Mama doesn't know it should be scary in order for it to work as a horror movie

Mama (2013)

Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) kills two of his co-workers, his wife and takes his two daughters to a cabin in the woods in plans of killing them also, but is stopped by a ghost living in the cabin. The two daughters are left in the cabin for five years and are being taken care of by the ghost they start calling "mama". Then Jefferey's brother Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau again) manages to track them down and take the daughters into custody with his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain). But "mama" doesn't like her children being taken from her, so some cheap scares and plenty of explaining the ridiculous plot follows. I must say I kind of liked the start of the movie and the premise looked good, but unfortunately this movie fails miserably on the one thing it sets out to do, scare the viewer. All the "horror" in this movie was nothing but cheap scares, there was not really any tension building at all. And the "mama" character was unintentionally funny with the wacky face and ridiculous poses. So every time she jumps out from the dark to scare you, you're just left wondering should you laugh or cry. Though I must say the children were quite creepy, especially at the start. So it's a downhill slope from the good start towards the ending which was nothing short of idiotic. Sure there's some good things in the movie like the acting for example, most of the cast is quite great and I liked the flashback sequence shot from "mama's" point of view, but those were not nearly enough to save this movie. So in the end it's a "horror" movie which isn't scary and with a ridiculous plot, that's not much to go with.
33%

Barbarians, swords, sorcery and sandals - Part 1

I needed to watch some barbarian and sword & sorcery movies for a project I'm working on, so I bought 11 more or less classics from the genre. That being the 80's Conan copies and of course the Conan movies themselves. Here's my thoughts on the first six of them in no particular order. As a warning for the fans of this genre, I must say I'm not a big fan of them so don't hold it against me if I fail to see the greatness of some of these movies.













Red Sonja (1985)

Brigitte Nielsen is Red Sonja, a master sword swinger who seeks revenge on the evil queen who killed her family. The queen has also stolen a magical orb with destructive powers and Red Sonja tries to retrieve it. Joining her in this adventure is Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor, a warrior on a quest to destroy the orb. They are also joined by an annoying kid prince and his servant, serving as the comic sidekicks I guess. This movie follows very predictable paths, bit of sword swinging and adventure with of course a bit of romance in there as well. The acting is quite bad most of the time, but then again the cast is there for their looks not because of their acting talents. I guess the real reason this movie was made was that Brigitte Nielsen looked hot in that tight warrior outfit. Highlights of this movie was Ennio Morricone's music, but unfortunately not much else. At parts the movie gets so bad it becomes funny, but then it just becomes bad again, so can't really recommend it as a campy fun movie either. Anyway it had it's moments and kept me somewhat entertained despite it's flaws.
40%

The Blade Master (1984)

From a barbarian movie by Joe D'Amato you'd expect quite a bit of sexploitation. Much to my surprise there was basically none, if you don't count the nice outfit of Mila. Well anyway, this is a bad movie and unfortunately it's not the kind which turns into great comedy for being so bad, so I won't waste much time for it. Apparently this is a sequel for Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982), though absolutely nothing is this one made me want to see what the first, or the third for that matter, are about. Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) is this some sort of a great warrior who is living at the far edge of the world which seems to be about a day away from everywhere. One day Mila (Lisa Foster) brings bad news about his mentor who is captured by a bad guy named Zor (David Brandon). So off they go with their mute Asian sidekick, funnily named Thong (Kiro Wehara), to rescue the mentor. Bad effects, horrible acting and a nonsense plot follows. A few scenes cracked me up in laughter, like the snake fight and the hang gliding scene with those hand grenades for example, but mostly the only excitement this movie offered was watching the incredibly short skirt of Mila. So it's not really anything more than just a bad movie. I'm just wondering why did someone make this in the first place? Why did someone finance this horrible excuse of a movie? Why did someone release it as a DVD? And most of all why did I buy it? Well luckily it was cheap, but I'd still rather have my 3.95 back and most importantly my one and a half hours back.
10%

Ironmaster (1983)

Umberto Lenzi is more known from his violent crime movies and cannibal films, but like most Italian exploitation directors, he too wanted to cash in with the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and this is what he made. It's basically not a barbarian movie as it's a story about cave men who discover iron, but the themes are quite barbarian. Vood (George Eastman) kills his tribe leader and the hero of the movie, Ela (Sam Pasco), drives him out of the tribe. But Vood discovers an iron blade and comes back to claim the leadership of the tribe by force. Then Ela is cast out while Vood decides to take rule over all of the neighboring tribes. Ela then joins forces with a peace loving tribe of hippies and they of course have a bloody battle. That's the story in a nut shell, but there's plenty more than that. There's lions, men in monkey costumes, disease ridden people who look like zombies and of course the horribly bad acting. The fights are clumsy as usual but this time, this one being an Umberto Lenzi movie, there's some gore effects to spice things up a bit. The music was quite horrible and annoyingly repetitive. For most parts this was just a bad movie, but there were quite a few absolutely brilliant moments that were so horribly bad they were great comedy. So I must say I was surprisingly entertained and in the end this was quite an ok campy trash movie.
48%

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

This is the first feature length movie of Albert Pyun, the self proclaimed master of cheap b-class action movies. True to his filmography and the genre in question this movie is not good either. The story in this one goes something like this, an evil guy called Cromwell (Richard Lynch) resurrects an evil sorcerer just to kill him moments later. Then Cromwell goes on to kill the king and become the king himself. The son and the daughter of the king escape and years later try to take over the kingdom from Cromwell. There's some twists I guess I shouldn't mention in order to not spoil it, even though I wouldn't really recommend watching this movie in the first place. It clearly shows that Pyun is trying to go for the feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with the hero, the music, the dialog and the action, but of course missing the mark by a mile. Though I must say the hero, played by Lee Horsley, was by far the best thus far out of these movies, well at least he tries to bring some comedy into it if nothing else. There are some scenes which were absolutely brilliant in how idiotic they were. For example a scene where an evil jailer gets his head slowly pushed into a grinding wheel which is powered by his own legs. Still makes me laugh to think about it, I mean if your head is about to get grinded out maybe it would be wise to stop pedalling the damn thing. Anyway that's just one example, there are more of those, but unfortunately they are few and far between. So in the end this is not really worth watching, unless you want to waste your time on garbage for a few hilarious scenes.
36%

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

Thus far this is the only movie I might consider leaving to my collection out of this bunch. Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie, but it's so bad it's simply hilarious. The story is basically a copy of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), this time set on planet Ura. Two groups are fighting over the control of a village's only water well, in comes a strange warrior called Kain (David Carradine) who has other plans for the village. You can guess the rest. Anyway, the fighting was bad, the tits were plenty, the acting horrible, the creatures were oddly cute, the effects hilarious, the dialog ridiculous and did I mention the tits already? The movie is horribly edited, it looked like someone did some cuts to the final print of the movie as even the music cuts from time to time and not only between scenes, but within a scene as well. Though that only helped the goofy feeling of the movie. I must say I wasn't bored and I did get some nice laughs, even though I kind of doubt I'll be watching this one again any time soon. Maybe I'll save this one for some hangover morning in the future.
65%

Can't find a linkable trailer for this one, so here's the opening credits, for what ever that's worth...

