LITERAL REMAINS

Way back in high school, my drama class did a performance of Much Ado About Nothing.  From that play I learned the term “to die in your lap”.  That line comes from the French term la petite mort, which means “the little death”.  During the Renaissance, I think it was, the French (those romantic devils) [...]

Before I go any further, I want to point out three movies that should really be seen.  They are three very different independent films, and they represent the best of what the horror genre has to offer.  D4, Emerging Past, and Mask Maker.  They represent science run amok, psychological horror, and the slasher categories respectively. [...]

I have been a Sherlock Holmes fan since I was about six years old or so.  For me, Jeremy Brett will always personify the world’s greatest detective.  But Robert Downey, Jr., he ain’t so bad.  He is a pretty good Sherlock for the modern audience.  In A Game of Shadows, Holmes is pitted against his [...]

I’m still trying to catch up on some reviews, especially since I injured my knee recently and I have a little time on my hands.  So, this will be the first of a few reviews deemed Knee Injury ’11. Attack the Block is the kind of movie you have to watch more than once.  There are [...]

Sometimes you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Sometimes things happen around you that you have no control over.  That just may be what you call Life, I don’t know.  But if you are Tucker or Dale, you may want to become a recluse, because the things that happen around you, [...]

I wasn’t born until 1977, so I missed out on the heyday of the drive-in.  I just caught, and barely remember, its swan song.  I have an aunt who worked part-time at our town’s drive-in (she also worked at our local cinema, the Capri, and would get us in for free– she was the coolest) [...]

This movie makes me sad.  I can’t watch those agonizing Sarah McLachlan save the animals commercials on television; I have to flip the channel on the double– they will ruin your entire day.  Same goes for the feed the kids or the adopt a Jewish family in the Middle East ads (they’re out there, watch [...]

Okay, I’m continuing to catch up here with some reviews that slipped by me.  To their credit, the movies reviewed weren’t the most memorable. Final Destination 5?  They should have stopped with number 2.  Final Destination 2, best of the series.  I can only hope this fifth excursion into Death’s revenge is the last of [...]

I know that article title sounds like the opening of some really bad joke, but it’s not, just I’m trying to catch up on some reviews.  So, I thought I’d spew a few thoughts about these three movies which are based upon three characters I highly admire.  I was a comic book kid, still am, [...]

After his mother, Elizabeth, dies in an accident at work, Joe Lamb is left with his dad, Jackson, a deputy sheriff, who doesn’t really know or understand his son.  All father and son have in common is their grief, and the fact that they have to learn to live without Elizabeth’s guidance.  Once summer rolls [...]

It’s easy to beat up on this series, to make jokes about it, to dismiss it.  I’ll tell you something, though, and this is coming from a true horror fan:  at the heart of The Twilight Saga there is an interesting story.  It’s buried in there, just like there’s a good movie somewhere in Spider-Man 3. [...]

I was of the mindset that this movie would be so bad that it would be good.  I was completely wrong.  It’s just bad.  I couldn’t even gleam any satisfaction from the crappy acting.  From start to finish, the preposterous scenes fall like dominoes, one right after the other.  You’d think a movie like Hellraiser: [...]

It’s been a long time since the original film, The Howling, was released.  Thirty years, actually.  A lot has changed since 1981, but there is one constant that we can almost always rely on:  any subsequent Howling entry, be it a sequel or remake or re-imagining or whatever, the quality will be a toss up.  It’s [...]

For his girlfriend’s birthday, instead of buying her an engagement ring, Evan buys Jennifer an old decaying 19th Century plantation house out smack dab in the middle of nowhere.  The crumbling house comes with forty acres, stocked full of antiques, and its own little family cemetery that belonged to the previous owners.  That the house [...]

Maybe I expected too much of Cowboys & Aliens.  I mean, I really wanted to see this movie.  Who wouldn’t want to see this movie?  Daniel Craig (James Bond), Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones), cowboys, aliens, Native Americans.  Maybe I set my expectations too high.  I don’t think I did, I just wanted to be entertained [...]