SECOND HELPINGS: Casablanca** (1942)

It seems like every time that I watch this film I understand its popularity more and more. This was one of what I call the Original Eleven- one of the 11 films that I watched in my freshman comp & speech class in college that started my whole movie rating obsession. I did not care for it one bit when I first saw it in the autumn of 2002. Over time, I have come to terms with much of this film, but I still have a few issues with it.

Some films from Casablanca’s era are ridiculously dialogue heavy. I used to wonder if this was a common trait for older films but I found that to not necessarily be the case as I have watched more and more films from the early days of Hollywood. Casablanca certainly fits the mold of reel-to-reel lightning-fast conversation. The conversations between Rick, Ilsa, Victor, and Captain Renault are full of exposition, wit, and a flurry of emotions.

At times, these conversations literally pull you from one point to the next, giving you very little time to digest what is actually being said. If you are fine with taking the film as it comes, then you probably see nothing wrong with any of its content. The more you think about the film afterwards, however, the more you realize its plot elements fall apart in some ways. It’s only an hour and forty minutes long, so there is plenty of room to slow the dialogue down and tighten up a few of the details.

The music of Casablanca is terrific and the acting is very good, but there isn’t much that I found technically exciting about this film. There are a lot of static shots of people talking to each other or cuts back and forth between the faces. I can recall one scene in Rick’s where the use of shadow is quite good but very little else stands out as a unique or memorable shot. There is also a pretty glaring continuity error during the famous airport scene- Major Strasser’s epaulettes appear and disappear between cuts. Oops!

Overall, I get why people love Casablanca. It is full of romanticism, heroism, and idealism set against the dark days of World War II. The cookie cutter bad guys are so mean that it’s hard not to cheer on those who oppose them. I see it as an above-average film with a cult following. I think part of the appeal is generational, as it provided a distraction from the grim realities of World War II when it was released and it was a model for idealism and earnestness for Baby Boomers growing up with its occasional re-release in theaters. I am not part of either generation, so I can easily look past it to find the better films of the era.

Original Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Second Rating: 3 out of 5

New Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Oh, the finality! The themes of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy began with origins (Batman Begins), and ratcheted up with escalation (The Dark Knight). The way the second installment ended, you would have thought that the final chapter would be about redemption and honor. Nah- Nolan cranks things up to 11 with a film rooted firmly in annihilation.

Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is still plagued by the physical after-effects of moonlighting as Batman. Despite his ailing body, a new evil draws the Caped Crusader from his self-imposed exile. Physically and intellectually gifted, the revolutionary and terrorist known as Bane pushes Batman and Gotham City to their limits. With the city held hostage (literally cut off from the rest of the world), Batman must find a way to defeat his opponent and save Gotham from nuclear holocaust.

As far as final chapters go, this one is a doozy. Just as I appreciated seeing Batman with bruises in Batman Begins, I liked that the filmmakers acknowledged that being Batman comes with irreversible wear and tear. Bruce Wayne is frailer this time around, forcing him to find strength in his mind and in his beliefs in what he fights for. Batman is no longer fighting for justice; now he truly fights for good against Bane’s evil.

Our antagonist, Bane, is a tough egg to crack. He comes across as equal parts bad guy caricature and plausible threat. His eloquent rants about liberation from class structure and the greed of Gotham’s elite smack of Occupy Wall Street and extremist liberal revolutionaries. He seems well-versed in the likes of Marx and Hitler, attracting the disenfranchised from the shadows like the pied piper. With Bane in charge, the have-nots and the mentally unstable take over.

Bane’s followers don’t seem to mind his almost Orwellian police state, nor do they seem bothered by his countdown to oblivion. Perhaps they don’t believe their hero would liberate them for a few months only to destroy them. Or perhaps they are too caught up with their revenge against the haves via kangaroo court to notice that the light at the end of their tunnel is actually an oncoming train. Either way, it all feels possible and that should scare the heck out of all of us.

The realism of post-revolution Gotham never fully sinks in because director Christopher Nolan knows he has to deliver some spectacle. With the stakes as high as they are, the action is grander, the gadgets are fiercer, and the drama strives to be epic in scope. Unfortunately, converging all of the plot lines for the grand finale requires too many doses of convenient timing and lucky coincidence for me to swallow. I can appreciate red herrings and slight-of-hand, but The Dark Knight Rises goes too far at times for me to suspend my disbelief.

