The Exploding Skull Cage

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengence(2012)

Directed By Mark Neveldine And Brian Taylor

Director duo Neveldine/Talyor continued their Four Loko fueled headlong action sprints into derangement in the lastest Ghost Rider film. 

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengence finally gives Nicholas Cage room to act as his trademark man unhinged before the CGI flaming skull takes over. 

The Ghost Rider in this sequel is more demonic, inventive, and all together more interesting to watch than the stiff original.

The story involves Cage as Johnny Blaze a burned out ex motorcycle driver and host to the spirit of vengence that feeds on evil (from war crimes to "illegal downloads"), living in the shadows and ruins of Eastern Europe, lured out of his self imposed exile by a drunken priests claims of redemption provided he prevent a young boy from becoming the anti-christ-the usual super-hero stuff. 

The real spectacle lies with Cage's performance in one gloriously sweaty interrogation scene where special effects showing Cage's face teetering on morphing into a hollow skull can barely keep up with the actors natural manic facial controtions. 

If your not laughing during this scene, than you will know this is not the movie for you. 

Neveldine/Taylor have never feared veering into bieng crude or obnoxious from Crank's repeated public sex scenes, to Gamer's masturabory virtual reality, and finally in Ghost Rider pissing flame.

The flaming piss, for what its worth, is not something that actually happens in the film per say, but is a flash of imagination from the young Satan spawn, when questioning Cage about what its like when the demon of vengence takes over. 

Later it flashes back on screen when Satan describes his mortal body as just bursting with power, and the soon to be anti-christ equates the ultimate power with an old man needing to piss.

 

Whether or not the director's channelling their inner Takeshi Miike or Cage's scenry chewing will be enough to earn this the new cult classic space it deserves is uncertain.

This version is Ghost Rider as a road movie, which plays to the characters limited stregnths, but for what little there is to work with here everyone involved does their best. 

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengence is a sequel that far exceeds the original film but as a movie its just okay. 

I can't think of much more a Ghost Rider film could possibly be or hope to accomplish, but if Neveldine/Taylor stuck with the franchise , I'd imagine it would at least would be worth watching.-Joe

Slash From The Past

Scream 4(2011)Directed By Wes Craven

"Scream 4" is Wes Craven's best film since the original "Scream" 15 years ago. The film begins with a fantastic opening of movies-within-movies trying it's best to get past the years and layers of expectations that have grown up around the original films and especially the even more numerous "Scary Movie" series. Rather than try to spin off yet another adventure of poor Sydney (Nev Campbell) being chased around by "Ghostface" and his trademark telephone calls in a new location (college and then a Hollywood studio the last times) "Scream 4" goes back to the sites and sets of the original murders in the town of Woodsborrow. In "Scream 4", "The Stab" series, films within the Scream-universe inspired by the original murders, have been churned out continuously, and after the seventh Sydney returns to Woodsborrow to do a book signing for her new auto-bio "Out Of Darkness", with which she hopes to reinvent herself. Reinventing yourself is a theme and phrase repeated throughout the film, by Sydney with her book, Gale (Courtney Cox) who is trying to adjust to the pace of small-town life, the "film geeks" who believe the killer is trying to do a "remake" (not a sequel) of the original killings for the modern age, and finally the killer itself. "Scream" in all its "meta" ("I don't know what it means I heard one of the kids say it") glory was made for an audience who had seen it all when it came to slasher-horror, but "Scream 4" is the audience whose seen Everything, and then the spin-offs, prequels, sequels, parodies, and failed TV versions of Everything as well. Too bad despite all this prior knowledge, and everyone from the hottest ingenue to the lowliest nerd able to rattle off laundry lists of horror film titles, no one attempts even the most basic survival techniques (like arming themselves) until the films end. In a town full of murder, people still stay at home alone, open front doors, get out of their cars, throw parties, and all but paint targets on their chest. "Name-dropping" is just that; easy list making, if any substantial information or ideas behind any of those names, goes unremembered and unapplied. If no one learns anything from previous films or from events earlier in the film, then the post-modern playfulness becomes empty posturing. Though innovative and entertaining in its own right, the style of the film has more a brain than its characters. To really re-invent the slasher genre you would have to after the "deconstruction" (which "Scream" accomplished amply) you would then take out the parts that don't work and re-construct into something better, not just continue along the same path while commenting and becoming ever more aware of its flaws and limits. "Scream 4" as many times as I laughed or found myself surprised by a bit of witty dialog or particularly effect scare, is still "deconstructing" cliches and tropes while then stumbling right into them (the lack of weapons, opening doors, being alone in desolate areas etc). The film is a wormhole for those looking to examine self-reflexivity nearly to the point of exhaustion, but it doesn't practice enough of what it preaches. Unable to create genuine scares, it makes up for it with jokes, in-jokes, peek-a-boo surprises and peppy dialogue with no lag time or wasted sub-plots. The killers motives haven't advanced much over the series childhood scars and a need for fame come up again and again, but in "Scream4" they come across more bitterly with less faith in the "future". The sequels will not save us. In fifty years as the killer reminds us the slasher film has come no further than "Peeping Tom", in its obsessions with voyeurism and violence, regardless of how non-invasive our modern cameras have become (one character wears a camera attached to his head). But by the end of the movie, truth be told, I was more than satisfied. I enjoyed "Scream 4". Coming out of a three film slump with (in order of awful in decreasing order) "Red Eye", "My Soul To Take", and "Cursed" Wes Craven has finally returned with something lively and stylish. His latest film is not one of his most original but like "Vampire In Brooklyn" and "New Nightmare" proves to be one of his more clever pastiches, and if nothing else confirms Craven's position as a master of his medium.

