Reviews

I originally slammed this film when I first saw it. Having had a chance to see it again in a more proper setting, I find myself changing my opinion on this film.

You see, the first time I saw it was on the big screen. A matinée showing, at that. How scary can anything be in a crowded building in the middle of the afternoon? The next time I saw it was at home, at night, after having watched the 'Curse of the Blair Witch' back story mockumentary. It also helped that I live near the woods. This time, I saw how truly scary this film can be. Without the sound distortion of the theater's Surroundsound system, many of the scary sounds came through much more clearly. And seeing the back story helps you to see some of the supernatural aspects (that house at the end isn't even supposed to be there!).

Seen the right way (at night, as close to alone as possible, near or in the woods if you can manage it), this is a horror masterpiece.

This is probably the best Lovecraft screen adaptation so far. True, it's a small-budget, independent film, but the filmmakers do the most with what they have.

Making it an in-period silent film was a stroke of pure genius. If the story had been put to screen when it was published, this is what it would have looked like.

The best scene (in my opinion) is when Legrasse and his men storm the swamp and break up the Cthulhu Cultists. The scene has all the creepy, unsettling atmosphere that Lovecraft described.

Now, some of the FX are obviously done on a very small scale. The ship was clearly a model in a pool or something. But again, if it had been made in 1926, it wouldn't have looked much better, even from a major studio.

The look of R'leyh is excellent. The weird angles, the oppressive atmosphere of the place, and the sense of growing dread are conveyed perfectly.

When we finally see Cthulhu, the limitations of the small-scale effort become clear. While the stop-motion animation is very well done, the fact that the dreaded Lord of R'leyh is a clay figure almost blows it. Almost. Again, had this been made in 1926, the makers would have had to get Willis O'Brien as the special effects director for Cthulhu to look better, and he still would have been a stop-motion puppet. Besides, every Lovecraft fan knows that no matter how whiz-bang the FX are, be it a puppet or a CGI, the Great Cthulhu will never be as scary on screen as he is in our minds. So even the low-budget Cthulhu we see here isn't all that bad.

10/10 stars, for finally putting Cthulhu on screen. Congratulations to the filmmakers, as I hear this won all kinds of (well-deserved) awards at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

As a fan of the classic monsters from the old Universal Studios films, I was probably bound to enjoy this film no matter how bad it turned out. If you're a fan of the old films...Lugosi's 'Dracula', Karloff's 'Frankenstein', and Chaney Jr.'s 'The Wolf Man', and all the myriad sequels...you're apt to like this film, and see its flaws as forgivable. After all, the old films, particularly the ones from the 1940's, were far from perfect.

And there are flaws. The plot is overwrought, the acting by many of the supporting roles is at times wooden, the Wolf Man (I refer to Velkan; there's more than one werewolf in this film) doesn't have enough screen time, and some of the fight scenes (especially near the end) go on way too long. And the second scene of the film (with Van Helsing fighting Mr. Hyde) is completely unnecessary.

However, when this film is on, it's on in style. The opening scene is hard to top; the creation of the Monster, Dracula trying to take control of the Monster, an angry mob chasing the Monster to an old windmill, and the pathos of the Monster as the windmill burns, all in black and white as a beautiful tribute to the classic films. The portrayals of Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster would have made Lugosi and Karloff happy; their signature characters are handled as though they were directing Roxburgh and Hensley themselves.

If you aren't a fan of the old classic monster movies, you probably won't be too impressed with 'Van Helsing'. However, as long as you go understanding that this is a popcorn film, a movie to enjoy with your higher brain taking a snooze, you'll like it. It's just as much fun as Sommers' Mummy films.

And if you are a fan of Lugosi, Karloff, and Chaney Jr., this film is an absolute blast. Do not miss it.

8/10 stars if you like popcorn films, probably 5/10 otherwise.

This short film is based on "The Scream of the Dead", a chapter in H.P. Lovecraft's story 'Herbert West-Reanimator'. Bob Poirier's performance as Herbert West is perfect. It's like the character walked off the page onto the screen.

I'd like to see Crawling Chaos Pictures try a full-length adaptation of 'Re-Animator'. The best thing about their vision of it is that they set it in the 1920's, around the time the original story was set, instead of 'updating' it like a lot of larger-budget filmmakers feel impelled to do.

