The Amityville Horror (2005)

By Adam Lippe

amityville

While the movie made almost no impression on me whatsoever, I kept getting the feeling that the most annoyed potential viewer will not be anyone who worships the original (which I have not seen), but rather, Paul W. Anderson, director of Event Horizon, which used to hold the record for the most loud noise scares and music jump close-ups before this remake. I don’t know when it happened, but I somehow became immune to the artificial overpowering soundtrack boost, and so when this kept happening every 30 seconds, I had no reaction. Though, no one else in the audience seemed to, not even the two 4 year old children in front of me.

The only thing I enjoyed was the moment where the babysitter is trapped in the closet and the little dead girl makes her put her finger in the shotgun created hole in her head and all of Ryan Reynolds’ line readings. He needs to find his way out of dreck like this and Van Wilder and into something that shows off his skills. I suggest a vehicle for the only movie stars working in Hollywood today with as much screen presence, both of whom have been trapped in the doldrums of type casting recently. Laugh if you must, but a robust, over the top, silly action/comedy starring Reynolds, George Clooney, and The Rock, playing to each of their strengths, would be fantastic empty entertainment.

In terms of Reynolds, his chiseled physique in Amityville seemed a little out of place for a low rent building contractor in the 1970’s, but I guess they had to focus on something apart from Melissa George’s buckteeth. She has a great body, but clearly Olivia D’Abo was unavailable.

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Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]


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Featured Quote (written by me)

On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.