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1/10
A movie that can cause cancer.
27 August 2014
This is hands down the worst Leprechaun movie, and it's also one of the worst remakes. That's a twofer, right there. As much as we all loved the Leprechaun series and horror remakes, that's saying something. Do yourself a service and watch something else—watch the 1998 Psycho remake. At least that one borrowed from the source material.

It doesn't feel at all like a Leprechaun movie. I don't know anything about wrestling, but when I heard that someone else was going to don the role of the title character, a role that Warwick Davis made infamous, I figured they were just going to redesign the character and feed him all of Davis's lines. Maybe they'd even throw in a few rhymes here and there.

Well, there was absolutely no reason why they needed a wrestling star to play this character, because the Leprechaun in this movie isn't a character. He's a monster. Yeah, he's a guy in a rubber suit, hopping around like Gollum from Lord of the Rings and growling like some disturbed beast. He has no dialogue, and he doesn't even resemble what a leprechaun is supposed to look like. He looks like kind of a decrepit Pumpkinhead.

They must have known early on that it was a terrible choice, because whenever you see the creature, he's all blurry. What, did they just smear Vaseline over the camera lens? And they don't do this just for certain scenes—it's every time they show us the monster. He has a fair amount of screen time, but they rob us of every potential scary moment because you can never see the damn thing. It also doesn't help that most of the time, they do these weird POV shots, and apparently the Leprechaun possesses infrared sight, like the Predator.

That brings me to my second point: the editing and all the shaky cam. I honestly had no idea what was going on during the whole movie. The monster just pops out of nowhere, tries to eat the main characters, and then—I don't know, it's all over the place. Rinse and repeat. The characters run back and forth into this one cabin in the woods, never accomplishing anything. Every time they go back, someone else dies. It's a terrible paint-by-the-numbers set-up, and again, because they feel the need to make the picture blurry whenever the monster shows up, we can never tell what's going on.

It doesn't matter anyway, because I just didn't give two farts about the characters. That's very common in modern slasher movies. Since when did they make this rule that characters don't need personality in horror movies? Is it really that hard to give characters some personality traits? I know you spend a little more money on ink, but come on? Slashers used to be fun. But here, I cared even less about the protagonists. They just didn't have anything interesting to say. I couldn't even hate any of the characters. Lately, it seems to be a fad with horror movies—there has to be at least one blatant dickhead for the audience to hate. But here, everyone's just kind of there, enjoying the scenery until the Leprechaun arrives. There's no reason to cheer for anyone, there's no reason to hate anyone. It's the most severe case of bland I can think of, and I sat through eleven Puppet Master movies—I know what I'm talking about.

The only connection this movie has at all with any of the earlier films is that the surviving character at the end actually says, "Fuck you, Lucky Charms." I was actually surprised to hear it, because after watching this lifeless piece of crap, I was beginning to wonder if the filmmakers just didn't bother with watching any of the prior movies. Not that they would have a lot to look forward to, but that's beside the point.

I think it's obvious, I hated this movie. And to add insult to injury, they gave us twelve minutes of credits. Twelve. Frickin'. Minutes. The actual move is only an hour 18 minutes. Pay no attention to the 90 minute runtime. The last twelve minutes are purely credits. And no, there weren't a lot of people who worked on it…they just felt the need to give us boring glimpses of movie stills in between showing us the names of people who would go on to become raging alcoholics after making this movie.

This was a total waste of time, an abomination of movie-making proportions, and it needs to be outlawed in at least thirty countries, including this one. I think I found a contender for worst movie sequel of all time. Leprechaun: Origins has the potential to give me cancer. Steer clear, because there's no cure. The only remedy is to just forget it ever happened.
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1941 (1979)
6/10
Despite a likable cast and great John Williams score, the soft cinematography hinders the experience.
12 February 2011
Outlandish, out-of-control farce takes place post-Pearl Harbor, as American forces prepare for the next Japanese invasion. While the Japs spend most of the time searching for Hollywood as their next target, the streets of Los Angeles are rampant with scattered, goofball antics, making this more slapstick than satire. It draws inspiration from National Lampoon's Animal House, in which nothing is comprehensible, focus continues to shift between multiple characters, and the jokes are really hit-or-miss. Despite a likable cast and great John Williams score, the soft cinematography hinders the experience. It's hard to tell what was intentional and what was experimental. Faults aside, it is a more unique undertaking for director Spielberg, and certainly a far call from your traditional WWII epic; nothing memorable, but somewhat enjoyable.
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300 (2006)
4/10
It has a cartoonish, computerized look that gives the locations a mostly static feel.
12 February 2011
Effects-driven period piece chronicles a minute army of three hundred Spartans in their crusade against thousands of Persian slaves. Despite the period in which it takes place, the whole movie feels like a stylized graphic novel, probably due in no small part to the fact that it is based on one. It has a cartoonish, computerized look that gives the locations a mostly static feel; not to mention that the action and the carnage take precedence over an under-emotional story and two dimensional characters. It feels like a big budget flick that was shot entirely on a sound stage, and while some of the effects tend to be overwhelming, we just happen to live in an age where it takes much more than an abundance of computer imagery to truly entice us; and for a movie about Sparta, the special effects just aren't necessary.
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7/10
There's enough gore to entertain enthusiasts of the genre and it moves fast enough to keep us on the edge of our seats.
12 February 2011
Documentary filmmaker goes cross-country with fellow classmates, taping the zombie apocalypse that has been spanning four prior films, all helmed by horror legend George Romero. Fifth installment in the long-running Dead franchise analyzes human cruelty, and uses the guerilla-style filmmaking to show how people tend to watch, but seldom help. Film uses the gritty, shaky camera movement that defined movies like Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, but aside from that, there isn't a whole lot that sets it apart from past zombie offerings. The characters are all just trying to survive, as usual, and there's really no one memorable to root for. However, there's enough gore to entertain enthusiasts of the genre and it moves fast enough to keep us on the edge of our seats. The different camera perspectives help give it that eerily familiar feel, giving us a story through different sets of eyes – a nice touch, and an interesting experiment for Romero, but still not quite as impressive as his earlier films.
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