Tobe Hooper’s original Chainsaw really disturbed me the first and only time I saw it. Part 2 was easier to stomach. Never saw the third one. And the less said about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, the better. But the Michael Bay-produced remake isn’t half-bad. Of course, this means it’s only half-good, too.

With a nod to the original by having John Larroquette again serve as narrator, this Chainsaw begins with five young, horny and weed-high Texans en route to a Lynyrd Skynryd concert. After almost hitting a girl on the side of the road, they give her a ride; she blubbers on about “they’re all dead” and then promptly puts a bullet through her brain. In trying to report the death, the group comes across the Hewitt home in a desolate, overgrown field, housing a bizarre clan of miscreants and mischief-makers, not the least of which is Leatherface, the hulking, power-tool-wielding killer who sews himself masks from his victims’ skin in his spare time. (He’s also got Internet gnome Harry Knowles’ disembodied head in his basement lair; I got a sadistic glee out of seeing this while simultaneously hating the movie for sucking up to him.)

Full Metal Jacket’s R. Lee Ermey steals the show as a squirrel-eyebrowed sheriff (or is he?) with one hell of a mean streak. As the only likeable character among the completely annoying and disposable teens (for my money, they aren’t impaled on meathooks fast enough), 7th Heaven’s Jessica Biel has the Marilyn Burns role as the lone survivor of the slaughter; with the modern-day twist, however, she somehow turns from screaming crybaby to courageous ***censored***-kicker in Act III. But since she makes said transformation all in a clingy and increasingly damp tank top, I don’t mind so much.

What I did mind was the quick-cut, rapid-fire editing – a Bay trademark – that dilutes the horror; those shots of the ‘saw slicing through people’s limbs might be scary if they actually appeared onscreen long enough to register. That said, there’s plenty of vomit and viscera for the film to wallow in, and its brutality and nihilism grow tiresome, as does the running time with a drawn-out conclusion that has half a dozen endings.

After being fired from End of Days and S.W.A.T., it’s nice to see Marcus Nispel finally make his directorial debut, and the washed-out look he brings to the film is welcome. Unfortunately, the rotted colors also reflect Chainsaw’s staleness. There are no new ideas or innovations to elevate this above average. At least it’s not an embarrassment to the original’s enduring legacy – that’d be the aforementioned Part 4.

When hated director Michael Bay announced plans to produce a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, horror fans were aghast. After all, the original film has rightly earned a place for itself among the true horror classics. Its sun-bleached cinematography, exhausted actors and gritty documentary-like directing still pack a powerful punch.  A couple of uninspired sequels and the mind-numbingly horrible Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation only added to the feeling that the chainsaw should probably stay on the shelf.

But with Michael Bay producing, the project was fast-tracked and the collective bitching and moaning of all the horror fans on the internet wasn’t about to derail it. Now that the film has been released, we can separate it from all the hooplah and attempt to judge it on it’s own merits.

The basics of the story remain pretty much the same. Five kids are driving across Texas with two pounds of weed they have apparently smuggled in from Mexico. Appropriately enough, they are headed for a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. A chance encounter with a suicidal hitch-hiker leads them into a brutal encounter with a psychotic clan of butchers.

The first hour of the film is absolutely riveting. There is an ominous sense of dread that pervades the film and it steadily builds as we meet more of the psychotic redneck characters. The rural Texas atmosphere is very creepy and unsettling. And once the tension has built to a feverish pitch, the violence starts, and it is very, very brutal.

While the basic concept storyline and concept remain true to the original, director Marcus Nispel and screenwriter Scott Kosar add some substantial embellishments to Leatherface lore. I won’t spoil them here, but prepare yourself for a Darth Vader style unmasking. For the most part, these additions are interesting, but after a point they only diminish the raw horror the character possessed in the original.  Unfortunately, as it enters it’s third act it quickly becomes a pretty standard girl monster chasing a pretty girl type of movie.

Thankfully, the pretty girl getting chased around is Jessica Bihl, clad in the best pair of jeans ever put on celluloid and a white tank-top that is drenched for most of the movie. In addition to the physical attributes Biel brings to the role, she does a great job as a traumatized girl watching her friends get hacked to bits.

