Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - 2005 - PG-13

I saw a preview for this film, and when I saw the title, I thought they were putting me on and advertising a video game. It looked pretty neat from the trailer, and upon discovering it was a movie, I had to see it.

The best part of this film is the animation. It's CG like Pixar and Dreamworks are famous for, but this animation kicks both of those studios' butts when it comes to the CG work. It is absolutely incredible. Realism is beyond compare for computer animation. It's one of those that you must see to believe.

This medium, of course, allowed for some amazing action sequences. The opening motorcycle chase was just incredible. There was also a one on one melee in a gutted church that was rather good as well. Lots of great shots that were nothing short of picturesque while some high speed this and that went on in front of it. Just a feast for the eyes.

This is, however, where the good part ends.

This thing is based on a video game, and I can only guess it translated well. There was a ton of exposition running non-stop from one end to the other to make sure the audience had a clue as to what was going on. This means that the character development was almost completely sacrificed. They tried to squeeze too much into their running time, so elements of the plot seemed odd or out of place at several moments.

Then, comes the friends of the main character. Who the heck are these guys? We go from ex-soldier guy with skill to these superheroes with no introduction. They come into the story completely out of no where like a deux ex machina finish to a large monster (who also came out of no where) in the middle of the film.

Then, it turns out the main villain is someone who does not exist until certain requirements are fulfilled. It was a neat final battle, but the final resolution escaped me.

I can see fans of the game throughly enjoying and understanding this film, but this is another that for me, who watches the movie and expects to understand, I got lost in the overwhelming plot laid out here.

Final Destination -- 2000 -- R

This film has probably one of the cleverest premises in recent history for a horror movie. It was actually original. What if you had a premonition of your own death and avoided it? The answer plays out in this film where death does not like to be interrupted in his plan and the survivors of a horrific plane crash are summarily killed in a variety of "accidental" ways.

The boy who saw the accident which should have killed them is ushered off a plane when he declares that it will explode on takeoff. He and several others are in the waiting area when the plane actually does explode killing everyone on board and traumatizing those remaining. Just when they think it's all over, the survivors begin to die as well.

The death sequences (not to be morbid) are extremely inventive. Since we are not dealing with a physical force, but one that is supposed to be supernatural and controlling the fates of everyone, the potential for creative sequences is very much there. Every once of these things could be well labeled a freak accident, since the chances of most of these actually happening in real life is slim to none.

One of the more creative: a woman is drying her hands and lays the cloth on a knife block. She is boiling water for tea and pours the water into a mug. She flips out whe she realizes the saying on mug has emotional impact. She dumps the hot water and grabs vodka from the freezer. Well, this causes the mug to crack and the vodka to leak out. She walks across the room with the mug in hand and adjusts something behind a computer monitor (I forget what this was, but it made sense). The vodka trickles out of the mug and down into the computer monitor. She continues fooling with whatever next to the monitor for awhile. Well, the vodka gets into the electronics, creates a short circuit, and the monitor explodes. She is cut by the flying glass. Then, the flames from the exploding monitor ignites the vodka trail on the floor leading into the kitchen. Now the stove is on fire. She makes her way into the kitchen to put out the fire and collapses from the blood loss. She looks up and sees a cloth to help stop the flow of blood. What's the cloth on? The knife block. Tug on the cloth. Knife block comes down and thunk! Knife in chest. But wait, she's still alive. Our boy comes to help her. The stove blows up and knocks a dining room chair over to push the knife in. Now she's dead.

While not all of the deaths show that level of creativity, there are many that do, and the final showdown is not to be missed since it doesn't get more unlikely than that, and yet well within the rules of the film.

Definitely a recommended one for its creativity, originality, and even rewatchability.

The Fog -- 2005 -- PG-13

This is a remake of the 1980 John Carpenter film that I have yet to see. We have a little island town with a dark past that finally comes back to haunt them in the form of a fog hiding the supernatural attackers.

Like many teen scream flicks, this one lacks in the character department first and foremost. The main male lead, whose name I don't even remember, has little to no development at all, even though he seems to be the main character. More time is given to the female lead, Elizabeth, but she up and does silly things that no one in their right mind would do (like hearing a noise and walking outside all the way down to the beach in her underwear). There are other characters, but what development they are granted is limited solely to the scenes they are in....if you're lucky.

One question I wanted to know waswhy these spirits chose this moment to return. There seemed to be a bigger backstory here that they never got into. The spirits seem to have a tie-in with the lead female, Elizabeth, but rather than explore this thread, the movie moves onward to another impressive, special effects-laden kill. 

