Annie

ANNIE (Will Gluck, 2014)

Although Annie Bennett (Quvenzhané Wallis) was abandoned at an Italian restaurant at the age of four, the plucky Harlem foster kid remains confident that she’ll be happily reunited with her parents. In ANNIE the ten-year-old waits outside the eatery every Friday night in anticipation that mom and dad will return for her. In the meantime she’s in the care of Colleen Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), who provides shelter and little else for Annie and four other girls. Miss Hannigan is still bitter about her failed singing career in the 1990s and spends her alcohol-soaked days lamenting what might have been.

Annie’s prospects improve, at least for the time being, when cell phone mogul Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) crosses her path. Video of him saving her from being hit by a van goes viral and boosts his flagging New York City mayoral campaign. Stacks’ campaign manager Guy (Bobby Cannavale) recognizes Annie as a golden opportunity to broaden his candidate’s appeal, so he convinces the billionaire to become her temporary guardian. Instead of moving into the group home Miss Hannigan was threatening to send her to, Annie settles into a penthouse overlooking Manhattan. Beyond the public relations advantages she gives him, Stacks is slow to warm up to Annie, leaving her care to his personal assistant Grace (Rose Byrne).

Director and co-writer Will Gluck’s modernized musical remakes Broadway through what’s popular on the radio. Showtunes are adapted with hip hop beats and AutoTuned vocals that play it exceedingly safe rather than tapping into the innovation in today’s rap, R&B, and DJ culture. The closest this version of ANNIE has to a memorable production number is when “It’s a Hard Knock Life” uses the sounds of straightening up the foster home to add STOMP-like percussion. The singing and dancing are adequate, with Diaz faring best in a scenery-chewing solo and a duet with Cannavale.

What ANNIE lacks in terms of belters and hoofers, it makes up for in personality. Wallis comes across as a sweet, streetwise kid whose hardships haven’t soured her outlook on life. Her Annie is not a precocious foster child, just a quick study when it comes to understanding her place in the system. Foxx avoids becoming maudlin as his career-focused character allows this little girl to soften him up. He’s also funny doing a number of spit-takes, especially when they’re ill-timed on the campaign trail. As a surrogate mother of sorts to Annie, Byrne shares some tender moments Annie make it easy to root for the happy ending for everyone that is sure to come. Diaz and Cannavale are likably unlikable as they scheme to use Annie for their selfish interests, and the celebrity cameos in a fake movie within the movie are an amusing treat.

At times the updated references scream of trying too hard--enough with the hashtags to signal that one is plugged in--but overall ANNIE makes an easy transition from its original Great Depression setting to today. The lack of crassness is the best carryover from ANNIE’s origins. Rather than trying to subvert the pie-eyed optimism of its source, this version dials back the irrepressible enthusiasm to a more prudent level while never feeling as if it needs to be more cynical or vulgar to appeal to a new generation or wider audience.

Grade: B-

RoboCop

ROBOCOP (José Padilha, 2014)

OmniCorp is making a fortune using robotic law enforcement overseas, and CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) can’t wait to deploy it on the streets of the United States.  Sufficient Congressional and public resistance requires finding a solution to persuade the masses that his machines provide a safe method of policing.  The lack of a human element in decision-making is the sticking point for many, so the way to alleviate public fears is to enhance a wounded officer with the latest technological advancements.

With so much riding on the experiment, the perfect candidate is needed to inhabit the suit.  They find him in Detroit cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), who is just a head, hands, and thorax after being targeted in a car bombing.  His grieving wife Clara (Abbie Cornish) consents to the procedure as a way of keeping him alive but fails to consider that doing so turns him into corporate property.  As Alex’s intellect and emotional capacity prove problematic in testing, leading OmniCorp scientist Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) is instructed to program the human element out of him.

