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Gavin Grades The Movies

Posts from April 2010

A Nightmare on Elm Street
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
It's 1984, a new studio has the guts to make a movie called A Nightmare on Elm Street from writer/director Wes Craven for under $2 million.  The movie is bloody, scary and insanely popular.  It goes on to earn over $25 million, which in 1984 was a good bit of money, produce a series of sequels, a TV show and start a major movie studio.  The movie followed in line as other cheap horror films like Halloween and Friday the 13th, but this one  was different.  The monster in this was not a lumbering, silent killer with no personality.  We were introduced to Freddy Krueger who talked, cracked jokes, was sadistic and sexual and, in my opinion, was the reason why the 1984 Nightmare on Elm Street was a cut (no pun intended) above the rest.  Fast forward to 2010, and Michael Bay's production company continues their rampage and raping of all the beloved horror movies from the past that they fatten up and throw out to slaughter for quick cash.  Some of these remakes have been good (The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and the rest have been absolutely awful.  The remake of Nightmare on Elm Street falls in the latter catagory.  I have to admit that I was pretty excited for this.  Even though the original has a special place in my heart, when I heard that Oscar-nominated and incredible actor Jackie Earl Haley (Watchmen, Shutter Island) would be playing Freddy, I couldn't have pictured anyone better for the part...and yes that includes the original Freddy, Robert Englund.  I thought that Haley would bring the viciousness the character deserved and leave the one-liners at the door.  Boy, I was I wrong.  I feel like he tried but it wasn't good enough.  The script for this film couldn't have been worse and when you have a cast of no-name actors who were hired solely on their looks read such horrible dribble, you're really just pouring salt on a wound.  I can only imagine that such a horrific oversight could be made by a director who's only experience behind a camera comes from music videos, which is exactly what they had in director Samuel Bayer.  Everything about this movie was pathetic and lame.  The lazy acting, the bloated production budget, the miserable script and even the makeup effects were terrible.  I know they wanted to give Freddy a more "burn victim" look, but he literally looks like he's wearing a rubber mask.  Some of the scenes that amazed and shocked audiences in the original, such as the infamous body-flying-around-the-room scene, is disappointing and downright awful.  I want to make it very clear that I'm not saying this because I'm a snob about remakes.  I'm not against them and have seen some that I enjoyed more than the orginal, such as Rob Zombie's Halloween.  I think that if you have something different to bring to the table and can show me the same story but still make my eyes pop, you've really impressed me then.  Furthermore, I even went back and watched my copy of the original Nightmare when I got home to make sure I wasn't falsely remembering how good it was.  Sure, it's campy, but that's why it was so great.  It was really scary and this remake isn't.  It's full-on proof that throwing money at it and passing it off to a group of people who don't know or worse, care, what they're doing results in a giant pile of suck.  The only thing that they finally got right about this remake is the title...it truly is a nightmare. Nightmare on Elm Street (Rated R) Gavin Grade: F     Click below to hear an interview with star of Nightmare on Elm Street, Thomas Dekker. Thomas Dekker 4-30-10
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City Island
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
Remember how Little Miss Sunshine seemed to come out of nowhere and go onto such success that it won Oscars?  Remember when an indie film called My Big Fat Greek Wedding popped on the scene, won over audiences and grossed $368 million worldwide?  What do you think could happen to a movie that is a little bit of both?  City Island is the brain child from writer/director Raymond De Felitta and seems to be a passion project for star Andy Garcia (Godfather III, The Untouchables), who is also one of the Producer, and it just might follow the same path.  The film is about an Italian family living on City Island, which is a small fishing village right off the coast of The Bronx.  They'll make sure you know the history of the town by the end of the film...believe me.  The film is about a family that has a lot of secrets; some are pretty serious and some are pretty funny.  Julianna Margulies (The Sopranos, ER) plays Garcia's wife and seems to have a grip on the family until Garcia brings someone home to meet them and that's when we see the secrets start to unfold.  The film is very funny and also very touching.  What starts off as a slow build to learn who these characters are and what secrets they hide from each other seems a little daunting and plodding at first; but once the the film picks up its momentum, it really gets good.  Garcia turns out one of his best performances I've ever seen.  Because the movie is so low budget, I'm guessing they released it so early so that it has time to develop a following and hit a wide release by late summer in hopes that perhaps The Academy will remember it.  