(Long Island, N. Y.) I’ll admit it…I’m a Jackass fan. From the 2000-2002 MTV television show and the three films that followed, I’ve always gotten a hugely perverse kick out of Johnny Knoxville and his band of mentally unbalanced misfits as they engaged in all manner of skits, pranks, and stunts, most of which involved pain, injury, nudity and/or some form of bodily excrement.

2010’s Jackass 3D, while inspired at times, for the most part just felt like the well had finally run dry. The whole gimmick was just starting to feel forced, and perhaps it was just time for these guys to retire and get normal 9-to-5 jobs. I mean, they’re almost all in their 40’s now…time to grow up, right?

However, to my surprise, there is now a fourth Jackass movie, and it actually succeeds where the previous one faltered. How, you may ask? By upping the ante? Nope…by stripping the Jackass concept down to its core and, believe it or not, taking just one skit and stretching out for the entire duration of a feature-length film. Sounds crazy? Yeah, but that’s Johnny Knoxville for ya.

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is centered around Knoxville’s Irving Zisman character; hidden under layers of latex and make-up, he plays a cantankerous 86 year old man whose outrageous behavior is tempered by the begrudging slack the victim of his pranks typically gives to the elderly. After all, those old folks can’t help getting their genitals stuck in vending machines, can they?

Much like Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat character, Bad Grandpa’s gimmick is all about the fact that people generally don’t take the elderly (or, in Borat’s case, foreigners) all that seriously, so when Knoxville rolls into an all-black strip club on ladies’ night in full Zisman mode and offers patrons a “serving of Irving,” the women laugh it off.

Until he drops his drawers and lets it…um, all hang out, so to speak. Then all hell breaks loose, and the harmless old guy is no longer quite so harmless? But hey…it’s all in good fun.

Much like Baron Cohen’s 2006 Borat movie, Bad Grandpa is a series of hidden-camera skits that prey upon the unsuspecting public, loosely stitched together by a storyline involving Zisman taking a road trip with his grandson Billy (Jackson Nicoll). It seems that Billy’s mom is off to jail and the newly-widowed Zisman has his dreams of womanizing dashed when he is reluctantly charged with the task of delivering Billy to live with his deadbeat dad.

What follows is a cross-country journey involving strip clubs, flatulence, bingo halls, shoplifting, corpse humor, property destruction, heavy-handed (and unsuccessful) pick-up techniques, malfunctioning kiddie rides, twisted child beauty pageants, binge drinking…basically all manner of tomfoolery, but, shockingly enough, all tied together with a slight emotional edge and some genuine heart that a film like this desperately needs in order to avoid being just another gross-out comedy. It’s not as gut-bustingly hilarious as perhaps it aspires to be, but it’s still consistently funny and enjoyable.

Knoxville, while displaying his usually comic timing and improvisational abilities, also surprisingly manages to inject Irving Zisman with a bit of a soul as well. Little Jackson Nicoll matches Knoxville’s performance as an adorable, baby-faced boy with the heart of a devil (he reminds me a lot of the Man Show Boy, if anyone remembers that kid). It’s no spoiler to say that, over the course of their road trip, Zisman and Billy form a bond, and that slow-building affection is genuinely touching…when grandpa isn’t blasting diner walls with his excrement, that is.

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa isn’t for everyone; but if the idea of a man and his grandson engaging in a heart-warming afternoon of fishing on the very same bridge that they just tossed grandma’s dead body off of, then Bad Grandpa is for you.

(Long Island, N. Y.) I’m about to make a slight departure from the norm here this week – instead of reviewing a film currently in theaters, I’ll be writing about one that’s being released Direct-To-Video – but not to worry, I’ll be back to my usual format next week. In the meantime, read on…you might actually learn something cool.

While I’m a big horror fan, a notable sub-genre of it – the so-called “found footage” film – has often had very mixed results. Movies like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and any other instance where the story is told through the lens of a lead character’s camcorder, webcam, cell phone, or whatever video recording device you can think of, have become popular. And while, if done right, the found footage genre can produce some immerse storytelling, at times their lack of logic – that someone is constantly feeling the need to film what’s going on despite being menaced by monsters or other dangers – just seems forced and really doesn’t make any sense.

VHS was a direct-to-video title released to video in 2012, but don’t let that fool you…it was actually a pretty solid little film that combined the found footage concept with one of my favorite gimmicks- the “anthology.” As in films like Creepshow, VHS is a series of horror shorts, each directed by a different person, all tied together by a “wraparound” story that plays out over the course of the movie. The overall result was decent enough, but there was plenty of room for improvement.

