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Iconic. Classic. 10/10.

This movie would probably hit way harder if they set it about 25 years later. This is supposed to be a 2015 world, and it is solidly on its 2000 milieu. Needed something more to make me believe it.

Overall this isn't awful for what it is. And Arnold is always fun in this sort of movie

What the fuck was that?
I'll just say strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is about a completely rationale basis for a system of government compared to whatever the fuck happens in the last 20 minutes of this movie.

Pam Ferris is a gem in this. It's worth watching for her performance alone

Is this cinema? No. Is it a cold retread of the original? Yes. Is it fun, saccharine TV movie fluff? Absolutely. So watch it for what it is and enjoy the show

Plus, Tom Skerrit wears some of the sluttiest shorts this side of skin-emax.

Like Edgar, I would likely also be undone by confessing my crimes to a horse and a mouse

Watched on Friday February 7, 2025.

Danny DeVito & Betty White more than make up for Taylor Swift's total lack of voice acting skills.

And the music in this slaps

A fun of 90s nostalgia for 60s kitsch. Do all the gags stand the test of time? No, but that's part of its charge.

Also indistinctly Peoples being played by the Olsen twins, which is apparently not the case. The more you know.

Plot is a little thin, but damn can Lin Manuel Miranda write catchy songs for a musical

The 3D effects obviously get the most hate on this one, but nobody ever talks about how Shelly is supposed to be grotesquely fat and ugly for apparently no reason other than being Jewish and socially awkward.

The biker gang subplot serves genuinely no function but could only exist in the early 80s.

I wouldn't mind having a Norbot, even the evil ones

100% a Christmas movie. They're a freaking Christmas tree for crying out loud.

The audio design and lighting in this is 10/10.

Well this is darker than I it being when I was a kid

Watched on Monday December 23, 2024.

This review may contain spoilers.

It's like the Wizard of Oz...if Oz was full of depressed undead grandparents, cantankerous rich guys with broken legs, and weepy 10 year old lovers. Oh, and there's a massive forest fire.

But you learn that home is where the heart is, or something.

I know of no other way to describe this than a fever dream.

They clearly found some discarded costumes and sets on a back lot, decided yeah that's good enough, and went with it.

The song about Cincinnati being the best place on earth kinda slaps though

Watched on Monday December 16, 2024.

One of the better modernized adaptations of A Christmas Carol, which I generally find to be a little too try-hard. This one is more of a black comedy than a straight adaptation, with lots of jokes that were very timely in the late 80s and will leave a lot of modern audiences stumped as to why they were funny 35 years ago, but it still mostly holds up.

My biggest complaint is Bill Murray. He plays the same time of character in every one of his movies, and his only method is to basically scream what is meant to be a joke as loud as possible so you know it's supposed to be a joke. It's always been very grating to me as a viewer, but he's been around in the business for a very long time so more people must like it than not.

A Christmas classic, in the trues sense: syndicated saturation. It's not the best movie ever made, but it's episodic plot means you can leave it running for days at a time, catch snippets here and there, and you eventually see the whole movie.

The concept has the bones of something interesting, but the execution just doesn't work. When you have an indie short film, you're not expecting a fully polished production, but the writing and camera work is giving student film. Barley worth the 16 minutes of spilled ball bearings.

the beloved children's book The Polar Express? Well, if HP Lovecraft had written The Polar Express, this is the movie that would have been made from it.

Complaints about the CGI & motion capture are valid, but it was a product of it's time, the technology has advanced significantly over the last 2 decades, and I'll cut it some slack there.

Eddie Deezen (voice of Asshole Kid) being a real life sex pest totally checks, his character would definitely grow up to be a creepy incel.

Tootie is the exact level of extra I aspire to. Nobody can decapitate a snowfamily quite like her, she only songs dirty songs that make her sisters blush, and she murders an old man in cold blood before dancing around a bonfire. A role model.

Oh wow, a Tim Burton movie with Helena Bonham Carter? What will they think of next?

The way the oompa loompas are handled in this adaptation is so derivative. Because the oompa loompas' songs from the musical are so iconic, they felt the need to have Deep Roy dance around to increasing phoned in songs for each kid. It just doesn't work.

Johnny Depp trying to do a very thinly veiled Michael Jackson impression doesn't help.

Freddie Highmore is one of the few redeeming performances in this.

Overall, this is forgettable. Worth a watch, but not something I'd seek out again.

What an absolutely bizarre piece. First off, the premise is wild. Santa is in the throws of depression and wants to end it all because he can't pay his rent on the North Pole, so a lawyer who likes to decorate the town for Christmas (because reasons) decides to help him try to find a loophole in having to pay his rent.

This is an Italian/American co-production, and features some really bizarre dubbing for not just the Italian actors, but also the American ones. There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to why there is so much dubbing going on, because from what I could find the movie was originally all in English.

Overall, this is a kitschy 60s movie and if you watch it for what it is, it's actually kind of fun in parts. Some of the songs are decent, especially the title track, which slaps much harder than it has any right to based on the quality of the movie itself.

In the 90s, we had a whole genre of kids films about quasi dead beat dads who learn the error of their ways and show their families that they really do care about them in 90 minutes. This one throws in the added fun of a Power Rangers knock off, a mentally unbalanced postal worker, and tickle me Elmo mania. It's not cinema, but it's a fun romp through the Twin Cities in search of the hottest toy of the year, while learning what fatherhood is really about: dres as your kid's favorite tv character and learning to fly with a jet pack to save said kid from certain death.

