I went into this like many thinking, "Hey, it's Switchblade Pictures, another chance for some cheap thrills and naked girls." Admit it, you all did. But there is nary a bare breast to be seen between the two movies, so if you are in search of skin, sorry you'll need to look elsewhere.

I was impressed by how they made the most of their budgets. I'd love to know how much, because I'm betting between the two movies they spent less than 20 grand and yet manage two solid films. I am a big fan of the world of low budget movies, it is a high stake of gambling but often you can find movies with a lot of heart for the horror movie genre instead of movies that just hurl money and music video directors at a horror project until you get something to churn out onto DVD or into theatres for a week. Usually the low budget adventure is fraught with awful lighting, inept acting, and big ideas that fall apart in the details, but sometimes you get movies that understand their limitations and do the best they can with what they have and not try to remake "Gone With The Wind" with zombies (you know that doesn't sound like a half bad idea).

The fights are better than the first, thanks in no small way to Donnie Yen's excellent choreography, with the exception of the rather laughable CG fight early in the movie where it makes the original "Street Fighter 2" look cutting edge. I liked the story more. While it was predictable, it worked better than the completely predictable original. But probably what makes the movie better is the lack of the long unbearable sections in the original where Blade heaps exposition on the audience with a dump truck that drags the movie to the ground. Here the exposition is peppered thorough the big action sequences and you aren't stuck in these long draggy parts as much.

Director Guillermo Del Toro really brought the entire package deal here, and his success with this translated into making "Hellboy" even more popcorn fun. Extra points go to "Blade 2" for having Ron Perlman, who is always a going to give a good performance.

He does a wonderful job of creating that kinetic flow of dreams, especially the credit sequence which makes all Pixar movies look like pre-school flip-books. The plot is a little warped, but for the world of dreams you can't expect clarity. The plot felt a little like a Mamoru Oshii movie, but I am huge fan of his work too so I went right along with it. The movie has amazing energy that starts off strong and maintains the entire duration of the movie.

It's movies like these, with their exciting thought-provoking storylines, vibrant lively animation style, and guts to be daring in their choices, that are the real animation masterpieces, not those cold, sterile Pixar movies with their done-to-death trite storylines and lifeless CG.

The first and seemingly universal complaint is no Michael Myers, but I've always liked that. It is the only "unsequel" in the history of slasher movies, and by that it is unique--possibly a hideous mutation, but as slasher movies go it stands alone. The attempt was to derail the slasher sequel train that at the time was seeing a new "Friday The 13th" movie being put out on a yearly basis, and while I still find them enjoyable in that junk food kind of way, they were adding nothing to horror movies in general. "Halloween 3" was trying to keep the Halloween theme in the film but break with Michael Myers and set off on its own by keeping the "Halloween" name but making different movies within the Halloween theme. It was a grand experiment that utterly failed, but the attempt is worthy enough.

The biggest problem was the overly goofy story of a toymaker stealing a chunk of Stonehedge for some ancient Celtic rite facilitated by discs in Halloween masks that make kids' brains melt and leak bugs. Add to that the army of clockwork android robots and you really stray off the normal path into crazy town. It felt a little like a 50s sci-fi movie, like "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", especially at the end when Tom Atkins is trying to get them to stop the broadcast and it slowly dissolves, leaving you with the commercial jingle echoing in the night sky.

It has a few good moments but overall it was a weak movie that wasn't the best idea to lead off a break with convention, and I think that is why "Halloween 3" is so universally hated. I give it three stars mainly because I always applaud trying something new--win, lose, or draw, the attempt is praiseworthy. Too often with domestic movies we go for the cheap and easy (we're on "Saw VI" now, were any of the "Saw" movies even good to begin with?) and eschew the new and different but forget if it wasn't for somebody coming up with a wacky idea of a masked guy killing babysitters on Halloween, it is doubtful we'd even have a slasher genre today.

First let's get the good out of the way. Yes, it looks great. When you have a budget that is fifty times bigger than the original, it better look sharper than the original or you really have to cut back on the doughnut budget.

This movie started the long and shameful line of Americanized remakes of Japanese horror movies that continue to this day. The biggest sin these movies commit is they take all the subtlety out of the movie and hand feed you each and every plot point with a spoon with big flashy step pieces that fall into place with audible thumps like Tetris blocks. What made the original "Ringu" so enjoyable was the subtlety that pervaded the entire movie. In this version the tense, gloomy, claustrophobic enivorment has been replaced with a camera filter making everything blue grey, because we have to visibly show the audience that things are gloomy. We're not going to chance them not picking up on it.

