Jackass 3D

I was about to start this review with the complaint that Jackass 3D relied a little too much on the poo, vomit, and scrotum  gags. And then I realized how dumb that would sound. After all, isn’t that what Jackass is all about?

Instead, what I’ll say is this: the latest installment of the tv/movie franchise feels a little like a restaurant franchise. No one goes to Applebee’s because the food is great. They go because, though the food is mediocre at best, it’s always the same. When you order that tray of Baby Back Ribs, you know exactly what you’re getting. And when you watch a Jackass movie, you know you’re in for a lot of farting, shitting, pissing, punching, and laughing.

To be honest, I didn’t expect either of the first two Jackass movies to be good. I was pleasantly surprised. More than that, I laughed my ass off. But the creativity abundant in the first two movies is lacking in the third. The ratio of silly and funny to gross and painful is off this time around. I know this is patently unAmerican of me to say, but sometimes enough is enough when it comes to people taking hits to the nards.

Maybe what’s really missing from Jackass 3D is enthusiasm. I can’t say I blame them. I don’t think I could be too enthusiastic about taking a T-ball to the family jewels, and I don’t even have family jewels. Then again, the silly skits like Party Boy and Werewolves in London require no organ damage and, in my opinion, were funnier anyway.

Top 20 Movies of the Decade (2000-2009)

After waiting a year (almost) for the movies of 2000-2009 to fully sink in, we’re finally prepared to unleash our best of the decade list. Hold on to your butts.

20. Memento – The infamous “backwards movie” that really launched Christopher Nolan’s career (The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Inception). Nolan packs enough action into his movies to satisfy most everyone, but at the root of his best movies are unique story/narrative concepts that are fully developed and realized via complex plots. Hard to believe that some thought of him as a “gimmick” movie maker when Memento first came out.

19.  Cloverfield – A documentary style horror movie, effectively crossing Godzilla with The Blair Witch Project. Maybe not completely beloved by critics, but beloved by me. Cloverfield‘s faithfulness to its point of view gives the unfolding horrors a sense of realism that heightens their impact.

18. Nine Lives – Nine loosely connected, interwoven vignettes, written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, son of famed Latin American author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

17. Dogville – Lars Von Trier’s controversial 2003 movie starring Nicole Kidman and set on a stage with no props, backdrops, or scenery. Very dark.

16. Adaptation – Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin, Donald, attempt to adapt Susan Orlean’s  The Orchid Thief.

15. The King of Kong – This documentary tells the story of the all-time Donkey Kong arcade game record, which is surprisingly dramatic. There’s sabotage, conspiracy, and an antagonist so villainous, you wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t real. Plus a lot of hilarious nerds.

14. O Brother, Where Art Thou? – The Coen Brothers teamed up with George Clooney to make a Depression-era retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

13. The Man Who Wasn’t There – Billy Bob Thornton stars in this barber shop Noir. My favorite Coen Brothers movie of the decade, even if it’s not the most critically acclaimed.

12. Brick – This is what happens when you view a high school drama through a Noir lens.

11. The Descent – A horror movie that rises to the challenge of having an actual story with real characters, while remaining truly scary. (Side note: In seventh grade, I made it to the southwest semifinal spelling bee for my state, and I got out on my first word. Descent. Ever since, the word has terrified me.)

10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Charlie Kaufman’s “what if we could pay to erase our bad memories?” movie, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Peter Jackson’s fantasy trilogy is probably the best execution ever in this genre.

8. Let the Right One In – Swedish vampire movie that on the surface sounds similar to the plot of something like Twilight, but in reality works as a totally unique, quirky horror movie.

7. Inglourious Basterds – Most critics prefer the Kill Bill movies, but despite many openly sophomoric elements, Basterds struck me as Tarantino’s most mature movie, and it’s my favorite of his from this decade, and maybe my favorite over all.

6. A Tale of Two Sisters – This Korean horror movie combines a “what the hell is going on” plot with a variety of creepy visuals.  It has stuck with me for about 7 years.  (It also was remade into the horrible American horror movie “The Uninvited“.)

5. Shotgun Stories – A blood feud erupts between two families in a rural Arkansas town, and it’s not long before both sides go too far.

