Chris Hemsworth is Thor (photographic proof of said statement below).

Obviously this is just a single image, staged and lit for maximum dramatic effect, but it looks pretty solid to me. I couldn't care less about the character of Thor, as my education on the character primarily comes from a viewing of Hulk Vs. Thor. But, as I've said before, I genuinely excited about the movie for one reason - it's insanely large cast. I'm excited for any movie that gathers Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings, Idris Elba, Ray Stevenson, Stellan Skarsgard, Anthony Hopkins, and Rene Russo in one place. As for Kenneth Branagh, I'm the guy who will fight tooth and nail to defend Mary Shelly's Frankenstein any day of the week.

Scott Mendelson

Jonah Hex gets a perfectly decent trailer.

I wrote at length about this picture's troubled history and my thoughts on the comparably truncated marketing campaign elsewhere, so I won't rehash that here. So, now that we have a real trailer, how does it look? Well, unless there was real doubt about the June 18th release date, or most of this footage came from re-shoots, there is no reason why Warner couldn't have had this trailer in theaters months ago. For better or worse, it looks and sounds exactly like a Jonah Hex movie. It's absurdly violent and with just enough sci-fi/supernatural goofiness to suggest an R-rated Wild Wild West. Josh Brolin fits to a tee and it's always a hoot to see John Malkovich in this kind of big-studio villain role. For what it's worth, Megan Fox actually appears to be a full-on participant in at least a few action beats. The seemingly meaty supporting appearance of Lance Reddick (Fringe) is a welcome surprise as well. The whole project gives a vibe of over-the-top, trashy pulp fiction, which is exactly what this film should feel like. Again, I'm not really sure why anyone at Warner is so worried about this. Even if it is terrible, the marketing department is doing its job just fine at the moment, and that's all that will matter come opening weekend.

Scott Mendelson

Guest Review - A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

Once again, I'm poaching (with permission) friend and colleague RL Shaffer's review of a movie that he has seen before myself. In this case, it's the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The film finally screened last night, but since my wife wants to see it too, it was too much of a hassle (re - babysitter and weeknight traffic) just to see it two days early. I will likely check it out Friday night or, if work runs over, Saturday night. Anyway, here is RL Shaffer of DVD Future giving us his take on A Nightmare On Elm Street:

A Nightmare On Elm Street
2010
95 minutes
Rated R

by RL Shaffer

Caution: Some Spoilers Ahead

Whenever a remake arrives, critics are faced with a problem: judge the film against its predecessors, or judge it as a standalone work. It's a catch-22. Judge a film as it's own thing and you miss points that might make it an unworthy companion to the original feature. Compare it to the original, though, and you'll look like a nostalgia snob who only likes films from the 1970s and 1980s. And this is what makes judging this remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street so hard, particularly since I'm not against the idea of any remake as long as there's a fresh, exciting story to tell. But, in a way, this latest Nightmare is suffering from the same problem critics often have. The film seems to be attempting, with some effort, to be it's own new vehicle for Freddy Krueger, but it feels completely trapped within the confines and rules of the original film's best gags.

"Tina"-like character starts out the movie, but gets killed while sleeping with her sketchy boyfriend. Check. She's later seen in a bloody body bag. Check. Freddy takes his victims to a boiler room. Check. Freddy nearly attacks Nancy in a bathtub. Check. Nancy faces off against Freddy. Check. Nancy pulls Freddy into "our" world. Check. It's all there -- the classic moments of the original Wes Craven horror film. But none of these scenes really work with the edgier (but oddly inconsistent) narrative, or the newer, creepy dream sequences, for that matter.

In this Nightmare, the driving force seems to be micro-naps -- an effect that renders the victim incapable of telling the dream world from the real world. In other words, a character might be shopping at their local grocery store, and slip right into a terrifying nightmare and not know they're asleep. And this clever little plot device provides some of the film's best scares. Adding to the creepy factor, Freddy seems intent on wearing all of his victims down, plaguing their dreams until they reach this haunting stage. It's sadistic, atmospheric, and frightening, even if Jackie Earle Haley (stepping into the shoes previous worn by Robert Englund) seems to be having absolutely no fun playing our fedora-wearing villain. But that's where this film's ingenuity ends. The story, which unevenly rehashes the plot of the original (even borrowing elements deleted from the film), is a jumbled mess.

There are spots that work terrifically. For example, Freddy is now an accused child molester who's essentially hunted and killed by the parents before he's ever caught and prosecuted. This fixes a major flaw from the first film -- how would police have screwed up a child murdering case so bad that the guy would get off? And how did the parents get away with murdering him afterward? But the story also deletes some of the original film's best subplots. Nancy no longer has a father, for example. So now, the implication that Nancy's mother and Nancy's father divorced following their bout with nasty vigilantism is totally lost here, replaced by a vapid mother character who's so blank she might as well have been left on the cutting room floor.

Even worse, the film is driven by a mystery that results is nothing interesting. We're given this wink, a subtle seed, that Freddy might be innocent -- that the children essentially lied about being molested (think: Capturing the Friedmans) and are being punished years later by an evil ghost. Or worse yet, the real molester is still on the loose, and this "Freddy" character is some diabolical demon pulling the strings (which would put the film in line with Wes Craven's A New Nightmare). But either subplot would lead to too gray an area for a film as shoddy as this to explore. Instead, the filmmakers take the easy way out and fall, once again, in line with the original -- Freddy is still, and will always be, the bad guy.

This, for all intents and purposes, renders this remake pointless. The film adds nothing new to mix, and botches every possible chance it had at being a thought-provoking, terrifying horror film. It even blows a few old school scares by tossing in new school techniques. I'm sorry, but the scene where Freddy pushes through a wall and hovers over Nancy while she sleeps was better when the effect was done using a white bed sheet and good lighting. This new film uses CG that looks to be borrowed from 1996, a la The Frighteners. Freddy's makeup effects are also far less compelling, and scary.

It's sad that both mainstream moviegoers, and filmmakers alike, seem to treat the horror genre like it's a ride and a fun marketing tool, rather than a viable art form. Horror can be artful. It can be rich with texture, character depth and symbolism. In fact, a film that employs such techniques is usually much scarier because we actually care about what we're seeing. It affects us on a subconscious level. In this era of sophisticated remakes, with films like Star Trek, Batman Begins" or Casino Royale, we want our old school cheesy entertainment to be reborn through a sophisticated, mature lens. We want a richer, deeper Nancy. A thoroughly developed back story for Freddy. And scares that get under our skin, and haunt our own dreams. This remake, quite sadly, does nothing of the sort.

