Archive
REVIEW: Ghostbusters (1984)
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Produced by: Ivan Reitman
Written by: Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis
Edited by: David E. Blewitt, Sheldno Kahn
Cinematography by: László Kovács
Music by: Elmer Bernstein, Ray Parker, Jr. (theme)
Starring: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Ernie Hudson, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, William Atherton, David Margulies, Slavita Jovan, Paddi Edwards (voice)
Year: 1984
Ghostbusters is yet another one of those cultural milestone films that I managed to somehow deprive myself from seeing for an unreasonable amount of time, particularly as someone who is really into movies. In my defense, this was largely due to the fact that I grew up in an unreasonably fundamentalist Christian environment for the early part of my life, and so films like Ghostbusters, which dealt with the supernatural without clearly making it so that everything that was happening was demonic and didn’t remind you how much you needed Jesus to save you from hell were more often than not declared to be welcoming mats for demons to enter your life. No, I’m not kidding. Luckily, we got out of that environment and are (a bit) more sane now, but I continued to avoid the film because… well, mostly it was because I just never got around to it. Eventually this became a bit more like resentment, though. At some point, it seemed like everyone was obsessed with Ghostbusters again, even from those who weren’t kids or even born yet at the time this movie came out, and you couldn’t talk about movies or reference ghosts without someone throwing out some kind of Ghostbusters reference and then talking about how brilliant the movie was. It was very annoying. This became another one of those movies that I was sick of before I even saw it. Read more…
REVIEW: Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)
Directed by: Tomas Alfredson
Produced by: Carl Molinder, John Nordling
Screenplay by: John Ajvide Lindqvist
Edited by: Tomas Alfredson, Daniel Jonsäter
Cinematography by: Hoyte van Hoytema
Music by: Johan Söderqvist
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Ika Nord, Peter Carlberg, Karin Bergquist, Mikael Rahm, Henrik Dahl, Patrik Rydmark, Rasmus Luthander, Mikael Erhardsson, Johan Sömnes, Elif Ceylan (voice)
Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Year: 2008
Movies about troubled youths and movies about vampires are pretty easy to come by, but mix the two together, and you’re more often than not going to end up with something that draws more comparisons to Twilight than an actual horror film. Back in 2008, however, Swedish director Tomas Alfredson partnered up with author John Ajvide Lindqvist to adapt Lindqvist’s acclaimed novel Låt den rätte komma in into a film that managed to shed any pretenses of sexy romanticism and juicy interpersonal drama and maintained a level of maturity and somber, dreadful sorrow that’s far more appropriate to both subgenres of storytelling – this, despite the fact that the film’s protagonists were far younger than either one of Twilight’s glittering nitwits. Read more…
REVIEW: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
Directed by: Eli Craig
Produced by: Morgan Jurgenson, Albert Klychak, Rosanne Milliken, Deepak Nayar
Screenplay by: Eli Craig, Morgan Jurgenson
Story by: Eli Craig
Edited by: Bridget Durnford
Cinematography by: David Geddes
Music by: Michael Shields, Andrew Kaiser
Starring: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Chelan Simmons, Brandon Jay McLaren, Christie Laing, Travis Nelson, Alex Arsenault, Adam Beauchesne, Joseph Allan Sutherland, Karen Reigh, Tye Evans, Philip Granger
Year: 2010
You know, hillbillies, rednecks, and hicks don’t get a lot of respect. Jokes about incest, ignorance, ugliness, and prejudices are pretty common fodder when it comes to discussing people we assign these labels, and when they’re not made out to be the butt of jokes, they’re often made out to be psychotics to be feared and villainized. You would think, though, in these days of understanding and tolerance that we’d attempt to be not so quick to return judgment on those we deem to be judgmental. Sure, sometimes the criticism is justified, but obviously not everyone is the same, and sometimes these portrayals aren’t exactly fair. So what if someone were to make a film that told the story about a hillbilly massacre from the hillbillies’ perspective? No, I’m not talking about the Texas Chain Saw Massacre prequel movie they’re making, Leatherface. I’m talking about a film where it turns out that the hillbillies were the ones being terrorized by the perceived victims, a group of attractive, entitled young people! That’s pretty much the concept behind Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. Read more…
REVIEW: The Babadook
Directed by: Jennifer Kent
Produced by: Kristina Ceyton, Kristian Moliere
Written by: Jennifer Kent
Edited by: Simon Njoo
Cinematography by: Radek Ladczuk
Music by: Jed Kurzel
Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney, Barbara West, Benjamin Winspear
Based on the short film Monster by Jennifer Kent
Year: 2014
It takes a lot to scare me these days when it comes to movies. Sure, some might have a lot of high tension, and others may exploit our squeamish tendencies through excessive, torturous gore (amongst other things), but when it comes to genuine terror, I can’t recall many movies that genuinely get under my skin and terrify me. The Babadook, an independent Australian film that came out of nowhere and almost immediately became a cult classic thanks to word of mouth marketing, is undoubtedly one of the most unnerving, scariest movies that I’ve seen in quite some time, from any era – and I recently saw The Exorcist for the first time. Read more…
