Fifteen years after the original 90′s thriller that revived one genre, and kicked off an entirely new meta-based sub genre, the original gang is back and, of course, screaming their lungs out. It’s been ten years since Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) , Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox), and Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) last ran in with the now iconic Ghostface killer. A lot has gone on in the time lapsed, in our world, in entertainment, in the movie’s universe, and, of course, the movie’s meta-universe film-in-a-film universe. And just as the first trilogy did last century, this new installment not only has its finger on the pulse of modern pop-culture, but slices it open it with witty, bloody abandon.

As you may tell already, I enjoyed Scream 4. First I am going to discuss some more technical aspects of why I enjoyed the film, why I  recommend it, and my rating.  Afterward all that I’ll drill  into the core of why I enjoyed it so much, which cuts to the bone of its premise and includes a few spoilers. But I’ll explain why I think Scream 4 is not only a good sequel, but a good stand-alone satire on pop-culture.

So, first, pre-spoiler praise: Scream 4 holds up well after a decade of absence from the pop-culture stage. This gap in its history has been used very well to actually emphasize just why it is so on top of teen-scene (another sub genre owed to Scream creator, Kevin Williamson, practically the reason the WB lasted as long as it did). Remember, the first one came out in 1996 and the last one in 2000. Can you even remember how it was to live in those pre-cellular days? For a movie whose basis rests firmly on telecommunications, the differences between the original and the fourth film are immediate immediately.  For example, in the first film, news of Casey Becker’s (Drew Barrymore) death came by tv news and rumor and it spread like wildfire…as in as slow as flames over a grass field. In this fourth installment, a decade and a half later, 20 cell phones go off in the middle of a high school classroom to let the student body know that one of its own was brutally murdered.

The ageing also offered more meat for the actors to chew on, character-wise. Sidney has written a memoir in an attempt to rid herself of past demons, drop the role of victim, and move on with her life. Her book tour  ends in her old hometown on the anniversary of the killings as a symbol to herself for her freedom. While back home she reconnects with family, like our new heroine Jill (Emma Roberts), Sidney’s cousin. Gail and Dewey have been married since the last film (whose last sequence included his proposal). But while Dewey has grown into the responsibilities of town Sheriff, Gail, the hard-hitting journalist, is beginning to grow tired and frustrated by her confined life to the small mountain community. With their age comes another angle: Sidney is now the wise adult in a cast of fresh new teens, mentor especially to her young cousin, who, along with her friends, are now being targeted.

Of the new cast, a few are not very deep, while some shine and genuinely earn our sympathy. But all still manage to get the sharp, witty teenage banter dialogue that is a hallmark of Kevin Williamson (see Dawson’s Creek). While acting in a slasher film isn’t the kind to garner Oscars, there are two that stand out as not just good for Scream, but actually as good actors. Rory Culkin plays, Charlie, a film geek and aspiring Randy wannabe, who of course was the fan favorite in the first two Screams played by Jamie Kennedy. But that’s not a bad role, so much as an already self-aware script pointing out just how self-aware the town of Woodsboro has become after decades of mass murder coverage and hype. His high school film club essentially worship the Stab movies (Scream’s meta-universe movie-in-a-movie counterpart) as a defining tome for their community. Rory Culkin I have already been a fan of since Signs back in 2002. Plus he’s acting as a film geek obsessed with the hot girl that barely acknowledges he exists? Yeah, I’m a little biased on loving his part in this.

Hayden Panettiere however, I was skeptical of, coming in. I liked her in Heroes, but that was a huge ensemble cast and she didn’t stand out much, nor did the material let her as an actress. In Scream 4 she plays Kirby, the feisty, hot-girl best friend of Sidney’s cousin, Jill. Not the central role, but best-friend of the protagonist roles are always pivotal, and she has a huge share of fun dialogue. It doesn’t hurt either that she’s focus of Charlie’s crush, and not to mention quite the horror film geek herself.

Technically the film looks great. Has a gritty feel like the first two screams that I thought was sorely lacking in the third installment with its gaudy Hollywood movie set setting. Scream 4 takes the franchise right back to where it started, in quiet, secluded Woodsboro. Obviously, director Wes Craven is very comfortable filming horror in small towns. The one thing I did not like at all in this installment was the music. In the first film pop songs were used extensively to set mood and also play over the film’s credits. The soundtrack was a good collection. In this one, music, scoring included, seems to take a back seat to making sure the plot is presented cohesively and more blood and gore. Now I of course don’t mind a fourth installment trying so hard in those areas, but music should have been used to help, it should not have been overlooked.

