Review: American Psycho II: All American Girl (2002)

Director: Someone who likes to inflict pain.

Starring: A bunch of hacks who will hopefully never work again.

And here's the IMDB. View at your own peril.

Larry Griffin admitted to mental hospital after viewing of American Psycho II: All American Girl. Condition listed as critical, and symptoms as foaming at the mouth, ranting and raving incoherently and often blacking out entirely. Had to be restrained and locked in solitary for several weeks before his thoughts could be extracted and posted on the Internet for viewing. Here is what we have collected:

I know this is going to sound cliche, but where do I start? No, seriously, where the fuck do I even start with this? I have no idea how to sum up a movie like this. It's so bad that it put me in solitary in a correctional facility. It's so bad that it could probably singlehandedly cause the mass infertility like in Children of Men - and justifiably so, for this is the end of the line, and I think it'd be worth eradicating all human life if we were never plagued with movies like this again. This movie is so horribly wrong and so unholy and sinful that I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it was the antichrist itself in cinematic form! It is so wretched that...okay, okay. I need to calm down, lest they put me back in solitary again.

But GODDAMN. What a fucking mess! This is the sequel to the highly acclaimed American Psycho, which was rightfully praised, as it was a great movie. It had subtlety and the wit was just sharp as a razor. It was hilarious and also depressing and dark, all at the same time. But I guess it just wasn't hip enough, so some numbnuts decided to make a direct to video sequel to it! And this one stars Mila Kunis as a female serial killer for no other reason than because she has boobs. That's right, they're using the old 'take a male idea and turn it female to gain a wider audience.' Except Kunis and all of her female co-stars set back womens' rights a good two hundred years or so, and no one with the right amount of chromosomes would ever find this movie appealing, so I guess that backfired on them, didn't it?

American Psycho II: All American Girl starts off with Patrick Bateman, played by an actor who is definitely NOT Christian Bale, getting killed off by a little girl who somehow untied herself from the binds he placed her and her babysitter in. Yes, the first few minutes of this movie completely shit all over the first one and completely destroy everything about it that was good. Nice work. Assholes.

Then we get our first dose of the absolutely ear-raping narration from our harlot from hell, Mila Kunis, who has grown up quite a bit from her role as a little orphan girl in Santa With Muscles. It takes up about the first five or ten minutes (and reoccurs throughout the film), and her obnoxious voice and the terrible writing make it about as endearing as a rusty nail through the foot. It makes the narration in The Spirit sound good in comparison. Seriously, SHE NEVER SHUTS UP. It's like having someone scrape their nails on a chalkboard, it's just painful. And with a stifling sense of pretentious self indulgence to boot. Puerile. If you can survive it, watch the scenes where she talks to her psychiatrist played by that crazy guy from Cube II: Hypercube. Just try it. It's really unbelievable how annoying it is to listen to these yahoos yammer on about nothing. It's so bad that I found myself pausing it every few seconds just to get a breath of fresh air from the bullshit being layered on. And that's pretty much the entire movie. Nothing but obnoxiously pretentious dialogue and even worse narration delivered in the smarmiest of the smarmy ways possible by horrible actors who were aided by horrible writers. Isn't this just so wonderful? And I'm just getting started.

How about the characters? Their sole motivation is to get good words in with their teacher, played by William Shatner, in order to become his teaching assistant in a college course on catching criminals, and get into the FBI. One of the girls constantly talks about sleeping with him and...I'm done with the characters. Let's move on.

Every bit of the dialogue here is just oozing with a slimy, disgustingly arrogant sense of self worth underlined humorously by the fact that none of it is even one bit intelligent or insightful. Ooh, you've got quirky dialogue, so what? This is a movie that tries to be a social satire (...I think...), but has nothing to say, at all. The dialogue is reminiscent of the stark, satiric tone of the first movie, except the writers here don't understand how to write anything satirically. In a satire, you write big, edgy lines that sometimes make the characters out to be unlikable, rude or insufferable, but it works because it underlines a point about society, the world or some other norm that the writers find necessary to poke fun at. When you remove any kind of relevance to anything, any kind of point, you're just left with characters who are unlikable, rude and insufferable, which I am sure this movie did not mean to do - merely a victim of supreme ineptitude. This movie quite astonishingly manages to have a script with lines that sound like they were meant to be satirical, but are very blatantly not actually satirical of anything, and so it just really blows. Tough, I guess.

