Christina Reviews *Mermaids*

         ****

         Winona Ryder plays Charlotte--- a 15 year old girl who is going through a “zealous Christian” phase.  She comes from a Jewish single parent household, and her mother is off-the-wall and not exactly one who boasts traditional values.  So it’s fair to say that her strong religious convictions aren’t exactly shared by her family members. 

           The movie takes place in the 60’s and is about a mother and daughter who don’t see eye to eye.  The daughter is going through some weird teenage craziness, and the mother is played by Cher.

           I liked this movie.  I thought that there was something quirky and appealing about the characters, and I like the fact that the VHS includes Cher’s “The Shoop Shoop Song” video with clips from the film.
It is also worth noting that the actor who plays Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles plays Charlotte’s crush.  And a very young Christina Ricci plays Charlotte’s younger sister Kate.

Christina Reviews *Matinee*, the 1993 satire starring John Goodman

         Matinee is a Cold War era satire set on a military base in Florida during the 60’s, when concerns of nuclear attack were at their highest.  To take everyone’s minds off of their real life concerns, Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) makes a monster movie called Mant. 

         Gene Loomis and his little brother Dennis want to see the new movie which is about a half-man, half-ant.  The two brothers are new to the area.  They recently moved to Key West because their father was stationed there.  Gene has just made friends with a local boy Stan (Omri Katz, Hocus Pocus) who is in love with Sherry (played by Kellie Martin).  Gene meets a “commie” named Sandra  (played by Lisa Jakob of Mrs. Doubtfire fame).  They all decide to go to the Woolsey movie together.  But the opening showing doesn't go as planned.  The vibrating seats and appearance of a man in an ant costume were all staged by Woolsey.  But in addition to all of that, there's also a kidnapping, a bomb shelter malfunction and a touching climax where big brother Gene is put in the position where he must save his little brother's life.

        My father loved this movie, but then it is more appealing to his generation than mine, I suppose.  That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it as well.  Kellie Martin was pretty impressive as Sherry, I have to say.  The acting was great.

Christina Reviews *Matilda*

          This movie is based on the book by Roald Dahl.  It is about a precocious little girl named Matilda Wormwood who has a crazy family who doesn't support her at all and certainly doesn't respect her intelligence. At a very young age, she is able to read very advanced books and she wins the admiration of her new teacher Mrs. Honey. The only problem is her dim parents and the evil Mrs. Trunchbull who rules the school with an iron fist and locks disobedient children in the “Chokey” (a closet with nails sticking out of the door). And then there's Matilda's new found super powers.

          The predicaments Matilda gets into are funny, as well as the things Mrs. Trunchbull says, even if she is cruel. It might be a little scary and upsetting to very young children, but it depends on the child.
This is one of the only Roald Dahl books I read as a kid, and it is, by far, my favorite.  So, of course, I’m glad it was made into a movie.  I have to say that the movie definitely did justice to the book and then some.  It might even be better than the book because Danny DeVito is a brilliant comedic genius.

         Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman are hilarious as the Wormwoods.  And there’s something about Mara Wilson that is endearing.  She was born to play the role of Matilda.

Christina Reviews *Match Point*

       Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays Chris Wilton, a young man who is engaged to one girl but enamored by his fiancee’s brother’s girlfriend (played by Scarlett Never Saw a Script I Could Refuse Johansson). And furthermore, did you know that Chris is the cousin of the milkman’s son's spinster piano teacher? Anyway, this is a Woody Allen movie so incestuous little love triangles are only to be expected.

          What begins as your classic Man Marries a Rich Girl and Then Takes a Mistress movie eventually becomes something much more sinister. This is no Bridges of Madison County. In Match Point, a woman does not get to have mind-blowing, adulterous sex with her lover and then just walk away from it all in the end.

         This movie does not have a sympathetic protagonist by any means.  Chris is an absolutely loathsome human being, and the very ending may come as a bit of a disappointment to many.  But you know, I liked this movie anyway.  I can't even explain why I liked it.  It was just so twisted, and I like twisted movies.


        I give this movie three stars.  It's Match Point, and it could go either way.



       ***Edited on 6/5/11***

Christina Reviews *Mary Higgins Clark's Loves Music, Loves to Dance*

         Typical Mary Higgins Clark fare. This one is about a serial killer who likes to dance with his victims before he offs them. The one scene I loved in this movie was a flashback of one of the victims’ having an 18^th birthday party. We find out at one point in the movie that she has a twin brother. And yet her name is the only one on the birthday banner. Ha ha ha. If you thought you could slip that one past me, you were DEAD wrong.

Christina Reviews *Martian Child*

          Martian Child is a predictable story that we've all seen a million times before. Man seeks to add depth to his life by reaching out to a troubled child, only to find out that he's got his work cut out for him.  There are the people in authority who question his "unorthodox" methods of child-raising.  And in the end, man and boy learn some valuable life lessons.