Enter VHS 2. Released just in time for the Halloween season this month through On-Demand services, Netflix, and DVD/Blu-Ray, this sequel pretty much improves over its predecessor in every way…well, almost. The wraparound story that links the individual segments this time around is actually pretty weak, but the shorts for the most part are great, sans one; let’s briefly take a look at each and see how they measure up.

Tape 49 (Directed by Simon Barrett) This is the wraparound story I mentioned…it involves two sleazy private investigators, Larry and Ayesha, who are looking for some kid that’s disappeared. They track him to a house, where all they find is a laptop, a bunch of TVs, and a mysterious stack of VHS tapes. The laptop contains a webcam recording of the missing kid talking about the tapes, and while Larry investigates the house, Ayesha starts popping tapes into the VCR and watches them….eventually, with disastrous results.

Overall, this segment is pretty stupid. It contains all of the bad clichés of horror-people wandering off alone, doing incredibly stupid things, and generally acting like dullards. Example- Larry finds a dead body, but instead of running for help, hey, let’s pop another tape into the VCR and see what’s on it! Geez. By the way, VHS tapes were an interesting but ultimately odd choice…if Larry and Ayesha were teens instead of grown-ups, they might not even have known what the hell they were.

Phase I Clinical Trials (Directed by Adam Wingard) This segment involves a guy who, after losing his eye in a car accident, is fitted with an experimental cybernetic eye implant for free; the catch that a tiny chip in the device will be recording everything he sees so that the company that created the implant can gauge its effectiveness. Thus, the entire segment is seen from the perspective of the cybernetic eye, which is actually a clever way of getting around the “guy who films everything” nonsense normally associated with the found footage genre.

Unfortunately for the unnamed patient, the visual range of his new eye is a tad TOO sensitive, and he starts picking up on things that no man was meant to see…

Good segment. It builds up quickly, has a solid concept, some very good scares, and some creepy visuals and atmosphere. It’s memorable but rushed; in the end, it’s more of your typical jump-scare laden modern horror, despite the effective twist to the proceedings.

A Ride in the Park (Directed by Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale) This segment was fun…if a film about zombies in the woods eating people could be considered as such. A cyclist (it’s occurring to me as I write this that very few of the characters in this movie have names…nor do they need them, actually) with a “helmet cam” decides to film his “extreme” exploits along the bike path in his local woods; after being attacked and killed by a zombie, he comes back as one of the undead himself and joins in on the carnage.

Again, the “helmet cam” is a nice concept to introduce the found footage concept in an organic and natural way, unlike many movies in this genre (one great example: Cloverfield). This short takes a twisted yet (sort of) lighthearted approach to its storytelling, chronicling the cyclist throughout his death, transformation into a zombie, and his eventual misgivings over his new situation. It’s also gory as hell, for those of you who enjoy such tomfoolery. Another segment that beats out anything in the first VHS film.

Safe Haven (Directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans) THIS is the money shot of VHS 2. Directed by Gareth Evans, the man that gave us the best action movie in the last decade (2011’s The Raid), comes what might be the best horror in the last decade as well. There is no longer any question- the man is legit.

Set in Indonesia, Save Haven depicts a news crew that is allowed to enter into a compound housing a mysterious cult in order to film their rituals. What is initially presented to the news crew is simply an odd bunch of eccentrics led by a strange man they refer to as the “Father.” However what they eventually get is a one-way ticket to hell instead; to say anything more would be a disservice to the viewer, but suffice it to say that this segment is NUTS. It takes a little while to get moving, but the slow build only serves to flesh out the suspense and drive home the point that something is clearly wrong with this cult…but it’s not what you expect.

Filled with violence, gore, and disturbing imagery that will stay with you long after the movie is over, Save Haven makes VHS 2 essential viewing for any serious horror fan; it’s only drawback is that it’s stuck in the middle of another movie and not a standalone effort.

Slumber Party Alien Abduction (Directed by Jason Eisener) The weak link in the chain, aside from the wraparound tale. This segment, involving a group of kids on the giving and receiving end of a prank war with one kid’s sister and her boyfriend that is soon interrupted by a bunch of alien invaders is ultimately pretty lame and, unfortunately, not scary at all. The camera gimmick in this one involves the device being strapped onto a dog, but the concept really doesn’t work; aside from the invaders, who are genuinely creepy to behold, Slumber Party Alien Abduction just comes across as sloppy and amateurish, which grates harshly against the quality and cleverness exhibited in the previous segments of VHS 2.

But overall, VHS 2 is mandatory for your Halloween “to-do” list just for the Safe Haven segment alone; luckily, there are other quality, scary shorts to wade through as well, and even at its worst, VHS 2 is still better than a lot of the horror being churned out these days. Check it out, and…boo!

