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DVD Joy Ride
Joy Ride follows the familiar conventions of road-movie thrillers with enough vitality to make everything old seem new again. A confirmed master of neo-noir suspense, director John Dahl (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction) sets a consistent tone of humor and horror as Lewis (Paul Walker) and his black-sheep brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) drive from Salt Lake City to pick up Lewis's friend Venna (Leelee Sobieski) in Boulder, Colorado. En route, they play a practical joke via CB radio, inviting vengeful terror as an unseen trucker (voiced with exquisite menace by Silence of the Lambs villain Ted Levine) pursues them with relentless, homicidal aggression. Inevitable comparisons to Steven Spielberg's Duel fail to appreciate Dahl's unique talent for energizing B-movie formulas while injecting his own brand of rib-tickling excitement. While Zahn deserves extra credit in his first top-billed role, Joy Ride wins a badge of honor for everyone involved. --Jeff Shannon
I'd like to start off with the pros by saying this was decently entertaining due to its fast pace suspense and believable storyline. The 2 brothers who play a light joke on a trucker over a CB radio, and later find themselves, along with their friends, the targets of the vengeful trucker, is realistic and absorbing because it can happen to anyone.
I would categorize this into a suspense-slasher despite the fact you see very little blood and gore. The actors/actresses are by far one of the better groups among modern horror flicks with loads of crappy, stiff actors. The movie builds suspense very creatively and unleashes them at opportune times without making you feel like they are throwing cheap scream bursts at you (think The Grudge). It's filled with twists and turns and leaves you little time to guess what happens next.
Now, on with the cons. Usually, candidates selected for targets in horror flicks are known for their stupidity. The common "don't go in there, you fool", "don't divide up, stay together", or the "shoot him, dammit, that's what your gun is for!!!". It's very normal for people to make a mistake or two and pay for the consequences. But seriously, the actors in this movie are so stupid (bad scripting?) that they continue to make dumb mistakes and very, very illogical decisions that gets you to wonder if the writer specifically put those decisions in to carry on the plot. There must have been at least 15 or 20 places where these sort of things happen, and some of those mistakes are just so unforgivable that I had to take out a star for the bad plotting.
The other part I really found annoying was how godly they made the pyscho trucker. I mean, we aren't talking about normal killers like Jason or Freddy who are a step or 2 above their victims...we are talking about an omniscient, omnipotent criminal who can stealthily maneuver a huge truck to do anything at will, track down people with every piece of information about them, strategically plan every move and moves of opponents, while also knowning skills close to those of being an espionage. I mean, this guy should not even be a trucker, but an instructor who teaches CIA or FBI agents. This was the part that took the movie down further more. It would not have been hard to make an intelligent killer rather than the god of all criminals. The guy doesn't make one single mistake besides the prank that he fell for, and that's just very implausible. I'm sure you can find some far-fetched idea to explain this phenomenon, but I find it hard to beleive that a guy that can drive like a getaway specialist and track down people and plan out strategies like a CIA, would be a normal, ordinary trucker.
Dumb
A pretty dumb teen horror flick that tries to capture Duel, but doesnt get that far. Sobieski, who's normally good, is just not that great here. Maybe it's the wrong vehicle for her.
Was That A Peppermint Candy Cane?
Here's a heads up to all you silly kids out there: Long haul truckers who drive those massive Kenworths are not to be messed with--especially on the CB radio. The hours are long, the road monotonous, and some of these drivers get a little too puckered. But alas, brothers Lewis and Fuller (who named these characters?) fail to grasp this incontrovertible truth, so the stage is set for a road trip from Hades, a nonstop cat and mouse chase that makes JOY RIDE an entertaining, yet goofy, experience.
Having hooked up with his wacky brother, steady Lewis (Paul Walker) heads out, in a rundown old jalopy (was that an Impala?), to pick up a hot babe he has a crush on--a babe out of college for the summer, with all three of them destined for the east coast. But, problematic brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) decides it would be great fun for his sibling to play with some truckers on the CB radio. . .with Lewis pretending to be a female looking for love. Going on the air as "Candy Cane," Lewis instantly attracts a trucker who doesn't like to be the subject of any kind of prank. Once the trucker discovers that Candy Cane is a Dandy Shane, all sorts of awful stuff starts happening.
Thus, the chase commences, as the disgruntled semi driver stalks the two brothers relentlessly--even though his rig could do stuff on dirt roads and in cornfields that I never knew a double-tandem could ever begin to accomplish. But hey, I suppose motive always overcomes burying a ten-ton rig up to its twin axles in dirt. People come, people go, suspense unfolds, suspense ebbs, girls scream, police come, and we witness a very dramatic, exciting destruction of property. And then, predictably, the climax tells us this tale has yet to end. . .