Sure, this Nightmare does succeed more often than not at scaring us, even if the scares are far more shallow than the original. And the characters, while fairly bone-headed, are well rounded and likable, particularly once we make our way into the film's shockingly anti-climatic final act. But we do, secretly, want the remake to be better than the first film. Why wouldn't we? And there was certainly room for improvement, too. It's not like the 1984 film was flawless. The film is heavy on melodrama and amateur performances. Hell, even Johnny Depp is pretty terrible in the film. But this latest Nightmare On Elm Street doesn't quite cut it. It's better than most of the older sequels (Nightmare 4, 5, and 6 in particular), but it's never sharp enough to slice deep into our minds and remind us why the original film was so profoundly terrifying -- it was gritty, sadistically sarcastic, haunting and surreal. If the filmmakers were to borrow something from the original, I wish they would have borrowed that instead.

Grade: C+

Side Note:
There's quite a bit of footage seen in this teaser below that's NOT present in the final film. For example, the scene with all the candles, the shot of the two children looking creepy, the pool party, the shot of the kid falling from the house, the dead bodies' eye being opened, the girl running towards the yard furniture and more. Wonder if some post-production tinkering, or reshoots, drove many of the remake's bigger flaws?

Inception viral game reveals new poster...

It's a pretty low-resolution image, so I'm sure a bigger, prettier version will be online in the next forty-eight hours or so. In the meantime, enjoy...

Scott Mendelson

Jonah Hex gets a new poster. A case for not fixing broken films and shorter marketing campaigns.

After near complete silence and less than two months to go, Warner Bros finally is to start the official marketing campaign for Jonah Hex. Envisioned first as a vehicle for Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Crank: Full Voltage, Gamer), the DC Comics adaptation eventually fell into the lap of Jimmy Hayward (the animated Horton Hears A Who). However, reshoots and various sorts of behind-scenes-drama seems to have caused Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend) to come aboard as a 'consultant'. Whether or not he completely took over the film is a question I cannot answer, but the result is a much-feared final product that has been curiously absent from the springtime summer movie ad parade. On paper, this project looked pretty smart: a violent, supernatural (?) western based on a cult DC Comics character, with an interesting cast (Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, and Aiden Quinn as President William McKinley) and a $50 million budget that allowed the film to not have to set any records in order to be successful.

But with word of rampant reshoots, behind the scenes drama, and poor test screening results, there are two things of note. First of all, let's hope Warner Bros doesn't or already hasn't done a repeat of Universal's handling of The Wolfman. Displeased with the first cut from two years prior, Universal sunk $60 million into 'fixing' the film and ended up with the same $30 million opening and $61 million domestic gross and $76 million overseas total that they likely would have gotten had they just released whatever Joe Johnston turned in in the first place. But instead of dealing with a $90 million under-performer, they were stuck with a $150 million disaster. Point being, unless the original cut was downright unwatchable, there really couldn't have been a need to sink so much money into theoretically improving a horror movie about the wolf-man. People will come and enjoy (or not) as long as they get the gory goods. Same thing with Clash of the Titans, which underwent a severe re-edit that apparently boosted the budget from $80 million to $125 million, only to end up grossing the same $145 million US and $242 million overseas (so far) that they likely would have earned with the vastly different cut that Louis Leterrier turned in. I don't know what went down with the original version of Jonah Hex, and I don't know how much these reshoots have added to the budget. But considering that we're dealing with a B-movie comic-book western, I really don't see the use of trying to fix something that's broken in one way so that it's just broken in a different fashion. After all, the all-important opening weekend isn't about quality, it's about marketing. And it's perfectly easy to market sand to make it look like glass.

Second of all, much has been said regarding the 'mere' two months of anticipation that will follow the release of the above poster and the debut of the full-length trailer (this Friday, with A Nightmare on Elm Street), but two months is more than enough. Sure we nerds love the early teasers and test screening reviews, and other assorted tidbits, but the normal moviegoer doesn't even notice what movies are coming out until the last couple weeks prior to release. Heck, general audiences still often don't know what they are going to see until they get to the theater at the end of their work week. As long as audiences want to see Jonah Hex when they see the commercials on that week's (insert hit summer TV programming here), Warner will be just fine. Just as American political campaigns would be infinitely improved if they were just a few months prior to the election, studios could save countless marketing dollars by simply waiting until just before the release to unleash their advertising campaigns. Movies will cost less to market, thus more interesting movies can be made and/or get theatrical releases, and audiences will be less likely to feel that they've already seen the whole movie in various trailers and online clips before they even walk into the theater. Everybody wins.

Scott Mendelson

Bill Condon officially signed to direct Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.

After months of speculation, Summit Entertainment has finally landed Oscar-nominee Bill Condon (nominated for writing Gods and Monsters and Dreamgirls respectively) to helm the final book of the Twilight series, the much-debated Breaking Dawn. There is still no word as to whether the book will be split up into two films ala Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The principal cast members would likely have much negotiating power if such a move were to take place, so Summit would have to weigh the cost of paying Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner giant raises versus the likely cash cow that would be one more Twilight picture. I can only presume that Bill Condon will be directing all of Breaking Dawn whether the book is adapted into one or two pictures. This likely puts Condon's theoretical next picture, Richard Pryor: Is it Something I Said? with Marlon Wayans as the groundbreaking stand-up comic, on the back-burner for at least the next year.

Frankly, the most interesting thing of note is that in this age of director-shepherded franchises, the Twilight Saga will end up having a different director for each book. Even the Harry Potter franchise has had four helmers for eight pictures, with Chris Columbus directing the first two pictures and David Yates directing the final four episodes (of course, Alfonso Cuarón directed part 3 and Mike Newell directed part 4 in between). Even if Breaking Dawn becomes two movies, that's still four directors for five movies in a single narrative. In this day and age, where Sam Raimi starts and finishes his personal Spider-Man trilogy, and Chris Nolan seems set to close out his Batman epic, it is a little unusual for the cast and narrative to maintain such consistency while the director's chair is a revolving door. It is one thing when an initial helmer is shown the door or leaves the series after two installments for whatever reason (Batman Forever, X-Men: The Last Stand, Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Trader),or when the studio wants to revive a finished series with fresh blood (see Rob Marshall taking over the reins from Gore Verbinski in the new Pirates of the Caribbean picture) but it is quite interesting that Summit is so determined not to maintain the slightest bit of directorial consistency with a series that none the less maintains a rigorous narrative continuity.

This isn't a James Bond or Mission: Impossible installment, where each film more or less tells a stand-alone story that has a bare-minimum of continuity from the prior picture. And considering how very different, both visually and tonally New Moon was to the original Twilight (and how more overtly visceral Eclipse seems to be in comparison to both), the only series that comes to mind that even comes close to playing this game is the Alien quadrilogy. Each installment had a wildly different director (Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet) and thus each film felt completely separated from the prior one, even as the characters and continuity were more or less respected. And considering how loathed (perhaps unfairly) the last two Alien pictures are, it will be interesting to see the critical reception to these last two (or three?) Twilight pictures.

Scott Mendelson

Piranha 3D gets a trailer.

