This has under a 6 on IMDB, under a 50% (both audience and critics) score on Rotten Tomatoes, and under 1,000 views logged here at the time of this writing, but for the life of me I don't see why. This is a pulpy, foreboding, brilliantly scored mood piece that might be style over substance but the style is so good that it didn't matter for me. It feels like a Lynch homage, an at times surrealist fever dream. I…
I'm glad people are making weird, experimental stuff like this, but most of it just isn't for me. This one kind of feels like listening to a 10 minute heavy metal drum solo. You can tell there's skill at work and it might be an impressive achievement but in the end it just feels kind of loud and you have a bit of a headache. It was also kind of just difficult to physically watch a couple of times, with the flashing lights, etc. At least there's something of a discernable story in this one, which isn't always the case in this kind of avant-garde/experimental stuff.
****1/4.
It's not necessarily a miracle that Big Trouble in Little China got greenlit, but it's a minor miracle that it managed to reach the screen in its final form. I simply ave a difficult time imagining how Hollywood executives looking at this script (which is awful from an objective standpoint) and premise (absurd from an objective standpoint) and thought it was a good idea without making major revisions. I'm sure glad it happened, though.
I mentioned the script, which…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
It should probably be illegal to pack this much fun into a movie of this length, but I'm glad it's not. Essentially a re-make/re-imagining of the first film of the series, Sam Raimi once again sends Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) to a cabin in the woods where great danger lurks. The first film was noticeably lower on budget, and while it was fun, focused more on the creation of a dreadlike feeling, whereas Raimi's second effort at the story just…
