Turn the right corner in Sin City, and you can find anything…

It’s been five years since Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller and Quentin Tarantino dropped Sin City on audiences’ laps and the film’s legacy is apparent everywhere you look — from green-screen heavy films such as 300 to Mickey Rourke’s career resurgence. When taken at face value, though, Sin City may seem nothing but a pubescent boy’s late night dream — full of babes, bullets and booze.

Militant call girls wield automatic weapons and swastika-shaped throwing stars as yellow skinned child molesters stalk the seedy underbelly of Basin City. Decapitations, disembowelments and dismemberments are commonplace occurrences in Frank Miller color-deprived world. Despite the depraved plot twists waiting around every darkened alley, something exists in Sin City that screams bloody poetry.

When describing its coolness factor, it’s easy to bring up the meticulously executed visuals. With the stark black-and-white coloring and the occasional splotch of vibrant primaries, Sin City is certainly a stroke of retrograde noir genius. But, it isn’t just the use of visual tones and set dressing that separates the film from its predecessors. There exists — buried in the gratuitously bloody monster that is the film — the heart of a soft-spoken poet.

Adapted from comic book artist Frank Miller’s series of crime infused comics, Sin City was born of the unholy alliance of Miller and director Robert Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, best known for his hyper-kinetic action sequences, helped Miller translate his stark, and often unsettling, artwork to the big screen. Using a system of panel-to-shot replications, the dynamic duo gave creative birth to a living breathing funny book that is anything but kid friendly.

In The Long Goodbye, audiences were introduced to Marv (Mickey Rourke), a scar-faced, nigh-unstoppable bruiser.

After waking up with the dead body of a one-night stand nuzzling against him, Marv embarks on a path toward revenge-driven redemption. As the brutish bulldozer carves a bloody path toward the identity of his lover’s killer, he ponders his own sanity.

In The Big Fat Kill, Clive Owen played Dwight, a Converse-sporting ex-con sent on a mission to dispose of the body of a corrupt policeman. After a drunken slime bag of a cop (Benicio Del Toro) winds up on the receiving end of the red light district’s vengeance, Dwight must hide the resulting body before the delicate truce between the police and prostitutes is torn asunder.

The violence is extreme and the ladies sexy, as characters become entwined in escalating events. While Miller’s characters dress like there is a clothing famine, the females in Sin City exert a strong domineering power that the Spice Girls could only hope to channel.

Instead of quivering beneath the gloved hand of a pimp, these ladies of the night rule their own lives and are not above carving up a couple of rough-housing party seekers.

This segment also featured a scene guest-directed by Quentin Tarantino.

That Yellow Bastard stared Bruce Willis as a soon-to-be retired cop who saved a young girl named Nancy from the child-molesting son of a U.S. senator. Thanks to the wounded pedophile’s father, Hartigan (Willis) is locked in jail and left to rot. The knowledge that the girl’s innocence was preserved is the only thing that keeps Hartigan alive as his name is dragged through the mud and he loses everything he once held dear. When he learns that the girl, who has grown into the curvaceous Jessica Alba, may be in danger, he stops at nothing to put a final end to the yellow bastard who threatens her.

The nuanced subtleties that exist in Sin City were never more evident than in the brilliant acting job delivered by Willis.

When Hartigan discovers that Nancy has grown into Sin City’s top exotic dancer, his soul is torn. Even though he managed to save Nancy’s virtue from the clutches of the senator’s son, her brief flirtation with evil has forever tainted her soul. No longer is Nancy the pure child he saved all those years ago; she has become a reflection of the city in which she dwells. Drawn together by their lost lives, Nancy and Hartigan become connected in a way that is a little touching and a little creepy.

Sin City is a stunning piece of cinema that masqueraded its subtle morality tales beneath an ironically colorful collection of killer characters and killer visuals.

If you took the time to look beyond the cries of gratuitous violence and overtly underdressed women, you may just have found a reflection of mankind’s own dark soul and the shinning humanity that exits underneath.

Shortly after the film was released, talk immediately began about a sequel — which has yet to actually go further then just talk. I seem to recall the Weinstein brothers also throwing around discussions about a possible television show spin-off. I wonder if a script was ever written for the TV show or if the talks were just that — talk.

Last year Sin City was released on Blu-ray and it looks absolutely stunning. The computer-generated graphics and a pristine print have convinced me to adopt Sin City as my official go-to disc whenever I wish to show off my home theater system. If you haven’t already, upgrade your DVD copy ASAP. Your eyeballs (and ears) will thank you.

Read more movie reviews

R-rated movies make for excellent Saturday morning cartoons.

Not quite ready to enter the action hero retirement home, Sylvester Stallone will return to world of big guns and bigger muscles next year with The Expendables, the film that finally unites Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger — if only for one short scene.

