Cinderella III: A Twist in Time -- 2007 -- G

I'm getting into a horrible trend here. The first film I saw from 2006 was also a Disney direct-to-video sequel of a classic film (Bambi II). I have children; what can I say? As for this one, I saw a trailer for it some time ago, and I will say that it's probably one of the cleverest Disney sequel concepts I've ever heard: the evil-stepmother gets ahold of the fairy godmother's wand and rewrites history so Cinderella loses? Now there's an idea! Too bad they screwed it up in execution.

The name of the game here is contrivance. To believe this plot, you have to accept that some of this stuff would actually happen. Even if you accept magic and talking mice as a property in this world, it still rings as largely unbelievable and contrived. To begin with, Cinderella's discarded step-family has to get the wand. How is this done? The fairy godmother is casting this and that in preparation and just tosses the wand off to one side. It lands in front of Anastasia who is watching them, and she runs off with it to mother. Apparently, while in most magic worlds, the wand is little more than a channel for the caster's natural ability, in this world, the fairy godmother has no power at all without the wand, which grants its caster unlimited power, allowing the step-mother to turn back time to when the arch-duke comes to call with the glass slipper.

From here, it only gets worse. Here's a short list. Cinderella's stepmother does interfere with the shoe session, shrinking Anastasia's foot into the shoe and intercepting Cinderella on the stairs, smashing hers. Her step-family travels by coach to the palace. Cinderella decides she'll sneak in and see the prince so he'll remember her. She walks to the palace and somehow beats her family there. She and the mice split up inside the palace to look for the prince...ok. The mice tell Cinderella about the magic and stepmother having the wand, but seem to have an intimate knowledge of what happened to fairy godmother, even though they could not have known this. When they go after the wand, the mice make a big mess in her step-family's room, and Cinderella decides to be the maid to clean it up. Sure, no one will recognize her even though she hasn't changed clothes from that morning. Of course, she was recognized, but now they have the wand and rather than take the wand, Cinderella allows the mice to carry it through the palace in this idiotic sequence where they use it on Lucifer. Why didn't she pick it up? Then she does this long chant where she tries to fix the prince, but somehow, she is interrupted even though the phrase "bibbiti bobbiti boo" is made to be quick. Yup, those are the "magic words."

If you can believe it, the contrivances continue to worsen as we keep going. The stepmother assures the prince she will handle Cinderella "personally," even though she has no authority in the palace whatsoever. In fact, timeline-wise, she's only been in the palace a few hours. Well, she orders the guard to banish Cinderella from the kingdom and put her on the next boat out of the country, never to return. Say what?! As important as she thinks she is, there is no way this pauper woman from the country can order someone to be banished...even if her daughter is set to marry the prince. She's also been the very vision of rudeness to these people, and I can't figure out why they would tolerate her. She bullies the guards, rejected the wedding preparations, and even bullies the arch-duke...and gets away with it! Anyway...

So far, I'm not really spoiling anything in my opinion given the overall predicatability here. Cinderella ends up on a boat with no visible crew sailing out of town when princey shows up after a song and dance of the mice (who, to increase the bad movie score, gives the line, "love the song"), produces a mystery dagger out of no where which also disappears into no where, slices his way down the boat sail Peter Pan style, and rescues Cinderella from her banishment. no one reacts to the prince doing this, since there is no crew visible anywhere on this boat. We saw them briefly open the sails and pull in the plank, but that was it. They're invisible, and likely now pissed because they have to turn around, let this guy and his woman off, and replace the sail.

Big twist! Ooooh! Aaaah!

Moving on, Stepmother still has the wand so she's able to continue wreaking havoc on our poor heroine by whisking her off to inside a pumpkin carriage driven by Lucifer and a random horse. This pumpkin carriage has vines with thorns that wrapped around this horse in one big piece...but for some reason, this carriage has a pin linking it to the horse. Huh? Why would a pumpkin and vine carriage have a pin linking the two sections together? I thought it was one piece. Why, to facilitate the plot, of course! Yadda-yadda, stuff happens, and Cinderella rushes off to stop the all-new inevitable sequel to the first almost wedding between prince (What is this guy's name? Anyone?) and Anastasia. For some reason, stepmother (she needs a name, too) and Drizella are hiding behind the curtain watching where no one out of several hundred people ever sees her, and the prince (when she whisper-shouts "say 'I do!'" to Anastasia) never hears her. That was just weird. And for ultra-weird, there is a resolution that takes advantage of the villain monologue that is just annoying.

Add to this all the wonderfully cheesy dialogue between most of the characters and some mostly forgettable and unnecessary songs, and you get this movie. It was an idea that had so much potential for being awesome, and with four writers, you'd think you'd get something worthwhile, but unfortunately no. You get a series of little more than plot points and a 74 minute film that could have benefited from a little more explanation and characterization.

Now what did go right here was the inclusion of the step-sisters as actual characters and their playing into the plot in a bigger way than the original. In the original, they were all pretty interchangeable and little more than obstacles to overcome. This time, Anastasia gets some serious time and life to her. Drizella is still just a grumpy chick who is avoidable. Granted, it's still not much, but it's a little something.

We've also got some scenes that work very well and are actually well written. The moment between stepmother and Cinderella at the beginning where stepmother smashes the other glass slipper. The priceless moment where prince walks into the room with Anastasia wearing the slipper, stopping with a look of horror, and asking if he were in the right room. That scene has got to be the highlight of this film. It is only followed up with the moment (after a really dumb food fight) where the king and prince show up, look at the trashed room, and the king asks if they're in the right room then too. It shows at least one of these guys can write.