Elizabeth's final actions in the film save the day...but why does she do them? Nothing to this point indicated what needed to be done, and likewise when she did it, it occurred without reasoning or explanation. I thought I had a clue as to what was going on based on what I did know, but it didn't go that way and instead, did something that didn't make a lot of sense.

So while the pacing was decent, the characters were paper thin, and the plot had multiple pitfalls. I wanted to know why this started, or at least someone say there was nothing to trigger it. It might have been triggered by a bag of goodies that was torn open near the beginning, but that really doesn't make a lot of sense...however, it's all we have to go on.

Frankenstein -- 1931 -- NR

The 1932 version of the film is nothing but plot. Boris Karloff definitely established the visual look and feel of the legendary monster, the sets are ominous enough, and the effects solid for 1931, but the script just had a plot and ran through it with no attempt to create any kind of characters or their relationships with one another. 

Again, I am surprised at comments about these classics when they are purported to be the "greatest of all time" in respect to their genres. I suppose in that aspect that is true. Most monster movies have no characterization, and this one is no different.

The French Connection -- 1971 -- R

1971 must have been a slow year for movies. If ever you wanted to know just how boring a detective's job can be, this film exemplifies it. It's 104 minutes I'll never get back. The characters experienced no growth during the course of this film, and the story never took off to any degree that I noticed. The only note-worthy scene was an interesting chase of a car following a city train. The car was under the tracks swerving and speeding. However, the setup for the chase was poorly executed and since I had no emotional investment in the picture by this time, it came off as really anti-climactic. 

How this film managed to win 5 Oscars including best picture, best director, and best screenplay is a mystery I'll never know the answer to. For best picture, it beat out Fiddler on the Roof and A Clockwork Orange, both of which are vastly superior to this film.

But hey, not all films are for all people. I didn't like it, but maybe I missed something.

Fatal Attraction -- 1987 -- R

Classic love triangle flick that was nominated for best picture and has been spoofed over and over and over. A man (Michael Douglas) cheats on his wife for a weekend when she is out of town, and is then stalked by the woman he slept with (Glenn Close). Once you get past waiving your finger at the idiot for committing adultery to start with, his family becomes the victims of his wrongdoing, making the consequences of his actions the real plot of this story. After the affair, the movie kicks off and just moves non-stop to the end with several twists and turns along the way as Close's character keeps tightening the noose.

What makes the tale all the more enthralling is the realization that with everything that she is doing to him, he can't (won't) reveal what is really going on to his wife because if he does, he'll be forced to reveal his infidelity. Close's character knows this and continues her dirty game until he dies or gives her what she wants from him.

The Forgotten -- 2004 -- PG-13

This thriller started out really well. It was bizarre and had a lot of question thrown out here with an even bigger question mark on how to find them. Then it got weird. It crossed over into soap opera land where characters refuse to ask the simplest and most logical of questions. A world where someone calls and gets interrupted with a whole other story, and then the person who interrupted never learns the reason the other person called, and it was probably important or they wouldn't have called. The characters did stupid things. Who in their right (or wrong) mind would sleep in someone's abandoned house? Especially if they're being followed? The characters' stupidity and lack of asking questions forced the movie to keep going since it left those loose ends untied. The problem I had was they could have been tied very easily, and it shouldn't be that easy.

This might be considered a spoiler so consider yourself warned.

About 45 minutes in, one of the characters made a vague suggestions about "someone other than the government" and "abducted." The word alien was never used, but I thought "Oh, this better not be an alien movie." Yeah, instead of a clever way for the government or even her husband to cover this up, it was alien involvement. Talk about a freakin' cop-out. It completely ruined all the wonderful things they started with. Grumble...

Had a happy ending and the extended original ending was better than the theatrical which was supposed to be frightening. I just can't get over that stupid alien bit.

The Fog -- 1980 -- R

The original version of The Fog was written and directed by John Carpenter, the guy who gave us Halloween. It follows a small town preparing for their centennial celebration only to find out that their founding fathers may not have been entirely scrupulous in their dealings to acquire the monies needed to build the town.

So we get a fog which rolls in and brings with it the zombie-ish people who want revenge on the town for their founding fathers. What follows is a handful of deaths and a small climax to wrap things up. It has a fair amount of chilling moments, and a very creepy atmosphere which helps, but beyond Carpenter's inherent film making strengths, there's really nothing to write home about.

We are introduced to a host of different characters, but Carpenter is more focused on his thrills and plot than developing these characters to anyone memorable, and if a character dies, we don't really miss them.

The basic plot is decent, and it has a solid backstory. If Carpenter had spent some time on his characters, we'd have a really memorable movie. As it is, it's another filmed filed under the slashers that could have been better.

