Why should not having seen a movie stop me from babbling about it? Besides, you can tell a lot from a trailer. Caveat Lector's in place, let's proceed.


Batman Begins

Stupid title.

Stupid casting. (Michael Caine as Alfred?!?!?!)

Stupid Batmobile.

It'll make at least $150 million.

As much as I love Batman, this one is leaving me indifferent. The first scenes I saw got me excited, the last ones left me cold. My love for Batman will twist my mind and make me like it anyway -- eventually. I even kinda warmed up to Batman Returns after several years.

On the plus side:

No George Clooney. (Robin shouldn't act Batman off the screen!)
No Joel Schumacher.

Still, I'm leery.

[Update: Katie Holmes' involvement with Tom Cruise is also takes her out of the plus category for this film, further lessening its overall attractiveness. While Cruise never detracted from Nicole Kidman or Mimi Rogers for me, this one just creeps me out.]


Amityville Horror & House Of Wax (the remakes)

They both look like they suck (but I'll give a slight edge to Wax as being possibly less sucky).

I'm torn about The Amityville Horror. Here's a film I would personally love to remake myself. Even though the book is the scariest thing I've ever read, the original movie sucked, sunk by its low budget and overreliance on the viewer having read the book. A big-budget production that stuck to the book should be a homerun, surefire classic. It looks like they blew it.

Strike one is that it's from the same producer as the disgustingly bad remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Strike two is the same criticism I have to lob at Amityville, the House of Wax remake, and most modern horror: over reliance on gloss and digital gimmickry. All these films look the same, and they are starting to be variations on a plot. Now they are taking old films that were distinctive and filtering them through the one type of bad horror film the current crop of filmmakers seem to know how to make. It's Hollywood's version of "To a person who only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Strike three, and what really concerns me about The Amityville Horror, is that not only has it been put through the filter, much of what I see in the ads isn't in the book. That doesn't bode well. For instance, it looks like they changed Jody the invisible friend who is a demonic giant pig spirit (I know, but it works in the book, trust me) into the ghost of a little girl. Uh-uh. One of the few things that worked in the earlier version was a shot where the father is returning to the house after checking out strange noises emanating from the boat dock, looks up, and for the only time sees Jody, eyes glowing red, standing over his step-daughter in her bedroom window. The shot in the trailer for the remake, shows the little girl looking out one of the legendary "eye" windows, while a ghostly girl fades in and out next to her -- same boring crap we see in every horror film now.

They should have stuck to the book. It doesn't get better than that.

Back to only knowing how to make one movie and fitting everything into that mold. What I get from the House of Wax trailer is that a bunch of kids, er, young people show up in a deserted town and begin poking around. After they happen upon the local house of wax they eventually realize the figures are made from the missing town folk and start getting chased around by the Leatherface-like waxmaker. Blech. Pretty far from the previous incarnations. (And, oh yeah, did I mention it features Paris Hilton?)

[Update: They happen upon the town after getting sidetracked/taking a Wrong Turn on a trip, camping out, and having a scary encounter with the crazy waxmaker the previous night. Never seen that before....]

As with Amityville, I don't care for the most famous version of House of Wax. The 1953 version starring Vincent Price is itself a remake of 1933's far superior Mystery of the Wax Museum, which in turn was based on a play. My favorite house of wax type movie is the 1966 Chamber of Horrors, staring Patrick O'Neal and Cesare Danova. (While not having anything to do with House of Wax, except perhaps sharing some sets, Chamber of Horrors was originally meant to be a TV series called -- yep -- House of Wax.)

(I'll probably have to wait till the DVDs wash ashore at the library, to tell you what I think of the actual films.)


XXX: State of the Union

Minuses:

I didn't really care for the first one. Maybe Vin Diesel knew what he was doing, passing up this to make The Pacifier. (?!?!?!) I doubt it, but....

Ice Cube? Lame. Though he has enough of a built-in audience to make this number one or two it's first week. (I'll be generous and give it number one opening weekend.)

Large chunks of this are so obviously computer animated, it looks like a cartoon. That being the state of things, and the target audience being used to video game graphics, it probably won't matter, but I hate it.

Pluses:

(Next.)


Fantastic Four

I'm not a Fantastic Four fan, but this one looks way cool. And it includes one of my favorite villains: Dr. Doom. Watch out Batman, Fantastic Four's the superhero movie to beat this summer.

(Isn't it funny how it's more fun to trash movies than to praise them. I almost like seeing a bad movie better -- there's so much more to talk about afterwards. When you see a good movie, it's, "Wow, that was a good movie." "Yep, good movie." When you see an awful movie you can spend the next two weeks deliciously ripping on just how awful it was and why.)


Herbie: Fully Loaded

Herbie's back! Herbie's back! Herbie's back!

(That's "The Love Bug" to the less informed amongst you.)

Let's admit it -- with the exception of the original, the bar's pretty low for this one. It couldn't be any worse than Herbie Goes Bananas (which I'm ashamed to admit I saw in the theater during its original run -- would you believe too much cough syrup and a Cloris Leachman fixation? No? Me neither.). The title "Fully Loaded" is a nice take off on the Matrix being "Reloaded," so maybe the filmmakers at least have a sense of fun and humour. They also had the good sense to resist "updating" Herbie to the modern version of Volkswagon Beetle.

I say we give the little fella a chance.



I'll be back soon with more ill informed movie critiques, including:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Dukes of Hazzard
Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith