Where the Wild Things Are / *** (PG)

Max: Max Records
Mom: Catherine Keener

With the voice talents of:
Carol: James Gandolfini
Judith: Catherine O’Hara
KW: Lauren Ambrose
Douglas: Chris Cooper
Ira: Forest Whitacker
Alexander: Paul Dano

Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Spike Jonze. Written by Jonze & Dave Eggers. Based on the book by Maurice Sendak. Running time: 94 min. Rated PG (for mild thematic elements, some adventure action, and brief language).

I can hear the complaints. “It’s not a kids movie.” “It’s depressing.” “It’s not any fun.” In fact, Warner Bros. Pictures felt director Spike Jonze’s original cut of the film was so family unfriendly they made him go back and re-edit some of it. So this is the more family friendly version of the film. But whatever you think the movie should be, it’s still a good movie. Possibly a little slow and a little too devoid of humor, but “Where the Wild Things Are” is a smart look at how difficult it can be for a kid to understand just how complicated life can be.

To say this isn’t a kids movie is to ignore half—if not more—of what childhood is about. Max (newcomer Max Records) is a boy who must often play by himself because the people closest to him have other things to worry about in their lives. So Max builds forts in the snow by himself and terrorizes his dog and desperately seeks the attention of his Mom (Catherine Keener, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”), who despite her love for him has many concerns beyond Max—work, her ex-husband, a boyfriend.

Max has a vibrant imagination. When Mom is having a rough day, she has Max make up a story for her. One evening after Max pushes his Mom’s buttons to the point where she becomes very angry with him, he runs away. He finds a boat and sails across a sea. He discovers a land inhabited by wild beasts who behave very strangely. After he diffuses a situation with one of the beasts named Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini, “Romance & Cigarettes”), he convinces the small clan of creatures to make him their king.

Jonze’s script, co-written by Dave Eggers (“Away We Go”), obviously expands a great deal on Maurice Sendak’s children’s book. He uses all of the monsters seen in Sendak’s book as they were designed by the writer/artist. But unlike the book, each monster is fleshed out into an individual. Each of the monsters contains elements of Max’s own personality. Judith (voiced by Catherine O’Hara, “For Your Consideration”) is the side of his personality that is always negative. Alexander (Paul Dano, “There Will Be Blood”), the smallest monster, reflects the side of Max that feels no one ever pays any attention to him. The talented tunnel builder Ira (Forest Whitacker, “The Last King of Scotland”) is quiet and content. Douglas (Chris Cooper, “Adaptation”) is the consummate friend, even when his arm is ripped off! The Bull (Michael Berry Jr., “Star Trek”) is an ever present, seemingly imposing force, who turns out to be quite sweet when he finally speaks. KW (Lauren Ambrose, “Starting Out in the Evening”) is the one who is breaking away from the juvenile antics of the rest of the group, the element in Max ready to make the leap into adulthood.

Carol is the most like Max’s surface personality, the one who Max learns the most from. What their relationship amounts to is a deep examination of how the mind of a child works. The child wants everything to be the way he expects it to be, and a child’s expectations are as grand as their imaginations. Max proposes the building of a giant home for the entire monster clan, with an underground tunnel from one part to another. This fort will spring as a trap when anything enters that one doesn’t want to be there. What Max’s grand design does not consider is that each monster may not have the same wants and desires. These creatures’ personalities are as divergent as any group of people.

For all its insight into a child’s psychology, the one thing that “Where the Wild Things Are” is a bit light on is the fun. It is a dark film that misses much of the zeal of life children are able to express, even moments after their world has been devastated. When Max first arrives among the wild things, they do spend some time romping around having fun. But this whole environment is so foreign to the audience; we never really get a chance to relax in it before the tensions begin to arise amongst the monster clan. Plus the “real world” Max exists in is so fraught with the tensions of everyday life; we get the impression that Max lives a depressing life. I don’t think Jonze (“Being John Malkovich”) intend this, but we needed to see a good time for Max. We almost get that in the snowball fight, but that goes bad.

Many have complained, “This isn’t a children’s movie.” Hogwash, I say. My boy said, “This is sad.” But he sat riveted throughout most of it and said he enjoyed it when it was over. “Zombieland” isn’t a kid’s movie. “Inglourious Basterds” isn’t a kid’s movie. But there is hardly a movie made without graphic violence and sex that isn’t a “kid’s movie.” Movies are made out of fantasy—even those based on fact. Movies are often our primary connection with our childhood once we reach adulthood. And to say something that is thoughtful, intelligent, and even sad isn’t for kids is to deny that kids are capable of these characteristics. “Where the Wild Things Are” may not be what we as adults want out of a kid’s movie; but it is of childhood, and therefore something for a kid’s wonderment.

Where the Wild Things Are | Movie Trailers

Horrorfest 09 Special Report: “The Strangers” and the Cinema of Brutality

After seeing the fascinating and disturbing picture “The Strangers”, I was struck by a new and somewhat disconcerting trend in horror over the past decade. There has been an increasing trend toward the depiction of brutality in cinema in general, but most profoundly seen in the horror genre. The connection seems obvious at first. If you’re watching a movie about a serial killer, there is going to be some level of brutality involved. But there’s a difference between violence and brutality, even graphic violence does not necessarily entail the depiction of brutality.

I enjoyed most of this intense thriller about a couple that comes home from a wedding reception very late at night. After a strange woman knocks on their door at 4 a.m. looking for someone else, a group of three people wearing masks begins to psychologically torture the couple. At first just working on their fears by making noises outside and trying to get in, but eventually much darker intentions are pursued and eventually the couple is physically tortured and then killed.

The majority of the picture is fascinating, skillfully made, and totally frightening. But in the final moments, when the psychological torture had given way to physical, I couldn’t help but wonder why I would want to watch this. Although the director makes it clear from the beginning of the film how it will end, the majority of the running time is filled with suspense over just what is happening to the couple. What terrible things do these strangers have planned for them? How will they remain hidden and protected from these vicious killers? How will they escape? How can they fight back? Will they get help?

But once they’ve been captured, the game is up. The final ten minutes of the movie is just a voyeuristic look at the brutal things terrible people will do just for the hell of it, and suddenly it is no longer a horror movie. Rather it is a snuff film, entering territory that is more like pornography than art. It’s something I get no excitement from. The characters ask their killers, “why are you doing this?’ and I have the same question for the filmmakers.