The 1987 ROBOCOP satirized corporate greed and questioned putting trust in technology.  Director José Padilha and screenwriter Joshua Zetumer’s ROBOCOP consigns the biting humor to segments with Samuel L. Jackson’s cable news blowhard stumping for the adoption of robotic security forces.  Reflecting the times, the challenge in this version isn’t whether such science should be used for law and order but who is controlling it and to what end.  For instance, in the near future drones are almost certain to become more widely employed, so the question becomes how they are incorporated without infringing on the rights and safety of citizens.  Other thematically relevant information is lobbed into the new ROBOCOP, but overall the film plays as though it lacks a point of view.  It seeks to get credit for providing food for thought without digesting.

The talented cast, which also includes Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Jennifer Ehle, and Jackie Earle Haley, add class to what has the potential to be savage material.  Like the new, shiny ROBOCOP with the latest special effects and slick production values, the actors are simply adornments.  Respected actors, snippets of sociopolitical commentary and flashy computer effects are collected badges to claim something vital is present.  It looks good but lacks the personality or depth.  

With more focus placed on the forces manipulating him behind the scenes and the family that misses what he was, it can seem like the RoboCop character is an afterthought in his own film.  Part of the appeal of Peter Weller’s version was seeing a cyborg lawman push around the city’s scumbags in ways a mere man would be incapable of doing.  Through no fault of Kinnaman’s, this RoboCop isn’t cleaning up the city so much as he’s trying to solve his own murder and get his emotions to override his programming.  What Murphy looks like when the suit is removed is a great and disgusting reveal, yet there’s little identification with what remains of the man who’s an unwilling tool of the powerful.

Grade: C

About Last Night

ABOUT LAST NIGHT (Steve Pink, 2014)

ABOUT LAST NIGHT strives to rise above romantic comedy clichés, but in its haste to push through every stage in a relationship it fails to let its primary couple just be.  Danny (Michael Ealy) and Debbie (Joy Bryant) experience the ups and downs of being together in moments akin to montages expanded with dialogue.  The course of them growing close and apart are like a collection of Instagram videos rather than full scenes.  These peeks at the dating life are long enough to get the basic idea across but feel rushed and incomplete.  

The remake of the 1986 Brat Pack film, itself an adaptation of a David Mamet play, relocates from Chicago to Los Angeles to follow friends and co-workers Bernie (Kevin Hart) and Danny and the main women in their lives, roommates Joan (Regina Hall) and Debbie.  Bernie and Joan are a combustible couple eager for their low-key friends to find someone special too.  Danny is still nursing his wounds a year after the end of his previous relationship.  Debbie isn’t in any rush either.  They hit it off, though, and while initially cautious about becoming seriously involved, they decide to share a place.  As the seasons change, so too do the temperatures in their connection.  

To its credit, ABOUT LAST NIGHT doesn’t contrive some nonsensical reason or easily resolved misunderstanding to instigate Danny and Debbie’s break-up.  If anything it pokes fun at such movie devices through Bernie and Joan’s manufactured excuses for splitting.  Still, director Steve Pink and screenwriter Leslye Headland are in such a hurry to get to that point that they skim over much of what would advance the main duo’s commitment to one another beyond the first level of intense physical attraction.  This might be understandable if ABOUT LAST NIGHT were commenting on how sexual chemistry can lead people to form deeper ties than they are prepared to accept, but the film seems convinced of their appropriateness for one another even if it fails to convey this.  Having laid a weak foundation for Danny and Debbie’s relationship, the disagreements and separation don’t mean as much when from the outset the mechanics to get them apart are visible.

Ealy and Bryant are never less than appealing as the sensitive and grounded characters, but the prescriptive nature of their arcs isn’t nearly as much fun as the passion and bickering between Hart and Hall.  Their playful and volatile relationship is meant to contrast with the stable one.  Instead it does a much better job of assuring that these are the two people in the film who really mean something to one another, even if sometimes they drive themselves crazy.  Hart is very funny as he vigorously recounts Bernie’s exploits and performs dating arithmetic so he maintains the upper hand.  Hall matches his energy and ruthlessness while holding onto some vulnerability.  Bernie and Joan’s pairing is a caricature, yet they feel like the ones with something at stake.    