With a cast that includes Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke, The Expendables should be a lot of fun and action junkies are already frothing at the mouth in excitement.

As Stallone fans prepare for the release of The Expendables, some might watch the four Rambo films in preparation.

But fans that only re-watch First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo III and Rambo won’t be getting the full Rambo experience. They would be forgetting Rambo: The Force of Freedom, the 1986 syndicated cartoon series based on the franchise and now available on DVD.

During the 65-episode run of Rambo: The Force of Freedom, producers neatly sidestepped the apparent problems that would come with having a children’s cartoon hero who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Turning a popular film franchise into a kid-friendly Saturday morning cartoon is not an uncommon event. Here are a few other adult-oriented films that have lived, if only for a short time, on the small screen.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber

Original movies: During the early ’90s, Jim Carrey’s most popular roles were Ace Ventura, an eccentric pet detective; The Mask, a green-skinned cartoonish crime fighter; and Lloyd, the brainless co-star of Dumb and Dumber.

Television shows: Hoping to capitalize on Carrey’s fame, three cartoons were produced in 1995, each based on a different film. Carrey, who had gone on to bigger and better things, didn’t provide voices for any of the shows.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective exaggerated the film series’ already broad humor and featured work from Family Guy‘s Seth MacFarlane as a writer. Although the full series is not available on DVD, a few episodes are included in the Ace Ventura double-pack.

The Mask took a slightly (very slightly) more serious route and focused on more traditional super-hero antics, even introducing several characters from the comic book that provided the basis for the film. A few episodes were released on DVD in an exclusive Wal-Mart two-pack with Son of the Mask a few years ago but the DVD has now become hard to find.

Dumb and Dumber was produced by cartoon legends Hanna-Barbera and saw Lloyd and Harry adopt what they thought was a cat but was really a purple beaver who acted as the brains of the operation.

All of the shows dropped the source materials’ adult humor and none of them found great success.

The Mask and Ace Ventura did feature a crossover between the two shows, with Ace Ventura even wearing the mask on his butt, causing his anal alter ego to momentarily become endowed with supernatural powers.

Friday: The Animated Series and Clerks: The Animated Series

Original movies: A cult classic film that launched the acting careers of Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, Friday dealt with two men who spend a day smoking on their porch — all the while interacting with friends, family and angry drug dealers. The original film eventually launched a mildly successful franchise.

Clerks was the black-and-white debut from writer/director Kevin Smith. The film dealt with a day in the life of two misanthropic convenience store clerks.

Television shows: Not all film-to-cartoon adaptations wind up nestled in the Saturday morning line-up. Clerks and Friday were two very-adult films that saw the release of their own short-lived animated series adaptations.

Premiering a few years ago on MTV2, Friday: The Animated Series reunited all the characters (but not the actors) from the Friday franchise in outlandish plots that reinforced negative stereotypes in a way that could only be done in cartoon form. Episodes dealt with, among other things, the Virgin Mary-esque appearance of Biggie Smalls’ face on a tree and a visit to the ghetto from Condoleezza Rice.

Clerks: The Animated Series not only featured the same characters as the original film, it featured the same actors providing the voices. Only two episodes of the show actually found their way onto television, but the DVD release of the show became a minor hit. Smith has expressed interest in creating more episodes of the cartoon straight-to-DVD.

Other cartoon shows that had their origins in adult-targeted movies include Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures, The Toxic Crusaders, Highlander: The Animated Series, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, RoboCop, Police Academy: The Series, Alienators: Evolution Continues and Problem Child.

What R-rated movie would you like to see made into a children’s cartoon? Personally, I’m still holding out hope for Requiem for a Dream: The Animated Series.

Read more movie reviews

A plea for more TV shows being reanimated and turned into movies.

James Cameron, the man who brought movie audiences such cinematic masterpieces as Piranha Part Two: The Spawning and some other movie about a boat that I can’t remember the name of right now, is finally returning to the big screen with Avatar, his theatrical adaptation of the popular cartoon series, The Smurfs.

By combining his computer effects wizardry with the beloved characters from the classic Belgium cartoon, Cameron is sure to have another smurftacular hit on his mothersmurfin’ hands.

Now, as revolutionary as Cameron is in all things under God’s sun, for once this isn’t a case of the King of the World introducing society to a new concept.

Television shows, after all, have previously found new life on the big screen after their cancellation.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released 10 years after the original series ended its run. The movie was ushered into production in large part as a result of the fan conventions that sprouted after the show began to run in syndication.

Unfortunately, the movie still came too late for those nerds who couldn’t take the fact that their favorite show had been axed and settled in for a date with a warm bath, a razor blade and a framed photo of William Shatner.

