Top Ten Underrated Villains

Hello associates,

I've wanted to do a villains list from the minute I started this blog, but my main problem was "its been done before." Every Halloween, Spike or SciFi or Bravo have a top villains countdown and I always have seen the same usual suspects on top... Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, the Wicked Witch, Norman Bates, Hans Gruber, Freddy Kruger, the shark from Jaws, etc. I could write up that same list, because honestly, those are the iconic villains that a lot of people know and love. So I decided instead to come up with ten villains that have slipped through the cracks for whatever reason in the popular mind. It's a group of performances that are in fairly major movies, but whenever I see "best of" lists, they never show up. So without further ado...

Honorable Mention - Vincent Cassel in Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Nothing in Neverending Story, Stephen Dorff in Blade, Ben Stiller in Heavyweights, and the 2 main antagonists from Battle Royale

10. Ed Harris as General Francis Hummel, The Rock

Ed Harris' portrayal of Hummel shows what a talented actor can do with a stock villain role. I think he's underrated because a lot of people remember the Rock for the explosions, the Sean Connery one liners, and another mopey Nick Cage embarassment. Besides Harris, you also get Tony Todd (Candyman!), David Morse, and John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox!) as the members of his Marine squad.

Hummel holds the city of San Francisco hostage with a stockpile of biological weapons, yet when push comes to shove, Hummel does not try to take lives. Almost any stock villain would fail because the heroes defuse the bomb or stop him, but Hummel fails because of his moral values and beliefs. His actions don't seem weak or pathetic, but more like what a realistic career military man would do.

As an audience, you run the full range of emotions with him... you sense he's just trying to do his job and I love his reaction when the mariners led my personal favorite Michael Biehn try to invade Alcatraz. During the fierce gunfight that ensues, there's a fairly quite shot of Harris' face. His facial expression relays so much emotino compared to the typically hammy acting military villains from action movies. For being so three dimensional and realistic, Harris as General Hummel takes the place to start the list.


9. Tim Roth as Archibald Cunningham, Rob Roy

I had a hard time putting this performance on the list, as Roth did receive an Academy Award Best Supporting Actor nomination (losing to Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects who in my opinion should have been up for Best Actor...). However, in the years since 1996, it seems like Rob Roy has been somewhat forgotten. Also, Cunningham disappears for decent chunks of the movie and is the henchman to John Hurt's aristocratic character.

If you haven't seen it, the skilled yet effeminate Cunningham has the job of tracking down the rebel highlander Rob Roy. Despite his 'fancy' and 'dandy' exterior, he proves himself to be a ruthless and formidable foe. By the time this raping, stealing, murdering, wig-wearing aristocratic psychopath finally crosses swords with Liam Neeson's Roy, you've never wanted to see a movie villain die more. Fortunately, the amazing ending doesn't disappoint. After simply annihilating Liam Neeson for what seems like ten minutes... well, check it out... (sorry about the Polish subtitles, but there isn't much dialogue and this is the tightest edit of the fight I could find) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27M5KWI_q50&feature=PlayList&p=8BD409B68B76405D&index=0&playnext=1. So for a cool, nasty, and girly display of evil, Roth makes it on the list.

8. Michael Wincott as Top Dollar, The Crow

So if Roth gets on for abuse of Liam Neeson, then Wincott gets on for being responsible for killing the main character right away (and that's not a Brandon Lee joke, its in the plot). The original Crow has been forgotten and it seems like all people remember is the unfortunate death of Brandon Lee. Wincott has made a career of using his amazingly gravelly voice to play an assortment of pretty cool villains, like in Robin Hood Princes of Thieves, Along Came a Spider, Dead Man, and the Count of Monte Cristo. I think his best overall performance comes as this criminal mastermind in the 1994 Crow.

Top Dollar is interesting because he's first and foremost a businessman and only hates the Crow because he's losing money. Dollar's fallen on hard times and is trying to get his organization back its former glory. He's smart, organized, and vile, sleeping with his sister and encouraging drug deals. For most of the movie, he uses his various henchmen (including Candyman himself, Tony Todd) yet fares quite well himself in the climatic battle against the superhuman vigilante (wounding the titular bird does tip the scales in his favor). For combining scuzz with smooth, Wincott makes the list as this nasty capitalist.


7. Colin Farrell as Bullseye, Daredevil

After a meteoric rise to stardom, Colin Farrell's career tumbled after a series of mediocre starring performances (Alexander anyone?). Bullseye is a completely psychopathic hitman with the mutant power of superhuman reflexes giving him perfect accuracy with handheld weaponry. Given that over a dozen Marvel movies have been released in the last 10 years or so, to me, Daredevil tends to get lost in the mix (the non-chemistry/acting of the Affleck-Garner love story helped that out, as well as a last second studio decision to change the rating from R to PG-13).
Farrell as Bullseye just seems to have a lot of fun and genuinely enjoys what he does, while still being menacing and a threat. This balance of humor and intensity is what makes Bullseye memorable and elevates him over some of his more serious contemporaries (Yes, Ian McKellan's portrayal of Magento has more depth and substance, but that character isn't exactly underrated). Bonus points can be given to the producers/director for having Bullseye use Farrell's natural Irish accent.


6. John Hurt (voice) as the Horned King, The Black Cauldron

Somehow, someway he's a Disney villain... yikes! During my animated characters countdown, I revealed my love for the Black Cauldron, part of which stems from this amazingly evil villain, the Horned King. Many of the iconic Disney villains that tend to make these lists are at least a bit comedic (Captain Hook, Cruella DeVil, Ursula) in one way or another. The Horned King has no funny side... He's a red robed, red eyed, skeletal, antler wearing despot with plans of world conquest. That's right, his scheme involves taking over the world, which runs contrary to the normal Disney motivation of messing with a princess or cute animal, maybe even taking over the African savannah or a European castle.

His method for doing so is even creepier... find a magical cauldron with arcane power, fill it with the bodies of warriors his armies have killed, and then ressurect them as an unstoppable army of the undead. The Horned King also commands a living army of thuggish warrior as well as vicious pteradactyl type creatures called Gwythaints, all of whom are dominated by fear and intimidation. The Horned King scores so low for two reasons, 1.) he doesn't really do a lot himself besides be a creepy menace and 2.) he makes the classic James Bond villain mistake of imprisoning instead of killing the heroes which makes him a not quite as effective in my opinion.

(I appreciate theatrically trained British character actor types quite a bit - this may be an ongoing theme for this list). The Horned King's voice is provided by the distinguished and distinctive Brit John Hurt. Hurt tends to play more emotionally anguished and complex protagonists or is often used as a narrator. However, he shows his range by playing an ugly, menacing villain (actually a more subtle performance than his villainous dictator in V for Vendetta). Horned King deserves his spot for being a big part of why the Black Cauldron was the first PG rated animated Disney movie.


5. Christopher Plummer as General Chang, Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country

My level of enjoyment of Star Trek is a fairly mixed bag. I have fond memories of the original series and the Next Generation as a kid, and I do enjoy several of the movies, but I did not follow any of the later series (so I think that makes me a casual Trekkie). Whenever I bring up Star Trek villains, three tend to come up... the most overused - the Klingons, the most visually striking/menacing - the Borg, and the hammiest - Ricardo Montalban as Khan. Since rarely are specific Klingons mentioned, Christopher Plummer's portrayal of Chang deserves recognition as not only the best Klingon villain, but a great villain in his own right (I just think personally a lot of people dismiss Star Trek VI as the one where the cast looks really, really old (the actors were in their late 50s to early 70s at the time of filming) or the one with the clumsy Cold War analogies (fairly true). I think the filmmakers realized this and had the story be sort of a Star Trek meets Tom Clancy/CSI which was more cereberal and less physical for the most part.).