ABOUT LAST NIGHT is more frank, especially out of the gate, in its descriptions regarding what goes on in private between men and women than many romantic comedies.  While some of that crudity comes across like it’s there for shock value in this genre, it helps to remind of the animalistic motivations underneath the social rituals. For a film that often doesn’t take the easy way out, it’s unfortunate that the larger share of screen time is devoted to the more conventional but less satisfying relationship.

Grade: C+

Carrie

CARRIE (Kimberly Peirce, 2013)

Remaking a film recognized as a genre classic is a tall order for any filmmaker. Although director Kimberly Peirce doesn’t take the shot-for-shot approach for her adaptation of CARRIE, her version is remarkably loyal to Brian De Palma’s 1976 film. Consider it a kind of cinematic karaoke, in which the basic track and lyrics are provided but room for individual interpretation remains.  De Palma got first crack at the Stephen King novel and made his CARRIE in the key of Alfred Hitchcock.  Peirce bases her cover on De Palma’s composition.  While the similarities are hard to deny, the variations construct a conversation between the works a la Liz Phair’s EXILE IN GUYVILLE responding to The Rolling Stones’ EXILE ON MAIN STREET. 

A new opening scene with Margaret White (Julianne Moore) giving birth to Carrie and choosing to spare her life marks one of the biggest differences.  The child’s origin is referenced later in the original CARRIE but not depicted within it.  This key departure makes plain the theme regarding fear and confusion about female sexuality.  It also suggests the possibility of the story being viewed from the mother’s perspective, although ultimately that is an avenue not taken.  Moore’s Margaret doesn’t get significantly more screen time than Piper Laurie did in the role, but the character’s arc is more empathetic in Moore’s portrayal even as it’s clear that this is a woman whose beliefs have caused her great anguish. 

The plot foundation is virtually the same between the two films.  Loathed by her high school classmates, Carrie (Chloë Grace Moretz) becomes a larger object of derision when she reveals her ignorance regarding the changes to her body during adolescence. Rather than comforting her daughter after the traumatic episode in the locker room, Margaret doubles down on a message of religiously rooted guilt and bolts Carrie into a closet to contemplate her inherent sin.  Carrie rejects her mother’s warped philosophy as a source of strength.   She prefers to hone the telekinetic power within her.

Most of the other girls despise Carrie even more now that they are being reprimanded for viciously teasing her and threatened with suspension, including from the prom, if they don’t follow gym teacher Ms. Desjardin’s (Judy Greer) punishment regimen.  Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) regrets her behavior toward Carrie and decides to give up her time at the dance because of it.  She persuades her boyfriend Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie instead. Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) refuses to do penance for her treatment of Carrie and, along with boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell), plots to give the shy girl a prom no one will ever forget. 

CARRIE’s examination of teenage cruelty gets updated with a humiliating smartphone video that circulates among the student body, but for all of the potential to illustrate how technology can make an ostracized kid more vulnerable to peer abuse, Peirce’s film doesn’t convey the violation and torment associated with being perceived school-wide as a laughingstock.  Aside from the shower scene, which clashes with the rest of the character’s conception, Moretz’s Carrie seems wise and in control from the get-go. She’s not a meek girl discovering her development but a mostly self-assured young woman who learns to channel her strength, which is a major departure compared to Sissy Spacek’s performance in De Palma’s film.  While Peirce and Moretz are welcome to this put this spin on Carrie, it undermines the protagonist’s trajectory. 

