My Favorite Movies

It's incredible that the slasher subgenre has been around since the 1960's and yet no director has ever made a GOOD STRAIGHT slasher movie since Halloween (1978). When I mean STRAIGHT slasher movie I'm talking about a slasher movie that amputates all the bad-joke-one-liner comedy shtick; the offensive, irritating, and cookie-cutter cliches; the AWFUL pop, rock, heavy metal, hip-hop, and rap songs; and the god-forsaken character stupidity throughout the movie and goes for the throat, the heart, the stomach, the liver, the large intestine, the small intestine, the balls, the genitiles, and the stomach of the matter without unnecessary narrative killing the momentum and pacing and suspense.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D is flat-out incredibly awesome as a 3-D movie, a slasher movie, a murder mystery, a horror movie, and a psychological profile into the killer and his victims that exists in the real world and doesn't upset the realism of the realm of physics or bothers to "cover your eyes" to shield the audience from what mommy and daddy don't want you to see. In a sense, it's a slasher movie with A BRAIN! (Talk about an oxymoron.) Having never seen the original My Bloody Valentine I could care less whether it's above or below this remake because this remake is amazing from both a technical as well as a visual and directorial standpoint in comparison to horror movies like or similar to this film, but get or misunderstand what it's suppose to be or how to use a certain technical or artistic effect.

This movie fixes nearly every problematic-cliche in regards to slasher or horror movies (in general), remakes of horror movies, and recent and past 3-D movies and 3-D horror movies. My Bloody Valentine 3-D gets right what makes watching a horror movie scary, bloody, gory, and fun with a hint of creativity, realism, imagination, and ingenuity as a side dish to the main course. But, what is even more incredible is My Bloody Valentine 3-D is still just as good of a movie even without the 3-D effect added on to it and is just as scary and just as great of a slasher movie that hasn't been seen since the likes of Halloween back in 1978.

Slasher movies, eat your hearts out, bitches!!!

My Bloody Valentine 3-D: ***1/2

Let me first make this clear... PERFECTLY CLEAR! I HATE teen comedies. They are somewhat worse than romantic comedies, but that's not a very long stretch since the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. The only sub-genre I find worse than teen comedies are the beach-blanket movies, which are just teen romantic comedies with no brain mass and decrese the level of the vacation-going populus from going to the beach. In other words, Jaws is no longer the only reason not to go to the beach anymore.

After watching the trailer for "I Love You, Beth Coope"r about a few months before this movie came out I originally thought "Oh, god another crappy, stupid-teenager, sex, drugs, and bad rock 'n' roll" dullard." But, under than sentiment was a little bit of curiosity and a hit of optimism about the movie because...

1) Chris Columbus was directing this and he has rarely let me down in terms of film-going experiences.

2) Hayden Panettiere was starring in this and, she being a good actress in and of herself, I didn't think she was going to make a stupid decision as far as film projects go in starring in a piece of crap.

3) This movie is based on a book written by one of the writers of "The Simpsons"

With those ingredients I didn't think this movie was going to be as bad as the trailer made it look (fuck you 20th Century Fox and your marketing strategies!). The movie also reminded me of another teen comedy that I love called "Angus", based on a short story by man named Chris Crutcher.

I couldn't believe and was totally amazed by how much I LOVED this movie. It was sweet, charming, endearing, funny (yes, I said funny), clever, and was able to take ordinary teen comedy stereotypes and turn them on their ears put some spins on known demographics. I Love You, Beth Cooper has its heart in the right place and I mean behind the ribcage and below the lungs and not below the belt buckle.

I could care less about whether the movie is original because in this day and age originality is, as far as I know, is dead. Just as long as a movie is able to take an old formula and put a fresh spin on it, it works. It's funny without being mean-spirited, disgusting, or relying on gross-out humor and horrible one-liners, but instead relies on the situation and situational comedy; it's charming and endearing without over-sentimentality, and it's fun and real in it's charm, affection, and ability to make new, interesting, and likable characters and asks questions and says things that few teen comedies actually dare to ask outside of the teen comedy realm of sex, drugs, virginity, popularity, and the most and biggest cliche of all Hollywood teen comedies... THE PROM/BIG DANCE.

Instead of having the comedy and romance take place during school or a dance/prom season it takes place after graduation and when school ends, which frees the movie from the stereotypical bondage that held other teen movies prisoner in Shit City County Jail.

Spawn - The original theatrical cut was a half-and-half movie, but was completely neutered of all the cool stuff, was more of a hollow shell of itself, and had way, way too much dialogue replaced with very retardedly written alternate dialogue in place of the actual dialogue that should've been there. Not to mention that the alternate dialogue just flat-out didn't make any sense at all for being in certain scenes or really had any purpose.

Spawn: The Director's Cut- I really, REALLY hate it when studio executives, "bean counters", fans of any type, or the MPAA gets in the way to make sure the movie gets screwed up (both intentionally or unintentionally) for the sack of sustaining what they believe or for the sake of continuing their cult of worshiping THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR. The version is a MUCH, if still flawed, better movie of the Spawn character. I have not read the comic books, but I would like to get into them one of these days in the future. The effects still look better than the effects in New Line's other movie adaptation of video game-movie Mortal Kombat; primarily because Industrial Light & Magic are cooler and better at their job than Threshold Industries who just flat-out suck hard at their job in everything they do.

This is the same thing that trapped Daredevil when it was released and, as much as I liked Daredevil in theaters, Daredevil: The Director's Cut was a HELL of a lot better movie than the theatrical cut. And it's a shame that neither the TRUE versions of Spawn or Daredevil were released in to theaters because I think they would've garnered more recognition and status than their spaded counterparts; much less anything else there would've gotten some pretty cool and pretty good sequels out of them, too.

(Rough Draft review)