Thursday Movie Picks: Cars/Racing

Thursday Movie Picks: Sibling Relationships (Biologically Related)

Thursday Movie Picks: Movies set in a Mental Institution

If you've been hanging around here lately, you'll know that I've been taking part in Wanderer's Thursday Movie Picks Meme over at Wandering Through the Shelves. The quick and dirty on it is that you write about three movies that pertain to whatever category she has set up. The only parameters being they should either be your best (or favorites), worst (or least favorite), or hidden gems. It really is a blogathon-esque activity so swing by, see the categories she has set up for upcoming weeks and join the fun.

This week's theme was a tough one for me. We're talking movies set in a mental institution. Of course, the easiest route to go was pick the best and most famous of them all, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest then find two others to fill the need for three pictures. It's worthy of every drop of ink spilled and key stroked in praise of it. However, you should know me by now. When two roads diverge in a blog, I try to take the one less traveled by, and that makes all the difference.

Wow.

How dare I paraphrase the great Robert Frost knowing that in just a few moments I'm going to drop some nihilistic crap on you?

What do I mean?

Well, we're exploring one of my guilty pleasures for this week's picks: slasher flicks. These are certainly not the best movies to take place in a mental institution, for sure. Some might think they're the worst, but I don't. I wouldn't call these hidden, by any stretch. So, I guess we can call these favorites. Screw it, let's just get to it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

When the kids of the Elm Street kids can't stop having nightmares, they get sent to a psyche ward where Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) goes after them, one by one. This was the first movie in the franchise to venture off of Elm Street. It's also the first to give us the wise-cracking while he kills you version of its iconic killer. If you're a fan of the franchise, then you know this is one of the better entries into the canon. Along with Freddy's change in personality, the movie also introduced some pretty cool concepts. Oh, this one last tidbit is a personal one. I'm not even sure why I remember this, to be honest, but watching this movie in theaters way back in 1987 was the first time I had heard the phrase 'sleep deprivation.' Incredibly random thing to throw in, I know, but that's what I got.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

So yeah, we're going from a part 3 to a part 5. Deal with it. This installment of the Friday the 13th series finds young Tommy (John Shepherd), who had just killed the iconic Jason at the end of the prior movie, The Final Chapter, being admitted to a mental institution for troubled teens. Of course, it's located deep in the woods, silly. Why yes, the kids at this institution start turning up dead, one by one. How'd you guess? Okay, I won't pretend this is some form of high quality cinema. I will say that it's one of the better pictures in the franchise.

Halloween (2007)

Lots of people hate on Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's horror classic. Ignore everything I say from this point forward, but I think this one is just about as good. Unlike the original, it spends lots of time in the place where that movie only started from and spoke of, the mental institution Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) escaped from. The actual remake part of the film, Myers following around and killing the teens of Haddonfield, is actually the weakest part. Right up through that escape, however, director Rob Zombie gives us the best story-telling of his career and some of the best in an American horror flick in quite some time (in '07, that is). I promise I'm not drunk or high. Anyhoo, a large chunk of this involves us watching Myers pass a lot of years being counseled by Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell).

Okay, tell me I'm the one who should be committed.

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The Artist

Cat People (1982)

Directed by Paul Schrader.

1982. Rated R, 119 minutes.

Cast:

Nastassja Kinski

Malcolm McDowell

John Heard

Annette O’Toole

Ruby Dee

Ed Begley Jr.

Frankie Faison

John Larroquette

Scott Paulin

Tessa Richarde

As a teenage boy I loved this movie. Even then, I watched as many flicks as I could get my eyeballs on. Summer trips from my native Queens to visit my grandparents in North Carolina meant an escape from the confines of VHF and UHF viewing (google it, young’uns) and a couple months with the infant known as cable television. This included HBO. During the hottest months of either 1983 and/or ’84, I forget which, they ran Cat People at least three late nights a week. I watched it as often as possible. It’s lack of explosions, somber mood and exotic looking leading lady made it seem artsy, to me. Watching it made me feel sophisticated as if this were somehow too snooty for my friends. Still, it has heavy doses of what budding bags of he-hormones crave: blood and boobs. I thought I discovered truly high caliber cinema.

