I have been a Sherlock Holmes fan since I was about six years old or so.  For me, Jeremy Brett will always personify the world’s greatest detective.  But Robert Downey, Jr., he ain’t so bad.  He is a pretty good Sherlock for the modern audience.  In A Game of Shadows, Holmes is pitted against his archenemy, the diabolical and equally genius, Professor Moriarty.  Moriarty has an intricately woven plan to, well, get rich.  Of course, according to the plan, a lot of people have to die for him to get his obscene amounts of money.  Fortunately, Holmes has some intricately woven plans himself to stop the mad professor.  I liked this movie a little bit more than the first one, I think this one has a little bit of mystery to it.  Not much, but a little.  I think it’s funnier than the first one.  Towards the end, though, it gets a little too stylized, and a little too Matrix-like.  Noomi Rapace had nothing to do in this movie, which is sad; she was vastly underutilized.  And one thing I don’t understand, for Dr. Watson to be limping due to an old injury, he sure can haul ass pretty fast.  4.5 out of 5


I loved the original Quarantine, based on the Spanish film REC (I have those two movies still to watch).  Quarantine 2 finds a group of airplane passengers exposed to the super-rabies-virus-whatever-you-call-it, and quarantined to a terminal.  If you have seen the first film, or the original Spanish films, you know that means the infected get really mean and violent.  And like to bite, tear, and gnash.  Q2 is a pretty good low budget effort, though it lacks the ferocity of the first film.  There are no real shocks or Oh My God! moments, and you know just about everything that is going to happen.  Yet, I liked it maybe more than I should have, and they may be because it is better made than you would expect.  3.5 out 5

How best to describe The Orphan Killer?  Long.  Tedious.  With a few fleeting moments of interest (mainly the nudity).  I’d like to see what the makers of this film could do with a bigger budget and, let’s face it, a tighter script that doesn’t take itself so serious.  A kid, an orphan to be exact, grows up hating the Catholic church and people in general, I think.  I don’t know.  I have to confess, I kind of zoned out watching this movie for a while.  It has a sort of bargain basement kinetic, grungy, style that’s likable, but it needs some editing.  Watch it as a midnight movie with friends.  It tries too hard to be hardcore, and comes up cliched and limp.  Click here for ordering info.  2 out of 5


Can anything stop the remake steamroller?  We can only pray.  Now, some of the remakes I like.  I am in that minority that liked the remakes of The Fog and Halloween.  And The Wolfman.  I do not like this remake of Fright Night.  I like the original, but was never a die hard fan of it.  This remake is just boring.  I thought The Orphan Killer went on for too long; that masked slasher needs to cut this steaming pile to shreds.  Right off the bat we know the neighbor (played by a boring Colin Farrell) is a vampire.  Everybody in the movie knows it pretty much too.  And then it just goes on and on and on.  At one point I checked the time because I thought it was near the end, but, no, there was still like forty or so minutes left.  Put a stake in this damn thing’s heart already.  1 out of 5

John Jason

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