Dimension is releasing this campy cheese-fest on August 27th, and I might see it just for the nutso cast. It's beyond wonderful to see Christopher Lloyd in a seemingly sizable role again. Believe it or not, the man who was Judge Doom and Doc Brown has not been seen in theaters since My Favorite Martian, Baby Geniuses, and Man on the Moon (where he basically played himself on the set of Taxi) all back in 1999 (he did voice over work in Hey Arnold!: The Movie and Fly Me to the Moon in 2002 and 2008 respectively). Joining him for this Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors) vehicle is Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Dina Meyer, Jerry O'Connell, and one Richard Dreyfuss. Mr. Dreyfuss is also an infrequent visitor to our silver screens, so any project he chooses (like the 2006 Poseidon remake) automatically makes it a mini-event. The movie itself looks relatively stupid, and there's just no way it can possibly measure up with the astounding awesomeness that is Mega Piranha.

Scott Mendelson

Review: The Human Centipede (2010)

The Human Centipede
2010
92 minutes
not rated
Available on IFC On Demand on April 28th, in theaters April 30th.

by Scott Mendelson

The Human Centipede is a textbook example of a film peaking too soon. At its core, it's a standard horror film about pretty young people who get lost in a foreign land and fall prey to unspeakable evil. The film works, up to a point, due to the matter of fact presentation of said deviousness. Alas, after a stunningly strong first half, the film has nowhere to go and nothing of interest to say, leaving the remaining running time to simply observe unimaginable suffering and seemingly pointless cruelty.

A token amount of plot - Jenny and Lindsey are two young Americans who are road-tripping through Europe. Like all such creatures, they end up with a flat tire in the middle of the night, in a part of Germany with no cell reception and no plausible avenues for rescue. Instead of simply staying in the car until daylight, they choose to trek a short distance and take refuge with an odd but helpful doctor who claims to specialize in separating Siamese twins. No sooner do they let their guard down do they find themselves strapped to gurneys in the doctor's basement, held captive alongside another apparent hostage. Needless to say, they really should have just waited in the car.

That's all the plot you need, so that's all you get. It goes without saying that the evil Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) intends to perform some unnecessary surgery on his unwilling patients. In a move that resembles a similar suspense-building gambit in James Cameron's Titanic, Dr. Heiter explains in specific detail, complete with quaint visual aids, exactly what he plans to do with his victims long before the operation is scheduled. It's a sickening reveal that is brutally effective in creating unbearable tension as we await a seemingly inevitable date with a ghastly procedure. But once the much-anticipated event arrives, the film has nowhere left to go. Thus, after a powerful and frightening initial 45-minutes, the final 45-minutes can only linger on the aftermath of said horror, objectively and clinically detailed pain and misery for no real purpose beyond apparent shock value.

While the film smartly holds its gore in reserve, giving you only enough gruesome imagery to dread the gruesome moment, the fact remains that the picture has no real purpose beyond being 'shocking'. None of the characters, be they victim or villain, are the least bit developed. And the experiment in question produces such an appalling result that we basically sit there, sympathetically looking away as the patients endure several stomach-churning effects of the experiment, just hoping that the victims' suffering is almost over one way or another. I wasn't so much offended by the content as I was annoyed at the lack of any context or deeper meaning beneath the human misery on display. And said absence of any real purpose or even a forward narrative drive in turn bored me for much of the second half.

The first acts of the picture show a great deal of promise. The main location is creepy and clinical and Laser does much with little as the ice-cold and often off-the-cuff insane doctor. The slow build to the 'money scene' is genuinely dread-inducing and the film plays fair in terms of logic and character. But once the wait is over and the deed is done, you realize that you only have to look forward to watching innocent people suffering for no particular reason. At heart, The Human Centipede is a roller coaster where there is only one long, unending drop. The ride up the hill is nerve-wracking and skittish, but the plunge downward quickly becomes nothing more than stomach-churning and pointlessly unpleasant. Frankly, if you're going to revel in such debasement and agony, you really ought to at least try to have a moral or even a reason. Otherwise, I'm just watching a snuff film, and a relatively boring one at that.

Grade: C

How to Train Your Dragon retakes top spot in fifth weekend, while Back Up Plan and Losers open softly. Weekend box office review (04/25/10)

Apologies for the delay for this weekend's box office write-up. Real life got in the way.

If at first you don't succeed... After narrowly missing a return to first place last weekend, Dreamworks' How to Train Your Dragon easily took the top spot in its fifth frame. This is the first movie to return to number 01 since The Passion of the Christ over Easter weekend 2004 (its seventh weekend). How to Train Your Dragon joins such rare company as Forrest Gump, Jerry Maguire, and Signs. Dropping 21%, the critically-acclaimed and just-plain awesome cartoon earned another $15.3 million (the eighth-biggest fifth weekend of all-time). The picture has amassed $178 million stateside and $372 million worldwide. Domestically, it's running ahead of every single non-Shrek Deamworks cartoon outside of Kung Fu Panda. On a weekend-by-weekend scale, it's nearly doubled the fifth weekend of every other such Dreamworks film (Kung Fu Panda made $7.3 million in its fifth weekend and Monsters Vs. Aliens made $8.5 million in the same period respectively). Even Shrek and Shrek 2 could only muster $13 million on their respective fifth weekends, while Shrek the Third grossed $9 million in weekend five. Ironically, the dragon fable is showing such strong legs that Dreamworks may end up shooting itself in the foot when it steals away the 3D screens on May 21st for the likely quick-kill theatrical blitz of Shrek Forever After. Shrek 4 surely will open huge, but theaters prefer leggier hits as opposed to massively front-loaded blockbusters. Don't be surprised if Dreamworks keeps How to Train Your Dragon in at least a token number of 3D screens after the fourth Shrek picture debuts. Come what may, this is a remarkable run for a surprisingly good movie.

Second place went to The Back-Up Plan, as CBS Films' Jennifer Lopez rom-com debuted with $12.2 million. It's not a scorcher of a debut, in fact it's one of Lopez's smallest debuts as a lead in a mainstream picture. But this is Lopez's first film since Monster-In-Law back in summer 2005. Monster-In-Law opened to $23 million over the second weekend of summer 2005, which is still Jennifer Lopez's biggest debut. That picture had a stronger hook and added buzz of Jane Fonda's return to big-screen acting. $12 million is generally a decent number for an untested star (Kristen Bell's When In Rome for example), but it's a pretty soft number for someone who used to do very well in this genre. Point being, it appears that Lopez may be the sort of celebrity that attracts more attention in the gossip rags than as an actual actress. As someone who rooted for her back in her Money Train/Jack days (when she was a shockingly good actress holding up otherwise terrible films), this is a sad turn of events. Of course, it doesn't help that most of her films, pre and post stardom, just weren't very good. Aside from Out of Sight and Selena, her best films are arguably Anaconda and The Cell, which doesn't exactly bode well for her credibility (she's done some interesting indie work like Blood and Wine and Bordertown, but no one ever saw those). Still, the solution here is easy: supporting roles in interesting films, rather than playing the lead in bland pictures that depend on you to carry them.

