Movie Roundup: Bounty Hunter Slaves, Famous Directors, and Dimensional Travellers

The high from Texas Frightmare Weekend has worn off and I figured it was time to getting back to movies. The ones I've watched in the past week have been only semi-horror related, so it looks like they'll have to go into the Roundup, and surprisingly, I liked all of them!

Django Unchained (2012)
Quentin Tarantino has certainly not lost his signature style or his flair for entertainment. Django Unchained is both a different type of movie for Tarantino, as he takes on the spaghetti western genre, and at the same time, it's exactly the type of movie you would expect him to make. The dialogue is heavy and colorful, expertly executed by most of the actors. I was most impressed with Christoph Waltz as Dr. King Schultz, who made me smile every time he opened his mouth as he practically danced with those words. The film is entertaining as hell, if not without its problems. By now it's just stupid to me to bring up Tarantino and controversy because it's happened in some form with almost every movie he's done. Is the excessive use of the n-word just for historical purposes or is it just Quentin's favorite word? Does he really have to show the body exploding in a shower of blood every time somebody gets shot? Seriously, who cares? I look at Django as another fun Tarantino romp that makes good use of skilled actors and air hoses that shoot blood from people's bodies.

Hitchcock (2012)

Ah, how could I have forgotten about this movie?! My love for Hitch knows no bounds so I was all kinds of excited when I pulled the DVD out of the Redbox the other day. The movie is only about a specific part of Hitch's life and career - the making and release of Psycho - but it was very interesting for me to see because I, sadly, didn't really know that much about his life. I loved learning more about his relationship with his wife Alma Reville, and how influential she was in his professional career. Although Sir Anthony Hopkins doesn't sound a damn thing like Hitch, the look they gave him is competent enough for me to believe it for the movie's run time, and Hopkins' Hitch mannerisms are pretty spot on. I loved his performance at the beginning when he's doing the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"-type opening and it totally put me in the right frame of mind to enjoy the movie on different levels. On the whole, I liked the mixture of drama and Hitch's well known macabre sense of humor that served as the tone of the movie.
Also, the dude playing Anthony Perkins has a pretty scary resemblance to the actual actor at that time. He was a great find.

John Dies At The End (2012)
So if you thought that Don Coscarelli couldn't get any weirder than Bubba Ho-Tep, you thought wrong! I seriously have no idea what I just watched, but I do know that I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's weird when love something and find it difficult how to defend that stance, but I'm going to try. The plot is confusing and is not explained all that well; however, you kind of get enough of the gist to follow along as main characters Dave and John take a drug called Soy Sauce that turns them into psychics and lets them travel through dimensions and alternate universes to fight... something. A bad alien thing, maybe? I dunno. What I do know is that John Dies At The End is freaking hilarious and entertained me the whole way through, despite how crazy and weird it was. Chase Williamson as Dave was delightful in his performance, and his comedic timing was brilliant. He and Rob Mayes as the eponymous John (who actually doesn't die at the end, but somewhere in the middle... kinda...) are both believable and cute as these two young guys who deal with their strange situation both seriously and with the kind of cavalier attitude you would expect from people their age. I'm very curious to read the book the movie is based on now, although I'm fairly sure that it will only confuse me even more.