So, overall, I gave Scream 4 a 7 out of 10. Compare that to my 8 for Scream and 8 for Scream 2 (and ignoring the 3 I gave to Scream 3), and I whole-heartedly recommend seeing this one in theaters. The story is good, the original cast is back, the acting is fun to watch, and I love the premise  (discussed more after this wrap-up).  If you’re a horror fan, you’ll enjoy it, if you’re a Scream fan, you’ll absolutely love it.

Now for the juicy bits. Firstly, I do not give away the ending! I would never perpetrate such a horrible cinema faux pas. But I do discuss the premise of the film in more detail and talk about a couple plot points that are irrelevant to the mystery itself. So feel free to read on if you don’t mind knowing just a couple things before going to the theater. But, for purists, Beware, here be spoilers:

Why did I feel Scream 4 was able to live up to the original in a world flooded with remakes, reboots, sequels, and knock-offs? In fact, that is why I feel this movie was so well done. The self-referential motif’s of the Scream films is what defines it. You cannot watch a Scream movie and not be thrown into a pool of film trivia, from horror to classics, from technique to style. So in this world of remakes, that is exactly what Scream has to comment on. It’s right there in the sequence of the films: the first Scream was about horror films, the second about sequels, the third about trilogies. Now here is the fourth installment, fresh for 2011 to show us how to properly make a horror reboot. And be sure, there are rules to making a reboot, and be doubly sure that you better learn them if you want to survive it.

Right off the bat with the opening scene we are thrown off balance with a fake intro that turns out to be a Stab movie being watched by the real(?) characters. We are the audience watching an audience watching a film that itself self-aware. And at every layer (including us, the realer(?) characters) there are comments on what such shit horror films have become and how even with the awareness of being shit, it’s all just as predictable and lazy as ever. Meta-humor layered upon meta-humor layered upon black humor. It’s enough to make Descartes head explode (“I think you think that I think that you think that I am therefore you are?”) Scream 4 does not only pay homage to the original that made it possible, it literally worships it and does its best to reinvent it, all the while reassuring us that it can’t, just like Scream 2 did when ripping on sequels.

Further references to new advances in communication come up when Dewey is unable to keep a lid on the murders, not even aware that the entire story was leaked over the internet and has spread all over the country until Gail tells him. The media becomes a kind of character lurking in the background, as reports poke and prod around the victims to get statements. This media exposure becomes more central as Charlie explains the reboot rules to us, kindly pointing out how the killer needs to take the story to the next logical stage and film his murders for the world to see. This idea of our lives being broadcast to everyone is literally manifested in Charlie’s film-geek friend, Robbie (Erik Knudsen) who keeps a streaming web-cam strapped to his head for his vlog.

The technology of the new century and the premise of rebooting franchises come together in the central theme of coming to terms with living in a world where at any moment you can suddenly be on camera for all to see along with that public demanding you constantly reinvent yourself for their amusement.

For me, Scream 4 not only succeeds as a horror film and a sequel, but as a stand-alone film about our media-savvy audiences, crazy spot-light-seeking celebrities, and the odd relationship between where they demand and beg each other for approval. As if it were a companion piece to the first film, it’s another great satire on pop-culture.

I’ve been waiting over a decade for a movie like this. Not only since I saw Independence Day, but also since reading H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. There was always something missing from the very saturated sub-genre of alien invasion films. That one element, maybe obviously, was realism. But how do you depict something so fantastical as realistic. Alien contact is one of the few subjects of art that has literally never been before experienced by a human. Because of that, a lot of leeway is given by audiences ready to accept any interpretation offered; from sappy ID4, through surreal Skyline, the almost textbook The Arrival, monster-driven Blob or Thing, red-scare Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or character-driven theme-laden Signs. That’s some range. (I do not include the beautifully made District 9 or nostalgic Day the Earth Stood Still because those are not invasions.)

The only thing that unites this wide range of plots, other than the premise, is how humanity, for all its weaknesses and technological inferiority, somehow manages to pull a Deus ex Machina out of its ass and pull off a win against odds so insurmountable it makes a lottery ticket look like a sound investment. There’s always one person that figures out the secret code or weakness, and just in the nick of time before our last defenses are breached. The only one that stands out is War of the Worlds, arguably the first alien-invasion story ever written, wherein humans actually don’t fend off the Martians, but instead need to be rescued by mother-nature itself as the invaders succumb to native bacteria to which we have long since become immune (guess the Martians weren’t smart enough to send a scouting party). But even that lacks realism, because if we can draw from any actual experience, it is never the invaders that are hit with disease. In fact, disease warfare has won over many indigenous populations very successfully.