In the end, this is an example of  an idea with some awesome potential go terribly wrong in the execution. All the clever little "what ifs?" from the trailer do play out, but when it's all over, I just shake my head and wish they'd gotten someone better to draw the whole thing up.

Bridge to Terabithia -- 2007 -- PG

Whew, finally another film from 2007 to join the Disney sequel. This one was based on a best selling book and was even made into a TV movie back in 1985. Having neither seen that movie nor read the book, I'm going kind of fresh here.

The basic plot was ok. A couple of outcasts find friendship in each other and create a fanciful world between them where they are the rulers and can do whatever they want to do; it's a world called Terabithia. They reach this world through an old enchanted rope over a river, and once there, anything can happen.

Trouble is, this fanciful world is never really explored, and while the effects there are neat, they aren't used to their fullest potential either. The focus is on the school situation with your typical bullies and what goes on in overcoming them as well as a little teenage crush between our main boy and one of his teachers. I was waiting with baited breath for something to happen in Terabithia, but it was more like a private clubhouse escape than any kind of fantasy world.

Characters here are fair. We get some decent builds in the lead boy and the girl, but everyone else lays kind of flat and just does their part to further the story or give these two some others to interact with. It really turns out to be mostly a character sketch for the boy's character.

Naturally, we aren't without a big twist, which turned out to be about the only one the film had to offer. I kept waiting for something big to happen...like the worst in any situation...but it never did. Everything worked out perfectly in most of the tableaus the film presents.

It's a decent kid movie where you see the youngsters overcome, but it's not for the little ones as the "big twist" was admitted a big shock, even to me. I didn't see that coming at all, so it worked, but I couldn't help but wonder about its purpose when all is said and done. The film isn't bad, but in retrospect, it turned out to be kind of typical in its construction.

The Hitcher -- 1986 / 2007 -- R

I thought I'd just tackle both versions together since they have similar strengths and similar weaknesses, so hitting one would be like hitting the other.

I was originally drawn to this film because the 86 version showed up on a list of the scariest movies of all time, and being a sucker for the scary movies, I naturally had to watch it. Ok, on the one hand, I can understand the fear factor. On the other, there should have been a quality requirement to this list. Both films ranked as "ok" on my list of how things are; neither served to blow me away in any fashion.

The 86 version was notably stronger in many respects over the 07 version, and I'm not one to automatically gravitate to the original. For instance, I have always preferred the American Ring to its Japanese daddy (the J-Horror fanatics can stop booing me now!). The use of a single character over a couple gave the suspense factor a few notches that it lost when there were two. After all, two against one is uneven, but one on one is matched and who will win? It also preferred to leave some of the more grotesque imagery out and let our imagination wonder how hideous it looked (and made us lean our heads to try and see better).

The original also let the police stick to the main guy as the killer as opposed to letting the cops know there was someone they did not know: "a third person." This placed the lead in greater danger since it left the cops in the dark, and left us wondering whether they would take him in or kill him, creating yet more threats.

However, let's turn the tables on the 86 version and talk about what 07 did improve. In 86, the love interest was introduced halfway through the film, but in the original, they were a couple from the start. I already stated that the lead being solo was better overall, but being a couple from the beginning created a better bond between the leads for the final showdown. The new one also better illustrated the truck stop, which confused the hell out of me in the original, and instead of ropes (which could have been cut), the bargaining tool was chained up and not going anywhere.

However, since the couple was already together, this necesitated the addition of scenes not in the original, since the original required the couple to meet and learn about each other. This allowed the addition of some scenes that were all shooting and killing as opposed to any building of character, which the film desperately needed.

What do they have in common? Well, there is a hitchhiker named John Ryder who is not a nice fellow, and he hitches a ride with our hero(es) only to show his true colors and threaten to kill them. The original sets this up a lot better, but we are left constantly in the dark as to who this is and why he is so intent on killing our lead(s). It rings back to Duel in its basic construction, though Duel did a lot of things a lot better.

The largest weakness is how John manages to always find our couple, and why the couple was completely unable to escape him. The truck stop plays a pivotal role, but our heroes (in both films) got there on foot and broke in to stay the night leaving no discernable trace of where they were while there. Several places the leads went should have been impossible to tail, but he did. How did John continue to find them? It never explained, and it never made sense. I could understand ID-ing the car along a stretch of road with no where to go (such as the never-ending state highway in Duel), but their roads here could have taken them anywhere. Not only that, but they ended up hiking cross-country. He kept driving. They could have ended up anywhere.

It was overall weak on both films, and contained far too many implausibilities to get enough into it to be afraid of anything. I'm sure it freaked people out about hitchhikers for awhile, but it was not effective at scaring on the spot.

The Number 23 -- 2007 -- R

Being a sucker for a decent thriller, I loved this movie. Probably the sheer paranoia of the whole thing just got to me, but I really enjoyed how it unfolded, how it played out, and how it generally worked. Using something like a number as a so-called "killer" was nothing short of clever.

This movie is about paranoia more than anything else. Seriously, a number is out to get you? It's killed once and it will kill again? Come on. But that's what all the other characters were also saying. It's only a number. You're stretching to find correlations. Any complaint one would have about the premise is hit on by the reasonable characters. That's awesome.