Final Destination -- 2000 -- R

This film has probably one of the cleverest premises in recent history for a horror movie. It was actually original. What if you had a premonition of your own death and avoided it? The answer plays out in this film where death does not like to be interrupted in his plan and the survivors of a horrific plane crash are summarily killed in a variety of "accidental" ways.

The boy who saw the accident which should have killed them is ushered off a plane when he declares that it will explode on takeoff. He and several others are in the waiting area when the plane actually does explode killing everyone on board and traumatizing those remaining. Just when they think it's all over, the survivors begin to die as well.

The death sequences (not to be morbid) are extremely inventive. Since we are not dealing with a physical force, but one that is supposed to be supernatural and controlling the fates of everyone, the potential for creative sequences is very much there. Every once of these things could be well labeled a freak accident, since the chances of most of these actually happening in real life is slim to none.

One of the more creative: a woman is drying her hands and lays the cloth on a knife block. She is boiling water for tea and pours the water into a mug. She flips out whe she realizes the saying on mug has emotional impact. She dumps the hot water and grabs vodka from the freezer. Well, this causes the mug to crack and the vodka to leak out. She walks across the room with the mug in hand and adjusts something behind a computer monitor (I forget what this was, but it made sense). The vodka trickles out of the mug and down into the computer monitor. She continues fooling with whatever next to the monitor for awhile. Well, the vodka gets into the electronics, creates a short circuit, and the monitor explodes. She is cut by the flying glass. Then, the flames from the exploding monitor ignites the vodka trail on the floor leading into the kitchen. Now the stove is on fire. She makes her way into the kitchen to put out the fire and collapses from the blood loss. She looks up and sees a cloth to help stop the flow of blood. What's the cloth on? The knife block. Tug on the cloth. Knife block comes down and thunk! Knife in chest. But wait, she's still alive. Our boy comes to help her. The stove blows up and knocks a dining room chair over to push the knife in. Now she's dead. 

While not all of the deaths show that level of creativity, there are many that do, and the final showdown is not to be missed since it doesn't get more unlikely than that, and yet well within the rules of the film. 

Definitely a recommended one for its creativity, originality, and even rewatchability.

Final Destination 2 -- 2003 -- R

For a sequel, this one didn't do too bad. It had a lot of conventions of the genre in that it killed off whoever survived the original (except the token one, of course). It had the one surviving person who could bring everyone up to date from the first film with the "I was there" speech. It altered the rules somewhat, though did a fair job of explaining them. 

Complaint one is about the dialogue. Seriously, there are several lines that should never appear in a movie of any kind. When the character is talking and pauses briefly, there is not real reason to say "go on" except it being in the script. There was the "what do you mean" question when someone was explaining something weird. And of course, it wouldn't be a sequel with the "I can't believe this is happening again" line. Not just once, but three times!

There were a lot of contrivances to the plot, though it did what it could to explain them away, to its credit. Unlike the first one, the potential victims here were all strangers, meaning they had to trust each other in this outlandish theory. So they all got together to meet about it. Why? This is not answered. Nor is it explained HOW they managed to get everyone a special cell phone instead of just exchanging numbers. Again, there was some good explanation to get around some of this, but passing out the cell phones was just silly to me. 

What went right was changing up the rules. At the beginning, I had doubts since the rules as established in the original were that you will die in the order you were supposed to die in the original incident. Well, the last ones to die were the first to go, so I'm thinking there's a problem here since our girl survived and the was the last to die. That gets explained and it works for me. We're going in reverse order.

And now, the real redeeming quality. I hesitate to say much on this since it would this part of the film though it has no bearing on the actual plot. Here's the short version without details. Every survivor in this film would have died the previous year had the survivors in the original film died on the plane. They go into detail on this one, but that's some good storytelling.

So this is a rare sequel that measures up closely to the original probably because they worked to tie it in to the original, give us the elements of the original we liked, and move the story forward instead of placing it on a treadmill. Good stuff.

Got FD3 at home and looking forward to it...

Final Destination 3 -- 2006 -- R

The latest installment of the FD franchise where death is the bad guy, and weird deaths are the bill of fare adds very little to the overall storyline. Basically, is you take the original Final Destination film and set it on a roller coaster without any adults, you have this film. The main difference is that one can conveniently look up the plot of the first film online and discover that people will die in the order they were supposed to be killed.

One thing this adds is that for some reason the leads play a minor role in nearly every death, usually by way of distraction or interference. In the first film, every death played out in an intricate series of apparent coincidences that caused the people to die. In FD3, the leads track down the next victim and seemingly inadvertently cause the person's death. It's not quite as cut and dry as the original was, and the deaths are not nearly as creative. There is one incredibly clever sequence in a hardware store, but most of the deaths are quickly done. There is usually a decent setup, but nothing that comes close to some of those in the original film.