Firefly, another science-fiction television show, also received a theatrical rebirth thanks to the show’s impressive DVD sales and a slightly more socially acceptable group of fans.

Although Serenity, the film version of Firefly, didn’t perform well at the box office, rumors of a sequel tend to come up now and then thanks to the show and film’s successful DVD sales.

Other television shows that found new life on the big screen include Police Squad! (repurposed into the Naked Gun franchise), Strangers with Candy (based on a late-’90s Comedy Central show starring Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert) and Twin Peaks (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was both a prequel and epilogue to the David Lynch-produced television show).

Mulholland Drive, another Lynch film, was re-edited from a television pilot passed over by ABC.

With the success of the Sex and the City movie, I hope there is a continuing trend to reunite the actors of fan-favorite shows that were canceled instead of simply remaking and recasting shows that are remembered more for nostalgia than the actual quality of the original show (cough Transformers cough).

Here are a few shows that could find a new audience on the big screen:

Despite critical acclaim, Arrested Development never found firm footing on the small screen.

Fox tried to keep it afloat, but the show’s large budget paired with small audiences led to an early demise of this very funny program.

I think the big screen is a perfect place for the Bluth family to reunite.

Although some cast members have gone on to find successful solo careers, a big-screen reunion could produce a film that combined the best of Christopher Guest and The Royal Tenenbaums.

While rumors continue to fly that the cast and creator of the show are hard at work preparing a big-screen version of Arrested Development, my hopes have been dashed enough that I will remain a cynic until I see the first trailer.

Kristin Bell is a superstar waiting to happen. As TV teen sleuth Veronica Mars, Bell possessed more than her share of wit and charm, a combination that complimented the show’s razor-sharp writing.

In fact, it’s a surprise nobody has brought Veronica Mars to the big screen yet.

This is one franchise that’s primed to explode. A modern-day Nancy Drew that never talked down to her audience, the movie doesn’t even need to have a lot of ties to the cancelled show — just team Bell up with series creator Rob Thomas for a mystery movie. Whatever comes out is bound to be better then When in Rome.

Miracles was a little-seen supernatural drama that was unfortunately swallowed alive by the reality television craze of the early ’00s.

Starring Skeet Ulrich and Angus Macfadyen, every episode was comparable to the best of The X-Files.

Tense and often very scary story lines provided a backdrop to Ulrich’s underrated acting. A film version wouldn’t have a lot of baggage to bring along.

Fewer people remembering the show would mean fewer people complaining that the adaptation didn’t live up to the dreams and hopes that had been immortalized in the (probably slash) fan-fiction created after the show’s cancellation.

Instead, the producers could just concentrate on creating a spooky supernatural film with compelling characters — a film that would finally carry on the legacy of The Exorcist.

There are, of course, many other shows that have been canceled or forgotten that could launch amazing feature films. Freaks and Geeks (am I the only one who thinks a movie about the characters going to their 10 year reunion would be fantastic?), The Tick, Dark Angel, Gargoyles or Boomtown being just the tip of the Cameron-sized iceberg.

What show would you love to see get another shot at redemption on the big screen?

Read more stuff I wrote during college

Two shows about college worth registering for.

On April 22, 2001, MTV premiered Undergrads, a prime-time cartoon about college students. Twelve episodes and four months later, the show was cancelled.

A month after the sudden demise of Undergrads, Fox premiered Undeclared, a live-action sitcom also about college students. Sixteen episodes and three months later, that show was also taken off the air.

Just as each show offered a touchingly honest portrayal of co-ed college life told through the eyes of four young men, both were cancelled just as they began to hit their stride.

Thankfully, both shows have been granted life after cancellation — as each has found a legion of loyal fans ready to keep the candle burning through the power of TV-on-DVD.

Undergrads

Characters — Undergrads focused on four childhood friends as they attended their first year of college. The show featured characters that were at once both stereotyped clichés and well-drawn out and believable representations of college life.

Show creator Pete Williams distinctly voiced each of the four main characters.

Nitz acted as the show’s straight man, giving emotional weight to the plot with his urgent need to win the heart of his high school crush.

Gimpy was the resident nerd, isolating himself in his technology-filled habitat emerging only to make a Star Wars reference.

Cal was a horribly dull-witted man-cub who still managed to pull in all the ladies with his good looks and childish charm.

Rocko proudly flaunted his crass nature through a constant state of alcohol-fueled daze.

I can guarantee you that each of the four main characters will remind you of somebody you went to school with.

Episodes — From traditions and school rivalries to financial aid, sex and underage drinking, no area of college activity was left untouched throughout the run of Undergrads.

With a cast of characters with such distinct personalities, Undergrads was able to provide different takes on classic college chestnuts such as an issue with bad roommate that was seen from both sides of the coin.