I’ve seen several films in this same vein during Horrorfest over the past couple of years. Last year it was both the original and Hollywood remake of “Funny Games”, and a couple of years ago it was the controversial movie “Chaos”. While Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” tells a similar story as “The Strangers” of some home intruders that torture and murder a family, it is an expertly told game for these murderers. Certainly not for the faint of heart, but the skilful filmmaking keeps the voyeurism above the level of exploitation. “Chaos”, although it was famously accused of being exploitation by Roger Ebert, is a much more structured story, that unfortunately sails off course in its final moments.

Then there are the “torture porn” movies like the “Saw” franchise and the “Hostel” films. For the most part these movies are structured as ridiculous games for the victims involved and therefore fall more along the lines of silly horror fantasies rather than as true disturbing voyeurism. But all of these films add to a sense that our culture is becoming more desensitized to the truly disturbing.

I would guess it’s the goal of these filmmakers to present this material to be just as disturbing as it actually is and therefore present a purposeful feeling of unpleasantness about murder and torture, but again I feel compelled to ask why would I want to see that. It isn’t that these are necessarily bad movies. As I’ve stated, several of them are skillfully—some even artfully—made, but there is a line where the entertainment factor disappears and what is left is merely depravity. Is that a line that should be crossed?

Zombieland / *** (R)

Columbus: Jesse Eisenberg
Tallahassee: Woody Harrelson
Wichita: Emma Stone
Little Rock: Abigail Breslin
406: Amber Heard
Bill Murray: Bill Murray

Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Ruben Fleischer. Written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick. Running time: 80 min. Rated R (for horror violence/gore and language).

Anybody who is familiar with Facebook has seen the quizzes you can take to see how long you’d last in a zombie apocalypse. Well, now they’ve made a movie to help you improve your score. “Zombieland” is a veritable rulebook on how to survive full-fledged zombie outbreak. In fact, the narrator and star of the story, Columbus, states his many rules for survival throughout the film. The director highlights each rule with title cards and dinging sound effects to let you know when one is being put into practice. Even the characters’ names, which are simply their home towns, are one of the rules for survival. They don’t use their real names so they won’t get attached to each other in case one of them is turned into a zombie and the others must destroy him.

Jesse Eisenberg (“Adventureland”), as Columbus, narrates his thoughts with innocence and charm, which acts as counterpoint to the grizzly images of the zombified populace feasting upon the uninfected. Director Ruben Fleischer places special care in providing the minutest of details to the slow motion scenes of zombie attack that accompany his opening title sequence. With Eisenberg’s timid narration and a hard rock soundtrack supplementing those images, it’s easy to discern that this isn’t going to be you grandma’s idea of a zombie flick.

Fleischer has said that the recent British zombie spoof “Shaun of the Dead” inspired him in making this film. Certainly “Zombieland” is an American take on that movie’s notions about zombies and how our over stimulated society might react to a zombie outbreak with underwhelming alarm. But “Zombieland” is hardly a spoof of zombie flicks. In fact, it’s hardly a zombie flick at all, save for those gruesome opening credits and the final ten minutes. In between credits it is basically a buddy/road trip movie that just happens to have the zombie apocalypse as a backdrop.

Tallahassee, a sort of redneck zombie killing expert played by Woody Harrelson (“Seven Pounds”), joins Columbus on his journey. “Teaming up” is against both their survival codes, but they do so out of convenience and loneliness. The two are soon conned by a couple of sister grifters, Wichita (Emma Stone, “Superbad”) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin, “Little Miss Sunshine”). Since they’re sisters, I’m not sure why they have different names. Later the four combine forces to travel to California so Little Rock can find some happy memories at an amusement park the sisters had visited before the zombies.

What the movie amounts to is not much more than some characters that are fun to hang out with, some good conversations about hip pop culture references, like the disappointment of finding an endless supply of snowballs when all you want is a twinkie, and an unexpected cameo by Bill Murray (of “Ghostbusters” fame) playing himself. The zombies really don’t even come into play that much beyond giving the leads something to kill every once and a while.

I suppose with Columbus’ rules of survival, that’s really all a zombieland would be—a place to hang around, shoot the breeze, and take very alert bathroom breaks. Don’t forget the “Double Tap”, and that’s really all there is to it. I suppose that can be fun. It is for this movie.

Zombieland | Movie Trailers

Horrorfest Week 1: It’s October Already?!

It’s October already?! Wow! That one snuck up on me. The Wells household has been so busy over the past few months that Horrorfest snuck up on me for the first time since I started devoting the entire month of October to horror movies back in 2000.

I was able to compile a list of films to watch just days before the month began, but it’s so unlikely that I will get to all of my titles that I’m wary of announcing any sort of schedule for this year’s fest. 13 days into the month, and I’ve only gotten to five movies so far. Regardless, Horrorfest is officially under way, and it’s still my favorite time of the year.

Like a couple years ago, this year’s Horrorfest got a sneak about a month ahead of time when Rob Zombie’s sequel to his “Halloween” reboot was once again inexplicably released at the end of August. Hollywood does realize that Halloween falls in the month of October, right? Of course, the release date is only one of the first film’s mistakes to return in “Halloween II”. But I don’t want to focus on the negative right now. For that you can read my review here. It wasn’t Horrorfest when I saw “Halloween II”, but it is now; and so far, it’s already one to remember.

I kicked off the official Horrorfest entries with a British classic that I first read about in Roger Ebert’s first volume of “The Great Movies” series. “Peeping Tom” was advertised in 1960 as the British “Psycho”. Apparently the Brits were still bitter about Alfred Hitchcock’s defection to Hollywood at the time. While Michael Powell’s cult classic about a serial killer is not as accomplished as Hitch’s movie from the same year, it is strangely more intimate than the American horror classic.

It follows a young movie studio cameraman, who films even when he is not at work on a hand held camera. He is obsessed with filming beautiful women. He even moonlights as a photographer for soft-core pornographic stills. Soon it is revealed that he is behind a series of killings which he also films, but when he meets a woman in his own tenement building he makes a pact not to put her on camera for fear that he might kill her too.