Fanboys currently have The Dark Knight Rises at #50 on IMDB’s Top 250 movies list. I am not a fanboy. I enjoy this film on its own and as the final chapter in the recent Batman trilogy. I like the way the filmmakers incorporated Selina Kyle into the mix (though she is never actually called Catwoman). I even appreciate the character of Bane, difficult as he is to understand at times. But this is weakest of the three Nolan Batman films. The pace is uneven and its big ideas get crowded out in favor of action/comic book movie staples.

The Dark Knight Rises works, but we want to triumph with our heroes (especially comic book heroes). With this film, audiences achieve catharsis. Maybe we should just be glad that this film wasn’t a major letdown, as many sequels are. Maybe this is what the filmmakers wanted our mindsets to be heading into this movie. If you keep expectations low enough, you are never disappointed. I expected a quality product and that is more or less what I got. It probably wasn’t possible to top The Dark Knight but I was hoping for an equal to Batman Begins.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

SECOND HELPINGS: The Dark Knight (2008)

Not much has changed since my original assessment of this film, though I don’t feel the need to be as wordy this time around. My original review for this film is probably one of the worst I’ve ever written because it rambled. This second go around will be much more terse and to the point.

What’s still good about this film? I like the move away from a comic-book accented Gotham City. Gotham looks like a real major city, making the carnage and terror unleashed by the Joker seem more palpable. I also still enjoy the theme of escalation and how Bruce Wayne is troubled by it. He has to reckon with the Joker’s rules of engagement without losing too much of himself. Heady stuff for a comic book flick.

And of course, Heath Ledger steals the show as the Joker. I cannot praise the decision enough to keep the character as an enigma. In this politically correct era of trying to understand bad guys, The Dark Knight’s Joker is a breath of fresh air. There can be no justification for his antisocial tendencies or his sociopathic nature, so none is given. Sometimes you have to accept evil as evil, and the late Heath Ledger goes all out to embody an almost perfect evil.

What still doesn’t work for this film? It is more than just a little unbelievable for the Joker to plan so far ahead for some of the things he does. Anything that he does not seem to have a contingency plan for goes perfectly for him out of sheer luck or coincidence. If you stop and think about it all after the credits roll, one or two strokes of luck the other way would have cut this film short in any number of places.

There is no denying the power of Heath Ledger's performance though. Christian Bale does some fine work as well but the success of Batman films are usually determined by the villain. Fortunately for everyone involved, this version of the Joker is the best Batman film villain to date. There is not enough ludicrousness in the Joker’s ability to plan to undermine The Dark Knight’s strengths. My original rating stands because you can pick this movie apart if you really want to get down to brass tacks.

Original Rating: 4 out of 5

New Rating: 4 out of 5

SECOND HELPINGS: Batman Begins (2005)

Like a fair number of people, I went nuts for this movie when it first came out. Here was a Batman that is at least somewhat plausible, unlike the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher films of the 80s and 90s. The characters have depth and struggle with heavy-hitting themes without being paraded around as pure spectacle and an excuse for overacting supporting characters. I watched this film again before seeing The Dark Knight Rises and some of its flaws became more apparent.

Maybe it is a direct result of seeing its successors so soon after taking this film in, but Batman Begins feels the most out of place of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy. It feels the most like a comic book movie of the three and the layout, look, and feel of parts of Gotham City give off a slight comic book vibe. The other two do not. Gotham feels more like a real city. I don’t want to let a criticism of continuity for the whole trilogy affect my rating for this film, so I am hoping that my initial enthusiasm was a matter of me being dazzled by the breath of fresh air that was Batman Begins.

I am fine with the League of Shadows. In fact, it makes for a very worthy foe. Batman is forced to go head to head with the forces that trained him. Their motive for destroying Gotham is fascinating but their intended means of accomplishing their goal lacks some believability. The water-vaporizing weapon goes just a little far out there, considering how realistic much of the rest of the film is.

