Jay's Movie of the Week #11: Snow White: A Deadly Summer

David DeCoteau is doing something right... I just can't quite figure out what for all the wrong here. (Originally reviewed for DVDsnapshot.com)

Official Synopsis:

In this edgy tale of horror, a troubled teenage girl finds herself in a web of lies and deceit when her stepmother attempts to murder her by sending her to a discipline camp.

Our Take:

The ever-prolific David DeCoteau has made classic Eighties B-movies, lots of Full Moon features, and created the “Horror Guys in Underwear” genre (The Brotherhood and 1313 series). This genre of bad, bland horror films, light on gore and heavy on tease, is mostly notable for being unable to decide if the target audience is straight women or gay men, then failing to reach either. DeCoteau has evidently decided to take a break from being the only director surrounded by more hot young guys than Chi Chi LaRue and audition for the ABC Family Channel. (I can only assume as in Snow White: A Deadly Summer there's gender equity and everyone keeps their shirts on...)

The plot of with this teen-centric “horror” feels like a TV movie, but TV generally requires higher production values. Here, between a borrowed mansion and a camp for teens that resembles a neighborhood public park, DeCoteau makes the best of limited resources with a quickie take on the Snow White story. (Beating the upcoming big-budget ones to the punch?)

One A Week Reviews #8: Libestraum

I've seen Libestraum on offer for 20 years now and always meant to watch it. I had heard it was something of a meditative mystery featuring the last screen appearance of Kim Novak and had the excellent pedigree of being directed by Mike Figgis. Also, it starred Bill Pullman along with two lead actors, Kevin Anderson and Pamela Gidley, who never really "happened," even though they kept getting the opportunities.

Turns out, I wasn't missing much.

It's fitting that a film named after a piece of music should open with a shot of a piano. In flashback, a man and woman are having a tryst only to be interrupted and shot. Thirty years later, we join Nick (Anderson) as he travels to visit his birth mother (Novak), who lives in the Nursing Home of Dramatic Lighting. She is dying, but as she'd given him up for adoption, this is the first time he's met her. He also wants to study the rare cast-iron-frame building that shooting happened in, now about to be torn down by Bill Pullman's character, Paul Kessler. Paul and Nick are old pals, though their relationship is stiff, awkward, and nearly ended by a work-site accident. Was it fate, or somehow caused by the ominous arrival of a mysterious man in a limousine?

Out of Touch With Oscar

While I love writing about movies, I generally restrict it to those I can screen at home. I also tend to prefer the lower profile ones. Every year, the Oscar Nominations come out and, even as they increase the number of titles nominated, I find I've been moved to see fewer and fewer titles. Generally the show is lousy, bloated, and self-congratulatory, though I'm the first to defend that this is part (nay, most) of it's fun. I prefer to skim Twitter that Sunday night for real-time, #Oscars-hashtag-baiting snark and look at the outfits and list of winners the next day. Excellent time management, and I don't stay up 'til after Midnight to see which people I will probably never, ever meet won what.

While I knew I was this out of touch, I was surprised to see that out of this year's list of nominees, I’d only seen ONE of the movies on it.

No sweeping art films about War, or childhood, or family dynamics. Nah, just the one with poop and pee jokes... and I loved it.

 

I guess it gets all my votes.