Retro Review: Psycho III (1986)

Happy Halloween everyone! As is now my tradition, it's time to review a "Psycho" movie on Halloween. This I plan on doing until I run out of "Psycho" movies to review. There's five of them if you're wondering. Four with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and one blasphemous remake. Today's subject is "Psycho III," which was directed by Anthony Perkins himself in his directorial debut. As a refresher course, I often claim "Psycho" as my favorite movie, which is why I made it my Halloween review when I started this series of Halloween reviews two years ago. Then I thought it would be fun to dive into all of the sequels because not many people realize they exist. They were put into production in the 80's, after Hitchcock had passed away, seemingly to cash in on the trend of horror franchises that started going rampant with the likes of "Halloween," "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street." They are 100 percent a shameless cash grab and thus you might think that there's no initial value, but they're actually a lot better than they have any right to be. "Psycho II" is especially shockingly good, even though it does get carried away with too many twists and not enough streamlined focus. "Psycho III"? Well... it's a bit of a handful, but there's still value here.

First of all, as far as the premise goes, this movie takes place shortly after "Psycho II" leaves off. The two movies are a companion piece, much like "Halloween" and "Halloween II." In fact, I was reminded last night that one of the big twists at the end of that movie plays very heavily into this movie as we're certainly not done twisting and turning, adding to the Norman Bates mythology that didn't necessarily need to be expanded on, but the writers had a lot of fun doing so. Spoilers for "Psycho II" if you haven't seen that one and still want to without being informed of what happens, but I kinda need to talk about that in order to even bring up the premise of "Psycho III." Emma Spool. She's Norman's aunt. Norma's sister. She shows up at the end of "Psycho II" and reveals that she is Norman's real mother. Is she telling the truth? Well, we'll get to that. But Norman quickly poisoned her and banged her on the head with a shovel, killing her. Then he took her corpse up to his room to become his new mother. And I had to tell you that because that's where "Psycho III" picks up. People are still investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Spool. As they do so, she takes on the new role of Norman's mother, arguing with him and haunting him as he tries to maintain some normalcy.

I think the good part of this movie is the continuation of Norman's arc. It is a bit of a regurgitation from "Psycho II," but it remains the highlight of this movie because Anthony Perkins does such a great job in this role. By the time this movie had come out, he had over 25+ years of experience as this character. He knows how Norman is supposed to act and respond. And the fact that he was also the director of the movie means that he can steer the ship where he wants it to go rather than relying on another character being able to make sure things go right. Thus I buy this constant torment that Norman has with himself and I like the fact that he's able to gain more control over it. There's even a scene where he's walking into the bathroom to seemingly kill this girl while she's in the tub, but ends up saving her life as she had attempted to commit suicide. Because of that, I was able to buy into the conflict he had with this whole situation and it made sense that this new girl, named Maureen Coyle, was able to fall for Norman because he saved her life. And while Norman was also equally attracted to her, she started a whole bunch of triggers in his head because she had a striking resemblance to Marion Crane, even having the same initials and similar suitcase.

While this relationship and Norman's continued conflict is of genuine interest and executed fairly well, unfortunately that's about as far as I can get when it comes to the positives in this movie. It's everything else that starts bogging up the movie. First of all, I do have to bring up the fact that there's a significant age gap between Norman and Maureen. I don't know how old the characters are supposed to be, but Anthony Perkins was 54 when this movie was released while Diana Scarwid, who plays Maureen, was 31. It's true that Perkins still manages to pull off a charming and charismatic older Norman, but there's still a 23 year age gap there that makes it so there's not as much emotional weight in that relationship, which is what this movie heavily relies on. In the original "Psycho," Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh as Norman and Marion had so much natural chemistry together, as well as nearly equally as conflicting backstories, that it made everything very beautiful and hauntingly tragic when Norman lost control and killed her. Maureen Coyle as a discount Marion Crane just isn't that interesting. And I also found myself not caring much for her backstory as a suicidal nun who decided God doesn't exist and ran away from her duties.

It also borders too far into the realm of being too repetitive. A beautiful and conflicted blonde runs away from her obligations and winds up at the Bates Motel, causing Norman to enter into a conflicted torment. It's a been there, done that sort of thing. And as the movie repeats some of the same exact elements of the first movie, especially as we get to the end where they even repeat the falling down the steps thing in the same exact way that Hitchcock did, "Psycho III" begins to feel less and less like its own thing and more like something that's just copying and pasting from better material. Even though "Psycho II" and the recent "Bates Motel" TV series also used some of the same signatures of this franchise, they managed to successfully be their own thing. "Psycho II" specifically felt like a proper continuation of what would happen with Lila Crane and Norman Bates if Norman was released into society 20 years after his incarceration and there's plenty of mystery and suspense as a new, intriguing story starts to unravel. "Psycho III" just begins to feel like they ran out of ideas and didn't know what else to do with this franchise, but continued out of obligation in order to keep up with the other 80's horror franchises that were still going strong, at least in terms of quantity.

Because of this, even though Anthony Perkins the actor will forever have a special place in my heart for what he brought to the table with Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins the director showed that perhaps directing wasn't quite his thing. Now I don't know all of the history behind the production of this movie. Perhaps Universal themselves should get at least some of the blame along with screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue, but it was Anthony Perkins steering the ship and when the ship as a whole just doesn't go anywhere interesting, the captain of the ship has to take a brunt of the blame, just like the coach of a football team or the manager of the business. There just wasn't anything super unique about this film to help it stand on its own. When the movie did try to branch off and do its own thing, it becomes a complete disaster. As I said, nothing about Maureen and her life as a Nun was very interesting. But also taking front and center stage was a character named Duane Duke, who attempts to rape Maureen at the beginning, then later shows all kinds of disrespect towards every woman he meets. And for some reason he becomes a huge character in this as he's trying to help crack the case as to what's up with Norman Bates.

In solving this mystery, he teams up, or rather is recruited by a random journalist, another character who I don't care about. She's just an angry, annoying journalist who is trying to probe the situation despite having no connections with Norman Bates. When Sam Loomis and Lila Crane started to investigate what's going on with Norman Bates in the first movie, there's some strong emotional connection with them as they are well written characters. They also have a specific connection to the case as it's Lila's sister Marion that has gone missing. So "Psycho III" lacks the personal connection, or solid motivation, with our side characters and they also aren't likable at all. I was waiting for them to get killed by Norman so they can stop bogging down the film. And that's not a right thing to cheer for. Every death in "Psycho" is tragic and upsetting. Not once do I find joy in someone's demise. And on that note, the first two kills in this movie are borderline extras. Two girls get killed who I'm not even sure are given names. And if they do have names that I don't remember, they most certainly aren't given a backstory. They just show up to get killed, making this movie fall into some bad tropes of the most throwaway 80's slashers that are all about the gore and nothing else.

