31 Scary Movie Mini Reviews 2024 – Part 2

Posted by sean

Every October I watch and write mini reviews for 31 scary movies. It’s the last day of October 2024, so here are my final 16 reviews.

Scary Movie Mini Review #16: House of Usher (1960) Directed by Roger Corman

Another Poe story from schlock master Roger Corman, who used his schlock money to make these artful Poe adaptations. The fiancé of a wealthy woman visits her family’s brooding gothic home. He finds both her and her brother in a sickly and fragile state, claiming to be cursed and unable to leave. The house is literally crumbling around them. If you’ve read the Poe short story, you know how it ends, though Corman never stuck that faithfully to the text, and deviates pretty wildly on some major plot points here.

House of Usher has atmosphere for days, a striking technicolor palette and grand, melodramatic acting and music. The concrete soundstage floor in some scenes is a bit distracting, but the otherwise elaborate house sets make up for it, as does the sound design and simple yet effective visual effects. There are even some crane shots and camera moves that feel strikingly modern, as well as a gorgeous color-tinted nightmare sequence. I particularly liked the creepy paintings of past Usher family members and the house itself, done in a wild neon abstract style that’s as creepy as it is anachronistic. Corman always got the maximum bang for his buck, and House of Usher has plenty of bang.

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31 Scary Movie Mini Reviews 2024 – Part 1

Posted by sean

Every October I watch and write a mini review for 31 scary movies. Since we’re half way through October, here are the first 15 reviews:

Scary Movie Mini Review #1: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) Directed by Tim Burton

Tim Burton’s 1988 film Beetlejuice is not a great movie, but its weird story and inventive visuals have captured viewers imaginations for decades, and I’ll admit that I enjoy it myself, though it’s always felt a bit shallow. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is just as shallow, but also feels like multiple sequels crammed into one. There are at least three subplots in this movie that could have easily been their own more clearly defined stories. I suspect this script started out as a TV series that was then condensed into a feature.

Tim Burton is at peak Tim Burton here and clearly having a non-Disney blast. The visuals are striking and it’s nice to see so many practical makeup effects and sets. It’s also fun to have talents like Catherine O’Hara, Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega riffing off each other, though it’s sometimes difficult to understand their motivations. The rich artistic yuppie vs mortality-obsessed goth dynamic from the first movie has become confusingly blurred with these characters as they’ve aged. Keaton’s Beetlejuice performance has actually gotten better with time. He’s great.

I was ready to give up on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as just another nostalgic cash grab crammed with too much plot, but then the third act happened. Burton goes so bonkers here that I had to admit he was doing something special, something more than just another fan pandering sequel. I only wish he could have paired this ultra-silly, anything goes cinematic energy with more disciplined storytelling.

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31 Scary Movie Mini Reviews 2023 – Part 2

Posted by sean

Every year in October I try to watch and write about a scary movie for each day of the month. Here are my last 16 Scary Movie Mini Reviews for October 2023. Enjoy!

Scary Movie Mini Review #16: One Cut of The Dead (2017) Directed by Shin’ichirō Ueda

Here’s a fun one from Japan: filmmakers making a low budget zombie movie run into real zombies? This movie requires zero spoilers to fully enjoy so I won’t give you any. But if you don’t mind some splattery zombie gore, it’s a fun ride. That’s it. That’s all I can say. Watch it, it’s awesome! (I should watch more zero spoilers movies because writing the reviews for them is so easy.)

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31 Scary Movie Mini Reviews 2023 – Part 1

Posted by sean

Last year I reviewed 31 scary movies, one for each day of October. This October I’m doing it again! Today is halfway through October, so here are the first 15.

Scary Movie Mini Review #1: Kiss of the Vampire (1963) Directed by Don Sharp

This lesser Hammer Horror film has a garish poster that promises “giant devil bats summoned from the caves of hell to destroy the lust of the vampires!” Not surprisingly, the bats are normal sized cheesy rubber puppets on fishing line. Despite that, this movie has a unique tone to it, something surprisingly magical and haunting that’s abandoned in the goofy and rushed climax. 

A newlywed couple are on their way by motor car to their honeymoon. They break down somewhere in the German mountains near a castle, and of course there’s a menacing man watching them from a castle window. They end up at a strangely empty inn and are invited to sup with the wealthy doctor and his children who live in the castle. Unsurprisingly the doctor and his children are vampires, but they’re a different type, more satanic personality cultists than undead blood suckers. The young wife is slowly lured into this cult’s clutches, and the husband and local Van Helsing wannabe must save her. All this is rote cliché, but what stands out as unique is the slow, menacing pace and tone, the texture of long gray rainy days and gloomy moonlit nights. These vampires remind me more of the secret society in Eyes Wide Shut than the Draculas in countless vampire flicks, and their menace is more in the way they corrupt your soul than your blood. It’s a pity that the ridiculous rubber bats flap in at the end and ruin everything.

