Bad movie with a good hook.

Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman.

Say it five times into a mirror and Candyman appears to kill you. Unless you’re Virginia Madsen.

Madsen is Helen, doing a thesis on urban legends. She is told the Candyman myth – of the tall, black, gravel-voiced phastasm, with a hook for a hand and a pimpin’ longcoat, who disembowels you upon summoning him – then recites his name into a mirror to debunk it.

Well, Candyman (Tony Todd) does, in fact, appear much later (no reason given for the delay – maybe it’s a black thing? D’oh!), yet Helen keeps escaping his flesh-stained hook-hand. Because he’s hot for her flat white booty it seems. The filmmakers (writer Clive Barker and director Bernard Rose) try to conjure the same sentiment as BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA where Gary Oldman’s Count “crossed oceans of time to find you,” as we see Helen’s visage in some old painting in Candy’s dungeon… but the concept is completely mismanaged in this mediocre production. And Tony Todd ain’t no Gary Oldman.

Considering that Barker co-wrote this screenplay with director Rose, from his own short story The Forbidden, it’s not transferring well to the screen. Yet the movie adds more hook to the story (see what I did there?), like the iconic ‘saying the name 5 times,’ and ‘in front of a mirror,’ with backstory added that Candyman was the son of a slave and a painter.

And that was the greatest gambit that endeared CANDYMAN to African-Americans in the United States. The story was originally set in Liverpool, but Rose envisioned it in Chicago, so based it in the real life Cabrini-Green housing projects, with a backstory of Candyman’s first victim being named Ruthie Jean (inspired by real life victim Ruthie Mae McCoy, killed in a Chicago housing project when her killer entered through the back of her bathroom’s medicine cabinet – which is how the ‘mirror’ element was inspired).

So black viewers identified with this black supernatural villain (especially with him trying to nut a blonde), and the movie has become somewhat iconic. In retrospect, it looks dated; produced around the same time as DARKMAN (1990), it shares a kind of insipid color palette and the residue of 80’s modality. Also, Madsen’s constant smoking is making me hoik. (She sits at her desk, lights up a cig, glass of wine – lights up a cig, giving a report to the police with her eye bludgeoned – lights up a cig. It’s more horrifying than the Candyman.) And the efx are chromakey, especially an opening shot of the city swarmed by bees, which only added cheapness to the opening unnecessarily.

Helen has a passionless relationship with her husband (lackadaisical Xander Berkeley), who is probably plonking his 16-year-old sociology student. Honestly couldn’t tell. Was Xander lying about his affair, or is he acting so badly that we think he’s telling the truth? When someone says, “You’re my wife and I love you dearly…” that pretty much means the opposite, no? Is he trying to act like he’s reading this line for the first time, or is he actually nervous that she’ll discover he’s lying? Or – here’s a novel approach – does he really love her dearly despite the robotic line-read?

With the Candyman legend rampant in the projects, Helen scares up her black friend (Kasi Lemmons as Bernadette – she was Jodie Foster’s FBI pal in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) and rolls into the ghetto looking for clues, dressed like a whitegirl aching for BBC. She befriends a black single mother (Vanessa Williams) with a small child and a dog. When Helen visits this woman a second time, Candyman appears to her – but doesn’t kill her. Instead, hypnotizes her, beheads the dog, wounds the mother and kidnaps the kid, then frames Helen for the madness.

Whaa–? I think black people have been telling you this legend all wrong, whitegirl. I mean, the dog never said “Candyman,” five times. Later, Helen would be out on bail, Bernadette comes over. Candy appears – and doesn’t kill Helen. Instead, kills Bernadette. Really? She never said Candyman five times either! Helen made to look like Ted Bundy, waking in a pool of blood with a carving instrument in her hand.

