Thursday, February 5, 2015

Be Kind, Please Rewind

He’s a Shape-Shift Worker. He’s the…

Vidiot

Week of February 6, 2015

Immortality means no more inheritances. First up…

 

Dracula Untold

With a reputation for impaling as well as sucking on his victims, the real Dracula was most likely a Transylvanian prostitute.

However, this fantasy/horror movie maintains that he was a supernatural nobleman.

To save the sons of his kingdom, including his own, from the clutches of the Turkish sultan (Dominic Cooper), Prince Vlad (Luke Evans) strikes an accord with a vampire (Charles Dance) and gains the use of his powers for three days, including flight, strength and command over bats.

But if during that time he succumbs to the accompanying bloodlust he will remain a creature of the night forever.

The most compassionate and selfless version of Vlad the Impaler to date, this bloodless re-imagining of Bram Stoker’s inspiration for Dracula is de-fanged and sanitized.

More super-hero than son of the Devil, Dracula Untold is a bungled interpretation.

Besides, the only historical character who could fly was Jesus.  Red Light

 

Ouija

The worst thing about playing with a spirit board is your friends will finally learn you’re illiterate.

Luckily, the friends in this horror are all able to discern written messages from beyond.

Laine (Olivia Cooke) and her friends (Daren Kagasoff, Bianca A. Santos, Douglas Smith, Ana Coto) use her childhood Ouija board to reach out to their deceased friend Debbie (Shelley Hennig), who mysteriously committed suicide.

Making contact with a spirit they believe to be Deb, the friends slowly realize the entity leaving them messages - sans Ouija board - is not their friend at all.

In fact, it’s the restless soul of a mother murdered by her daughter.

With a script as flimsy as a Ouija board, this no thrills thriller from Hasbro fails to conjure up scares, or any reason to care about these one dimensional characters.

Furthermore, Ouija boards should only be used to order ghost pizza.  Red Light

 

John Wick

The ideal leisure pursuit for a retired hit-man is assisting retirement communities with their mercy killings.

Mind you, the pensioner in this action movie is too busy with revenge killings.

Following his wife’s (Bridget Moynahan) funeral, former mob enforcer John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is accosted by Iosef (Alfie Allen), the son of his former boss Viggo (Michael Nyqvist), who kills his dog and steals his car.

To protect his son from Wick’s legendary wrath, Viggo puts a bounty on Wick’s head that attracts the hit-man’s contemporaries (Adrianne Palicki, Willem Dafoe) to the party.

They, along with Viggo’s other cronies, might just come close to matching Wick’s lethalness.

From stylized shootouts to choreographed hand-to-hand, this fresh take on the standard vengeance tale is relentless in it’s delivery of kinetic violence, snappy dialogue and sad faces from Keanu.

Incidentally, Wick’s unwillingness to stay retired is why millennial hit-men can’t get a job.  Green Light

***Impale Complexion***

 

Bram Stoker Dracula

As well as inspiring the character of Dracula, Vlad the Impaler was also the inventor of the scarecrow.

But as this horror movie attests, he didn’t use straw and old clothes - he used Turks.

Disavowing God after the death of his wife (Winona Ryder), Vlad (Gary Oldman) is cursed to walk the Earth for eternity thirsting for human blood.

Surfacing in London centuries later under the moniker Count Dracula, Vlad is shocked to encounter Mina Harker (Winona Ryder), a look-alike of his dead wife.

However, Mina’s fiancée (Keanu Reeves), Professor Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) and others (Cary Elwes) affected by his actions will stop at nothing to separate the Count’s head from his shape-shifting body.

The most cinematic and sinister depiction of Stoker’s protagonist yet, director Francis Ford Coppola infuses the gothic narrative with striking visuals, elaborate costumes and brazen eroticism.

Furthermore, marrying Dracula means no more buying tampons. 

He’s a Discount Dracula. He’s the…

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