The other highlight of the cast is R. Lee Ermey as a sadistic and depraved local sheriff. The Sheriff may actually be the most menacing character in the movie and Ermey takes to the role with great relish.

Visually, Nispel has made the interesting choice of avoiding the gritty realistic style of the original in favor of a slick style that looks a lot like a (surprise, surprise) Michael Bay film.  The slick cinematography actually works very well and the film is beautiful to look at. Nispel has also toned down the cannibalistic decor in favor of a more realistically creepy white trash type of decay.

In the end, this is easily the best Chainsaw movie since the original, and it does nothing to harm the reputation of that film. The filmmakers have approached the film with an appropriate amount of reverence and seriousness while adding their own spin to the storyline. All you horror fans can just relax and be happy that mainstream Hollywood is actually releasing such an intense, violent and non-campy horror film.

Reviewed by Christopher Sharpe.

Con-man movies will never go out of style. There’s something that will always be appealing about street-smart that can earn a living by outwitting un-likeable marks.

Confidence brings us not just a single con-man, but an entire team of con-artists that move around the country perpetrating elaborate scams. The team is led by the too-smooth and too-confident Jake Vig, played by Edward Burns. We meet Jake and his team as they are scamming a greasy accountant out of $150 grand. Unfortunately, the accountant and the stolen money belong to a notorious crime lord nicknamed the King. Jake realizes that both he and his gang are dead men if they don’t make thiings right, so he arranges a meeting.

The meeting takes place The King’s strip club while he auditions a sister-on-sister strip act while simultaneously trying to snuggle up and hold hands with Jake. The King is played by Dustin Hoffman, in full blown scruffy-rat-faced-hyperactive freak mode. Jake agrees to work a grift for King in order to pay back what he owes him. Of course, nothing is really what it seems and everybody is working a complicated grift on everybody else. The double-crosses and hidden agendas just keep building until you just give up trying to figure it.

The movie would be infinitely more compelling if the characters were developed beyond cookie cutter stereotypes.  It’s ***censored*** near impossible to root for the mumble-voiced Edward Burns as the protagonist. He’s just too arrogant, too smug and too girly-faced. The rest of the characters fall into easy stereotypes: the corrupt cops, the pretty girl, the fat guy with a heart of gold, the grizzled federal agent, the big black guy, etc.

The highlights of the cast are Rachel Weisz as a beautiful and mysterious pickpocket and Paul Giamatti as a grifter with a phobia about unclean toilets. Neither is given much to do, but both actors do their best with the limited material. Weisz’s character seems implausibly added to the story line just to add some sex appeal. It seems highly illogical that you would pick a random albeit attractive pickpocket to join your highly-experienced crew on a very important job.

However, that would only be illogical if this movie took place in something that remotely resembled the real world. Instead, Confidence seems like it was shot from a tenth-generation copy of a David Mamet script with some mid-90’s Tarantino flourishes added for seasoning. The movie is even presented with a fractured time-line which opens with the Jake Vig character apparently dead, although definitely alive enough to narrate the movie and break the fourth wall when necessary.

With it’s bright neon lighting, slick cinematography and uninspired script, Confidence feels like the product of some rich white guys who have watched too much film noir and fantasize about living the gangsta lifestyle. The film is mildly entertaining because it hints that it has the potential to develop into something pretty cool, but it never does. When the movie is over, your are left with an elaborate trick, thin characters and an unsatisfied feeling. Confidence works as a temporary diversion with some nice performances, but ultimately falls flat.

Reviewed by Christopher Sharpe.

DVD DETAILS
Director commentary
Writer commentary
Cast commentary
Sundance Channel Presents “Anatomy of a Scene”
Music videos
Widescreen anamorphic format

CREDITS
Directed by James Foley
Written by Doug Jung
A Lions Gate Films release
Running time: 1:38.
MPAA rating: R
Starring: Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Luis Guzman

From the opening title card proclaiming the film to be in “ShawScope” and the grainy, rainbow-patterned “Our Feature Presentation” clip that follows, it’s obvious that Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” is his grindhouse opus. Or at least half of it. Regardless, the movie revels in its chopsocky and giallo roots so feverishly that it would be difficult not to want to play along.

