The Mad Magician

Essentially a remake of another film by the same star from the previous year with a new profession behind it that powers the revenge motif, there's not a whole lot with this one that really works. The fact that it's so similar with the exception of the profession change does little for this one, requiring it to introduce a few spectacular gags for the revenge aspect when doling out the deaths but beyond that we don't get anything hardly original in here. The 3D gags are lifted straight from the previous film, going around with masks on to commit his crimes is a plot-point from there as well and the romance angle is taken from there as well with just a few minor tweaks that would naturally come about due to the profession rather than anything else. The constant plot of him being under the bosses thumb is nothing more than a requirement to start the rampage and goes on way too long for what it should be, the bumbling authorities accidentally uncover the whole ploy through sheer accident without willfully doing anything to piece the puzzle together and moreso the comic relief couple are rather tired and irritating more than a positive force upon the movie.

That said, it's still quite fun with a few good moments here and there, including a few spectacular tricks to be employed by the stage-show, the finale contains quite a bit of action with the brawl in the shop and as usual it's always fun to see Price get to do his thing every now and then where he just gets to monologue for a while spouting off the reasons for his revenge, the end result containing a rather twisted logic behind it all that sounds reasonable enough for the rampage to ensue and not come off like a hokey joke.

While it's nowhere near the top of his career works and certainly not near the bottom rung either, there's just too much about it that doesn't work to say it does nothing more than be overall adequate.

If you mean Tony Todd's character is obsessed with Virginia Madsen because the script says so and there's never that much depth to either one of them, and that there's a lot of pretentious mumbling over shots of the city that don't really mean much, then yes I would agree. There just isn't any real depth to it. It takes itself far too seriously to be entertaining as a slasher movie, too, so yeah, it pretty much just sucks. Violence can be done effectively - I just don't believe it was here.

Candyman 2 is the best one....love Tony Todd's portrayal.

I know you're adamant about your strong dislike for Candyman so that last comment was more directed to everyone. I've read all your posts against the film but I still don't entirely understand, were you expecting something profound? A comparison I'd draw upon is A Nightmare on Elm St, sure there's obvious differences but the death scenes are shocking and they serve their purpose. There's an intelligent story to link it all together with Nancy being thought of as mad, the real world and dream world beginning to blur like Helen's world begins to unravel and she and others start thinking she's mad. Candyman shows things unclearly and is mostly left for interpretation, the common assumption is Candyman is a fictitious story but he is then summoned into reality unwittingly by Helen, but additionally to this is whether Helen is haunted by the ghost of Candyman and he is somehow making her do his bidding, or going mad due to her obsession, or she is doing it as an act of revenge on behalf of the title character for how he was treated, so already there's three layers at play. Additionally to this is whether Candyman is somehow alive but remains incredibly elusive and is framing Helen, and finally that Helen acted alone and simply used Candyman as a cover, that she was in denial until the bitter end. And apparently that's a dull story? It's quite intelligent with it's role reversal, mystery with no definitive answer and additional layers considering horror at the time was predominantly formulaic. I don't believe Candyman is your straight slasher or meant to at be entertained as one, from my research and Phillip Glass' opinion of what he was presented beforehand, the violent kills were added as an after thought, possibly due to the influence of popular horror films prior to it's release. Helen and the character of Candyman do grow as characters but it's predominantly told through actions, the audience do not need to be told everything the characters are thinking, there's a beauty that visuals and music simply convey more eloquently than excessive dialogue.

Man, I can't wait to see The Counselor. I'm an enormous Cormac McCarthy fan and it has a great cast. Too bad it looks like I'm completely booked until after the weekend.

Yeah Candyman is definitely not a bad horror flick, as horror flicks go. Let's be honest...the vast majority are crap, so Candyman being at least decent already puts it pretty high on the list. Don't really see what one could point out as being way shittier about Candyman as opposed to most other given horror movies. In lots of ways it's actually more interesting and complex, as volute detailed above. wtf. Candyman is shit and Halloween is genius?

