The Writer's Poke

Rose (Rosalind Russell) is a vaudeville mom. Her goal in life is to make her kids stars. Actually, she wanted to be the star. She wanted to fulfill her dream through her kids. Louise (Natalie Wood) eventually gets her mom to admit it, but that's way late in the film, after Louise has basically said, "I'm not you. I'm going to do burlesque, because that's what pays the bills." The movie is an odd musical. I didn't count the number of times characters broke out into songs, but it felt like just a few times, with it mainly being Rose doing the singing. I could 100% be off on this, because Russell didn't keep my interest as an actor, but I'm not sure even Marilyn Monroe in her part would have kept my interest in this film. I get the plot, but the movie felt overly long. It goes for almost 2 1/2 hours, and I'm thinking it deserved about 90 minutes. The musical numbers were not memorable at all, and they felt somewhat off the cuff -- no rhythm, no r...

Yeah, not a surprise, but the real problem with this franchise is that it's a one-hit wonder. Is the idea novel and somewhat interesting the first time? Sure, but when you go five sequels deep, you should have developed something more than what they ended up developing.  Now, what claims to be the "final" final destination is separated by 14 years from the last sequel. That's 14 years for them to try to figure out something a little bit better, and I have to admit, I was hopeful. The opening sequence and even the first half of the film did feel slightly above the average Final Destination fair.  Over the course of the film, we get to see that maybe all of the films were "related." My man Bludworth (Tony Todd) even gets a full name in this film, and we learn just a smidge more about him -- he was the little boy at the beginning of this film...  Brief note about Tony Todd: He looks horribly thin in this film. He's bald and gaunt. I didn't know until I ...

Based on the ending death montage, I'm guessing that the writers really did think this one was the final movie in the series. And compared to the previous film, this movie did seem to have something going for it. The formula is the same as always: A major accident, with a few younger people surviving, only to realize that you cannot outlive death.  Each time, one person has the vision, and then they start to figure out there's a "pattern," and deaths start to occur in the order in which they "should have occurred." This time, we also get the wrinkle that if it's your turn to die, someone else can "take your place" which returns death's balance. The problem is: you only end up with as much time as that other person was slated to live. If you kill the wrong person and they had an extra day to live, then that's all you get.  Maybe I was most happy to see Bludworth (Tony Todd) return to the series, after being absent in the 4th film, He act...

Man. The team that did the 2nd Final Destination is back with another chance. They have a $40 million budget. How do they use it? They don't hire any high-end acting talent. They don't use it to write a script. And quite honestly, I can't say they use it for special effects, because I've seen equivalent CGI used in C-level films. Nick (Bobby Campo) is the one with the visions. Is there a reason he would need to have visions in CGI? Going into this film, I cheated and looked ahead. What I saw scared me. First, they dropped the number from the film. Second, for an already gimmicky franchise, they filmed this one, apparently, in 3D. Third, whereas in the first film, when they took the time to be clever with character names, in this one, they don't even bother to name most of the characters -- Cowboy, Racist, Racist's Wife, MILF, Girl on Top.  And, a personal note: No Bludworth? Seriously? As minor a character as Bludworth has been, you could find a way to include h...

The premise of these movies is always that people are fated to die, and yet, for some unexplained reason, someone always has the vision that they are about to die. These deaths are not just about the person with the premonition. They are about a group of people -- generally young people. First it was the airplane crash, then it was the multiple-car pile up, and for this movie, it's the roller coaster. All of these events are out of the ordinary, as are the ways that Death "recovers" the lives of the people fated to die. I guess that's all necessary for the purposes of movie magic, but I'd prefer deaths that are a little bit more boring and mundane. When the death scenes get too crazy, I lose all sense of verisimilitude. I want to watch a movie that feels like real life, or in this case, real death. Even something like this: Why not have the character survive death and then have the character go to the doctor and find out that they have incurable cancer? Now that w...

“What did you think?” I asked my daughter. "It was okay," she said. "About equal to the first one." I thought so, too, but if the second one is no better, no worse than the first one, why make it? Money, I know. Money. But definitely not for "art." There's nothing really artistic about these movies, and no one is pretending that they are going to be changing cinema forever by making the Final Destination movies.  Bludworth. What a wasted character. I've looked ahead, and I know he's the character recurring the most in the series. I still hold out hope that his character will eventually be developed and mean something. In the first film, it felt like they didn't know who he was or what to do with him. Same feeling in this sequel. He basically plays the same one scene role here. In fact, I'd say less effectively, as he comes off a little too hammy, not as creepy or as eerie as in the original.  Alex (Devon Sawa) does off camera -- never m...

I'm not sure what I expect when I watch movies like this. It doesn't seem right to say, "I expect to see people killed in graphic and cool ways," but I suppose that's part of it. If a woman steps one inch out into the road and gets slammed by a bus going 75 miles an hour, that's one thing. But if another character gets their head sawed off right below the eyeballs, that's something else... The movie is somewhat intriguing because the "Jason/Freddy" villain isn't human... it's just Death (not even Death personified... not even the Grim Reaper).  This is a movie I've seen before, but the first time, I wasn't paying attention to the "classic horror names" some of the characters had -- there's the obvious, like Billy Hickcock (Seann William Scott), but then there's also the "deeper cuts," like Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke), aka "Val Lewton."  Even the minor throwaway characters sometimes had cool...