I love Westerns. I love great revenge films. I love good comic book adaptations. “Jonah Hex” is neither. In fact it almost aspires to not be a good movie at every single turn that seems almost calculated meticulously to suck the life out of its audience as much as humanly possible. From the casting of Megan Fox as a heroine, Will Arnett as a villain, and the conscious avoidance of the source material’s gritty and bleak Western tone, “Jonah Hex” is an abomination, a sheer testament to the waste of time, money, and resources comic book adaptations can be.
Tag Archives: Supernatural
The Uncanny Boris Karloff
I would love to be one of those movie geeks who explain that the first time they saw a Hollywood legend like Boris Karloff was in a movie only five people have seen for years, and I explain the details of the plot and make you feel bad for not having watched it and give you some impression of my knowledge of movies because you have yet to see it or can’t even find it. But no. My first time ever coming close to Boris Karloff’s insane greatness was during “The Grinch That Stole Christmas.” Yes, it was “The Grinch,” a half hour animated movie animated by Chuck Jones that played on television every single year. Not very impressive? I don’t care.
Avalon High (2010)
So why am I reviewing a movie adapted from a teen book I’ve never read in to a film on a channel meant for preteens starring a bunch of actors I’ve never heard of before? Well, because admittedly, “Avalon High” really peaked my interest while changing the channel (and uh… staying on… “Wizards of Waverly Place for a half hour, don’t judge me) and I really had to see what kind of movie “Avalon High” was. As a kid in middle school I was absolutely enamored with the legend of King Arthur and always found the myths and folklore to be absolutely amazing. From the lady in the lake, Excalibur, Merlin, the round table, Mordrid. Camelot, the love triangle of Arthur, his best friend Lancelot, and Guinevere, it’s all rather entertaining and compelling to research, and watching “Avalon High” I realized if I was thirteen this movie would have been watched by me thirty times a day.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): DVD/Blu-Ray Combo Pack
While scouring reviews for “Nightmare,” I read a comment online that suggested the reason why Samuel Bayer’s absolutely lethargic lazy remake of the horror classic is so bad is because he wasn’t recruited by Platinum Dunes to re-imagine this world, but to simply lens it for them. And that’s an apt observation when you’ve managed to sit down and actually watch Platinum Dunes latest cinematic slap to the face of movie goers and horror lovers everywhere. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” 2010 is possibly one of the worst remakes of all time, it’s a lazy, unimaginative, nonsensical, and absolutely tedious piece of hogwash that doesn’t try to do anything new with the material before it, nor does it re- invent much, but instead merely goes through the motions as a routine horror affair focused on squeezing in as much shocks as possible and moving on to the next scene.
Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998)
When it comes to hardcore well versed Scooby Doo Fans… we’re not one of them. But for a brief (oh so brief) period in the late nineties, Hanna Barbera thought it’d be a good idea before the live action movie to feature the Scoobies solving actual paranormal cases that they presumed were originally just scams and con jobs. “Zombie Island” is one of the best (and few) examples of Scooby-Doo done well and correctly with a case the entire gang gets in on that is creepy and actually risks their lives, in the end. With animation I’m never above being experimental, and my faith in “Zombie Island” was rewarded with a wicked and creepy little yarn about the Mystery Machine group re-uniting after a long stretch on their own.
Second Coming (2008)
I honestly don’t even feel good calling this a horror movie, but I guess at the end of the day it is. “Second Coming” is a movie I’d looked forward to watching since I received it and I’m saddened that it didn’t meet my expectations at all. In fact it’s so far below my expectations I was pretty crushed to finish it. “Second Coming” could very well be an engrossing supernatural crime thriller, but in the end it’s really just a glorified television melodrama with a supernatural angle that doesn’t even make good on its tagline of a revenge tale.
Our Favorite Modern Final Girls
Today’s Final Girls are much more than just virginal screaming crying women who run through the woods and fall to the ground waiting for the killer or monster to eat them whole while their men come to the rescue. Today’s final girls have to be tough, they have to be independent, and surely enough they have to be fierce, and the final girl has been refined over the years from the prey to the predator. Some of our favorite modern final girls we’re putting in this list are women we considered listing as scream queens, but while they do fit the mold of scream queens, they do much more than just scream and run. They fight back, they cause trouble, and surely enough they kick enormous amounts of ass, regardless of whether they live to see the end of the movie. The title of final girl was once just a tagline to best describe the final female character of the horror movie that ended up either living to see the end until a grizzly fate, or fight back enough to see a few sequels until the writers got sick of her and moved on to someone younger.
Folks like Heather Langenkamp, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Adrienne King made famous the device which was then refined and re-worked with Sigourney Weaver in “Alien” who was very much a final girl but did much more than run away from the monster screaming and crying. Women like Debbie Rochon turned the formula from there on in and especially Wes Craven decided to turn the final girl in to something of a heroine as we saw in Neve Campbell, then Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Sarah Polley. These are only a few of the modern Final Girls you should be looking out for, and some you’ve likely grown to adore over the years, and we pay homage to the final girls of the new millennium adding a new dimension to what was once considered a laughable plot device for a horror film.
Final Girls and scream queens are not all meant for mainstream success. Like directors of the genre, they’re meant to be on the fringes of the cinema circle like Linnea Quigley and Debbie Rochon, always playing to the crowd and supplying a reason for the killer or evil menace to stomp around and seek victims in their warpaths. Modern Final Girls are much more than panty wastes. They’re heroines. They’re independence. And they fight back against the male dominant monster with as much gusto as possible. What with the affordability of filmmaking becoming easier and easier over the years and new directors popping up every minute to show us their chops, there’s a good chance we have many more scream queens and final girls waiting in the wings to show us their screeches and combat skills. These are only a few we avidly admire and root for.