Peirce and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa are indebted to Lawrence D. Cohen’s screenplay but make justifiable minor tweaks.  The film benefits from giving Sue a slightly larger role.  Clarifying her motivation and having Tommy defend Carrie in an English class rather than the reverse adds poignancy to the inevitable tragedy.  Ms. Desjardin gets a fairer shake this time around than her analogue did.  Unfortunately the indistinct extreme Christian fundamentalism remains as much of a caricature in the new CARRIE as it was previously.  Taken on its own terms Peirce’s CARRIE holds its own as a coming-of-age drama even as some of the changes weaken the payoffs.

Grade: C+

Total Recall

TOTAL RECALL (Len Wiseman, 2012)

In TOTAL RECALL factory worker Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) has a vivid dream in which he and a woman are being pursued by synthetic soldiers.  He wakes up to remember that he doesn’t live the thrilling life of a spy and that the beautiful woman beside him in bed is not the one which he fantasizes spending adventures with.

Quaid lives in The Colony, which used to be called Australia and is essentially the rundown home for the blue collar laborers in the United Federation of Britain.   A global chemical war has left much of the planet uninhabitable at the end of the 21st century, so working stiffs like Quaid must take an elevator-like transport--a sub-subway, if you will--that passes through the Earth’s core to the more affluent territory.  Times are tough in The Colony as the UFB’s Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston) seeks to crack down on terrorists fighting back on the downtrodden’s behalf.

Feeling as though his life is missing something, Quaid eventually decides to visit Rekall, a company that can implant memories as if one actually experienced them. The only caveat is that customers cannot select memories that overlap with their real lives.  Quaid chooses the spy package, but things go wrong almost immediately.  The Rekall employee (John Cho) accuses Quaid of lying about his past, and next thing he knows the room is surrounded by law enforcement.  Through an exceptional display of physical skill and mental calculation, Quaid escapes and returns home to his wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale).

Are Quaid’s experiences part of what he purchased, or is he really a secret agent?  The appearance of Melina (Jessica Biel), the woman from his dreams, further confuses Quaid as to what is real. Director Len Wiseman’s remake doesn’t have much interest in the thematic questions the premise raises.  This TOTAL RECALL is less humorous and contemplative than Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story that is the basis for both films.  Nevertheless, it succeeds on the modest aims of a self-contained action/science fiction film.  The action scenes mostly work, particularly some chase sequences, although Wiseman thoroughly botches the spatial element of a fight in an elevator.

While clearly inspired by other films--BLADE RUNNER is liberally borrowed from--the production and art design are quite beautiful.  Considering that Wiseman utilized an almost monochrome palette for the two UNDERWORLD films he directed, it’s nice to see him utilizing more color in the noir-like gloom of TOTAL RECALL’s dystopia.  

Wiseman is better off when he frees himself from the strictures of replicating Verhoeven’s version.  The obvious nods to the other film are more distracting than anything.  The hat tips feel less like homage and more like dutiful item box checking. While Wiseman’s slick update probably has no good reason for existing other than a rights owner wanting to cash in a chip that takes advantage of today’s special effects, this TOTAL RECALL is a solidly entertaining blast of summer movie spectacle.

Grade: B

Dark Shadows

DARK SHADOWS (Tim Burton, 2012)

Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), the dashing heir to the family fishing empire, picks the wrong woman to spurn in DARK SHADOWS.  Angelique (Eva Green), a servant at the Collins manor, reacts badly to his decision to break off their romance.  As a witch, she’s more than capable of getting her revenge.  She causes the deaths of Barnabas’ parents and his beloved Josette (Bella Heathcote).  As if that isn’t punishment enough, Angelique turns him into a vampire and then sees to it that he is locked in a buried coffin.

Almost two hundred years later--1972, to be exact--Barnabas is accidentally freed.  He returns to the coastal town of Collinsport, Maine and finds it to be much different than what he knew.  The changes aren’t just technological and societal.  The family estate is in disrepair and inhabited by eight strangers, as is apt to happen when one is gone for nearly two centuries.  Now calling Collinwood Manor home are matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), Elizabeth’s brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) and his son David (Gulliver McGrath), the boy’s psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), groundskeeper Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley), maid Mrs. Johnson (Ray Shirley), and newly arrived governess Victoria Winters (Heathcote), who bears a marked resemblance to the love of Barnabas’ lifetime.

