JP's Reviews

Embrace of the Vampire (2013)

If nothing else, Embrace of the Vampire sets the bar even lower than the 1995 film of which it is a remake. That particular bar, mind you, was already so low that perhaps only Barbados Slim could passed under it; then again, there was no way that a new version of the film that first gave us Alyssa Milano in all her glorious full-frontal nudity wouldn’t be a let down. People, mostly of the female persuasion, undress and have sex here, but they’re just nameless, faceless naked bodies.

The action, such as it is, takes place in the small, fictional North Summit college. How do I know it’s small? As far as I can tell, there is only one course: a mythology class taught by English literature professor/fencing head coach/closeted vampire Mr. Cole (Victor Webster).

Professor Cole introduces his subject by asking whether "These glorified monsters [that] have graced the pages of our literature, our plays, our cinema" are "Myth? Reality? Maybe a combination of both." He goes on: "Can we not draw similarities between, say, a devil and a vampire? [never mind that both are, as far as his students are concerned, equally imaginary] Or better yet, a dinosaur and a dragon? Or a Neanderthal to an ogre?" That is a little bit "better," though not by much.

To the movie’s credit, we do see people actually fencing — both literally, as well as figuratively with their tongues; like the original movie, this one includes an instance of totally gratuitous HLA (hot lesbian action). Also like the original, there’s some contrived, convoluted, half-and-half (half-baked and half-assed) bullshittery going on here; to wit: "The only way that we could stop these creatures was to use their own blood to transform their offspring," which sounds suspiciously like artificial selection. This actually could have been an intriguing concept, had the movie bothered to explain it.

And then there’s this: "When a vampire finds a virgin from the creature who bit him, from the bloodline, he can use this pure blood to change back into his human form, but only if the virgin, you, Charlotte, only if you give yourself to him willingly."

Charlotte (Sharon Hinnendael) wonders, "if I can just end it, then why don't I just give myself to him?"; the answer is, because she "will suffer for eternity in hell." Huh. So the same fluid exchange would redeem the man, but condemn the woman. Patriarchal much?

Undeterred, Charlotte tries (and fails) to preemptively have her cherry popped by romantic interest/manager at the coffee shop she works at Chris (Ryan Kennedy), so that she’ll no longer be of use to Cole; this isn’t made explicit, which would mean she’s smarter than the movie — on the other hand, she does say in her job interview that she "worked at an eyetalian coffee shop for two years," so maybe I’m giving her too much credit.

Paul, Apostle of Christ

Can you be said to lead by example when the example is spurious? Paul, Apostle of Christ is the early Christianity 'success story' of the conversion of Mauritius Gallas (Olivier Martinez), Commander of the Third Legion of Rome, and Prefect of the Mamertine Prison.

Actually, I’m not even sure Mauritius officially converted; he certainly formed a better opinion of Christians after Saint Luke cured his daughter of an indeterminate disease. I guess the filmmakers deserve some credit for not presenting this as a miracle (Luke saves the little girl’s life through his medical knowledge), but it really makes no difference anyway because there was no sick child, no Mauritius Gallas, no Third Legion, no nothing.

This is a kind of artistic license that goes well beyond the fact that everyone in Nero’s Rome speaks fluent English (with a French accent, in Martinez’s case). Mauritius’s conversion (if indeed he converted) doesn’t carry as much weight as, say, that of Constantine, and not because the latter was an Emperor and the former a humble prefect; the problem is that Mauritius’s change of heart doesn’t appears to take place, not as a sign of personal growth, but simply because it’s in the script. I mean, if you’re just going to make shit up, why stop at one conversion? Why not go ahead and make it so that the entire Third Legion accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts as their Lord and Savior?

Luke is only slightly less fictional than Mauritius, and equally problematic. A "Luke," to whom tradition assigns authorship of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, was mentioned by Paul in three of his epistles. The movie depicts Luke (Jim Caviezel) visiting Paul (James Faulkner) in the rather well-lit "darkness" of his cell, where the two commit the Acts to paper. Why? According to Paul, "[Luke] believes people should know the certainties of my life."

This turns out to be quite an unwittingly ironical statement, considering that a) though the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are attributed to the same author, the true identity of this author remains unknown, and b) there are many contradictions between the Acts and the authentic Pauline letters; thus, in the odd chance Luke did in fact pen these books, it’d be safe to say that he and Paul weren’t as simpatico as this movie would have us believe (the aforementioned irony, by the way, is completely lost on the filmmakers, according to whom "Paul’s life was well documented by Luke").

Poison Ivy: The Secret Society

Poison Ivy: The Secret Society is the “sexy girl version of The Skulls” (Wikipedia), but I think it’s more like the 'dumb blonde version.' I'm not saying that the protagonist's intellectual ineptitude is directly related to her gender or hair color; her golden mane and femininity are just an unfortunate coincidence.

Danielle Brooks (Miriam McDonald) is a farm girl — completing the trifecta of stereotypes — who transfers to Berkshire College, an elite New England private school. Danielle sold the property she inherited from her late parents to pay for school, and yet the best she can afford is a work-study program. Oh, and her nickname is Daisy. How do I know all this? It’s all in the "Berkshire Transfer Students Official List," (BTSOL, if you’re into the whole brevity thing) of which we even see a copy. I swear, they could show a character literally reading directly off the script, and it wouldn’t be as dumb as this.

Daisy, by the way, is the name of a flower, as is Azalea (Shawna Waldron), who is the president of the Ivys, a "secret" society that everyone on campus knows about; on the other hand, it must be impossible to keep a secret in a college so small that, as far as we can see, only offers one single, solitary course, attended by all the main characters, and taught by Professor Andrew Graves (Greg Evigan), who is not only married to the dean (Catherine Hicks), but is also the father of Daisy's romantic interest, Blake (Ryan Kennedy).