“Peeping Tom” is a bit goofier than its contemporary American films, but its innocence helps fuel its anti-hero’s compulsions. This is a serial killer that it is very difficult not to like, even when he is in the act of killing.

“The Last Winter” is a horror film of a very different nature. The message horror flick is one of the best kinds, and the environment often takes the spotlight in the horror picture with a message. Such is the case with this winter isolation suspense film. In fact, nature is the horror in “The Last Winter”.

Taking place in an isolated research station in the Acrtic, “The Last Winter” provides all the classic horror devices. An isolated location, a small cast of characters that can be killed off at a decisive pace, a harsh environment, and lots of darkness set this movie up as a chiller. Of course, in the end it’s the lack of chill that winds up being the real horror. It is called “The Last Winter” after all.

Perhaps this movie isn’t quite as scary as it should be. There is no ubiquitous monster, as in a film like “Alien”, although for a while the filmmakers make it seem like it. Eventually a sort of spirit monster does rise, but it happens a little too late in the film to hold as much significance with the film’s environmental message as it should. But the movie does make you think and the cast does a good job of keeping their own tensions up, even if the “monster” doesn’t.

A wintery environment is also a major factor in Roman Polanski’s 1967 vampire spoof “The Fearless Vampire Killers: Or Pardon Me, but Your Teeth are in My Neck”. Taking the basic “Dracula” formula, the fearless vampire killers of the title are Professor Abronsius, a doddering old fool, and Polanski himself as the Professor’s hapless assistant Alfred. They visit a remote town in Transylvanian to try to prove Abronsius’s theories about bloodsuckers and find themselves in a slapstick caper version of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire tale.

While the movie never really quite works, it does benefit from Polanski’s skilled direction and superior production values, elevating it above the batting level of your typical spoof. It’s a spoof directed by someone who could’ve taken a serious swing at its subject, rather than looking like it was directed by someone who only directs spoofs. Hence the winter environment lends some truly striking visuals to go with its subject; and despite the slapstick humor, there is still some respect paid to the vampire cinematic traditions. Which is something that cannot necessarily be said about today’s serious takes at the vampire mythos.

“Feast”, the only horror film to come out of the Project: Greenlight reality television series about giving cinematic upstarts a shot at making a movie, however, is not interested in taking horror movie traditions seriously. And that is where it finds all of its charm. While not a spoof in itself so much as it spoofs the horror flick cast clichés, “Feast” is a gross, disgusting, and ultimately original take on the creature feature.

Like “The Last Winter”, “Feast” sets itself up in many horror film traditions. Again we see the isolated location, the limited cast that can be picked off one by one, and the nighttime setting. Although it gives us the archetypal characters we’ve come to expect in such situations, it does not conform to even the traditions with them that it claims to when it labels each character with title cards explaining their role and life expectancy. The first indication that something is awry with the way this film deals with its characters is when the “hero” is introduced as being the story’s most likely survivor and then within seconds of his introduction is decapitated. The unseen monsters then proceed to cut the cast in half in the first three minutes of the 95-minute runner. The movie replaces the hero with a second one; and then eventually, when that one meets another untimely demise, gives up on the traditional heroes by promoting one of the cast’s other roles to the eventual hero role.

“Feast” certainly isn’t for the faint at heart, as the gore level is ratcheted up to distract from the absurdity level. Nor does it contain the thought provocation or message of similar horror set-ups. But it is a fun time if you’re paying attention.

The first truly great horror movie to emerge from Horrorfest ’09 is the Spanish ghost story “The Orphanage”. Executive produced by Spaniard maestro Guillermo Del Toro, Juan Antonio Bayona, working from a screenplay by Sergio G. Sanchez, proves the rising Spanish film movement with this intelligent and truly heartbreaking masterpiece in personal horror.

A woman returns to the estate where she once lived as an orphan. Purchasing the property along with her husband and young boy, she plans to run her own institution for mentally handicapped children. Before her school opens, however, her son disappears under strange circumstances, and the woman begins to suspect the old orphanage might be haunted.

The development of the plot is deliberate and disturbing. It’s one of those movies with an ending you can’t see coming, but once it arrives you can retrace the steps toward its implacable logic. The ending is bitter sweet, and some might perceive it as a cop out, but without its meager attempt at some little bit of happiness to be found in its conclusion, the closing would be almost too much for an audience to endure. This is masterful filmmaking, and everything Horrorfest is about.

Julie & Julia / *** (PG-13)

Julia Child: Meryl Streep
Julie Powell: Amy Adams
Paul Child: Stanley Tucci
Eric Powell: Chris Messina
Simone Beck: Linda Emond
Louisette Bertholle: Helen Carey
Sarah: Mary Lynn Rajskub
Dorothy McWilliams: Jane Lynch

Columbia Pictures presents a film written and directed by Nora Ephron. Based on the book “Julie & Julia” by Julie Powell and the book “My Life in France” by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme. Running time: 123 min. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong language and some sensuality).

Meryl Streep is the reigning Acting Oscar nomination champion with more than any other actor in the awards’ history. With 15 nominations (two wins), ahead of Katherine Hepburn with 12, and many more roles ahead of her, she promises to widen the gap. She will do just that when the next set of Academy Award nominations are announced next January with her role as famous American chef Julia Child in “Julie & Julia”.

Nora Ephron’s “Julie & Julia” is taken from the book of the same name by author Julie Powell, who became famous by blogging about her experiences of cooking every recipe in Child’s first cook book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” over the course of one year. But as Ephron points out in the credits, her film is “based on two true stories” and is also inspired by Child’s autobiographical novel “My Life in France”, which highlights her love affair with her devoted husband Paul Child. Ephron intercuts Child’s struggle to be taken seriously as an American housewife attempting to spread well-conceived instruction on French cooking with Powell’s own struggles to give her writing career and life a necessary jump start.

Ephron (“You’ve Got Mail”, “Sleepless in Seatle”) sticks with her strengths and tells both Powell’s and Child’s stories as sentimental romances with the kind and devoted husbands with which each of them share their lives. Stanley Tucci brings as much charm and character to Paul as Streep does to Julia. The two were paired together in much different roles in 2006’s “The Devil Wears Prada”, and it’s a joy to see them together again, bringing such love to these characters.

