Everything Peter Jackson did well with Lord of the Rings goes horribly wrong here.
From There and Back Again to There and Bastardized instead.
I throughly enjoy Jackson’s early horror work, full of whimsical yet disgusting, terrible and ridiculous gore. Brief homages to this in the LOTR trilogy were fun, especially in the extended editions.
This is the first time I bothered watching the extended version of this film, due to how little I enjoyed my first taste of it, and…
Essentially the perfect slasher. Halloween doesn’t just introduce three icons of horror in Michael, Laurie and Loomis, it cements the character outlines as all-time pillars of the genre.
Donald Pleasance’s mad and frantic performance does as much as the score (one of the best, or at least most effective, in movie history) or use of darkness to make Michael and the film as scary as it remains today.
Halloween is a thorough masterpiece aside from the music and performances though. So…
I have no particular affinity for Gladiator, and had pretty low expectations for this one, but really enjoyed it.
After a very slow start, everything started clicking. Denzel was fun and great, the fights were brutal and Lucius became a solid and likable character. The ship battle was especially cool. I hated the CGI animals though- they were solid, but distracting and inferior as usual.
Absolutely fantastic filmmaking on all levels and truly both hilarious and terrifying. Humans are strange.
Imagine living in a timeline where this country didn’t actively celebrate and justify the very worst aspects of society. Still though, a great movie is a great movie.
First time in a long time for me, and the first time ever for the kiddo tonight. It was certainly fun to finally share in this adventure.
Iconic in every sense of the word with ample all-time scenes, bits and tropes. The opening sequence is still my favorite, and arguably one the best adventure sequences ever put on film. All that, and the music may still actually be the best factor.
I absolutely love this movie more and more each time I watch it.
The scenery alone, featuring the woods as the co-main character, is arguably the best aspect of the film, but the score makes a solid claim to that as well, sitting amongst other game-changing all-time horror greats as featured in Halloween and The Shining, among others.
I’ve heard some find this to be slow or boring and, though I never agreed fully, I did understand that critique the first,…