REVIEW: Paranormal Activity
Directed by: Oren Peli
Produced by: Oren Peli, Jason Blum
Written by: Oren Peli
Edited by: Oren Peli
Cinematography by: Oren Peli
Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Amber Armstrong, Ashley Palmer
Year: 2007/2009
It’s kind of obligatory to address this issue when reviewing this film, so I’ll just get it over with – It could easily be said that found footage has worn out its welcome, particularly since it hardly seems like filmmakers care that much about actually conforming to the handheld style beyond characters addressing the camera and someone in the movie supposedly holding the camera, even though it makes absolutely no sense for them to continue filming, particularly at the angles they hold the camera (Hello, The Visit…). I wouldn’t exactly refute the claim that found footage itself has gotten tiresome, but it’s not exactly because the style is necessarily overdone – it’s that it is too often being done poorly, oftentimes just as a gimmick. However, a few films still manage to use the style to their advantage and actually do it well. Chronicle comes to mind as being a fairly decent one. I still love Cloverfield, complaints about motion sickness be damned. And the anthology film V/H/S 2 managed to one-up its mediocre predecessor with some truly entertaining and effectively terrifying short subjects within the format. But even these owe a great debt to Paranormal Activity, the film that reignited the found footage craze after a virtual post-Blair Witch lull. Read more…
Halloween Movie Month 2015
It’s that time of year again — October 2015 kicks off the fifth annual Halloween Movie Month (formerly known as “Scary Movie Month” but changed because I just didn’t want to review only scary movies)!
You might think that for such an auspicious occasion, I will have something special planned. Well… you’d be wrong. I don’t. I’m planning on winging it, quite honestly. Why? Because life. Lately, I’ve been pretty busy, and this has led to me being very tired, and so I basically have been writing reviews based on what I feel like, and I plan on continuing that for the month of October in regards to season-appropriate movie choices.
That being said, though, I am definitely looking forward to reviewing movies for this year, and I do at least have some things in mind that I want to get to. The first movie I plan on reviewing is a pretty big one, too, and is one that I’ve been meaning to watch for years but have, quite honestly, been a bit too intimidated by to really feel like I could give it its due. However, with the movie exiting Netflix streaming services at the beginning of the month, I felt like it was a sign for me to just do it before it’s too late. Which movie is it, you ask? Well, fine then, I’ll tell you: it’s The Exorcist!
So yeah, no formal plans for this milestone month, but, as with every subsequent year I do this, I increasingly look forward to expanding my exposure to the horror genre and other Halloween-related movies. Seriously, I’ve really grown in my appreciation for these things, and I always find myself holding back on reviewing certain movies until I can do it for this time of year. As always, though, I’m going to start the month off by leaving you with a convenient list of previous Halloween-appropriate reviews for you to peruse.
Happy Halloween!
Dawn of the Dead: Director’s Cut (2004)
Halloween (2007, Unrated Director’s Cut)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Last House on the Left (2009)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
REVIEW: Poltergeist (1982)
Directed by: Tobe Hooper
Produced by: Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall
Written by: Steven Spielberg (screenplay & story), Michael Grais, Mark Victor (screenplay)
Edited by: Steven Spielberg, Michael Kahn
Cinematography by: Matthew F. Leonetti
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith
Starring: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Heather O’Rourke, Oliver Robins, Dominique Dunne, Richard Lawson, Zelda Rubinstein, Martin Casella, James Karen
Year: 1982
Poltergeist and the films that followed it have become some of the most fabled films in Hollywood history. Seemingly everyone knows about “Poltergeist curse” that was often been attributed to the ironic fact that the first film used real human skeletons as props in one pivotal scene and was rumored to have afflicted many people who worked on the films throughout the trilogy, ranging from small incidents on the set to the deaths of many of the films’ stars during that time. Producer Steven Spielberg was also the subject of much Hollywood scrutiny over his role in the first film’s creation, as he had a contract with Universal to not direct another film while he worked on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial for them, but many who worked on the film claim that Spielberg had, in fact, taken over a lot of the directing duties on the set from its credited director, Tobe Hooper, likely in order to avoid any legal ramifications. Content wise, the film was also one of the most controversial films of its time, initially being issued an R-rating from the MPAA before Spielberg and Hooper talked them down to a PG, thus making it perfectly acceptable for younger audiences to see this scary movie without adult supervision if they so wished. Though it wouldn’t be the final straw that broke the camel’s back, it would be just one of the many that would convince the MPAA that a rating between the two was needed and eventually lead to the creation of the now ubiquitous PG-13 rating. Read more…
