Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON (2006) - Oct. 26, 2008
About a camera crew who follow around an aspiring horror movie villain (in this movie's universe, characters like Freddy and Jason are real people), this was a clever satire on horror movies, specifically slasher movies. The film does a really good job of skewering various horror movie cliches, while never becoming the overt comedy you suspect it might. The film does falter, however, in the third act, when it loses the documentary format altogether and becomes an all-out slasher movie. At this point the low budget, previously not a hindrance, becomes readily apparent, as does the director's talent (or lack thereof). While the documentary stuff looks good and is fairly well directed, the slasher movie stuff (in which they were obviously going for a much more overtly cinematic vibe) looks fake -- it kind of reminded me of the artificial cheesiness of Vince's films in Entourage; it's like they were trying to make it look like a real movie but couldn't quite pull it off. It's too bad -- if the whole movie had been as good as the first half, this easily would have been an instant classic. **1/2

Saw V

SAW V (2008) - Oct. 25, 2008
Another October, another mediocre installment in the Saw saga. This one is slightly better than the last one, if only because it wasn't ridiculously convoluted. Also, David Hackl's direction, while bland, was at least competent and not full of empty stylishness like the aggressively bad Darren Lynn Bousman. The scenes with the strangers stuck in a typically convoluted series of traps were essentially entertaining, but all the stuff with the detective investigating Jigsaw was dull and pretty much completely superfluous. **1/2

Max Payne

MAX PAYNE (2008) - Oct. 18, 2008
Wow. It takes some serious incompetence to take a game as exciting and fun as Max Payne and turn it into something so dull and dreary. This film strikes all the wrong notes pretty much right from the get-go, with Mark Wahlberg essentially playing the most cliched gritty cop imaginable, and with anything even remotely resembling fun being tossed out the window in favour of a convoluted mystery. The movie also all-but-abandons Max Payne's signature gunplay (ie. the thing that actually made Max Payne worthwhile in the first place), with no action at all until the third act -- at which point it's almost impossible to care, even if the action had been decent (it isn't). The film is decently acted and features competent, if somewhat uninspired direction (though the essentially monochromatic cinematography gets a bit tiresome after a while). It does seem pretty clear that most of this film's problems can be attributed to Beau Thorne's turkey of a screenplay. Boo-urns. *1/2

WALL-E

WALL-E (2008) - Oct. 14, 2008 (Fifth Viewing)
Prediction: Pixar will never again make a film this good (though I probably would have made that same prediction after Toy Story 2. And the Incredibles). This movie is seemingly impossible to top, but I suppose if anyone is up to the task it is Pixar. ****

Perfect Blue

PERFECT BLUE (1998) - Oct. 11, 2008
Well, now that I've seen all four of Satoshi Kon's films, I can say without hesitation that the man has talent up the yin-yang. This was an exceptionally well made film about a young pop star who decides to make the transition from singer to actress. As her role in a film starts to parallel her own life, and a website started by an obsessed fan seems to get more and more personal, the lines between what's real and what isn't start to blur. The film is splendidly directed by Kon, who does an excellent job of allowing the viewer to get inside the main character's head, as well as creating a pretty tense atmosphere throughout. This is also definitely the type of film that seems like it would benefit from repeat viewings (which seems to be the case with pretty much all of Kon's films), as not everything is spelled out for the viewer, with the conclusion putting many of the events of the film in a whole new light. Good stuff. ***1/2

Quarantine

QUARANTINE (2008) - Oct. 10, 2008
Though this remake is almost identical to its inspiration, REC, it still somehow manages to lose something in the translation. Where the original managed to maintain a fairly high level of tension throughout, this one is only sporadically suspenseful and contains some added stuff which only serves to unnecessarily pad out the runtime. The film also makes the questionable decision to spell out what's happening to the people in the apartment much more so than in the original, which significantly downgrades the creepiness factor. It's pretty clear right from the get-go that Quarantine really has nothing to add to the original -- it's at its best when it's most closely aping REC (such as the tense finale), which makes the whole thing feel completely redundant. **

Fatal Move

FATAL MOVE (2008) - October 7, 2008
Convoluted almost beyond belief, I was essentially able to follow this up to about the half-way mark, but it just got more and more confusing until I essentially had to throw in the towel and resign myself to being baffled by the whole thing. The plot (or what I could follow of it) involved the usual assortment of determined cops and ridiculously duplicitous criminals. The action was generally passable, though it was marred by an abundance of some seriously fake looking CGI blood. I might have been able to overlook the weak storytelling if the action had been exciting, but there wasn't all that much action, and what there was was mediocre at best. *1/2