Thirty years later, I realize I have no idea what I was watching, yet I love it just the same. I must say that today my reasoning is much different. What I took for bold artistic choices are simply misguided filmmaking decisions. The storytelling is strongly of the “maybe no one will notice this plot hole” variety. Malcolm McDowell gives a typically unhinged performance while John Heard resides at the wooden end of the spectrum. Leading lady Natassja Kinski is still an exotic beauty, but her acting is more in line with Heard’s than McDowell’s. Superman’s mom and girlfriend (figure that one out) Annette O’Toole is somewhere in the middle but is more than reason enough to watch if you’re into redheads and maybe even if you’re not. The great Ruby Dee gets her Miss Cleo on while my boy Dan from Night Court (John Larroquette) has a small role. And I haven’t even mentioned how bizarre it all is. Unintentional humor, WTF moments and some surprisingly still effective special fx abound.

If you don’t believe that this is one strange trip, let me fill you in on our plot. It seems that some tribal people in the most backwards part of some third world country have sacrificed so many of their own children to the local black leopards over the centuries that the cats have evolved into a human/feline hybrid. They’re usually in human form. However, when they become sexually aroused they transform into black leopards. The only way they can turn back human is to kill. Nice. There’s a kicker. Paul (McDowell) has been living with this curse for quite a while. His sister Irena (Kinski) doesn’t yet know either of them have this affliction. She’s has just flown out to New Orleans to stay with her brother whom she hasn’t seen since she was four. Paul knows something else Irena doesn’t: the only way to get your groove on and not turn into a big black cat is by doing the oochie-coochie with a sibling. Ewww. Imagine Irena’s dismay and disgust when her big bro starts puttin’ the moves on her. I don’t mean the smooth player moves, either. I mean the overly forward desperate, sweaty, wide-eyed, screaming ‘I really need to get in your pants right now’ type of moves. Double ewww. Since sis won’t give him any, Paul continues dining on the local population of loose women. Meanwhile, Irena slowly comes to the realization of what she is and simultaneously falls for Oliver (Heard), the zoo curator. Yup.

By the way, this is a remake of a 1942 movie which I haven’t worked up the courage to watch. Somehow, I’m doubting the 1942 version is quite this bonkers. There were codes and restrictions and whatnot. This newer version dispenses with any notion of restraint and just goes for the full-on ridiculous. It’s saving grace, if it wants to be taken seriously are the special fx. Cat People isn’t loaded with them, but they’re effective. In particular, Nastassja Kinski’s transformation scene is among the best I’ve ever seen considering the era in which it was made. It even blows away stuff I’ve only seen recently. Unfortunately, nothing else here is nearly on that level. If you’ve seen this movie, you’re probably nodding your head in agreement right now. If not, you must understand the big lesson the movie teaches us. Suffice it to say, it shuns incest by extolling the virtues of bondage and bestiality. For that, it’s so bad it’s awesome!

MY SCORE: -10/10

Halloween (2007)

Directed by Rob Zombie.

2007. Rated R, 111 minutes.
Cast:
Malcolm McDowell
Daeg Faerch
Tyler Mane
Sheri Moon Zombie
William Forsythe
Scout Taylor-Compton
Hanna Hall
Danielle Harris
Danny Trejo
Brad Dourif 

John Carpenter’s Halloween is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It is undeniably one of the most influential and imitated movies of all time. Every slasher flick that followed owes it a huge debt of gratitude. Without it, there may not have been a Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street. That it would be remade was inevitable. Musician turned director Rob Zombie tackles the task.

