Halloween 2 (2009)

Halloween 2
2009
Dir. Rob Zombie

This may be a long one. I feel like I should explain my sordid history with horror movies, and specifically the "Halloween" movies, before I write about one.
The horror genre sucks. There is such an utter lack of quality material, and such a determined, almost fundamentalist defense of crap that my respect for the genre runs low. All of this makes finding a really good horror movie a pleasure though. There's something visceral about being as scared as you get the first time you watch "The Descent" or "The Exorcist".
Having said that, there are three things to note:
First, the original "Halloween" was always one of those bright lights in the face of the crap that surrounded it. It was minimal and it was truly frightening because of it. You aren't distracted by gallons of blood or victims being tortured. No game is being played and we don't get a motivation from Myers. He's just there and he's killing everyone. The sequel, however, was a by-the-numbers slasher flick with no creativity and less entertainment.
The second thing is that I like Rob Zombie. I think "House of 1,000 Corpses" is a reasonable effort at something... odd. "The Devils Rejects" on the other hand, is a standout. In the face of most of the mainstream crap being released, it was a pleasant surprise and needed change of pace. Most importantly, however, I liked his remake of "Halloween" a lot. It had problems but I thought it worked pretty well as a stand-alone movie.
Third, I have no issue with remakes. Is it representative of the larger problem with creativity in Hollywood" Yes, it is, but a remake should be treated like any other movie. It should be judged on it's own and more importantly, your enjoyment of the original shouldn't be tainted by the fact that someone tried again.
And now for Halloween 2 (and this will be short):
This movie is sloppy, really damn sloppy. Nearly everything is wrong with this movie. It's too dark to see what's going on and it's too choppy to figure it out on your own. Myers seems to be wandering around with no clear path for most of the movie, just so he has more people to kill. The "motivation" given to him this time around is contrived bullsh*t and only diminishes the story around it. The decision to turn Loomis into a greedy, rambling ass was misguided at best.
If there is anything good here, its the always reliable Malcolm McDowell and Brad Dourif. Neither gives anything close to a career high performance, but neither phones it in either. They are entertaining to watch, but since Dr. Loomis' storyline is useless and Dourif's "Sheriff Brackett" is only in a handful of scenes, they are hardly a redeeming feature.
In short, don't bother seeing the movie, even if you liked the first.

Edge of Darkness (2010)

Edge of Darkness
2010
Dir. Martin Campbell

Overall, I was disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high, but the fact is there was something about this movie that just wasn't hitting the right buttons like I expected.
There are three things of note here;
First, Mel Gibson is still one of the most commanding presences on screen. He knows how to control a scene and make it his. Gibson is one of our last true "movie stars" and I wish he did more acting these days. He has an uncanny ability to turn emotions on and off when necessary, and this is only complimented by the extremes he can jump to. Also, despite his age, he still handles the action sequences (some more demanding than others) with realistic refinement.
The second thing is, based on what I've seen him in*, Danny Huston is quickly moving from "interesting" to "please don't cast this man" in my book. He does "smug arrogance" extremely well, but that's about it. His ability to show emotion is lacking at best, and non-existent at worst. Admittedly, my view of him is probably tainted by his part in "Wolverine", which was one of the many preventable missteps in that movie. In "Edge of Darkness", he works for the first half of his scenes, when all he's doing is playing "smug arrogance", but as the movie progresses, he becomes outclassed and eclipsed by more capable actors. My opinion, sorry.
Third, and most simple is that Ray Winstone has been criminally underused. The pairing of him and Gibson is, in the least, inspired. These are two men who know how to handle the screen. His character deserved more time and more depth. This is not to suggest the character was crap, only that Winstone, in a beefier role, can take a movie to a new level (just watch "The Departed", a good movie on its own but a better movie because of Winstone).
Anyways, I would say the movie's biggest issue is the script. I have yet to watch the mini-series it is based on (its on the queue) but it seems like that was probably a better format. There is a lot of information coming at you in the movie and some of it is better explained than the rest. I never felt confused or lost to the point that I couldn't make sense of what was going on (in the sense that I never had to pause or rewind the movie because I felt like I was missing a huge piece of information), but once it was over, I couldn't help but feel like there were unresolved issues.
Maybe there is a longer cut out there that resolves this, or maybe I just missed something that was already there, after all, there was a remarkable amount of talent involved in this movie and I have a hard time believing they didn't have the same issues with the script that I did.




apologies for rambling


*From the top: Edge of Darkness, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, 30 Days of Night, The Kingdom, Children of Men, The Aviator, 21 Grams. For the record, I don't remember him in the last four movies. Of the others, I thought he was good in "30 Days of Night" (for whatever that is worth) and I thought he was interesting in "How to Lose Friends...".

The Salton Sea (2002)

The Salton Sea
2002
Dir. DJ Caruso

Convoluted would seem to be the key term here.
The thing is, I liked "The Salton Sea" up until it was over. In fact, I liked everything a lot up until the very end, which, for me, is something I could overlook if the rest of the movie was stellar.
But it wasn't.
Not that it was bad. Like I said, I liked it for the most part, and if you have the time it's worth a look. The supporting cast here works pretty well (although it's becoming increasingly clear to me that Adam Goldberg is probably known as "the Jew" in Hollywood circles) and its nice to remember that Val Kilmer could carry a movie at one point.
Once again though, the movie swan dives into mounds of horse crap when it finally gets around to telling you what's actually going on.
Without revealing too much about the story, I'll say (write) this; the movie is strongest when we are watching Kilmer in the life of the junkie. The flashbacks of his "previous self" are buzz kills. They are cheesy, poorly acted add-ons that serve more to discredit the story than add any emotion. The two detectives (Doug Hutchison and Anthony LaPaglia) are good, well rounded characters and I'm more or less okay with where their piece of the story wound up.
Pooh-Bear (Vincent D'Onofrio) was an embarrassingly obvious attempt at creating a character who would be memorable for his little (big) "quirks" (that's the best word I can think of right now).
I guess when it comes down to it I can't really say I liked it, but I certainly didn't hate it...

No trailer this time. Sorry

Apologies for rambling