Ok,
I have never seen the original 'House of Wax' [Editor's note:
Shame on you, Ed!], but from what I'm told, this remake doesn't really
have anything in common with it besides a title. Anyways, this had been
hyped for a while in various genre magazines and web pages and heck, it
even had a neat little poster for it months before it came out. And
it's a horror movie, so you know I was going to see it anyway. The
movie is about a group of kids stranded in the middle of nowhere after
vehicle problems. They search around and find some gross stuff and are
even menaced by a truck in the middle of the night and have a run in
with a creepy man dumping road kill in the woods. Of course, everything
I just listed is lifted from countless prior horror movies, some better
and some worse than this one. Unfortunately, most of the borrowed ideas
and Hollywood gloss don't really combine to make that great a movie.
Elisha
Cuthbert is hot, that's for sure. Her acting is even kind of good, as
is the acting of whoever plays the bad guys, but the rest of the cast is
vapid at best. In fact, their best scenes come when they are dying.
There are very very few scares. That left me very disappointed. What I
did like was the gore. We get all sorts of nasty atrocities, such as
lips glued shut with super glue and later ripped open, a clipped off
finger that was definitely the gore highpoint of the movie, some
slashings, a great wax human losing his face (wait until you see him
cry!), and a spear through the head, with a head slide that beats
Jason's slide down the machete at the end of ‘Friday the 13th Part 4’.
So yeah, it's a neat new teen themed horror movie. Not scary, but
definitely gory and pretty fast paced. I noticed that this one had a
lot in common with ‘Tourist Trap’. Does anyone remember that one? I
do. Anyway, this is a 90 minute time waster with some damn good gore,
but not much else. (Edward Black)
Ok, we
went to see this last night. I was a bit intrigued by the premise, a group
of aspiring FBI profilers on an island and someone killing them off one at a
time and them using their talents to try and figure out who is the killer.
It even stars Christian Slater and Val Kilmer, so I was definitely looking
forward to seeing this. I even read a lot of good reviews of it. So off we
go to see Mindhunters... It quickly becomes evident that this movie is
going to go nowhere except sticking to the basic stalk and slash scenario of
people dying and others trying to figure out who is doing the deeds. That
is perfectly fine by me, as I am a humongous fan of slasher movies. But
where this movie ultimately fails is that it does nothing to liven up the
proceedings. The death scenes are slightly imaginative, but the parts
between them are deadly dull. The writer (Wayne Kramer) came up with some
good character ideas but some of them are never expanded upon and we are
definitely never given the opportunity to care about what happens to them.
Interestingly enough, some real brief research on this one reveals that it
was actually directed in 2002/2003. Then shelved for a year and finally
released. Apparently the finished product was so bad that the studio
demanded work be done on it to make it ok for a wide release. Yeah, well
whatever work was done on this was nothing great by any means and I would
love to see the original mess just for laughs.
It was funny, and no surprise, that after the movie had
finally plodded to an end and the credits rolled, that Renny Harlin was the
director of this. No surprise at all. Renny Harlin, director of such movies
at ‘Cutthroat Island’, ‘Driven’ and the recent slap in the face to all
horror fans; ‘Exorcist: The Beginning’. Yeah, it was no surprise at all to
find his name behind this insulting mess of a movie. After viewing this,
upon reflection on what I had seen, I grew even angrier with what I had just
witnessed. There are some scenes so implausible, it's a wonder anyone
didn't grab Mr. Harlin while filming and yell, "Hey dumbfuck! What are you
doing?" For example, the first death, is so ridiculously over the top that
I just shook my head and said wow, since the effect was done obviously for
shock value and not that it could happen in real life as fast as it did
there. Also, the cigarette death part, while pretty gory, the motivation
behind it is so lame, because why would a genius profiler do what they do in
a situation like we are presented with? Oh, it doesn’t end there, but I
will end there review here with saying that don't get tricked into this to
see Christian Slater and Val Kilmer, the only two talents involved in this,
because they each have about 5 minutes screen time. What a waste. (Edward
Black)
For
some reason, Hollywood doesn’t hold that many world premieres in Ohio.
But who needs Hollywood when we’ve got homegrown filmmakers like Andy
and Luke Campbell and their Speedfreaks Productions? These are the
twisted geniuses behind the cult favorites ‘Midnight Skater’ and ‘Demon
Summer’. On Saturday May 7th, over 400 people turned out to
see their latest release, the street gangs vs. mutants epic ‘The Red
Skulls’.
I can’t really give this a review as such, because
I was slightly involved. I have a cameo as a preacher during the
opening credits (thankfully without any lines) and somehow got credited
as “script advisor”. I can’t really take much credit for anything,
though. I basically looked at an early draft of the screenplay and told
the guys, “looks pretty good to me.” But even I didn’t expect the end
result to be this good.