To Zombie’s credit, he’s not content with merely doing a spot-on remake with updated wardrobes. He truly tries to make it his own. He does this by taking us deep into the world of the iconic slaughterer of teens. We first meet Mikey (Faerch) when he is just a wee lad, albeit one with a penchant for killing small animals. Very tired of how people treat him, he graduates from animals to humans. Through a startingly realistic series of events, he kills four people who make the error in judgment of pissing him off. We then spend some time with him in a mental institution, both at the beginning and end of his stay. Eventually, we get to the point that serves as the starting point for the original, his escape from the institution and subsequent return home. This constitutes the first half of our feature and it is spectacular film-making. It’s much more brutal, unflinching character study than true horror. Since it revolves around a child committing some hellacious acts, all of which are graphically depicted, it’s all sorts of unsettling. The magic of it is that through the mayhem of his life, we feel bad for Mikey. Like we do about most children who come from adverse circumstances, we feel his life could’ve been different. It could’ve been better. We see points where small changes my have made a world of difference.

During Michael’s escape, something happens that eats away at the movie. His humanity is quickly and completely stripped away. All of the empathy the film had been working so hard to build up comes tumbling down due to his final encounter with the guard played by Danny Trejo. This is an occasion where predictable would’ve been a good thing. Had the expected thing happened, basically the opposite of what actually does, it would’ve maintained our feelings for him going forward. Instead, the director’s nihilism got the best of him. From this point on Michael Myers (Mane) is once again a faceless monster we’ve no attachment to.

This brings us to the second half. From here we get a mechanical but truncated remake of the original. Things keep happening at a rapid rate so we’re never bored. The problem is our emotional involvement has taken a nosedive. The reason for this is two-fold. I’ve already explained the first part of it. The other part is this shortened second act. We meet the people of present day Haddonfield that Michael will shortly terrorize. However, we don’t know them. We don’t care about them. They are merely the bodies in various stages of undress that our killer will mutilate. Like all the best movies in the franchise, the original isn’t about Michael Myers. It is about Laurie Strode, the Jamie Lee Curtis character now played by Scout Taylor-Compton and the terror he cast upon her. We felt for her. We were scared with her. This time around we couldn’t give a flip about her. It wouldn’t be an issue if we still cared about Michael but we don’t. In the blink of an eye he went from a scarred, misguided and dangerous child to a superhuman behemoth who’s only function is viciously killing anyone in his path.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween is a hard movie to judge. The first hlf alone makes it worth seeing. It contains some of the best storytelling of any American horror flick perhaps of the 21st century. The second half is stilly visually exciting, but leaves us flat as the boogeyman coldly moves from victim to victim. Murder is a gruesome but clinical and joyless task he must continuously perform for our morbid pleasure. The director gave us Mikey and created a soft spot in our hearts for a child who can’t seem to help but lash out in ways fatal to others when he’s angered. Then, Mikey was snatched away. In his place, we were given the machine known as Michael Myers.

MY SCORE: 7.5/10

Easy A

Directed by Will Gluck.
2010. Rated PG-13, 92 minutes.
Cast:
Emma Stone
Amanda Bynes
Alyson Michalka
Thomas Haden Church
Lisa Kudrow
Stanley Tucci
Patricia Clarkson
Penn Badgley
Dan Byrd
Malcolm McDowell
Cam Gigandet

Keeping up a lie usually involves telling more lies. One mistruth simply begats the next. For most of us, this continues until the entire house of cards comes tumbling down on our own heads. Olive (Stone) is going through just such a thing.

It all starts innocently enough. She tells her best friend Rhiannon (Michalka) that she’s got a date this weekend when she really doesn’t in order to avoid going camping wither Rhi’s eccentric family. By the time Monday rolls around Rhi wants to know the juicy details of said date. Even though she’s done absolutely nothing at all since leaving school Friday afternoon, she tells Rhi that she lost her virginity to a college guy. Though said in confidence, this happens to be overheard by the wrong set of ears which, of course, share a head with the wrong set of lips. Olive suddenly finds herself to be the most scandalous girl in school. A select few know the tale to be false. However, most of these are boys who help perpetuate the myth, plus create more falsehoods. These guys are in search of changing their own rep and soon they’re lining up to pay Olive for the privilege of saying they slep with her, even though they hadn’t. As you can imagine, Olive soon comes to be viewed as the school whore.

