Cop Car

There’ve been a few new flicks I’ve seen, with one or two that have fallen into the independent range of production, and Cop Car falls into that category. When I'd first seen the trailer, it seemed like a good concept and that it'd be an enjoyable and thrilling movie. I've always been a fan of Kevin Bacon and I do love it when he plays a villain, so I decided to place this one on Netflix and wait for it too arrive.

To synopsize, Travis (James Freedson-Jackson ) and Harrison (Hays Wellford)—two mischievous friends wandering the open farm lands of their small town— come across an abandoned police cruiser in a tree-covered clearing. Finding the keys, the two boys decide to take the car for a drive while having fun with all the equipment and firearms left behind. The vehicle’s owner, Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin bacon), returns to the area where he parked his cruiser and finds it missing. As we soon find out, the sheriff isn’t all that respectable and needs to find his vehicle before his true nature is exposed.

The cast is relatively small as it mainly stars the two children and Bacon, but the plot is an interesting

concept. Although I feel that most children wouldn’t do such a thing as to freely take a vehicle—especially a police car—that has been left with the doors unlocked and keys sitting inside, it does seem plausible as the two boys exhibited tendencies to be more on the delinquent side. For instance, they appeared to be miles from their homes without any adult supervision, even discussing their travel to be over a day’s walk. Still, I felt that we really don’t get much of a backstory on these two besides the quick exposition from them when another character asks about their guardians.

Kevin Bacon plays the backwoods hick sheriff perfectly, complete with mustache and southern drawl. Even though we really don’t get to see how everything led up to the clearing, we see enough to know he’s a dirty cop and has a secondary life of corruption.

The first thing I’d noticed when the film started was how it appeared to be a movie set in the late 70s or early 80s. The clothing the boys wore and the soundtrack gave me that impression and I thought that was interesting until we see Bacon using a modern cell phone throughout the flick. But that won’t take you out of the film or make it any less enjoyable. However, as I had mentioned the music, I really didn’t care for the soundtrack themes and thought it had a bit too much of synthesizer, which is why I felt it was supposed to be set in the 80s.

Over all, it’s a forgetful film, which is a shame because the story had the potential to be something better. I think that maybe if they had made the kids in their teens and gave them more interaction between themselves and Bacon’s sheriff character, perhaps it would’ve given the plot a bit more tension. Throughout most of the first half, the kids were actually oblivious to their position, having fun joy riding and trying to use items they’d found in the car. My thinking is that if they knew what they had gotten themselves into and had a bit of back-and-forth with Bacon through the CB, we’d have more of a pressure-filled thriller.

As a whole, Cop Car will keep you interested just to see what comes of the kids not to mention Kevin Bacon’s dilemma as the corrupt sheriff that can’t afford to have these kids turn up with his cruiser, leading all to know what he was doing in that clearing in the first place. So you come away feeling that it was ninety minutes of your life that you won’t get back, but more like an interesting flick that just missed the mark.

So, my final "bit" on Cop Car?

The pros? The two boys, James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford, play their parts a bit reserved but are believable as a couple of misguided preteens. You can accept that they decided to go on a bit of an adventure, leaving their home with only the clothes on their back with a single beef jerky stick to share between them. The only aspect I can’t get over is their decision to take the cop car (which, I might add, didn’t seem to be too far away from Bacon’s character…how did he not hear the car roar to life and drive off?). So, I really can’t recommend this film, but I won’t sit here and tell you not to see it. If you have an hour and a half to yourself, where you’re not doing anything and would like to sit and watch a halfway decent movie, rent Cop Car and have at it.

Thanks for reading and I’ll try to get back here in a timely manner to give my thoughts on another flick.

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens

Now if there’s a movie that can draw me out of movie-review-retirement, it’s this movie—a new Star Wars film.  A movie done, maybe not perfectly spot-on to be in line with the original canon (the films between 1977 and 1983), but at least has the feel and believability to be a continuation of said films. 

***SPOILERS AHEAD (TURN YOUR SPEEDER AROUND NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE) ***

Back in 1999, when the first prequel, The Phantom Menace, was released, I’d foolishly thought we were going to receive the same George Lucas magic we’d gotten two decades prior, so sure he was going to capture lightning in a bottle for a second trilogy go-round…but it wasn’t meant to be.  Sadly, those films were just boring political tales told between exciting accounts that were given to us in exposition by some of the characters (Where were those movies?!), leading up to the origin of Darth Vader.  Don’t get me wrong, some of the scenes and subplots of those films were exciting, but it just couldn’t make up for Jar Jar Binks in the first one, Anakin and Padme’s bad romance-novel love story in the second, or Darth Vader’s easy turn to the dark side in the last one.  We all had such high hopes for those prequel films, but they all fell flat, unfortunately.

