Fright Night

*****

Two Stars Out of Five 

This past weekend was one of failed remakes. Conan the Barbarian bombed at the box office, and while that wasn’t exactly a remake, per se, it shares its title with another film, and covers similar(ish) ground. Fright Night did even worse financially, which was a bit of a shock, really, as I expected it to be a hit with the teenage crowd who doesn’t know their mouths from their asses, and will pay shitloads of money involving anything with vampires and/or horror. All in all, it was a pretty sad weekend for remakes, but dorks and douche bags throughout the world are undoubtedly celebrating the fact that two films that attempted to “rape their childhoods” failed so miserably.

I’ve covered my feelings towards remakes in the past, so I’m not going to retread similar ground now. Instead, I’ll just actually try to objectively review Fright Night for all my fans. All two of you. Or one. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of my readers jumped from the sinking ship that is known as my non-start career in offering pointless opinions about movies.

But before I can start the review proper, a bit of history is in order. So put on your powdered wig, and let’s take a trip all the way back to… 1985. ‘Twas a time of antiquity. Motley Crue was ridiculously popular, hairy pubes were in vogue, bright neon-colored clothing was worn by all the hip kids, malls were heavily populated, and Twilight was but a twinkle in the eye of Stephanie Meyers. Horror movies were predictable (still are), and most of the genre films were horrible (still are, which is a right shame). Along came Fright Night, which hilariously played with genre conventions by tossing in some humor, intelligent subtext, and a witty twist to the whole Rear Window thing. Teenage Charlie spies his new neighbor up to no good (chances are when you just read “up to no good” you idiosyncratically started singing the rest of the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme song. No? Just me? Well, it’s better than singing myself to sleep every night with the “Growing Pains” theme). He’s quickly convinced that his handsome playboy of a neighbor is indeed a vampire. Lots of tomfoolery, malarkey, shenanigans, and rigamarole ensue. The movie, which had one of the best VHS covers in history, was awesome. As I mentioned, the film offered ample amounts of humor, poking fun at the genre is was lovingly embracing, and included some great subtext about closeted homosexuality (I’m looking at you, Evil Ed), and the inherent fears of a young adolescent discovering his sexuality and being threatened by a much more experienced, better looking adult. The film has only gotten better with age, and a remake seemed unnecessary, but since I enjoy Colin Farrell and horror/comedy hybrids, I was willing to give the remake a chance.

"Yeah, I know Miami Vice sucked. My bad."

Too bad, then, that it kind of sucked. If you’ve read my Conan the Barbarian review (and I just know you have), you’ll remember that I said that the worst kind of bad movie is the forgettable kind; the type that doesn’t do anything particularly memorable. Well, the new Fright Night is just such an example. The film doesn’t do anything that its predecessors haven’t done way better, and in trying to be a horror-comedy, it fails to succeed at either. Gone is the subtext from the original, and in its place is… well, nothing, really.

The film is just kind of void of any real personality. Any time it starts to pick up steam with a couple of funny one-liners or an interesting situation, it shifts to something else without maintaining any forward momentum. I really think the most exciting part of the entire movie for me was watching the Las Vegas skyline, which is unfortunate, because if I want that, I can watch “Las Vegas” reruns on TNT every day at 11 am and noon.

And, well, I guess I have a really weird pet peeve about the way Hollywood depicts high school. Maybe I went to a weird high school in which there weren’t really all that many bullies (none that I can even remember, actually), and that social circles weren’t strictly enforced. Yeah, the kids who played Magic: The Gathering generally stuck to themselves, but it’s not like they received beatings daily for playing a card game. In Hollywood, though, if you’re not banging a hot cheerleader, a football stud, have a $300 haircut, drive a muscle car, and smoke dope, you’re a square, and you’re going to get the living shit beaten out of you. The movie lost me really early on, because Charlie (Anton Yelchin, who is so-so) has turned his back on his best bud “Evil” Ed (McLovin – I’m not even going to type out his real name, since you know who that is) and their fun, geeky ways in order to climb the all-important high school social ladder. Charlie can’t even talk to Ed, for fear of facing scrutiny from his new friends, and that just wreeks of tired clichés. So, there are standard Hollywood high schoolers – the cool guys, the hot chicks, and the dweebs. And, y’know, just like real life, when the dweeb skateboards down the cool kid’s street, he gets beaten up. Makes sense, right?

Horrible clichés aside, even that would be okay if it were maybe played up a bit. Perhaps the film could focus on the subtext of being an outsider, of feeling alienated, and maybe even using that as a way to sympathize with Jerry (Colin Farrell, who is sufficient, but doesn’t do much to spread his thespian wings). But no. Instead, the film just keeps on chugging along, skipping from one spot to the next without developing the characters, or giving the audience much to care about. Charlie is dating a cute girl named Amy (Imogen Poots, which is arguably the weirdest name for anyone ever) and she has about as much character as the for sale signs populating Charlie’s street. She’s cute, though, so I guess that’s supposed to be enough. Charlie himself is pretty much a shithead. It was impossible for me to want to cheer for the guy, considering he abandoned his best friend and lifestyle all for a bit of the ole’ poon. But I guess you have to play by the Hollywood rules of high school, and nobody is going to screw a guy who hangs out with McLovin.

MINDFREAK!

Once the proverbial shit hits the fan, Charlie seeks out help from Peter Vincent (David Tennant, easily the highlight of the movie) who is a Las Vegas magician and supposed vampire hunter. His presence makes some sort of sense, considering how he’s portrayed, and the original Peter Vincent from the original Fright Night just wouldn’t have worked. In the original, Peter Vincent was the host of a weekly show which played old horror movies (think Joe Bob Briggs or Elvira, but older and clearly less buxom). Vincent is a cliché magician, equal parts Criss Angel douchebaggery and Russell Brand hubris, and he’s actually quite funny. But, of course, as soon as things start to get interesting with him, the story shifts quickly away from him, and we’re back in the dull shit again.

My two biggest gripes with the entire movie are this: the horrible special effects, and the utter lack of suspense. The vampire effects for Colin Farrell are simply bush league. I’m talking I Am Legend bad. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why filmmakers are so hesitant to use practical effects like prosthetics, but I guess that’s just where we are in society. It really looks like shit, though. And as far as the lack of suspense, I would have liked to have a bit more “is he actually a vampire?” type of dialogue between Charlie and everyone else, or even have him question himself at least once. Charlie is told Jerry’s a vampire, and minutes later, he’s sold on it. There’s nothing to make him question his sanity or anything, which is a boring shame. I get that they want to push the movie forward quickly, but it’s all just underway before it even gets much of a chance to get started.

