New Year's Evil

New Year's Eve to me is one of the most overrated holidays. It is a holiday where we wait for hours for basically just a ball to drop and it is just an excuse for party goers to party. It becomes more and more each year and is a tiresome thing. If it were up to me, I would just treat New Year's Eve as a normal day. The film, New Year's Evil from 1980 just adds more bad stuff to all of this.

New Years Evil is the story of Diane Sullivan who is the host of a cool punk television countdown show celebrating the New Year. She receives a phone call from a person claiming to be named Evil and saying he is ready to kill. Thinking it is a prank, Diane thinks nothing of it until learning from the police that a killer is on the loose.

The whole idea of this film is new. Not many films use the concept of New Years Eve and mix it with horror. It is interesting to watch the 80's music here and the drugs but still though, New Year's Evil's biggest problem is actually many things. The cast is not good and has nothing to them, the kill scenes are boring, and everything in this movie can be described as uneven. It is all filled with typical ideas with most of them coming from other films.

Another downfall is the killer. Played by Kip Niven who has a Bruce Jenner feel, the character lacks a lot of substance and gives no reason why we should even be interested in him. During the third act, the film throws us a twist that is out of the blue but it's comes across as more leaden than ever. This is a very bland killer.

                                         
                           Possibly the worst slasher mask ever.

New Year's Evil is kind of a hidden stoner film and it is also a film to watch to seek out some 80's music. Still though, it is a horror movie that I couldn't see as being very good back in 1980 and surely not good now close to thirty years later. It's a horror movie that in the end should be forgotten like it has been.

2.5/5

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Christmas Vacation

During it's fourteen year run, the National Lampoon Vacation series was pretty top notch. It produced a different concept of following a family and all their crazy adventures. It was a series that besides "Vegas Vacation" showed Chevy Chase in his prime as a comedic actor and also many series can't say they used every rating from R, PG-13 and PG for the various films which shows it's a series that works for everyone.

That said, every one especially knows about the third film in the series, Christmas Vacation. It is said to be a classic Christmas film, and is well known by non-fans of film industry. The film is something you can just find on about every station during Christmas time even though it is now more than twenty years old and I don't see this dying anytime soon. Call me crazy me though, because for me Christmas Vacation is just a merely an above average film.

In the heart of Chicago, the Griswold family craziness begins during Christmas time. The Griswold extended family is here with Clark (Chevy Chase), his trashy brother Eddie (Randy Quaid) and the rest of the family. Clark deals a lot of stuff including Christmas lights, presents, a Christmas bonus issue and really everything that comes with Christmas.

I could just be nitpicking and maybe the Christmas scrooge has come out from inside of me but Christmas Vacation suffers from a lack of plot. Most of film is wandering around in an 80's style house watching a family who don't know the ways of life. With the setting being just a house, it shows off the low $27 million budget, and I don't know why the movie is called "Christmas Vacation" because the family doesn't go anywhere. Christmas Vacation is full of sex, bathroom humor, old people and dysfunctional family jokes that are typical in comedy films.

I think if a film is going to use just one setting, then it really needs to rely on the characters. The main star of the film and the father of the family, Clark Griswold (Chase) can't seem to do anything right and has numerous problems. He is an annoyance and by the end of the movie it just becomes too much. The mother of the Griswolds is Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) who is innocent in all of this and really doesn't seem to fit into this craziness. The kids are Audrey Griswold (Juliette Lewis) who is a bitchy teen who has problems with just about about everything and the younger brother is Russ Griswold (Johnny Galecki) who does nothing noteworthy. From Uncle Lewis (William Hickey) to Aunt Bethany (Mae Questel), the old people in this story are what some old people are. They are off in there own world and have no purpose or able to relate at all to the present time. The only character that really earns his keep and is worth watching is Eddie (Quaid) who's pretty funny and who has some heart. Still, none of these family members has an inch of character development.

This movie has the Christmas spirit and is original to the series so I see a reason why some people call it a classic. To me though, it just has too little on substance, has big flaws on the important parts and really all I got out of it was some smiles. Christmas Vacation is an easily watchable movie but it is a film I would rather choose to forget than to remember.

3/5

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Looper

When I look back at films I watched during my high school years, you could say it was "Joseph Gordon- Levitt time". Gordon-Levitt first became really well known as the young kid on Third Rock on the Sun. Then he appeared in films and didn't become a big name until 2009. He was an actor that always seem to be cast by good directors like Steven Spielberg in "Lincoln", and also supported by good actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Micheal Shannon. Looper is more of the same but is one of the first films with him that you can really question.

