I'm a big horror movie nut, and as every horror fan will attest to, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a masterpiece of the genre. It combined a gritty documentary feel with a heap of tension and perhaps the scariest degenerate hillbilly family ever depicted on film. A lot of people gave the 2003 remake a lot of crap, but I thought it was appropriately creepy, with an amazing performance by R. Lee Ermey (aka, the army sergeant from Full Metal Jacket). I'll even give the remake's prequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning a pass. But Texas Chainsaw 3D is beyond comparability in its shittiness. I cannot defend this film in any way.
The film starts out with clips from the original 1973 film, as if reminding us what a good horror movie was, before plunging us into a shameless rip-off of the opening scene from The Devil's Rejects, only lacking any of its grittiness or style. It also supposedly takes place right after the original ends, but there are so many things they get wrong that all continuity is thrown out the window. First off, in the original, there were only four members of the family living in the house - but here there seems to be a congregation of bearded fat guys in the house as well, along with a mother and a baby, with no explanation as to who they are or what roles they played in the murders. The film adds in extraneous family ties in order to add "depth" to Leatherface later on, but none of it works or makes sense. They also try to add an "anti-hero" layer to him that works against the character in every way, making him neither scary or interesting. The same problem existed (to a far lesser extent) in Rob Zombie's Halloween. Seriously - we don't need to know the psychological reasons why these villains are killing people.
The acting is atrocious, the script is even worse, there's absolutely no suspense whatsoever, the kills aren't even clever or visually interesting, it doesn't feel "brutal," and it makes me upset as a horror fan. Other than a few fun moments where the chainsaw is in-yo'-face with the 3D, this not only has nothing going for it, but it actively tries to ruin a mythology.
Rating: D-
Whew. Now that I vented about that piece of crap, how about a movie that was pretty good; The Impossible tells the story of a family separated by the massive 2004 tsunami in Thailand and through their single journey you get this very broad sense of what it must have been like to go through this disaster. I thought J.A. Bayona (director of the cult horror flick The Orphanage) really made this potentially sappy story into something very gritty, realistic, and yet hopeful.
Naomi Watts is on fire here (or I guess in this case she's on water), and let's just say that at times her performance can be hard to watch. The other members of her family include her three sons and her husband, played by Ewan McGregor. McGregor is similarly intense and great as his on screen wife, and the kids are surprisingly good as well. It's really distasteful, but it's been said that the studio heads pressured Bayona to essentially re-cast the picture with white actors (the real family this tale is based on is Mexican), and although I'm disgusted that that's how movie corporations operate, I can say the casting department did not disappoint despite it being whitewashed.
While I did have some issues with the film, many of which are spoilers about the ending, I think this is a very intense, well put-together look at this large-scale tragedy. By the end of it you will feel as though you were pulled through this ordeal alongside these people. It's hard to watch and troubling, but artfully done.
Rating: B+
The Office's John Krasinski and Matt Damon both co-wrote and star in Promised Land, the latest picture from Gus Van Sant. Damon and Frances McDormand play two corporate salespeople travelling to a small town to offer them the "chance of a lifetime." They plan to drill for gas on their property, which in turn will make this economically declining farm town into a prosperous community. They have a lot on the line on whether or not the town agrees, but things get complicated when a schoolteacher (played by the aging but still great Hal Holbrook) and an environmental group spokesperson (Krasinski) speak out against the drilling, believing it unsafe and that it could potentially pollute the town water supply with chemicals.
There were a lot of things to like about this film. The relationship between Damon and McDormand was refreshingly non-flirtacious and as I'm a sucker for small-town movies, I enjoyed the isolated nature of the town and all the local yokels. Of course the story is all too relevant with today's economy, and I loved the moral dilemma of money vs. morals (one of my favorite scenes in the film deals with this idea on the smallest scale possible: a little girl's lemonade stand). I also liked that both sides of the debate were given fair and balanced viewpoints, never leaning towards one side or the other, just focusing on the characters.
There were also a lot of things here that pissed me off. Rosemarie DeWitt plays some chick Damon meets at a bar, and her one function in the plot is to smile at him. We also get a similar situation with McDormand and some guy that works in the grocery store (you Lost fans will recognize him). These half-hearted characters really feel out of place and would've cut down the run time - not that this is a particularly long movie, but at times it doesn't go anywhere. There's also a twist ending (I guess M. Night was brought in), but it's a god-awful place to end up, and upon reflection doesn't make a lot of sense. It's worth watching once, but ultimately Promised Land seems like a promising movie that could have been great.
Rating: C+
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