         In the short story, the main character is gay.   In the movie, David (John Cusack) is heterosexual because 1. The story isn't about a gay man.  It's about a man whose wife died tragically not too long ago.  The author just didn't realize this.  2.  How else were they going to fit Amanda Peet's character into the story?   I can't remember Peet's name in the movie.  It doesn't matter what her character's name is.  All that matters is that the character is played by Amanda Peet.  Amanda Peet's character is David's female friend.  And a man cannot have a female friend in a movie unless, on some level, even if it's a totally subconscious one, he wants to jump her bones. To be honest, Amanda Peet's character is barely in the movie and kind of fades into the background once she fulfills her primary duty in the film by acting suspiciously intimate with David.

         This isn't a bad movie. But that's because it's safe.  There are some nice scenes here and there.


        ***Edited 6/5/11***

 

Christina Reviews *Manny & Lo*

          ***1/2 

        Manny (Scarlett Johanssen) and Lo (unknown) are sisters. Manny was in a foster home until her older sister “kidnapped” her so that they could be together. They spend their time traveling, never staying in one place for very long.

          Lo is pregnant and she has waited until the absolute last moment to have it confirmed by a doctor. It’s too late to get an abortion, but she has no idea what to do with a child, let alone how to have one. She decides that what she needs to do is kidnap someone who knows a thing or two about children. She figures this hostage will be able to help her through the birthing process. So she and her sister kidnap a baby store clerk.

          I liked the quirkiness of the movie. And even though I dislike Scarlett Johanssen very much, I think she was a good actress as a child.

Christina Reviews *The Little Mermaid*

          I had never seen or read the Hans Christian Anderson story as a child, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw this movie after having only being acquainted with the Disney version.
 
          I definitely felt that the anime version had its charm.  And I appreciated the fact that it wasn’t as trite as the Disney version.  But it’s not really for kids.  It has a depressing ending and if it does have a message that’s not completely grim, and possibly sexist, it’s not a message that a child is probably going to appreciate.   I was in my 20’s when I watched the movie and even I am a little bit unsure of its message.  Is the movie saying that if you throw your life away for a man, this is a sacrifice that will greatly please God and elevate you to sainthood?  Or maybe I'm too dense to get the hidden meaning. I really don't know.

Christina Reviews The Lifetime Network

What can I say?  This channel is a guilty pleasure for me.  It's not that I like seeing women triumph in the face of adversity.  I probably just like the adversity part.

Here are some of my favorites.



The Babysitter’s Seduction

Stephen Collins and Keri Russell star in this movie about an 18 year old babysitter (Michelle) who is seduced by the evil father of her charges.  Early in the movie, the children’s mother is found by Michelle, shot dead in the kitchen of her mansion.  At first, it’s assumed to be a suicide.  But when those investigating the case begin to suspect that it was a murder, Michelle is one of the suspects.  It’s an assumption that the husband does little to discourage.
It’s kind of awkward watching Reverend Eric Camden play a psychopath, and Felicity is little more than a dumb ditz.  Ah, I shouldn't say that.  She finds out what's going on in the end and there's a big showdown in the final minutes of the movie.  This is standard Lifetime fare.

Fatal Vows: The Alexandra O’ Hara Story

Alexandra O’Hara (Cynthia Gibb, Gypsy) is a single mother of a little boy named Ryan.  When she meets Nick Pagan (John Stamos, Full House), she thinks that she’s found the man of her dreams.  But not long after they marry, he begins acting weird.  There are several murders that occur around the city, and the victims all seem to be women and girls that Nick knows.   When he starts acting violent toward her and Ryan, she decides that enough is enough.  But Nick is a man who won’t take no for an answer. 

Ben Gazzara plays Nick Pagan’s pedophile father and David Faustino (Married…With Children, Killer Bud) plays Nick’s conflicted nephew.

Fatal Vows is based on the true story of Alejandro Henriquez.   He killed a handful of Hispanic women and children in New York years ago, one of which was a 10 year old girl named Jessica Guzman.  Most of the victims in this movie are white.  And John Stamos is as white as they come (that is if you consider Greeks to be white).  But this is one of my favorite Lifetime movies, and that’s because I like watching Uncle Jesse act tortured and go on a murderous rampage. 

Gone In the Night

Cindy Dowaliby and David Dowaliby find themselves at the center of an investigation when their 7 year old daughter is abducted from her home in the middle of the night. 

This is the true story of the abduction and murder of Jaclyn Dowaliby.  The movie is four hours long and it stars Shannen Doherty and Kevin Dillon as the mother and father of Jaclyn.  I've been fascinated by this case ever since I was 8 years old and first heard about it on the radio.
 

The Killing Secret

Punky Brewster plays a girl who dates someone else’s boyfriend unknowingly, gets pregnant by him, and when he finds out she’s having his baby, he kills her.  His real girlfriend begins to suspect that there’s something going on with her boyfriend, but this is long after she befriends the mother of the missing (dead) girl.

Nightmare in Columbia County

This movie is based on the real life murder of Shari Smith---sister of beauty pageant contestant Dawn Smith. 

Shari is abducted by a man named Larry Gene Bell while getting mail from the mail box at the foot of her driveway.  She is missing for several days.  Her family pleads for her safe return.  While she’s missing, Dawn and her family get phone calls from a madman who claims to be Shari’s abductor.

