Movie Reviews: Try Harder! + Some Kind Of Heaven + Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) + Senna
Try Harder! (2021)
For the super-smart at Lowell High School, the college application process is emotionally draining. There are unpleasable parents and disappointments and race issues. This was okay.
Best Lines:
“Tiger mom central.”
“I'm not a suburb kid.”
“Doesn't care and will still succeed.”
~
Some Kind Of Heaven (2020)
Concern is in the air in a Florida retirement village. Their are oldies in golf carts in the Villages. There is an odd tension in the air. People are disaffected. This was not charmingly restful. This was uneventful. Some oldies are nasty. There are notes of despair. This was totally dysfunctional. This was irritating and social.
The place seems limiting and joyless and full of the delusional. The place is not a liberal, egalitarian society. People endeavour. There is dullness. This was not insightful and it was wholly inadequate.
Best Lines:
“I don't see the slums.”
“Is not the real world. We leave in a bubble.”
~
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
The horrific events of 1973 have faded into the past. The original crime is unsolved. Is is now a subject of true crime documentaries, t-shirts and novelty trinkets. In this sequel people head to a remote location and violent events are to come. The dead people walking mock a redneck and have worsening relations with the locals.
They've bought Harlow, a dead town, they're going to gentrify it. They talk of food trucks, art galleries and a comic book store. The redneck they insulted calls them cultists. 2 women have terrible hair. They stomp into an orphanage that sports a confederate flag and bars in the windows and harass an old woman (Alice Krige). WTF is sweet tea?
The hipsters have the old woman evicted. They throw her out cos a bus of investors is coming. The idiot women with bad hair cause frustration. The old woman dies and her sole charge aka Leatherface goes on a roaring ramapge. Leatherface is freaksome and nightmarish. Cue gore, violence and blood. This is not a redemptive tale.
Meanwhile the hipsters auction off the town as Leatherface comes closer on his hugely destructive rampage. The navel gazers don't notice until it is too late. Apart from the Alice Krige cameo and a voice cameo by John Larroquette, this is a cast of no names and never will be's. The original spread unease. This is an unwelcome disinterment of Tobe Hopper's 1974 classic.
The hipsters ignore and mock the past. There is so much hurtling viscera, characters spring from nowhere and vanish into the grave. There are misdrections and foreshadowing and recreations of famous scenes from the original. This is better than 'Halloween Kills'. This is a direct sequel to the original. Does nobody ponder that a truck packed with urban young folk are in an uncomfortably rural corner of the Lone Star state, again?
There are some interesting contrasts in the first half of this film. Where are the rest of Leatherface's cannibalistic relations? The young people represent destructive conformity with their hipster gentrification. The good old boy redneck lurks. This was lurid and fecund. The original was a cultural phenomenon, this is shinier. There is some unease. A Margot Robbie lookalike with massive and obvious veneers dies.
There is no place of refuge for them. This gets perverse. The hipsters bring it on themselves. Sally the only survivor of 1973 shows up played by a new actress sporting an Ava Max wig. There is no complete objectivity. There are feeling of desperation. How old is Leatherface? How can he still swing a chainsaw? Where did he get the chainsaw?!?
There was some creative potential in this. People are not righly unsettled. There are creepy faces and people took an immediate dislike to hipsters. This is deliciously malicious in places. Class differences are played up. Viewers will either be fascinated, equivocal or plain bored at various points in this films. There is some creeping dread, but not a lot. The original was legendary. This was not an enormous pleasure. It is not that unsettling.
This tries to be compelling and visceral. The good old boy is unflappable. The hipsters are easily triggered. Cruel and hateful things happen. This was a manufactured narrative. There are complex realities. People do not behave morally as they are opportunistic narcissists. This was a troubled production. Various characters who are interesting exit the film, the final girl(s) are boring.
There are no cops. The original was not that bloody. Morons die. This was unpleasant in the 2nd half. Someone is sprayed with the contents of a sewer. WTF? The nutjob is intimidatory and threatening. You are adverse to this. Hipsters livestream Leatherface and say they are cancelling him. Cue violence. One of the final girl(s) survived a school shooting. What they have lost.
Blood seeps under a door. Victims are in disfavour. There is determinaiton and hidden objectives and hypocrisy and bad faith. There are idiots and no lofty ambtion. This stirs anger. Doesn't he need to refuel his chainsaw? Why doesn't it jam? Sally turns out to be an idiot. This was disappointing. Leatherface does not recall Sally. Nobody is pragmatic or cautious.
This was not highly exceptional. There is Hollywood darkness and this gets oh FFS. This turns rubbish. Distressing things happen. How did one person survive that? There is sloppiness. The town turns into an adversarial battlefield and no one notices. Various people get hoist by their own petards. The ending is a total WTF moment. There is a brief post credits scene.
Best Lines:
“5 youths were attacked.”
“Never again spoke of the sorrows.”
“Heard about you...everybody has.”
“Texas mating ritual.”
“Inspire more people to follow.”
“Just pay me, we're good.”
“We're in deep Texas.”
“Kick her out of her own house.”
“Right side of this.”
“Needed me to show em mercy.”
“You can't take care of yourself.”
“I can only disappoint them.”
“It's him isn't it.”
“If you run, he'll never stop haunting you.”
“Death followed me here.”
“Remember me now?!? I'm the one that got away! And I'm here to make sure you don't!!!”
“50 years I've been waiting for this night.”
“I fear no evil, I fear no evil.”
“I wish I knew you all were coming – I'd have put my face on.”
~
Senna (2010)
No.