Movie Reviews: Growing Out, I’ll Be There With You, The Lodger

MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D In theory, 3-D filmmaking should amplify the effect Roland Barthes foresaw in Cinemascope — that of the viewer becoming a “little god” free to float about at will in the frame’s capacious space. In practice, it’s typically like watching a shitty movie with the added sensation of getting poked in the eye. Case in point (and point in the cornea): a remake of the 1981 Canadian slasher opus My Bloody Valentine, in which an implacable killer in mining gear taps a rich vein of nubile victims. In director Patrick Lussier’s dull update, the superior 3-D process is the only attraction: pickaxes regularly perforate the screen, accompanied by flung jawbones, jack-in-the-box eyeballs and golf-course sprinklers of arterial spray — and the 3-D gore effects are somehow less impressive than just the shots peering down endless mineshafts, or the many flashlight beams sweeping like light sabers across the auditorium. But the movie’s defeated by the plodding predictability of the stalk ’n’ slash form. There’s no excitement or terror in watching the 3-D execution of 2-D actors giving 1-D performances, just the steadily diminishing returns of the same eye gouge delivered ad infinitum. That said, as a piece of no-tell-motel slasher bait who spends her entire role nude — with one of the movie’s screenwriters, no less — Betsy Rue would pop off the screen even without the glasses. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)

PROMETHEUS TRIUMPHANT: A FUGUE IN THE KEY OF FLESH Drawing upon numerous sources — from Greek mythology and Frankenstein, German Expressionism and The Phantom of the Opera — Prometheus Triumphant sets lofty goals for itself but fails to find an original entry point or live up to its objectives. This period piece, directed by Jim Towns and Mike McKown, follows white-masked Janick (Josh Ebel) in his attempts to raise his late lover, Esmerelda (Kelly Lynn), from the dead. Shot in grainy black-and-white, complete with intertitles, Prometheus Triumphant’s serious bid both to pay tribute and contribute to film history comes off as tiresomely quaint, since the film neither approximates the visual eloquence of its forebears nor yields fresh results. Intriguingly, the filmmakers seek to make explicit the sublimated eroticism of such obvious inspirations as Murnau’s Nosferatu; Esmerelda’s body lies glaringly bare as Janick attempts to animate it. But the naturalism of the nudity doesn’t gel with the otherwise overdrawn aping of silent cinema aesthetics, and so Prometheus gives off a stilted rather than sexual aura. The simplistic ending, on a moral note unrelated to larger themes — sealed with a risible kiss — gestures toward possibly campy intentions, even as its indecipherability in this regard relegates it to failed artistic pretension. (Grande 4-Plex) (Kristi Mitsuda)

UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS was not screened in advance of our publication deadline, but a review will appear here next week. (Citywide)