4. Amelie – A French story about an eccentric girl and her first secret adventures after a childhood of isolation.

3. The Station Agent – A lonesome dwarf inherits an old train station building in rural New Jersey and befriends some of the locals.

2. The Best of Youth – Originally made for Italian TV, this 6 hour mini-series/movie tells the story of 2 brothers, covering from their high school years up through adulthood.

1. Grizzly Man – The life and death of Timothy Treadwell – the guy who voluntarily lived among the bears in the wild of Alaska for months at a time – filmed by Treadwell himself and pieced together into a documentary by Werner Herzog after Treadwell’s death.  I watched this over 5 years ago and still think about it a lot. It didn’t win the Oscar, in fact it wasn’t even nominated, but it’s number 1 in our book.

Documentary December – Last Train Home

In many ways, life in China is almost incomprehensible to the average American. Lixin Fan’s documentary, Last Train Home, gives us a glimpse, a sometimes disturbing one, of life in China through the lens of one family of migrant workers.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 86 minutes

Directed by: Lixin Fan

Starring: Zhang Changhua, Chen Suqin, Qin Zhang

Theatrical Release: 09/5/10

DVD Release: 2/22/11

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $272,556

Metacritic Score: 86/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 100%

The movie opens with a shot panning across an endless crowd of people – I’d guess in the six figure range – standing outside of a train station in the rain. Every year 130 million migrant workers head home for the Chinese New Year, which, we’re told via text on the screen, is the largest human migration in the world. The subjects of the film, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin, have been making this annual trek for roughly 20 years – starting when they were just 16 years old and dropped out of school to find work, a decision which they not only regret but seems to consume them – even after 20 years, they bring it up constantly. The couple spends the rest of the year living in a tiny bunk down the hall from the factory where they sew jeans and other garments to be shipped to the Western world.

They arrive home at the family farm to spend time with their 16 year old daughter, 10 year old son and the grandmother that is raising the children with the financial help of the factory money. Their visit is awkward. Spending around 51 weeks a year away at work, they don’t know their own kids very well. Their daughter, Qin, is openly angry at her parents and rebellious. Ironically, and against all the parental advice she’s ever received, Qin drops out and gets a factory job similar to that of her parents. Her parents are confused and upset by her decision. Her mother says, “I’d rather work even harder than have Qin work.”

While there are many differences from American life to be seen, in some ways the similarities are more striking. The first words out of Qin’s younger brother’s mouth when his parents show him the cell phone they bought Qin are, “Does it have games?” During an argument with her mother, Qin says, “I don’t care what you say.” Teen angst and rebellion, it appears, are universal.

If the most important thing in someone’s life is spending time with the people they care about, the economic situation in China has removed this aspect of life almost completely. Last Train Home doesn’t beat this idea over your head, but by the end you realize that’s what it’s all about.

Documentary December – Exit Through the Gift Shop

There’s a lot of speculation regarding how true the events portrayed in the Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, actually are. After considering it a while, I’ve decided that I have no goddamn idea. But let’s start at the beginning.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 86 minutes

Directed by: Banksy, Shepard Fairy

Starring: Thierry Guetta, Banksy, Shepard Fairy

Theatrical Release: 04/16/10

DVD Release: 12/14/10

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $3.29 million

Metacritic Score: 85/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 97%

Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the story of Thierry Guetta and the eight years he spent relentlessly shooting footage for his great street art documentary, Life Remote Control. Thierry begins filming his cousin, whom goes by the moniker Space Invader, as his graffiti deals exclusively with the imagery of the ancient video game of the same name. Almost instantly upon shooting Space Invader in action, Thierry is obsessed. He quickly branches out from there, slowly but surely meeting and filming the biggest artists in street art including arguably the biggest name, Banksy, whom is shown only in shadow. Thierry travels the world, filming the hijinks. He scales buildings side by side with the graffiti artists he films and tightropes the peaks of steep rooftops to get the perfect shot. The artists respect his enthusiasm and fearlessness and not only let Thierry shoot them freely but befriend him in the process.

It’s not until much later – approximately 6 or 7 years, in fact – that they realize he is in no way a legitimate filmmaker. He is just a guy that compulsively films everything around him, never bothering to watch the boxes and boxes of tapes lining the walls of his residence. (As Banksy describes it, “I realized Thierry was not a filmmaker but a guy with mental problems.”)

