Theatrical Review: Skyfall

SKYFALL
2012
Rated PG-13
"Mommy was very bad."

I have to say, I'm not a huge fan of James Bond. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's nothing to the franchise. The iconography is peerless, the tradition legendary, and if there is a single person on earth who can order a vodka martini, "Shaken, not stirred," without feeling like a poseur, I've never met them. Still, as much cultural significance as the films have had, they always seemed kind of corny.

Until, that is, Mr. Daniel Craig took over.

The first time I saw it, I openly declared - much to the horror of many friends and family members - that Casino Royale was not only the best Bond movie, but that Daniel Craig blew even the much revered Sean Connery off the screen. And, despite its many detractors and its chronic case of weak villainy, I still think that - if only for its tone - Quantum of Solace is better than at least 90% of the rest of Mr. Bond's outings. The shift away from the wink-wink, nudge-nudge silliness that had positively strangled the franchise since even before Connery called it quits was such a breath of fresh air that, for the first time in my life, I found myself eagerly awaiting a new James Bond film.

Expectations, as it turns out, were a tad too high.

I had my first inklings the first time I heard Skyfall's eponymous theme song on the radio. Now, I love Adele - I have probably listened to her album 21 at least that many times - so I don't want you to think my dislike of this song stems from some stylistic grudge I bear her. The problem here is that naming the theme song after the movie is a nod back to the bad-old-days of Bond, to songs like Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" (Gah!), Tina Turner's "Goldeneye" (Gah!), and Madonna's "Die Another Day" (Double-Gah!). It represents a step backward to a time which I had dearly hoped lay buried in the past, never to be resurrected.

Sadly, I hoped in vain.

Now let me qualify. I don't want to leave you with the impression that I think Skyfall is a bad movie. It certainly isn't the shameless type of snark-and-schlockfest that the Brosnan Bonds had devolved into by the end. It's just that it's a little too wink-wink, nudge-nudge for my taste.

My biggest complaint is that there is a way to tell a story that goes back to Bond's roots, and this isn't it. The implication here is that - despite the fact that Bond only earned his 00s two films back - he's been doing this forever, and indeed the filmmakers imply that all of the Bond movies happened some time between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. It just doesn't make sense within the rebooted storyline unless you do some serious mental gymnastics. (CLICK HERE for some of the best I've ever seen.) But even if you can pull that off, once we get the winking reveal that Naomie Harris's character makes at the end, the chronology falls apart again. It's just sloppy storytelling for the sake of fan-service, and I simply cannon support that philosophically.

But like I said, it isn't all bad. Despite all of the self indulgent wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more-ing on display, there is still some great action to enjoy here. Also, as anyone who's followed the franchise for any amount of time knows, a great villain covers a multitude of sins, and here we have a truly great villain.

Javier Bardem's demonically affable Raoul Silva may be the greatest Bond villain of all time, and I don't say that lightly. While I have never been a huge Bond fan, Bond villains are among the best in the business of being evil, and Bardem's pitch-perfect performance aside, Silva is complex, well written, and - even at his most diabolical - disturbingly sympathetic character. I'm sure that I will rewatch this movie many times if only to see him strut.

So, despite all my complaints and reservations about 007's future, I liked the movie. Though shameless fan-service and backtracking to the cutesy cleverness of Old Bond kept me from enjoying it wholeheartedly, Bardem's performance and director Sam Mendes's steady hand both manage to make it worth revisiting, even if it isn't up to the standard set by Casino Royale. Still, the film ends with a title card reading, "James Bond will return!" If the drop-off in quality from Casino Royale to this is any indicator of future trends, perhaps it would be best if the filmmakers don't keep that particular promise.

8/10

-GABE

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DVD Review: Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III
1990
Rated R
"There's roadkill all over Texas."

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre isn't my favorite movie, but it's one of the few I consider to be perfect. The movie's scope and execution is so pure that I can't help standing in awe every time I watch it, so much so that just writing about it here makes me want to go watch it again. That being the case, I had it in mind to review all four of the original Texas Chainsaw movies during 31 Days Of Fright. Sadly, being a family man and having a full time job, I just couldn't find the time to pull off a six hour marathon of screams, saws, cannibalism, and cross-dressing, and for some strange reason my wife didn't think it would make a good family movie-night event. Go figure.

