Freddy Krueger kills his own franchise in this lifeless reboot of the horror classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

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MOVIE REVIEWS (Week of Apr. 29)

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Starring Jackie Earl Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner
Directed by Samuel Bayer
Freddy Krueger, the pun-loving, claw-wearing, supernatural serial killer who stalks teenagers’ dreams is back for his ninth feature film, the franchise reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s been seven years since he last appeared on the big screen, but that apparently wasn’t long enough for filmmakers to figure out a fresh take on the old formula.

Jackie Earle Haley dons Freddy’s trademark brown fedora and striped sweater this round and the Best Supporting Actor Oscar-nominee (for his role as a paroled sex offender in 2007’s Little Children) does an admirable job. His take is considerably darker than most of the character’s past iterations — a possible history of child molesting is suggested for the first time — and Haley’s performance is the highlight of the film.

On the other end of the massacre, the Elm Street teens are played by Rooney Mara and Kyle Gallner, two young actors with potential trapped in one of the most lifeless films of the series’ entire lacklustre history. It seems the production company, Platinum Dunes, which remade both the Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchises, was banking on horror fans being interested in watching a world-famous, 26-year-old plot unfold at a snail’s pace.

Nearly every scene of the film, without exaggeration, is spent teasing out clues and slowly unraveling the mystery of how and why Springwood High School students are being slaughtered in their sleep. Anyone familiar with the previous eight films, or the Freddy’s Nightmares TV show, or Freddy comic books, or even Will Smith’s Nightmare on My Street rap video already know the answer walking in. (Hint: It’s Freddy.)

Nobody will be losing any sleep over this Nightmare. –Andrew Weichel

GUNLESS

Starring Paul Gross, Sienna Guillory
Directed by William Phillips
The concept of a Canadian Western looks good on paper. Unfortunately, writer-director William Phillips didn’t use the rest of the pad to bang out a half-decent script in support of his initial notion.

Phillips’s film (his first since 2003’s Foolproof) gets off to a plodding start when the unconscious Montana Kid (Paul Gross, boasting Conan the Barbarian’s coif) is carried into Barclay’s Brush, Canada, by his faithful steed. The infamous American gunslinger immediately runs afoul of the town’s blacksmith (Tyler Mane) and challenges him to a duel. Alas, the placid town is “gunless,” with the exception of a dilapidated sidearm owned by fetching widow Jane (Sienna Guillory). The protracted repair of the necessary weapon offers the flimsiest of excuses for the Kid to hang around the backwater community and, well, not do much of anything, really.

Biding an entire hour until the arrival of a scarred, vengeful villain (Callum Keith Rennie), Phillips trots out the hoariest humour imaginable. Former 90210 heartthrob Dustin Milligan (who stole every one of his scenes in Mike Judge’s 2009 comedy, Extract) suffers the worst, relegated to playing a bumbling Mountie in one of the film’s many wayward attempts at physical comedy.

The romantic subplot between the Kid and Jane could most charitably be described as requisite. Considering that Gross shares more chemistry and enjoys more meaningful conversations with his horse, it’s understandable that Guillory spends most of the film in an indignant huff. Some late-in-the-game philosophizing fails to add any depth, while the climactic shoot-out is decidedly second-rate.

Ultimately, the lack of firepower alluded to in the title is only the first of Gunless’s many deficiencies. —Curtis Woloschuk

THE COCA-COLA CASE

Directed by Carmen Garcia and
German Gutierrez
Coca-Cola made headlines earlier this year when the corporation tried to shut down screenings of this, directors Carmen Garcia and German Gutierrez’s documentary — and it’s not hard to see why. The film follows a pair of U.S. lawyers attempting to tie the soft-drink giant to the kidnapping, murder, and torture of union leaders and their families in South America, and there will no doubt be viewers who walk away pledging never to burn their tongues on Coke’s product again.

Much of The Coca-Cola Case takes place in Colombia, a country attorney Daniel Kovalik calls the “trade union murder capital of the world, by far.” He claims 4,000 assassinations of union members have been carried out in that country in the past 24 years, including eight at Coke’s franchise bottling plant. Kovalik and colleague Terry Collingsworth have spent almost 10 years trying to hold the company’s U.S. headquarters accountable, and the documentary’s draw comes from the lingering, far-fetched possibility they could actually succeed.

This is serious subject matter, and the film is appropriately sombre in tone, with none of the amusing musical montages or attention-grabbing publicity stunts of a Michael Moore doc. Garcia and Gutierrez keep behind the lens, letting Kovalik, Collingsworth, “Stop Killer Coke” campaign leader Ray Rogers, and a handful of union and non-union Coke workers in Colombia and Guatemala speak for themselves.

Since Coca-Cola representatives declined to appear, the company is defended by stock footage of CEO Neville Isdell at a shareholders’ meeting, and by students at a pro-free-market demonstration at the University of Chicago, where earnest participants bear signs reading “Fuck Human Rights.” It’s hardly balanced, but justice-thirsty movie patrons will be too incensed to mind. —Andrew Weichel

PASSENGER SIDE

Starring Adam Scott, Joel Bissonnette
Directed by Matt Bissonnette
Passenger Side, from Montreal-based writer-director Matt Bissonnette, unfolds as the longest, most stifling car ride in the history of indie dramedies. But then, after nearly an hour and a half of asking, “Are we there yet?,” the film comes to a quiet, jarring halt. Bissonnette crafts the Holy Grail of twist endings, inspiring a burning need to rewatch a movie you didn’t care for to look for clues you may have missed the first time around.

Michael (an uneven but likable Adam Scott) is a writer whose burnout brother, Tobey (Joel Bissonnette, director Matt’s real-life sibling), calls out of the blue to ask for rides to job interviews around Los Angeles, though he’s actually just looking for an ex-girlfriend. Tobey and Michael have years of unresolved familial stuff to sort out, of course, including Tobey’s drug use, their born-again Christian mother, and Michael’s penchant for writing about their fucked-up family dynamics. These issues are addressed in fits and spurts of lengthy, unnatural dialogue, in between encounters with a veritable parade of weird strangers, who aren’t so much characters as a messy heap of textbook quirks.

Passenger Side’s greatest flaw is a script that’s unbearably self-conscious and full of meta-references. For example, Michael describes his latest book as “two brothers who drive around in a car looking for a girl, and it’s actually pretty boring.” Yep, it is. Then they discuss existentialism. At length. Queue a flat tire and the line, “A flat tire isn’t much in the way of plot development.” No kidding.

Had Bissonnette applied this level of self-awareness to the editing process, Passenger Side might be more than just a bad trip with a brilliant destination. —Andrea Warner