150 Movies in 90 Days: The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2

My first introduction to Ash was in Army of Darkness, which I still consider to be a masterpiece that is above the criticism of mere mortals like myself. However, I'm ashamed to say that until June 11th, 2013 (over 15 years after I first saw Army of Darkness), I had never seen the other two films in the series: The Evil Dead and The Evil Dead 2.

I even bought them, sometime last year when I was looking around and the Blu-ray versions of both were on sale. Still didn't watch them, though, bogged down by school, work, and...well, school. That's part of the reason I'm doing this whole thing, in fact- I have far too many movies on my shelf that I've bought, but haven't watched.

June 11: #10, The Evil Dead

...and in related news, corn syrup prices have soared...

 
I've known for years that Army of Darkness represented a complete departure from the first film in the trilogy, The Evil Dead. Even knowing that, though, I had no fucking idea how much of a departure it was. Let me represent it for you the only way I know how- with a poorly-done graphic made in two minutes using Paint:

I'm not just saying this because The Evil Dead is a straight-up horror film. The production values are completely different, and necessarily so because The Evil Dead was made on a shoestring budget. Ash as a character is, well, not really Ash. At least, not until late into the film, and even then he is still just a regular guy who's pretty damn freaked out regular than the cocky hero with the quips he has become two films later.

When I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I was struck over and over by how familiar a film could be even though I've never seen it before. This movie is that way because so many aspects of the film have been repeated and borrowed elsewhere since it was made. I mean, Cabin in the Woods literally does not exist without this, and if you've seen it, you'll enjoy this simply by recognizing where they got so many of the tropes.

Same with Army of Darkness. They're miles apart (literally, look at the graphic!) in many ways, but both films feature the "camera flying through the woods" technique to show that very bad things are coming, the tendency of everyday objects becoming possessed (most notably, mirrors), and of course, cabins. Then you also have the moment in Army of Darkness where a deadite appear to be dead, but isn't really, and Ash knows it. That suddenly makes sense, now.

Things I loved about The Evil Dead- the music, especially in the first half. It's wonderfully minimalistic and includes pianos, organs, all kinds of creepy touches that don't TELL you to be prepared for one of the stupid jump scares that modern horror films are so proud of, but instead suggest that terror is around the corner.

Furthermore, the film is just SO Sam Raimi.

Which is way better than being "SO Raven".

Raimi's directing is inspired and more than anything is what lifts this film above being a forgettable gore-fest. There are loads of examples, but I'll limit myself to one scene that contains several: Ash is going down into the cellar to check on a friend who went down previously, and obviously, we know that's not good. As he goes down the stairs, there's a closeup on his shoes that follows them down, step by step. He looks up, and we see from his perspective the opening of the cellar with his friends' worried faces looking down. When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, we are looking at him before we pan all the way around in a slow 360 that shows us the entirety of the creepy cellar before it makes its way back to Ash's face. Brilliant stuff.

Oh, and there's blood. TONS of it. As in, "enough that you just start laughing". Between that, the crap that comes out of the mouths of possessed folk when they die (looks like milk?), and some pretty bad claymation effects, it's hard to say that The Evil Dead is actually scary. But it's good! Grade: B

June 11:  #11, The Evil Dead 2

I'm not going to draw a completely separate crappy Paint graphic to show where The Evil Dead 2 stands on the Evil Dead-Army of Darkness continuum, but imagine that it's somewhere between the river shark and the first, smaller peak. Somehow, it manages to take two completely different things and bring them together in a way that does not seem completely forced or disjointed.

Now, at first, I thought the film was creepy, and not for the right reasons. There was Ash, taking a new girlfriend to the cabin where his friends were possessed and died, and hey, why not give the new girlfriend the necklace that belonged to the old one before you decapitated her with a shovel?

Then I realized that even though it was a new actress, the footage was re-shot (and just plain different), and all of the friends were excluded, it was actually a quick recap of what happened in the first film. Alrighty, then.

We get a lot of the same tricks from Raimi as in the first film; again, we see the camera zooming through the woods to symbolize the demonic forces heading to the cabin, and he even re-uses the 360 camera pan. This time, though, everything is more polished without losing any of the grittiness, likely simply because of the increased budget.

