Michael Ritchie was an inconsistent director, though with Smile he struck comic gold.
Archive for category New Reviews
It’ll make you grin
Dec 24
I want my mummy!
Dec 22
So I did something about it.
THE MUMMY’S CURSE (1944)
…is notable chiefly for the contempt it displays for the franchise which contains it. That said, it’s probably the only chance you’ll ever have to see a 3,000-year-old, undead Egyptian princess using a microscope.
I have also copied over:
– The Mummy’s Hand (1940)
– The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
– The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)
…and as a consequence, I am currently suffering a strange medical condition I call “bandage-blindness”.
Indian cinema frequently borrows from popular Hollywood movies, but never has the borrowing been more bizarre and less appropriate than in Kutty Pisasu (2010), a Tamil film that brings together the divine retribution of Kali and.. and…
You know what? I can’t. I just can’t. Suffice it to say it’s one of my least favorite American pop-cultural artifacts, and it has no place mixing with Indian mythology… but you’ll have to read about it for yourself. Oh, and there’s also a singing/dancing child star who goes around incinerating people. It’s weird, it’s wild, it’s colorful, and it’s much less fun than you might think.
Alas, I could not find the unrated version of Dream Lover to watch, but that did not stop me from enjoying this thriller.
The David Whitaker musical score for The Sword And The Sorcerer is truly magnificent, helping to raise the movie out of its low budget origins. And shock of all shocks, the movie does not suffer from being directed by Albert Pyun.
OK, I know. It’s bad form to be late to a Roundtable that was my idea in the first place… especially considering my near-total non-participation in the Cabal this year. Trust me, it’s not out of a lack of interest.
In the meantime, here’s a review to prove I’m actually still alive:
I spent my teen years hoping someone would make a movie out of Michael McDowell’s “Cold Moon Over Babylon”, and my adult years hoping they wouldn’t. Now that they have, the result is a good news/bad news situation: the good news is the movie is remarkably faithful to the book. The bad news… is exactly the same.
Will Laughlin is the Braineater.Oozy listening
Nov 26
It’s a little known fact that nothing inspires song-writers quite like films about disgusting creepy goo…
Steven McQueen vs rampaging red jello!
Richard Jaeckel vs rampaging green polyps!
Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
The belated sequel A Christmas Story 2 is too little and too late for even the biggest fans of the original movie.
Yes, at long last… it’s Amityville: The Awakening (2014… no, 2015… no, 2016… no, 2017! We mean it this time!).
So was it worth setting the alarm for this Awakening? Oh, of course not. It’s not as painfully bad as its multiple reshoots and reschedulings might have led us to believe, but the final product is so depressingly generic that I found myself wishing I were watching Amityville Death House instead. Give me enthusiastic incompetence over dreary corporate-approved indifference any day!
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCMENT: Amityville: The Awakening is free to watch on Google Play from now until October 28, 2017.
UPDATE: Sure enough, Amityville: The Awakening was released to theaters for a very limited run on October 28, and its nationwide gross was… $742. This sort of thing just makes me mad.
Will Laughlin is the Braineater.True and compelling
Oct 1
The made for television movie I Will Fight No More Forever more than deserved a theatrical release.