The Klingons on Star Trek are a brutish warrior race that live by honor, but unlike the stereotypical brash and stupid villains (Christopher Lloyd's Klingon character from Star Trek 3) Chang is a scheming, intelligent planner. Instead of trying to blow up the Earth with a superweapon, Chang uses political trickery to assassinate political leaders, mentally toying around with the primary cast leading to the imprisonment of Kirk and McCoy. This realistic motivation combined with the class and elegance the classically trained Plummer (Unfortunate that despite Plummer's acting skills, he's never been even nominated for an Oscar, he has won 2 Emmy and 2 Tony awards) brings to the part makes him a great villain. I also like the visual look of the character, at Plummer's request, they didn't coat him with prosthetics, letting the character have more complex emotions (props go to the intimidating eyepath held on by three screws... now that's tough). I think the Shakespeare quoting, cool, yet devious Chang deserves his spot on the list.


4. Thomas Ian Griffith as Terry Silver, Karate Kid part III

The first Karate Kid movie has two memorable villains in the evil Cobra Kai disciple Billy Zabka as Johnny Lawrence and his mentor, John Kreese, played by Martin Kove, but to me, they don't hold up after watching the master of evil, Terry Silver, in part 3.

After the original villains are humiliated by Danielsan and Mr. Miyagi (and after a sequel that doesn't expand on this particular story much at all), Kreese contacts his Vietnam war vet friend, Terry Silver, to help him get revenge. The character of Terry Silver is incredibly rich, dresses extremely well, happens to also be a black belt karate sensei, and he makes his living by illegally dumping toxic waste...

Thomas Ian Griffith plays the smarmy asshole of a character perfectly (He might have the best evil smirk in movie history through the early parts of the movie). I personally love that he schemes and negotiates both in a sauna and while taking a bubblebath. He sets up a bunch of run ins with Daniel to gain his trust, telling him Kreese has died, and training him in his own form of karate. Silver makes it a point to train Daniel the wrong way, telling him to use his anger and turning him against Mr. Miyagi. I definitely acknowledge that the idea that a billionaire would devote his personal time and resources to defeat and humiliate a local teenage karate champion is extremely ridiculous (Karate Kid 3 does not = realism). Griffith has so much fun with the part, not taking things too seriously, as his character in real life probably wouldn't. Overcoming such impossible odds is why Karate Kid 3 works as a movie at all, as by the end you really want Daniel-san to take this maniac down once and for all.


3. Elijah Wood as Kevin, Sin City

Now we get to the serious evil... This is probably the second best example of "casting against type" on this list. Kevin in the comics is more of a middle aged typical 'molester' and seemed menacing, but not quite as interesting at first. Then, you learn that Kevin is a cannibal who feeds the leftovers to his mostly feral pet wolf and keeps the heads on his wall... over the top and ridiculous, yes, but so is the rest of the Sin City universe. I love the movie adaptation, and I think this performance tends to get lost in the mix (if I had written this right after Sin City came out, I don't Wood would be as underrated).

Robert Rodriguez's decision to cast the innocent hobbit (only Rings joke in this section, I promise!) as the vicious killer made things all the creepier. At first, I thought it was gross miscasting, but changing the character's age and tweaking the look was a huge improvement. In the role, Elijah Wood has no lines of dialogue, yet manages to convey emotion extremely well through body language and his expressive eyes.

Part of what made Kevin so menacing is how much trouble he gives Marv (Mickey Rourke). Marv's combination of size and strength coupled with his fighting abilities makes him seemingly superhuman, yet the much smaller Kevin gives him more physical trouble than anyone else in the movie. The reasons he shows up this low o my countdown are his lack of screen time and relative unimportance to the overall plot (I think of him like Boba Fett from the first Star Wars trilogy). Yet he more then earns his spot with his distinctive look (love the glasses and preppy sweater), his spectacular comeuppance, and that the character made Elijah Wood frightening.


2. Frank Langella as Skeletor, Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe is a fatally flawed movie, yet this performance gets lost in the general sillyness of seeing He-Man fight evil in the suburbs of New Jersey. Frank Langella is a criminally underused and underrated actor, often appearing as stock villains in awful movies such as Cutthroat Island, Junior, and the Whoopi Goldberg opus, Eddie. When given a script that has the chance to flex his sizable acting chops, he can put together a performance like his portrayal of Richard Nixon in Frost vs. Nixon or his take of Dracula in the late 70s.

Skeletor in the cartoon He-Man was a fairly goofy yet visually dynamic villain with typical plans for world conquest and incompetent henchmen. The movie Skeletor comes across as an intelligent, persuasive schemer who retains the craze for power his predecessor had. The makeup on Langella is pretty good for the time period and budget and the costume/ram's head staff look genuine.

For such a crummy movie, Langella puts forth a ton of effort to make Skeletor a somewhat layered, menacing, and all around bad guy. I really love the monologue he delivers at the end when Skeletor gets the power of the universe. It's an amazingly moving and intense and I actually am rooting for Skeletor a bit as he finally is able to match He-Man physically. So for taking a buffoonish villain out of a badly animated show and making him a believable foe, Skeletor takes his spot on the list.


1. Ted Levine as Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Silence of the Lambs

This performance is why I came up with this list, because lost behind the iconic, Academy Award winning Anthony Hopkins was this amazing characterization of a serial killer. Ted Levine is a talented character actor who usually plays cops, military types, or similar authority figures (Heat, Hills Have Eyes remake, and the boss on Monk are the three other roles that popped to mind). It wasn't until well after I saw the movie that I connected Gumb with any other part that Levine has played (trying to illustrate how unrecognizable he is).

For starters, the character is written as a somewhat feminine transvestite. On paper, there's definitely potential for Gumb to be silly or funny and not as scary. Ted Levine reportedly spent some time with transvestites in bars in order to not make the character a complete caricature. He also purposefully avoided villain roles in the years after the Silence of the Lambs was released to avoid being typecast. His dedication and hard work pays off as Gumb comes across as psychotic and disturbing in a somewhat realistic sort of way. In my opinion, the entire "lotion-dog-pit" sequence would be one of the best 'serial killer' scenes in any movie.

Finally, a good chunk of why Silence of the Lambs works so well is that the character of Jame Gumb is so threatening and out there. The search to catch him becomes so intense that the advice of Hannibal Lector becomes crucial. Strangely, while reading about this character, I found out the author Thomas Harris based the main plot of Silence of the Lambs on a true story, but not the story of noted serial killer Ed Gein (who definitely influenced the character of Hannibal Lector). I found it personally incredible, but a Seattle detective actually sought out the advice of Ted Bundy to try and catch the Green River Killer.

So there's my list... Check the movies if you haven't seen any yet...

Pandorum and Surrogates

September... The month where the kids go back to school, Bumbershoot happens, baseball rosters get really big, and Jason Statham releases another crappy action movie. In general, September and January are the two 'dump months' of the calendar year... when studios release movies that they have little faith in ( or that will only appeal to a limited audience (Stomp the Yard or Tyler Perry's latest endeavor).

Surrogates and Pandorum were both released the last weekend of September 2009. Surrogates was the higher budgeted movie at 80 M, grossing a combined 60.5 M worldwide and domestic. It also featured a bigger 'name' cast, headlined by Bruce Willis and a trailer featured Mr. Willis fighting robots. Pandorum cost 40 M, but failed to crack 15 M worldwide. Pandorum's previews gave it a Resident Evilish vibe, it was produced by Paul W.S. Anderson (the man behind the Mortal Kombat movie, the Death Race remake, and all 3 live action Res Evil films), and starred the poor man's Harrison Ford, Dennis Quaid.