The other major sin is how easily Emma Spool, Norman's aunt, takes on the role of his new mother figure who he argues with. In the "Psycho" lore, Norman initially took on the Mother persona because he was so traumatized with his killing of his mother, who he knew and loved for years. That sent him spiraling out of control into a severe case of Dissociative Identity Disorder. There's no trauma regarding his "new" mother. He killed her as more of an afterthought in "Psycho II" and now she has even more control over his mind in this movie. It almost treads the line of a supernatural occurrence of her demon haunting Norman and yelling at him a lot, rather it being Norman having lost complete control over his mind. The supernatural is not where this movie goes. But the execution just isn't there to make it believable this time around. And there's not even a major twist in this movie that blows your mind. It just progresses naturally as more of a drama than a twisted psychological thriller and leaves you feeling a bit empty. Some of the deaths have no weight because you're glad they happened while other deaths have no weight because there was no reason for them to happen. And the finale of the film doesn't leave you in a haunted daze. Rather, there's a lot of confusion, which is not what you want from your movie's ending.

For the sake of being a personal reference guide, this next paragraph is going to be a spoiler-filled paragraph where I dive into the details of the ending. If you want to check this out, turn away. If you've already seen this movie or don't care about spoilers, then lets proceed because I'm going to need these details for when I discuss "Psycho IV" next year, which is actually a prequel to the original. As it turns out, the big twist of this movie is a twist that retcons the twist in "Psycho II." Emma Spool is NOT Norman's mother. She is his aunt. But she was jealous of Norma as she was in love with Mr. Bates. She killed Mr. Bates and kidnapped Norman as she felt that Norman was the son that her and Mr. Bates should've had, rather than Norma and Mr. Bates. But then she gets discovered, is institutionalized, and Norman is returned to Norma. This I was fine with. It works better than what we learned in "Psycho II." And it does connect with that film as a continuation of the story arc. But all of this is important because "Psycho IV," in telling this beginning, tells a completely different story of what happened. We'll explore all of that next year. In short, "Psycho IV" is fine as a standalone film, but is very frustrating with how much continuity errors there are.

More spoilers in regard to the ending of "Psycho III" in present time, the conclusion of Maureen's ends with her dying, but not because of the fact that Norman lost it and killed her. He was actually fairly sane. At least to some degree. But she dies because because Mother's final scream (which is Norman's final scream, even though it comes from the bedroom while Norman is in the hall?) startles her and she falls down the stairs, becoming impaled on an arrow. That was disappointing because she died just for the sake of dying rather than dying in an emotional way that has meaning. The franchise felt the need to kill off all of the characters rather than letting some of them survive. However, our journalist lady then comes in and confronts Norman. And she DOESN'T die. Even though Mother orders Norman to kill her, Norman takes control of himself and instead stabs the corpse of Mother, seemingly destroying that personality. I thought this was a very solid conclusion to Norman's arc. Then when he gets arrested after the police learn that he was indeed behind all of the killings, he mentions that he feels free, so he doesn't mind being arrested. That would've a fine ending, until we learn that Norman kept a piece of Mother's hand, meaning he's not free.

And that's how we conclude this version of the Anthony Perkins interpretation of Norman Bates. There's still two more movies to review, but one is a weird prequel and the other is an unnecessary and shameless remake with no heart and soul. So given that "Psycho III" is the ending of Norman's arc, it's sad that we leave it off on a disappointing and unsatisfying conclusion. That said, this movie is fine enough. I'm certainly not upset at its existence and if you want to get another fix of Norman Bates, watching "Psycho II" and "Psycho III" is a worthwhile undertaking. But in reality, "Psycho" is 100 percent satisfactory as a standalone movie, which is what Hitchcock intended on it being. They're just a product of their times and very much reflect the era of 80's horror. If you like 80's slashers, you actually might enjoy "Psycho II" and "Psycho III" a lot more than you might think. But if you're going for pure Hitchcockian magic, neither of them quite hit the mark. And the fact that I always forget what happens in what movie might be their biggest flaw as they're simply just not as memorable as the classic original. That said, I still gave "Psycho II" an 8/10 last year. I stand by that. With "Psycho III," we're going a few notches lower and awarding it a disappointing 6/10.

The Lighthouse Review

Here's a challenging movie to review. "The Lighthouse" is a movie I saw as fast as physically possible, which for me meant waiting around until it became available to general audiences. In initially debuted the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year, then bounced around to several more film festivals, with Toronto back in September being its other major stop. It finally hit normal theaters on October 18, but just in a few theaters. It expanded this past weekend into about 500 theaters where I was lucky enough to see one of my local theaters being one of those 500. Sure, rave reviews out of the festival circuit was something that made me hopeful, but the reason I had my eyes on this one is because it is the sophomore effort from director Robert Eggers, whose first directorial effort was the 2016 film "The Witch." If you know me well enough, or at least have followed this blog for a while, you've probably heard me raving about "The Witch" at one point in time. As the metaphor goes, "The Witch" is one of those movies that ages like fine wine. I enjoyed it quite a bit the first time I watched it, but the more I've seen it, the better it gets. If you ask me what my favorite horror movie is from this current decade, there's no hesitation. "The Witch." So of course I wanted to see what this guy did next.

Because I was so excited for this movie based on the name of the director alone, I had zero desire to see any marketing. Due to it being a smaller, independent film, it's not a trailer that came up much at all during my theatrical movie adventures. So I am happy to report that I successfully avoided everything about this movie. The only things I knew about it were the cast and crew, the Rotten Tomatoes score (which has been hovering around in the 90s), and the most obvious of it all -- it had something to do with a lighthouse. That's it. If you are one who also likes smaller, independent horror films and/or you loved "The Witch," I'm going to give you permission to exit this review right now. This won't be a spoiler review, but if you're on board, "The Lighthouse" is a movie that is experienced best when you know absolutely nothing. It's quite the experience. If you want to know my opinion real quick, it has my stamp of approval. So there you go. Now you can take that information and head out to the theater. Come back to this review after you've seen the movie because I'm certain you'll have a lot you want to talk about. And I'll be happy to oblige because there's a lot I want to talk about, too. And I'll get to some of that in this review. Although I do plan on treading lightly here.

For those of you who require more information than just knowing the movie has my stamp of approval, or you've now come back after closing this review and going to see this movie, let's proceed forward and try to figure out exactly what this movie has to offer. Because, yeah, this is quite the intense movie. The last movie I reviewed was "Zombieland: Double Tap" and this movie here could not be more different than that one. "Zombieland" is the type of movie where you kick back and relax. "The Lighthouse" is a movie where you need to sit forward and turn your brain to full capacity, because you're going to need all of it to crack this one. And then some. Multiple viewings are most likely required to understand everything or to fully appreciate what took place. Unfortunately for me, I have only seen this once and now I have to figure out how to even write a review that does this movie justice. As a friend of mine asked me after we got out of the screening, "How in the world are you going to review that movie?" I have no idea. But we're going to make an attempt. And in making said attempt, you have to understand that this is a preliminary review. My opinion of this will likely change over time, but I have to say something right out of the gate to convince you to go see it.