Christina Reviews *Liar Liar*

          Jim Carrey plays Fletcher Reede, a lawyer who is unable to lie for an entire day after his neglected son makes a magical birthday wish.  You see, his son is sick of his father making promises and then reneging on them, so he wishes that, for one whole day, his father will have to tell the truth.  And his wish comes true.

          And so Fletcher spends the day telling homeless men how he really feels, making fun of his co-worker’s new hairstyle, insulting his boss, etc., etc.  When he finds out what his son did, he tries to get him to take back his wish.

         At the end of the movie, everyone learns the valuable lesson that sometimes it’s good to lie.  But not to your kids.  Lie to everyone else, but never to them.

        As always, Jim Carrey does a great job.  This is a funny movie, even if not a word of it is true.  Attorneys don’t lie.  They “lawyer” people.  Everyone knows that.

Christina Reviews *The Kids Are All Right* starring Annette Benning and Julianne Moore

          Joni and Laser are the teen children of Nic and Jules. Nic and Jules are lesbians. Joni and Laser were conceived through artificial insemination. They have the same donor dad. When Joni turns 18, she decides that she wants to meet her father. Nic and Jules are against the idea at first, but then go along with it. What follows is a comedy about the ways in which the entrance of the children’s biological father causes fractures in the family unit.

         This is a great movie that doesn’t make a big issue about the fact that Joni and Laser have two mothers. To be honest, it could have just as easily been about a heterosexual couple. It wasn’t preachy or patronizing. I did feel like the ending kind of glossed over the main conflict, but I also liked the understated quality of the ending.  Overall, it was a good story.

Christina Reviews *Juno*

      **** 

         When the movie opens, 16 year old Juno is going into a store to take a pregnancy test.  She only had sex once, and it was with her best friend, and as it turned out, that was all it took.  In the words of the store clerk, her “eggo is preggo.”

         At first Juno wants to get an abortion.  She thinks that she might go to Women Now “because they help women now.”  But when she gets there she is ambushed by a lone abortion protestor who speaks broken English and tells her that fetuses have fingernails.  If that isn’t bad enough, the monotone receptionist is just plain weird and rambles about sweet-smelling condoms.  Juno begins to think that maybe abortion isn’t the right choice for her.

         So she decides to give the baby up for adoption.  She has a couple all lined up.

         The rest of the movie is about Juno saying funny things and the expectant adoptive mother practically busting her top as she waits for the baby to be born. 

         Things don’t work out exactly as planned in the end, but then again, if there’s anything Juno knows all about it’s things not going as planned, so it’s cool.

        This is a great movie about teen pregnancy where everything works out in the end!  Ellen Page is hilarious.

Christina Reviews *Identity* Starring John Cusack, Ray Liotta and Amanda Peet

          Identity opens with a scene where we learn that a convicted killer is about to be put to death for the killing of 6 people in the 1980’s.  Then the movie cuts to a motel.

         One by one, the occupants of Rooms 1-10 die horribly gruesome deaths.  My understanding is that the deaths begin with Room 10 and work backwards.  The remaining occupants begin to panic.   They don’t know what’s going on.  And as it turns out, they all have some interesting things in common.

        The movie cuts back and forth between convicted, death row inmate Malcolm Rivers and the people in the motel.  I’m not going to say too much more because I don’t want to spoil anything.

         Suffice it to say that there’s a twist at the end, as is often the case with movies these days.  The twist was certainly clever, though perceptive Psychology majors may crack the code early on.  I believe I did, but then again, I may have had some hints at the ending beforehand.  I can't remember how much knowledge I had going in the first time around.

        I can’t help but wonder, though, if it’s a clever twist that doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny.  I had a bit of a hard time following along with the rationale behind the twist at the end.  It seemed a bit convoluted.  I never figured out how the real killer managed to survive, or why the final victim wasn’t killed off long before the end.   And I’m not sure why so many of the motel people had to die in order for the story to work.  None of this will make sense until you watch the entire movie.  This is a hard movie to review because you can’t critique it thoroughly without giving away the end.

        I think the main problem with this movie is that it is a bit of a shaggy dog.   By the time you discover what is going on, you no longer have any reason to be invested in the main characters.  Not that it matters in movies of this kind where you’re just waiting for the next body to hit the ground anyway.  But still.

        Once again, I guess you’ll have to watch the movie for yourself and decide whether or not you like it.  Just keep in mind that you’ll either love it or feel incredibly cheated.

Christina Reviews *Ice Princess*

          Ice Princess is a Disney movie starring Michelle Trachtenberg.

         Here is the basic rundown.*  

        Science nerd Casey Carlyle discovers that there is an aerodynamic formula to ice skating.  When applying this formula to her own skating and the skating of others, she figures she's onto something.

       She decides that, with her aerodynamic formula on her side, she has what it takes to compete.  

       The ice-skating coach says, “It takes money and dedication to compete.”

       She gives up.

       But then she decides that maybe she shouldn’t give up after all.

