Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Zombie movies have always been one of horror's most popular sub-genres. George Romero's zombie movies are classics, and in recent years, DVD releases of those movies have been widely successful. The films of legendary Italian directors Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento are regarded with great esteem among diehard genre fans, and zombies have seen success in video games, with Resident Evil, House of the Dead, and Timesplitters being popular game franchises. When Fox Searchlight brought the British pseudo-zombie movie 28 Days Later to America in 2003, it was greeted with wide critical acclaim. Universal Pictures imported another zombie movie from England a year later, only this one was a little more lighthearted than 28 Days Later. Made by cast and crew members of the popular British TV show Spaced, Shaun of the Dead is a comedic homage to the zombie movies that preceded it, greeted with high praise from reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a 29-year-old loser, living a rather mundane existence as an unmotivated electronics store clerk. He isn't helped any when his fed-up girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), with a little nudging from her roommates Dianne (Lucy Davis) and David (Dylan Moran), dumps him for not changing his slacker ways. After a night of drowning his sorrows in Queen songs and several pints of alcohol with his slob of a best friend/roommate Ed (Nick Frost) at the Winchester, the local pub, Shaun wakes up the next morning and walks to a nearby convenience store, discovering that the normally busy streets outside his house are a wee less busy.

He returns home to find Ed staring out a window into the backyard. Ed informs Shaun of an apparently drunk woman standing in their garden, so they go outside to shoo her away. The woman tackles Shaun and tries to bite him, but when he pushes her off, she falls and gets spiked on a pole sticking up from the ground. That would usually hurt or even slightly annoy most normal people, but to the "drunk" lady, it's not a problem. She doesn't even notice. She just stands back up and starts shuffling in Shaun and Ed's direction.

They wisely retreat inside the house and try to call for help, but all of the phone lines are tied up. However, they soon discover the way to defend themselves when Ed kills a zombie that came in through the front door by bashing it in the head with an ashtray. Coupled with a news report moments later that says head wounds are the best way to dispose of the undead, our two zeros get a bright idea: Shaun and Ed grab their record collection and head outside, chucking records at the zombie lady and another one that's joined her in the backyard. Because when you think head wounds, you think vinyl records.

After some debate over which records should get broken and which ones shouldn't (do you throw the Purple Rain soundtrack or a Dire Straits album?), Shaun arms himself and Ed with a cricket bat and a shovel. Note to self: cricket bats are far more effective weapons than regular baseball bats. Shaun and Ed soon come up with a plan to get Liz and Shaun's mother (Penelope Wilton) away from the zombie horde. They put their plan into action, and with Shaun's mother, Liz, Dianne, and David in tow, they hole themselves up in the Winchester. Knowing that they can't survive in the Winchester forever, they soon try to find a way out without becoming food for the ever-growing number of undead or killing each other first.

You might be a little disappointed if you're expecting British horror along the lines of 28 Days Later or Dog Soldiers (an underrated British werewolf flick that was imported to American video store shelves and the Sci-Fi Channel in 2003). When a movie that comes right out and says it's a "Romantic Zombie Comedy," expecting anything else from it would be ill-advised. It's a romantic comedy in the midst of a zombie invasion, which is one of the most original cinematic concepts that I've heard in a while. The movie is both well-written and well-executed, and my only complaint is the humor. I didn't get some of the jokes in the movie, but most of the ones I didn't get were in-jokes for fans of Spaced to catch. Being an American that's never seen Spaced, I missed the humor behind those. But those were a minuscule part of the comedy, as all the jokes worked on some level.

That extremely minor complaint aside, the movie is great all the way through. I haven't seen a movie balance horror and comedy this well since the original Return of the Living Dead, and that's saying something. Return of the Living Dead is a really good movie, but Shaun of the Dead just may be better. The cast is enjoyable, with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost being the definite standouts. Helping the cast is a hilarious script (co-written by Pegg and Edgar Wright), and for the horror moments of this horror/comedy, the score composed by Daniel Munford and Pete Woodhead is very engaging. Throw in the stellar use of songs by Queen and The Smiths, along with various techno songs and music from the 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead, and the whole soundtrack is superb.

I'm just sad that Shaun of the Dead didn't get a wider theatrical release, because it could have gone from a surefire cult classic to a surefire blockbuster. It's a romantic comedy that horror fans can enjoy, and a horror movie fans of romantic comedies can enjoy, and that eclectic combination makes one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a long time. For that, Shaun of the Dead gets four and a half stars.

Final Rating: ****

Walking Tall (2004)

Back in the mid-1960s, one of the most crime-ridden places in the United States was McNairy County, Tennessee. It was overrun with corrupt police, violence, drugs, and organized crime rings. A former professional wrestler and football player named Buford Pusser was elected sheriff of McNairy County in 1964, and began to enforce and uphold the law. He took Theodore Roosevelt's quote "walk tall and carry a big stick" to heart, and with a large oak club as his weapon of choice, he cleaned up the county for six years before ending his term as sheriff in 1970.

Sheriff Pusser faced numerous death threats and assassination attempts, one of which led to the murder of his wife, before he died in a car accident in 1974. While it was ruled that Pusser simply veered off the road and crashed, it's believed by many that his accident was intentional, that he was ran off the road on purpose by someone holding a grudge against him. Regardless of the circumstances of his death, Pusser's story became so well-known that it inspired Joe Don Baker's 1973 film Walking Tall, a movie that itself inspired an extremely shortlived television show and two sequels starring Bo Svenson. The story of Buford Pusser has become a modern tall tale, and twenty-one years after the original film's release, the story was retold starring another former football player and professional wrestler.

Chris Vaughn (The Rock) is a retired Army Special Forces member returning home to rural Kitsap County, Washington. However, he soon discovers that the town is not as he left it. The local lumber mill has been shut down and replaced with a casino, Chris's little brother Pete (Khleo Thomas) has started doing drugs, his high school sweetheart Deni (Ashley Scott) is a stripper, and the crooked police are controlled by the casino's owner and one-time friend of Chris's, Jay Hamilton (Neal McDonough). Chris reunites with some old friends to celebrate his homecoming at the casino, but after raising a stink when he discovers the craps table is using loaded dice, he ends up catching a beatdown from some of Hamilton's goons. Instead of the regular beatdown where a guy gets roughed up and thrown into the street, the goons zap him with a stun gun and carve up his chest with a box cutter before dumping him in the middle of nowhere and leaving him for dead.

Chris eventually recovers, but gets some bad news when he learns Pete has been hospitalized, thanks to a near-overdose on crystal meth. Chris finds out Pete bought the meth at the casino, and he turns from mild-mannered Bill Bixby to giant green guy Lou Ferrigno. Okay, so he didn't turn into the Incredible Hulk, but he does gets mad as hell and he isn't gonna take it anymore. Armed with a cedar two-by-four, Chris clears out the casino and lays waste to the gang that attacked him. He gets arrested for and acquitted of assault charges, and promises to clean up the city. He successfully runs for sheriff, and fires the entire police squad before hiring his longtime friend, convicted felon Ray Templeton (Johnny Knoxville), as the one-and-only deputy. Because when you think of hard-working law enforcement, you think of the Jackass ringleader. Keeping the cedar two-by-four on his truck's gun rack as an "equalizer," Chris essentially becomes a vigilante with a badge as he and Ray begin to bring down Hamilton's drug/crime ring, no matter how unorthodox the means.

Walking Tall is an all-out action movie, and it carries that label as a badge of honor. It really serves no other purpose than as a way to spend 85 minutes watching The Rock crack some skulls with a big tree branch while Johnny Knoxville serves as comic relief. The film is anemic on plot and heavy on action. I haven't seen Joe Don Baker's Walking Tall movies, so I can't compare them to Rock's Walking Tall, but the remake is essentially "Rock no like, Rock smash!" The Chris Vaughn character is already a man's man the second the movie starts. He obviously doesn't take any crap from anybody, instead of being a regular guy like the real Buford Pusser. The movie basically shows us that The Rock can easily transition from the choreographed fighting of professional wrestling to the choreographed fighting of Hollywood action movies. While Walking Tall hits all of the necessary plot points, the characters have no real backgrounds or development. The movie should have been at least 30 minutes longer to fill out those necessary plot points. At a very short 85 minutes (or just about 75 minutes if you don't count the end credits), the movie feels like it had to be cut and squeezed into its PG-13 rating, and that didn't help it at all.

With the exception of The Rock and Johnny Knoxville, the bulk of movie's cast is very forgettable. The producers could have cast any random person that walked into an audition, and it wouldn't have mattered. None of the characters are very interesting. I didn't care about any of them or really feel anything for them. I'm quicker to lay blame on the lacking script than the acting, since most of the cast tried hard but couldn't really do anything here. I must say, though, that The Rock and Knoxville are both good here. With this being his third major film role, Rock's acting skills have drastically improved, and Knoxville proved to me that there's more to him than Jackass. The fight scenes here are more realistic than other action movies, which is a definite plus, and I applaud the film's stunt crew.

