8 Mile (2002)

 

"You ever get to a point when you gotta stop living up here and start living down here?"

 

2002 must have been the year for singers starring in movies. Just like Britney Spears earlier in the year with "Crossroads", Eminem follows suit with his film debut, "8 Mile". However, unlike Britney Spears, Eminem puts in a stellar performance and this movie is actually really good. 

"8 Mile" follows Jimmy 'B-Rabbit' Smith as he tries putting his life back together. B-Rabbit has to move back in with his mother and little sister and, at the same time, he is trying to get his rapping career off the ground with his attempt, and utter failure at local rap battles. Smith's friends are constantly fighting with the New World led by Papa Doc (Anthony Mackie). Smith's friend Future (Mekhi Phifer)sees Smith's talent and signs him up to battle other rappers again, against Smith's wishes. Smith eventually gets his life back together in order to battle in the final scene.

The reason that "8 Mile" is so good is that Eminem's acting is phenomenal. I believe his emotion and I believe he IS this character. I'm sure it helps that this film is semi-biographical, Eminem did grow up like this, he did have a dysfunctional mother and he did rap battles. The film isn't short on talent either including Academy Award winner Kim Basinger as his mother, Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer, Anthony Mackie and Michael Shannon (playing his mother's boyfriend) and directed by Academy Award winner Curtis Hanson. And let's not forget that Eminem, himself, won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for this movie. 

There is very little bad about this movie, if anything. I remember when this movie came out originally, I honestly thought Eminem was going to be an actor and surprisingly he did not. I'd love to see him star in another movie because he really is a good actor.

Crossroads (2002)

 

"All we have is now, and right now we have each other"

 

Crossroads came out in 2002, during Britney Spears's heyday. Younger people may not realize how big Britney Spears was in the early 2000s. It was natural for her to make her way into acting. Problem is, Britney Spears isn't a very good actress.

Directed by Tamra Davis, Crossroads is a very formulaic coming of age film. Lucy (Spears) is a new high school graduate who is under the rule of her father (Dan Aykroyd), all he wants her to do is ignore her social life and become a doctor. Meanwhile, Lucy has broken up with her friends during high school. Her friends consist of Kit (Zoe Saldana) who has become a self-centered model and Mimi (Taryn Manning) who has become pregnant trailer trash. Lucy, now has the reputation of being a goody two shoes. When Mimi brings the trio back together to dig up a time capsule they buried as children, she reveals she will be going across country to go to L.A. for a singing competition. The trio head out with Ben (Anson Mount) who is allegedly a murderer (we later find out it was rumor). And that's pretty much the entire movie.

This is a very bland and (as mentioned before) formulaic. There is nothing in this movie we haven't seen previously in other films. Britney Spears is a cardboard actress (at least in this movie). Taryn Manning plays trailer trash which is a stretch for her from playing previous trailer trash characters. Manning was clearly put on this earth to play trailer trash. Even Zoe Saldana, who is a good actress, is bad in this movie. 

Also, this movie treats pregnancy as a disease. During a karaoke scene (which is only there to promote a single from Britney's 2001 album "Britney") Mimi attempts to sing, which she sucks at, you hear a random guy in the crowd yell out "SHE'S PREGNANT!" and then later on when Dan Aykroyd's character finds Lucy he says to here "This isn't like you, running way... with a PREGNANT GIRL!". I mean, come on! Pregnant women are still women, they can stand and sing, they can travel, it's not something taboo or crazy. Yes, she is a teenager, but she's 18, so what difference does it make?

Overall, this movie isn't very good. With the bland acting and the poor writing, this movie is just a promotional video for Britney Spears and her recent album at the time. That being said, this movie has a special place in my heart as I am a pretty hardcore Britney fan and I was definitely a hardcore fan in 2002. So, I enjoy this movie but I can see its major flaws and recognize this movie as bad.

Wes Craven: The Man, The Legend

I've told the story many, many times over the years but it's time to tell the story again. Way back in 1997, I was a dorky, little fool who really only liked comedies and Disney movies. But, one thing I hated more than anything was horror films. I refused to watch horror films because I just didn't like them. When a little film called Scream came out everyone, everywhere were raving about this movie. And I, for one, just didn't care. Finally, I just gave into peer pressure and finally, reluctantly, sat down to watch this little horror film.