And we're going to start here with the basic premise of this movie, which is a lot more simple than I was anticipating. Again, I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I didn't realize that the movie only had three cast members, one of which only shows up for a brief period of time. For the most part, it's just Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson playing two guys who work at a lighthouse, with the setting being the late 1800s. Dafoe is the older guy who's been there for quite some time while Pattinson is the new recruit who is essentially getting his bearings straight as to what exactly he's doing. Because of this, Dafoe is the crazier man who enjoys treating Pattinson like a slave or a servant, making him do all of the dirty work. All of this was both physically and mentally exhausting for Pattinson, which caused him to start slowly devolving into madness. Dafoe, on the other hand, was already completely mad, but seemed to relish in all of it. This is all setting up for quite the power struggle. Was Pattinson going to simply submit himself to all of this or was he going to crack and start to fight back? And if he does the latter, how is Dafoe going to respond? And, yes, you guessed it, that's as far as I'm willing to go when it comes to describing the plot. Rest assured that there's a lot more to this than that.

The first thing I want to talk about with this movie is the technical side of the movie. I believe the setting of the movie is the late 1800's and Eggers did his best to make that feel authentic as possible. It starts with this being a black and white film with a more square-ish aspect ratio. I'm not exactly sure what the said aspect ratio is, but it's close to being a square. Something that was made for an older TV rather than a modern theater screen. Some people might call this a gimmick, but I see this as Eggers wanting this to feel more old-fashioned. On top of that, all of the dialogue is taken from old sailors' journals and stuff like that, so that Eggers can get the proper style of dialogue here. So if you've seen "The Witch," it's a similar thing as that movie. Eggers likes having his movie look and sound authentic to the time period that it's set in. That I can appreciate. He might alienate some viewers who only watch movies in 21st Century American English, but the patient are rewarded. I really like this authentic feeling I get when I watch his films. It makes it feel like a realistic experience that adds to the emotion and the intensity, which in turn elevates it above the traditional drama/horror. Eggers doesn't care to follow modern conventions, which is respectable.

I will confess that there were times where the dialogue was so thick and complex, especially with Dafoe's character, that I got a bit lost. But it's not the type of experience where I storm out of the theater calling the movie the worst thing to ever exist simply because my brain had a hard time comprehending everything. Rather it makes me want to buy the movie when it comes out so that I can flip on the subtitles in order to catch things that I may have missed. I have a feeling that will help enhance my experience. On that note, I'm looking at Eggers' next film project on IMDb and there's a movie called "The Northman" listed that is a Viking revenge saga taking place in 10th Century Iceland. After that, there's a movie called "The Knight" that's a medieval epic of sorts. I'm really excited for both of these as I totally expect Eggers to continue his style with making his films feel authentic. If the general audiences don't take to it, then who cares. I'm more than willing to be a part of this niche. Everyone else can go watch their jump scare fests or mindless slashers. I enjoy a movie that's willing to have a lot more meat to its bones. It might give me an intellectual challenge, but in the long run that's for the best as long as it continues to feel authentic and real.

Two more things about the tone of this movie. With this first one, I'm going to get really technical here. There's a thing that I learned where sometimes in a movie the score or soundtrack of the film doubles as something the characters are listening to themselves rather than just something that the audience is listening to. Think "Guardians of the Galaxy" where Star Lord is listening to his tapes. I can't remember the name of this term. That's why when I said that I'm going to get real technical, I hope you sensed a bit of sarcasm. If not, well now you do. Whatever said term is called, "The Lighthouse" used it a lot with the blaring sounds coming from the lighthouse. It felt like one of those Hans Zimmer scores where it sounds like he fell asleep at the organ, but the sound was coming from the lighthouse in this instance. The constant blaring really made this creepy and intense as you slowly become more and more unsettled as to what's about to happen. The second thing I want to mention in regards to the tone is the pace. It's purposely slow. Again, this might alienate some people who wanted a traditional jump scare fest, but I thought the slow nature of the film helped things build properly to a satisfying conclusion.   

That's about as far as I can get into this movie without tripping over actual spoilers, so with the rest of this I'm going to proceed with even more caution. Because, yeah, things happen. Some things I was anticipating based on where the plot was taking me. Other things were so bizarre that I'm not sure what to think about them. But it wasn't like "Midsommar" this year where I felt many things were happening for the sake of shock value. Everything that happened in this movie felt like it was happening for a specific reason and I have no idea what some of those reasons were. When the movie finished, no one in my screening dared to move. Usually I'm the last one to exit the theater because I like to sit and ponder about what I saw while the credits are rolling while everyone else gets up and leaves the second the first credits show up. But in this instance, no one did. Everyone was stunned into silence and everyone felt it was more necessary to turn to their neighbor and talk about what just happened rather than get up and walk to their car. And Eggers spends no time babysitting his audience. He just expects you to figure things out on your own. Thus this movie is one that elicits a conversation, thus helping the experience last far beyond the end credits.

I'm not going to talk about any of those themes. What I will say is that my initial reaction is that this is a movie that doesn't dive quite as deep as "The Witch." Although in fairness to "The Lighthouse," that's an awfully high bar to jump over, one that I wasn't expecting it to accomplish. However, it's also worth noting that "The Witch" took a long time for it to fully sink in for me. I loved it when I walked out. I loved it when I reviewed it. But at the time I didn't give it a perfect score. But three years later, there is no question in my mind that it absolutely deserves it and it will be super high up on my list of favorite movies of the decade because it's a movie that took time for me to fully appreciate. Even though I don't think "The Lighthouse" will ever top "The Witch," I fully realize that I need to give it time. But I'm not going to wait a year or two to review it. So I'm going to do this weird thing where I am going to give what I call a tentative score. And who knows. Maybe I'll return to this movie one day. That's a thing I'm strongly considering when it comes to "The Witch." I won't make any guarantees. But one of these Halloweens that's a thing that I would love to do. Anyways, with "The Lighthouse," my tentative score for it is a 9/10, but just know that could change.

