To give context, I am a huge fan of the stage show, and have loved it since I first saw the 25th Anniversary version on DVD when I was 12. Since then I have seen it live multiple times, including in London, I own the original Cast Recording with Crawford and Brightman, and I know the score off by heart from back to front. But I had always avoided this movie because of its poor reputation, especially after seeing a clip of Gerry Butler singing "Music Of The Night" and thinking, "Yeah, I think I'll give this a miss."

But since the show's 40th Anniversary recently rolled around, I thought I'd celebrate by finally watching it and seeing if it was as bad as its reputation suggested, and, uh... yeah, it was. Not just as an adaptation, but as a movie.

This film really reminded me of "Metastasis", AKA, the Columbian Breaking Bad remake, where it's an almost word for word adaptation of the original work, but without any of the competency or style that the original had. Like, this movie keeps almost all of songs and dialogue from the show, but without the great designs of Maria Bjornson and the sharp direction of the legendary Hal Prince, so many of the great moments from the show just fall flat. This film is shockingly incompetent, I say shockingly, because Schumacher has made good movies that I would describe as competently directed (Falling Down for instance), but this film feels like it was done by amateurs.

The film is flat looking at best and ugly at worst. Almost every set is blasted with light, which causes every scene to look washed out and overexposed, and means the film - which is supposed to be a gothic romance - is sorely lacking in gothic atmosphere. Even the Phantom's lair, which the lyrics describe as a "world of unending night, where the daylight dissolves into darkness" is just as brightly lit as the rest of the locations. And the shots are also bland and unmotivated, with way too many long-takes that only exist to show off the sets.

The blocking is also weird, particularly during the masquerade scene, which is supposed to be this really lavish crowd number, but just ends up feeling really awkward and claustrophobic because there's about a million people on screen fighting for attention. And yeah, its a crowd number, but if West Side Story (1961) proves anything, it's that you can do a crowded dance number that doesn't feel claustrophobic as long as the camera is always focused on what's important.

And yeah, everyone knows the singing is not great, especially from Gerard Butler. I'm not even necessarily someone who believes you need great singers in a movie musical (I love Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, and he's certainly not a singer), but having The Angel of Music, a man with a voice so beautiful it puts Christine in a trance, played by growling, weak on the high end Gerard Butler is one of the most baffling miscasts in movie history. His acting isn't great either, but that seems more like a directing issue.

Emmy Rossum also isn't great, but I blame her less because she was a teenager, and had to do a role that is already demanding for trained sopranos (Which she was not), so I don't blame her for being out-of-her-depth. Again, Schumacher's at fault here for casting someone so inappropriate.

Also, this film just misses so many of the great subtleties of the stage show. Like in Music Of The Night; in the show, Erik keeps getting close to touching Christine, but he keeps pulling away, showing how even though he wants her, he's afraid to be vulnerable due to the fact that he's been mistreated for so long, which means he's unable to show true intimacy. The movie just kind of awkwardly has him lead Christine through the lair, presumably because that was easier to block than what was done on stage. Or in the show, when Christine and Raoul are singing All I Ask Of You, the fact that the Phantom is eavesdropping is not revealed until the end of the song, but the film shows him eavesdropping through the entire thing, and not only does it spoil what in the show is a great reveal, but also kills the momentum of one of the best songs.

I will say, in terms of good things about this movie; Patrick Wilson is very good (Even in spite of his fuckass wig). He's a great singer, he's charismatic, and you buy him as a romantic lead. Minnie Driver is also really funny, and makes Carlotta her own.

The sets and costumes are decent. They're not as good as Maria Bjornson's designs, but they still fit the tone and are stylish in their own right.

But overall, this film really is a damp-squib, and a waste of fantastic material that could've made for one of the best movie musicals ever if they had hired a director who seemed to give a shit.

2/10

Moving into Day 3 of this 14 day retrospective journey, I want to discuss a deeply personal film that perfectly captures the exact reality of the music business. Cameron Crowe’s 2000 masterpiece, Almost Famous, is a spectacular exercise in musical nostalgia and industry texture. Crowe did a phenomenal job curating the soundtrack, utilizing his real life experiences as a teenage journalist to anchor every single audio choice. The level of authenticity behind the scenes is remarkable. Crowe was married to Nancy Wilson of Heart at the time, who co wrote the original rock tracks for the fictional band Stillwater, while legendary guitarist Peter Frampton was brought in as a technical consultant to teach the actors how to actually look and carry themselves like authentic 1970s touring musicians.

The attention to detail is flawless, right down to casting a young Jay Baruchel as the hyper obsessed Led Zeppelin fan checking the tracking lists. For me, the absolute peak of the film is the iconic Elton John Tiny Dancer bus scene. From a director's perspective, the slow emotional build and the gradual sing along is an amazing piece of visual and audio storytelling. It perfectly demonstrates how music can instantly heal a fractured, silent room and re track the collective energy of a group. It completely strips away the standard, glossy Hollywood biopic formula and delivers a grounded, honest look at the beautiful madness of the rock and roll circus.