But other than The Rock, Knoxville, and the stunts, there's really nothing I can say about Walking Tall other than despite bring another brainless action movie, it's still fun and engaging. I don't know how proud Buford Pusser would be of the new Walking Tall, but if he liked movies with non-stop action and not much else, he'd approve. Myself, I give it two and a half stars. That sounds about right to me.

Final Rating: **½

The Grudge (2004)

Any American who's seen an Asian horror movie can attest to the fact that the land of the rising sun churns out some very different horror movies, ones that we Americans aren't really used to seeing. Horror movies here in the States usually deal with some serial killer with a sharp object looking to kill people for their transgressions. Have sex, you're gonna die. Do drugs, you're gonna die. Kick a puppy, you're gonna die. Cheat on your algebra midterm, you're probably still gonna die (sorry). If you do something naughty in any way, shape, or form, you're bound for certain doom. But if you do encounter the villain, you might be able to live.

But in Asian horror movies, everybody's screwed. Everyone from the cute four-year-old kid you saw at Toys 'R' Us to that prick who cut you off in traffic on your way to work, they don't stand an ice cube's chance in Hell of surviving if they encounter an Asian horror movie villain. You don't even have to really do anything to incur the wrath of the villain. Just look at the villain, and thanks for playing, your prize is a toe tag and a one-way ticket to Morgue City. The guilty suffer, the innocent suffer, animals suffer, everybody suffers.

And not only that, but Asian horror movies like to seriously mess with your head. We Americans also like to know the whys and the hows of our horror movies. We like everything explained to us and wrapped up with a cute little bow. Why is the mass murderer mass murdering? Where did that icky flesh-consuming virus come from? However, it seems as if Asian horror movies worry less about telling us why something is happening. They just tell us that it is happening and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Asian horror is all about atmosphere and building up as much dread as possible before giving viewers a payoff intended to make you leap out of your skin.

DreamWorks Pictures saw the upside in bringing such a film to American multiplexes when they bought the remake rights to Hideo Nakata's popular Japanese ghost story Ringu, originally released in 1998. Remade as The Ring in 2002, it grossed $128,579,698 at the American box office and prompted studios to buy the remake rights to as many Asian horror movies as they could. One of these was Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on. Its title a play off the Japanese words for "grudge" and "curse," it was at first a popular direct-to-video movie that Shimizu himself remade for Japanese theatrical audiences in 2003. It was this remake that Sam Raimi proclaimed the scariest movie he'd ever seen. Raimi's Ghost House Pictures quickly purchased the remake rights, brought Shimizu on to direct once again, and headed to Japan to tell the tale of a quaint little house that's pissed off at everybody.

The movie begins with a few lines of text, setting up the movie's universe. When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. This curse manifests itself as ghosts that hold a grudge against anyone unlucky or just plain stupid enough to enter the domains they reside in, stalking its victims until they finally perish and pass along their grudge to some other unfortunate person. Exposition aside, let's get to the plot at hand. Our primary story follows Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a foreign exchange student living in Tokyo with her boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr). Karen works as a social worker and hospice nurse in her spare time, and when her coworker Yoko (Yoko Maki) doesn't show up for her shift, she's asked her to be Yoko's temporary substitute.

Karen heads to the house Yoko was assigned to, populated by Matthew Williams (William Mapother), his wife Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and his senile mother Emma (Grace Sabriskie). However, Karen finds the house in complete disarray. The place looks trashed, and the only person there is the near-catatonic Emma. However, there's more in the house than just a mess and a crazy old lady. Karen soon discovers the house is haunted by two malevolent spirits, and as various unusual and increasingly disturbing events occur around her, she and Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) search to find the house's connection to a series of mysterious deaths and the disappearance of Matthew's sister Susan (KaDee Strickland), and how they're all related to a pair of murders and the suicide of an American college professor (Bill Pullman) three years earlier.

The Grudge has gotten a lot of knocks against it for its similarities to The Ring, mainly because they're both horror movies that feature female ghosts with long nasty hair covering their faces. And I'll be the first to admit, some scenes in The Grudge are eerily similar to scenes from The Ring. However, both films are seemingly inspired by Japanese ghost stories about the spirits of wronged women returning from the grave to seek vengeance for their deaths. That said, I loved The Grudge. Loved it. The 2003 version of Ju-on was a frightening enough experience, and this thoroughly faithful remake maintains that same level of fear. I must admit that the American Grudge joins the extremely short list of horror movies that have scared the living crap out of me.

Takashi Shimizu and screenwriter Stephen Susco utilize a Quentin Tarantino trademark in the movie, using a nonlinear style of filmmaking as they jump around the film's timeline to show various points in the story at different times. While it sounds rather confusing and hard to follow, it works to help set the off-kilter atmosphere of the movie. It makes sense if you look at it this way: As Sarah Michelle Gellar's story progresses forward, the story of the house progresses backward. The end of Sarah's story meets the beginning of the house's story in the finale, and it all makes sense in the end.

Also fun are Shimizu's mix of quiet dread and jump scares. Jump scares have become horror clichés over the years, but The Grudge makes very good use of them, and there's not a wasted scare in the movie. And the way Shimizu frames shots (with a little help from the gorgeous work of cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto and production designer Iwao Saito) allow the jump scares to sneak up on us. Even though I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown, every minute of the movie was entertaining.

The effects are superb, from the wisps of smoke that ooze out of a wall to the undead thing that crawls down a flight of stairs (perhaps an homage to a famous deleted scene from The Exorcist?). Also wonderful is the film's score, composed by Christopher Young. If Shimizu's work is frightening visually, then Young's score is frightening audibly. The music is absolutely great. The one thing that bothered me, though, was the insanely high number of Americans in the movie. The movie takes place in Japan, yet there's more Americans in the main cast than there are Japanese people. Is it so hard to find Japanese actors? Maybe they could have called up Tarantino and asked him which casting agency he found Kill Bill's Crazy 88s at.

The crew and most of the cast do a commendable job with what they're given to work with. Sarah Michelle Gellar is watchable, yet she just seems really bland. After seven seasons of having a TV show built around her, it's hard to picture her as a leading lady in a big Hollywood production. And the reputation she developed from Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't help her here, either. Her character here is a weak and scared young lady in an unfamiliar land, as opposed to the sarcastic bad-ass demon killer that everyone recognizes her as. I just kept waiting for her to whip out some of her slayer moves and dropkick the ghosts into next Tuesday, and it never happened. It looks like she's descended into Mark Hamill/Luke Skywalker territory: no matter what she does from now on, she'll always be under the shadow of Buffy Summers.

On the other hand, Jason Behr was a complete failure as Gellar's on-screen love interest. He doesn't have too many scenes, and when he does, he's just awful. He just stands there and looks all Ashton Kutcher-y and has absolutely no personality whatsoever. Casting Takako Fuji and Yuya Ozeki to reprise their roles as the malicious mother-and-son ghosts from the Ju-on movies was a fun and welcome touch, but perhaps the highlight of the cast was Ryo Ishibashi as the grizzled yet curious Detective Nakagawa. Somebody needs to send Ishibashi to the set of Law & Order or C.S.I. quick, because he did a great job here, and I hope he gets more work in the States.

Despite a paper-thin plot and characters that aren't exactly paragons of complexity, The Grudge is one of those movies that could scare the pants off even the most jaded horror movie viewers. The Grudge literally made me jump out of my seat and scream, and I never do that. The recent trend of remakes has irked a lot of people (including myself), but if they can be as good as The Ring and The Grudge, I say Hollywood should start remaking all the Asian horror movies they can. In spite of its flaws, I'll give The Grudge four stars. Go check it out, won't you?

Final Rating: ****

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

The survival horror genre of video games has given the gaming world some landmark titles since the genre came into prominence in the mid-1990s. But few survival horror games can say they're as influential as Resident Evil. The original game and its sequels have become seminal titles for fans of horror games, and I doubt it came as a big surprise to anyone when a Resident Evil movie was released in 2002.

And although the reactions from fans and critics were decidedly mixed, the movie's box office returns were enough to warrant Sony Pictures sending a sequel into production. Retaining elements of the first movie while adding a heaping helping of elements from the game franchise to soothe upset fanboys, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is at least an improvement over its predecessor.

The movie begins shortly before the end of its predecessor. A team of scientists from the Umbrella Corporation opens up its Hive laboratory below the Midwestern town of Raccoon City following the release of the T-Virus, but like most things in sci-fi/horror movies, things just go straight to Hell and the T-Virus escapes. Umbrella begins evacuating its executives from Raccoon City, leaving the rest of the city to rot. Thirteen hours later, Raccoon City has been contaminated with a widespread outbreak of the T-Virus. The town has become overrun with packs of zombies attacking any citizens they come across, and police actually arresting some zombies.