Azalea learns that Daisy is a shoo-in to get a coveted internship; the former’s plan to prevent this from happening is to get Daisy to join the so-called secret society. “Turning the farm girl into an Ivy won't stop her from getting the internship,” Blake warns her; Azalea's response is "yeah, we'll see about that". Spoiler alert: we never see about that.

What we do see is the Ivy’s vast influence (one can't help but wonder why Azalea doesn't just use this leverage to nab the internship for herself). Once Daisy is accepted, she doesn't have to worry about money anymore; “Who do you think made your financial aid problems go away? Who do you think gave you your scholarship?” Azalea asks rhetorically. To my chagrin, though, she doesn't ask who makes Steve Guttenberg a star.

Do the writers (incredibly, it took three people to write this movie) really expect us to believe that, on top of selling the family ranch or whatever, Daisy still needs not only a student loan but also a scholarship, or do they just not understand the difference between the two?

I lean towards option B, especially after seeing the way Azalea blackmails Daisy, which involves Will (Brendan Penny), Daisy’s rancher boyfriend whom she left behind (“how do you know about Will,” Daisy asks; my guess is she must have read it on BTSOL).

Azalea claims to "have this piece of paper and at the top it says "title deed", at the bottom, a name and it's "William Miller"." Daisy never even demands to see this document, so she may just be dumb enough to believe that "Will's land" really "is at stake," as Azalea later assures her; moreover, recording Azalea's confession and immediately playing the tape back to her is likewise not the action of a person of at least adequate intelligence.

Rule of thumb: never remind the audience that they could be watching a much better film. Rocky III may not be the haymaker that the first two films of that franchise (a true one-two knock-out combo) were, but it’s arguably the saga’s last great chapter, and it might as well be Citizen Kane compared to This Is the Night, which appears to have been written and directed by a concussed Rocky Balboa.

Dr. Johnson said that puns are the lowest form of humor, but this movie resorts to an even lower form: retrospective humor. For example, it's 1982 and Anthony Dedea (Lucius Hoyos), the young protagonist, calls Rocky III "The end of the trilogy, the last Rocky movie." HAHAHAHAHAHA! Get it? It's funny because they’re still making Ricky-related films.

Anthony and his two friends (the lead in a teen comedy always has exactly two sidekicks) are bullied for getting into a pool with their shirts on — which I believe is one of the rare occasions in which bullying is actually justified, and perhaps even encouraged. Take your shirt off, or stay out of the pool. It’s not ****ing rocket science.

Vincent (Frank Grillo), Anthony's father, is a failed restaurant owner who has to beg for a loan from wannabe mobster Frank Larocca (Bobby Cannavale); Anthony thinks this is "shameful" and that his father is a "coward." What a ****ing hypocrite. When Anthony takes off his shirt at the pool like a normal person, then let him talk about the shame and cowardice of others; meanwhile, as Vincent tells him, “shut up when you speak” (God bless you, Frank Grillo).

Anthony becomes "Public Enemy Number One," and he and his friends outcasts, when he’s falsely accused of questioning Rocky Balboa's manhood. I personally love Rocky, but has the Italian Stallion really sparked such a level of fandom as we see in this film? I mean the kind of obsession usually reserved for Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

Elsewhere, there is a subplot that sees Marie (Naomi Watts) and Christian (Jonah Hauer-King), Anthony's mother and older brother, establish an emotional bond when she discovers his cross-dressing. The problem with this isn't whether it's queerbaiting or not, but that it unnecessarily prolongs a movie that's already well over 100 minutes.

To think that just 20 years ago Watts starred in Mulholland Drive, and now she's relegated to the parts that should have been cut so the movie wouldn't be too long. All things considered, it might revolve around Rocky III, but This Is the Night doesn't have the Eye of the Tiger (nor, for that matter, the song of the same name).

Are you just reviewing bad films?

I'm pretty sure most of us already know they are bad.

Streets of Fire is like a feature-length Jim Steinman music video (admittedly not that big of a stretch), which makes all the sense in the world considering the singer/songwriter's cinematic bent. Steinman penned the opening and closing songs (one of which is the anthem “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young”), while the score is a Ry Cooder leftover from another movie (and you could certainly do a lot worse than that). To no one’s surprise, the music is by far the best thing about the film (making me wish it was a musical proper).

The film opens with Ellen Aim and the Attackers in concert performing “Nowhere Fast.” Never mind the unfortunate band name; Ellen looks and sounds great thanks to Diane Lane’s stage presence and Laurie Sargent’s and Holly Sherwood’s voices. The show comes to an untimely end when the Bombers, a motorcycle gang led by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe), crash the party and kidnap Ellen.

Raven absconds with Ellen to the Battery, a part of town the police don't dare go to; thus, Billy Fish (Moranis), Ellen's boyfriend/manager, offers Tom Cody (Michael Paré) $10,000 to rescue her — Billy doesn't know it yet, but Tom is Ellen's ex. The two are joined by McCoy (Amy Madigan), a tough girl with little tolerance for arseholes.

Once again, the action plays out like an MTV montage, but this is a deliberate aesthetic choice. The sets are elaborate and detailed but nonetheless clealy sets, and the actors’ look perfectly reflects the characters that have been assigned to them, which is very convenient because what we see is exactly what we get.