Still, I hadn't yet seen the third installment in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre "series" - I put it in quotation marks because, for the life of me, I can't seem to find the logical chain of events that connects the third and fourth films to the first two - and I had shelled out four hard-earned dollars to buy it, so I decided to give it its own review, shorn of prequels and sequels. Considering its position within a "series," this might not be appropriate, but watching it as a standalone movie might actually have put it in the best possible light.

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III - despite the claims of its theatrical trailer - isn't where the real terror begins. That's not to say it isn't scary. The movie definitely has its share of chills and jumps, but few movies can compare to the sheer horror of the first film. I'm sorry to have to say it, but this movie is not among them.

If the filmmakers had just called the movie Leatherface, and left off the subtitle, I would have said that this was the first (and least) remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The plot is basically the same, though there are decidedly fewer victims lined up at the get-go, and the film adds nothing - apart from a rather flashy new chainsaw - to the mythology of Leatherface and his twisted family. I'm not saying it's a bad movie, but it's a step backwards. Though decidedly nowhere near as good as the first, at least The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 had the virtue of going to new places and trying new things. This one is basically just more of the same, only not as well done.

It was neat to see Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings) as the sadistic ladies man "Tex," and Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) in the stereotype-shattering role of a gun-wielding survivalist. Sadly, Ken's is the only character here who manages to dodge the stereotype bullet. I won't spoil the ending (though, if you watch it on DVD, the menu spoils it for you), but despite the "Don't mess with Texas" slogans that bookend the movie, it seems like this is exactly what the filmmakers were trying to do. As I ejected the disc, I couldn't help feeling that the writer and/or the director were taking great pains to lump an entire state in with Leatherface and his creepy relatives; as if all of Texas was one big, inbred family working to cover up a great cannibalistic conspiracy. Much like a kiss from Leatherface, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

In the end, I didn't dislike the movie. I just felt that it seemed like a very thinly veiled attack on an entire state, and that it didn't hold up very well as a successor to the Texas Chainsaw dynasty. Taken on its own, it's okay, but if you're looking for some real scares, go back to the original. The saw may be family, but this member of the family is showing some recessive traits.



6/10

-GABE

Theatrical Trailer:

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The Man With The Iron Fists - Quick Trip and Full Review

Sorry these took so long to get posted to the blog. It's been that sort of month.

RTM's Quick Trip Review



RTM's Full Review

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31 Days of Fright, Day 31: Lennon and Loaf review Halloween

In the final installment of our 31 Days of Fright series, we dig back into the RTM archives to bring you our failed television pilot that would, nearly 35 years later, become Driveway Video Discussions.

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31 Days of Fright, Day 30: 30 Days of Night

Welcome to day 30 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe closes out the month with...

30 DAYS OF NIGHT
2007
Rated R

Vampires are not romantic.

Look, it’s not like I don’t get it. The whole concept of the vampire is very sexual in nature, what with the exchange of bodily fluids and all the neck-play involved. Obviously there is just naturally going to be a certain level of sexuality involved in any vampire story, but quite frankly, I’m sick to death of sexy vampires. Vampirism isn’t sexy, it’s just sexual. Personally, I blame Bella Lugosi for the confusion.

Count Dracula – at least as imagined by Tod Browning, via Mr. Lugosi – was a seducer. Seduction is sexy. It can even be romantic. I get that. The problem is that, at its core, the act of vampirism isn’t romance, it’s rape. It isn’t the wooing of a consenting partner into a mutual act, it’s taking by force and leaving the victim as a shell of what they once were. It isn’t civilized and seductive, its brutal and animalic.

That’s what I like about the vampires in 30 Days of Night. They are ugly and brutal and merciless. They’re cunning, but cunning isn’t a mark of humanity, it’s the mark of a predator. The creatures that descend upon Barrow, Alaska in David Slade’s adaptation of the Steve Niles/Ben Templesmith comic are anything but sexy, which is exactly how it should be.

