Bottom Line: Supernatural horror with here-and-there touches of satire is an irresistible modern Halloween pick.
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Ruth Livier
Sam Raimi’s return to horror has both gross-out and satirical twists, but it is not a disappointment. It is simply a fun, supernatural roller coaster ride.
Bottom Line: #1-ranked masterpiece on IMDb’s Top 250 list well deserves its placement. And the Best Picture Oscar it did not get.
Directed by: Frank Darabont
Starring: Bob Gunton, Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins
Question of the day: Why did this film lose to FORREST GUMP for the 1994 Best Picture Oscar? Okay, Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis admittedly did a phenomenal job with GUMP, but THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is, with no doubt, nothing short of an unforgettable masterpiece.
Bottom Line: Case closed: 12 Angry Men has been rightfully considered a film-noir classic.
Directed by: Sidney Lumet
Starring: E.G. Marshall, Ed Begley, Edward Binns, George Voskovec, Henry Fonda, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, John Fiedler, Joseph Sweeney, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, Robert Webber
Bottom Line: More irresistible, documentary-style startles–this time from the directors of Catfish.
Directed by: Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
Starring: Chloe Csengery, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Jessica Tyler Brown, Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
In 2009, we were hit by surprise with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, a film that budgeted only $15,000 and grossed massively at the box office with over $193 million. Because of the manner in which it ended, a sequel could not be easily produced; but fans were using social media to demand a follow-up of some sort, and out of that came prequel PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, set a month or so before the events of the first. Now, we have PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3, an inevitable prequel set (for the most part) eighteen years prior to the events of the first and second installment.
Bottom Line: Rarely have the holidays ever been more fun in movies!
Directed by: Jeremiah S. Chechik
Starring: Beverly D’Angelo, Chevy Chase, Juliette Lewis
The Vacationers have taken a brave turn in their series, as CHRISTMAS VACATION is still as farcical as the last two (VACATION and EUROPEAN VACATION), but the first one not to be a road movie. In fact, if you believe that “vacation” is definitively travel, then this maybe should be called “National Lampoon’s Christmas Staycation”, to use a pun-esque portmanteau meaning a holiday spent staying at home, and also to mislead far less viewers and fans.
Bottom Line: Irrelevant to the classic, a good one for even Carrie fans to skip.
Directed by: Katt Shea
Starring: Dylan Bruno, Emily Bergl, Jason London
It’s no wonder fans of the 1976 Stephen King movie CARRIE are scratching there heads about this film. Besides the fact that Rachel Lang is supposedly Carrie White’s half-sister; and Sue Snell, one of the main bullies in the original film, has now ironically become the school’s guidance counselor (still portrayed by Amy Irving); THE RAGE virtually has nothing in common with CARRIE. In fact, the title is very misleading. If this were to be even remotely better, somebody could have simply suggested changing the title to something like, “Rachel: The Rage”, and billing it as “the follow-up to CARRIE.”
Bottom Line: Just as much fun as the first one: some are scared mindless; others are laughing themselves mindless.
Directed by: Tod Williams
Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Molly Ephraim, Sprague Grayden
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 isn’t as good as #1. Nor is it a B-movie. Still, it is very enjoyable, and at this point, some of us are already addicted to the newly-spawned horror saga.
Rather than picking up where the first film left off, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 takes place mostly before the events of #1, with the last few minutes succeeding the first film’s conclusion. Now, the story focuses more on Kristi (Katie’s sister) and her family, which includes a middle-aged husband, teenage step-daughter (who looks only a few years younger than Kristi herself…), baby son, and dog. Periodically, Katie and Micah make visiting appearances, but they are not the main focus, this time around.
Bottom Line: Do not be fooled by the extremely low production budget: you may find yourself terrified.
Directed by: Oren Peli
Starring: Katie Featherston, Mark Fredrichs, Micah Sloat
***Disclaimer***: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is not scary. It just has an extremely terrifying mood and a terrifically groundbreaking core.
Remember THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT? The film that started the “found footage” sub-genre? (Well, I don’t remember, as I’ve never seen it.) The sub-genre was lost for eight years, until the 2007 Spanish horror film [REC] was made, at which point filmmakers decided to go back to implying violence to generate terror on an amateur film camera. That’s where PARANORMAL ACTIVITY comes into play.
Bottom Line: Kubrick’s war satire is darkly funny, but not notable.
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: George C. Scott, Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden
Stanley Kubrick’s odd, bizarre 1964 war comedy has a humorously surreal twist as well as a subtle message.
Besides the characters named via wordplay (i.e. General Jack Ripper, Major “King” Kong, Colonel “Bat” Guano, and–of course–Dr. Strangelove), this film is quite a funny one. And if it was a bomb, then I guess that I have learned to stop worrying and love it.
Bottom Line: One of the better films in the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”.
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston
Fourth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a high-flying, high-aiming blend of THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON MAN, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS, per se. Forty-five years after the Norse God of Thunder made his first starring comic book appearance, a big-budget feature film is finally created as a resurrection.
It was enjoyable to see the humor of IRON MAN implanted into a film about a mythological figure. There is subtle, clever, ironic, and sometimes even silly humor galore from Thor when he collides with humanity, which is somewhat like Robert Downey Jr.’s superhero character. Did we expect to see this again? I guess not. Was it fun to see? Absolutely.
