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December 25, 2006

Black Christmas

(out of four)

Horror movies have come a long way in 30 years, although you wouldn't know it by watching this brain-dead Black Christmas remake, which recycles the serial-killer-in-a-sorority-house plot from the original without any improvement in style or story. Bob Clark's 1974 version has acquired its cult following largely in retrospect, with horror fans celebrating the seminal slasher movie for doing it first. With Halloween, four years later, John Carpenter not only did it better, he also picked a more appropriate holiday. Yet devotees insist that Christmas is the superior film.

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Posted by Peter Debruge at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2006

Charlotte's Web

(out of four)

Call me heartless, but by the end of the new computer-enhanced, live-action adaptation of Charlotte's Web, I'm not convinced that Wilbur is worthy of any of the words his eight-legged friend uses to describe him. Radiant? Hardly. Terrific? How so? This pig may have escaped the smokehouse, but it's the word-spinning spider (voiced by Julia Roberts) who seems special.

The rest of the critters simply remind us how much better Babe was at assigning unexpected personalities to otherwise ordinary farm animals. Remember Ferdinand, the duck with a rooster complex, or Babe, the delusional porker whose sheepdog tendencies earned the movie a Best Picture nomination? Now that was some pig.

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Posted by Peter Debruge at 11:28 AM | Comments (582)