The story is about an ordinary who is given a novel by his wife for his birthday. She only gets this book because he was late meeting her because a dog got away from him at the end of his shift (he's a dogcatcher). As he reads this book, he thinks the character in the book is a lot like him -- too much, he thinks. He looks for similarities in every aspect of the character's life and in the dreaded number 23. He sees it everywhere. You might say that's because he is looking for it; well, his wife thinks so too.

They work to trace the writer to find out who this person is. They hope maybe this person, with the odd name of Topsy Krepps, will help to shed some light on both the number and why so many aspects of the character are like our hero. After much chasing and searching, they finally learn the horrible truth. Something I never divulge in a review.

Plot is clever and moves fairly well throughout the film. It's a psychological thriller, so body count is not the goal; the goal is watching someone's decent from sanity to madness. It weakens a bit in the character department, but once the pieces fall together, we get a pretty good picture of our main character. His family is done decently, though the wife plays a far larger role than the oft-missing son.

Me? I liked it. It's not for everyone, especially those looking for body counts or high action stories. But if you want one of those slow-burning fuses that gives you a fairly decent payoff in the end, then this one will deliver for you.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street -- 2007 -- R

I have loved this musical for years. It’s not often that you get a bloody, horror musical about a serial killer, and the very subject as the basis for a musical sounds like a horrible idea, but when you start with a powerfully dramatic play and throw Stephen Sondheim at the task of making it sing, you end up with something strange and wonderful. I had seen the TV version of the stage production, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. When I learned a real movie was being made out of the musical, I was excited. When I heard Tim Burton was directing, I was beside myself. I had to see it.

Granted, all this meant I was already a bit biased, but I was determined to be open to what lie ahead. I wasn’t disappointed.

The story was pretty much intact in its entirety. All the character and the drama was the stage was there, and none of it was stripped. There were a slew of necessary changes to take it from a stage musical to a movie, but unlike so many other movie musicals that came from the stage, the translation was done for the benefit of making a movie while retaining the musical qualities. This is a rare horror film that creates characters and drama within its run time, which is makes for a good experience.

When it comes to the songs moving from stage to screen, there were quite a few cuts. All of the choral scene change numbers were gone, and while I personally missed them, their not being there did not detract from the story, and I suspect if they had been left, even as voiceovers, they might have removed us from the movie experience. Stage and screen are different animals entirely, so the trimming of the songs and swapping of two numbers worked well within the screen construct.

The one song I wished they had placed was the sadistic tune of Johanna, sung by Judge Turpin. It was cut from the stage production because it slowed down the story, and the emotion in that song is put forth by the peeping of the judge through a hold into Johanna’s room, but I still feel that it would have added something significant to his character. Oh well.

The storyline concerns a man named Sweeney Todd, who we learn quickly was a barber formerly named Benjamin Barker that was thrown into prison for having a beautiful wife. The judge who threw him in immediately set himself upon having the wife as his own and rapes her, which leads her to take poison. Sweeney’s daughter, Johanna, only a baby when he was taken away, was taken into custody by the judge to raise as his own, and early on, he decides, after she shows interest in the sailor that rescued Sweeney, that he will marry her "to save her from the evils of the world."

Sweeney checks out his old digs on Fleet Street and finds a pie shop there owned by a woman known only as Mrs. Lovett. She is brooding over having no meat for her pies and as a result, she makes the "worst pies in London." She helps Sweeney get his feet back under him and even had his old razors stored in his former tonsorial parlor upstairs, which he uses to win a shaving contest and the respect of the townspeople as a barber.

Sweeney’s aim, of course, is to take revenge on the judge and town beadle for destroying his life, killing his wife, and stealing his daughter. He is fixated on it throughout, and when his attempt to kill the judge is accidentally thwarted, we begin the most famous part of one of the most famous serial killers in history. He decides no one is worthy of living and Mrs. Lovett decides that her meat pies are the perfect way to dispose of the evidence.

Most movies don’t require that much space for the entire plot, and I only gave a basic overview. It’s that in-depth. When it comes to the singing, the movie is cast using actors such as Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman who do fine jobs in singing their roles. I was actually surprised to find Depp in the title role, since I never suspected he could sing, but it turns out, he carried Sweeney very well, showing his extreme versatility as an actor, since Sweeney Todd is a hundred worlds away from Willy Wonka.

Being that it is a movie, it allowed for a ton more subtlety to be brought to the roles in ways that non stage could ever offer. On stage, you have to project everything, so the smallest expressions, which are ten feet high on screen, are invisible on stage. This nuance gave the film an air that definitely added to the experience and made the movie version unique in a way that the stage could never match.

So I thoroughly loved the film. I felt it did justice to the musical in the best way a movie can, and would be willing to watch it over and over. I already listen to the soundtrack constantly, and plan on grabbing the DVD as soon as it hits. A horror movie with a true dramatic is rare indeed, and this one is a gem to me.

The Invisible -- 2007 -- PG-13

What a cool premise. A guy wanders out of the woods after a bad night only to find no one can see or hear him. Is he dead? Is he a ghost? He thinks he is, but much to his surprise, he learns that the wait on this side of the afterlife is quite short...unless you’re still alive. So begins the race to find his body to save it before he dies and passes away entirely. Big problem, though. No one can see or hear him...no one, except one girl. But can he convince her he is real and to save him before it’s too late?