I am supremely disappointed in this movie. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected so much out of it, but I did. It was reviewed quite well (74% on Rotten Tomatoes), and I heard from several peers that it was just brilliant. I wanted to like it – any time a movie portrays vampires as a threat and not pussified Twilight vampires, it instantly interests me – but I just couldn’t. Between the horrible clichés of high school students, absolutely no characters to give a shit about, no character development, and bad special effects, there just wasn’t there for me to like.

It’s a shame that this is probably going to be my last review for a while – school starts in a week – and the review just so happened to be for a movie that didn’t particularly tickle my fancy. But hey, I watch the shitty ones so you don’t have to, right? So, go ahead and do yourself a favor: track down the original. It’s damn great, and it’s light years ahead of this one.

G'bye!

Conan the Barbarian

**1/2***
Two and a Half Stars Out of Five

There are several types of bad movies. There are bad movies that are doomed from the get-go; you see them, and you know that there was no salvaging that particular project. It's shit, it will always be shit, and it was always going to be shit (think From Justin to Kelly - there was no saving that movie - and you'll get the idea). Then, there are movies that, for some odd reason, just never fully clicked. Everything that needed to come together just somehow didn't, and you're left with a bit of a mess. A good movie exists somewhere inside of the current picture, but it just couldn't escape. There are two other types of bad movies (don't worry, I'll tell you what they are): bad movies that aren't really all that bad, they're just rather forgettable. They don't do anything to separate themselves from the crowd. They're just... there. Then, there are really, really, really bad movies that you see that you'll never be able to forget because they were so terrifically horrible. It takes a lot of shit going wrong to have one of those bad boys on your hands, and it's not often that one makes it into cinemas. They're bad, but at least they're memorable. There's certainly something to be said for that, right?

Unfortunately, Conan the Barbarian is a bad movie that has a good one somewhere inside it trying to sneak out, and it's also not bad enough to be memorable. It's ultimately rather forgettable. Which is sad. Because I wanted it to be a lot better. I wanted it to be the feel-good-testosterone-fueled-decapitation-filled movie of the summer. I wanted a movie that made me want to grow a hairy chest, to chew tobacco, and come home and force my woman to make love to me, afterward having her call me her Apollo God of Sexy Love Time Sex (I'm using hyperbole for at least one of those actions listed above. You decide which ones). Basically, I wanted a movie to make me feel like a strong man, which I'm admittedly not. I wanted something like Predator, or 300 (don't laugh - you thought that movie was bad-ass until everyone liked it and you decided to hate it because you're pathetic). Instead, I got... bleh. And bleh is the worst type of movie you can possibly make, because it doesn't mean anything to anyone. Ya dig? You dig.

Good god, he's handsome.

So, I suppose I should address the plot, even though I didn't give a flying tit about it, nor did I even want to. Conan is a Cimmerian, which shouldn't mean anything to you. Basically, he's a viking who was born on a battlefield and his mom dies. His dad (Ron Perlman, clearly cashing a paycheck) raises him to be a warrior stud. But before Conan can come of age, his dad is killed by some douche-nozzle named Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang, continuing his asshole phase from Avatar). Zym is trying to get a bunch of separate pieces of this helmet thing that will make him a god or something, and Conan's dad has the last piece. Because, you know, anytime you don't want someone to put together a helmet that possesses the ability to make someone a god, you hide the separate pieces instead of destroying them. That makes sense.


So, Zym puts the helmet back together, but now he needs a "pureblood" girl to bleed into it. It's not what you think - it's got nothing to do with a virgin menstruating into the helmet to activate the god powers, even though that would be way cooler for some strange reason - the pureblood is, I guess, the ancestor of the dickweeds who created the helmet and then hid the pieces throughout the known world. Again, this opens things up a bit for interesting subplots, because you would assume that the pureblood is an inbred individual who had devolved into a grade-A dipshit, but no. It's an attractive nun. Or something. Named Tamara. I know what you're thinking now: Tia and Tamara from "Sister-Sister" right? But there is no Tia around, so you can kiss your hopes of a "Sister-Sister" TV show crossover with Conan the Barbarian. Maybe we'll finally get to see that in a sequel, but I doubt it. So Zym hunts for the gal with the blood while Conan grows up to be a bad-ass of the highest order, still yearning for revenge.

Good god, he's tough-looking.

As luck would have it, Conan (Jason Momoa, who is a huge bad-ass and is easily the highlight of the movie)
comes across Zym in a roundabout way, and he also falls in with Tamara (Rachel Nichols) because she's caught right square in the middle of the whole pissfest. So, in addition to getting revenge on the man who killed his father, Conan now kinda-sorta has to save the world, and the hot inbred chick who's blood Zym needs. Oh yeah, and there might be an incestuous relationship going on between Zym and his gothic/hideous daughter Marique (Rose McGowan in what is easily the worst performance of the year). So, there's a lot of shit going on, but none of it outside of Conan wanting revenge makes a whole lot of sense, nor is it remotely engaging.

The cast is okay, but outside of Jason Momoa, nobody seems to be giving a shit. Momoa is a buff, attractive fella who certainly is the right guy for the role of Conan, and he does the best with what he has, but that's really not that much. The man oozes charisma, toughness, energy, and machismo, but it's just not enough to save the movie. I feel bad for the guy, because based on interviews, he seems to be a great guy who really loves the character of Conan. Hopefully he gets a chance to do something better with him someday. Stephen Lang is efficient as Zym, bringing nothing to the table, nor taking anything off of it. Ditto for Nichols, who is pretty and... a bit feisty, maybe. But that's about it. Same with everyone in the cast, except for Rose  McGowan who is so jaw-droppingly awful as Marique that I couldn't believe it was the same person who so awesomely played Cherry Darling in Planet Terror. It seems she forgot that she wasn't in a comedy/camp film and decided to fuck around the set by being a horrible caricature of every witch ever. Her ineptitude in the role would be laughable if it weren't so sad, and frankly, the less said about her performance, the better we'll all be.

Good god, she's awful.

The action scenes are capable, but nothing special. Sure, there's a bit of arterial spray and lots of the good crimson stuff spurting across the screen, but again, nothing memorable. Credit to director Marcus Nispel for
finding a way to frame a tremendously handsome and strong Momoa in such a bland way in battle sequences. Also, I owe a debt to the editor for doing such a great job of ensuring that several of the action scenes are incomprehensible thanks to ADHD-influenced camera cuts. Whoever thought this was a good idea deserves to be fired from cinema permanently, as it makes no damn sense whatsoever. I like to see my action scenes, and to be able to compute just what the hell is going on, thank you very much. Some of the action scenes are pretty good, with Momoa again being the highlight, since he has a feral presence, and he moves very gracefully with a sword. Just know that it's nothing too great, and you'll probably forget all the action scenes minutes after you watch them.

