HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS (2013) ***

After killing the witch who tried to eat them as children, orphans Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) grow up to become prolific witch hunters.  When a witch (Famke Janssen) makes off with the children of a small village, the mayor hires the duo to bring them back.  They soon learn she is planning to perform a ritual that will make her all-powerful, and Hansel and Gretel set out to take her down. 

Horror movies based on fairy tales can usually go either way, but Hansel and Gretel:  Witch Hunters manages to be quite a lot of fun.  Written and directed by Tommy (Dead Snow) Wirkola, it’s full of funny touches (like sketches of missing children tied to milk bottles and Hansel having diabetes from eating too much candy from the witch’s house as a kid) and is a little bit better than you’d expect at nearly every turn.  It moves at a zippy pace and doesn’t take itself too seriously, which certainly helps.  The gore is also plentiful as bodies are ripped apart, people explode, and heads are crushed. 

It also doesn’t hurt that there’s more action than horror.  Some of the medieval witch battles feature tinges of Hong Kong-style action (I liked Renner’s fight with a pair of Siamese twin witches) and are fairly bloody to boot.  The way Wirkola peppers in nods to other films is amusing too.  The finale where a coven of witches are mowed down by a Gatling gun was obviously inspired by The Wild Bunch, and the scenes of witches flying through the woods on broomsticks are reminiscent of the Ewok speeder bike chase from Return of the Jedi. 

Renner and Arterton are sort of bland in the leads, but that kind of works in the movie’s favor.  If they were winking at the camera the whole time, the humorous witch-hunting hijinks would’ve felt forced.  Janssen makes for a formidable villain as the sexy witch who says stuff like, “FOOLS!”  The ever-reliable Peter Stormare also puts in a fine turn as the sheriff (and incompetent witch hunter), as does Pihla Viitala as the smoking hot good witch who helps the siblings. 

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2025) ** ½

After the death of her mother, a teenage girl named Quinn (Katie Douglas) moves to a rural farming community with her father (Aaron Abrams).  She quickly falls in with a group of friends who make YouTube videos depicting the local clown mascot, “Frendo” as a psycho killer.  Before long, a killer wearing the clown’s get-up begins picking off the friends one by one.  Things go from bad to worse when a veritable army of Frendos crash a teen party in a cornfield and set out to finish Quinn and her pals off for good. 

Clown in a Cornfield kind of plays like a variation on Thanksgiving, but with a clown instead of a pilgrim.  (There’s even a parade scene.)   Unfortunately, it’s one of those kinds of movies where every time it does something right, it inevitably makes a misstep.  Some viewers may be more forgiving than others.  It just depends on whether you’re willing to enjoy the highs and brush off the lows. 

Among the highlights is the fun opening scene which contains a nice little homage to Jaws, but… you know… in a cornfield instead of a beach.  The gore is solid too, which certainly is a plus.  We get a pretty good weightlifting kill, an arrow in the head, a chainsaw to the gut, a pitchfork to the stomach, head crushing, a cattle prod to the mouth, and a funny scene where some girls find a severed head and think it’s a prop for a YouTube video.  It also gets bonus points for the scene where the girls are unable to call for help because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone. 

It does seem a bit odd that it was based on a novel as nothing about it screams “literary adaptation” since it’s more or less just a riff on ‘80s slasher movies.  (The film thinks having a character say, “It’s like we’re in an ‘80s horror movie” lets it off the hook.)  The townsfolk conspiracy that fuels the clowns’ massacre is easily the weakest part, as it loses a lot of momentum in the third act when the killers begin over-explaining their motives.  

Douglas is solid in the lead, but the rest of her friends are rather grating.  The supporting cast of adults include Will Sasso as the sheriff and Kevin Durand as the sniveling mayor.  They’re pretty good, although they feel kind of underutilized.  At least Abrams manages to be likable in the thankless dad role. 

Overall, Clown in a Cornfield is an uneven horror flick that’s nearly saved by a good crop of kill scenes. 

SPINAL TAP 2: THE END CONTINUES (2025) *** ½

This is Spinal Tap is one of the quintessential cult comedies of all time.  Not only is it one of the greatest Rock n’ Roll movies ever made, it (for better or worse) also kicked off the mockumentary style of comedy.  It wasn’t really necessary for the original stars and director Rob Reiner to reunite after more than forty years for a sequel.  Then again, for anyone who has seen the original more times than they can count, you’ll undoubtedly get a kick out of seeing the characters once again. 