Moranis, and this is also unsurprising, makes the most of his dialogue; he has to constantly look up to make eye contact with his interlocutors, but at the same time he invariably talks down to them. “I don't know what's more pathetic, the way you talk or the way you dress,” McCoy tells him — and since Billy is supposed to be pathetic, he also not only looks but also sounds exactly the way he's supposed to. As for Dafoe, with his leather fetish and Misfits hairdo, he endows Raven with a sort of teenage Count Orlok quality.

The only real disappointment is Paré, and by extension, the romance between Tom and Ellen. We don't know what they see in each other other than their both physically attractive (which means that her relationship with Billy is actually built on a potentially more lasting foundation), and we don't care whether or not they end up together.

Moreover, there linger some hard feelings between the two, but that doesn’t justify the movie’s one truly WTF moment. We’re all familiar with that cliché that sees the protagonist knock his sidekick out, ironically to prevent the latter from 'getting hurt' when all hell breaks loose; however, this is the only film I can think of wherein the supposed hero puts his fist through the face of the woman he supposedly loves.

It’s true that Ellen behaves like a spoiled bitch when she finds out that her ex-boyfriend had the audacity to charge her current boyfriend for saving her life when even the police couldn’t be bothered to do something, but the whole thing is still uncalled for, and the fact that she, this essentially being a live-action cartoon, looks no worse for wear once she regains consciousness, just makes it worse — as if violence against women were a victimless crime.

Joke’s on Billy, though; he’s the one left stuck with a famous girlfriend who sings longingly in public about the guy who toyed with her emotionally and assaulted her physically; on the other hand, as a manager he probably feels much less bad about collecting his 10%.

Movies like this one never fail to remind me of Cameron Diaz’s "crazy bitch mother" character in My Sister’s Keeper. The difference is that we weren’t really meant to sympathize with Diaz until he eventually relented and stopped being such a bitch. Here, however, Melissa Leo achieves the seemingly impossible feat of making Bella Thorne comparatively likable.

The plot is your standard Roaring Rampage of Revenge disguised as a Shakespearean pastiche. Actress Lillian Cooper’s (Leo) son Curtis’s (Jake Weary) death parallels that of King Hamlet (down to one of his alleged assassins being called Claude, which is just a little too on the nose, if you ask me), and Lillian is as crazy as Ophelia — well, almost.



Curtis dies from an apparent accidental overdose, but Lillian immediately suspects murder most foul — even though her son was a pseudo-rockstar with a history of substance abuse. She recruits Curtis’s dealer/photographer Taz (Thorne) to be the Horatio to her Hamlet (when they first meet, Lillian pulls a knife on Taz, and Taz obliquely threatens Lillian with a gun; needless to say, it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship).

Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice are also invoked, though to what end I haven’t the foggiest. There is also a reference to Poe’s The Imp of the Perverse that manages to be both plot-relevant and completely out of ****ing nowhere; if you’re going to do Shakespeare, then do Shakespeare — or, better yet, don’t.

I liked how Lillian uses a production of Hamlet she directs and acts in as an alibi, which in turn means she goes about the Revenge Business (some of it, at least) in the guise of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father; then again, as cool as that is, it of course makes zero ****ing sense. All things considered, there was no reason to drag the Bard’s name into this incoherent mess.

I must admit I’m not at all sure what exactly is it that happens in this movie, or if it even happens, but I think that’s more the filmmakers’ fault than mine. If Curtis’s death was indeed accidental, that leaves all of Lillian’s obvious mental issues unaddressed.

On the other hand, if he was in fact murdered, that would mean Lillian is crazy like a fox (as opposed to just plain crazy), but what about motive? Sure, "Curtis is going to be a bigger star now than ever before," but why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

What we have here is ultimately all madness and no method. I don’t mind ambiguity, but this film is not ambiguous so much as it is contradictory. Pray tell, why on Earth is a movie titled Measure of Revenge that ends with the words "Justice will be served"?

Zangaro, the fictional African country in The Dogs of War, is something like Zamunda's poor, small neighbor – especially small. North (Colin Blakely), a British documentarian, informs James Shannon (the invaluable Christopher Walken) that a week after taking office, President Kimba sent his opponents, Colonel Bobi (George Harris) and Dr. Okoye (Winston Ntshona), into exile and jail, respectively.

When Shannon, a mercenary on a reconnaissance mission to determine the feasibility of a coup d'état, is arrested, what are the odds that he'll briefly find himself in the same cell as the good doctor? Apparently, as good as befriending one of Kimba's mistresses.

Contrived coincidences aside, director John Irvin wisely favors, like the Frederick Forsyth novel upon which it is based, an 'ask questions first, shoot later' philosophy; as a result, a large portion of the 100-minute running time is devoted to the preparations and logistics of the coup — which itself is left for the film's climax (an approach reminiscent of that of The Dirty Dozen), and it's over before soon-to-be-ex-president Kimba knows what hit him.

Shannon's personal life, or lack thereof, also receives a lot of attention, which helps explain his willing willingness to pursue this line of work in general, and to return to Zangaro following his traumatic first experience in the country. The reasons behind the coup, in contrast, are not explored as thoroughly; in a nutshell, Roy Endean (Hugh Millais), an English businessman, is interested in a recently discovered platinum deposit on Zangaro.

Basically, the only difference between Kimba and Bobi is that, as the latter puts it, “He wants to be God, I want to be rich”; meanwhile, Endean explains that "The people I represent will not do business with a madman." Ergo, out with Kimba and in with Bobi — these plans, though, are subject to change, considering that Shannon may or may not have his own agenda.

Ed O'Neill, in just his second film credit, has a pre-Married with Children cameo, and the ever-reliable Tom Berenger is Shannon's lieutenant, but The Dogs of War is, as it should be, Walken’s film through and through.