Phil Hartman steals the show playing the horniest character in a Christmas movie of all time.

"The jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse"

A true Christmas classic, this third entry in the Vacation series follows the continued shenanigans of the Griswold family, introducing even more relations to hilarious effect. This one does rely on more slapstick than the previous 2 films (not really my cup of tea), but it keeps the laughs coming through the whole hour and a half runtime.

Definitely a product of the 90s. A "broken home", an aloof stepdad that is polar opposite of the divorced dad (who is obviously a workaholic with no time for his former family), mental health being the butt of half the jokes, plenty of fat jokes, making innuendo about child abuse for laughs.

Watching this is like stepping back in time, and why I will always love it. But I think we can all agree that a movie where Santa buys the farm in the first 15 minutes is a little morbid for a kids movie.

What a bizarre adaptation. The modern dance is weird but works somehow, but the voiceovers by a score of well known British actors is just... off-putting? It's hard to describe but it just doesn't work.

Well this was... different. I understand why the critics loved it, but it's weird, even by Miyazaki standards. I felt like there was some cultural context that I was missing with some of the symbolism around death & grief, so maybe that was part of why it didn't totally land with me. I also found the voice acting to be pretty mediocre in the English dub. Overall it was a fine treatment of a boy processing the grief of losing his mother and learning how the real world works (it ain't all sunshine & rainbows, kids), but some just felt not quite there for me. Still recommend it, particularly of you're a fan of Studio Ghibli's other films.

A fun but ultimately unnecessary prequel to the classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Olivia Coleman's Mrs. Scrubbitt is the real breakthrough performance. Probably would have been a 4.5 without Matt Smith, because he should never be in anything. Ever.

never disappoints, the perennial Christmas classic. Probably will watch at least 10 more times before Christmas

A foxy arse country period comedy

The pacing on this one felt a little off compared to part 1, but still a very solid adaptation.

Watched on Thursday November 14, 2024.

the "final" entry in the franchise (we all knew that was never going to hold) really leans into the comedy of Freddy, sometimes to the story's detriment. A movie about a guy who murders teenagers for fun in their dreams obviously can't take itself too seriously, but at times this one seems to think that it doesn't have to take itself seriously at all.

The 3D segments are silly, even more so when you watch it in a non-3D setting (ooooo wiggling fingers).

This nails the 70s aesthetic, but the writing/pacing don't match it. I get what theyre going for, but there is just never quite a payoff that makes it worth the trudge to get there.

Somehow 8 films deep, the franchise just keeps chugging along, repeating the exact same formula every time, with the exact say level of payoff.

Is this a good movie? Not really, but we're not watching Saw movies for the cinema of them. Just sit down and enjoy the blood spattered ride.

While not a perfect adaptation of Shirley Jackson's book (I don't think I've ever seen or heard an adaptation that truly does her work justice), there are more than enough chills and thrills in this to make it a fun watch.

Julie Harris really shines as the neurotic Nel

Nobody plays a frumpy plain Jane like Chloe Sevigny

Just boys being boys.

The pie eating contest will always be iconic.

A movie filmed in 2021 that isn't released until 2024...and has at least 3 montages.

This movie is 10 years too late. But they still used 2014 CGI.

Movies about making movies always hit right with me. This B-movie horror take on the genre is a fun watch as long as you don't think about it too much. It's just fun, enjoy the ride.

I could have done without the color sequence, but it was a fairly common gimmick at the time so I'll let it slide

It's a video game movie, but tries to stand on it's own. Instead of just adapting source material, it is sort of an amalgam of a bunch of stuff from the games and some fluff. Visually, it's great. The dialogue and acting...well it's a video game movie. Sean Bean should have had a bigger role.

I love a good slasher, especially this time of year as we head into spooky season, and I've somehow never gotten around to the reboot trilogy. This installment is alright, but not amazing. It's subtle throwbacks to the original, and even the retconned sequels, work, but at times it try to lean too far into fan service. A wink and a nod to the originals is fine, but there are points where this just feels like they're just lifting while sequences and not just paying homage.

What bothered me the most was the lack of tension through 2/3 of the movie. We already know who Michael is, we already know he's coming back to Haddon field, we already know he's going to starting killing his way through the townsfolk. There's just nothing to grab the viewer until the third act when Laurie's special ops training kicks in.

Jamie Lee Curtis is the best part of this by far and without her in the role of Laurie, this film wouldn't work at all.

Watched on Monday September 9, 2024.

Watched on Monday September 9, 2024.

Some of the jokes have aged like milk, but that's part of its charm. I don't know who was clamoring for an Our Gang move in 1994, but somebody must have wanted it because it had an box office of over $65M.

I want a spin off about the mooses

I'm a sucker for a Golden Age musical. The massive chorus numbers, the painted backdrops, the whimsy. Brigadoon tries a little to hard to cinematize a stage show instead of trying to be a movie in its own right, and that I that is where it suffers most. Some musicals need to adjustment when transitioning form stage to screen, and I think the changes made here aren't necessarily for the better.

But it is still a solid piece and I definitely recommend it.

• Double Dragon
• Mortal Kombat
• Mortal Kombat
• Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
• Street Fighter
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie
• Super Mario Bros.
• Tomb Raider
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.