I LIKE HALLOWEEN EXCITEMENT!

Summer is wrapping up nicely. Got married, honeymooned in the Utah desert under a hot sun. Now Fall is approaching, bringing with it all of its cool weather, dead leaves, and Halloween preparation. Halloween is my favorite time of the year. I love hot summer BBQs and snowy Christmas mornings but nothing beats a glowing jackolantern and a horror movie marathon.

I have been catching up on some of the more recent horror releases that I missed, both the good kind and the terrible kind. Keep in mind that with most pop cultural facets, my personal concept of "recent" may be incredibly distorted from reality. I'm usually at least five years behind the times. Here's what I've watched over the past few nights to get in the October mood:



[REC] 2
I really enjoyed the first [REC], a Spanish-made first person point of view, found footage style zombie virus movie. The found footage subgenre has its highs and its lows for sure, but [REC] does a really good job creating a creepy vibe in an enclosed area and keeps the camera work steady enough to not take you out of the situation, which has been a flaw of these types of movies in the past. The ending was genuinely creepy.

If you don't want spoilers, you can skip over this paragraph . . . ok? . . . The sequel kind of picks up where the first one ended. After the revelations of the first movie's finale, we are now dealing with demons and not just your average zombies. It was refreshing to see the filmmakers vary from the formula that was so successful the first time around. Although it is set in the same apartment building as the previous film and it still has its POV camera style, this is its own movie and not just a retreading exercise. That said, I enjoyed the first one more but still recommend checking this one out. Since we as viewers already have most of our explanations for what's going on, I didn't find this one as suspenseful as the first.



Night of the Demons
This 2009 remake of the 80s cult classic isn't trying to reinvent the wheel. It was pretty fun. I like the original better but this has some merits of its own. It's got Eddie Furlong and the girl from Freddy vs Jason trapped in an old mansion being stalked by demons. Most of the gore is old school but there is a fare share of CG shenanigans. Fans of the original will be treated to a brief but funny cameo by Linnea Quigly wearing the same pink tutu she had on 20 years ago and a variation of the original's infamous lipstick scene. And kudos to whoever made the poster for keeping in the same style as the old movie and not having all the actors photoshopped together in front of a spooky fog or something.



Day of the Dead
The 2008 "remake" of George Romero's third zombie tale is so far detached from the source material that it would have been better off with a different name. I know they were trying to cash in on the successful Dawn of the Dead remake's momentum, but this movie was so far off the mark that linking it with Romero's Day of the Dead probably turned more people off than it attracted. Horror fans are generally a loyal bunch and one must be careful when dealing with the icons of the genre's past. After seeing the trailer when it came out I had no interest. It looked worse than horrible. After watching it tonight, it actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I'm not saying it was good, but I have certainly seen worse low budget zombie movies. These zombies run and scream and climb up walls and ceilings, just so you know ahead of time. I know that drives some fans nuts so I'll warn you. The only things this has in common with the original are the character names (though most if not all of the characters' other traits have changed), there are corpses trying to eat people, and there are soldiers present. Overall it was pretty stupid. It would fit in better with those Bulgarian Return of the Living Dead sequels they were making awhile back. Also, the poster lies. This movie has nothing to do with zombies who vomit like Garbage Pail Kids.



Trick r Treat
I re-watched Trick r Treat as I think I will every Halloween season from now on. It's an anthology style horror movie that nails the aesthetic of Halloween night so perfectly that you can practically smell the dead leaves and pumpkins. Since it first came out it has been an instant Halloween classic in my house. I'm sure I'll watch it again before October 31st.



Masters of Horror: The Black Cat
This episode of the Showtime series is directed by Stuart Gordon and teams him up with his Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs as Edgar Allan Poe. While it is basically a telling of the Poe story The Black Cat, it has a twist in that they have Poe himself as the lead character and interweave elements of his own life into it. Combs is really good here although his prosthetic nose is a little distracting in a few scenes. Some might find it surprisingly gory, but I'm sure fans of Stuart Gordon's other work will be quite pleased.



Into the Mouth of Madness
This one's not a recent movie even by my out of touch standards, but I hadn't seen it in years. Sam Neil is great as an insurance investigator who gets sucked into a maddening mystery surrounding a missing author who is a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. It's a lot of fun. It's a pretty weird movie even for John Carpenter but well worth the watch.

Well, I'm off to bed with visions of pumpkins, ghost, and skeletons dancing in my head. Plenty of time for more movies before the season is through (or even started, for that matter).