I sat there riveted. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and when the movie was over I realized I had just watched something special. Scream would go on to spawn 3 sequels and a successful 2015 TV series. But, at least in my generation, the film kind of became a joke. So, me saying that this film is special to me and "changed my life" makes me feel kind of goofy. But it did change my life, it completely changed my life.

After seeing "Scream", I made it a mission to see as many horror films as I could so I would understand any of the references in any of the films. And now, almost 20 years later, I get all the references!

You may be asking yourself, why am I even bothering telling this story again? If you really wanted to read the story you could go back and read my "Scream" review from years ago. The reason is because, not only did the film get me into horror films but it introduced me to the person who would go on to become my favorite director and aside from one movie that followed "Scream", I would see every single one of his movies in the theater. That man, was Wes Craven.

Unlike most of the general public, I had never heard of Wes Craven when Scream came out. I had heard of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and knew it involved Freddy Krueger and how he looked but that was it. Didn't know the director or the cast or anything else. But after seeing "Scream" one of the things I did was make it a mission to see more films by Wes Craven. This led me down a path I was never coming back from but enjoying the hell out of.

I spent the next, nearly 20 years, enjoying horror films and changing my passion from nothing to writing. The writing aspect came from Mr. Craven himself as I began to realize he wrote a lot of the films he directed and I found that the films he wrote were far better than the ones he didn't. And so began my passion for writing.

On August 30, 2015 we lost Mr. Craven after a battle with brain cancer. Words could not describe the pain I felt. Wes Craven was a big part of my life through his films. I would watch anything and everything he worked on from his big budget theatrical films to his garbage TV movies to films that he simply produced all the way down to the film "Wes Craven Presents They" which he had absolutely nothing to do with. I felt like I lost a friend and even though I knew the day was eventually coming that he would be gone, I never really thought about that. It had been a dream of mine to meet the man and tell him how much he changed my life and how I majored in writing in college because of his films. I spent many years of my life studying writing because I loved the movies he made. Some might looked at his films as low budget trash, especially films like "The Last House on the Left" and "The Hills Have Eyes" but I look at them as groundbreaking and very interestingly those films look very tame nowadays compared to the torture-porn crap we have today.

I'm writing this really to just get my feelings out there. I wanted to do this right away the day after he died, but I just couldn't put any of this into words until today. Most people nowadays will remember him for Scream, but he did so much more, he worked on films and TV. He was a director, writer, producer and actor. One of his greatest films he ever made "New Nightmare" brought all of those aspects of him together.

Wes, even though I never got to meet you and tell you this, but you changed my life. You meant so much to me and you will never be forgotten. Not by me and not by the millions of others who were touched by your work as I was. Your legacy lives on and I want to thank you for all the wonderful films you have left us with.

When a Stranger Calls (1979)

"Have you checked the children?"

Before there was "Scream" there was 'The Stranger'...

"When a Stranger Calls" is horror film from the late 1970s that was inspired by a classic urban legend. The babysitter alone in a house being terrorized by a man who keeps calling asking if she's "checked children", only to find out the call is coming from inside the house! And that, ladies & gentlemen, is the first 20 minutes of the film. The rest of the film drags and drags and drags. After the initial 20 minutes of the movie we jump 7 years where we find that the psychopath from the first film has escaped and is now roaming the streets, stalking some ugly middle-aged woman. The film spends a good 40 minutes with this whole thing and it never pays off!

Charles Durning plays a private detective who is tracking down this psycho. After he almost catches him we jump back to Jill (played by Carol Kane) where she is now a stay at home mom with 2 kids. First thing I have to say is, how is Jill old enough to have 2 kids THOSE ages. They look to be at least 7 and 3. We are led to believe that she is a teenager in the beginning of the film and then the film jumps 7 years, which would make her in her early to mid 20s. Just seems kind of odd to me.
Anyway, she and her husband are going out to dinner and leave their kids with a babysitter. Somehow the psycho knows where she lives and what restaurant she will be at and calls her and starts her freaking out all over again. The film ends abruptly and you walk out wondering what the hell you just saw.