George Lucas had always mentioned that he’d like to continue the story with a trilogy to follow Return of the Jedi, but I think most of the fans—myself included—kind of cringed at that idea, especially after the waste of film—well, digital film—that the prequels had been.  Yet, having Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher reprise their roles still sounded intriguing.  Some of the books I’d read and heard about had had Han and Leia marrying and having a child that grew to be trained as a Jedi, even some books revealing that Leia, herself, had learned to use the Force, excelling in lightsaber skills.  But as the actors aged quite a bit since the last 1983 film, I didn’t think it was possible to bring them all back, especially Harrison Ford who’d actually wanted the Han Solo character killed off back in the original trilogy.  At the time, the whole thing just seemed like a pipe dream…better just to live with my fond memories of A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

So back in 2012, there was a strange little news tidbit when it was reported that Disney bought Lucasfilm for a whopping $4 billion and soon after, announced that a new film was being planned.  A year after that, it was confirmed that the new film was to be helmed by J.J. Abrams (of “Alias,” “Lost,” and Cloverfield fame).  Being very impressed by his original films and how he was able to revive the Star Trek film series, I felt the Star Wars franchise was in great hands.  In the two years that followed, and being that we’re in the 21^st century where it’s nearly impossible to keep anything a secret in Hollywood, set photos and videos were leaked, giving us a feel for what we were all going to get.  It looked great, seeing that Abrams was going the practical route and not choosing to have a CGI porn fest with the new film.

So, anyway, without much more backstory on how the film came to be, let me jump right into the synopsis of the film, Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens.

It seems as evil never truly dies as The First Order has risen after The Empire was defeated decades prior.  Led by the mysterious Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), their priority is to find the last of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), and destroy him.  To counter this new threat, a new Resistance, led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), fights to keep information of Skywalker’s whereabouts that they have in their possession as they get help from two unlikely heroes—Finn (John Boyega), a defected storm trooper from The First Order, and Rey (Daisy Ridley), a lowly scavenger from the planet Jakku.  But as the Resistance base is discovered, there isn’t much time as The First Order is preparing to destroy them with their newest and deadliest weapon on the Starkiller Base—a weapon hundreds of times the destructive power of the Death Star.  Will the Resistance be destroyed for good?

First off, I’ve just got to say…it was so weird to have a Star Wars film start without the familiar 20^th Century Fox logo and fanfare.  It always seemed to go hand-in-hand whenever I watched one of the films.  So much so, that whenever I hear that intro music in any other movie, I instantly think that I’m about to watch a Star Wars flick.

Now…about The Force Awakens…

The new characters introduced for these new generation Star Wars films, I felt they had held their own right from their introductions.  Unlike the prequels, where some of the characters grew on you—while many others did not—these new characters were written right and the actors were given good direction to make us like them instantly.

With Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), we see him as a Han Solo type, a bit of arrogance and showing no

humility or anxiety when coming up against an enemy.  I wish we’d had seen a bit more of him in this film, but being that this film had quite an ensemble, I can understand why and hope to see more of him in the sequels.  Right away, he’s likeable and we understand he’s a heroic figure as part of the Resistance.

Of course, who cannot like BB-8?  Obviously the R2-D2 for the millennials of the audience, it’s a cute little roly-poly robot that’s like a stray dog you can’t help but let tag along with you.  The character, as a droid, is surprisingly able to express some emotion and you can almost understand what it’s saying through its beeps and squawks.  I was even more amazed by its performance since I’d heard that the representation was done, not by CGI, but by a practical effect.  And I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it perform during video footage of a Star Wars panel at the San Diego Comic Convention. 

John Boyega’s character of Finn raised some eyebrows and even upset some diehard Star Wars fans when we first saw him in the teaser for this film.  I guess there was some backlash as to seeing a black man as a storm trooper.  Seeing the original trilogy, and trying to forget what I’d seen in the prequels, I’d never had an opinion on what race or gender was supposed to be under that white armor.  Why would this be a problem?  I’ll say this: this subplot of having a storm trooper with feelings, having misgivings about killing people in cold blood, was something I would’ve never foreseen.  I hope we get more of Finn’s backstory, maybe in flashbacks, about his journey to becoming a storm trooper.  Maybe it was just a throwaway scene, but I was curious as to whom that other storm trooper was that died in his arms and left the bloody streak on Finn’s helmet.  Maybe he still has friends that are storm troopers and we’ll see Finn be torn on what side to stay on.  But Boyega pulled off a good performance here.

Daisy Ridley turns out to be quite a strong character that seems to have a lot of backstory we won’t see for a while.  It’s interesting how the story plays her up to be Han and Leia’s daughter, how she achieves the proficiency of piloting a spacecraft and knows her mechanics, but ends up being a mystery.  But she’s never perceived as a damsel in distress, even when she’s in trouble.  To that effect, she’s never saved; instead she saves herself when captured.  And I like that mixture of her character, how she’s not overly feminist but is still tough when it’s called for.

Now, the big baddie, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is definitely shown as a force to be reckoned with, presented as a villain who seems to be more powerful than Darth Vader.  His masked persona and disguised voice gives him the shadowy appearance of someone you don’t want to mess with. 

However, later in the film, it appears he’s conflicted with his emotions involving his parentage which creates a problem for his allegiance to the dark side of the Force.  The arc of this character may seem a little quick and forced, but as with all the aspects of this film I have to look at it as a third of a story.  Hopefully we get to see more on how Kylo Ren came to be…as well as The First Order as a whole.