Deathstalker (1983)

Deathstalker (Rick Hill) is a sword swinging warrior whose goals in life are to have sex with as many ladies as possible and to obtain the three powers of creation. He gets one power, a sword, from an old witch, the other two are held by an evil magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard) who just so happens to arrange a big tournament where the winner gets them. So Deathstalker heads to the tournament and is joined by Kaira (Lana Clarkson) a warrior woman in probably the most ridiculous and sexist outfits I've ever seen. That's about all there is to the story, some sword swinging and plenty of tits to follow. I must say the entertainment values were quite high in this movie, especially during the first half, but unfortunately the second half focuses too much on the story and the sword fights, which of course are not much to go with. Apart from the outfit of Kaira there were quite a few hilariously weird moments, for example a funny sex scene which might give homophobes some very bad nightmares. All in all this was an ok bad movie, had some good laughs and it kept me entertained throughout. Though in the end there are so many better good bad movies out there that this one will just vanish in the vast averageness.
50%

That's it for the first part, the second part with the Conan movies and a few other 80's exploitation flicks, will follow eventually when I get the time and mood to watch them. Might end up watching the Conan remake as well, but don't hold your breath for it.

A miserable movie

Les Miserables (2012)

The novel by Victor Hugo is brobably the most adapted book ever written, with hundreds of theatre, radio, TV and cinema versions from all over the world dating from the 1800's to today. Now I of course haven't seen all of those adaptations, but from the movies the 1934 one was quite ok and I kind of liked the 1998 version, but really I just wonder what the hell can anyone add to that story anymore. Well it turns out not much, except for a great cast. But the cast really is almost worth the whole movie. Hugh Jackman is great, Russell Crowe is good as well even though he can't sing that much, Samantha Barks was surprisingly good and pretty much everyone in the movie brings out a great performance. But there's one above everyone else and that's Anne Hathaway, her performance is just about as perfect as one can be. Too bad she's gone after the first 30 or 40 minutes and even though the rest aren't bad either, but you just feel the level going down from there on. Then the music, just about every line in this movie is delivered by singing. Now I'm not a big fan of musicals as they tend to take me out of the movie as it's not realistic in any way, but that being said, I don't hate them. But as the music here isn't exactly diverce, it gets rather boring towards the end when there's only an occasional word or two which aren't sung. After about 2 hours I was basically begging for some normal dialog between the characters, but no chance of that.

I didn't like the camerawork, the shaky cam tried to get some sense of realism to it, but really most of the time it was just annoying as it kept reminding you that you are watching a movie, the complete opposite of what it usually tends to do. Also the framing was simply boring, every single scene was framed with either closeups or some weird angle which left you just wondering why the hell was that angle chosen and does the cameraman have some sort of a balance disorder. And when I say closeups, I mean about 95 percent of the shots in this whole movie. Sure that brings out the emotions from the actor, but I guess they don't know what establishing shots mean or that you really need some diversity for it to keep it interesting. This is painfully obvious at some of the most powerful parts of the story where the movie takes out the scope of things by just giving you a face. Now that's a real problem as this story is really epic and demands some bigger scale to things, you'd expect that a big Hollywood movie would bring that, yet the movie manages to look small, kind of like a small theater play. Another problem is that every scene is built to maximize intensity and thriving for the biggest possible emotional impact, unfortunately that makes the movie annoyingly monotonious. It seems that the director doesn't even know what subtle or nuanced mean. So when you finally get to the end where you'd supposed to feel deeply for the characters, I found myself not giving a damn and just hoping this stupidity would be over. In the light of all that the fact that Tom Hooper gets so much acclaim for the direction of this is just criminally wrong.

In the end this movie was only worth the watch to see Anne Hathaway's performance, but unfortunately even as brilliant as it was the rest of the movie isn't worth it. And it's really a shame that those great performances by Hathaway, Jackman and Barks get wasted in a movie like this.

30%

The Wicker movies

First a bit of background story before we go into the movies. The Wicker Tree (2010) stood in my shelf for over a year before I now finally watched it. Reason for this was that once it came out I of course rushed to get it, but I decided to watch The Wicker Man (1973) before it to refresh my memories of it. That was actually a bad mistake, The Wicker Man is pretty much a perfect movie so it raised the bar so high that I knew the sequel could never live up to it. So I decided to give the sequel a better footing and put it back to the shelf to wait for a better time. Well the “better” time was now as I'm trapped at home with a nasty flu. But first a few words about the original and unfortunately the remake as well.

The Wicker Man (1973)

One of the best horror movies ever made and a movie which would most likely be in my all time top 10 list if I ever had to make one. I can't praise this movie enough, it's perfect in every aspect and especially the mood is just something unbelievable. It does what most horror movies tend to forget nowadays, it builds up tension slowly but surely until it gets scary as hell before the absolutely devastating ending. A brilliant masterpiece that can stand multiple viewings despite the easily spoilable plot.

100%

The Wicker Man (2006)

Even though the best thing to do with this movie would be to just forget it's existence, I'll put it here as well, kind of like a warning to stay away from it. I haven't seen this since it came out so can't say how it would work today, but then again I don't want to ever watch it again. It's one of the worst remakes ever, missing every single aspect that made the original so brilliant, and all in all just a horribly bad movie.

0%

The Wicker Tree (2010)

Sequels are always hard and nearly every time fail to live up to the expectations. This however had all the things on paper that could make it good. It's written and directed by Robin Hardy, the same man who wrote and directed the original so there was a good possibility it would be something like the original. Even though I had very little expectations, mostly just hoping that it would at least be somewhat entertaining if nothing else, I was still disappointed. This continues the story of the village 37 or so years later, though it's left a bit unclear whether it actually is the same town as Summerisle was on the original as this time it's called Tressock, but it's very similar none the less. A young American gospel singing couple (Henry Garrett and Brittania Nicol) travel there to spread the word of the lord and much to their surprise they are warmly welcomed there. Well the town's folk of course have other plans for the naively simple couple and things go along similar paths as the original. The less you know the better. The story in itself was actually quite good and intriguing, but unfortunately everything around it and especially the way it was told didn't work at all. Both Garrett and Nicol were rather bad, though then again their roles were so one dimentional that even better actors might have had trouble with them. But that didn't bother much as that's the way they were supposed to be, it fit the story and gave it a bit of dark comedy as well. The real problem acting wise is the rest of the cast, they were all quite bad. Especially Graham McTavish who didn't fit the role in any way. Only one who at least tried to put some effort into it was Honeysuckle Weeks. But the acting didn't ruin the movie it's the story telling which did it. There's an attempt to a similar tension building as in the original, but this time all the attempts for dark comedy broke the tension as in the original they fit right in most of the time even helping to build the tension. And the mood from the first one was nowhere to be seen. It just proves how hard it is to recreate the incredible mood from the original when even the creator of it can't do it again. Another thing that troubled me was that the movie was quite amateurishly made, some scenes looked like they could be from some cheap soap opera. So even though the story was nice, this is in no way a good movie, rather bad actually. This probably works better as a book and Robin Hardy seems to be a better writer than a filmmaker, so I guess I'll give the book a try some day.