This is where the reality of the events begin to come into question. At Banksy’s insistence, Thierry does attempt to edit together a movie out of his countless hours of footage. We are shown a couple of clips of the final product, which are essentially micro-fragments of nonsense strung together. No shot is over 1 or 2 seconds, nor do they relate to clips before or after them. Totally incoherent.

It’s at this point that Banksy takes over the project and Thierry takes on the street art name Mr. Brainwash and sets out to make a name for himself. The idea that the latter is a hoax has been put forth many times, and I really can’t say. I don’t want to ruin the ending of the movie by giving a lot of details, but I’ll say that the whole thing is almost too clever to be completely true and all of the facts represented accurate.

In any case, Exit Through the Gift Shop is an entertaining movie. It isn’t really the definitive street art documentary that Thierry may or may not have ever intended it to be, though if there’s a hoax involved it does make a fitting piece in Banksy’s collection. Thierry is an interesting character, however much fact or fiction he truly is.

Documentary December – Winnebago Man

Jack Rebney is the Winnebago Man – an oddly eloquent yet obscenity laced orator that rose to Youtube fame for the outtakes of an early 1980′s Winnebago promotional video that featured him losing his shit repeatedly and swearing up a damn storm. (My personal favorite quote is “My mind is just a piece of shit this morning.”) As a truly eccentric character – he has lived in the woods alone for the past 15 years – with a flair for hilarious dialogue, he is a kickass subject for a documentary. Director Ben Steinbauer, however, took this great subject and made a merely OK documentary.

First of all, take a look at the original video:

The movie begins with Steinbauer following in the footsteps of “throw it together” documentary filmmakers like Nick Broomfield that essentially make a movie about themselves trying to make a movie. They run down leads and try to get interviews. The narrative follows the filmmaker’s journey rather than the subject’s journey, and the story is told to the audience by the director via lots of voice over rather than letting the footage show us the subject and their story. In this case, Steinbauer talks about his personal history with the Winnebago Man video, which actually dates back to the pre-Youtube era of funny videos being spread via hand copied VHS tapes. He then details his early efforts in finding Rebney and setting up an interview with him. In an already very short movie (less than 90 minutes), this is fluff, and there’s an annoying “golly gee, funny videos make everyone happy” quality to the early voice over segments to make it a little worse.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 85 minutes

Directed by: Ben Steinbauer

Starring: Jack Rebney

Theatrical Release: 07/09/10

DVD Release: 11/02/10

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $181K

Metacritic Score: 71/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 91%

As the film progresses, we meet Rebney and he’s exactly the same guy we’ve seen on youtube – sure, he’s older, in his mid to late 70′s, but just as intense, quick-witted and foul-mouthed as he was that day in the Winnebago 20 odd years ago. And here’s the film’s real flaw – we ultimately don’t see a ton of footage of Rebney just being himself. Steinbauer fights with him about talking about his childhood and opening up to people, which Rebney has no interest in. Rebney is extremely skeptical of Youtube and his so-called fanbase, whom he misunderstands and assumes to be laughing at him rather than being amused by his turns of filthy phrase.

Rebney’s dream is to write books about politics and philosophy. He agrees to work on Steinbauer’s project merely for the chance to spread his ideas. Winnebago Man reveals almost none of the content of his message and all the footage is condensed into showing him being defensive about “opening up to people.” Without revealing the ending, the “opening up” storyline does pay off in a satisfying way, and I did feel like Rebney was changed by the experience of making this documentary. Still, I wanted to know Rebney better, not in a superficial “what was your childhood like?” way, but in an adult “what are you genuinely passionate about today?” way. Instead I got a Rebney reduced to a hermit caricature to fit Steinbauer’s sappy ode to the power of funny videos. Golly gee, that’s swell.

