Category: Movies
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Adventureland – Quirky and Awkward as Expected
Adventureland has been on my list to see since it came out. It always seemed exactly like the kind of movie I love and, well, it is. It’s the kind of film I relate to probably a bit more than I should. It’s not a screwball comedy or, really, even a standard rom-com. It doesn’t quite…
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The Truman Show: Prescient and Hopeful
When The Truman Show came out in 1998, “reality TV” as we know it today was just barely a thing. MTV had aired the first season of The Real World in 1992, the original Dutch version of Big Brother hit the airwaves in 1997. The “king” of all reality shows, Survivor, wouldn’t air until two years later, in 2000. In…
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Hair: You Know Some of the Songs and None of the Plot
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a bit of a fan of the classic American Musical. That cuts off around the mid-60s, a little after West Side Story. Anything after that I likely haven’t had a lot of exposure to (which is one of the oversights I’m trying to fix lately). The stage version of Hair…
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Transformers: The Movie – Accidental Impact
Two of the main cartoons, comic book series, and toy lines of my childhood were G.I. Joe and Transformers. I started the G.I. Joe comic with issue #6 and Transformers with “Issue 1 of a 4-issue limited series” (which then ran for 80 issues). When Transformers: The Movie hit screens in 1986, I was excited. I saw it and I loved…
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Wet Hot American Summer: Ridiculous in all the Right Ways
I missed catching Wet, Hot, American Summer when it first came out back in 2001. It wasn’t until 2015, when Netflix released the “prequel” series, that I finally got around to watching it. That time delay may have made it even funnier than it would have been 14 years earlier. The Plot The film follows the…
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Dark Shadows Returns, Will Burton Make it Work?
In case you haven’t heard, Tim Burton is coming out with another film where Johnny Depp is playing a pale, maladapated man who’s completely out of place even among the not-quite-normal people around him. This time around, it’s in a reboot of classic horror soap opera Dark Shadows. I grew up having vague memories of…
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Karate Kid – We’ve Changned Almost Everything
First, go and watch this trailer for the new Karate Kid movie staring Jacki Chan and Wil Smith’s talented son Jaden. If this weren’t being billed as The Karate Kid, I don’t think it would be that bad. My problem is that, once again, we’ve taken everything except the most very basic story idea (kid…
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Friday the 13th (2009): Just Die Already
To say I didn’t hold out a whole lot of hope for the reboot of the Friday the 13th franchise would only be a slight understatement. I was relatively happy with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, so seeing the same team involved kept my expectations from being totally negative. There was some small spark of…
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The Strangers: A More Classic Terror
Liv Tyler attempts to escape from one of the interlopers in The Strangers. It being the Halloween, I’ve been in the mood for horror films. Over the last few years, there has been no shortage of supposedly scary movies. Problem is, most of the ones I’ve seen haven’t been all that scary. Disgusting? Yes. Full…
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Three claws down for X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I could spend hours poking and picking at the things they changed from the comic book continuity I grew up on and loved. I could lament the lack of some of my favorite story bits and the light touch they gave others. I could do all that, but, when it comes to X-Men Origins: Wolverine…
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Push
Got back a little while ago from seeing Push. Not a bad film, but definitely not as advertised. If you’ve seen the ads, it’s being billed as “the first real action film of the year” or some such. Let me be the first to tell you, Push is not an action film. It’s got a…
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More Horror
Hot on the heels of Forrest J. Ackerman’s death, I’ve come across a couple of much more positive horror goodies. First, the flick that my friend Kelley was in, Women’s Studies, has been picked up for distribution. That means that all y’all will be able to see it. That’s good news for everyone. Then, another…