       Her mother wants her to go to Harvard, so she goes to a Harvard interview.  She tells the interviewer that she’s sorry but she has to go chase after her dream.

        The Harvard interviewer says that there will be no chance to reschedule if she changes her mind.

         She says that's OK and see ya.

       Her mother asks her why on Earth she would give up on her dream of going to Harvard.

       To which Casey responds,  “I’m giving up on your dream.  I’m going after mine.”

       In an emotional scene, Casey Carlyle tells her coach that she wants this more than anything.  She points out that she gave up on Harvard in order to pursue this dream.  She says that maybe she doesn’t have what it takes, but at the very least, no one’s going to say that she doesn’t have the guts.

       Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil the end.  But suffice it to say that things don’t turn out all too shabby for Casey.

       Is this a decent feel-good, family movie about pursuing one’s dreams at all costs.  Yes.

       Is it the next Citizen Kane?  No.


        * Quotes might not be 100% accurate.

Christina Reviews *The Hills Have Eyes*

         A family goes on an RV trip and end up trapped in a desert.  What follows is the kind of thing that happens any time a group of people are trapped in a desert with no cell phone reception.  Things go a little awry.

         There is a family of mutants living in the desert.  They are deformed as a result of the nuclear testing base not too far from where the RV broke down.  And these aren’t your normal, everyday mutants either.  These are mutant killers!

         There were some really disturbing scenes in this movie.  I won’t go into detail because I don’t want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say that this is not for the faint of heart.  Rape, murder, animal torture and baby snatching.  Is there no end to the horror?

         I really liked this movie much more than the original, and I think that’s because it took place in modern times, and so I could relate to the characters better.  I have to say, though, that the character development of the mutants was better in the original.   They were given more of a storyline in the first movie.

         I have this crazy theory that none of the horrifying events in the remake actually happened and that it was all part of some kind of coma-induced nightmare.  The son is knocked out while searching for his dog, and it's after he regains consciousness that things go wrong.  I could go into that a little more and how the movie seems to have a bit of a Freudian edge to it (one of the characters even makes a crack about the mother's Freudian obsession with snakes), but there I go overanalyzing things that are really quite simple.

Christina Reviews *High School Musical*

         Troy and Gabriella meet at a New Year’s Party.  They sing karaoke together.  They fall in love over a bad song.

         It is a brief romance.  They part ways that same night.  It's fair to assume nothing much will come of the relationship, though they exchange numbers.

         But then Gabriella transfers to Troy’s school.  And he finds that he’s now got a bit of a dilemma on his hands.  Does he ditch Gabriella and just play ball?  Or does he pursue this budding romance with Gabriella and his newfound love of the stage?  And how will this look to all of his basketball buddies? 

         And then there are the musical siblings Sharpay and Ryan who don’t much like the idea of competition.  As far as they’re concerned, they’re the only ones in the school who are allowed to have talent.  Does he really want to step on Sharpay's and Ryan's toes?  Is that a good way to start the new semester? *

         High School Musical has a plotline that's not too far-removed from the basic premise of Grease.  It seems to be a distant relative.  There are a few noticeable differences, of course, but the main difference is that High School Musical sucks.

       The music in the series was clearly slapped together in a few minutes.  If a character is eating lunch in the cafeteria, the song is this:  "I'm sitting here.  Eating a sandwich.  Feeling kinda down.  Because my friends all hate me.  And the cheese in my sandwich looks a little brown."

      Or if they're swimming in a pool, the song goes like this:  "Here we are.  Swimming in a pool.  Everything is grand!  Watch me do a handstand!"


      I am proud to have been a part of the generation that brought you this movie.  It's certainly something I'm sure my nieces and nephews will want to hear stories about when they're older.


    * I didn't actually remember the plotline when I first began writing this review.  I used Wikipedia as a way to jog my memory.  Heaven forbid I remember anything about this movie on my own.

Christina Reviews *He's Just Not That Into You*

           This is a chick flick movie about how a woman learns the hard, but valuable lesson, that when a guy doesn’t call you back it’s probably because he’s not interested.

           He’s not playing hard to get.  It’s not because he secretly likes you.   It’s not even because he wants to have your babies in the not so distant future.

          She learns that this is always the case.

          Except when it’s not.

          I have to say that I did like the scenes where Ginnifer Goodwin’s character calls up Justin Long’s character and asks him to decipher tricky signals as a way to determine whether or not her latest date is interested in her or looking to bail.  That was kind of funny.

          But overall, I wasn’t impressed.  Let’s face it.  You all know what kind of movie this is.  You either want to see it or you don’t.  I could say that the story had heart and the characters had depth, but would you believe me?

         What can I say?  I’m just not into this movie.  And no, I’m not playing hard to get.

Christina Reviews *Heavenly Creatures*

          When Juliette Hulme (Kate Winslet) moves to a new school, she makes friends with Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey).  The two girls become fast friends, and before long, they are doing everything together.  When people around them begin to believe that the relationship may be unhealthy, they start to panic.  Their love for each other borders on obsession.  They come up with a plan so devious that it will change their lives forever.  I cannot say much more about this devious plan without spoiling the ending.

