Shaun of the Dead movie review: necrophilia
I mean, who, precisely, said you couldn’t have a zombie romantic comedy? Why can’t the male lead express his undying devotion for his ladylove by bashing dead people in the head with a cricket bat?
horror
Dawn of the Dead movie review: dead again
So the lights go down and the movie starts and it’s like an assault. And my new friend Brian, who had been assuring me that I couldn’t possibly be more psyched to see this film than he was, he who had obviously made something of a hobby of zombie movies at some vulnerable point during his formative years — and it’s true; I had only seen the original Romero flick for the first time the day before — turns to me and asks plaintively, ‘I *wanted* to see this?’
Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Young Frankenstein, Little Shop of Horrors, and Beetlejuice (review)
Why do slasher movies make us laugh in the instant after we jump and scream? When comedy works, it’s for the same reason that horror does: It surprises us, and laughter and screams emanate from that same primitive lizard part of our brains, one that reacts before we can think.
Bubba Ho-Tep movie review: groovy
Bruce Campbell makes me laugh just looking at him. Just thinking about him. But I never thought he’d almost make me cry. And I certainly never thought he’d almost make me cry in a movie called Bubba Ho-Tep.
Frailty (review)
It sends a shiver up my spine just thinking about the movie now, even as I gaze out the window onto a gorgeous, happy, sunshiny day. It’ll be great when this one finally comes out on DVD, cuz then I’ll be able to curl up on the couch in the middle of the night wrapped in an old afghan for protection and give myself the wild heebie-jeebies watching it.
Halloween (1978) (review)
Please don’t write into tell me how sophisticated Halloween actually is, because that’s a symptom of my third point, which is that I suspect the Halloween movies are like the Star Wars movies, in that the most fun thing about them isn’t what’s actually onscreen but the fannish discussions that happen offscreen about the interrelations between characters and the interconnections between events that loop through the entire series of films.
Donnie Darko movie review: choose your own psychotic breakdown
Donnie Darko in, in fact, what Ferris Bueller’s Day Off might have been if David Lynch had ever gotten his hands on it, a daring, disturbing, visionary debut from 26-year-old writer/director Richard Kelly.
The Others movie review: scary movie
This is classy gothic horror, old-fashioned in the best way: there are no CGI specters, just mysterious footsteps and distant cries and movement in the shadows and hushed whispers and slamming doors.
Jurassic Park III (review)
Isla Sorna has become something of an attractive nuisance these days. Never mind that InGen’s real-life monster island is surrounded by restricted airspace and that travel to it is absolutely forbidden. Never mind that it’s common knowledge that people have been eaten there. Does this stop adventurous types from trying to catch a glimpse of an honest-to-goodness genetically engineered freak dinosaur? Of course not. InGen’s legal budget must require advanced mathematics to grasp.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence movie review: I feel therefore I am?
It upset me tremendously, and disturbed me and moved me. The film does what truly great science fiction does, which is get to think about what it means to be human. So I’m having a bit of an identity crisis, I think, an identity crisis on behalf of the entire species homo sapien.