In restraints, Helen is brought before a police psychologist. To prove her innocence, she tries to conjure Candyman from a mirror. Sure enough, he appears – doesn’t kill her again! Instead, hooks the psychologist through the spine and frees Helen. Alarms go off throughout the police station, which means the psychologist must have had his spine connected to the alarm system. I can think of no other way the alarms would start one second after he is stabbed.

Helen performs a Movie Escape (knocking out a nurse and taking her uniform), flees home, to find Xander plonking the 16-year-old (so he was lying! Okay, got it: bad actor). She somehow figures that Candyman is holding Vanessa’s kid hostage, forcing her to come retrieve it. Can’t really figure the endgame: is Candy going to woo her with a candlelit dinner of braised dog or something? I dunno, I don’t think even Candy thought this out too well…

They say you never forget your first time.

Director tries to create some ominous sequences (Bernard Rose just directed UB40’s Red Red Wine video – 2 years later he would direct the magnificent IMMORTAL BELOVED), but the mythology is just too scatterbrained and – What’s with all the talking, Candy?! Too much qualification on why he’s not murdering her. The more he talks, the more UN-scary he becomes; he starts to sound like a dude saying anything just to get into a chick’s pants. Which he is.

So is Candy caring for the baby now? Feeding it, changing it… I think this legend needs some revising: “And if Candyman likes you, he’ll kidnap someone else’s baby to lure you into rescuing it; he’ll feed it and play peekaboo with it so it doesn’t give away his location by crying…”

In a badly-staged climax, a stuntman in a blond wig climbs into a garbage heap in the middle of the projects—oh wait, it’s meant to be Helen, looking for the kidnapped kid. The ghetto residents mistake her for Candyman (see? that stuntman shoulda worn a sexier skirt) and set the garbage on fire. Although, I don’t know how they hope to burn this entity that could teleport supernaturally through mirrors. Speaking of which, Candy has teleported inside this heap to threaten Helen (make up your mind, brah! Are you propositioning her or terrorizing her?), and somehow when she hits him with a burning timber, he stands there and screams instead of teleporting somewhere else. Helen grabs the kid and crawls out, and – I dunno – keeps distracting Candyman by hitting him so that he wouldn’t teleport out of the fire? What are the rules? Anyway, it’s explicitly shown that Candy dies, and the stuntguy in the wig dies as well—I mean, Helen.

The whole black community turns out for her funeral, all late of course, because – black. (Now it’s getting downright racist.)

Xander, now living with his snarky 16-year-old who can’t cook but has great tits, looks into a mirror in grief and moans for “Helen” – and after five moans, Helen appears (!),  crispy-burned, with a hook, and disembowels him. Because adultery is a killable offense, right?

So, uh, you can just say any dead person’s name and they’ll appear? Okay: Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate.

Hey, it works! Hold all my calls… Her hook just makes it hotter…

END

Hells to the No.

Again with the boasting: “I could whisper a suggestion and have you step in front of a subway train, I could force a neighbor to hurl you down a flight of stairs. I can put a baby in your belly that would rip its way out of your womb in three days–” Okay, I wanna see that last one. An angel boasts vacuously to the woman he is hunting… then walks away like a big-mouth douchebag without doing ANY of it…

The PROPHECY series once again falls to Earth like Satan banished from heaven. The previous entry, UPRISING, was quite intriguing and well-made (for a PROPHECY movie), but now all the insensate problems that made the first three films such dungheaps are again brought to the fore in this fifth entry, THE PROPHECY: FORSAKEN.

Allison (Kari Wuhrer) returns, holding tight the Anti-Bible (which is really just the Bible with addenda), not letting it fall into the wrong hands. Those wrong hands belong to Angel Stark (Tony Todd, CANDYMAN). He’s the one with the big mouth and nothing to back it up except his love of Christ. He wants to know what God has dictated just on the very last page of Revelations – the name of the anti-christ, who will bring about Armageddon. He’s worried that all the humans who survive Armageddon will become the favorites of God, instead of the angels. Satan wants Armageddon to happen – to fill up his dance card, so helps Allison protect the Book. Meaning Allison is working with Satan to allow the anti-christ to live, so that Armageddon will happen and Bruce Willis will sacrifice himself for all our sins. So Stark wants to kill the anti-christ as a child, so that Armageddon won’t happen and the angels can remain the beloved of God…

This is the plot of PROPHECY: FORSAKEN. And we wonder why the bible makes utterly no sense.