Zombieland: Double Tap Review

It's been 10 years since "Zombieland" was released in theaters and finally the world has received the sequel that they've been requesting for so long. I will admit that I did not see "Zombieland" in theaters. It came out in 2009 and that was one of the years where I was M.I.A. from the world of modern media due to me serving a mission for my church. There's a lot of movies released in 2009 that I still haven't seen. But I did eventually see "Zombieland." I don't know when that was (it was at least a few years ago) and it was only once, so I'm no "Zombieland" aficionado, nor have I been a part of the loud group demanding a sequel. But when I watched it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one of those movies where you sit back, relax, and enjoy a silly, self-aware zombie movie that spends most of the time making fun of the genre in a "Deadpool" sort of way. Non-coincidentally, the writers for "Zombieland," Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, went onto write "Deadpool" and "Deadpool 2." And they're back penning the screenplay for this sequel, along with EVERYONE else, cast and crew alike. So yeah, I was totally down for a return to "Zombieland." All things considered, I figured it would take a disaster of epic proportions for me to be physically upset at a "Zombieland" movie. 

In short, said disaster did NOT happen. "Double Tap" was a fun sequel that I'm certain "Zombieland" fans should enjoy. We start out 10 years later with Jesse Eisenberg thanking everyone for choosing to come back and join them despite there being so much zombie stuff. Then they make fun of the fact that a lot of the other zombie refuse to use the word zombie and then we're into the story. Honestly speaking, said story doesn't matter. Nevertheless, we start with the four of our main characters chilling out in the White House, because that's where they've established as their home. But in said home, Little Rock (Abagail Breslin) has become a little restless. She acts like a rebellious teenager wanting to break out. So one night, her and Wichita (Emma Stone) ditch the guys as Wichita got a bit spooked by Columbus' (Jesse Eisenberg) marriage proposal. So to commiserate, Columbus and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) head over to the empty mall where they meet Madison (Zoey Deutch), the dumbest dumb blonde that you'll ever meet. Columbus uses her as a rebound when Wichita awkwardly shows back up. What's happened? Well, Little Rock ditched her and ran off with a hippie and now the group of them needs to go rescue her due to the T-800 zombies. 

I think the most amusing thing here is the fact that everyone decided to get back together for one more ride. Back in 2009, Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenberg were certainly on the map in terms of their acting careers, but in the 10 years since, both have developed into prestigious Oscar-nominated actors, with Emma Stone having won an Oscar. Woody Harrelson already had an Oscar nomination under his belt before "Zombieland," but since then he's become even more wildly known thanks to "The Hunger Games" and most recently got another Oscar nomination for "Three Billboards." Abigail Breslin is the only one who hasn't soared into superstardom since "Zombieland" as her moment of fame came right before "Zombieland" as she picked up an Oscar nomination for "Little Miss Sunshine" in 2007 while also being well known for "Signs" in 2002. But still, she's picked up some nice roles along the way. Yet despite all this fame, these four were willing to step back down to Earth a bit and jump back into their "Zombieland" roles, making for a nice family reunion. Because it wouldn't be "Zombieland" without these four. Personally I wouldn't have been that interested in following different characters in another part of this world. I wanted our main crew.

Even though the story wasn't always progressing, it was still fun seeing our main crew together. Like the first "Zombieland," this was episodic for much of it and I was fine with it. Yes, we had our main through arc that I detailed, but I mentioned that said story doesn't really matter because it wasn't the big focus. Rescuing Abigail Breslin wasn't of the utmost importance. Chilling out and hanging with the cast as they went on all their little adventures along the way was what really mattered. I could tell that the cast a had a lot of fun with all of this and that was quite infectious. Woody Harrelson felt like he wasn't even given a script to work with and I mean that in a positive way because it looked like he was being himself and goofing off the whole time. When he was geeking out about how great Elvis is or when he was talking about driving off on his own, I felt like that was Woody Harrelson. Jesse Eisenberg also seems to relish in the roles where he's allowed to sound nerdy and smart as he speaks in his super fast way, constantly rattling off his memorized list of rules. Emma Stone felt like the most serious of the bunch, but that provided a good contrast in the group. She also felt like she enjoyed grabbing some guns and shooting zombies.

The zombies don't always show up in this movie, but when they do, the scenes are rather entertaining as this group has developed the perfect system in attacking given that they've been together for 10 years now. And they do up the ante by bringing in the T-800 zombies. That of course is a "Terminator" reference as these zombies have evolved into stronger and faster zombies that are much more difficult to kill. Those zombies are quite intense, giving the movie an occasional touch of actual horror, even though the movie is mostly just a comedy. Our main characters were so good at killing zombies that I was never super worried about their survival, but when the T-800s came in, I actually wasn't 100 percent sure exactly what was going to happen. I may have been 98 percent sure, but there was a part of me that got a bit nervous when the T-800s caught our main characters by surprise, almost causing them to not know what to do while increasing their desire to actually go find Little Rock so she doesn't get mauled by the evolved zombies that she's not ready for. And when the T-800s started swarming together, suddenly I got a flashes of "World War Z." It's those super fast zombies that scare me the most because those things are vicious. The slow zombies are mostly boring.

Ultimately I think the best comparison here is the "Fast and Furious" franchise. There's a whole heck of a lot more "Fast and Furious" movies than "Zombieland" movies, but both are franchises are centered around the idea of chilling out and having fun. Believe it or not, I'm perfectly willing to shut off my brain and enjoy some mindless fun. As I say, there are times to sit and deeply analyze a film. There are times where I require a great story and emotional character arcs. Then there's a time to watch "Zombieland" and "Fast and Furious." Expectations are different. You just want to be entertained. And if you are, then you walk out satisfied. I didn't even care what the Rotten Tomatoes score was going to be. There's one YouTube critic that I follow who said this was an entertaining movie that fans of "Zombieland" should enjoy. That was all I needed. I don't even care why the movie ended up in the 60 percent range. Too many people overthinking things. Which is the same thing when people give a negative review to a "Fast and Furious" movie. I mean, what were you expecting? An Oscar-caliber film? If so, you purchased a ticket to the wrong film. "Double Tap" isn't going to win any Oscars. But if life is stressing you out, it's going to provide you some solid escapism.

