uglykidmatt

With "Freddy Vs. Jason", director Ronny Yu has done what many before him have tried and failed. No, I don't mean resurrecting supernatural psycho killers Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. As we all know, it takes nothing more intricate than a well-placed lightning bolt or ill-timed nightmare to accomplish that. What Yu and his screenwriters, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, have done here is much more complex and exciting: they've raised the horror hackers' respective franchises from the grave. Freddy's "Nightmare on Elm Street" series has been dormant since "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" way back in 1994, and "Friday the 13th" slasher Jason has appeared in only one film since '93, last year's poorly received sci-fi one-off "Jason X". Now, with "Freddy Vs. Jason", the gloved fiend and the goalie-masked monster have regained their box-office mojo, if last weekend's $36.4 million bow is any indication. Even more thrilling, Yu, Shannon and Swift have injected new creative blood into the series, providing the film with some traits often missing from both franchises, namely a great story, top-notch performances, stylistic flair, and good, old-fashioned thrilling fun.

"Freddy Vs. Jason" opens with big bad Freddy trapped in hell, unable to use the nightmares of Elm Street's teenagers as an outlet for mayhem and murder. Having caught on to the source of Freddy's power, the parents of the town of Springwood have secretly drugged their kids with a powerful experimental dream suppressant, robbing them of their ability to dream and keeping Freddy well in check. To unleash the teens' nightmares again, Freddy needs to reintroduce them to the notion of fear, but trapped as he is, he needs help. In other words, he needs Jason Voorhees, the indestructible hockey-masked killing machine who Freddy raises from the dead and sends on a door-to-door death dealing mission on Elm Street. Fear rises and Freddy's powers grow, but now the razor-fingered phantom has two big obstacles to overcome. First of all, the new kids of Elm Street are not going down without a fight. Second, neither is Jason...and as you may know, the big silent killer is harder to take out than a New York cockroach. It's a monstro a monstro fight to the finish...and only one fiend can walk away undead.

New Line Cinema, who originated the "Elm Street" films and recently bought the "Friday the 13th" franchise from Paramount, worked for nearly a decade on a script that would pay proper respect to the continuity of both series while still providing a suitably exciting backdrop for a Krueger-Voorhees showdown. It was worth the wait; Shannon and Swift's clever screenplay provides a perfect means for Freddy and Jason to find themselves facing off, and it does so without violating the mythology of either franchise. What's more, unlike many of the series' previous films, "Freddy Vs. Jason" is far more than a relentless series of graphic killings interrupted by witless, perfunctory plot-delineating dialogue. Shannon and Swift stud the script with sharp dialogue, beautifully exploit the origin stories of both Freddy and Jason, and actually manage to give us teen characters who are more than pretty cannon fodder for the two maniacs-in-chief. "Freddy Vs. Jason" is one of the rare horror pictures where you may actually find yourself rooting for the kids over the killers.

This is not to suggest, of course, that the film stints on the imaginative bloodletting. Brutally exciting moments abound, from an arrogant young stud finding out the hard way that his bed's not adjustable to a nosejob-hungry PYT who gruesomely learns what she'd look like with no nose at all. Yu, a Hong Kong cult favorite who broke into the U.S. horror market with "Child's Play" revival "Bride of Chucky", stages the film's killings with maximum kinetic inventiveness, and he also keeps the tension and excitement high as the story builds to the inevitable showdown between the demonic duo. The pacing is fast and furious, the storytelling is clear and unstintingly visual, and the action enhances the story rather than overwhelming it utterly.

Yu is given ample support in realizing his vision by the work of a top-notch technical crew who turn "Freddy Vs. Jason" into the most visually impressive film in either series. Cinematographer Fred Murphy provides a vibrant contrast of garish colors and deep, foggy shadow, cloaking the film in suitably foreboding haunted-house atmosphere. Mark Stevens' editing brutally punches home every last spatter of blood, and all that red stuff, plus assorted eviscerated bodies and severed appendages, are ably supplied by makeup supervisors Rebeccah Delchambre and Patricia Murray-Morgan. Even the music is top-grade; stalwart composer Graeme Revell provides a thumping orchestral accompaniment, with a dash of "Nightmare"'s plaintive piano theme and "Friday the 13th"'s chee-chee-hah-hah vocal effects, and the song score is chock-full of grinding hard-core rock, most notably "When Darkness Falls", a doom-laden dirge by Killswitch Engage that closes the film.