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife


Bluebeard's Eighth Wife was the first of two collaborations between director Ernst Lubitsch and then up-and-coming screenwriter Billy Wilder. The film, all style and surface, is more Lubistch than Wilder, but the script co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett (a tandem that would create, among others, The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard) lends itself perfectly to the famous 'Lubistch touch' — the German filmmaker’s characteristic shrewd and methodical humor.

For Lubitsch, making laugh is like making love, and he isn’t the slightest bit interested in instant gratification; in fact, his approach is the comic equivalent of Hitchcock's definition of suspense. Michael (Gary Cooper) suffers from insomnia; Nicole (Claudette Colbert), whom he meets at the beginning of the story in the store where he goes to buy a pijama shirt (but no pants, which itself to an elaborately humorous visual gag), recommends “Professor Urganzeff's method ... take a long word, like 'Czechoslovakia' ... While you spell it backwards, you stretch and yawn between each letter … You only have to worry about 'slovakia.' By the time you get to "Czech" you will be fast asleep."

The second half of the film actually takes place in Czechoslovakia, where we finally get the real punchline to a joke that Lubitsch set up some half-hour ago (and to top it off, near the end of the movie we find out that there really is a Professor Urganzeff).

Michael is a 'serial husband'; marriage is such a revolving door for him that the suit he wears to his most recent wedding still has rice on it from the previous ceremony. Nicole is horrified to learn that Michael has been married seven times previously and calls off the wedding, much to her father's dismay.

Michael explains that he gives each of his wives a prenuptial agreement that guarantees $50,000 a year for life if they divorce. Nicole agrees to marry for double that amount, and proceeds to apply withhold sex (not in so many words, of course) to precipitate a divorce and because otherwise "it wouldn't be fair to my next husband."

As usual, Lubitsch knows that 'love' is not the stuff of drama but of farce, and that lovers are not so much to be pitied as ridiculed; on the other hand, he has a sincere appreciation for his characters, who are like little children, and he ultimately laughs with them, and not at them.

Britney vs Spears has 'first world problem' written all over it. “Britney is no longer a free person. She has no basic human rights. She can't write a check or have a credit card.” Boo hoo, cry me a ****ing river. To be fair, though, Britney had nothing to do with this pseudocumentary, nor does she appear in it other than by way of archival footage.

This film is not only frivolous, but also sloppy — it feels, at best, like a glorified episode of The E! True Hollywood Story, and at worst, like an amateur YouTube documentary complete with Wikipedia article-style narration.

Britney vs Spears is guilty of the same sins as, say, QT8: The First Eight, though at least that doc had a few big guns and wasn't afraid to pull them out; here, however, we must settle for interviews with a “former assistant,” or a “former backup dancer” — the former of whom, by the way, claims that “Britney had a work ethic like no other, but she was never motivated by money” (hard to believe, considering that the whole damn conservatorship thing revolves around money).

One of the few interviewees who could be actually considered to have been close to the singer is her ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib. Now, since Ghalib is, by most accounts, the scum of the earth who profitted from invading Britney's privacy, it's very difficult to believe that he ever had her best interests in mind; the filmmakers, however, not only neglect the question whether Ghalib had an ulterior motive for entering into a romantic relationship with Spears, but in fact manage to present him as a victim.

"Two years ago I started making a movie about Britney Spears with journalist Jenny Eliscu," director Erin Lee Carr says. Two years, yet the final product doesn’t have either the sheen of workmanship or the conviction of obsession to show for it.

QT8: The First Eight is the wrong title for this documentary/hagiography of Quentin Tarantino. Never mind the cacophony of of having two 'eights' (even if it is, as I suspect, a reference to the Crazy 88, it’s still pretty ****ing lame); a more accurate title would be The First Three That Actually Matter and the Six (counting Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) Bloated, Masturbatory, Overrated Ego Trips that Followed.

Like it or lump it, there is a 'before and after' Jackie Brown. Tarantino’s transition from genius to raving lunatic began with Kill Bill, and reached an apex with the pointless exercises in historic revisionism that are Inglorious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Back to QT8, I would normally dismiss a documentary about a living person wherein that person is conspicuous by his absence as nothing more than a ****ing waste of everybody’s time — in this case, however, I’ll file it under 'addition by subtraction.' Arguably the best thing about this movie is that Tarantino is nowhere to be seen or heard.

The second best thing about about the film are the contributions of Michael Madsen, Sam Jackson, and Christoph Waltz (and, to a lesser extent, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, and Jamie Foxx). Their interventions are entertaining and insightful, and carry the weight of credibility.

In contrast, when I hear some nobody saying "Watching [Reservoir Dogs] with enough audiences ... [Tarantino] realized that he needed to give the audience permission to laugh," I’m like, you’re not telling me what he thought; at best, you’re telling me what you think he though — then again, that’s par for the course in a documentary where everything, regardless of whether the source is trustworthy or not, is secondhand information.

In consequence, Tarantino is not there to explain the actions that led him to almost killing Uma Thurman and apologize for them — not that he needs to, though; since this is a Quentin lovefest, the blame somehow gets shifted to Harvey Weinstein, which is a dick move even if Weinstein is a dick himself; blame the man, and rightfully so, for the shit he’s done (god knows there’s plenty of that), nor for the shit he didn’t do just, especially not just so you can get your golden boy off the hook.

At one point, to illustrate Tarantino’s infectious enthusiasm, Waltz says "It's like going to a whore house to get infected with the syphilis." I’m sure it sounded better in his head, but this ill-conceived simile unwittingly makes a good point. I’m reminded of Doctor Faustus, a novel by Waltz’s compatriot Thomas Mann, whose hero literally and willingly contracts syphilis because he equates madness with artistic genius; the ensuing progressive disease reduces him to an infantile state in which he lives out the remainder of his short life under the care of his relatives. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that Tarantino doesn’t have syphilis — but then, what’s his excuse?