I mentioned Marcus Nispel, the director, above. He should be awarded something for being the director of remakes that absolutely nobody was particularly clamoring for. The man is responsible for Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Friday the 13th, (2009), and now this, which is, of course a remake of the Ahnuld classic from 1982, which was inspired by the legendary Robert E. Howard (whose pulp writings don't have much in common with any of the films based on them). While Texas Chainsaw Massacre was utterly forgettable aside from Jessica Biel's ever-shrinking t-shirt, I remember that it had really good sound. So, that's good. I guess. And I actually loved Friday the 13th  because it was an open love letter to the slasher genre, which I am an unabashed fan of. He struck the balance between humor and horror brilliantly, and tossed in a buttload of boobies to boot. I loved it. But still, three remakes? I don't hate remakes like so many people do, because I believe they can offer something different if they're done correctly. But three remakes is a lot. Come on, man. Spread your wings. Create something unique. Grow a beard, move to Soho, and do a little art flick. Shit, I think I just gave him the idea to remake Eraserhead. Sorry, in advance, gang.

The really sad part is, I do think that there is a good movie in there trying to get out (kinda like the attractive girls in high school who slutted it up with everyone but you, and then had three kids before dropping out of community college and then going back to get their associates degrees in Communications got super-fat, but their hotness still kinda sneaks out every once in a while when you see them at bars and old, newly-divored 40 year-olds are buying them drinks). If a better crew had been attached, or maybe somebody who had cared more about the characters, or maybe an editor who wasn't coked out of his head had worked on it, it would have been better. As it stands, this is all we've got. And it's not horrible. But it's certainly not any good. Sorry, Mr. Momoa - you deserved better than this.

But, I always like to end on a positive note. So here's a .gif of Ahnuld-Conan looking like a fuckwit. Toodles!

 

 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

*****
Four Stars Out of Five

"You'll go positively ape for this movie!"

"There sure are a lot of monkeyshines in this flick!"

"The apes use a special type of gorilla warfare against the humans..."

"Don't monkey around, and go see this movie."

And so on and so forth, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, for the review. Kind of.

It doesn't seem like a decade has passed since Tim Burton's craptastic remake/"reinvisioning" of the 1968 sci-fi classic, Planet of the Apes. I remember taking my older brother to the movie for his birthday, because it happened to be released that day. I also bought him a hideous red Planet of the Apes shirt with black velour lettering on it at the video store I worked at. A few pictures of him in this shirt, and sporting blond tips in his hair, still exist. I remember loving the living shit out of that movie when I saw it, thinking that it was the most mind-blowing thing I'd ever seen. Then, I watched it again, thinking this time I could keep my mind from being blown because I could follow the story and see how the twist ending happened. I couldn't figure it out. It's not because I'm stupid - I may be, but that's not the point here - but because the movie didn't make a lick of fucking sense. In my weird, 16 year-old mind, I confused bad storytelling with mind-blowing storytelling, and seeing the movie again helped me to distinguish the two.

There's not much worth remembering from Tim Burton's interpretation of Planet of the Apes; in fact, it is a great example of shitty, overblown blockbusters from the earliest part of the new millennium: take an artsy-fartsy director, give him a good-looking guy for a leading man, regardless of whether or not he can carry a film on his own (Mark Wahlberg), use a shitload of money on special effects, take a stupid screenplay, and turn it into a movie. The shittiness of the movie held Wahlberg back for a few years, and only now is he starting to act in movies that are made for him, instead of shoehorning himself into a starring role even if it doesn't work (think Colin Farrel, and you've got the right idea). Regardless, the movie was, and still is, a pile of shit, and even though it made a bunch of money, it never kickstarted the franchise the way 20th Century Fox wanted it to (maybe that's because the ending didn't make ANY. FUCKING. SENSE.).

So, ten years have passed, and Fox decided to give the ailing franchise this decade's remake - a reboot! Look around summer tentpole blockbusters for the last couple, and next few, years and you'll see a slew of reboots on display: The Amazing Spider-Man, Batman Begins, The Incredible Hulk (only a few years in between Hulk flicks, setting a record for reboots), The Man of Steel, X-Men: First Class, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I don't inherently hate the idea of reboots, as I think it gives filmmakers a fresh start due to head-scratching continuity issues, aging actors, and story constraints. I understand a lot of people see this is simply just a cash-grab by the studios, but really, what isn't? Movie companies make movies to make money. Don't be silly, people! And I was more than willing to let a new Planet of the Apes movie restart the franchise, as the continuity is so far up it's own ass that it could easily be called "Planet of the Asses" or something similarly sophomoric in humor. I loved the original, but I hated Burton's take, so I was hopeful for this new flick, but also approached it with trepidation, because it could just have easily been another shitstorm of apes and humans fighting one another.

First, the bad news: the title is really long. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (or, what I shall call ROTPATA for the duration of this review, and even that is longer than a lot of titles) is a horrible title. And misleading. The film isn't necessarily about the world being overrun by highly evolved apes, but rather, it's about one ape in particular named Caesar (motion-captured by the amazingly talented Andy Serkis) and his relationship with humans. While the title does a good job of keeping the franchise attached to it, and letting the audience know that this is a "year one" version of apes becoming the dominant species of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if people watched this movie and thought that the title was used to shamelessly earn more money from name recognition.

The good news: the movie is really good. ROTPOTA ignores everything that has come before it in the long-running series, and also many of the typical story beats that a summer action blockbuster is supposed to hit. Whiz-bang action is substituted for heartfelt drama, character growth, and doomed relationships. It's quite a shock, actually, to have a bunch of emotion in a flick that most people just assume will be filled with angry apes and bloodied humans. Even more shocking is that the character that we come to care a lot about is an ape, and just how much we feel for him as the story unfolds.

The film opens with a science lab testing Alzheimer's cures on apes. Before Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco, teetering between "paycheck-mode" and "I-actually-want-to-be-here" forms of acting) can get the cure fully funded and approved by his overseers, one ape goes, well, ape-shit (see what I did there? YES!). The board of directors get a front row seat of watching an ape run amok and being shot to death and they make their decision to cease research on the wonder-drug. It turns out that the angry ape, Bright Eyes, had just given birth, and went nutso to protect her young. It doesn't matter much, because clearly people who are boards of directors don't know diddly-squat about apes (they are wont to violent outbursts, in spite of their cuteness), and Will is forced to sneak the baby chimp home with him.

