 
The Grudge AVP: Alien VS. Predator
Turn off the lights, make a big bowl of popcorn and prepare for some very spoooooky thrills from these recent flicks. In The Forgotten, Julianne Moore plays a mother-in-mourning, 14 months
after her son (and his classmates) died in a plane crash. She’s
seeing a psychiatrist (Gary Sinise) who’s trying to help her get
her life back on track, but the painful memories linger on. Her husband
(Anthony Edwards) is also sympathetic, but even he can’t help
shake her sorrow. One day, strange things begin to occur: her son’s
The Grudge derives its story from Japanese mythology and the belief that death due to a “powerful rage” results in ghosts that linger on to torture the living, long after the event has passed. Buffy’s Sarah Michelle Geller plays an American nurse caught up the curse that keeps getting worse and who may need a hearse…of her own. Filmmaker Sam Raimi wears his producer’s hat this time out and enlists the skills of director Takashi Shimizu, who made Ju-on – the original film that The Grudge was remade from and who has more or less re-shot the same film in English using American actors. Although told in a non-linear fashion and rooted in horror that’s more psychological, I didn’t find it all that scary, but that’s just me. It’s bound to give large segments of the population nightmares, in which case it’s served it’s purpose. It’s not easy to make a flick that’s both scary and funny, but the British comedy Shaun Of The Dead delivers in a big way. Hapless under-achiever Shaun and his loser buddy Ed spend most of their time at the local pub, much to the chagrin of Shaun’s girlfriend, who dumps him after three years. When the local population begins turning into zombies, it takes a while for our hero to notice, but when he does, he decides that rescuing her will put him back in her good graces. Much blood and many laughs ensue and guarantee a gross old time. Don’t miss the bonus features chock full of deleted and extended scenes, the Zomb-O-Meter, hilarious outtakes and more. For a bigger jolt of sci-fi on a much larger scale, there’s the most recent entry into the Alien / Predator franchise that pits the popular creatures against one another in a story “ripped from the comic books!” This is first film in the series without Sigourney Weaver and I’m sad to say I miss her. When we last saw Ripley in Alien Resurrection, she had become a human/alien hybrid and was trying to prevent her acid-drooling cousins from making it to Earth and turning us all into walking incubators. As it turns out, they’ve been on Earth since at least 5000 B.C. and used in rituals to develop Predator manhood every 1000 years or so. Set in the present day, AVP serves as a kind of prequel to the other
films in the series, with Lance Henriksen (also seen in Aliens) as a
wealthy industrialist rounding up a team of scientists and explorers
to investigate a pyramid located buried beneath the snow and ice of
Antarctica. When they start poking around the ancient structure, they
find themselves caught in the middle of the aforementioned ritual and
as you might expect, all hell breaks loose. There’s plenty of face-hugging
and acidy blood and even a little Predator humor that’s strangely endearing.
AVP doesn’t come close to the greatness of the first two movies, but
then nothing ever will. -- David Bassin
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The
Forgotten
Shaun
Of The Dead
face disappears
from a family photo, a scrapbook becomes nothing more than empty pages
and all the people around her insist her “son” never existed.
As Moore searches for the truth behind these mysterious events, she
enlists the help of a man (Dominic West) whose daughter was also lost
in the crash and they end up uncovering more then they bargained for.
West will be familiar to fans of HBO’s The Wire and plays pretty
much the same character here. Without giving away any major plot points,
I’ll just say that the story winds up in X-Files territory and
will leave you wondering if we humans are really alone in the universe.