Unlike so many other horror-film directors, Yu pays as much attention to his victims as to his killers, and the result is some of the most engaging horror-film acting in quite a while. Ravishing Monica Keena is surprisingly affecting as Lori, the troubled young lady who is Freddy's prime target. Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child displays an enjoyably biting humor as Lori's appearance-obsessed friend Kia, and Jason Ritter, as Lori's one-time true love, shows an easy command of the good-guy role. Kyle Labine provides able comic relief as the Jay-like stoner Freeburg (who has a hilarious encounter with an "Alice In Wonderland"-style Freddy caterpillar with a fatally alluring hookah), and Christopher George Marquette transcends his nerd-cliche character with a surprisingly sincere performance.

Still, as unexpectedly interesting as these guys turn out to be, Yu knows why we're here, and he never fails to make it clear that this is Freddy and Jason's show all the way. Robert Englund is of course back as the sweatered, razor-gloved Krueger, and he's in top-class form, leaning heavily on Freddy's more sinister "New Nightmare" persona while still cracking off a few vintage one-liners, mostly at Jason's expense. The now 54-year-old Englund is still able to exude a palpable sense of danger and physical menace that's as enjoyable as the laughs he wrings out of Freddy's sometimes eye-rollingly corny jokes (sizing up Kia, he comments, "How sweet...DARK meat!"). And Ken Kirzinger, a controversial replacement for four-time Jason Kane Hodder, more than holds his own against Englund, making Jason as physically imposing and murderously forceful as he's ever been, most notably in a dynamite scene in which Jason slashes his way through a rave in a cornfield, taking out one blood-spurting victim after another. Jason, in my opinion, has never been scarier on screen; New Line should sign Yu and Kirzinger to do the next "Friday the 13th" picture without delay.

Of course, even with all this great material, it's just the framework for the film's main event, a two-part smackdown between the titans of terror, and Yu does not disappoint. Battling first in Freddy's boiler-room dreamscape, then through the woods of Jason's Crystal Lake killing ground, the two fiends unleash every weapon in their formidable arsenals in a protracted, insanely bloody duel that includes top-of-the-line effects and stunt work, wince-inducing moments of violence, and literal buckets of blood and flying gore. It's a high benchmark for each series, and one of the greatest horror-monster showdowns of all time. King Kong Vs. Godzilla has nothing on these guys.

Lest the high grosses trick you into thinking that Freddy and Jason have toned down their acts for a kinder, gentler audience appeal, let me assure you that it's business as usual in "Freddy Vs. Jason". The violence is gory and graphic, there's several scenes of gratuitous sex and nudity, and the humor is as dark and politically incorrect as ever (Kia even makes a homophobic crack about Freddy's sweater). Still, these disreputable qualities are not only forgivable, but welcome as essential ingredients in the mix, and if you're offended, you really shouldn't have come to this party anyway.

In a summer of disappointing blockbusters and unnecessary part twos and threes, "Freddy Vs. Jason" is an unexpected treat, the best sequel so far this year and one of the summer's most purely entertaining pictures (I would rank only "Pirates of the Caribbean" ahead of it in terms of sheer enjoyment). Bloody, funny, endlessly exciting, this is the rare horror film that delivers, and then some. Hats off to Ronny Yu, Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, and the entire cast and crew for teaching two old demons so many exciting new tricks. And I end with one simple word, a word certain to be echoed by horror buffs around the country...

Rematch!