33%

The filmography of Michael Bay

I was thinking which director's filmography I should go through next and at first I thought I'd take some other master of the art out of the best of the best. But then I thought it's not good to just focus on the brilliant directors as watching a masterpiece after a masterpiece tends to raise the bar too high for everyone else. So that's why I decided to take a look at Michael Bay. The man who is associated with explosive hyper active action, racist type casting without any character development and idolizing Americana. Not forgetting helicopters flying slow motion in the sunset, the light streaks and flares to spice up dull conversations or the camera that just doesn't stand still for a second. I must say I have a hate/love relationship towards the man. At best he does properly funny action movies which are very entertaining, but at the same time he has no idea how to tell a good story or build drama or characters for that matter. Even the action has been bad in his later films where it's just a CGI mess with no sense of what's going on. But I must say they are still fun, intentionally or not. His commercial and music video background shines through his movies, and that's what they basically are, a mix of commercial product placement and music video. So for what ever it's worth here's Michael Bay's filmography.



Bad Boys (1995)

His first movie actually already has everything he became famous for. There's the sunset, the low flying helicopter, no character development, product placement, light streaks and big explosions. The story is simple crap and surprisingly even Bay himself has said that he didn't like the script. But that's not the point in this movie, it's the action and the comedy. Which it has plenty of both. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is quite great and they actually put up a buddy act that's one of the better ones I've ever seen. And that's the real driving force of this movie, without it this would be just another crappy B-action flick. Speaking about the action, it's nice to see that at start Bay didn't have his hyper active shooting style and the action actually makes sense on screen. So yes the action worked quite well also. What didn't work in addition to the thin story was the character development. Or the lack of it, there is absolutely none. Luckily the characters are so strong to begin with that you really don't need it that much, but that did leave the characters way too one dimentional to bring any drama into the action. The main duo is certainly great and Joe Pantoliano and Tcheky Karyo were quite ok as well. But the damsel in distress, Tea Leoni, was completely useless, her role was basically to look good. It's actually hilarious in the end where she's inserted in all those slow motion shots where the two cops walk with their guns drawn. Just what's her purpose there? Well that gave me laughs, even though I guess it wasn't intended that way. Despite it's quite serious flaws, it's still an entertaining and especially fun action movie. So it does what it's supposed to do even though it doesn't give you anything extra.
66%



The Rock (1996)

Say what you will but this is one of the best action movies ever made. Having said that, this movie is also the movie where Bay first introduced his frantic editing style with most of the shots not more than 2 seconds long and rarely visiting the same angle twice. Something I've later started to hate from the bottom of my heart. But for some reason this is one of the very few movies where it actually doesn't matter at all. This movie is just tons of fun. The overly cheesy patriotism of USA turns into comedy and supports the movie as an extra comic punch very nicely. And believe it or not I really like the story behind all the explosions. I don't mean the story of a lab rat and an old fart fighting a team of highly trained marines, that's pure comedy, but the driving force behind the characters. The bad guy is actually a good guy with a noble cause but with bad means for it, the old Brittish agent wrongfully imprisoned for most of his life and even the lab rat were all genuinely interesting characters. Something you can rarely say in a movie like this. The casting is one of the best of it's kind, Ed Harris, Sean Connery, David Morse and even Nicolas Cage back in the days when he at least still tried to put some effort into acting. Add to those the old legends like John Spencer and Philip Baker Hall and of course my favourite hero actor from the 80's, Michael Biehn, and you have a stellar casting. Another thing that I absolutely love about this movie is the soundtrack, Hans Zimmer's best by far and one of the best I've ever heard. Pure brilliance every note of it. The movie has some idiotic moments that are not saved even by the comedy, but to tell you the truth I can't remember them even though I've seen this movie about 10 times already. That's saying something about the entertainment values. And even though this movie kind of populised the highly annoying fast cutting in action movies, I still can't stop liking this movie, it just works.
98%



Armageddon (1998)

So after making one of the best action movies of the 90's, Bay decided to make a movie about rednecks saving the world. I could write a novel on how hideously horrible this movie is, but to be honest it stinks so much that I don't want to waste my time and energy on it too much. First of all the whole concept of the movie that astronauts, some of the world's smartest and most technically trained men, couldn't drill one god damn hole in the ground is just silly beyond belief. But no, rednecks are the guys who can drill anything, drilling holes is an art after all, so they rather send them in space. The rednecks are of course stereotypes with no depth at all to them, you have your over protective father, reckless hero type, a cowboy, a divorced father with a gambling problem, a sex addict, a dumb fatso who lives with his mother and a big black man right from the days of slavery. It actually made me angry how insulting this movie is towards people, if Bay's world would be the world we live in, then please just let the asteroid wipe us all out. And it's just not the rednecks and the racism towards black people and rednecks themselves, the Russian cosmonaut was just as appalling. It says a lot about the movie that Billy Bob Thornton, a great actor but quite characterized as a redneck, is cast as the director of NASA. Fuck yeh! Ok, so the characters are horrible and even though there are some good actors in this most of the cast is horrible as well. Though at most parts I blame the script and the direction, not the cast. Of course Ben Affleck is hopeless no matter what, but for example I have never seen Steve Buscemi giving out a worse performance. He's a fucking character actor, usually playing himself, so that has to be an achievement. And when I say the script is bad I mean it stinks so bad it makes dog shit smell like roses. Just one example, the pilot pulls a gun on Harry and Chick says "What are you doing with a gun in space?". Nothing wrong with that except that they have freaking miniguns on their spacebuggythingies. Oops, guess they forgot... Well it's just one example out of hundreds, but as I said I'm not going to waste more time on this shit. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen and actually now seeing it for the second time it borders on being brilliant as it really is so bad that it becomes funny. But I'm not going to give it that honour just yet. Though one thing I must still mention, for some weird reason this movie is in The Criterion Collection, a collection of historically important movies from around the world. The Rock (1996) is in there also from Michael Bay and that I can understand why as it really is one of the best action movies, but why this movie is in there I have no idea. Maybe those people at Criterion have a very twisted sense of humour or something.
1%



Pearl Harbor (2001)