Documentary December – The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

It’s the Appalachian equivalent of Jersey Shore.  The opening minutes of Julien Nitzberg’s documentary, “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia“, give a rapid fire family history of the film’s subject, the White family of Boone County, West Virginia.  A gun shot sound effect punctuates.  The patriarch, D. Ray White, was a clog/tap dancer, growing famous both for his unique performances as well as his outlaw lifestyle that ultimately resulted in him getting shot and killed.  His sons attempted to follow in his footsteps, perhaps finding more success in terms of achieving the outlaw lifestyle than anything else. One died a violent death at a young age, one fled the area to keep out of trouble, and the most famous, Jesco White, has brain damage from “ten long years of huffing gasoline.”  He isn’t sure if the damage is on the left or right side of his brain, but does recall the doctor saying that in essence he has a hole in his brain where the remaining tissue is like cigarette ash.  (Jesco is the subject of a 1991 PBS documentary called “Dancing Outlaw” which we plan to review later in the month.)

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 84 minutes

Directed by: Julien Nitzberg

Starring: Jesco White, Hank Williams III

Theatrical Release: 05/05/2010

DVD Release: 10/26/2010

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%

In many ways, this super quick opening summary is the most compelling part of the film.  The outlaw life and death is dramatic and intriguing from a distance.  It all gets uglier upon closer examination.

After the shock of the family’s violent history, Nitzberg moves into the day to day life of the Whites, which is an all you can eat, smoke and snort buffet of prescription drugs, whiskey and weed. We watch a new mother chop and snort oxycontin off the hospital room end table a few hours after giving birth.  We see two 50-60 year olds blow smoke in their 85 year old mother’s face during her birthday party.  We meet a lot of family members that talk way slower than Tommy Chong.

The Whites have a histrionic streak about as wide as the New River Valley Gorge.  Family members trade off bragging about using and selling drugs or committing acts of violence.  They take an enormous amount of pride in their fame and the attention they get for being so dysfunctional.  The infamy and death are glorified as much as possible.

But generations of this lifestyle lead to a value system that a normal person can’t really comprehend until they watch this.  Drugs and violence have been such a part of the Whites lives now for so long that they have no real sense of the negative effects they can have, even in the case of guarding their kids from them.  There are scenes of one of the 5 or 6 year old kids drinking 6 or 7 cans of Pepsi and bouncing off the walls.  How many years until it’s something more serious? In later scenes, the same child threatens to murder his estranged father. His aunt’s response is something along the lines of, “You wanna go to jail? Don’t say that kinda stuff on camera.”

In the end, there isn’t really a single clear cut good guy among The White clan.  Jesco may be the most articulate and charming, which is insane considering his aforementioned brain issues.  The family is fascinating on a certain level, but there is ultimately no real substance to their story.  The violence of a train wreck is visceral and thrilling, but the aftermath, the reality, is no fun.

31 Days of Horror – Splice

Last October we reviewed Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, a 1997 Canadian horror movie that seems to have slowly and surely built a strong cult following over the years (and rightfully so, as it’s good.)  It was a bit of surprise to see Natali back with Splice in June 2010, writing and directing a horror film for the first time since Cube – and this time with a fairly big name cast and the movie going wide in U.S. theaters.

In Splice, Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) are scientists who create a human animal hybrid by splicing together DNA from various species. As the hybrid, Dren (Delphine Chanéac), rapidly develops into something more human than animal, the lines between science experiment subject and child are blurred. Elsa and Clive struggle with the ethical implications- they can’t tell anyone about their breakthrough because human testing is illegal, and they can’t just kill Dren because she’s part human.

The story is instantly engaging. As Dren is introduced over the first two thirds of the movie, she evokes a response almost like the Elephant Man, a deep  sympathy with some curiosity and a little revulsion.  This provides an emotional punch to the ethical conflict that develops between Elsa and Clive.  They rail against each other some, not quite sure what role to take with Dren or how to deal with her. The audience has similarly mixed feelings that shift and change as Dren quickly mutates, and we’re forced to reevaluate things again.  Natali has a gift for making genre movies that are competent and suspenseful as standard horror, but also ask the audience ethical or philosophical questions that resonate on a much deeper level.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 104 minutes

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali

Written by: Vincenzo Natali

Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac

Theatrical Release: 06/04/10

DVD Release: 10/05/10

Production Budget: $26 million

Domestic Gross: $17 million

Metacritic Score: 66/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 74%

Visually, Splice has some of the best CGI I’ve seen.  It was about halfway through the movie before I even stopped to consider the fact that a lot of what I was watching wasn’t real, and then wondered how they did it.  Everything looked solid and tangible.  It didn’t have that super phony CGI sheen.  There were tricks to make Dren’s eyes extremely far apart when viewed from straight ahead – essentially some CGI or other effect literally on one of the lead’s faces for the bulk of her screen time – and I could not tell how they achieved this.  It looked unsettling and inhuman in the ways they clearly intended, but it didn’t look fake the way Jar-Jar Binks looks fake.