In what has, not atypically, been a dismal year thus far for films, Christopher Guest's "A Mighty Wind" stands out like a rose in a trash pile. Another of Guest's "Spinal Tap"-style pseudodocumentaries, this film, about a reunion of once-popular folk musicians for a special concert, is funnier than the previous dog-show mock-doc "Best In Show", but is also surprisingly heartfelt, building a gentle feeling of good cheer that stays with you long after the final song fades out.

Folk impresario Irving Steinbloom is dead, and his emotionally stunted son Jonathan (an slightly Woody Allenesque Bob Balaban) has planned a grand memorial for him: a concert broadcast on public TV live from New York's immortal Town Hall. He pulls together some of the most beloved acts of the mid-sixties folk heyday, including the old-fashioned Folksmen and the homogenized, creepily cultlike New Main Street Singers. But there's a wild card in the mix, and his name is Mitch (Eugene Levy). Formerly one half of the beloved romantic singing duo Mitch and Mickey, the singer / guitarist suffered a mental collapse after an mid-performance kiss with Mickey (Catherine O'Hara) on a TV show came to nothing, and has to be coaxed into doing the concert like a yogi being soothed into walking on hot coals. Now a zonked-out shell of a man with a weirdly clipped way of speech and nervous, dizzy eyes, Mitch finally agrees to take the stage with Mickey...but will the kiss that captivated America be repeated?

A concert in honor of a dead man, emotional anguish, a yearning for a furtive kiss...doesn't sound like laff riot material, does it? But Guest and his hugely talented cast pull it off. Virtually all the actors from "Best In Show" are here; the company, in addition to those named above, includes Michael Hitchcock, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, John Michael Higgins, Ed Begley Jr., Fred Willard, Paul Dooley, Jennifer Coolidge, and Guest himself as a banjo-playing wiggly-voiced Folksman. This is the director's third film with this talented repertory, and the actors, largely improvising from a scenario created by Guest and Levy, throw themselves into the material with gusto, creating characters who provoke effortless laughs and left me with a giddy smile on my face through the whole film. Knowing that the most effective comedy, no matter how outrageous the laughs, often proceeds from a firm bedrock in reality, these performers wisely do not push their admittedly caricatured creations into cartoon territory, keeping them just grounded enough so we can laugh in recognition at the bizarre vicissitudes of human nature as much as in disbelief at their silliness.

Naturally, with such an enormous cast, there are bound to be a few standouts. Willard, whose dimwitted dog-show announcer was the comic highlight of "Best In Show", steals scenes as the New Main Street Singers' boorish manager, former star of an obnoxious sitcom called "Wha' Happened?" (canceled due to "total lack of interest", according to "Variety"). Begley is amusing as a Swedish TV producer with a penchant for Yiddish phrases, and Hitchcock has some fine verbal duels with Balaban as the Town Hall rep putting the concert together. All these performers score laughs, but Coolidge, as a feather-brained PR agent, delivers an offhand remark about model trains that had me worried I'd lose the rest of the scene's dialogue under all the laughter in the theatre (some of it admittedly mine).

Still, it's Levy's performance as Mitch that will stay with me the longest, as the actor, in the midst of a career renaissance, turns in a characterization that's almost Chaplinesque in its deft combination of humor and pathos. Mitch is a man whose unrequited love for his former musical partner has broken his brain, and it's honestly touching to see the poor man wandering the streets in lovelorn confusion, sitting in his drab hotel room as he listens to the enthusiastic sex of the people in the next room, and wistfully recalling the story of how he and Mickey first met. O'Hara matches him with her own frustration at his daffy lovesickness, but when the two of them get onstage to sing at the end of the long concert sequence that concludes the film, I was amazed to find that I was just as anxious as the film's characters about whether or not that famous kiss was going to happen again.

Guest is by now an old hand with this documentary-style storytelling, and he thankfully does not cram the form down our throats with scripted narration or a constantly darting handheld camera. There are a few nicely recreated period-era stills and some great old pastiche TV footage (I especially liked the chintzy hearts-and-clouds set Mitch and Mickey performed on back in the sixties), but for the most part, Guest's most utilized documentary device is talking-head interviews, which would run the risk of bringing the film to a grinding halt if the dialogue within didn't contain some of the movie's biggest laughs. Fred Willard sitting at a desk talking in this film drew more solid laughs from me than all the slapstick gags in the amusing but problematic "Anger Management".