Before I go any further, I would like to note that the plot certainly borrows quite liberally from Deep Blue Sea, in which a group of scientists are testing an Alzheimer's cure on sharks, only to have the sharks gain intelligence and go all sharky on everybody. It's surprising that everything lines up so similarly between the movies, as both lead scientists have fathers struggling with the disease, and dangerous animals are being tested on. At least ROTPOTA includes animals that share quite a bit in common with humans, and Deep Blue Sea ROTPOTA proves that smart filmmaking with a focus on emotion and drama can make a good film when compared to a similar plot in a film that uses about as much restraint as a seven year-old at Chuck E. Cheese. uses sharks because, well... sharks are fun to watch eat shit. If anything,

Shortly after bringing the baby ape home, Will's father names him Caesar. It becomes clear quite quickly that Caesar inherited the biological changes from his mother, and Will notices how intelligent he is. Caesar is raised as a son to Will and is taught a significant amount of sign language. Caesar, like any rambunctious child, grows ever curious to the world around him, getting him into a fair bit of trouble, and also leading him to question his place in the world. He knows he's not human, but he's been raised as one, and is certainly smarter than many humans. This alienation serves as the major thrust of the film, and it is brilliantly done thanks to the special effects team and Andy Serkis, the motion-capture actor who portrays Caesar. Not one ape in the entire film is "real." They're all motion-capture actors, and it actually changes the way I perceive special effects. We've been led to believe that special effects need to perfectly mirror reality if they are to be seen as successful. The apes here, though, look really good, but not perfect. But the special effects allow something that could never be possible with actual apes - it allows them to have real emotions and facial expressions. The special effects in any movie tend to be there to just be there, but they serve an important storytelling purpose here, and it is absolutely a tremendous achievement in filmmaking.

After it becomes clear that Will's father (John Lithgow) is falling to Alzheimer's, Caesar becomes protective of his surrogate grandfather. One afternoon, in a haze, Will's father attempts to drive his neighbor's Mustang, and the results are predictably bad. The man, a grade-A asshole, begins to berate the confused old man, and assaulting him. Caesar witnesses this from his bedroom window, and jumps into action, attacking the man and biting off his finger. The outside world sees this, and Will is forced to put Caesar into an ape sanctuary.

This is where the story gets heartbreaking. Caesar doesn't understand why he's being taken away from his family, and worse, the place he is forced to live is run by inhumane assholes who terrorize the apes. Caesar is alone, as he is viewed as an outsider by both humans and the apes he lives with. The majority of the second act of the film plays out like a silent film, in which we follow Caesar, and we see how he adjusts to realizing that he is an ape that is viewed as inferior to humans. Eventually, Caesar's intellect reveals him to be the alpha of the apes, and he uses his intelligence to escape and expose the other apes to the drug that will transform them into being super-intelligent apes.

I've already raved about the special effects and Andy Serkis' awesome performance, but enough great things cannot be said about them. Serkis has been the king of mo-cap for years, thanks to his performances as Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and as Kong in King Kong, but he elevates his game here to an art form. Serkis will absolutely be ignored by the awards committees when the time comes, but he shouldn't be. He does something that not many actors do anymore - he transforms himself completely into his character, and he conveys his emotions through facial expressions and body language alone. And then there's the fact that he actually, you know, moves around like a chimp for two hours perfectly! Serkis is the star of the show, and that's saying something, as you never actually see his face.

Of course, the movie isn't perfect. There are a few missteps here and there, like the typically dickish, money-grubbing boss that Will Rodman must contend with, and the ape sanctuary employees are assholes because the story needs them to be. There are a slew of easter eggs and nods to the other films in the franchise, especially one line in particular that just doesn't fit (thankfully it is quickly eclipsed by the crazy dramatic scene just seconds later, but still). But overall, this is one of the best films of the year thus far. I was incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed this film, and also just how much I cared for Caesar and his issues. I was thrilled to see the film have a successful opening weekend (about $20 million more grossed than they anticipated) because it helps ensure a sequel, and also serves notice to filmmakers that Hollywood blockbusters can be entertaining, yet also emotional and thought-provoking. Check it out!

Also, check out this gif of a kung-fu chimp!

Captain America: The First Avenger

***1/2**
Three and a Half Stars Out of Five

I really wanted Captain America: The First Avenger to be great. I mean, I really really wanted it to be great. So, I was a bit disappointed when it turned out to just be comfortably in between "good" and "very good." It's a bit of a miracle that comic book movies have progressed to the point that an adaptation being "very good" is a disappointment, but that's really how far the genre has come in the last few years. While Captain America: The First Avenger doesn't compete with the modern classics like The Dark Knight and X-Men: First Class (the best damn movie of the summer, people!), it's better than other recent flicks like Iron Man 2, Green Lantern (this is much better than that), X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and a slew of others. For clarification's sake, it's right around the same level of coolness as Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk. Surprisingly, I think that Thor is Marvel's best movie to date, which is amazing, because Thor, as a character, is not incredibly high on my list of favorites. He's grown on me over the last three years, but he's not on Spider-Man's level, nevermind even being able to compete with Cap.

It is important to note that Captain America: The First Avenger is the final Marvel movie before next summer's highly-anticipated, potentially-orgasm-inducing Avengers flick is released upon the masses. As such, the film is required to serve as a sort-of retroactive bookend to everything that has occurred thus far in Marvel's shared movie universe, and also as an origin story for Steve Rogers, the man who becomes Captain America. While the necessity to include foreshadowing and "look, we're tying into Avengers, here!" type of storytelling isn't nearly as jarring as it was in Iron Man 2 (that movie should, in hindsight, be renamed Avengers: 0.5 Starring Iron Man!), it is clear to see that the filmmakers' hands were tied to an extent. Overall, it does a great job of tying a nice bow on top of the present known as Avengers, but it hurts the standalone film here. It begs the question: Is it okay to hamper a present film's success in order to increase a future film's success? I can't answer that question, and neither can anybody else, but someone should certainly try to, if we're going to continue down this shared universe in film. It's a lot easier in the comic book medium to avoid or ignore plot points in other stories, because comic book fans are geeky enough to fill in the blanks themselves, and with the ridiculous amount of continuity to deal with in comics anyway, we kind of get to choose what we want to accept, and ignore what we dislike. In film, it's not that easy, as the films need to cater to a mainstream audience that can easily digest the stories being told to them in around two hours. I really like the risks Marvel is taking with all of this, but I wonder if, long-term, it's a great idea to purposely hamper their individual franchises for the sake of one uber-franchise. But, only time will tell, eh?

But seriously, my two fans didn't come here to read about my musings on a shared film universe. They came here to read about my opinions on the film. So, I owe it to my (two!) fans ("observers" is probably a better word to use to describe them, but I'm feeling confident today) to actually, y'know, attempt to review the damn movie. So, without further ado...


