Texas Chainsaw (DVD Release)

Admitedly, I am a huge horror movie fan. I will pretty much watch any horror movie no matter how good or bad. Most of the new horror movies are pretty bad (but even bad horror movies are fun) but if you keep watching all the crap, sometimes you find a hidden gem (recently: V/H/S). This may be a bad start to this review. Texas Chainsaw is absolutely not a hidden horror gem. It does suffer from something a lot of modern day horror movies suffer from, however, and that is: Good Idea, Bad Execution. I felt the same way about last year's Cabin in the Woods which everyone in the world (except me!) loved.

Here is Texas Chainsaw's good idea: This movie is a sequel to the 1974 original and picks up mere moments after Sally escapes the cluthces of Leatherface and the crazy Sawyer family. If you ever wondered what happened after she escaped, well, she is hospitalized and starts telling her tale which leads a lynch mob to the front door of that creepy old house. Seconds before they arrive, the local sherrif has the family surrendering poor, slow Leatherface over to the police, but then the angry mob shows up and burns the house to the ground, killing (almost) everyone. Who survives? Well, since this is a sequel, Leatherface, of course, but also a baby who is stolen by one of the men and delivered to his wife, who, unable to have children, raises the baby as her own. Said baby grows up to be Heather (Alexandra Daddario) who suddenly learns of her ancestry when she receives an inheritance from a recently deceased grandmother she never knew she had. She and a group of friends travel to Texas and, obviously, murders via chainsaws and meat hooks ensue.

The fun part of Texas Chainsaw is that it actually took the time to develop this plot line that fills in so many gaps. It also features cameos by original cast members Gunnar Hansen (the original Leatherface) and Marilyn Burns (the original Sally who now plays Heather's grandmother). In the age of horror movies that can make money being about nothing whatsoever, it's nice to see a sequel pay homage to the original. But now for the bad news, or rather, the bad execution.

Texas Chainsaw is not good. It's absolutely dull and the only thing worse than being dull is being dull, stupid, cliched and all around generic. Texas Chainsaw is all of these things. It takes one of the greatest horror movie villains of all time and tries to turn him into this sort of anti-hero (but we, as a society, only like to root for the lovable bad guy with a heart of gold if he looks like Norman Reedus). It just doesn't work. None of it works, whatsoever. It's a lazy attempt at making an honest to goodness sequel to the BEST HORROR MOVIE EVER. This had to have been the first draft of the film because none of the ideas or plots or character development (ha!) is fleshed out or thought through or anything. Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre film maker Tobe Hooper is listed on this film as an executive producer and I almost feel like the basic idea was his. Maybe he turned it over to someone else who then proceeded to jot down a few notes and turn in a lazy film. This could have been a pretty good follow up to the original, but not with these lazy filmmakers and terrible actors.

And don't even get me started on the massive plot holes concerning what year it may or may not be. The original takes place in 1974 and Heather is a newborn baby. Flash forward, the actress is maybe 20 years old. She is living by herself and drinking alcohol pretty freely, so we'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she's even 25. That would make the year this film takes place as 1999. Which is all well and fine... until a very new and very modern smart phone plays a huge factor in one particular long scene. Unless Heather and her friends are just baby faced 40 year olds, the very simple math just doesn't work out, much like the rest of this mess.

Grade: D+

The Great Gatsby

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of 3D, in general. I think it is unneccesary and sort of silly. It drives up prices even more and for what? A few cheap thrills as something flies towards your face? No thanks. Since there are exceptions to every rule, I have two exceptions for my I Hate 3D rule. They are: Martin Scorsese's Hugo and Ang Lee's Life of Pi. These two films are examples of brilliant directors (two of the aboslute best, really) who know how to make a goddamn movie and know how to use 3D to enhance their films. Hugo was brilliant and while Life of Pi was a flawed masterpiece, the 3D definitely wasn't the problem. Baz Lurhman is already a pretty visual director (that's probably the understatment of the year). Moulin Rouge already popped off the screen and that wasn't even in 3D. When I first heard that The Great Gatsby would be filmed in 3D, I thought it was a terrible idea. Then I saw Hugo and Life of Pi and thought I could have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Lurhman is a great director too, so maybe he will get the 3D thing right also. But here's the problem. I'm not sure Baz had any idea what to really do with the 3D. If anything, I think the 3D in this case was highly detrimental to the film. But more on that in a moment.

In case you haven't read The Great Gatsby since tenth grade English class (unlike me who reread it last month in anticipation), here is the summary. Narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) moves from the MidWest to Long Island in order to become a big wig on Wall Street. Meanwhile, he becomes obsessed with his millionaire playboy neighbor Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) who throws lavish, impossibly crazy parties in order to catch the attention of the girl who got away, and the girl who just so happens to live across the bay, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), who also happens to be Nick's cousin, and also happens to be married to rich brute Tom (Joel Edgerton), who is having his own affair with a trollop named Myrtle (Isla Fisher), who is married to a sweet but stupid mechanic (oh, hey there, Jason Clarke with those sexy eyes). Also, there's sexy, mysterious Jordan (Elizabeth Debicki, doing her best angsty Rooney Mara impression), who is Daisy's bestie and Nick's love interest despite the fact that he's probably gay (at least this is implied in the book. They really make no mention of the fact that he's most likely in love with Gatsby in the movie, and really, why would they? It's not like it's 2013 or anything).

The acting is mostly pretty good. DiCaprio is perfectly cast as Gatsby. He's mysterious and sexy. He pretty much brings it as the pretty boy wanna be rich man. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure Maguire was the right choice for Nick. Sure, he played it well enough (and he had the hard part, what, with that excrutiating framing device), but Nick is supposed to be all wide eyed and innocent and I just didn't really get that vibe from Maguire. He seemed more confused than anything. Clarke, Debicki and Fisher are all fine but they don't really have much to do. Mulligan is fine as Daisy as well, but it's not necessarily her fault that she isn't better. The character of Daisy in the book is not written as a real person but as some sort of fantasy dream girl, so Mulligan does the best she can with a character that isn't necessarily adaptable. The problem with Mulligan's performance is just that she doesn't have any chemistry whatsoever with DiCaprio and that's sort of a problem when you are trying to make a romance movie. The highlight of the film, for me, is Edgerton who is absolutely the only subtle thing about this movie and takes Tom from being just some racist bully and turns him into this very layered, nuanced character.

And speaking of nuance, or lack there of, to say The Great Gatsby is opulent is an understatement. The party scenes are crazy and vivid, the costumes are luxorious and beautiful. But there is also the slight problem of it being all a bit much. The 3D distracts from the costumes which distracts from the music which distracts from the acting. The Great Gatsby is a feast for the eyes, but it is also just too much. The actors and the dialogue (those iconic lines written so many years ago that are still so ingrained in the minds of so many) and, even the plot!, all take a back seat to the crazy visuals.

Now, reading this, you probably assume that I hated The Great Gatsby, and it may sound that way, but it's not the case. I thought it was very flawed but by no means bad. Sometimes it's so good, it almost hurts because you realize what could have been. First things first, I loved the heavily hip hop influenced soundtrack. I guess there are a lot of people hating on the soundtrack because rap wasn't around in the 1920s. First of all, Jay-Z is timeless! Second of all, I don't remember people being all that upset about the music in Moulin Rogue - actually, quite the contrary, I'm pretty sure people loved it - and as far as I know no one was writhing around to Like a Virgin and singing songs by The Police in 1899 France. I also loved the shirt scene (which was always my favorite scene in the book) and I thought the entire sequence of Jay and Daisy reuniting at Nick's house was pretty perfect and funny. Also, you know, whenever Joel Edgerton was on screen was pretty great.

So, maybe it's just that The Great Gatsby isn't adaptable. I mean, the book is something like 150 pages long and it took 2 and a half hours for Baz to tell the tale. Maybe, people should just take 3 or 4 days and read the book again. It's widely considered the greatest American novel ever written for a reason.

Grade: C+

Iron Man 3

Word on the street (and, by street, I mean Entertainment Weekly) is Robert Downey Jr. might not be back for any future Iron Man endeavors, and that is definitely a shame if it turns out to be true. When these moveis lean toward the mediocre, Downey Jr. is the one who saves them from themselves. It's hard to believe anyone will be able to fill his shoes and fill the character with the perfect mixture of charm, wit, humor and cockiness. Downey Jr. is perfect for Tony Stark / Iron Man, the way Harrison Ford was perfect for Indiana Jones and Heath Ledger was perfect for the Joker.

My feelings about Iron Man 3 are so mixed that I barely even know where to start. Director Shane Black takes over for Jon Favereau here and I think that was a good thing. He injected a much needed dose of adrenaline into the series. However, at times, it's maybe a bit too hectic. I think Black had a lot of great ideas, and maybe he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to do this again, so instead of streamlining all of his ideas, he more or less decided to put every single one of them into this movie. Iron Man 3 takes place after series of events that took place in The Avengers (and the characters talk about those events A LOT... too much) and it finds Stark suffering from anxiety after his near death and unable to sleep. Instead, he's been tinkering with a new suit that comes to him and forms onto his body when he beckons. Soon, he has a whole lot to worry about other than his insomnia. A mysterious terrorist calling himself The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley, having an absolute ball) begins making serious threats against the president. Plus, a swarmy scientist (Guy Pearce) is making a play for Stark's lady Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

That's about as much plot as I'm willing to get into. The plot is long and confusing and I seriously have no idea how any of the ten or twelve small children who were in the same theater as me had any idea what was going on at any point. Although I guess it doesn't matter. The plots of these movies take a major backseat to the special effects and the action sequence. And while it takes a good 45 minutes to get to any action sequences, each one is bigger and crazier than the one before it, until we get to that final chaotic scene which is so over the top it's almost ridiculous (okay, it's totally ridiculous and I have yet to decide if that's good or not). So, the plot is long and meandering. It takes us back to the 1999 and Stark's encounter with a brilliant botanist (Rebecca Hall) and it takes us to the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, where Stark forms a sweet but completely unnecessary bond with a small fatherless boy. It takes us from houses being destroyed to over the top battles on deserted boats. All the while there are three things that are holding this whole crazy ship together.

Okay, maybe four, if you count Gwyneth Paltrow's abs which are seriously RIDICULOUS. I have literally not been able to think about anything else in the last three days. Those abs are definitely getting me through my latest attempt at planks. But I digress.

Robert Downey Jr. is the shining star here, as he almost always is. He brings so much to the role of Tony Stark that, like I said, it's impossible to picture anyone else in the role. He sort of phoned it in during that last Iron Man movie (or perhaps that script was just such a mess that he didn't know what else to do), but he's definitely back in top form here. The second this is the direction by Shane Black which, while a bit crazy at times, is also refreshing. You can tell he's having the time of his life, that he feels the unadulterated joy of making a movie like this and that sort of energy is seriously contagious. The final is Kingsley, who steals all of his scenes as the Mandarin. Without ruining anything or saying too much, there is a plot twist involving his character which I vehemently hated and nearly ruined the movie for me, but Kingsley at least plays it well. He plays it better than any other actor could. He goes for it, completely and totally, the way very few actors could, and possibly no one else could pull off.

These few saving graces bring Iron Man 3 to a place just above mediocrity. It's definitely no where near as good as the first, but it is better than the second. If it's the end of the Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man age, I think he deserved a little bit better.

Grade: C+