Now, some of the familiar faces are here—some blended in, some a little forced into the story.  Carrie Fisher’s Leia is back, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) have big parts as well, R2-D2 appears in sleep mode throughout most of the film, and good ol’ C3PO (Anthony Daniels) makes a cameo as well (the aforementioned forced-in character).

With all the performances, their dialogue sounds like it’s from the heart or off the top of their heads, not read from a cue card like the prequels seemed to be in comparison.  Abrams is not trying to produce a Shakespeare-in-space melodrama, he’s trying to continue the feel of the movies most of us grew up with.  So far in his career, he’s struck me as a man who can fill Spielberg’s shoes with ease.  I really never had any reservations about Abrams taking over for George Lucas and always thought it was best to let Lucas retire for good.  Some of the other directors mentioned as taking the reins for this film were a little scary (I won’t mention any names here), so I’ve always felt at ease with the announcement of Abrams.

Okay, now for a few of my critiques.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that I dislike this movie or have a huge problem with these characters or scenes I’m about to explain, they’re just certain aspects of the film that kind of irked me or took me out of it altogether…and don’t worry, there are only three of them that I’ll list right here.

First is the lightsaber duel between Finn and Kylo Ren.  From the moment we’re introduced to Kylo Ren, we see he has tremendous powers, even appearing stronger and more expanded than Darth Vader’s powers from the earlier films.  We see Ren stop a laser blast in midair and even extracting

information from other characters’ minds, so how would Finn be any match for him?  Through exposition we find out that Finn was born and raised to be a storm trooper, not even given a name but a label—FN-2187, so how is it he can use a lightsaber and go toe-to-toe with a being as powerful with the Force as Kylo Ren?

The second nitpick is another lightsaber duel, again with Kylo Ren, but this time with Rey.  It’s alluded to that she may have the Force strengthened within her, but in Star Wars lore, we all know that she still must have training in order to wield a Jedi’s weapon.  To top it off, she nearly defeats the villain—again, one trained with the dark side of the Force—in this scene, leaving me scratching my head.

My final criticism is with the representation of the Supreme Leader Snoke character (voiced and motion captured by Andy Serkis).  I’ve heard grumbles about the character’s gigantism, but totally understand that the character was projected as a hologram and know that it was done before in The Empire Strikes Back when the Emperor was projected in much the same way, so I can’t knock that.  My criticism falls on the rendering of the character.  The CGI seems dated and looks as if it was created during the beginning stages of computer imagery at the turn of the century.  With the rendering work on the latest Planet of the Apes movies (both featuring Serkis’s MoCap performances) and on the Hulk in both Avengers movies, I thought we’d get something in a Star Wars movie that’d blow us away.  Nevertheless, I would like to see more of this enigmatic villain.

Little touches that I noticed and loved was little details to show that this film is tied to the original trilogy.  For example, Abrams didn’t try to show any fancy technology within the ships, but instead showed us that the Falcon and X-wing fighters…and even the tie fighters still have those Atari-esque monitor read-outs.  The storm troopers, although a little updated in their armor design, is essentially what we’d seen in the original trilogy…and they’re not CGI clones (at least, I don’t think they are…and if they are, they don’t appear to be).  Although I had my reservations about Snoke’s depiction, most of the special effects look great and had me amazed during a lot of the scenes…the Millennium Falcon never looked so awesome!

Not really criticisms, but I wish we get more familiar scenes and planets (systems) in the upcoming films.  I would’ve loved to see at least one of them in this film, like Tatooine (which I thought we were seeing in the trailer).  But maybe we’ll return to it in the next one, or even Hoth or the forest moon of Endor…or Cloud City… 

Speaking of Cloud City, Billy Dee Williams has been on the record, not confirming that he’s going to reprise his role as Lando, but saying that he can’t talk about it, which leads me to believe we will see him again.  Apparently, he’s signed a nondisclosure agreement, so his return is probably in the works.  I mean, can you imagine Lando meeting Rey for the first time, saying, “Hello, what have we here?” in that smooth Colt 45 voice?

I can probably go on and on about this film, quibbling and discussing to my heart’s content.  I’m sure I’ll think of one thing or another that I’d forgotten to mention on this review after posting, but I think you get all the points I’ve presented here and see where I fall on my opinion of the film.  So, without further ado, here’s my final “bit” on Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens:

Overall, a great film—probably the best I’ve seen in 2015—and it’s definitely on par with the original trilogy.  Its only setback is that there’s such a long time between Return of the Jedi and this one that you really can’t say that the sequel comes in seamlessly.  It’s certainly nice to see some of the original cast again and wish they’d have played a bigger part or made sure to stick around for the sequel.  By the way the film ends, maybe I’ll get my wish in the next film, but this is by far better than any of the prequels.  I loved a lot of the sprawling scenes featured in this movie that we’ve never seen in previous Star Wars films.  Some examples: The First Order’s rows upon rows of storm troopers as General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) addresses them, the Starkiller Base’s weapon sucking in the sun and discharging its gargantuan blast to destroy the targeted planets, the Millennium Falcon flying above the sands and through the downed destroyer ship carcass, the primitive—yet crude—lightsaber Kylo Ren wields…all such great sci-fi eye candy.  I plan on taking in another viewing or two and will definitely add this to my Blu-Ray collection once it’s released.  If you’re a Star Wars fan, I know you’ve seen this already, so I don’t need to tell you to get out there and watch it.  But if you’ve never seen one of these films, you need to start with the ’77 film, watch the two sequels to that, ignore the prequels, and jump right into The Force Awakens.