(Long Island, N. Y.) I didn’t like Machete, director Robert Rodriguez‘s 2007 attempt to expand a fake trailer he made for the violent exploitation spoof “Grindhouse” into a full-length feature film. Now I like its new sequel, Machete Kills, even less.

In theory, Machete should have been awesome. In reality, you can make anything look awesome for 2 minutes, but when you need to pad it out to 90, then the seams start to show, so to speak. Danny Trejo, a re-occurring actor in Rodriguez’s flicks for ages, stars in his first lead as the eponymous Machete, reprising his role from the Grindhouse trailer. He’s plays an ex-Federale who is the most dangerous Mexican on the planet.

Or rather, he would be, if Trejo wasn’t a few months shy of hitting 70 years of age; I thought the guy could barely hobble across the screen in the first movie, but he’s really coming across as broken-down…not the best guy to craft an action movie around, if you ask me. If Rodriguez had made Machete maybe 15 or 20 years ago, Trejo would have been awesome in it, but now it’s just sad. If the proposed third film ever gets made (which probably won’t happen after this past weekend’s lackluster take at the box office), the poor guy’ll need a walker.

The plot of Machete Kills, in theory, should be hilarious fun; Machete is recruited by U.S. President Rathcock (Carlos Estévez, AKA Charlie Sheen acting under his real birth name) to stop a madman from launching a deadly missile aimed at Washington, D.C. in a move that mirrors the James Bond flick Moonraker. The story opens up from there to involve a worldwide criminal organization (again, similar to SPECTRE from the Bond movies) headed up by the evil Luther Voz (Mel Gibson, clearly spoofing his own recent image as a nutty bully).

There’s also an eclectic backing cast comprised from a “who’s who” of celebrities, including Michelle Rodriguez, Sofía Vergara, Amber Heard, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jessica Alba…the list goes on and on and on. I guess, on paper, Machete Kills should be good for a laugh, right? Or at least a bout of morbid curiosity?

Nope. Much like the original, Robert Rodriguez found a way to stretch out a gag far beyond its breaking point, taking crazy B-movie action and somehow making it BORING. It doesn’t help that the effects are sub-SyFy movie-level quality, which is strange because Rodriguez is the one man in Hollywood that can make a great-looking film for something like $20, but here the CG blood and explosions look like something out of a Playstation One game. Was this done on purpose to add to the spoof? I don’t know, but I just remember the good old days when every Robert Rodriguez movie WASN’T a spoof; I mean, the man has made some impressive films in the past, but now all he’s interested in doing is winking at the camera.

Now I’m going to cut and paste a small paragraph from my review of the original Machete, because I said this stuff well enough the first time around:

“Too many corny, talky scenes, too much bad digital gore (especially where physical gore effects would have worked better- that’s just lazy), and barely any good laughs brought this movie down several notches for me. Plus, most of the action scenes seemed poorly staged and filmed, which is an oddity in a Robert Rodriguez movie.”

Ah, thank you, Chris. But there are some good gags and some decent action/gore scenes to be had in Machete Kills, and in some ways Rodriguez hits the mark slightly more often than he did in the lackluster first entry in the series; but it’s just not enough, and the overall experience of this movie is one of pain and boredom sprinkled with a laugh here and there.

Machete Kills is bad, and you probably should skip it; but hey, maybe you might find a few fun nuggets to enjoy if you look hard enough. Probably not, however.

(Long Island, N. Y.) Wow. This movie came out of NOWHERE. Well, at least for me. In this day and age of the Internet where films are spoiled left and right months and sometimes even years before they’re released, I can’t believe I didn’t hear anything leading up to the initial trailer of Gravity, directed, co-written, co-produced, and co-edited and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, perhaps best known for directing some of the better-received Harry Potter films.

I saw that first cryptic trailer, and was blown away

by how tense and intense it was, while really showing almost nothing about the film it was advertising. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney were in space, wearing astronaut suits, obviously lone survivors of some sort of unfathomable accident. They were surrounded by floating debris, Bullock spinning out of control into the nether while creaming and pleading for help; the horror of her situation made all the more gripping by the fact that there were no sound effects (it IS space, after all);

just her frantic voice punctuated by her frantic hyperventilating and Clooney’s voice urging for her to hold on as she spun out into the void.

It was a trailer that told everything and yet nothing about the film at the same time, and it really ran in contrast to most modern trailers that spoil all the best bits about a movie before you even have seen the thing. And after seeing it, I knew I had to experience Gravity for myself.

I honestly don’t want to tell you anything more about Gravity, as going in knowing as little as possible will only enhance your viewing pleasure; however, I’ll give you a little more. Just a little.

Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock), a bio-medical engineer, is on her first space shuttle mission; astronaut Matt Kowalski (Clooney), who is commanding the shuttle Explorer, is a veteran who is on his last. Stone, while spacewalking over to the Hubble Space Telescope, has her tether severed by debris from a Russian anti-satellite test accident and finds herself tumbling out of control into open space. Kowalski rescues her with the aid of a thruster pack on his spacesuit, but upon returning to their point of origin, they discover that the Explorer is effectively destroyed and their crew-mates dead.

Their only hope is to navigate to the International

Space Station, which is 100 kilometers away; however, that pesky Russian space debris is in orbit and the duo only has 90 minutes before it hits them again; this time, they might not make it out alive.

It sounds simple, but there’s so much more to Gravity than that brief plot description; it’s a character study of sorts, set in the vastness of space, and the supreme acting abilities Clooney and Bullock put on display here are a huge part of what makes it so gripping. These two are fantastic together, and they’d better be; for most of the film, they’re the only two actors who appear (others are

heard via radio communications, but not seen). They take a concept that might fall apart in the hands of lesser actors and…well, again, they’re fantastic, and in turn, they make the film fantastic as well.

It also helps that director Alfonso Cuarón is a massively talented individual who knows how to craft an intense, harrowing scene of horror while getting you into the head and emotions of the film’s protagonists; the fact that he can interject such compelling humanity into scenes like this really drives home what a master of his craft he is.

Also of note are the effects and cinematography- this is probably the best representation of film space that I’ve ever seen; it’s totally, 100 percent convincing and

completely crazy and disorienting, as being in actual space would most likely be when there truly is no “up” and “down.” This aspect of Gravity is just masterfully, masterfully done, and heightens the tension to a monolithic degree.

Also, be sure to see Gravity in a theater with a solid sound system, as the sound work is half the and really sells the feeling of isolation endured by the leads, and if you have the ability, I urge you to see Gravity in IMAX for maximum immersion and disorientation. I often consider IMAX a gimmick and not much else, but with the right film, it can be mind-blowing; it is so with Gravity, as several people actually seemed to have trouble walking out of the showing I attended.

Any film that can do that gets a thumbs-up from me. Get out there and see this. Now.

(Long Island, N. Y.) Don Jon represents actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s writing and directing debut, and after watching the film, I can only say that he has tons of potential; however, it’s only glimpsed here and there amid long stretches of tedium and aimlessness.

The film is about a young Jersey Shore-wannabe named Jon Martello (Gordon-Levitt), nicknamed “Don Jon” by his friends for his legendary abilities when it comes to meeting and bedding the ladies at the nightclub they frequent. Little do his friends know, however, that while Jon always manages to seal the deal, so to speak, he’d rather be watching internet porn on his laptop; in fact, he often slips out of bed after his latest sexual conquest has drifted off to sleep to satisfy himself watching videos on Pornhub.com.

And that’s the problem…years of watching porn has apparently warped Jon’s attitudes he’s by himself with a solid internet connection. But can someone actually be addicted to porn?

Despite not really seeing a problem, Jon nonetheless attempts to try something different by getting into a relationship with a floozy he meets at his club- Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), an attractive but vain and shallow woman who has a set agenda when it comes to a man, and sets out to mold Jon into that image. Despite that, Jon (thinks that he) falls in love for the first time in his life, but when the two finally have sex, it’s just as unfulfilling as before.

Not helping matters are his mother Angela (Glenne Headly), who is desperate for grandchildren, and his father Jon Sr. (Tony Danza), who…well, is just plain nuts. But a chance encounter with a strange older woman named Esther (Julianne Moore) at a night school class just might set Jon on the path to kicking the porn habit for good and finally connecting with a person for real.

Does Don Jon sound sappy and clichéd? It is and it isn’t. Underneath, it’s your typical romantic comedy about a guy who deviates from society’s narrow definition of “normal” and is forced to conform because being “normal” is equated to being “happy.” However, this is coated with a rough and unique veneer of internet porn addiction, something that is probably going to become a big problem in coming years due to the fact that it’s free and it’s pretty much damn near everywhere. So, Don Jon has a typical theme made more interesting by an interesting plot device.

However, for a comedy, Don Jon isn’t very funny. It made me smile several times, but the big laughs come not from Gordon-Levitt, Johansson, or Moore, but from the great Tony Danza, who plays Jon’s ultra-Italian father as a foul-mouthed, wifebeater-wearing nutcase; it’s a shame he wasn’t in the film more, as he steals every scene he’s in. Gordon-Levitt and Johansson do stand out in their performances, however, especially when it comes to their ultra-Jersey accents and attitudes, which come across as 100 percent authentic; it’s easy to buy into their characters, which helps you get into the story that much more.