Honestly, I never thought Hellraiser was all that great either. The most interesting part of the movie was the Cenobites, and they're not even really the focus. Given that it's basically marketed as a Freddie-style slasher, you'd think they'd be more of a presence rather than just kind of a background menace. The whole mythology of the puzzle box thing doesn't make any fucking sense either - why does a Rubik's Cube summon BDSM demons? Wouldn't it be something more...BDSMish? Why does that one merchant keep selling it? Why is it required at all? They seem to want to basically draw just about anybody down into their dimension to have fun with them, and not let them escpe, but the connection between them and the whole puzzle box just doesn't make any sense. And maybe there was something I missed, but why the fuck did it make Frank into an immortal blood-drinking monster? The movie is just kind of all over the place in terms of themes and should have just picked the whole demon BDSM thing and stuck with it.

The ambiguity of the Candyman himself isn't really as mystical as you're implying: if there was more of a disconnect between the story of him and reality, maybe it would work better. As it is, people outside of Cabrini Green think it's a myth and then Helen discovers that it's real. Once we know beyond a doubt that this is a supernatural killer doing all of these bloody deeds and causing fear, the movie gets way less interesting. The best parts of the film are the early bits when it just seems like it all might be superstition and fear of a bunch of dirt-poor slum residents. Maybe those gang members Helen runs into in the bathroom are manipulating people and killing in the slums to reign some kind of control - that would be more interesting to me. If we didn't know whether or not there was a killer at all. That's the kind of ambiguity I wish they had done more with. Once we see the Candyman appear, once we know he is actually a real thing, the film just loses that initial questioning and fear. After that it just kind of becomes a darker version of Nightmare on Elm St. - people don't believe her, she screams a lot, they assume she's crazy, etc. That doesn't make the movie shit exactly - it's a common trope.

While I like the setting quite a bit and the set-up as the movie begins - talk about urban legends and the fear of the uneducated - is quite good, after that it just loses me. You say there's a lot of ambiguity as to whether or not she's going insane or if the Candyman's real. I dunno, it didn't seem like much of a gray area to me. It was clear the movie was telling us that this was a real, supernatural killer. I think that's as definitive as you can get in a film like this.

I can definitely see why people like it, but it doesn't work for me. Just comes off as, like I said, one dimensional violence trying to be more than it is. It didn't inspire any kind of dark mysticism or suspense for me really, aside from the great urban setting.



Well, yes. I judge films based off how well I think they pulled off their chosen themes and ambitions. Halloween is straightforward. A quiet suburb turned upside down by a madman with a knife. Simplistic and it doesn't try to be anything else. Combined with effective directing, tension and atmospheric build ups to the violence, kills at the right times, an open-ended disbelief at the end of what Michael Myers really is - yes, I think it's a masterpiece. It leaves things to the imagination and I really like the disruption of quiet suburbia. That's scary to me. It's minimalistic, it doesn't have a lot else to it besides what you see, and it works like a charm every time. It's all about what was intended and how well those intentions came across. I believe Halloween accomplished its goals perfectly and Candyman fell short of what it was trying to do.

If I recall correctly, the puzzle box (er, the LAMENT CONFIGURATION) was only supposed to be discovered by "the chosen," if you will... those whose lives were devoted to depravity and excess of all kinds would in some fated way be brought by their obsession with carnal pleasures to come into possession of the box, a kind of "gift from the gods." Through that gateway these explorers are allowed to access to the Cenobites' dimension, an eternal playground of mind-shattering experience that one could "choose" but never escape from, for better or worse. There's not that much rationale behind it, necessarily, it's basically a kind of heaven/hell that the mystical practitioner can reach if their hunger is intense enough. I don't know if it has much of a raison d'être, it just sort of is. And to my recollection, the cenobites don't even want anything to do with random people, they're only interested in the devout, the true seekers. The only reason they revealed themselves or came into contact with anyone other than Frank in the story was that he had somehow found a way to escape that dimension (resurrected in that freaky incomplete undead form) and they wanted to recapture him, so people who weren't meant to come into contact with the box ended up finding it and getting involved, etc. Anyway...yeah. They were only ever interested in Frank, but he fucked with their program.