I LIKE MOVIES #19: X-MEN FIRST CLASS

I finally got around to seeing X-Men: First Class last night. I enjoyed the previous movies in the series but did feel that Last Stand and Wolverine's solo flick were on a descending trajectory. Not bad, but not great. This newest entry is part prequel and part reboot. Some might nitpick a few continuity errors with the rest of the series, but that doesn't change the fact that this chapter in the series is arguably the strongest. The acting was great throughout with particularly good performances from Michael Fassbender as Eric "Soon-to-be-Magneto" Lehnsher and Kevin Bacon as supervillain Sebastion Shaw. Between First Class and James Gunn's Super, Bacon is proving to be quite the heel lately.

One of the best things I can say for X-Men: First Class is that its characters carry the story just as much as the special effects and action. This one movie accomplishes what George Lucas couldn't do in three by showing a troubled person with special powers tragically succumb to his own inner demons and turn to evil. And unlike with Anakin Skywalker, there are points where sympathy is created for Eric even though we know he will end as a villain.

I'm not saying that the movie is without its flaws. It is on the verge of suffering from the same symptoms of character overpopulation that have bloated many a superhero movie in the past, but there is just enough balance to keep the scales from tipping. My only other issue is with the look of Beast.

If I were to tell you under any other context that Kelsey Grammer looked way more badass than somebody you might think I had lost my mind. But this new, young Hank McCoy looks so much like a purring kitty that it's kind of funny. Not only is the new Beast out-cooled by Kelsey Grammer, but even Scott Howard from Teen Wolf is actually more intimidating. Every time Hank appeared on screen in his furry blue form I kept thinking of that old "Beauty and the Beast" TV show with Ron Pearlman and Sarah Conner.



His transformation was pretty well done. It was very reminiscent of the transformation in the recent Wolfman remake. But the end result got more giggles than gasps.



Other than thinking Beast looked a little silly and feeling a bit cramped by too many characters I enjoyed First Class quite a bit. If you liked the other X-Men movies, definitely check it out. If superhero movies aren't your cup of tea then why are you still reading this?

I'll give X-Men: First Class today's arbitrary rating of 12 mutants used for civil rights metaphors out of 15.

I LIKE MOVIES #18: DEMOLITION MAN

I wanted a bad action fix so I popped in Demolition Man. I hadn't seen it in years and was kind of surprised by how fun it still is. Part of the fun is how poorly it is aging. It all looks very early 90s and the timeline established within the movie will only become sillier as the real years go by. It's like when you watch Back to the Future II and wonder where your hoverboard is. The fancy pants future, in the case of Demolition Man, is 2032. So within the span of two generations there will be no more murder, no more swearing, and no more sex. A hard pill to swallow but who's looking for realism when this is clearly a case of big dumb escapism action?

Could it be that I'm just a pessimist and I can't imagine a social utopia arriving in the next two decades? Nah. They should have just set it a few hundred years later. You're trying to tell me that people won't know what toilet paper is in 2032? Get real, sista. Let's get back on topic.

Stallone plays John Spartan, a cop who plays by his own rules, who marches to the beat of his own drummer, who does what the the other cops won't, who takes it to the bad dudes despite the reprimands of his superiors, etc, etc. Wesley Snipes plays Simon Phoenix, the kind of amped up bad guy that they just don't seem to make anymore. The two get cryogenically frozen and subsequently thawed out in the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY! There is a plot involving political motivations and assassination attempts. But the whole affair is played lightly and the focus is on explosions and gun fights and jokes about how drastically times have changed.



Wesley Snipes seems to "get" this movie and just has fun with it. Some might say he hams it up, but that's the job of the villain in this type of action movie. His clothes and hair are spot on when it comes to dropping this movie into a time capsule. These are the elements that age like a fine wine. A wonderful Bad Action vintage.

Sandra Bullock adds the "sassy love interest" element that is essential in all great Bad Actioners. Though there is a lurking suspicion that she may be Spartan's daughter, luckily nothing ever comes of it. It would be weird, like when Princess Leia plants one on Luke in Empire. But weirder. Because they have that virtual reality head gear sex.

Demolition Man is a sci-fi/action movie that relies a lot on comedy to lighten the mood. It tries to put some social commentary in the humor for good measure but doesn't get bogged down in it. Like I said, it's big dumb escapism and a fun movie. I doubt the filmmakers expected Dennis Leary's character to inspire the nation to rise up and take to the streets, sticking it to the man from sea to shining sea.

So, yeah. Watch Demolition Man if you want. I give it 2 out of 3 seashells.