Around that time, we're reintroduced to Alice (Milla Jovovich), the survivor of the first movie. Like we saw at the end of the previous movie, she awakens in an Umbrella-owned hospital and wanders out into an abandoned street, making sure to snatch a shotgun from a police cruiser. However, she might not need it, as it turns out a round of Umbrella experiments has given her superhuman fighting abilities.

Come nightfall, Raccoon City has descended into chaos. The zombie infestation has reached massive proportions, forcing Umbrella to quarantine the city and quell a mass exodus to prevent their little accident from making national news. A team of Umbrella commandos sent in to clean up the mess has been wiped out, leaving just Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and Nicholai Sekolov (Zach Ward) to fend for themselves. They discover and team up with another band of survivors, comprised of Alice, local pimp L.J. (Mike Epps), news meteorologist Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt), and video game heroine Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a suspended member of the Raccoon Police Department's elite STARS division.

The motley crew is soon contacted via payphone by Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), a high-ranking Umbrella scientist outside the city gates who's been following their actions via Raccoon City's street cameras. And folks, Ashford has some crappy news for them. It turns out that Umbrella's gonna use their military connections to drop a nuke on Raccoon City at dawn, but Ashford will guarantee them safe passage out of town before then if they can find his daughter Angie (Sophie Vavasseur), who disappeared following a car accident during the evacuation of Umbrella's crew.

Unless they'd really like to stick around and have a missle dropped on them, they don't really have a choice. Thus, they're stuck fighting through a horde of undead humans and packs of zombie dogs to rescue Angie. However, even after finding Angie, they still have to make it to their rendezvous point intact. But it turns out that zombies and dogs aren't the only things they have to worry about; there are also the Lickers that return from the first movie, and the "Nemesis" (Matthew G. Taylor), a bio-engineered leviathan roaming the streets in search of Alice.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a big violent action roller coaster ride, and it knows it. It has no qualms with substituting thrills in lieu of things like plot advancement and character development. The movie isn't for moviegoers who like well-written stories and Oscar-caliber acting. It's for those who like watching people shoot at monsters with high-powered weapons.

Director Alexander Witt uses his feature film debut to show off years of tricks learned working as a second unit director on flicks like Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and The Bourne Identity, and other than a few moments, the film is visually astounding. Unfortunately, many of the best action scenes are buried underneath quick cuts and shaky camera moves.

And though I said the movie wasn't about plot, the script by Paul W.S. Anderson (who passed the director's chair to Witt so he could make Alien vs. Predator) could have used some work. The plot proper (an amalgamation of the the second and third Resident Evil games with a dash of the original movie for flavor) didn't begin until almost a third of the way through the movie, and the buildup to the climactic Alice/Nemesis fight scene was actually very anticlimactic when it's all said and done. We did get some fun scenes, though; namely a Licker's siege on a church and the survivors fighting their way out of a zombie-infested graveyard. Something is always happening on screen, however, and it's never boring.

Unfortunately, it seems as if Anderson didn't really care about the side characters, just wanting to cram Alice down our throats. If you're going to disrespect the game's characters by making them sidekicks to some new character that comes across as the female John Rambo, the fans are really going to resent you. That's probably why that the Resident Evil movies aren't all that popular with the fans of the franchise that I personally know.

The movie's acting was also give or take, depending on which actor we're talking about. Sienna Guillory was great as Jill, emulating her video game counterpart right down to the way she walked. Too bad she was second banana to Alice, but what can you do? Meanwhile, Milla Jovovich seemed to be half-assing it at times. It's like she said, "Okay, folks, my boyfriend wrote the movie, so the rest of you goons are gonna work while I sit here and look all awesome. Somebody get me a martini." I also liked Oded Fehr as Carlos, but he was severely underused. Why bother promoting Carlos from the games to the movie if you're barely gonna put him in there?

I really enjoyed Mike Epps as well, even if he was just one-dimensional comic relief. He got a lot of mileage out of it, and provided many funny moments. Another thing I enjoyed was Jeff Danna's industrial-metal score. It's far from memorable, but it worked for what the movie needed. And whoever was working the sound effects needs to be beaten. A lot of the scares are accompanied by a loud sound effect, making it seem like they wanted to scare the audience by making them deaf

While Resident Evil: Apocalypse is certainly a better film than its predecessor, it still struggles to reach higher than mediocrity. It teeters precariously on the line between good and bad, coming across as fun at certain times while banal at others. It's really that inconsistency that brings about the movie's downfall. There are some entertaining moments, especially for fans of the games, but ultimately, the movie is average at best. There's a good movie that could be made out of the Resident Evil games, but this sadly isn't it.

Final Rating: ***

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Motion pictures have not been without controversy. Some draw fire for their content, others for their messages. With the exception of Michael Moore's anti-establishment documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, I really can only think of one other movie this decade that has sparked as much debate and media discussion as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Funded by Gibson's own wallet and independently distributed by his Icon Productions company and Newmarket Films (since no major distributor wanted to touch it), it became the little religious epic that could, raking in $604,370,943 worldwide and surpassing My Big Fat Greek Wedding as the highest-grossing independent feature film ever. But does it hold up to the hype?

I'm sure most of you readers know the story of Jesus, but since I'm wont to put the plot in my reviews, you'll just have to hear it again. The movie begins in the middle of the night at Gethsemane, an olive grove near Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth (Jim Caviezel) has gone to there to pray, accompanied by three of His apostles. As the apostles sleep, Jesus prays for His safety, as the prophecy of His death will be soon be fulfilled. Soon thereafter, a group of Roman soldiers appear, led by Judas (Luca Lionello), another of the apostles. Jesus isn't surprised and is actually pretty calm, and after a brief struggle between the three apostles and the soldiers, Jesus peacefully hands Himself over and is led away in chains.

The soldiers bring Jesus before the Jewish leaders, where high priest Caiaphas (Mattia Sbragia) interrogates Him before Jesus admits that He claimed to be the prophesied messiah. As the priests discuss what they should do with their prisoner, a guilt-ridden Judas appears before them, asking them to let Jesus go in return for the thirty pieces of silver he was paid to identify Him. Caiaphas tells Judas that his guilt is none of their business, so Judas throws the bag of silver at them and leaves. The guilt begins to eat away at Judas's sanity, finally pushing him to suicide as he hangs himself from a tree the following morning.

That same morning, Caiaphas and the priests present Jesus before local Roman governor Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shapov), alleging that Jesus is a blasphemer and an insurrectionist. Pilate questions Jesus in private, and under pressure from his wife (Claudia Gerini) and fearing civil unrest, Pilate tells the priests to take Jesus to the hedonistic King Herod (Luca De Dominicis). Jesus's home of Galilee is in Herod's jurisdiction, so why not send him there? The priests present Jesus to Herod, who assumes He's just crazy. Herod gets a good laugh out of the moment, and sends Jesus back to Pilate. Man, and I thought the justice system was screwed up now. Turns out it was just as screwed up 2000 years ago. Two millennia go by, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Anyway, Jesus gets sent back to Pilate, and the priests are sick of getting the run-around. Pilate doesn't believe Jesus is guilty of any wrongdoing, so he lets the crowd decide which prisoner will receive his customary pardon during Jerusalem's Passover festival: Jesus or a notorious criminal named Barabbas (Pietro Sarubbi). The crowd picks Barabbas, and demand that Jesus be crucified. Pilate refuses, stating that he doesn't know what Jesus could have done that was deserving of a punishment that severe. To appease them, Pilate orders that Jesus be tortured by receiving a heavy scourging with a cat-o'-nine-tails before being freed. Even the beating isn't good enough for the crowd, so Pilate washes his hands of Jesus and sentences Him to death before turning Him over to the crowd. We enter the movie's third act as the near-dead Jesus is forced to carry an enormous cross through the streets of Jerusalem, a journey that ends with his execution on the hillside of Golgotha.

Bravo to Mel Gibson for having the balls to put his reputation as a filmmaker on the line by making a movie that reflected his convictions and beliefs. Most movies about Jesus usually just show His life and gloss over His death and resurrection, yet The Passion of the Christ shows the suffering He went through to pay reparations for humanity's iniquities. In a business where people worship at the altar of the Almighty Dollar, it's refreshing to see a movie that says something more than "I love money."

The Passion isn't about the cast or the cinematography or anything resembling a plot. Gibson's intent was to show the final day in the life of Christ (and by extent, Catholicism's fourteen stations of the cross) more realistically, in a way that it had never been shown before. Movies and artwork in the past depicted Jesus hanging on the cross with well-groomed hair and not a speck of dirt or blood on Him, almost looking like He was having a good time. The Passion, however, shows Him looking haggard, in agonizing pain and covered in dirt and gore. Most biblical movies also had everyone speaking English, and here, Gibson pushes the realism one step further by having all of the characters speak in Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew, without a single word of English dialogue.