But Battle: LA, the newest edition to the club, has brought something I’ve always wanted to see: a dash of realism. It achieves this partially through the point of view it gives us. One major distinction to be made between alien invasion stories is the pair of eyes with which it tells the story. ID4 gave omniscient eyes, letting us see over the whole scenario like spectators at a ball game; this gives audiences answers to basic questions like who, what, why, etc by way of scenes involving the military and government officials. Another POS is showcased in Signs, told through a very limited scope of one family as they experience the events around them; this gives the audience no answers at all and we are left to speculate with the characters.

Battle: LA, however, manages to mix both perspectives.  The story follows a military platoon, specifically Staff Sergeant Nantz. We see through these regimented eyes the first notifications of “meteors” en route for Earth and through the realization that they are no mere pieces of space rock. This unique limited view is dropped into the very system that normally offers the audience omniscient questions. So we do get some answers, but they are given to us as the characters receive them from their commanders and reconnaissance. This technique is more visceral, and while not entirely true to the method of Showing rather than Telling, it comes closer than other films.

After a very brief briefing, we’re airdropped into battle with the soldiers and left to fend for ourselves. It doesn’t take very long for anyone to realize there will be little exposition as we run for our lives.

Dragging us through hell is the common ragtag, multi-ethnic band of troops. Only a few precious minutes is given to reveal who is retiring in a week, who’s expecting a baby, who’s engaged, and who’s the young battle-virgin. However, trite it sounds on the page or in retrospect; it is shown with a respect for the individual characters as in a cohesive unit and not to deliberately pull at fake emotions. Most of the characterizations are made through actions.

And there is plenty of action through which the characters are revealed. Battle: LA excels not only in its home genre, but is a very good war film. More akin to Black Hawk Down, than District 9, since the limited point of view doesn’t give the audience anymore intelligence than the main characters. Once we are in the heart of the battle, there are no more scenes outside hell. The fighting is up-close and in-your-face. It plays out like an urban guerrilla war with the invaders treated as combatants both by the characters and the camera. These are not creatures to stop and understand, they’re hostiles to be killed or avoided. Explosions echo and bullets ricochet everywhere in the congested Los Angeles streets. The atmosphere is very constricted and claustrophobic, which ups the adrenaline and keeps the story rooted in realism: this is happening right here in our backyard.

Action, while ample in this visual-effects-filled explosion extravaganza, is also a theme. Several times it is noted that no matter what decision is made, a decision must be made. While simplistic in scope, it cements the characters and audience in the moment and emphasizes the fact that they are in the midst of a war and need to survive. The theme itself drives the plot forward.

Rounding out the “sci” in this still very science-fiction-based war story, the invaders are perfectly represented. On film they look amazing, but only for the few seconds you’re able to focus on them in the midst of all the gunfire. Their tactics and alien technology are the right mix of advancement and plausibility that marks all great science-fiction. There are no force-fields, laser-guns, or machines that just won’t die. They are an advanced race but they are a civilization like us. During one rare moment of calm when a solider is able to reflect on their predicament he makes what I think is a very introspective comment on how the invaders “are just a bunch of grunts following orders like us.”

Without giving away too much, there are, of course, the familiar tropes you must recognize from such a highly represented sub-genre. But, again, with that added touch of realism, none of them feel forced; instead they grow out of the characters’ actions in a way that is not just plausible, but as if it had to happen that way.

In the end, you will be left satisfied and feeling that this is how the Alien Invasion story SHOULD look. And it looks amazing.

Amazing. It’s unreal. I take off my 3D glasses after the credits roll and I feel exactly as Jake Sully does after he steps out of the machine that lets him control his alien body. I feel like I have literally stepped out of some other world and back into our own. This is the depth of the experience that is Avatar. I did not watch the movie, I was in it. I was there on Pandora deep in the jungle amidst the ferns, the bugs, the wildlife, and the people who live there.

James Cameron has come back after twelve years of being crowed king of the world to take us to a completely different world he has created out of the latest advances in filmmaking technology. The story he tells is a familiar one, filled with familiar themes of conservation versus wasteful destruction and appreciating the world you live in versus taking what you want from it. But you have never experienced this story in this way before.