I certainly hope that happens because I think certain aspects of the film are good enough to warrant such Oscar consideration.  What I enjoyed the most about the movie is how well the characters displayed the characteristics of a typical urban Italian family.  Trust me, the dinner scenes hit a little too close to home.  But unlike My Big Fat Greek Wedding, there are no cultural traditions or stereotypes being rammed down your throat.  In fact, outside of a last name of "Rizzo" and the look and sound of the family, they don't even make it clear that they are Italian.  That just might be me projecting that.  What's great about that though is that it can be enjoyed by anyone who happens to come from a loud, passionate family that wears their emotions on their sleeves.  It might be sloppy writing at times to have resolution boil over and have the acceptance of the conflict be so immediate, but as an Italian, I'm telling you that that's how it happens.  We get very upset or angry or emotional over something, we lash out about it and then we forgive and calm down right away.  There are elements of the movie that I didn't get and seemed forced.  The son's secret, for instance, seems zany enough to be from a Coen Brothers' movie and really goes nowhere.  It was almost as if they gave him a secret just so he would have something to do in the movie.  Although he's played wonderfully by newcomer, Ezra Miller, the part was totally unneeded.  City Island stumbles occasionally and isn't Best Picture quality, but any movie that can make me cry and make me laugh out loud within a 15 second window and never slide into the cheesy column of cinema is note-worthy in my book.  At the very least, the film is worth seeing for Andy Garcia, who turns out one of the best performances in his career. City Island (Rated PG-13) Gavin Grade: B+ Click below to hear my interview with star of City Island, Andy Garcia Download
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Date Night
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
You would think that when a movie comes out that pairs up two of the funniest working people in Hollywood right now, you would have the makings of pure comedy gold.  Somewhere during Date Night, starring Steve Carrel and Tina Fey, they went off the cliff and I'm guessing they never even realized they did.  The film is a typical story, where the characters are placed in a situation they have no business being in and that's where the comedy comes from.  In this case it's a painfully average New Jersey couple who go into Manhattan for...you guessed it...date night and end up getting involved in a mafia blackmail scandal.  Now, I consider The Office and 30 Rock two of the funniest shows on TV right now and when I saw that the stars of those shows would be in a movie together, I became very excited about it.  I should have done my homework on it and I would have eased back on that excitement throttle.  Carell and Fey are very, very talented writers who excel at scripting out the obsurb and impossible story and making it hiliarious; BUT they didn't write this.  The movie was written by a guy named Josh Klausner, who's only other work is the absolutely horrible Shrek the Third.  To make matters worse, Date Night was directed by Shawn Levy who many film fans consider to be the go-to guy for hacky comedies that are piss poor at best.  (I personally liked the Night at the Museum movies but many consider them to be among his many, many failures.)  So behind Date Night you've got not a creative dream team but actually more of a creative nightmare team.  Even when you saturate the movie with amusing cameos like Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), William Fictner (The Dark Knight), Oscar-nominated Taraji Henson (Benjamin Button), James Franco (Spiderman) and many more, they STILL couldn't land a solid dismount on a joke.  And the saddest part of the whole thing to me was that they clearly thought they were making something awesome given the evidence in the form of outtakes displayed at the end of the movie.  They're cracking each other up on that set and, sadly, that stuff that made it on the cutting room floor was some of the best stuff in the movie.  The story is horrible, the acting seems bland and besides the occational chuckle it wrenched out of me, it was a sorry excuse for a comedy.  Remember that that's coming from a HUGE fan of Carell and Fey.  I sat in the theater patiently and waited the entire 88 minutes for it to get funny and it never did.  I think that understanding like that could only come from a fan of those two and anybody else would've walked out.  The movie couldn't even fill the standard hour and a half of entertainment but I still looked at my watch twice because I thought the movie was a 4 hour epic.  The only way I could or would recommend this movie as your date night entertainment would be if you were looking to break up and were too chicken to do it.  If you pick this movie and pretend to laugh your ass off the entire way through, they'll leave you on the spot because I couldn't imagine anyone staying with somebody with judgement that bad. Date Night (Rated PG-13) Gavin Grade: D+
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Kick-Ass
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