          This is a true story.  The movie was inspired by horrifying events in the life of fiction writer Anne Perry. 

           I thought that this was a very good Peter Jackson movie.  I don’t have much to say about it because I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it.  It was just a very well-crafted and well-acted film.

Christina Reviews *Heathers*

        JD: Greetings and Salutations.  Are you a Heather?
        Veronica: No, I’m a Veronica.  Sawyer.  This may seem like a really stupid question...
        J.D.: There are no stupid questions.
        Veronica Sawyer: You inherit 5 million dollars the same day aliens land on the earth and say they're going to blow it up in 2 days. What do you do?
        J.D.: (Pause) That's the stupidest question I've ever heard.

         The Heathers are the most influential clique at Westerburg High.  There’s Heather Duke, the follower.  There's Heather McNamara, the cheerleader (I guess you could just say that both Duke and McNamara are followers).  And then there’s Heather Chandler.  Heather Chandler is the one who wears the red scrunchie.  She gets the red ball when the Heathers play croquet.  She’s the leader and everyone else is just lucky enough to be in her presence.

       The Heathers run the school with an iron fist.  They make fun of the weaker kids.  They run lunch time polls so that they can waste their fellow students' time with stupid questions.  They write fake love letters to make unpopular girls think that there are boys out there who like them. 

         Veronica Sawyer has been welcomed into the group, even though she doesn’t have the right name.  She craves the popularity, but she hates the person she has become.  In her diary, she lashes out at the Heathers--- and at Heather Chandler in particular.  She wants revenge.  And one day she is able to get
it---by accidentally killing the girl who is both her sworn enemy and her best friend (in the words of Veronica, it's the "same difference.")  Needless to say, the revenge doesn’t go as smoothly as planned.  And now her biggest concern is whether she's going "to Prom or to Hell."

         From that point on, she finds herself sinking deeper and deeper into a hole as she and her new boyfriend JD end up killing more and more classmates without ever intending to.

        This is my favorite black comedy ever.  While high school was nothing like this for me, I can appreciate that it is Hell for lots of teenagers, and this is a good portrayal of teen angst taken to the extreme.

        Several years later, Jawbreaker was made in an attempt to recapture the brilliance of Heathers.  It was a formidable task and, needless to say, Jawbreaker failed.

        Watch this 1989 cult classic instead.  It will have you looking at high school in the way you always have before.   Watch it with your grandmother, in fact.  During the opening credits, she'll be tapping her foot to "Que Sera." 

         "I like this movie already," your grandmother will say.

          And then she'll find out what it's really about and hate you forever. 

Christina Reviews Ethan Hawke's *Hamlet*

         I didn’t much like Almereyda’s 2000 adaptation of Hamlet.  Call me a purist.  Call me uncool.  But I much prefer the more traditional versions.  Branagh’s Hamlet was excellent, for instance, though a bit long.

       As for the Ethan Hawke version, it was all millennium glitz and very little substance.

        The “To be or not to be” speech in a video store?  I suppose there's some deeper meaning there that I'm missing.

        I think it’s always a good idea to put a twist on an old classic.  And it was a bit interesting to hear Shakespearean language recited in modern times.  But overall, the movie felt a bit pretentious, and as a result, it was hard to take it seriously. I know that Shakespeare is probably largely responsible for the stilted language, but somehow it works better in the context of his plays than in the context of modern America.

         I had the same problem with Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo & Juliet.

Christina Reviews the *Halloween* Series

         The original Halloween opens with a 6-year-old boy in a clown costume hacking his older sister to death with a kitchen knife.  The little boy is Michael Myers.
     
         Fifteen years later, he’s back to Haddonfield, Illinois, ready to take care of unfinished business.  He has his sights set on one particular girl.  How about that Laurie Strode?

        Jamie Lee Curtis plays Laurie, a 17 year old babysitter who would rather be responsible than party with her friends. 

         To reinvent a Dorothy Parker quote, Curtis sure does “run the gamut of emotions from A to B.”  If she doesn’t make it all the way to B then pretty darn close.  She doesn’t do much in the movie other than make catatonic faces and run in terror.  Occasionally she laughs with her friends and such so that you can differentiate between the times when she’s happy and the times when she’s scared.  This comes in very handy in particular in those early scenes where things are a little amiss but not quite awful yet.

         The movie ends with a cliffhanger, leaving the door open for Michael Myers to return in Halloween II.

         In the sequel, he hunts down Laurie Strode in the hospital where she was admitted after the near fatal, and really quite stressful, events of the first movie.  I didn’t much like the sequel.  It was very boring watching Laurie run through the hallways of a hospital with Michael Myers chasing after her.  There’s not much that can be done in a hospital.  This is why I liked the fact that Rob Zombie took creative license with the second film when remaking it.  I did like the fact that the secret of Laurie Strode’s heritage is revealed in this movie, though.  It was a cool twist.

         The third movie has nothing to do with Michael Myers.  It’s about haunted masks and how there’s only ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two more days until Halloween.  Silver Shamrock.

