Sunday, October 12, 2014
The Madness: Automatons Week 1
Magic is a great film. The central performance by Anthony Hopkins is the right level of manic and over the top for me and the film carries a real sense of dread as it builds to its conclusion....Rating: 4/5
I don't care that Maximum Overdrive has a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes and has been panned by critics. I don't care that Stephen King was coked up throughout production and had no clue what he was doing. I don't are that Lisa Simpson is incredibly grating and annoying throughout the film. I don't care that the choice to have ACDC score a horror film seems a bit odd. I love it anyway. Recommended for me and like minded viewers....Rating: 4/5
Westworld is still quite enjoyable it does feel a bit dated by today's standards. I wouldn't mind seeing an update to this material that fully explores the themes of how we interact and deal with technology that has been created solely to amuse and please us even after it seems to break away from it's programming. Also, James Cameron had to have seen this movie before he made the Terminator....Rating: 3.5/5
I still remember the first time I saw The Living Doll. My brother and I were watching a Twilight Zone marathon when I was about 7 when this episode came on. It scared the hell out of us. While I don't find Talky Tina nearly as frightening today it's still a great episode and Telly Savalas is such a douchebag that watching him get his comeuppance is still a pleasure. Highly recommended....Rating: 5/5
Jack in the Box is about a young girl whose father is murdered and she uses a Jack in the Box to exact revenge. I watched the episode because I find Jack in the Boxes to be pretty creepy and this sounded like it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately it was pretty awful. Basically whenever the girl plays the box when someone is around water they are murdered by the water. The only clever use of the idea is when someone drowns in a car wash. Otherwise, pretty bland stuff....Rating: 1/5
By this time on Saturday it was time for "family madness" so I introduced my 4 year old to Ghostbusters. This film is a classic and is one of my favorite all time comedies. The jokes still work for me even after so many viewings....Rating: 5/5
Casper's Scare School is an animated series my daughter recently found on Netflix. The series is fun for what it is though I am always looking for this stuff to be more referential to its influences....Rating: 2.5/5
Child's Play is a movie I revisit often. It's a movie from my childhood and my enjoyment of it continues today. The fact that it's paced so much differently than most of the other films in the franchise playing with the audiences expectations of whether Chucky is actually alive and holding off on Chucky's reveal for a good 40 minutes helps a lot to set it apart from not only the sequels but many modern horror films of this type....Rating: 4/5
By the time Child's Play 2 came around Chucky had transformed into Freddy Krueger and the franchise itself was in full fledged slasher mode. Child's Play 2 doesn't really do much to expand on the first story but it's still fun to watch and the effects are outstanding....Rating: 3/5
Back to some family friendly madness with Short Circuit. Again I was introducing my 4 year old to a movie from my youth. She ate this one up. It's still a fun movie especially to watch with young ones....Rating: 3/5
Still a great movie for children and adults and one of the best animated franchises of all time....Rating: 5/5
Puppetmaster is the one that started it all for Full Moon and would go on to be the flagship franchise for the company for better or worse. The film still holds up better than many of the sequels and is my third favorite of the franchise....Rating: 3/5
Fun for the little one. It's a Curious George take on the headless horseman with a little twist at the end that my daughter really enjoyed....Rating: 3/5
This has always been my favorite of the Ernest franchise. Perfect for budding horror fans and with the Chiodo brothers on creature effects it's hard not to enjoy....Rating: 3/5
This is the one that put the franchise into hibernation for 7 years and rightfully so. It's the worst in the series and this viewing only strengthened my opinion....Rating: 1.5/5
My second favorite of all of the films in this franchise and my favorite as a child (which also explains my fondness for it today)....Rating: 3.5/5
Before David DeCoteau was making garbage like A Talking Cat he made movies that were actually good. Part 3 is my favorite of the franchise. It's incredibly ambitious for a low budget direct to video Full Moon feature and somehow they manage to pull it off. Somewhere along the way Full Moon seems to have lost the ambition for these types of projects....Rating: 4/5
While I believe Puppetmaster 4 is a completely unnecessary sequel and does little to improve the continuity of the series (in fact it kind of further muddles it up) it's still a fun movie in parts....Rating: 2.5/5
This "final chapter" is the one where I feel the franchise start to slip. If it were actually the final in the franchise I would cut it some slack but there's not much of a story to tell and it retreads a lot from the fourth. There's also a strange plot with three bumbling burglars who break into the hotel. It feels like I'm watching a low rent rip off of Home Alone only instead of running into traps they're being murdered by puppets. This is also the first time it starts to feel like there is some serious padding going on to make feature length run time....Rating: 1.5/5
Mr. Boogedy is an hour long made for tv movie that ran on the Disney channel as part of it's Wonderful World of Color series back in the late 80's. It's fun and cheesy and just scary enough for a 4 year old without going overboard....Rating: 3.5/5
Bride of Chucky is on par with Curse as the second best in the franchise as it was the first sequel to actually build on the world given to us in the first film rather simply than retread what had been done before. It's funny and self aware without toppling into pure parody and it was a fresh take on a tired franchise....Rating: 3.5/5
Only slightly better than part 3. It had potential but the jokes feel dated and won't hold up over time and any interesting themes they were looking to explore never really go anywhere....Rating: 2/5
Curse is shockingly good. Nobody saw it coming. Hopefully Mancini's plan to follow this up can maintain the same level of quality....Rating: 3.5/5
I have always enjoyed Scooby-Doo and am happy to see the recent iterations of the series, both tv and animated movies, have gone back to what made the series work in the first place. This one's kind of fun for the call backs to old school episodes but the overweight Daphne story line was definitely misguided....Rating: 3/5
I have finally arrived at the moment in the franchise I fear most and the ones that stopped me from finishing this series a year ago, parts 6 through 8. It's just not good....Rating: 1/5
Even DeCoteau used a pseudonym on this one. I'm glad they tried to go back to an origin story because it worked so well in part three but unfortunately it doesn't work here...Rating: 1/5
The worst one up to this point. Even Charles Band used a pseudonym on it. This one is actually an insult to anyone who went out and spent money on it and Band should be ashamed of himself for presenting this as something new in the franchise....Rating: 0/5
One of my favorite horror films of all time and it always surprises me to find out how many people have never seen it....Rating: 5/5
This is how remakes should be done. Take the original concept and put a new spin on it. I don't see the original as untouchable and this is one of my favorites that came out of the remake craze....Rating: 3.5/5
Meh. It's got some production value but that's all I can take at this point. At least I can see the finish line of this challenge....Rating: 1/5
I appreciate what Band is trying to do here but the puppet effects are just so awful. He should have just made his own spin on nazisploitation film and left the puppets out....Rating: 1/5
I have seen Devil Doll on other time without the MST3K riff. It's much better this way....Rating: 3.5/5
Frankenweenie is a good movie but not as great as it could have been. I was let down when I originally saw it. The animation is great and I like the overall concept it just doesn't all quite come together for me. This was also released the same year as Paranorman which I absolutely love....Rating: 3.5/5
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