Powell also has the benefit of a supporting husband in Eric, played by Chris Messina (“Vicky Christina Barcelona”). The movie really rides on these two parallel romances, although they are not its subject. It’s great to see such positive portrayals of men in a story about women struggling for their place in the world. Usually the men in such a woman’s life are used as one of the story devices that hold the women back from their desires. Here the men push the women along in their ambition and provide a positive force upon which these women can fuel their own fire.

Amy Adams (“Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”) is her usual charming self in the role of Powell, but she’s never given the great character work required from Streep as Child. While Powell falls into some of the more typical molds of the female romantic lead, Child breaks the mold of romance clichés. She’s too tall, too brash, too old, and yet she’s still filled with a positive outlook and insatiable yearning for acceptance.

Despite the wonderful portrayals, there is a certain lack of dramatic conflict in the two women’s stories. Ephron ties to inject some tension into Julie’s and Eric’s relationship late in the story. I don’t know if their brief breakup is in Powell’s book or not, but it seems thrown in and unsupported by Eric’s rather understanding character. Julia’s difficulty in getting publisher’s interested in her book and the issues of credit that come up between her co-authors ring more true, but they don’t grab the audience’s interest as well as the romance elements between Julia and Paul.

Overall, however, “Julie & Julia” makes for an entertaining engagement. Although Streep has certainly performed in more profound films, her performance here ranks among one of her best. When an actress is arguably the best actor of hers and many a generation, that is reason enough to see a movie.

Julie & Julia | Movie Trailers

The Informant! / ***½ (R)

Mark Whitacre: Matt Damon
Ginger Whitacre: Melanie Lynskey
FBI Special Agent Brian Shepard: Scott Bakula
FBI Special Agent Bob Herndon: Joel McHale
Mick Andreas: Tom Papa
Terry Wilson: Rick Overton
Robin Mann: Ann Cusack

Warner Bros. Pictures presents a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Scott Z. Burns. Based on the book by Kurt Eichenwald. Running time: 108 min. Rated R (for language).

There is a scene in Steven Soderbergh’s new comedy, “The Informant!” in which directing FBI agents sit aghast with their mouths hanging open during an inundation of criminal accusations against one of their civilian spies. That matches the reaction anyone might have to the complete oblivion with which Mark Whitacre seems to go about both his “espionage” work and his crimes. It is by no mistake that Soderbergh and his star, Matt Damon, chose to produce this real-life story of corporate corruption mere months after the biggest economic collapse this country has seen since The Great Depression.

The subject of this dark comedy is not the price-fixing crimes committed by agri-giant ADM and various other international agri-businesses in the early 90s, but rather it’s the strange and ultimately shocking conduct of physicist Mark Whitacre, who decides to go to the FBI to collect evidence against his employer, ADM, because of an alleged “conflict of conscience.” Whitacre makes you think of that adage that in order to be a good liar, you must believe your own lies.

Damon is a tour de force, in a sense, as Whitacre. The seemingly meek businessman is a far cry from Damon’s role as Jason Bourne in the popular spy franchise, but in his own way, Whitacre is nearly as successful as Bourne at what he does. He is so earnest that you can’t help but like the guy, even once you realize there is nothing that comes out of his mouth that can be trusted. He truly believes that reporting the price-fixing practices of his cohorts at ADM is in the best interest of everybody, and he will only be rewarded for it. It never occurs to him that such a betrayal will make him a pariah in the agriculture industry. Nor does it occur to him that all the lies he tells will have an effect on the FBI’s case against the corporate giant. As the lies are revealed—even through the final moments of the film—it becomes apparent that Whitacre just has no concept that his view is completely separated from reality.

The poor FBI agents who try to help him are so blindsided by his schemes that they might as well be some of the nameless dead agents left in Bourne’s wake in Damon’s more sophisticated spy films. Scott Bakula (of “Quantum Leap” fame) gets a rare film opportunity as the baffled Special Agent, Brian Shepard. Bakula’s own earnest delivery makes it easy for the audience to believe the FBI could be so easily duped by Whitacre’s oblivion. In fact, almost everyone in this movie seems so nice and unaware that it seems like they live in what would be a wonderful world, if it weren’t for Whitacre’s strange disjointed sense of right and wrong.

Soderbergh (“Ocean’s” trilogy) steers this happy, sad, quirky ship with throwback techniques that recall the espionage filmmaking of the 60s. The use of washed out filters and film stock makes the movie look vintage. Even the font used in his credits sequences looks like something from 40 years ago. The employment of Marvin Hamlisch to compose the score is a stroke of genius. Multiple Academy Award winner Hamlisch’s scores and songs were incredibly popular throughout the 70s, and here he perfectly captures the sappy, corny innocence of an earlier period in film. The film’s entire emphasis on an innocent outlook fuels the comedy behind what are really terrible financial crimes against the American people.

The film’s goofy approach to its subject matter gives it the feel of a “Hee Haw” version of a James Bond thriller. Perhaps that’s because instead of nuclear guidance systems, the secrets being revealed here involve corn syrup, but the characterizations also have a Podunk quality to them. Everybody from Whitacre, to the FBI agents, to the higher ups at ADM are just clueless hick versions of what you might normally find in a typical spy thriller, but they’re all playing at a bigger game than any of them understand. It allows us to sit back and laugh at what they’ve done.

They say laughter has a healing quality. In times filled with Bernie Madoffs and government bailouts for both the banking and auto industries, we could all use a good laugh over corporate greed. “The Informant!” is just what the doctor ordered.

The Informant! | Movie Trailers

Halloween II / ** (R)

Laurie Strode: Scout Taylor-Compton
Michael Myers: Tyler Mane
Dr. Samuel Loomis: Malcolm McDowell
Sherriff Lee Brackett: Brad Dourif
Deborah Myers: Sheri Moon Zombie
Young Michael: Chase Vanek
Annie Brackett: Danielle Harris
Nancy McDonald: Mary Birdsong
Mya Rockwell: Brea Grant
Harley David: Angela Timbur

Dimension Films presents a film written and directed by Rob Zombie. Running time: 101 min. Rated R (for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, terror, disturbing graphic images, language, some crude sexual content, and nudity).