In the end, it was a good movie, and did not shame the Final Destination franchise. It also had some good pacing, decent characters (for a horror flick), and a sensible plot. On the down side, it's strength was also its weakness in that it basically rehashed the first film with a slightly different scenario and different characters. The photographs were a nice addition, but really, it wasn't enough to distinguish itself.

Footloose -- 1984 -- PG

This film with Kevin Bacon has a far better soundtrack than storyline, though its simplistic story has some measure of uniqueness to it. It follows a boy from the city who is used to all the debauchery of the big city moving to a small town still reeling from a five year old event and all the laws passed to prevent it from recurring. The trouble is this event (involving the deaths of several teens) resulted in the outlawing of rock music and dancing, elements they believe lead to the activites that led to these deaths.

It becomes a face-off between the kid, who ends up representing the teens of the city, and the town's preacher, who represents the adults. Each side has their extremes and these are played out pretty well with some of the adults actually burning books and some of the kids openly condemning the boy's efforts.

One of the issues this film has is in its development. The kids are developed ok, and its possible a lot of this has to do with the amateurish acting by its young leads. They all act like sterotypical teens out to buck the system. This hardly creates an interesting or even sympathetic character. The show is regularly stolen by the preacher and his wife, who being played by actors of greater experience, put forth more depth than the script ever hoped to portray making their scenes far more interesting than the main storyline. in fact, they'd stolen the show so well that near the end, you could follow the preacher's dilemma even better than the kids and even felt for him more. The film even seemed to shift in his favor. This aspect is only a weakness in that the film was supposed to be about the teenagers.

The other part of this film that weakened it is its exceptional soundtrack. A lot of time was devoted on screen to its custom-written songs. So much so that it often detracted from the story so that the songs could complete.One of the special features touted that the songs tell a story. I'm sure they do, but it would be better if they told the story that was going on on screen. Unless Kevin Bacon and his conry he was teaching to dance were in a solid boy on boy relationship, "Let's Hear It For The Boy" is not the most appropriate song to accompany them.

"Holding Out For A Hero" was played under a tractor race, of all things, and I think I can understand this one a little bit, but this is how misplaced it was. The tractor race was about Bacon's character versus the teen town bigshot. They were playing chicken on tractors. Who would be "singing" this song? Why the girl, of course. She was in a relationship with bigshot, but plotwise, she would inevitably go for the new kid. Hence, she needed a "hero." Got that. But the scene is not about her, and she received very little screentime during it.

So, the film wasn't a bad thing, but it made some errors for the sake of vanity that didn't help it.

A Fish Called Wanda -- 1988 -- R

Oh my goodness, now this was a funny movie. The credits blame John Cleese for the writing of this screenplay, and it all worked perfectly.

Basically, we have four people who work together to heist a bunch of diamonds. Neither of them trust any of the others, but they needed each other to pull it off. Everyone has essentially lied to everyone else about practically everything, so the whole film revolves around untying all the ends and figuring out who's who and what's what.

I never guessed how this was going to end up, and it's just perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and definitely recommend it.

Flightplan -- 2005 -- PG-13

This thriller with Kyle (Jodie Foster) begins grimly with her identifying her husband's body before it is interred for a flight to the United States to be buried. Her and her daughter are to accompany him on the plane ride home, and ironically, the airplane she is taking is one she helped to design as an aeronautical engineer.

During the flight, she and her daughter grab a couple of back seats to rest during the trip, and when she wakes up, her daughter is gone. Not only is her daughter gone, but since she entered the plan with her daughter wrapped up in her coat (the little girl was scared), no one remembers her daughter existing at all. As mothers do, she raises a huge stink about her daughter being missing until she is understandably detained.

It's frustration and confusion during the first half to two-thirds of this film as she frantically tries to convince everyone that she has a daughter and the girl is missing. The character is wonderfully portrayed and we feel every emotion she goes through in the process. This film is definitely a star vehicle as every other character in the film pales in comparison to the lead.

Once the big reveal comes and everything else plays out, it does so in a fairly interesting fashion, though I had concerns about Kyle's apparent munitions knowledge and our "villain spills the plot to the heroine" bit at the third act break. It's an ending that pales in comparison to the tension of the rest of the film, but delivers a fairly satisfying conclusion and even retribution to our heroine.

So it's a good film that gives us a nice reversal and great tension, and it's a lot better than some of the other films that have come out recently.

Amelie (Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Le) -- 2001 -- R

Wow. Finally, I got to see something good again. This film is in French with English subtitles, so it's not for everyone, but for those who can enjoy it, it is a really good film.