And yet somehow, great visuals, a great story idea and a very good cast did not add up to a great movie. I’ve never said this before, but Splice was a movie crippled by its overly speedy pace.  Too much story was crammed into the allotted time, and the plot and character development seemed forced. For example, in an early scene, Elsa and Clive are wracking their brains trying to figure out how they can possibly bind the animal DNA with the human DNA, something considered nearly impossible. The entire transition from “Try this!” and “Damn! It didn’t work. We’ll never figure it out.” to “OMG, it worked!” takes about 30 seconds.  In the grand scheme of the movie, this is actually one of the more forgivable cases of blazing through a scene to set things up, but almost the entire movie was that rapid.  By the time things frantically raced – literally – through the final chase scene and climax, the lack of real thrills leaves you feeling that the movie didn’t live up to its early promise.

Splice would probably have made for an awesome book or first season of a TV show.  Instead, it’s merely a pretty good movie.

Shutter Island: We Have To Go Back!

In Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a US Marshal investigating the disappearance of a patient and/or inmate from a remote institution for the criminally insane. Creepy noir-ish thriller-y things ensue as Daniels and his partner (Mark Ruffalo)  struggle to uncover the truth. Of course Daniels becomes more and more suspicious of the hospital staff, and of course the audience becomes more and more suspicious of Daniel’s sanity or lack thereof.

The movie looks and sounds awesome. The story, as any good thriller should, makes you wanna know what in tarnations is going on.  I liked almost everything about  Shutter Island, and I wish more big budget studio movies were as daring as it was.

My only complaint, and it’s a big one, is that very similar unraveling sanity plots have been done before, and I think done better (The Machinist and A Tale of Two Sisters, for example).   Perhaps I’d have been completely wowed if I’d seen it ten years ago or had I not seen the “big twist” coming since I saw the trailers for this movie months ago. It might have been a 5 star mind-blower of OMFG proportions.  Sadly, neither of these are true.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 138 minutes

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Written by: Laeta Kalogridis, Dennis Lehane

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley

Theatrical Release: 02/19/10

DVD Release: 06/08/10

Production Budget: $80 million

Domestic Gross: $127 million

Metacritic Score: 63/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 68%

Still, the journey is always what matters most, right?  Some of the clues to what’s really going on along the way are subtle and clever – in the opening moments, I pondered why the agent from Seattle spoke with a thick Boston accent.  Others are a bit confusing – I’m still baffled by a mental patient pantomiming drinking a glass of water with an empty hand and then setting the empty glass down in the next shot.  No idea.

There seems to be a split amongst viewers in terms of Teddy’s insanity/sanity. I interpret his final line in the way it would make the most satisfying end to his story – That he is indeed insane and over the course of the film has been made aware of this fact. He murdered his wife after she murdered their children, and rather than live with the awful truth, he is choosing to be lobotomized so that he can be at peace. So while the twist doesn’t give much bang for its buck, the ultimate resolution almost makes up for it with an emotional punch in the gut.

Shutter Island will be released on DVD and BluRay on June 8, 2010. The movie is based on the novel Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.

31 Days of Horror – October 11th – “Doomsday”

In 20o7, a deadly virus pandemic breaks out in northern UK. The British government’s solution is a massive quarantine over all of Scotland. Those left in the quarantine area are left to fend for themselves, which doesn’t go over so well.

Fast forward about 20 years later and enter our badass leading lady, Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), complete with eyepatch. The Reaper Virus is back, and the Big Kahunas send an elite group of soldiers into No Man’s Land formerly known as Scotland to see if they can find anything that might lead to a cure. Who is selected to head up the task but our one-eyed heroine… who, coincidentally was one of the last few lucky people to make it over the wall the night they put the quarantine into effect.