Everyone should know who Captain America is: he's Steve Rogers, the undersized, overly-sickly young man from Brooklyn who just wants to fight for the Stars and Stripes in WWII. He wants to sock old Adolph right in the kisser, but he can't pass any enlistment tests. He leads a pretty sad existence, as he's too puny to ever get with any ladies, and his best friend, Bucky, is set to ship off for some Nazi-killin'. As luck would have it, Dr. Erskine - a German scientist who has developed a super-serum that can transform people into super-soldiers - overhears Steve talking to Bucky about his obligation to serve his country, and takes Steve under his wing. Soon enough, Steve takes part in an experiment, and he transforms into a sexy, muscular, super-enhanced stud. Before the process can be replicated, Dr. Erskine is killed by a Nazi agent, and Steve is left as the only super-soldier in the world.

Meanwhile, Red Skull is over in Europe getting ready to take over the world, thanks to the Cosmic Cube. His story isn't anything spectacular, but it serves as a way to get Cap into action, and it also does a good job of building into the Marvel Universe as a whole, as the Cosmic Cube has ties to Thor, and all that Norse stuff that we just witnessed a few months back. I wanted more Red Skull evil, but the movie was kind of overstuffed as it was, so hopefully Red Skull is back in the future, and he gets more rounded out, and his villainy really gets a chance to shine.

So, there's the set up. It's a great origin story for any superhero, as Steve Rogers knows what it's like to be the bullied kid, but now he has the power to step up to bullies. In addition to his new powers, he also has to deal with being a one-of-a-kind badass, which allows him to hold onto his alienation. This alienation would, in a lesser man, prove all-encompassing, and eventually ruin that man. With Steve, he's just a super-duper optimist who is a really good person, and just wants to fight evil and wrong-doing any chance he gets. The heart of Steve Rogers is really what it's all about, and Captain America is a hard character for a lot of people to get into. He's a lot like Superman, in that he can be seen as "boring" because he's always the good guy, never makes questionable decisions, and is, in many eyes, "perfect." He's so much different than the Average Joe, and he doesn't have the character issues like Tony Stark (alcoholism, egotism, capitalism), Bruce Wayne (obsession, post-traumatic stress disorder), Peter Parker (life shits on this kid like he's a toilet), Bruce Banner (uncontrollable rage issues), or Thor (he's a god from another fucking dimension, shit gets weird for him all the time). Without any character defects, there isn't much of a character-trajectory for Steve, so I understand why cynics don't like him. But those people are wrong, because superheros should inspire us to be better, and Steve Rogers is the pinnacle of inspiration.


So, with such heavy shoes to fill, the filmmakers needed to be sure to cast the perfect guy for Steve Rogers: a man who is a physical Adonis, has immense confidence, but doesn't project any amount of douchiness. They hit a home run with Chris Evans. Evans perfectly embodies Cap's heart, soul, and physicality. He holds onto his past as a runt without it letting define him as a super-soldier, and he brings no smarm at all to the character, which allows him to be a natural leader for those looking up to him. The costume is brilliant, too, as it has enough of the iconic Cap uniform, while also including enough realism into it to make it all work. Evans is as perfect for Cap as Robert Downey is for Iron Man, and that's not faint praise at all. Marvel has absolutely killed it with their casting of the Big Three of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Cap, and Iron Man. Avengers could be a giant pile of shit, but it will at least have three great leads.


The rest of the cast is great, too. Hayley Atwell brings the perfect amount of sexiness and toughness to the role of Agent Peggy Carter, and her relationship with Steve is actually believable, as the seeds of attraction are wisely planted before Steve turns into a Sex-God. Hugo Weaving brings just the right amount of camp and flair to the Red Skull, although his character is slightly underutilized. I would have liked to see Red Skull be more ruthless and less mustache-twirlingly evil, but that is forgivable. Tommy Lee Jones actually steals the show as Col. Phillips. The majority of the laughs are thanks to his deadpan delivery, and dickhead-oozing confidence. Stanley Tucci is great as Dr. Erskine, an all-too-brief role that is crucial to the story. Sebastian Stan is perfect for the role of Bucky, although he's criminally underused, and his exit from the story left a lot to be desired. I hope they pick up on that story thread in the future, as Stan has the makings of a star, and there's a lot of dramatic tension there to use wisely. Even Dominic Cooper is pleasant as Howard Stark, Tony's dad who helps create the super-soldier Steve. Although it does make me wonder just how old Howard was when he sired Tony, but whatever. Like I said, the cast is great, but it would all be for naught if Chris Evans was the perfect man for the shield. Thankfully, he brings it all together and carries the show as Cap.


So, it's all a bit of praise, isn't it? Unfortunately, the movie does get bogged down a bit by the exposition, and some of the action scenes are more miss than hit. I wanted more fisticuffs and bad-assery, but I was left with some underwhelming set pieces. I get that hand-to-hand combat wasn't all that popular during the war, but I wanted a bit more Cap as a guy who beats the living shit out of everything in his path and less shooting from afar. I guess I was just disappointed a bit by the amount of action, although there is more action here than in Iron Man, and it's not horrible action. It's just not what I wanted.


The film does have a great look to it, and director Joe Johnston is the primary reason for that. He's a Spielberg disciple, and it shows, as the movie has more in common with Raiders of the Lost Ark than any war movie. It's got a great style that is reminiscent of old-school serials, and while I liked the tone and look, I can see others being disappointed, because most people probably won't recognize that that's what Johnston was aiming for. People don't want Indiana Jones, they want visceral violence. That's sad, but that's just where we're at in today's society.


Ultimately, the flick is just too beholden to the larger universe that it fits in. There's almost too much set up for Avengers, and it ends up hurting the film more than helping it. The ending of the film certainly sets up next summer's second-largest event (sorry, but The Dark Knight Rises is going to be a way bigger deal than Avengers), but what could have been a great character moment is instead just a cliffhanger for a different movie. I really did enjoy the hell out of Captain America: The First Avenger. I did. I thought it was good. I just wanted it to be great.


FYI: There is an Avengers trailer after the movie ends. It's relatively short, about a minute and a half long, and it doesn't show or tell us much of anything. It's a neat little intro, but that's all it is. There are a bunch of random clips of the characters, like the Big Three, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Black Widow (Scarlet Johannson), and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). It's just enough to whet my appetite for the movie next summer. While I don't have an image, or a link to the trailer, I do have something better than that: A gif of Samuel L. Jackson getting eaten by a shark in Deep Blue Sea. 'Til next time.

