Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)

Directed by: Shawn Levy

Starring: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria

Other Actors of Note: Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Robin Williams, Christopher Guest, Ricky Gervais, Bill Hader, Jay Burachel, Clint Howard, Eugene Levy, Ed Helms, and Jonah Hill

Plot: When the Museum of Natural History is closed for upgrades and renovations, the museum pieces are moved into federal storage at the famous Washington Museums. The centerpiece of the film will be bringing to life the Smithsonian Institution, which houses the world's largest museum complex with more than 136 million items in its collections, ranging from the plane Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) flew on her non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic and Al Capone's (Jon Bernthal) rap sheet and mug shot to Dorothy's ruby slippers, Fonzie's jacket from Happy Days, the still from M*A*S*H and Archie Bunker's lounge chair from All in the Family. With a forwarded resume, Larry (Ben Stiller) becomes another caretaker at the Smithsonian, where Kahmunrah, an evil Pharaoh will come to life with the reestablishing of a tablet as a magical force in the museum bringing the old exhibits (Such as Theodore Roosevelt and Dexter) and new exhibits (like General Custer and Al Capone) back to life, and in conflict with each other. Larry enlists the help of Amelia Earheart, who he develops a romantic interest in, and together they try to put everything back in order. Taken from www.imdb.com.

When it comes to mainstream sequels, the idea is to take everything that worked in the first movie and supplement it with things that are bigger and, theoretically, better. However this plan rarely works.

I am quite unashamed to admit that I really enjoyed the first "Night at the Museum" it was a fun little movie with a sense of adventure that didn't try to be too serious but also didn't patronize its intended audience. Ben Stiller and Robin Williams (as well as Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan) were funny and managed to not feel forced. No to mention the message about meuseums was understated and, I thought, well put. Not to mention they managed to capitalize on Mickey Rooney's insanity. For those who claimed that it was juveneille or stupid, I would like to remind you that it was meant to entertain fucking 8-year-olds you elitest assholes! If you feel the need to complain about this movie then you obviously don't remember "The Pagemaster", "Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest", or any of the other godawful kids movies from the 90s.

However, as much as I liked the original movie, this sequel represents everything that goes wrong when studios try the "go big or go home" approach.

So, we rejoin Larry Daley as a succesful businessman who has quit his job as a night guard but still drops by the museum every once in a while. But of course he's become horribly overwhelmed with bring rich and famous and just doesn't have time to talk to museum exhibits anymore. Well now most of the exhibits are being removed and taken to the Smithsonian in the national archives, the monkey ends up stealing the tablet of Akmunrah and his brother Khamunrah is awakened in the National Archives and vows to awaken his army of the dead to take over the world using the tablet. Larry goes to Washington DC to try and save the day.


As much as everyone hated Ben Stiller in the first movie I thought he gave a good performance that may have fallen short of some of his truly great roles (Mr. Furious in "Mystery Men", Tugg Speedman in "Tropic Thunder", Gary Focker in "Meet the Parents") was certainly still one of his more entertaining and funny characters. Stiller still remains one of the good points but without a good cast of characters to have chemistry with he's kind of weak here on his own. There's a good moment early on between him and another security guard played by Jonah Hill that is far too short and sadly not lived up to during the rest of the movie.

So Carla Gugino pissed off with no explanation, so in her place we have Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart. Sweet Jesus, if the real Amelia Earhart was this goddamn annoying then it was no accident that she dissappeared without a trace, it was divine intervention. Adams is one of the most obnoxious characters I've seen in quite some time, which makes the romance between Larry and Amelia seem even more forced than it was already. At very least she wears tight aviator's pants and the cameraman seems obsessed with giving us shots of her ass.

Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan are one of the few good things that returns from the first movie (the t-rex, Easter Island Statue, and Robin Williams only make small appearances at the beginning and end of the movie) but they don't get much of a chance to shine until the big fight at the end that involves a wonderful pisstake of "300."

Hank Azaria plays 3 roles, a very over-the-top (in a bad way) Abraham Lincoln, a thinker statue that sounds like JFK for no reason, and the villain of the film: Kahmunrah. Azaria does a Boris Karloff impression but it sounds more like a Stewie Griffin impersonation done by Jeremy Irons. Hank Azaria is a funny actor but this just another one of his big-budget flops. Then again when you have to fill the shoes of Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobb you're going to lose.

Bill Hader does a rather humorous General Custer, constantly obsessing over his hair and coming up with horrible war strategies. Unfortunately he only appears in 2 or 3 scenes while we have to put up with Amy Adams for the whole fucking movie.


The plot of this movie is pretty much non-existent. Larry goes to DC to save his favorite museum exhibits. He then gets trapped trying to stop Kahmunrah when he could just turn the middle piece sideways to turn everyone inanimate. You might be saying, "But Baytor, this is a children's film." But I remember catching plot inconsistencies like that when I was a kid so I don't accept that.

This is also added to the fact that there doesn't seem to a single night guard on duty in the whole Smithsonian and all the museums and the Washington monument are right next door to one another. There also appear to be no security cameras to catch Larry causing millions of dollars worth of damage.

Aside from this it's an hour and a half 0f throw away jokes with a few good ones intersperced every now and then all around the thread of a big advertisement for the Smithsonian. Naturally everything is fixed by the time the movie is over. None of the original charm is there from the first movie and only the vaguest hint of the humor remains.


This movie is a perfect case for why going for broke on the sequel is a very very bad idea.

I give "Night of the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" a 2 out of 5. Skip it.

Terminator Salvation (2009)


Directed by: McG

Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood

Other Actors of Note: Helena Bonham Carter, Bryce Dallas Howard, Michael Ironside, Anton Yelchin

Plot: After Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust, a group of survivors led by John Connor struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job. Taken from www.imdb.com.

"Officer Token Angry Blackguy reporting for duty, sir!"

Kids, don't cheat on your wife. Seriously, bad shit happens. When James Cameron sold out and made the horrible film "Titanic" proving universally that shit can be successful so long as you have an army of tasteless screaming teenage girls on your side. (This hypothesis would later go on to be tested when "Twilight" came out.)

So anyway, Cameron offered a role to his then-wife Linda Hamilton A.K.A. Sarah Connor. Well Linda turned down the role apparently to further pursue her successful acting career (that's a joke) and the role was given to Cathy Bates who to this day remains the only person in that whole goddamn movie who actually manages to act. But I digress, so anyway, long story short Cameron ended up sleeping with on of the actresses and Linda Hamilton won the rights to the "Terminator" films in the divorce.

Now surely, "Terminator" being Linda's only memorable role, she's going to make sure that the series is treated with the utmost respect and care, right? Well, according to "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" the answer to that question is a most emphatic "fuck no!"

So this was the chance to make everybody forget the third movie. Arnold is busy ruling California with an iron fist so he's out and that's for the best. Nick Stahl was politely asked to fuck off, that's 2 for 2. And they hired... the guy who directed the "Charlie's Angels" movies to direct.... okay, now you're just trying to fuck shit up.