Third place went to the resilient Date Night, which dropped just 37% in weekend three. The kinder/gentler After Hours has become the second choice for frequent film-goers and the first choice of casual adult audiences. The Steve Carell/Tina Fey vehicle has grossed $10.4 million in weekend three for a total of $63.3 million thus far, surpassing the $60 million gross of Fey's last vehicle Baby Mama, from April 2008. This one is going to stick around awhile, as there is no real adult entertainment until Ridley Scott's Robin Hood on May 14th. Fourth place went to a new picture, The Losers. The DC Comics/Vertigo adaptation opened with just $9.4 million. The film has a seemingly troubled history, shifting release dates from April to June and then back to April. The PG-13 may have been the fatal blow, as the film was sold as a sexier, more violent variation on The A-Team (at one point, it was set to open the weekend before The A-Team movie, as sort of a 'screw you' from Warner to Fox). If ever a film would have benefited from an R-rating... Anyway, the picture cost only $25 million so the damage should not be too severe.

The other major opener was the Disney documentary Oceans. After pulling in around $2.5 million on its Earth-Day opening last Thursday, the picture grossed $6 million over the weekend. That's the third-biggest opening for a documentary in history, behind Disney's Earth ($8.8 million) and Fahrenheit 9/11 ($23.9 million). Earth grossed $32 million stateside and earned another $76 million overseas. Oceans has already grossed $54 million overseas, which means the $80 million documentary will end up another solid investment. Expect another on of these next Earth Day. Last weekend's number one movie (with a bit of help from Thursday-night screenings, natch) fell to fifth place. Kick-Ass dropped 52%, which would have been OK if it had opened like the geek masterpiece that it was proclaimed as, as opposed to a garden-variety Lionsgate picture that it is. The people who wanted to love it ended up loving it, but the general moviegoers at best liked it. Plus, The Losers and its misguided PG-13 siphoned off younger moviegoers who were turned away from the R-rated Kick-Ass. Still, the $50 million acquisition has $34.7 million in the bank, and it has already grossed a surprisingly robust (for Lionsgate) $21 million overseas. Point being, it wasn't the second coming of anything, but it will be just fine in the long run. Heck, if the overseas numbers hold up and the nerds come through for the DVD/Blu Ray, we may even get that Hit Girl-centric sequel after all.

n general holdover news, Clash of the Titans crossed the $145 million mark, dropping 42% in its fourth weekend. It's pulled in $385 million worldwide. Death at a Funeral dropped 50%, as the surprisingly-funny all-star remake grossed $8 million in weekend two (yes, the film is too crude at times, but I laughed as often as I groaned). It's not a mega hit, but the $21 million picture has already grossed $28.4 million and will do fine on DVD/Blu Ray. Hot Tub Time Machine (also better than expected, natch) has crossed the $45 million mark, and Alice in Wonderland now sits at $327.5 million, just below The Lion King's $328 million total and Forrest Gump's $329 million take. And, um... Avatar dropped 8% and earned another $920,204 in its nineteenth-weekend despite selling 2.7 million Blu Rays over the last four days. I'd love to write a piece detailing Avatar's theatrical run, except said theatrical engagement refuses to end.

That's all that's fit to print this weekend. Join us next weekend, when A Nightmare On Elm Street opens to summer-level numbers despite not actually being a summer release (it finally screens on Wednesday, but I'll likely wait until Friday as the wife wants to see it too). And Brendan Fraser returns to family fare as he faces off against various woodland creatures in Furry Vengeance.

Scott Mendelson

Review: Harry Brown (2010)

Harry Brown
2010
103 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Harry Brown is, on the surface, a vigilante picture in the mold of Outlaws, Death Wish or The Brave One. It concerns an ordinary man fed up with rampant crime and unable or unwilling to trust the local authorities to stem the tide. But the film is really about social disconnect, and the trauma that can occur when no one feels connected to their peers. When no one feels any connection to those around them, it is only that much easier to victimize or ignore the plight of our neighbors. There is also a token nod to the futility of the 'war on drugs', and how much collateral damage it has created. But, for those who don't care about the 'deeper meanings', it also works as a violent action drama about Michael Caine taking the law into his own hands. Whichever suits your pleasure.

A token amount of plot: Like a lot of vigilante pictures, the opening act is so filled with wanton street crime and gruesome arbitrary bloodshed that one wonders how our hero even lived long enough to become victimized in the first place. Michael Caine plays Harry Brown, a retired Royal Marine who lives in a housing project for low-income citizens. A double-whammy of tragedy rocks his world, as his long suffering wife passes away on the same week (day?) that his best friend is murdered by young hooligans. When the sympathetic police detective (Emily Mortimer) informs Brown that conviction will be difficult, Brown takes it upon himself to wreak murderous vengeance.

What makes the picture more effective than a random Death Wish sequel is the quiet and simmering performance of Michael Caine. Caine has found a new potency now that he's playing characters that are having to face their own mortality. His work here, while different in tone and substance, is just as powerful as his star turn last year in I'm Not Here, where he played a bereaved former magician dying of Alzheimer's. Brown is horribly traumatized by what he did while in Marines, and the events in the first act of the picture causes him to at last unlock that brutality that he consciously buried after the war. Harry Brown's vigilante is a portrait of someone who truly has nothing left to lose, and there is an unstated idea that he does not intend to survive his pursuit of the gang that murdered his friend.

Everyone in the film is cut off from one-another. The police are distrusted by the community at large, the peaceful citizens live in fear from the hooligans, and the hooligans themselves feel no ties to their own neighborhoods, making it that much easier to attack and kill without empathy. The film's violence is swift, brutal, and bloody, with the slaughter of the guilty every bit as gruesome as the slaughter of innocents. This is not a film that promotes vigilantism, but neither does it explicitly 'tisk-tisk' the idea of fed-up locals fighting back on their own. Harry Brown is not a crowd-pleasing wish-fulfillment fantasy, but a sad and sobering drama where vigilantism is seen as the inevitable result of the failure of society to police itself.

Grade: B+

M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender gets a final trailer (and why 3D might actually be a good thing this time).

Now that's more like it... After a useless teaser last July, a compelling but brief Super Bowl spot, and a confusing and flat first trailer earlier this year, Paramount has finally cut something that feels like a summer contender. Granted, I'm a bit biased as I desperately want Shyamalan to knock this out of the park and re-establish himself, but I won't pretend that I was impressed with the listless first trailer. This final preview has somewhat restored my confidence in this do-or-die project. The trailer lays out the general narrative in a clear and comprehensible fashion, every major character gets a few highlight moments, and the visuals look absolutely dynamite. I love that the action beats are all shot in wide shots and edited with long and fluid takes.

Yes, in general I roll my eyes when I hear that the latest genre picture is going to be 'going 3D', but the I can't imagine that a visual perfectionist like M. Night Shyamalan would allow his film to be converted if he wasn't happy with the test results. For the moment, I'm going to be optimistic and presume that the 3D conversion is a sign of confidence over the wildly colorful spectacle on display and not a way to compensate with quality issues (Clash of the Titans, The Green Hornet). Point being, the images on display in this latest trailer are just the kind of thing I'd actually want to see in 3D. As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Twilight Saga: Eclipse gets a final trailer.

