Feliz Aniversário and happy birthday to my beautiful Mom, who inspires me every day to do and be my best and without whom nothing would be possible. Amor pra sempre.

  I have mixed feelings about Where the Wild Things Are, the big-screen adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book (a childhood favorite of mine). On the one hand, I agree with many of the critics who are calling it way too gloomy and whiny. But on the other, I’m fascinated by the big creatures, of course (Carol, Judith, Ira and all the others exist on the screen, thanks to giant puppets), but also by the uncondescending attention to the feelings of a child. Max (played very nicely by Max Records) is a young misfit, a 9-year-old loner who creates his own worlds, like snow castles in his own backyard. When his sister’s friends destroy the castle in the middle of a playful tussle, he tearfully thrashes her room, to the chagrin of her mother (Catherine Keener). Later that night, he’s sent to bed because of bad behavior, and ends up instead as the king of a magical island full of giant beasts. Instead of going for the loud, garish Cat in the Hat movie approach, director Spike Jonze (from Jackass and Being John Malkovich) creates a grave, melancholy mood. Much of the movie is shot in earth colors, sometimes looking up at things, as if taking a child’s point-of-view. It’s fascinating stuff, but I wish there was some fun to go along with the sadness. Even when the characters get into a pretend-war, somebody ends up getting hurt. So it’s a mixed bag, but one worth seeing, even though I’m sure kids would prefer watching “Up” on DVD instead.

An actually scary movie coming out just in time for Halloween. What a concept! The story behind Oren Peli’s 2007 zero-budget chiller, only now making its way into theaters, is almost as interesting as the movie itself. The whole thing started as a short extended to feature length and shown at the Sundance Film Festival, and then brought to the attention of Steven Spielberg, who was freak out by it. So now it hits the big screen, and audiences looking for a scare will wanna check it out. It’s presented as found footage of a mysterious case involving a young couple in San Diego with a bit of a supernatural problem. Katie (Katie Featherston) is plagued by frightening visions of a demon trying to, er, drag her to hell, while her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat), who is documenting the events with his new camera, is at first skeptical. But then doors start opening and shutting by themselves, heavy footsteps are heard in the middle of the night, and growling sounds start talking back to the characters. Given the very low budget, no special effects were available, which meant the filmmakers had to rely on their creativity to creep us out. And oh boy, do they succeed. The audience I saw it with (at a midnight show, the ideal time) screamed right when they were supposed to scream. It’s been predictably compared to The Blair Witch Project, but Paranormal Activity deserves its own place in the realm of do-it-yourself horror.

Drag Me to Hell (Universal): Still one of the year’s most out-and-out fun flicks. Sharp social commentary and giddy frights involving maggots and squishy eyeballs are two great tastes that taste great together in this exhilarating horror movie, released just in time for a great Halloween gross-out party. Welcome back, Sam Raimi.

Land of the Lost (Universal): From one of the best to one of the worst. Seriously, you need to work hard to botch an adaptation of a TV favorite about dinosaurs, but you can count on Will Ferrell, the filmmakers, and their array of smarmy jokes and crummy special effects to do their damndest to do it. Memo to Jorma Taccone: Stick to “Jizz in My Pants” videos.

Natural Born Killers (Warner Bros.): Supposedly Oliver Stone deviated so much from Quentin Tarantino’s original screenplay about a couple of serial killers who become media sensations that QT asked to have his name removed. I can see why, though there’s no denying that Stone’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink and the all-out performances by Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, and Robert Downey Jr. are fascinating on their own right.

Happy Birthday to Me (Anchor Bay): Clips from this one terrified the hell out of me when it played on TV in the early 1980s. Seen today, it’s just another lame slasher film cashing in on the Friday the 13th craze.

Every Little Step (Sony): Do you really wanna know what goes on behind the scenes of a production of A Chorus Line? Yeah, me neither.

Before I even knew who Martin Scorsese was, I already dug him thanks to this wacky yet oddly unsettling 1985 comedy. Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is a word processor who makes the mistake of stepping outside his life’s safe zone only to realize that Manhattan at night is pretty close to one of hell’s lower rungs. He becomes fascinated by a flaky girl at the café (Rosanna Arquette) and is lured into her apartment, where her artist roommate (Linda Fiorentino) also lives. From there on, it’s a spiral of misunderstanding and chases that make a Kafka novel look like My Pet Goat. Even now that he’s considered America’s greatest director and all, it’s weird how little credit Scorsese gets for his comic talent. Not just here and in The King of Comedy, but also in the profane, volatile give-and-take of everything from Mean Streets to Raging Bull to Goodfellas. Dunne’s work here is really accomplished, a mix of growing terror that gets funnier the more desperate the character gets. And there’s plenty to be desperate about: Teri Garr as a vengeful waitress, Catherine O’Hara leading a lynch mob on an ice-cream truck, Cheech and Chong trying to make off with contraband… For all the neon and hip nightclubs, the city looks genuinely dangerous here. The mix of moods was very startling, because for the first time I realized how things can go from amusing to horrifying in a heartbeat. Everybody’s out to get you: That’s life. But it takes a genius like Scorsese to get laughs out of it.