So after hiring McG (A monicker that implies he's Irish, a gangbanger, AND a douchebag) they approaced Christian Bale, hoping for him to play the role of the terminator for this movie. But Bale said, "You know what, why don't you take this page and a half of dialogue for John Connor and stretch it out to encompass most of the movie, I'll play that."

McG tried to negotiate but then Bale took off his pants and began screaming "I AM BATMAN!" in a raspy voice and proceeded to noogie the fuck out of him. The producers eventually agreed to rewrite the script so he would quit giving McG swirlies and asking him if he liked Huey Lewis and the News and proclaiming that professionally they were "fucking done." And thus "Terminator Clusterfuck" was born.

So, let me see if I can try and piece this jigsaw puzzle together in a way that makes a modicum of sense. So, it's the future and John Connor is not leading the resistance at all, in fact he's getting bossed around a bunch by Michael Ironsides and anyone else who fits the stereotypical grizzled-army-commander template. He finds out about a signal that can be used to stop the machines and decides to field test it. Flash on over to LA where Marcus Wright, a convicted murderer who we met in the prologue with a completely superfluous appearance from Helena Bonham Carter, walks on screen naked and screams. We immediatly know he's a Terminator cause that's how this shit works, also because they told us he was one in the trailer.

Marcus meets Kyle Reese who gets kidnapped by robots and he hooks up with super-hot downed pilot Blair (played by Moon Bloodgood, who is apparently a night elf) and then trek on over to an inevitable confrontation between Connor and Wright. This confrontation is both needlessly epic and inevitably homo-erotic.

So some shit goes down, some more stuff blows up, the Arnold-bot shows up for reasons unexplained and the movie ends with a kind of weird ending. But given the alternative I think it's obvious that this turd was polished as much as can be reasonably expected.

They're totally about to kiss.

So, Christian Bale is not the star of this movie despite what he and the producers clearly want you to believe. I think he's finally going the way of Kevin Spacey and slowly selling out as this performance is at best "good." His role in the movie feels like it was written in last minute and even the part that was written into the script originally just isn't overly impressive (we get to watch another John Connor futiley try to fight against yet another T-800: oh gee fire didn't work, maybe you should try punching it!)

Contrary to Bale, Sam Worthington is actually quite good, oh sure he's a bit two-dimensional and badass. But on the scale of cool Terminators he falls somewhere between the T-1000 and the T-RiverTam. Even in his 2-dimensional glory he actually manages to be a compelling protagonist. This would work better if he wasn't interrupted every 15-minutes by Bale whispering dramatically into a walkie-talky.

Anton Yelchin is 2-for-2 on franchise destroying sequels. Not only does he actually manage to look like Michael Biehn but he manages to have that raspy voice without it feeling forced. He seems to have studied the part and it's easy to believe that Yelchin's character in this film eventually becomes Biehn's in the first movie.

Moon Bloodgood and Bryce Dallas Howard serve no purpose and could have been entirely removed from this movie without anything important having changed. I don't know about Bloodgood but Howard is too good of an actor to be relegated to such a small bland role.

Oh, park a helicopter on top of them and shoot them in the face, Sarah Connor should have just tried that.

Despite my annoyance with Christian Bale, McG, James Cameron, and really everybody who brought this into existence not to mention my overwhelming indifference for seeing the robot war, there are a lot of things in this movie that actually work.

For one, the post-apocalyptic atmosphere works perfectly. Everything feels suitably desolate and barren and despite the fact that they ignore everything that Kyle Reese said in the first movie (I.E. that they fight during the day and young-Reese says that Hunter Killers hunt best at night despite the fact that old-Reese said that the resistance only fights at night.) Things are suitably explodey and filled with all sorts of different kinds of killer robots but that help is also a hinderance.

Some of the T-1s are still hanging around from "Rise of the Machines" but not many, perhaps ED-209 threatened to sue for copyright infringement, I don't know. But we also get to see the Hunter Killers from the opening of T2. There are water snake terminators, giant people grabbing Terminators with motorcycles in their legs. Yes you read that correctly, there are evil robot motorcycles.

Now, this movie did do something that the T2 changed and T3 ruined entirely. For the first time since the first movie the T-600s are scary and all I can say is it's about fucking time. Finally the T-600 looks like it has some size and weight to it and not a very elaborate animatronic puppet that could break in a stiff wind. Honestly the T-1000 was cool but far from scary and the T-X was just fucking pathetic so it's nice to feel a sense of at least mild fear from them again. But of course my big problem is with the lone T-800 in this movie.

So the Arnold-bot shows up for no real reason (unless he's fulfilling the prophecy he gave in T3, but it doesn't really come to pass as he said it would and what happens would break continuity and end with past-Connor totally dead) but then decides to break continuity entirely. You see, thus far in the movie the T-600s have been uncharacteristically weak, they die far too easy seeing as it took a hydraulic press, a vat of molten iron, and a nuclear blast to kill them in past films respectively. So when Arnold-Bot gets a vat of molten iron poured on him I was understandably confused when he didn't fucking die. That shit killed the T-1000, why is the lesser-model surviving from it. Does this mean we're going to be seeing an even more powerful T-1000 in a future sequel? Someone call Robert Patrick, he's not busy Governating anything! (I'm sorry Kristana Loken, but you can eat shit and die.)

Other than that it's action-packed, not as bloody as it should be but at least much ballsier than T3. I was kind of bothered and annoyed by the gratuitous line quotes ("I'll be back", "Come with me if you want to live", "What day is it, what year?") and there were far too many T3 references (Mrs. John Connor, the Arnold Bot, the Terminator nuclear fuel cells, the T1) as hoping McG would ignore that movie and just move on.

Pictured: Scary

It's an entertaining and suitably desolate and dangerous, but it never really feels like a Terminator movie and that's really what hurts it. It's still twice as good as T3 but if you're a hardcore fan that maintains the series ended at T2 this won't change your mind.

McG almost seemed to get it and he's got two more sequels to figure it out. Mr. G, if you're reading this (and you're totally not because I know only like 3 people read this) my first advice is to beat away Christian Bale's ego with a big stick (use fire if you must) and try and write a movie that meshes with your idea as well as Cameron's. I fully believe you can do this if you just try harder.

I give "Terminator Salvation" a 3 out of 5. There's nothing really wrong with it but there's certainly nothing right either.

Star Trek (2009)

Directed by: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana

Other Actors of Note: Leonard Nimoy, Winona Ryder, Tyler Perry, Oz Perkins

Plot: A chronicle of the early days of James T. Kirk and his fellow USS Enterprise crew members.


Hey, remember how back in my "Twilight" review I gave Trekkies a pass on the grounds that the Twunts are rabid lunatics with no souls and serious emotional issues? Well, before you all get too cocky thinking you'd get off scot free, it's your turn.

So "Star Trek" is a sequel/prequel/reboot/camp stove/flash light to the entire Trek series. And while it does follow the events of "Star Trek: Nemesis" it's the new extreme "Cool Ranch" to the original film's "Nacho Cheese" flavor.

So apparently the studio execs realized that we had pretty much milked the teat of the adventures of Captain Picard, Worf, Data, the black guy off "Reading Rainbow", that guy with the beard, that one chick, the other chick, that other guy, and that other guy till it started squirting out blood, and rather than make another sequel they made a deal with Mephistopheles to restore order to the series. He agreed, hiring J.J. Abrams to un-fuck things, but as we "Spider-Man" fans know... Mephistopheles doesn't work for free, he had certain terms...