Looper is set in the future where time travel is illegal and used by criminal organizations on the black market. Once the person is caught by the mob, they are sent back thirty years to a looper. A looper's job is to kill those sent back in time and is how Joe (Gordon-Levitt) makes his money. One day though, his future self comes back to be killed causing an interesting situation for him. Though this is an original plot, there is just too much to grasp here and it is a confusing piece. This film could have went many different ways but it ends up going many places we didn't want it to go. You can like some aspects of this movie but not all of them.

As with most films he is in, Gordon-Levitt delivers a very well done performance and has a cast to support him. Emily Blunt plays a different role and she is much more gritty than she has ever been before. Bruce Willis is the future Joe who does not put out a bad performance but he doesn't at all look like Gordon-Levitt which is a problem. Willis does get some makeup but it doesn't go hand in hand enough to be the future Joe. All these characters are well developed and do have a lot to them.

Director Rian Johnson sets this film in 2044 and in the future realistic world. All we really see though is rundown buildings, poor looking towns and no color in this world. In the third act, the film's setting is a farm where we feel like Shoeless Joe Jackson and kids from Nebraska are going to be coming out of the fields but this setting ultimately makes us feel like we are back in the present time and it's takes us away from the film. Basically, Rian Johnson wanted to portray a future world but he didn't have any ideas for it.

A second viewing might be interesting but for now I think Looper is potentially a good film but with a few bad ideas. This film seemed to forgotten once 2013 came along and you wonder if anybody will have heard of it twenty years from now. For now, Looper is an overrated film from 2012.

3/5

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An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story

Found dead in her bed in 1986, Christine Morton's death left Williamson County, Texas in shambles and caused her husband Micheal Morton to be found guilty of murder and facing a life sentence in prison. In November of 2011, with the case now twenty fife years old, we learned of the startling new evidence of another man's DNA linked to Christine's murder. "An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story" is the documentary story from CNN Films about an innocent man convicted of murder and the family he lost because of it.

Even though we don't want to admit it, we seen have this story before. We all know of people who have gone to jail because of a crime they did not commit. This murder mystery is nothing new and could have been just another 48 Hours Mystery episode.

That said, five things still make this one different.

 1) Michael Morton is an honest, down-to earth southern guy who was really in a bad spot. He was a very likable guy which adds a good perspective to the story.

2) There is a hidden secondary plot that focuses on prison life including sleeping conditions, food, the plantations and the scary images of rape.

3) As we should, we learn more and more about the in's and out's of the criminal justice system and  again this is just one of many examples where the verdict of the criminal justice system isn't always right.

4) From attorney John Raley and the many others, there are many great interviews in this film which add to the depth of the story.

5) The ending provides some interesting closure going every which way we want it to go and in the end provides the justice that is needed.

In sum, An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story is a documentary that needed to be told and make it's point. This documentary will likely be forgotten down the road but it is still a very fine work from CNN films and famed director Al Reinert.

4/5

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Curse of Chucky

To say in 1988 that we were going to have a horror film about a doll as a killer that later spawned a successful series would seem unreal. No doubt it would be interesting but very silly regardless and also a risk film due to the possible bad reactions to it. Still as history showed, Child's Play was a hit and it made it's mark on the horror world. It was the first movie in a popular series that still has nothing close to it in the horror genre.

That said, now in 2013 after nine years, we get a new Chucky film. The whole idea is again forced, questionable and asking for trouble. The series already faced it's fate if it wanted to be a black comedy film like the last sequels or edgy horror like first two movies in the late 80's and early 90's.

Curse of Chucky uses only one set and obviously was made with a smaller budget. A small package has been sent to the home of wheelchair-bound mother Sarah Pierce (Chantal Quesnel) and her daughter Nica (Fiona Dourif). The package containing good doll Chucky, which of course always leads to trouble.

We have seen this type of plot before with a house in the middle of nowhere but with the Chucky films, you can say that it's a little different. The movie uses it's budget here, introducing more characters than usual with "Clue" vibes and these characters all bring something unique to the table and that's something different with this series.

Obviously, the main reason why these films are successful are the main attraction, the doll Chucky who is the center of attention and he leads all ships to these films. In this installment, Chucky is not as funny as previous and he seems to show up when he wants to but he is still the same Chucky. He does bring fresh and new kill scenes which I liked. Brad Dourif does his usual good voice work for Chucky and Chucky does have a new look which gives him a little different vibe than before.

Once the third act is about to come to a close and the dvd player is about to turned off, we see that the ending is ambitious and wants to do a lot of things. It takes you in many directions so you need to follow it all but still though, this is a very different ending for the series. The ending is smart and an example of how a movie can go against the grain in a direct-to-dvd film. It also gets bonus points for a cool cameo that pays homage with characters from earlier films in the series.

Like most sequels, this really is an unnecessary film and for a series that returns after almost ten years, this should not have been very good especially considering that it is a direct-to-dvd film, but it was good. I think this film will end up being one the biggest surprises of 2013 and maybe even in horror movie history.

3.5/5

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