It’s very hard to talk much about this movie without giving too much away. When I read the blockbuster sleeve, in fact, it gave away a bit of the plot I didn’t want to know before hand. What I said above is what was in the trailer, and that’s about all I’ll give away. The plot, itself, runs a bit on the slow side. It tries to be a slow-burning fuse, but that only works if it attached to something that actually explodes. This one works to build, but fizzles out on a continual basis.

Our boy wanders the world, and reacts to it in a weird way. It’s like he is still in it, but not really, which is somewhat true. God, I love ambiguousness sometimes. The trouble is he seems to be able to pass through some objects, but not others. He has to open some doors, but at other times, he just appears in rooms with people. He seems to have to find people, but at other times, he can just be by their side. It’s an inconsistency you want to forgive because "he’s a ghost," but based on his interactions, find it difficult to let go of.

When it comes to characters, our main couple is fairly well drawn. We understand who they are, their family life, their ambitions, what brought them to where they are, why they do what they do. It’s very refreshing to find so much work put into these people. Everyone around them was filled out to a much, much lesser extent. You have a basic idea who everyone else is, but they are clearly only bit players and receive about that much attention too. Their existence is there to fill key plot points, and then they are let go of almost completely.

The ending rings very bitter-sweet, and it can be argued that it could not have gone any other way, although as an audience, we would definitely want it to end differently. The climactic scene where everything was building to only served to give us the final fizzle as all the momentum comes to a grinding halt while our little couple gets their moments to eek out the final bits of plot to close the film. It takes a film with questionable believability to begin with (it’s a ghost story), and drives us right out of the moment with a contrived bit that lacks the punch it is intended to provide.

On the one hand, I liked the movie. I enjoyed how it unfolded, and how, in a Hitchcockian way, we actually know almost everything and everyone placing us in a superior position to the characters involved. The problem is, this knowledge is not used in a suspenseful way, leaving us to watch as these characters just play out their story as we expect them to, instead of throwing any surprises or twists at us. Would I recommend a watching of it? Sure, it has its moments, and I’ll admit that I did enjoy the ride, but it’s not something worth watching more than once.

I Know Who Killed Me -- 2007 -- R

When I saw the name of this film, I had just seen the trailer for The Invisible. I assumed that this film was going to be somewhat similar, but with the minor star power of Lindsay Lohan and an R rating attached. I assumed wrong.

Where The Invisible involved a ghost-like kid, this one has a girl who was kidnapped and mutilated, but when she shows back up, she thinks she is someone else entirely. She acts different; she talks different; it seems like she created an alter ego to deal with the trauma of her injury. Not only is there an alter ego, this alter ego has an entire history laid out in great detail. The stories have no inconsistencies. They know that she is the missing girl, but how to get through to her.

Meanwhile, our injured heroine deals with the idea that she is who everyone else says she is, not who she thinks she is. Regardless, she looks around for clues to her mutilator, and as the movie progresses, comes up with reasons why things happened and how it affects her. It’s enough to make David Lynch sing a bit with the number of turns her history takes, and given the setup, it works. After all, she’s the same person; she’s just lost her mind for a bit.

While somewhat interesting for a time, the plot grew quickly tiresome. You’re not yourself; we got it. No, instead the movie drives that point home over and over and over again, like a stake in the railroad tracks. Rather than spending time moving the investigation forward or exploring who she really is, we take continual trips back to her doing something out of character for the other one, or the obligatory "I need to create interest in the male populace" strip-club scenes, in which Lindsay Lohan dances...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And not just for a few seconds here and there. When we hit the club, we’re there forever...and nothing happens.

You can only watch Lindsay wiggle her butt for so long before you want the movie to move on...please? You can move on now. Yeah, go on.

Characters? Well, there was a basic sense of the lead character...characters? Lindsay’s Aubrey/Dakota characters had enough to make you wonder "what the heck?", but everyone else lacked severely. I didn’t even know the boyfriend was the boyfriend before he was declared as such later. She had friends...their names? I’m sure they were in the script. Her parents were Daniel and Susan. I got that because the Dakota character made a firm point of using them every time. Lots of cardboard cutouts though. Very little tie in to anything form anywhere.

The third act was out of no where. She leaves the house, but how? I thought she was watched. As soon as I wonder why she isn’t followed, Dad shows up. Convenient. Now he’s playing along. The killer was easily predicted. They didn’t even make it difficult. That whole bit was far too easy, although they pulled the stupid move of splitting up. Well, actually dad left her in the car (why?) while he explored, and then she randomly got out of the car and explored too.

Ending? Oh, dear, don’t get me started. Let me say when I watched the deleted scenes, and saw what was likely the INTENDED ending, it made much, much more sense, albeit taking the chance of making the audience feel cheated. The way the ending felt is that they wrote it one way, but when the studio heads saw it, they flipped out and wanted it changed to the more ambiguous, weird ending. Bad news fellas. Since the film built to the intended ending, the weird one didn’t work at all. The credits rolled and I said "huh?"

So this had the potential of being something interesting, but with the character sucked out, and a sorry ending that didn’t work, it only holds the potential without delivering it. Oh well.

Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem -- 2007 -- R

A follow up to the rather poorly constructed Aliens vs Predator comes off a bit nicer than the first. It’s has more action, more no-holds-barred blood and guts, and pretty much everything else that its PG-13 predecessor lacked... Well, everything except a decent storyline. This film was made for the action audience to show a predator face off against a bunch of aliens and kick butt -- nothing more. And it delivers that magnificently -- and nothing more.