Okay lets ignore J.J. Abrams and Satan for right now, we'll get back to them later. Right now I want to talk about the cast:

Okay, we'll start with Chris Pine. I HATED the idea of Chris Pine playing Kirk, he had the look of an actor whose Starfleet uniform would have a popped collar and would constantly call Spock names like "Bro'sef", "Bro'mosexual", and "Bro'lcun." Fortunately I was dead fucking wrong and I salute J.J. Abrams for finding someone so perfect for the role.

Now Pine isn't a perfect reproduction of Shatner. First of all in this continuity Kirk grew up without a father so he's a bit more rebellious and cocky (if such a thing is possible) than the original, but it never feels forced or too different. The fact that Pine bears a strange resemblance to Shatner circa 1966 doesn't hurt anything either. Pine owns the movie and really makes for a good leading man. I truly hope that if this franchise doesn't take off (or even if it does for that matter) that Pine will get a lot more roles in future movies. It's good to know there are still actors under the age of 35 who can act.

Karl Urban was the one that I could not accept under any circumstances ever ever ever ever. I looked at his past roles in films like "Doom", "The Chronicles of Riddick", and "Pathfinder" and went "What the fuck is this cocksmith doing playing McCoy?" But you know what? Miraculously he fits McCoy perfectly, and no one is more surprised than me, he even manages to be as fuck-ugly as Deforest Kelley (and that shit isn't easy!) Urban's role was almost entirely reduced to "wacky side-kick" territory, but just like with Kirk it works very well. I however don't want to see Urban in any more non-Trek movies.

I am sad to say that Zachary Quinto (the actor I was actually okay with) is mildly disappointing as Spock. Now this isn't to say that he doesn't play Spock well, he just fell short of my expectations I suppose. Spock seems a bit more prickish than normal and much less sage-like. Which I get it that he's young Spock, but Kirk's supposed to be the dickish hothead, not Spock.

We do get the right Spock though because Leonard Nimoy reprises his role as "Spock Prime" (who I'm guessing turns into a fire truck and leads the Autobots to defeat Unicron after the credits roll.) Nimoy is as good as he ever was (that amount being "great") and commands the screen when he's on it. He even gives the intro narration (strangely they chose the intro from "Next Generation" rather than the original series) as we watch the Enterprise head off into space.

Zoe Saldana plays a more than capable Uhara. Admittedly this Uhara is the typical sassy smart movie chick which makes it all that more awkward when she falls into Uhara's intended role of "Sit in this chair and look pretty, every now and then swivel around and give the viewers false hopes of seeing up your skirt." It's not that Saldana can't act, in fact she plays a more than capable Uhara, it's just that her character is vastly under-utilized which is entirely the writer (and to some extent Abrams') fault. There's also a romance between she and Spock part way through that just sorta pops up out of nowhere, but it's mostly ignored and you get past it.

Anton Yelchin does a good job as entirely superfluous Chekov. His part in the movie is to talk funny and tell us things we already know. Once again, not the actor's fault, it's the writer's. (To be honest I'm kinda surprised they didn't just make him go "Nuclear Wessels" over and over and over again.)

Now, Simon Pegg has been kind of controversial as Scotty. The poor bastard doesn't get introduced until halfway through the movie and then they just kind of haphazardly cram him in there and hope nobody notices. Now if you think about it, the way he enters the movie works (and they had to have some way to introduce Nimoy so he was necessary) but it still kinda sucks as Pegg steals the show (as always) and minus his little bumpy Ewok sidekick he's perfect in his role. Some say he's "too jokey" but Scotty was always one of the more lighthearted memebers of the crew to begin with. Oh, and yes, he does say "I'm givin' 'er all she's got, Cap'n!" This film needs a whole lot more Scotty.

John Cho was the only casting I didn't like in this movie as Sulu. It's not that Cho doesn't play the part well. It's not that he's Korean instead of Japanese. The problem is that Cho just doesn't feel right for the part, it seems like they just cast the first capable Asian actor they could find and that really hurts things. But seeing as Sulu's entire purpose is to pull a lever back and forth for 90% of the movie (the part where he's not doing Kung Fu and "fencing" with his collapsible samurai sword) so it doesn't become tired.

Now, Eric Bana plays a suitably angry and menacing Romulan in Nero. The problem is that he's so damn 2-dimensional that if he turns side-ways you can't see him. He's a Romulan from the future that's pissed at Spock so he went back in time to kill everybody because his planet blew up. So he's decided to suck every planet into a black hole via drilling a hole into each planet's core using his uber-menacing giant ship (for some arbitrary reason) and injecting some red goop that creates black holes and must be extracted with a comically large syringe.

Also: Tyler Perry is in this movie. What the fuck?!


Abrams (aside from tossing in his usual "Slusho" reference) throws in a lot of nods to the old series. Besides the Spock intro and Scotty's famous line we also have the Vulcan shoulder grab thingy, Kirk banging a green chick, and the horrible death of a red shirt! These all add nice little asides to the film and fortunately never become distracting. But lets not let my fountain of praise distract from the mistakes.

Abrams tries to make the point that this is the future and as such there are lots of alien races hanging about. The problem is the races seem less "Star Trek" and more "Star Wars" particularly the bumpy Ewok and the long-faced weirdo red herring hanging out at the bar.

Partway through the film Kirk gets jettisoned out of the ship onto an Ice Planet that might as well be called "Not-Hoth" and gets chased by what looks like a 4-legged Wompa beast which then gets eaten by a red "Cloverfield" monster that proceeds to follow Kirk through a super elaborate chase sequence. When a mysterious stranger in a parka chases the monster off, I expected him to turn around, revealing himself as Han Solo, and go "Shit, you're not Luke" before running off.

Also Abrams paints Iowa as a desolate wasteland filled with nothing but hay bales and dickhead highway patrolman. Which is fucking spot on. But nowhere in Iowa is there a giant gorge for Little Kirk to "Thelma and Louise" his space-Mustang into. Seriously the deepest spot in Iowa is maybe 50 feet.

These small problems aside the film is visually stunning and there's not a set in this flic that doesn't look picture perfect.

The story falls back on the old chestnut of time travel that we've already seen in past Trek films but even if the idea has been used it works in paying tribute to the fans, the non-fans, and anyone else. This time the situation doesn't get miraculously un-fucked at the end. The crew doesn't go back and fix things, a parallel universe is now permanently formed and Spock is trapped in it with his younger self and some other bad shit that I wont spoil happens.

The plot's a bit simple and retreads a lot of familiar territory but it does a suitably good job of re-introducing the characters and entertains. Which, in the end, isn't that really all it needs to do?

Now, about your precious fucking continuity. Everybody finds a reason to bitch about this, even Crybaby Central had to put in their 2 fucking cents on this. I don't know how I can make this any clearer than the movie did. This film takes place in an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, the events at the beginning of the film takes your precious canon and throws it the fuck away. Do you know why they did this? Because you whiny fucks bitch and moan in every single movie about "continuity errors" in everything from "First Contact" to "Wrath of Khan" and that's not even bringing up the numerous TV shows.