Based on those descriptions... Surrogates obviously comes out on top, having at least a chance to make back some money on bluray/dvd sales and rentals, but both were financial failures. I'm not to going into a lot of detail reviewing these, because both were fairly derivative... but some quick bullet pointish thoughts.

Surrogates... The central concept is that in the near future, 98% of people live their lives through robotic 'surrogates' that can get into dangerous situations while keeping their owners harmfree and far away. In and itself, its not bad idea for a movie, and personally, I hope that some day war could fought in that sort of way... just robots fighting and keeping humans safer.

The acting for the most part is decent enough. Willis goes through the motions, using his combination of cynicism, inventiveness, and vulnerablility to play the same character he's played many times before. Supporting cast... Rastafarian Ving Rhames was entertaning (its a different sort of character than his usual 'tough guy'), James Cromwell (the farmer from Babe) played another grumpy authority figure, and Radha Mitchell, while fairly attractive, really needs more fleshed out parts in movies. I'd like to figure out if its the writing or her talent why she's so bland and forgettable, but not really bad.

Plotwise, Surrogates was decent (how the Matrix started meets I, Robot describes it well) and the ending actually makes a lot of sense, its just the setup that makes the whole film crumble. Offhand, there are enough problems with the concepts of surrogate robots that it just killed the movie for me. I watched this yesterday... and I've come up with 5 reasons to prove how stupid it is (no real spoilers here, if you watch the first few minutes of the movie, these issues should be obvious).

1. Why isn't everyone obese? I mean, you'd still have to eat and drink, but controlling a surrogate means you pretty much are immobile in a chair the whole day.

2. Wouldn't this kill off the massive restaurant industry? I mean, the surrogates themselves don't have to eat anything and that's 98% of the population moving around in this movie. I mean, they could bring back carryout, but I can't see a bunch of people sending their robots to get Jack in the Box tacos...

3. How cheap are these super advanced surrogates? Everyone seems to have them, and they are super advanced (I think there's a 10 year timeline or so in the intro from when they get invented to mass produced). Think about personal computers, I mean it took at least 10 years just to have something like the Apple 2GS, Amiga, or Commodore 64 from the room sized computers of the 70s... I can't believe that they would be that affordable for 'everyone' to have them...

4. The surrogates seem to be as strong and agile as the script calls for. At some points, they are really strong, can jump almost like Spiderman, take a fair amount of damage... This isn't a spoiler, its in every preview! Yet, in some scenes, they get taken out in just stupid ways. I realize that average people are 'behind the wheel' but if I had one of these things, I'd be jumping and climbing around everywhere. I mean, it would be expensive and maybe a little silly to have everyone bounding around like kangaroos, but even from an efficiency standpoint, it doesn't make sense. Its not like the robots get tired! (they could lose battery power maybe, but there seems to be recharging stations everywhere!)

5. This last one REALLY ground my gears. The surrogate robots use cell phones to communicate and talk to each other like humans! Think about this, these superadvanced robots controlled by wireless signal from great distances still use cell phones? Think about the Matrix, the Agents just sort of thought to each other through their earpieces. When Trinity needed piloting skill in the first Matrix, they just uploaded it into her brain, and she was a human! I mean, I realize the movie needs dialogue or else it would be really boring if robots just gave each other all knowing looks back and forth. For a non robot equivalent, instead of bluetooths, people starting using those old rotary phones..

Enough ranting about the stupidity of Surrogates and onto Pandorum...

I can't really say much about the plot without completely ruining it.

So instead, I'll discuss the setup a bit though, its about two crewman on a spaceship played by Ben Foster (Angel from Xmen3 or the crazy sharpshooter from 3:10 to Yuma) and Dennis Quaid trying to fix their damaged ship. See, they are trying to get from Earth to some distant planet without a Star Trek/Wars warp drive. This would take a really, really long time, so there are many different 'shifts' of crewmen who work for a few years, then go back to a deep cryogenic sleep. This seems like the way you'd handle a manned interstellar mission...

Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system... is 4.5 light years away. Meaning if we sent a spaceship at 1/10th light speed (which is currently technologically possible, but would be ridiculously expensive), it would get there in 45 or so years. It would then take another 45 years to get back to earth. Given the limitations of human life expectancy and the difficulties of raising children in space to man a return mission, this would seem insurmountable. However, what if you had 6 shifts of people operating the same ship? Each would only be awake for roughly 15 years, and if you could cryogenically freeze them so that they couldn't age in the meantime (well, that in and itself is sort of silly), it would help with the aging problem.

Problem is, making a movie about a long trip like that would be tedious at best, so, we get some bland monsters that are a blend of the Ghosts of Mars and Gollum. These chase our heroes around dimly lit corridors, feast on a diet of extras and supporting characters, and disappear when the script needs to get in some exposition. Yep, the middle section is a lot like the crappier parts of the first 3 Alien movies, especially the 'running through the tunnels' part from Alien3. However, the ending pulls everything back together and had a twist I didn't really anticipate at all.

So if you want a September sci movie with an interesting concept, bland action, and a cool ending, skip Surrogates and check out Pandorum.

That's all I have to say about that.

Bottom 7 movies of 2009

I watch a lot of movies. That statement shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone. I feel like I should do a 'year in review' so I'll give my top and bottom 7.

I'm only considering cinematic releases, so all straight to DVD movies aren't up for consideration (number 1 would be utterly dreadful S. Darko) So I'll start at the bottom 7, the worst of 2009 (I haven't seen Old Dogs or Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, so they are omitted)...

Dishonorable mentions (the next 7 in no particular order); Transformers; Revenge of the Fallen, The Uninvited, Haunting of Molly Hartley, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Paul Blart Mall Cop, Fighting, and Babylon A.D.

7. Year One

Jack Black = funny, Michael Cera = funny, Harold Ramis = funny, Black+Cera+Ramis = amazingly unfunny. For starters, the idea of cavemen wandering through biblical times does have some comic potential (I was hoping for something like Mel Brook's History of the World). Ramis assembled a who's who of comedians for the supporting cast, including Hank Azaria, David Cross, Paul Rudd, Christopher 'McLovin' Mintz-Plasse, Kyle "Tenacious D" Gass, and Bill Hader. The problem is, Black and Cera lazily play their normal 'types' (Black constantly mugs, wiggles his eyebrows and dances around, Cera talks really quietly and is awkward around women, etc.) while most of the supporting cast get very little screen time and have little impact on the story. The worst offender of the supporting cast is the terrifically unfunny and overly hairy Oliver Platt as a high priest (and I even sort of liked Platt in Lake Placid, so that should give an example of how awful he is here).

Its like Ramis assembled his cast and forgot to give them anything remotely funny to do. The humor involves too many pratfalls, tired homophobic routines (yep, some things about the Romans would seem fairly gay by today's standards), and dumb scatological jokes (a poop joke that was better in the 3rd American Pie). A lot of money got put into the costumes and sets (the movie had a budget of 60 M, fairly high for a straight comedy) but none was put into the story or script. This movie makes the list over the other contenders because the three or four good jokes are all in the preview (only Bill Hader's sadly brief appearance would be the sole exception), making the following hour and forty minutes an extremely boring, unfunny affair.

