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Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Coming Soon: 1/4/13

New year has come and passed.  I'm glad everyone survived the Mayan 2012 apocalypse.  I just have to ask: did anyone really take that seriously?  Anyway, there's plenty of movies coming up.  Not many good ones unfortunately.  But here is what you can see this weekend.

1) TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D: Leatherface terrorizes teenagers.

The Good: It's torture porn for gore hounds.

The Bad: Just how many unncecessary remakes are they going to make? 

Final Thoughts: *apologies this is longer than it should be* When I think of poorly produced, badly thought out, and totally disrespected movies we eventually come to the horror/slasher genre.  Many people think all you need is an unkillable bad guy and a high body count and it will be a success.  There's a reason the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a huge success and it wasn't because of the body count or gallons of blood.  It's because a movie like that hadn't ever been done before in 1974.  Texas Chainsaw Massacre is in many ways the original slasher movie.  A killer whose face we never really see, obsessive compulsive motives for killing, using power tools as instruments of distruction instead of creation.  It was as much a psychological thriller as it was a "slasher" movie.  It was a portrait of pure evil inspired by a real life serial killer, Ed Gein.  A killer who not only inspired Leatherface, but also Buffalo Bill and Norman Bates.  It's not the blood, it's not the overly staged death scenes, it's not the computer effects, and it's not the body counts.  It's about experiencing evil.  Some people can't tell the difference.  Nowadays the "slasher" movies drown out the idea of pure evil and instead just show carnage as the actors involved cash in an easy paycheck and hopefully launch their careers.  And yes I said easy and I mean it.  How hard is it to act scared?  It's one of the most basic human emotions out there?  Here's your character motivation:  He's scary and wants to kill you.  Act scared and run away.  OSCAR PLEASE!  It's why they get little known talent to do these movies.  It doesn't take much skill to act scared and they can produce movies like these for relatively cheap.  Add in the fact they can slap the name Texas Chainsaw on it and throw in a big hulking guy and call him Leatherface to trick audiences into thinking this is in any way going to be as good as the original.  It's a horror movie not good enough to be released anywhere near October.  You tell me how good you think it is.

2) A DARK TRUTH: A former CIA operative turned talk show host is hired by a whistle blower to expose human rights abuses by the whistle blower's company.

The Good: It has that one guy from Diary of a Wimpy Kid?

The Bad: This is an action movie with all the subtlety of Ferngully.

Final Thoughts: So not interested.

3) VS: A group of super heroes do battle with the arch nemesis they believed was dead.

The Good: I have no idea.

The Bad: It's written, directed and starring the same guy.  Not a good sign.

Final Thoughts: It's a small, independant movie by a guy and his friends looking to catch a break.  Give it a chance.

See you at the movies

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