I kind of lied when I said that the change from a straight-up horror film to whatever the hell you'd call Army of Darkness wasn't abrupt, as there is quite a tone change when Ash decides to attach a chainsaw to the stump where his right hand used to be and then simply says, "Groovy." I didn't mind, though, nor did I mind when Ash pins down his possessed right hand underneath a pile of books, the top of which is A Farewell to Arms.

I'm not sure if it's because Evil Dead 2 feels a bit more fleshed out while The Evil Dead is kind of bare-bones, or if it's because the acting and just about everything else is better in the sequel, but I prefer the second film to the first. Maybe it's the Freddy Krueger glove hiding in plain sight as Ash walked through a doorway in the cellar? (My wife actually spotted it; I had to rewind.) Okay, it was probably that AND the ballet-dancing corpse. Grade: B+

150 Movies in 90 Days: Epic

June 9: #9, Epic

"Honey, I Shrunk the 'Avatar'!"

My kids and I have seen the trailer for Epic a few times, and they have wanted to see it ever since. I don't blame them; it's a great trailer. Of course, it's easy to make an amazing trailer and considerably harder to make a movie that is as good for its complete two-hour running time. Still, when you're trying to watch a butt-load of movies in a limited amount of time and you can multi-task by watching an animated movie now and then that won't make you want to claw your eyeballs out, you do it.

So, Epic came to the DeWitt Operahouse and I went to see it along with the wife and kids. How was it? It was good. Really, it was like a mashup of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Avatar, as the plot leads to a teenage girl shrinking down to microscopic size and immersing herself in a mysterious civilization of tiny little people who protect the forces against the evil forces of Skeletor- er, sorry- the "Boggans", who want the forest to rot for reasons unknown to anyone whatsoever and to that end, shoot arrows that kill living things.

Where the film parallels Avatar is in its message of conservation, although the way the message is communicated in Epic is a lot less heavy-handed and preachy than in Avatar. The teenage girl who gets the shrinking treatment has just arrived to live with her estranged dad, who is a scientist obsessed with the idea of microscopic people living in the woods, and the story thankfully doesn't go too deep into their father-daughter issues, either.

So Epic succeeds at exploring some serious themes without getting preachy or losing the interest of the kids in the audience, but what else? Well, the animation is top-notch, and particularly impressive during the many action sequences. The voice acting is great, too. Of course, every major animated film these days features excellent animation and voice acting.

Ultimately, Epic is a good movie for kids and adults alike that doesn't insult the intelligence of its audience or devolve into fart jokes from one-note characters with silly voices.The laughs instead come from a loveable three-legged dog and various physical comedy that mostly hits the mark. However, the film does have its generic points, such as a male protagonist that is essentially a watered-down Flynn Rider from Tangled. Overall, Epic is a good movie and better than most "family-friendly" movies, but ultimately isn't something you'll remember years from now. Grade: B.

150 Movies in 90 Days: Die Hard 2 and Die Hard With a Vengeance

In general, I'm going to try to start making these reviews separate posts, because there really hasn't been anything "mini" about them. I suppose I could also try not writing 900 words about Die Hard, but a) that's not in my nature, b) this is my blog, damn it, and c) have I mentioned I like making lists?

Alright, on with the show. I've had to pick up the pace (which isn't hard at the pace I was going at) and now I can report back to you about two more cinematic masterpieces: Die Hard 2 and Die Hard With a Vengeance.

June 8: #7, Die Hard 2

"How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?"

 

I don't know that I'm in the Die Hard series' target market anymore.

I mean, I like watching explosions and shootouts as much as anyone, but I doubt many other people were excited to see Die Hard 2 mainly because they wanted to see what happened with McClane and his wife. Therefore, I enjoyed the first ten minutes of the sequel, as I quickly found out that McClane is now an LAPD officer and has reconciled with Holly, who is know sporting a slightly less tragic haircut than the shitty 80s perm she was rocking in the original film.