Top 10 Horror Movies

It's damn near impossible to have been born in the 80's - or at least have come of age in the decade - without having an affinity for horror movies. The 80's was a great time to be a horror buff, as it saw the true birth of the slasher genre, which also meant that you were guaranteed to see a bunch of boobies in between your brutal dispatches. Special effects - the practical ones, not CGI - had gotten to the point where deaths in the movies could be disgustingly visceral, with geysers of crimson splashing across the screen as a buxom brunette was decapitated. It was an awesome time, as movies in the 80's just didn't seem to give a shit about anything more than entertaining. And I had an older brother, seven years my senior, who educated me weekly on the horror flicks of the era, as every Friday night we talked our parents into taking us to a liquor store that also rented movies (damn, I miss liquor stores/gas stations that rented movies... Nothing was so uncomfortable as asking for Care Bears while the old dude behind me was waiting to get his pint of Beam's 8 Star and a porno), and eventually a Blockbuster Video.

So, suffice it to say, I loves me some horror movies. If you don't, you're weird. Thanks to Netflix Instant Stream, I've been watching a lot of shitty horror movies, and I got the idea to write up my top ten favorite horror movies. These aren't necessarily the best horror movies ever made, but my personal top ten, and really, that's all that should matter to you. As far as criteria, I'm avoiding any sci-fi horror, like Alien, and also drama with horror elements like The Silence of the Lambs and Seven (sorry, I'm just not comfortable with typing SE7EN as a movie title). If I were opening it up a bit, the three movies listed above would surely make the list - in the future, I'm going to do a list of favorite movie characters of all-time, and rest assured, Buffalo Bill/Jamie Gumm will make the list - as would Zodiac, but this isn't really a list about heady drama. I'm keeping it to strictly genre efforts.

Without further ado... A list completely unimportant to the world at large:

10.) The Devil's Rejects

I like Rob Zombie. I like his music, and I appreciate his cinematic enterprises. But I love The Devil's Rejects. I remember seeing Zombie in concert when I was 16, and he showed a video of House of 1,000 Corpses whilst playing the song of the same name. I was in awe of the gore in the clip. I couldn't wait to see the movie whenever it was finally released. Then I saw it. And it was a pile of shit. It didn't make any sense, and the acting was so campy that I just couldn't get into the movie at all. And Dwight K. Schrute was turned into a merman. And a hulking Terminator-looking thing went apeshit for a while. And Chris Hardwick - from MTV's Singled Out show (a personal fav when I was a kid... whatever) gets killed. So, when I saw the trailer for a sequel, I rolled my eyes and figured that Zombie was a helluva musician/performer, but he just didn't get film. But a weird thing happened: the reviews were all pretty glowing, so I sacked up, and saw the movie in theaters.

It was one of the most disturbing mainstream movies I'd ever seen, and some of the sequences were a tad hard to watch, not because of the violent content, but because of the violent subtext; this family of misfits raised the question of nurture - could you grow up in a murderous household and not be a murderer? Could you also, while heinously murdering innocent coeds, develop a lot of love and attachment to human life? Zombie focused on those questions in this creepy flick, and the answers aren't easy to digest. Do you feel bad for Otis and Baby, because this is what they've been made, or do you hate them because this is what they've always been? There is also an interesting subplot concerning vengeance, in which the protagonists (or is it antagonists? Zombie, you heady bastard, you!) are tortured by a cop-gone-rogue. Zombie does what so many smart horror movies do - they ask you questions you're afraid to ask yourself, but it doesn't provide you with any answers. Oh yeah, and it's creepy as hell, too.

9.) Dead Alive

I always saw this movie case at the video store growing up, but never really gave it the time of day, because it looked so fucking weird. Finally, I relented when I learned what it was about: a pathetic mama's boy who tries to take care of his zombified mother after she's bitten by a Sumatran Rat Monkey. Peter Jackson directed this oddity before he hit paydirt with his Lord of the Rings opus, and his trademark off-kilter sense of humor really shines, especially during a dinner table scene in which two zombies kinda-sorta start fooling around with one another. At the time of it's creation, it was the bloodiest movie of all-time, and it shows. It's still incredible, given the financial constraints, what the film does, and the low budget even plays to the film's strengths. With a big studio backing it, there is just no way that Jackson could have gotten away with all of the crap he does here. It's an insane movie, and I have a hard time finding the words to due it justice. So, I'll just go with this:

The climax involves a whole helluva lot of zombies and a lawnmower. 'Nuff said.




8.) Texas Chainsaw Massacre

I'll never forget the first time I saw this movie. I was 15, and it was a Friday night. My parents were out of town, and I decided to stay up all night and watch this creepy flick, and the Evil Dead trilogy. After watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I shrugged and thought to myself, 'I don't see what all the fuss is about.' Then, I got the stupid idea to set up our old computer in my room so I could "write a screenplay." So, I headed down to my basement and started rummaging around in the back room for our old Compaq that operated on MS-DOS. While I was down in the basement, I heard a weird noise, and I looked into the dark shadows and got supremely freaked out. I don't know why, but I pictured Leatherface's fat ass running straight at me, and I ran upstairs as quick as I could, then tried to watch Evil Dead and get the image of a disgusting Leatherface out of my head.

Very few movies have ever actually scared the shit out of me, and this is one of them. I didn't think so at the time, but just a while after it ended, the movie snuck up on me, and burrowed it's way into my psyche. After seeing the movie so many times now, I feel that it's due to it's amateurish direction from Tobe Hooper, as it looks more like a documentary than a feature film. I mean that as a compliment, as the lack of a legitimate score makes the murders even more creepy, as the screams from the victims aren't hidden behind anything. It's just screaming, and while I can understand that it gets old after a while, it's also very creepy, as Leatherface hangs some unsuspecting girl on a meat hook. And the dinner table scene? I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite so demented in my entire life. This movie was ahead of it's time in so many ways, and it is still influential in cinema today (look two spots up to see a great imitator...). Any time a movie can creep me out - even the 15 year old version of me - I've got to pay respect to that. And Texas Chainsaw Massacre scared me more than just about any other horror movie I've ever seen.



7.) Dawn of the Dead


Zombies, like Hansel from Zoolander, are sooo hot right now. They have reached a new level of popularity in our culture, thanks to the TV show The Walking Dead, and weird parody books like The Zombie Survival Guide and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But - and this is where I show how dorky I am - I have loved zombies for about as long as I can remember. The primary reason is because of George Romero, who was at one time an amazing storyteller and also the creator of the zombie genre. As I mentioned above, great horror movies ask us interesting questions, and Romero went through a phase in his film career when all the questions he asked us were in the form of zombie stories. Great horror movies use their stories as subversion, as a way of saying more about our lives than we sometimes think they're capable of. Dawn of the Dead is just such a flick.