In a further testament to the talent of his cast, all the songs in "A Mighty Wind" have been written and performed by the actors themselves. Folk music fans will of course find the most to appreciate here, but even if the stuff makes your teeth grind, you'll likely find something here easy on your ears. Among the film's musical standouts are the New Main Street Singers' rendition of the hard-luck manifesto "Wanderin'", the Folksmen's jaunty "Old Joe's Place", and of course, Mitch and Mickey's signature tune, the really quite lovely "A Kiss At The End of the Rainbow". Honestly, most of the music here is more pleasant than funny, but the final line of the film's title song more than makes up for it.

Warner Bros. wisely chose to release "A Mighty Wind" at an off-time of year, before the loud FX onslaught of summer and the heavy hammering of the weighty Oscar-bait fall releases. Indeed, spring seems like a perfect time for such a light, sweet, touching film, and especially considering the drecky leftovers that often glut the theatres at this time of year, a truly enjoyable picture like "A Mighty Wind" is all the more welcome. No matter what the release date, though, this film is a real treat, a lot of laughs, a perfect date movie. At least I think it would be; I'd have to go back with a date to be sure. And I figure if Mitch and Mickey don't get her ready for that good-night kiss, nothing will.

"Chicago" represents the latest salvo in a mini-revival of one of Hollywood's most venerated genres: the live-action musical. Since the end of the golden age of big-budget studio song and dance extravaganzas, musicals have appeared only at irregular intervals, and most have met with mixed critical response and equally indifferent gross figures (the most recent example: Alan Parker's box-office also-ran "Evita"). But the holiday-season success of the Coen brothers' music-filled Depression comedy "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2000) indicated a new song filling the Hollywood air, a notion confirmed last May with the release of "Moulin Rouge". Baz Luhrmann's phantasmagorical tale of 19th-century Parisian decadence, memorably scored with contemporary pop tunes, may not have set the summer box office on fire, but it was heaped with critical raves, won an enthusiastic cult following, and became the first musical in decades to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

"Chicago", the feature-film debut of veteran stage director / choreographer Rob Marshall, is not as radical or experimental as Luhrmann's picture. Like "Evita", it is a cinematic adaptation of a hit Broadway show, namely Bob Fosse's tale of two 1920s murderesses who milk their crimes for headline-grabbing glory. And, like Parker's film, it doesn't attempt to re-invent the musical; it's content to be a solid, well-crafted genre product that knows what audiences expect from a musical and delivers in spades.

Indeed, the story (adapted from the original musical by "Gods and Monsters" scribe Bill Condon) is the most radical thing here, following as it does the exhilarating up-and-down fame rollercoaster of two cold-blooded killers. Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) is a wannabe, a small-time song-and-dance girl who looks at the bright lights of the Chicago clubs and longs for her night in the spotlight. She gets it in a rather unexpected way after she kills her lover (Dominic West), a sleazy furniture salesman who'd filled her heads with lies about showbiz connections. Sent to prison, Roxie finds that the public's thirst for scandalous headlines has turned her into a celebrity, and the scared, confused young murderess transforms into a media monster, playing the people like an orchestra and turning her crime into an act of self-sacrifice. Roxie's rise to fame incurs the wrath of her one-time showbiz idol, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a Louise-Brooks-bobbed former chorine who's doing time for killing her sister and philandering hubby...and who was the number-one star of Murderess Row until Roxie sauntered in. Caught between these two vixens is Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), Chi-town's biggest celebrity lawyer, who's representing them both...and who has a few "razzle-dazzle" tricks of his own up his sleeve.