I saw this at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. On the big screen, the graininess of the film takes a moment to get used to. This is, after all, an amateur production. But even that adds to the feel of watching a story set in the past. I give this 9/10 stars.

This 50-minute adaptation of Lovecraft's story 'Cool Air' actually has more punch than the original story. Instead of going for any shock value that could be exploited, Bryan Moore creates a very human story about a man's desire to live...or at least avoid death...at any cost. Doctor Munoz (played by Jack Donner) is unusual for a Lovecraft character in that we don't fear him or what he does. In fact, we come to pity Munoz for how much he has lost, and how much he's sacrificed to stay alive.

'Never underestimate the power of the human will', Munoz tells Randolph Carter, and the audience comes to believe that, whatever medicine or strange science he says is keeping him alive, it is his will that keeps death at bay.

This is an excellent short film. I saw it recently at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon, and it very nearly got a standing ovation from the audience. So did Bryan Moore and Jack Donner when they had a Q&A session with the audience. Hell, we should have carried them out on our shoulders. I hope we haven't heard the last of Bryan Moore; he's a filmmaker to watch.

10/10 stars.

I have never, in my whole life, been so impressed with a motion picture as I was with this masterful adaption of Tolkien's classic epic. The acting and direction are flawless, and the visualization of Middle-Earth is breathtaking. Every detail, from casting to scoring, was handled as if Tolkien himself was watching over the production.

As far as I can tell, the movie's main critics are a) uptight Tolkien purists, and b) people who didn't like or haven't read Tolkien's work. The uptight critics say that Jackson left too much out, but the truth is that much of Tolkien's narrative is just too slow to be filmed well. I, for one, was glad to see the story tightened up a bit; I got a bit tired of those happy little Hobbits singing silly songs and falling ass-backwards into extraneous troubles every few pages. Also, Tolkien never actually described Lord Sauron in the novels; he left it to the reader's imagination what the Dark Lord looked like. That worked perfectly in print, but the cinema is a different medium altogether. The scene where Sauron the Great takes the battlefield is one of the most heart-stopping in the whole movie.

If your idea of a good fantasy film is wall-to-wall swordplay with lots of scantily clad chicks in chainmail, this isn't the movie for you. If you think the genre of epic fantasy deserves better than Xena and D&D, if you like movies with an intelligent plot and story, if you think dialogue is more important to a fantasy film than the sound of swords clashing endlessly, then Peter Jackson's vision of the greatest heroic fantasy is for you. I give it 10/10.

Based on Michael Shaara's great novel "The Killer Angels", this is one of the most impressive movies about the American Civil War that I've ever seen. It is a shame that the theaters are unable to screen a movie of this length, otherwise this would have been up for numerous Oscars.

In one memorable scene after another, we are told the tale of the pivotal battle of the Civil War, where the Confederacy made huge tactical mistakes that turned the tide of the war against them. Particularly memorable is the scene where Colonel Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) addresses a group of deserters, and through the conviction and passion of his argument, convinces them to re-enlist for the coming battle. Martin Sheen gives the performance of his career (so far) as General Robert E. Lee, portraying him as a gentleman, a warrior, and a patriot to his cause.

The reason this film is so powerful is that it doesn't take sides, as some Civil War movies tend to do. The Rebels aren't shown as a bunch of uneducated, slave-driving rednecks, but as people fighting for their personal liberty. That they kept slaves but fought for liberty is an irony not lost on the Rebels; one Confederate officer comments "We should have freed the slaves first, then fired on Fort Sumter." The Confederates weren't fighting for the right to keep slaves, they were fighting to remain free from a federal government that they felt was growing too powerful, and that message is made clear in this film.

Highly recommended; I give it 9/10.

Much has been said about the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan". Here's all you need to know about it; at preview screenings of it, some veterans who survived D-Day had flashbacks of their unimaginable experiences. Some couldn't bring themselves to watch. That being said, anyone who wasn't there on D-Day should see this film so they will have some small idea of what those brave soldiers went through.