6. Dragonball Evolution

This movie was poorly edited and written, had a delayed theatrical release, and then dumped to theaters in April 2009. Given the difficult to adapt source material and that the budget was slashed from 100 M in preproduction down to 30 M for production, I feel a little bad for this movie from the start. It seems like 20th Century Fox has been steadily accumulating the rights to a number of properties with a strong built in 'core' audience (The Seeker, Eragon, Hitman, Garfield, Fantastic Four, etc.). Then, the resulting movie adaptations get as little effort into budget and script as possible. The ensuing cheap cinematic abortions then are dumped to theaters hoping to lure in the enthusiastic fan base and thus cash in on the 'name' value (and so far have mostly tanked).

For casting, despite being set in Japan, Canadian Justin Chatwin is miscast as the lead Son Goku as is Emmy Rossum as the blue haired inventor Bulma. Amidst a sea of awfulness in the supporting cast, Chow Yun-Fat hammily enjoys himself as Master Roshi while an underwritten James Marsters evils it up as Lord Piccolo. Vegita, the most interesting and popular character from the anime, doesn't even appear at all. I think a good 30 M Dragonball movie starring a Canadian was doomed from the very start, so this is low on my "bad" list.

5. Knowing

Most of Knowing wasn't 'that' bad, having an interesting concept and being helmed by Alex Proyas, (who joins David Goyer in the "creative people I love that made a horrible 2009 movie" list) the director of Dark City and the first Crow. Nick Cage is only moderately irritating, there are a couple cool action sequences, and the cinematography is decent. However, with about a half hour to go, the movie goes from alright to a big bag of sloppy goose shit. Where do I begin?

If there was a giant solar flare, the levels of UV radiation would greatly increase thereby increasing the frequency and rate of cancer. The characters talk about UV radiation a couple different times... Yet, the climax (given away in the previews) features a giant ID4 style fireball engulfing most of the world. Apparently, people dying of radiation < stuff exploding! To paraphrase what happens in the end of the movie... what if at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, after Indy found the Grail and reconciled with his father, got crushed by the falling debris in the temple? Wouldn't that suck? Yep, it would, and so did this movie, featuring one the worst endings of any major movie that I've seen.

4. Street Fighter, Legend of Chun Li

There have been a lot of terrible video game movies, so I tend to give most of them a little more latitude given their weak subject matter. What's wrong with this sequel? For a game with literally dozens of characters, we only get 7 in this movie - Chun Li, M. Bison, Charlie, Vega, Balrog, Gen, and Rose. What's wrong with this list? For starters, the first Street Fighter movie focused on Guile, so his omission is fine, but to me, the sequel had to be about the HaDouken twins, Ken and Ryu (the 2 most popular characters). Not only are they not part of the plot, they aren't even in the movie at all (except for a name drop towards the end). This would be the equivalent of having X-Men 2 be all about Storm and leaving Wolverine completely out.

Next, some awful casting decisions... Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog is about the only thing that works... In the opening montage, Chun Li grows up from being obviously of Asian descent to the Canadian Kristen Kreuk (who does a decent job with the martial arts and puts forth a decent acting effort). Neal McDonough seems more like a standard mob boss than the evil dictator M. Bison (He's no Raul Julia and he's the completely wrong physical type). The guy playing the martial arts legend Gen is far too young (the same actor played Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat!). For the fearsome clawed killer Vega, we get the hispanic guy from the Black Eyed Peas... ugh. The real reason this movie features on the list is the absolutely all time awful performance from Chris Klein as Charlie Nash. Klein's characterization features the worst acting (being hammy yet bland all at once) from a 'name' actor that I've ever seen in a major motion picture. Since he's only a supporting character, that saves this flick from the worst of the year.


3. All About Steve

Oscar award winning Sandra Bullock has been irritating and annoying before, but her performance of a shrill, stalkerish, obsessive crossword puzzle writer takes the cake for her worst career performance (I was wishing for her burping FBI agent from Miss Congeniality about twenty minutes in). Also starring the amazingly bland Bradley Cooper, this movie has three terminal flaws.
strike 1 bad acting
strike 2 bad plot
strike 3 bad writing.
The only thing that saves movie from being the worst of the year is the costarring tandem of Thomas Haden Church and Ken Jeong as an arrogant news anchor and a suffering camera tech. These two are trying to bring the funny into a painfully unfunny script, they have all the best lines (some of which have to be improvised) and make their part of the movie tolerable. Unfortunately, the movie is focused on a creepy Bullock-Cooper "romance" which makes the final project abysmal. I'll put it this way, when Bullock falls down a gaping hole (the only good physical joke and ruined in the preview) I was hoping for her death or at least serious bone breaking injury. Instead, I got another half hour of movie... ughhhh.

2. The Unborn

Out of the 2 Un movies released in early 2009 along with the Uninivited, this movie is everything that's wrong with most American horror. Using a combination of really cheap boo scares along with cheap rip offs of prominent horror movies like the Exorcist, the Grudge, and others does not scary make. The really sad thing about this one isn't the cool looking trailer, the waste of talent of David Goyer (who wrote Dark Knight, Blade, and Dark City), or a slumming Gary Oldman. The sad thing is that the movie is only PG-13, depriving it of the gore or nudity it would need to be at least entertaining (like the My Bloody Valentine remake).

1. Bride Wars

This might be one of the least funny comedies I've ever seen. It makes chick flicks look bad by being an offensive farce involving two lifelong friends who sabotage and destroy each others lives (using methods that might have been funny in Saved by the Bell) because their weddings get accidentally booked on the same day. Given the current 'bridezilla,' over competitive weddings of today, I truly believe that a script with good comic potential exists. Furthermore, you get a completely cheap "happy ending" because one of the male characters makes a script based decision to question the stupidity of the movie's plot. Anne Hathaway should have known better, Kate Hudson's agent needs a career change (Fool's Gold looked like an Oscar contender compared to this). Just amazingly unfunny, cliched, and completely devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever.

My Favorite Twelve Supporting Kids Cartoon Characters

Salutations,

So I have a half dozen or so 'best of' lists that are half finished and I'm going to be proactive and finish them. The first and easiest because its the closest to being done is my supporting cartoon characters list. I have the distinction of being able to watch six hours of cartoons (anything PG rated or less) at work every day so I've been looking at a LOT of kids movies (because Disney sequels > Olson Twins movies) lately and that's where I came up with this particular group. To preface this, its kids characters only, so no Brian from Family Guy or Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons. Also, its supporting characters, so no primary heroes (mostly boring) or villains (saving for another list) are going to appear here. So without further ado...

12. The Aracuan Bird (Disney, no credited voice actor that I can find)
Well, I know this particular character probably isn't on anyone's list, but let me explain a bit. Most old time cartoon shorts had a hero and villain and thus almost none of them technically worked for this list (I didn't want to use super obvious characters like Goofy or Daffy). The Aracuan Bird appeared in three Donald Duck cartoons: a segment of the movie The Three Caballeros(1945), the short The Clown of the Jungle (1947) and a segment of the movie Melody Time called Blame it on the Samba (1948) (you can look up some if not all three on YouTube). The bird melds the more plot driven, safer Disney cartoons with the kinetic energy of the Warner Brothers. Given the generic, fairly tame adversaries that Donald Duck normally dealt with (ants, a dopey bee, Pluto, etc.), this combination of Woody Woodpecker and the Looney Tunes Dodo hopped up on RedBull really made an impression on me as a kid, despite his sparse appearances. So representing the bright nonsense of classic cartoon, the Aracuan Bird makes the list.

Fun Fact - there is an actual Araucuan bird (note the slightly different spelling) native to South
America.

