Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
I don't think there's a more disappointing young filmmaker today than Christopher Landon. The feature film of his that first brought him to my attention was Happy Death Day, a delightful little romp through Groundhog Day antics. That success lead to serious attention from Blumhouse who started throwing money at him to make movies quickly… Continue reading We Have a Ghost
#10 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi's filmography. Ralph Bakshi wanted to prove that he could make a movie for families, so he made a film filled with Nazi imagery, a female fairy that is in a near-constant state of undress with obvious nipple protrusions, extreme violence, a meandering, nearly pointless plot, and complicated, underexplained… Continue reading Wizards
This is something of a complete disaster of a film. I kind of hated it. If this doesn't end up my least favorite Best Picture winner, I will be very surprised. There's an amateurishness to just so much of the film's craft that it boggles the mind that anyone would want to reward it for… Continue reading Cimarron
#31 in my ranking of the Classic Universal Monster movies. Whose bright idea was it to change the design of the Gill Man to *checks notes* remove the gills? Seriously, I can understand the half-baked ideas about science taking shortcuts around Nature, the uninteresting love triangle thing that barely exists, or even the meandering story.… Continue reading The Creature Walks Among Us
#30 in my ranking of the Classic Universal Monster movies. These Mummy movies are simply not very good. I have some suspicions about why the writing and directing teams simply could not find a way to deal effectively with the mute and slow-moving monster, but all that really matters is what we see on screen.… Continue reading The Mummy’s Ghost
David Vining, Author 