Stand out episodes include “Risk,” in which the four main characters indulge themselves in a non-stop game of Risk, and “New Friends,” in which Nitz is faced with the thought of growing up and leaving his high school buddies behind.

The entire series takes place over the course of a single school year, giving a somewhat satisfying conclusion to the show.

DVD — The good news is that Undergrads is available on a two-disc set from MTV. Unfortunately, special features are sparse and the set itself is harder to come by than a parking spot in a campus garage. If you are lucky enough to find a copy, snatch it up. You won’t be sorry. You can also visit the official show site for crudely animated cartoon shorts featuring the continuing adventures of Nitz, Gimpy, Cal and Rocko.

Undeclared

Characters — As the show’s pilot begins, Steven Karp (Jay Baruchel) is excited about his 7-inch growth spurt during the summer between high school and college. Looking forward to leaving behind his former nerd identity, Steven is ill prepared for the soap opera-like antics of his co-ed dorm.

Charlie Hunnam, Seth Rogen and Timm Sharp co-star as Steven’s roommates. During the course of the series’ run, each of the characters manage to develop distinct personalities and relationships with each other.

The real relationships showcased in the series, though, are between Steven and his on-again-off-again girlfriend Lizzie (Carla Gallo) and his recently divorced father (Loudon Wainwright III).

A mixture of genuine drama with typical college-based humor sprinkled in, Undeclared showed great potential as a show and served as a launching pad for much of today’s top talent.

Episodes — Most of the 17 episodes dealt with either Steven’s relationship with his father, a man handling a mid-life crisis, or Steven’s constant pining for Lizzie, who has given her heart to another, slightly creepier young man (played by Jason Segel). Each episode added to relationships built in previous episodes, offering genuine character development over the course of the series.

Stand-out episodes include “Addicts,” in which Steven becomes addicted to buying pre-written term papers from a local townie (played by guest star Will Ferrell) and “Eric’s POV,” in which guest director Jon Favreau offers insight into Lizzie’s relationship with her obsessive older boyfriend.

DVD — Undeclared is available in a four-disc set from Shout! Factory. While the collection includes an impressive array of extras, the episodes are presented out of order, leading to some jarring confusion during potential marathons of the show. A handy instruction guide provided in the DVD case, though, will help fans plan out the order in which to watch the series.

Series creator Judd Apatow has gone on to much success since the cancellation of Undeclared. Thankfully, he has used his success to shine a spotlight on a large portion of the show’s cast, including them in the films he produces and directs.

Read more stuff I wrote during college

Sly Stallone’s movie needs time to age

The Expendables is four pounds of action stuffed in an ankle-high sock, covered in gasoline and then set on fire. It’s big, it’s loud, it’s painfully stupid and it may become a great movie in ten years time. Sylvester Stallone’s action epic is a fine wine in the making — it just needs a few years to age.

In The Expendables, Stallone plays Barney Ross, the leader of a team of hardened mercenaries that find themselves embroiled in a plot to overthrow a South American government. Ross’ team consists of a handful of heavies — as heavily armed as they are muscled. Culled from the world of professional fighting, athletics and direct-to-DVD action films, the Expendables are a motley crew of recognizable faces — a true collection of bad asses.

There’s Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture and Mickey Rouke. In other words, these actually are your father’s action heroes. Unfortunately, time has not been treated the crew well and it becomes painfully obvious very fast why half the cast has been resigned to straight-to-DVD hell.

As Lee Christmas, the second in command of the team, Jason Statham is the perfect example of the casts’ faults. He’s fast-witted, quick with a knife and pretty much the same character he plays in all of his films. This is true of most of the film’s characters. Stallone and his co-writer Dave Callaham put a lot effort into planning some truly stunning action scenes but building fleshed out characters and developing a believable story were not at the top of their list — an oddity since The Expendables devotes a heck of a lot of time to these failed attempts at non-action scenes.

For a film that pats itself on the back so much for its manliness, there are a heck of a lot of scenes where the cast bemoan their lot in life or wax poetic about their emotions.

The Expendables succeeds when it is a non-stop action explosion — hitting audiences over the head with a two by four of loud, fiery awesomeness. Despite an over-abundance of CGI blood, suspect computer enhanced explosions and hyper-stylistic action scenes that are hidden beneath a scattershot of Bourne-esque editing; The Expendables succeeds as an action film. In all other regards, though, the film falls painfully flat on its veiny, wrinkled face.

The Expendables is the type of movie that will eventually find great success on basic cable afternoon reruns. For those able to catch the film on TNT or SPIKE TV in five years’ time, great enjoyment will be had. Lazy afternoon screenings free from the burden of expectations or the desire to see a good movie will treat the film nice. To those that pay $10 for movie theater tickets, though, there is bound to be disappointment in the film’s painfully bad plot and dialogue.