Well, thanks for reading and May the Force Be With You!

MY RETURN

Before I get into reviews of various films, I'd like to address the elephant in the room-namely, my return to this blog.

Last October, in 2014, I was actually pretty excited to furiously watch-and subsequently write my views about-numerous horror movies to produce thirty-one articles each day of the month, counting down to Halloween.  It was fun, like most of my movie-watching experiences, but the writing wore me out.  So much so, that I decided to take a break and even pondered the desertion of my blog.  As luck would have it, work at my employment started to skyrocket, so I couldn't put any time to Cinema Bits even if I'd wanted to.

I had been thinking of returning earlier, back last spring, but a project fell into my hands that was very exciting and took up a bunch of my time.  It had to do with another passion of mine: the American pastime of baseball.  I won't get into that here-this blog is called Cinema Bits and not Baseball Bits (though that sounds catchy!)-so I'll keep to the talk of motion pictures.

So, now, as 2016 approaches, not to mention that work has slowed down a bit, I think it's high time that I make my return to my cinephilic hobby.

With that said, I'm going to try and put down to words, most of the new flicks I've treated my eyes to and maybe put in a classic here and there.

So, for those of you who've silently followed along in the past, get set to enjoy some posts here and there.  I'll try to keep consistent and post more frequently.

I thank you for your patronage and readership.

Manny the Movie Maniac

Halloween II (2009)

Well, here we are, with the final film of the whole Halloweenfranchise, which seems like it ended it with this one movie.  Yes, Halloween II, the sequel that Rob Zombie said he would never do after working on the reboot a scant two years before, brought him back to put more of his style into it, a style that not too many fans enjoyed.

Though you may read my piece on the 2007 remake and come away thinking I had hated it, you’d be wrong because I thought it was quite good.  However, I felt it was unneeded and just a way for Dimension—as well as all involved—to make money.  To really impress me, and most of the fans, they’d have to do what was done in 1998 and make a sequel to what was done prior.  Although they had cheated and ignored a few sequels that had been made, at least the continuity was kept in place and we were given an original story with a poignant theme.  But Dimension had shot themselves in the foot by giving the green light to the following sequel, 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, which gave them no choice but to reboot the whole thing. 

So after the mildly successful reboot, the logical thing to do was to get a sequel on the fast track.  But what would they call it?  They weren’t just going to give it the same name as the original’s sequel, were they?  That’d be too confusing when looking up these titles.  On top of that, who was going to direct it?  Zombie said he was burnt out and definitely wasn’t going to return for a sequel.  In fact, he announced a project that he was working on that would take precedence over anything else.  He even indicated that he’s an artist, implying that working on a sequel was beneath him.

Not too long after that, guess who was back in the director’s chair to take on the sequel?  That’s right…Rob Zombie.  And guess what title they gave the sequel?  Yes…Halloween II.  Wow…these guys are such visionaries.

Well, Zombie tried to save face by letting everyone know he was going to make this sequel his own, that he wasn’t tied into making a remake of the original part two, but to make his own part two.  So that was sort of promising.  Scout Taylor-Compton and Malcolm MacDowell were both set to reprise their roles, as well as a few other actors, so it looked like we might be getting something special.

Anyway, before I get much further, let me give you the synopsis of Halloween II.

The film opens shortly after Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) shoots Michael Myers (Tyler

Mane).  The story progresses a year with Laurie going through therapy to deal with what happened, whereas Dr. Loomis (Malcolm MacDowell) is using the tragedy to sell another book.  Meanwhile, Michael is seeing visions of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) as he makes his way to find Laurie.

The whole story is convoluted and has a lot more to it than that, but for the sake of shortening the breakdown and not giving too much away, I gave just the least amount of details possible.  For one, the whole beginning of the film will piss some of you off for reasons I can’t give without spoiling it.  Also, I don’t want to give away how certain aspects came to be.

So, where do I start?

Let’s talk about the character of Laurie and how her personality has developed since we’d seen her in the 2007 film.  Of course, it’s understandable that she went through a lot of grief as she lost her parents and some of her friends because of a deranged killer and it doesn’t help much that she had to fight for her life on top of all that.  But Rob Zombie wrote and directed her character to be such an ugly and detestable person, she comes across as someone you really can’t care about as the movie goes along.  Even as shallow as she becomes throughout the story, she’s given hateful friends as well.  I’m thinking that we’re supposed to see her as a person who is losing her sanity, but it just doesn’t seem that way.  One of the biggest problems I’d seen in this film, for instance, is when she finds out some information that makes her very upset to the point where she’s violently sobbing.  What does she do?  She goes with her friends to a big Halloween costume party and is suddenly giddy and partying.  I don’t know…overall, I just don’t find myself caring about her character.