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31 Scary Movie Mini Reviews – Part 2

Posted by sean

This October, to celebrate Halloween, I’m writing 31 mini reviews of scary movies. Here are the final 16:

Scary Movie Mini Review #16: The Midnight Hour (1985)
Directed by Jack Bender

This 80s made-for-TV movie is a bit of everything: part Stephen King small town horror, part creature feature, part teen comedy, part… musical? Seeing LeVar Burton dance the Get Dead dance has to be seen to be believed. An ancient curse comes back to haunt a small New England town. Our teen heroes accidentally trigger this curse then have to resolve it on Halloween night, all while throwing a wild Halloween house party and dealing with an increasing hoard of zombies, vampires and ghosts. This is all way more fun than scary, think a Halloween version of  the original Jumanji, and the 80s styles and zany makeup and costumes alone make it worth sitting through some of the more boring sections. The gravestones are made of flimsy wood, the wolf man looks more like a thin guy in an ape suit, the filmmakers can’t decide if the movie is set in the 80s or 50s—a good chunk of the movie is just pretending to be American Graffiti—but it’s still a lot of fun to watch and an endearing Halloween treat.

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31 Scary Movie Mini Reviews – Part 1

Posted by sean

This October, to celebrate Halloween, I’m writing 31 mini reviews of scary movies. Here are the first 15:

Scary Movie Mini Review #1: The Munsters (2022)
Directed by Rob Zombie

A surprisingly cute, very silly and fairly faithful prequel to the original Munsters TV show. The stacked-to-the-ceiling art design, crazy colorful neon lighting and off-kilter camera angles are bonkers but mostly fun. My only quibbles: too much background music telegraphing the comedy when it’s already working fine without it, and maybe a bit too drawn out of a running time with a weirdly abrupt ending. If you like the Munsters and want to admire Rob Zombie’s unique filmmaking style without watching an R-rated gore-fest, I think you’ll mostly enjoy this.

Scary Movie Mini Review #2: The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)
Directed by Oz Perkins

Tragic drama by way of horror, the Blackcoat’s Daughter is a story about an emotionally isolated young woman who feels so alone that she’s willing to be accepted by anyone who will have her, or in this case, any thing. The film is set in the depths of two frigid, snow-bound Februaries and vividly captures the desolate feelings winter can summon. Some disturbing violence unfolds, but it’s surprisingly overshadowed by empathetic, overwhelming sadness. An effective supernatural chiller that also feels very real.

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Prepping for Episode 8: My Star Wars Saga Viewing Plan

Posted by sean

Star Wars Episode 8 is only a month away! To prep for it, why not follow my elaborate and exhaustive Star Wars saga viewing plan?

1. Star Wars: Episode I – the Phantom Menace

Come for the podrace, stay for the final lightsaber fight. This was one of my favorite films growing up, and though the acting and screenplay are pretty rough, it’s probably the most beautifully detailed Star Wars film to date and the most Flash Gordon-esque of the series.

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Mini Reviews: 2015 Awards Season Films – Part 2

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The Hateful Eight

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As a storyteller Quentin Tarantino is a cold-hearted chess player. He sets up his characters on the board and then pits them against each other in violent combat, gazing unflinchingly at the resulting carnage, uncaring and unmoved. This clinical approach seemed to be slipping slightly in Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, in which he seemed to truly care for a couple of the characters he sent into the fray, but its back with a vengeance in The Hateful Eight, which is undoubtedly his most sadistic and amoral film to date. That’s not to say the film doesn’t have its redeeming features, but you have to dig through a couple of inches of gore to find them.

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Spy Vs Spy Vs Spy: Mission Impossible, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Spectre Go Head to Head to Head

Posted by sean

This summer brought us not one super spy film, but two, with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and when the holiday movie months arrived, it was once again time for another entry in the James Bond franchise: Spectre. Instead of reviewing these three films separately I decided to pit them against each other in a no-holds barred fight to the death. Let’s see who’s left standing when the dust clears.

Characters

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Every film needs them, and Mission Impossible has a couple, but they’re all pretty bland. It feels like they all have interesting back stories and relationships that have happened off screen, I just wish they could have happened on screen instead. Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg play their parts amiably, and Tom Cruise’s Agent Ethan Hunt is steely eyed and daring as ever but not much else. Many of the characters in this film were introduced in 2011’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, but then as now they had little depth or development. For such a huge franchise, it feels like an opportunity to create enduring screen characters has been wasted.