Some muddled story about a mission to overthrow a South American general is just an excuse to have the film’s heroes cut people in half with a stream of ammo or partake in fist fights while engulfed in flames.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of really great scenes in The Expendables. The all-to-brief moment in the film that finally puts Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the same screen is as fun and exciting as you might imagine. The film’s final act — an increasingly absurd “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” scene — is a great example of balls-to-the-wall action that manages to overwhelm and stun audiences into a giddy happiness.

There’s a lot to like about The Expendables — it’s just going to take a few years to appreciate it.

Read more movie reviews

Forget Indians, everybody knows the cowboy’s greatest enemy comes from outer space.

In High Plains Invaders, the Kristoffer Tabori directed gunslinger vs extraterrestrial creature feature, James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) plays Sam Danville, a former officer in the Indian Wars who, seeking a bit of a thrill, has turned to a life of crime. After tasting the sweet nectar of Indian-killing, Danville is not content to go back to his old life. No, now that he has shot people dead, Danville leaves his best gal Abigail Pixley (played by Cindy Sampson) behind and transforms himself into a train robber.

When his latest escapade accidentally causes a train derailment, Danville is crushed to find out he has unwittingly become a murderer. His spirits aren’t the only things that are going to be crushed though; Danville faces a hanging — just as soon as the town’s incompetent sheriff can lead his motley crew of deputies into putting together a half-decent gallows.

Yes, High Plains Invaders begins with its toes firmly dipped into typical western chestnuts. There’s the dusty one-street-town complete with saloon, general store and prison. There’s the contemplative hero who has just a bit of a bad streak running through him. There’s even a bounty hunter — albeit one who is a real beauty and looks good in a skirt and gun strap. And I’m not talking about Bobba Fett.

Sanny Van Heteren plays Rose Hilridge, a sassy lass who makes her bones killing bad guys — and doesn’t take gruff from anybody.

But honestly, this is all window dressing — as fluffy and ultimately meaningless as the decorative trimmings on a pistol. There is only one thing that people watching a movie about cowboys vs. aliens want to know about — and that one thing doesn’t involve character development.

The invaders of High Plains Invaders are a group of shiny gold insectoids that scuttle about on crab-like legs, drilling into the ground in search of Uranium. Not only do these creatures use the raw element as a projectile weapon that they shoot out of their mouths and into the chests of unsuspecting yokels, the aliens seem to get some kind of high from snorting the stuff.

In a big of unlucky happenstance, Jules Arning, a squirrely little man played by Sebastian Knapp, has been processing the element at his ranch on the edge of town. When the aliens get a whiff of what a treasure trove of uranium they are sitting on, it becomes a massacre worthy of James Cameron standards.

Well, maybe not James Cameron. More like Roger Corman.

The film, while utilizing some impressive make-up effects and an admirable job with computer graphics, is still very much a low-budget film. The effects are rough and the filmmakers choose to play much of the action off-screen where the audiences’ need to utilize their imagination helps keep the budget in check.

James Marsters does a respectable job as a western hero — though I have to admit I missed the faux-British accent he donned while playing Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. With only a standard American accent at his disposal, the actor seemed to lose some of his charm and charisma — but maybe that was just my low-level racism at work.

The film, while low budget and awfully cheesy in its plot, is surprisingly entertaining in places.

When it plays out like a prison siege film like some kind of combination of Assault on Prescient 13 and Starship Troopers, the movie hits the spot in ways few straight-to-DVD creature flicks do.

High Plains Invaders is not a perfect film and it won’t win any awards for its ingenuity but there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half than watching cowboys and aliens duking it out at the OK Corral.

Robert Saucedo recommends the graphic novel IRON WEST by Doug TenNapel as the best cowboy vs. aliens bit o’ fiction around. Follow Robert on Twitter @robsaucedo2500.

It’s funny. I didn’t realize how much I liked the wisecracking trickster Freddy Krueger that Robert Englund played in the later Nightmare on Elm Street movies until I sat through the first terribly somber hour of the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake.

As Jackie Earle Haley’s Freddy Krueger slowly works his way through the all-you-can-eat buffet of teenage victims presented before him in director Samuel Bayer’s film, I started to grow a little bored.

Instead of the macabre antics and on-the-nose killer puns that had been the trademarks of the later Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, the new film featured a mostly silent but deadly killer who hid in the shadows — popping out only to utter something dreadfully threatening in a Christian Bale cancer voice before eviscerating his victim.

Now there is nothing wrong with a slow but steady pace in a horror film. Some of my favorite scary movies take their sweet time before getting to the good stuff. Setting the tone and building suspense is highly important.