Ok, this movie is supposed to be some kind of a big homage to the soldiers of the war and the people involved with it. I saw an overly long cheesy piece of crap that does nothing even remotely like that. It's just about the same as if Bay would have taken a dump on the entombed U.S.S. Arizona. The thing is that the only sympathetic characters in this movie are the Japanese, now I must say I was surprised that they weren't depicted as monsters and for that I have to give it some credit. But really everyone else seems to be one dimentional obnoxious idiots. Anyway, the movie starts off with a quick buddy establishment, we are given glimpses of the past to make us belive that Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are good friends. Well I kind of missed that part which should bind them together, at a later point it didn't matter much as they are supposed to be mad at eachother, but then they are supposed to be buddies again and it just doesn't work. The buddy bit just a small problem compared to the "romance" that is what I would imagine a 12 year old girl might write in her diary. And we have to endure this torture for the next hour or so. I can see that they are trying to go for the 40's romantic movies with that, but really why would someone even try to do that? The modern audience expects a bit more depth to the romance than they did back then. The concept of a romance hasn't changed one bit since then, but the way people buy it surely has, so I just have to wonder what the hell were they thinking with this horse shit. So then the bombs start to fall and all hell breaks lose. Luckily the sound effects were loud enough so people who fell asleep in the first hour and a half should wake up by now. But what we get is not a dramatic recreation of the attack, there's certainly no drama in it, hell there's no feeling at all. It's nothing but an explosive war masturbation by Bay. I can imagine him getting all excited like a little kid about all the shit he can blow up while making it look as "cool" as he can. What's "cool" about an attack that killed more than 3000 people? Well unfortunately after the overly long action sequence the movie isn't over and we have to endure an hour more of this utter garbage. There of course needs to be a payback from the attack so the movie can end with an up note, not that there was any tragedy in the attack in this movie in the first place, but lets just imagine there would have been for good sport. Well the two "buddies" are supposed to bind together again, but again I missed it. Was it after they beat eachother up and woke up in the car? Was it while they were killing the Japanese in the air? Was it when they got recruited for the secret mission? Or was it when Doolittle asked them if everything was ok? I mean come on, the viewer has already lost every bit of interest to these characters at this point so why even bother going further. Well they bomb some Japanese factory, Hartnett gets killed, Affleck gets the girl and USA kicks ass, woo-fucking-hoo. They conviniently "forgot" to mention the real reason why Japan surrendered, the two a-bombs. But then again as that would make the audience see how the mighty US of A answered a sucker punch with quite an inhumane act of monstrosity and you can't have that in a movie about heroes. Saddest thing of it all is that the total amount of money spent on production and promotion of this movie roughly equaled the amount of damage caused in the actual attack. They would have made a better homage by spending that money on the veterans themselves and some new history books for the schools.
2%



Bad Boys II (2003)

Bay takes another swing at the Bad Boys and of course the budget is now a lot bigger so there's tons more of everything. After the last two monstrosities this movie actually feels like a breath of fresh air and seeing it right after Pearl Harbor (2001) it feels like a masterpiece. But it's certainly not a masterpiece, it's just an ok action flick. So how does it compare to the first part? Surprisingly well actually. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is still there, even though it not as funny as it was in the first part. They are clearly trying too hard at parts and it goes a bit overboard, but they still have their moments and give out plenty of laughs. The story was still crap, but maybe a tad better than the first part. Not like anyone would have expected a realistic take on things anyways so it doesn't matter that much. I didn't like the main villain, played by Jordi Molla, he was lacking charisma needed for the part and thus it was kind of a miss. Rest of the cast is quite ok with some familiar faces from the first part. Even though it can't top the first part in the buddy act, the action in this one is so over the top that it's crazy. There's three huge car chases all well worth mentioning. The first one with the car transport truck is quite great with all of it's carnage. The second one is brilliant in it's macabre dark comedy with all the bodies flying around. But the third one is just insane with the Hummer crashing into everything in it's path. Total destruction and that's what I liked about this. Michael Bay likes to blow shit up and call me crazy but I enjoy watching that money burn. So this is a good sequel and even better than the first part, but still it's lacking in too many other departments except action, so it's nowhere near as good as The Rock (1996). The saddest thing is that after this movie the big budget R-rated movies pretty much died. Well they didn't die, but only a very few were made since. Which is a shame of course.
69%



The Island (2005)

After the explosive violent and surprisingly brutal fun ride Bay went back to the more easy going action. This is a story about a man and a woman who find out they are clones, made only to act as spare parts for the people who ordered them. The company which breeds the clones assures the public that the clones are vegetables without any feelings, but yet they must raise them as "normal" humans because of some nonsense about the parts not working if the person is kept sedated. The two clones escape and set on a mission to uncover the whole business of cloning people for medical purposes. I actually liked the story quite a bit, the moral dilemma of taking "spare parts" from a copy of yourself to extend your own life. Also the vanity of mankind that a woman would buy a copy of herself to give birth to a baby so she could keep her form. But that whole cloning dilemma isn't really a new idea and actually it was ripped straight from The Clonus Horror (1979). Now this movie is actually better than The Clonus Horror (1979), but as this movie doesn't mention any connection to it, it's basically the same as a stealing the idea which kind of watered it down. Anyway into the nice idea there's inserted this absolutely ridiculous action adventure plot that is just too silly to keep the interest up. Sure there's tons of action and explosions, it's Michael Bay after all, but I really got just bored watching it as there was no feeling to it. Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson try to do their best with the crappy dialog they are given and do a fairly ok job regarding the script. Rest of the cast were quite disposable. The ultra fast editing gets very boring and the movie looks like a Michael Bay movie looks, tons of light streaks, overly saturated contrasty imagery and the camera doesn't stay put for long. Quite a waste of time and money.
23%



Transformers (2007)

I loved Transformers as a kid in the 80's. I had pretty much all of the toys and the cartoon show was the high point of the week. Then of course I grew up and got other interests so Transformers was left behind. Even though I knew I wouldn't be the target group of this movie anymore, I still wanted to see it. My expectations for it were very low, mostly because of Michael Bay. And surely enough it wasn't a good movie, but much to my surprise it wasn't a bad one either. This is a movie I would have loved to death when I was 10, it has everything I loved in movies back then. But now as it takes a bit more than explosive action to get my attention I saw a bit too many things I didn't like. First of all this movie is racist. I mean if a guy like me who is whiter than white from a country like Finland can see that, then there really has to be something wrong with it. All the black people in this movie are portrayed as one dimentional stereotypes who are there just for entertainment values for the white folk so they can feel better about themselves. Even the robot, Jazz, that's clearly another black stereotype is the only one to be killed. Only black person who doesn't seem to be type cast is the soldier with the credit card, though his character's biggest moment is screaming "left cheek!" over and over again after which he disappears. Not exactly a world image you want to give to your children. That being said I still liked Bernie Mac as the used car salesman, he was simply hilarious. And in general the comedy in the movie was actually quite good. John Turturro's character was also hilarious and he did a great job with the part. Shia LaBeouf was also a nice surprise and pulled off the hero role quite well. Which can't be said about Megan Fox, sure she looks great but can't act at all. Also Jon Voight was quite bland, though the dialog given to the character wasn't helping the part one bit. Then the main thing, the robots. Well I think they looked somewhat ok. I mean I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions of them, now they just had too much going on in details that it was hard to make sense of them. But that being said they did look a lot more realistic than the smooth cartoon or toy versions. The reason why I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions is that they are never really introduced apart from Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. Now they just tend to blend in with each other and it makes it sometimes hard to tell them apart. And that's where one of the major problems of the movie lies, the way the action is shot. It's just one big CGI mess. There's tons of stuff going on and it's shot with a hyper active shooting style, that results in a total chaos which makes absolutely no sense at all. Sure the kids might like it, but the thing is when you have no idea who hits who and where, you really lose interest and just watch the fireworks without any idea of what you are supposed to see. And what's up with the Autobots, am I the only one who thinks everyone else but Optimus Prime were completely useless? Sure they shoot, do flips and set up a show, but mostly they just got their asses kicked while Optimus was the only one who managed to actually kill the Decepticons. This movie also features one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen, right up there with Jar Jar Binks, that little robot that just doesn't seem to die. So there are huge problems with the movie, but still I didn't get bored and had some fun with it. It even managed to raise the little kid in me as I almost cheered when we see Optimus Prime for the first time. But unfortunately in the end it's still a bad movie with some quite good moments.
42%



Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Didn't see this one when it came out, but decided to watch it now as I'm going through Michael Bay's filmography. Being a sequel to a big action movie it of course tries to top it by being even bigger. There's more robots, more army, more action, more explosions, more goofy characters, more product placement and more "Bayhem". And of course the robots are bigger, the army has bigger weapons, the explosions are bigger and the goofy characters of course are a bigger nuisance. But the movie just doesn't go bigger, it also goes smaller with tons of smaller little robot critters which are there to show how diverse their race is or some other nonsense like that. Just as I had declared that little robot in the first one as one of the most annoying characters in the history of movies, this one goes better. There's actually 3 robots that all are way more annoying than the one in the first part. There's the "twins", two robots that make you want to go and get a can of gasoline so you can burn yourself from the misery of watching them. And for fucks sake they even have goofy teeth, one with a golden tooth for that matter, what the hell does a robot do with teeth anyways? That little toy car robot is no better, even worse actually, but luckily it spends quite a bit of time in a box so we don't have to watch it. Apart from those the new robots seemed quite ok, even that old fart Jetfire who was also idiotically stereotyped, but at least he didn't make me want to go on a killing frenzy. But as before it really doesn't matter much how good the new robots were as you don't really see them, only glimpses of them spinning around while fighting. So the annoying CGI mess action continues right where it left on the first part and is actually even worse on this one. Most of the time I had no idea what was going on when shit blew up and CGI mess was spinning on the screen. I'm not a young kid with ADHD so I can't keep up with this lightning cutting pace. Then again if it was a bit slower and smoother it would bring out all the mistakes and inconsistencies of the action, so I kind of understand why they use it. But instead of covering up the mistakes, maybe they could have just properly planned them and shot them in a way that they would look good. That's Michael Bay's worst problem (well in addition of being a racist and sexist and all the other stuff), he just can't direct action. I actually watched the extras of the blu-ray i rented and there was a big segment on this huge explosion that made the Guiness book of records as the biggest explosion ever shot with live actors next to it. In the movie it's nothing special, you've watched non stop effect assault for the last 30 minutes with a hideous fast pace cutting. So when this big bang comes it looks like a nice breath of some easy action, not spectacular or huge or anything like that, only that it's nice that we actually get to watch a shot more than 2 seconds. On the extras however it looks absolutely brilliant, but in the movie it's simply lost in the "Bayhem". Not going to go into the story, it's what it is, not like you could write anything about the meaning of life in a movie about transforming robots so lets leave it to what it is, entertainment. The cast is the same and those who were good on the first one are good here as well and Megan Fox didn't learn how to act in the two years in between so nothing has changed. I must mention the huge amount of mistakes there are in the movie. It clearly was rushed to get finished as you see the cameraman's shadow on multiple occasions and that one slow motion explosion where Megan Fox goes transparent is just something hideous. Also many of the effect shots are very poor. For example when the Devastator is digging up the machine from the pyramid, the falling "stones" look like something I could do better on my own computer. I would love to bash this movie to the ground for the horrible piece of garbage it is with all of it's product placements and formulaic exploitative nature. But I still found it to be somewhat entertaining, however a good movie it surely isn't.
30%


After watching all of the Bay movies again I must say I'm more on the hate side, despite him making one of the best action movies of the 90's and two fairly good action flicks. The thing is that the shit he has also poured out smells so bad it tarnishes the glory of those few good ones. Well anyway that's something to think about when Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) comes out. I'm not going to see it in the theatre as I'm planning on keeping my promise of not watching any sequel/prequel/comicbook/cartoon/toy/remake/etc. movies in the theatre this year.

This movie pulls all the usual strings

No Strings Attached (2011)

Well I'm quite far from target audience for this movie, but was basically forced to watch it so here's the short review for what ever that's worth. So it's a story of a man and a woman who have a physical relationship, but of course they end up in love and of course things don't go as they are supposed. I would like to know who came up with the formula of a romantic comedy, I might just make this world a better place and let him/her out of his/her misery. Well, people who like these kind of movies probably already know wether this is a good one or not, so watch it if you like em. I didn't get bored to death with it, but still it wasn't exactly an entertaining experience either.
31%

Jason Voorhees - The man behind the mask part 1

It's friday the 13th and time for a bit of a tribute. I actually waited a bit to post these reviews as I noticed that the date was coming up. So call me crazy, but I decided to watch all of the Friday the 13th movies again as I saw this documentary called His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2009). Most people have their favourite horror icon, wether it's Freddy Krueger from The Nightmare on Elm Street or Michael Myers from Halloween or Pinhead from Hellraiser or maybe Jigsaw from the Saw series. Mine has always been Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series. There's just something about that unstoppable killing machine in a hockey mask that I like. I know it's not exactly an original choice as he is pretty much the grand master of slasher icons. Kind of like the Wayne Gretzky of horror (no pun intended). Not that the other guys wouldn't be all star players as well, but no matter how you measure it Jason takes the win in every category. For example sequels and remakes, Halloween has 7 sequels and 2 remakes, Hellraiser has 8 sequels and a remake is about to be released soon, Nightmare on Elm Street has 7 sequels and one remake and Saw has 6 sequels. Friday the 13th has 10 sequels and one remake. How about the all important body count? Freddy Kruger has a pitiful 45 throughout his films, Jigsaw is doing fairly well with 77 in only so few movies and Michael Myers has a respectable 111. Jason has a record breaking 161 throughout his films and actually if you add to that the other kills in the series done by his mother or impersonators it's close to a staggering 200. Jason has also been to the future, he's been in hell and he actually kicked Freddy's ass, not to mention he has even been in a talk show. So he is the biggest of them all, no matter how you see it. But are the movies any good? In the early 90's when I found this franchise I really loved them, but I was around 15 then so eventually I did get bored of them and except for the first part and Freddy vs. Jason, I haven't watched any of them since. I have a feeling I'm going to be very disappointed and ruin my good memories of them by doing this, but I want to see how they work today. So here's the whole story of Jason Vorhees.