As I said, the movie isn't about cinematography or acting, but since I'm here to review a movie, I might as well talk about its technical merits. The Passion is an extremely well made movie, and I applaud cinematographer Caleb Deschanel for his work. Every member of the cast was on their A-game here, and I applaud them as well. Jim Caviezel's performance as Jesus was a very sympathetic one, coming across as a man who was scared but willing to die for what he believed was right. And I was really creeped out by Rosalinda Celentano as Satan, who occasionally appears to make attempts at planting seeds of doubt in Christ's head. She (yes, she) gives Satan the needed creepy factor to make Cavaziel's "scared but sure" performance that much better. Also excellent was John Debney's musical score. During the third act especially, the score is very melancholy yet hopeful, and it is both gripping yet understated.

Sure, some could be sickened and turned off by the brutality of the movie, and come away feeling like they watched nothing more than a biblical snuff film. That's a very valid response to the film. I don't expect everyone that watches The Passion to break out into tears like some people or run to the nearest church as soon as the movie ends (though feel free to do either, if you so desire). In fact, the violence of the movie may not have the same effect on some that it has on others. Personally, after a lifetime of watching violent horror movies, I was rather desensitized to the violence, though there were several moments that made me flinch. But overall, I'll give The Passion of the Christ three stars. I don't see it as the five-star epic that others see it as, but it's still a good movie to watch as a companion piece to movies about the life of Jesus.

Final Rating: ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Ask a group of geeks to name a writer whose work they appreciate, and a good number of them will probably say Joss Whedon. His unique style has earned him a lot of respect over the years, but his greatest claim to fame has to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show debuted in 1997 on the WB Network, and over the course of seven seasons, it turned Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar into stars while becoming a pop culture powerhouse by inspiring novels, comic books, action figures, video games, and its own spinoff TV show.

But once upon a time, Buffy was not the pop culture juggernaut that it was at the end of the '90s. In the summer of 1992, 20th Century Fox introduced the world to the title character via her own motion picture, the existence of which I'm sure Whedon would love the world to forget. Instead of the dark yet ultra-witty Buffy that was popularized through the show, the movie is instead a goofy comedy that really bears no resemblance at all to the now-classic TV show that followed it.

Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson) is your stereotypical early-90s Valley Girl. She's a dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader whose primary concerns are shopping, boys, and hanging out with her dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader friends. Her only goals in life are to "graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die." All that is brought to a screeching halt when she's confronted by Merrick (Donald Sutherland), who informs her that she is the next in a long line of young women chosen by destiny to kill vampires.

Naturally, she's skeptical. If some weird British guy came up to you and told you that you were destined to kill bloodsucking hell-spawn from beyond the grave, you'd probably think he was crazy too. Anyway, Merrick convinces Buffy that he's not some loony old man, and at his request, she accompanies him to the graveyard so he can explain this whole vampire slaying thing to her. Some vampires appear and get killed, and after some initial reluctance, Buffy begins to accept her role as a vampire slayer while Merrick assumes the role of her mentor.

Buffy eventually crosses paths with Pike (Luke Perry), a mechanic who looks like he's the reincarnation of James Dean circa Rebel Without A Cause. The two form a partnership after she rescues him from a gang of vampires, and when they chase a vampire into a stockyard full of parade floats, they encounter the vampire king Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and his one-armed sidekick Amilyn (Paul Reubens). Merrick shows up and tries to prevent a Buffy/Lothos showdown, claiming that Buffy isn't ready to fight him yet. Lothos doesn't want to leave without fighting somebody, so he snatches Merrick's stake and stabs him in the heart with it. A vampire killing a guy with a tool intended to kill vampires, that's so poetic.

Buffy starts to back out of the slaying business after Merrick's death, but just when she thinks she's out, they pull her back in. Buffy and Pike share a moment at a high school dance when a posse of vampires crash the party. While Pike deals with the vamps wreaking havoc on the dance, Buffy heads for the school boiler room to duel with Lothos and Amilyn, a duel that leads to a final showdown between Buffy and Lothos on the dance floor.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an 86-minute joke that just isn't funny. The humor isn't funny, the horror isn't scary, and the acting is awful. Joss Whedon's original script was heavily rewritten, and if I were him, I'd have asked for an "Alan Smithee" credit. The jokes are mediocre at best (though I got a good laugh out of Amilyn's never-ending death throes at the end of the movie), and its attempts at horror fall flat. I figure I might as well just break my complaint down into more specific categories.

First up, the acting. The only real performances I actually enjoyed were Paul Reubens (who you may recognize as Pee Wee Herman) and David Arquette as Pike's vampire friend Benny. I wanted to get into Luke Perry's character, but he just kept giving off this weird "hey, remember me? I'm on 90210 and I'm so darn cool" vibe. If the movie was made now, it'd be a "hey, remember me? I was on 90210 and I'm a washed-up nobody now" vibe, but that's beside the point. Meanwhile, Kristy Swanson's ditzy Valley Girl routine was absolutely annoying, to the point where it was rough to watch the movie. The only good thing I can say about her is that after a while, Movie Buffy didn't seem as distant and self-important as Television Buffy.

And I think that Rutger Hauer and Donald Sutherland realized the potential the movie had to be awful, but had different stances on what to do. Sutherland downplays everything to the point where it seems like he's saying "this sucks, just give me my paycheck so I can leave." On the other hand, Hauer hams it up like crazy, hitting almost every possible villain cliché he can, right down to having a conversation with the hero when he has the chance for victory. I almost expected Reubens to pull a "Seth Green in Austin Powers" and say, "Look, let me get a gun and shoot her, and save us some time."

Usually, I comment on film scores, but Carter Burwell's score was nearly nonexistent. Not once do I remember hearing anything but dumb early-90s dance and pop/rock numbers. Outside of songs by Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest singer Rob Halford, there really isn't any good music in the movie. Besides, who puts a Divinyls song in a movie and expects to be taken seriously? The Divinyls suck!

If you're looking to get into the "Buffyverse," you'd be well-advised to just avoid the movie and start with the first season of the TV show because it follows different rules than the movie (in the movie, vampires can fly and don't turn to dust when killed). However, the movie does have the novelty of featuring a Buffy that isn't Sarah Michelle Gellar. Overall, I'll give Buffy the Vampire Slayer two stars. Some cool moments, but other than that, it's just empty.

Final Rating: **

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2000)

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: almost every movie gets a sequel. Even movies you wouldn't expect to get a sequel probably get one. Possibly the most sequel-driven genre of all is the horror film. Just about every horror movie ever made has a sequel (or group of sequels), prequel, or knock-off. Even the most obscure foreign horror movie can get a sequel or two. Such was the case with the Canadian import Ginger Snaps. The tale of a pair of sisters whose tightly-knit familial bonds are tested when one becomes a werewolf, it became a cult classic upon its release in 2000. It was only a matter of time until the sequel was made, and that sequel came in the form of Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.

Picking up sometime after the events of the first Ginger Snaps, Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) is on the run from a werewolf looking to mate with her. Infected with the lycanthropy virus and haunted by recurring visions of her dead sister Ginger (Katherine Isabelle), she has managed to slow down her transformation with a daily series of monkshood injections. After a particularly strong dose of monkshood and an extremely close escape from the werewolf, Brigitte passes out in the street and awakens in an all-girls drug rehabilitation facility. Facility supervisor Alice (Janet Kidder) confiscates her monkshood, and without steady injections, Brigitte's transformation into a werewolf begins to speed up.

Among the encounters with Alice and a shady male nurse named Tyler (Eric Johnson), Brigitte is befriended by an eccentric girl nicknamed "Ghost" (Tatiana Maslany). Unlike the other girls, Ghost gets to roam the grounds freely because she's keeping her grandmother company while she recovers from severe third-degree burns in another section of the facility. While Ghost is antagonized by the various rehab patients because of her odd behavior (her obsession with comics often leads her to speak like a comic-style prose), she and Brigitte become a close-knit pair, much to Brigitte's initial reluctance.

When Brigitte discovers the horny werewolf from earlier has found the clinic, Ghost helps Brigitte escape, and together they head to Ghost's grandmother's house for refuge. Ghost discovers that Brigitte is turning into a werewolf herself, and tries to help her new friend delay the transformation. Of course, things don't always go as they're planned. The male werewolf finds them once again, and Brigitte's tenuous grip on both her sanity and her humanity begins to slip away as the lycanthropy overtakes her.

It's very hard to have a sequel that's up to the same par as its predecessor. The list of "better than or equal to" sequels isn't exactly long. Ginger Snaps 2 isn't an equal to the original Ginger Snaps, but it's close. A lot of its quality is helped by the acting ability of its star. Emily Perkins is great as the would-be werewolf Brigitte, and she carries the whole movie on her shoulders. While she had Katherine Isabelle sharing the spotlight in the original Ginger Snaps, she does all the grunt work here. The Brigitte character pulls a transformation akin to Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies, and Perkins pulls it off believably with her impressive performance.

