Hello, my name is Andrew Jara. I am trying to be a writer/director. I made a film named "Last Days" that i'm trying to bring some press to.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Comic I Read: Legions of Monsters
Plot: Morbius, the living vampire, recruits monster hunter Satana Hellstrom, along with the Werewolf by Night, Manphibian, and the Living Mummy to stop a disease that is turning monsters into mindless killing machines.
Review: I wanted to like this story guys, I really did. It has a 1950s monster movie feel to it. It is mostly tongue in cheek and has cool artwork as you can see above you. But it’s just kind of mediorcre. I wasn’t in a rush to keep reading. The story was just sort of lacking which is sad because most of the characters are really intriguing. They have a crush thing going on between Hellstorm and the Werewolf that makes for some cute and awesome scenes. I think the main problem is that the Morbius is so boring. Has anyone ever liked this character? I say if you like these characters you should totally check it out as it’s the equivalent of a popcorn flick but it’s not winning any new fans.
Comic I Read: Hellboy: Bride of Hell
Plot: Hellboy tries to save a Virgin sacrifice from an evil demon.
Review: This was a great story. Because it’s not just a story of Hellboy defeating evil again. It’s actually about realized that their are zealots on both sides of the fight and the extremists of the good side can be as bad as the others. It’s a good lesson for Hellboy to learn and another side of the world that we haven’t really seen before. It also is one of the Hellboy stories that ends on a really sharp downer and it’s great. Also the art is great. I always love how the demons always look a bit like Hellboy and they share characteristics. It makes you feel like they are all part of the same world.
Plot: After the death of her father, a shy girl must contend with what her hidden desires and her new mysterious uncle.
Review: I’m torn about this review. On one hand it was very enjoyable and a good entertaining watch. On the other hand, it’s the perfect example of an Asian director coming over here. This is Chan-wook Park’s first American movie. His famous films have been Oldboy, Thirsty and the Vengeance trilogy. Now Asian horror is a great genre and does things that America would never even think of; which is why it’s so special but also why it’s so hard to try state side. In Asian Horror and maybe this is just for us because we don’t normally see the marketing for those films but we are usually in the dark about what the film is about so you kind of hang on every word but with this film, I knew that there was something wrong with the Uncle but it takes a long time to show us and then an even longer time to get the other characters to realize. Also the movie kind of jumps from scene to scene, which is common in the genre, and also popular in the genre is the idea that the movies do not take place in the real world but in a movie world. For example look at the characters up there, they literally dress like they are out of a Fitzgerald novel which is fine until Stoker goes to high school and all the kids dress normally. It shocks you out of the film and starts making you wonder why she and everyone in her family dressses like that. Also it relies on the troupe of the evil rapist. Now don’t get me wrong, rape is a real thing and it’s terrible but it seems like more and more horror movies are using it to make you quickly hate someone you had no reason for hating up until that point. It’s like our generation’s nazi. Just make the character a rapist and it’s automatically okay to kill them. I think everything has it’s place and if used right it can be shocking and effective but here it is just thrown in out of nowhere and just as quickly dismissed making it feel cheap. But having said all that I did enjoy the film, and the acting is great. Mia Wasikowska is great as the title character and is able to play an shy, apathetic charater without making her boring or unlikable which is rare. Matthew Goode is also good as the uncle although if they were trying to not make him creepy from the beginning they failed but they weren’t. I will Nicole Kidman was a bit wasted but everyone else turned in a good show. I would say this may be only for Park fans but if you like horrors or thrillers give it a watch and see what you think.
Trivia: Wentworth Miller, the tattoo guy from the TV show Prison Break, wrote the screenplay! That’s crazy!
Plot: A brother joins his friends at his family’s old cabin to help clean his sister of drug abuse but a secret book may bring about their doom.
Review: I was 100% against the idea of Evil Dead Remake. I didn’t want them to replace Ash, I didn’t want to kill the idea of more sequels to the trilogy and most importantly I didn’t think anyone could replicate the tone of the series and would make it boring like the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. And I was like this until about 20 minutes into the movie. The first twenty minutes are a bit slow and it has the most Diablo Cody slang that no body uses but then after they open the book and shit starts going wrong I was on board. Does it have missteps? Of course and we will talk about that in a bit but what it gets right is not trying to be the original or even compete with it. It’s pretty much what would happen if a group of dummies opened the book instead of lovable dummies like in the originals. And the gore and look is amazing! I think if you dive into it you will come out with a big smile on your face like I did and want to re-watch the original trilogy.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s bash this bitch! Okay the first real problem is the characters. Jane Levy and her brother turn in good roles and are really original at least in execution. (The junkie and the prodigal son who wants to help) Jane Levy especially does a lot better than I expected and she was awesome. It’s the other characters. It’s like they saw “Cabin in the Woods” and were like those are our characters right there! Which would be fine if Cabin didn’t tear that apart. In the original there is at least an attempt to make them original while in this one they are taken right out of the horror dead body guide book. I mean the girlfriend character is barely on screen and just shows up when they need someone else to talk. In fact a lot of time they lazily do the horror movie conventions that the Evil Dead movies tried so hard to go against. (Hearing the voice and going, acting like dummies, crashing a car) It didn’t make me hate it but man let’s switch things up.
