Dean reviews "Halloween", "Balls of Fury" &"Death Sentence."
Here are the reviews of this week's new movies. let me know what you've seen that you love or hate.
Dean
HALLOWEEN - RATED R:
He’s back! We first met Michael Meyers nearly 20 years ago...and now, one of the most iconic horror film villains returns in "House of a Thousand Corpses" director, Rob Zombie's remake of "Halloween."
About half of the story offers a prequel like telling of how our masked, ginsu carrying friend got to be the way he is; and in fact, what the story is behind the mask.
The second half re-tells the story that we saw in the original film of the killer's return to his hometown where he murdered his family to find the sole survivor.
A bit more stylized than previous Halloween treats, the blood and guts are toned down a bit but still gut wrenching with one slashing after another in fairly predictable setups.
What’s crucially missing is the suspense and compassion that made the early Halloween movies among the greatest of all time.
It’s nostalgic to see an old friend but whatever new power we thought we find in "Halloween’s" remake is barely there. A Dean's List "C"
BALLS OF FURY – RATED PG-13
"Talladega Nights", "Blades of Glory" and "Dodgeball" all did great jobs at spoofing their sports. Now, the world of ping-pong get's its turn, only not anywhere as smart or funny.
For the first 10 minutes of "Balls of Fury", the silliness was bouncing back and forth like a wild game on your basement ping-pong table; and then, the balls fell flat.
Stage actor, Dan Fogler, a Jack Black-Sam Kinison wannabee, only without the passion, is a fallen-from-grace ping pong prodigy, recruited by the FBI to bring down an illegal underground ping pong network run by an evil fanatic overplayed by Christopher walken.
To get his game back, he's enlists help from a blind Chinese master and his beautiful niece, "Karate Kid" style.
Along the way, he encounters one odd character after another including Oak Park native, Thomas Lennon, Lt. Dangle from "Reno 911", as a German uber-opponent and Patton Oswalt, "Hammer", a neighborhood dweeb who's only in the movie for a minute.
I really wanted to like this movie. The PP sequences are cool but most of the laughs are in the trailer. The story is weak, the direction is all over the place and with a few exceptions, the potentially rich characters are poorly acted.
Don’t go in expecting much. Mostly fumbled and rarely hit out of the park, "Balls of Fury" turns out to have neither. A Dean's List "C-.”
DEATH SENTENCE –RATED R
I think we liked Kevin bacon better when he was "Footloose, footloose." Now, it's just his performance that's loose.
In "Death Sentence", he’s a mild mannered, all around family man whose life is shaken when a horrible act of violence befalls one of his kids as a street gang initiation. When the justice system fails him, he goes on a revenge rampage only there’s very little to explain the amazing transformation. I needed 6 degrees of explanation to make it more plausible.
Director James Wan of "Saw" fame notches up the violence but the holes in the story proclaim "Death sentence", a Dean's List "C-.”