I don't think Hellraiser is an incredible film, but I definitely enjoy it. I like to think of it as a really trashy '80s soap opera driven utterly out of its mind on LSD. A unique mix, for sure. Cool shit, I actually really like the concept and the effects, etc, the acting/writing and whatnot just drag it down somewhat. And the ending sucks balls.

@Empyreal: I can see where you're coming from with your perspective on Candyman. I agree that the ambiguity could've been handled a bit better, perhaps. Looking at it through an overall pros-to-cons gauge, though, I still see it as being in the upper echelon of horror films and far more interesting as a film in general than a straight-up slasher flick like Halloween. And while Candyman has its own problems, Halloween also has its share of badly worked, unbelievable bits going on within its own particular reality as well, so... That being said, I would still like to rewatch both of them and I'm also going to watch Halloween II in a few days.

Maybe. I dunno, while obviously no movie is literally perfect, I can't remember anything in Halloween really taking me out of the film and making it less enjoyable for me. That's the key really - does the movie work well enough for you that you can ignore the flaws? That's mainly why these things get so subjective.

Oh, I know all that; I was being kind of facetious initially. What you're telling me definitely seems to be the case, it's just that in the movie it's clumsily and inconsistently explained. Also, the symbol of the puzzle box doesn't make sense to me; it should've been something that references what it represents, at least. Why does solving a puzzle mean you're the chosen sex fiend? Shouldn't it be something sex related? What if you're a sex fiend but aren't good at puzzles? What if you find puzzles boring and would rather go have weird sex? Now, a puzzle dildo, THAT I would understand.


But don't they try to carry off the main chick too? Even though she's just some random girl? Like I said, the core mythos I don't have much of a problem with, it's just the crappy/inconsistent way it's actually portrayed in the first movie that bothers me.


I should say that I probably like it more than most of its peers, but I still find its flaws really drag it down for me. Maybe moreso, because the core concepts are actually quite cool.

I think the rationale for the puzzle box is that it looks cool. Or do you need more underlying themes? Maybe it would've been better if instead of a baroque puzzle box the arcane key was more like the game pod from eXistenZ, some sentient device that you have to make orgasm to achieve immortality gain entrance to the transdimensional fuckdungeon.

Now see, THAT would be a movie. Anyway it's not about underlying themes at all, but horror motifs. The main source of horror is BDSM demons who torture and fuck you for eternity - it's the addition of pleasure that makes it interesting, sets it apart from typical horror movie threats. Ideally, everything in the movie would consistently reflect that feeling, heighten it and enhance it. I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but yes, I definitely would've preferred a fleshy device that you have to make orgasm, a living puzzle box of tiny, tangled limbs that you have to forcibly arrange into a series of painfully erotic positions while it squeals and moans.

Nah, I wasn't entirely kidding, just generally having fun with the themes.

Though come to think of it, the Cenobites were pretty much all about pain as the method rather than pleasure. The extreme event horizon of pain that demolishes the psychological self and transfigures one's consciousness, opening an undreamt plane of sensual excess beyond normal dualities. They're like BDSM snobs that disregard any sensual experience but agony. So in that sense I'd expect them to await the arrival of some extreme hook suspension artist or something rather than a dude in sweatpants going for gold in the autosodomitic olympics. Not so much a puzzle dildo as a puzzle ass pear.

Hellraiser is okay but it's not something I want to watch regularly. Something about the dark/dingy setting, slow build up and a few scenes that simply drag-on bog it down for me. It has a cool concept, I like how things are hardly explained and how it's almost pieced together like a nonsensical nightmare with logic being tossed out the window, but I found the sequel executed those ideas far better.

@Empyreal, I'm satisfied with that assessment. I believe it mostly comes down to taste.

Thanks for naming my next album, dude!

Just checked out The Exorcist III last night based on the recs of some of you guys here. It was good! Lots of odd quirks to its makeup that I really enjoyed and thought contributed to its sense of unsettling uniqueness. Like the emphasis on extended dialogue, strange pacing, great character acting, trippy audio details, the slightly dreamlike vibe, the odd sense of sarcastic humor, the hidden aspects of the terror... very cool and unexpected, not at all formulaic, yet it feels like it fits right into that vintage horror mindset. Glad I gave this one a chance, I'd like to watch it again next year.

