items tagged with Elizabeth Perkins

INSIDIOUS

THE DUKES OF HAZZARD

Since there’s exactly one entertaining scene (preceded by one entertaining cutaway) in the entire film version of The Dukes of Hazzard – one sequence in this shockingly wrong-headed comedy that’s the least bit amusing – let me just save you the $10 and describe it now: For reasons I’ve gone to great lengths to forget, Bo (Seann William Scott) and Luke (Johnny Knoxville) decide to make a pilgrimage to Atlanta, so they hop in the General Lee and high-tail it out of Hazzard County, speeding along their dirt road with “Yee-haaaaw”s a-blazin’. Cut to the freeway in Atlanta, with the General Lee stuck in traffic. (A nice moment.) As they wait, vehicles pass them on both sides; half of the drivers and passengers greet the boys with hearty “Way to go! The South will rise again!” admiration, and the other half sneer at them with “You’re gonna be late for your Klan meeting, rednecks!” revulsion. It’s unclear whether the boys ever realize that the source of the travellers’ contention is the trademark Confederate flag on the General Lee’s roof.

THE RING TWO

After sitting through the lifeless horror sequel The Ring Two, the only thing I wanted – besides a major jolt of caffeine to wake me up – was a towel. What is up with all the freakin’ water in this movie? With the exceptions of Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Esther Williams in anything, I can’t think of a leading actress who spends as much screen time soaked as Naomi Watts does in this half-hearted follow-up to 2002’s The Ring.

FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN

I can’t imagine who could make sense of the gobbledygook plotting of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, yet I can’t imagine who will fail to be wowed by the movie’s effects; it might be the most visually extraordinary, intellectually banal sci-fi work since 2001: A Space Odyssey. There isn’t a moment in the film that isn’t amazing to watch, and that includes the moments when the heroine (voiced by Ming-Na) simply walks alone with her hair blowing lightly past her cheeks; Final Fantasy stands as the current standard-bearer in computerized realism.