11. The Huntsman (Freakazoid, voiced by Jeff Bennett)
Okay, this is the last really obscure character, I promise. If you weren't aware, I really love Freakazoid!... If you don't know what it is at all, it followed Animaniacs and spoofed superheroes the way Animaniacs spoofs classic Warner/Disney cartoons. Like Animaniacs, the show had multiple segments and shorts without a real main plot line. One of the supporting characters, The Huntsman, is a combination of Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, and Robin Hood. He's strong, magical, tough, and has an amazing theme song that to this day I still can recite pretty well. Unfortunately, he doesn't usually have much to do... watch this (its only about 3 minutes) to get a good idea of why he's hilariously awesome... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPbIiLrNGZo

Fun Fact - Jeff Bennett also voiced Dexter's Dad on Dexter's Laboratory...

10. Hammy (Over the Hedge, Steve Carrell)
Over the Hedge isn't even one of my 20 favorite animated movies, but the surprisingly manic vocal performance by the normally even mannered Steve Carrell combined with a really fluid animation puts him on my list. I suprised myself with just how fun and crazy this character is when I watched the movie again. I thought long and hard about including Chip or Dale or both, but in the end they weren't as interesting. I went with what would happen if Chip or Dale freebased some cocaine... you'd get Hammy. If you haven't seen Over the Hedge, its a fun throwback type of movie and Hammy's role in the very end of the climax is what put got him in the list.

Fun Fact - Hammy suggests calling the titular hedge "Steve" saying that "Steve is a nice name"

9. Snake Eyes (G.I. Joe, no credited voice actor)
This one was tricky for me... I wanted a character from the 80s action cartoons I watched a lot in my very young years. Optimus Prime seemed like a main character and the best part of He-Man and Thundercats were the villains. That left G.I. Joe and by far my favorite Joe was the silent ninja Snake Eyes. If I remember right (and its been probably 15 years since I've seen any of the G.I. Joe episodes) Snake Eyes was severely burned and suffered damaged vocal cords in a helicopter explosion. Although you'd think a guy armed with only a sword and a few grenades would be at a disadvantage in a firefight, you would underestimate the poor aim of the Cobra troops. Quiet, badass, action star with nary a line, Snake Eyes deserves his spot on this list

Fun Fact - Not a fact at all, but I was always really cheesed that besides hardly being in it, Snake Eyes got his butt whooped twice in the G.I. Joe movie... I know they were pushing the newer characters to sell more toys, but don't make the cool old characters look like total wimps. At least he had a better fate than most of the original Transformers in their 80s movie....

8. Gurgi (The Black Cauldron ,John Byner)
I really love Lloyd Alexander's series of Prydain novels quite a bit. For those who are unaware, its a series of five books, the second of which is the Black Cauldron, which are based on Welsh mythology. The rights to the series are owned by Disney, who only produced the 1985 classic, the Black Cauldron, which at the time was the only Disney animated feature to receive a PG rating... Gurgi is to the Prydain books as Sam is to Lord of the Rings, only if Sam was a mix between a dog and a monkey. Gurgi is full of mischief, but is arguably the most heroic character in the movie. His two traits are his use of rhyming couplets (the most famous was "crunchings and munchings") and his odd voice, spoken all in the 3rd person, provided by impressionist John Byner (who's most famous for the ant and aardvark characters from the Pink Panther cartoon). To try and describe the voice... think maybe a more intelligible Donald Duck who's a heavy smoker. To sum it up, in terms of balancing loyalty, humor, and an unforgettable voice, Gurgi gets the spot at #8.

Fun Fact - Gurgi is the only character from Black Cauldron to have his own attraction at a Disney theme park, Gurgi's Munchies and Crunchies at Magic Kingdom DisneyWorld. It was open from 1986-1993 and then changed into Lumiere's Kitchen (it's currently called the Village Fry Shoppe).

7. Puss in Boots (Shrek 2, Antonio Banderas)
I don't enjoy the Shrek character or franchise that much but somehow someway this little guy makes it on the list. He's why I own Shrek 2 and not the original... The movie character combines the fairytale with Antonio Banderas playing Zorro with a lot of 'cat' still intact. The cute cat faces, the constant distractions, the funny payoff of the "Cops" sequence... Exactly what a supporting character should do. The character is popular enough that Dreamworks has a spinoff in production based more on the actual fairytale. I'm looking forward to that a lot more than the actual fourth Shrek movie that's coming out this year.




Fun Fact - Antonio Banderas also does the voice in the Spanish language version of the movie.

6. Tiger (An American Tail, Dom DeLuise)
First off, R.I.P. Dom DeLuise who died earlier this year. I think the movie buff would remember DeLuise as Burt Reynolds' co star in both Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit as well as his small parts in Mel Brooks films. I personally became aware of DeLuise through a variety of animated characters, primarily in Don Bluth films. An American Tail is the first movie I can remember seeing in theaters when I was 4 years old, so chalk up personal bias as to why Tiger is so high on this list. I was discussing Tiger with a friend at work who dismissed the character as being a knockoff of the Cowardly Lion from Wizard of Oz. I disagree and I think that the combination of panic, embarassment, agitation, and warmth DeLuise brought to the role gave it a more depth than the Lion (I think the physical comparison is more apt). Even though An American Tail will always be remembered for the song Somewhere Out There, I think Tiger's musical number "A Duo" deserves a mention (as well as the trippy visuals).

Fun Fact - Dom DeLuise voiced the character of Tiger seventeen times, in both theatrical movies, both straight to DVD sequels, and in all 13 awful episodes of Fievel's American Tails. The only character he voiced more was Itchy, the Daschund from All Dogs Go To Heaven (21 times).

5. Kronk (Emperor's New Groove, Patrick Warburton)
Maybe a surprise being this high, but I think Emperor's New Groove is the best post Lion King Disney movie. The film had a troubled history, losing an Owen Wilson voiced slacker type (good thing) and a soundtrack full of Sting songs (bad thing) for Kronk (great thing) and a Tom Jones song (pretty cool thing). It's always tough for G rated animated movies to reach both the kids without boring/excluding the adults. Most of the time, the more adult humor is pop culture/movie references. This movie has a fair share of those, but most of the humor is from the ever deadpan Patrick Warburton as Kronk, the dim witted yet well meaning henchman. Warburton tends to play two sorts of characters - tough (Joe from Family Guy or the Hoodwinked Wolf) or dumb (The live action Tick or Puddy from Seinfeld). He's been typecast for sure, but he plays the monotonous dimwit so gleefully well that he completely steals the movie despite being a villain's sidekick. Special props go to the use of the "angel and demon on the shoulders" gag that Disney brought back from their old Pluto cartoons.

Fun Fact - Showing that Disney realized he was the best part of the first movie, the character of Kronk starred in the straight to DVD sequel, Kronk's New Groove.

4. Genie (Aladdin, Robin Williams)
Robin Williams' comic stylings have led to a fairly hit or miss film career. To me, his two greatest comedic performances are in Good Morning Vietnam and Aladdin, where his manic improvs make sense in the context of the story. Everyone has their favorite, but out of all the modern Disney film sidekicks, the Genie combines personality with humor and visual flair while still being crucial to the plot (which is why he's here and some of his contemporaries aren't on this list).
Unlike most animated movies, Williams improved almost all of his dialogue. He had the script outline with suggested topics and came up with the various transformations (an estimated 52 character changes). Visually, the animators were inspired the stylings of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld to make the genie much more 'cartoony' than most of the human cast. The fluid animation combined with Williams' improvs that don't detract from the story are what put the Genie on the list. Plus, he has 2 songs, one of was Oscar nomiated (Friend Like Me) and might be my favorite Disney song. Finally, the Genie inspired the coolest level of the Sega Genesis Aladdin game (the 2nd best Disney video game after the NES Ducktales).