Tatiana Maslani also puts in a decent performance, giving off a creepy vibe which is really fitting for the character by the end of the movie. Maslani does what she can with what she's given, but the character gets really annoying at times. I can only handle hearing her talk in prose so many times before I just want to reach through the TV screen and strangle her. I did, however, enjoy Katherine Isabelle's appearances as Ginger. I loved her in the original Ginger Snaps, and though she didn't have much screen time, I loved her here as Brigitte's ghostly anti-conscience.

Also good were the special effects by KNB EFX Group. I've been a fan of KNB's work for a long time, and I appreciated their work here. Unfortunately, a lot of their best stuff is hidden by insanely quick flashes. A hummingbird couldn't see most of their work. However, the visible effects were great, especially Brigitte's facial makeup near the end of the movie. Kurt Swinghammer's score was also good. I preferred Michael Shields's score from the original Ginger Snaps, but Ginger Snaps 2 has a different tone that requires a different score. The industrial/techno-esque stuff really worked, and I absolutely loved Swinghammer's reprisal of the original's theme. My only real complaint with the movie (other than Ghost being so annoying) was Megan Martin's script. It wasn't bad as a whole, but a boring stretch in the second act and some cheesy dialogue are big knocks against it.

Ginger Snaps 2 tries hard, and can call itself a success. A lot of sequels are just retreads or remakes of its predecessor, but this one takes a different step and I commend it for that. I give it three and a half stars; no more, no less. I'll recommend to fans of the first one and fans of werewolf movies, but viewers would serve well to watch both movies back-to-back.

Final Rating: ***½

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Sometimes, sequels can be good things. They can continue the story of the original, or tell a new story with familiar characters. But sometimes, a sequel comes along that cannot justify its own existence. One sequel like that is Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, the oddest chapter of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre saga. The movie is just bizarre (and not in a good way), and it's actually the only Massacre movie that has no cannibalism or deaths via chainsaw. The movie is loathed by fans of the series, and rightfully so.

The story follows four teenagers leaving their senior prom: the loud-mouth misogynist Barry (Tyler Cone), his bitchy girlfriend Heather (Lisa Marie Newmyer), stoner Sean (John Harrison), and Sean's best friend Jenny (Renée Zellweger). They head into the woods and almost immediately end up in a serious car accident, leaving them stranded out into the middle of nowhere.

It's not long before the teens stumble upon a family of psychotic rednecks, comprised of Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey), Darla (Tonie Perensky), W.E. (Joe Stevens), and Leatherface (Robert Jacks). The movie ends up taking an almost incomprehensible turn when we learn that the family of cannibals aren't really cannibals at all, but just a bunch of whack-jobs that are working for a guy named Rothman (James Gale), who apparently represents the Illuminati. That whole Illuminati thing is just speculation, however. They never say exactly what Rothman's purpose is, which I guess can be said for this movie as a whole.

One of the most noticeable things about the film is its stupidity. All the characters make idiotic moves, like getting in the truck of a stranger that doesn't look like he's all that happy, calmly asking a psychopath to give them a break after he snapped somebody's neck and tried to run over them with a tow truck, splitting up in the middle of nowhere instead of sticking together, and locking themselves in the home of the villains before asking their hosts where the phone is so they can call the police. My biggest complaint is the interpretation of Leatherface. Leatherface is now a whining transvestite whose collection of masks are the faces of his prettiest victims. Sure, Leatherface wears what's called the "pretty woman" mask during the dinner scene in the original, but he's totally queening it up here. I don't have anything against cross-dressers, but Leatherface is supposed to be an intimidating monster, and it's kinda hard to be scared of a serial killer dressed like RuPaul.

Writer/director Kim Henkel co-wrote the original Massacre, and after revisiting many of the original's more memorable moments, he gives the movie its own bizarre flair. The family actually orders pizza for dinner, which (as crazy as it may sound) gives us a great scene in which Darla picks up the food at the pizza place's drive-thru window with Jenny screaming from the trunk of the car while a police car. However, the movie has absolutely zero respect for the series, and blatantly rips off scenes from the original. Leatherface drops a girl on a meat hook here, as he did in the original. But instead of doing it with the intention of making her a meal, it doesn't matter. The family members aren't cannibals, but their motivation is to scare and kill people because Rothman says so.

The only noteworthy things about the movie are Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. They both did the movie before becoming famous, and their performances are actually pretty good, considering what they had to work with. Zellweger does what she can, but any fault should be blamed on the asinine script. And McConaughey's hammy, over-the-top portrayal of Vilmer is the biggest reason that anyone should ever watch the movie. Without him, the movie would have been dead in the water, because he's the life of the whole thing. His character could probably be described as Viggo Mortensen's character from the third Massacre hopped up on angel dust. More movies should have redneck psychos controlling their knee braces with remote controls.

The movie may have been made with good intentions, but good intentions don't make a good movie. Unless you want to see an Oscar winner before she gets famous and Matthew McConaughey acting like a madman, you'd be well-advised to avoid this movie like the plague. You'll only get bad acting, crappy writing, and the reduction of one of cinema's most iconic murderers into an embarrassment.

Final Rating: *

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

I've said a million times that sequels are unavoidable, especially in the horror genre. If a horror movie is successful, then it's almost guaranteed to get more than one sequel. However, sequels to the legendary Texas Chainsaw Massacre were few and far between. Despite being released in 1974, it had only spawned one sequel in 1986 before New Line Cinema released Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III in 1990.

Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler) are driving across the country to deliver a car to Michelle's father. After ending up at a Texas gas station, they're given directions they think will lead them back to the highway, but it leads them deeper into the middle of nowhere. It's in the woods that they meet a survivalist named Benny (Ken Foree) and, like every other movie in the series, they encounter a family of cannibals.

This time, the family is comprised of family alpha male Tex (Viggo Mortensen), technophile Tinker (Joe Unger), the oft-disrespected Alfredo (Tom Everett), matriarch Mama (Miriam Byrd-Nethery), and a little girl (Jennifer Banko) who's always clutching a doll that looks like it was made from the skeleton of a dead fetus. And let's not forget Leatherface (R.A. Mihailoff), who somehow managed to survive being gutted and blown up at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Despite having the House Party and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies raking in all kinds of cash at the time, New Line Cinema was still "the house that Freddy Krueger built." After the disappointing box-office numbers for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, New Line decided that Freddy was running out of steam and they saw a new horror cash cow in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. The movie was intended to be the start of a full-fledged horror franchise on the level of the Nightmare and Friday the 13th movies, but a poor showing at the box office killed that idea (although New Line did distribute the remake of the original Massacre).

Horror movie connoisseur Joe Bob Briggs once commented that this was the the Massacre with the least gore, and he's not too far off. The MPAA-imposed cuts really hurt the movie. According to director Jeff Burr, the movie was submitted to the MPAA eleven times (a record at the time) before it got an R rating. It ended up making some sequences almost incomprehensible, and the movie actually missed its original release date due to the constant editing.

It also had one of the stupidest endings I've ever seen. I don't want to spoil what it is, but it seriously left me wondering what happened and why. Sometime that can work in a movie's favor, but not here. And what happened to the little girl? Her name is never said once, not even in the credits, and we never learn what happens to her in the end. She just disappears. And since she doesn't return in the fourth Massacre, we're just left guessing her fate.

I can't complain about everything, though. I really liked the movie's look. It goes from the glaring reds, oranges, and yellows of the Texas desert to deep blues and blacks of nightfall, and the interior of the Sawyer house feels like a normal family lives there (well, an insane version of a normal family). The score, composed by Jim Manzie and Pat Regan, is also great. It gives us a haunted house feel that really compliments the movie. Most of the acting is actually pretty good. Kate Hodge isn't bad as our heroine. She starts out as a non-violent pacifist (she actually says something to the effect of "violence is never the answer" during the movie), but by the end, she goes nuts and has to resort to some serious violence to save herself.

Ken Foree was also good, but to be totally honest, anybody could have played his character. Foree gave it some legitimacy, however, thanks to his part in the zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. And I can't forget Viggo Mortensen, who you may recognize from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The feminine apron and painted fingernails gave Tex a weird ambiguity, but he seems like the kind of guy you could bump into on the street and not think he's a cannibal nutjob.

However, I wasn't too big on Jennifer Banko. I just hated the character (sort of a little girl version of Chop-Top from Massacre 2) and I'm glad she didn't show up in the fourth one, but I did get a giggle from her doll being named Sally (which could have been a reference to the character of Sally Hardesty from the original Massacre).

Overall, I'll give the movie two and a half stars. It's a fun way to kill some time, and you might enjoy it if you're into horror movies. Of the three sequels of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this one is probably the best, but you're not missing anything if you skip it.