Batman Begins marked an exciting new direction for not only Batman but for superhero movies in general. It showed that you can tone down the flamboyant elements of the comic book genre and still create something exciting. To make it a powerful emotional and intellectual draw is an added bonus. The framework of these pros can easily be attributed to the X-Men franchise but Batman Begins benefits from a better balance of flair and fun, while also focusing on far fewer characters. For this, I still hold it to be an excellent film but I feel I have to drop it ever so slightly from the ranks ‘great’ films.

Original Rating: 4 out of 5 (Click here for the original review)

New Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Because I Said So (2007)

I am going to break from my usual formula for reviews and advise you right off the bat- spare yourself and avoid this movie at all costs. It’s not the worst movie ever made but you will suffer for your foolishness if you decide to watch it. That’s not a threat from me to you. This movie just might make you hate yourself a little bit for subjecting yourself to its inadequacies.

Daphne (Diane Keaton) is a helicopter mom from hell with a fashion sense that never evolved past the Annie Hall mannish look. Latching onto the love life of her youngest daughter, Milly (Mandy Moore), turns out to be a disaster for all parties. Milly ends up dating two men at once- the man her mother favors after placing a personal ad on behalf of Milly, and a musician who Daphne feels is woefully inadequate for her little girl.

Do any of these characters sound likeable to you? A neurotic middle-aged woman who tries to manipulate her adult children? A young adult who ends up sleeping with two men because she can’t figure out which one she really wants to date? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

To be fair, a story about family member fixing the problems of either one of these characters might have potential. Mixing the two the way the filmmakers have here creates a disaster of a film that fails in every arena save for having a few ideas that might work. The time and cost involved in re-writing this mess into two coherent tales would be enormous because the only two round characters in the current narrative suck big time. Fleshing out the rest of the cast would be a nightmare too because there is very little to work with.

This film is billed as a romantic comedy. There is nothing romantic about a loose woman leading on two decent guys, nor is there anything comedic about the ditzy female stereotypes running amok in these reels. I would expect any intelligent woman to be extremely disappointed with this film. I would also expect any intelligent man to be extremely disappointed with the woman who was tricked into thinking this dreck might be enjoyable.

Some films leave you anxious for resolution. Because I Said So had me anxious for the closing credits. In case you ever had any curiosity in watching this film, please know this: it stinks to high heaven. If you find a copy of it, run in the opposite direction.

RATING: 1 out of 5

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Just when you thought the Friday the 13th series had ended on an upswing, here comes a head-scratching misfire that holds a scant few good ideas and a whole lot of poor execution. While it may indeed deliver a new beginning by not bringing Jason Voorhees back to life, that’s about as new or as fresh as it gets. The rest of the film features the same tired, formulaic goings-on as the other Friday flicks.

Several years after murdering Jason Voorhees, Tommy Jarvis still has visions of the masked maniac coming to get him. After bouncing around between psych wards he lands at Pinehurst Halfway House, a middle-of-nowhere facility for troubled teens to rehabilitate their emotional issues. When one resident brutally kills another, someone else starts killing the remaining residents and workers of Pinehurst and its surrounding neighbors. Tommy’s visions of Jason get worse, leading us to wonder if he’s finally snapped and responsible for the killings or if he is being set up.

I recall seeing a portion of this film on TV once when I was in either middle or high school. It didn’t make sense to me then and that assessment hasn’t changed much over time. The horror genre is built upon fake-outs and misdirection, but these foundational elements seem tedious now as they are presented in the series. I can only stomach so many bad decisions and scary moments revealed to be red herrings or dreams before I lose interest. After seeing these tools abused through four movies so far, I have little interest remaining to lose.

The problems with this film are numerous, but really, they are par for the course with Friday the 13th flicks. Disposable teenagers? Yes- and this time they’re all like the bad kids everyone hated in school, so audiences are almost encouraged to cheer on their deaths. Immoral behavior? Oh my yes- sex, drugs, and even trespassing! This film also includes plenty of 80s character stereotypes and embarrassing amounts of generalizations about African Americans and special-needs individuals. The setting feels unnatural and, for my tastes, there is way too much swearing going on. The filmmakers knew it would get a hard-R rating so they clearly are swinging for the fences on obscenity.