But ultimately, Don Jon just kind of plods along without any real focus or humor. It’s entertaining in parts, and very well-made and directed, but it’s still a bland affair. Perhaps some clever editing could have tightened things up, but when the core of the movie isn’t very compelling, chopping out a scene or two here or there can only do just so much.

So, Don Jon is an interesting entry into feature-filmmaking by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and it’s a solid one for an amateur, but it’s just that- amateur.

He’s got the visuals and the acting covered…now he just needs to concentrate on improving his writing and I think he stands to be something to watch in years to come.

(Long Island, N. Y.) You know, I’ve been all but begging Frenchman Luc Besson to get back to directing films after spending years simply writing and producing them. But now that he’s behind the camera again, I’m almost begging him to go back to being a producer again.

In his prime, Besson created some of my very

favorite films…The Professional (AKA Leon), The Fifth Element, The Messenger…all great films that conveyed an awesome sense of action, energy, ultra-quirky characterization, and humor. For a while, he took

a break from helming films to concentrate on his budding production company and breeding a new

generation of protégées such as Oliver Megaton and Pierre Morel. Okay, Megaton is as forgettable as they come, but Morel is a great talent; nonetheless I really started to miss the insane brilliance of Besson’s vision. His style has warts, yes, but it’s also brutally refreshing and unique.

Or at least it was…I know he’s put out a film or two recently that really only screened in Europe, but The Family, an action/comedy flick starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones, is his first foray into mass-market movie-making in quite some time, and unfortunately, it’s quite formulaic and, frankly, just not up to par with much of his earlier work.

The setup for The Family is as generic as they come- it’s your typical “fish out of water” film where you know everyone will acclimate and get along in the end. Robert De Niro is Fred Blake, AKA Giovanni Manzoni, a mob snitch who has gone into witness protection with his family after a failed attempt on his life. After screwing up several of their last placements, Manzoni, along with his family – his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), son Warren (John D’Leo), and daughter Belle (Dianna Agron) – are shipped off to a small town near Normandy, France, by the FBI agent handling their case, Robert Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones, and hey! The name ‘Stansfield’ is an obvious reference to Gary Oldman’s character in Besson’s The Professional).

Once there, the family runs into conflict with the town’s inhabitants (the wife runs into snooty grocery store clerks and blows up the shop in retaliation while the son starts a mini-mafia at his school, for example) and are eventually discovered once again by hit-men

hired to kill them, and…well, that’s really all there is to it. It’s a fairly threadbare plot and while the action scenes are pretty much up to par with some of Besson’s better work, the humor and characters tend to fall flat more often than not.

The problem is that most of the characters are actually fairly unlikable at best and actually fairly loathsome at worst. It’s not really the fault of the actors; it’s just that they’re written that way, unfortunately. It isn’t helped that situations are introduced that radically shift the tone of the film, making it hard to laugh at some of the very black humor that pops up here and again throughout The Family. Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE black humor, but it’s a tough plot element to get right; it needs to be wielded like a surgeon’s scalpel, and instead Besson swings it like a hammer. In other words, it just doesn’t always work, but oddly, I’ve seen blacker humor succeed in other movies…maybe Besson is just rusty.

So, overall, The Family is disappointing but it does grant me my wish of the return of Luc Besson; now if I could only get the Luc Besson of 20 years ago; THEN I’d be happy. Perhaps I should have worded my wish more carefully.

(Long Island, N. Y.) 2011’s Insidious, directed by Saw creator James Wan, was a great little horror movie made on the cheap that relied on a thick atmosphere of dread, solid acting, and good, old-fashioned scares that were refreshing in this day and age of lame horror flicks and pointless remakes. It was one of the few modern movies that I’ve seen that really managed to get an audience involved (another that comes to mind is the first Paranormal Activity); people at screenings I attended were yelling, screaming, and talking to the screen, which is ever the hallmark of a great movie.

Of course, Insidious did major bank at the box office, but how could it not? It was a good movie that got widespread word-of-mouth, and it only cost something like a million bucks to make. Personally, with the success of such movies and several high-profile, big-budget flops this summer, I think Hollywood will eventually sit up and take notice. I’m hoping that this means we’ll be getting more cheap movies that take chances because studios aren’t sweating making back the $200+ million that they sank into the budget. And, maybe we’ll start seeing a whole lot less remakes and sequels and more original concepts and off-the-wall ideas? Hey, it’s a thought.