This is the trailer that apparently debuted on the Oprah Winfrey Show this afternoon. As expected, this final tease showcases a much larger scale of action and alleged adventure. The pace is brisk, and would-be money shots are plentiful (the opening moments feel like a real horror film), and there is almost a complete downplaying of the core love triangle. This third trailer seems to be (stereotypically) aimed at boys who will likely be dragged by their significant other on opening weekend when they'd rather be checking out M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender (not that a PG-rated adaptation of a Nickelodeon adventure cartoon screams 'hard-core' either, but I digress). The preview seems to be saying "Yes, this time exciting stuff actually happens other than backwoods brooding" as well as "Yes, THIS is why we paid for those IMAX screens." Still, at the end of the day it's a Twilight film, so don't expect Avatar-quality special effects or Red Cliff-scale battle scenes. It will be interesting to see whether the IMAX ticket-price bump will offset the scathing general-audience reaction to New Moon (IE - the first film was much better) over opening weekend. As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Blu Ray review: Avatar (2010)

You can find my original theatrical review of Avatar here. The bare-bones Blu Ray contains the HD version of the movie and a standard-def DVD copy as well. To the surprise of no one, the Blu Ray looks astounding and sounds breathtaking, using up about 41 gigs of the 50 gig disc. No shock here, the 2D image is gorgeous, actually resembling 3D imagery more often than not. No extras, so nothing to report there. If you just want the 2D theatrical cut of the film, you could much worse than this. Otherwise, we all know there will be a least a couple re-releases down the line. And that's about all you need to know. Great movie, terrific looking and sounding disc, no extras. The rest is up to you.

Scott Mendelson

Amanda Seyfried: the official superhero counter-programming of our time.

Apparently the only weapon that rival studios have against the onslaught of major genre pictures is one Amanda Seyfried. She helped open Mama Mia! to $28 million against the record-setting $158 million opening weekend of The Dark Knight back in July 2008. She helped Dear John open to $32 million back in February of this year, knocking Avatar out of the top spot in its seventh weekend. Now, her latest film, Letters From Juliet, will be getting a national sneak preview on Sunday, May 9th. Of course, as we all know, May 7th is the opening day of Iron Man 2, which itself is a strong contender to steal The Dark Knight's opening weekend crown (unlike the first film, there are no advance-night, pre-12:01 screenings planned, meaning Paramount wants a nice, clean opening-weekend record). The picture actually opens on May 14th, against Ridley Scott's Gladiator II... err... Robin Hood. Don't be too surprised if Summit's lower-budget romantic drama makes waves against Universal's apparent been there-done that rehash. A dark, violent, revisionist Robin Hood with modern-day sensibilities... I loved that in 1991 when it was called Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (obviously, I'll be the first to eat 'crowe' if it's anywhere near as good as Kingdom of Heaven).

Snark aside, it is incredibly refreshing how Seyfried, in just six years, has become one of the biggest stars in the industry. Alternating between quality film work (Mean Girls) and uncommonly good television (Veronica Mars, Big Love, a one-shot gig on one of the funniest episodes in CSI: Vegas history), she truly broke out with her first lead role in Mama Mia! just two years ago. In that time, she's developed a genuine following and a moderate box office pull, propping up good films and making bad films (Jennifer's Body) feel more like noble failures. Most importantly, she's done all of this without ever having to play the 'token love interest' in a male-dominated genre picture. Hell, one of week's big news stories is the unknown male actor who was cast as HER token love interest in Catherine Hardwicke's The Girl with the Little Red Riding Hood. And, unlike Hillary Swank, she's never had to fend off cruel taunts that she's somehow too headstrong or 'butch' to compete for mainstream roles.

Point being, if you can't beat her, recruit her. Marvel could do worse than to find a villainous role for Ms. Seyfried in Captain America (does Red Skull have a female equivalent of Bucky?) or The Avengers, to say nothing of her being a coup for any and all of the theoretical female Batman villains for Nolan's next picture. Pamela Isley, Selina Kyle, Talia Al Ghul - pick one. She seems like the only one who can stand up to the superheroes anyway.

Scott Mendelson

Angelina Jolie, Salt, and the incredibly sexist double-standard in action movies.

The cover story of this year's Entertainment Weekly summer movie preview concerns the behind the scenes scoop of the new espionage thriller Salt, directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Much of the 1.5 page article is a group 'pat on the back' for the seemingly amazing progressiveness symbolized by the fact that Angelina Jolie ended up playing an action hero originally written for a male star like Tom Cruise (he bailed when the script began to too closely resemble a Mission: Impossible picture). Fair enough, such a thing really shouldn't be a big deal in 2010 and the fact that they are falling over themselves in self-congradulation is the very opposite of progressive. But the real kicker occurs at the top of page 38. A direct quote:

"In the original script, there was a huge sequence where Edwin Salt (the original male protagonist) saves his wife, who's in danger," says Noyce. "And what we found in the new script, it seemed to castrate his character a little. So we had to change the nature of that relationship." In the end, Salt's husband, played by German actor August Diehl (Inglourious Basterds), was made tough enough that he didn't need saving, thank you much.

So, hidden in an article centering around just how the making of Salt is oh-so empowering for female action heroes is this tidbit. To put it in plainer terms, the filmmakers believe that it was perfectly OK for the spouse to be rescued from mortal danger if said love-interest was a girl, but not if the spouse was a man. So it's great if the action hero is a girl, as long as they don't have to opportunity to one-up any male counterparts and/or reverse the oldest cliche in the action-film handbook. Saying that girls can be portrayed as helpless damsels in distress but boys can't is about as old-school sexist as one can get.

Scott Mendelson

Kick-Ass duels How to Train Your Dragon in photo-finish. Death at a Funeral opens well, Avatar still around. Weekend box office review (04/18/10)

To the surprise of many who obviously had no idea how the movie business works, Kick-Ass did not in fact set the movie-going world on fire this weekend. Despite all the foaming at the mouth by geeks for the last year and the wagging fingers of moral indignation over the picture's somewhat taboo content, the movie performed like a high-end Lionsgate release with a $19.8 million first-place finish. As I wrote yesterday when discussing the $7.5 million opening day, Lionsgate films generally have a ceiling at this point in time. Sure the Tyler Perry films and the Saw sequels can and often do open above $30 million. Madea Goes to Jail cracked $41 million last year. But if you take out the Saw sequels and the Tyler Perry melodramas, Lionsgate's highest-grossing opening was the $23.9 million debut of Fahrenheit 9/11. After that, you have last year's surprising $23 million debut of the PG-13 horror drama The Haunting in Connecticut. After that, it's all $21 million and downward. The critically-acclaimed Russell Crowe/Christan Bale western 3:10 to Yuma couldn't crack $15 million. The much buzzed-about return of Stallone's Rambo couldn't break $19 million. So anyone who thought that a Lionsgate-distributed, original, R-rated action comedy based on a generally unknown property and aimed at a specific audience (young, comic book-worshiping males) would somehow open to $30 or $40 million just wasn't doing the math.

