ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve, T.J. Miller, Mike Vogel
screenplay by Sean Anders & John Morris
directed by Jim Field Smith
by Jon Thibault
What happens when a beautiful, wealthy event planner meets a scrawny, socially maladroit, uneducated TSA security guard who's too uncoordinated to shave his own balls?
Love!
½*/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Kid 'N Play, Full Force, Martin Lawrence, Robin Harris
written and directed by Reginald Hudlin
by Jon Thibault Any movie starring people with names like Kid 'N Play, Bowlegged Lou, B-Fine, and Martin Lawrence is destined to suck. Add mediocre-at-best writer–director Reginald Hudlin, and you're staring down the barrel of a 12-gauge crap rifle. Yet House Party spawned two sequels and became an early-'90s cross-over phenomenon: a purportedly comedic take on the popular urban genre of the time, like Boyz n the Hood and Do the Right Thing, only with funny violence and racism. Now, decades later, it sports a 95% "fresh" rating on ROTTEN TOMATOES, which proves once again that white guilt (more specifically, white liberals' fear of appearing racially insensitive) almost always trumps professional integrity–an attitude that's patronizing to black filmmakers and loathsome in its self-congratulatory mendacity.
Troll Hunter
Trolljegeren
*/****
starring Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland, Johanna Mørck, Tomas Alf Larsen
written and directed by André Øvredal
by Jon Thibault According to WIKIPEDIA, the "found-footage" genre was invented with 1980's Cannibal Holocaust, but it didn't pick up steam until 1999's The Blair Witch Project, which gained notoriety owing to its miniscule budget and profound, lasting creepiness. In the language of film, handheld, sloppy camerawork is associated with documentaries, making its use in horror particularly effective. Cannibal Holocaust is still considered a gore classic, and 2003's direct-to-DVD August Underground's Mordum is the most disturbing movie ever made, suspending the disbelief of the most sophisticated moviegoer with its potent coupling of brilliant special effects and the shittiest production values imaginable. But only Blair Witch's perfect storm of lo-res video, unscripted dialogue, and egregious camerawork won a massive audience, landing directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez on the cover of TIME and setting the standard to which everything remotely similar has been compared. It took almost ten years before audiences had forgotten enough about Blair Witch to be scared shitless by Paranormal Activity.