Reel Film Chronicles – Page 17

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

Not only does Renee Zellweger appear in this atrocious entry in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, but Matthew McConaughey appears in full force as well: they very well could be the best thing about this film. McConaughey plays Leatherface’s brother Vilmer and does in fact surpass the popular chainsaw wielding villain in terms of scares. Zellweger doesn’t have much to do here but play the classic final girl trope as best as anyone and is in fact, the only character in the film that passes as a decent person. The rest of the characters are all awful and the film doesn’t skirt around it at all: you find yourself rooting for both good and bad folk to die gruesome deaths, but yet the film doesn’t really deliver there either. I read somewhere (and I apologise as I didn’t bookmark it) that perhaps the film is a commentary on the franchise itself, if not horror movies in general during this time frame: villains are reduced to a fraction of what they were before (as Leatherface is the weakest part of the…

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

Number three in the series feels more akin to a reimagining of the original film than a sequel as it follows the basic outline rather than treading new territory like the first sequel did years before. I guess in 1990 the original was sixteen years in the past, which by horror fanchise standards is old enough for a remake. Unfortunately, this feels rather like the other generic films of the decade; wherein with Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 which ventured into a creepy underground domain with our cannibal clan and added a healthy dose of camp, the third one goes straight serious yet can’t match the match the shocking horror of the original. Indeed, I don’t think anyone is actually killed with a chainsaw in this film; Leatherface is in the title yet does very little in this slog of a thriller. The film spends an inordinate amount of time running around in the dark and focusing on the shenanigans of the killer Sawyer family, which I think takes away some of the fear factor. Aside from young Viggo Mortensen’s menacing…

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

While I found it difficult to sit through the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I did end up rating it quite highly. The big takeaway I had was the amount of screaming that dominated the last act of the film, and I found it exhausting to complete. I leveled a similar complaint against The Goonies when I watched it the first time: there just seemed to be sections of loud talking, yelling and general tomfoolery that overloaded my (apparently) old man sensibilities. It pleases me to report then, that the “screaming” of TCM2 was much more bearable. The film though, does not hold the same significance of the original, although I did enjoy watching it quite a bit: the sequel does not seem to take itself seriously, as it has a bit of surrealism that leans into comedy rather than the shock horror of the first. It’s a good mix as we’re treated to a zany performance by Dennis Hopper (that scene where he’s shopping for chainsaws is out of this world) and a solid showing of the cannibalistic family, including…

Batman: Hush

While I read the original comics that this movie is based on, you must know that I am not a reliable source; the memory of those comics are long forgotten and yes, I should have either read them before taking this on or maybe I should read them after and *before* I write this. But I’m not interested in making comparisons: I didn’t grow up with Hush like I did some of the other iconics stories, such as Year One or Dark Knight Returns. I have enjoyed – for the most part – the DC animated features: it’s always felt to me that they have their act together and are able to make coherent, concise stories that often excel past their live action attempts. It’s no different here: we get the luxury of moving beyond the capabilities of live action just adding in so many of Batman’s rogue gallery in such a short amount of time; they come and go to server their part in the story perfectly and in true comic book fashion. Hush elevates in its exploration of…

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

2016 | dir: André Øvredal | 99 m I don’t know if it says more about me or about the horror industry that when I first heard about The Autopsy of Jane Doe, I immediately assumed necrophilia was going to play a large part in the plot. (Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.) I’m not sure why, exactly, but my mind kept trying to connect it with Deadgirl, a movie that involves some teenage boys, a zombie girl, and a whole lot of lube. Although, I’m not sure whether sex with somebody who’s only mostly dead counts as necrophilia or it’s really more of a grey area, zombiphilia. Either way, the point is The Autopsy of Jane Doe was actually nothing like Deadgirl, and I definitely don’t have a fetish for corpses that can legally be proven in a court of law as far as you know. I picked up The Autopsy of Jane Doe for a good price at FanExpo last year, but for some reason, it never made the cut in my yearly Halloween horror movie marathon. I mean, I guess I…

