“The Last House on the Left” is the re-make of the 1972 horror movie shot by famous director Wes Craven. I would say, this thriller is a softer version of the original which was banned in many countries because of its “extreme nature”. In 1972 film Mari dies and son of the main criminal Krug commits suicide, while here they both seem to survive. Or, for example, in the original Mari’s mother performs fellatio on one of the criminals then bites off his penis and spits it out in the lake. In this version, she and her husband kill him mercilessly with home appliances.
Movie trailer may give you the impression that there are elements of the supernatural in this film, but there are none. There are no movie stars in the cast, except for the aged but still recognizable face of the actor Tony Goldwyn who played Carl Bruner in the 80s hit “Ghost”. It is definitely not a family movie and it ends with the memorable execution of Krug performed with another home appliance: regular microwave.
For those of you who still remember 1987 thriller movie Fatal Attraction, the new film Obsessed is just another shameless reprise of the film with Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. Sometimes it makes me wonder, if there are any new ideas left in Hollywood at all? So many new movie releases are just remakes of the old ones… Fatal Attraction gave birth to a whole new films about psychopathic villains like Basic Instinct, Single White Female, Unlawful Entry and such. But Obsessed is not a variation, it is as close as one film version gets to the original while not being considered a remake.
Critics panned the movie, but people voted for it by their money, making the whole venture profitable again. So, trust me, soon we will see more copycats bringing us more anti-heroines with psychopathic tendencies against men who don’t want them.
After this movie finishes its run Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garney need to have a serious talk with their agents. The choice (and the quality) of the scripts that they offer the actors is getting progressively worse. Things like that can’t go on long – there is a big chance that the guys will eventually (if not already) lose their celebrity status. . Ghosts of Girlfriends Past claims to be a romantic comedy, but it is just is so boring and not funny that each and every movie critic panned it.
In fact, initially the first choice for the lead film character was not Matthew at all – it went to Ben Affleck. But he dropped out after the failure of another masterpiece Gigli and McConaughey was brought in to pick up the pieces. Matthew’s character is a womanizer who comes face to face with the ghosts of his girlfriends when he attends his brother’s wedding. This experience helps him to find his true love, who is played, of course, by Jennifer Garner. If you missed this film, you did not lose much, trust me.
One can’t just lose with this sequel. Especially if the original comedy brought authors over half a billion dollars. So here comes Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Main character, played by Ben Stiller, is still divorced. But, behold, he is not a loser anymore – he has started a company to manufacture his inventions.
The rest of the plot is another combination of toothless comedy, pranks and special effects that take place inside American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC (who would have guessed?). There is a couple of movie celebrities that joined the sequel cast.
Family oriented movie already scored, covering the budget, ads and marketing expenses. And I have no doubt that the revenue will keep on growing. I think, the most positive effect of this movie is that audience will find out that people in the Smithsonian do more than just boil decomposed corpses like in the TV show Bones. And new yorkers maybe will take their children one more time to the American Museum of Natural History like they did after they watched the first Night at the Museum.
The face of John Connor changed one more time in the Terminator franchise. In the fourth movie of the series Terminator Salvation we see Christian Bale as the leader of the resistance movement against the damn AI machines that took over the world. I bet, you will go and watch this movie anyways, no matter what I say here. I can just add that the film is entertaining as a science fiction thriller but it’s just not the same without Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Look what happened to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I just heard the announcement that Fox would not renew the show for a third season. And even if you liked it, you know why it has been shut down – no Arnold. The main thing that made the movie famous (at least on YouTube.com) was Christian Bale’s rant when he mercilessly cussed out the photography director and threatened to leave the cast during filming.
New Star Trek is a prequel to all other Star Treks made before. It turns out that Kirk and Spock knew each other before before they unite aboard the USS Enterprise to fight another villain Romulan Nero that returned from future through a black hole. The whole story with time traveling probably confused general audience but many special effects and family friendly film plot won hearts of the movie goers. And Trekkies and Non Trekkies dearly paid for it with over 301 million bucks.
Only one guy from the old cast was brought in – Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock from the future. Schatner was probably busy, doing other projects, like advertising website in commercials. Other guys are young, energetic and agile as they are supposed to bring more millions to Hollywood in future prequels or sequels. This one is the eleventh film based on the Star Trek franchise and its success shows that there will be no end to it in the near future.
Personally, I have nothing against Star Trek, it is nice to have it. I just wonder what happened to all these books from the Gold Age of sci-fi that no director wants to shoot. It is practically untouched by cinematographers who always complain that good scripts are hard to come by. Read the books, ladies and gentlemen, it is all in there.