Fun Fact - After a contract dispute, Dan Castellaneta (the voice of Homer Simpson), took over for Robin Williams for Return of Jafar and the Aladdin animated series.

3. The Brain (Animaniacs, Maurice LaMarche)
Now this may seem like a cheat, but I'm using the Brain's appearances from Animaniacs as opposed to his own show. I make this distinction because I think Pinky and the Brain work best as shorts and not as well as full half hour cartoons. The Brain's personality seems to be part Napolean Bonparte and part Vincent Price, and the voice is based on Orson Welles. His appearance is actually based on Tom Minton, a producer and writer of Animaniacs. I find the Pinky and the Brain cartoons a good balance of classic Warners slapstick with a lot of really clever pop culture references (I especially love Brainy the Poo and Bubba Bo Bob Brain). Finally, the Brain started the great catch phrase "Are you pondering what I'm pondering..."

Fun Fact - Maurice LaMarche also imitated Orson Welles in Ed Wood, dubbing over Vince D'Onofrio's cameo.

2. Launchpad McQuack (Terry McGovern, Ducktales)
The best of the best as far as supporting characters go, Launchpad was far and away the greatest original character in Ducktales and then joined Darkwing Duck after Ducktales was cancelled. He served as the bodyguard and pilot for Scrooge and was the focus of several early episodes. His cleft beak/chin, the aviator goggles and bomber jacket gave him a distinctive visual look, being one of the largest characters in Ducktales. I also have to mention his ability to crash any sort of transportation with little to no injury to Launchpad or his passengers. Launchpad had a lot of courage and integrity and beyond his pilot skills, served as the voice of reason and honesty compared to the more obssessive Scrooge. My favorite Launchpad episode has to be Double o Duck in which he becomes James Bondish spy (an episode that has little to do with Scrooge or the nephews at all). As the series of Ducktales went on, Launchpad was used less and was replaced by both Bubba Duck and Gizmoduck, he also did not play a big role in the Ducktales movie. In Darkwing Duck, Launchpad was the pilot and sidekick to Drake Mallard and was the only character besides Gizmoduck to appear in both series. His personality changed a bit as he became dumber, more passive, and less a man of action (probably to contrast more with Darkwing himself). Anyhow, after watching the Ducktales episodes as an adult, I really think Launchpad is the best TV kids supporting character.

Fun Fact - Launchpad was considered for a starring role in his own show, a show that eventually became TaleSpin.

1. Baloo the Bear (Phil Harris, Jungle Book)
When I thought this list up, this was my easy top choice... as a supporting character, you can't beat Baloo. He advances the story of Jungle Book, representing the easy going jungle life that Mowgli has to give up to become a man. He also provides comic relief without being irritating or distracting and has a character arc of his own. By the end of the story, the lazy 'jungle bum' battles Shere Khan to help out his friend. Baloo also has one of the greatest songs in the Disney catalogue, "The Bare Necessities," as well as contributing to "I Wanna Be Like You." His brash, laid back and boisterous voice provided by radio personality Phil Harris complemented his large size and hipster attitude. I also personally respect that the Disney animators used the sloth bear as a model for Baloo's diet and physical features. He eats fruits, plants, and insects and his large claws and stocky body also resemble the sloth bear. Baloo was so popular that Phil Harris reprised the character (I realize the look of both characters is different, but in voice and personality... it's Baloo) in 2 different movies; Little John in Robin Hood and Thomas O'Malley in the Aristocats. Furthermore, Baloo became the star of TaleSpin, voiced mostly by Ed Gilbert (Harris' voice had aged too much although he did record some dialogue). After Harris passed on in 1995, Baloo was voiced by John Goodman in the Jungle Book 2 (a rare Disney sequel that wasn't completely awful).

Fun Fact - Phil Harris' last animated role was that of Patou in Rock a Doodle in 1991. Harris was 86 years old when he recorded the dialogue.

So there's my countdown... It took some time to put together... Hopefully it wasn't too boring or tedious to read through... And its all opinion (its called "My favorite" for a reason) and completely subjective. More lists and such to come...

That's all I have to say about that.

District 9 and Jennifer's Body

Okay,

So I've been lazy and have had a bunch of half written articles lying around. I still don't feel like finishing any of them, so I'm going to write a couple of mini review nuggets.

First, my thoughts about District 9... I liked it a lot, definitely a solid 8.5/10. I knew 2 things going in:
#1. It was about aliens and discrimination
#2. The aliens lived in the slums of South Africa
The acting was pretty amazing, especially the main character played by Shartlo Copley who I had never seen before. I actually didn't recognize ANYONE from the cast which made it seem a lot more real and less Hollywood. The movie had a respectable $30 million budget all of which went to the effects, which were pretty astounding. It also leaves room for a sequel while pretty neatly wrapping up its own story which to me is fairly hard to do. After watching the incoherent mess of Transformers 2's action scenes, I really honestly appreciated the action scenes in District 9 a lot more. The action here is messy, chaotic, and frenetic, but well shot and edited so you can really see and understand what's going on.

The director, Neill Blomkamp, has a background in visual effects and animation, and based the movie out of his childhood in South Africa (hopefully the parts without the aliens). Normally such an unusual movie wouldn't get the release it did, but Peter Jackson gave Blomkamp the $30 mil for a movie project of his choice (this came about after the Halo movie fell through which Jackson would have produced and Blomkamp would have directed).

So anyhow, if you are a fan of action sci fi with some social commentary melted in, definitely worth your time.

The other movie I want to talk a bit about is Jennifer's Body. Everyone who knows me probably thinks I really loved this movie. You have a super hot Megan Fox and award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody together in a horror comedy (a genre I really love) which should be amazing. Unfortunately, a good idea on paper turns into a fairly blah movie, I'd give it a 4.5/10. I'm going to break it down into 3 areas of disappointment.

First, Megan Fox can't act... at all... As a token hot character with little or no dialogue, this isn't a problem (I'd have loved to see her die in the opening scene of the Friday the 13th or the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street remakes) As Jessica Simpson, Pamela Anderson, and other "hot celebrity of the year" have found, its tough to be extremely successful as a lead only relying on physical and not acting 'talents.' Amanda Seyfried (from the horrific Mamma Mia remake) isn't believable to me at all as the nerdy friend (the classic "she's really hot but she has glasses" nerd that a lot of teen movies would make fun of). And the guy that plays Seyfried's boyfriend pretty much sucks too. To me, the only really redeeming actors are Adam Brody (from the OC and a small funny part in Thank You for Smoking) and J.K. Simmons (spiderman's boss, juno's dad, in about every 3rd movie these days). Sadly, neither has a lot of screentime and both play fairly one note characters, but compared to Fox and Seyfried, both look like best supporting actor contenders.

Second, Diablo Cody... I really do like Juno a lot, I know there's some backlash about the level of Cody's talent, I'm not going to completely rip her apart. The success of Juno was a combination of Cody's writing, brilliant performances by Ellen Page, Jason Bateman, and the aforementioned Simmons, the music by Kimya Dawson, and the direction of Jason Reitman. Unique among a lot of modern day movie makers, Cody is only a screenwriter. I say 'only' because a lot of the directors I like (Tarantino, Rodriguez, los Coens, etc.) also do screenwriting, producing, etc. So Cody's impact on a movie is only through clever, witty dialogue. She is really good at said dialogue, however, to me it doesn't completely work as well in this movie as it did in Juno. Sure, there are some catchy one liners (the "evil, not just high school evil" zinger that's in the trailer) but as a excellent, coherent screenplay... it sounded too much like Juno... There's a reason why Kevin Smith has never attempted an English period drama or why Tarantino has never done a family film... that's the same reason why Diablo Cody's writing doesn't work quite as well in a horror piece as it did in a teen dramedy.