Uma Thurman stars as The Bride, a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, headed by the mysterious Bill (David Carradine, seen here only from the shoulders down). When she gets pregnant and attempts to leave her criminal past behind, Bill orders the Squad to
strike down her and the entire wedding party. But she survives and slips into a coma. When she awakens four years later—entropied, childless and bitter to the core—she literally makes out a
five-point checklist of people to kill.

End of story.

“Vol. 1” is simply Uma making her way through roughly half that list, tracking Viveca A. Fox to her new suburban-mom lifestyle and locating Lucy Liu, a Tokyo underworld boss, at The House
of Blue Leaves, a restaurant and club that serves as the movie’s immense, bloody, balls-out showdown. The action comes fast and furious and—in order to secure an R rating—sometimes in black-and-white. Blood spurts as it does in old-school samurai classics and 42nd St. staples like “Shogun Assassin”—like geysers. Yet the effect, in true Tarantino fashion, is comical. Never do you feel that the violence is real. Tarantino’s simple revenge tale has fun hopping drive-in genres, even switching to animation to tell the origin of Liu’s bloodthirsty character.

But what truly makes the movie is Uma. (Ethan Hawke, you are a stupid, stupid man.) She’s obviously gorgeous, but you’d never expect to see her kicking ***censored*** believably as she does here. The woman knows her way around a big, thick samurai sword and looks great even when drenched
in the entrails of her enemies. She receives great support from the other actors—it’s nice in particular to see “Street Fighter” Sonny Chiba excel in a straight dramatic role—but make no mistake: “Kill Bill” is all Uma.

It would be easy to overpraise this movie; it’s not the year’s best nor the most fun, but it’s an absolutely solid good time. I wanted “Vol. 2” to start rolling immediately, partly because I didn’t want it to end, and partly because it does feel like half a movie. But that half a movie is more tense and exciting than anything else right now.

House of the Dead is based on a video game. Though its zombie-populated content may remind you of Resident Evil, the execution more resembles Super Mario Brothers. This Dead is utterly brainless and as, well, dead as a doornail.

Several extremely detestable college kids – no need to list the actors’ names; you shan’t heard from them again – are on their way to a Sega-sponsored rave on a secluded island, but miss their boat. They think nothing of dangling a grand in front of salty boat captain Jürgen Prochnow (20,000 leagues below Das Boot) and his hook-handed, fisherman-slicked, beady-eyed assistant Clint Howard to take them there. Prochnow (playing a character named Capt. Kirk – this film’s apex of comedy) is reluctant at first because of rumors of the island being haunted by evil spirits, but hey, apparently his life is worth a thousand bucks.

Upon arrival, the group finds the party grounds deserted. Normal people would think, “This ***censored*** ain’t right” and bolt, but these kids head for the keg and look for a place to copulate. Luckily for mankind, their sexual acts are forever postponed by the arrival of reanimated zombies intent on killing them. We root for the zombies, even though they look like they were created solely using materials from Party Galaxy.

Hope for the kids arrives in the form of marine inspector Ellie Cornell, who’s armed to the hilt and the only likeable character in the movie, and that’s because she was the cute big sister in Halloween 4 and 5. So naturally she doesn’t last too long. But with her help, they make their way to a deserted spooky house – to justify the title – wasting zombies all along the way in that ultra-edgy Matrix-y way, only without the budget or talent to pull it off (also not in the budget: licensing funds for Prodigy’s “Firestarter,” so they made their own sound-alike song). No matter – the filmmakers think the effect is so cool that each and every one of the protagonists gets his or her own 360? bullet-time spin-around shot, one right after the other. Even more embarrassing is that the action is interrupted randomly with footage from the video game, complete with onscreen titles reading “RELOAD” and “FREE PLAY.”

But what can we expect from a director named Uwe Boll (that’s German for “obstructed bowel”)? Or, for that matter, a production designer by the name of Tink? This is exactly the kind of lame, lazy, half-assed crap that the screenwriters use to trash mercilessly back when they wrote for the Film Threat family. It looks flat, sounds terrible, feels homemade and had me checking my watch a mere 12 minutes into it. Even the completely gratuitous nudity fails to become a mitigating factor when they don’t even show you breasts worth baring.