You mouth-breathing fuckheads and the ever-growing tome that's being written every time something vaguely involving Trek comes up alienates new viewers and it's a reason that the only show that's picked up any new fans in the last 20 years was "Enterprise" which your pissing and moaning got canceled.

J.J. Abrams was wise to just hit control, alt, delete and restart this thing as it brings on new fans who may one day learn to appreciate the original series and maybe even stop making fun of you!

Yes that's right portly 30-something wearing a way-too-tight Slayer t-shirt. People will understand you're a sweet nice guy who really means no harm and just needs a nice girl to remind you to wipe the cheeto dust off your hands and bathe every once in a while.

Yes, bespectacled girl with messy hair wearing a baggy sweater and sensible shoes. People will start to look past the Vulcan ears you insist wearing everywhere and see it as "cute" rather than "fucking weird" and see the true beauty within you despite the fact that you smell like ben gay and cheap perfume.

Yes, angry web-forum troll, they will see the black heart that lurks within your dark exterior and destroy you for the monster you truly are.

In simpler terms, this is what happens when you ignore continuity and start over:

This is what happens when you don't:

Any questions?


This movie did exactly what it needed to do. It's a fun, compelling, and entertaining film that panders to its fans and brings in new fans whilst breathing new life int oa series that was long past dead. It actually made me interested in "Star Trek" again, which I haven't been since I was 10.

I give "Star Trek" a 5 out of 5.

Observe and Report (2009)


Directed by: Jody Hill

Starring: Seth Rogen, Ray Liotta, Michael Pena, Ana Faris, Collette Wolfe
Other Actors of Note: Danny McBride

Plot: Bi-polar mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt is called into action to stop a flasher from turning shopper's paradise into his personal peep show. But when Barnhardt can't bring the culprit to justice, a surly police detective, is recruited to close the case.


Every once in a while a movie comes out that just doesn't fit into the mainstream market and on these things I'm torn. I'm glad because more non-traditional movies deserve the big screen treatment but I'm also annoyed because you can't sell a non-traditional film as what it is, so you get a bunch of people who don't understand where the movie is coming from that don't enjoy the film and sadly that side is usually populated with a lot of whiny fuckheads with imdb forum accounts.

I've seen these moments when movies like "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "In Bruges", and "Slither" came out. I found all these movies brilliant but some people just didn't really get them, expecting the cookie-cutter bullshit they're used to. So I understand why you don't like this movie and I respect your opinion.



That said, you can all go fuck yourselves, this movie was great!

With that out of my system, let's proceed. "Observe and Report" tells the tale of Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen) a tubby 30-something loser with nothing to his name save the massive chip on his shoulder. Ronnie is the head of security at a shopping mall and like any security guard he thinks he's Judge Dredd.

When a serial flasher assaults the shopping mall at the same time as a string of robberies, Ronnie sees this as an oppurtunity to beat his rival, Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), win the woman of his dreams, Brandi (Anna Faris), and become what he's always dreamed of being. A hero.

Naturally Ronnie eats his share of shit sandwhiches when he approaches Brandi, tries to solve his cases, and attempts to become a member of the police force. We slowly watch Ronnie deteriorate into a complete lunatic and have a complete mental and nervous breakdown.

And it is hilarious!


I now take back every bad thing I've ever said about Seth Rogen. On the surface you're looking at Seth Rogen as the same character he's played in every movie he's been in ever, but if you stay on the surface the latter half of the movie will be really messed up for you.

Rogen successfully plays a character that's already unstable at the beginning of the movie but slowly turns into an absolute nutcase as the movie progresses. The thing is that Rogen's so likable that you don't immediately see the warning signs and the change is so subtle that once he's there it comes as a shock. For all intents and purposes Ronnie Barnhart is Travis Bickle and he plays it much more subtly than DeNiro ever would have.

There are a lot of early moments in the movie that the audience seemed to take as typical comedy fair that didn't quite sit right with me. This all culminated at the film's turning point where you find out that unlike most audacious losers, Ronnie is actually frighteningly capable of backing up his ideals and while many found this moment triumphant, I found it fucking terrifying. Nothing is more frightening than a mentally unstable person with a false sense of authority and the means to enforce it.

Anna Faris has finally found a role in a movie that doesn't suck ass and while she doesn't get much time to shine, she makes use of what she gets. Brandi is every shallow skanky bitch you have ever known and the part is played impeccably. She's an easy character to despise and a definitive cause of Ronnie's eventual breakdown. If anything, this film could've used more Anna Faris.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was dissappointed to see Ray Liotta was in this movie. Sure he can be a good actor but for every "NARC" we have to sit through 3 "In The Name of the Kings," fortunately this manages to fall in the former category with one of Liotta's finer performances. Liotta forms a nice foil for Ronnie in that this man is as much of a sadist as Ronnie is a delusional sociopath. One particular scene he leaves Ronnie in an area where he knows more than likely that he will get killed just because he's annoying him and it was those small touches that made him a more than capable villain to the piece.

I'm still torn on Michael Pena's performance. On one hand, Pena does a straight up send-up of a classic John Leguizamo character. On the other hand, I don't think this was done on purpose. Pena has proven to be a very capable actor in "Shooter" and "Crash" but I couldn't help feeling like his aping of Leguizamo was less parody and more lack of effort. No less, Pena manages to be very funny, if albeit a bit over-the-top and clich'e.


Now allow me to support my point here. This movie is "Taxi Driver" re-written as a comedy and if taken as that you kind of start to get the idea. Rogen's likability kind of clouds the fact that this is not a likable or admirable man and it's not until he's already super-crazy that this point really comes across. I was debating this with another person that Ronnie was crazy even from the beginning, she said that it was at the halfway point when he was taking his medication that he "went" crazy.

But I disagree, you can see in his actions and words that Ronnie thinks he's the hero of this story and his monologues only seem to support this fact. His obsession with catching this pervert pushes the man over the edge and when he doesn't make it as a police officer it becomes his very goal and you can tell he will go to any cost to become the hero he envisions himself as.

The entire movie is a trainwreck of one low after another where Ronnie goes from mostly harmless, to delusional, to predatory, unstable, and flat out insane. And the beauty of the whole thing is that by the time the credits roll, just like Travis Bickle before him he doesn't get that swift kick in the ass from reality. He gets validated, vindicated, and even praised. He becomes the hero, and it's both frightening and humorous at the same time.

Next I want to touch on something that everybody's been getting on their soapboxes about. There is an instance of date rape in this film. I should say that the word "rape" should be used rather lightly as it's only technically rape. What happens is Ronnie takes Brandi out on a date and after drinking like 15 shots of tequila and taking all of Ronnie's pills (which she asks him for and proceeds to eat like they're m&ms.) It should be noted that Brandi is conscious and consentual for this encounter, she's just blasted out of her fucking gourd. This has prompted many people, especially feminist groups, to go up in arms about how in bad taste this is.