The story – for those of you who don’t already know – is that a group of vampires arrives in Barrow, Alaska just in time for the month-long darkness that leaves the town essentially cut off from the rest of the world. The vampires are preceded by a Stranger (Ben Foster) who sneaks around town destroying anything that could be used to communicate with the outside world – cell phones, sled dogs, helicopters, you get the idea – in preparation for the invasion. I won’t give away any plot points beyond that, except to say that what follows is a full fledged blood-bath of Biblical proportions, and that only a small handful of the town’s residents survives to drive the story – and the conflict – forward.

I’ve heard from some that this movie isn’t faithful enough to the comic series, and I can’t really argue, as I’ve never read it. If you have read it and you’re the type of person who demands absolute loyalty to a movie’s source material, I guess you might be disappointed. Personally, I’ve always said that every story should be judged solely on its own merit, and not upon how it compares to what came before or what comes after. I really don’t care how faithful it is to the comic series. This movie is scary, intriguing, engaging, and – most of all – still as gripping as ever after the fifth viewing. If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, by all means, feel free to give it a pass.

I’m not saying the movie is without its flaws. There’s a certain level of illogic underlying the whole thing. I won’t get into specifics, as it might spoil certain plot points, but it should suffice to say that the motives and actions of certain characters don’t always make the most sense. Still, even having had the logical flaws pointed out to me, I just can’t bring myself to give a crap about them once the story gets rolling. Perhaps I have an overactive suspension-of-disbelief muscle, but the whole thing still works fine for me.

So there you have it. As I said in my Nosferatu review (CLICK HERE for that), vampires were my first horror love. The vampire sub-genre as a whole has been pretty disappointing in recent years, but vampires are a resilient species, and I don’t believe we’ve yet seen the last good story they have to offer. In fact, if movies like 30 Days of Night are any indicator, I think they've still got some delightful tricks up their sleeves. Am I being overly optimistic? Maybe, but what can I say? I guess I’m a romantic.

8/10

-GABE


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31 days of Fright, Day 29: The Omen

Welcome to day 29 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, something frightening happened to Jonathan, he thought about it, and it turns out it was...

THE OMEN
1976
Rated R

I was rather stuck on what movie to review for today. Hundreds of movies were rocking around in my brain, begging to be chosen, when suddenly, Gabe mentioned that neither of us had done a review of an antichrist movie. So why not go with quite possibly the scariest one: The (original) Omen. It’s been about 9 years or so since I’ve seen this movie (although I have seen the remake quite recently) and even today it’s easy to remember why this film scared me half to death. It really is genuinely that scary. It could just be nostalgia talking, but this movie takes me back to my childish self, before I became so jaded and calloused, and that’s saying something.

It all starts with the newborn son of a couple dying shortly after being born. The husband is convinced by a priest to substitute the child with a baby born recently whose mother died right after she had him. He agrees without telling his wife, because he’s worried that she’d lose her mind if she found out. They happily decide to name the child Damien. And then shit gets weird (to say the least).

A lot of people today have either seen the original, the remake, or read the books, so many of you know what happens next. But, for the sake of people who haven’t experienced the grisly glory that is The Omen, I’ll stop there with my description. There are too many surprises and out-of-nowhere violence to go any further. And really, that’s one of the things that make this movie great. It’s creepy on two levels. There’s an almost timid, yet horribly unnerving, creepiness about Damien and the way he looks and talks (or doesn’t) and moves, and then there’s the in-your-face gore and mayhem throughout the movie (and trust me, there’s a lot of it). They balance so well, you have to give props to the director for pulling it off. It really isn’t easy to make a good horror movie that doesn’t feel one-note, because so many people stick to a set structure. This movie re-wrote said structure.

And it doesn’t stop there. The acting in this movie is superb, but I did have a few problems with how overly expository the dialogue was, but that’s a problem with the time period, not the writer (see my Exorcist review for more on this by CLICKING HERE). Also, they had the writer of the novel write the screenplay. I have no way to express how much I love when this happens. A lot of authors usually don’t write their own screenplays simply because scripts are an entirely different style of storytelling than books. There’s almost no room for description in a screenplay, and everything has to move a lot faster, and mostly through dialogue. There have been several flubs from authors who really just didn’t know how to adapt their own work, but in this case, it worked marvelously. David Seltzer (the author of both the book and the film) really kept to the story he wanted to tell in both formats, and it comes though extremely well. The music only adds to this. It’s ominous and creepy, yet strangely happy and upbeat at certain parts. It almost contradicts itself, but that really makes the viewer more aware of the terror right in front of them.