Walker and Zahn are solid, if not noteworthy, in their roles, while Leelee Sobieski very aptly plays female-soon-to-be-victim Venna, a college coed who is on both brothers' babe radar. Ted Levine furnishes the eery voice of the scorned trucker, and he reminds me how Claude Akins might sound if the beloved character actor had had too many tequila shots. Be that as it may, JOY RIDE entertains as a "chase flick," as long as you ignore reality, the laws of gravity and physics, basic human interaction, and several other bothersome little quirks. But what the heck: with a CB radio, you've got the entire world on your doorstep.
--D. Mikels, Author, WALK-ON
Sultry Eliza Dushku runs for her life in a snug white tanktop, pursued by inbred backwoods cannibals in Wrong Turn. Dushku (Bring It On, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and a clump of other attractive young people (including Six Feet Under's Jeremy Sisto and Desmond Harrington of We Were Soldiers) get waylaid in the deep West Virginia wilds by a trio of grotesque mountain men, all given realistic ugliness by makeup artist Stan Winston (Interview with the Vampire, Terminator 2). Wrong Turn is the sort of movie where you know who's going to die by the order they appear in the credits, but fans of the inbred backwoods cannibals genre (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes) will find much to savor, particularly the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Eliza Dushku - Emmanuelle Chriqui - Jeremy Sisto Director(s): Rob Schmidt DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Domestic tensions turn intimately sinister in this pulpy potboiler, which develops a steely sense of menace. The trouble begins when Mr. and Mrs. Glass (Stellan Skarsgård, Diane Lane) are appointed legal guardianship of 16-year-old Ruby (Leelee Sobieski) and her 11-year-old brother (Trevor Morgan) after their parents are killed in a car accident. As trusted former neighbors, the Glasses welcome the orphans into their luxurious Malibu home, but the all-glass structure turns into a gilded cage when Mr. Glass's motivations are revealed to be anything but friendly. With plot-thickening roles for Bruce Dern and Kathy Baker, the film builds considerable suspense before tailspinning into absurdity, and veteran TV director Daniel Sackheim takes full advantage of his prismatic setting and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Leelee Sobieski - Diane Lane Director(s): Daniel Sackheim DVD Release Date: Released the 02 January 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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With confident style and low-budget ingenuity, Jeepers Creepers gets under your skin, provoking spine-tingling horror when college siblings Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry (Justin Long) encounter a flesh-eating demon along a barren rural highway. After a harrowing car chase that sets the movie's nerve-wracking tone, they investigate suspicious activity near an abandoned church, where a corrugated pipe leads to unimaginable horrors. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game against the regenerating demon, which feeds on fear--and selected body parts--according to a psychic (Patricia Belcher) who adds chilling portent to the routine climax in a besieged police station. Writer-director Victor Salva (Powder) emphasizes primal fear over logic, but plot holes are easily forgiven when... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gina Philips - Justin Long Director(s): Victor Salva DVD Release Date: Released the 08 January 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A guilty pleasure with excess horsepower, The Fast and the Furious efficiently combines time-honored male fantasies (hot cars, hot women, hot action) into a vacuous plot of crystalline purity. It's trash, but it's fun trash, in which a hotshot Los Angeles cop named Brian (Paul Walker) infiltrates a gang of street racers suspected of fencing stolen goods from hijacked trucks. The gang leader is Dom (Vin Diesel), ex-con and reigning king of the street racers, who lives for those 10 seconds of freedom when his high-performance "rice rocket" (a highly modified Asian import) hurtles toward another quarter-mile victory. Racing is street theater for a lawless youth subculture, and Dom is a star behind the wheel--charismatic, dangerous, and protective toward his sister Mia (Jordana... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Paul Walker - Vin Diesel Director(s): Rob Cohen DVD Release Date: Released the 03 June 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Saw opens with a gruesome scenario: Two men are chained to the walls of a grimy bathroom with a bloody corpse lying on the floor between them. Tape recordings tell them that one of the men has to kill the other, or his wife and child will die. The corpse is holding a gun in one hand, but it's out of reach...but whoever has locked these two up has thoughtfully provided a hacksaw that can't cut through the heavy chain, but might cut through a little flesh and bone. From there, Saw jumps back and forth as the two men slowly unravel how they know each other and that their tormentor is one of those all-knowing, all-capable serial killers (it goes without saying that Saw is hugely influenced by Seven and the movies of Dario Argento), a fellow known as Jigsaw who... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Leigh Whannell - Cary Elwes - Danny Glover Director(s): James Wan DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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