Okay, let's think for a moment here. In "Beerfest" a man is so intoxicated that he goes home with what he thinks is some sort of super-model like woman and then proceeds to have rough nasty sex with a large vaguely abusive woman, this is portrayed as funny. In "A History of Violence" Viggo Mortensen rapes his wife, this is portrayed as beautific. In "High Plains Drifter" Clint Eastwood rapes a woman, this is portrayed as vindicative. And in my favorite example, in "40 Days and 40 Nights" Josh Hartnett is raped by a vengeful ex-girlfriend and then his current love interest walks in on this and breaks up with him for "cheating on her" and he APOLOGIZES! So you know what? Get the fuck off your goddamn soap-box, I'm not going to hear any arguments about what is technically rape when the "victim" was awake and consenting to the act and yes she's intoxicated but Ronnie didn't make her drink herself stupid or swallow the pills.

Not to mention the date rape is kinda the point. Ronnie has a skewed perception of reality where he's the man, why should he think that the fact that she's drunk is the only reason she would want to sleep with him? When she doesn't move he actually does stop and ask if she's alright to which she replies "Why are you stopping, motherfucker?" and he goes back to work. In his mind Ronnie is doing the "right" thing, of course it's not, but that's because he's fucking delusional! DUH! Ronnie is not a character to be admired and respected, he's a fucking anti-hero you stupid tits!

One other point I wanted to touch on is the fight scenes. There are three fight scenes in this movie and they are all coreographed beautifully. They're gritty, violent, and the best part is they seem natural and not rehearsed. The big fight scene toward the end of the film that pits Ronnie against about 20 police officers with nothing but a mag-lite is more than reminiscent on "Oldboy's" famous hammer scene down to the continous flowing shot as the protagonist fights off waves of attackers.

While this review has been nothing but praise I want to make the point that this is not a perfect movie. Some of the scenes fall flat, and a lot of the jokes at the beginning aren't very funny, not to mention Seth Rogen's likability hurts the audience's ability to see what kind of a character he is from the beginning which makes the mid-film point incredibly jarring which I felt hurt it. I am not part of the crowd that thinks this movie should be nominated for an Oscar, it's not that good and I certainly see and clearly understand why people don't like it. This is just a movie that's too indie for its own good. What it is is funny, dark, thrilling and just a damned entertaining movie that requires perspective for optimal watching.


I know a lot of people are divided on this but I firmly hope to see more well-thought-out dark intelligent comedies like this in the future. Though this movie has cult classic written all over it. Don't expect "Paul Blart 2: Blart Harder", this is something entirely different. And you know what, if you don't like it then I'll take this movie and keep it up on a pedestal of truly unappreciated and great films like "The Cable Guy" and "The Ladykillers" that I truly appreciate while you stupid cunts miss the point. Me and the other people who enjoy these are gonna continue to praise them for years to come.

All six of us!

I give "Observe and Report" a 5 out of 5. Fuck the haters.

Twilight (2009)


Director: Catherine Hardwicke

Starring: Kristen Stewert, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Ashey Greene, Taylor Lautner

Plot: Bella Swan is a clumsy, kind hearted teenager with a knack for getting into trouble. Edward Cullen is an intelligent, good looking vampire who is trying to hide his secret. Against all odds, the two fall in love but will a pack of blood thirsty trackers and the disapproval of their family and friends separate them? Taken from www.imdb.com.

"You think this is scary, just wait till you see the cage I'll be keeping you in."

Remember back in a more innocent time when Trekkies were considered to be the bottom feeders of the fan world? A bunch of otherwise intelligent people with a hard-on for intergalactic diplomacy and pointy ears were considered to be the bottom of the barrel. Well it's only now we realize how very wrong we were.

Thanks to "Twilight" and Stephanie Meyer, our dumb-as-toast ignorant housewife and writer in-that-she-puts-words-on-paper-only, we have seen that fan obsession in women aged 12-30 is so horrifying that it makes us long for the days of chubby fanboys with bowl cuts and elf ears. If you haven't had the distinct "pleasure" of witnessing one of these rabid lunatics check the comments section here.

I digress however. This review has nothing to do with the fact that Stephanie Meyer is a hack, the books are over-rated fluff, or that her fans are a bunch of raving psychopaths with a disturbing and immensely pathetic obsession with a fictional character. I am here to review a movie and pretend that I have some intergrity. I just needed to get that out of my system.

Okay, so it's the story of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) a 17-year-old girl who is so normal and plain that 3 boys are humping her leg like crazed chihuahuas her first day of school and everyone she meets adores her to point of near-idolizing her. She moves to Forks, Washington with her father, the county Sheriff, Charlie (Billy Burke.)

So anyway on her first day of school she meets moody heroin-chic vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) who she immediatly falls in love with because... that's never really explained and he falls in love with her too because he desperately wants to kill her and feast on her sweet neck meats.

So they make goo goo eyes at each other for aboout 40 minutes and the plot goes 15 kinds of nowhere and then the vampires play baseball which attracts the attention of the evil vampires (we know they're evil because we're told they're evil, otherwise we would just think they're Kalvin Clein models from 10 years ago that got lost.) who then decide that they too want Bella's sweet neck meats, though pecularly enough they don't find that a valid reason to fall in love with her.

So she fakes a fight with her dad and fucks off back to Pheonix where she falls for a very obvious trap, ignores any chance to redeem her as anything other than a week dependent waste of space and gets bit. So she's got vampire "venom" in her and Edwards "dad" decides that it can be sucked out even though that doesn't work with real venom but fortunately Edward could suck a bowling ball through a bendy straw and saves her life. They dismiss it as she fell down a flight of stairs through a window and nobody questions why the entire Cullen family just happened to stroll by a hotel in Arizona when they live in Washington.

Then there's a bunch of fluffy romantic shit, Bella asks Edward to bite her, he doesn't, they kiss, and there's a half-assed attempt to tie to a sequel and the credits roll.

This picture is scary for all of the wrong reasons.

Kristen Stewart is our heroine and while the character of Bella has always been shallow, weak, and a desperate Mary Sue but at the beginning of the book she showed traits of a charming, intelligent, and somewhat likeable teenage girl. This is not what Kristen Stewart plays, in fact she doesn't even play the clumsy, needy, "oh lawdie me I seem to have sprained my ankle" character. She's somehow more pathetic than that and spends most of the movie simpering. Do you remember having a really awkward conversation with someone where they clearly have nothing to say to you so they say a bunch of random things quickly in a breathy frightened voice? That's every line Bella has in this film and it adds to the awkwardness of the dialogue. Though the blame doesn't like solely on Kristen Stewart's shoulders, the cast we have set out before us makes the cast of the average "Smallville" episode look Oscar-worthy.

Robert Pattinson's performance is almost passable at times but he mostly just broods and smoulders for the duration of the film. His line delivery is a slightly less painful version of Kristen's but it's not as annoying with him. He manages to be possesive, threatening, borderline abusive, and genuinely scary. The problem is he's not supposed to be doing any of that. In fact, if Meyer or the film-makers had had the balls to make this into a real horror movie they could've gone the mindfuck angle and made a truly disturbing and good horror movie.

