father says, 'bow your head like the good book says...'

Jim Dedman has a post passing judgment on this very website, all of which is welcome. He says he disagrees with my ratings of May, Heavenly Creatures, and Terminator 3. A brief comment on each of these movies:

May was a sincerely creepy movie up until the final 15 minutes. Jim Dedman points to Roger Ebert's four-star review of the movie, presumably to illustrate the fact that at least one other person besides himself has enjoyed it immensely. I must admit that Ebert's rating was the only reason I rented the movie to begin with. Indeed, I thought Angela Bettis' performance was right on the mark. However, I thought the final scene was simply too contrived and over-the-top. It had a Frankenstein-like quality to it that I felt to be simply misplaced in this day and age. No, I wasn't laughing at the final scene. But I was overcome by feelings of doubt, skepticism, and disbelief. Up until that scene, everything had a genuine, down-to-earth sense to it. I could imagine the events of the film actually happening in real life, and indeed I have come across people not so different from the character of May. It was this everydayness quality to the movie that made it seem so different from other horror movies. I felt the movie to be a sad, sometimes terrifying account of a lonely social outcast. All of this was destroyed in the final scene, which was so beyond my personal limits of belief, and was in such stark contrast to the rest of the movie, that my disappointment overwhelmed my judgment of the movie as a whole. (Even so, I gave it a B-, which is respectable!) The final scene makes sense from a purely abstract, intellectual perspective. That much is true. However, to have the horror shown to us in such a non-subtle, explicit way, was error.

Heavenly Creatures had some good themes, and interesting ideas to it. But the performances were sub-par, and I still cannot get over the scene in which we are exposed to the girls running and laughing ad nauseum. Plus, the scenes involving the clay figurines coming to life were (much like the final scene in May) a little too awkward for my tastes. There's much to be said for subtlety, and self-restraint.

T3 worked because it was imbued with a sense of self-awareness that is rarely seen in sequels (indeed, I think that's why sequels are generally inferior to the original films). T3 recognized that T2 was the best action movie of the 1990s, and it correctly presumed that attempting to match or surpass that genius would be an exercise in futility. So what to do? Don't take yourself seriously. This T3 did well. As I said in my review, T3 is like a Scream for the action genre. It managed to poke fun of itself all the while maintaining its "action movie" status. It was fun, action-packed, and humorous to boot.

Finally, Jim Dedman calls me out on the fact that I gave Old School--that sordid excuse for a film--an "F" without reviewing it. Well the fact is that everything below 28 Days Later (with the curious exception of The Hulk) does not have a review. Why? Because back then, I still had not discovered the fun of film criticism. But in response to Jim Dedman's defense of Old School, (much like Jim Dedman before me) I will simply reference Roger Ebert, who said it best in his one-star review of the film: "This is not a funny movie."

Oh, and just a peripheral point: I was re-reading some of my old reviews, including the ones Jim has referenced. I must say that the quality of my reviews has vastly improved since those first few attempts. For example, upon re-reading Heavenly Creatures, I must say that the style and writing of that piece is in marked contrast to my current, more refined, style. It takes time to find your voice in film criticism. That much I have discovered. That said, I implore you all to read some of my more recent reviews for a better sense of my film criticism skills.