The first trailer for the remake of another classic horror film — Stephen King's Carrie — is out, and it's looking anemic compared to the bloody and blood-curdling promotional campaign that Evil Dead has waged over the last several months. more »
There are enough terrific, elegant old-style Tim Burton touches in Dark Shadows that, now and then, you might be fooled into thinking the once-mad genius had finally come back to his senses: A young girl gazes dreamily through the window of a train slipping through the New England countryside, the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” serving as an aural curtain for her reverie; a wispy ghost woman floats toward the waiting arms of a giant chandelier, her hair and tattered skirt winding around its crystals like jellyfish tendrils; a secret button reveals a passageway whose opening is framed by mechanical ocean waves and a cadre of cast-iron wolves raising their snouts to the moon in a hearty salute. Parts of Dark Shadows look lovely. So what happened to the story?
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At age 15, Chloë Grace Moretz is now right in the center of the child/adult Venn diagram. Pretty soon we’ll have to accept that she really is a young woman, but for now, it’s slightly discomfiting to see her in the jailbait short shorts and tiny halter tops she wears in Derick Martini’s Hick. Even in the old days, girlhood went by in a flash, and most contemporary parents will tell you that today those years of innocence — or at least perceived innocence — are even more compressed. Plus, some girls just move faster than others: Moretz’s character in Hick is an unhappy 13-year-old named Luli who doesn’t yet know how to use her sexual allure, though she’s vaguely aware that she’s got some. She can’t wait to grow up and get the hell away from her tiny, repressive Nebraska town and her heedless parents (played by Juliette Lewis and Anson Mount), and her urgency gives the movie whatever momentum it has.
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