Jason Scott Lee (SOLDIER) is wasted here as zealot Dylan, killed and brought back to life to serve Stark, but helps Allison escape Stark instead. He convinces curvy wet dream Wuhrer to get naked and change her clothes in an alley, to make her look like a hooker, because – he tells her – the angels hunting her won’t recognize her that way. Oh sure: we’ve ALL used that excuse to get a girl naked in an alley, right fellas?

John Light returns as Satan The Runway Model. (Is this not how they say the devil will come at you? Not as a monster, but as a dreamster. After numerous TV and video features, Light just doesn’t seem to have the agency clout to have landed the breaks that a guy with his stunning looks usually gets).

Stark acts like he’s sniffing out The Book, stashed within the wall; his eyes light up – he’s definitely smelled it! Punches a hole in the wall, drags out – a fake Book decoy! We ask ourselves: What the hell was he sniffing then? If he has the power to sniff out The Book, then that power should be telling him The Book is nowhere in this house! Joel Soisson is the numbnuts responsible for this debacle. (Producer on all three original PROPHECY films, and also writer of DRACULA 2000 and its sequels; strangely enough, Soisson also wrote and directed the previous PROPHECY: UPRISING, which was surprisingly good. Now even more of a surprise after noting his track record!

A homeless guy stabs Allison. She’s suddenly Black Widow and kicks his ass. Then she has to Act Her Stab Wound every so often and wince, so we don’t mistake the red dye on her sweater for red dye. When she shouts at Dylan, “All we have to do is believe!” I kicked over the TV and cancelled my Netflix account. You just DON’T say that line in a movie and expect to be taken seriously anymore.

And look – here’s the name of the anti-christ. Spoiler Alert: It’s the nicest member of Monty Python. See how the devil comes at us? As MICHAEL PALIN!

The last page of the Book Of Revelation: The Life Of Brian.

END

Michael Bay instructs Shia LeBeouf on what he’s not looking at.

The PC-vs-Mac wars escalate.

Well, what did you expect?

If there is such a thing as “too many effects,” this movie has too many effects for TEN movies. Effects effects effects, for the love of God, effects. Just for the sake of effects. And then for the love of God, more effects. Stir. Vomit.

Michael Bay directs TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, the fantastically stupid sequel to TRANSFORMERS (2007).

Writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Ehren Kruger pile unnecessary complicated backstory on unnecessary complicated backstory, piled on juggernaut computer action that makes our optic nerves jigger like topless dancers in an earthquake.

Sam (Shia LeBeouf, still giving it his best Jerry Lewis meets Ben Stiller) is now in college. His girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox) is still a whore (we meet her as she’s readying for a gangbang, as she kneels doggie-style over the seat of a motorbike, airbrushing the fuel tank, which I’m sure is the prescribed position to achieve the best Frank Frazetta effect). His parents are still kvetching Kevin Dunn and Julie White. And, like every nerd, his best friends are still robots from outer space.

(By the way, how does Megan Fox feel, knowing that the girl who pursues Sam in college (Isabel Lucas) is hotter than her, with the same fluttering fuck-me eyes, the same pert breasts, the same cupid bow lips, red as a baboon vagina in estrus, arcing over nubile wet mouth? How does it make bighead Fox feel to know that spinners like her litter campuses across America? And without toe-thumbs!…)

The Autobots, led by drama queen Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, still trying to rasp like Clint Eastwood) are now aiding the American military in their battle against Decepticons (the bad robots, whom we know are bad because they’re all trying to rasp like Gozer from GHOSTBUSTERS).