The takeaway from Against the Ice is that not all CGI is bad — which doesn’t necessarily mean that some of it is good, only that some examples are comparatively worse than others. There is a scene in this movie that will remind you of The Revenant, except that the bear in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film is one of its most memorable aspects; as for the one in Against the Ice, let’s just say that I’ve seen more realistic polar bears in those Coca-Cola Christmas ads.

Now, both scenes involve lots of computer generated imagery and a stuntman pretending to be a carnivorous mammal of the Ursidae family, so the difference between awesome and pathetic lies in the performance of the actor being attacked.

Like in pro wrestling, the encounter between Leo DiCaprio and the bear may not have been spontaneous, and its outcome may have been predetermined, but that doesn’t mean the actor didn’t take an actual beating, getting thrown around to and fro like a ragdoll by way of wires; moreover, all of his facial and body language is committed to selling the gravity of the situation, which in turn makes the bear, CGI or not, look like a million bucks. Meanwhile in Against the Ice, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau pretty much just lies there, bringing no urgency to what should be a life-and-death struggle.

This scene is symptomatic of Against the Ice, which is no less a collection of clichés than The Revenant, but whereas the latter amounts to much more than the sum of its parts thanks to superb execution, the former is too conventional to ever transcend its chosen genre.

Consider the way it tracks the passage of time beginning with “Day 1”, which is of course a logical starting point, but also a very obvious one; from there it skips all the way to “Day 26” — my question is, since apparently nothing of note happened in the first 25 days, why not just start with the 26th day and go from there?

All things considered, no one will be surprised to learn that Ejnar Mikkelsen (Coster-Waldau) — on whose book (or, presumably, a translation of the same, seeing as how the Danish characters all speak English as a first language) the movie is based — and Iver Iverson (Joe Cole) “remained friends for life”, but don’t they always? Just like Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in the King’s Speech, or Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali in Green Book.

All movies “based on a true story” take extreme liberties with their source material, and I usually hate it when they do, but Against the Ice would have been considerably less trite if the makers had gone the opposite route with the characters’ relationship; after all, in the words of Mr. Burns following a similar but by no means as protracted ordeal, “once you've been through something like that with a person, you never want to see that person again.”

13 Fanboy is so bad it makes Halloween Kills look like a masterpiece in comparison. This movie is like Wes Craven's New Nightmare minus the budget, talent, visual effects, creativity, and intelligence. Some of these shortcomings are a result of this horror movie co-written and directed by Deborah Voorhees (whose last name helped her land an audition and win a role in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning) being, as the title suggests, a glorified fan film that has no official connection to the Friday the 13th franchise — but then neither did Friday the 13th: The Series, and yet that TV show was an entertaining product that went beyond exploiting an intellectual property to which it was attached by the most tenuous of links.

“An obsessed fan stalks his favorite actors from the Friday the 13th films and beyond ... The cast includes a myriad of real life actors and actresses from the Friday the 13th films as well as iconic scream queens” (IMDb). The first problem with this is that Friday the 13th, unlike Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, or Halloween, doesn't have an iconic scream queen, so Voorhees was forced to borrow them from other movies: for example Dee Wallace, who in the 70s and 80s appeared in The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling, Cujo, and Critters, and in the 2000s in Rob Zombie's Halloween

As for the "myriad" of "favorite actors", the killer must be the only person on the face of the planet able to recognize them and distinguish any particular one from the others. Lar Park Lincoln? Judie Aronson? Tracie Savage? Jennifer Banko? These are names so esoteric that Voorhees herself doesn’t trust the audience to be able to identify them, so she plasters the screen with their names, their characters’ names, and the movies in which they appeared.

I can understand that C.J. Graham, by the nature of his character, would be unrecognizable, but even Kane Hodder who, mask or no mask, is arguably the 'poster child' of this franchise, gets the equivalent of 'name, rank, and serial number'. The question is, if Voorhees didn't make this movie for the kind of viewer who would instantly recognize Kane Hodder, for whom exactly did she make it?

All this demolishing of the fourth wall is a deliberate choice as well as a necessity brought on by the public's understandable ignorance of who the **** these people are, so here’s another question: why even bother with this meta-bullshit? Why not just go full-on film-a-clef?

Instead of real-life nobodies (and the cumbersome, intrusive exposition they cause), you could have fictional characters standing in for some of the actors who actually became household names post-Friday the 13th; that is, characters that would be, albeit justifiably so, as unknown to the viewers as Mr. Graham and Mrs. Banko, and at the same time belong to a familiar frame of reference.

Since I’ve mentioned Graham twice, I’d be remiss if I didn’t observe that he takes in this movie’s single memorable moment; face to face (or, rather, face to mask) with the villain, who confesses he’s "been waiting my whole life to fight you, Jason" (although only a few scenes ago he had already fought Hodder), Graham blurts out: "What do you say, boy? You want a shot at the title?," his delivery punctuated by a conveniently timed flash of lightning.

This and no other is the spirit in which this film should have been made; with enough of a sense of humor to be able to make fun of itself. Unfortunately, Voorhees takes her material too seriously — almost as if she believed she's actually related to Jason.

Bram Stoker's Count Dracula is textbook example of my Evil Iceberg Theory (the less you see of and know about a villain, the better). In an epistolary novel, the title character is the only one who doesn’t set his thoughts down in letters or in a diary (or, like Dr. Seward, a phonograph recording).