Elizabeth is the only one who knows Barnabas’ secrets, so in exchange for being permitted to stay at Collinwood, he promises not to indulge his vampiric impulses on anyone living there.  Barnabas then settles in to restore the family business to its former glory only to realize that the competition is headed by the very woman who cursed him so many years ago.  She’s going by the name Angel now and is a pillar of the community.  Worst of all, her desire to call Barnabas hers has not abated.

From 1966 to 1971 the soap opera DARK SHADOWS ran for more than 1200 episodes.  With so much material to choose from and only 113 minutes to fill, director Tim Burton’s film is best described as being based on the TV show rather than a remake of it, although screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith does his best to shove as much plot in as possible.  DARK SHADOWS has a lot to establish and does so with clarity, but it feels like half of the film is prologue.  (Ironically, the opening scenes in the mid-1700s are efficient in setting up Barnabas and his eternal dilemma.)  Once everything is finally laid out, the narrative struggles to gain momentum.  

DARK SHADOWS gets stuck in neutral because of the uncertainty as to what kind of a film it wants to be.  In keeping with its soap opera roots, it overflows with doomed romanticism and heightened drama.  Long stretches pass in which events and relationships are treated as being deadly serious.  Not enough is invested in these characters, though, to feel the big emotional scale DARK SHADOWS wishes to pull off.

Complicating matters is that the film is also intended to be a comedy.  Burton appears more at ease in acknowledging the ridiculous elements of the story and simply having fun with the supernatural twists and turns.  Depp handles his role with composure and sufficient restraint, making him a humorously refined but still lethal bloodsucker.  Sinking her teeth into the villain role, Green charges her scenes with Depp with sex, danger, and playfulness that the rest of the film resists.  For all of the good these two leads do, the jokes in DARK SHADOWS mostly consist of easy targets related to Barnabas’ puzzlement by modernity.  Director and screenwriter settle for arriving at the mildly amusing when the obvious destination is camp territory.  

The production and art design and Colleen Atwood’s costumes help Burton create a familiar but no less dazzling gloomy world.  Visual effects are put to spectacular use when Green’s skin looks like cracked eggshell.  Burton has lavished a lot of attention on the surface and it shows.  No matter how good it looks, DARK SHADOWS is missing a soul and a heart despite no lack of wanting them.     

Grade: C-

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY opens in the thick of the Cold War.  It is the early 1970s, and British intelligence, referred to as The Circus, has its upper level shaken up by a failed mission in Hungary in which one of their own is killed.  Agency head Control (John Hurt) is ushered out, as is his close colleague George Smiley (Gary Oldman).

It’s not long, though, until Smiley’s retirement is interrupted with a request to lead a secret investigation into another agent’s claim of a mole at the top of The Circus.  Could new chief Percy Alleline (Toby Jones) or his loyal men Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), or Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) be double agents for the KGB?  
While Smiley interviews accusing agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) and other former Circus employees, his trusted inside man Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) acquires what he needs from headquarters and is his eyes and ears around the office.  

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY begins with a flurry of information that can be overwhelming to sort out at first, but director Tomas Alfredson encourages focus and patience as practiced by Smiley to make sense of it all.  The gloriously drab visuals, save for some splendid wallpaper and soundproofing, lay bare the difficult work of rooting out answers amid the ambiguity of the characters’ actions.  Yet the information in the frame is carefully ordered in verticals and horizontals, suggesting that while a pattern of rogue behavior may not stand out, it can be spotted with careful examination.