After the opening scenes, we get to the plot of the movie, the search for a young man whose brothers have all been killed in the war. A troop of soldiers is sent to bring this young man home. On the way, they question the validity of their mission; why risk a whole group of men to save one? It is a question that has no easy answer, for the characters or the audience.

This is, in my opinion, the greatest movie about the Second World War ever filmed. It was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but lost to "Shakespeare in Love". Why the Academy snubbed "Saving Private Ryan" is a mystery and, again in my opinion, the biggest mistake the Academy ever made.

Teenage girls spent an entire summer watching this movie; people flocked to it in unprecedented numbers; the Academy of Motion Pictures completely lost its head and awarded it Best Picture. All for a film that was little more than a poorly-written Harlequin Romance set on the greatest ship to never finish one voyage.

This film could have been improved in so many ways:

1) Punt the insipid fictional love story and focus on the real-life characters. The supporting cast playing the actual people on board the Titanic was, on the whole, a much better group of actors than the ones in the fictional love story.

2) Have somebody (anybody!) else play the role of Jack. Matt Damon would have been good, Joaquin Phoenix would have been better, but DiCaprio was a huge mistake.

3) If DiCaprio is really a must, have him and Billy Zane switch roles. Zane is much better suited to the romantic lead role, and DiCaprio would have been perfect as an unlikeable, self-absorbed fop.

4) The Captain should have been portrayed more as he was in real life, not as the confused, incompetent geezer the movie makes him out to be. Witness reports say that Captain Smith acted heroically and with honor; it is a disservice to his memory to portray him as this film does.

After all this, I must admit that I did kind of like this movie. I just don't understand all the fuss over it, and I REALLY don't understand why it won the Best Picture Oscar. This is a good film, but it is far from being a great film.

Brilliant acting, brutal battle sequences, and a concise story propel "Gladiator" to epic status, making it quite possibly the greatest epic of Ancient Rome ever filmed, rivalled only by "Spartacus".

Russell Crowe proves himself to be one of the great actors of our time as he plays General Maximus, a man who only wants to live a quiet, peaceful life with his family. Instead, Maximus is hailed for his abilities in battle, first on the battlefield as he helps Emperor Marcus Aurelius expand the Empire, then in the gladiator arena after he is betrayed, sold into slavery, and forced to kill for the entertainment of the barbaric masses. Crowe shows us the General's quiet desperation to get home after the battle in Germania, his unimaginable shock at finding his family murdered, and his intense desire to avenge his family by killing Commodus, a range of emotions that many actors these days have trouble playing convincingly, but which Crowe handles perfectly.

But a hero is only as good as his nemesis is bad, and Joaquin Phoenix portrays the insane Emperor Commodus flawlessly. Commodus is shown as more than a crazed dictator; he is shown as a young man who wanted to feel love from his father, but couldn't, even when his father tried to express his love for Commodus. His unsettling passion for his sister makes the audience dislike him, but his apparent love for his nephew makes him seem human, until he threatens the boy near the end. The audience comes to hate Commodus, but there is also a feeling of pity for him, and that is a hard balance for an actor to maintain. Phoenix shows that he has a long, impressive career ahead of him, and in my opinion, he should have been awarded the Best Supporting Actor Oscar when he was nominated for this role.

Everything about this production is remarkable, from the almost Wagnerian score to the jarring choreography and cinematography of the battle sequences. A true masterpiece of movie making.

Stephen King's strength isn't his blinding originality; it's his ability to take familiar, overused ideas and give them a fresh angle. "Rose Red" is a perfect example of this. Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House", Matheson's "Hell House", every haunted house story you ever heard or told, you'll recognize it here. A team of psychic investigators go into a house that not only has a reputation for a few bumps in the night, but also a reputation for causing snoopy investigators to vanish off the face of the earth. The team has the usual suspects; a cynic, a social misfit, an obsessed team leader, mediums of every stripe. Stealing the show is young Kimberly Brown as Annie, an autistic girl with the power to summon spirits, cause stones to fall from the sky, and wake up the sleeping evil of Rose Red. Is this film an original take on the haunted house theme? No. Is it worth watching? Yes. Is it scary? Surprisingly, yes. Well worth the time it takes to watch it. Rating: 8/10