As any horror aficionado knows, the art of the slasher flick lies in the art of the slasher to kill creatively. Such creativity allows for great randomness in the killings even though there may be some vague driving force behind the killer’s madness. John Carpenter’s original “Halloween”, while not the first slasher flick ever, set the standard for what a slasher flick should be. Perhaps it was foolish of anyone to think they could improve upon Carpenter’s model, but if anyone could do it, it would be Rob Zombie. Unfortunately, with his remake of “Halloween” two years ago, Zombie failed. Now, he is back with the sequel to his “Halloween” vision, and he continues to make the same mistakes the second time around.

I had great hopes that Zombie could rectify the errors of his first “Halloween” with this revisitation. Although his first movie “House of 1,000 Corpses” was a creative but flawed piece of horror, Zombie was able to craft a masterpiece with his sequel to that, “The Devil’s Rejects”. But while “The Devil’s Rejects” defined the subgenre of serial killing families, “Halloween II” seems stuck between the traditional conventions of the slasher flick and the deeper, more thoughtful filmmaking for which Zombie seems destined.

“H2” starts out hitting all the right notes. Like Carpenter’s sequel to his “Halloween”, it picks up in the moments immediately following the first film. In fact, Zombie does a stupendous job of basically retelling pretty much the entire story of the Carpenter penned “Halloween II” in the first twenty minutes of his own sequel. We follow the killer, Michael Myers, in his undefined need to continue to pursue his sister, Laurie Strode. Like the 1978 sequel, Laurie finds herself at the Haddonfield hospital following the Halloween night murders of the first movie. Michael quickly and horrifically dispatches the entire skeleton crew hospital staff to get to her. These are the best scenes in the movie, with Zombie fully embracing the conventions of the slasher flick, using location, mood, lighting, and spatial timing for effective shocks and thrilling terror. But then…

Let’s just leave it at two years pass. The world thinks Michael Myers is dead, while the audience knows better or else they wouldn’t have bought their tickets. Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton, “Obsessed”) is still failing to cope well with the events that led to the deaths of her friends and family. Now living with Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif, “Deadwood”) and his daughter, Annie (Danielle Harris, “Urban Legend”), another survivor of Michael’s attacks, Laurie is still unaware of her blood relation to Myers.

Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell, “Heroes”) has turned his involvement as Myers’ shrink into a career boost. He’s preparing to release a tell all book on the two year anniversary of Myers’ killing spree and is doing a pretty good job proving what an egomaniac he is on the talk circuit leading up to the book’s release. This mishandling of Loomis is one of Zombie’s greatest mistakes. The original’s Loomis, played masterfully by the great Donald Pleasance, is one of Carpenter’s greatest creations. He seemed to be a crazy man, but spoke as the voice of sanity to deaf ears. McDowell’s, by fault of the writing, not the actor, is a greedy, megalomaniac, devoid of morality, who builds his own fame and success on the suffering of Michael’s victims. I think Zombie is trying to make some statement on our media driven society, but he chooses the wrong vehicle for his message driven on a beaten down path that is far too easy a road for such an innovative filmmaker.

The voice of reason in this version is Sheriff Brackett. I’m happy to see Zombie give Dourif, who more often plays the psychotic, the opportunity to play such a good character. Unfortunately, Brackett is delivered an emotional blow late in the movie, which Zombie never gives him a chance to deal with.

Meanwhile, the family bonds between Michael and Laurie and their deceased mother, Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie, “The Devil’s Rejects”), create some interesting developments with some potentially, yet somewhat unexplored, horrific implications about the afterlife. These “dream sequences” are the most interesting aspect of Zombie’s vision. A whole movie involving them would be quite welcome and—I would speculate—quite frightening.

While Zombie’s creepy notions of life after death tease us throughout the picture, the slasher model dictates that many teenagers must die senselessly. Typically their deaths are quite creative. Here they only manage to be brutal, and therefore, disturbing. This isn’t a fun slasher flick where you wonder just how the killer is going to murder the next person. “Ooo, there’s a band saw in the background. I’ll bet that gets used.” No, here the hulking Myers, played by former pro wrestler Tyler Mane (“X-Men”), kills in the most sensible way, with his fists, his feet and a very big knife. Practical, but not exciting.

I will give Zombie credit for ending the film on just the right note, however, with a nice homage to “Psycho”.

Halloween II | Movie Trailers

Inglourious Basterds / **** (R)

Lt. Aldo Raines: Brad Pitt
Shosanna Dreyfus: Mélanie Laurent
Col. Hans Landa: Christoph Waltz
Sgt. Donny Donowitz: Eli Roth
Lt. Archie Hicox: Michael Fassbender
Bridget von Hammersmark: Diane Kruger
Fredrick Zoller: Daniel Brühl
Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz: Til Schweiger
Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki: Gedeon Burkhard
Marcel: Jacky Ido
Pfc. Smithson Utivich: B.J. Novak
Pfc. Omar Ulmer: Omar Doom
Josef Goebbels: Sylvester Groth
Adolf Hitler: Martin Wuttke
General Ed Fenech: Mike Myers

The Weinstein Co. presents a film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Running time 153 min. Rated R (for strong graphic violence, language, and brief sexuality).

Chapter One

Once upon a time… in German Occupied France

In May 1940, the German Army occupied France. They discriminated against Jews by recording all of their whereabouts and banning them from many public places. Starting in 1942, all Jews were required to wear a yellow star designating them as lesser citizens. Jews were rounded up to live in ghettos where the living conditions were unbearable, and eventually the Germans developed their plans for the Final Solution—a more efficient way to eliminate “undesirables”. The Final Solution involved the mass execution of Jews and other social and religious groups felt to be inferior by the leaders of the Nazi Party. By the end of World War II, in May 1945, some 6 million Jews and “inferiors” had been “eliminated” throughout Europe by the Nazi regime. It is said that only about 200,000 Jews survived the Holocaust. This is one of humanity’s darkest chapters.

Chapter Two

THE CRITIC IN THE SHOW

A couple of weeks ago, I played a role in a professional production of the play “The Diary of Anne Frank”. It was a small role. Mr. Kraler was a character made up by Frank to represent two men, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler, employees of her father’s business, Opekta. They helped hide the Frank family and four other Jews in the company’s secret annex building for two years during the German occupation of Holland. It was a difficult play for all the actors, many of whom suffered headaches and other signs of stress while dealing with replicating the emotions of these real people who went through this terrible ordeal. My role was relatively easy in comparison to the others, but there was still the obligation to do these brave people justice. Their sacrifice was more heroic and noble than anything an actor could do in representing them. What was going on around them was unthinkable, and yet they rose above it. To see people you knew and worked with and cared for carted off simply for being Jewish, never to be heard from again. It must have been like living a nightmare.