Final Rating: **½

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2 (1986)

All the way back in 1974, Tobe Hopper directed one of the most important and influential movies of the horror genre: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Twelve years passed while Hooper made movies like Poltergeist, Salem's Lot, and a remake of the 1953 sci-fi flick Invaders From Mars before he finally returned to what brought him to the table in 1986 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2.

Our story begins with Stretch (Caroline Williams), a radio DJ working the night shift when two annoying rich kids heading to Dallas for the big Texas/Oklahoma football game decide to prank call the station's request line from their car phone. Stretch can't hang up on them (why, I don't know), so she's forced to listen as a truck the punks ran off the road earlier meets up with them on a bridge. Someone climbs out of the truck bed and starts swinging a chainsaw at their car, and in the chaos, the driver gets the top of his head sawed off and the car crashes into an overpass.

At the crash scene the next day is Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper). As a former Texas Ranger and the uncle of Sally and Franklin Hardesty from the first Massacre, he's been on a fourteen-year quest to exact revenge on the chainsaw killers. After Lefty puts an article in a Dallas newspaper asking for witnesses to make a statement, an enthusiastic Stretch shows up at his hotel room and offers to give him a cassette tape of the phone call made by the rich kids. He asks her to leave, stating that he wants to do things on his own.

But Lefty soon realizes he needs help, so he confronts Stretch at the radio station and persuades her to play the tape on the air with the hope that it will bring the killers out of hiding. It succeeds, as members of the cannibalistic Sawyer family show up at the station and trash the place, killing station manager L.G. (Lou Perry) in the process. Lefty and Stretch follow them back to their hideout, climaxing in a chase throughout a series of subterranean caverns beneath an abandoned amusement park.

The movie is about as far as from the original as it could. While the first Massacre was a raw "take no prisoners" nightmare, the sequel is a little more lighthearted. The movie isn't as much about Stretch or Lefty as it is about the family, who've become almost parodies of themselves here. Returning from the first film are Leatherface (Bill Johnson), the crusty heap of dust the family calls Grandpa (Ken Evert), and Drayton (Jim Siedow), who's now a caterer using the meat of the family's victims to make his award-winning chili. Replacing Edwin Neal's hitchhiker is Bill Moseley as "Chop-Top,", a wise-cracking hippie with a metal plate protruding out of his scalp thanks to a tour of duty in Vietnam. While this isn't totally a bad thing, it could have been better. The story of Lefty getting revenge on the Sawyers would have made for an intriguing movie. While this one is watchable, it was disappointing too.

Dennis Hopper is great as Lefty. He give the character its own unique charm and elevates the movie, hamming it up all the way through. He's the biggest reason to watch the movie, so Hopper's fans would do good to check this one out. Meanwhile, Caroline Williams (who has a quick cameo in Texas Chainsaw Massacre III as a TV reporter with no dialogue) is good as Stretch, though she isn't really required to do much outside of screaming her head off. I also enjoyed Jim Siedow's portrayal of Drayton. While he was a bit different from he was in the prior Massacre, I thought he worked great as a total sleazeball. I did like Bill Moseley as Chop-Top as well, though the character's biggest drawback is that he almost hits Jar Jar Binks levels of annoyance at times.

And finally, Bill Johnson isn't too bad as Leatherface. Leatherface is still a menacing figure, but he seems like a wuss because he actually develops a crush on Stretch. What self-respecting horror villain falls in love? I could see it if Stretch was a chainsaw killer too, but come on now. She's the victim, not the villain. On the aspect of the film's music, the score (composed by Jerry Lambert and Tobe Hooper) isn't too bad at all. Its cartoony feel really lends itself to the similarly cartoony feel of the movie, and I can't complain about it. The makeup effects, created by a team led by makeup legend Tom Savini, look really cheesy and fake at times, but look good at other moments (L.G.'s face being peeled off, for instance).

The major complaint that I do have with the movie is the previously mentioned cartoony feel. It starts off like it could be as gritty and jarring as the original, but it does turn into a big cartoon with blood and violence. One scene features Lefty showing up at the Sawyer hideout with an arsenal of chainsaws, and instead of the family attacking him, Drayton just offers him a giant wad of cash from his catering business. It does lead to a cool Leatherface/Lefty chainsaw vs. chainsaw showdown, but what purpose does it serve? It just really numbs the family's animalistic nature from the first movie. The final twelve minutes of the film is absolutely perhaps the most odd. From Drayton trying to pay off Lefty, to the chainsaw duel, to Chop-Top chasing Stretch through the caverns (which had a major letdown of an ending), it's all a mish-mash of the bizarre and the insane.

Overall, I'd give Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 a fitting two stars. It's probably just for fans of Leatherface and crazy B-grade horror movies, but the first film and the remake remain the best of the five Massacres.

Final Rating: **

Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

Nowadays, everything gets a sequel. If a movie doesn't have a sequel, something's wrong with it. Case in example: Cube. A low-budget movie from Canada that received much critical acclaim, it was only time before a sequel was made. And as of this writing, a third one is in production. See? Sequels and trilogies really are taking over Hollywood, even the "direct-to-video independent movie" market. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. I have a review to do.

The movie's plot is similar to the first Cube, yet with a few twists. Our story revolves around seven strangers: Kate Filmore (Kary Manchett), detective Simon Grady (Geraint Wyn Davies), blind college student Sasha (Grace Lynn Kung), Jerry Whitehall (Neil Crone), video game designer/computer hacker Max Reisler (Matthew Ferguson), the senile Mrs. Pasley (Barbara Gordon), and Julia (Lindsey Connell). The seven find themselves trapped in a futuristic "hypercube," where the rules of time and space have absolutely zero relevance. We soon see various alternate realities and timelines within the hypercube begin to overlap, and those realities and timelines quickly begin to collapse atop one another as the group tries to find their way out.

I loved the original film, and I was quick to watch the sequel when I saw it air on the Sci-Fi Channel. Predictably, Cube 2 borrowed some from the original. But that's unavoidable, because what else can you do in a setting like this? While I do appreciate the sequel for trying to further the story behind the existence of the cubes and trying not to give the viewer the same thing, the movie is still a mixed bag. On the downside, the need to explain the origin behind the cubes dented the original's ambiguity. Another faux pas was the lack of unpredictable and random booby traps that gave the original its excitement. The sequel only had one really fake-looking CGI shredder. Cube 2 also spent way too much time talking and not enough time being exciting. I don't always have a problem with that, but the dialogue was just so horrible. It made the actors look bad and the characters look worse. I also disliked the bright lighting and each room's white walls. In the original, the varying colors of the walls added to the mood of each scene. But here, it's harder to get an emotional grip for things, and it's tougher to connect with how the characters feel.

On a positive note, the concept behind the movie is neat. It gave the filmmakers carte blanche to mess with our heads and make the movie as weird and psychedelic as possible, and they tried. Norman Orenstein's techno-esque score can be chalked up in the "thumbs-up" column as well. I also thought that hiring Andrzej Sekula as both director and director of photography was a good idea. His background in cinematography (you might have seen his name attached to such movies as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and American Psycho) really helped the movie. The idea of timelines and alternate realities overlapping was a great way for creepy sound effects to work their way into the movie too. Had the rooms been a bit darker (see also: my beef with the wall color), it would have almost been like a haunted house.

In the acting category, I really liked Geraint Wyn Davies as Simon. Even though Simon is built as the villain over the course of the movie, he ended up being the only likable character in the movie. I thought Simon's growing collection of watches and nametags near the end of the movie was a neat twist, but that's just me. The rest of the cast was okay with the horrible script, but I absolutely hated the character of Mrs. Paley. I just wanted to reach through my TV screen and smack her around. Mrs. Paley is probably the single worst character I've ever seen in any movie ever, quite possibly worse than Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project. She's that awful.

There's just so much you can do with the concept of people trapped in a maze of cubes, and Cube 2 at least made an attempt. Unfortunately, it tried too hard with too little, and it ultimately came off as being a Sci-Fi Channel Original with a bigger budget (which is odd, considering I first saw it on the Sci-Fi Channel). A lot of the mystery and tension from the original were gone, and the dialogue is crap, but the trippy audio experience and the neat idea behind a "hypercube," as well as having a lunatic you can cheer for, boosts my rating a little. Overall, I'll give Cube 2: Hypercube two stars. Not awful, but nothing that you should beat yourself up over if you miss it.

Final Rating: **

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Way back in 1991, a video store clerk from California wrote and directed his first movie. The movie was the talk of the Sundance Film Festival, it became a cult classic after its 1992 theatrical release, and it made its director one of the hottest underground filmmakers in Hollywood. That director is Quentin Tarantino, and that movie is Reservoir Dogs.

The movie opens on a nondescript diner, with our main characters finishing breakfast and discussing pop music. One analyzes Madonna's "Like A Virgin," claiming that it was all about a sexual veteran who hooks up with a well-endowed man. Another, totally oblivious to the conversation at hand, flips through an old address book trying to put a face to one of the names inside. This quick opening scene introduces us to our cast, then leads into the story itself. Through a series of flashbacks, we get to know Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), and Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino).

