Milk_Tray_Guy

I remember seeing this third US entry in the Ring franchise not too long after it came out. It got slated back then and didn't do well financially. It pretty much ignores the Naomi Watts movies and starts out as its own thing - an obvious attempt to relaunch Ring as Final Destination type teen horror. It doesn't work. The two 'name actors' - Johnny Galecki and Vincent D'Onofrio - are good (shame they don't share a scene); the rest of the cast are young, charisma black holes, playing characters we don't care about because we know next to nothing about them. The colour desaturation is *waay* overdone, as though the director saw it somewhere and thought it looked 'cool'. And the story is a mess; anyone not familiar with the Ring mythology - and maybe even some who are familiar with it - will probably be confused as hell. Bonnie Morgan - the actress/contortionist portraying Samara - does a good, creepy job (no digital effects on her contortions, they're all done for real; the girl must be quadruple-jointed or something!), but doesn't get much to do. Typical - the best thing about the movie is underused. Not surprisingly, there was no follow-up. Galecki, D'Onofrio, and Morgan get this 4/10.

Fun movie based on a simple concept - you can't outrun death; when it's your time, it's your time. But they say the simplest ideas are often the best, and the premise here has tons of scope for increasingly bizarre and spectacular 'accidents'. The biggest set-piece is of course the plane disaster at the beginning - horrifyingly realistic, playing on the real-life fears of a lot of people. Nothing afterwards comes close, but the effects throughout are nevertheless well-done, the deaths inventive, and the young cast are pretty good (best performance by a mile is Devon Sawa - although, to be fair, he has the most to work with). The ending is a very obvious reshoot (confirmed in interview by the director and a producer on the disc), but it's better than what they shot originally.

The movie does hit a bit of a lull between the plane sequence and the 'kills' finally starting (this was originally an unused script for an episode of The X-Files, and it does feel stretched-out in places to fill the hour-and-a-half runtime), but once it hits its stride it's a wild ride. 7/10.

Viciously funny mockumentary about teen beauty pageants and the literally murderous extremes that some mothers will go to to try to ensure their daughters win. Stars Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, Allison Janney, Denise Richards, Kirstie Alley, Brittany Murphy, and - in her film debut - Amy Adams. Plus Adam West as himself! If you like the original Mean Girls and have a twisted sense of humour you'll probably like this (I loved the town perv-pedo who managed to somehow get himself on the judges panel, and also last year's winner talking on-camera about how entering pageants had truly changed her life - giving her interview from her bed in the bulimia clinic!). The whole cast are great, but my favourite is probably Ellen Barkin as 'Annette', 'Amber's' (Kirsten Dunst) trailer-trash, drunken mom, whose only concern when she walks in on a camera crew filming an interview with 'Amber' in her bedroom is 'Well, if they ask you to take your top off, get the money first', before leaving her daughter to it! 😄

Great kick-back-at-the-end-of-the-day movie 7.5/10.