Really, the first 20 minutes or so of Die Hard 2 is comic gold. Between seeing McClane check his beeper and hearing his wife say to him condescendingly, "It's the 90s, remember? Microchips, microwaves, faxes, air phones...", there are plenty of nostalgic moments to chuckle at if you lived through the 90s and once thought a microwave was amazing technology.

We also meet our villain just minutes into the film, and he's doing naked tai chi, y'all. Nothing says "badass" like doing traditional martial arts forms in the nude in your shitty hotel room. Again...comedy gold.

Unfortunately, they double down on the quips in the early going, and many of them miss the mark. McClane gets an important fax printout from an customer service desk worker, and when she hits on him, he flashes his wedding ring and says, "Just the fax, ma'am. Just the fax." GROOOOOAN.

Oh, and we see McClane's old friend Sgt. Powell again, even though he serves no real purpose in the story. When we join him at his desk, answering McClane's phone call, he's opening five Twinkies at once and eating them like a man possessed- BECAUSE HE'S FAT, GET IT? High-level comedy, right there. Even when McClane mouths off to his superiors (including the insanely annoying Dennis Franz, who really dials it up to 11 here), it isn't quite right. "What sets off the metal detector first? The lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?" McClane says at one point. Well, duh, McClane. Obviously, the lead, unless you've been eating nickels.

Just as with the first Die Hard, they don't fuck around for long here- the first shootout happens about 13 minutes into the movie. And unlike in the first installment, the sequel is much, much better when it's engaged in action. Director Renny Harlin, best known to me for directing A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and to regular folks for directing Deep Blue Sea, does a great job with the action sequences, particularly a very spectacular plane crash that no, I did not just spoil, because it's a movie about terrorists taking control of an airport. Come on, you knew.

 McClane continues to be a great character, with help from Bruce Willis. In this one, he really steps the emotional vulnerability up a notch, full-on sobbing after the aforementioned plane crash. Of course, he immediately turns his sadness after the crash into the much manlier emotion of pure rage, ensuring that none of the manly men sitting in theaters watching this in 1990 would start to feel uncomfortable.

The primary weakness of this film is the bloated roster of characters. McClane deals with what seems like a dozen different airport officials, policemen, military officers, and so on. Being the blue collar worker's action hero, he also buddies up to a janitor who is nearly as annoying a character as Franz's Captain Carmine Lorenzo. Even the terrorist ends up just being the henchman of another, much less interesting terrorist who likely prefers Dos Equis on the occasions when he does drink beer.

"Stay thirsty, my friends."

This movie still packs enough of the things that make action movies (and specifically, 80s/90s action movies) great to really be enjoyable, though. At one point, the bad guys brags that they have three grenades, but they throw over ten of them at McClane, which then take about 15 seconds to blow up so that he has plenty of time to get out of the area in the most ludicrous way possible. There's a wonderful, nonsensical plot twist. Then there's a moment I will just refer to as the "eye-sicle". It's hard not to love this movie, warts and all. Grade: B.


June 9: #8, Die Hard With a Vengeance

In case you enjoy a pinch of racism in your summer blockbusters

As the third film in what is now a five-film franchise, Die Hard With a Vengeance remains notable for a number of reasons:

- After the first film gutlessly flirted with the idea of using "Die Hard" to create an awful title, but only included "Die Harder" as a subtitle to the usual "Die Hard 2", the third film doubles down and just goes with it. How about "Die Hard With a Vengeance", some asshole said in a board room, to which some other asshole said, "It sucks! It makes no sense! I love it!" They took 12 years to make the fourth film because they couldn't think of another terrible title, as a matter of fact.

- The movie teaches you that a) black people are inherently dangerous and b) those that aren't dangerous hate you because you're white. It might be the first black guy/white guy buddy cop movie to ever move race relations backward.

However, the most notable thing about Die Hard With a Vengeance is that for the first hour or so, it's not really a Die Hard movie at all. Oh, sure, it's got Bruce Willis, but he's not shooting anyone, he's running around with Samuel L. Jackson solving fucking MATH PROBLEMS for a terrorist voiced by Jeremy Irons. That's right, the villain in Die Hard With a Vengeance is the fucking Riddler, but only if the Riddler sounded like Scar from The Lion King.