In the meantime, we’re getting a sequel to Insidious, entitled Insidious: Chapter 2, and we already know it’ll be another money-maker for Wan and the studio that backed it, because while the budget was blown up for this new installment, it still only cost $5 million to make; based on the good will (or, since it’s a horror movie, would that be ill will?) its predecessor generated, Chapter 2 should make back its investment on opening night alone…from there, it’s all gravy.

I won’t get too into the plot details other than to recap the basics, since the original ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger: Insidious was the tale of Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Renai (Rose Byrne), whose son possessed an ability to project his “astral form” into a place called The Further, which is kind of like a waiting room for dead spirits to hang out in until they figure out that they’re actually dead. Anyway, their son’s spirit gets lost in The Further, and the Lamberts enlist Elise Ranier (Lin Shaye), a woman with psychic abilities, to help guide Josh into The Further to find his lost son before lost ghosts hijack the kid’s empty body. This leads to a confrontation with a demon who looks like a cross between Darth Maul and a ballerina…wait, what?

In fact, that’s the one point in an otherwise chilling and scary movie where Insidious went off the rails- building up the big, scary boogeyman the entire time, but when the curtain is finally drawn aside…he’s actually almost laughable. No, not almost, he WAS laughable. Seriously, if they couldn’t come up with a scary-looking dude, they should have just continued to keep him hidden. But they didn’t, and Darth Maul remained the one wart on an otherwise great film.

Insidious: Chapter 2 picks up right where the end of the first film left off, with Josh seemingly possessed by this creepy old lady spirit who has been haunting him since he himself was a kid. It seems that she jumped into his body while he was guiding his son home out of The Further (he thought it would be a good idea to stop and taunt her, the dummy), and Chapter 2 deals with the repercussions of Josh’s possession (no one knows at first, despite Josh killing Elise by strangling her), and the origins of the “old woman” that is currently inhabiting his body (hint: she’s…um, not quite what you think) and the quest to retrieve the real Josh, whose soul is trapped in The Further. What follows is…well, a lot like the stuff that happened in the first movie, actually.

And that’s the weak point of Insidious: Chapter 2. It feels less like its own movie and more like a Greatest Hits version of the original. The sequel hits a lot of the same beats as the first one and many of the scary events feel almost recycled. That’s not to say that there are no original bits of spookiness in Chapter 2, but after the fresh-feeling experience of the first movie (despite it being somewhat derivative of films like Poltergeist), it is a bit of a disappointment not to have that same type of experience this time around.

But Chapter 2 is still a very good horror movie with some excellent jumps, and I’m astounded that James Wan is capable of churning out so many quality films so quickly. I mean, didn’t The Conjuring just come out, what, a month or two ago? And he’s currently filming the next entry on the Fast and Furious series (replacing director Justin Lin)? The man is a machine, I’m telling you. And it helps that his cast is uniformly superb, with Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne really standing out and getting you to feel their respective plights. It’s something that most horror films can’t be bothered with…normally, they’re just interested in getting to the next kill or sex scene.

So, while not quite as good as the original, Insidious: Chapter 2 is still a worthy entry in a noteworthy and effective horror series. Plus, you know it’ll make tons of dough, and the ending leaves everything wide open for a sequel, so I think it’s safe to say that Wan and company will be making yet another trip into The Further again soon. I’m looking forward to it.

(Long Island, N. Y.) I liked 2000’s Pitch Black, the first of the Vin Diesel-starring sci-fi film series about convicted killer and all-around nasty dude Richard B. Riddick. It was a tense action/horror movie pitting a group of people marooned on an alien planet in the middle of an eclipse and stuck between vicious predator life forms that only come out in the dark and Riddick, a bad guy who can see in the dark and who may or may not be their ally. It was gritty and action-packed, and, more importantly, it was Diesel’s breakout role.

Its sequel, 2004’s The Chronicles of Riddick…not so much. Eschewing the grit and horror elements in favor of cheesy and over-the-top fantasy elements seemingly ripped off from the David Lynch film adaptation of Dune, I can honestly say I’ve never seen it in its entirety; I’ve just caught snippets on cable throughout the years, and I’ve never liked what I’ve seen. The series seemed, much like The Matrix movies, to be an example of a director doing well within financial constraints but blowing it big time when given the chance to do a big-budget follow-up.

Thankfully, writer/director David Twohy and producer/star Diesel, have taken the series back to its roots, either through good sense or just because of the fact that no one was willing to drop another 100 large on a Riddick movie after the last one barely broke even. Regardless, Riddick, despite having a silly title (like when Sly Stallone called Rambo 5 “Rambo”), still manages to bring the goods, redeeming the series and functioning as a great standalone entry at the same time.