Unfortunately, the remake’s writers’ need to sow the seeds of a mystery into a plot that stays largely faithful to the original 25+-year-old movie proves to be a mistake.

While this may be effective for teenage audiences who are new to the series and being introduced to Freddy Krueger for the first time, those of us who aren’t experiencing our first Nightmare on Elm Street rodeo will quickly grow tired of the dreary proceedings and begin to pine the Freddy Krueger of our youth — the one that would transform out of a television set or turn a helpless victim into a human meat puppet.

My biggest problem with the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake is the fact that it takes itself way too seriously — a problem I find repeated in far too many recent horror films.

There is completely too little levity — whether it is a bit of humor or a quiet character-driven scene designed to break the tension. It seems most modern horror films want to be a “non-stop roller coaster of terror.” Well, unless you are showing us something fresh and interesting, audiences will quickly grow bored of the same loud-noise jump scares being tossed at us like fish to a hungry sea lion.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is perhaps too faithful to the original film — with some scenes lifted directly from Wes Cravens 1984 hit. It’s the scenes that are tweaked — even slightly — into something fresh and heretofore unseen that prove the most effective. I’m all for staying true to the source material but I also don’t want to watch the same movie I’ve been seeing for years with only new, spiffier special effects to set it apart.

That being said, Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as Freddy Krueger really does work— especially towards the end when he is allowed to add a touch of personality to the monster.

As the film approaches its climax and Freddy Krueger begins to make jokes — albeit dark and borderline uncomfortable ones — I started to really enjoy myself and forget that I was watching a remake. Haley hits the nail on the head with his performance as Freddy Krueger. From his raspy, menacing voice to the amazing body movement and finger twitches he sprinkles into his delivery, his performance is the highlight of the film.

The cast of teenage victims, on the other hand, while turning in perfectly acceptable performances, do nothing to set themselves apart from the dozens of other kids Krueger has killed over the years. There is no real breakout performance from the cast of victims — no future scream queen or horror movie superstar in this disposable teenage wasteland.

Despite all of this, A Nightmare on Elm Street is definitely worth checking out — especially if you are a fan of the series. While a paint-by-numbers approach to the plot’s unraveling leaves the first half of the film a little dry, things pick up fast and heavy and by the time the film’s climax rolls around, the movie is moving pretty smoothly towards a satisfying climax.

Over the last several years, Patrick Wilson has had quite a bit of success in both smaller, more intimate film such as Hard Candy and larger, more special effects driven movies such as Watchmen. Not to take anything away from his earlier work (which I have loved) but Barry Munday is Wilson’s finest hour.

Barry Munday begins with Wilson playing the title character as a selfish, sex-obsessed slob with a personality that is a cross between Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy and Clerks’ Randal Graves. With a coat of sleaze three-inches thick, Barry slinks through life in a series of one-night-stands and downward gazes into women’s blouses.

Barry’s sex-drive experiences an extreme change, however, after Barry looses his testicles during a scuffle with the trumpet-wielding father of a teenage girl he was macking on during an afternoon matinee at a movie theater.

Now half the man he used to be, Barry’s life manages to sink even further down the proverbial shower drain — spending his days hobbling around his apartment and playing video games as his mother waits on him hand and foot.

Not long after his accident, Barry experiences another life-changing catalyst when a former one-night-stand named Ginger Farley, played superbly by Judy Greer, files a paternity lawsuit.

Ginger, a frizzy-haired, acidic-tempered virgin (well, at least until she was deflowered by Barry), has given Wilson’s character a newfound purpose in his testicle-free life.

Now, with a new addition to the Munday lineage quickly approaching, it’s time for Barry Munday to finally grow up and take charge of his life. But first, he has to win back the affections of his baby’s mother, a woman who would rather see Barry drop dead then for him to be any part of her child’s life.

Besides Wilson and Greer, Barry Munday has the benefit of an amazing supporting cast including Chloe Sevigny, Cybill Shepherd and Malcolm McDowell as Ginger’s family; Jean Smart as Barry’s mother; and Billy Dee Williams as Barry’s DeLorean-driving boss.

With a top-notch script, an amazing soundtrack and great performances all-around, Barry Munday is a highly recommended comedy from writer/director Chris D’Arienzo. The script is adapted from a novel by Frank Turner Hollon.

At times, the film is tonally a grown-up version of Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up yet is still prone to its moments of extreme silliness and raunchiness.

Wilson’s performance as an idiot man-child proves that the talented actor has a gift for comedy. Hopefully it won’t be too long until we get the chance to see Wilson try his hand at making audiences laugh again.

Category: Spotlight Premieres

Director: Chris D’Arienzo

Showtimes: Tuesday, March 16 at 6:56 PM at Alamo Lamar and Wednesday, March 17 at 7:15 PM at Alamo Lamar

Inside Pulse — Movies will be on the ground at SXSW! For live coverage from the event, follow Robert Saucedo and Travis Leamons on Twitter at @robsaucedo2500 and @skipkassidy.

