The End Of The Line For A CGI Ogre

Okay, so I haven't really been doing much blogging lately. It's just that I haven't really been in the mood for it. That, and I haven't had much to say, anyway. There's not a lot going on at work for me to talk about, and I've been spending my off-days just sitting around the house doing nothing. I guess I could just come up with a theme and run with it, but that'll have to be later.

Why later? Because I kinda wanted to talk about the movie my mom and I saw today while I had a little free time. The movie in question: Shrek Forever After. Yeah, all the commercials are calling it Shrek: The Final Chapter, but the movie itself said Shrek Forever After, and that's the title I'm going with.

It wasn't the best movie in the franchise. It wasn't even second best. But hey, it was better than Shrek The Third, which is something positive, because Shrek The Third was pretty lame. I honestly can't say that I thought it was a bad movie, because it did have its good moments. The problem is that it's ultimately kinda forgettable. I saw it just a few hours ago, and I'm already having a hard time remembering a lot of it.

There's no reason for it to have been that way, either. Shrek Forever After could have been so much better. But it's ultimately a mediocre movie with a few funny jokes here and there. It's not bad, it's just kinda there. So I guess I'll give it a thumbs-in-the-middle with three stars and a recommendation if you're a diehard Shrek fan.

And do Paramount and DreamWorks really expect us to believe this is the last Shrek movie? How many times have we heard movies claim to be the end of a franchise, only to keep going?

Wasting My Free Time

I do stupid things when I have too much free time.

So I had today off from work, and do you want to know how I spent it? Writing a review of Hobgoblins, a tremendously awful Gremlins ripoff from 1988. It's a movie so bad, so tremendously awful, that I can barely comprehend its existence. So go click the link, and please, whatever you do, take my word for it. Please do not rent this movie to see what you'd think of it. It's not worth the brain damage.

Just Get To The Avengers Movie Already!

Unless you've been living in a cave for the last few weeks, you've no doubt seen all the advertising for the recently-released Iron Man 2. I'd really been looking forward to it, so much so that I immediately went to see it after I left work on Friday afternoon... then I saw it again yesterday afternoon with my dad. Yeah.

I know I usually do a usual quick post after I see a movie, going over what I thought about what I'd seen. But I thought I'd do something a bit different for a change, just to see what happens. So if you want to see my thoughts on Iron Man 2, head on over to the "Sutton At The Movies" blog by clicking this link. Somebody needs to visit that blog, and it might as well be you!

One, Two, Freddy's Coming For You

Hey, how ya doin'?

Me, I'm doing okay. Work's been fine, with all the good days and bad days you'd expect. But I can't complain... too much.

But the truth is I don't really have a whole lot to go into about it as of this moment. There just hasn't been much going on that's been worth me talking about. It's only been a month, though, so things could change sometime.

Anyway, since my usual routine here seems to be me talking about whatever movie I've just seen, I want to kinda stick to it for a second. This past Saturday, my dad and I made the trip out to see the new remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect out of the movie, especially since I've never really been a huge Freddy Krueger fan. But I liked it a lot.

I know a lot of people go into the Platinum Dunes remakes expecting the worst, mainly because of Michael Bay's involvement with the company. Plus their track record hasn't exactly been stellar, with none of their movies being much better than mediocre. But the Nightmare on Elm Street remake was actually pretty darn good. Though there are parts that I thought could have been done better, it's nearly everything that I could want out of a movie from this franchise.

The movie is probably the darkest the Elm Street franchise has been when it comes to tone. As the movie begins, you can tell that the characters have all been through so much psychological torment thanks to their nightmares, and that's built upon throughout the movie. Those that survive look utterly defeated and beaten down by the end, and with the way Freddy is depicted, you believe it.

Oh my, do you believe it. The remake's version of Freddy is perhaps the most malevolent, the most sleazy, and the most monstrous the character has ever been. Just thinking about him makes my skin crawl. Though he makes the occasional wisecrack like how Robert Englund's Freddy would in the later Elm Street sequels, he's more in line with how Freddy was in Wes Craven's original movie. That's the Freddy I'd been wanting for a long time.

It helps that Freddy is played not by Englund, but by Jackie Earle Haley. He's very, very frightening in the role, playing Freddy as an utter monster who is having an absolute ball causing his victims so much pain. Haley is fantastic, and as much as Englund is associated with Freddy, Haley completely makes it his own. He's the best part of the movie, and if you are debating whether or not to see it, do so if only for Haley's performance.

It's one heck of a movie, believe it or not. I know that a lot of my fellow horror fans will probably hate me for saying so, but I really liked it. It was worth seeing. So on my usual scale, I'd definitely give A Nightmare on Elm Street four stars and a recommendation to check it out. I know horror movie remakes get a bad rap, but this is one of the good ones.