The other MUCH bigger problem is the DEADITES. I’ve always seen the Deadites as not quite zombies and not quite demons, but something else. They seemed to only live in Sam Raimi’s mind and would act whichever way he wanted them to. Here they are pretty much just demon possessed people and don’t show the originality that the well originals had. Also in the original you see the Deadites messing with time, messing with physicals, bringing mounted animals to life just to laugh at you and it made you feel like things were truly hopeless and there would be no escape. In this one there is too much of a need to explain things too much. For example in the original trilogy, the bridge over the river is transformed into a steel hand keeping them back but in the remake a river over flowed. Like sure it has the same effect but one has the slight bit of hope that the Evil Dead movies don’t have. Also again they tried to go a bit cliches with the deadites talking about hell or saying you’re mothers in hell where I don’t ever remember the deadites mentioning hell before (They did mention souls but I thought that was just a deadite thing) and I mean they may have but there wasn’t an focus on it. Where again if you say there is a hell, there has to be a heaven and alas hope. And it’s when the deadites come that you miss Raimi the most. The director here is adequate but gone are the crazy zooms or the heard angles and in the place is a safe camera choice. I think it boils down to that.
The original were a bit daring and a huge risk (male protagonist, camera zooms, remaking the sequel, actors quitting) while this one is just a bit too polished. Now that that’s out of my system, it was still a fun ride and a great if flawed addition to the series.
Trivia: Stay till after the credits for the best scene in the whole world!
Evil Dead Rant that I disguise as a review
Comic I Read: Revival: Vol 1
Plot: A sheriff has to deal with the dead rising in her small town while her sister searches for clues on who or what killed her.
Review: This is an independent mystery comic. And the problem with a lot of independent comics (and mystery comics even more) is that we don’t get enough information to keep going. In six issues, they were still setting up the characters and we didn’t even get one answer about the dead. And after six issues or volume one I had the choice to start searching the comic out and I just didn’t have enough to make me care or what to continue. I mean it had a bit of potential but I needed more answers
Why do all independents ruin their great premises?
Comic I Read: Hellboy: Makoma
Plot: Hellboy acts as the stand in to hear the legend of Makoma.
Review: This was an interesting book. Hellboy is not the star of it, instead Hellboy stands in for Makoma in the ancient African Legend. The frame is that Hellboy is hearing the story and inserting himself into the legend as we all do. It was very interesting and a great way to expand the mythology and tell more of Mignola’s favorite folktales without making you forget about Hellboy. And that’s my favorite thing that Mignola always uses folklore as his side characters. There wasn’t much in Hellboy story but there didn’t need to be. This is a great read for any Hellboy fan.
I have given up on the following
I watched about six episodes and I just never got into it. It was pretty slow and pretty ridiculous. I could never believe it and the characters were boring time. It’s hard to write a good character for Kevin Bacon and this show failed at that. Kevin Bacon is awesome btw. So that’s my review. Also it thought it was a lot smarter than it really was. Poe references for a serial killer? what is he? a 13 year old goth kid? and the whole following thing was just too big and dumb to be taken seriously
Comic I Read: Vampirella: Master Series
Plot: Vampirella must fight against the vampires that turned her into a vampire and save the daughter of a mob boss.
Review: This is my first Vampirella story and I figured if I was going to like any of them, it would be the one written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. And I wasn’t impressed. Don’t get me wrong, the comic is fine and if you enjoy the character then more power to you. But to me, it was just more of the same and she has pretty much all the same powers as Blade with the same attitude so it was nothing surprising. I mean vampires are all pretty much the same in every book so it’s really the hunter that changes but this was just a re-hash of standard vampire hunter motif. I think it’s time for a new one one don’t you? Also her costume is ridiculous but you kind of forget about it once you’re actually reading. And I will say the mobster’s daughter was intriguing and would have been a better character to lead this comic. I’m done with the hardened monster hunter but the new fresh faced killer that still gets scared with them? I’m on board for that!
The better mainstream reviews a horror movie gets the more mediocre it usually is. Right sinister?
Is this good? I’ve heard different things