We basically start with the birth of Amelie (sounds like "Emily") and her growing up with her father, the doctor, and her mother, the teacher. We get no less than 20 minutes of voiceover introducing her, her like/dislikes, those of her family, friends, and all those around her. It was a strange way to set up this world, but remarkably effective since we knew everyone from the get go without trying to figure them out as we go along. It goes a bit over the top occasionally, but it's better to know than not to know.

The story revolves around Amelie's interactions with these people and how she wishes to help people in her own way. It all started when she found a forgotten box of treasures, and the owner's reaction when she returned it. It inspired her to do as much good as possible, and she does in very often humorous ways. She moves on to helping others in the best way she knows how, and while it occasionally backfires, she often succeeds in amusing and unique ways.

The characters are very well rounded, interesting, and unique in their quirky ways. The lady behind the cigarette counter is not just about the stoagies...she's a hypochondriac. That guy who's always in the bar? Well, he's hung up on the waitress and is stalking her. The inevitable romantic interest? He collects pictures that people have thrown away from under photo booths. Just an incredible assortment of unique individuals that made this film that much more enjoyable to watch and follow.

I laughed quite a few times at the silliness that went on here, but it was so simple that I throughly enjoyed every moment. Granted, the subtitled movies aren't for everyone, but if you ever wanted to try one, this would be a great start.

Friday the 13th -- 1980 -- R

As a movie lover, watching this film was simply a requirement. It spawned the second longest running movie series of all time with ten sequels (so far; the first being James Bond with twenty sequels), gave us a horror icon with Jason Voorhees (though he ironically does not appear in the first film), and still makes us scratch our heads in trying to figure out how it did so well.

The premise is simple and ancient. Get a bunch of kids to an isolated location and kill them off one by one. The killer remained a complete mystery until revealed, and ended up with a perfectly plausible reason for killing everyone and an equally creepy trait in doing it.

To back up a little bit, we have a Camp Crystal Lake that was closed out in 1958 because two counselors were killed. The year before that, a boy drowned in the lake itself. The camp had been wrought with problems and delays for years anytime it tried to open, and now we're trying again. While we're given a series of red herrings to follow in regards to the whodunit, none of them make a lot of sense and it looks like the film is in continuity error hell until the big reveal which sets it all straight.

So once everyone is in place, people start dropping like flies. The director knows suspense, though, which is rarer and rarer in a film like this. We know the killer is out there, but we watch as the characters cluelessly carry on with their completely logical routines. They don't know there's a problem; only we do, which adds to the suspense of each death. This is consistently done well throughout, and the characters don't make any choices that are illogical, which is another plus. After all, they are counselors who need to know the camp inside and out. If they see something, it stands to reason that they'd check it out. They are also a bunch of late teens who like having fun, so the presumption that someone is playing with one of them is also not illogical. After all, they don't know anything is wrong.

We can fault the film in the character area, but for what it is, it does fairly well. Most of the characters are just cardboard cut outs, and there's not much to relate to in them. This makes their deaths kind of anticlimactic, since only the suspense gives the deaths any meaning or feeling. We do get some snippets of the characters' lives, but just not enough. However, since we're also dealing with a large number of characters whose fate it is to die, it's hard to go very deep in a ninety minute film.

The final issue here when it comes to the fear factor is that the film has no real staying power. Halloween takes place in a neighborhood. I live in a neighborhood. A Nightmare on Elm Street happens in dreams. I have dreams. Friday the 13th happens at a camp. I never go to a camp. If I ever do, I will probably be creeped out, but as I sit here, the party is over. I'm not invading the camp, so the killer isn't out to get me.

Oh yes, and the score does seem to pay a tad bit of homage to Bernard Herrmann's main titles to Psycho. That's the main titles, not the famous "violin screech" accompanying Marion Crane's demise in the shower.

I rank this film as being very good for its genre, and delivering a solid amount of suspense. It doesn't really deliver in the scare department because I never really felt any fear during the movie, but I was locked in on the suspense, because it did that very well. If you like movies, you gotta view it. As for the sequels...well, they're on my list, so I'll let you know.

Friday the 13th Part 2 -- 1981 -- R

I've been intending to subject myself to this one for some time, and so last night, I pulled it out and gave it a viewing. Before we hit the main titles, we were in cliche city, but I can't help but wonder whether at the time, they were cliches, or whether this was the series to establish the cliches.

Cliche #1: False scare followed by false sense of security. Our heroine from Part 1 walks into the kitchen to find (gasp!) an open window. She approaches this open window cautiously before (zing!) a kitten jumps through. She sighs with a laughs. Kittens aren't scary. My thought: a kitten didn't open the window.

