I recently caught The Bye Bye Man on Netflix, and the good thing is that it’s not irredeemably bad. Which still means that it’s bad, just not so bad you get angry at yourself for having watched it. It has all the elements of a really entertaining, well-done movie but the most essential element of […]
2004’s The Chronicles of Riddick was a movie that betting person would have assumed was a sure thing. David Twohy was not only returning to direct–he helmed Pitch Black, the movie that propelled Vin Diesel to stardom–but the sequel would expand upon the ideas introduced in the first movie in new and interesting ways. And…it […]
As I have said time and again, I am not fond of remakes. More often than not they don’t add anything to the original–did we really need to know about Michael Myers difficult upbringing in Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot?–or they add details that seemingly are there just to differentiate them from the original. The thing is, as […]
Jon Amiel’s The Core wasn’t a success at the time, which is a pity because it’s pretty engaging. It plays very much in Irwin Allen wheelhouse, except on a greater scale. What’s also important is that Amiel brings a humanity to his characters typically missing from such movies, so despite a pretty ample amount of […]
If I were to tell you that Keith Shaw’s Avalanche Sharks–despite the poster proclaiming ‘Snow Sharks’–wasn’t a very good movie, you’d probably say something to the effect of ‘Duh, it’s about sharks that ‘swim’ though snow, devouring skiers. What about that scenario screams Academy Award to you?’ And I get that, though the movie doesn’t […]
Olly Blackburn’s Kristy is one of the better home invasion thrillers, except in this instance the ‘home’ in question is an entire college campus, empty but for a skeleton staff and Justine (Haley Bennett), who’s planning on staying on campus over the Thanksgiving holiday. Unfortunately for Justine and everyone else, a cult of religious zealots have […]
I am mystified why Brian DePalma’s The Fury (based on the novel by John Farris) hasn’t been remade because not only would the movie benefit from a more timely interpretation (in these days of government programs we often don’t completely understand, but fear a reboot could potentially find a very receptive audience) and a more […]
If you’re expecting me to say something to the effect that Pitof’s 2004 super hero movie Catwoman is some sort of lost classic then you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree…because it’s not. And while the buck usually stops with the director, I don’t think that that’s entirely fair in this case, mainly because the […]
If you ask me the true test of whether or not a movie is a good one is that of time, namely if it can stand up well to repeated viewings.
With John Carpenter’s 1982 movie The Thing–based on Christian Nyby’s 1951 movie The Thing From Another World and the original John Campbell short novel, Who Goes There?–we got to see a director at the peak of his powers.
SCREENPHILES 