Fun mystery with Edgar Allan Poe hunting killer

The Raven (2012)
Starring: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Kevin McNally, and Brendan Gleeson
Director: John McTiernan
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

In 1849, a madman launches on a series of grisly murders inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. When Baltimore Police Detective Fields (Evans) turns to Poe himself (Cusack) for help in the investigation, he plays into the killer's hand and draws not only Poe but his young lady love (Eve) into a web of terror and destruction rivaled only by Poe's horror stories.

"The Raven" is a neat, if not terribly deep, mystery film. It has an atmosphere that brought to mind a little bit Poe's stories--with their twisted intrigues, darkly romantic atmosphere, and downbeat endings where nobody wins and all is horror and misery--and a lot of the Edgar Wallace-inspired movies from the 1960s--with their masked maniacal villains undertaking impossible schemes of murder. It's a combination that I enjoyed immensely as the film unfolded. I liked the film's denouement, because until the film's last moment it looked like they were setting up a sequel... and I was relieved that they backed away from that. (Although... the way it did ultimately end, the door was left open for one, depending on what you imagine happened as the credits start to roll.)

While there were some aspects of the film that seemed a bit far-fetched--with the killer built a massive contraption to re-enact "The Pit and the Pendulum" alone and undetected being the worst of these--the biggest complaint I have with the movie is the use of those CGI blood-spatter effects that every filmmaker, from the most budget-starved backyard productions to the money-gorged opening-on-2000-screens studio extravaganzas. As in every other film I've seen them used in, theses look so fake that they break the illusion and wrecks the scene far more than even the worst practical blood effects. Is it really so much more expensive to hook an actor up to some tubes and pump red liquid through them? The effects crew did it when a couple of throats got slit during the course of the movie, so would it really have been that much harder and that much more expensive to just same effect on a larger when a guy gets cut in half by a giant, swinging blade?

Overall, though, this is a film worth taking a trip to the Cineplex for... although you can just as easily wait for it to be released on DVD or VOD, because there's really nothing here that will be lost by not seeing in on the theatre. Heck, maybe those terrible blood effects will seem less terrible when on a smaller screen.

'Last Action Hero' shatters the fourth wall

Last Action Hero (1993)
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Dance and Austin O'Brien
Director: John McTiernan
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A young movie fan (O'Brien) crosses over into his favorite movie universe--the non-stop action world of hardboiled cop Jack Slater (Schwarzenegger)--with an enchanted movie ticket. That's all well and good, but when the ultimate evil criminal mastermind of that world, Benedict (Dance) gets hold of the ticket and leaves his film reality for the Real World, real tragedies may unfold.


This movie is unfairly maligned, I think, because it's actually a far deeper film than critics and rank-and-file movie goers give it credit for.

It might be because I'm a writer, but this rates high among my favorite movies of all time--not quite in the Top Ten, bt almost. I love it, because it says alot about the creative process when it shows the film universe through the eyes of the visitor: Everything that was going trhough the writer's head while he was working on the script is included in the world--including talking ducks and other weirdness that never makes it into even the first draft--while commonplace things that every real person must have aren't even present, such as the furniture in Jack Slater's apartment. There is none there, because Slater never goes there in the stories, so the writer never thought about what it contained.

The film's commentary on the life of fictional characters and how casually we writers abuse them also spoke to me, such as when Slater learns that nothing in his world is "real" and then wants to know why anyone would invent a tale so horrible as having him powerless to stop the murder of his own young son... particularly when it's just for the entertainment of others.

There is also one aspect of criticism I hear of this film that indicates that most viewers and critics don't even get the surface of the thing. The Jack Slater Universe the fan crosses into isn't supposed to be a recreation of "Lethal Weapon." It's supposed to be a spoof of it and all action films of that type. I think it was great that Schwarzenegger was willing to lampoon himself and even the entire genre that his career was built on with this film. (And with my interpretation, some of the more outrageous aspects of the film world--such as the mob hit--may actually be like the talking duck... things that will never show up in any actually produced movie).

"Last Action Hero" is a movie that both critics and audiences don't seem to get, because they don't watch it with their brains engaged. Try taking a second look at it, but this time consider that maybe there's something to it that isn't on the marquee.

'Die Hard' brings explosions to Christmas

Die Hard (1988)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman and Bonnie Bedelia
Director: John McTiernan
Steve's Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Hardboiled New York City cop John McClaine (Willis) is struggling to cope with the long-distance relationship his marriage has become since his wife (Bedelia) took a job at the offices of a Japanese company in California. He travels west for Christmas Eve and the company's Christmas party, but soon finds himself in a situation far more explosive than his marriage will ever be: A group of terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Rickman) has taken the company executives (along with John's wife) and are threatening to kill them one by one unless a series of rediculous demands are met. With much more than his marriage at stake, John sets about defeating the terrorists single-handedly... but will he be fast (and deadly) enough to stop Hans Gruber's real master plan?


"Die Hard" is perhaps the perfect "hero with no way out, surrounded and outnumered by bad guys, and the situation keeps going from bad to worse"-movie. The script careens toward the film's explosive climax at breakneck pace from the very beginning, and yet it still manages to work in enough characterizations, subplots, and reversals that the viewer is invested in the characters and kept guessing how things might turn out up to the very end.

Rickman and Willis are excellent as the film's coldhearted villian and very vulnerable hero--unlike the heroes protrayed by the likes of Schwarznegger and Segal, Willis' John McClaine actually bleeds when hit, shot, or cut--and a fantastic supporting cast lets them both shine ever brighter. The cat-and-mouse game between McClaine and Gruber should stand as one of the greatest battles of wits and weapons in cinematic history.

If you haven't seen "Die Hard," add it to you list of Christmas viewing. At the very least, you'll be able to say that no matter how bad getting together with the relatives is. At least none of them are shooting up the Christmas tree with uzis or blowing up skyscrapers with all of you still inside.