I like the concept of bringing Tommy Jarvis back and pushing him to the edge of sanity with all the murders, but this plot thread really didn’t need to occur in a Friday the 13th film. It is an interesting stand-alone concept forced into the framework of a bad movie series. We’re shown early on that the killer cannot be Tommy but we’re still fed the possibility that it might be him the rest of the way through the movie via the concerns of other characters. So much misdirection surrounds the reveal of the real killer but it becomes apparent who the real killer is just a few minutes before the big reveal. The motive comes out of nowhere and couldn’t possibly have been inferred from the events of the film, making it a final-reel revelation that’s the stuff of pulp fiction and amateur mystery writers.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is a lot like the first Friday and The Final Chapter. It’s got a few interesting ideas but the execution fails miserably. The two chief things this film has going against is the fact that I felt cheated out of a crappy but tolerable conclusion in Final Chapter, and that there is too much stupidity, absurdity, and randomness in this film’s ingredients for me to rate it any higher. Pulling back the finality of The Final Chapter is a misstep in and of itself. Instead of a fresh start, audiences are most likely wishing for Jason’s return after A New Beginning, which ends with more than enough room for more sequels. God help us all.

RATING: 0.5 out of 5

SECOND HELPINGS: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

After three bloody slaughter-fests, this was to be the final Friday the 13th movie. While we know now that this was a big fat lie, you have to wonder what moviegoers anticipated leading up to its release. Would Jason go out in a blaze of glory? How will it all end? Will Jason finally die? Hardcore fans of the series were probably eager for this film and were likely disappointed, while everyone else who thought it would be little more than the same old Friday shenanigans may have found themselves pleasantly surprised.

After a weird greatest hits kind of montage of clips from the first three films, we pick up where Part III left off. Jason, thought to be dead, escapes from a hospital morgue and makes his way back to Crystal Lake. Somewhere on the lake, the newly divorced Mrs. Jarvis moves into her lakefront cottage with her teenage daughter Trish and her young son Tommy (Corey Feldman). A bunch of rowdy teenagers move into the cabin next door for a week of unsupervised fun. All of them lie in Jason’s path, leading to yet another round of blood-letting.

This film made me ponder some very important questions: How does Jason find his way back to Crystal Lake? Why can’t anyone hear this large, lumbering maniac until he is right on top of them? How is he able to break into buildings so quietly? Why are all the girls who visit Crystal Lake opposed to wearing bras?

Once again, we have a bevy of horny teenagers incapable of making good decisions. Sadly, very few of them get memorable or unique executions, something that the first three installments prided themselves on. Despite a lack of flair in his killing technique, Jason actually shows signs of planning his actions and even, dare I say it, comes off as a cunning villain at times. That certainly sets it apart from Jason’s first two rounds.

Other positive points include characters we actually care about. The Jarvis’s are innocent bystanders just trying to make it as a family; they aren’t your typical horror flick fodder. There is also a subplot involving a man hunting for Jason in the hopes of exacting revenge for his sister’s death in Part II. It falls apart a little when you realize that The Final Chapter takes place no more than four days after Part II, but it’s still a nice idea. Then there is also a virgin girl among the rowdy teens. She is the only level-headed one in the bunch. Sadly, most of these likeable characters don’t make it through the film for one reason or another.

Other than a few random acts of decent cinematography, The Final Chapter is more of the same. It doesn’t bring anything full circle or provide any kind of emotional closure one might expect from a final installment. Instead, we get a loose ending that suggests that, while Jason does die, another might step into his shoes. Sure enough, the joke is on us, since this movie made enough money for Hollywood to renege on that whole Final part.

The Final Friday is a step up from both Part II and III, but considering how insipid those two films were, being a step up isn’t really saying much. I have yet to see all of the Friday the 13th movies, but I surmise that this is probably the best place to stop watching the series if you absolutely have to go beyond the original.

ORIGINAL RATING: 1 out of 5

NEW RATING: 1 out of 5

Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

Despite being hacked, stabbed, and beaten over the head with any number of things, Jason Voorhees just won’t quit. As big of a confusing, non-engaging, and technical mess that Friday the 13th Part II turned out to be, it actually gets worse with Part III. That’s right; there was room under the lowest of bars set by Part II for this piece of cinematic garbage to slither underneath.