If you’re sick of the same-old and the mundane, I highly suggest giving this movie a try. It’s genuinely creepy and a really fun ride. It’s hard to find someone who has seen this movie and really didn’t like it, and it’s actually scary, much unlike all these crazy Japanese remakes and PG-13 horror made specifically to pander to middle-school kids. But if you’re curious, watch it for yourself and see, it scared me (and still does) and it’s a wonderfully made film, for you film buffs out there. So remember, “If something frightening happens to you today, think about it. It may be... The Omen”

9.5/10

-JONATHAN



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31 Days of Fright, Day 28: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

Welcome to day 28 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe unearths...

NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR
1922
Not Rated

I'm not sure if I've already told you this, but vampires were my first horror love. I watched Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys when I was eight, and fell immediately head-over-heels. In the intervening years, I have watched vampire movie after vampire movie, struggling through days and even weeks worth of some of the worst stories ever captured on film, always hopeful that just around the next bend in the aisle at the video store, the greatest vampire film of all time could be waiting for me.

Then came adulthood and the slow crumbling of all my vampiric hopes and dreams. Blade. Underworld. Twilight. Vampires may live forever, and maybe I'm just getting too old, but this new generation sucks.

But fear not, fellow vampire hunters. It turns out there is yet hope in the halls of the dead, but it's not a hope for the future. As any vampire worth his grave dust knows, hope is a thing of the past.

I've always been an unabashed lover of vampire nostalgia. The Lost Boys will forever be my own, personal blood and gold standard, but I also take great joy in finding and sharing other classics from my childhood, like Fright Night, Vampire Hunter D, The Omega Man, and Near Dark. If the recent past holds such a treasure trove of vampire goodness - and there are quite a few that I haven't even discovered yet - what if I went back further? What if I went all the way back to the foundations of vampire cinema, to the godfather of them all?

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror wasn't the first vampire movie ever made, but it is certainly the most immortal. When it was discovered that F.W. Murnau had basically adapted Bram Stoker's Dracula to the big screen without first securing the rights, he was ordered by the courts to destroy all known copies of the film, and - I'm sure, to the horror of film lovers everywhere - he complied. Still, rogue prints of the film survived, hiding in dark corners of the globe until the sun of copyrights set and they could emerge to claim their rightful place at the head of the bloody feast table known as Vampire Cinema.

But, I can hear you ask, is it merely the cold corpse of a movie, silently convalescing in the aged crypts of Castle Vampire, unable to contend with its leaner, lither, more terrifying offspring? Well, yes and no.

Nosferatu is definitely showing its age. At ninety, one can hardly expect the polish and sparkle (ugh) of a modern vampire movie. But is that an entirely bad thing? Yes, the cinematography is archaic to the point of being stilted and most of the movie is so over-acted that it would make Adam Sandler blush, but the real question is, Does it detract from or add to the experience? For my money, the archaic acting and cinematography only serve to draw me more deeply into the time period in which the story is set. I always find it not just slightly disconcerting when I'm watching a movie set in the nineteenth century, only to find that the characters speak like modern teenagers. Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films may have been entertaining, but I can assure you they will never get a second viewing out of me.

And there is Nosferatu's contribution to the mythology of the vampire in general to consider. Most sources seem to agree that Nosferatu is the first story in which sunlight killed a vampire. No small matter, that, as the idea now permeates vampire mythology so fully that writers and filmmakers have to set aside extra time in their stories to refute it before they can move forward with a tale in which sunlight won't kill a vampire. It's a significant addition to vampire lore, and this movie brought it to the table first.