As for horror comedy... There aren't a lot of great ones, (Gremlins, Shaun of the Dead, American Werewolf in London) there are quite a few flawed, but fun ones (Arachnophobia, Tremors, Slither) and some bad ones (Idle Hands, Urban Legends, All About Steve... well Sandra Bullock was scary enough in that one to make it all out horror for me). A final problem with Jennifer's Body is that it isn't very funny and it isn't particularly that scary either. There's a really fine line to balance and the movie falls short on both sides. The horror aspect, although fairly gory at times, never really even made me jump at all (compare this to a similar movie from last year, Drag Me to Hell, completely ridiculous yet there is still some pretty tense scenes). The hot chick killing guys, its been done before (Species for the mainstream folks and Teeth for the more indy folks), and the sarcastic high school angle played out like maybe Scream or even parts of the Faculty. There just seemed a lot of missed opportunities for humor or scares throughout (like when Fox's character gets in 'poor shape', it just looks like she isn't wearing makeup, compare this to AWolfIL... you might understand if you watch the movie). Finally... this is another movie with a wraparound story told in flashback. I really loathe this storytelling device for the most part because it makes the ending superobvious (except for in Fraility or High Tension, but those are two amazing exceptions). Basically if you are familiar with the horror genre at all you will know exactly what happens to the characters. The final nail is the pointless annoying scene during/after the credits. Comedic outtakes, excerpts from the soundtrack, these are things that are acceptable in the end credits, not extraneous scenes from the movie (I don't know who started this trend, but boo!).

So for now, that's all I have to say about that...

Patricks

Top 5 Least Disappointing Movie Monsters

Okay,

To preface this list, I had a brief conversation today about the power of imagination vs. the power of technology with regards to on screen creatures. For the most part, I'm in favor of the "less is more" because computers, puppets, miniatures... all have their issues to varying degrees. I've read a lot of books in the horror genre and then seen the accompanying movie, and usually, what shows up on screen just doesn't quite match up with what I have in my head. When the images meet or surpass what I've thought, it generally makes the movie a little more special. So thus, the top 5 least disappointing movie monster list. To make this list, the movie has to be based on a pre-existing book or story and I have to have read the story before I saw the movie. So without further ado...

5. JawsFoot, Peter Benchley's Creature

This isn't a particularly well known movie, to the point where I couldn't find any good screen shots of the titular beast. Instead faithful readers, you get the maquette pictured at the right. A short backstory/explanation... Peter Benchley is the guy who wrote Jaws (as well as the Deep) and based on the Jaws money, wrote 2 other sea creature monster movies, The Beast and White Shark. Both of these were made into TV miniseries, White Shark being renamed the awesomely generic creature. The book featured a nazi genetically enginereed shark/human hybrid that would have looked something like an albino Arnold Schwarzenegger with metal teeth and claws. As a middle school aged kid, I had this awesome mental picture of Ahnold as the White Shark monster (that line of reasoning wasn't too much of a stretch... I mean, he actually made Junior around the time I read this book). Instead, the producers of the movie changed the monster to what I have since dubbed Jawsfoot. When I watched the movie, I really loved this concept... I know it's completely ridiculous, outlandish, and dumber than the book, but I was not disappointed by this monster at all. Jawsfoot gets bonus points for the cast (including pre Sex and the City Kim Catrall and the Coach himself, Craig T. Nelson!) taking the ludicrous concept fairly seriously.

4. The Balrog, Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring

The fiery demon from the mines of Moria whom Gandalf would not let pass... The only Balrog I saw as a kid was this stupidity from the Ralph Bakshi 1978 Lord of the Rings... A guy rotoscoped in with butterfly wing, slippers, and a lion mask... Terrible, just terrible











After seeing the early previews for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, I was fairly excitied what
the Balrog might look like... The book says "shrouded in fire, darkness, and shadow" and mentions the many pronged whip... Trying to combine fire and shadow together would seem like a really tough character design, but as you can see, I think it came together amazingly well. The only reason why the Balrog is so low on the list is that well, he isn't in the movie very much (less than five minutes of screen time in a two and a half hour movie). Still, an amazing use of CGI and one of the most imposing fantasy monsters I've ever seen.




3. Kothoga Monster, The Relic

I realize that this was a fairly unoriginal movie, but I really liked the Jurassic Park meets Alien concept from the book. The authors, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child intentionally keep the descriptions fairly vague as to the actual creature's appearance. I don't want to post a picture because I think far and away the best part of the movie is actually seeing the monster itself. My mental picture of the Relic creature from the novel was blown away by an amazing Stan Winston (he's a visual effects guy who created both the Terminator and Predator among others) made creature.

One of the things I love is that the eye color of the monster changes from the novel to the book (yes, it's a small detail) and it's a really great, subtle tweak to the design. Yes, there is some poor late 90s CGI work at hand in parts of the movie, but the practical full size creature is one of the best of it's kind (I would use the Alien or Predator on this list, but since they were created directly for a movie and I saw the movies before any of the fan fiction, they don't qualify). So for being an organic, nasty, and crazy monster which elevated a mundane movie... the Kothoga (it's called MBun I think in the book)...

2. the Medusa, Clash of the Titans (the original)

I realize that Clash of the Titans has no exact literary basis, but I read the myth of Perseus before I saw the movie, so to me it counts. Clash of the Titans is the final movie done by legendary visual effects guru Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen came to fame by creating a series of stop motion creatures in fantasy and science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s. After watching CGI films for going on 20 years now, Harryhausen films seem really archaic and outdated, but as a young kid, I thought they were amazing (In my opinion, the moat monster from Willow seems inspired by those old films).

The medusa in the movie has a snake like lower body, a rattlesnake tail, and shows skill at archery (I always thought that was cool as a kid, then when writing that, I think to myself, self, "why would someone as deadly as medusa need to be an archer?" It'd be like if Magneto was also a sniper or something... just stupid... but then, she's immortal, so archery is a hobby or something... yeah, I'm a dork...)

Ahem, the point is, the movie differs from the classic interpretation, but I really love the more aggressive, hunting Medusa. I know Clash of the Titans is fairly corny and takes itself a little too seriously (especially Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith), but it's rooted in Greek Mythology, so it's a fantastical adventure and nothing more than that. I know Clash is going to remade later this year and I'd wager that the Medusa in the remake will be a CGI creation that blows the original out of the water. For me, that old Medusa was an amazing representation of a myth brought to stop motion life.

1. All the monsters (besides the tentacles), The Mist

When I came up with this list, I knew that the menagerie of the Mist would take the top spot. For the not aware, the Mist is a novella (it's a little over 150 pages) in a book (Skeleton Crew) of short stories by Stephen King. It's about as simple as a plot gets, a bunch of people get trapped in a supermarket by an eerie mist concealing a number of deadly creatures. I read this story at the age of 13 or so, and I always wanted/pictured a movie adaptation (I thought of Christian Slater as the star back then, ended us with Thomas Jane, kind of a wash)... My wait finally came to end when Frank Darabont, better known as the force behind both Shawshank Redemption and the Green Mile, released his version in 2007. I was disappointed by very little of this finished product, as Darabont treated the material very seriously, (it's a fairly ridiculous setup and I always had worries a movie would get campy or Tremorsish) even getting a Stephen King approval to alter the ending.

