wes-115 Reviews

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

Very Good...Full-On Chainsaw. Lots of gore. Very little cheese.

[8/10 · 26 September 2006]

The movie is very good...if you're into this kind of thing. It's nice to see a franchise splatter film that is intense and gory without being cheesy. Many of the current crop of splatter films are played intentionally cheesy for humor. Which is fine, but they shouldn't ALL be like that. This movie has some humor in it, but it's a darker humor, and not meant to be cheesy or campy.

Everything that comes to mind when you hear the words "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is in this movie. No wussing-out in this one! Murder, torture, cannibalism, insanity and a touch of the surreal. Oh yeah, and a chainsaw. No punches are pulled, so this flick is not for the squeamish.

Tonally it wasn't as surreal as the original, but it had a better (read: creepier) tone than the 2003 remake. Plenty of blood and guts. R. Lee Ermey plays a major character instead of a bit-player like in the 2003 remake, and the film benefits from this.

Simon Says (2006)

The welcome return of the fun gore-fest! See it in a full theater for maximum effect!

[6/10 · 26 September 2006]

EDIT: I just heard today (9/27/06) that Simon Says does not currently have a theatrical distributor. SAY IT ISN'T SO! It would be a travesty for this film to go straight-to-video, since it is best enjoyed in a theater environment with a large group of folks with whom to share the experience.

I saw this VERY FUN and gory movie last night at a preview screening at Austin's Fantastic Fest with a full auditorium of horror movie freaks. We had a GREAT time hooting and hollering at all the splattery fun.

Simon Says stars Crispin Glover as twins with a HEAVY Southern accent (think Sheriff J. W. Pepper in "Live And Let Die"). Crispin's performance, while creepy, unique, and striking - as is his wont - is flawed in the over-emphasis of his slack-jawed accent. But it does give his character some...ummm...character.

The plot is a slasher involving (among others) 5 college students who stumble across Glover's neck of the woods whilst seeking the typical river-side debauchery in the wilderness.

This is a funny movie. Usually intentionally so, sometimes not...however, the greatest thing about this movie is the kills. Nearly every kill involves the prodigious use of one, two, or even as much as twenty pick-axes. The most awesome one being the very first camper to get caught in the woods. We see her later on in a deliciously twisted reveal that had us absolutely ROARING! The entire auditorium busted a gut at how that one ended up. The rest were quite entertaining and creative as well.

So, check it out in the theater and have some fun with it.

Don't Look Now (1973)

More 70's Crap

[1/10 · 13 July 2006]

This overrated turd lends further credence to my theorem, stated as follows:

Theorem: "Movies from the 70's suck."

Corollary: "The level of suck is directly proportional to the level of critical acclaim."

There are some extremely rare exceptions to this postulate. Don't Look Now is NOT one of them. Do not fall for the hype.

I love psychological horror, spooky atmosphere and a thriller with a good story. (IMO, The Shining is the scariest movie ever made.)

This movie has none of that. What it does have is pretentious editing, unnecessary zooms, wooden acting, trite photography and hideously bad sound design. In fact, it contains some of the worst Foley work I've ever been subjected to. The famous sex scene is too long, contains way too much of naked Donald Sutherland, and is an object lesson in how NOT to cut a scene.

Bad. Just bad. Awful. Stay away.

War of the Worlds (2005)

Craptacular! (SPOILERS)

[2/10 · 4 December 2005]

(SPOILERS)

All good things about this movie:

The visual effects and imagery. The bookend narrations by Morgan Freeman

A few of the bad things about this movie:

Tripods underground. Awful dialog. Annoying Rachael. Moron Robbie. In-laws and their home completely unharmed. Robbie survives.

Rampant stupidity: Who goes to a major population center like Boston when the world is being destroyed? Who drives into a mob when you have the only functioning vehicle for miles around? Who gets ON a ferry when the tripods are bearing down on the landing? Who walks TOWARDS the sounds and flashes of a large battle?

Volumes could be written about the two brats, but I'll just leave it at Annoying Rachael and Moron Robbie.

Why does the tripod shield go down when the crew gets sick?

The Dolby Digital sound track on the DVD sounds thin and muted and/or range-compressed.

Alphaville (1965)

Awful, Pretentious, And Self-Important

[1/10 · 26 August 2005]

Well, I made it through about half an hour of this HIDEOUS movie before shutting it off, and I feel obliged to warn others who may fall into the trap of the good press and critical praise for Alphaville.

It takes a lot to get me to turn off a film. For Alphaville, the event that pushed me over the edge was a 5 minute soliloquy on the nature of time by the voice of the "Alpha 60" computer. This voice sounds less like a computer, and more like a 500 pound Frenchman with swollen adenoids on his deathbed after a prolonged bout with lung cancer whilst eating a buttered croissant. I couldn't stand another second of this disgusting voice. Especially since the text of the speech was horribly banal, trite, and painfully pretentious.

I have read claims that Kubrick was inspired by this voice when creating HAL for 2001. I can't believe that this is so. Unless Kubrick himself has stated this, I would sooner believe that this is just a halcyon fantasy of the pseudo-intellectual fans of this hideous waste of celluloid.

The photography of this film is amateurish, at best. The editing is choppy and ham-fisted, with random shots of flashing traffic lights, arrows, and E=MC^2 neon signs inserted between cuts...which I expect is supposed to place the viewer in awe of the film maker's cleverness, but is instead laughably pretentious. Or maybe it's because the filmmaker didn't have coverage for his scenes so he used visual non-sequiturs as cut-aways to make his poor production and shooting skills look like "art."

The wretched acting is stilted, droll and flat of affect, apparently in some kind of misguided and pitiful effort to either pay homage to, or parody, the noir thriller.

The plot themes explored by Alphaville are notionally childish, and are nothing that hasn't been explored a hundred times over by better film and television productions, both before and since the production of this movie.

Really, I can't say enough bad things about Alphaville. Stay away. Worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space! (Which I watched all the way through!)