Of course, this all coincides with Olive’s English class reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel “The Scarlet Letter.” She is inspired by the plight of Hester Prynne and embraces her new found notoriety since before she was never talked about at all. She also yearns to piss off Marianne (Bynes), the school’s “Jesus freak.” Olive not only dons progressively sluttier outfits, she adorns them with a giant red “A” just like Prynne was made to wear. Things are going great, until she realizes they really aren’t.

Brazenly, but wisely, Easy A juxtaposes itself with the Hawthorne classic. It even takes the time to note the similarities and differences for us. It goes so far as to defend not only the novel, but the original film version while throwing barbs at the much more recent cinematic attempt starring Demi Moore. The movie gets much mileage from this, even filling in the uninformed on what happens in the book nearly as much as telling its own story. This makes the correlation between the two easily accessible and not just an in-joke to those of us who actually did the reading assignment in school.

The film doesn’t hide from its other major influence, John Hughes movies of the 1980s. Olive blatantly tells us she wishes her life were helmed by the famed director. We also get plenty of references and even short glimpses of those movies. As with “The Scarlett Letter,” this aids our audience, presumably mostly made up of teens and twentysomethings, get the jokes. However, this also highlights the one major flaw I find in Easy A. Our BFFs are too good looking. Part of the charm of movies like Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club is that stars like Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy looked and felt like awkward teens relegated to high school’s lower social class, unsure whether they would ever blossom into the beautiful butterflies they so longed to be. It helped they were actually teenagers. Stone did a fine job with the role. She just can’t possibly give off that type of vibe. Her age, she’s 22 may have something to do with it. The natural confidence of someone already past the painful stages is difficult to contain. In addition, Michalka (also 22) as Rhiannon looks anything but the sexually frustrated, unable to get a boy co-ed we’re told she is. Let’s be honest, if she went to almost any high school in America looking the way she does here, she’d be constantly surrounded by an ever-widening swarm of athletes, rich kids, pretty boys and local college underclassmen. Beating them back with a stick might be a literal action for her instead of just a figure of speech.

The looks of the cast aside, I find Easy A funny in enough spots and very smart. It doesn’t often cause out loud laughter, but extracts the grins and soft chuckles that come from being able to relate to what we’re seeing. It may resonate more with females because their reputations are generally touchier topics. Still, I enjoyed it and had no problem becoming vested in the fate of our hero.

MY SCORE: 8/10

Bolt

Bolt

2008. Rated PG, 96 minutes.

Directors: Byron Howard, Chris Williams. Starring John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Malcolm McDowell, James Lipton, Chloe Grace Moretz.

Plot: Bolt (Travolta) is a dog who stars in his own TV show. He believes that he has superpowers and that the amazing feats he performs are real. Bolt unwittingly gets out into the real world in an attempt to rescue "his person" Penny (Cyrus), whom he believes has been kidnapped by their arch-enemy, The Green-Eyed Man.

The Good: It's a fish-out-of-water tale mixed with a road movie and both aspects work well. The dialogue is sharp and funny. Unlike a lot of Disney movies, it's not afraid to give us a bittersweet ending. Perhaps most importantly for a film like Bolt, we get fun action scenes and intoxicating visuals. Oh, and the pigeons are hilarious.

The Bad: Even though it's barely over an hour-and-a-half, it drags a bit in places. That's partly due to our hero having to literally travel across the country. The movie could've gotten more mileage out of Penny by checking on her more often to see how she's handling the situation, but that's nitpicking.

The Ugly: The way the cats on the studio lot pick with Bolt.

Recommendation: 2008 is the strongest year for animated movies I can remember. That said, Bolt is one of the better entries.

The Opposite View: Lou Lemenick, New York Post

What the Internet Says: 7.5/10 on imdb.com (4/3/09), 88% on rottentomatoes.com, 67/100 on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 7.5/10