So we watch in pretend tension as McClane runs around with his newest interracial tag team partner and solves story problems over a payphone, only to run to another payphone and be directed to a nearby fountain, where he is (no shit, seriously) asked to fill a container with exactly four gallons of water by only utilizing a three- and a five-gallon jug.

"If two planes leave the same airport at 1 PM, how many miles apart will they be at 3 PM if..."

Scar the Math Terrorist even starts off his first phone conversation with police by saying, "I want to play a game," meaning that Saw ripped off Scream which ripped off Die Hard With a Vengeance. And they say that action films are unimaginative. (By the way, the terrorist's name is "Simon". As in "Simon says". And if you think he doesn't use that exact phrase OVER AND OVER AGAIN during the film, you haven't seen enough action movies from the 80s and 90s.)

Suddenly, though, about an hour in, the director, the writers, or fucking Bruce Willis himself seems to say, "Enough of this shit, let's just start shooting each other and blowing shit up!" And that's what happens. The film becomes a full-scale Die Hard film, with a ridiculous body count, McClane buddying up with blue collar workers like he always does (most notably, a dump truck driver), explosions galore, a crazy plot twist that is followed by a much more believable plot twist.

The writers make the strange decision to keep McClane married, even though he has the most troubled, yet mutually apathetic marriage ever. McClane hasn't talked to his wife for a year- they argued and he just never called her back, he says (seems legit)- and they leave the film with a glimmer of hope of the two reconciling again. Why? So the romantics in the theater could say, "Oh, how nice! Their terribly unhealthy non-marriage might continue, after all! Maybe he'll finally see his kids after a year!" You turn McClane into an alcoholic in this one; why not turn him into an unrepentant, tail-chasing poon-hound while you're at it?

The acting, especially by Willis and Jackson, is sturdy and their interactions are entertaining and often funny. Furthermore, while the action sequences are just as ridiculous and expertly done as in the second film, new director John McTiernan shows a flair for composition during the film's many scenes where nothing is blowing up that his predecessor, Renny Harlin, lacked. Exhibit A: the great bird's-eye view we get of cops scrambling around on the streets below to solve Simon's latest riddle, which pans out to give us our first glimpse of Simon himself (47 minutes in!) as he smugly surveys the chaos he's caused.

Die Hard With a Vengeance is in some ways more flawed than Die Hard 2, yet ends up being a more enjoyable experience, nonetheless. Maybe it's because there's finally some tension between McClane and one of his obligatory black sidekicks. Maybe it's because they dialed down the unnecessary subplots with secondary characters, or the number of secondary characters themselves. Or maybe I enjoy story problems more than I care to let on. Grade: B+.

150 Movies in 90 Days: Iron Man 3 and Die Hard

As you can see by the homely, MS paint-drawn logo above, 150 Movies in 90 Days is still a thing.

I'm just really, REALLY behind, is all.

The good news is that since I last wrote, I've managed to watch two movies! The bad news? It's been ten days. As my friend John McClane would say, "Yippie ki-yay." (No "motherfucker", though. People who watch two movies in ten days don't get to quote the entire catch phrase.)

Essentially, what started out as 150 Movies in 90 Days really just kind of became 146 Movies in 72 Days. Totally do-able, right? But I'd better stop pattering about and get to my reviews so I can start watching some more of them, right? Right.

June 2: #5, Iron Man 3

When we said we wanted "more Iron Man", we didn't mean more Iron MEN.

I wasn't always a comic book fan; it was something instilled in me by my older brothers, Derek and Russ. They were technically step-brothers, but that only increased their influence. One day, they were just there, having moved back to live with their dad (my stepfather, obv), and as they were older than I was, they were clearly more worldly, experienced, and just plain cool than I was.

I never really gave much thought to comic books until I saw their collections- neatly bagged and boarded, alphabetized in their longboxes, my inner need to organize was at once married with a primal appetite for stories featuring super-powered muscle men and scantily-clad female warriors, and the effect was undeniable.

