From the outside, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters looks an awful lot like the cousin of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and its vulturous novelized kin. But Tommy Wirkola isn’t trying to mine wit out of genre trash based off of pillars of classic literature or the travails of American history; he just wants to make Sam Raimi flicks. Admittedly, the two transgressions are more or less the same thing- cribbing is cribbing- but watching the unabashed stupidity of Hansel & Gretel unfold feels akin to the experience of watching an eight-year-old in the full throes of a massive sugar rush as they haphazardly recreate scenes from their favorite movie using whatever…
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Off the Netflix Queue…’The Aggression Scale’
Describing Steven C. Miller’s The Aggression Scale as a violent Home Alone riff feels almost too retro-hip for my liking, but it’s almost impossible not to. The similarities between the two films are clear; pit seemingly defenseless children against brutish home invaders, watch the former embarrass and defeat the latter. But Kevin McAllister didn’t know how to work a pump-action shotgun, and possessed a much cuter propensity for violence. Owen (Ryan Hartwig), his analogue here, favors all manner of sharp objects and potent cocktails of ammonia and bleach. (They both admire the efficacy of a nail through the foot.) The clearer difference, though, lies in pathos– Kevin’s just a self-indulgent…