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One more week, and it will all be over. Another tent pole, another bit of Monday money bragging, and Summer 2008 will be history. Before that, here’s the films in focus for 22 August:
[REC] [rating: 9]
[REC] is ridiculously good. It’s a show-stopping terror trip through something that really shouldn’t work all that well.
It doesn’t happen that often, so when it does, it truly is cause for celebration. The horror genre has been so blatantly mismanaged by Hollywood, reduced to a series of unnecessary remakes, forced franchise fodder, independent null sets, and Westernized takes of better foreign frights, that when a solid movie macabre comes your way, you really do have to stop and settle the shivers. And it’s more than the dread onscreen working your frazzled nerves. No, when something as remarkably effective and downright scary as [REC] arrives on your plain, PG-13 doorstep, you have to seriously contemplate the reasons why - and wonder just when America is going to show its dearth of creativity and cannibalize the thing. read full review…
Death Race (2008) [rating: 6]
Like big steaming chunks of charred animal flesh, or a fleeting glimpse of a gal’s ample cleavage, Death Race taps into something very primal (and very male) about the action movie experience.
Remakes are like those proverbial Tribbles in the classic Trek episode. Give them a creative inch - or in the case of Hollywood, a recognizable box office return - and they’ll overrun your aesthetic starship, and last time anyone checked, Tinsel Town was plowing through them at warp speed. In a clear case of ‘the new generation needs its own version’, everything from the last three decades is now being updated to appeal to a tween, PG-13 demo. A rare exception is Death Race, an ‘update’ of Roger Corman’s action spoof that’s been given a gritty, grimy, hard-R polish. Gone are the cross country premise and “people-as-points” fun. In their place is a Rollerball meets ridiculousness ideal that’s, oddly earnest if ultimately empty goofiness. read full review…
The Rocker [rating: 5]
Sadly, The Rocker is so rife with formula that a pre-school could wet nurse on it indefinitely and still never go hungry.
Rock stardom is a standard personal fantasy. It represents two very elusive elements - the power that music has over all of us and the godlike fixation we have on those who make it. The notion of moving the masses in such a way, to produce the beautiful noise that brings sense and sensibility together, remains a wonderful daydream of wanton wish fulfillment. So when a movie proposes to take on said topic, to show how a fleeting glimpse of recognition ruins a man’s life, it should have a relatively easy time of getting our already primed attention. Sadly, The Rocker is so rife with formula that a pre-school could wet nurse on it indefinitely and still never go hungry. read full review…