To call the film immersive while talking about the three-dimensional perspectives is misleading. Cameron has carefully picked and honed his story to introduce to audiences to the proper use of three-dimensional technology. Because it is not just the image that is immersive, it is the story itself, as well as the fictional world he has created. The planet of Pandora is a lush, tropical world, full of exotic creatures and plants that are some of the best imagined I can remember in a film depicting an alien world. While at the same time it is engrossingly familiar with the green trees, blue waters, herbivorous, lumbering giants, sleek and fast carnivores chasing after them, and plants and flowers that cover the entire surface.

To watch the movie is to take a stroll with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a marine who has been chosen to pilot an Avatar. A laboratory-grown hybrid between a human and a Na’vi, the native population of the planet. At this point I’ll point out for the geeks that, in fact, Pandora is a moon, orbiting a blue gas giant planet that looms large in the sky beautifully in nearly every night shot, like the most romantic full moon you could imagine that takes up half the sky.

Jake joins the team of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) who are the scientific/diplomatic representatives of the human race on the planet, and of course, the team is a measly dozen scientists that try to study the planet and its people among the hundreds of mercenaries that protect the Company’s interest. Representing those interests is Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) who is cold as ice in his descriptions of the reason they are there (a mineral that nets a staggering 20 million dollars a kilo) and his lack of sympathy for the natives in the way of the shareholders interests. The Company’s determination in taking what they want is personified by the grizzled Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who plays the part of uncaring, aggressive, might-makes-right antagonist to perfection.

Those are just the humans. After the quick introduction of their characters and their motives, Jake, and we along with him, are thrown into the jungle. We have to step easy through the unfamiliar territory, brush the leaves out of our faces, and bat the gnats away. Then we need to run from the growling set of jaws that means to make our visit a short one. And Jake runs into Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and introduces us into her tribe full of its own band of characters and themes. It is with her guidance that Jake is shown the real Pandora. The beautiful world to run through, to dive into, and to fly above. The landscape takes on its own personality. It is awe-inspiring in the least.

I will be the first to admit the plot may be predictable, the conflict easy to see from light-years away. But sometimes the point of a story is not to be unpredictable, but to simply matter. There are dozens of films that sport twists and surprises but in no make you care for the people that are twisting. As always in Cameron’s films, it is the characters that push the story forward. You will end up being pulled into the world and fall in love with every aspect of it just as Jake Sully, and like him you will not want to leave.

That is how the three-dimensions are used so effectively. They are used as a tool to engross you in the story and character, not as gimmicks. The history of 3D movies is full of, until now was made up entire of, silly tricks and gags to make children giggle and teenage girls scream. Balls would be thrown at the screen, bubbles would float over the audience, an arrow or knife would cut through the screen, and then the boring plot would continue. The story and the effects were both oblivious and irrelevant to each other. However, this is not itself a bad thing, most new technologies are introduced this way. Indeed one of the first films ever was nothing more than a shot of an oncoming train that caused a panic and sent audiences screaming for their lives out of the theater over a hundred years ago.

After what seems a hundred years of 3D movies being laughed at as silly, Avatar brings the technology to fruition. Avatar is not a movie you watch, you experience it. It is an experience that you will no where else. I implore everyone to make sure they experience it in its intended IMAX 3D format. You should not wait to see Avatar on blu-ray on a tiny television screen, and that includes anyone that thinks their 60 inch LCD HDTVs are special. Any tv of any size will be flat and bland in comparison. Which is why I intend to see Avatar in it’s all-immersive three dimensions again.

I am not happy. I’m not angry. I’m just sad. Not sad the movie was no good, because it was very good…if you can call paying to be depressed good. I read the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Cormac McCarthy (author of No Country For Old Men), so I knew what I was getting into.

The setting is a bleak distant future…I hope. The time is never given, nor the exact location, not even the Father and Son’s real names given. Such things are not important anymore. Only survival is important. This is not a dystopia like Blade Runner, it’s not an action-filled barbarian-run thug society either. It’s simply the End. Food is running out, no more grows. Trees are dying all around, there is no more wildlife. There is literally nothing.

The images are disturbing in ways that drama I Am Legend could never reach and yet as eerily familiar, while without the tongue-in-cheek humor, of the comedy Zombieland.

That’s it, that’s all I can say. Like Viggo Mortensen’s character says, “there’s no more tales left to tell.” Things like that just don’t matter. Sure there are cannibals, but there’s no time to feel disgusted, you have to run. There’s no food, but there’s no point in whining about it, just keep looking for some.

If you want to experience gripping story about a Father protecting his Son against the greatest of odds, if you want to sit for a few hours and witness the darkest hour any movie has ever portrayed the human race going through, if you think you can handle it to get to the hope I’m sure you think must be at the end (whether it is or not), then you should make an effort to see this film.