This time, director Marty DiBergi (Reiner) chronicles heavy metal gods Spinal Tap (Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer) as they prepare to do a reunion show in New Orleans.  They haven’t seen each other, let alone played together, in fifteen years, so they have to get the rust off in the rehearsal studio.  They must also find a new drummer since all their others have all died under mysterious circumstances. 

The plot is wafer thin, not that it really needed one anyway.  The best portion is the first act where we find out what the guys have been up to.  Nigel (Guest) runs a cheese and guitar shop, David (McKean) writes music for when you’re on hold with customer service (“I won a Holdy!”), and Derek (Shearer) owns a glue museum.  The movie sort of plateaus about halfway through as the scenes in the studio kind of go around in circles.  The big concert finale is a lot of fun though and the ending is quite memorable. 

Honestly, this might’ve worked better as a Netflix show or something akin to their 25th reunion special.  That said, when it’s funny, it’s very funny, even if it never comes close to touching the original.  For most fans (like me), just having everybody in the same room together and jamming will be enough.  There isn’t much meat here, but there are plenty of laughs (and a couple of great cameos).  For a forty years later sequel to a cult classic, it works better than it should… depending I guess on what you want out of it.  Ultimately, it feels less like a continuation and more like a victory lap.  Heck, most cult classics don’t even get that. 

HUMAN HIGHWAY (1982) * ½

I watched the new Devo documentary a few weeks back which featured clips from the band’s appearance in Neil Young’s Human Highway, and I was immediately intrigued.  Based on the footage shown, it looked like a trippy good time.  Well, it was certainly trippy. 

There are Hollywood vanity projects and then there’s crap like this.  Most vanity projects are given to actual filmmakers who have rightfully earned a chance to basically do whatever the hell they want.  Sometimes though, Hollywood gives these things to people that have no business being behind the camera.  Such is the case with Neil Young.  Honestly, you could’ve given the camera to Crosby, Stills, OR Nash and they probably could’ve come up with something better than this. 

The plot has Dean Stockwell (who co-directed with Young) taking ownership of a diner/filling station sometime after the apocalypse.  As he tries to find ways to save money, the nerdy grease monkey (Young) shows the new guy (Russ Tambyln, who also served as choreographer) the ropes.  Meanwhile, a bunch of sanitation workers in glowing radiation suits (Devo) drive around in a truck filled with barrels of radioactive waste. 

Parts of this movie resemble an episode of Alice directed by John Waters.  Others play like David Lynch’s Hee-Haw.  None of it is funny, and it is painfully amateurish throughout.  About halfway through, Young hits his head and dreams he’s a rock star and the rest of the movie basically plays like a long music video.  This sequence also features him performing an annoying song where he dances around with Native Americans that’s filmed in headache inducing Blurry-Vision. 

The cast (which includes Dennis Hopper in multiple roles) can’t save this one.  All of them were probably just doing Neil a favor.  Devo is the only real reason to watch it.  Their songs “It Takes a Worried Man”, “Come Back Jonee”, and their duet with Young on “Hey Hey, My My” make it (mostly) tolerable.  (They may seem like an odd pairing, but Devo was formed at Kent State during the massacre and Young wrote “Ohio” about it, so it makes sense that they’d be kindred spirits.)  It’s the band’s mascot Booji Boy who steals the show.  He probably deserved his own movie.  

KARATE KID LEGENDS (2025) ***

Even though I am a big fan of the original Karate Kid movies, I still haven’t gotten around to watching the Cobra Kai TV show.  I mean, I love Karate Kid and all, but I can’t see myself devoting tens of hours to a TV show about it, even if they did bring my boy Terry Silver back.  There are just so many hours in a day.  On the other hand, a ninety-minute team-up movie between the original star Ralph Macchio and the remake’s Jackie Chan?  Well, that I can do. 

Li (Ben Wang) is a kid who moves from China to New York and almost immediately starts getting hassled by a karate champion classmate named Conor (Aramis Knight).  You see, he’s just jealous because his ex-girlfriend Mia (Sadie Stanley) has befriended Li and he wants to show him up in front of his girl.  Meanwhile, Mia’s father (Joshua Jackson) owes money to the shady characters to own the karate dojo where Conor trains.  Since Li promised his mom (Ming-Na Wen) not to fight, he agrees to train Mia’s dad for an upcoming boxing match.  After her dad is brutally beaten, Li vows to get payback by entering the “Five Boroughs Karate Tournament”.  In order to win, he’ll have to be trained by his Uncle Han (Chan) and his friend Mr. Miyagi’s prized student, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). 