A shred of the McGuffin from the last movie – the All-Spark crystal – becomes the McGuffin for this movie. But the writers cannily transfer the crystal’s mechanics into Sam’s brain (because as it is, we could hardly care less about the crystal, not that we care that much more about Sam), so HE can be the target of the Decepticons, led by a robot named The Fallen (Tony Todd). Made even scarier by his name being an adjective.

Story is structured along the same lines as a George Lucas tale (i.e. they make it up as they go along), and never have I seen a movie with so many explosions with nothing happening.

TRANSFORMERS 2 is enjoyable, in a “the-only-thing-more-constructive-than-watching-this-movie-is-wasting-time-playing-a-video-game” kinda way.

Suddenly – just like the last movie, in the midst of raping our optical lobe – John Turturro as paranoid Agent Simmons again! Raises the funny level. Mildly. Then, in a movie filled with unnecessary visuals – the John Turturro buffalo shot. And I’m not saying his thonged ass is not a beautiful thing, I’m just sayin’…

They’re robots – shouldn’t they be fighting with viruses online, rather than pushing each other? Why do they blink? How come none of them can aim? These technologically superior behemoths have Faster-Than-Light travel, targeting mechanisms and rocket launchers built into their forearms; I mean, how many rounds can they possibly fire without hitting a damn thing?

Starscream is a JET with ROCKET LAUNCHERS and he can’t shoot down Sam, because apparently Sam is such a good hider – amongst Egyptian huts so volatile, one bullet causes them to explode like gas stations. Guess Starscream can’t keep up with the editor’s lack of continuity jump cuts–

–oh, a nice slow motion bounce of Megan’s running boobies–

So why don’t the tigerbots scour the huts and find Sam?; what is the purpose of those tiny mini-me-bots except to annoy me?; then Simmons is climbing Khafre’s Pyramid near the giant Decepticon, calling a naval vessel to unleash a classified weapon on it – but why is he in the target area? Apparently so he could crack the 13-year-old mentality scrotum joke…

You lost me at ophthalmologist.

“No matter what happens, I’ve still got THESE.”

It is no secret this movie’s target demo is 13 year old boys. But the movie makes no attempt to hide the fact that the American military are also arrested development 13-year-olds. Such toughboy jargon: “Deploy the 2000 pound J-Dams!” Oh, kick out the J-Dams, dawg! Their probe is called Predator 01 – scary like John Turturro’s undies; their mission is Operation Firestorm – silent but deadly, like the fart of the same name; “We’re rolling strike packages” – oh, not the strike packages, Cecil! Not the strike packages! “Task Force Ripper – execute Lightning!” – that oughta scare the big things that are not harmed at all by our weapons.

Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson reprise their roles as military guys in denial that their bullets are useless. They talk real tough to impress 13-year-old boys and keep firing.

If the Transformers were not so radically detailed, I wouldn’t be in so much pain. If they looked like the Hasbro toys they were inspired by, they would be cool, streamlined giant robots. Instead, the onscreen designers try to melt the vitreous gel in our eyeballs with more mechanical ganglion than the human eye could possibly digest.

A Blackbird jet transforms into an old geezer who insists on giving us more illogical backstory about the Original Gangstas – the Primes who came to Earth during caveman times who turned into rocks to protect a magical Spear of Destiny and then ate Little Red Riding Hood. Or something.

Optimus Prime is killed by the head Decepticon named Megatron (Hugo Weaving), but is resurrected with some magic dust that reconstitutes itself into the Spear of Destiny that Sam stabs into his chest. Just like Jesus, except more believable. Then he pimps his ride with some hardware from the Blackbird and conjugates the adjective robot.

Don’t you just love it when a deus ex machina comes together?

But we can’t see anything because it’s all just a mash of mechanical CGI. I hope the good guys won. Megan Fox’s boobies seem to be okay. That’s all that matters to 13-year-old boys.

END