The six total strangers have been hired by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his son "Nice Guy Eddie" (Chris Penn) to steal a shipment of diamonds from a local jewelry store. Each have been given their odd codenames with the intention of nobody knowing anyone else's real identity. That way, if any of the thieves are arrested, they'll be unable to implicate their accomplices.

The flashbacks help to fill in the gaps in the main story. From the dialogue, we learn that the diamond heist went bad. An employee pulled the alarm, Blonde started shooting random people, and the cops were on the scene before anyone had time to blink. We learn that Brown is dead from a gunshot to the head, nobody knows what happened to Blue, Pink stashed the diamonds in a safe hiding place, and Orange took a nasty shot to the stomach and has passed out on the floor of an abandoned warehouse that serves as the group's rendezvous point. Pink theorizes that the police had the jewelry store staked out, and that a member of the group is actually an undercover cop. As Pink, White, and Blonde look back at the events that transpired, it becomes more and more evident that Pink's theory just might be right. But which of the six was the mole?

A quasi-remake of one of Tarantino's favorite movies (City on Fire, a 1987 movie from Hong Kong starring Chow Yun-Fat), Reservoir Dogs is the kind of movie that might take multiple viewings to completely get what's going on. That's how it is with most Tarantino movies, so if you're unfamiliar with his work and decide to go rent his movies after reading this review, be warned. Tarantino's trademark out-of-sequence scenes actually help to further the plot here, because if we'd seen them in order, the entire context of the movie would have been changed. The movie would have gone from a "whodunit" to a "when will they find out" movie.

Tarantino's script is well-crafted, yet the characters don't do a whole lot besides stand around and talk. The script's dialogue and character development are frequently entertaining, though those offended by excessive profanity will be turned off. And although it isn't apparent on first viewing, or even on second viewing, Tarantino uses the opening scene in the diner to firmly establish our characters. Mr. White butts heads with Joe, at which point Mr. Blonde offers to shoot White for him. Mr. Pink protests when the others say he should leave a tip for the waitress, after he stubbornly refuses to leave one. Mr. Orange squeals on Mr. Pink when Joe notices the tip is short. Nice Guy Eddie establishes himself as a daddy's boy. All of these characteristics are reprised over the course of the movie. But the idea here is that except for Joe and Mr. Blonde, all of the characters are bluffing. They act tough, but aren't exactly great at handling themselves in desperate situations. The majority of the movie features the group panicking and jumping to conclusions.

The script is supported by the stellar cast. Having a small cast means that those involved have to work harder, and the cast does that and more. Michael Madsen, Harvey Keitel, and Steve Buscemi carry the entire movie on their shoulders. Buscemi is hilarious as the paranoid Mr. Pink, Madsen is both humorous and disturbing as the calm-yet-psycho Mr. Blonde, and Keitel is strong as Mr. White. Having Keitel in a crime drama should be a license to print money, because he's awesome here. Tim Roth is fine as the apprehensive Mr. Orange, and is really good in the scenes that don't require him to be unconscious and covered in blood. Also noteworthy are Lawrence Tierney and Chris Penn, though they don't exactly drive the movie or anything.

Along with the profanity-laden dialogue, people may also may be turned off by the violence. While the majority of the violence is implied, the idea of such carnage is enough to make squeamish members of the audience squirm. Meanwhile, I loved the soundtrack as well. Punctuated by a mock '70s rock station featuring deadpan comedian Stephen Wright as the DJ, the movie has some of the most memorable use of music I've ever seen. Michael Madsen's big scene, in which he tortures a police officer while "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealer's Wheel plays on the radio, is proof enough of that.

Reservoir Dogs is, for all intents and purposes, a low-budget B-movie that viewers will either like or hate. While his work improved with his subsequent movies, It is most definitely fun, though, and it was a great debut for Quentin Tarantino. If you claim to be a Tarantino fan and have yet to see Reservoir Dogs, you owe it to yourself to at least run out and rent a copy of it right now. I'm sure you won't be let down.

Final Rating: ***½

Kill Bill: Volume Two (2004)

We've all seen movies that end in cliffhangers, endings that are essentially advertisements for the next chapter. It happened with the second and third installments of the Back to the Future and Matrix trilogies, and it happened with Quentin Tarantino's would-be epic Kill Bill.

While the Back to the Future and Matrix cliffhangers were intended to be two separate movies from the start, Kill Bill was different. Believing that nobody would want to sit through a four-hour movie, Miramax had Tarantino chop Kill Bill in half, leaving us with Kill Bill: Volume One and Kill Bill: Volume Two. I've already reviewed Volume One, so let's get to Volume Two.

In Volume One, we learn that a group of assassins had crashed a wedding, killing everyone but the pregnant bride (Uma Thurman), who was left in a coma. She awakens four years later, missing her baby and swearing revenge on the five people who attempted to take her life. The bride crossed two names off her hit list in Volume One, and in Volume Two, she hunts the other three: Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Budd (Michael Madsen), and her main target, Bill (David Carradine).

Along with the bride's vengeance, we're also treated to the back story. Via flashbacks, we see what exactly took place at the wedding four years earlier. We also see how the bride prepared for her life as a mercenary-for hire, as Bill delivers her to Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), a harsh sensei who hates white people, Americans, and women. Flashbacks also show us how Elle lost her eye, and how and why the bride decided to abandon her life as an assassin.

Like I mentioned in my review for Volume One, Quentin Tarantino once said Volume One was "kill, kill, kill," and Volume Two was "Bill, Bill, Bill." He was right. While Volume One features two hours of action and violence, Volume Two centers around the intricacies of the relationship between Bill and the bride (whose real name we learn during Volume Two). Despite being one long epic, the two volumes are quite different. Volume One is a high-speed kung fu flick, while Volume Two is a slow-moving spaghetti western, reminiscent of the work of Sergio Leone. In fact, some musical cues from Leone's classic A Fistful of Dollars appear in Volume Two.

While I didn't care too much for Volume Two at first, since I hadn't admittedly seen Volume One yet, it's to grow on me to the point where I actually prefer Volume Two. First off, I really liked the cast, and the way they portrayed their characters. Uma Thurman and David Carradine were absolutely brilliant as the revenge-fueled bride and her intended target Bill, while Daryl Hannah was good as Elle Driver and I really liked Michael Madsen as Budd. The fight choreography is also good, despite the small amount of actual fights.

The final confrontation between the bride and Elle is a sight to behold, as the two practically tear down Budd's run-down shanty of a trailer. I also thought The RZA's score for Volume Two was quite possibly better than Volume One's. No stranger to the "karate western" genre (having scored Forest Whitaker's 1999 movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai), The RZA's score gives the movie the same epic feel as Volume One.

Finally, Tarantino's direction is still wonderful. A sequence in which Budd buries the bride alive is proof of that. Tarantino plays with various styles in the scene, switching between black-and-white and color. He also plays up the claustrophobic confines of the bride's casket, shrinking the screen down from the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio to a smaller 4:3 ratio. Tarantino's script is also excellent. Budd giving the bride the choice of either a flashlight or a shot of Mace is both cringe-worthy and humorous, while a scene where Elle details the dangers of black mamba snakes is wickedly funny. Tarantino's crowning achievement in the dialogue department comes near the end of the movie, when Bill gives his comic book monologue.

When I first saw Volume Two, I probably would have given it three stars on my usual scale. But after having time to ruminate on it, I'll go ahead and give it four stars. However, it should be watched back-to-back with Volume One, or it doesn't have the proper impact that it should. As I said in my review for Volume One, I hope that Miramax will eventually release Kill Bill in its full uncut form. But until them, Kill Bill will be two excellent films instead of one.

Final Rating: ****

Kill Bill: Volume One (2003)

A film's quality can be drastically altered by the enthusiasm of its participants. For example, a movie like Evil Dead 2 might only be sub-par if it weren't for the dedication of those involved both in front of and behind the camera. Such is the case with Quentin Tarantino's energetic homage to spaghetti westerns and '70s kung-fu flicks, Kill Bill. Originally clocking in at somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours, Miramax had Kill Bill halved during post-production, and the results were Kill Bill: Volume One and Kill Bill: Volume Two. Two separate films, released with a six-month interim. This review's gonna cover Volume One, so let's get cracking.

In Volume One, the story is exquisitely simple. When a pregnant female assassin (Uma Thurman) decides to leave her team of fellow mercenaries-for-hire, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or "DiVAS" for short), in order to get married and start a new life, her former crew shows up at the wedding rehearsal and takes out everyone there, including the bride herself. Fortunately for her but unfortunately for her attackers, the bride lives, but remains in a coma.