Also like the "Fast and Furious" movies, "Double Tap" wound up having a lot of heart with their focus on family. Relationships were a bit rocky along the way, but this crew is a like a family in this movie and ultimately they learn family is what matters most. I thought that was a nice touch. Now the next movie I'm going to review is a much different experience that requires a lot more brain power. And that's a type of movie that I also really enjoy. But sometimes you just need a "Zombieland" in your life. That's all there is to it with this. That's why it's made this review a bit tough to write because the idea here is a lot more simple. I could've made this a two paragraph review or something that is only 100-200 words, but I decided to make it the length of a normal review for me and that was a bit challenging because there's not much to say here. It's a chill adventure with the characters you love who are going around and killing zombies. The writers, the director, the cast, and the other crew members all came together to make something that was simple and enjoyable. The last thing I'll say here is STAY FOR ALL OF THE CREDITS. Both mid credits and end credits. One of the best end credits scenes I've seen. And on that note, I'm going to give "Zombieland: Double Tap" an 8/10.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Review

It's been a bit slow for me recently in terms of my theatrical movie reviews. The reason behind that is a bit of a combination of things, but in the meantime I hope you've enjoyed my Halloween reviews. Hopefully I can get around to a few more of those before the end of the month. We'll see. But in the meantime I do now have a trio of theatrical movie reviews to get to you here in the next few days and we start with the fourth movie this year in Disney's series of live action remakes, following "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King." Believe it or not, we're not even done yet this year because next month "Lady and the Tramp" will be debuting on Disney+. "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" was not one I was looking forward to, nor was it one that I thought was even coming out until Disney pulled an audible earlier this year and bumped it up. It was initially scheduled for May 2020, but I'm assuming Disney opened their eyes and realized that "Wonder Woman 1984" was scheduled for the very next weekend, so they smartly put it into a less crowded October. Although that was a smart idea, it didn't quite work out as "Mistress of Evil" opened up to just $36.9 million, which is $154 million less than "The Lion King" and only half as much as the first "Maleficent" in 2014.

What that boils down to is simply the lack of excitement for another trip into this twisted world of Maleficent. Despite performing well, the reaction to "Maleficent" wasn't super positive and the five years between sequels didn't help matters. As I said before, I wasn't looking forward to this movie. The reason for that is I didn't like "Maleficent." I don't want this review to turn into a re-review of that movie, especially since I haven't bothered to watch it again since my initial viewing, but diving back into that movie is going to be a necessary thing for the sake of comparison here because, surprise, I really enjoyed "Mistress of Evil." And I promise you that I am as shocked as anyone, especially since the Rotten Tomatoes score for "Mistress of Evil" (41 percent) is significantly lower than that of "Maleficent" (53 percent). Yeah, sure, "Mistress of Evil" got an A on Cinemascore, but so did "Maleficent," so I didn't put much thought into. I was ready to go and get this thing over with because reviewing the latest Disney movie is always a necessity, right? And I fought the movie. I went in with the wrong mindset, looking for everything wrong with it, just to get this experience over with so I could go have fun with "Zombieland 2." But that's a fight I lost. Disney won me over.

Ever since the drive home from "Mistress of Evil," I've been trying to nail down exactly what went wrong with "Maleficent" so that I could properly compare to how it was handled differently in "Mistress of Evil. And the first thing that I have to point out is that "Mistress of Evil" is not the movie you think it's going to be. I'm not exactly sure what Disney's marketing campaign for this one was thinking, but those trailers are not representative of what this film is. Nor is the title of the movie reflective of the movie's content. Based on the title and the trailers, this felt like a movie that was retconning the first movie in an apologetic manner by turning Maleficent into the evil character that we all wanted her to be. I was a bit conflicted with that idea. Sure, I liked the idea of a super dark and evil Maleficent. This half-baked, wishy-washy version of Maleficent in the first one was not interesting to me, especially since Disney's original animated "Sleeping Beauty" is a heck of lot more dark and terrifying than their 2014 live-action remake. It felt like a cowardly move to pander to a younger audience and thus not have the guts to go dark when in fact the original movie that people have grown up watching for over 50 years did just that. That was one of the major faults for me.

That said, if you're going to commit to a certain route, commit to it. Perhaps I don't like what you're doing, but don't pander to an upset audience. Make the movie you want to make. This is the main point of conversation I was expecting to have here, but surprisingly that's not the conversation we were going to have, despite all the marketing leading me to believe that. In fact, this is very much in the model of the original movie. Maleficent isn't even the villain in the movie. And no, she's not an anti-hero here. She's the straight-up protagonist. The real villain here is Queen Ingrith, mother of Prince Philip, played wonderfully by Michelle Pfeiffer. When Philip proposes to Aurora, and Aurora accepts, Queen Ingrith invites Aurora and Philip to a dinner to celebrate, but also makes sure that Maleficent comes, too. At this point, Maleficent isn't in the best position because, despite doing a great act in loving Aurora and helping her overcome the curse, the city still hasn't accepted her. Queen Ingrith plans on feeding off of that by framing her for an awful wrong-doing, antagonizing her to the point of making her lose her temper, then showing the city how horrible Maleficent is, so that the Queen can lead a massacre of all of the non-human beings that have "infected" the land.

After Maleficent gets shot down while trying to fly away, to Queen Ingrith's surprise, another Maleficent-like creature sweeps in and saves her, taking her to their home. Because, yeah, there's a lot of these Maleficent-like beings. Going over the plot in Wikipedia helps remind me that their race is called the Dark Feys, who are a species of powerful, warlike dark fairies that have been driven to near extinction due to human oppression. They once lived peacefully in the land, but due to being misunderstood, they started getting killed off and went into hiding. Maleficent specifically is one of the last remaining Dark Feys whose bloodline is directly traced to the Phoenix, an ancient Dark Fey ancestor. When Maleficent is rescued and brought to their secret lair, there is debate among them as to how Maleficent can help them. Due to her powerful nature, some want Maleficent to lead them to war against the kingdom, while others hope that Maleficent's treatment and relationship with Aurora can help them peacefully unite with the human race and once again live in harmony. If it feels like I'm going to far into this movie's plot, OK maybe I'm diving a little further than I normally would, but I still haven't crossed into the second half of the movie here, so in my view I'm safe.

Either way, I think it's important for me to describe to you what this movie is actually about since Disney themselves didn't bother. And in telling you what this is about, I can successfully describe to you why this movie worked when the first one didn't. What this ultimately boils down to is the fact that I never bought into the first movie's premise. It didn't make sense that Maleficent would get so angry and curse this young girl, only to then watch over her and slowly fall in love. I didn't feel that arc fit in naturally to the story. I felt like the had a fine enough idea, but the execution was very poor. It certainly wasn't Angelina Jolie or Elle Fanning's fault. They did great in their respective roles, but the writing and the direction just gave them nothing to work with. In contrast, I felt this movie had solid execution. I may have been a bit scarred at their poor interpretation of "Sleeping Beauty," which holds up excellent as one of the better Disney Princess movies. But I was able to accept the fact that what was done was done. I couldn't hate this movie based on the flaws of its predecessor. Instead, I was able to accept the story's mythology and move forward. And I ended up happy about the fact that they owned up to what they did instead of putting together an apologetic sequel.