Of course, I would be remiss in my duties as your personal film taster if I did not mention the one thing that makes Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror truly one of the greatest moments in the history of the genre, which is the immortal performance of Max Schreck. His turn as the grotesque Count Orlock is so good - especially by the standards of that era - that there has actually been speculation - upon which 2000's Shadow of the Vampire was based - that he wasn't really an actor at all, but an actual vampire hired by director F.W. Murnau to play in the movie. It sounds absurd, but when you watch the movie and see not only the sinister quality of Schreck's performance, but the very genuine looking fear in the eyes of actor Gustav von Wangenheim - an actor who, for most of the movie, overacts with such gusto as to make Jerry Lewis look subtle - I would be surprised if you didn't find yourself at least questioning whether such a thing might not be possible.

Sadly, it's not all blood roses and funerary incense. Most of the film's original score was lost decades ago, and with the exception of the scenes during the time and immediately after Count Orlock is on the ship, the soundtrack Kino Video either found or commissioned for the movie was easily the most headache-inducing thing I've had to endure cinematically since Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter's stampede scene. It completely ruined the sinister atmosphere Murnau had worked so hard to create. I felt like I was watching a great silent horror movie while someone watched Beyond The Mind's Eye on a TV right next to me. What a way to drive a stake through the heart of one of cinema's greatest moments.

No, this isn't a horror movie that will pack teenagers into a theater and sell millions of dollars worth of tie-in merchandising. Yes, the soundtrack belongs on a tech demo video from 1993. Yes, this film is archaic and slow and overacted, but for my money, it's also more immersive than five Twilight movies, more atmospheric than four Underworld movies, and more terrifying than three Blade movies. It's old and stiff and of another time, but it's not dead. It still stalks the darkened corridors of our collective cinematic mind, it still seeks new victims to feed its dark existence, and it is still very, very dangerous.

9/10

-GABE


Thanks for riding along! Be sure to click on the banner below to check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch our videos, "like" them, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment or a question, or even suggest a movie for future review. You can also check us out on Facebook (CLICK HERE) and Twitter (CLICK HERE). And don't forget to check back every day in October for a new installment in our 31 Days of Fright!

31 Days of Fright, Day 27: The Exorcist

Welcome to day 27 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Jonathan takes a trip down memory lane with...

THE EXORCIST
1973
Rated R

The first time I saw this movie, it scared the hell out of me. It was partly because of the movie itself (and the fact that I was about 12) but mostly it was the way in which I saw it. The scenario is this: I was staying at a friend’s house whose mother was notorious in our group for sleepwalking. My friend was asleep and so was his mother, and I was busy trying to navigate a Nintendo 64 game. Suddenly, the door to my friend’s mom’s room opened. She came out groggily, and I could almost immediately tell she was asleep (this sort of thing happened quite a bit). She wandered around for a few minutes, then came stumbling over to my game and suddenly shut it off. Then she promptly went back to bed. Guess what was on TV when she turned it off? That’s right, The Exorcist. I was far too scared to get up and turn it off, so I sat through the whole thing. I’ve never been the same again.

I’ve watched this film about thirty times since that first viewing, and I can see why I was so deathly afraid. I know it will never hold that same intense feeling of fright it did when I first saw it, but there are certain parts that still chill me to the bone. And now that we have the new uncut edition (which is the version I watched for this review) we have a chance to experience parts of it for the first time. That was really exciting for me. This film is sort of the genesis of my horror movie experience, and it remains a classic in the genre as well as my own life, for many reasons.

The direction is spectacular. Every scene has obviously had quite a bit of care put into it, because they all cut extremely deep. And, in my opinion, any director who can get a child to act that insane and scary deserves a ton of recognition. I also highly enjoyed the writing. While some of it seems very overly expository, it gets the story across well and conveys the horror that everyone involved is feeling. The problems with the dialogue don’t seem like problems in writing. It all feels very natural. I think the problems are with the way people spoke during that time period: a little clunkily, and with too much explanation.

Despite all its good points, there were a couple of things that didn’t really impress me, the biggest of which is how slowly the story moves. Especially in the extended cut. It crawls at a snail’s pace for quite a while, and I can see why I remember almost nothing at all about certain parts of it from when I was young. They’re easy to simply ignore. But when it picks up, it really picks up. It almost goes nowhere at all for an hour, then it goes everywhere all at once, in the best way possible. There’s really not a whole lot that takes you out of this movie that can’t be blamed on the time period rather than the filmmakers themselves.

