A Good Day to Die Hard

John McClane travels to Russia after finding out that his estranged son is in prison. Things do not go as planned from there. A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth and (hopefully) final film in the Die Hard series feels kind of like it’s just going through the motions. Every action set piece and every twist and turn in the script feels like it was taken from one of the earlier Die Hard films. Any time there’s a moment between McClane and his son, it’s just, “bicker, bicker, bicker, joke, joke, joke and on to the next plot point.” There’s one decent car chase sequence in the film but, for the most part, it just feels like John McClane and his son have been shoehorned into a movie that’s completely unrelated to the Die Hard franchise.

Rating: 62%

(Image from Wikipedia)

My Soul to Take

On the night that the Riverton Ripper was killed, seven children were born. Sixteen years later, on their collective birthday, the Riverton 7 are stalked by an unseen killer. Has the Riverton Ripper come back from the dead? Or has one of the Riverton 7 become possessed by the killer’s soul? My Soul to Take should have been an easy layup for Wes Craven. It’s a supernatural slasher that borrows from several of his previous films. There are elements from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and Shocker in it. And yet, the film is a bit of a mixed bag. The main problem is the script. Seven characters are too many for the movie to follow. Only four of the Riverton 7 get a decent amount of screen time. The remaining kids, along with the rest of the side characters, float in and out of the movie. Mostly showing up just in time to be killed off. At various points, the script also tries to tackle a couple of serious issues but never takes the time to fully develop them. And the ending feels both unearned and like it could have been replaced by any number of alternate outcomes.

Rating: 61%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Red Eye

After multiple delays, Lisa Reisert boards a red-eye flight to Miami. The man sitting next to her on the plane, Jackson Rippner, seems charming enough, at first. But, not long after takeoff, his true character is revealed. Kicking off a deadly game of cat and mouse with multiple lives on the line. Wes Craven's Red Eye is a slick little thriller. So fast and direct that the movie is, without credits, barely 80 minutes long. The leads, Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, are both great and there are some good supporting parts played by Brian Cox and Jayma Mays.

Rating: 69%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Cursed

After getting into a car accident, orphaned siblings Ellie and Jimmy (played by Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg) get attacked by a large animal. Jimmy swears it was a huge wolf, but everyone tries to convince him that it was probably just a bear or a cougar. By the next morning, the pair start to notice strange changes. Jimmy's getting stronger and Ellie is surprisingly attracted to the scent of blood. Is it a coincidence or have they been cursed with lycanthropy? Wes Craven's Cursed was apparently a nightmare to make, with endless reshoots thanks to the Weinsteins. At least three different versions of the movie were completed. The final version is decent but probably nowhere near the movie that Craven and Kevin Williamson had intended to make. The cast is great, with Ricci and Eisenberg being backed by Joshua Jackson, Judy Greer and Michael Rosenbaum. Plus cameos from Portia de Rossi, Shannon Elizabeth, Nick Offerman, Scott Baio, Craig Kilborn, Lance Bass and the band Bowling for Soup. 

Rating: 62%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Live Free or Die Hard

As a favor to the FBI, John McClane is tasked with escorting a hacker to Washington, D.C. Things quickly start to go sideways after a group of hitmen try to kill the hacker before McClane can bring him in. With assassins following their every move, McClane and the hacker attempt to stop a group of terrorists who are attempting to bring down America through a coordinated cyber attack. As far as Die Hard movies go, Live Free or Die Hard probably ranks second to last for most people. What saves it from being dead last, for me at least, is the presence of Justin Long as the hacker. Long has an endless supply of charisma and his back and forth with Bruce Willis, while being somewhat derivative of the odd couple dynamic in Die Hard with a Vengeance, elevates the movie overall. Timothy Olyphant is good as the leader of the terrorists, but lacks the intimidating gravitas of previous villains in the series. And Kevin Smith is unnecessarily shoehorned into the movie as another hacker.