If, as Lovecraft wrote, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown," then Dracula is the embodiment of this fear; inscrutable, unknowable, unreachable, impossible to negotiate or reason with. Moreover, it’s futile to try to assign him complex motivation; like the shark in Jaws or Dr. Lecter, the Count kills to feed — no more, no less. Taking all this into account, it's easy to see how bad an idea Dracula Untold really is.

The story is narrated — a long time after it took place, though oddly in the same childlike voice the narrator had when the events trasnspired — by Ingeras (Art Parkinson), son of Vlad III Draculea, aka the Impaler, aka Son of the Dragon, aka Son of the Devil, aka Dracula; let's just call him Vlad (Luke Evans).

"In the year of our Lord 1442, the Turkish sultan enslaved 1,000 children from Transylvania to fill the ranks of his army." One of these children grew up to become Vlad, who "disgusted by his monstrous deeds ... buried his past with the dead and returned to Transylvania to rule in peace." So Vlad just took his ball and went home. Just like that, no revolt required. Someone should tell the Sultan how slavery really works.

This notwithstanding, Wallachia and Transylvania remain under Ottoman rule, and Vlad must pay an annual tribute to Sultan Mehmed II (Dominic Cooper); one can't help wondering why these two peoples are so hostile to each other, especially seeing how they share the lingua franca of British English.

Mehmed takes it upon himself to 'enslaving' a thousand other children (perhaps the first thousand just walked away like Vlad?), including Ingeras. Vlad refuses, and knowing that this means war, goes to a cave in a mountain to seek help from "a vampire. From the Greek word pi, to drink [actually 'pi' is a Greek letter; the language in which it is a word that means 'drink' or 'suck' is Albanian]. The beast was once a mortal man who summoned a demon from the depths of hell to barter for his dark power. The demon deceived the man, granting his wish, but his price was an eternity condemned to the darkness of that cave, where he remains until he finds another to free him."

The cave vampire (Charles Dance), who once was a Roman and thus speaks, like all Romans do in the movies, the Queen's English, gives Vlad a sip of his blood, and with it “a taste of my power. The strength of 100 men. The speed of a shooting star. Domain of the night and all its creatures. See and hear through your senses. Even heal grievous wounds ... Once you drink, your thirst for human blood will be insatiable. But if you can hold out for three days, you will return to your mortal state having tasted my power, and perhaps saved your people. [What if I feed?] I will be freed having granted the darkness a worthy offering. You will become … like me. A scourge on this earth destined to destroy everything you love… I, however, will be free to unleash my wrath against the one who betrayed me. And one day, I will call upon you to serve me, my pawn, in an immortal game of revenge."

All this does is show that sometimes no explanation is the best explanation. Let's compare Coppola’s Dracula, in whose introduction — featuring modern Romanian dialogue with medieval English syntax (perhaps not historically correct but still much better than English-English) — Gary Oldman plunges his sword into the stone cross of a chapel, and drinks the blood that flows from it. This doesn't necessarily make any more sense, but at least it's short and to the point, and Coppola has the good sense to not even try to explain it.

Conversely, all of Dracula Untold’s heavy exposition only raises more questions than it answers. How did this Roman guy end up in Transylvania? Are there no caves in Rome? Why can't he leave the cave and Vlad can? What exactly does "an immortal game of revenge" mean? This phrase simply reeks of oxymoron.

Speaking of Coppola, he was the second to make the character of Dracula and the historical Dracula one and the same person, and add a Reincarnation Romance to the plot (the first was Dan Curtis in his own 1974 Bram Stoker's Dracula, written by Richard Matheson).

Director Gary Shore and screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless repeat the formula in Dracula Untold, but their mistake is making an entire movie out of this premise. If they had done their homework, they would know that the link to Vlad III is tenuous at best, and that the real and probably only reason Stoker used the name 'Dracula' is because he was under the mistaken impression that it meant 'devil' in Romanian (but who knows; maybe the confusion of ' Greek pi' with Albanian 'pi' was a tribute to this linguistic faux pas on the Irish author’s part).

Three Months is such a sweet, touching little film that it makes me wish the script didn’t force the protagonist, Caleb, to ride around solo on a tandem bike. Sure, Caleb has an emotional attachment to the thing (it belonged to his dead father), it comes in handy to the plot now and then (in a ‘hey, I have an extra seat in case you need a lift’, or ‘oops sorry, there’s three of us and only two seats’ sort of way), and it doesn’t even look like it’s that much harder than riding a normal bike — but still, the whole idea smacks of a desperate cry for attention; writer/director Jared Frieder’s way of making sure we know how quirky his main character is supposed to be.

A movie can be, and this one otherwise is, original and spontaneous without making its main character look dumb or crazy, neither of which Caleb is; as a matter of fact, he more often than not comes across as a very intelligent young man — so much so, indeed, that it’s hard to justify his preferred mode of transportation.

He certainly makes other questionable choices, but these stem more from a careful observation of human nature than from the plot’s requirements. Fortunately, Three Months is, more so than the destination, about the journey — even if the journey partly takes place on “a gay two-man bike” (by the way, the film contains a nicely understated sense of humor) —, which seemingly starts out as a queer version of Clerks, but will eventually distinguish itself through a knack for the unexpected.

There is romance in it — and some of the most moving moments involve Caleb’s tentative, puppy-love relationship with the popcorn-loving Estha (the popcorn thing is also gimmicky, though nowhere near as much as the tandem bike) — but it’s not a romantic comedy; similarly, the action revolves around Caleb’s wait for a future revelation, but by the time the titular three months are up, the nature of the knowledge he has been expecting is rendered moot, superseded by the wisdom he has gained along the way

Apex is an ironic title for something that feels more like a nadir. This is not only the latest but also the dumbest version of the Most Dangerous Game plot, wherein the would-be hunters spend more time hunting each other while their supposed prey sits idly by watching them kill each other. As for the prey himself, the film offers two contradictory narratives, with the character inhabiting a limbo somewhere in between.