Friday the 13th (1980)

Well this is one of the movies that started the modern slasher genre, even though you could argue that the genre had already been started, but never the less this surely helped to boost it to new heights. Not much to say about the plot, group of young people go to a summer camp to get it ready for the kids coming in a few weeks. They hear stories how the camp had a bloody history and soon enough they start to die one by one. You don't have to wait for the first kill too long as it comes before 5 minutes is up. A crew member Willie Adams playing a counsellor is the lucky man to be the first to die in this franchise and his girlfriend follows him right after, so two down and around 196 to go. I must say the plot wasn't as bad as I remembered it to be, there was some effort to it, though of course these movies aren't made because of the plot. Sure the dialog was corny at parts and towards the end the actions the heroine takes are quite idiotic, but I've seen a lot worse also. Another thing about the end, all respect to Betsy Palmer, but I found it quite unfitting that the killer who chops up quite a few people with ease before can't handle one girl and looks to be fighting like an old lady. The t&a (tits and/or ass) department was surprisingly lacking as I counted only two scenes, something hopefully the later parts will fix. The kills however are quite spectacular, Tom Savini's effects are a work of art and this movie has some of the best he has ever made. My favourite by far being the scene where Kevin Bacon gets an arrow through his throat. The music sounded like a ripoff from Jaws (1975) and Psycho (1960), but I guess that was intentional kind of like a message to the viewer that there's something more horrifying coming. Anyway I liked this quite a bit even though the main man with the hockey mask wasn't in it and I must say it was surprisingly entertaining. I watched the fully uncut Blu-Ray version of it, actually if I remember correctly this is the only part where there is an uncut version available. The MPAA didn't go easy on the sequels and sort of targeted the franchise with a lot tighter rules than others of it's kind. Don't know why, but I guess someone pissed someone off or something, not like the MPAA has ever been biased about anything before either so who knows. Another thing about the Blu-Ray, because the picture quality was quite great, it showed some mistakes quite badly. Some on the makeup, but most notably in the final scare where you can clearly see some twig moving behind the boat. Also was quite funny to actually see the numbers on the dices on that strip Monopoly, hard not to laugh when the girl throws one and two but still says double sixes. But those little things just add to the magic of the movie and this classic can stand a lot of fun making without losing it's charm.
75%



Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Five years after the first part they open another camp next door to Crystal Lake where again a group of young people gather to learn the ropes of being a counselor. Of course again they start to get killed one at a time and the myth of a guy named Jason roaming around the woods killing people starts to come into reality. I didn't like the flashback sequence at the start where they recap the first part in a dream by none other but the sole survivor of the first part. Tends to drag the start for way too long and actually we have to wait almost 12 minutes before Alice gets an ice pick in her head. That's a whole lot longer than in the first part, though if you don't count the flashbacks then it's a lot closer to it. Anyway, as the sequel is supposed to bring things to a new level, this really didn't. I mean sure now we finally have Jason killing the teenagers, but other than that this movie walked pretty much the same path as the first one, not even trying to top it. Didn't count but the bodycount seemed quite similar as well. The kill scenes are quite mild, thanks to MPAA, so didn't top the first one in those either. The t&a was a slight improvement, but still nothing to rave about. My favourite kill was the double impalement, but the wheelchair kill was quite great also as it was just so wrong in so many levels. I must say that towards the end Jason turns into the unluckiest guy on the planet, nothing seems to go right when he tries to let Ginny out of her misery. That unfortunately brought unneeded comedy into it and made it more campy than it should have been. I mean of course you can't watch these with a straight face, but still some sense would be welcome. Loved the dog bit at the end though, almost as good as the ending of the first part. So all in all, even though this movie has a couple of good scenes and that it set the tone for Jason hunting teenagers, this is still a bad sequel as it really doesn't even try to top the first part.
42%



Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)

This movie should be called Saturday the 14th or Sunday the 15th as it continues right where the second part left, so that would be saturday, though the majority of it happens on the day after that, so sunday. But then again who cares, another group of teenagers are gathered near the lake and Jason is out to get them. Again the movie starts out with a flasback from the second part and again it's quite tedious as I just watched it, don't really need to be reminded about what happened there. Then again as all of these were done a year apart from eachother and as the home video hadn't exploded yet, I kind of understand the point of recapping the previous part at the start. But then again as the story in these is very thin, they could have just as well left it out and it would have worked just as good. Anyway, this movie was done in 3D to bring a new element to it and I must say it was quite painful. I mean I didn't watch the 3D version of it, but everything, and I really mean everything, is slapped on the camera as a gimmick to tease the audience and it really gets annoying after a while. So was it any better than the second part? We have to wait over 15 minutes for the first kill, way too long. But then again the kills are quite good in this one, a definite improvement from the second part. And even though the MPAA did rape this one as well, it's not as bad as the second one so there's some proper gore in it also. The best kill was the machete swing at the guy walking with his hands, though the head crushing in all of it's goofiness was quite nice as well. The t&a department is the weakest of the three, which was a definite let down. But what's most notable in this one is that Jason finally gets his iconic hockey mask, thanks to a nerdy guy called Shelly who brought it to the lake. Though there is no great moment of putting the mask on for the first time, Jason just walks into the scene wearing it, but none the less you could call that a historical moment. The end fight is quite idiotic again, Jason seems to have huge strenght when he's killing other people but when the heroine needs to get away he seems to be as weak as a little girl. I mean he can crush a man's head with bare hands but can't choke a woman or snap her neck. Anyway, even though the t&a was a major let down, I liked this more than the second part.
53%



Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

This again continues right where the last one left so now we're going on Monday the 16th, but again it really doesn't matter. Another group of teenagers go to the lake while Jason wakes up in the morgue and off we go again. True to the tradition, again we get a flashback at the start setting up the story. Luckily this time it's a bit shorter and full of kills from the previous movies so I didn't mind that much. We have to wait for the first kill about 14 mins (not counting the flashbacks), so they are not breaking any records here, but then again it's a very good one so it was worth the wait. Tom Savini returns to make the effects for this part and they are a beauty, even though MPAA vandalised them again. Luckily there are a few glimpses of them left so all the work didn't go to waste. Funny that the reason why he returned was that he wanted to kill the character he built, little did he know that the series was still in the beginning at this point. The biggest improvement to the previous parts is in the t&a department which are plenty, so that was a nice surprise. There's also quite a bit of comedy in it and I mean intentional, unintentional there's of course in every part. For example it has one of the funniest dance scenes I've seen. Best kill by far is Jason's "death", but then again as he didn't really die I guess that doesn't count. Other than that, the "where's the cork screw?" scene cracked me up even though it wasn't that special otherways, though maybe the first kill was the best after all. This didn't have the most original kills of the series, though they are not bad either, mostly thanks to Tom Savini. The biggest surprise however was the end fight, I mean sure it also had it's idiotic moments where the victims make stupid actions but still it was very effective and managed to even raise some tension. So it's definitely better than the last two and managed to be quite entertaining.
60%



Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

So after the final chapter where Jason gets chopped to pieces you of course go for the new beginning. The movie starts off great when Tommy, the kid from the last part, is watching in the bushes when two drunken guys dig up Jason's body and of course he jumps to life and kills them. We get the first kill before 4 minutes, a record so far. But that was all just a dream. Tommy is now grown up and been to all sorts of mental institutions. Jason seems to haunt him in flashbacks and soon enough people start dying. I'm a bit puzzled about the timeline right about now. I mean the first part was set in 1979, the second part was set 5 years later so that would make it 1984 as would the third and the fourth as they are direct continuation. Now this is set 10 years after the fourth part so that would make it 1994, at least according to my math skills. Still the movie looks quite like 1985. Then again maybe those country folk don't really stay too current on the latest trends. Well anyways lets not get caught up in small things as there's plenty of good fun in this one. First of all the t&a is well in order, especially the "It's showtime!" bit was a joy. Also the appropriately named Debi Sue Voorhees was a sight for sore eyes. Second thing I liked were the innovative kills, though again the MPAA has spoiled the fun quite efficiently. Very hard to pick the best as there's so many good ones. The flare to the mouth scene, belt around the tree, garden scissors to the head or the crapper impalement were all quite nice. There's plenty of unintentional comedy but also some intentional that works somewhat ok. Loved the two crazy hillbillies. Even the ending looked to be nicely over the top with the tractor and all. But then they piss it all away. First time I saw this I was so angry about the ending that I ranked this as the worst piece of crap this franchise has. I still didn't like the fact that Jason is not the killer, but then again he isn't in the first part either so I didn't take it too seriously this time. For sure this movie is a bad movie for the fans of the series, but for everyone looking for a campy fun slasher, this was actually quite ok. But as I'm a Jason fan I'm going to rate it with that.
35%



Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986)

After the ridiculous copycat nonsense we're back in business with the real thing. This time there's no flashback at the start, but we hear voices from the fourth part as Tommy and his friend are digging up Jason to burn his body. Which I found quite odd as the mayor said in the last part that Jason was cremated, oh well little things don't matter as it still looks like the 80's while the timeline should be somewhere around 1997 if you count the years. Anyway, Tommy's plan to burn Jason ends up going wrong and he actually helps to resurrect Jason by impaling his body with an iron pole which gets hit by a lightning giving Jason one hell of a jump start. First kill happens a bit after 8 minutes as Tommy's friend who didn't even want to dig the body up in the first place gets to pay the price of that mistake. Tommy escapes and Jason is out for blood again. It seems that Crystal Lake has been a great camp site because they have renamed it and yes there's another summer camp for kids in there and more importantly another batch of counselors to be cut to pieces. This part finally gets what's important in these movies, it's not the teens, it's Jason and the movie focuses more on him leaving the teens to be what they are, meat for the grinder. Sure there are the "lead" characters of Tommy and Megan, the sherif's daughter, but the real star of the show is the man with the hockey mask. The "Bond" start was pure brilliance and they clearly made Jason more like a super hero, or maybe a villain in this case but it's debatable. Hell the undead, unstoppable killing machine even has a utility belt with all sorts of cool pointy things to slay the teenagers, very convinient. Just like the last part this one also has lots of comedy in it, some bad, some quite ok. But the biggest problem this one had was that there's no t&a at all, not even a glimpse! That's a shame as this part had erything else so well in hand. The kills are quite great and again there are too many good one's to pick the best. The metal pole swing scene, taking the machete with a hand in it, the head to the Winnebago wall scene and folding the sherif in half in a very painful manner were all quite great. Also the music was great, Alice Cooper was my childhood hero so can't go wrong with that. I enjoyed this part probably the most out of the sequels thus far, it's focusing on the main thing and filling the gaps with somewhat ok humour. Too bad the t&a was a let down as this could have been quite brilliant.
69%

Jason Voorhees - The man behind the mask part 2

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Passed the half way marker on the series and I still haven't lost my sanity, that's a great thing I guess. But damn, the timeline goes absolutely crazy in this one. I mean it was around 1997 when Jason ended in the bottom of the lake and in this one Jason was already in the lake when Tina was a little girl so that adds at least 12 years to it again when Tina is grown up and this story begins. So that would mean this movie is supposed to take place in around 2009. Well didn't see any cellphones or ipods or digital cameras or anything like that, just the usual 80's stuff. Either those country folk are really behind in development or I should just stop trying to figure out the timeline. Anyway this part goes back to traditions with a flashback start, though this time there's a new narration to it. The plot in this one is that a young woman, Tina, with telekinetic powers comes to the lake with her mother and doctor in order to get her powers in control. Of course on the next door there's a group of teens hosting a surprise birthday party so that's a definite check on the fresh meat. Tina ends up resurrecting Jason with her powers and the killing starts again. We get the first kill already at around 7 mins, but it's not Jason who does it. Jason's first kill comes at around 20 minutes, that's the slowest thus far from the parts where Jason is actually doing the killing. But once he gets started he's not wasting any time, so it's not a big problem. Again there's plenty of good kills, but the best is the sleeping bag slam. Brutal. Though I really liked the skinny dipping kill also but for a very different reason. Speaking of that, the t&a department is back in order again which was a big plus. The story borrows quite a many themes from Carrie (1976) and of course goes totally over board with the powers, but I still quite liked it. The movie was cut to a torso by the damn MPAA, so many of the quite innovative kills are mere flashes on the screen and it seems very mild in modern standards. This movie is also remarkable because it's the first movie with Kane Hodder as Jason, who of course is the most known actor to play Jason and ended up reprising his role in the following movies as well. I must say this was actually even more entertaining than the first part and turned out to be my favourite thus far. It doesn't try to be funny, but it doesn't take itself seriously either, so when ever it goes to the unintentional comedy it actually works quite well, just like a no brainer slasher flick should.
77%



Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

The story continues where the last one left, Jason is at the bottom of Crystal Lake and a boat anchor cracks a power line which jump starts him again. There's not exactly a flashback in the start but the guy in the boat recaps the past events to his girfriend, and he was even kind enough to bring a new hockey mask for Jason. So of course they end up dead and Jason takes a swim to a nearby cruise ship where a group of teenagers are heading for New York. The title is actually quite misleading as only a very small part of the movie happens in New York, it's mostly on the ship, at the docks, back streets and sewers which could be from what ever city. This part was a major let down, only thing it had right was the t&a, but even those were quite few and far between. We actually get tits before the first kill which also happens a bit late at around 10 minutes. I didn't like the look of the movie, it was too dark and dirty. That would have fit it well if the director would have even tried to build some suspense, but as he goes only for the gore effect (which of course got cut out by MPAA) it fails quite miserably. The timeline of course gets even weirder, but even though I decided to not care about it as they clearly just ignore the previous sequels, it still made an idiotic turn on it. I mean Rennie, the heroine of the story, was supposedly getting drowned by Jason as a little kid, well that all fine, but Rennie is 20-something and Jason drowned in the 50's. She sure looks young for a 45 year old. Anyway that's not even the most idiotic thing about this movie, the ending is just something colossal in stupidity. And saying that for this series where the stories are quite far from smart is something special. Also what the hell is up with Jason's teleportation skills? I mean immortality and super human strenght I can take but that's just too much even for me. Crappy movie and even the kills weren't anything worth watching. For the best kill, as a Finn the sauna kill warmed my heart, though I did like the boxing kill in it's goofiness also. But other than that, there's nothing to see.
28%



Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

First there was The Final Chapter and now it's The Final Friday with Jason going to hell. Don't they ever learn this series will never die? Anyhow the biggest question with this was what New Line was going to do with the franchise after buying it from Paramount. The movie starts up great, we get some nice suspense, a very nice shower scene and most of all Jason is back (and not as a fucking kid like in the last part). But then it all goes to hell. Jason gets blown to pieces and we get this nonsense about his soul or what ever switching between bodies as hosts. Then there's some killing and even more idiotic plot about Jason having a sister who is the only one who can kill him. Horrible excuse for a Friday the 13th movie as this has very little to do with it. People want to see Jason killing teenagers in his hockey mask, not some Body Snatchers ripoff. There is some fine t&a which was well needed as there's really not much else to look for. The first kill was probably the slowest of the series at just before 17 minutes. Best kill was by far the safe sex kill, which in a real Friday the 13th movie would have been one of the best in the series but in this it's just a waste of a good idea. This was the second fully uncut movie in this series thus far, but that didn't really help much as the kills aren't that great, apart from that safe sex bit. This was a crappy waste of time and money.
17%



