a few things to consider...

Insidious (2011) functions best if you pretend that it's a sequel to The Entity.  Just imagine that James Wan was making this brokeass movie somewhere out in the Valley only to have Barbara Hershey show up one day at the craft services table to decide that she wanted to be in it, systematically taking more and more lines from Rose Byrne and ingratiating herself to Leigh Whannel.  Good job, Barbara.  You never let us down.

I also think it will help any Insidious viewing party to know that Patrick Wilson used to be my neighbor in Brooklyn and he is a kind and lovely man with the voice of an angel and triceps worthy of a men's magazine.

At its best, Insidious feels like getting felt up during a field trip to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion when the cars keep breaking down.  It's atmospheric and full of macabre glee.  Joe Bishara's score is fantastic.  At its worst, this movie is blatanly riffing on Poltergeist  - replacing JoBeth Williams with Patrick Wilson.  In today's landscape of crappy movies that hate their audience, I think we can all agree that there are worse crimes than competantly ganking a classic.  I live for moments when it becomes obvious from watching a film that the people making it actually enjoy movies.  Insidious is such a film.  Go see it.

...a monster what takes his time.

"Everyone has to earn a living."

In honor of NASA discovering a man-made life form (unquestionably harkening the eminent destruction of us all), I am pleased to announce the second best film nomination in this year's FaggotyAssAwards:

Monsters! 

(I added the exclamation - people don't actually shout in Monsters.) 

Set a couple of years in the future (well after the NASA lake monsters have fully developed and decimated most of our population), this movie chronicles a hispter photographer and a hipster trust fund girl as they become trapped in a Mexican war zone with no passports.  White people problems.  Its working title was "America hates Mexicans"...but that's better left for Arianna and her crackerjack team at Huffington Post to cover. 

Loathsome hipsters aside, this is surely my favorite of the Jurassic Park sequels; at it's best, Monsters patiently explores intimate nuances of human interactions in the face of atrocity.  This is the rare horror movie that chooses to linger on human interactions and well-shot locations over cheap effects and jump-scares.  Get into it.

becoming a man

"What men will do to you in prison is nothing compared to what demons will do to you in hell."

In honor of “National Coming Out Day,” I’m coming out in favor of Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take. Get into it.  This movie took an unjustifiable beating by critics and America proved once and for all that people have no interest in original stories or tone.  You see, My Soul to Take has more ideas than it even knows what to do with.  I guess that's a problem?

My Soul to Take is about becoming a man. It’s also about leaving behind the resentment of an imperfect childhood and apathetic parents and taking responsibility for yourself and your destiny.

It’s also about two high school boys reenacting their favorite scenes from Big Business!

"That puppet was scary."

The process of becoming a man is a metamorphosis and often a painful one, at that.  Growing up is shedding the cocoons of insecurity and self-consciousness in order to fully inhabit the person you are.   Getting older is a daily lesson in learning to accept things that should never have to be tolerated (like Meg Whitman’s face), taking punches like an MMA fighter and still somehow finding the strength within to say, “Thank you that felt great.”   If everything works out, eventually you can wind up being the absolute best version of yourself in spite of parents who never really loved you, a town who wished you would go away, and a best friend who would rather stab you in the groin than kiss you on the mouth.  No wonder gay men are so mean!

This movie is exactly what I had hoped it would be - it’s a horror movie from 1987 made in today's meme (there are some of the best shots in Craven's entire career in My Soul to Take).  If you can see past a couple of wooden line-readings and an exposition-heavy screenplay that often feels as though it was translated from another language, My Soul to Take is the condensed soup of Wes Craven’s entire career.  All of his obsessions are on display: boiler rooms, big knives, voodoo magic, homicidal homosexuals in love, soul transplantation, gorgeous craftsman homes, and even California condors.  This is especially welcome because, unlike other current horror movies, Craven has a knack for finding teenagers who actually look like teenagers, who act like real teenagers and who have soulful eyes.

If we've learned anything in our continued exploration of horror movie magic, it's that when a horror movie has a male protagonist, it is a gay movie.  Knives penetrating boys is gay.  Lingering shots of shirtless boys emoting with pouty lips in steamy showers is queer. 

That said, about halfway through My Soul to Take, I began to question my thesis.  Maybe straight boys can be sensitive and sweet?  Maybe straight boys, post-millennium, are allowed to be emotional and secure enough to have sleepovers with their best bros (who just so may happen to sneak in through their bedroom windows at night so their single mothers won't see)... and then the third-act set in.  My Soul to Take is assuredly and irrevocably one of the gayest horror movies ever made.  Thank God!

