In defense of... Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

With yet another would-be remake/reboot/sequel of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre arriving in theaters tonight night at 10pm (this time merely titled Texas Chainsaw 3D), I thought now would be as good a time as any to offer my thoughts on my favorite entry in the very long running series.  No, I'm not talking about the admittedly groundbreaking Tobe Hopper original, nor the surprisingly good 2003 remake, nor even one of the wacky 'official' sequels.  No, truth be told, my favorite variation on the adventures of Leatherface and his cannibalistic family remains the last one.  I'm speaking of course of Jonathan Liebesman's 2006 prequel to Marcus Nispel's 2003 remake (complicated, I know), entitled merely Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.  The film was a moderate box office success ($19 million opening weekend, $51 million worldwide off a $16 million budget) but was roundly panned by most critics and even a large number of would-be hardcore horror fans.  To this day, I'm not sure why.  Yes, it can be argued that we don't need an origin story for Leatherface and his murderous clan. We don't need to see how he was born, how he got the chainsaw, or how a certain villain from the prior entry happened to have lost his legs.  But perhaps too well hidden in the minutiae of its origin stories and mythology building is nothing less than a top-flight horror film.

Review: Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

Battle: Los Angeles
2011
116 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Rare is the movie that loses points for being too realistic. But Jonathan Liebesman's alien invasion picture feels less like an epic and more like a genuinely plausible war picture. This is not a bad thing, and the film is generally successful at showing what the military response to such a domestic threat might be. The film is basically Black Hawk Down, with the faceless marauders being from outer-space instead of militant indignant people. While the marketing promises scale, the film merely delivers claustrophobic survival with no real deeper meaning that would give the carnage any real weight. Liebesman gets the details seemingly right, but the end result is a war picture where the fact that the invaders are from 'up there' seems almost beside the point.

Jonathan Liebesman to direct Clash of the Titans 2. Why that's good news...

Normally I couldn't care less about a sequel to this year's Clash of the Titans remake. The film wasn't very good, and it was most notable for a stunningly awful 3D conversion. I was lucky/smart enough to see the film in 2D (I later sampled the 3D so I could confirm its inadequacy), but the film is still a botched bore, although this seems to be yet another case where poor Louis Leterrier had his movie radically altered in the editing room. But if there must be a sequel, at least Jonathan Liebseman will be directing it. Why is that good news? Well, because first of all, Liebseman has some history with studio interference, as his debut feature, Darkness Falls, underwent massive studio tinkering, so hopefully he can stand up to the newly hands-on Warner execs (the formally hands-off studio apparently tinkered with Clash of the Titans, Terminator: Salvation, and Edge of Darkness). Second of all, his short film Rings, which was shot to coincide with The Ring Two in 2005, is the best American variation on the Ring mythology yet made, better than the rock-solid American remake of The Ring and quite a bit better than the terrible Ring Two. Third of all, this means that his upcoming alien invasion picture, Battle: Los Angeles, is obviously making some studio execs very happy, implying that it may live up to its clever teaser.