In short, this is a near perfect horror movie, not because it is a classic and not because everybody’s heard of it, but because it’s genuinely scary and the story is truly involving. The characters are acted almost perfectly, and it’s directed with such vision that one can’t help but appreciate the care put into it. The filmmakers obviously approached this film with one goal in mind: to scare the pants off anyone who watches it. They’ve accomplished that, and still do almost forty years later.

9.5/10

-JONATHAN


Thanks for riding along! Be sure to click on the banner below to check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch our videos, "like" them, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment or a question, or even suggest a movie for future review. You can also check us out on Facebook (CLICK HERE) and Twitter (CLICK HERE). And don't forget to check back every day in October for a new installment in our 31 Days of Fright!

31 Days of Fright, Day 25: The Cabin in the Woods

Welcome to day 25 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Jonathan gets a little stoner vindication when he visits...

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
2012
Rated R

My first instinct here is to regurgitate information I’ve given all of you a million times before. Babble about remakes, adaptations, sequels, and the like, but I’m going to fight that urge. If any of you are faithful readers, you already know my opinion on this subject. What it all comes down to is originality. That’s really what I look for in a horror movie, considering so many of them are exactly the same. One thing I will say about this movie, it has a ridiculous abundance of that.

It follows a group of college kids going out to a lake cabin (super cliché, I know) to simply have a good time, dance, and drink. Sound familiar? Just you wait. They are almost immediately attacked by bloodthirsty monsters, as we’d all expect. But then something interesting happens. We, the viewers, are introduced to a secret society controlling every move and every action in the house. That’s where things get really messed up.

Unfortunately, though I’d like to go deeper into detail, any more would take so much away from the impact the film has. It is such a breath of fresh air in the horror genre as of late, despite its clinging desperately to stereotypes. It’s The Truman Show meets Scream, secret filmmaking paired with hilarious horror satire. These are the types of movies that truly hold my interest and force me to get lost in the illusion, and isn’t that what we’re all looking for? But I must say, amidst all the cheesy humor and cliché storyline, my favorite part was the fact that the stoner was the smartest one of the group. It’s about time, Hollywood!

There are a few things that didn’t sit well with me. That acting left something to be desired (even though sometimes it was supposed to be bad) and the storyline became really farfetched and convoluted out of nowhere. My least favorite part of this movie, however, is the last two seconds. I absolutely hated the last two seconds, and I firmly believe this film would have been improved tenfold by the exclusion of it.

But there is so much good about this film, it’s hard to hold any of that against them. From the perfectly pin-pointed stereotypical characters (acted very well in some points) to the deep layers of satire and comedy, this one is definitely one to see. I have a feeling that there will be no in-betweeners for this movie, it will be either a love or hate relationship. And that’s ok with me, I love it!

8/10

-JONATHAN


Thanks for riding along! Be sure to click on the banner below to check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch our videos, "like" them, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment or a question, or even suggest a movie for future review. You can also check us out on Facebook (CLICK HERE) and Twitter (CLICK HERE). And don't forget to check back every day in October for a new installment in our 31 Days of Fright!

31 Days of Fright, Day 24: The Woman

Welcome to day 24 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe goes to extremes with...

THE WOMAN
2011
Rated R

This ain't no date movie. Unless, of course, the story of a family who captures a feral woman in the wild, chains her up in their cellar, and proceeds to collectively "civilize" her sounds like a date movie. If you meet someone who thinks this does sound like a date movie, you should probably either run like hell, or marry them immediately, depending on your particular persuasion. That actually sums this movie up nicely.

I first heard of Lucky McKee's The Woman shortly after its film festival premier (the name of the festival escapes me, but it may have been Sundance), because a guy in the audience caused quite a ruckus when - just after the movie ended - he stood up in his chair and started shouting his revulsion at the movie's degradation of women. I can't argue that the women in the movie are literally treated like animals, but that's clearly not the point of the story, and I have to wonder if the whole thing wasn't just a stunt pulled by the filmmakers to garner some press for a movie that, in all likelihood, would never have made it onto most people's radars.