After all, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is concerned with the art of observation, especially when the stakes are high.  Being able to read people and relationships, catch glimpses in reflected surfaces, and pluck details from notes and audio tapes is critical to the task at hand.  Alfredson’s marvelous precision in showing how an agent might do difficult espionage work is as thrilling as any overblown James Bond setpiece.  Guillam’s plan to smuggle records out of intelligence headquarters doesn’t have him hanging off of buildings but dazzles with an elegant beauty and daring found in the simplicity with which the scheme is conceived and executed.  Whether the spies are functioning in realistic ways or not, their activities have the ring of truth to them, a quality likely indebted to the novel’s author John le Carre, which is the pen name of a former MI6 agent.

As Smiley, Oldman is the epitome of quiet cool.  He’s the studying man putting the pieces together because he can fade into the background.  He doesn’t say much, but his demeanor speaks volumes.  Peering out from his glasses, he sees and processes until the time to take action arrives.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY conveys a lot with a little.  The exceptional concluding montage, which leaps between the past and present and features devastating match cuts of tears, reveals untold riches about the characters and the secretive lives they lead in the business of intelligence gathering.  TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is low key, which is only appropriate, but it is also electrifying when it cuts through the noise to the buried truth.   

Grade: A-

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (David Fincher, 2011)

Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s three posthumously published Millennium novels are an international sensation and already were made into a film trilogy in his native country.  Now comes the first in a presumed American remake trilogy with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) has just lost a libel case and is likely on the verge of losing his magazine when wealthy Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) approaches him with a tantalizing offer.  Vanger will pay him a tidy sum and provide damaging information about the businessman who defeated Blomkvist in court.  In return Blomkvist will come to the Vanger family’s island estate under the guise of writing their history while his real work is investigating the disappearance of Henrik’s niece Harriet nearly forty years earlier.  Vanger believes a family member killed her and is continuing to taunt him by sending pressed flowers, which Harriet used to give him on his birthday.

Meanwhile, computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), who did the background check on Blomkvist, finds her well-being subject to the whims of a newly appointed guardian.   Although in her twenties, Lisbeth remains a ward of the state because of a diagnosis of mental incompetence.  She eventually teams up when Blomkvist needs a researcher and is directed to her.

Having seen the Swedish film version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, it’s somewhat difficult to approach director David Fincher’s take on the pulpy mystery without recognizing how remarkably similar the two are.  Perhaps out of allegiance to the popular source material, both films are crammed with more plot than feels necessary and seem as though they always have just one more thing to wrap up.  The central mystery struggles to sustain interest because Blomqkvist and Salander are sorting through an information dump rather than mixing it up much with the suspects in the Vanger clan.  Nevertheless, Fincher directs the dickens out of scenes involving research with computers, archival records, photographs, and personal mementos.

The story is mostly the pits in both, but Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO fixes some of its predecessor’s problems and is clearly the superior of the two.  Although slightly longer than the other, this adaptation cuts through the narrative details like a hot knife through butter.  That it plays more efficiently while taking more time indicates editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall’s skill at keeping a brisk pace.

This time around Lisbeth is more of a person, and a highly damaged one at that, than the cartoon avenger she’s positioned as in the Swedish version.  Mara plays her as a feral animal taking tentative steps toward socialization.  Taking this angle on the character makes a big difference in explaining the dubious sexual relationship that develops between Lisbeth and Mikael.  Whereas Mikael’s irresistible magnetism in the Swedish film reeks of authorial wish fulfillment, Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO shows Lisbeth initiating this contact as her attempt to crack her shell while still asserting control.  Likewise, the suffering and revenge she experiences, while still horrific, are less exploitative under Fincher’s command.

Despite these improvements, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO can’t quite transcend its junk foundation or, at least for me, the familiar beats of the other adaptation.  Applying the sheen of cinematic quality to a lurid airport novel only goes so far when the cheap thrills have lost some luster because they’ve already been had.

