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Posts Tagged ‘Paul Harris Boardman’

Urban Legends: Final Cut (second review)

Tuesday, December 12th, 2023

The title URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT sounds like an escalation, because the legend has suddenly become plural, but I seem to remember this sequel coming out with a whimper. I thought I remembered respecting it a little more than others at the time, but in my review back then I seem to have thought it was pretty bad.

It starts on an airplane during a storm, which seems crazy enough for the series that you can probly guess it’s the ol’ “actually we’re watching a movie-within-a-movie” cold open fake out. The reveal is kind of cool, though: suddenly the pilot sees a Tom-Cruise-looking asshole in sunglasses staring into the cockpit from the outside – he’s the director of this student film (filmed on a set from PUSHING TIN). In an even more aggressive “you kids liked SCREAM, right? Check this out!” move than the first URBAN LEGEND, the story has moved to Alpine University Film School, where aspiring directors are in a cutthroat competition to win “the prestigious Hitchcock Award,” which they all talk about it like it’s a guaranteed Hollywood career because it has been a “springboard” for successful filmmakers in the past. (read the rest of this shit…)

Scream 4 (revisited)

Friday, March 17th, 2023

As I mentioned in my SCREAM VI review and elsewhere, I consider Wes Craven’s SCREAM (1996) to be one of the great horror films of the ‘90s, and since then I have dutifully watched each of the sequels as they were released and enjoyed at least parts of them. SCREAM 2 seemed quite good in 1997, but my attachment to it has faded over the years. SCREAM 3 was disappointing in 2000, and hasn’t much grown on me. That seemed to be the end of it, and it seemed questionable when a SCREAM 4 came along 11 years later.

I remember I saw it at a preview screening. After the debacle of CURSED and the (enjoyable) mess of MY SOUL TO TAKE, I didn’t necessarily believe that Craven would be able to pull off the difficult task of a decade-plus-later part 4 that few had asked for. I also remember there was a guy sitting near the front talking to himself and the screen throughout the movie, being pretty annoying, but when it was over and he was leaving he made direct eye contact with me and said, “That was great!” with so much more enthusiasm than I had for the movie that I forgave him. (read the rest of this shit…)