The South by Southwest film festival will be held in Austin from March 12 through the 20th. For more information about attending the festival and the films being shown, visit www.sxsw.com/film.

Rapid advancements in technology and the increasing acceptance of animation as a genre not limited to being solely for children has led to this being an interesting, and excellent, decade for animated films.

While there have been a lot of terrible cartoons churned out in the last ten years, there have also been some amazing additions to the genre.

Picking the top ten animated films for this first decade of a new millennium proved to be a harder task then first imagined.

With a plethora of memorable cartoons released in theaters over the last decade, it was next to impossible to whittle the list down to just ten choices — let alone put them in any kind of order.

What follows, though, is my humble attempt to pick what I felt were my favorite animated movies of the last ten years.

I don’t presume to think that this list will be the same for everybody or that I will even feel the same way in another ten years, but, in the meantime, consider this a list of ten animated movies from the last ten years worth checking out.

10. Waking Life

Richard Linklater helped resurrect the dying art of rotoscope with his 2001 film Waking Life, an introspective look at dreams, death and the in-between.

An ensemble film in the vein of Linklater’s breakthrough hit Slackers, Waking Life hopped from subject matter to subject matter providing slice of life vignettes and interviews that explored a variety of off-kilter subjects.

Proof of Waking Life’s impact on the genre can be seen in the increased use of rotoscoping in everything from television commercials to movies — including Linklater’s later stab at the technique with A Scanner Darkly.

9. Coraline

Henry Selick’s 3D stop-motion film is a smorgasbord of outlandish concepts and creepy images. Based on the young adult novel by Neil Gaiman, Coraline features the voices of Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher in the story about a young girl who discovers a hole in her wall that leads to a magical land where nothing is what it seems and a witch wants to catch her and replace her eyes with buttons.

A mostly faithful adaptation of Gaiman’s book, the movie does an admirable job of capturing the prose’s off-kilter tone and sense of wonder.

Selick has proven he does not need the support of Tim Burton when making a movie and I, for one, can’t wait to see what he does next.

8. Ratatouille

This decade has unquestionably been the era of Pixar when it comes to animated movies. With hits — both commercially and critically — released seven out of the last ten years, Pixar dominates this list and Ratatouille is only the first of the studio’s films to find its way onto my list.

Brad Bird’s culinary cinematic gem, the film is proof that, with a good script, an animated movie can be first and foremost a good movie. Patton Oswalt provides the voice of Remy, a rat who fancies himself a chef.

No bigger evidence of the film’s success can be found then in the fact that the film actually paved the way to increased popularity of rats as pets.

7. Les Triplettes de Belleville

Svlvain Chomet’s beautiful film is a masterpiece of sights and music. A co-production between companies in France, the UK, Belgium and Canada, the film is a mostly dialogue-free story about a grandmother’s attempts to rescue her Tour de France cyclist son who has been kidnapped by the French mafia. Along for the ride is a trio of washed up singers and a morbidly obese hound dog named Bruno.

The film’s music is amazing — especially the Oscar nomated song Belleville Rendes-vous.

This is not a film for children — some might be entertained by the sight gags but most wouldn’t know what to make of it but it is an amazing achievement in animation —at once both innovative and a classic throwback.

6. The Incredibles

Another Brad Bird film, The Incredibles is a wonderful homage to the Silver Age of comics — with a great post-modern Watchmen-esque twist.

After all the act of being a superhero is outlawed, the former crimefighters settle down for a suburban existence. The movie focuses on a dysfunctional, but loving, family with extraordinary abilities as they come together to save the world from a former sidekick gone insane.

The first Pixar movie to feature an entirely human cast, the movie showed audiences that you could have a family-friendly superhero movie without being overly cheesy or talking down to children.

The family dynamic on display in The Incredibles is pitch-perfect — a great tribute to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four.

Now, all we need is this movie to finally make its way onto Blu-ray.

5. Spirited Away

Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, Spirited Away is the story of a young girl who encounters a hidden world of ghosts and monsters when her family stops at an abandoned theme park.

Smashing records in Japan, the film would receive international acclaim upon its’ release — for good reason: It’s bloody great!

As somebody who normally can’t stand Japanese animation (it all looks the same to me), I fell in love with Spirited Away. Miyazaki is a true visionary — able to create images that will stick in your head and perfectly weave social commentary into a story that any child (and adult) would enjoy.

4. Up

The third Pixar movie to find its way onto this list, Up is one of the only 3D animated films released in the last ten years to not suffer when watched in 2D.