As anyone who ever saw Bob Fosse's films ("Cabaret", "STAR80") can attest, the man had a cynical streak a mile wide, so it's not hard to see why the tawdry material of "Chicago" (based on a real 1920s murder case) was attractive to him. Condon, fortunately, does not file down the story's rough edges, and his script scores some trenchant observations on the curious nature of modern celebrity. Velma and Roxie are just like Lorena Bobbitt, Kato Kaelin, and all those other small-timers who, through one stupid action or simply by being in the wrong place at the right time, become famous beyond any right they actually have to achieve such heights. And who lets such undeserved accolades come their way? Us, of course. The film's howling chorus of reporters and courtroom gawkers eagerly sucking up the latest sensational story are the on-screen stand-ins for the audience, whose appetite for scandal and thrills has become so insatiable that the unremarkable are remarked upon, the unworthy celebrated, the evil elevated.

It's a deep message for what is essentially a song-and-dance comedy, but Condon allows himself to engage its darker implications without cramming "message" down our throats. We are, after all, mainly here to see the numbers, and Marshall's expertise with choreography and music makes sure the songs (composed by "Cabaret's" John Kander and Fred Ebb) pack a satisfying punch. "Roxie" is our little killer's exhilarating ode to her impending fame, complete with her name in big red lights. "Cell Block Tango" finds Velma and a gaggle of murderesses singing about how their victims all "had it comin'", complete with some admirably sleazy choreography. Marshall's imaginative staging of "We Both Reached For The Gun", a musical press conference, has Roxie as Billy's wooden ventriloquist's dummy and the reporters as marionettes under his control. And, of course, there's a knockout closing duet for Velma and Roxie, the biting, excitingly filmed "Nowadays". I've never seen "Chicago" onstage, but if this movie captures the energy of the show, it must be one showstopper after another.

Marshall's direction is not always as assured as his staging of the musical numbers. Oddly, the film almost feels like it was shot in sequence, as Marshall's initially choppy editing and scene-pacing grows progressively more seamless as the picture goes along. This is crucial, as the numbers all take place in a sort of fantasy nightclub cut off from the main action. Still, Marshall generally gets high marks for his debut, and he is ably abetted by a top-notch technical crew. In addition to the aforementioned editing (by Martin Walsh), strong work is put forward by costume designer Colleen Atwood (who nicely recreates the sometimes anachronistically revealing dance outfits of the stage show), cinematographer Dion Beebe, and the set design crew, led by production designer John Myrhe, who are able to make their squalor a little more authentic than what one would see on a stage.

Of course, as with any musical, the lion's share of the picture's success rests on the shoulders of its performers, and while Astaire and Garland aren't losing any sleep, "Chicago"'s cast members acquit themselves surprisingly well as song-and-dance artists. Gere, slick with oily charm, displays a witty way with a lyric and a nice relaxed tap-dance style. Zeta-Jones, a dancer in London before she hit the silver screen, shows off the flashiest moves of anyone here, all the while oozing fearsome sexuality. Also turning in fine work are Queen Latifah as the corrupt warden of the women's prison and John C. Reilly as Roxie's hapless cuckold of a husband, whose "Mr. Cellophane" poignantly sums up his nowhere-man status.

As far as I'm concerned, though, this is Renee Zellweger's show all the way. For me, Zellweger's onscreen work has been wildly uneven, ranging from the agreeable "Jerry Maguire" to "Me Myself & Irene", where she seemed stunned to find herself in front of a movie camera. Here, however, her confidence is exhilarating, and as Roxie transforms from a timid criminal to a vampish media super-vixen, Zellweger projects sex, sarcasm, and sweetness (often insincerely) like nothing I've seen from her before. Her dancing is not as polished as Zeta-Jones's, but she more than holds her own, and her numbers are easily the most memorable of the film. Roxie may not be a star, but Zellweger certainly is here; I'm rooting for her to take home a Best Actress Oscar for this.

"Chicago" is not quite the masterpiece some of the early reviews have suggested. The lack of a more experienced director keeps it from being more than a top-notch screen transfer of a venerated stage work. Nevertheless, the film is funny and exciting, with plenty of memorable numbers, and it proves for sure that the success of "Moulin Rouge" wasn't a fluke.

Now...how about that Sweeney Todd movie finally?