Thankfully, the movie is grounded by her friend, Annie (Danielle Harris), and Annie’s father, Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif).  But their performances aren’t enough to save this film.

I do like the travelling Michael Myers, getting back to finding Laurie, as he grew a beard and has become more feral and living off the land.  But, I always question this…where was he travelling from?  When he’s being taken away from Haddonfield, the ambulance didn’t get far before he stopped it.  Laurie moved in with the Bracketts not far from town, seemingly on the outskirts.  Why is Zombie making it look like Michael has been walking for miles and miles, as if he’s been travelling across country?  Although it’s pretty cool, it just doesn’t make sense in the scheme of things.

Malcolm MacDowell as Loomis is wasted in this film.  All we see is Loomis acting like a dick, only hungry for the fame and money, not caring about anything else.  Although it may have been believable to make him have a change of heart later in the film, the story takes too much time showing what he’s doing which has no bearing on the story.

Finally, the one thing that really pissed off fans was the concept of having Michael see the ghost of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie).  I thought it was done well at first, thinking it was a nice original touch by Zombie to include this facet in the movie, but after a while it became tiring.  At the climax, however, the appearance of the apparition was a bit confusing.  Was she just a figment of Michael’s imagination?  Was she a real ghost?  This part of the film has its pros and cons, I guess.

Zombie was right when he said he was going to make this his own, as the formula went away from a masked man stalking the town of Haddonfield.  Instead, he focused on the turmoil Laurie is going through, adding a bit more to send her over the edge until she finally does.  As a whole, this film is not about a disturbing killer, wanting to continue his murderous ways, but about what happens to Laurie psyche.

Well…my final “bit” on Halloween II?

Rob Zombie gives us a logical sequel to his 2007 remake, but injects a lot of his ugliness he tends to put into his films.  Instead of a place where we can connect and associate with, he gives us nightmarish backgrounds and spiteful themes.  These themes work in his original films, but seeing that this is still a remake of the original series, I think he should’ve made it a bit more mainstream so that it would be accepted by a broader audience.  All in all, the film missed the mark, but it still made money…that’s all that matters to the studio and producers, right?  And speaking of the film being a success…where’s part three?  It’s been five years now and no confirmed sequel?  Come on, Dimension…or Weinsteins…or Akkad…let’s get it together!

Thanks for reading and have a Happy Halloween!

Cinema Bits is on Twitter and Facebook.

Well, this is—more than likely—the last “bit” you’ll read on here.  It’s been fun, writing these reviews of films old and new, and I hope it helped anyone out there who’s never seen them.  The writing and editing of this blog really took up a lot of my time, sometimes even taking up some from work—which was a risky habit in which I had partook.  I’ll still be posting news and short reviews on my Twitter page, so keep an eye out for those tweets.  For the few of you who’ve checked out my blog and the scarce amount of you who’ve even added a comment here and there, thank you for your patronage and readership.  Cinema Bits may evolve into a podcast sometime in the near future, and perhaps you’ll still see a review pop up now and again right here, but for now I’m just going to enjoy watching movies without taking notes or remembering certain scenes and themes to write down into a review shortly thereafter.

Thank you and keep on watching those movies!

Let Me In

Not too long ago, in 2008, a Swedish film called Let the Right One In was released and it took the world by storm.  Many horror aficionados praised it—especially fans of the vampire subgenre—and a few of my fellow horror movie buffs recommended it to me, citing that I’d love it.  So, always giving anything a try, I ventured throughout the Netflix web site and found that the film was available, having it sent out to me right away.  Although I had my reservations about foreign films—especially the trouble of having to alternate between reading the subtitles and watching the action on screen—I went ahead and took a gander at this film when it arrived in my mailbox.

Well…I didn’t enjoy it.  Much to the disappointment of friends that suggested the film to me, I just couldn’t help but dislike it.  Although I found the story interesting, I didn’t think it warranted the praise it had received by a lot of horror film critics.  Now, I must say, I didn’t shut it off halfway through the movie, but watched the whole thing, thinking there might’ve been some saving grace that’d make me applaud it.  But, to me, there wasn’t…and I didn’t.  Someone asked me why I didn’t care for the film and I had to think about it for a while, not really sure myself why I hadn’t enjoyed it, and it finally hit me—the dubbed voices.  I recalled that when the disc booted up, I went through the menu and decided against watching the film in its original format, choosing to watch it with the English language dubbing.  When I informed my friend of that, he said that’s why I probably didn’t enjoy it.  He said not only did I miss out in the correct inflections of the actors’ voices, but also on the sound effects they’d used throughout, which I hear is rather unique.

Even with all that, I just couldn’t find myself trying to watch the film again.  I saw it.  I felt what I felt about it.  That’s all.

Well, cut to a couple of years later, and Hollywood wants in on this Swedish vampire craze.  Hammer Films gained the rights to the story and proceeded to go forth with hiring Matt Reeves (of Cloverfieldfame) to direct the American film version. 