The first 20 minutes of the film are amazing, truly terrifying. I am not scared by much, but as I watched this in my dark bedroom in the middle of the night, I found myself clinging to my blankets because it was seriously scary. But after that the film falls apart. The director spends too much time on the killer and his odd obsession with some random middle-aged woman he finds in a bar. As the audience I just didn't give a shit about this story line, especially since it leads to nothing! Once we get back to Jill and her story I feel the film finds itself, but it's literally just rehash of the beginning of the film with Jill now the mother instead of the babysitter.

The film will always be remembered for the first 20 minutes but nothing else, I don't really consider it a classic but it's worth watching at least once.

A Christmas Story 2 (2012)

In 1983, late director Bob Clark (Black Christmas, Porky's) made what some consider the greatest Christmas movie ever made. "A Christmas Story" has gone down in history for that that simple fact; even TBS plays the movie for 24 hours straight on Christmas day. Personally, I feel the film is very overrated, not saying that it's a bad film just overrated. That being said, Warner Brothers in their infinite wisdom decided that what "A Christmas Story" needed was a sequel, almost 30 years later.

Being promoted as "the official sequel to 'A Christmas Story'", Warner Brothers seems to have forgotten that the film already has had TWO sequels before this one: a 1988 TV movie entitled "Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss" and the 1994 film "It Runs in the Family" (most commonly known as "My Summer Story"), but since Warner Brothers didn't make those films I guess they felt they didn't count as sequels and they have completely disregarded them.

Now that that's out of the way lets delve into this bear sized shit of a movie. The story is about Ralphie and he's an annoying 15-year old who wants a car. Him and his stupid friends wreck a car at a dealership and the rest of the movie is all about them trying to come up with $85 to fix the car. Daniel Stern (Home Alone) plays the father in this film and he comes off as a very cold hearted cheapskate. At the end of the film he seems to have redeemed himself and proves to be a loving father, but throughout the rest of the film he's just an asshole. 

The film does what I assume they felt were homages to the original film but in reality they were just blatant rip offs. This film rehashes so much from the original film it baffles me why they even bothered making a "sequel" instead of a "remake". They rehash the tongue to the pole in a rather stupid way by having the same character stick his tongue in a vacuum at a department store and then you get to see his face stretch out inside the tube as some goofy way of making this generation of retarded children laugh. Having Ralphie dress up in a stupid animal costume is rehashed having him dress as a reindeer at a department store. Somehow the leg lamp is back at the very end, though the film never really admits who the hell gave it to the father. So much is rehashed from the original film all the way down to Ralphie's brother getting a space ship for Christmas and sitting on the floor making "vroom" sounds with it (in the original film he gets a blimp and does the same thing).

This film fails so horribly it's not even funny. I didn't expect anything at all from this film but I just wanted to give it a shot. Seeing Daniel Stern embarrass himself in this direct-to-video garbage is terrible. The man made some classic comedies in his day and he has been reduced to this trash. That being said, Stern is the ONLY good thing about this film. He does give a stellar performance but his character is so cynical it's hard to even enjoy it. The only thing this film did well (and I'm using that term lightly) is they got an actor (surprisingly the writer) to sound JUST like Jean Shepard narrating. But something that small and pathetic can't save this useless, unneeded and unwanted sequel to a film that is considered a classic. 

Halloween (1978)

"It's Halloween, I guess everyone is entitled to one good scare"

The mother of them all! Halloween was made during a time when horror films were few and far between. "Psycho" started the slasher genre in 1960 but the genre laid dormant for almost 2 decades until John Carpenter came along and changed film history forever.

Halloween was released in 1978 and cost a mere $320,000 to make but it earned far more than that, becoming the highest grossing independent film at that time. The film is so simple yet so effective. The film follows Laurie Strode (played by a then unknown Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends on the night of Halloween as they are stalked and killed by a masked assailant. By today's standards this story has been told a million times over, by in the late 1970s this was something new. Especially the tone that Carpenter brought forth. The film is genuinely scary because of the simpleness to it. Michael Myers is portrayed as a faceless character, and when you do see his face (only twice) he shows no emotion whatsoever. The film begins with a very long POV shot of a young girl being stalked and then murdered, when the scene is over you discover the person whose point of view it came from was a 6-year-old boy. Just the thought of that is enough to chill you to the bone!

