David Vining's Blog, page 120

Masaki Kobayashi: A Retrospective

The Samurai


Samurai movies as they became known were heavily influenced by Westerns from the 30s and 40s. Given a huge boost in popularity both in Japan and across the world by Akira Kurosawa’s earlier jidaigeki films like Rashomon and Seven Samurai, they drew upon the conventions of the Westerns of John Ford, John Wayne, and Randolph Scott to create similar situations while drawing on the distinctly Japanese settings, usually the height of the Tokugawa era of the Shogunate. That Western influenc...

The Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise: The Definitive Ranking

I’m not exactly a student of the three major slasher franchises of the 80s and 90s (Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street), but I’ve seen enough of all three to pretty solidly conclude that the Nightmare films are, on average, my favorite. Nothing in any of the three approaches the solid craftsmanship and storytelling of the first Halloween, but if told I had to pick a random entry from any of the three, I’d go with Nightmare because I know that, at least, there will be s...

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Ugh. I really like the first Nightmare on Elm Street film and have a pretty good time with most of the sequels, even as they got more comedic to certain degrees. The effort to bring the series back to its more dangerous and dark roots (despite the existence of New Nightmare, I guess) goes awry from the moment it starts. Oppressive in tone, confused in storytelling, and obsessed with the worst kind of lore, the sole feature film made by noted commercial director Samuel Bayer is an embarrassme...

Cursed

“Hey, let’s make Scream again, except werewolves!” is what I imagine Kevin Williamson said to Wes Craven excitedly one day during a script meeting on Scream 3. It’s one of those ideas that feels fresh when you don’t think about it very much, but the more you do consider it, the more you realize that it’s just as derivative as Scream had become by its third entry. There needs to be more there beyond the concept, and the more seems to have been a season’s worth of storylines all shoved into on...

Freddy vs. Jason

The two horror titans fight! And…then there’s a bunch of boring teenagers trying to figure out if they’re in a Nightmare on Elm Street movie or a Friday the 13th movie. I’m somewhat a fan of the Freddy franchise, enjoying the imagination that tends to go into the kills and, especially, the endings. I’ve never really been able to get into Jason’s movies, though. I’ve watched the first three and barely made it, never deciding to go further. So, when I come into this showdown, I guess I’m rooti...

Scream 3

After the uninspired search to replicate the charms of the first film in the first sequel, Miramax allowed a handful of years for Wes Craven to go off and make Music of the Heart before returning with the second sequel, also written by Kevin Williamson. It does not match the joys of the first film nor does it match the depths of unimaginative machinations of the second. It’s a middle of the road entry in the short franchise that manages to work well enough to partially entertain. At least th...

Music of the Heart

Listening to interviews with Wes Craven, he says explicitly, more than once, that he never wanted to be pigeonholed as a horror filmmaker. His primary interest was comedy, actually, and you can see him approach it here and there in his earlier years and especially in the years after A Nightmare on Elm Street when he got the smallest bit of freedom. Well, he got some freedom after the financial successes of the first two Scream films and, in combination with finishing out a contract with Mira...

Scream 2

This is emblematic of why I don’t really like what the whole “guess who’s the killer” genre has become. It’s become purely about misleading the audience and making them unable to see what’s coming. That’s a plus for many people, obviously, but it actively prevents the film from being about anything, from the narrative actively pursuing any ideas. It also separates the final act from the rest of the film since none of what comes before the it informs the actions of the finale. It ends up bein...

Scream

I don’t think I can come up with a better argument that Wes Craven should never have written his movies alone than Scream. I think he was a perfectly competent filmmaker when it comes to the visual aspects, and his ability to manage actors had improved over the years. However, he was always a subpar writer. Even A Nightmare on Elm Street, his best work that he wrote himself, really needed another pass by a better writer. Scream, though, from a script by Kevin Williamson, is Craven bringing h...

Vampire in Brooklyn

Wes Craven was no good at directing comedy, and the combination of simply capturing some of the earliest excesses of Eddie Murphy’s comedic stylings along with the super-generic vampire terror end up clashing anyway in Vampire in Brooklyn to the point where even if you find the funny stuff actually funny and the horror stuff actually scary, the two don’t gel at all together here. Horror comedy can work really well (Shaun of the Dead is a prime example), but Craven doesn’t know how to weave t...