Now, in my opinion, the worst thing Hollywood has been doing nowadays is remaking/rebooting/reimagining movies, showing no originality or creativity whatsoever.  Second to that, however, is when American film studios take films from other countries (especially if it’s a non-English speaking country) to make an English version of them.  Usually, the end result is something subpar in comparison to the original.  But was that the case with the American version of Let the Right One In?  That’s a good question.

Titled Let Me In, the movie didn’t veer off the Swedish film’s premise (besides the location) and, of course, the language spoken throughout.  I pretty much wasn’t looking forward to it when it was announced, but as time went on and I had seen the first trailer, I became interested and decided to see the film on opening day back on October 1^st of 2010.

The film focuses on a young boy, Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who’s bullied at school and is quite a

loner, spending most days by himself at the apartment that he shares with his mother (Cara Buono).  One day, he notices new neighbors—an older man and a young girl—moving in who keep paper plastered on their windows and are seldom seen.  Owen spends a lot of time in the snowy play area in front of the apartment building and he soon meets the young girl, Abby (Chloë Grace Moretz), striking up a friendship with her.  Soon, Owen realizes that Abby is a vampire.

Let Me In, just like the original Swedish film, is such a simple story, but was made quite strong in this American remake.  It’s a mystery to me as to why both films are nearly the same—with the location and language excluded—but I still love the American version way better than the Swedish one.  I usually don’t take consideration on the language of the film because I’ve seen many foreign films that I’ve enjoyed and would hate the idea if they’d ever be made into an American adaptation, so I won’t cite that as a reason why.  Even though both films take place in the mid-80s, it might be because this film is a more familiar look at the decade that I had grown up in, as we see the candy Owen consumes—“Now & Later”—that I had enjoyed as a child.  Also, seeing Reagan on the television in the hospital brought back memories of my youth as well.  I guess that’s what it is, the familiarity of the era this movie represents, as to why I enjoyed this version over the original.

Besides that, the two young leads of this film do such a fine job epitomizing their characters that you really felt a sense of reality in the story even though it was about vampirism.

In a lot of movies, you have kids getting bullied, but it’s usually hard to believe that the children playing the victims would get harassed at school, seeing that they’d probably conform well in school.  But with Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Owen, he just embodies the type of kid other children would be drawn to for intimidation.  Kids in school, unfortunately, are usually drawn to the weaker-looking youngsters and that’s exactly how Smit-McPhee looks like—a little weakling.

If there’s one thing I can commend the original film on is the casting of Abby (Eli in the Swedish version).  The little girl in the movie was perfect for the role because of a mysterious subplot that wasn’t featured in the American version (I’ll get into that later).  But she was able to be a little creepier, when needed, than Moretz was in this variation.  However, she was a great little actress in this film and I really enjoyed what she brought to it.  She definitely has a great career ahead of her as long as she avoids films like the remake of Carrie (what a turd that was).

Now, about the subplot that was featured in the original that wasn’t brought up in this film…let me go over it here and give you my take on it.  In the Swedish version, there’s a mysterious scene where Abby (Eli) is in Owen’s (Oskar in the Swedish version) apartment and she changes clothes.  He peeks in on her and notices her pubic area is scarred and sewn up.  It’s quick cut and is never mentioned or brought up later in the movie, but a lot of people were a little perplexed by it.  I guess in the book, it mentions or goes over how the girl was turned into a vampire.  Seems that she was actually a boy and was castrated before being turned, leaving her forever a little girl.  I’m surprised they included that little scene in the original without explaining it, yet I’m not surprised they didn’t include any of that in the American version.  You can imagine how audiences would feel if they saw that in this film—more than likely, uncomfortable—and just how taboo that would be in the first place.  I’m glad they left it out and there was really no need to have it in there anyway.

Also, another surprise performance was by Richard Jenkins as Abby’s “father.”  I was used to quite a few movies where he plays the funny straight man and thought I wouldn’t take him seriously in this movie.  But he pulled off a hell of a performance, especially when you understand what he really was to Abby near the end of the film.

The special effects in this film were subtle and not overbearing.  They were exactly what this film needed and I loved it.  Along with the music and film editing, this film was made so much better with both of those aspects working perfectly in this film.  Overall, the style that Reeves instilled within this film was brilliant, literally putting trivial characters in the background, never featuring them in detail (sometimes out of focus) nor having them seen in full; that was something I hadn’t seen before and I thought it was a nice touch in putting the emphasis on the two main characters.

So, my final “bit” on Let Me In?

It’s an above-average vampire flick that scares you, yet, at the same time, entertains you with its touching story within.  Although not original, Matt Reeves made the film his own with the extra special touches given, making this one of the best horror movies of 2010.  It shouldn’t be missed. 

Side note: whether or not you want to see the Swedish version first is up to you.

Thanks for reading and have a Happy Halloween!

Cinema Bits is on Twitter and Facebook.