In most of these “legacy” sequels, the stuff with the new characters tends to be the weakest part.  The surprising thing about Karate Kid Legends is that the new characters are all appealing and the new storyline (which is basically an inverse of the original) is engaging.  Wang makes for a likable lead and he’s quite good in his mentoring scenes with Jackson.  In fact, the shakiest aspect of the movie is the last act, which is what you’d expect to be the strongest. 

Many will be bummed that Macchio doesn’t show up until the last forty minutes, but honestly the narrative holds up pretty well without him.  Once he’s there, it’s really little more than fan service anyway.  That said, it’s still a kick (no pun intended) to see him and Chan sharing the screen together.  The tournament finale has some problems too, mostly because it feels rushed and the editing gets a little ADD (the video game-inspired graphics for the fights are cheesy too).  However, it’s nothing that derails the fun.  Besides, Wang gives the movie plenty of heart, and that’s really what counts in a Karate Kid film. 

TITILLATION (1982) ***

Eric Edwards stars as a fast-talking detective who is hired by an eccentric millionaire (Roy Simpson) to find a woman who can fit into a giant bra made of brass.  Naturally, there’s only one woman with a figure like that, and that’s Kitten Natividad.  When she mysteriously disappears, Edwards gets help from the millionaire’s secretary (Angelique Pettyjohn) to find her. 

Directed by Damon Christian, Titillation has a little something for everybody. It’s an entertaining detective spoof that’s anchored by several strong performances as well as a handful of steamy sex scenes.  There are even some legitimately funny moments along the way, like when other characters appear to hear Edwards’ hardboiled narration and try to find out where it’s coming from.  Edwards also proves himself to be a fine comedian as he handles the humor just as well as he does the hardcore action. 

The movie really belongs to the ladies in the cast.  If you’re a fan of Natividad, you’re bound to enjoy it.  Kitten also appeared in Christian’s Eat at the Blue Fox, but unlike that film, she is allowed to get in on the fun here.  Even though her sex scene isn’t of the hardcore variety (no penetration is shown), it’s still hot just seeing her getting all nude and jiggly.  Pettyjohn herself had an interesting career.  She had memorable turns on Star Trek, appeared with Elvis in Clambake, and made movies with everyone from Michael Findlay to Jim Wynorski to Fred Olen Ray.  In the ‘80s she even appeared in a handful of porn films like this one.  She’s particularly hot in her energetic scene with Edwards.  However, the scene where she and Mike Horner seduce a young blonde babe is the XXX highlight as she really gets into it.  Randy West also appears as Edwards’ partner who bangs Gina Gianetti on a bearskin rug. 

Pettyjohn and Natividad later co-starred together in the immortal classic, Takin’ It Off.  

HAPPY GILMORE 2 (2025) ** ½

After the death of his wife, golfer Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) gives up the game to raise his kids.  As the years go by, he becomes strapped for cash and decides to pick up his clubs once again in order to put his daughter through ballet school.  He also winds up going toe to toe with an upstart “extreme” golf league and sets out to take their obnoxious creator (Benny Safdie) down a peg with the help of his old nemesis, Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald). 

I haven’t really kept up with Adam Sandler’s Netflix films (aside from the dramas like Uncut Gems and The Meyerwitz Stories).  This one wasn’t too bad, all things considered.  However, it wasn’t exactly good enough to make me want to run out and watch his other Netflix stuff any time soon. 

The biggest problem was there was no reason it needed to be two hours long.  Then again, I guess just about every Netflix Original out there runs on way too long.  The real issue is that it has enough plot for two movies.  Had the film been content with having Happy trying to pay for his daughter’s dance lessons, it would’ve been just fine.  The last half hour with the extreme golf stuff is weak though, and it’s here where the film begins treading into Caddyshack 2 territory. 

Qualms aside, Happy Gilmore 2 pretty much gives you what you would expect from a three-decades later sequel to Happy Gilmore.  There are lots of cameos from stars of the original and random celebrities (some more random than others), plenty of scenes of Sandler acting like his usual goofball self, and a few genuine chuckles.  It’s just entertaining enough to justify the long wait.  While it will no doubt appease Sandler’s die-hard fans, it often gets bogged down with plot and fan service.  Then again, there are certainly worse legacy sequels you could waste your time on.