Given the pretty modest 18 million dollar budge, the creatures in this movie were executed to near perfection (this movie, the 19 M Pan's Labryinth, and the 30 M District 9 prove to me that the talent/will of a crew of artists and technicians can overcome budgetary constraints to create amazing visual effects). My one problem was the 'tentacles' sequence... which didn't look quite finished as far as the integration with the rest of the environment was concerned (they also reminded me a lot of the lake monster from the first Lord of the Rings as well as the monsters from the Treat Williams opus, Deep Rising). The flying creatures bit, the pharmacy, the 'Blowhole' (super obscure Tick reference there) creature towards the end all show what CGI can accomplish in this modern age of movies... for sequences or creatures where puppetry, stuntpeople in suits, and stop motion all would completely fail.

So that's this fairly odd list done... I could write a reverse (the most disappointed I've been... to figure out an early candidate... "Amy Ugly Gorilla Amy Go Away") someday, but that might be hard to cut down to just five... Next up to finish... either my top 10 underrated villains or my top 10 supporting horror characters (the second would use the same criteria as my cartoon list). Any request anyone for something different?

Remakelicious

okay,

To start this off, I'm very anti remake of 70s-80s or just movies in general. It's a huge hollywood fad right now (I know there was a screenwriters strike a little while back, but really?) and I think the remake of the excellent Spanish horror movie Rec was the low point. For those who are unaware, Rec was released on November of 2007, a little movie told from 1st person perspective ala Cloverfield about a group of people trapped in an apartment complex with an infectious disease ala 28 Days Later. Nothing mindbreaking, but a fun, claustrophobic little thriller. In October of 2008, we got Quarantine... A shot by shot 'remake' that was RELEASED eleven months later. Meaning that after some studio execs saw Rec, they decided right away to make their inferior version... Rec didn't get a theatrical release in america and was just released on DVD a few weeks ago in early July of 2009 in America. People at my store actually thought Rec was a ripoff of Quarantine, when in reality... grr...

Moving on... Up to this point, my two favorite remakes have been horror movies, namely fairly flawed horror movies. Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Jessica Biel was substantially less gritty and nasty than the original, but had things like "a budget", "sets", and "professional actors" all of which I appreciated. Plus it had one of my favorites, R. Lee Erney, in a new role that filled some plot holes (if you don't know who he is... the abusive drill sergeant/cop from many movies, starting in Full Metal Jacket... bushy eyebrows, yells a lot... that guy).

I also thought the Hills Have Eyes was great... Once again fixing some dodgy acting, taming down the "superdogs" and featuring some outstanding makeup effects (although for sheer creepy factor, no amount of makeup tops Michael Berryman from the original...).

Bringing us to the actual review of...

The Last House on the Left (2009)

Now I respect the original a whole lot. For those who are unaware, horror god Wes Craven (who brought us Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream) started his career with the exploitation flick Last House on the Left way back in 1972. It was made on a shoestring budget and is famous for being banned in the UK and only getting past a "X" rating because a personal friend of Craven's was on the ratings board. Unfortunately, (and I'll piss off some hardcore fans of original) it's flawed, almost fatally by bad writing (the 'comic relief' cops belong in a different movie), bad acting (especially the parents), and cheap production values and camerawork (although the crappy camerawork does give it a true life gut punch feeling at times).

When I first heard about a remake, I thought immediately to some of the more hideous 70s remakes (I'm looking at you, Julia Stiles' The Omen and Van Wilder's Amityville Horror). I was really pleasantly surprised with what I got instead... a movie that fixed 95% of the original's flaws and improved on the first flick a great deal. Where to start??

Since the movie is a character driven piece with a pretty small cast, acting is important. The 'biggest names' in the remake are Tony Goldwyn (the villain from Ghost and Neil Armstrong in "From Earth to the Moon") and Monica Potter (the female cop from Along Came a Spider or the love interest from Patch Adams) as the parents. Okay, so maybe they aren't A list celebrities, but if you take a look at IMDB, they are fairly recognizable, yet bring a really nice grounded sort of realism to a somewhat ridiculous plot. Both actors brought an odd combination of sympathy, vulnerability, and flat out viciousness that played out well onscreen and they made a believable married couple to boot. Sara Paxton as their daughter also brought a nice "girl next door" vibe and seemed a much stronger, tougher character than the "victims" from the original movie.

For me, the two stars of the movie were Garrett Dillahunt as Krug and Spencer Treat Clark as Justin. I knew Dillahunt could play a crazy villain from his performance as Wolcott from the excellent Deadwood series (he's also supposedly quite good in the Terminator TV series, but I haven't seen that) and he didn't disappoint with his first big theatrical performance. Dillahunt was an amazingly grounded, likeable, and at times fairly charming protagonist. To me, it was a really interesting approach to that sort of character... he didn't take some of the 'obvious' choices and almost seemed like a more daunting hurdle... It's tough to talk too much about him without getting into major spoiler areas (which I'm trying not to do). Speaking of vulnerable, Treat Clark really made me feel for what his character goes through as the youngest member of the gang. I connected to his performance... a lot of impact using his body language and especially his eyes... and very little dialogue (I've seen this character before with Jared Leto in Panic Room or the hillbilly girl from Hills Have Eyes, but this might be the best version in my opinion).

Despite being an hour and fifty minutes (somewhat long for horror movies) the movie was paced quite nicely. There were some beautiful camerawork by director Dennis Iliadis, really polished and fairly stunning cinematography, and a pretty haunting score. I especially appreciated the moments of just silence... it's almost a cliche, but when the movie got quiet, it amped up the tension. Finally, the different suspenseful buildups and how tense some of the scenes got... I was glued... It was also great to see a minimum of stupid "jump" scares (no cats, birds, or unnecessary loud noises in this one) instead using music and camerawork to create the solemn, moody atmosphere.

The action in the movie was nasty, brutal, and realistic. Goldwyn and Potter... reminded me oddly of Scream as they fought more like "real people" and not like "action heroes". The movie isn't a gorefest the whole way through, but there are some pretty damn nasty setpieces... And yes, a brutal and fairly long (in the unrated cut) rape scene is present... I know that really, really turns some people off, but it is a fairly important plot point and necessary for the conclusion to have the right emotional oomph.

So what didn't I like... the setup was a little clunky in terms of exposition and plot points (yep, she's real good at swimming... yep, he's a doctor.... wonder if that might come into play later). Two of the gang members that I didn't mention with my acting recap were a little stereotypical for me, (we got 1 'bad girl' and 1 'creepy, wide eyed rapist') in a crappier movie they'd have been fine, but with the other performances at hand, they stuck out a little bit. The very last scene was monumentally stupid, (after the 'boat scene', just turn the movie off) tacked on, and felt out of place (not to mention ripping off Wolf Creek and Gremlins). This scene is fairly over the top, completely out of left field, and takes away from the gritty realism and the mood established in the rest of the movie. I hoped it was just a 'deleted scene' only in the unrated cut, but unfortunately was in the theatrical as well...

So I give this remake.... 7 out of 10 (same score I'd give Hills Have Eyes remake)

Recommend for some great acting in this kind of genre flick, some high tension :o), amazing music, and great 3rd act.

Stay away from goofy gang members, clunky exposition, a few pacing issues, and a just awful final scene.

And that's all I have to say about that.