And she keeps going on about killing people like it's something to look forward to. She attends a class on serial killers. I'm not even mad that she is trying to get into the FBI to stop serial killers by killing everyone who is in her way to becoming her professor's new assisant - this movie is too far gone for me to care about plot holes and logical idiocy at this point - but it's like they're taking the first movie literally! They really think it was a movie about serial killers killing people! They think that scenes like the one where Christian Bale chases a hooker down a hallway naked with a chainsaw...is supposed to be taken literally.

Holy mother of fuck. I think my brain is breaking in half. Did you...did you guys even watch the original movie or read the original book? IT'S NOT ABOUT SERIAL KILLERS, YOU MORONS. Get it straight! It's not that hard!

And if you thought it couldn't get any worse, watch the ending sequence in which the Cube II guy sermonizes to a college class about how Kunis' character was really 'one in a million,' and that she was so much 'better' than people like Bundy, Dahmer and even the original Patrick Bateman, as if inciting names that terrifying will make us believe any bit of this movie any more. In context, this is the equivalent to being endorsed by a child murderer, or perhaps a Nazi sympathizer. The fact that this movie would even suggest such a thing is perhaps both the funniest and most pathetic facet about it - I don't know about you, but I can't decide whether to laugh or cry at the fact that a team of adults wrote this slop and thought any of it could possibly be taken seriously long enough for this ending sequence to incite a reaction.

And ooh, she's not really dead at the end, what a shock! They choose to end the film on a generic plot twist that you could find in any dime-a-dozen direct to video horror film at Blockbuster. Well, at least now I know their priorities. It's kind of hilarious, actually; like they just said, okay, we're done raping the fabric of space and time, annoying the hell out of the audience and pissing all over the original source material. Just give them a regular shitty ending twist as opposed to an astronomically horrible one.

How do I end a review of the worst of the worst, the absolute nadir of cinema? It's pretty tough. The story is all over the place, the characters are headache-inducingly awful, the acting is a load of incomprehensibly retarded slop, the direction is complete amateurish shit, the soundtrack is a joke and the whole thing is just insulting beyond belief. Nothing about this movie is humane or sanitary; it is detrimental to the health of all who partake in its festival of horrors. American Psycho II is a film that is not merely bad, not just horrendous, but actually pathologically destructive, as if deliberately trying to destroy any kind of affection one had for the original film and novel. It is, in no uncertain terms, completely unwatchable.

Afterwords, he quickly lapsed into incoherent babbling, and did not recover for many more months.

Review: A Troll in Central Park (1994)

Director: Don Bluth

Starring: Mostly trolls and little kids.

IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108395/

Okay, I know what you're thinking: "Reviewing a kids' movie? Truly, that won't yield the right results because you don't have the right mindset to enjoy it! You're going to be too harsh on it if you criticize it at all, since it was made for kids and kids will eat up anything you throw at them."

Oh, bullshit. A Troll in Central Park is a deeply mediocre and forgettable little venture that I don't find very well made at all. It's about this troll who gets kicked out of...troll-land...for...being too nice and loving flowers...and then he meets a little boy who is selfish like most kids are at his age, and a little girl who is as sweet and innocent like most kids are at her age. The movie rambles along for 40 minutes without furthering the plot at all while the troll and the kids...just do stuff, I guess. There is a ton of stuff about following dreams and believing you can do anything, and a whole lot of stuff that is well meaning enough, but also completely idealistic and not at all rooted in reality. It's all pleasant to watch, but what would I have gained from it if I were 5 years old and watching it? That no matter what happens, it'll be okay as long as I wish hard enough for the right thing to happen? That isn't exactly the right message.

And this movie doesn't even really make me believe it. It spends a lot of time singing deliriously about such matters, but little time elaborating or explaining anything else. I know I have to expect a certain level of...well, childishness...in a kids' movie, but that doesn't mean there doesn't have to be any substance at all. So we're supposed to believe that if we wish hard enough, our dreams will come true. And? The movie says little else beyond that. If a kid were to try and actually follow these directions, he'd have very little knowledge of what to do after the initial "believing."

But let's just pretend that that doesn't matter, being that it is a kids' movie. Is it good then? Well, maybe if you didn't have the annoying songs, the lack of any real plot, the creepy, weird singing flowers, the completely shit final battle that amounts to a very confusing, directionless fumble with a thumb-war somewhere in there...