        The fourth and fifth movies are about Laurie Strode’s orphaned daughter Jamie (Danielle Harris).  Laurie Strode is dead and Jamie is being stalked by Michael Myers.  Danielle Harris shows a little more emotion than Jamie Lee Curtis, but that’s not hard to do.

        The sixth movie is called The Curse of Michael Myers and it involves the occult.  Apparently a curse was put on Michael Myers at birth and that's why he was the way he was.  The eighth movie will attempt to explain away his quirks by other means, but for now, the devil made him do it.  Laurie's daughter Jamie dies in a barn in the opening minutes of the film.  So the only character in this movie who is worth noting is Tommy.  He was the boy Laurie babysat for in the first movie, only now he's all grown up.

        In Halloween: H2O, Laurie Strode is back from the dead.  As it turns out, she faked her death.  But in order for H2O to work, you have to pretend that every sequel after the second doesn’t exist.  This is a good movie for those who liked the first two films but hated everything after the second movie.  To be quite honest, I think I'd rather pretend that this movie didn't exist.

       In Halloween: Resurrection, Laurie Strode dies---for real, this time.  Or at least until the next time they decide to resurrect her.  And then the rest of the movie is about a reality show in which several young people go to the old Myers house to prove to the public that there’s nothing to be afraid of.  Or is there?  You know what the one thing is that you never do, other than end a sentence on a preposition?  Trespass on Michael Myers’ turf with impunity!  And this is the movie in which we learn that “Michael Myers is not a soundbite. ... He's a killer shark in baggy-ass overalls.”

          To be honest, I think that Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween II far surpass any of the original movies.  There’s a darker tone and more perverse quality to Zombie’s movies which I think suits the story really well. But not everyone will agree. Rob Zombie isn't for everyone.

         It does kind of sadden me that Scout Taylor-Compton’s Laurie Strode is not a sweet, innocent girl like Jamie Lee's Laurie was.  She’s still kinda nice, but she’s a bit of a brat as well.  I suppose it's only fair, given all of the crap she had to go through.  I liked the music in the Halloween II remake.  And I liked the fact that Danielle Harris played Annie Brackett.

           I would rate the first movie ***½ stars, the second movie ** stars, the third movie ** stars, the fourth movie *** stars, the fifth movie **½ stars, the sixth movie **½ stars, the seventh movie **½ stars, the eighth movie **½ stars and the remakes **** stars.

Christina Reviews *A Guy Thing*

*** 1/2

Jason Lee plays Paul, a man whose world becomes a nightmare when he wakes up in bed with one of the dancers at his bachelor party.  He and Becky (Julia Stiles) try to make a clean break, but it’s not so easy, as she seems to show up everywhere he goes.  She’s a little wishy-washy and unsure of what she wants to do in life, so she jumps from one job to the next --- bachelor party dancer, toll booth collector, record shop clerk.  Then he finds out that not only does she work at every place he might possibly want to go, but she’s also the cousin of his soon-to-be wife, Karen (Selma Blair). 

As the countdown to the wedding begins, Paul finds himself getting over his head in lies and cover-ups until the truth is finally revealed.  I promise you, the truth is something you definitely would have expected in your wildest dreams.

This was a funny movie.  It hasn’t got a twist or all that much of a heart, but it’s got enough humor in it and Jason Lee is a great comedic actor for this generation.

My favorite part of this movie, which also happens to be the epononymous scene, is when Karen finds Becky's underwear in the tank of the toilet and confronts Paul about it.  He lies and says that they were supposed to be a birthday gift.  She makes a face and points out that the underwear has clearly been used.  He starts raving against the underwear bin in which he found them.  So she calls up the store and gets some guy on the phone.  At first the clerk is confused, but when she says that her fiancee bought her dirty underwear from their store, the clerk quickly catches on and apologizes for the inconvenience, explaining that this happens all the time.  When a customer asks him about this mysterious underwear bin, he explains, "It's a guy thing."

By the way, whatever happened to Julia Stiles?  She seems to have vanished off of the face of the earth.  I know she’s still making movies, but is anyone watching them?  There was a time when you couldn’t go to the video store without seeing her face on some slip sleeve box or DVD cover.

Christina Reviews *Grosse Pointe Blank*

          Martin Blank is a hitman. When he gets an invitation to his high school reunion, he doesn’t want to go.  What is he going to say to his old classmates?  Hi, Sally, what are you up to these days?  Oh, you're a wife and a mother?  Me?  Yeah, well, I'm a professional killer.  I get paid to kill people.  What else is new?
     
         His assistant (Joan Cusack), on the otherhand, is dead set on the idea of him attending.  And when he’s hired to off a man in the same town as where his high school is located, she convinces him that this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

        It only follows that he will reconnect with his high school girlfriend (Minnie Driver), whom he abandoned without a word ten years prior. And it only follows that things will get a bit sticky from that point on.  But when is life anything but sticky for a hitman?

         I loved this movie, but then I like Cusack’s style of humor. Not everyone will, I suppose.

        And I just realized that it will have been ten years since I graduated from high school in exactly a month and three days.