Collector’s Corner: 12 Monkeys

Almost since the beginning, Terry Gilliam has been a mainstay in my movie collection, and my DVD copy of 12 Monkeys has been around since university. It easily claimed a spot on the list of Essential Cinema that my friends and I hashed out over countless drunken nights and weekend marathon gaming sessions of SSX Tricky. So I was super stoked to upgrade to the Arrow release of 12 Monkeys a couple weeks back when Ryebone and I made our annual pilgrimage to FAN EXPO, it being a staple of my cinematic diet for so long. And also a little sad. Not at the superior visual and audio quality of the new Blu-ray version, which is awesome, but at the replacement of the specific DVD copy that has been a part of my life, literally for decades now. For some, sentimentality over a particular copy of a particular movie that was mass-produced around the world may be difficult to grasp. It’s the same basic drive that fuels all sentimental connections, I suppose; that particular thing is associated in one’s brain with another thing that occurred in…

Spider-Man: Far From Home

2019 | dir: Jon Watts | 129m The Marvel Cinematic Universe is, by this point, a well-oiled machine that basically prints money on command. Spider-Man Far From Home, the second solo outing for Peter Parker and his alter-ego in the MCU, seemed destined to be a smash success, as most Marvel films are these days. And, of course, it is raking in a tonne of dough. There’s no question it’s a financial success for Marvel Studios and their evil overlords at Disney. It did what it was designed to do, and exactly nothing more. I went in to Spider-Man: Far From Home as a fan of the MCU in general: a few terrible films, a few great films, a lot of solid films somewhere in between those two extremes, but always well-thought out and part of a larger plan. I remember walking out of Avengers: Infinity War and thinking that this is probably as close as I would get to experiencing a cinematic event that people watching The Empire Strikes Back for the first time in theatres must have shared. I’m impressed at the MCU’s long-form storytelling,…

Dark Phoenix

Sometimes a film is nearing release amid a turmoil of negative hype, and as it crests to a swelling of negative criticism in the final days the movie releases to a thud at the box office – exactly as expected. And sometimes, your curiosity still gets the best of you, and you have to watch the train wreck for yourself. As an avid enthusiast for so-called “bad” films, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to watch the (presumably) last entry in Fox’s rocky X-Men franchise that began so innocently, and triumphantly nearly twenty years ago. The series was a owed a small debt as well; I’ve seen every entry in the theatre and I wouldn’t allow some nasty reviews to deter me from completing the saga: it was the least I could do for the franchise that ultimately opened the door for our modern superhero blockbuster films. It nearly bears repeating, that expectations into a film hold a lot of sway over opinions of the film (least for me). So in this case, my expectations are pretty low. Like, VERY…

Batman (1989)

The original Tim Burton Batman from 1989 lives in my head canon as one of my favourite films of all time; although I would be hesitant to say it was top ten or even top twenty material, it’s fair to say it’s on my list of most viewed movies. So when was the last time I actually sat down to watch this? I draw a complete blank, throw the dart, and it lands in the murky depths of the early 2000s. It was an afternoon in the summer of 2002′ after finishing for the day from a summer job, I found myself with a fresh paycheck and the entitlement to feed my movie collection. Batman and Batman Returns were my targets and pickups that day from one of the local media shops, and I would have gone home and watched at least the first one, with the second one perhaps following that weekend. A few short years later, Batman Begins would hit the scene, and those original films would take a back seat in viewing priority. With the latest release of…

Collector’s Corner: Prince of Darkness

John Carpenter. When you absolutely, positively have to scare every last bubble-gum chewer in the room, accept no substitute. Some people live with no regrets; regretting stuff is pretty much all I do. With regards to my video library, one of my current regrets is the lack of John Carpenter films, which I’ve started to remedy with my recent acquisition of Prince of Darkness, an integral entry in his self-described “Apocalypse Trilogy” alongside The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness. In this company, Prince of Darkness is the weakest entry, but it’s also a great entry. Any time you can get Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, and Alice Cooper in the same film about an ultimate evil force trying to bring about the end of days, you can’t go wrong. Carpenter’s pantheon is the perfect complement to the films of David Cronenberg. Both filmmakers came out of the same school, focusing a great deal on horror and sci-fi, and both have a very economic form of storytelling. Some days I want to watch an epic Scorsese drama; other days I want to be kicked…