I was also able to believe the motivations of all the characters in this. Queen Ingrith was representing your population of individuals who are unaccepting of other races, ideals and cultures. She was motivated by fear. Fear of losing power. Fear that her idea of what she think the kingdom should be like would be overrun by a new and different idea that would comprise their current success. Sure, you could maybe call her a bit cliche. But Michelle Pfeiffer relished in the role. She reminded me of Charlize Theron in "Snow White in the Huntsman." Even though the latter movie wasn't quite what it could've been, Charlize Theron relished in this idea of playing an evil queen and so does Michelle Pfeiffer in this. And boy is she good at. But she's also good at putting on a lovable queenlike face that will garner respect from the kingdom while being utterly despicable behind the scenes, pulling all the strings in a malicious plot to get what she wants. And that's what makes you feel for Maleficent and Aurora. Maleficent because you feel her pain of just being stabbed in the back misunderstood and Aurora because she's doing her best to be the neutral peacemaker. She wants to appease her soon to be parents-in-law while also not wanting to antagonize her godmother in Maleficent.

All of this led to the emotion being strong. In the case of Aurora, while Elle Fanning is no longer the young girl she was in "Maleficent" (she was 16 when that movie was released and is now 21), she still brings the youthful innocence to the role that makes her a unique, but interesting version of Aurora. With that youthful innocence, she still hasn't developed enough of a reputation to be able to have a strong impact on the kingdom, especially since she gave her kingdom up and has reigned as Queen of the Moors since the end of the first movie, the Moors being the race of fantasy creatures that live in the land. Price Philip's people are a different kingdom, so when she realizes what Queen Ingrith is up to, there's not much she can do. On the side of Maleficent, when she joins up with the Dark Feys, I feel she is 100 percent justified in her desire to wreak havoc on this human kingdom with how wronged she was by Queen Ingrith and her people. Yet Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a Dark Fey named Conall who plays the unbiased voice of reason, trying to get her to make the right decision to establish peace instead of starting a war. His character was excellent. When when some of the other Dark Feys were angry at his proposals, they also felt justified in their emotions.

I'm not going to dive into the ending of this movie. I'll leave that for you to discover on your own. But I will speak in general terms that I thought the ending of "Maleficent" was cheesy and dumb. On the other hand, the ending of "Mistress of Evil" was phenomenal. There's a final battle sequence that has some of the best action that I've seen in a Disney movie. It was a true marvel to behold and brought with it some applause-worthy sequences. The resolution to all of these character arcs was also quite satisfying. I do have some major nitpicks, but I can't get into the specifics of those here. I will say that it is still a Disney movie and that broadly sums up most of these concerns. But overall, I walk out of this experience rather stunned at the final result. I entered this movie wondering if Disney is going to wind up with three entries on my year-end worst movies list (with "The Lion King" and "Dumbo" being the other two). Instead we have a sequel that ranks fairly high up on this list of live-action Disney remakes. Sure, it doesn't hit the heights of "The Jungle Book" or "Pete's Dragon." I wouldn't even put it ahead of "Aladdin" from this year, but it's nevertheless a solid entry into the Disney cannon that I'm going to recommend you give a chance. My grade for "Mistress of Evil" is an 8/10.

Retro Review: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Last year when I reviewed "Halloween II," I mentioned that I probably wasn't going to be reviewing any other movies in the "Halloween" franchise. I reviewed the original "Halloween" two years ago because its a horror classic. Plus, it's a requirement for any movie critic reviewing Halloween movies to talk about it at some point, right? Last year as a part of my Halloween reviews, I decided I wanted to review "Halloween II," not just to continue reviewing movies from that franchise necessarily, but because last October the new "Halloween" reboot/sequel came out, which set itself up as a direct sequel to the original movie, essentially erasing the other sequels from existence. Or, rather, creating an alternate timeline like in "The Flash." So my goal last year was to see which "Halloween II" was the going to be the better follow-up. As it turns out, both movies suffered from similar problems of being unfocused and killing too many red coats rather than having a streamlined story like in the original. But "Halloween (2018)" edged out "Halloween II" due to it having a better ending. Initially my idea was to let that be a wrap on this franchise, but I couldn't help myself. "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" is such a strange piece of cinema that it deserves to be talked about.

The reason why "Season of the Witch" is such a strange movie is that it's a "Halloween" movie that does NOT have Michael Myers in it. I think that concept alone has turned a lot of people away from this movie. They aren't interested in random "Halloween" anthology films. They want to see the immortal, unbeatable Michael Myers wandering around town, killing people. And if no Michael Myers in a "Halloween" movie is a deal-breaker, then this movie might not be for you. However, despite the horrendous reviews this movie has received, it also has a good deal of followers that consist of people who are able to compartmentalize a bit and see this as what it was intended. Something completely different. That's why context here is important. You have to know what you're getting into and the history behind it all before you come to a rash conclusion about it. Honestly, I think the idea of it all was pretty great. If you haven't seen "Halloween II," Michael Myers went kaboom in a hospital. The idea there was that that was supposed to be it. The Michael Myers story was complete and the people behind the franchise wanted to do a series of other stories surrounding the holiday of Halloween rather than just doing movies about the character of Michael Myers.

People in the 80's weren't ready for that, though. The idea of doing a horror cinematic universe was about 30 years ahead of its time. Every studio trying to go for a cinematic universe didn't explode onto the scene until Marvel's "The Avengers" in 2012. Shortly after that is when we did get a horror cinematic universe with "The Conjuring" films, which currently include both films in the main franchise, a trilogy of "Annabelle" films, "The Nun" and the loosely connected "The Curse of La Llorna." There's also a whole roomful of objects waiting to be turned into movies as a third film in the main franchise coming next year. So the idea works in today's world, but in the 80's people just wanted their mindless slasher flicks with their unstoppable horror villains, ala Freddy, Jason and Michael. No Michael equals no money, which is why "Halloween III" only made $14.4 million, which was only half as much as "Halloween II," which earned $25.5 million the year before. So they quickly threw aside this idea of "Halloween" anthology films, labeled it a failed experiment, and brought Michael Myers back in "Halloween 4," which they subtitled "The Return of Michael Myers" as emphasis. Michael Myers has remained a central character in the franchise ever since.

That's why "Season of the Witch" is this strange outlier of a movie. We now have 11 movies in the "Halloween" franchise, with a 12th and a 13th movie coming in the next two years, yet this is the only one without Michael Myers. Actually, he does make a quick appearance. We see a brief clip of the original Halloween movie playing in a bar that our main character goes to. So not only does he not show up in the movie, but he apparently doesn't even exist in the universe of this movie. That means I probably can't refer to this as an attempt at a horror cinematic universe if I'm getting technical about it. Rather the appropriate term is what I started with, "Halloween" anthology films. "Season of the Witch" isn't even really a slasher flick, so it's even a completely different subgenre of horror as this one is more of a mystery/sci-fi horror film with themes of witchcraft. The specific plot involves some Halloween masks being rampantly sold across the country, or at least in this specific area, with an earworm of a commercial attached to it that I now can't get out of my head that promised a big event coming Halloween night for everyone to tune into. Meanwhile hidden discreetly around the town are these weird, emotionless individuals that suggest something fishy is going on.

