HarryWarden

The best way to describe CTHULHU is "Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Shadow Over Innsmouth." It's a very deliberately-paced movie with long, moody takes and an emphasis on character drama. This film is a completely love-it-or-hate-it affair. People expecting gore and monsters will be disappointed, but art-house horror fans and David Lynch lovers will be in pure bliss.

H.P. fanatics will argue the merits of this one, but the filmmakers are the first to nail the bizarre fever-dream aspect of Lovecraft's writings. There's a lot of nightmarish imagery and nothing is explained or resolved by the end. And while this is a very loose adaptation, there are plenty of nods to the Cthluhu mythos to keep fans happy.

The acting is a little uneven and there are times when the movie feels TOO disjointed, but this cerebral effort is still the closest we've come to seeing true Lovecraft captured on film. Those sick of Stuart Gordon's camp-fests, will find much to love about Cthulhu.

What a depressing experience.

The big final showdown of an epic story...and I felt NOTHING. Not one little stir of emotion. This film was exactly what we all feared it was going to be: No tact, no style, no substance. It's just sad that such a wonderful intelligent series had to deteriorate into a hollow studio FX show. Mr Ratner, you certainly lived up to our low expectations.

Every frame of this film feels rushed. A slew of characters were killed and cured, and I didn't even bat an eyelash. Ideas are barely explored and none of the characters get any real focus. Aside from Wolvy, Storm, and Magneto, every mutant feels like an obligatory cameo. All the actors, save for Ian McKellen, act out-of-character and hurry through their lines like they just want to get out of the movie.

To be fair, this isn't entirely Ratner's fault. It took everybody working together to screw this one up. The script is atrocious. The dialogue is flat out embarrassing - it's almost all composed of badly-timed puns and quips, and some unintentionally hilarious lines ("She was sealed up in a cocoon of energy."). The mutant cure is barely explored and nothing that was set up in the previous two films ever really amount to anything.

There's a sense that Fox controlled everything here and used everyone involved as their puppets to milk the fans of their cash. This is not the X-Men we know and love.

I saw this with a packed house at the Mann's Chinese in Hollywood. The theater was full of screaming X-fans and the excitement level was over-the-top. Five minutes into the film, it was dead, as if a giant vacuum had sucked all life from the theater. The "Snakes on a Plane" trailer (which was more brilliant than anything here) got a bigger cheer than anything in X3.

'Nuff said.

We've seen dozens of remakes in the past several years: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Ring, Dawn of the Dead, The Fog. None could hold a candle next to the original films.

Could it be? After all this time, do we finally found a remake that's actually superior? You're damn right! The Hills Have Eyes is not at all like the other remakes in this ungodly trend. It's not a cheap cash-in. It's a movie made with respect by horror filmmakers for horror fans.

Sure, it has its share of problems: There are too many cheesy false scares, they added a corny patriotic subtext, and it sticks so close to the original that fans will find little in the way of surprises. But it's a leaner, meaner animal than Wes Craven's original film. The characters are more believable, the mutants are scarier, and the whole thing is incredibly visceral! This is the first studio horror film in years that I've liked...mainly because it doesn't feel like a studio horror film.

Funny side note: A girl next to me in the theater was silently weeping through the last half of the movie. Guess it made an impression.