While most 3D-enhanced cartoons rely on gimmicks to sell the experience, Up has the benefit of a top-notch story to carry it past any cool extra dimensions.

And what a story! Anybody who isn’t teary-eyed by the first ten minutes has no soul.

Carl, a widower looking to retain his hold on the past, decides to recapture his childhood fantasy of flying his house to South America. Along for the ride are Russell, a Wilderness Explorer, Kevin, a large bird with a taste for chocolate, and Dug, the coolest animated dog ever.

It’s sad, funny and a whole lot of fun — in short, a great animated movie.

3. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Oh, sweet Jesus do I love Roald Dahl. I love the books form the famed children’s book author almost as much as I love the films of Wes Anderson. It’s no surprise, then, that I loved the everloving hell out of Fantastic Mr. Fox — a film that combined the whimsy of Dahl and the visual (and emotional) sensibilities of Anderson.

With a voice cast including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, the film takes the best aspects of the two creators’ styles and molds a smart, witty romp that will make even the hardest of hardmen crack a smile.

Using a retro approach to stop-motion, the film retains a timeless quality — something most animated films seem to ignore as they stuff their pallets with pop-culture references and pop songs by Smash Mouth.

2. Team America: World Police

While it may not be timeless as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Team America is unquestionably one of the films (animated or otherwise) most representative of the last decade.

Made by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the duo responsible for South Park, Team America features a cast of marionettes as they drink, fight, have sex in a variety of styles and smash in the heads of the world’s most popular celebrities.

When Kim Jong-il plots the destruction of the world, it’s up to a paramilitary squad of ass-kickers to save the day — whether the world wants them to or not.

While not the runaway hit that South Park was, Team America has its share of supporters and I am most assuredly one of them.

1. WALL-E

The fourth, and final, Pixar movie on my list had to be WALL-E. WALL-E is flat-out one of the best films of the last ten years — let alone animated films.

The story of a robot left to clean the dying planet Earth, WALL-E had more heart and soul then any cartoon ought to have — but what would you expect from Pixar, the studio that has caused me to cry at more movies then any other.

Director Andrew Stanton is able to graft real human emotion onto a character that never really speaks and has limited facial expressions — a stunning feat. This was accomplished, in large part, by the enormous talent of Ben Burtt, the sound design mastermind.

The movie has everything I’m looking for in a animated film — amazing visuals, interesting characters and a powerful theme running as an undercurrent to an engaging story. That’s why WALL-E is number one in my book.

For Craig Thompson, love is a wonderful thing filled with pain and joy. The innocence of first love is countered at every turn by the haunting warnings of temptation that the Bible has instilled in him since his childhood.

In “Blankets,” an almost 600 page autobiographical comic book, Thompson recounts his first love, among other memories of his childhood.

“Blankets” begins plainly, with a simple panel that reads: “When we were young, my little brother Phil and I shared the same bed.”

The simplicity of this panel is a good indication of what comes next in Thompson’s touching rendition of his youth.

Throughout the graphic novel, the reader is introduced to a wide variety of characters that orbit around young Thompson. From his wild brother Phil to his sometimes cruel father, Thompson reflects upon the past with enough sincerity that readers will be tempted to take everything he says for granted, no questions asked.

“Blankets’” main story surrounds Thompson’s emotionally turbulent first love. Thompson meets Raina at church camp and together each finds in the other the comfort and peace that they had been lacking. Thompson had always been an outsider and in Raina he discovers a friend who makes everything else obsolete.

From their first encounter, each finds a serenity that they embrace along with each other. Thompson details his descent into love with a poetic meter that will remind readers of a love song. Not all things are rosy for the young lovers, though. Thompson is constantly at odds with his upbringings and battles with the dual nature of love — striving to find a balance between worship and lust.

The use of beautifully symbolic illustrations help to tie together his love story with the undertones of his faith. The saga of Thompson and Raina’s love is broken up with reflections about growing up with his brother and their misadventures.

Thompson’s illustrations perfectly convey the innocence of childhood with an almost cartoonish atmosphere that is well balanced with the many touches of intricate detail and deftly drawn emotions. Fans of pop art will appreciate the beauty found in the simplicity of Thompson’s art.

The simplicity of snow is turned into masterful artwork with clever panel layouts and creative uses of negative space. The black and white nature of the illustrations actually work well to convey the black and white nature of remembrance. The past is the only thing clear to Thompson as he looks back on his year with Raina.

“Blankets” is a story of love and loss that is not only an easy read, but a poignant one as well. Everybody who has experienced the bitterness of a relationship that they once thought would last forever only to have it fall apart will be touched as they read Thompson’s autobiography.

“Blankets” is, in short, an excellent read that manages to offer incredible insight into the life of a normal teenager experiencing life, in all its wonderful pain.