Billy Burke actually does a reasonably good job as Bella's father and stands out as one of the 3 or 4 people who have an acting ability. Another of those, quite surprisingly, is Tyler Lautner who plays Jacob Black a Native American boy who lives on the local Indian reservation. He happens to be the only actor in the entire film who's capable of acting like a real teenager.

Then of course there's the "villain" of this piece. Toward the end of the movie we meet James, played by cam Gigandet who is quite possibly the least threatening antagonist ever. Maybe if he didn't look like he just escaped from an LA night club or looked less like a runway model (that's not a complement) or managed to be half as threatening as Edward is, but he's not. You never feel any sense of danger whatsoever from the character which isn't really the actor's fault but he certainly doesn't help matters by not being scary in the least.

It was bound to happen. T-shirt!

Okay so the whole point of this story taking place in Forks, Washington is because there's rarely direct sunlight and it's the optimal place for vampires to reside. (Yes, this movie is nothing but the punchline for a joke about the Pacific Northwest.) Yet every shot we see is brightly lit and overexposed and bleached out like a British TV drama. And while we're on the subject of sunlight, when we finally see the whole "vampires sparkle in the sun like diamonds" (Note to everyone, David Bowie is a vampire) it just looks like Pattinson rubbed crisco on his face, it's a horrible effect.

Then there are the flashbacks periodically throughout the film some that have happened, some that haven't, are all played like the murder scenes in an episode of "CSI." In fact the one of Edward's turning is rather unintentionally hilarious as Carlisle gently whispers in his ear and then appears to give him a hickey.

One of the big selling points for parents everwhere is that "Twilight" is free of sex which goes against the retarded stereotype invented by writers who are far worse than Stephanie Meyer like Anne Rice and Laurel K. Hamilton which are nothing but fangs and buttfuckery. But for a series so free of sex each touch, look, kiss, and moment between the two protagonists is so deliberately sexual it's hard to miss. In fact toward the end of the film as Edward is sucking the venom out of Bella's hand and she is apparently in excruciating pain the look on her face and body language make it look as though she's having a particularly earth-shattering orgasm.

It also suffers from what Hollywood seems to think a small town is. Small towns are not just small cities with less people, they are not populated with an ethnically diverse crowd of upper-middle class yuppies. They are redneck villas with maybe one or two people that aren't white and everyone calls everyone "ya'll." Get it right for once.

Also let's talk about vampire baseball. Vampire baseball sounds like an idea that Tracy Jordan off of "30 Rock" would come up with for a movie. But even Tracy is more intelligent than to make such a blatantly ridiculous thing the cause of the conflict in the movie. It is a dumb segway from romantic build-up (of which there is none, Bella thinks Edward is hot, Edward thinks Bella looks tasty, that's it) to the "danger" of the film.

One problem the movie shares with the novel is that it's too damn long. The movie is over two hours which should be reserved for movies with deep involved storylines, not something that can be told in an hour-long TV show length. I was begging to movie to stop by the time it ended.

Now this is not to say that "Twilight" is ALL bad. Director Catherine Hardwicke does seem to have a good grasp of how to direct a film (which she showed in spades with "The Nativity Story" and "Lords of Dogtown") and polished this turd as best she could. I'm kind of glad she got the shaft and doesn't have to be stuck with this horrible series for the next few years of her career. Then again, imdb.com has her next film pegged as an adaptation of James Patterson's "Maximum Ride" about experimental bird-teens. Yeah...

"You gon' get raped."

So there you have it, "Twilight" is a bad movie. This is nothing to be surprised about, shitty movies based on shitty young adult books are a dime a dozen (look at "Eragon.") But I don't feel compelled to review most of them because we have an unwritten agreement that they don't bother me and I don't bother them. But nobody can shut the fuck up about the "Twilight" movie, and having read the book I knew there was no way it could be any better than the novel and I was right.

I however, don't hold this agains't the film. As I said, it's a bad book and thus a bad movie is natural, what annoys me is that everyone's treating it like it's the greatest thing ever made. There is nothing wrong with liking something bad so long as you realize that it has lots of shortcomings. I like "Street Fighter" with Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme but I don't even begin to think it's a good movie.

I give "Twilight" a 1 out of 5. So "Twilight" fans, I'm sorry if I pissed you off but one day you're going to grow up and realize that this movie and this book really is, at best, incredibly mediocre. Or maybe not, maybe you'll always think ti's the best thing since Jesus invented sliced bread and you'll remember this review as the most insulting moment of your life. But for me...

...it was Tuesday.

Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

Director: Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogan, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Rainn Wilson

Other Actors of Note: Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Ed Helms, Stephen Colbert, Keifer Sutherland, Jeffrey Tambor, Renee Zellweger

Plot: When a meteorite from outer space hits a young California girl named Susan Murphy and turns her into a giant monster, she is taken to a secret government compound where she meets a ragtag group of monsters also rounded up over the years. As a last resort, under the guidance of General W.R. Monger, on a desperate order from The President, the motley crew of Monsters is called into action to combat the aliens and save the world from imminent destruction! Taken from www.imdb.com.


About a year ago the folks at Dreamworks sat around their boardroom and said. "You know, I know we're just the poor man's Disney and God knows Pixar is going to wail on our balls with a meat tenderizer when it comes to 3D animated movies anyway, but you know, maybe we could suck a little less than we do."

Of course, they went and made "Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa" anyway, but that's not the point. SOMEBODY listened and they made a plan to make good animated movies, strangely enough this plan involved Jack Black and fat jokes but no-less "Kung Fu Panda" was a huge success and a beautiful movie in style, animation, and story.

Well meanwhile in Dreamworks' department of non-shitty moviemaking they were cooking up another little project that did for classic 50s b-science fiction/horror films what "Kung Fu Panda" did for Kung Fu movies. This movie was dubbed "Monsters vs Aliens" and just like "Kung Fu Panda" on paper it sounded ATROCIOUS. Then the teaser poster was released and it looked HORRIBLE. Then I saw a trailer and was taken aback by how good it looked. The rest was history.

Basically the story goes like this. A meteorite falls to Earth on top of a woman named Susan on her wedding day. Rather than turning into human pudding as most people would do if they were hit by a metoerite, Susan instead grows fifty feet tall, inexplicably gets white hair, and becomes super strong.

Immediatly after the wedding is ruined and her d-bag fiance runs screaming like the little bitch he is, she's taken to a secret government installation and meets Dr. Cockroach, BOB, The Missing Link, and Insectasaurus (more on them later.) It turns out that since the 50s, General W.R. Monger (see what they did there) has been keeping monsters locked up in a secret underground facility to keep them out of the public eye.

Well as fate would have it, the meteorite that turned Susan into Ginormica happened to have been made of some infinitely strong space matter that is wanted by an alien that's half Kang and Kodos and half Invader Zim called Gallaxhar.

Gallaxhar sends a gigantic robot probe to Earth to retrieve the meteorite's energy. Anyway, as robots do, the robot begins tearing shit up so the Gen. Monger decides to sick his monster team against the robot to stop it.