^Definitely the best horror film I've seen this year. Who'd have thought a second sequel to The Exorcist would actually give the first a run for it's money. How the killer is always one step ahead, intelligent and delivers such incredibly grotesque murders reminded me of Se7en, and this was 7 years before. I also like how the supernatural element is by and large downplayed, this I think gives it a more realistic, gritty and mysterious quality. There's reverence to the first but it's own disturbing bag entirely and doesn't seek to imitate the first.

Have you seen 500 Days of Summer? It's funny, the plot centers around a relationship and stars Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Lewitt. So you could call it Hollywood romantic comedy, but that statement is very misleading. It's a romantic comedy that avoids every cliche of the genre ever and makes for an entertaining film.

Enjoyable flick, but I dunno, that cheesy ending really saps a lot of the realism out of it. I still liked it though.

If you really want a romance film that doesn't abide by any cliche of the genre, go for Take This Waltz.

About that ending, isn't that how it happens in real life though?

I'll have to check out that one, thanks for the rec, Emp.

@shouvince, I'm terribly picky when it comes to romantic movies but I found Mozart and The Whale to be a good watch. The usual boy meets girl set-up but it deals with characters that have disabilities, namely asperger's syndrome. Radha Mitchell and Josh Hartnett play the leads and none over-do their condition, those with experience have spoken out that it's actually an accurate portrayal. The writer is Ronald Bass who worked on Dangerous Minds and Rain Man, as such the dialogue and drama at the best of times is relatable. It's not exactly laugh-out-loud funny but it's light-hearted and has it's moments. They're characters that have their flaws and problems (as we all do) and watching them try to overcome them to form a better life is quite powerful, it struck a chord with me, and I found this movie avoids most of the unrealistic and sappy/cliche crap so you don't feel dirty after you watch it.

Yeah, I've seen it but that's only because it had JGL in it and also because I think I went through a marathon of his movies a year ago. It was quite atypical and I remember enjoying it.


That sounds good though I'm not particularly fond of Hartnett. I'll give it a shot and let you know. Will also check out Empy's rec.

I watched Kick Ass 2. Very cringe-worthy. I don't remember the first movie being this bad. The dialogues were terrible and forced. The gore and blood were getting the comicbook treatment but that failed too. Chris Mintz Plasse was annoying as hell. And to add to all that, the story was just too predictable and boring.

I vaguely liked Kick-Ass though it was far from great. I'll have to watch the sequel to see what all the hubbub's about.

Any specifics? I can say he's certainly different and not his usual cocky self in this movie. I do, I remember it like it were yesterday.

Batman, here you go.

Volute, not sure man. I think I've only seen him in a couple of movies viz. Lucky Number Slevin, Black hawk. These are the ones that I can recall right now. Perhaps I wasn't too impressed.

Ain't nobody got time to watch entire movies on YouTube! I think I already have it uh...downloa...uh...purchased.

I have a question for you guys: what is, in your opinion, the best year in movies? To me, it has to be 1999. I mean how can you go wrong with films such as American Beauty, October Sky, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut, Tarzan, Toy Story 2, The Iron Giant, The Matrix, Green Mile, Boys Don't Cry, Notting Hill, The Blair Witch Project, Magnolia, All About My Mother, I mean Christ, I could go on!

Yeah, 1999 was pretty kick-ass as far as movie-years go, in terms of years after I was born, I would have to agree with you in that it's the best movie-year.

I'm more of an oldie fan of movies, so my personal pick would be 1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey; Once Upon a Time in the West; Night of the Living Dead; Faces; Rosemary's Baby; Romeo and Juliet; Planet of the Apes; The Lion in the Winter; Where Eagles Dare; etc.

1959, hands fucking down. I mean, Imitation of Life, The 400 Blows, The Diary of Anne Frank, North by Northwest, The Fugitive Kind, Anatomy of a Murder, Pickpocket, Hiroshima Mon Amour... I mean, need I go on?

@darkeningday Have you seen Shadows? That's another great one from '59.