Cliche #2: Kill off the survivor(s) from the previous movie. They love doing this. Nightmare 3 saw three survivors, and the first thing Nightmare 4 did was wipe them all out. Well, one person survived Crystal Lake in Part 1, and she was wiped out before the main titles.

The first thing that concerned me in this one was when we got this long montage of flashbacks to film #1, which is probably the only reason we had the survivor from film #1 at all, though she did get pretty high billing. But when the first 10 minutes of a film that doesn't make the 90 minute mark are flashbacks to the last one, you gotta have some concern as to the thinness of the plot you're getting into.

After the main titles (geez, four paragraphs and we haven't got past the main titles yet), we meet more teens who want to get out to somewhere around Crystal Lake. There's apparently a counselor training center out there now that is far away from the Camp featured in part 1. But...

Cliche #3: Perform action that services the plot, but makes no other logical sense. ...these people park on one side of the street and run across the street and a half a block back to a pay phone. Why? So their vehicle could be towed without them noticing. I'm thinking: why not park next to the pay phone? Because then they could hear the tow truck coming. Then again, the building the parked next to might have actually had a phone attached to it; it was too far away to notice.

Anyway, they get the truck back and start driving out to Crystal Lake where...

Cliche #4: Cliche #3 happens to get some exposition out. ...they are stopped by a log in the road so the girl can wander into the woods and locate a sign for Camp Crystal Lake so they can talk about it. Of course, the branch was there deliberately, and I'll give that one to them. It was the wandering into the woods that I thought was bizarre, much less randomly locating this sign.

Moving on, we get to this center where no one can act, and all the dialogue sounds like it is being performed by a troupe of high schoolers. We easily idenitify the one we're going to see naked at some point, get some acquaintance with the ones who will die at some point, and traveling through this tripe, we really don't care about them either. Some effort is made to develop some of them, but none of them really get to the point where we can feel for them.

Cliche #5: Long expository sequence where the previous film is recounted and the current one is setup. This happens around a campfire with a ghost story of sorts. Instead of getting the question mark of who is possibly doing this, we learn right from the beginning that legend has it that Jason Voorhees, the boy who drowned, wanders the wilderness searching for prey. It got old really, really fast. Possibly because we are already familiar with it, but expository sequences like this are done in nearly every horror sequel assuming no one watched the last one, I guess. It ends with a scare with a mask and spear, and we are left knowing that this is going to come back to haunt us later.

Two of the characters insist on going to where the first film happened, even though it is (of course) forbidden. I'm not sure whether to classify this as a cliche or not. I rolled my eyes at the insistance, but can't say whether it happens a lot because I could see myself being curious about it if I were in the area. Anyway, they run across this sheriff who turns them into their boss at the training camp. I mention this sheriff because...

Cliche #5: Long chase ends with the demise of the chaser. As soon as the sheriff followed the mystery character into the woods, we knew he was toasted. He kept chasing and kept chasing and kept chasing, and I'm thinking that the chasee is gone, just go home. Does he go home? Nope. He keeps going until...

Cliche #6: Entering a house that isn't your own without being invited. ...he finds a shack in the woods and goes right on in. He explores this handmade hut and of course, bites it there. It's a setup for later, but could have been done better to avoid the cliche.

Cliche #7: Get rid of all the characters you don't want to kill off. Who wants to go to town? That said it all for me. Everyone who isn't going to die is leaving. In Scream, we had a big party and everyone left except the leads to find the principal hanging from the goalposts. So the ones who have received the least character setup all go to town with the exception of three who are the heads of the training thing. I was actually kind of surprised that these left, but figured they'd all return later anyway. I was part right.

Ok, insert long chase sequences, and hacking up of the pointless characters, and you get the majority of the rest of the film. For one of these kills, we get...

Cliche #8: Go into an area calling someone's name and never look behind you. ...a guy goes out the door because he heard a noise and thinks its his girl. He goes out the door calling her name over and over. He goes one direction (facing away from the entry to the area), and never turns around. He's hit, of course, and never sees it coming.

Once everyone left behind was killed, the two heads returned (strangely, the first character idenitifed by name stayed in town to not meet his end; maybe a future sequel). These two discovered blood everywhere and a lot of unanswered questions since there were no bodies.

Well, throw in a really, really long chase sequence where our girl runs through rooms and the forest, etc. She comes at Jason with a chainsaw, and could have finished him off but...

Cliche #9: The opportunity to finish off the villain is available, but the hero/heroine doesn't take it. ...she doesn't. She threatened him. He stumbles and fell face down over a table or something. The chainsaw was running and she had the advantage. Run that thing through his back, and we are short one horror series. What does she do? Drops it and runs.

