Category: Movie Reviews

Movie Review: BLAIR WITCH – pointless sequel comes too late, and doesn’t add anything new.

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blair

I’m probably not the only person on Earth to wonder why someone thought it would be a great idea to make another sequel to seminal horror movie The Blair Witch Project, especially given that 1/ the original movie was 17 years old when this sequel was released, and 2/ Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, was a bad movie rushed to capitalize on the success of the original, and failed badly both critically and commercially.  As of me writing this (January 8, 2017), Blair Witch has a worldwide gross of $45M on a $5M budget, making it more successful than Book of Shadows on paper, but the harsh reality is that in terms of present value of money, and ticket prices outstripping inflation, Blair Witch took in far less money from the public.  It may have made a decent profit, but it failed to catch the attention of the public at large.

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Movie Review: THE SIGNAL – Sci Fi with a story too ambitious for its budget

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thesignal

After watching The Signal, I was left with much the same feeling of frustration I had with Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color, with the only real difference being that I didn’t hate the latter.  What these movies had in common for me was a self-indulgent disregard for the audience.  I’ve been watching movies long enough to understand and appreciate filmmakers that don’t spoonfeed the audience what their movies are about, and I think I have a good nose for self-indulgence in movies, which I define as movies that throw a lot of disparate elements into the screenwriting blender, except for a payoff that’s either meaningful or logical.

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Movie Review: TRAIN TO BUSAN – Korean zombie movie entertains, but doesn’t innovate

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews3 Comments

busanhaeng

I will admit that I’m burnt out on zombies – I have been for a while, long before they transitioned into pop culture with (arguably) the success of Shaun of the Dead – but likely I’m not alone.  It’s the go-to monster for low budget crap on Netflix, and hundreds of badly written “post apocalyptic” novels on Amazon.  Gone are the days – long gone – when the zombie was used as a metaphor for the mindless hordes of us, where the shuffling, brain dead hordes said, or tried to say, something about our propensity for herd mentality and mass consumerism.  Nope, all gone, swept away under a tidal wave of pop culture of, ironically, brain dead depictions of zombies.  Now you’re more or less likely to see them used either as backdrops (The Walking Dead) or rampaging groups of chase/eat machines (28 Days Later, World War Z).

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Movie Reviews: BEST and WORST of 2016

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews3 Comments

projector-copy

Caveat – this isn’t a list of movies released in 2016, it’s a list of movies I’ve watched in 2016, some of which are a few years old.  I did elect to remove The Brood and The Quatermass Xperiment from the ratings only because they are movies I’ve watched multiple times over many years.  Feel free to skip to the bottom of the page for the lists.

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Movie Review: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN – Mostly satisfying mystery/drama, with a nice performance by Emily Blunt

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girlontrainposter

The Girl on the Train was a “maybe I’ll see it in the cinema” for me.  The previews were decent enough, but never really set me alight.  I didn’t read the book, and while I like Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow), she too has never really made me sit up and notice.  There was that plus the feeling that the vibe just seemed to skew a little too closely to Gone Girl for comfort.  Being a David Fincher fan, and feeling Gone Girl was a solid evolution in Fincher’s career, going to see a rip off, in the end, put paid to whether or not I went to see it in the cinema.

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