Yeah, it sucks. The Nostalgia Critic is reviewing this next week, and I will be eagerly awaiting what he has to say about it. For those of you who aren't, I don't think this should be on your list of movies to show your kids.

Review: Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

Director: Victor Salva

Starring: Ray Wise, Eric Nenninger, Nicki Aycox, Jonathon Breck

IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301470/

Here is the impression I get from this movie: MAKE A FRANCHISE OUT OF ME! DO IT NOW!

But otherwise...yeah, it's actually not too shabby. I've been told time and time again that this movie is a horrible piece of garbage, but what I see when I watch this is a pretty decent, enjoyable horror flick. A sequel to the first Jeepers Creepers movie, which told us a charming fable about two kids whose curiosity and morality gets the better of them, so an ancient monster ripped their eyes out, this movie asks many important questions. Like, is the kid in the denim jacket really gay? How can you make heavy artillery weapons to fight off said ancient monster in less than 24 hours? Is the kid in the denim jacket really gay? What is the story behind the strange weapons that appear to be made out of human flesh? And is the kid in the denim jacket really gay?

Yes, this movie is certainly easy to make fun of. I mean, how can you not; it's a horror movie with dumb kids on a school bus, of course it's going to be easy to poke fun at. The basic story is that it's nearing the end of the Creeper's month-long reign of terror, and he'll soon be gone again for another 23 years. He's getting pretty desperate, and we see him steal away the small son of a local farmer, and then the chaperones of a school football trip before the action kicks up. The first hole is almost immediately noticeable as we see the farmer and his older son put together an arsenal of cannons and weapons in less than 24 hours to fight off the monster, who they seem very sure that they can take.

Now, I do admit that it's a plot device that never gets old; the woebegone father out for revenge, and I like the bleak outlook as the movie actually had the nads to kill off a little kid. But that hole...is just too big to ignore. You're telling me they made all that shit and figured out exactly what to do with that weird tribal looking weapon thing they found in that short of a time? You could argue that they already had the weapon put together but...why the fuck would a small country farmer family like this have such destructive weapons then? That goes beyond silly and into actually horrifying.

Other things I like about this movie: The setting. Just like the first movie, this desolate, cornfield-stricken country road setting is just fucking awesome, and I would love to see more horror movies utilize them. The acting, like the first movie, is pretty decent, and I never have trouble believing that these people are who they say they are.

The other main plot point here is the kids on the bus. They're mostly sports jocks, with the main guy being this muscular blonde jock named Scotty. Scotty is mad because he only got to play for twelve minutes in the final game. Stop the presses! He's basically a huge dick to everyone, but somehow his character is just kind of enjoyable to watch, because we all know someone a little bit like this. Although I do have to wonder about his conflict with the black guy. Isn't "Don't you want to call me something else?" about twenty years old as a point of contempt these days? I mean it's not even like most of the bus is white, anyway. Try getting with the times, writers!

But at least they represent every race and minority here - from the black female to the psychically sensitive to the Philipino-Hispanic-Asian-whatever-it's-supposed-to-be guy to even Izzy, who everyone thinks is gay. I'm glad a low budget horror movie that most people won't ever see is being politically correct! Because...you know. That's just so important when you're being chased by a winged hellion who wants to eat you alive.

So the movie explodes into a cauldron of fast moving survival horror as they try to put their heads together and find a way to beat the monster. It's pretty fun, if not exactly stirring cinema, and I don't see much to really hate here. Although I do have to take issue with the fact that Izzy thinks it's a good idea to flip over the car and turn it into a hunk of burning rubble like it's some natural instinct. There's some Darwinian natural selection for you. And since it's been like 7 years without another Jeepers Creepers movie, I think we can say the same for this would-be franchise, too.

Review: City by the Sea (2002)

Director: Michael Caton-Jones

Starring: Robert De Niro, James Franco, Frances McDormand, Eliza Dushku, William Forsythe

Website: http://citybythesea.warnerbros.com/

I love a good drama, and thankfully, this is one of them. It's a 'based on a true story' type thing starring Robert DeNiro and James Franco, both of whom really go all out and give captivating performances in a story of a weathered cop who has to go after his own son in a murder case. Really this movie just looked cool; I had never really heard anything about it, but it looked cool. And surprise, it is.

The mood here is one of oppressive, suffocating urbania. A gritty, smog-streaked backdrop and some whitewashed sands and faded-looking oceans make up the setting of City by the Sea. I really like settings like this, so it's no surprise that the movie had me from the very beginning with its abandoned, torn up old buildings and grey skies.