Wrong Turn

Most of us have travelled far distances, trying to get from point A to point B in a decent amount of time.  When doing so, it’s never part of the itinerary to get stuck in traffic for hours on end.  Just a few weeks ago, I travelled to the city of Anaheim to catch a game between the Oakland A’s and Los Angeles Angels.  It was a three and a half hour drive to the stadium and it went pretty well on my venture over there.  However, getting back home was a different story.  Being that it was Labor Day weekend, seemed like everybody in California was on the road that day, particularly on Highway 101 heading north.  Like most of us are apt to do—not to mention how our GPS devices are now programmed to give us go-around alternative routes—I exited off the highway to take some back roads and avoided the freeway.  It didn’t help, but that’s not the point.  The point is, after seeing Wrong Turn, you might want to stay on the highway or main roads from now on.

I’m always trying to get a friend of mine to watch a lot of my favorite horror movies, but he always needs quite a kick at the beginning of the film to keep him interested.  If the film doesn’t have some action or female nudity within the first five minutes of the flick, it loses him instantaneously.  When trying to initiate a film that has a bit of exposition during the first few scenes, my buddy’s eyes glaze over and he begins to stare out into space, sometimes even falling asleep.  It drives me crazy, but I understand he has the attention of a flea so I can’t fault him for that flaw.  However, when I’d presented him Wrong Turn and he witnessed the beginning tease to the story (I won’t give it away because it’s quite a scary scene), his eyes widened and he perked right up, instantly interested in the rest of the movie (he also drooled over the female leads who wore very flattering outfits in this flick).  With all that said, after he finished watching the movie, he thanked me for introducing it to him and I felt a sense of a job well done.

So, the point of that story was just to explain that even the toughest critic was able to enjoy Wrong Turn.  But before getting any further, let’s synopsize the story.

The film opens with Chris Flynn (Desmond Harrington) driving through West Virginia and on his

way to a job interview.  A chemical spill on the highway brings traffic to a dead stop and he chooses to take an abandoned back road as a shortcut.  He ends up crashing into an incapacitated car sitting in the middle of the road, debilitating his vehicle in the process.  With both cars disabled, he teams with the group of friends who were stranded in the car—Jessie (Eliza Dushku), Scott (Jeremy Sisto), Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), Evan Kevin Zegers) and Francine (Lindy Booth)—to look for help.  Soon, they find they’re being stalked by cannibalistic mountain men and must fight to stay alive.

Let’s begin by saying that this film, by all means, is not much of an original story.  We’ve actually seen it in The Hills Have Eyes and even a little bit of it in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so I can’t commend the writer, Alan B. McElroy, for any originality in this.  The director, Rob Schmidt, however, gives us a very unsettling sense of dread in Wrong Turn that sort of rivals what we’ve felt in the movies I’d compared it to a few sentences ago.  We definitely get a more grizzled and visceral film that will scare a lot of people, making them squirm in their seats at times and having them yell at the screen at others.

Of course, this movie features a lot of horror movie clichés that we’ve seen countless times before: the characters are stuck somewhere isolated, the cell phones don’t have service, the antagonists are able to track the protagonists’ every move, and so on.  But the sense of realism is there, with no humor, and a feeling of trepidation is understood throughout.  Wrong Turn is not one of those horror slashers where you sit with a smile on your face, thinking it’s fun or rooting for the killers to catch their prey.  No.  You side with the protagonists right away as you can relate to what they’re going through, not to mention that they’re likeable characters.  The leading characters in this film are not the secondary douche bags you see in Friday the 13^th or Halloween sequels that deserve what they get.  They have character development and you actually feel bad for the ones who don’t make it and fall victim to the mutated inbreeds. 

There’s not much more I can add to this, seeing that it’s a simple story of kids getting stuck in the wooded mountains of West Virginia, only to be stalked by deformed killers.  But it’s definitely a scary good time with a message to everyone out there: stay on the main roads and never take shortcut through an abandoned wooded area.

So, my final “bit” on Wrong Turn?

The best of the franchise, which I still can’t believe they’re making sequels to this.  I believe the series is now up to six movies, with the latest one to be released just before Halloween.  Well, I can’t speak for the unreleased one, but all the subsequent sequels haven’t stood up to the original one in its shock value and suspense.  Do yourself a favor and see this one if The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are your type of films…you won’t be disappointed.

That’s it for now…thanks for reading and have a Happy Halloween!

Cinema Bits is on Twitter and Facebook.

Night of the Creeps

You know how I feel about 80s horror movies, so I think I’ll finally stop waxing poetic on that decade.  I was in my teens between 1981 and 1988 and it was a tough time for me growing up, so that’s what I looked to for a way to live vicariously through the characters on the screen.  Yeah, most of the films were silly and unbelievable, but they were always entertaining and never missed the mark when it came to giving the audience a good time.  Even though there was an overabundance of horror films back then, most of them were solid and above mediocre standards.  I loved them and still do to this day.

Well…lookee there…I said I wasn’t going to be overly verbose on that decade, but I did it anyway.  It just goes to show that the subject of horror movies in the 80s is something I never get tired of talking about.

I’ve also mentioned before that due to the superfluity of that genre of films, I didn’t get to see quite a few of them that were released during my movie-going days back then.  So when I catch up these days, usually by checking out the catalog of DVDs on Netflix, they usually bring me back to that innocent age of my teenaged years.  Sometimes they’re excellent movies that make me think, “Why have I not seen this one?”  Other times, I turn off the flick twenty minutes into it, regretting that I had it sent to me in the first place.