When they first showed footage of this little-know comic book movie at last year's geekfest, Comic Con, it played to standing ovation.  Now I wasn't there so I don't know what was shown or how much was the nerds saw; but I did hear that it spotlighted the movie's gratuitous violence, graphic language and twisted sense of humor.  It's easy to say that that was not false advertising.  Kick-Ass was a concept that relatively unknown British director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust) fought to get made and was failing to do so until Brad Pitt got his hands on the script.  Yes, THAT Brad Pitt, who loved it so much he signed on as a Producer, got a bigger budget for the film, got Nicolas Cage to agree to be in it, kept the studio suits from watering it down to PG-13 and eventually got the film made.  Any time that I see Nicolas Cage is the biggest star you have in the movie, I'm willing to guess it's horrible and not even worth a rental on DVD.  The good news for him though is that Cage was great playing a character named Big Daddy in a disturbingly funny and manic performance that makes me remember when he made good films.  Besides him we have a list of main characters played by a progression of actors that get less and less famous the higher you go on the food chain of the film.  We have Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad, Year One) playing Red Mist but never being known for anything besides McLovin', followed by 13-year-old Chloe Moretz ((500) Days of Summer, Diary of a Wimpy Kid) who's the foul-mouthed assassin Hit Girl and starring in the movie is the completely new British actor Aaron Johnson who plays Kick-Ass.  How that kid landed the lead in a movie like this with very little experience to speak of can only be attributed to his incredibly awkward look, pre-pubescent voice and successful understand and execution of the character.  What the film tries to do is blend humor and action into a post-modern, realistic Superhero story.  The problem is that it doesn't blend it that well.  It comes across as two different movies; the first being a comedy about a teenage boy fantasizing about girls and crime fighting in between masturbation sessions and the second is a hardcore action film that trades the punchlines for blood-splattering headshots.  The second film I liked but the first not so much.  I think the cliche jokes about awkward teenage years that the writers and director thought worked so well, didn't...at least not on me.  There was nothing new brought to the table in the first 45 minutes to an hour of the 2 hour film.  But once that second movie starts, it was like a dam broke open and the rest of the movie is a deluge of fun and violence.  The tone is set really well too by the music.  It's one of the most creative and exciting soundtracks I've heard in years that has such odd choices as a live version of "Glory Hallelujah" complete with audience ovation at the end.  Plus the original score reflects the two different movies well with a great goofball, ska score for the comedy and a downright goosebump-giving, sweeping Superhero score for the end.  This movie worked on a couple different levels, but not all of them.  It stayed faithful to comic book lore that guides all Superhero stories through their plots and it's nice to see them made well for adults...even if it is adults beating the snot out of children who may have just called them the c-word.  But the comedy doesn't work.  The moments that I actually did find funny were marginal at best and after a while they felt way forced and just became obstacles to get to the next action sequence.  If the trailer for the film looked fun to you and you like your Superhero movies with a little less superpowers and a little more R-rating than this is your movie...just don't expect it to be kick ass. Kick-Ass  (Rated R) Gavin Grade: B-
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Death at a Funeral
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
How does one remake one of the funniest movies of all time?  Stop.  Let me start again.  WHY would you ever remake one of the funniest movies of all time?  Especially when it only came out three years ago and it was in English?!  The original Death at a Funeral was made by Director and former voice of "Miss Piggy" and "Yoda," Frank Oz (What About Bob, The Score) and starred an entire British cast.  Critics liked it but I loved it.  I thought the script, written by Dean Craig, was one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.  My brother Benjamin made me watch it and I laughed so hard that I had tears falling from my eyes.  Thinking that it was a one-time-fluke, I watched it again and again and still laughed my ass off.  So to go back to my original question: How does one remake one of the funniest movies of all time?  The answer: exactly like this.  Director Neil LaBute (Wicker Man, Lakeview Terrace) teamed up with writer, Craig, and changed virtually not a damn thing.  Next they went out and assembled one of the best black comedy casts they could.  Chris Rock, a chubby Martin Lawerence, Danny Glover (Saw, Lethal Weapon), Tracy Morgan (30 Rock, Cop Out), Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), and many others take the script and make it their own as much as they could.  They also have Luke Wilson (Old School, AT&T commercials) and James Marsden (Enchanted, X-Men) join them as the token white guys in the cast.  