On the one hand, Thomas Ernest Malone (Willis), aka The Mutilator, has been convicted of assault, fraud, wire fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, computer crime, robbery, arson, kidnapping, possession of illegal firearms, manslaughter and “criminal activity”. Criminal activity? What’s all the other stuff, then? Hobbies? (comically, both IMDb and All Movie speak of "a crime he didn't commit").

Furthermore, Malone — who “became addicted to gambling and lost custody of his children,” which makes it sound like he bet his offspring on a losing hand — has “active warrants in 47 states” (even though he’s already in prison), and his sentence is "life imprisonment without parole/117 years." Huh?

On the other hand, we’re shown a long list of serious injuries and medical problems including "two synthetic liver transplants" (the movie is set 20 Minutes into the Future) and "more than 60 concussions." Finally, his date of birth “cannot be authenticated”; i.e., the character must be as old as Willis himself.

This kind of cognitive dissonance reminds me of Demolition Man. In that film, Wesley Snipes can't hide his excitement at the prospect of having Jeffrey Dahmer among his henchmen, unaware that Dahmer would be totally useless in hand-to-hand combat with Sly Stallone.

Similarly, it can't be very amusing or challenging to hunt down a battered old man that even the NFL wouldn't clear to play. Sure, Malone may be "the toughest prey" they've ever faced, and "The universe just doesn't seem capable of killing him," but in that case, wouldn't it be quicker and easier to just tie him up, hang him upside down, and club him to death like a piñata?

But as I noted above, Malone is essentially a bystander in his own movie — or maybe he’s supposed to be his character from Unbreakable, which would at least explain his otherworldly resilience.

In 1975, Richard Dreyfuss starred in Jaws; 35 years later he had a cameo in Piranha. His connection to the first film is obviously the only reason he’s in the second, wherein he’s killed off before his name even appears in the opening credits.

Dreyfuss is not alone, though; Elisabeth Shue and Ving Rhames also get to whore themselves out. In the latter's case, there was never any danger that Piranha would result in another hand-me-down acting award for Jack Lemmon; on the other hand, Rhames has easily the best scene in the entire movie — using an outboard motor in a way that would make Ash Williams proud.

But I'm getting ahead of myself; Shue and Rhames first have to find the remains of Dreyfuss, then capture a piranha which they take to Christopher Lloyd (in full Doc Brown mode), who identifies it as a species that has been extinct for two million years (according to the subtitles, Lloyd calls it the "regional piranha," but he may actually be saying "original"; either way it doesn’t matter because neither term makes sense).

An earthquake released the piranhas from an underground lake, or some such bullshit. Q: "How could they survive for so long cut off from the surface?" A: "Cannibalism. They must have fought each other to survive.” Until, presumably, there could be only one. Piranha MacLeod? Well, that would actually explain their apparent immortality.

Piranha is supposed to be a comedy — or, specifically, it's a remake of a parody of Jaws released three years after Jaws and 32 before this one. In other words, this material was so diluted it was almost homeopathic.

Shue and Rhames are big fish in a small pond here — kinda like those poor Sea World orcas (I know they’re mammals; you get the idea, though); as such, the only emotion they inspire in the audience is pity over their career choices.

Only Jerry O'Connell, in a role no doubt based on Joe Francis (of Girls Gone Wild infamy), moves as if he's in his own element — ​​because he is; he knows exactly, having been in several others of the same ilk, what kind of movie this is, and navigates it accordingly.

The Burnt Orange Heresy feels like it wants to do for painting what The Ninth Gate did for books. The problem is that there were books in Polanski’s film, and not just mere props, but objets d'art in their own right. In contrast, there’s precious little painting in this movie; in fact, there’s literally less than meets the eye.

James Figueras (Claes Bang) is nominally an art critic, but sounds more like a shill. He has written a book called The Power of the Critic, and gives lectures about, well, the power of the critic. In one such lecture he resorts to "an oratorical gesture": a cock-and-bull story about a tortured Norwegian artists who, haunted by the portraits of Nazi officers he was forced to paint in a concentration camp, swore never to touch a brush again and took up finger painting.

The anecdote is so far-fetched that we know is a crock of shit five seconds before James admits as much, but the point is that "because of what I, as a critic and an expert, have shared with you ... I have shaped your experience of this painting ... I single-handedly made you believe that this [a non-descript painting that James himself "slapped down without any real care or inspiration"] was a masterpiece."

Now, all James did was appeal to his audience’s emotions. His spiel, made up or not, provided no objective insight, no "expert" opinion. Wouldn’t his case for the power of the critic have been more convincing if he had produced in-depth arguments on technique, style, composition, etc., instead of feeding his listeners a sob story whose power lies in the telling and not in the teller, thus rendering James’s status as art critic moot? Perhaps he should have titled his book The Power of Rhetoric.

Having said all that, it’s safe to say that James is actually meant to be a hack (no problem there; my beef is with how transparent of a hack he is). That talking up one’s own sense of power is a sign of weakness is a irony that’s lost on the character, but not necessarily on the filmmakers, who make James an embezzling pillhead; in that sense, his bragging about a power he doesn’t really have makes sense when we see it as typical junky behavior — not much different than when he says "I can end it [his pill-taking habit] ... I'm just waiting for the right moment."