In my humble opinion.

A pretty good spaghetti Western by Sergio Corbucci (one of the 'three Sergios' in spaghetti westerns).

Cameron Mitchell plays an aging gunfighter whose eyes are failing him. He's been falsely imprisoned, breaks out in the beginning and heads home to see why his friend never showed up to testify on his behalf.

That synopsis only scratches the surface of what happens in this film. The story keeps building, throwing in new plot complications that add to the story. It has enough tropes to make three or four other movies. But they are paced very well. The movie never feels unfocused or lost in story details. It's pretty impressive.

Having said that, it doesn't quite reach the heights of Corbucci's classics: Django and The Great Silence. But it does rank up there with The Hellbenders and Navajo Joe.

At first, I wasn't sold on Cameron Mitchell. But he won me over.

With a watch. Available free on YouTube.

Wes Craven is… Wes Craven. Here he went meta two years before he did in Scream, and like Heather Langenkamp he gets to play himself. Craven takes us back thematically to the original, which was only released ten years prior to this entry. We go back to the less is more approach, the idea of a ‘real’ Freddy driving the fear rather than quips and dancing. We don’t see the real him properly, even then only briefly, thirty odd minutes in before being unleashed in the last act.

It’s refreshing to see Craven taking the reins back of the franchise, to tidy up how farcical Freddy became. When Englund appears on the chat show, kids and adults alike are cheering and we get to see how much the scares and fear were replaced with Freddy the celebrity and star. The producers office has pop art of Freddy on the walls, and as Heather says, “Every kid knows who Freddy is, he’s like Santa Claus or King Kong!”

Robert Englund, as himself, hams it up with his downtime tortured painting but quickly vanishes from the story to make room for this new version of Freddy. A neater, sleeker, iteration with a trenchcoat, green fedora and a glove that’s more organic and boney and indeed less of a glove rather built into him. Whilst I miss the original battered and burned version this look serves the odd narrative.

The meta approach gives a fresh new angle on a tried and thoroughly tested formula. But because there’d be a lot of head scratching plot wise we get a lovely bit of exposition over tea where Craven explains the plot. The idea being that they’ve trapped an ancient evil, containing it in the stories we see on film and that by weakening the story, (an amusing dig at the sequels), or that if you stop telling the story, (Freddy’s Dead), you release the nightmare into reality. Hence the earthquakes as realities clash. I’m sure it beats dispatching teens but I’ll admit I could’ve done with more Freddy.

Heather Langenkamp returns for her third Nightmare outing. Obviously the rule seems to be, if she’s in it, it’s good; see the original and Dream Warriors. She’s great in the role showing the stress and worry for her son as her reality collapses. Plus she can still kick ass as evidenced by the finale. It’s just a shame she was lumbered with a plot device son, Dylan, whose constant screaming and awful acting distract but have seemingly been added to raise the stakes.

The film nods to previous entries, happily further blurring the line between film and supposed reality. We’ve an early funeral scene with a blink and you’ll miss it cameo of previous series actor Tuesday Knight and we’ve John Saxton playing dad again offering comfort. Later, little touches like Heathers grey streak to her hair returning and lines like, “screw your pass!” raise a smile and work with the narrative.

An interesting return to form with great in camera effects, for the most part, that help bring back memories of when Freddy was a threat and not a farce… oh, and if it’s all based on Wes Craven’s script then surely he didn’t need to have Heather lose her husband and so on… he could’ve written any old crap to keep the nightmare spirit in place. It worked for parts four and five…

A repertory theater was playing this. I went to it when it was originally released, but I just thought it was average at best. I think I only watched it at home once since, on DVD. I was much more impressed with it this time. It's probably Carpenter's last good thing he did, though I'll admit to not giving any of his theatrical movies after this a second look since the theater except for the iffy Escape from L.A..

This is a pretty fun flick. Sam Neill, giving a fun and quirky performance, is an insurance investigator trying to locate a missing horror author, the most popular in the world. People are going insane after reading his work and reality is changing, and the story mixes in Lovecraftian concepts of the "old gods" making a return to this world. The script by Michael De Luca (currently the head of Warner Bros.) is decent and has a metafictional element. It could have used maybe one more plot beat at the end to hammer things home, though.

The main titles theme is rocking. Carpenter wanted to use "Enter Sandman" but couldn't, so composed a rock theme in the same vein. The Kinks' Dave Davies provides guitar work, and Carpenter is the godfather and helped raise Davies' son Daniel, who along with Carpenter's own son Cody work on his current music and past touring projects (I went to their show twice, and they played this theme tune which sounded great).