David Vining's Blog, page 74

Rocky

Sylvester Stallone wanted to make it in Hollywood, but he couldn’t get cast in anything other than…stuff he’d rather forget he was ever near. So, he wrote his own screenplay, heavily influenced by Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, and got it funded by the independent producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, and they hired the largely unremarkable young filmmaker John Avildsen to direct. The result is a tender character piece that, especially when combined with its rousing score by Bill Con...

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Milos Forman’s second American feature is a loose adaptation of the novel by Ken Kesey that made so many changes that Kesey refused to ever watch it. Having never read the book, I can’t comment on changes, but I can say that this is one of those Best Picture winners and well-loved films that I never quite get. I think it’s a good film, well-made, acted, and lensed, but I don’t get into the emotional groove its offering, feeling more distant from the action than it seems like most audiences d...

The Best Picture Winners at the Oscars: A Statement of Purpose Part VI

And we’re back at it!

After taking a detour through independents and then a recurring day of the week, I’m returning to the Oscar list, covering the period from 1975 to 1985.

Looking at what’s coming, this feels like the industry continuing its back and forth, but instead of looking forward and then looking back, it’s about alternating between feel good films and feel bad ones, between tear-jerkers and triumphant ones. Looking ahead, this might be the eleven Best Picture winners I’m le...

The Friday the 13th Franchise: The Definitive Ranking

I’m going to be honest, I liked this more than I thought I would.

Granted, I have a bunch of 1 star reviews here, but there’s also one 3.5 star review which is better than I ever gave the Nightmare on Elm Street series. I mean, it’s overall not a good series. Without Part VI, it’s not good at all, but in the handful of films where the filmmakers had an understanding of what they were doing, the mechanics work well enough while people around it have some fun.

It was started as a ripoff ...

Friday the 13th (2009)

Another tired reboot of a franchise well-past its sell-by date where few people involved understood its appeal, and the new people see it as only a source for gritty, grimy sights of borderline torture with lots of boobage. It ends up a mire of well-produced tedium as the 2000s versions of boring teenagers get gored with precious little of the rare wit that the franchise could put out from time to time and absolutely none of the comedy. It’s just a dirty, grungy time at the movies with a cou...

Freddy vs. Jason: A Second Look

I assumed when I went through the Nightmare on Elm Street films that Ronny Yu and his writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift were much bigger fans of the Friday the 13th franchise than they were of the franchise led by Freddy Kreuger. First, I don’t get it. Nightmare is far more interesting a franchise, though it definitely has low points on par with Friday and it’s high point isn’t as high as Jason Lives. The second thing is that I got the sense that they didn’t understand Freddy all that we...

Jason X

I didn’t hate this film. It’s just about the most generic Jason Vorhees movie one could come up with, just with a thick Alien skin on top. However, Jim Isaac, the director, and Todd Farmer, the writer, had a decent idea of the appeal of Jason Vorhees slashers, and they did their best to deliver exactly what one would expect. I can see why the film would fail at the box office (it’s the tenth entry in a tired franchise that goes really out there in terms of setting) but also why it would end ...

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

Oh, no. If it weren’t for the rather amazing (genuinely great stuff) makeup work, I don’t think there’d be a single thing to recommend in this insane attempt to expand the thin lore of the Friday the 13th franchise. Magic daggers and blood ties? Really? I get the need to inject more into this franchise, more than just another pack of teenagers to mow down in a slightly different setting, but this tale of possession is so ridiculously stupid that it ends up being a step down for a series alre...

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

What if we did a Friday the 13th movie, but we set it on a boat? Yup, that’s it. Generic Jason adventure, except it’s on a boat and the final act is in New York. All of the pieces are there that one would expect. There are boring, dumb teenagers who are obsessed with sex. There are a series of murders that no one notices, killing any sense of grand tension through much of the film. Yeah, I’m dismissive, but there’s a technical skill to some small parts of the film that make me think the expe...

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Carrie meets Jason, except that Carrie was actually using the paranormal to tell a human story about becoming your parents and repression and this version is a loose collection of ideas about psychics and telekinesis thrown together almost randomly in service of yet another Jason Vorhees adventure. Gone is the sense of fun and knowing self-awareness of the sixth entry. John Carl Buechler helms a script by Mauel Fidello and Daryl Haney that wants to be more than it can succeed at being. Ultim...