Apparently the backstory for this remake is that Rock saw the original and loved it so much that he wanted to bring it to a wider audience.  So he produced the film and really championed to get it made.  It shows because you can tell that he's the one cast member trying the hardest to go against type and actually act in it.  Everyone else does pretty much what we've seen them do their entire careers.  However, the good news is that the story stays the same...they even use the same midget from the original (Peter Dinklage).  It's almost like painting a Picasso by the numbers; as long as you follow the directions, you'll successfully re-create a masterpiece.  The story is gold and shouldn't be messed and I'm really glad they didn't.  The only originality they added was one bit that ended up being the second biggest laugh in the theater.  (The biggest laugh goes to a scene that is so shocking and so funny that the theater was laughing so long, so loudly that you miss the dialogue for about 45 seconds.  Don't worry, it's worth it.  I still laughed as hard as I could even though I knew it was coming.)  If I was writing a review for the original Death at a Funeral, I would give it an A+.  The fact that it was an upscale British family that was so posh and had so much go horribly wrong at the funeral added to the craziness of the story...that and it was the first one.  This version works, but doesn't work as well because I don't get the impression that any of the characters are posh and seem like craziness happens often; so why should they be shocked?  But the translation from snooty British to loud Black works.  I wouldn't say that it's a perfect fit but if this means that more people get to enjoy this story, then I agree with Chris Rock and I'm glad this was redone. Death at a Funeral (Rated R) Gavin Grade: B+ Click here if you want to score passes to an advance screening of Iron Man 2!!!
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Clash of the Titans
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
Hey kids, it's time for you meet the Greek Gods!  Long before there were superheroes there were these guys and gals.  In fact, the Greek Gods are where superheroes came from.  We'd have no Batman without Zeus.  Superman never would've happened without Hades.  We never would've gotten to enjoy Iron Man without Poseidon.  Each God has special powers, backstories, and adversity they must overcome.  I think Greek Mythology is absolutely fascinating and if you ever want to take a fun class in college I recommend it.  Ever since I was a kid I was a fan, so you cam imagine how much I watched the original 1981 Clash of the Titans.  Sure it was campy and silly but it had some top-notch actors and special effects that blew people's minds back then.  Fast forward to 2010 and how the studios try to not only recapture the box office magic that 300 created in early spring a few years ago but also relaunch the franchise of Greek Mythology.  Who knows, maybe if the movie catches on we can see spin-offs of the Gods like they do with Superhero movies now.  The problem is that this isn't good enough to achieve any of that.  Let's start with the fact that it's been touted as a 3D movie; it's not.  Clash of the Titans was never shot in 3D, but when they saw how 3D is the new Gold Rush and how it helped Avatar reach a new galaxy of greenbacks, they delayed Titans from opening and went through in post-production and gave it a tawdry 3D conversion.  They failed with that and failed miserably.  The faux 3D is so deplorable that it gave me a migraine and distorted the picture.  Everything that movies like Avatar, How to Train Your Dragon and A Christmas Carol did for 3D, Clash of the Titans stands to undo and make people think it's not worth the extra money again.  If you insist on seeing Clash of the Titans after reading this, make sure you see it in plain, old fashioned 2D.  You will enjoy it more.  They also casted Hollywood's new golden boy, Sam Worthington (Avatar, Terminator: Salvation) in this as Prometheus.   Why Hollywood is so in love with this guy is beyond me.  He wanders through the incredible story of Prometheus and his battle with the Gods (not the Titans so the title never made sense) in such a lazy way that it never once helps you feel that he's in any peril (or from Greece with that accent).  Because he's been in blockbuster after blockbuster, Worthington is here to stay but for the love of Zeus, I have no idea why.  There is a rumor I heard from friends of mine that work in film that this is being called "Trash of the Titans" in Hollywood.  It's not quite that bad.  The action sequences are pretty good but not a big enough payoff to sit through the terrible acting and clunky dialogue that goes on for too long in between.  That even includes veterans like Liam Neeson (Taken, Batman Begins) and Ralph Fiennes (Harry Potter series, Schindler's List) who try their hardest to make their scenes work.  And even though director Louis Leterrier did such a good job with Edward Norton's The Incredible Hulk, this falls flat.  I still can't fully hate on it though because it's about the Greek Gods.  It's exciting to me to see Medusa and Acrisius fighting our heroes.  I hope that if anything comes from this, it's that more movies about the Greek Gods should be made...just made right. Clash of the Titans (Rated PG-13) Gavin Grade: C-
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