Chapter Three

THE QT

Back in the eighties, there was a young man who loved movies. He worked in a video store and consumed them by the genre. Exploitation, horror, noir, crime, western, sci-fi, war movies; he loved them all. He loved movies so much he aspired to make them himself and soon sold some screenplays to Hollywood and proceeded to direct his first movie starting from a workshop at the famed Sundance Institute. “Reservoir Dogs”, released in 1992, was certainly an accomplished first effort; but it was with his second film in 1994, “Pulp Fiction”, that Quentin Tarantino’s unique gift for film was realized and accepted by the masses. QT revolutionized a cinema that had become stagnant since the ‘70s, and he did it with a retro flare visually and on the soundtrack, but with a fresh new dialogue-heavy take and layered plot lines. A QT character doesn’t talk like real people, he talks like a movie character in love with the way people talk in movies. His movies also seem to relish in their cinematic looks and atmosphere.

Chapter Four

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, Pt. 1

Some have asked me whether this movie is based on a true story. If you’ve seen the movie, you know beyond any doubt that it is most certainly not. Some have asked if it is a remake. No, although it almost borrows its named from “Inglorious Bastards”, an Italian made 1978 movie about a band of American commandos on a special mission behind Nazi lines. Some say the idea of the commando unit in this “Basterds” is taken from the German unit portrayed in Sam Peckinpah’s 1977 German Army point of view WWII film “Cross of Iron”, but I don’t really see it. QT’s Basterds are an American unit made up of Jewish soldiers commissioned to work undercover behind enemy lines killing and scalping Nazis for the express purpose of spreading fear and doubt throughout the Nazi ranks. While that set up certainly suggests an interesting World War II movie, what develops from that initial idea is something purely Tarantino, and most-likely only QT himself could pull it off.

Chapter Five

WHAT WENT DOWN

QT’s movie isn’t really about The Basterds, however. It is about a plot to take down most of the higher ranking officials in Hitler’s Third Reich during the premiere of a Nazi propaganda movie that the Führer himself may be attending. Of course, the long and winding road QT takes to get to that plot and the intertwining storylines that cross and parallel each other in order to get there are also purely Tarantino. The Basterds are merely a cog in the wheel of that plot.

Like many a Tarantino plot, there are some major players—the Americans (i.e. The Basterds), the British, the Nazi SS—hard at some big time plans, who will come to see those plans teeter on the quibbles of some fairly minor players. The Basterds have spent a good deal of the war building up a reputation as the Nazi headhunters they were commissioned to be, letting only a few live to tell the tale, never taking prisoners. The Nazis have been building their reputations hunting Jews, Colonel Hans Landa in particular has risen through the Nazi ranks from one of their best Jew hunters to head of security for the special screening of the propaganda film “Nation’s Pride”, about a sniper named Zoller who held off hundreds of American troops single handedly and starring Zoller himself. The British have developed Operation: Kino, a plot to kill most of the top ranking Nazi inner circle by sending The Basterds in with one of their own to blow the screening up. Unbeknownst to the British, Americans, or Germans is the fact that Zoller has developed a crush on a young woman who is the proprietor of a small but beautiful movie house. When Zoller convinces Goebbels to move the venue to his crush’s cinema, he sets into motion events that neither side will be able to predict, for his crush is none other than Shosanna Dreyfus the sole survivor of one of Landa’s hunting parties. She will now have her revenge.

Of course, this synopsis cannot suggest the style and skill with which Tarantino executes his strange tale of vengeance. Like all of his films, he laces his heavy storyline with moments of lacerating humor, mostly along the more morbid lines here, as when he has a German soldier recount the tale of how he came to live through one of The Basterds raids, or the pomposity with which he depicts the British High Command’s attitude toward what will basically be a suicide mission for The Basterds, or the boyish charm he infuses into Landa, easily the film’s most evil character. The violence—when it comes—is graphic and gory.

Tarantino once again displays his exquisite use of music in the soundtrack, as when he opens the film and introduces The Basterds with the spaghetti western music of Ennio Morricone, or his use of David Bowie’s song from the early ‘80’s horror movie “Cat People” as Shosanna prepares for her final revenge. Not only does the out of period music fit incredibly well, but the French actress, Mélanie Laurent, looks remarkably like the young Nastassja Kinski from “Cat People”. And then there are all the twists and unexpected developments Tarantino throws in throughout the story.

Chapter Six

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, Pt. 2

QT has established his knack for redefining actors’ careers with his casting, often resurrecting fallen stars. There are no career revolutions for American stars in this one, unless you count Mike Myers (“Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery), who shows up in an unusual cameo as the British general in charge of Operation: Kino. While I don’t think this brief appearance will do much for his career, Myers is spot on in his presentation of how the British SIS Command is historically depicted in WWII movies.

As for the primary cast, QT gives Brad Pitt (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) yet another whack at one of his fun oddball roles with The Basterds’ commander, Lt. Aldo Raines. He delivers a speech to his troops that only a very select few actors could even hope to pull off. Mélanie Laurent (“Indigènes”) displays an amazing skill to tell a story with her eyes, as she must hide her intensions and true identity to the SS as they rearrange their screening plans to fit her theater. And Christoph Waltz has already deservedly won Best Actor at Cannes International Film Festival with his quite comical performance as the delightfully evil Landa. Let’s hope the Academy remembers him in February.

There are some wonderful supporting performances as well. Til Schweiger (“King Arthur”) is intimidatingly funny as a German officer who joins The Basterds because he enjoys killing his countrymen even more than they do. Michael Fassbender (“Hunger”) carries the British pomposity established by Myers into The Basterds’ realm. German-born Diane Kruger, probably the second most recognizable star to American audiences due to her role in the “National Treasure” films, provides the beauty for the film as a German actress spying for the British. Eli Roth (“Death Proof”) is adequately deranged as the deadliest of the Basterds, known to the Germans as The Bear Jew. As with most of Tarantino’s endeavors, the fates of all his characters are totally unpredictable.