I was mega excited to see this “Doomsday“, having enjoyed both of Neil Marshall’s previous films (“The Descent” and “Dog Soldiers“). The opening scene had my interest piqued- massive disease pandemics are high on my creep list.  About twenty minutes in, the movie takes a more bleak, post-apocalyptic angle. Right on! I’m thinking “Fallout 3 meets Half Life 2: The Movie”, and I’m ready for some action! About thirty minutes in, the movie makes a 90 degree turn for the 80′s. Complete with the psychotic bad guy, Sol, with his silly punk rock hair-do and spiked jacket. Sol does a jig on stage, eats some human flesh, and I’m lost.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 105 minutes

Directed by: Neil Marshall

Written by: Neil Marshall

Starring: Rhona Mitra, Craig Conway, Sean Pertwee

Theatrical Release: 03/14/08

DVD Release: 07/29/08

Production Budget: $33 million

Domestic Gross: $11 million

Metacritic Score: 51/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 48%

The confusion doesn’t end there, either- there’s still a “Gladiator” scene, a car chase scene that looks a little more like a car commercial than anything else, and the neatly packaged ending.

There’s so much wrong with “Doomsday“, and so much that could have been right. Either the disease pandemic angle or the bleak post-apocalyptic angles could have been awesomely scary. And if Marshall wanted to do an 80′s action/apocalypse homage, that’s cool, too, but pick a genre and stick with it. I’m not necessarily a big fan of the medieval-meets-cheesy-punk-rock apocalypse style, but I’d tolerate it if the movie at least made sense.

“Doomsday” has a disconnected feel, as if it were written in 10 or 20 minute chunks that wind up not really corresponding to one another. Eden’s eye patch, for example, disappears after her first scene.

This was Marshall’s first big budget movie, and think a lot of directors get dollar sign fever when they finally get the big budget. They forget the old adage that “less is more.” Hopefully Marshall will get back to basics for his next feature.

31 Days of Horror – October 10th – “The Wizard of Gore”

Next up in our 31 Days of Horror countdown is “The Wizard of Gore“, a “kind of” remake of a 1970′s Herschell Gordon Lewis movie of the same name.

From a writing perspective, I think “The Wizard of Gore” could have been good- probably even great, and maybe could have cracked my top 5 horror movies, given my penchant for film noir. It’s got the mystery, the shape shifters, and to top it off, a creepy magician. Unfortunately, the directing and production are such collosal failures, the movie assumes the shape of a giant terd.

Montag the Magnificent is not your garden variety magician. When he chooses a female audience member to be part of his show, instead of making a purse disappear or pulling a scarf out of an ear, he slices them open and pulls out their innards or stuffs them inside a giant barbeque and lights it up. But at the end of the show, just as everyone’s about to flee from the theatre in horror, he says his magic words and the girls appear alive and well before the audience’s eyes. But while the girls may leave the stage unharmed (except for being hypnotized into getting naked, no biggie!), one by one they show up corpsified. Journalist Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue) becomes obsessed with the show and the disappearing girls.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 95 minutes

Directed by: Jeremy Kasten

Written by: Zach Chassler

Starring: Kip Pardue, Crispin Glover, Bijou Phillips

Theatrical Release: N/A

DVD Release: 08/18/08

“The Wizard of Gore” looks cheap and amateur across the board. The colored lighting and craaaaaazy camera angles are reminscent of mid 90′s MTV, and I don’t mean that as a compliment, in case it wasn’t obvious. There are odd visual flashes throughout the movie that I found confusing since they tip off the already obvious twist. If they were going to be there at all, they should have been a lot more subtle a la Fight Club. Perhaps director Kasten should focus a bit more on communicating the plot to the audience and a little less on the camera tricks.

Dourif (as a crooked herbalist) and Glover (as the aforementioned creepy magician) give good, if not over-the-top, performances. I get the sense that both actors are desperately trying to save a movie they know is destined for the crapper. Kip Pardue struggles as the lead. His lines are delivered so stiffly, it’s almost as if he’s never seen a noir film.

When I noticed the credit for the Suicide Girls in the opening, I thought, “Send in the boobs.” There should be a Countdown to Titties clock in this movie. Anytime you see a chick with tattoos, put 60 seconds on the clock. And it’s not that I’m opposed to breasts in movies, but pointless mam-shots have become so predictable for horror movies that I find it a bit annoying. Make a decent movie and then you’ve earned your tatas.

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