The day after the ending of Friday the 13th Part II, Jason Voorhees is on the hunt- for some clean clothes and a place to lie low while recovering from his injuries. After seeking refuge in a barn near Crystal Lake, a group of rowdy young adults show up to stay at the neighboring cottage. The vacationers manage to make enemies with a local biker gang, who show up at their cottage to exact revenge. Jason starts with the bikers and works his way through many of the vacationers as one girl realizes she encountered the masked menace before.

Part III has many of the same issues as the original and Part II. No-talent actors exchange unoriginal banter and make incredibly horrible decisions thanks to the work of no-talent writers. The film’s lone attempt at creating any kind of interesting backstory winds up as more of a ‘so what?’ moment than anything else. It even recycles a series of false endings used in the previous installments, adding their own unique and confounding twists.

The big draw of this film was that it was shot in 3-D, so fans could watch people get stabbed, eviscerated, and hunted down in sequences involving stuff that looks like it might fly out of the screen at you! The problem with this is that 1980s 3-D was a fad that passed (though 3-D has certainly reared its often gimmicky head in recent years) and cannot be experienced in at-home viewings. When you take away the 3-D gimmick, the sequences utilizing 3-D effects stick out like sore thumbs due to their clunky nature and drive home just how pointless the gimmick really was.

Few, if any, likeable characters are to be found here, and you should know by now that that is a cardinal sin for me when it comes to horror films. Even the bad guys are disappointing simply because a multi-ethnic biker gang roaming rural New Jersey makes absolutely no sense to me. These disposable ne’er-do-wells are the first time audiences are actually encouraged to cheer on Jason Voorhees’s brutality. Once you start cheering for a mass murderer, you a pretty far down the slippery slope. The series will have to go to great lengths to recover from this.

The lone good thing about this film is that it is the one where Jason finally acquires his trademark hockey mask. It suits him much better than the potato sack he was running around in during Part II. Other than that, everything about this film has ‘loser’ written all over it.

RATING: 0.25 out of 5

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Before there were Saw and Paranormal Activity movies coming out every year, there was the Friday the 13th franchise- cranking out abysmal films on the cheap that were guaranteed to rake in a sizable profit off the bloodlust of 1980s teenagers. This, the first of many sequels, is no different from any other paint-by-numbers slasher flick. It also sets the bar quite low for the installments that followed.

While only 87 minutes long, the first ten minutes of this film are a re-airing of the final ten minutes of the original Friday the 13th. Flashforward two months and the lone survivor of the Camp Crystal Lake murders discovers Mrs. Voorhees’s head in her refrigerator and then bites the dust at the hand of an unseen killer.

Now flashforward again five years into the future and a new batch of idealistic wannabe camp counselors are setting up shop on the banks of Crystal Lake, not too far from where previous horrors occurred. Fueled by curiosity over Mrs. Voorhees’s exploits and local legends that her son, Jason Voorhees, is actually still alive and avenging his mother’s death, some of the young adults start down a slippery slope of bad decisions that dooms everyone at their camp.

Everywhere you look in this film, there are signs that it was made for a quick payday. It may have had twice the budget as the original, but its qualitative return on investment is dismal. The acting is even worse this time around and the gore makeup barely comes off with a passing grade. Also, I must beat a dead horse and complain about the dearth of likeable characters. I am open to having a few immoral disposable teenagers in a film to be the first couple knocked off, but the core characters have to be developed and see growth during a film for audiences to get emotionally attached to them.

Interestingly enough, Jason Voorhees himself is Part 2’s biggest problem. It’s called retroactive continuity, or retcon for short. Audiences are led to believe one thing and then later events erase part or all of what was assumed to be historical fact. It happens a lot in soap operas and lousy sequels (I’m looking at you George Lucas).

In Part 2, Jason is the retcon. In the original Friday the 13th, Jason drowned in the 1950s due to inattentive counselors, which explains why his mother would go to such bloody lengths to keep the camp closed years later. Now we are to believe that he did not die. In fact, he’s been living in a shack in the woods and saw his mother get snuffed out in the first film. Jason appeared as a nightmare at the end of the first film- disfigured and scrawny. Well, now he’s the size of an NFL lineman and all muscle.