So Reese Witherspoon is the "star" of this movie for all intents and purposes. This is very much Susan's story and most of the plot is focused around her. You see, Susan's weatherman fiance Derek (played by the occasionally funny Paul Rudd) is a selfish prick who derails their honeymoon in Paris so he can go to a job interview in Fresno. Susan really has no self-identity and sense of accomplishment but it's through becoming Ginormica that she realizes how self-reliant she can truly become. Of course in children's movie style she loses the ability that makes her special and then manages to pull a win out of her ass anyway. It may be a rerun of the message we saw in "Kung Fu Panda" but it's still very well done.

As with the Furious Five in "Kung Fu Panda" the other monsters are underutilized but still given a bigger role than their kung fu counterparts. They are composed of Dr. Cockroach M.D. who is based on "The Fly" (not the David Croenenberg one) to the point that he even physically resembles Vincent Price, B.O.B who is a mash-up between "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and "The Blob" (there's even a gag that parodies the shot of the blob pouring out of the movie theater doors), The Missing Link (though missing link between what and what I have no idea) who is a mixture of "The Thing From Another World" and "The Creature From the Black Lagoon", and Insectasaurus who is "Mothra" (if you're wondering why it looks like a hamster I can honestly say I have no fucking clue.)

Hugh Laurie is quite well placed as Dr. Cockroach. He embraces the mad scientist clich'e beautifully as he's alays seen creating bizarre divices out of whatever junk he finds lying around. At one point you see him building a bomb out of legos and asks Susan if she has any plutonium. He also does the obligatory mad scientist laugh which serves as a gag at several points throughout the film.

Will Arnett plays the Missing Link, an amusingl vain creature who clearly thinks rather highly of his abilities. The Link appears to be close friends with Insectasaurus though no real reason is ever given for this, it's just shown that the two have a bond of some sort.

Seth Rogen steals just about every scene he's in as BOB, an indestructible blob creatue that has no brain. He's easily distracted, forgetful, and tends to mistake himself with other characters. There's an ongoing joke where BOB thinks he is Susan and is constantly talking about getting back with Derek. He's given some of the better gags and lines throughout.

Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Colbert are horrible, terrible, and nothing short of painful in this movie. Their jokes are bland, tired, and beyond lame even for a children's movie. There is one gag with Stephen Colbert but unless you've just watched "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" yesterday then you won't get it and will just be confused and think it's the stupidest thing you've ever seen. Even if you have it's still rather hard to catch.

Rainn Wilson is similarly bland but at this point we're used to him stinking up ever non-Dwight Shroot role he plays. He's tolerable and not bad, he just doesn't bring anything special to the table.


This movie makes sure to bring in plenty of gags from other movies. Aside from the origins of the monsters there's a gag the president does where he plays the five communication tones from "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" and then breaks out into the "Beverly Hills Cop" theme song. Even the somewhat cheesy order Gallaxhar gives to "Destroy All Monsters!" which will only be funny to dorks like me still works. Even the Dreamworks logo is done in scratched looking black and white and shows the boy on the logo getting abducted by a UFO.

Visually the animation is on-par with the average Pixar films. Unfortunately the story hasn't quite caught up. While they go a route Pixar has yet to explore by having a female protagonist, the other characters are rather weak by comparison.

BOB, The Missing Link, and Dr. Cockroach are vastly underutilized and often feel like bit parts moreso than main characters as they have to step aside to make room for Susan's story. Insectasaurus in-particular just doesn't get enough screen time which is a shame as he's the most entertaining one that's not BOB.

I'm hoping that in the inevitable sequel we'll get a chance to flesh the rest of the characters out a bit more and maybe drop a good deal of the more cheap humor. Though the Dr. Strangelove-esque war room sequences at least amused me enough to not hate the president and general characters entirely.

I was also kind of annoyed by the lack of the Versus aspect of the film. The kung fu scenes in the previous film showed that epic and well choreographed fight scenes can be utilized for animated children's films. The moment when the alien robot is trouncing the monsters and suddenly Insectasaurus shows up had me all itching and ready for some hardcore Kaiju action but it never happened. Even the fight scene between the monsters and all of the many Gallaxhar clones feels somewhat underwhelming.

Ultimately the film is a highly enjoyable experiene but falls just short of the mark that "Kung Fu Panda" set before it. It's well-done but it still feels like the script was a draft or two away from being perfect.


Dreamworks still has a long way to go before they'll be at Pixar levels, or even meet the level they set for themselves with their last great film. But don't let that negate from the fact that "Monsters vs. Aliens" is a fun, entertaining, and well-written film that will be enjoed by children and adults alike.

I give "Monsters vs. Aliens" a near-perfect 4 out of 5.

The Last House on the Left (2009)


Directed by: Dennis Iliadis

Starring: Garret Dillahunt, Riki Lindhome, Spencer Treat Clark, Sara Paxton, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn, Martha MacIsaac, and Aaron Paul

Plot: After kidnapping and brutally assaulting two young women, a gang led by a prison escapee unknowingly finds refuge at a vacation home belonging the parents of one of the victims -- a mother and father who devise an increasingly gruesome series of revenge tactics.


I've said a few times in the past that Wes Craven's first film, "The Last House on Left", was a bad movie. And I stand by that statement, the cinematography was primitive even for the time, the effects were almost non-existent, the performances of the killers were good but the rest of the cast were atrocious, and the movie kept trying to intersperse moments of humor in between all the violence with the use of two bumbling police officers that made it seem less like a dark comedy and more like the most fucked up episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" in existence.

That being said, "The Last House on the Left" was a very influential movie. There's a reason the film is so well known among the horror crowd, a reason why Wes Craven launched a (admittedly flash-in-the-pan) career out of it. It was a deliberately debased, disgusting, and mean-spirited film that exposed the audience's fears. It wasn't safe, it wasn't escapism, and it did a great job of getting under your skin. Which in turn makes it that much more of a shame that the movie was terrible even by exploitation film standards.

I was maybe the only person who actually got excited when I heard this movie was being remade. Most of the internet decried the ruining of another masterpiece, apparently remembering the spectacle rather than the movie or perhaps thinking of a movie that might have actually been good.

So if you've seen this trailer then you know the plot, the progression, and the ending. But for the 15 million of you who said, near in unison, "this trailer shows everything so I don't feel I need to see the movie." Shut the fuck up and go play in traffic. The good thing about the spoilerific trailer is I don't have to be careful about spoilers.

So the Collingswood family composed of daughter Mari (Sara Paxton), father John (Tony Goldwyn), and mother Emma (Monica Potter) go on vacation at their nicer-than-your-actual house lake home. (To be fair, John is a doctor, so it at least makes sense that this horror movie family is upper-middle class.)

So Mari borrows the car and goes to town to see her friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac) who works at the grocery store in town. As they're talking, creepy loner Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) overhears Paige ask Mari if she still smokes Marijuana.

Justin offers to give Paige some really good weed if she allows him to buy cigarettes even though he isn't legal. The two girls take Justin back to his motel room where they get caught up smoking when Justin's uncle Francis (Aaron Paul) and father's girlfriend Sadie (Riki Lindhome) who just got back from breaking his father Krug (Garret Dillahunt) out of prison and brutally killing two police officers. Unfortunately the dashboard camera on the police car caught Sadie and Francis busting Krug out so the three of them are wanted for murder.