So more long chasing until she ends up at the shack our sheriff found where she pulls something very clever and very well setup. This was probably the best part of the movie right here, and likely the only reason the movie can be considered decent.

Then more fighting and they defeat Jason with a machete to the shoulder. Wait...the shoulder? Who dies from wounds in the shoulder? Yeah, that collarbone is broken, but I doubt it will stop him, though he is sure motionless. Run him through, whack him in the head or something...do they? See cliche #9 and smack forehead again.

Final scare and out.

This one did have the occasional suspenseful moment, and those moments were fairly well done. They were overshadowed, however, by torrents of stupidity, cliches, and poorly developed characters. They were here to get killed and unless you were taking notes, you won't even remember their names.

I will say the variation on why they were at Crystal Lake was decent and believable; they did avoid the original camp, and why not build elsewhere on the lake? Makes sense to me. Who knew that this Jason freak would claim ownership of the whole lake and not just the camp? So for a good point, I'll give them that.

Friday the 13th Part 3 -- 1982 -- R

I do try to find some kind of redeemable quality in movies, but this one really didn't do it for me. I guess the actors and people had some work for awhile, but it was hardly worth it. Let me count a few ways in which this film had problems.

We start with a flashback to Part 2 to see how it ended. Unlike Part 1's flashback, this one did not serve much of any real purpose other than to kill about 5 minutes and establish that we are 1 day following the end of that film.

We move on to some people who apparently live somewhere near Crystal Lake, but this is where we find problem number one. Friday the 13th has a simple premise: kill anyone who camps on Crystal Lake. These people (the first victims) had apparentlylived in this location for some time and even owned a store there. Why did he attack them? Why now? And the dude: no wipe, no flush? He deserved to die.

Anyway, we move onto the main girl and her horny friends, and she's going out to a farm house that she hasn't been to in 2 years. Apparently her family lived there prior to that time, undisturbed. So at some point, Jason decided the whole lake was his, and this occurred some where betwee parts 1 and 2. Figure out why. I dare you. Actually, I beg you. I have no idea and the movie didn't go into it.

So miss skittish reacts to every noise and sound she hears. A scream? Must run and check it out. She went out to the van and commented on the door being open, and she knew she'd left it closed. Hm. There are about 8 other people who could open it, and big surprise, one of them did. Also, these caracters check out every single frigging noise they hear. Who does this? A tree branch rustles. Who's there? Maybe the wind? It got very old, very fast.

They go into town for a second and run into this 80's gang, who of course, go out to this farm and get hacked. One of them even heard the obligatory noise and checked it out. Guess what happened the her... These guys served no purpose in the plot narrative beyond some early fodder and syphoning the gas out of the tank. One might think this created a no escape for the protagonist, but there were other, much more believable ways to do this rather than creating 3 kills for Jason. Well, one of them died, and then came back in the end or a helping hand only to die again. Weird. Maybe it's something in the water, since we will see Jason in another 8 films after dying in this one.

There were also highly curious instances of characters passing points where other characters died without noticing any blood. For some of those kills, there would be blood. Lots of it. It ain't coming out of the carpet. It happened multiple times to distraction.

A final comment on my complaint section would be some bizarre reference to "The Wild Bunch" like we've suddenly landed ourselves in the series finale of a bad sitcom. By that time, my eyes has rolled so many times that I about fell over.

Now, one significant point in this film that simpl must be mentioned is that this is the film where Jason first dons his legendary hockey mask. It is first worn by a character named Shelley (a male), who is probably the best developed character in the film. He isn't another teen cliche like everyone else. He attempts a slight character arc before he dies, but his arc was overshadowed by all the other crap in this movie.

Finally, they get kudos at one point because I did jump when the guy flopped out of the tree.

The plot attempted a shred of originality in that it involved a girl coming to face her demons at her old home with her friends. She didn't come for drinking, partying, or sex. She had a run in with Jason a couple years before, and we don't know fully what happened there, but she lived and left soon after. This was just to prove to herself that she could face the old homestead again. Where her parents are is anyone's guess.

Unfortunately, despite a decent premise, it went downhill quickly. There were so many kills in this film that occurred so close together that it got boring in the middle. I nearly fast forwarded it to the third act so something would happen again. It began rehashing elements from the first two films after awhile. The two main characters separate while everyone else is hacked. Two characters upstairs have sex and die. Kevin Bacon's death is redone. As in the end of 1, the survivor hops in a boat and then has a nightmare of someone coming up from the deep and dragging her under.