If I am to believe this scenario, I have to understand a few things. Why, if he did not drown in 1958, didn’t Jason seek out his mother immediately after surviving his near-death experience? How does he find food to eat in the back woods? Where does he acquire clothing from? Why didn’t he reveal himself to his mother in the first Friday the 13th when she showed up at Camp Crystal Lake? Part 2 never even approaches answering these questions, which are necessary to make the whole thing make even a lick of sense.

One interesting thing about Jason is that he doesn’t waste any time on killing people. Most other horror films let their protagonists linger in whatever immoral shenanigans they partake of before paying the price. Jason’s victims barely get into the act of anything before he clobbers them with whatever is handy. Unfortunately, Part 2 contains a closing scene similar to its predecessor, all but assuring us of another sequel.

RATING: 0.5 out of 5

SECOND HELPINGS: Friday the 13th (1980)

This is the first of what will be many Second Helpings reviews that I write over the years. I just want to explain to you all what to expect from these things from here on out before we lay into this silly horror film.

Essentially, there will be two types of Second Helping reviews. First, there will be reviews for films that I previously rated but did not write a first review for. Reviews for these types of films will be similar to a first-time review you are accustomed to seeing. They will also include a dash of informal content.

The second kind of Second Helping review will be for films that I already wrote a review for. These will be very informal and compare my initial review with how I felt about the film the latest time through. Consenting opinions will be brief and only elaborate so far. In those instances where I have changed my mind about a film, expect a more in-depth breakdown of the film that provides my justification for changing its rating.

Now for the film at hand…

Friday the 13th begins with the murder of two camp counselors in 1958. Flashforward to 1979, and a group of aspiring camp counselors have gathered to re-open Camp Crystal Lake. The locals are nervous because they remember the murders and feel the camp is cursed. All warnings aside, the young folk forge ahead with their plans. Unbeknownst to them (for a while at least) they are getting picked off one by one by an unseen killer who is determined to see Camp Crystal Lake remain closed.

There is a good reason why this film series gets picked on, spoofed, and referenced so much. The series as a whole is terrible but this franchise-opener actually has some promise buried in the reels. Horror films have almost always stuck to the formula of starting with a moderate sized cast and thinning the herd gradually down to a lucky (or unlucky) few. While that is certainly in play here, I like the reason for the killing, which is oftentimes not very convincing in slasher flicks. The killer has a unique and powerful motivation for keeping Camp Crystal Lake on ice. Everything surrounding this motivation, however, is deeply flawed.

Let’s start with the basics- Friday the 13th offers up little in the way of likeable characters. Instead of building up characters that we care about, we are expected to care simply because someone is trying to kill them all. Most of the would-be counselors in this film take any chance they can get to smoke dope or have sex. Maybe I’m just a prude, but when you do stupid things, expect consequences for your bad decisions. Since this is a horror film, bad decisions flow almost as freely as the blood.

Compounding our misery is the fact that the acting is, on the whole, very poor. Deliveries are unrealistic, poorly timed, and sometimes just don’t make much sense. The main female good guy (Adrienne King) does some good screaming and looks good and terrified when necessary. Aside from this, the only notable thing about the acting in this film is that Kevin Bacon is in it.

I will say that some of the special effects makeup work looks pretty good. Unfortunately the makeup artists’ work is squandered by surrounding realistic-looking wounds with ridiculous spurts, spatters, and a number of anatomical and physical inaccuracies. To top it all off, the director chose to throw in a lot of POV camerawork, even when it can’t possibly be from the killer’s POV. If you are going to make the camera bob and weave to avoid the main characters, it darn well better be the killer. As this is not (or should not) be the case many times, I have to knock this film for an unnecessary effect.

Overall, Friday the 13th is about as silly and unappealing as I remember it. The best part about this film is that the dim-witted, lumbering Jason Vorhees is not the killer. His inclusion in the final reel ultimately takes away from the film and opened the door to a number of inferior sequels. It’s a shame, because this could have been a quality stand-alone horror flick. Everything just went wrong for it though.

ORIGINAL RATING: 1.25 out of 5

NEW RATING: 1.25 out of 5