other works featuring this attribute being Eraserhead, sort of, Elephant Man, his worst movie until this one, and his somewhat lame Disney effort The Straight Story). Give me a break. People think this is better because they just simply don't like ugliness or truth. So instead of Willem DaFoe achieving his personal pinnacle of creepiness and Nick Cage achieving his own personal height of greasiness in various backwater hellholes, you have hot, nude lipstick lesbians making out in lush Hollywood surroundings. Voila, everyone loves it even though nobody (including Lynch himself) knows what the hell its about. Not to mention the really cheesy music video-esque effects that plague the final act of this. How anyone can argue that this aborted TV pilot with a 45 minute long non-ending slapped onto it wasn't truly Lynchs weakest feature at this point, I don't know, but it clearly follows a downward trend that started with Lost Highway and has culminated with his fizzling out as a feature length filmmaker. But I guess all people ever really wanted out of him was to be the most pretentious softcore porn director ever.

Carnal Knowledge (1971)

Mike Nichols last depressing hurrah

[7/10 · 7 November 2012]

For the first half hour the characters are so disgusting and terrible, the feeling of bile rising in my throat doesn't subside. These are the people who I have known. And while I cannot bring myself to turn it off, I also can't help but fondly remember watching all of his movies that he made before this one, the spark that say The Graduate or Catch-22 had, and this just feels a little flat. But at the same time, it seems to completely succeed in doing what it sets out to do, creating something suffocatingly real, like watching the most depressing moments in my life played back for me with dim lighting and blonder actresses. The fact that Candice Bergen goes away after that also helps. Upper middle class ennui is something that's almost always tedious to watch, but this is actually affecting. Nonetheless, this feels like the beginning of the end for Mike Nichols. He would never again make anything on a level with Catch-22, and he followed this one up with Day of the Dolphins. Seriously. wtf. Also for the curious, pop star Arthur Garfunkle (as the back of the DVD box puts it) gives a surprisingly strong performance in this.

Tideland (2005)

Gilliams Finest?

[10/10 · 20 July 2012]

I find it pretty odd the overwhelming amount of negative reviews for this film. How you can start watching this film and not feel anything for the girl is simply beyond me. How heartless can you be to say you were bored watching this neglected girl spiral into insanity? And you can't say its not convincing, the performances from these relative unknowns (other than Jeff Bridges, who spends most of his time in this movie either unconscious or dead) were more convincing than the big name Hollywood windbags he chose to lead in 12 Monkeys. Brendan Fletcher was hands down the most convincing mentally disabled person I've ever seen on film. Everything about this movie draws you in, the woozy camera work makes you feel like you're there with them, as an extremely doped up fly on the wall, the writing flows like battery acid, and it all makes very real something that is almost never really examined in movies, and that is child neglect. I've seen plenty of child abuse in movies, but I can't think of a single film that focuses entirely on a neglected child trying to survive and develop with no guidance from anyone. I certainly can't think of one that does it with this much biting wit and laugh out loud black humor. One more point of interest I'd like to touch on is the way this film portrays pedophilia. Its kind of feels as if this film was trying to find a situation that almost justifies it. It sort of feels like listening to Tommy by The Who, where sexual child abuse is touched on repeatedly and you get the sense that perhaps Pete Townshend was a victim of this, and then years later you find out he was looking up kiddie porn on the internet. You kind of have to wonder what happened to Peter Gilliam when he was a kid to come up with this film. Well if this isn't too horrible to say, and I suspect it may have been one of the points he was trying to make, I'm glad whatever happened to him did happen to him if it led him to make the works of genius that he is responsible for.