Unfortunately, this is about the only thing the filmmakers get right. The movie’s downfall begins with the introduction of wealthy art collector Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger fidgeting like he’d rather be anywhere else), who sits on the board of "The Debney Trust;" in that capacity, he is "to offer the great man accommodations" — the great man being reclusive painter Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland).

Debney lives in "dilapidated little house ... at the edge of [Cassidy’s] property," but cares little or nothing for his host, routinely rejecting Cassidy’s daily invitation to join him for lunch. Cassidy recruits James to "procure" him a Debney painting in exchange for an exclusive interview with "the great man"; the way Cassidy pitches this to James is half bribe, half blackmail, and full nonsense.

Clearly, Cassidy has never heard of the whole 'if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain' thing; what exactly it is that impedes him from going himself to the dilapidated little house and dealing directly with Debney shall remain an unfathomable mystery, equal to the riddle of why doesn’t the rich man doesn’t even attempt to bribe, not James but Debney, with something other than lunch. It shouldn’t be too hard to ply the geezer with money or some other substantial offering (Debney does confess to a weakness for a "local widow"); this is the same man, after all, who has a "charitable trust" named after him. Moreover, it will become apparent that what Cassidy wants is an art thief, rather than an art critic (insofar as James can be said to be one).

In Cassidy’s defense, though, Debney turns out to be crazier than a shithouse rat, and as James is bound to discover, there is a powerful reason that Cassidy can’t get his hands on Debney’s work — and by 'powerful,' I mean 'really ****ing stupid;' I won’t reveal it, but suffice it to say that it’s even dumber than the Norwegian finger painter stuff.

The Last Valley is set in the German countryside during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), a conflict originally motivated by religious differences that soon became mainly political (if there’s any difference at all). Vogel (Omar Sharif), a former teacher constantly running from the ravages of war, discovers a village hidden in an idyllic valley; unfortunately for him, the Captain (Michael Caine) and his band of mercenaries — which includes Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists (“pagans”, “blasphemers,” “Satan worshipers”, and “worse;” i.e., Catholics) — arrive at the same time.

To save himself, and the village, from looting, pillaging, and rape by the soldiers, Vogel persuades the Captain to camp there and forget about war, famine, and, of course, the plague, for the winter. Using Vogel as a mediator, the Captain brokers a truce with the population, agreeing to protect the people of the valley in exchange for food, shelter, and concubines; in a scene brimming with religious satire, the Captain manipulates the local Catholic priest into give, or better yet, sell the chosen women a “public blessing ... full remission of past and future sins” (I’m reminded me of the bishop in The Baby of Mâcon preemptively pardoning hundreds of rapists).

Another great scene belongs to Sharif; the Captain has moved a conspicuous “Our Lady” altar to a less conspicuous location in the valley, incurring the wrath of the aforementioned priest and other Catholics (including, ironically, those under the Captain's orders).

In order to preserve the fragile peace, Vogel comes up with a story about a dream he had the night before in which “a regiment of soldiers came riding under a full moon. They were huge and wicked, and they faced the altar. But as they watched, the shrine disappeared. So the soldiers went on their way to Rheinfelden and never came back."

Writer/director James Clavell provides the Captain and Vogel with romantic interests, but the only relationship that matters is the love/hate bromance between the cynical military man and the scrupulous ex-teacher. On the other hand, Clavell puts the Tyrolean locations to great use; the titular valley, photographed in all its splendor by John Wilcox, delivers in spades the Arcadia that the script promises.

Salyut-7 is packed with such sublime imagery that it would be possible to enjoy it without subtitles or knowledge of the Russian language — which is actually not a bad idea, because the plot has been exaggerated to such an extent that Baron Münchhausen himself wouldn’t buy it.

In a nutshell, after contact with the Salyut 7 space station is lost, cosmonauts Vladimir Fyodorov (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) and Viktor Alyokhin (Pavel Derevyanko) are sent to try to commandeer the ship and repair it. The ensuing docking attempts, edited by Mariya Sergeenkova almost like a mating dance, provide the film's best sequences. Meanwhile, Sergey Astakhov and Ivan Burlakov's cinematography captures the most impressive and, dare I say, convincing outer space scenes I’ve seen since Ad Astra (which was actually released two years later).

Salyut-7's visual prowess, however, isn't limited to the vastness of space, and indeed thrives equally well in the confined spaces within the ship. While in orbit, the film is in general a feast for the viewer's eyes. The problem is that the filmmakers spend too much time on Earth manufacturing unnecessary and unlikely conflicts.

The mission is a race against time for two reasons. The first has to do with the idea that NASA is carrying out a mission to recover Salyut-7 and steal Soviet secrets with the space shuttle Challenger (pre-disaster, of course), bringing the station to Earth within the shuttle's cargo bay.

This premise would be fine for a James Bond flick, but here it only manages to detract from the gravity, if you will, of the situation. The second reason is the limited amount of oxygen, the low temperature, and other conditions that Vladimir and Viktor have to deal with, forcing them to repair the station in a few days if they don't want to die of hypoxia and/or hypothermia.

The real-life mission actually lasted 112 days (over three months), and the astronauts wore warm clothes (in the movie they don't even have gloves). Many other events are wildly hyperbolized or shamelessly made up, while others are just plain clichés — like the guy in the control center getting all thoughtful while everyone else celebrates.

It's a shame, because Salyut-7 is, aesthetically speaking, a perfect illustration of the apocryphal anecdote according to which NASA spent a lot of money developing a pen that could write in zero gravity (feel free to substitute 'Nasa' with 'Hollywood' and 'pen that could write in zero gravity' with 'CGI') while the Soviets simply used pencils.