The plot can be summed up in a few short words -- Resident Evil with aliens. Resident Evil 2, actually, involves zombies overrunning a town and one zombie-stomping super-human savior running about wiping them all out. Aliens vs Predator: Requiem involves aliens overruning a town and one alien-stomping super-human predator running about wiping them all out. It’s a tour de force of alien smashing by the predator who is on no one’s side but his own, and so he wipes some humans out in the process of wiping the aliens out. No skin off his nose either way (though there was some skin off one poor soul in the process).

How does it fit with the franchises? Well, it didn’t really follow either one. The predators have a thin vein of knowledge to begin with, so there wasn’t much to follow there. The aliens have a few rules to follow with their species, but again, not much plot to keep track of since the Alien movies all occur in the future.

Ah, but there’s the problem. The Aliens have rules to follow. One such rule involves how they propogate. Let’s think back, shall we? Where do little aliens come from? A queen lays an egg that hatches into a bug-looking thing. Buggie thing finds a host and latches on for a few hours while it lays an egg in the hosts chest. The host thinks he’s cool until baby alien (aka chest-burster) busts out of the chest cavity leaving host for dead and running off making a mess of the kitchen. Those are the rules.

AVPR has no queen. It does have buggie things, but they only lay the initial eggs. Apparently, one of these monsters has a built in ovipositor that can drop multiple eggs in a host all at once allowing multiple chestbursters to burst forth at once. How interesting and new. I guess the aliens de-evolved in the next 200 years to their prior restrictions.

I have always been against spoilers, but here’s where I have to make an exception. The one question I’ve been asked when people find out I’ve seen this film is "who wins?" They love togo for some level ambiguousness in these sorts of things, but still create a clear winner. The first movie had a winner. Even Freddy vs Jason had a winner. In AVPR, however, they bowed out of the whole thing. It was probably the cheapest ending they could have possibly done. They didn’t even try. It effectively invalidated the majority of the movie, and the progress made by the characters. Maybe someone thought it was a good idea, but it truly and completely sucked, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Even the characters weren’t too bad; there was an effort made to make them somewhat more than just cardboard (though a fair amount of cutouts existed). Some lack of believability in some of the situations was there, such as attacking a pizza guy is a more serious offense than they made it out to be. Even if he had it coming, the pizza company can do you some legal damage for attacking their delivery guy. There was some teenage over-the-topness as well, but for the most part, the characters were fairly decently drawn. We’re not talking Godfather quality, here, but they are passable for their genre.

So it’s a movie with some great actions, some neat special effects, some solid one on one battles, lots of carnage, and everything else that the fans were dying for from the first film. But you always remember how a movie ended, and this one failed miserably on that account. Anything would have been better than what they came up with, and my prayer is that the DVD will include a different ending entirely that is far more satisfying than the schlock they stuck up in the theatres.

Saw IV -- 2007 -- R

Wow. It is a rare sequel that can continue the quality of the prior installments, and yet Saw (after recovering from its medicore second installment) pulls off its fourth film with flying colors after a well made third film. Like the first and third movies, this one wisely focuses on a single character’s struggle throughout and we are left to wonder what he will come to and what trademark twist this game will have in the end. Saw adds to the rarity of a decent sequel by being a horror franchise, a genre known more for its bad sequels than any good ones. Until Saw, the mention of a sequel to a horror flick is usually met with groans, but with the prospect of Saw V and VI on the horizon, I find myself excited about what will happen next.

We follow the character of Agent Rigg, who was in the last two films to a lesser capacity, and our buddy Jigsaw (whoever he is this time) notes that Rigg has this bad habit of trying to save everyone, but this time, he is told that he will find several people in need of help during his journey to save a fellow officer, but he is to help none of them to try and break his "save everyone" habit. So Rigg follows the instructions he has been given and we encounter a number of Jigsaw’s trademark torture toys, but Rigg is told to allow the people to save themselves.

Add to this some more character information. What’s that? Character information? Yeah, we find out more about John (aka Jigsaw) and how he came to be who and how he is. We meet people who knew him and even witness his first trap along with a subsequent trap that we don’t see the results of. Characters from other films are reused and given more depth and life in this installment and I wouldn’t doubt that continuity is maintained throughout (I must re-watch the other three). To find this level of depth in a horror movie in unheard of, and it only serves to make a dark and gritty (and even painful to watch, on occasion) set of films a real pleasure to watch and experience.

Like the other movies, we’re given a slew of cannon fodder for Jigsaw’s toys, and if a weak point can be had, this would be it. The reason horror movies tend to have thin character development is because people must be killed off during the course of the movie. Saw gives us people that serve only to be killed, but using the trademark cassette recorder (of which Jigsaw must have purchased in huge quantities since he leaves them everywhere), we actually learn a little about these people that crop up. Unlike the third film, however, these people and tests do not relate to the character’s journey in any specific way except that they have their own problems and must save themselves (in Jigsaw’s unique way) instead of be saved.

It’s put together in such an ingenius way that, like the previous films, I did not anticipate the twist at all, and yet, it fit perfectly within the confines of the story. We also find our minds trying to wrap around the continuity and timeline of the series again. It is only a matter of time before someone constructs a "chronological Saw" that places all these events in the order they happened as opposed to the puzzle we’re given as these movies go on. The movies are also constructed in such a way that you can enjoy the current film, but will miss out if you haven’t seen the previous ones. There are elements near the end of this fourth movie that will be lost on the viewer if they haven’t seen Saw III.