Now, this is a very cinematic thing. It's based on a true story, but it's blown up to a level where you'd probably have to be a coma patient not to sit up and take notice. It's strange because this isn't an action movie or something that you'd have to suspend your brain animation to enjoy; it's a dark and serious drama, but it's played big and loud and in your face, like it's a new Bruce Willis action flick. Where there would normally be explosions and high speed chases, here there are long strings of dramatic tension, exposition and all around bad things that happen to our hero. It never seems to stop. His partner dies, he's saddled with a grandkid he didn't even know existed, his girlfriend breaks up with him...

But it managed to entertain me enough. The plot is fast and gripping, the acting is good and the story is very well written. Eliza Dushku gives a good performance as Gina, the down-on-her-luck teenage mother who Joey impregnated and made a mother, and De Niro as Vincent LaMarca is just spellbindingly awesome. Great performance, and different for him, too. James Franco as a druggie and a young father is very believable and his conversations with his father are some of the better parts of the movie. And William Forsythe appears as another ruthless bad guy killing machine. Joy. My only real problem with it is that it does lay on the drama a bit thick at times and comes off as heavy handed. And that might drive off a few people, but I don't think it really hinders the experience too much. It's hard not to get wrapped up in this one, honestly.

One of the best things about this is the lesson - it's a moral question that is buried just to the point where you can pick it out without too much work. The theme is one of growing up and parental guidance. De Niro's character, in the midst of his conflict with his son, constantly says to everyone around him that people make their own choices and that they follow whatever path they themselves create. Nobody else is responsible. But is that really true, or do the parents have more of an influence than he wants to admit? Is a person defined by his upbringing or does everything he do come solely from his or her own ability to make decisions? The film doesn't really provide the answers for us, and neither will I, but the fact that it poses these questions makes it interesting and worth watching and thinking about. Check out City by the Sea for a very spirited and intelligent cop drama that you won't want to miss if you are a fan of the genre.

Jury Duty (1995)

Starring: Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere, Stanley Tucci

Directed by John Fortenberry

“Jury Duty” is a movie that is loosely based upon "12 Angry Men," and centers around a loser who is selected for, you guessed it, jury duty, and holds up the deliberation in order to take advantage of the nice hotel where he is staying during the course of the trial.

Yeah...this movie sucks. One of the biggest differences between the 1957 classic (which can be seen on television in one scene and is used as a minor plot device) and this film is that the former is a drama while this is a comedy. The other big difference is that the former starred Henry Fonda, one of the best actors of all time, while this one stars Pauly Shore, who should not even have an acting career. Now all that being said... why was this made? Did they really expect people to pay money for this? Very little of this movie provided any humor, and the few times I did laugh, it was mostly due to the fact that the gags were so pathetically unfunny by nature that they actually became funny by default, if that makes any sense at all.

Now to be fair, I am being lenient in terms of my criticism, because as bad as it is, I did not feel like I was "harmed" by it. I would compare it to something like "Dude, Where's My Car?": it is not funny, but you are aware that you are seeing something stupid and are just watching it for the sake of wasting your time. That being said, at least "Dude" had a catchy title and had the sensibility to come up with its own weird story line as opposed to trashing the legacy of a movie of far superior quality.

Therefore, I do not recommend this film.

12 Angry Men (1957)

Staring: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley

Directed by Sidney Lumet

"12 Angry Men" is a film, based upon the teleplay of the same name, in which a juror tries to convince his colleagues that the case that they are assigned is not as clear-cut as it appears.

This is simply a classic. Nearly all of it takes place in the same jury room with the same twelve angry (and not so angry) men discussing one issue: the guilt or innocence of a boy charged with murder. The fact that this movie can still keep you so interested, and with only a bare minimal amount of emotional cues (i.e., music) is an achievement in itself. However, the real reason the directorial debut of the great Sidney Lumet (who as of this writing is still alive at age 85 and to my knowledge is still technically active) remains a cinematic jewel after all these years is because it makes you think, not just about the story, but about the meaning of a fair trial, the imperfections of the legal system, and other eternally relevant and important issues in a way that is both artful and powerful.