Rating: 68%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

For those keeping score, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later takes place, appropriately, 20 years after the events of the original Halloween and Halloween II. H20 ignores the events of Halloween III, 4, 5 and The Curse of Michael Myers. H20 suggests that Michael and Loomis survived the hospital explosion in Halloween II, with Michael going MIA after the explosion and Loomis dying sometime in the years that followed. Laurie Strode, having faked her own death, has assumed the name Keri Tate. With Laurie/Keri now living with her 17 year old son in California, where she is the headmistress of a boarding school. In this continuity, Laurie and Michael are still siblings. H20 begins with Michael tracking Laurie down in California right before everybody leaves the boarding school for a big camping trip. Halloween H20 is kinda slow. It takes almost half the movie's running time for Michael to make it to California. The movie's body count is also pretty low. H20's portrayal of Laurie is pretty interesting though. She's wounded but a lot more proactive than we've seen her in the past. It's almost a precursor to the version of Laurie seen in the David Gordon Green Halloween trilogy. H20 has a pretty impressive cast, along with Jamie Lee Curtis there's Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Janet Leigh and LL Cool J. There's a Creed song given prominent placement in the film, which seems appropriate for a movie released in 1998. And even though this little pocket of Halloween continuity will be dropped after Halloween: Resurrection, H20 manages to be a decent entry in the series.

 

Rating: 69%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Fun Fact: At one point, Scream 2 is seen playing on a TV in a dorm room.

Scream 4

Most of the meta chatter in Scream 4 is about remakes. It makes sense, given that horror movies were in a serious remake rut at the time of Scream 4's release. And while the movie keeps telling us that it's a remake, it actually turns out to be a much better concluding chapter for the Scream series than Scream 3 ever was. Every surviving character returns except for Sidney's father, who never really made much of an impact in the series and only ever appeared briefly in parts 1 and 3. The story does a good job of showing us what's happened to these characters in the ten years since their last brush with death. It's a good send-off for the series and I sincerely hope that it's the final chapter.

Rating: 66%

(Image from collider.com)

Scream 3

One of the things that always bothered me about Scream 3 was that a lot of it was centered around the production of Stab 3. In Scream 2, they had only just released the first Stab film. So we're just supposed to accept that another Stab film has come and gone, depicting the events of the previous Scream film? Stab gave Scream 2 the opportunity for some meta commentary on slasher films and the success of the original Scream. Stab 3 and the hijinks in this movie mostly transform Scream 3 into a parody. Also, in light of recent events and allegations, it seems pretty gross to have plot elements pertaining to a young woman being sexually abused by a Hollywood producer being used as the backstory for the latest killer.

Rating: 59%

(Image from scream.wikia.com)

Scream 2

Scream 2 was released almost one year to the day after the original Scream and it shows. It seems to have been made to capitalize on all of the elements of the original that surprised audiences and critics, while failing to deliver on some of the aspects that made the original so good. The humor is amped up and the cast features even more hip, young television actors. It's also very meta, with the characters recognizing and pontificating on the fact that they're in a sequel. Moreover, it features commentary on the success of the original film with the introduction of the film-within-the-film, Stab, which dramatizes the events of the first film. It fails to deliver a story on par with the original, recycling the framework from the first film without injecting enough original content.

Rating: 65%

(Image from ca.movieposter.com)

Scream

I've mentioned Scream many times on this site. It's a movie that was responsible for reviving the horror genre in the 1990s and launching a wave of imitators. It was the Pulp Fiction of horror movies, if you will. It holds up pretty well today but it has definitely begun to show its age. The hairstyles and fashions in the film stand out now, what with it being almost twenty years old. And you have to remind yourself that almost no one owned a cellphone at the time, because that's literally a plot point in the movie. I particularly enjoyed watching the movie again recently because I forgot just how awesome Sidney Prescott was, she had plenty of 90s sass and humor along with the strength to kick a little ass when confronted with a jerk in a Halloween costume. It was also enjoyable to be reminded of all of the little plot details around the edges of the film. You remember the teens and the rules and the iconic costumes, but you forget that a lot of the movie was about the main character coming to terms with her mother's death and the reality of her mother's sordid past. Also, the motivation of the killers (spoiler alert?) reads like something you'd see on a Men's Rights Activism message board nowadays, so you're happy to see them get killed at the end.

Rating: 85%

(Image from scream.wikia.com)