Short plot recap- Riddick, who heads up the so-called Necromonger empire after driving a knife up to the hilt into the brain of the previous leader in the last movie, is getting kinda antsy being the big cheese and starts longing to discover his long-lost home world. Making a deal to appoint a new leader in exchange for a ship to search out his planet, Riddick is instead betrayed and barely survives an assassination attempt. Left stranded and wounded on a hostile alien world, it’s just Riddick and his deadly guile, strength, and skill against two crack teams of bounty hunters who are on the hunt for his head…

I’m a fan of Vin Diesel. I feel his dramatic talents as an actor are under-utilized and often under-appreciated and he’s got the physical credentials to make for a great action star; I honestly thought he had a great shot at inheriting the crown from the likes of Arnold himself. Some bad film choices over the years have unfortunately caused him to fall short of that goal, but he’s finally found lasting success with his entertaining Fast and Furious series, and, to a lesser degree, Riddick. Anyway, Diesel is in prime form here…Riddick is typically a calm, cool killing machine with a dry wit, which doesn’t really require a great deal of range when it comes to delivery, Diesel still manages to infuse the role with intensity and drive; it’s like he’s missed playing the role, and he knew this movie was a make-or-break opportunity for the franchise. As a result, he really seems to give Riddick his all, and he delivers, bringing back all the fun traits about the character that made Pitch Black so enjoyable 13 years ago. It helps that he’s also in tip-top shape in this installment.

His backing cast is, for the most part, also good. Karl Urban, Judge Dredd himself, reprises his role from The Chronicles of Riddick, and he’s joined by other underrated yet suburb actors such as Bokeem Woodbine, Jordi Molla, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, and even former WWE wrestler Dave Bautista, who seems to be making quite a film career for himself as a cinematic badass. He’s surprisingly not bad it, actually…especially since he’s already a big, scary-looking dude to begin with.

Visually, Riddick is impressive in that it does a lot with a relatively small budget. Yeah, I just called $38 million “relatively small,” but in an era where blockbusters are hitting $200 large and higher, $38 million is considered “small.” But what the filmmakers manage to do with this “paltry” sum more illustrates how $100+ million budgets are apparently squandered than anything else; for a sci-fi movie set on an alien planet and featuring fearsome and large CG monsters, Riddick in no way looks or feels cheap at $38 million, even if it does take place on a smaller scale than its 2004 predecessor.

Featuring a slow burn of a pace that lends it a more thoughtful air as it ramps up its pace as it goes along, great action scenes, and a solid story and effects work, Riddick is a great return to form for both Vin Diesel and the franchise. The ending leaves it open for another installment, and given the relatively cheap production cost, it seems likely that we will be getting another journey into the wacky world of Richard B. Riddick again in the future. Hey, I’m all for it.

(Long Island, N. Y.) Oh, it’s just so sad. Harry Potter is over. Twilight is over. And thus begins the mad scramble by every Hollywood movie studio in existence to appropriate every cheesy ‘tween’ book series in a bid to find a replacement

cash cow franchise. And, just like flops like The Host, Beautiful Creatures, and Percy Jackson, they’ve failed yet again with the subject of today’s review: The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.

Take Wesley Snipes’ Blade movies, cross them with Twilight, add an extra dash of lameness, and you have The Mortal Instruments. It’s an insanely terrible film set in New York City involving the next Bella wannabe, Clary Fray (Lily Collins) who finds out that her mother is a “Shadowhunter,” AKA a demon hunter. When her mother is removed from the picture, Clary suddenly finds herself hunted by demons herself, but is rescued by the somewhat effeminate Jace Wayland (Jamie Campbell Bower), a man she had seen murder someone earlier.

Of course, this wasn’t a murder- turns out Jace is a Shadowhunter as well, and – surprise! – that was really a demon he had killed, not a human.

Clary discovers that, much like Harry Potter, she has inherited her mother’s abilities as a Shadowhunter, and begins to follow the predictable paths of A) being trained in the use of her powers, and B) falling in love with Jace. Ugh.

Anyway, it goes worse. The plot continues to devolve into toilet water when we find out that the forces of evil are after a “Mortal Instrument” called a

Mortal Cup, which allows humans to become human/angel hybrids. Or something. And there are witches and vampires and werewolves running around stinking up the script as well. It’s really derivative of every other tween fantasy fiction paperback clogging up the book-racks at Wal-Mart that are being gobbled up by little girls. It’s yet another example of a female author attempting to live out her dreams through her cooked-up little avatar and kids buying into it, and Hollywood buying into the fad in a desperate attempt to have lightning strike again. But, thankfully, moviegoers aren’t biting this time around.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is boring. I actually tried me MAKE myself fall asleep halfway through in order to spare myself further boredom, but alas…I was wide awake the entire time, able to drink in every rotten detail. The acting was poor at best, the CG was poorly-done and ever-present, and the plot a mish-mash of a million other movies and a total mess. Characters are shallow, uninteresting and undeveloped; you don’t connect to or care about anyone on-screen at any time. It reeked of a film that was created solely by committee, focus-tested to death trying in vain to adhere to every cliché available to somehow manufacture another viable franchise to replace Potter and Twilight. It’s sad, like I said.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones flopped right out of the gate, so thankfully that means the plans for the proposed sequel are being scrapped as we speak.