I could probably go on for awhile, but I recall doing that with two. These people need a script doctor to go over this tripe before they film it. There are a ton of talented people on the net who could do this, and I know quite a few. With all the talent available, stuff like this doesn't have to get out there.

Firewall -- 2006 -- PG-13

So last night, we put in this thriller with Harrison Ford, who is not quite the Indiana Jones he once was as he runs around trying to be nimble, but occasionally having his age catch up with him. Perhaps it was deliberate.

The premise is a guy's (who was in charge of a bank's computer security) family is taken hostage in his own home. The hostage-takers have figured out his identity, habits, his family's info, even down to allergies. They take control over everything he has and leave us hanging for awhile before they reveal why they want him: to rob the bank electronically. Kinda simple for a premise, but makes for a neat little movie.

There is some creativity that went into this as they put up quite a few roadblocks here and there along the way to make things just a bit more complicated than the bad guys anticipated. One of my faves was the bad guy's simple plan to hook into a maintenance terminal, but he's told he's a week late. The bank had a merger and last week, they were all removed. I think the solution was a tad oversimpified on how they actually pulled it off, but who knows...that might be possible. It was creative.

The characters themselves were decent, but not great. We actually knew very, very little about the man and his family beyond some bare basics required to make the plot move. It was a fun ride to watch it unfold, but while the character decisions influenced the plot, it really felt like the plot was the star here with the characters being a requirement to make it work.

This is the type of film that spends such little time in developing characters that when they try, it stands out as cheap exposition, and you just want them to admit they aren't trying and just let the plot roll out. It goes plot, plot, plot, plot, I lost my little kitten when I was three and that really made an impact on my life back then, plot, plot, plot, plot. Notice how it slowed down when you read about the kitten? Kind of like that.

We had one major hiccup in the plot, and that's when there was an escape attempt. I will say that every element of the attempt was well setup. It was fun to watch them play out the escape and have each piece of a mini-puzzle fall into place as it plays out. What went wrong? They got all the way to the car and got it started. Instead of driving, they gave into the guns and got out. If she has hit the gas, they would have been home free. If you're going to blow an escape attempt, have her drop the keys in the floorboards, not start the car. Once the car is started, having the bad guys win that one is giving into the plot, not the characters. A mother would say "heads down, kids" and get the heck out.

With that exception, the film was rather good and fun to watch. It left you hanging for quite awhile at the beginning just wondering why they have moved into this guy's life. And with each complication, the plot just grew more and more clever. It's a shame, they didn't develop some interesting characters to go with it.

Fantastic Four -- 2005 -- PG-13

Going into watching this one, I wasn't expecting much. I'd been hearing people harp on how awful it was since it came out, but all that does is entice me into watching it, so here I am. After watching the film, I really don't know what the problem is.

What we have here is a basic movie adaptation of comic book super heroes, so we are going to start with how they were created. This being the case, the movie starts out very simply with a proposal to go into space to check out the cloud thing that supposedly caused the evolution of life on earth. The five (Dr. Doom being the fifth) go up to the station and bang, they get altered.

From there, we go through their reactions on how they feel about the change. Some are only concerned because this could be a disease, another wants to exploit his powers, and another is devastated and goes through a larger arc, because he has to change his life around what happened. The film follows a pretty standard superhero story where you end up with good supers vs. the bad super in a huge effects-ridden showdown.

The plot is pretty well laid out since it does follow a kind of formulaic storyline, and the characters aren't that bad off either. We get a little history between several of the characters as well as what's going on with their lives outside of the plot. We get some characteristics and idiosyncrasies since those actually do play into the plot and their abilities. From that angle, it's not that bad but not without its flaws.

One problem is why is the bad guy bad? I can see him being upset that he lost everything over the mission. I can see him being angry at the scientist guy for promising the shield would protect them and it didn't. But he seems to like his new abilities, so it's hard to say why he's so upset and wants them removed so bad. I guess I either missed his beef, or it just wasn't well clarified. It's hard to accept that someone is bad for the sake of being bad.

Another hiccup is this cloud thing. In space, I can accept it. No problem. It's actually a clever little concept. However, science boy was able to recreate this cloud in his lab. Huh? So you're telling me this scientist guy has the ability to recreate a cosmic cloud that alters one's fundamental DNA structure? You know, I can buy a lot of things, but this was one thing that was too much. On the bright side, while this part was central to the research section, it actually played a very minor role, and the story focused mainly on the characters.

So I'm not sure what all the fuss was about. This was not a bad film; God knows I've seen much, much worse. Overall, it was a pretty good movie with some better-than-average characters and a clever plot. I think there are some things that can be questioned, but given that it was based on a comic book, there's also a lot of latitude for forgivability. So, it's not as avoidable as everyone says.