Chapter Seven

FUCKING NAZIS!

Nothing can make up for the horrors that befell the Jewish people during World War II. The nobility of the many people like Kleiman and Kugler, who tried to help Jews during the Holocaust could never be replaced by acts of vengeance. Vengeance isn’t noble and makes us as bad as them. As with all of his heroes, Tarantino requires some sort of penance or sacrifice from his characters for the moral liberties they take. But, without diminishing the trials and struggles of all who suffered and fought during World War II, I am compelled to say about this fantasy of vengeance against the German Army, “It’s about time those fucking Nazis got what they deserve.” True, it’s only a movie; and no matter how Tarantino reimagines history in “Inglourious Basterds”, it will never change 6 million civilian exterminations. But isn’t it great to see Hitler and his cronies finally getting it really stuck to them?

Inglourious Basterds | Movie Trailers

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra / *½ (PG-13)

Duke: Channing Tatum
Ana/Baroness: Sienna Miller
Ripcord: Marlon Wayans
McCullen/Destro: Christopher Eccleston
Storm Shadow: Byung-hun Lee
Shana ‘Scarlett’ O’Hara: Rachel Nichols
Breaker: Saïd Taghmaoui
Snake Eyes: Ray Park
Heavy Duty: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaji
Zartan: Arnold Vosloo
Rex: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
General Hawk: Dennis Quaid
U.S. President: Jonathan Pryce

Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Stephen Sommers. Written by Stuart Beattie and David Elliot & Paul Lovett and Michael B. Gordon and Sommers. Based on characters created by Hasbro. Running time: 118 min. Rated PG-13 (for strong sequences of action violence and mayhem throughout).

Now, I’m sure all you G.I. Joe fans took one look at my poor star rating and decided that like the legions of critics who have panned the new live action movie, I have no understanding of the G.I. Joe universe and what it is all about. I can hear you saying, “It’s supposed to be an action movie, not some thought provoking treatise.” I understand this very well.

I was a great Joe fan as a youth. I watched the cartoon every day with cookies and a glass of milk after school—it immediately followed “Inspector Gadget”. I collected the comic books. I loved the combination of combat war action with the melodramatic soap opera-like leanings of the plot. Who was attracted to whom on the Joe team? How were they secretly connected to the Cobras (the bad guys)? I delighted in the bickering and inner turmoil that plagued the Cobras, often thwarting their own plans of world domination. So, I didn’t go into my screening of “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” with the typical film snob trepidation of some critics. But oh, how the gems of our youth can lose their luster.

“The Rise of Cobra” tells the story of how Cobra begins and becomes the ultimate enemy power the G.I. Joes will ever face. Taking place in the near future, we meet key members of the Cobra team before they’ve taken on their moniker. The Baroness (Sienna Miller, “Stardust”) is a leather clad dominatrix who seems to be the secret Cobra Commander’s go to henchman for getting things done. When she fails to obtain a new weapon from a NATO convoy, the second in command, a weapons manufacturer named McCullen (Christopher Eccleston, “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising”), puts the assassin Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee, “Hero”) on her case to make sure she gets the job done. Meanwhile an almost peripheral Cobra operative named Zartan (Arnold Vosloo, “The Mummy”) seems to be on a mission of his own. And, the mysterious Doctor develops a serum to control people and make them nearly indestructible using nanotechnology.

We discover the existence of the secret G.I. Joe unit along with the movie’s hero, Duke (Channing Tatum, “Fighting”), and his best friend, nicknamed Ripcord (Marlon Wayans, “Little Man”). As the only survivors of the convoy attacked by Baroness, and because of Duke’s intimate knowledge of the woman underneath the leather, the two are asked to join the elite military unit by its leader, General Hawk (Dennis Quaid, “The Express”). They meet other key players in the G.I. Joe operation—communications expert, Breaker (Saïd Taghmaoui, “Traitor”), physical training expert and all around big muscle, Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaji, ABC’s “Lost”), the sexy and brainy Scarlett (Rachel Nichols, “P2”), and the mute ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park, “X-Men”).

To go any further into the plot of this film would be a waste of time. All that must be known is that the Commander has a plot to take over the world involving the destruction of well-known world monuments, and it’s up to the Joes to stop him.

Here’s what I liked about the movie. 1) Director Stephen Sommers (“The Mummy”) utilizes spectacular special effects to evoke that great summer blockbuster tradition of thrilling the audience with the impressive destruction of famous settings like the Eiffel Tower. He precedes this with a spectacular chase through Paris as the Joes try to prevent the disaster. 2) Hyung-hun’s Storm Shadow, when out of his combat costume, is a suave, sharply dressed, enigmatic character. 3) Although not the primary focus, the screenplay does keep the soap opera elements of the comic book, most notably in the relationship between Duke and Baroness and the flashback events that led to their emotional split involving her brother Rex (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, “The Lookout”).

The drawbacks of the movie are so plentiful I probably won’t even get to them all. One very distressing element is the various flashbacks dealing with Storm Shadow’s past relationship with the Joe Snake Eyes. They encountered each other as children and shared the same sensei, but their entire relationship consists of fighting each other. There are no significant emotional moments for either of them. I think their connection would’ve been stronger had some sort of friendship been shared, but here it seems not only were they always enemies, but for no apparent reason.

Everything in this movie is dealt with in pure military efficiency, and generally with the same lack of imagination. There is no character development. Each character is given a name and job—sometimes one and the same—and their development is finished. There is no plot development. We are shown weapons and gadgets, the characters are given singular objectives and the play button is pushed to set the action in motion. The jokes are all one-liners of the ilk that even Schwarzenegger might feel uncomfortable uttering. I don’t think any character is required to string any more than two or three sentences together at any point in time. And, the dialogue is so atrocious it makes George Lucas’s dialogue for the “Star Wars” prequels sound like Shakespeare.