The plot is carved down to a nice bite sized mass market chunk that, while making everything clearer, also takes away a lot of the mystery that made the first "Ringu" so fun. The original didn't answer every possible question and left it up to you to decide. The ending is pure Disneyfied, but I doubt the original ending would fly well with US audiences.

But what really drove me nuts throughout the entire movie was the kid. I hated him from the very first wide-eyed "Village of the Damned" meets "Sixth Sense" scene. Kids in American horror movies are like a three legged mule on a treadmill: while the intention is well meant, it completely ruins the movie, as well as the treadmill. In the original movie, the kid was seen as independent, while in this movie the kid is seen as a world-weary know it all, and it drives me mad when movies have a kid acting like he is 45. In the original movie they got rid of the kid fairly early on and stuck with the two main characters, while this movie insists on dragging him along so he can annoy me for incredibly long stretches of the film.

While this movie certainly does work a lot better than 99% of later remakes--the remake of "Pulse" comes to mind--it still isn't nearly as good as the original because they took away all the subtle bits and added loud noise set piece horror sequences like the horse on the ferry boat and the hair in the mouth bit.

It is a lot like "Chungking Express", just set in history. It is a slow, melancholic movie that, if you are in the mood for it, can be rather satisfying; but if you aren't, I can really understand how it can drive you mad.

I watched the "Redux" version and haven't seen the original, so I can't comment on how it has changed or if it is better... I did enjoy it for its cerebral qualities. Wong Kar Wai does do an excellent job with it and this is no different. This is as close to wuxia as the art house crowd will ever get, and as close as the wuxia crowd will ever get to the art house.

Of all the iconic slasher movie figures, Jason manages to really survive the times. Michael Myers went through a slew of rotten movies; I've never been partial to Freddy Krueger; Pinhead really only had one good movie; and Leatherface, while having one of the better remakes under his belt, still has one of the worst movies in horror history associated with him: "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation". Jason is the biggest of them all. You show anyone an old style hockey mask and it doesn't matter who they are, the very first thing they will think of is Jason. He is the poster child of all that is good, in a guilty pleasure sorta' way, and bad about the entire slasher genre. If he spoke, he could be their spokesman.

This box set offers up the first 8 of the movies with some rather anemic extras on the last disc. I really think Paramount has left this series out to dry despite with the large number of fans who would love a big fancy deluxe edition that someone actually put some time into. But the value is good for them. I prefer the early entries as compared to the later ones where they were basically phoning it in. Despite its spotty record, this is still a series that every horror fan should consider adding to their collection.

My best explanation is "Robocop", by way of "Shogun Assassin". Even the slightest cut produces the Niagara Falls of blood. There are so many memorable and twisted scenes that naming them would take forever. My favorite was the coroner with the hand cannon, it could only be found in this movie. Great performances all around. The story was a little telegraphed, but that is the only thing that is all standard in this movie.

It may not be everyone's cup of tea simply because it is too out there that they get scared off, but that is the whole point of the movie. You don't call your movie "Tokyo Gore Police" and not go way off the deep end when it comes to blood and guts. I loved it, it hits that sweet spot of craziness that seemingly only the Japanese really know how to fill. Nobody else can do this kind of insane exploitation, and very few other countries even try anymore.

My biggest problem was the characters, pure and simple. You spend the first 45 minutes of the movie stuck with two characters who are so utterly obnoxious that, not only do you lose any sympathy with them, eventually I wound up with a rather grim opinion that what happens to them in the third act deserved to happen to them. When that happens you lose all the horror because you no longer care about the characters and it becomes just an exposition of special effects, like it is some kind of industrial film showing you what the special effects makers can do for you if you wanted to make your own torture porn movie. The special effects are nice, but after 15+ years of watching horror movies you really can't wow me with just that. "Audition" gives you characters you not only sympathize with but care about, and then what happens is all the more terrifying because of the emotional investment.

An utter failure as a film, like all torture porn movies it fails to realize you can't just take the coward's way out and give us crappy characters whom the audience at best is annoyed by and at worst depises. It doesn't matter how much blood and gore you throw at a movie if the characters and by extension the plot is dreadful.