While Lionsgate deserves much artistic credit for its diverse and sometimes challenging line-up (the same studio that release Saw and Madea's Family Reunion also released the masterpieces Away From Her and Akeelah and the Bee), it is not quite a major studio yet. It does not have the marketing might of Warner Bros or Disney. Lionsgate paid $50 million to acquire, distribute, and advertise Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass partially as a call to arms that they could play in the big-budget genre sandbox too. Unfortunately, they picked a film that was inherently limited in its break-out potential. Unless you were predisposed to like the picture on principal, the marketing materials looked crass, stupid, and very much aimed at the lowest common denominator. That the movie is smarter and more thoughtful than the controversial trailers is beside the point. Opening weekend is all about quality of marketing and the trailers made the movie look like a cheap-looking, overly smug, adolescent male fantasy in the worst sense of the phrase ("Ooh, we've got a ninja 11-year old girl who swears and kills people!" "Relax nerds, just put on tights and Lyndsey Fonseca will bang you outside of your favorite comic book store too!"). There was little-to-no crossover potential for older males or any females who weren't already nerds. The film was specifically targeted at young males, many of whom were too young to get in due to the R-rating. Point being, if you didn't already love the film after hearing about it last year, the previews were not likely to inspire you to check it out.

This opening, disappointing relative to inflated expectations but perfectly fine in hindsight, brings to mind the 2006 $13.8 million debut of Snakes on a Plane. Viewed objectively, a $13 million debut for a $30 million comic thriller about well, snakes on a plane, was a pretty solid result. But, endlessly pumped up by internet nerds who had not even seen the film, the hype caught on in the mainstream media and expectations were through the roof. As the Tea Partiers of the movie business, the geek demo makes a lot of noise and gets a lot of attention, and the media often tries to sell their opinions as mainstream buzz. But those opinions are meaningless when it comes to making a film into a mainstream success. Look, a $50 million acquisition just opened to $19 million. It likely won't have legs due to the PG-13 action picture The Losers opening this coming weekend and the far-more mainstream R-rated Nightmare on Elm Street remake the weekend after that. But the film should crawl to $55 million and at least top $80 million with worldwide receipts. And the inevitable director's cut DVD/Blu Ray will do big business and the film will eventually make a profit. This is more of a serious ego-bruiser for Lionsgate than anything else. If they can't open The Expendables to numbers past their general $18-22 million spread this August (good luck with that lousy trailer), they may have to take serious stock regarding what kind of studio they can be with the present marketing muscle.

The number two film of the weekend is the month-old How to Train Your Dragon, which dropped just 19% for a $20 million fourth weekend (the sixteenth-biggest fourth weekend ever). The PG-rated cartoon may have benefited from kids buying tickets for the animated feature and sneaking into the R-rated Kick-Ass, but this is a fantastic hold for the best film of the year. In that rarest-of-rare circumstance, a really good movie has overcome a slightly underwhelming opening to build its audience through sheer word of mouth. At this respective four-week point, the film is just about $5 million behind Monsters Vs. Aliens, neck and neck with Madagascar 2, and well past Madagascar and A Shark Tale. The fantastic cartoon has grossed $158 million domestic and $320 million worldwide thus far, and it will have ample room to grow. It will keep its IMAX screens for two more weekends until Iron Man 2 opens on May 7th. It will keep its 3D screens for a full month until Shrek Forever After opens on May 21st. Every once in a while, quality does win out.

Meanwhile, last weekend's top opener (if not quite the top film) Date Night came it at number three, holding relatively steady with a 31% drop in weekend two. The relatively solid Tina Fey/Steve Carell comedy (it's great when it focuses on character, less great when the frantic action overwhelms the narrative) grossed $17.3 million for a ten-day total of $49 million. As hoped, the film is becoming the second choice for general moviegoers and should play strongly into the summer season. The other major opener was Screen Gems' Death at a Funeral, which opened with $17 million. The all-star cast (Chris Rock, Zoe Saldana, Martin Laurence, Danny Glover, Tracy Morgan, Regina Hall, Keith David, James Mardsen, and Luke Wilson... whew!) propelled this remake within range of its $21 million budget. The demos for this one were 56% women and 56% over 25 (Screen Gems did not provide the racial breakup, for whatever that's worth). Clash of the Titans dropped a reasonable 40% in its third weekend, ending its seventeenth day with $132 million. The kinda-sorta 3D action spectacle has amassed $321 million worldwide, so it appears that the film is playing well with the casually curious and the younger audiences (it's been doing bang-up business with Saturday and Sunday matinees).

The Miley Cryus/Nicolas Sparks-weepie The Last Song crossed the $50 million mark with a 40% drop in its third weekend. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too? dropped another 62%, ending its third weekend with $54.8 million. It's currently Perry's fourth-highest domestic performer and should squeak by the $63 million earned by Madea's Family Reunion to take the silver before this quick theatrical run expires. Hot Tub Time Machine (a surprisingly character-driven comedy about personal responsibility with fun cameos, even if it cheats just a bit at the end) now sits at $42 million and The Bounty Hunter crossed the $60 million mark. Alice in Wonderland now sits at $324 million, making it the fourth-highest grosser in Disney history and the 21st highest-grossing film of all time. And Avatar more or less finished its theatrical run this weekend. Despite still being on 500 screens, it comes out on DVD/Blu Ray this Thursday. The 18th and would-be final weekend had an added bonus of late-night IMAX 3D showings at various AMC theaters. As a result, the James Cameron opus added 46 screens and jumped 21%, grossing $1 million more and ending its theatrical run (we would assume?) with $745 million. Wow...

That's all for this weekend. Join us next Sunday morning/afternoon as Warner Bros releases the highly-questionable The Losers. The DC/Vertigo comic adaptation has a great cast and a great A-Team meets Ronin premise, but the shifting release dates, 98-minute running time, and PG-13 rating does not inspire confidence. Meanwhile, CBS Films tries another theatrical go-around with the Jennifer Lopez pregnancy comedy The Back Up Plan. And Disney releases its latest Earth Day nature documentary, Oceans, in 1,200 screens on Earth Day (Thursday the 22nd).

Scott Mendelson

Kick-Ass opens with a completely expected $7.5 million Friday.

