There’s just a little too much going on in Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It seems to want to dip its toe into as many genres as it can, but doesn’t give any of them enough time to actually pay off. There are some great concepts and the cast is solid, but it just doesn’t fire on…
Tag: homage
Renfield (2023) – Chris McKay
Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, and Awkwafina star in Chris McKay’s bloody, hilarious, and over-the-top love letter to the supporting character of the original Dracula story, Renfield, including some wonderful homages to the original 1931 film. It’s modern-day America and Renfield (Hoult) has relocated Dracula (Cage) yet again to hide him from those who would hunt…
Evil Dead Rise (2023) – Lee Cronin
Lee Cronin wrote and directed Evil Dead Rise a nice new spin on the classic horror franchise that promises the ultimate in grueling horror. As much as I love the originals, and Bruce Campbell, I love that the new films have eschewed some of the comedic elements and really leaned into the brutal gore and…
Top Gun: Maverick (2022) & Two-Movie 4K Review
Coming some thirty-six years after the release of the first film, Top Gun: Maverick reminded film-lovers why we love going to the movies. It was a spectacle of the highest order as viewers joined actors in the actual cockpit of jets and planes to film a sequel that pays homage to its origins while pushing…
Scream 4 (2011) – Wes Craven
Kevin Williamson is back with a script that gives the Scream (and Stab) franchise the course correction it needed following the Scream 3 misstep, and right off the bat, the film has the sense of fun, and play that was messing in the third film. In fact the casting seems steps above the third film…
The Final Girl Support Group (2021) – Grady Hendrix
I’ve been a fan of Grady Hendrix’s writing since I first discovered the vhs looking cover of My Best Friend’s Exorcism. Since then, I hunted down anything he’d written before and after that (two last titles to read and I’m caught up) so I dug eagerly into The Final Girl Support Group. A Final Girl…
The Vast of Night (2019) – Andrew Patterson
The Vast of Night is very much my kind of film, part Twilight Zone, part early Spielberg, there’s a vibe to this film that I just totally dig. A lot of the film feels like an homage to old dramas, encouraging the theatre of the mind, but there is a nice payoff at the end…
Millennium (1998) – …Thirteen Years Later, and Skull and Bones
Micheal R. Perry pens the fiftieth episode of Millennium that feels like it riffs a bit on the whole meta horror movie serial killer theme revolutionised a few years earlier by Wes Craven’s film Scream. Airing on 30 October, 1998, the episode was another Halloween episode. This time around, Frank (Lance Henriksen) finds himself mired…
Spaceballs (1987) – Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is hit and miss with me, I love Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, but Spaceballs, no matter how quotable it is, and how much it delightfully skewers the Star Wars universe (with George Lucas’ blessing, and some special effects by ILM) has never done it for me. There are moments I like, but…
Silverado (1985) – Lawrence Kasdan
Occasionally a film comes along and revitalises the genre. Eastwood would return to the western trough countless times before he revitalised it with his own take on it, Unforgiven, but in the mid-80s, that shake-up was left to Lawrence Kasdan and his brother Mark. Lawrence had his fingers in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and…
The Mind Reels 