Don't take that to mean that I think The Woman is a bad movie. And when I say bad, I'm not referring to morality. While the pure, brutal misogyny of the male lead is clearly going to be too much for even some dedicated horror fans, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about filmmaking. Director Lucky McKee has quite a following - albeit, of the cult variety - and not without reason. He's clearly got a vision, and though there were many aspects of the movie I didn't like, I did feel that it was effective and that its scope became clear by the end.

The Woman is a movie that deals in extremes. Extreme misogyny, extreme submissiveness, extreme abuse, extreme retribution. This is both its strength and weakness. The extremities of the situation do make sympathetic characters even more sympathetic and the ending - which you can see coming as soon as you learn the setup - that much more satisfying, but the trouble is that the extremes carry beyond the story and into the performances. There is no nuance on display here, no subtle characterization. All of the characters are cartoons, and - at least for the first half of the movie - it's quite off-putting.

My biggest hangup with this film is that I just can't picture a world in which the titular Woman could even exist. When we first meet her, though her clothing is ragged and filthy, it's clearly manufactured, and she's carrying a knife straight out of an Eddie Bauer catalogue. So she's getting her supplies from somewhere, and given her apparent nature, I'm guessing the people she's getting them from aren't surviving to tell the tale. So, if people are going missing in her neck of the woods, and if she's so lackadaisical about keeping hidden that a guy who thinks smoking while hunting is going to help him bag a deer could happen upon her and go unnoticed, why hasn't she been caught already? I know that this is a moment where I should just suspend my disbelief and accept it as a given for the sake of the story, but it bugged me the whole time I was watching.

In the end, though the setup of the movie bothered me and I felt the performances were one-dimensional, there is something to be said for a movie that can seriously disturb me at this point in my horror fandom. Lucky McKee is a talented storyteller, though I think he should look into finding actors who can do more than the hundred-yard stare to indicate inner turmoil. Though I hated elements, I didn't hate the movie as a whole, and though I did see everything coming a mile away, it still managed to shock. It ain't perfect, but it ain't bad. Just don't watch it on date night.

6.5/10

-GABE


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You asked for a video, you got an apology.

Hello all you persnickety passengers and video voyeurs! Well, looks like this week's video was a bit of a bust. Gabe offers his sincerest apologies, and invites you to read the written review of the movie we screwed-up by clicking HERE. We promise to do better next time!





Thanks for riding along! Be sure to click on the banner below to check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch our videos, "like" them, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment or a question, and don't forget to keep checking back every day in October for more 31 Days of Fright!

31 Days of Fright, Day 23: Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except

Welcome to day 23 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe takes stalking to a new level of laziness with...

THOU SHALT NOT KILL... EXCEPT
1985
Not Rated

I have a love/hate relationship with movie trailers. I’ve been burned far too many times to ever fully trust them, and I genuinely think that I should be able to sue movie studios for releasing trailers that spoil the films they’re advertising. However, if it weren’t for trailers, I might never have discovered so many of the movies I’ve come to cherish so much.

Seven years ago, a movie called The Man With The Screaming Brain was released, and I was there. I’m up for just about anything Bruce Campbell related, and he not only starred in this movie, but wrote and directed it as well. Needless to say, I didn’t need to be convinced. I bought it the day it was released.

In addition to a surprisingly good movie (surprisingly, because it was released by The SyFy Channel, back when they were The Sci-Fi Channel), I saw a trailer for a movie I had never heard of but became instantly infatuated with: Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except. The ellipses alone would have been enough to sell me on this flick, but it actually looked pretty cool, in a so-bad-it’s-good kinda way.

The movie tells the story of a wounded Vietnam vet who survives the war only to find himself at war with the deranged, murderous cult that rolls into his rural town and begins laying waste to its inhabitants - not the least of whom is his girlfriend and her father.

I went straight to my local video store (yeah, we still had one back in’05, but its days were numbered), only to find that they didn’t carry it. I checked at Hollywood Video and Blockbuster too (they stuck around a little longer, but they’re all gone now), but it was a fool’s errand. Those guys never did have a decent selection.

Eventually I stopped looking. I got Netflix not too long after that, but they didn't have a copy at the time, so Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except just sort of got forgotten in the constant shuffle of newly discovered movies.