Grade: C+

The Crazies

THE CRAZIES (Breck Eisner, 2010)

Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) doesn't usually face much trouble in his small Iowa town in THE CRAZIES, but when a crashed military plane delivers a biological weapon into the water supply, people start behaving as if they're mad. One man with a shotgun walks onto a field during a high school baseball game. Another traps his wife and child inside his home and seeks to burn it down.

Dutton and his deputy try to take control of the situation, but who's to say they aren't infected? Before long the military has stormed into town to contain the contamination and the resilient victims by any means necessary.

Breck Eisner's remake of George A. Romero's THE CRAZIES isn't bad so much as it is inconsequential. Without any palpable sense of terror or political subtext, the film is analogous to its not-exactly-zombie townsfolk who stagger about purposefully but blankly.

On command THE CRAZIES follows what the screenplay dictates but lacks the cheap thrills or substance to take it beyond a basic escape movie with a low sense of urgency. Early scenes of regular people behaving irregularly are suitably disturbing. When the population is forcefully herded and divided, it appears that THE CRAZIES is ready to explode with tension ,but instead it fizzles out.

Olyphant adds a slightly off-kilter spin on the sturdy and heroic lawman attempting to keep order and fight the powers that be. Joe Anderson's humorous and skittish performance as the paranoid deputy brings some uncertainty to a film short on surprises.

THE CRAZIES is professionally made and reasonably diverting, but it's not eventful enough for it provoke a response. In real life no one wishes for mass panic during a deadly outbreak, but this fictional account of such a situation could stand to stoke more hysteria.

Grade: C+

Sorority Row

SORORITY ROW (Stewart Hendler, 2009)

In SORORITY ROW five sisters of Theta Pi pledge to keep quiet about the accidental, prank-related murder of one of their friends. Cassidy (Briana Evigan) is not in favor of covering up the death, but she doesn't feel she has a choice when the others threaten to pin the blame on her if she won't keep their terrible secret. Eight months later at graduation a killer with a lethally customized tire iron goes about avenging the dead girl the sorority sisters dumped in a mine shaft.

About halfway through, SORORITY ROW seems to abandon being a horror movie and gives itself over to comedy. Perhaps that is the best course of action as this remake of a 1983 slasher film is certainly more successful producing laughs than scares. Leah Pipes is very funny as the imperious and emotionally frigid leader of these morally repellent sorority girls. If she wants a future playing wicked queen bees, this performance shows she's cut out for it.

Rather than its partial tongue-in-cheek approach, SORORITY ROW would benefit from full commitment to dark humor, a la the 1988 Winona Ryder film HEATHERS. The movie is clearly sympathetic to the killer's blistering assessment of Greek life. Even its conflicted protagonist Cassidy is far from blameless in hushing up her friend's murder.

SORORITY ROW drops hints of a potentially withering commentary on group-think, but ultimately it's as conformist as its characters. The film caves into the demands for brain-dead horror cliches, gratuitous nudity, and run-of-the-mill suspense captured in needlessly shaky camera work. SORORITY ROW can laugh at the fact that it falls in line with genre conventions, but it doesn't excuse how easily it adopts them. After all, isn't going along with a plan despite knowing better the same thing its main character is guilty of?

Grade: C-

The Eye

THE EYE (David Moreau and Xavier Palud, 2008)

The Asian horror style is about two cycles old in the scary movie genre. Even torture porn seems to have exhausted its trendiness. THE RETURN, THE GRUDGE 2, THE MESSENGERS, and ONE MISSED CALL, all made four years or more after THE RING debuted in 2002, are frighteningly similar examples of this atmospheric approach's staleness. The less successful films are high on mood and short on plot, comprehensibility, and scares. THE EYE, an American remake of the Pang brothers' 2002 spooker THE EYE (GIN GWAI), copies these failings like a blueprint.