REVIEW: Grave Encounters
Directed by: The Vicious Brothers (Collin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz)
Produced by: Twin Engine Films, Digital Interference Productions, Shawn Angelski, Michael Karlin
Written by: The Vicious Brothers
Edited by: The Vicious Brothers
Cinematography by: Tony Mirza
Music by: Quynne Craddock
Starring: Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Mackenzie Gray, Juan Riedinger, Merwin Mondesir, Matthew K. McBride, Ben Wilkinson
Year: 2011
I didn’t really count on doing a found footage film this year, but my friend offered this up as a solid horror film the other day, and, in return I said I’d do a review of it. For the record, this is the same guy who suggested I watch the 1991 Sylvester Stallone movie Oscar, the also horrific Thomas and the Magical Railroad (which was his joke suggestion last year for a horror movie review), and the unexpected suggestion of Albert Nobbs. If anything, though I haven’t very much always enjoyed his suggestions, they have definitely given my reviews more variety, and so I think I’ll give him a pass on this cliché subgenre recommendation – and if he takes issue with my condescending tone here regarding his movie suggestions and taste, then he totally knows it’s intentional… and totally sincere. t(-.-t) to you and your suggestions, dude. I had heard of the film before, but it was only in passing on various websites’ comments sections and such. It also popped up recently on Netflix’s streaming service recommendations for me, so when he watched it and then made the recommendation himself, I figured it was just meant to be. Read more…
Halloween Movie Month 2014 & The Viewer’s Commentary Fourth Anniversary!
Well, it’s been just a little over four years since I started this blog, and can only mean one thing: It’s time to start reviewing Halloween movies! This theme month, formerly known as Scary Movie Month, was once a time when I begrudgingly made myself watch a bunch of scary movies in order to better understand a genre I did not typically enjoy.
Funny enough, however, in the few years I’ve actually been doing this, I’ve actually grown pretty fond of this month and of the movies I watch in the process of figuring out which ones to review. Are they all good? Not by a long shot, but it’s still entertaining since horror is still not a genre I’d typically find myself in the mood for if not for the oncoming Halloween holiday.
As always, October will be a month of reviewing nothing but Halloween-appropriate movies — not just the scary ones, but also the funny ones, the sad ones, the weird ones, the ones meant for family, and, yeah, even the musical ones (hence why I moved away from the “Scary Movie Month” monicker).
This year, in particular, I plan on returning to a series or two that I’d reviewed previously. One that I know for sure that I’ll be doing is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, particularly because the series was responsible for The Viewer’s Commentary getting its first spike in views thanks to a group of fans flocking to the site to gawk at my not-well-received review of the first film. The exchange we had on their forums encouraged me to explore other areas of the Elm Street series and surprised me in how, in the right mindset, yeah, these movies could be pretty entertaining. Freddy’s Revenge is, unfortunately, nowhere near as good as Dream Warriors or New Nightmare or even the original, which I honestly did not care for the first time around. But, hey, it has an interesting subtext to explore thanks to the switch up in the lead character’s gender, and at least it’s not the terrible remake, right? Speaking of remakes, I also hope to get around to reviewing Rob Zombie’s remake of John Carpenter’s slasher classic Halloween. Why not the original movie’s sequel, you ask? Because I watched the remake out of morbid curiosity recently when I saw it on Amazon Prime, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that experience go to waste, dammit!
And so, as always, I leave you with a list of previous Halloween-appropriate films I’ve reviewed since September 2011. The list is only going to get longer, so I don’t know how much longer I can continue to do this, but here they are all together for at least one more time! And, as always, enjoy a free movie, the public domain zombie film that started it all, Night of the Living Dead below that!
Dawn of the Dead: Director’s Cut (2004)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Last House on the Left (2009)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
REVIEW: Alien
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Produced by: Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill
Written by: Dan O’Bannon (screenplay); Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett (story); David Giler, Walter Hill (uncredited)
Edited by: Terry Rawlings, Peter Weatherley
Cinematography by: Derek Vanlint
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, Veronica Cartwright, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Bolaji Badejo
Year: 1979
I’ve been wanting to write this review for quite some time, but somehow never went forward with actually doing it. Don’t really know why it’s taken this long, but I figured that using it as the finale of the 3rd Annual Halloween/Scary Movie Month was appropriate enough! Read more…
The Viewer's Commentary 