Jason X (2001)

The last part ended up in a scene which set up the idea of a duel between Freddy and Jason, but for some reason they decided to send him into space instead. So the story goes something like this, Jason gets cryogenically frozen and his icicle is found 450 years later when Earth has become uninhabitable. He is taken to a space ship and defrozen, and of course the killing starts again. I didn't really like this part, the whole idea of taking him into the future was a bit too silly and felt like a desperate attempt to bring new life to the series. Jason belongs to the countryside, not to a space ship. Anyway, what I liked was that the body skipping bullshit was abandoned and it's the main man himself doing the killing again. And there are some quite good ones in this part. We get the first kill around 6 minutes so it surely doesn't waste time and the body count is quite high, actually if you count in the whole space station he indirectly destroys it's more than in the whole series alltogether. Best kill was the frozen face slam, though the guy spinning in the drill was also fun. Even though there's a lot of sex scenes and sexual references, there's not really any t&a. One set of fake robo-tits and two pairs of hologram simulated titties, so very weak in that department. I didn't mind that they took a comedic approach to the series, other parts did that as well, but the comedy in this one is a bit too idiotic. The SuperJason was just retarded, sure it made me smile but it was so unnecessary. This part was way better than the previous, but still far from the better ones from this series.
36%



Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

The fans had been awaiting for this movie since the 80's and after being disappointed that the previous movie wasn't what part 9 promised, they surely were anxious to see this one. And I must say I was also. I mean I had long before lost interest in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies as apart from the good first part they are very bad, but still to see Jason and Freddy fight it out in one movie sounded great. Freddy is pissed as no one seems to remember him and thus he has no one to kill, so he decides to call in some help. He appears in Jason's dream and convinces him to go to Elm Street to do some killing. So Jason takes a little trip and sure enough bodies start to pile up and the first suspect is Freddy as the older people in the town haven't forgotten him. But then Freddy has another problem, Jason is an unstoppable killing machine that cuts through the teens in such a speed that he can't get a kill in between. So Freddy needs to stop Jason so he can have the kids to himself and the battle is on. I actually like this movie, it's very entertaining and doesn't take itself too seriously. There's also enough t&a to keep things going and surely no shortage of kills. We get the first kill already around 5 mins, but it turns out to be a dream. The first "real" kill is around 13 mins and it's also one of the best kills in the whole series. I liked how the story tried to stay true to both of the franchises and at least I interpreted the ending that Jason won. At least he won the bodycount as Freddy manages to get only one kill in the whole movie. Sure it had it's flaws with some stupid dialog and idiotic actions that the characters make, also the acting was quite far from great. Anyway, this was a surprisingly good spinoff, very entertaining and fun, just what it's supposed to be.
73%



Friday the 13th (2009)

After Jason had been to space, hell and the future among other things it has become time to reboot the series. I actually don't know why, it's not like the other sequels were that loyal to eachother anyways or that the origin story was worth telling again, so they could have just taken Jason and slap him where ever they want and have a guy recap the past in a few sentences like before. At least I would have been perfectly happy with that. But they went for the remake which got me worried. I hadn't seen this before now as even though it had some interesting people working on it I thought it would still end up pissing on the horror icon. Marcus Nispel did a surprisingly good remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), so I thought he was quite a good choice to helm this reboot. Also it's written by the same lot that did the previous which I enjoyed quite a bit. But enough about that and on with the movie. I kind of liked the fact that they compacted the first three parts into one, we see the mother, Jason with a potato sack on his head and the legendary hockey mask. Then again that raised the question why is this a remake as it mostly focuses on the adult Jason slaying teenagers it could have just as well been part 12 as far as the story goes. I also liked the fact that they kept the horror as horror and the comedy was in between the killing, I mean it was nice for a change that they didn't make fun of Jason. The movie doesn't waste time getting the first kill as it's in the first 3 minutes into the film, but it's not Jason doing the killing. We have to wait a bit over 12 minutes for the first kill by Jason, but then again there's plenty of them so it didn't matter at all. Best kill by far was the machete to the head at the pier, one of the best in the whole series. There was enough of t&a also, so everything could have been in order, but it really wasn't. I mean now that I've seen all the parts back to back I've of course formed a view of who Jason is and this movie didn't really fit into it. First of all Jason doesn't torture people, he kills them, I mean he's a very efficient guy so when he comes at you with a machete he will chop you up, not set up some sleeping bag barbeque. Also he doesn't kidnap people, he just kills them, especially anyone who tries to impersonate his mother. Nor does he collect bodies, the only body he keeps is his mother's, the rest he buries into the woods or leaves out in display for the teens to get scared of. This new "personal" Jason felt like the director had mixed the characters from his previous remake as this wasn't the Jason we've seen before. Had there not been the hockey mask this could have just as well been another part of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I also hated the corny product placement ala Michael Bay, at least in the previous movies they were power tools or some other gadgets used to kill people, not just to market a beer brand or something like that. Anyway the movie was still somewhat entertaining modern day slasher with all the cliches it brings with it, too bad it was called Friday the 13th as it kind of missed the essence of this series.
38%



His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2009)

This 90 minute documentary hosted by Tom Savini goes through all 12 parts of the franchise. Right from the start it's obvious that the fans of the franchise will get the most out of this as I kind of doubt that there is anyone out there that would watch a documentary like this without knowing what's it about. And those who know what's it about either like the franchise and watch this or hate it and pass this one. So that being said I was a bit disappointed that it also tried to fish in new fans going through the obvious stuff everyone who has seen even one of the movies already knows. But luckily there are quite a bit of interesting info as well, some of which even I didn't know about even though in the early 90's I wore out the tapes and digged up every bit of info I could get. The interviews are great and they have really dug up pretty much everyone who was anyone in the series. There's all the directors, all the guys who played Jason, many actors from each part and lots of horror fans who all give out their take on the series. It's fairly well made and luckily they got to show clips from each part as I think some of them are from different production companies so it must have been a hassle to get the rights. Even though Tom Savini does a good job hosting it, I felt that the theme park thingy was a bit out of place and felt a bit too corny. Also it was funny that he was hosting in character but he was also being interviewed from the effects while being himself, so it looked a bit goofy. Anyway, fans will get at least something out of this, even though it's not the best it could have been.
68%


So, 12 movies and one document later I think I still have my sanity. And further more I still think Jason is the ultimate slasher icon. What makes him different from his colleagues is his efficiency he has in his work and the fact that he kills without any pleasure of killing, it's just an action for him. While Freddy, Pinhead and Jigsaw toy around with their victims getting pleasure from the thrill of the kill or feeding from their fear, Jason just gets the job done without any fancy bullshit. He's a working class mass murderer that doesn't put up a show, he just gets the job done and there's something you got to adore in that mentality. Michael Myers is actually quite similar to Jason, but I guess it's the woods and the hockey mask that ultimately makes Jason better.