People can say a lot of things, but no one can say this movie isn't interesting.  It's logic may stray all the way around the river-bend with Pocahontas and her little raccoon friend and, sure, it appears that the studio hacked off about thirty minutes in the 3D conversion process and, yes, the central conceit upon which the entire film hangs is far-fetched at best - but this movie is FUN.  Fun, Momma, fun! Does anyone remember when horror movies were joyful? Does anyone remember a horror movie that used actual tension and story in place of jump scares? Does anyone remember when a movies' kills were shocking and not nihilistic torture-porn.  Shouldn't you actually care about the people being hacked into and not want them to die? Isn't that the point?

Perhaps My Soul to Take was too ambitious for it’s own good, but I refuse to consider that a flaw.  Like my fraternity brothers say on pledge night, "Go big or go home!"  I had the time of my life in the empty Graumann's Chinese Theatre.  Man up and go see it.  Put on your best over-sized 1995 cardigan, spray yourself down with some CKOne and bring your friends.  

Don't Fuck with the Babysitter.

"Get the fuck out of the water, now!"

-Elizabeth Shue 

Piranha 3 (2010)

The Good.

1. Piranha 3 cast Elizabeth Shue and Adam Scott as its heroes.  Get out of my head!

2.  At one point, Adam Scott wears metal, Terry Richardson style frames and I actually gasped.

3.  The Back to the Future 2 reunion of Elizabeth and Christopher Lloyd made me feel warm and fuzzy all over (even though I'm certain that Christopher Lloyd would have no recollection of ever having worked with Elizabeth prior).

4.  Elizabeth Shue.  Congratulations, Mamma - you're back in the game and better than ever!

The Bad.

1.  This is not a movie in 3D.  Take off the glasses, you'll see.

2.  Eli Roth and cloyingly precocious child actors nearly ruin the delicate balance of tone Piranha 3 was going for.  Eli, do us all a favor, doll, and stay behind the camera.  xoxo

The Exquisite.

Move over Katie Cassidy.  Back off, Amber Heard. There's a new Scream Queen in town and she's British!  Kelly Brook.  Now and forever.  I love her hair.  I love her kind eyes.  I love Kelly Brook.

Today was a fairytale.

"I'm a sheriff.  She's a doctor."

• I love when angular Los Angeles/Aussie actors dress up like small town, Iowa hicks with hearts of gold.

• I love Timothy Olyphant and his impossibly long torso.

• I kind of loved The Crazies remake.  There's no gay subtext or male nudity to speak of.  It never goes out of its way to be subversive.  It's just an example of how enjoyable a horror movie can be when you take a simple premise, cast actors who understand tone and context, and shoot it well.  I had to go the bathroom the whole time but never left my seat.  

third wheel

Has your best friend ever dated a girl that you can't stand so you wind up seeing him less than you normally would just to avoid her ugly sweaters and ill-conditioned tips?  You know very well that, despite what you tell your other friends, she's not actually retarded, so she can tell you hate her.  But it's not like you're gay for your bestie and so you just leave it be; you don't even launch into a dramatic dialogue as it starts to rain, causing your nipples to poke out of your Donna Karen top.  Listen, if you ever thought that maybe you should try and make an effort to connect with your bestie and his hateful cunt girlfriend as a couple by taking a day trip, don't go skiing.

I've never been skiing and I certainly won't be skiing any time soon after seeing Adam Green's Frozen (2010).  Bobby Drake left Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and he's living as a stoner from Boston who loves his bestie, Kevin Zegers, and hates his bestie's girlfriend, Emma Bell.  Like any good episode of Three's Company, circumstance finds them trapped on a ski lift together where they have no choice but to resolve their differences and talk it all out!  Then the wolves begin to circle...

Even though I may not be wild about this film, Boston is very well represented with references to Papa Gino's (anyone from Boston knows that no birthday was complete without a hand-made pizza and getting to play "Oh Industry" on the jukebox) and dialects that come and go (this is an affliction that true Bostonians suffer from - we don't always go around talking like Shutter Island day players).  Frozen is thoughtfully plotted and thoroughly disturbing.  I was so curious as to how it would all turn out that I barely minded the fat people who were having full blown intercourse in the row behind me.