One fan of the movie pointed out to me that many critics were saying “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” made their I.Q.s drop. This is a ridiculous and uninventive statement for a critic to make. Had my I.Q. dropped, I most likely would’ve enjoyed the movie. But it isn’t really a matter of intelligence so much as one of maturity. I’m not twelve anymore and demand more competence in my entertainment. I require some quality filmmaking to go along with the dazzling explosions and sexy commandos. While the explosions, breasts and abs are all impressive here; it’s the storytelling that is in short supply.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra | Movie Trailers

“No More Yankie My Wankie”: In Memory of John Hughes 1950-2009

As a film buff, I often dread the deaths of certain filmmakers. The thought of never seeing another movie by Eastwood, Scorsese, or Spielberg is a disheartening one. One filmmaker I had never thought of in that way was John Hughes. In fact, Hughes hadn’t directed a movie since 1991. But when his sudden death was announced, I found myself both nostalgic for his high school comedies that permeated my own high school experience and saddened that we had lost an artist who so accurately portrayed the psyche of a generation.

On Thursday, August 6, 2009, filmmaker John Hughes died from a heart attack suffered on his morning walk in Manhattan. He was 59. Hughes had been a staple of the Cineplex during the eighties and early nineties. He started out as a writer for National Lampoon magazine. The movies that sprung from the comedy publication gave Hughes his first screenplay success. While his debut screenplay for “Class Reunion” (1982) didn’t enjoy the success of the earlier National Lampoon film “Animal House” (1978), it got Hughes on his way toward building a reputation as one of Hollywood’s premiere comedy screenplay writers.

Hughes’ first big success came with the screenplay for the Michael Keaton vehicle “Mr. Mom” (1983). Once his third screenplay was filmed, Hughes shot into the stratosphere of ‘80s comedy. “National Lampoon’s Vacation”(1983) became a national phenomenon, coming at the beginning of both the public acceptance of paid cable channels and the birth of the home video market. Within a few years of its release the family vacation comedy became loved by audiences of all ages despite its ‘R’ rating.

Hughes made his directorial debut in 1984 with “Sixteen Candles”, another family-oriented movie that pushed the bounds of good taste while perfectly capturing the alienation of adolescence. Stamped with the an inexplicable ‘PG’ rating, which allowed for the profane humor to reach a larger audience, “Sixteen Candles” kicked off a quick succession of high school-based movies that would help to define a generation and usher in a whole new era of filmmaking. Hughes followed up with a teen comedy or drama in quick succession including, “The Breakfast Club”(1985), “Weird Science”(1985), “Pretty In Pink”(screenplay only 1986), “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off”(1986), and “Some Kind of Wonderful”(screenplay only 1987), often utilizing the stars of “Candles”, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, and always depicting awkward teenagers flying in the face of authority and defying the class-oriented structures of their environments.

In 1987 Hughes directed his first grown up-themed movie “Planes, Trains & Automobiles”. Centered on a family holiday—Thanksgiving—the movie followed a man’s (Steve Martin) failing attempts to get home to his family during the busy travel holiday. He continued in the adult vein for his next project “She’s Having a Baby”(1988), about the loss of identity a man (Kevin Bacon) feels as he attempts to start his own family. He returned to family-based movies with his next two directorial efforts “Uncle Buck”(1989) and “Curly Sue”(1991), which focus on the unanticipated relationships adults can share with children.

“Curly Sue” would be Hughes’ final trip to the director’s chair, but he continued to pen a number of family films, including National Lampoon’s “European Vacation”(1985) and “Christmas Vacation”(1989), “The Great Outdoors”(1988), “Home Alone”(1990) and two sequels, “Dutch”(1991), “Career Opportunities”(1991), “Beethoven”(1992), “Dennis the Menace”(1993), the remake of “Miracle on 34th Street”(1994), “Baby’s Day Out”(1994), “101 Dalmatians”(1996), “Flubber”(1997), “Reach the Rock”(1998), and “Just Visiting”(2001).

Hughes was not a flashy director, but his writing skills helped him get into the mindset of the American high school teenager in a way that no other writer-director ever had before. Aside from a few contributions by a handful of other directors, Hughes essentially created the high school genre, one that to this day produces a new picture every couple of months. For the first time, Hughes ushered audiences inside the psyche of high school aged kids, and he took them seriously. Even in his most raucous comedies, his teenagers were intellectual and striving beyond the positions that had been predetermined for them.

He always had a great depth to his cast of characters. They were kids that really existed in American high schools. For the first time teenagers recognized themselves represented in film. As Hughes matured as a filmmaker, so did his characters. What were at first essentially plots constructed to provide shocking laughs provided by the imagination of his teens, eventually evolved into studies in how adults tried without success to control these kids as cattle, and then into examinations of the class systems that formed in high school society. His direction got more inventive as he moved into his adult fare, but he seemed most at home with his teenage characters.

Hughes also introduced the world to a new generation of actors. They became known as the Brat Pack; although, I imagine this categorization must have frustrated Hughes. He was trying to tell adults that these kids weren’t brats, but intelligent thinking people just trying to survive a period in their lives that most adults had lost touch with. Many of his stars never survived this inaccurate label. Molly Ringwald, Alley Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Lea Thompson, Eric Stoltz and others shared well over fifteen minutes of fame, but never seemed to outlive their ‘80s personas. Others, like John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Joan Cusack, and Bill Paxton became major stars. Hughes also showed a knack for creating the perfect vehicles for well-established performers such as, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Candy, Walter Mathau, Glenn Close, Catherine O’Hara, Dan Aykroyd, Paul Dooley, and Charles Grodin.

A contribution that Hughes had a hand in was the development of the soundtrack album as a moneymaking enterprise of its own. While George Lucas and Martin Scosese blazed the trail of incorporating pop songs into the structure of a film, Hughes is in a small part responsible for making the soundtrack album more marketable. Although the studio executives probably would have driven the market on their own anyway, Hughes touched the ever-important teen market with his ability to include underground bands on his soundtrack that spoke to the counter culture leanings of teens. Hughes introduced audiences to the likes of The Smiths, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, The Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, Everything But the Girl, Kate Bush, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Suzanne Vega, Echo & the Bunnymen, New Order, and INXS. Suddenly teens were exploring music beyond the American Top 40 charts. Soon bands would be making more money by contributing tracks to a film soundtrack album than they might from their own album sales.

Following the announcement of Hughes’ death, my home page on Facebook was aflutter with quotes from his movies. High school friends and college friends all had their favorite quotations. Quoting “The Breakfast Club”, one friend in particular noted that nobody had ever summed up his high school experience better, “You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed.” Thank you for opening our eyes. R.I.P. John Hughes.