Faking Porn, Fart 2. Somewhere along the way, the tween girlie movie series TWILIGHT transmorphed into the painfully overwrought “THE TWILIGHT SAGA,” like there was something extremely important happening between all these vampire models standing around doing nothing and all these werewolf models standing around doing nothing with their shirts off. So we arrive at the conclusion of author Stephenie … Read More
TWILIGHT BREAKING DAWN PART 1
Breaking Wind, Fart 1. The two-part laborious conclusion to the most trivial love story ever told, TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART 1, opens with a wedding sequence, exactly like the one in THE GODFATHER, with two small differences: it’s not about New York Crime Families, and it’s not good. Edward the Vampire (Hayden Christensen doppelganger Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan the … Read More
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA
Goolies Not Groovie. I really wanted to like HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: an animated comedy with a cute concept (iconic screen monsters gathering at a resort set up by Dracula, far from the persecution of humans) and a simple boy-meets-girl story, featuring the talents of director Genndy Tartakovsky (the wild mind behind DEXTER’S LABORATORY and THE POWERPUFF GIRLS) and writer Robert Smigel … Read More
TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE
The Tween Team. So it has come to this. After the vampire wars and the werewolf killings, after the tempest of accepting a human unto the clan of the undead, after the dark skies of Forks presage death raining rivers of blood, TWILIGHT ECLIPSE has come to this, the most chilling decision mankind has ever faced: Team Edward or Team Jacob. Edward … Read More
VAN HELSING
It was a Monster Mash! How does Kate Beckinsale run in those stilettos? She is one of the most beautiful women on this ugly planet – but that Boris-and-Natasha accent is a real turn-off. Her Transylvanian is worse than Don Cheadle’s cockney. In VAN HELSING, Beckinsale is Anna Valerious, a European village warrior woman with big hair, big sword and … Read More
RED RIDING HOOD
Lycan-nope. My, what big eyes Amanda Seyfried has! RED RIDING HOOD is a reimagining of the children’s tale about the talking wolf that eats grandmother. What better way to represent an anthropomorphized lupine than making it – a WEREWOLF? As this mysterious werewolf stalks a medieval village, we constantly ask ourselves, “Why don’t I feel any foreboding or tension? Why … Read More
TWILIGHT NEW MOON
Dead – and Mumbling It. Kristen Stewart mumbles her way through another TWILIGHT movie. Synopsis of NEW MOON on the BluRay cover: “In the second chapter of Stephenie Meyer‘s best-selling TWILIGHT series, the romance between mortal Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen gets more intense.” And by more intense, they mean he almost gets to second base. Stewart once again … Read More
THE WOLFMAN 2010
Loopy Lupine. THE WOLFMAN starts as a remake of the classic 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. film THE WOLF MAN, and ends somewhere between BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. That ain’t so bad, but not what it was aiming for. Director Joe Johnston (JURASSIC PARK III, HIDALGO) pays homage to the horror pioneers by including all the … Read More
TWILIGHT
Bloodless. A chick falls in love with a fey vampire. They don’t have sex. The End. Vampires used to be scary once. The iconography of the blood-drinking psychotic, the shape-shifting coffin-dweller, reached a horrifying zenith with the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker (published 1897). Then came the startling film NOSFERATU (1922). Modern media has progressively been bleeding out all the … Read More
UNDERWORLD
Overwrought Underworld. Guns, Gore and Grrrrrls in growling leather. UNDERWORLD gives a shot in the arm, so to speak, to the vampire and werewolf iconographies, updating/reimagining both to be in an ongoing millennia-aged war that is escalating, plopping them in modern day Europe (or somewhere with underground rail transport and rain that won’t quit) with automatic weapons and computers. And … Read More
WEREWOLF
Of Werewolves and Were-Euros. Not five minutes into WEREWOLF, we realize we’ve been duped into watching an interminable Mentos commercial – Euros playing Americans playing archaeologists. We meet these brawling “scientists” (don’t all scientists brawl at their excavation sites?) somewhere in Arizona, Europe, as they unearth a human skeleton with a wolf’s skull. Joe Estevez, in a role you will … Read More