Tag Archives: Virginia Gardner

2018 Films, Halloween, Horror, Slasher

Halloween-2018

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Halloween-2018

Director David Gordon Green

Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer

Scott’s Review #823

Reviewed October 23, 2018

Grade: B+

Let’s be honest—nobody will ever be able to top or recreate the iconic 1978 masterpiece Halloween, so any real attempt is a moot point.

Throughout the subsequent decades, many sequels or remakes have emerged, largely disappointing or turning the franchise into a joke.

With the latest incarnation of Halloween (2018), director David Gordon Green gets it right by creating a follow-up to the original, skipping all the other films. Scoring Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie is a significant win and seemingly dozens of neat references to the original gem.

Set forty years to the day (Halloween Eve and Halloween, naturally!), the audience is first given a summary of killer Michael Myers’ (Nick Castle) time spent in Smith Grove Sanitarium once captured following the 1978 Haddonfield killing spree.

Two journalists visit Myers in captivity and attempt to make him speak after forty years of silence by mentioning Laurie Strode and showing him his notorious Halloween mask.

Conveniently, he will be transferred to a maximum-security prison the following day. We know that Meyers will escape.

Meanwhile, Laurie has been living with post-traumatic stress disorder since her attack and lives in a constant state of paranoia.

With two failed marriages and a daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), who is traumatized by her mother’s anxiety, Laurie’s life has not been easy. As an aside, I love how Laurie dons the same hairstyle she had at age seventeen.

While she awaits Michael’s inevitable return, Laurie’s secluded house is peppered with traps and guns, allowing her to be at the ready at any moment. Despite her problems, Laurie is close to her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak).

When the inevitable happens, and Michael escapes, presumably by causing a bus accident off-screen, the action truly begins. The coincidence of this happening on Halloween night is to be expected and embraced.

Audiences who see the film are certainly not new to the genre. The target audience is the crowd that either grew up with the original or was introduced to it later.

Therefore, the film is wise not to try to reinvent the wheel, giving fans what they expect. The opening graphics (the eerie orange writing and the glowing jack-o-lantern) are intact, as is the “introducing” credit for its heroine—in this case, Matichak.

There are several certainties about a horror film like Halloween. We know there will be “kills,” and an inevitable showdown between Laurie and Michael Myers will conclude the film.

The fun is in the trip we take to get there. Who will be slashed and how? A butcher knife? Other Halloween delights?

Since there are arguably three female leads and three generations of Strodes, will the film make one of them feel Michael’s deadly wrath?

Halloween works; a significant reason is the countless nods to its past. Many scenes pay homage to attention-paying fans, creating riches and nostalgic memories.

Allyson’s boyfriend’s father’s name is Lonnie—undoubtedly the kid Dr. Loomis scared away from the Myers’ house forty years ago. Then there is a neighbor woman wearing curlers and slicing a sandwich with a butcher knife, from whom Michael steals the knife, an ode to Halloween II (1981).

Finally, as Allyson sits in the back of her class and glances out the window, she sees not Michael, but Laurie standing across the street, staring at her.

These gems are in large part thanks to clever writing and study.

There are a couple of negatives to mention. I am not crazy about Judy Greer’s casting as Jamie Lee Curtis’s daughter. The actresses look nothing alike, and Curtis does not seem old enough to be Greer’s mother.

Furthermore, attempts to add some comic relief moments—two bumbling police officers talking about brownies, Allyson’s goofy father, and the salty tongue of the kid one of the babysitters sits for—do not work.

How great would it have been to include P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, or Kyle Richards in cameos? Since Curtis and Castle returned, I wanted more familiar faces.

In wise form, Gordon Green leaves the window open for a potential sequel, so stay for the end credits. My wish would be for this to parlay to the aftereffects of the killings on the same night, which Halloween II (1981) did so successfully.

The possibilities are endless if the box office returns are strong enough and Curtis is on board for another installment.

2016 Films, Drama, Guy Films

Goat-2016

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Goat-2016

Director Andrew Neel

Starring Ben Schnetzer, Nick Jonas

Scott’s Review #762

Reviewed May 23, 2018

Grade: D

Goat (2016) is a film that made me angry for one hour and forty minutes. I deride it completely.

By incorporating outrageous, unnecessary scenes for no reason other than to offend, the film fails to teach a lesson or make any central point.

I understand what the filmmakers were going for by portraying fraternities as evil and their members as monsters. Goat never provided logic, much character development, or any good intentions.

I was left disturbed by what I had just seen.

College student Brad Land (Ben Schnetzer) is viciously attacked by two peers following a party one summer night.

As the police search for the assailants, Brad starts the fall semester at a college where his older brother, Brett (Nick Jonas), attends.

There, he decides to pledge a fraternity during “Hell week,” enduring one humiliation and degradation after another. When a fellow pledge dies following the fraternity’s abuse, someone rats the fraternity out, with Brad as the likely suspect.

Brad is an interesting study. The protagonist makes his first mistake when he gives ominous-looking strangers a lift home. At this point, we feel sympathy for the character and should root for him throughout the film, but I didn’t.

As nasty as the fraternity brothers are, it is not until nearly the end that Brad ever stands up to any of them, and he oddly refuses to point the finger at his assailant despite being right in the police lineup.

I found the character all over the place and never knew his motivations.

Most other characters (including the victimized pledges) have little rooting value and are primarily one-dimensional “frat boys” written poorly.

The writers of the script do their best to make fraternity brothers look awful- they beat, berate, humiliate, and degrade not only the pledges, but they barely treat females or animals any better.

This isn’t comforting to witness since there is little point. The humiliation scenes continue as if we are watching the same scene repeatedly.

Ludicrous scenes of the guys drinking, acting belligerent, using anti-LGBT slurs, and taunting each other commenced almost from the get-go.

A ridiculous cameo by James Franco goes nowhere and makes little sense other than his character being a former frat boy the current members looked up to. If I had a nickel for every “bro,” “dude,” or “man” used in the film to show machismo, I’d be a rich man.

In the final segment, the film makes a feeble effort to humanize Brett, who is hot and cold toward his brother all along (and never explains why).

They also write a few of the frat boys as feeling sorry for the sudden heart attack suffered by one of the pledges, but this only fueled me with rage, as it was unknown whether they were genuine or wanted to save their asses (they caused his death!).

My vote goes for the latter.

The only prop I will give to Goat is that it is not a middling glossy Hollywood affair and goes for the jugular in its intensity and brutality.

But the point I thought the film was trying to make (a thought-provoking look at the problem of fraternities) only made me hate fraternities and develop a negative view of them.

From the despicable scenes where the frat feeds a poor goat chocolate laxatives and forces a blindfolded pledge to eat what’s thought to be excrement to the concussion they give a pledge before he succumbs to a heart attack, the film is not an easy watch.

Too many scenes feel overly hammered home and redundant, and the conclusion is unsatisfying. We are left with Brett and Brad gazing out at the spot where Brad was attacked, and this scene does nothing to wrap up the film.

From the onset, I squirmed uncomfortably during Goat and never felt connected to the film or any of the characters.

Perhaps Goat (2016) would have succeeded or been appreciated more with more development and purpose, but the film failed me.