I'm not going to lie, I was actually rather intrigued by this premise. Even though we don't have the classic "Halloween" theme music, the replacement score was still pretty effective while the opening sequences did a good job of drawing me in. Most of the town, especially the children, are fascinated with these masks and the commercials. They've essentially become a viral hit. But yet we have one crazy guy running into town, trying to get the message across that "They're going to kill us all!" Who are "they" and what does this guy mean? Before he can get his message too far out, he ends up injured in a hospital, then quickly terminated when one of our mysterious men breaks in. So he really only got his message out to a couple of people. Yet when his daughter comes to town, demanding answers from the police about what happened to her father, she grabs the attention of one certain hospital employee who was one of the only ones to hear the father's warning. So the two of them decide to team up and solve this mystery of what happened to her father and who these mysterious people are. I was sold by this. Not actually having had seen this movie before this week, I was caught up in the mystery of it all and I liked the idea of this being more of a suspenseful thriller.

Unfortunately, when the two of them go on this adventure, that's where this thing derails a bit. They travel to the town where the Silver Shamrock business is based in, and even though the town itself is sufficiently weird and creepy, the movie devolves into this awkward lustful love story. I don't know how old these two characters are supposed to be, but the actors who play them are 47 years old and 23 years respectively when this movie was released. And our older, nearly 50-year-old guy is who the movie is really focused around in terms of a lead protagonist and he's just this weird creep. He's slapping his female coworkers on the butt, saying he should've married them instead, then he goes to the crime lab girl and makes out with her in return for a favor. All this before going on a solo adventure with the daughter of his patients who was just murdered. Instead of quickly trying to solve this mystery, they rent a room together in a motel and start making love all night. And it's only in between their love-making sessions where he finally asks, "Wait, how old are you?" To which she responds, "Older than you think." In between all of this, he's trying to please his ex-wife by promising to take care of their two kids, a promise he breaks every 30 minutes.

When it comes to the original "Halloween," the reason why that movie worked so well is you actually cared about Laurie Strode and feared for her safety. A strong central lead character with a streamlined plot makes for an extremely effective horror film. The reason why "Halloween II" didn't work as well is because they threw Laurie into a hospital, turned her into a damsel in distress, then had Michael killing a bunch of useless red coats for half of the movie. So if "Halloween III" was trying to be extremely effective, having a borderline pedophile-type guy as the main dude we're supposed to care about is not the best way to go about things. The girl was pretty likable, though. However, she was no Laurie. And it was her that started things. In fairness to our lead guy, he actually offered to go buy another hotel room, but it was the girl that convinced him to stay and sleep in her bed. Anyways, that made the rest of the movie significantly less interesting. Even though the town and the atmosphere were still quite effective, I wasn't worried about the safety of the protagonists lives, which removed the intensity out of the horror. When the mysterious people started swarming our leads when they got too close to their, I was almost on the side of the bad guys here.

Given that this is the only opportunity I have to talk about this movie, I do want to get into some of the stuff that happens at the end of the movie, so if you were actually planning on watching this movie and you don't want me to reveal the mystery behind it all, feel free to turn away now. The slightly less spoilery part of this is that our army of mysterious people are a bunch of robot people, which explains the emotionless element of their character, as well as their super strength in cracking skulls and tearing heads off. Speaking of which, there's not a whole lot of deaths in this movie. It focuses a lot on mystery rather than gore. But when we do get to the kills, they're rather brutal and unsettling. But I did like the idea of this robot army control everything. And they were all controlled by our evil, nefarious, mustache-twirling mastermind behind it all. He's mainly interested in bringing back some sort of ancient ritual, which is why he's cursed all of the Halloween masks. We're clued in on that when one random red coat lady gets her face zapped when she plays with their little medallion thing. And it actually adds to the intensity level when you realize this guy's plan is to melt the faces off of all the kids who bought the mask when their program plays at 9 p.m. 

The uninteresting part of the ending is the final confrontation in the heart of the secret lab. Our lead girl, who was the most proactive in figuring this all out, becomes the damsel in distress as she's captured by the robot people and it's up to our pedophile lead character to save her. And when he does, it's all too easy. He throws his Halloween mask they put on him perfectly on the hidden camera, climbs through all the ventilation area to reach the girl and break her out, then they steal a box of those deadly medallions, dump them into the main base from up in the rafters and electrocute all of the robot people, leaving only our main villain left to fight. But that's not much of a fight because the Stonehenge rune, which, yes that exists in their secret base, zaps him out of there after he slow claps after seeing all the destroyed robots. It's all kind of bizarre. The big twist of the movie, though, is that when they're driving home, the girl reveals herself to be one of the robot people. That makes zero sense to me. Then the dude gets home, tries to warn everyone to not watch the TV commercial, calls someone to get it shut off... and fails? The movie ends as a kid is watching the deadly commercial in his mask, which infers that the evil plan worked? Question mark?

If that's the direction that they did indeed decide to go, that's quite the bold ending. And even though the whole love arc derailed the movie, and gets made more confusing when we learn the girl is also a killer robot, the movie manages to maintain its creepy atmosphere throughout. When you learn that the overall goal is to kill everyone who buys and wears one of those masks, the movie becomes quite unsettling, and finishes off on an extremely unsettling cliffhanger inferring that the plan worked. So yeah, this movie has a lot of flaws. But it's also a lot better than it has any right to be. And if you've dismissed it simply because there's no Michael Meyers, or because it has an IMDb score of 4.9, it's worth checking out for the sake of curiosity. Again, it does have a fairly large cult following and I understand why those people love it. As far as what I'm going to do next with this franchise in terms of reviews? Well, I might watch/re-watch the fourth, fifth, and sixth films at some point to see if there's anything worth talking about there. If they're as disposable as I remember them being, I might jump straight to 1998's "Halloween: H20," the first movie in the franchise to retcon previous movies. My grade for "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" is a 6/10.

Retro Review: The Witches (1990)

Halloween 2019 continues with my review of the 1990 film "The Witches." Honestly, I had not ever heard of this film before this month, but I'm reviewing it based on a request from a friend. Said friend was the only one to request a review when I posed the question on Facebook this year, so I thought I'd reward that by reviewing said movie. Even though I knew nothing about this movie, I became rather fascinated with it. The movie has a very interesting production story that I'll weave into this review and has an upcoming remake scheduled for next October, which I had no knowledge of until after I was watching the movie. So it's nice to get this done this Halloween so I can be well prepared for the remake. Also more on that later. First thing of note, as is evident by the date in the title of this review, this is the 1990 film adapted from Roald Dahl's 1983 novel. That has to be noted because "Witch" is a fairly popular thing to have in a title. There's a 1966 British horror film titled "The Witches" as well as a 1967 Italian anthological comedy film titled "The Witches." Then of course we have the 2016 horror film "The Witch." And although it would be fun to go back and re-review "The Witch," that's also not what I'm doing here. Right now is the time to review the 1990 film.