The movie starts off with a scene in a ghetto apartment complex, and Romero quickly shines a light on race issues in the '70's - you know, post-Civil Rights when everything was supposed to be equal - and he heavy-handedly hammers home the point of the separation between social classes. It's a startling reintroduction into the zombie landscape he created with Night of the Living Dead ten years earlier, and he doesn't let up. A few survivors eventually make their way to a shopping mall, and Romero shifts his focus away from race relations to humanity's obsession with consumerism. It's all great stuff, an amazing blend of horror and social issues. The climax is absolutely stunning, as the survivors are put into harm's way not from the hordes of undead outside the mall, but rather fellow survivors; this serves to show that humanity's worst enemy is, more often than not, humanity itself. So much has been said about this classic that I don't think I can say much else without stepping on someone else's toes, who have said it much better than I could ever hope. Either way, this is a perennial Halloween experience for me, and it's one that I will always hold dearly to my heart.



6.) A Nightmare on Elm Street

Okay, so not all horror movies are required to have some sort of genius subtext. Sometimes they just have to be fucking creepy. And there have been very few characters created in film over the last 30 years than Freddy Krueger. Sure, he quickly devolved into a catchphrase-spouting caricature, but when he first appeared? He was one creepy mother-shut-yo-mouth. Freddy Krueger was a child molester who was burned to death, only to come back somehow to haunt his murderer's children in their dreams.

Wes Craven created Krueger, and wisely chose to present him as a nightmarish boogeyman, an individual who tormented his victims when they were their most vulnerable - while they were sleeping. Krueger's home - sleepytime - is something that is unavoidable, and is a universal fear. How many times have you wondered whether or not you could die in a dream, and then die in real life? I know it's been at least once.

Then there are the death scenes, which are forever stuck in my mind - there's the scene when Johnny Depp is swallowed by his bed, and a geyser of blood explodes from it, the scene with John Cusack's ex-girlfriend from Better Off Dead, in which she is flung around a bedroom... It's all so creepy and just-on-the-edge-of-impossible that it sticks with you. And I haven't even mentioned the scene in which Nancy is sleeping and Krueger emerges from the wall to observe her. It's a shame that Krueger devolved into such an unmenacing individual, and it's even more shameful that the remake last year was a huge pile of shit. But we'll always have this baby to look back to.

5.) From Dusk 'Till Dawn

I wondered for a few moments what constituted horror movies, and I wondered if a lot of humor would disqualify any movies that I would choose. But then I decided to do whatever I wanted, as I knew my editor (me) wouldn't give a hoot. So there was really no way in hell that From Dusk 'Till Dawn wouldn't make it. I watched his movie every day during the summer of 1996, and I have a feeling that it is one of the primary reasons I am the way I am today. It's directed by Robert Rodriguez, with a script from Quentin Tarantino. Really, what's not to love? Oh yeah, it also has some of the best dialogue in a movie ever, up to (but definitely not including), "Everybody be cool. You be cool," "Come on, Sex Machine!" "All right vampire killers... Let's kill some fucking vampires," and a monologue that uses the word "pussy" roughly 287 times in thirty seconds.

The movie is just incredibly ridiculous, and the plot can be succinctly summed up: a pair of criminals and their hostages hang out in a Mexican strip club for the night, but it turns out that the strip club is operated by vampires. That's basically it, and it is supremely amazing. The set pieces include horribly humorous special effects, and a Mexican bar band whose instruments are made of human body parts(!) - words really can't capture the insanity on display here, and as the years roll on, I find myself loving this flick more and more. The flick served as an introduction of sorts to Tarantino, and it features George Clooney before he was, y'know, George Clooney. There's nothing about this movie I don't love, and that even includes Juliette "Is-She-Actually-Kinda-Retarded?" Lewis.

4.) Scream

This movie is just genius. It really is. There's no other way to truly describe the flick, and to do so would be an insult to the movie itself. Horror was in such a sad state in the mid-90's - maybe as bad as the current horror genre is - that it desperately needed some sort of shot in the arm. Well, Wes Craven thankfully decided that the only way to fix an ailing genre was to completely turn it around. He decided to create a horror movie that was self-aware; it's characters knew the ridiculousness inherent in slasher-flicks, and they were aware of the "rules": Don't say shit like, "I'll be right back," don't have sex if you want to survive, and always be prepared for "one last scare." Scream was my first introduction to post-modernism (I have since fell in love with the literary genre), and also a neat bit of meta-fiction. It certainly didn't hurt that it was funny as hell, too.

But it would all be for naught if it wasn't at least, a little bit, scary. The opening scene certainly succeeds at that, with Drew Barrymore answering her telephone unsuspectingly (I sure hope she sends Craven an awesome Christmas Card every year for salvaging her career), only to have the person on the other end of the phone be a twisted maniac obsessed with horror movies.

What follows is a brisk tale that involves more than a couple high schoolers skewered and disemboweled by a weirdo in a Ghostface mask. Sure, the sequels ("These days, ya gotta have a sequel!") met with varying degrees of success - Scream 2 and Scream 4 were both pretty great, but Scream 3 made me want to dig out my own eyeballs - but this movie reinvented the horror genre for a whole new generation, and it made sure that it would never be the same again. It's just a shame that someone, somewhere, got the stupid idea to remake a bunch of Japanese horror movies into absolute shit, and someone else got the stupid idea to start the Saw franchise. While Scream's success has largely been forgotten now thanks to PG-13 crapfests and torture porn, I'll never forget this masterpiece for what it was - a smart, funny, and pretty damn scary horror movie.

3.) Night of the Living Dead

Anybody living outside of Haiti had no idea what a zombie was in 1968. Sure, I'm being hyperbolic, but it's pretty true - outside of Haitians, zombies were largely unknown. Until George Romero showed up. And the zombies he created weren't like the hypnotized zombies in Haitian lore; these things were recently-deceased flesh-eaters who could only be put down by effectively destroying the brain. Romero will never, ever, ever, ever be forgotten for creating the zombie subgenre, and even though it's been 43 years since he started it all, nobody has ever come close to making a better zombie movie.


I'm a fan of unknowns in horror. I don't like knowing why a serial killer is deranged and I don't like knowing why zombies are walking the Earth. It's unimportant exposition. It's scarier not knowing. And Romero uses that to his advantage, not ever letting us know why the dead have risen and are now munching on brains. Instead, he focuses on a select group of survivors - surprisingly led by a black man - who take refuge in a farm house while the dead try to break their way inside. Early on, Romero unleashes a standard zombie-flick trope, that is still used heavily today - it's not really the zombies we need to worry about, it's the fellow survivors. People are capable of a lot of dastardly shit, and when the dead rise up, well, you can only expect the bad apples to turn really rotten. The subtext of having a black man as the de facto "leader" of the survivors takes on incredible power at the end of the film, as Romero basically asks the audience, "Can even the apocalypse get people to stop acting like dickheads?" with the obvious answer, "Nope."