The cast is lead by Henry Fonda (one of my personal favorite actors), who is perfect as Juror Number 8, the man who is very calm and appears harmless, but holds a strong belief in the principle of equal protection under the law, despite enormous peer pressure from those who say he is fighting a losing battle, at least at first. I also like the main antagonist Juror Number 3, played by Lee J Cobb. I found it amusing how he would go on these rants before realizing that he has contradicted himself. Despite being very one-sided, however, he makes some valid arguments and he is later humanized when it becomes clear that his judgment is based on legitimate emotional stress rather than ignorance.

The rest of the cast is also very strong and they are all shown to have very distinct personalities instead of just mirroring the personalities of the leaders of the two opposing sides. Despite the fact that we learn a little about each of them, they are never mentioned by name while they are in the room, only by their jury numbers, which emphasis the point that it is the issue at hand, not their personal lives, that is at stake. Incidentally, one of my few problems with the movie occurs at the very end when two of the jurors mention their real names; I know they were pointing out that it was amusing fact that they spent so much time arguing with people whose names they did not even know, but I would rather have not known who they were. Still, that is a pretty small, almost worthless, complaint when considering the rest of this great film.

I strongly recommend it.

Review: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Starring: Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Katee Sachoff, Brad Loree

Well, well, well. What comes to mind when I say Busta Rhymes? The Halloween franchise? Holy shit, me too! I mean, why would you think anything otherwise? They go hand in hand, a perfect match, like peas in a pod.

Honestly, I just have to laugh at this movie. What was the creative process like? "Hey, guys, wouldn't it be FUCKING AWESOME if we had Busta Rhymes in a Halloween movie? And wouldn't it be even better if Rhymes...beat up Michael Myers in the climax? That's a winner right there. Cinematic gold, really." No, seriously, someone tell me how that ever seemed like a good idea. Watching that part is just completely surreal and strange. It isn't godawful, but...just really weird. This is what they chose to end the whole series on? This is what they thought would be a fitting conclusion to the Halloween name? Well, that sounds like the product of a long weed smoking session to me. Let's get started.

I don't even think the premise behind this is that bad. It involves a reality TV show sent into the Myers house to 'uncover why he was crazy.' It would have served as a nice bit of closure and add some intrigue after Michael Myers' death, if not for two big problems this movie has. The first is the fact that Myers isn't really dead. Yes, apparently in H20, the guy Laurie Strode killed was not Michael at all, but a fire fighter guy who Michael switched clothes with...and crushed his larynx so he couldn't tell anyone what happened. That's a pretty big stretch there. Couldn't you have just left it on a good note with H20, which basically was the only movie since the second one to feel like a real Halloween flick? I guess they really must have needed more money. Oh yeah, and they actually kill off Laurie Strode in the first ten minutes of the movie. Let that bit sink in a little before you read the rest of this review. Just let it sink in.

The second is that they never actually find anything that leads to any answers. I know the show was set up so that the kids would get scared and it would look good for TV, but...still, wouldn't it have been a better movie if there were some actual secrets revealed? The direction and acting in this isn't near as bad as Halloween 6, so it's just a shame the plot suffers so much.

The cast is pretty standard. You get an equal number of girls and guys, mostly egomaniacal weirdos...but Zoe Sachoff from the second White Noise movie is in it too, what a surprise. And the lead girl is your typical shy but still headstrong when she needs to be type. Only here they were capitalizing on the rising Internet use of that time, as the lead girl has an e-boyfriend she text messages often throughout the film, and it turns out he's a junior high kid at a Halloween party, watching her on the internet, as it is an internet broadcast. A lot of these scenes are pretty filler, but it gets pretty cool at the end when he's helping her avoid being killed by texting her Michael's whereabouts in the house. That's a pretty inventive idea.

But that's about as far as this film goes in regards to quality. The characters are mostly boring and dull, the kills are pretty unmemorable and the movie actually seems way too short, oddly enough. And Busta Rhymes, too. I'm no expert on rap music, but I do know that his performance here is annoying as hell. Seriously, dude, can't you go five minutes without sermonizing, acting like you're God and chewing up the scenery? It's obnoxious as hell. And to top it all off, we get the ending. After the cops and the press arrive in their usual timely manner right after everything is all over, Busta talks to the press and says first that Michael Myers is "not a spinoff, tie in or celebrity scandal"...right, that's why this movie exists; because he's NOT any of those. And then he says he's "done dancing for these cameras"...like he's pretending to not love the celebrity spotlight, being a rapper and all...hah. That is rich. What a dumb movie.