Christina Reviews *Grizzly Rage*

Four teens find themselves at the mercy of an enraged grizzly when they trespass onto forbidden territory and manage to run over a bear cub in the process.  Of course their car breaks down.  And of course there's no reception in the area.  No plot contrivance is unaccounted for.

The special effects in this movie were lame and it isn't really much more than a bunch of stupid kids running for their lives.  The acting was decent.  When the kids found out they were up a creek, they seemed adequately upset.  Tyler Hoechlin.  That's about it.

Two and a half stars.

Christina Reviews *The Good Son*

          Mark Evans (Elijah Wood) goes to stay with his aunt and uncle after his mother dies.  While there, he comes face to face with a blond-haired devil who calls himself his cousin.

          Macauley Culkin plays a bad seed in this 1993 non-classic.  Apparently he was trying to shake off the stigma of his role as Kevin McCallister and the limits it placed on him, artistically, at the tender age of 12.  You can’t exactly carve out your place in acting history alongside such masters as Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando if all you’re going to do in your movies is set booby traps and die by bee sting.  So he plays a villain in this, and he does an adequate job, I suppose.  I wouldn’t say there was anything earth-shattering about his performance, though.

         From what I’ve read, the screenplay was written by Ian McEwan.  Interesting.

          I thought this movie was OK.  It was nothing special.  But for some reason I can’t bring myself to get rid of the VHS.  It’s one of those guilty pleasures, I guess.

Christina Reviews *Gone, Baby, Gone*

When Amanda McCready, age 4, is abducted from her bedroom while her drug addict mother is out doing God knows what around town, private investigator Patrick Kenzie and his girlfriend Angie are enlisted by the girl's aunt to find her and, hopefully, bring her home safe and sound.  The only problem is that the police aren't too happy with the extra help and are content on handling the case on their own. 

This gritty, disturbing movie is based off of the fourth book in the Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro series.  The novel was written by Dennis Lehane (of Mystic River fame).  Gone, Baby, Gone was arguably the best book of the series, so I was happy that it was the one Ben Affleck chose to adapt.  It's got a great twist at the end.  The twist in Gone, Baby, Gone actually adds to the story by placing the protagonist in the middle of a moral dilemma that will test him as a person and will possibly destroy his relationship with the woman he loves.

Each of the books in the series are based on a different case, though of course Patrick does carry baggage from one story to the next, so if you're going to read the series, it might be a good idea to read it chronologically.  I didn't.  I read Gone, Baby, Gone first, the second book second, the first book third and the third book fourth, I think.  I still haven't read the fifth book.  I tried to get through the most recent sequel, Moonlight Mile, which is actually a follow up to Gone, Baby, Gone, but I had to give up on it about 70 pages in.

Anyway, I thought that the movie did really well with the source material, and I think that there were parts of the movie that were better than the book.  For example, I think it makes more sense for the cop played by Morgan Freeman to have a murdered daughter as opposed to a daughter who was only missing for a day once when she was a little kid but was found safe not long after she disappeared.  Little things like that only improve the story and make it more emotional. 

Oh, and the acting was fantastic.  Big thumbs up to the woman who played Amanda's mom Helene and to the woman who played Helene's good friend.  Nepotism smiled kindly on Casey Affleck, and he certainly doesn't disappoint, but it's the character actors like Amanda's mom who really earn their paychecks on this one.

Christina Reviews the *Friday the 13th* Series

Friday the 13th  *** ½

Several teenagers go to Crystal Lake to be camp counselors for the summer.  They arrive before the children and find that they have the whole lake to themselves while they prepare for the days to come.  Put six or seven teenagers together at a lake without an adult for miles, and tomfoolery is bound to follow.
 
Little do the teeangers know that there are about to be picked off one by one by a killer who has a vendetta against kids who party and screw around.

This is the original.  It was merely an excuse to rip-off Halloween, and yet it's still worth watching for it's cult status.  Kevin Bacon stars as a boy who gets it in bed.

Friday the 13th  Part II ***

Several teenagers return to Camp Crystal Lake not long after the first movie's massacre.  The killer is dead, so everything should be fine.  Right?

Not quite.

This movie boasts several gruesome death sequences and a sympathetic protagonist who is a future psychiatrist in the making.  Future psychiatrists seem to do very well in these movies.  When I was watching this movie with my brother, I told him that she would survive because she gets Jason.  She empathizes with him.  She feels his pain, if you will.  There's a boy in a wheelchair who's not as lucky as she.  The real kicker is that he gets it shortly after this really attractive girl makes him an offer he can't refuse.  Dayum.  Worse luck!

Also, the survivor from the first movie is killed off in the opening minutes.  She gets an ice pick in the head while making tea in her apartment.  I felt bad for her.  A girl should be able to make tea in peace!  Then again, she did kinda do Jason wrong in the first movie. 

This is also Jason's official debut.  Jason was not the killer in the first movie, as anyone who has seen the 1980 original and the first Scream movie know.

Friday the 13th  Part III   ** ½

This is the movie that is to blame for the iconic hockey mask.  Before this movie, Jason just wore a potato sack over his head a la the Elephant Man.