Now naturally with their faces posted on the front of the local newspaper they can't let Mari and Paige go now so they kidnap the girls and make for an escape through the mountains in the Collingswood's SUV. Mari outfoxes the criminals, leading them toward the Collingswoods' lake house and then tries to escape, causing Krug to wreck the car in the middle of nowhere.

This is where things take a turn for the horrifying. Sadie, Francis, and Krug all take turns beating on Mari for causing their only form of escape to wreck. Paige attempts to escape and Francis, Sadie, and Krug take off after her.

Paige is caught and the two girls are then stripped down. Paige decides to smart off to Krug and is then killed. After this Mari is raped and then escapes by swimming away, but Krug manages to shoot her before she can get away.

We see Mari floating face-up in the lake, apparently dead as it begins to rain. The remaining four, all injured from the car wreck or the tussle that followed, head looking for medical help and hopefully another ride. Unfortunately, the only house for miles is the lakehouse owned by Mari's parents.

The four come upon Mari's parents who offer them the guest house to stay in. Justin sees Mari's picture on the refridgerator and, feeling responsible for what has happened, leaves her necklace wrapped around the coffee mug in the kitchen for her mother to find.

The four go out to the guest house for the evening and Mari's parents are left alone in the house when she comes home. Mari, having just barely survived the bullet wound, has managed to find her way home. Seeing the necklace on the coffee cup and seeing that Mari has been shot and raped, her parents put the whole mess together.

Initially they plan to escape but they can't find the keys to the boat and left without a car and no houses for miles there's no way then can possibly hope to get out without the killers noticing. This plan is furhter exacerbated when Francis comes over from the guest house for something to drink. He stumbles upon Mari and suddenly Emma devises a plan to kill him. After dispatching him in an extrememly cruel manner they decide to go and take care of the rest of the group and get revenge.


Sara Paxton is the "hero" of the movie even though she doesn't have much of a part in the second act of the film. This time around the script is a bit more merciful in that it lets Mari live unlike in the original. Some claim this is weakening the story by not actually killing her but I felt almost like this was worse, at the halfway point of the original film it was very clear that Mari was done anyway, she more or less just let herself get killed, her pain was over. This new version of Mari is going to have to live with what's happened and what her parents had to do to protect her.

Paxton doesn't play a character, she plays a human being. Mari isn't some random teenager just there to fill a spot until she gets killed, she's a beautiful and articulate girl with dreams and a personality. She's smart, she's sweet, and she's good but not over-the-top good like the last girl in most horror movies is. She's clearly done the normal things teens have done and that's what makes her more human. The viewer is quickly made to fall in love with Mari and that's why what happens to her next is so disturbing.

This realism is further pulled off by the actors that play Paxton's parents. Monica Potter does a passable job, she's the typical movie mother and plays it with enough realism but it's Tony Goldwyn's performance that hammers things home. As John tends to his daughter's wounds, trying to seal the bullet wound and stop the bleeding using a kitchen knife heated in the fireplace, Mari lets out a whimper of pain and he replies in a patronizing voice "I know baby... I know" as if he were removing a splinter from a child's finger. Moments later when he finds blood on her thigh and sees she's been raped you see the look of horror and outrage and then ultimately blind anger on his face. These subtle tics serve to really tug your heart strings and really show the kind of mother/daughter dynamic that makes these people more than simple characters.

Of course the victims aren't the only performances that stick out. While Riki Lindhome and Aaron Paul play Sadie and Francis every bit as crazy as their 70s counterparts, it's Garret Dillahunt's Krug that really sticks out.

In the original film Krug was a nutcase who got his own son addicted to heroin just so he would have control over him. He sent his son out to find two girls just for the purpose of raping and killing them. In the original film when they find Mari's picture in the Collingswood home, Krug laughs. Even when he finds out that Mari's parents know what he's done he doesn't care. He's the sort of evil crazy bastard that Hollywood pumps out a dime a dozen. Krug isn't scary because Krug doesn't actually exist.

This is why Garret Dillahunt's Krug is so superior. Krug isn't evil for the sake of being evil, he's a bully. Krug is a man who values control over everything, he doesn't addict Josh to heroin he just beats the shit out of him when he acts up. When they steal a car who drives? Krug. Who kills Paige? Krug. Who rapes Mari? Krug. He doesn't do horrible things because he can, he does them because they question his authority and his control. Krug is a sociopath and a control freak and that's what makes him scary, because there are lots of people like him. We hear about people like him all time, they're constantly in the news for keeping people captive, torture, murder. They know what they did was wrong but feel no remorse. That is a real monster and why Dillahunt's performance is so well done.

Spencer Treat Clark's performance as Justin compliments Dillahunt's. Justin plays the obvious victim of abuse by not just his father, but his uncle and Sadie as well. Justin is withdrawn and typically keeps his eyes cast down. You can tell that he hates the people he's with and you can see that he wants nothing more than to stop what's happening to these girls but he can't get up the nerve to do it. Ultimately he does get up the nerve, but even then it's only the nerve to give the Collingswoods the tools to stop his father, not to actually do anything. His final triumph is bittersweet but much better than in the original where Krug convinces his son to shoot himself in the head.


In the age of "Hostel", "Saw", "Wolf Creek", "Captivity", "The Devil's Rejects", and a plethora of other cheap torture movies this film could have easily falling into the same trappings as the aformentioned. In fact given the recent "torture porn" fad it's impossible to shock audiences the same way that the original did and nigh-impossible to make this movie as painful as that one was at the time. Hell, by today's standards the original "Last House on the Left" is rather tame.

This is why director Iliadis doesn't torture the characters, he tortures us for watching. The cinematography doesn't give a lot of long shots or establishing shots and this is because it doesn't want a passive audience. Iliadis goes for substance over spectacle, he keeps the camera in close.

When Paige is stabbed we don't watch from a distance as Krug quickly stabs her. We watch the intensity on his face, we watch Paige gradually register more and more pain, we hear the blade slowly and laboriously part each layer of flesh as it goes into her abdomen.

When we see Mari's rape it doesn't show the typical man on top woman grinding his hips between her legs. This is far worse, the camera is left on Mari's face as she cries and weeps and ultimately goes near catatonic. You see the pain and suffering on her face and you're made to feel it.

These subtle things are what seperates gratuitous schlock from art. This isn't about seeing how nasty things can get it's about being witness to true pain and suffering and it's done beautifully.

Of course, once the second act starts the violence is about spectacle but that too has a reason. The audience has just watched what these people have done to these two girls, we want to see them dead as much as the Collingswoods. We want to see them suffer, and that's exactly what they do. Subtlety is thrown to the wind and violence and revenge become the centerpieces of the film. This never seems to over the top or ridiculous like in the original movie though, so it's acceptable.

However the final note of the film, the infamous "microwave scene" that was glimpsed in the trailer may have went a bit too far. It straddles the line between acceptable and over the top as it's easily the goriest moment in the movie and seems a bit too typical.


"Last House on the Left" gives this concept the quality and artistic style it's always deserved. I am glad to see this finally portrayed in the right light and seen the way it should have been.

I give "The Last House on the Left" a 5 out of 5.