Blind violinist Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) receives cornea transplants to return the sight she lost in a childhood accident. New or restored vision can be overwhelming for someone used to relying on other senses, so Sydney visits Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), an eye specialist, to help with the transition to the world of the seeing. Paul is abrasive in their first session and remains skeptical of the problems she claims to have.

Sydney sees snarling, ghost-like creatures escorting souls to an afterlife and envisions people burning to death in a factory. She is convinced that so-called cellular memories in her new eyes are responsible for these nightmarish sights. Sydney's only recourse is to find the confidential donor and uncover what the dead woman must be trying to tell her.

The Pang brothers' uneven but effective original had an eerie tone and less predictable beats in its favor. It also helped that this style seemed fresher when their EYE reached U.S. theaters five years ago. THE EYE remake rolls off Hollywood's Asian horror assembly line like expired goods that have been repackaged. Get the same old boring secrets and visual aesthetic! As bad as or worse than before!

Not that THE EYE could have been salvaged with a different actress in the lead, but Alba's wooden performance works to the film's detriment. She possesses two looks, blank happiness and hurt puppy. With such limited expressiveness, it comes as no surprise that Alba is more charismatic on and between the covers of men's magazines than on screen.

Having Parker Posey play Alba's sister is one of the strangest casting choices to come down the pike in awhile. The pairing makes about as much sense as Sydney getting the eyes of a poor Mexican woman who lived fifteen hours away and thinking that placing a towel over broken mirror shards on the sink means her sister will fail to recognize the damage.

Poor acting and narrative inconsistency and stupidity can be glazed over if a horror film has the ability to scare. Here's one occasion when THE EYE doesn't have it.

Grade: D

One Missed Call

ONE MISSED CALL (Eric Valette, 2008)

Cell phone radiation and talking while driving are the most commonly mentioned dangers associated with the mobile devices; however, no one ever raises the specter of receiving a portentous call that reveals the precise moment of one's death. ONE MISSED CALL proposes that voicemail messages from the future can be deadly, although using a cell while in the movie theater is probably a more realistic threat to one's well-being. (I'm looking at you, text messagers.)

Like a spammer with a new list of e-mail addresses, an evil spirit is blazing its way through cell phone address books to claim one life after another. The victim gets a call signified by a different ringtone. Caller ID shows the incoming message from the previous victim time stamped a day or two in the future. It's creepy enough to get a call from a deceased friend, but the voicemail, which contains the recipient's final words, is far freakier.

Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) feels helpless as she watches her friends get picked off during the course of a week. She knows it's only a matter of time until her number is dialed. Police officer Jack Andrews (Edward Burns) determines that his sister was the first victim in the chain, but tracing the source of the calls turns up more questions than answers. As the only believers in the phenomenon--others find it to be mere coincidence--Beth and Jack race to stop whatever malevolent force or being is at play.

The opening credits name Yasushi Akimoto's novel CHAKUSHIN ARI as the film's basis, but it is quite apparent that ONE MISSED CALL is a rip of Takashi Miike's 2003 movie. While it may be clichéd to proclaim the original foreign film to be superior, the fact remains that the Japanese pic contains more scares and intended laughs than this slapdash American remake.

Miike's film is no classic, but the workhorse Asian extreme director invested his version with enough dark humor and the grotesque to keep the conventional material (for him) reasonably entertaining. Eric Valette's ONE MISSED CALL is the latest in a string of J-horror yawners reliant on soundtrack stingers and questionable CGI effects in place of atmosphere and disturbing imagery. Valette's quotation of one of Miike's more striking and humorous images--a severed hand dialing the next victim--is on screen too briefly to register.

To its detriment this streamlined ONE MISSED CALL charges through plot points too. The dialogue is absurdly on the nose while failing to make the proceedings no clearer than they were in the original. The ending is a head-scratcher as well. Both films are similarly confusing plot-wise. In the end, the qualitative difference between the two is like receiving a personal phone call and one from an automatic dialer. The former has a better chance of holding one's attention than the latter.

Grade: D