Even at the zenith of my childhood comic fandom, though, I didn't give a shit about the Avengers. It may seem crazy now, but in the 90s, the Avengers were kinda lame. Captain America? Zzzzz. Iron Man? Dorky. Thor? Bo-ring. They even had a b-team, the "West Coast Avengers", which were the characters that were too lame to even be in the Avengers proper. Guess who was in that team? Hawkeye, and a bunch of other people nobody gave a shit about.

If you would have told me back then that one day, totally awesome comic book movies would all but take over every summer blockbuster season, I would have been pretty damn stoked. If you would have told me that Iron Man would be a much bigger box office and critical success than Wolverine, I would have laughed at you. And then called you something really mean and run away, because that's how I rolled when I was 10 years old.

We forget now how much of a surprise the success of Iron Man was. Nobody was really excited about it before it came out- at least nobody I knew was. Comic fans were cautiously optimistic about the oncoming slew of comic book movies, with the X-Men and Spider-Man films leading the way.

Another thing we forget, though, is that comic movies weren't exactly a can't miss proposition. You may remember the slightly-polished turds that were the likes of Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, or the formidable pair of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, sure. But we comic fans remember many other atrocities. The Punisher starring Dolph Lundgren. The 1990 version of Captain America. The unforgettable disgrace that was the original Fantastic Four, apparently filmed on a budget of $64 and 100 gallons of cheap vodka. (Seriously, click that last link and keep it on at least long enough to see the film's nightmarish rendition of The Thing.)

Now, it's 2013 and Iron Man 3 was widely expected to be the biggest hit of the summer and a can't-miss third installment of a series that has been enjoyed by critics and fans alike. Go figure.

Before I sat down to watch Iron Man 3 the first time, I had already told my brother, Chris, "In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark had a suit that came in a suitcase and automatically formed around him. In The Avengers, he had the wristband-homing suit. I'm sure in this one, we'll get a new and even more ridiculous way for Tony to put on his suit."

I don't mean to be self-congratulatory, but I kinda knocked that one out of the fucking park.

I won't spoil any plot specifics, but let's just say that there's A LOT of suits attaching themselves to Tony in new and unlikely ways in this one, and it's not just a one-off gimmick, but absolutely central to at least two pivotal moments of the film.

Besides that? Everybody gets to wear a suit, if at least temporarily. I'm beginning to think it was written into people's contracts. "Yeah, I'll do the movie, but why should Iron Man be the only one who gets to wear the Iron Man suit? I want one, too, damn it!"

Another thing that seems to be written into contracts in super hero franchises: not having to wear your damn mask. We first saw this particular phenomenon in the Spider-Man trilogy, where by the end of the series, everybody in Manhattan knew who Spider-Man was and simply didn't give a shit, apparently. Why? Because GOD FORBID we forgot for a second that Tobey Maguire was playing the role.

With the often-used "inside the helmet" cam we've gotten used to, we get a lot of Robert Downey, Jr. in mid-flight, telling Jarvis to Recalibrate This or Update Him on That. And that's okay, really. I suppose if you take a role and make it absolutely inseparable with your particular performance the way Downey, Jr. has with the role of Tony Stark, you can get a little more face time.

Acting-wise, Iron Man 3 delivers, as you would expect. Downey, Jr. is excellent, Gwyneth Paltrow is concerned without entering "wet blanket girlfriend" territory, and series newbies Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley both do well in their respective roles, even if I think that Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer (from Iron Man 2) is a far better corporate rival than Pearce's Aldrich Killian. Kingsley is really just superb in all facets of his role, as you would expect.

The story starts off well enough, with a compelling villain, a believable personal crisis and a first act that somehow survives a palpable lack of AC/DC. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen terrorists blowing Stark's oceanside palace into smithereens, and yes, that scene is great, as is everything that leads up to it.

Where things slow down for me is in the final hour, when the film tries to wear a few too many hats for my taste. There's a pit-stop in a small town where Stark befriends a kid, and although not only do they avoid the temptation to develop a corny, heartwarming relationship between the two, but actually do much the opposite for comedic effect, I could have done without him. Then, there's the final battle, which is easily the most amazing in an Iron Man film from a pure special effects and action standpoint, but somehow lacks the impact you would expect in the process.

