In this week’s HomeVideodrome podcast, Hunter is sick, Jim is having technical difficulties, but we somehow pull it off. Here we talk about the disappointment that was “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” the surprisingly fun “Fright Night” remake, and the greatness of “Heavenly Creatures.” So head on over to The Film Thugs and give it a listen!

The remake of “Fright Night” didn’t deserve the quiet death it was met with at the box office.

The attempts at righteous indignation most remakes receive from movie fans seem to be giving most of them undeserved buzz. If a remake is bad, it’ll be eventually be nothing more than a footnote that comes up with the original is discussed, or worse, a curiosity item (example: “The Wicker Man” remake). If it’s good, then it’ll get a life of its own, and this remake is one of the few that deserves to have its own place, as this smart, funny take on Tom Holland’s eighties horror gem nicely parodies the trends going on in the vampire craze that has taken hold of movies and television today.

Written by “Buffy” scribe Marty Nixon, “Fright Night” stars Anton Yelchin as Charley Brewster, a high school kid and recovering geek who has just gotten a new next-door neighbor in his banal Nevada suburban neighborhood.

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Anton Yelchin has arrived. The young actor, who had memorable roles in 2009’s “Star Trek” and this year’s “The Beaver,” has had featured  roles in films like “Charlie Bartlett” and “Alpha Dog” but he’s never really had a star vehicle that helped make him a household name. However, his new role as a teenager who suspects that his neighbor is a vampire in the fun horror-comedy “Fright Night” could change that.

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In this remake of the 1985 film, Yelchin plays a teenager named Charley Brewster who lives with his single mother in the Las Vegas suburbs. After he starts dating a beautiful girl in school, he’s become extremely popular and spends much of his time avoiding his former friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Ed is considered a dork by his classmates so Charley doesn’t want to be seen even talking to him. However, after threatening to tell others about Charley’s embarrassing youth, Ed gets a chance to talk to  Charley and warn him that his new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire who has been hunting down some of their classmates.

After Ed goes missing himself, Charley starts to investigate the theory. He watches Jerry out the window,  trying to figure out what his new neighbor is up to. When Jerry wants to borrow some alcohol from Charley, Charley tries to find out  if Jerry can enter his home without being invited first, a test to see if Jerry is a real vampire. That scene arrives with a quiet tension that underlies the relationship between the two neighbors. Unfortunately, scenes like that are few and far between as the mystery is soon solved and Charley discovers the truth rather quickly about his neighbor’s true intentions.

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Our buddy Kyle Smith points out that the Daily Beast has made a laughably pathetic attempt to gin up some controversy over a line from the movie “Horrible Bosses,” which is in theaters today.  From NewsBeast’s Ramin Setoodeh:

In the new comedy Horrible Bosses, Jennifer Aniston plays an overbearing dentist named Julia who tortures her assistant Dale (Charlie Day) by sexually harassing him. She’s one of three managers (along with Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey) meant to be so detestable that their underlings plot to murder them. She constantly corners Dale, asking him to perform lewd sexual acts. In one scene, Aniston’s character calls him into her office, wearing nothing but a white lab coat. When he expresses discomfort, she taunts him like a high-school bully. “You’re starting to sound like a little faggot there, Dale,” she says.

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What’s to Like

This remake of 1985’s “Fright Night” has potential. It has a strong cast with rising talent Anton Yelchin (“The Beaver”) featured alongside Toni Collette and Colin Farrell. The trailer is reminiscent of  2007’s “Disturbia,” which also told the story of a teenager who believes that his neighbor is killing people. “Disturbia” was a great thriller so “Night” might have learned something from its success.

What’s to Dislike

Over the past few years, several horror movies have been remade that pale in comparison to the originals. The new “Nightmare on Elm Street,” for instance, had a solid trailer but turned out to be a terrible film. Did I mention that this new “Fright Night” is in 3D? That sounds like a bad omen to me. (more…)

At the 83rd Academy Awards, a small movie entitled “The Way Back” competed against “Barney’s Version” and “The Wolfman” in the category of best makeup. Although “The Wolfman” went home with the prize, it was good to see “The Way Back” recognized at the award show. I only wish that this under-appreciated movie, which was inspired by the true story of a group of men who escaped a Siberian prison camp and walked over 4000 miles to freedom, received more recognition from the Academy.

“The Way Back” isn’t your typical Hollywood movie. The story focuses on the long trek the men took to escape the prison camp that they were forced into. The drama shows these men as they try to survive in brutal weather and harsh conditions. Their journey is dreary and long but their story is worth seeing for its focus on freedom and on man’s fight to overcome injustice.

Jim Sturgess plays Janusz, a young man who is betrayed by his wife and sent to the camp early on. Janusz quickly learns that looking out for others isn’t the best way to survive there. The weather is freezing and the food is scarce and some prisoners don’t bother caring for the weaker prisoners knowing that many of them won’t survive much longer. Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), a fellow inmate, tells Janusz to only look out for himself.  At one point, Smith even says, “We’ve all done terrible things to survive,” and you can tell he means it. Janusz eventually befriends Smith and the two join several others in a plan to escape and journey to safety. (more…)

Even in the vast annals of Hollywood sycophantic suckuppery, the recent UK Guardian profile of Oliver Stone by Carol Cadwalladr is in a class by itself.  It is a fawning treatise hailing everything about Ollie, from his unique artistic vision to his unique attitude toward self-love – and, unfortunately, I’m not referring here to his narcissism.  Yet this hagiography still provides some intriguing clues about a question that arises every year or so when Stone puts out a movie:  Why does this pretentious clown still get taken seriously?

I think it’s because entertainment journalists seem to think he’s hot.

I mean, after all, Stone “is a man’s man… a sort of latter-day Ernest Hemingway, an action man with a reputation for women and drugs who won the Purple Heart for bravery in Vietnam “

Wow, a Purple Heart “for bravery” – glad we have the MSM’s famous layers of fact-checkers and editors hard at work making sure reporters don’t make basic, embarrassing errors.  But I digress.

The overriding theme of the profile – and Stone’s own personal narrative – is simply how hunky the auteur is.  Whether he’s palling around with Castro and Chavez or simply talking about his Daddy issues – which, trust me, are nowhere near as terrifying as his Mommy issues – we learn that Ollie is all-man, all the time. (more…)

There was not a great deal of drama surrounding this year’s British Academy of Film & Television Arts Awards, commonly known as the BAFTA Awards. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) is a movie with deep roots in the UK. Director Danny Boyle was born in Manchester, England, lead actor Dev Patel is the star of the popular British television series Skins, and the movie is a gigantic hit in the British Isles with an impressive $20.6M (US dollars) in box office for Pathe, since its release there on January 6.

BAFTA Winner Mickey Rourke

The two major uncertainties entering Sunday’s ceremony were whether Kate Winslet, twice-nominated for Best Actress, would split her own vote and miss out on her second BAFTA Award and who would prevail in the Sean Penn-Mickey Rourke battle for Best Actor. Aside from that, it seemed like a Slumdog sweep, and that’s exactly how it played out.

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