Lesson - "It's the studio, stupid". With a $7.5 million opening day, it looks like Kick-Ass is performing exactly like a top-line Lionsgate picture that isn't a Saw sequel or Tyler Perry film. Take those two franchises away, and Lionsgate has never had an opening weekend above $23.9m (Fahrenheit 9/11). After that and the unexpectedly high $23m debut of The Haunting in Connecticut, Lionsgate films are all $21m and below. I'm not sure why anyone thought Lionsgate could somehow pull a rabbit out of its hat with a film that was specifically aimed at a small audience (getting banned by Carmike Cinemas didn't help either). Like Snakes on a Plane, this is a $35 million picture that was always intended to be a cult film, but was inexplicably predicted to break out by a media that still thinks that hardcore geeks are worth tens of millions in opening weekend box office. A commenter correctly compared the hard-core geek audience to the Tea Party; a small and vocal minority dominating the media coverage but not making much real-world impact. This thing was basically Rambo ($6.6m first day, $18m opening weekend) with more controversy, and that's about how its playing. No big deal, the film will still make money in the long run. It's just a case of box office pundits not doing the math/history before making predictions. Anyone who thought this non-sequel, non-established franchise, R-rated cult-film from a AAA minor-league studio would somehow open to $30 million or $40 million was completely insane.

Scott Mendelson

FYI - Avatar returns to IMAX 3D at AMC...

If you care, AMC is having late-night IMAX Avatar showings, if only for this weekend. Unless you need one last hurrah before the April 22nd DVD/Blu Ray release, I suggest you wait for the all-but-announced re-release that will likely commence either at the end of this summer or sometime in the fall. Said re-release will likely have a chunk of new footage, so in this case, fortune favors the patient. None the less, if you want it, here you go...

Scott Mendelson

Forrest for the Trees... How some critics missed the complexity of Hit Girl, and why some criticisms are rooted in accidental sexism.

I don't think Kick-Ass is a masterpiece and I don't have issues with critics who choose not to like it. But what troubles me is how much of the criticism revolves around the simplistic and wrong-headed criticism of the character of Hit Girl. I've written from time to time about critics and pundits being so blinded by state-of-the-art special effects that they were unable to see the real movie that those effects supported. The critics in question would completely ignore the character work, storytelling, and/or social significance at work in films such as The Matrix, Beowulf, or Speed Racer, and then rip the films for being soulless, empty-headed FX spectacles. Ironically enough, when many of these films came to DVD, critics would find themselves SHOCKED to discover that those missing elements where right there in front of them, but that had missed them on the big screen due to the overwhelming razzle-dazzle.

The other circumstance of missing the obvious usually involves audiences overwhelmed by taboo elements or the appearance of ultra-violence. This is the odd situation when critics (smart and dumb alike) climb all over themselves to condemn Fight Club as an ultra-violent, anarchist fantasy without realizing that there's only one death, only a token amount of fighting, and a message that explicitly condemns the domestic terrorists while coming down firmly on the side of personal responsibility. It happens when the media proclaims Pulp Fiction as an ultra-violent gorefest while blind to the fact that it contains a single-digit body count and only a token amount of onscreen graphic violence that wouldn't be out of place in any R-rated action film. And yes, it happens when critics and pundits decry the character of Hit Girl as nothing but a dangerous fantasy character. Why does she have no qualms about killing people? Why is the picture so cavalier about showing her being beaten to a pulp? Is she a dangerous role model for the young girls who will theoretically see this R-rated picture?

(SPOILER WARNING from here on out) Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman put a scene in the film where characters specifically discuss the immorality of Damon's actions regarding his daughter. It's made perfectly clear that she's been brainwashed from birth and a victim of what could only be called child abuse. Her father is training her to be a soldier in a war. Thus, she's been trained to view the mobsters in question as inhuman/sub-human, for whom killing of them has no real consequences. The movie works partially because it refuses to ignore the dark undertones at work. Sure, the movie didn't obsess on it or her possible PTSD stemming from the events of the film, but that's perfectly reasonable territory for a sequel to deal with. But Hit Girl is a supporting character in a movie with several major characters, so every choice that every character makes cannot be analyzed in full. The fact that Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and company took the time to acknowledge what a shockingly terrible parent Cage was, and what the long-term implications of turning his kid into a heartless killing machine should be enough. Critics cannot miss this obvious character development and then complain that the movie glamorizes an eleven-year old killing machine. The creation of Hit Girl is viewed as a tragedy, plain and simple.

The other two major complaints frankly have their roots in sexism and/or patriarchal condescension. The first deals with the climactic beat-down that Hit Girl suffers at the hands of lead villain D'Amico. Viewed objectively, the scene wouldn't be the least bit out of place in any other superhero adventure story. The climactic fight scene is a standard give-and-take of brutal blows scored by both hero and villain. At the very end, the villain gets the upper hand and starts to hammer at our heroine out of anger and fear. After all, this kid just wasted pretty much every henchman the guy has, why wouldn't he want vengeance? But the blows suffered by Hit Girl are no worse than those taken by Spider-Man in his climactic smack-down with the Green Goblin. And the violence is in fact far tamer than the vicious beating that Kick-Ass himself endures during the course of the picture.

The issue at hand is the double standard when it comes to female action heroes. Sure, we all say we want empowering female characters who can play in the action sandbox as effectively as the boys do. Yet we collectively cringe when said female heroes (and villains) receive the same kind of brutal violence that is commonly visited upon male action heroes and villains. We love watching Charlie's Angels overcome the villains in their path, but we protest when Crispin Glover momentarily gains the advantage. We say we want equality regarding gender and villainy in our genre pictures, but we constantly demand that only female heroes be allowed to do battle with female villains (Drop Zone, Die Another Day, etc). Television may have made great strides in this realm (The Powerpuff Girls, Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc), but the movies are still stuck defending the violence visited on female characters even when they are playing murderous cyborgs from the future sent to bring about Judgment Day.

The final issue at hand involves the somewhat preposterous fear that young girls will find a way to see and decide that Hit Girl is a role model for their play fantasies. Damn right they will. And you know what? Who cares? We have no qualms about young boys idolizing murderous womanizers like James Bond or Tony Stark. We never bat an eye when an eight-year-old boy wants to dress up as that genocidal, galaxy-destroying, slaughterer-of-children known as Darth Vader. And that's not even counting the countless fantasy games based on horror-film boogie-men of the moment. More than once, I dressed up for Halloween as an undead former child molester turned murderer of teens who sliced and diced innocent kids using a glove with knives for fingers. I turned out OK. As I wrote last November regarding the Twilight series, no one complains when our nation's boys emulate somewhat immoral male protagonists from various mainstream blockbusters, but we're up in arms about the questionable morality of female protagonists. Let's trust our young girls just a bit more. Any young girl who watches Kick-Ass and thinks that she wants Hit Girl's life is probably just as wrongheaded as the countless young boys who grew up really wanting to be Batman or Spider-Man. Which is, of course, partially what Kick-Ass is really about.

But then, wrongheaded would describe many of the critics who are up in arms over the character. Yes, the character is a surprising one, and her actions and appearance are striking enough to make audiences react in a somewhat simplistic manner ("That's so cool!" or "That's so offensive!"). There's more under the surface of the character of Hit Girl than 'aren't we shocking' fluff. And it should be a critic's job to notice. If anyone should be able to see past the fog, it's people who get paid to watch and review movies.