Cut to this week. I was at the last video store in town (not a proper “video store” at all, really – one of those “entertainment megastores” with a rental section) with my Road To The Movies co-host, Jonathan, when we happened across a copy of Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except, which looked to have only recently been released on Blu-Ray. Needless to say, after a short recounting of my experience trying to find the movie, and after a quick look at the case, we had to see it.

We were not disappointed.

It was everything I’d hoped for. Violent, gory, corny, absurd, funny, schlocky, over-the-top – this movie has it all. I’m a dedicated fan of bad movies, and this is one bad movie that hits on all cylinders. The acting makes porn look like The Royal Shakespeare Theater. The shameless use of stock footage would have made Ed Wood proud. Sam Raimi’s performance as the hippy cult-leader – yes, that Sam Raimi – is so grotesque, so excessive, so hilarious that it’s worth the price of admission alone.

I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, as watching it for the first time is truly an unforgettable experience, but I will say that if you’re a fan of insanity like The Evil Dead trilogy or wonderful schlock like Troll 2, then this is the Vietnam movie you’ve been waiting for. Your best bet is to get a crowd of like-minded friends together, crack some brews, and enjoy.

I suppose could be room for debate in some people's minds as to whether or not this is a horror movie at all, but not in mine. We have characters we care about (or, at least, we're meant to care about) put in truly horrifying situations by some really horrible people who commit some extremely horrifying acts (well, acts that would be horrifying if every scene weren't so absurdly over-the-top). If this had been done seriously and had been helmed by a competent director, it would be one deeply disturbing piece of cinema. And I know that there are people who claim movies like this and movies like The Devil's Rejects or Silence of the Lambs aren't horror, but all I can think to say to someone that jaded is, If stuff like that doesn't horrify you, you should probably seek professional help immediately.

Like I said before, I love bad movies. I’m actually trying to start a local bad movie festival. This one is a prime candidate; so good at being bad that it’s downright awesome.

8/10

-GABE


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31 Days of Fright, Day 22: Tucker & Dale vs Evil

Welcome to day 22 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Jonathan can't find anything but good things to say about...

TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL
2010
Rated R

Let me start off by saying this movie is phenomenal. I know that’s a bold statement, and a bold way to start a review, but it really is that good. It’s your classic hillbilly horror story turned on its ear (with hilarious results). It follows the hillbillies, rather than the college campers, who happen to be two normal guys making an innocent trip to restore an old lake cabin together. Once there, they go fishing and witness one of the college kids falling off a rock and nearly drowning. They save her, but all her college buddies see is their friend getting taken away into dark territory by two weird men.

I won’t go any further into the plot, because that’s the point where things get awesome… in a BIG way. It’s hard to call this movie "horror" because it’s so damn funny, but it also takes it all the way. It’s gory, violent, funny, weird… everything I want in my horror. The story is great too, as is the (sometimes hilariously ridiculous) dialogue, which is, in my opinion, flawlessly written. The characters were absolutely off the wall and extremely cliché (in a great way) but the hillbillies were deep and sensitive. While the writing was amazing, the acting was even better. Each character was based on a specific type of person, and all the actors pulled them off perfectly. There is little room for error when making a movie that completely exposes the ridiculousness of a certain genre, and this movie did it perfectly.

This is normally where I’d talk about what I didn’t like about the movie. But, honestly, there really isn’t all that much to dislike. I won’t go too into detail because of spoilers, but the end does get a little convoluted and starts to drag, but that really fits in with the genre they’re parodying. Actually, all the things I didn’t like I also don’t like about other movies in the genre. Obviously, I don’t have much of anything but good to say about this movie. You might not want to watch it if you’re uncomfortable with blood and guts (and a lot of it) or a ton of swearing, but if you’re a horror, action, or comedy fan, this is one to watch. I would go so far as to say it’s an instant classic among horror and comedy buffs alike.

10/10

-JONATHAN


Thanks for riding along! Be sure to click on the banner below to check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch our videos, "like" them, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment or a question, or even suggest a movie for future review. You can also check us out on Facebook (CLICK HERE) and Twitter (CLICK HERE). And don't forget to check back every day in October for a new installment in our 31 Days of Fright!