This film also really established the horny, drug crazed teenagers that followed oh, so many times in the following decade. This really defined many films since then. And it was even the basis of the 2012 film "The Cabin in the Woods". 

Overall, much can be said about Carpenter and his influence on the horror genre. Halloween was his crowning achievement and sadly he has distanced himself as much as he can from the film. I guess he got tired of being constantly reminded of it, but it's a shame he doesn't like it anymore. It seems over the past few years Carpenter has really distanced himself from all of his films, he almost comes off as if he resents the films. But, he has left us with a great amount of fantastic horror/sci-fi films to choose from. 

Halloween was such a success that a franchise began followed by the 1981 sequel "Halloween II" which was produced and written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. "Halloween III" which came out the following year was also produced and written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. The duo left the franchise after that never to be attached to it again. 

A Short Review of "The Body", an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

I spent my years in college studying television production and writing and received my B.A. in that in 2009. Throughout my years in college I have learned to analyze and love television shows from the stories to the production value and I continue that to this very day. Granted I have not been able to practice my art in many ways since I graduated but I still watch television shows more than anything else, regardless of this blog being specifically for movie reviews.

Today, I have chosen to speak about one of my favorite episodes of any television show out there. This episode spoke to me profoundly for many reasons, but the main reason is because something like this happened to me in my own life. In 2000, my mother suffered a severe stroke and later died in 2006 from complications related to that. It was a very dark time in my life, a time that I would never want to relive. In 2002, I began watching the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". I've a horror fan for many years, and I felt I would enjoy this series. I was right! "Buffy" is such a fun series to watch and re-watch, the writing is brilliant, the acting is brilliant, almost everything about this series is brilliant. In early 2001 an episode aired called "The Body" which dealt with the death of Buffy's mother. I did not see the episode until very late 2003 but when I finally did I realized how important this episode would be to me.

The episode deals with Buffy's mother who had surgery done to remove a tumor from her brain and in the episode she dies from complications due to this. The rest of the episode is basically everyone coping with the loss of her, and just that description sounds pretty boring or could be sappy, but I want to take a look at some of the things that happen in the show.

First off, there is no music. Throughout the entire episode no music is heard at all. I felt this gave off the eeriness of that feeling you get after someone dies. It's hard to explain the feelings you go through after a loved one dies, especially someone so close to you. This episode spoke to me so much because Joss Whedon did such a good job recreating a time in someone's life that is so hard to describe. In the opening Buffy finds her mother dead and tries frantically to call 911 and administer CPR, but to no avail. The paramedics show up and realize she is dead and leave Buffy alone. She then calls Giles, but her phone call is very vague as to what has happened, leading Giles to think that the main villain of that season is at her house. Buffy then wanders through her house aimlessly. The power of this scene speaks volumes, as when something terrible like that happens I think most people do the same thing. You don't know what to do but you know you have to do something. When Giles arrives he tries himself to revive the mother, but Buffy bursts out with the line "We're not supposed to move the body" and she realizes that she just referred to her mother as "the body" and she breaks down. There some sort of denial when someone dies. It's subconscious to a point but it hits you like a truck when you say out loud "she's dead" or you refer to her as "the body" instead of "mom".

One of my favorite scenes in the entire episode is when we find Willow, Xander, Anya and Tara getting ready to go to the hospital to be with Buffy and Anya doesn't understand why someone so close to them has died and why she can't just get up and go on living. The actress, Emma Caulfield, did such an amazing job performing that scene that it always touches my heart. When you're thrown into a situation like this no one really knows why someone has died and why life has to even end. I still ask myself these questions to this very day. And something that is stated during this scene is how the character was drinking something and when they heard the mother died one of the things she thought was that the mother would never drink that drink again. I don't know about other people, but when someone close to me dies I always think about how there are certain things they'll never do again or see items they've left behind and how it might have been when they left it there. When my mother died our house was filled with stuff she had touched just the day before and it broke my heart.

It's the little things that were in the episode that made it very special. I think the episode spoke volumes to me because of my own personal situation, I'm not sure if it spoke to other people like this or not, but it is a very special episode to me and I personally think it's the greatest television episode ever made. Joss Whedon did such a wonderful job perfecting this episode in every way and the actors were so unbelievable at the same time.