This movie is especially worth seeing if you get the 3D version, though it’s hard to really get the full effect on a regular TV screen.  It's a little better on a digital TV.  The Blu-ray version isn't much of an improvement.

Friday the 13th  Part  IV: The Final Chapter  ** ½

More naughty teenagers meet their demise and a little boy named Tommy (Corey Feldman) proves himself to be Jason's match. Tommy will appear in two more Friday the 13th sequels.

Friday the 13th  Part V: The New Beginning  * ½

This movie doesn’t really have much to do with Jason.  Tommy is in a mental institution, having gone mad after his fateful encounter with Jason years before.  Several murders occur on the premises, and the viewer is left to wonder who the killer is.  It’s definitely not one of the best entries in the series, but it does have some cool eighties music.

Friday the 13th  Part VI: Jason Lives  ***

This is one of the funnier sequels.  It is full of cheesy one-liners.  And this is really where the saga takes a turn toward the supernatural.  Jason was always a bit invincible, but he’s officially back from the dead now and is more powerful than ever. 


Friday the 13th  Part VII: The New Blood  ***

A telekinetic girl accidentally kills her father and then accidentally brings Jason back from the dead, all in the first few minutes of the movie.  This girl just doesn't seem to have much luck, does she?  The rest of the movie is a battle of her powers against Jason's as he goes on his usual killing rampage.  I think this movie is the one that has the classic scene where Jason kills a girl in a sleeping bag by whipping the sleeping bag against a tree. 

This movie is more of the same, only there was one victim I felt a little bad for.  There was this one bespectacled girl who didn't do anything wrong other than have the bad sense to hang around with losers.  I particularly disliked her back-stabbing best friend and this witch named Melissa who just didn't have very good manners.   I think this is the only movie in the series where I actually felt more than a casual contempt for the victims.  There were some real jerks in this one.

Friday the 13th  Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan  ** ½

Every horror saga has to have at least one entry where the killer stalks his prey on a cruise ship.  Well, maybe not every horror franchise.  But it sounds like a cool idea nonetheless, right?

Anyway, Jason boards a cruise ship full of 18 year olds who were only hoping for some post graduation fun.  Jason is looking for some fun as well.  His idea of fun differs from theirs.

A handful of survivors find themselves jumping ship and running through the dark streets of Manhattan with Jason never far behind. The main girl’s boyfriend is hot!  That’s all I have to say.  Very eighties feel to this one in particular.

To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, "First Jason takes Manhattan, then he takes Berlin..."

Jason Goes to Hell:  The Final Friday   **

 As it turns out, Jason's next stop is not Berlin.  And as it turns out, he can only be killed by a family member brandishing a special kind of knife.

This movie is B-O-R-I-N-G.  Jason outside of the eighties is kinda like Austin Powers outside of the 60’s.  It just doesn’t work.

Jason X  * ½

So apparently the special knife isn’t so special after all.  Jason’s back.  He’s been cryogenically frozen for years and is resurrected on a space craft in the future.  Like I said before, he's Austin Powers.  Only slightly better looking. 

The cruise ship thing was done, so I guess it was only a matter of time before they trotted out the spaceship.

Friday the 13th  (2009)  ** ½

The remake is not really a remake.  It’s really more of a new entry in the saga that never dies. 
A young man’s sister disappears while on a camping trip with her friends.  While searching for her in the woods where she disappeared, he stumbles across a group of kids who are about to meet a gruesome fate that can only come about at the hands of one Jason Voohrees.  This movie is OK, but nothing special.

Christina Reviews *Freddy Vs. Jason*

          Freddy finds that the children of Elm Street have forgotten about him. He is very upset about this.  He can't torment children in their dreams if nobody is afraid of him. So he resurrects Jason with the hope that the senseless, gruesome murders to follow will make people remember him.

         The only problem is that once he brings Jason back from the dead, it’s not so easy to send him back to the grave where he belongs.

         I didn’t really like this movie. It has obvious appeal for the common fan of the Friday the 13^th series and the Nightmare on Elm Street saga. Beyond that, though, it really is more of the same old thing, only what came across as campy and fun in the 80’s just seems trite in the new millennium.

Christina Reviews *Freeway*

           “You shoulda let me out of the car when I asked you to, Bob. You see what happens when ya got bad manners?”
                                                      Vanessa Lutz

          This is an interesting twist on the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  Reese Witherspoon plays Vanessa, a 15 year old girl who comes from a white trash background.  Vanessa Lutz may not be the brightest bulb in the world, but she has a real knack for survival. 

          When her mother is arrested for prostitution and her stepfather is arrested for molesting her, she decides to run away to her grandmother’s house in order to avoid social services.  Her car breaks down in the middle of the freeway, and a man named Bob Wolverton stops to help her out.  He offers her a ride.

          As it turns out, Bob Wolverton is not such a nice guy after all.

          I’m not going to say anymore because I don’t want to spoil the movie. 

         Reese Witherspoon has some great lines.  I find I like her best in quirky, eccentric roles like this one.