It was a great film, just not an excellent one. If you ask me, the series was released in descending order of quality, though having the weak link in a trilogy be this damn good is really saying something. Grade: B+.

June 6: #6, Die Hard

I'm struggling to think of something to say that isn't "Yippie ki-yay, motherfucker"...damn it.

I may have seen the original Die Hard when I was a kid, but I'm not sure. It's hard to tell whether I have a familiarity with its most well-known scenes, lines, and moments just from growing up in the 80s, or from actually seeing it, but I know that I have next to no recollection of the specifics of the movie beyond its more iconic moments. Did I see it when it came out? I don't know; my dad had cable and I was 10 when it first came out. I watched plenty of R-rated stuff (much more than PG-rated, for sure), but even today I don't remember movies all that well years later if I only see them once.

At any rate, I haven't seen any of the sequels, and with three of the five available on HBOGO right now, I thought it was as good a time as any to get into the franchise for the first time. I know, it's downright blasphemous not to have really watched Die Hard, but what can I say? I was more of a Van Damme and Stallone kid. We all had our favorites.

So, a half hour into Die Hard, and I already understood its appeal. Why was Die Hard so unbelievably popular when it released way back in 1988? Because it combined four things that just about every American loved in the 80s:

a) Tough guys shooting people,
b) Americans kicking the crap out of foreign dudes,
c) A working class hero, and
d) Hide and seek.

I'm not kidding- I think Die Hard mostly became a classic action film because it's all about hide and seek. Everybody who grew up in the 80s loved hide and seek. Shit, we didn't have Xbox 360s or smart phones as kids, and even if we had a Nintendo, our moms made it pretty clear during the summer that we had to go outside and play. Hide and seek was a great game, too, as tag was too simple and rewarded pure athleticism, while hide and seek allowed for creativity and sneakiness.

Everyone I know that's between 30 and 35 loves Die Hard, because when it came out, it was pretty much a living enactment of our fantasies: a badass playing hide and seek (with guns!) from deadly terrorists. What more could you want?

Watching Die Hard today, the film seems almost quaint. Innocent, even. Dude, the terrorists are white people. They look like businessmen. I mean, they're foreign, but that's a given. Can you imagine a movie about terrorists today where a) there isn't a Middle-Eastern person in sight, and b) the terrorists are just after money?

Then, there's McClane himself. Much like with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, you don't have to have seen Die Hard to know it. So much of what happens in the film has become a regular part of action movies since. Bruce Willis' John McClane was a predecessor to the action heroes we got more regularly in the 90s and after, who not only shrugged off gun wounds and dispatched bad guys with extreme prejudice, but had a sensitive side and ultimately just wanted to be with their wife and kids.

The film doesn't take long to get moving: if I recall correctly, the terrorists show up and start their little party about 20 minutes into the movie. The pace moves along briskly, with the exception of a portion of the early third act, where the terrorists seem to stop pursuing McClane so he can continue his unlikely buddy cop bromance with Reginald VelJohnson's Sgt. Al Powell via CB radio.

You may know VelJohnson better as the father in "Family Matters", and he's okay in the film, but part of the slowish area of the film is just there for VelJohnson to introduce the subplot of his own trauma, which comes from having accidentally shot a 13-year old kid while on duty and then opting to get off the streets. The subplot becomes important late in the film, and I wasn't really a fan of it, nor VelJohnson's little monologue. He was better when just kidding back and forth with McClane and not laying it on so thick.

Otherwise, this is pretty much a perfect action film. It's from the 80s, so there's lots of blood, cussing, and even a little brief nudity. None of that watered-down PG-13 action crap we get today, my friends. Oh, and also because it's the 80s, female lead Bonnie Bedelia, who plays McClane's wife, is saddled with an awful perm that renders her hotness almost imperceptible, sadly. She brings a surprising amount of believability and depth to a pretty clichéd "cop with strained marriage" storyline, though.

It's always nice to see that a classic holds up to the title, as I was saying the other day. Die Hard has terrific action sequences, solid acting, a script with just enough cheesy 80s quirks, and some humor, to boot. After this, I'm excited to see the others, even if I understand that they don't approach the level of the original. Grade- A.