I have not! Interesting, John Cassavetes's directorial debut. Surely better than any of his son Nick's films.

Yeah, probably. I haven't seen any of Nick Cassavetes' films, but I'm pretty sure anything his dad made is better than The Notebook. I'm avoiding that one like the plague.

Honestly I wasn't all that impressed by North by Northwest. Not a bad movie or anything, but for a supposedly gripping spy thriller it just seems like a G-rated, family version of a gripping thriller to me. It's too safe, too lacking in a sense of actual danger. The most recent Hitchcock I've seen is Frenzy, and while it can be annoyingly inconsistent in tone, the scary parts are fucking terrifying. Especially the long, pants-pissingly-suspenseful scene in which the killer visits the dating service - it starts out relatively harmlessly, getting gradually creepier and creepier and more and more threatening until it culminates in the gruesome rape/murder of the woman. I know North by Northwest isn't meant to be that dark, but to me it lacks anything comparably suspenseful of any shade.

Well, it is important to note that when North by Northwest was released, the Hays Code was in full effect. By the time Frenzy rolled around, the allowance of Arthur Penn's insanely violent Bonnie and Clyde had effectively rendered that code annulled. (I believe Frenzy carries one of Hitchcock's only 'R' ratings)

There's an enormous amount of violence in North by Northwest (and sex in many of Hitchcock's earlier films) that was cautiously implied but not explicitly seen or talked about thanks to that code. Personally, I prefer that era to today's "anything goes" time because it forced the filmmakers to be much more subtle with their content.

I love Frenzy, and I don't even give a shit about Hitchcock. I love it when the killer is stuck in the back of the truck trying to get that evidence off of the body. Hilarious.

Damn, that was a good year! A bunch of all time classics.

Also I saw Escape Plan. As expected, it was a lot of fun. You can tell Arnold in particular had a blast. He gets this whole scene where he has to distract Jim Caviesel (who's also great in this as the over the top, almost cartoonish villain) and he goes on a whole monologue in German, which is hilarious. Same for the scene where he picks up a giant machinegun from a chopper and lays waste. I wish he was given more to do in this. He certainly does a lot better than Stallone, who's the center stage here and just looks tired. He mutters every line, and his SUPER GENIUS character is the most unbelievable thing ever, but it just doesn't matter. My main problems with the thing is it takes forever to truly get started, most of the characters who aren't in the actual prison are completely throwaway (50 Cent does nothing, that chick from the Office does nothing etc. They're just sort of there.), and I would have liked the camera work to be a bit more focused when action is happening. It's not Die Hard 5 bad, but it's a modern action movie, so that's probably way too much to ask.

Oh c'mon, the Hays Code can only excuse so much. Plenty of Film Noir from that era was a hundred times more dangerous-feeling than North by Northwest, as was Hitchcock's own Psycho from the very next year. It's not about whether violence is implied or actually shown, it's about the suspension of disbelief (or more accurately, suspension of belief) regarding the good guys' safety. In the North by Northwest type of movie, you know Cary Grant is going to win in the end, but it has to feel like he might not. For me, it just never did.

1968 is easily one of my favourite years for film. So many brilliant films came out that year. 1973 is another favourite year of mine. The Exorcist, Don't Look Now, The Wicker Man, Badlands, Mean Streets, Serpico, Soylent Green, The Holy Mountain. I'm sure there's more I've missed out too.
1999, as mentioned, was a great year too.

I'll have to revisit it. I wouldn't consider North by Northwest my favorite Hitchcock film by any means, but I also remember finding virtually nothing wrong with. The crop duster sequence and the Mount Rushmore finale alone pushed the film into "classic" territory to me. All of the brilliant dialog (written by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? writer Ernest Lehman) and plot twists that actually made sense was just icing on the cake.

If you want a truly underrated Hitchcock nail-biter though, check out Lifeboat. Written by John Steinbeck(!!!) it was probably one of the most pro-women films made in the 1940's. I have no idea why it isn't brought up more. It's just brilliant stuff.


So did anyone see Ed Norton's parody of Wes Anderson on SNL? It's surprisingly funny for being on, you know, SNL. Check it out.