Now, the odd thing about Night of the Creeps is that I had it sent to me some years ago and threw it on for a watch—maybe letting it play for a half hour or so—but decided to eject it from my PS3 and sent it back to Netflix.  The reason I didn’t get into it?  Probably because of my feeling that one should watch horror movies during the right time of year.  If you’d read my review ofThe Howling, I started off with editorializing my view of watching most horror movies during the month of October.  Not all horror movies, mind you, but the ones that were made during the decade of 1980 through 1989 generally fall into that category.  So I think that’s what went wrong when I first saw Night of the Creeps—it was probably during the spring or summer and it just didn’t keep my interest.

I don’t know what made me change my mind and decide to give the movie another chance, but that’s exactly what I had done.  I seem to recall that perhaps it was a horror movie podcast I was listening to that made me reconsider trying it out again (Horror Etc.? Corpse Cast? SlasherCast?).  Whatever—or whoever—had gotten me to change my mind, I’m glad it did.  I saw it again and it had such a profound impact on me, I decided to purchase the Blu-Ray (which coincidentally had been released a few months beforehand) and it now sits proudly in the front of one of my horror movie binders.

Night of the Creeps marks the debut of director and writer, Fred Dekker.  He went on to direct The Monster Squad a year later, an episode of “Tales from the Crypt” and the ill-fated second sequel in the Robocop franchise.  However, as a writer, Dekker has had a string of hits, most recently having a remake of The Monster Squad on the block as well as a rumor that Predatormight be rebooted as well (let’s hope that neither of them will happen—no disrespect to Mr. Dekker, but the originals are classics and don’t need to be regurgitated).  As a first-time writer and director, Dekker really hit it out of the park with Night of the Creeps.

The film opens, in an alien vessel in space, where an alien is running away from some others and

carrying some container.  It’s able to shoot the canister out into space where it lands on Earth.  The year is 1959 and the container is found by some young man as it opens up as some leech-like creature jumps from it into his mouth.  The movie jumps 28 years later and focuses on two friends, Chris (Jason Lively) and J.C. (Steve Marshall).  Chris attempts to impress a girl, Cynthia (Jill Whitlow), by trying to join a fraternity.  As part of the pledge, the frat leader, Brad (Allan Kayser), tells Chris and J.C. that they need to steal a corpse from the college medical center and place it in front of the sorority house.  Chris and J.C. attempt to do so and inadvertently release a corpse from a cryogenic tube, being scared off and not going through with the frat initiation.  But the corpse is the young man from 1959 and he’s now some sort of zombie, turning others into zombies as his body releases more of the leech-like creatures, making more and more people into zombies.

Now, one thing I hadn’t mentioned is the inclusion of the great Tom Atkins in the cast.  Complete with his signature mustache, he plays Detective Ray Cameron who’s been on the force for a while.  Through some flashbacks, and as a subplot, we see that there was a serial killer on the loose back in 1959 and he had a chance to save the girl that he had a thing for but he wasn’t able to do so.  I like what he does with the character in the film, being a smartass to everyone and delivering some cool—but cheesy—one-liners throughout the movie.  The tagline of the film is one of the best he delivers: “The good news is your dates are here.  The bad news is…they’re dead.”  I guarantee that by the time you’re finished watching this movie, you’ll be using the term “thrill me” every chance you get…I know I do.  For all the years Atkins has played serious roles in the middle of typical tawdry plots, he finally gets this one and is allowed to have fun with it.  You can almost see the twinkle in his eyes as he delivers some of the best lines in this movie.

Jason Lively and Steve Marshall as the two main characters are your typical 80s teen heroes, much like Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith from Weird Science.  The antics Lively and Marshall get into as Chris and J.C., especially the contrived set-up to the movie, is emblematic of this movie—or any movie of the 1980s for that matter.  You’ve got to give it to them for taking their roles seriously and acting them out better than what you’d expect from a movie like this.

For any of you who love a good zombie movie, but want something more than what we’ve been given over the years, which is just a rehash of what George Romero has done, this is a refreshing one to see.  The reason the dead walk is a little on the sci-fi side of things, but it’s still nerve-racking how it all comes to be, leaving the whole movie full of tension. 

So, my final “bit” on Night of the Creeps?

Relive the 80s with this gem as you’ll get the practical effects that are notorious in these earlier

horror movies, the humor infused within is just enough to entertain but not ruin the story, you’ll feel the nostalgia of that era (especially if you grew up during that time), and there’s just so much more you’ll probably get out of this movie that I might’ve missed.  Overall, it’s refreshing that, during a time where slasher-type films were always green-lit for a horror movie release, a movie of this caliber and budget was given the go-ahead.  But just a word of advice…this is a perfect movie to see during the fall or winter, sitting in the dark with some popcorn and reliving that beautiful era of horror movie-making.

Thanks for reading and Happy Halloween!

Cinema Bits is on Twitter and Facebook.