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Mini Reviews: 2015 Awards Season Films – Part 1

Posted by sean

Why do all the best films come out in the space of three months?! My wallet and I wish the studios would space them out equally over the course of a year, but there is something fitting about the quality of cinema climbing as we approach our holy days. Here are some mini reviews of the 2015 awards season films I’ve seen so far.

Sicario

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Every once in a while I see a film that already feels like a classic, and Sicario is one of those kinds of films. Emily Blunt plays FBI agent Kate Macer who is frustrated by the violent drug crimes she encounters daily in her hometown.

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Mini Reviews: Cinema Double Feature

Posted by sean

I turned 29 this August and I was depressed so I went to the cinema and watched two movies back-to-back.

Irrational Man

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I love how brazenly simple Woody Allen’s films are. He doesn’t care if his stories follow well-trodden paths to predictable endings–he just delights in the dramatic art of getting there.

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Mini Reviews: More Netflixing

Posted by sean

Summer–time for staying at home and lazily watching Netflix!

Blue Ruin 
2013. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier

Blue-Ruin

The family feud is a staple of classic American storytelling, but it’s hard to imagine the backwoods familial wars portrayed in, say, Huckleberry Finn happening in modern day America. That’s why Blue Ruin is so compelling–it tells a story of revenge and violence between two feuding families that you wouldn’t imagine could happen today, but in a totally convincing way.

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My Top Five Favorite Films of 2014

Posted by sean

I had a really great time at the cinema in 2014, and these are my top five favorite films.

1. Interstellar

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I loved this film! I went to see it three times, it moved and inspired me, and even brought me to tears. Interstellar feels like a return to the cinema of the past. It’s full of grand imagery, thundering romantic music cues and features an epic science fiction adventure plot that has very real human stakes.

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Mini Reviews: 2015 Summer Films – Part 1

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Avengers: Age of Ultron

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Avengers: Age of Ultron is as close as filmmaking has come to capturing the feel of reading a super hero comic book. It’s jammed full of thrilling action scenes, muddled plots and subplots, sci-fi techno babble, obscure character cameos, and iconic images. An elaborate fight scene near the end is staged in slow-motion, almost like the individual panels of a comic. It’s not a great film, and it’s certainly not as well conceived or paced as it’s predecessor, but it sure is a joy to behold if you’re a fan of the genre, and especially so if you like super hero comics.

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Mini Reviews: Netflixing

Posted by sean

Here are some mini reviews based on films I’ve watched on Netflix over the past year.

Her Master’s Voice
2012. Directed by Nina Conti

This is one of the most impressive documentaries I’ve seen, and one I’ve wanted to go back to again and again. Nina Conti is a skilled British ventriloquist who works wonders with a simple monkey puppet. She’s beautiful and sharply funny, and much of her humor is based on self-mockery, picking apart the absurdity of her art form. The man who trained her passed away shortly before this film was made, inspiring her to travel to a conference in America dedicated to ventriloquism that he always wanted her to go to, as well as a home for ventriloquist puppets whose owners have died–a strangely haunting place. She brings her monkey along for the ride, as well as a plethora of her master’s old puppets, all of whom she gives a voice to during her travels. The film is very intimate, composed mostly of shots Nina must have filmed herself, as she deals with her complex feelings for her old master by talking to his old puppets. We also get to see the convention and a couple of great interviews with Mrs. Conti’s fellow ventriloquists. Her Master’s Voice is both a deeply personal film and an informative glimpse at the odd world of ventriloquism. It’s slightly sad, very funny, and a joy to watch.

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Mini Reviews: Some Recent Films I’ve Seen

Posted by sean

I haven’t done one of these in a while. I still owe you a Summer 2014 Films Part 2 review, but my computer recently crashed and I lost the file. Maybe I’ll post a re-write eventually. In the mean time…

Birdman
2014. Directed By Alejandro González Iñárritu

At its core, Birdman is an observation of man and his sense of worth. It repeatedly asks the question “Is it important to be important?” That question is dodged more than it’s answered, and the story often seems to be more interested in observing the intricacies of stage acting and actors, or mocking popular cinema, or naively criticizing critics. When it does get focused, it’s a fairly intense, emotional observation, with a camera that gets right up into actors faces as they wax eloquent or scream angrily. It offers few answers but raises a lot of engaging questions. The actors are all great. There’s a drum soundtrack that’s killer. It’s definitely worth a watch.

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The Hobbit 3: Oh No! More Hobbit!

Posted by sean

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

God bless Peter Jackson. He has a good heart and he clearly loves making movies. Nothing shows his love for this craft more than The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. It’s a film packed to near bursting with thrilling sights, passioned monologues and epic moments. Sad to say it has more in common with Dungeons and Dragons, a derivative version of Middle Earth, than it does with Tolkien’s original classic.
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