Just as ‘Demon Summer’ was a major step forward
from ‘Midnight Skater’, ‘The Red Skulls’ shows the Campbell’s skills as
filmmakers improving yet again. ‘The Red Skulls’ boasts a better
screenplay, better acting, better special effects… everything across the
board is a step up. Those disappointed by the relatively small amount
of gore in ‘Demon Summer’ will have nothing to complain about here, but
the film also boasts a more complex and satisfying storyline. There’s a
fair amount of campy humor, but also some genuine emotion.
Some of the big fight scenes could benefit from
tighter editing, but this still blows away 99% of the shot on video
flicks out there on so many levels it’s hard to nitpick. Seriously,
I’ll be surprised if my review is the only good one this movie gets, and
I think the 400+ people who turned out to The Kent Stage on May 7th for
the world premiere would agree. Am I biased? Possibly. You’ll just
have to find out for yourselves when this gets released on DVD.
(Bob Ignizio)
The
resounding cry is echoing all throughout Star Wars fandom: Yay! It
doesn’t suck! Yes indeed, George Lucas has managed what many thought
impossible. He’s made a Star Wars prequel that rises above mediocrity.
In fact, I can honestly say I had a good time watching ‘Revenge of the
Sith’. There’s still too much CGI, and the action scenes are once again
geared towards those with attention deficit disorder, but overall ‘Sith’
comes close to recapturing the spirit of the original trilogy. And of
course hardcore Star Wars geeks will be thrilled to see all the plot
points they’ve been waiting for realized on screen.
On the plus side, Yoda gets to kick some more ass,
Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor is a great villain, and Samuel L. Jackson
finally gets to do something. On the other hand, Natalie Portman’s
Padme is in this movie only to give birth to Luke and Leia. Aside from
that, her previously strong character just whines, and the end of her
story arc is like something out of a bad romance novel. And speaking of
romance, as in Episode II the movie just stops dead every time we get a
love scene between Anakin and Padme. There’s other stuff I could gripe
about, but the fact is this time Lucas made a movie entertaining enough
that I didn’t really care about its flaws while I was watching it. (Bob
Ignizio)
Ok,
I have never seen the original 'House of Wax' [Editor's note:
Shame on you, Ed!], but from what I'm told, this remake doesn't really
have anything in common with it besides a title. Anyways, this had been
hyped for a while in various genre magazines and web pages and heck, it
even had a neat little poster for it months before it came out. And
it's a horror movie, so you know I was going to see it anyway. The
movie is about a group of kids stranded in the middle of nowhere after
vehicle problems. They search around and find some gross stuff and are
even menaced by a truck in the middle of the night and have a run in
with a creepy man dumping road kill in the woods. Of course, everything
I just listed is lifted from countless prior horror movies, some better
and some worse than this one. Unfortunately, most of the borrowed ideas
and Hollywood gloss don't really combine to make that great a movie. 
Ok, we
went to see this last night. I was a bit intrigued by the premise, a group
of aspiring FBI profilers on an island and someone killing them off one at a
time and them using their talents to try and figure out who is the killer.
It even stars Christian Slater and Val Kilmer, so I was definitely looking
forward to seeing this. I even read a lot of good reviews of it. So off we
go to see Mindhunters... It quickly becomes evident that this movie is
going to go nowhere except sticking to the basic stalk and slash scenario of
people dying and others trying to figure out who is doing the deeds. That
is perfectly fine by me, as I am a humongous fan of slasher movies. But
where this movie ultimately fails is that it does nothing to liven up the
proceedings. The death scenes are slightly imaginative, but the parts
between them are deadly dull. The writer (Wayne Kramer) came up with some
good character ideas but some of them are never expanded upon and we are
definitely never given the opportunity to care about what happens to them.
Interestingly enough, some real brief research on this one reveals that it
was actually directed in 2002/2003. Then shelved for a year and finally
released. Apparently the finished product was so bad that the studio
demanded work be done on it to make it ok for a wide release. Yeah, well
whatever work was done on this was nothing great by any means and I would
love to see the original mess just for laughs. 
The
resounding cry is echoing all throughout Star Wars fandom: Yay! It
doesn’t suck! Yes indeed, George Lucas has managed what many thought
impossible. He’s made a Star Wars prequel that rises above mediocrity.
In fact, I can honestly say I had a good time watching ‘Revenge of the
Sith’. There’s still too much CGI, and the action scenes are once again
geared towards those with attention deficit disorder, but overall ‘Sith’
comes close to recapturing the spirit of the original trilogy. And of
course hardcore Star Wars geeks will be thrilled to see all the plot
points they’ve been waiting for realized on screen. 