Audition (Shout! Factory): Takashi Miike had already made about 500 movies before this nasty, nasty modern classic catapulted him toward international recognition. Pity the poor folks who venture into this one thinking it’s a slow-paced family drama, only to watch it mutate into a torture show that makes Eli Roth’s movies look like Sesame Street. I’m sure there’s a resonant message in here about the battle of the sexes, though I was too busy crossing my legs and covering my eyes to notice. Why isn’t this being released on Halloween?

Chinatown (Paramount): Oh man, talk about bad timing. Just a week or so after Roman Polanski is put behind bars for a 31-year-old sexual offense, along comes this 1974 masterpiece to remind us why the hell the cinema world gives the little perv leniency. But let’s stick to the movie, shall we? Jack Nicholson is the noir private eye sniffing out corruption in 1940s Los Angeles, and getting his nose sliced for his trouble. Faye Dunaway is the heroine with a disturbingly chummy backstory with the monstrously corrupt villain (John Huston). Magnificent in every way.

Not Quite Hollywood (Magnolia): Who knew Australian cinema, with all its starched period pieces and humanitarian tracts about the plight of the aborigines, had such a vigorous industry of gore, nudity, and car chases? This insanely fun documentary tells you all about it, with great clips and interviews with everybody from George “Mad Max” Miller to Quentin “I love all of cinema, all right” Tarantino. Make sure to track down the grotty beauties the movie celebrates afterwards, too.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney): Still haven’t seen this one. Or does catching parts of it in Gremlins as the theater burns down count?

Year One (Sony): Apparently many of you were able to resist Jack Black and Michael Cera in wigs and pelts doing some Biblical clowning. I couldn’t. Check it out.

A little break from movie-watching and reviewing to salute the guy without whom not only Filmerati would not have existed, but I would not have existed. Happy birthday, Dad, and thank you deeply for all the encouragement, wisdom, strength, patience, and support you’ve given me all these years. You’re super.

I guess I must be a glutton for punishment, because not long after suffering through Zombieland I voluntarily went to see Sorority Row. What can I say, I’m a sucker for horror flicks and this one looked so-cheesy-it’s-enjoyable from the trailer. Of course, trailers are deceiving things, and the movie doesn’t get any more imaginative than what you see in those couple of minutes. There is a plot, and a pretty promising one: a bunch of bitchy sorority girls cause a death when an initiation prank goes awry, and, after getting rid of the body, they all promise to never speak of it again. But there wouldn’t be any scares if the matter didn’t come up again and people started turning up slashed and diced in gruesome ways. Come to think of it, there aren’t any scares even when these things happen. It’s a pretty dismal affair, with plenty of gore and nudity but no suspense or characters to speak of. I can’t even remember any of the actors in it; I vaguely recall Demi Moore’s daughter being in there (as attractive as her mom, and as humorless an actress), and I wish I could forget Carrie Fisher’s embarrassing cameo as the obligatory wacky authority figure. (She’s no Piper Laurie in Carrie, that’s for sure.) It could have been an interesting film (a bit of Mean Girls here, a dollop of Black Christmas there), but it seems like nobody takes teen horror movies seriously since Scream. It makes Jennifer’s Body look like Psycho by comparison.

Zombieland insists that it is America’s Shaun of the Dead. I know Shaun of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead is a good friend, and you, Zombieland, are no Shaun of the Dead. I’m a sucker for zombie movies, but this one’s the pits. It’s set in an unspecified future where the world is overrun by flesh-craving undead, and the sole survivors are a Michael Cera-like nerd (Jesse Eisenberg), a redneck ass-kicker (Woody Harrelson), and a pair of flimflamming sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin). The only sanctuary is a Disneyland-like amusement park on the Pacific coast, but getting there is half the fun. Or would be, if this were any fun. It’s full of elements, like Harrelson’s strenuous performance, which should be fun but for some weird reason aren’t. Seriously, you can’t make a cult movie on purpose—they just happen after they’re made, whether or not that was the intention. And this one just about breaks its back straining for cultish coolness. So you have “hilarious” gore effects, random humor involving clowns and twinkies that doesn’t build to anything, snarky references to 1997, and even a cameo by a hipster icon (which I won’t spoil, because the movie needs whatever surprise it’s got). The audience I saw it with was so primed for it that they would have burst their sides laughing at the drop of a hat. Afterwards, the mood was vaguely irritated, as if they had been taken in by P.T. Barnum. This George Romero fan was not amused.