We could only be so lucky if we’re spared another installment of the insipid Mortal Instruments series, believe me.

(Long Island, N. Y.) Well, The World’s End is finally here after the fine residents of Europe got to enjoy it over a full month earlier than us Yanks, and now that I’ve seen it, I have to say that I had more fun with it than with any other movie released this summer (Pacific Rim comes in second).

Sadly marking the end of the fabled Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy started in 2004 with Shaun of the Dead and continued in 2007 with Hot Fuzz, The World’s End once again pairs up actors Simon Pegg (who also co-wrote the screenplay) and Nick Frost with

director (and co-writer) Edgar Wright, this time in a sci-fi comedy that manages to be both hilarious and, at times, heartrendingly emotional

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as well. It’s a masterful end to the Trilogy, but I hope it doesn’t spell the end of the ongoing collaborations between Wright, Pegg, and Frost, because whenever you get these three together…well, they make damn fine movies.

At the heart of The World’s End is the story of Gary King, a wild and hard-partying Goth kid who eventually grows up into a 40 year-old Simon Pegg; but while doing so, he never sheds any of the adolescent trappings that defined his high school glory days. Gary still wears the same clothes, listens to the same music (on the same cassette), and even drives the same car, and when the film opens, we find him pining away for the one thing that escaped the king of the party scene so many years ago- the successful completion of the so-called “Golden Mile,” a pub crawl through his hometown of Newton Haven covering 12 bars in a row; the goal is to reach The World’s End, the final bar that eluded Gary and his pals back in 1990 due to unforeseen circumstances (translation: they got too drunk to make it).

His failure to complete the Golden Mile has always haunted Gary, who has remained almost frozen in time compared to his buddies, who have all moved on, gotten married, jobs, and adult lives. Finally, Gary can take it no longer- breaking out of what appears to be a rehab facility, he rounds up the old gang (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan), who reluctantly agree (after a great deal of persuasion) to accompany their old leader on another go at conquering the Golden Mile.

However, upon arriving in Newton Haven and starting their infamous crawl anew, the group slowly starts to realize that things aren’t quite how they remembered in their own stomping grounds; eventually, the situation escalates and Gary and his crew find themselves uncovering a conspiracy involving an Invasion of the Body Snatcher-style alien plot to replace humanity with look-alike robots. The fate of the world hangs in the balance as the key to the survival of mankind lies in Gary and his friends finishing The Golden Mile and making it to the one pub that eluded them so many years before- The World’s End.

I won’t talk too much about the details of The World’s End, as it’s best experienced going in knowing as little as possible (the trailers have spoiled enough as it is), but I will tell you that this film is pretty damn fantastic. I’m not quite sure where I would grade it compared to the other Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy installments (Cornetto is a brand of British ice cream); Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz both might have been a bit funnier, but they also possessed some segments that dragged a bit, unlike The World’s End, which maintains a near-lightning pace throughout. However, the closing edition of the Trilogy also manages to tug on the heartstrings in ways that the previous films in the series didn’t quite manage…in particular is a twist involving Gary’s character that actually had me choked up a bit. Moments like these are few in The World’s End, but when they come they’re masterfully woven into the story and are genuinely touching. This is a film that truly gets you to care about its characters, which 99 percent of summer films either can’t be bothered to do; and it does this while managing to be both over-the-top and subtle at the same time, a cinematic feat that the British have seemingly mastered.

Simon Pegg really impressed the hell out of me here and easily stole the movie- his Gary is kinetic, frantic, and all over the place; an adolescent in an adult’s body, lost in the memories of days gone by. But this is tempered by some truly emotional scenes that really expressed Pegg’s surprisingly broad range as an actor. Also, Pegg’s chemistry with regular cohort Nick Frost is as intact as ever, with the two essentially switching roles from the characters they played in Shaun of the Dead; Pegg is now the aloof clown with Frost the mature one. The backing cast is just as vital to the success of The World’s End, with everyone coming together perfectly (Martin Freeman is always a hoot).

Wright’s typical energetic directing style is spot-on here, and the film manages to deftly swing from slapstick to drama

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