I firmly believe that Night of the Living Dead was a product of it's time. It was made in 1968, right near the end of the Hippie movement. Individualism was a very important aspect of counter-culture society, and Night of the Living Dead was made for the counter-culture. For individualists, the zombie hordes becomes the most menacing thing imaginable - a group of hundreds of individuals all exactly the same, with the exact same thing on their minds (BRAINS!!!) trying to "recruit" you to be just like them. I am of the mind that all zombie movies are ultimately about society at large trying to subvert you into becoming just like them, and it all started thanks to Romero and his crazy ideas about some flesh-eating weirdos.

2.) Halloween

Any movie that single-handedly creates a genre of film which features copious amounts of fornication, big-breasted coeds, and psychotic masked men on the hunt of blood is certainly a flick that I'm going to be a fan of. My love of zombie movies has been well-documented thus far, but the slasher genre has got to be a close second. There's a really good chance that, if not for zombie movies and slashers, I would have spent my time growing up playing varsity sports, hooking up with hot babes at discos, and getting voted "Most Likely to Have Three Children by Graduation" by my classmates. Good thing that didn't happen! Instead, my weekends were dominated with trips to video stores and watching stupid teenagers get all sortsa murdered by psychopaths in hockey masks and such. The probability of me siring illegitimate children stayed at a healthy .0078% thanks to slasher flicks, and that can only be a good thing, right? So what if it also kept the possibility of me ever seeing a naked woman  in reality at the same low odds?

The first, and best, slasher ever is still one of my favorite movies of all-time. Everyone knows who Michael Meyers, the crazed psychopath from Halloween, is. He's a voiceless, faceless being who murdered his sister at a young age, and then escaped from an insane asylum years later to return home. I don't love this movie because of some intelligent subtext, or the high-class of acting; nope, I love it because it is about nothing more than a crazed psycho stalking teenagers and killing them. A lot of critics hold this from being a masterpiece because of how it treats the teenagers - as oversexed dullards who lack the most common of senses. That, ladies and germs, is why I love the damn thing so much. Without Halloween, who knows if I ever would have been able to experience great cinematic moments like a big-tittied blonde running naked through the woods, or a teenage girl being slammed against a tree in a sleeping bag by Jason Voorhees? While the Friday the 13th series arguably perfected the slasher genre (no movie franchise ever did a better job of exploiting teenage girls in death scenes), Halloween gave birth to it all, and for that it will always have a spot in my heart.

The best part of it all, of course, is Michael himself. Nobody knows why he's evil. Nobody knows why he wants to stab a dork dressed as a ghost to the wall and then wear the ghost costume to go kill the naked girl upstairs. Nobody knows why he wants to eviscerate Jamie Lee Curtis. And nobody cares. He's got one goal, and one goal only. And sometimes, that's all you need in a horror movie, so long as it's done well. Also, the movie has one of the best theme songs of all time, competing with The Exorcist for esteemed title of "This-Song-Makes-Me-Want-to-Shit-My-Pants." Like so many other great horror franchises, the story of Michael Meyers quickly went to hell (and not the scary one, the stupid, un-fun one) with horrendous sequels that don't add anything of consequence. Of course, the franchise was remade a few years ago (by Rob Zombie), and while the remake - and the sequel - wasn't hugely disappointing (I actually quite enjoyed them, but I'm a sucker for horror, after all), nothing can compete with the original.

1.) The Lost Boys

This wasn't even a debate.

What do you get when you mix vampires, an amusement park, a greased-up saxophonist, the Coreys, and a kick-ass soundtrack (Cry Little Sister still rocks)? You get The Lost Boys. Of course, The Lost Boys could never have been made in another decade - it is certainly an '80's movie, but that is one of the reasons it is so awesome. It features ageless bad-ass vampires who sleep all day and party all night (in addition to drinking blood, of course) dressed up as punk-rockers and have an underground lair with a giant Jim Morrison poster. Please tell me how I'm not supposed to love this movie?

And I haven't even gotten to the cast yet. There's Jason Patric (at his most devilishly handsome) as Michael, the new guy in town who accidentally becomes a kinda-sorta vampire by trying to fit in with the cool crowd. There's Corey Haim as his dorky little brother with an obsession with comic books (sounds like me...) and an awesome dog named Nanook. There's Kiefer Sutherland as David, the uber-cool vampire. There's Jamie Gertz as the smokin-hot Star, who Michael wants to bone (and, as an aside, she served as my first ever real-girl crush, taking the torch from the animated April O'Neil). There's Corey Feldmann as one half of the Frog Brothers, dudes who run a comic book store and moonlight as vampire hunters(!). The movie has a cast to kill for, as seemingly everybody in the damn movie has met with some sort of fame. Even the dude who's not Ted from the Bill and Ted series of movies is in it (his name is Alex Winter, but I figured nobody knows his real name but me), and the grandpa from Blossom. I'm sure there have been better casts in movies before and since, but there is something unavoidably cool about this cast, and it makes the movie all the more enjoyable. I'm sure that when the film went into production, Charlie Sheen was snorting a line of coke off of a prostitute's hindquarters and was cursing Joel Schumacher for not including him in this masterpiece.

The movie isn't really "scary," but it counts as horror because of the subject matter. Mostly, it's just super-cool and fun. There's only one real scene that counts as "creepy," and that includes Chinese food, worms, and maggots. There's also a decently cool scene that involves a Buff Bagwell-type and his lady friend (who is reading a "Sad Sack" comic book) getting the roof of their car ripped off, then being pulled into the dark night sky, but nothing that will keep you up at night. The scene in which Bill from Bill and Ted gets killed garners the most suspense, but again, you're not going to have nightmares over these vampires. Maybe sex-fantasies, but that's it. Now, these vampires aren't pussified like the Twilight douches - they don't glisten like diamonds, don't look like they have irritable bowels, and actually kill people - but they're not overly scary in presentation.

Of course, what really pushes the whole film over the top is the one scene early on in which a saxophonist covered in baby oil rocks the fuck out of the amusement park/earthquake zone/concert venue. Tim Capello, the most ludicrous individual I've ever witnessed, looks like a coked-out Nick Manning (porn enthusiasts shall get this here reference) or perhaps Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake if he traded out his trimming sheers for a saxophone. I struggle to even find words to describe the man in all of his greasy glory. He is a man who deserves recognition, though. I don't think a statue (with baby oil dispensers) being erected alongside the Hollywood sign is too much for this gentleman. The GIF of good old Timmy above is pretty much the most beautiful thing ever, although for your viewing pleasure, I will also include a link so you can watch the sensual gyrating goodness the way it's meant to be enjoyed - to the mellifluous sounds of Mr. Capello's brilliant saxophone and vocals. You are welcome in advance.

Just watch the fucking movie.