In the end, I was pleased. I had that big goofy grin when the twist occurred, and can’t wait to watch the unrated version, and re-watch the first three. The series is shaping up very well, and I can’t wait for Saw V which will likely hit this Halloween, like the others before. It’s an incredible series as a whole, and Saw IV didn’t disappoint. Found another addition to my collection.

Halloween -- 2007 -- R

I watched the work print from last May and then the Unrated DVD version. Both had stron and weak points, but I’ll focus on the actual release that’s out there.

The big change here is the addition of Michael Myers’ backstory, starting the day of the murders when he was 10 before he was locked away. It follows his first killing through the killing of his family, his term in the asylum, and then a rehash of the original 1978 film. It’s a slasher, so that’s pretty much the whole plot.

What it did well was the backstory. Since there was nothing before except snippets in the other films, Rob Zombie was starting with a fairly clean slate when it comes to painting the backdrop of one of the unholy trinity of slasher villains. Seeing Michael’s home and social life really put a logic to his mentality as a killer, and this whole bit was done very well and very interestingly. I admit to being quite glued for the whole term of it.

Then we got to the true remake part...this it did very badly. It was as bad and the beginning was good. Where with the original, the deaths had some measure of (dare I say) creativity and suspense, the deaths this time are fairly standard using the butcher knife and just hacking away as quickly as possible. This is due in part to the tight time constraints the movie fell under after the backstory portion, since there was more ground and loose ends left to cover in the last hour than in the original, since we had a couple of additional characters to kill off.

While the deaths do fit the profile of removing the anchors in Laurie’s life, they also made less sense plot wise because of how much he had to move around to do it. If you actually picture what he had to do in some parts versus what you see him do in others, it is very strange. For instance, he watches one house all afternoon, and as soon as Laurie leaves, he moves in and whacks the people there. Then he walks to his old house and waits there for the kids to show up, hump around and then he whacks them (not that he shoudl have know they would show up). Then he moves on to another house he could not possibly have guessed to show up as the kiddos are humping there only to kill one and almost kill the other...wait, almost? Sure enough, she survives with mortal wounds, gasping on the ground when Laurie finds her.

But as I mentioned, it all happens quickly. No suspense. No build of wonderment. No chase. No girl’s panty clad hiney stuck in a window. No, he walks in and slice! We didn’t even get that classic moment where the kid goes to the car, door’s locked, gets the keys, goes back, door’s unlocked, gets in, realizes about the same time we do, and then blood on the windows. Nope, just a bunch of hacking and it’s over...every time. It gets tedious.

Then, rather than end the movie as Carpenter intended with the "boogeyman" still out there, we go beyond that and take it way, way, way too far. Maybe the intent was no sequels to this one.

For character, the beginning was excellent. If our heart went out to anyone, it was Michael’s mom. But in the second half, they were cardboard. Sure, we knew them from 78, but something could have been done with them...I mean, something. But no, they were cardboard cutouts.Laurie wasn’t bad, but we actually got to see her do more than just have sex.

And oh, let’s not get me started on the acting and dialogue of the guys in charge of the asylum. I’m not sure which was more horrible. The delivery of the rather asinine dialogue was just hideous and felt like they had the script sitting on the desk as they were reading it. When the guy said, "If our security was inadequate, you should have warned us." I wanted to scream, "IT WASN’T THE SECURITY OF THE BUILDING, IT WAS YOU’RE FREAKIN’ GUARD!!!!!!!" But of course, that was never acknowledged. In fact, based on the work print version, it looks like the whole slaughter in the asylum was added later and they just reused the "he just escaped" after-dialogue. Scenes were shifted around and this was one of them that got the shift, and they never re-did any part of it. They should have just dumped it completely. It didn’t help.

This movie was setup to be something really good, but by either time constraints or just plain laziness, it slumped into a stereotypical slasher in the second half. Granted, the original Halloween defined slasher flicks, but it had something special that its clones didn’t. This one is more like the clones than the original, which is unfortunate because they did a great job setting it up.

I Am Legend -- 2007 -- PG-13

Here is a fascinating one. A virus hailed as the miracle cure to cancer has an unexpected side effect: it’s deadly to anyone not naturally immune to it. We’re left in a very empty New York City with only one man and his dog to lead us through the story. 2/3’s of the tale is a one man story, and they pull it off incredibly well as we feel the loneliness of his situation of being what appears to be the only person left alive on Earth.

But we’re quick to learn he isn’t truly alone. Something else is out there. Something causes him to reinforce the doors and windows to his home with steel shutters and locks. Is it just the wildlife running free out there, or is there something else out there at night? What else did this virus create?

We have one character, really. And his backstory is laid out very clearly in the way of flashbacks to how the world, and New York, got to be the way it was and well as setting us his personal situation and what happened to his family. This sub story is revealed in little bites to make us curious as to whether his family is out there or not.

Really, the heart of the story is his looking to find a cure for the viral condition that’s out there and showing us the world he lives in. There’s a lot for us to discover as he does little more than go about his daily life, and really, the fact that it’s his daily life makes it all the more interesting as we are consistently wowed by the weird world science has created for them.

As could be expected in a situation like this, we also find that not only is his world messed up, but he is slowly but surely losing his mind. This is also given in little bites, but we get the idea that he not only is subject to some of the rules of this world, but he has created some rules of his own that serve to give him some measure of human interaction that he desperately desires, but cannot have in a world popuated by one. Apparently, his dog is just not enough to talk to, but this microcosm he made for himself almost leads to his downfall.