One line captures why people write and then read these stories, by the Father as he narrates: “I told the boy when you dream about bad things happening, it means you’re still fighting and you’re still alive. It’s when you start to dream about good things that you should start to worry.”

There are few feelings I love when, after I have entered a movie theater in a mopey mood, not entirely there on my own, but just there to do something on an otherwise boring day, that I slowly come to realize that I am in for a great ride. Before the credits for Gamer even start (during the now over-the-top animated logo for any company that helped produce the movie and their mothers) Marilyn Manson’s cover of Sweet Dreams began, immediately and appropriately setting the tone for what would be incredibly revolting yet deeper than it first appears. For the more hardcore gamers out there, you may recognize, as I did, the nod to Doom 2, which shares the music for Manson’s this cover (which itself is taken from Ozzy Osborne’s Crazy Train!) in the level Demon’s Head (all three pieces are on my playlist on this site).

The opening sequence jumps right into the action of a full scale battle. We follow Kable (Gerard Butler) through the hellish warzone that is bloodier than most war films. It is surreal as the realistic visceral violence is set to the tempo and manners of a video game. There are obvious “noob” players whose character, called Slayers, is not functioning quite right, NPC bots that walk around mindlessly, the characters scroll through there weapons unnaturally like in a FPS, there is even one player tea bagging a corpse. It was at that point I was almost rolling in the aisle laughing.

But I wasn’t laughing at the movie. I had expected a silly concept made up by suits to get kids off controllers and into theaters, but instead saw the movie as made by people who actually do know and like games, but had something to admit about their destructive nature. A lot of people have slammed the movie as brainless violence and no plot, I would have to rebut that they are the ones being mindless. Even if the satire is literally drenched in entrails, it’s still there.

The film plays homage to Blade Runner and Robocop by showing the future of our society having sunk into a dystopia of a corporate-run civilization, with ads, banners, and billboards covering every available square inch. However, unlike the older films, this once cliché of future settings is eerily familiar here. We learn through the media (news and talk shows, again not unlike Robocop) about the man responsible for Slayers, Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall, TVs Dexter), who is a mix of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Hannibal Lecter.

The movie’s satire is subtle while the devices used to show it are insanely in-your-face. We learn of the precursor to the game Slayer was one called Society. It is literally The Sims as played out by live human beings. A player logs in, dresses their character (or undresses, most of the time), and then completely controls the actions of that human. I don’t know how much is common knowledge about chat rooms and online forums, but trust me, the scenes of fetishes, freaks, fornication, and drugs are, unfortunately, so true-to-life it’s depressing. Like the gaming in-jokes from slayers, the society scene has references to online culture. The funniest bit are the attractive, young, vibrant actors that are paid to let their bodies be controlled by the…not so attractive players, which is visualized by the most disturbing…ugh…image, that I have had the displeasure to see (or even remember seeing).

The plot itself is standard formula of good guys in bad situations learning about bad guys and having to go fight them to save their family. It focuses mainly on the technology of being able to control another human being and the ethics and opportunities that come with that. There is a bit of mystery, such as in The Matrix, as the world is never really what it seems to be. The computer interfaces shown also reminded me of Minority Report which is widely known in the technology world for its clear screens manipulated by combinations of hand gestures. However, what makes Gamer stand apart from all the sci-fi of the past, is that this movie is not inventing new technology, it’s extrapolating current prototypes. Microsoft already had demos of a game system that reacts to human body gestures alone, the iPhone is changing the standards of any user-interface, and nanotechnology is rapidly becoming a reality. Gamer may be science-fiction, but the science in it is in no way fictitious.

While the plot is simple I am a strong believer that it doesn’t matter what the story is that you are telling, it matters how you tell it. The directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, first garnered my attention with Crank in 2006, starring Jason Statham. I immediately loved their style of jerky cameras, fast cutting, faster paced storytelling, and eccentric visuals normally reserved for death-metal videos and goth-kids’ poems. Gamer is definitely not for those with a weak stomach or those who become nauseous watching shakey-cam.

The soundtrack is fun and put to good use to both carry the action as well as the dark-comedy. The action is raw and intense and practically non-stop. The acting is on par, neither good or bad since it is simply not integral to the story. However, there are many cameos to be found of actors from cult-favorite TV and film.

Overall I had a great time seeing the movie. I cannot decide, though, if it is a 7 or 8 out of 10. On the one hand I enjoyed it immensely and got all the “easter eggs”. However, if you are not a gamer yourself (do you know what an “easter egg” is?) then you may not like the movie Gamer.