All Too Human

Splice(2009)

Directed By Vincenzo Natali

If you eliminate the science fiction elements of “Splice” you are left with a film about a couple where the woman wants to get pregnant and the man is more concerned with his career.

The woman goes ahead and get’s pregnant anyway without telling the man. He immediately perceives the child as a threat to their relationship.

As the child grows up they fear what will happen if it has contact with the rest of the world, so the woman moves her back to her own childhood home (also the scene of her traumatic, isolated, abused upbringing).

The three grow more isolated in their private world.

The parents feeling more and more godlike in their absolute control of the environment and fascinated by what they have made.

The child grows angry and confused wrestling with its own self-definition and sexual maturity.

The three destroy each other.

Don’t let the fact that “Splice” involves genetic monsters and pseudo-science distract you.

It’s about the meltdown of a relationship caused by a pregnancy and the resentments and other feelings that dare not be named, which eventually destroy the small nuclear unit.

It is considered rude if not downright misanthropic to suggest to anyone who is having or has had a baby, regardless of context, that their offspring or relationship is anything but a blessing.

Films like “Eraserhead”, “Brood”,“Rosemary’s Baby”, to a lesser extent Larry Cohen's "It's Alive", all mutate fears of parental responsibility into paranoia and horror.

It is tempting to compare this film to numerous other mad scientist body conscious or venereal horror flicks like “Species” and “The Fly”, but what is most affecting and disconcerting about “Splice” are its psychological dimensions.

Adrian Brody does something in the film that caused the theater I was in to gasp and let out a mutually shocked what-the-fuuuuuck?

What we were reacting to was not just visual shock, but the shock of seeing a taboo violated.

This scene transgresses (though is not “transgressive”) social mores, and these and there ramifications are what leave the bad taste in our mouths, the violated laws of science, pale by comparison.

Regardless of biology it's our understanding of the relationships that comes into question.

This scene is only possible if we believe in our understanding of the family.

Otherwise it's just animal action in motion.

Later, we witness Sarah Polley become her parents without ever having seen them on screen.

I had expected “Splice” to be a standard man-makes-monster-monster-runs-amok and throwaway para-military group arrives to fight said beast and provide requisite body count.

The film does have enough gore to please fans, but it's awkward feelings and all to human foibles that serve as the crux of the tale.

“Splice” instead defied my expectations, and unlike the lackluster “Monsters”, proved its defiance was a means and not just an end.

It doesn’t surprise me that people ignored “Splice”, Vincenzo Natali’s too smart for its own good “Cube”, was similarly slept on by critics; though looking back it’s proven itself one of the decades most creative and insightful genre works.

I don’t know think “Splice” will be the quite the cult-sleeper “Cube” was, but it was one of the most interesting theater viewing experiences I had this year.

Though the ending does conform to genre standards when it all goes horribly, horribly wrong, it’s terrors mirror earlier events in such a way that it doesn't (at least for this viewer), feel like a distraction, unlike the late in the game slasher-fest in Danny Boyle’s otherwise interesting “Sunshine”.

Like Polly and Brody’s characters I didn’t know what I was really getting into with “Splice” until it was too late to turn away.

Like them I was fascinated, repulsed, and impressed, but unliked then I came away having enjoyed the experience.

It was something else.