It’s a movie that gives the worst case scenario to a miracle drug gone horribly wrong, and makes us wonder whether all things should be cured or whether life is just life and we should leave well enough alone. Curing cancer may be the ultime milestone in medical science, but a cure that leads to a decimation of the world’s population is hardly worth it.

Knock, Knock -- 2007 -- NR

Ah, after a good weekend of watching such movie masterpieces as Patton and Thelma and Louise, why in the name of all that is good would I put down a review for a movie like Knock, Knock? It's a straight to video horror flick, with almost no redeemable value. Wouldn't a review of Mystic River be more enlightening? Probably not. You already know it's good. And besides whining about the "what are we going to do?" scene in Thelma and Louise, it was all good, too.

So let's talk about Knock, Knock. To start with, let's insert standard horror synopsis here: homicidal maniac goes around killing teenagers for undisclosed reason. Good. For the high points of the blood-lusting, there was lots of gory killings, and one scene of completely gratuitous, above-the-waist nudity. But from there, let's go into the more nitty-gritty aspects.

The plot follows an investigation of the killings of teenagers as they are left alone in various places. The killings are occasionally creative, but the scenes all happens a little too quick to be scary or suspecseful, so while we know what's going to happen every time one of them is left alone, there is not fear factor in any of them. While it's not a slice and dice on every occasion, most of the dirty work happens between scenes after we're graced with the point of death. While this serves to add some mystery, it grows tiresome after awhile, and we're wondering why after 30 years, they can't at least use some of the effects from Friday the 13th so we can get a view of the hack-n-slash.

But more along my forte, let's talk plot. Here's where the movie fails even more miserably. It's the believability factor. The killings are happening to the children of a group of miscreants who killed or almost killed some kid in a fire while they were in high school. This means that this group all had children at exactly the same time. They also all stayed in town (well, all except one), their kids are all "pretty", and they all followed in their parents' popularity. The chances of all of that happening in the real world is infinitessimal. Can it happen? Sure. But all of them deciding to have children at exactly the same time, or in a couple year span? No, don't think so.

Then there's the obligatory "let the star have a trap that gives them a chance of escape." After all, the killer wiped everyone else out almost immediately upon confrontation. For the last one, though, he knocked her out, carried her outside her own house, dumped her in a coffin (still alive), and then set the coffin on fire. While this does fit the plot, it doesn't fit the rest of the killer's characteristics. Just too much of a stretch.

When it comes to characters, there was nothing to write home about. We get a backstory about the main washed up detective and the incident that started it all, but that's about it. We meet the victims long enough for them to die, and to top it, the story doesn't even really focus on them. And pretty much every scene with the slow janitor runs boring. A guy playing with dolls doesn't warrant a 3 minute scene. Sorry.

This one was a goner from the script, and would have been a far more interesting film if it had taken an approach more similar to It, and focused solely on the miscreants committing the crime in the past and present. They still could have wiped out the children and preserved the whodunit aspect, if they wanted to, but to focus on the cops in a horror movie is a poor choice and took us out of the story entirely.

No Country For Old Men -- 2007 -- R

The Coen brothers. It brings up an image of Blood Simple and Fargo for me; two films that I felt were very, very good. This one won some Oscars, got nominated for a slew of things, and was just touted as the best film ever. I disagree. Here's why.

The short version is that the movie first, expects you to believe a series of events that just don't make sense to me. Are they remotly conceivable? I guess, but really feel like they're done for plot's sake. Then, for the ending, we're taken completely out of the original story to tie up some loose ends in a way that just doesn't make any sense either and I, frankly, get lost in. Details? Naturally. I don't complain without them.

To start with, it's setup all right. A hunter is out shooting a buck when he fires and they scatter. When he tracks them down, he discovers, instead, a dog limping away from something. Naturally and understandaly curious, he turns back to see what happened. It's a slaughter. 

Bodies all over the place around trucks, both left for dead. No survivors...except one who wants water. Our hunter has no water, and looks around to see what else there is. He finds a truck full of drugs, and a dead man under a tree, some distance away. He goes there and finds himself a bag loaded with money...we learn it's two million dollars.

Ok, he takes it...obviously.He goes home with it, and hides the bag under his run down trailer where he lives with his wife. To note, he appears to be Mexican, and she's quite white, so the commentary there about her mother disagreeing with their union is understood easily. Then, we lose our belief. In the middle of the night, he is suddenly guilty over the water guy. He fills up a gallon jug and goes back out there.

Sorry, a truck bed full of drugs and a two million dollar booty doesn't go missed for long, and he should thank his lucky stars he wasn't caught before. Naturally, he's caught now, and barely escapes with his life but without his truck. Now, they can find his house, so he tells his wife to go to mom's, and he runs ith the money.

He hides out in a motel, but we learn that the money has a tracking device in it...however, by watching how that plays out, the tracker apparently only has a range of maybe a quarter to a half a mile at the most. This means that he's gone many miles away, no where near his home, and the bad guy finds him? What?! And then, to top that off, he gets into the wrong hotel room and runs across a bunch of Mexicans with a bunch of guns and he blows them away...but not our hunter. Who the heck are these other guys? It never says.

So our hunter checks into another hotel in a city, but it never occus to him to consider how he might have been located. While dumb luck is the real key here, he has to go to sleep and wake up later to think of there being a tracking device in the money. He finds it in short order, and then notices the room light next door on (since he's in a hotel with adjoining rooms). I would have dropped the tracker in a drawer and skipped out right then. 