She awakens four years later, only to discover her child is gone and that a nurse at the hospital (Michael Bowen) has been pimping her comatose body to his friends for 75 bucks a go. She kills the nurse and his latest client, then heads to Japan to meet a legendary maker of swords, Hattoro Hanzi (Sonny Chiba). The bride convinces the long-retired Hanzi to craft her a sword because she has "vermin" to kill, and sets forth with her Hattoro Hanzi steel on a quest to get revenge on the DiVAS and their leader, Bill (David Carradine). Volume One follows the bride as she hunts down the first two names on her hit list: Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu).

In an interview, Quentin Tarantino described Volume One as "kill, kill, kill" and Volume Two is "Bill, Bill, Bill." I think that's a pretty accurate description, because Volume One is all about the action. Since Volume One's share of the plot is so simple (the bride shows up and kills people), it can concentrate entirely on the bride exacting her bloody vengeance on those who tried to kill her. It's a fast-paced, visceral kung-fu movie, no bones about it.

Even though most of the cast doesn't really get to do anything until Volume Two, the acting in Volume One isn't bad at all. Though she spends most of the movie fighting, Uma Thurman is great in the scenes in which she actually gets to play a character. I also really liked Lucy Liu as O-Ren. There should be more "former teenage assassins that become patronizing yakuza bosses that will decapitate you for questioning her" in movies.

Meanwhile, the fight scenes were really enjoyable. The choreography is just mind-blowing, so thumbs up to the stunt guys that put them together. The opening fight between the bride and Vernita is good, yet was improved on in the bride's awesome climactic fights with O-Ren and Gogo Yubari (played by Chiaki Kuriyama).

I also really enjoyed the massive fight with the Crazy 88s, yet I disliked the fact that most of it was in black and white. Even though it worked as a form of censorship (screw you, MPAA!), it also served as an homage to the censorship done when bloody kung-fu movies used to air on television. I personally feel it was an homage that could have been done without. Considering the almost cartoonish nature of the Crazy 88s fight, the MPAA should have allowed at least the majority of the scene to slide. The most graphic violence was animated anyway (the bride's anime-style story about O-Ren's life), so maybe the MPAA should lighten up.

Speaking of the Crazy 88's fight, the makeup effects by KNB EFX are brilliant. I've long been a fan of KNB and their work, and they didn't let me down in Volume One. The score (composed by Wu-Tang Clan member The RZA) is also great, with an oriental sound that enhances the movie in a fine way. Finally, Tarantino's direction is the definition of wonderful. He crafts both volumes in a way that even viewers that aren't fans of the genres that Kill Bill fall into will probably find something enjoyable. All of Tarantino's films are enhanced by their enthusiastic director, and the two volumes of Kill Bill are no exception. Tarantino is probably the biggest movie geek in Hollywood, and the movies he makes obviously show that.

Even though it's the first half of one long film, Volume One is absolutely wonderful as a stand-alone movie. The cast's enthusiastic charm and Tarantino's creativity work wonders, so I'll give Kill Bill: Volume One four stars. While better viewed back-to-back with Volume Two, it's still a good movie that should be seen. My only hope is that one day, Miramax will release both volumes edited back together as they were meant to be seen.

Final Rating: ****

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Q: What do two hitmen, a mob boss and his cocaine-fuled wife, a glowing briefcase, a down-on-his-luck boxer, S&M freaks, dead body cleanup, and a wristwatch have in common?

A: Quentin Tarantino's sophomore project, Pulp Fiction.

After scoring a cult hit in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction would go on to win the coveted "Palme d'Or" award at the Cannes Film Festival, get a bunch of Oscar nominations (including a nomination for Best Picture), and be one of the most celebrated films of the decade. It's one of the most important and influential movies of the 1990s, but is its reputation more hot air than anything?

The film's plot is actually three interweaving stories that follow a related cast of characters in Los Angeles over the course of a few days. The first story, titled "Vincent Vega & Marsellus Wallace's Wife," begins with Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), a pair of hitmen discussing Vincent's recent visit to Amsterdam while heading to an apartment to acquire a briefcase for their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames).

After getting the briefcase and dispatching the guys in the apartment, the story proper begins. It centers around Vincent, who has been asked to show Marsellus's wife Mia (Uma Thurman) a good time while he heads out of town on business. Vincent is understandably nervous, as Jules had told him a story about Marsellus throwing a man from a four-story balcony for merely massaging Mia's feet. Throw in a dance competition at a '50s nostalgia café, Mia mistaking Vincent's stash of heroin for cocaine, and Vincent arguing with his drug dealer (Eric Stoltz) over how to save someone in the middle of a drug overdose, and you've got story one.

The second story, "The Gold Watch," centers around Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), a washed-up boxer that's been ordered to throw a fight by Marsellus. However, Butch decides that he's going to win instead. And win he does, to the point that his opponent actually dies in the center of the ring. Butch, fearing the consequences of both killing his opponent and going against Marsellus's wishes, flees the arena and escapes to a hotel with his airhead French girlfriend Fabienne (Marie de Medeiros).

The next morning, Butch awakens to discover that Fabienne left his prized gold watch, his only memento of his late father, at their apartment. He sneaks back to the apartment, retrieves the watch after a quick shootout with one of Marsellus's goons, then heads back to the hotel. Along the way, he ends up coming face-to-face with Marsellus, and the two brawl into a pawn shop. They couldn't have picked a worse place to fight, because it's at the pawn shop where they encounter two redneck rapists and an S&M freak known only as "The Gimp."

Story three, "The Bonnie Situation," follows, showing what happened between Jules and Vincent retrieving the briefcase and Vincent's ordeal with Mia. They kill the guys in the apartment, pick up the briefcase and Marvin (Phil LaMarr), their informant, then go to meet Marsellus. Unfortunately for Vincent and Jules and very unfortunately for Marvin, Vincent's gun goes off and splatters Marvin's head all over the rear windshield. Vincent and Jules panic, seeking help from Jimmie Demmick (Quentin Tarantino), a former employee of Marsellus that has gotten out of the business.

Jimmie isn't too thrilled with the idea of Jules and Vincent showing up at his house with a dead body, so he pressures them to leave before his wife Bonnie gets home. A few phone calls are made, and Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel) arrives at Jimmie's front door to handle the problem. He instructs Jules and Vincent to clean up the inside of the car, makes a few phone calls, and gets a junkyard to demolish the car (with Marvin in the trunk for good measure) for them. After getting things settled, the two hitmen head to a nearby café for breakfast, where we see an extension of the movie's first scene. Two thieves, calling themselves "Pumpkin" (Tom Roth) and "Honey Bunny" (Amanda Plummer), hold up the café, only to realize they've gotten in way over their heads.

Pulp Fiction is one of my favorite movies, and for good reason. While almost all of the characters are portrayed as unlikable, it's hard not to think some of them are cool. The cast's portrayal of their characters is stellar, and their director is at the top of his game here. John Travolta is phenomenal here as Vincent, the hitman who can get himself into situations that he can't figure out how to get out of on his own. He's sort of like the jewel thieves from Reservoir Dogs. He talks tough, but loses his cool when bad stuff goes down.

Samuel L. Jackson is also wonderful as Vincent's partner-in-crime Jules, the scripture-quoting hitman that can barks orders like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket, yet can calmly and quietly reflect over situations as well. To be totally honest, every actor does his or her job perfectly, and I couldn't ask for better. I actually wasn't too big on the character of Fabienne, but that's not the fault of Marie de Medeiros. I just didn't think Fabienne was all that great of a character.

Also perfect was the script, written by Tarantino and Roger Avery. A lot of the movie's charm is how some of the dialogue and predicaments the characters find themselves in are so outrageous. The non-linear construction of the movie (which has become something of a trademark for Tarantino) is such that you can see the movie a dozen times, and still be surprised by what happens next. The stories all overlap and intersect, but a chronological edit of the movie would destroy the whole flow and feel of the movie. It would probably make even less sense if viewed that way.

As with all of Tarantino's other movies, the soundtrack plays a big factor. Here, the movie is scored with lots of surf music and other old songs. Many of the songs have become connected with the movie in such a way that hearing a particular song from the soundtrack can remind faithful viewers of the scene in which it was featured. In a way, it's like how the Stealer's Wheel song "Stuck In The Middle With You" has become forever attached to the torture scene from Reservoir Dogs. This time, it's numerous songs that have become attached to scenes from the movie.

Many consider Pulp Fiction to be one of the best movies ever made, and I won't disagree. Tarantino's knack for creatively telling crazy, off-beat stories is fully revealed here, and he's seemingly developing the same storytelling reputation that legendary director Orson Welles had at one time. In fact, one could call Pulp Fiction Tarantino's Citizen Kane. The creativity in his movies are light-years beyond other movies, and is at a level most writer/directors never reach throughout their entire careers. So I can't give Pulp Fiction any rating other than five stars. I know it will sound like hyperbole, but if you haven't seen it yet, you should.

Final Rating: *****