Scott Mendelson

TV Review: Mega Piranha (2010)

Mega Piranha
2010
90 minutes
not rated

by Scott Mendelson

Mega Piranha is everything Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus wanted to be but wasn't. It is completely entertaining from start to finish. It has just enough of a budget and just enough production values to actually deliver the trashy goods. It is generally terrible, but never insulting and never dull. It is an absolute laugh riot because it achieves that delicate balancing act between taking its world seriously and acknowledging its absurdity. The film never cheats by winking at the audience, and it never seems to be trying to make a camp classic. The film premiered on the SyFy Channel last Saturday and comes to DVD on April 27th. While I would never call Mega Piranha 'good' by any reasonable artistic standard, it is the most fun I've had with a live-action movie all year.

A token amount of plot - Deep in the Amazon, good-gooder scientists led by Dr. Sara Monroe (80's pop-star Tiffany) have been experimenting on piranha for some poorly-explained attempted to enlarge the food supply. For reasons never actually explained, said fish escape (or are stolen?) and end up attacking various unlucky swimmers and boaters in the jungle and eventually on the beaches. After an American diplomat becomes fish-food, American Marine analyst Jason Fitch (Paul Logan) is sent in to investigate. He quickly realizes that the piranha are quickly growing in size and are swiftly making their way to the Florida coast. Can Logan and Dr. Monroe find a way to destroy these giant piranha before they eat their way into America, all while avoiding the murderous local government that believes that the fish are part of a US-backed political coup?

As always with movies like this, the difference is in the details. Everybody plays it relatively straight, since they are smart enough to realize that the situation is ridiculous enough. Pop-culture icons Tiffany and Barry Williams (as US military chief um... Bob Grady) do what they can not to embarrass themselves. They don't try to out-act the fish and they don't try to rise above the material. I wouldn't call it good acting, but they stay above water, if you'll pardon the pun. Special props go out to Paul Logan, who plays bad-ass analyst Jason Fitch as if he's some muscle-bound cross between Jason Bourne, Horatio Cane, and Jack Bauer (the film maintains its high energy level partially due being edited like a cheap episode of 24, minus the split-screen). Like Chris Klein in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, Logan throws himself into the stock hero role with all the gusto that likely went into such portrayals when he was playing in his backyard at the age of eight or nine. Whether randomly sneaking around secret areas with absolutely no stealth (dig the spying montage which has him randomly darting from side to side, rolling on the ground, and doing other 'sneaky' things guaranteed to attract unwanted attention), or engaging in hand-to-fin combat with giant piranhas on the beach, Logan single-handedly makes the film a whacked-out delight even when their are no mutant fish to be seen.

But, unlike some films involving creatures both mega and giant, writer/director Eric Forsberg's film gives us plenty of piranha in all shapes and sizes (the film involves both CGI and old-fashioned puppets). In a touch that will make fans of Night of the Lepus happy, there is absolutely no size consistency to the fish as they grow during the course of the picture. One minute they are as big as a house and crashing headfirst into buildings (which is, in intellectual critic-speak, fu%^$ing awesome!), the next minute we're being told that they'll soon be the size of a horse. But the important thing is that you see these terrifying death-dealing fish early and often. And while I would have liked to have seen more moments of individual people being eaten alive, you do get all kinds of city-wide carnage. For what it's worth, the film isn't nearly as bloody and gory as Mega Snake, which makes this more suitable for family viewing. I've always said that the key thing for C-level monster movies is to give the audience what the box promises them. You want mega piranhas eating and blowing up everything in sight? You get mega piranhas killing the heck out of each and every major location in the film.

Sure, there are plot holes (just how did the fish get loose in the first place?), character issues (at no point do any of the scientists express guilt over the thousands of people killed by their experiment), and logic issues (the final solution to destroy the fish doesn't make much sense), but you know that going into a movie like this. But the film delivers in spades exactly what is demanded from the genre. You get an absurd premise, several insane moments (man-to-fish kickboxing, a climax that evokes Thunderball with giant piranha), at least one unexpected and shocking death (during a time-out moment, ala Deep Blue Sea), characters that are entertaining during the non-horror scenes (Paul Logan is every bit as much fun as the main attraction), and unintentional laughs galore (a death scene for a random villain consists of the same two shots repeated about ten times). Most importantly, you get plenty hilarious scenes of giant fish killing people left and right.

I often talk about the various terrible horror films (Sleepaway Camp II and Sleepaway Camp III) and disaster porn (Mega Fault) that my wife forces me to watch. Well, put this in that rarest-of-rare categories of inexplicably great movies that my wife forced me to watch. While I would never call Mega Piranha a good film, it is completely successful at what it sets out to do. The scariest thing about it is that, in a year already featuring films by Tim Burton, Roman Polanski, Martin Campbell, and Martin Scorsese, Eric Forsberg's Mega Piranha is the most entertaining and enjoyable live-action movie I've seen this year.

Grade: A-

When legend becomes fact, print the legend. Or, when movie gossip/rumor becomes movie news, what does movie news become?

I've complained here and there over the last month or so about my inability to actually cover real movie news as it breaks. By that, I mean so much news is reported as a 'rumor' or 'allegedly' or 'kinda-sorta/probably', that I'm loathe to actually believe it. But since the Internet runs on being first above being right, there is an inclination to run every rumor you hear and then take credit for breaking the one or two that turned out to be true. So while I'd love to tell you how great it is that Brad Bird may be directing Mission: Impossible IV, said 'news' is still a rumor. And while I'd love to share my thoughts on Logan Lerman playing Spider-Man in the Marc Webb reboot, said 'scoop' may not even be true at this point. And let's face it, by the time either of those stories are confirmed as fact, most of the readership will have moved on to the 'next big rumor'. So do I comment on the rumors and hope they turn out true? Or do I wait for official confirmation and hope you still care to hear my thoughts?

Oddly enough, if I may speculate just for the sake of this essay, I'd be more excited about Logan Lerman had I not seen Percy Jackson and the Blah Blah Blah. I thought he was fantastic in The Butterfly Effect and he's done well for much of his varied career, shining in various genre pictures (Gamer, The Number 23, 3:10 to Yuma, etc). But Percy Jackson and the Olympians was a stunningly terrible movie and Lerman didn't do the material any favors. Pure speculation, but I'm sure Lerman's camp is terrified of any would-be negotiations going public, as it just makes it that much more likely that Fox will enforce the option for a Percy Jackson sequel just to be 'evil'. Lightning Thief made $218 million worldwide on a $95 million budget so it wouldn't be completely insane if DVD/Blu Ray business does well. Like most nerds, I'm far more interested in who Sony gets to fill out the supporting cast. I still think the whole idea, Sony trashing their linchpin franchise and betting on a cheaper, younger-skewing variation, is insane, but if it magically turns out to be a solid adaptation of the early Bendis Ultimate Spider-Man arcs (and if the Raimi 3 finally get feature-packed Blu Rays as a tie-in), who cares.

Scott Mendelson