Nope. He turns the light back off and sits on the bed waiting for the inevitable, which happens. Our villain somehow got back in range and found him again. After a brief shoot out, our hunter jumps out the window...and runs back into the hotel (okay, that works...I mean, he could hide in a room in the hotel and never be found, right?), but he runs out a back door, apparently visible from the villain's room since he gets shot at (even though the villain was in a room next to the hunters...on the front side of the hotel).

So the hunter flags down a vehicle and hops in, telling the driver to drive...but our bad guy fires again...shooting the driver. Huh? So our hunter drives the vehicle from the passenger side and on a totally clear road, he manages to lose control and slam into a...parked car. Insert shootout here from which both parties survive.

More stuff and a pointless subplot happens until the wife and her mother are supposed to meet up with them...but mom tells a strange Mexican everything causing the bad guy to beat them to the next hotel and blow our hunter away before anyone gets there. D'oh! And the movie's not over yet. Where's the money? No one knows. Where are the aforementioned drugs? No one has said. 

Instead, we get a conversation between the sheriff on the case and his dad. Then the villain visits the dead hunter's wife (who just buried her mom...no mention of how that happened). Nothing is said of what became of her, but we can suspect she was shot (why not?). Then our villain is driving away from that scene down a peaceful street when BAM! He's side slammed by another car, breaking his arm. Why? I don't know!

So in the end, we get a chatter from the sheriff, who is now retired, telling us about a dream he had about his dad. And then it's over. ?! Wait, it's over? Last time I was surprised by a movie suddenly ending was The Godfather Part II, but at least that one made sense. Maybe I missed the point. I don't know, but we had a plot about a bit of money being chased around, and a sheriff kind of tracking it. Then the sheriff gets complacent about the whole thing, and gives up. Our hunter becomes our sentimental focus of the story, and then he's knocked off and forgotten. The money is a focus, but it gets absconded with and is also gone...we know not where.

Granted, the movie has some decent and even unique characters. Maybe one can argue that it's just a tretise on life where anything can happen, and it sucks anyway, but come on...this is a movie! One of my favorite quotes is, "The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." This is based on a novel, which is fiction, as far as I know, but it makes little sense. Maybe devotees of the novel just loved and understand what happened to the wife's mother. For me, I just note we're at a funeral and I'm going, "Who the heck is Agnes?"

I guess this is just another situation like The French Connection where everyone just loved it, and I just didn't get it. For this movie, while it had good characters, the plot was unbelievable, the situations near impossible, the characters' actions served the plot, and I'm sure they were going for clever dialogue in some scenes, but it just came off as gratuitous. So, for me, it didn't work.

Now, I have had occasion to be in the "wrong place" for certain types of movies, and perhaps I was expecting convention where I got weirdness. Maybe I expected one character as the lead where it was about someone completely different. Or maybe it had the Coen name stamped on it, and they got points for that. I don't know. Maybe someday I'll watch it again and catch all the fabulous and wonderful subtleties that won it the Oscars, but at this time, it's a movie that missed the mark in my book.

1408 -- PG-13 -- 2007

I love thrillers. They warp your head and leave you wondering. Such was the case with 1408. It's based on a Stephen King story, and the screenplay wasn't written by him, so it's a fair bet, the movie will be decent. It was. I really enjoyed. It was the type of film that keeps you guessing, and remains legitimately random enough that you don't know what will come next.

Our hero visits and writes about haunted locations, be they houses, motels, or other places. The film opens with him visiting a random hotel and staying on the 14th floor where "most of the paranormal activity happens." The hotel owners are clearly happy that he's there, and are certain to see a rise in business for appearing in his next book. But he's not a happy guy.

He's not mean by any means, but he went to a book signing and few people showed for it. And the only person to bring up a book was someone who had found an older novel of his on eBay, as opposed to the new books that were being sold. There are also references to his "10 most haunted" books showing up on discount rack sand such, which is never a good place for a writer to be.

He receives a postcard telling him "not" to stay in room 1408 at a hotel in New York, so naturally he checks it out. He calls the hotel and asks for room 1408 and it's "unavailable" without his ever telling them when he'll stay there. No matter when he asks, it's always unavailable. Well, undaunted, he goes through his publisher and finds a way to stay in that room.

However, the hotel manager still tries to change his mind about staying in this room, insisting that the room is evil. There are no ghosts or spirits, he says, but it's just evil as there have been 55 deaths in that room since the hotel opened. Our man is insistent, and so he gets the room. So begins a night that will change his life.

Reality is quickly turned on its ear, and nothing is set in stone. It starts simple but goes to the exceptionally weird. The room plays by its own rules, and whether it is real or not is in question the whole time. While the ending itself doesn't offer anything especially shocking, it is quite creepy in its own right.

A story about one character lends itself very easily to filling that character out very completely, and through the experiences in the room, we not only get a creepfest, but we also learn about the guy up one side and down the other. We get to know everything about him through the course of this room, and despite the horror of the experience, it can easily be said that the room saved his life -- or at least restored it.

The plot is actually very, very simplistic. All they needed to do was get him into the room, and let the weirdness begin. His backstory was simple and explained sufficiently. His reasoning for being there, and being trapped there was plausible. It was fairly well constructed overall, and was that much more fun when it didn't make sense (since it worked in the overall framework).

So I enjoyed, whatever anyone else might think. It was a fun little haunted room romp through some horrific imagery and one guy's life.