If you're like me and you've also not heard of this, this review is going to be mostly spoiler free, so feel free to proceed. It is an absolute necessity to talk about this film's ending, but I'll warn you before I do that. I went into this movie knowing that it's PG, so I expected a family friendly witch adventure similar to that of "Hocus Pocus," which I reviewed last Halloween season. And it is. To a certain expect. But this is also a very dark film in ways that are quite subtle and unexpected. The movie begins "Princess Bride" style with a grandmother telling a story to her grandson about her childhood friend who disappeared. Initially they had no idea what happened to her, but then they found her trapped in painting. As it turns out, she had been kidnapped by a witch. As the grandmother relates, witches are rather cunning and evil. They disguise themselves as normal women and will be nearly undetectable unless you know exactly what to look for. The other thing about them is that they hate children and are out to kill and destroy children. Yeah, that's a bit unsettling. And it actually comes with quite a bit of controversy that's directed at Dahl's original novel with accusations of it being sexist and misogynistic, teaching young boys how to grow up to hate women.

That's not exactly the take I got when watching this movie, but reading up on that I can see where critics of the book are coming from. Perhaps it would be better to have both men and women portrayed as witches and warlocks/wizards (whatever it is you call a male witch)? Regardless of that, I think the idea here is to present a story where evil beings are disguised as normal-looking human beings. It just so happens that all the evil beings in this story are women who are magic, child-hunting witches. When it comes to an eerie setting, I think this is perfect for Halloween. You immediately feel a sense of dread, especially since the introduction of the movie tells the story of a little girl who was kidnapped and spent the entirety of her life in a painting on the wall, so you know that this movie isn't going to necessarily be all rainbows and butterflies. Thus I don't know if this is really appropriate for young kids. There's no scenes that are explicit or graphic. It is PG and it sticks to that rating. But it's the unsettling nature of the film that has the potential to traumatize young children. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Some of the most classic Halloween family films are ones that are potentially traumatizing, but end up as our favorite films when we get older. 

I don't know exactly what this movie's legacy is, but I can definitely see it as a movie that some see as a classic because it was the type of movie that was appropriate enough for them to watch when they were younger, yet dark enough to stick with them. As a grown adult who hadn't grown up with this, I found this sufficiently creepy and thus rather rewarding. It wasn't just a silly kids movie about goofy witches. These were witches who were actually dangerous and the movie had stakes to it. Thus it ends up being fairly similar to other Roald Dahl stories. I'm certainly not an expert on his work, so I won't do a super deep analysis on this, but I'm aware of this little known story called "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Depending on which version of that you watch, it's also very dark and unsettling, especially when you watch the version wherein you are uncertain what the actual fate of the children that got turned into things in the movie. Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of which one that is. But I know that both of them are dark in their own ways, yet are fun enough to be enjoyed by a younger crowd, so they do a good job of riding that line of being appropriate for kids. That's a hard line to get right, but if you nail it, you get a story that's great for kids and adults alike, while being a film that gets better with age.

In terms of the continued premise, this won't be the spoiler-heavy section of my review, but I will tread on light spoilers in regards to what happens, so feel free to step aside if you want to go into this movie blind, knowing only that it's a movie where witches disguise themselves as normal females to hunt children. If you're fine with progressing forward, then I can say this gets sad because the kid's parents die in a car accident. Or at least that's what's implied. So the kid is now under the care of his grandma. Shortly after learning this, they decide to move to England. In the novel it states that this was written in the will of the parents. I'm not so sure if the movie specified that, but regardless, we are off to England, which is home to the most dangerous witches. And it's also the home of the secret witch council that the son and the grandma accidentally stumble into. This is where we meet the Grand High Witch, played in a deliciously evil way by Anjelica Huston, who I'm just now noticing is the lead star in both of the Halloween movies I've reviewed this season, the other being 1991's "The Addams Family," where Anjelica played Morticia Addams. She does an excellent job in both movies. And she's genuinely terrifying in this movie as she's hunting down the children.

This is where I get into my slight concerns in regards to the movie. While the premise is creepy and dark and the performances are excellent, there's some things that bothered me with the middle portion of the movie. They set this up as a world wherein these witches are nearly impossible to find and the Grand High Witch is like the devil in that you know she's there, but no one has ever seen her, so she's almost a myth. Yet everything becomes really easy as our main characters just so happened to go to the same exact hotel as all the witches in the area. If they were so secretive with how they do things, I think it should've been a lot more difficult for are main characters to accidentally walk into their annual meeting. But that was more of a nitpick than anything. Perhaps it's something that works well enough in the book, but doesn't exactly translate as well to the movie, which is going to continue to become a theme here as we dive deeper into this. The other part of this middle section is that the main kid, who has an odd obsession with mice, ends up getting caught by all the witches and turned into a mouse. This idea I loved. It adds to the darkness of the movie as things aren't rainbows and butterflies the whole time and there's some strong themes there, but we have issues with the execution.

The biggest thing here is almost not even the movie's fault, but rather the unfortunate consequences of not having the technology in 1990 to properly pull off the ideas of Roald Dahl's book. When the kid turns into a mouse, we then spend the rest of the movie following him as a mouse as him and his grandma device a plan to stop all the witches from turning all the kids in England into mice. And in doing this, we switch back and forth from actual mice running around to some pretty good puppetry work. In fact, Jim Henson worked on this movie. It was the final film he worked on before dying in 1990. Him and his team do a solid job with all the puppeteering, but it's extremely obvious and a bit distracting when we transition from real mice to puppet mice. And when we have real mice, the kid still has the ability to speak, thus we hear a voice on screen as he's running around, but I wasn't convinced that this voice I was hearing was coming from the mouse that was running around. I think they were all doing their best with this, but the lack of technology holds them back a bit, making this a movie that doesn't quite hold up, especially not after watching Disney's work on their "live-action" animals in "The Lion King" and "The Jungle Book." It looks a bit silly.

However, despite the lack of technology, the movie does do an excellent job of being satisfyingly terrifying in moments. There's a scene with the kid being chased by a cat that had me on the edge of my seat. And every time Anjelica Huston is on screen, she absolutely owns it, especially when she peels off her woman skin and reveals her creepy witch appearance, which apparently took six hours to put on and six hours to take off, and was absolutely miserable for Anjelica. Props to her for sticking it out and giving a solid performance despite all of this. However, I also got the feeling that the movie was holding back a bit. After an incredibly creepy and unsettling set up, it becomes a bit safe and cartoonish as the witches aren't even fast or smart enough to chase down a young kid in certain sequences and are rather easy to stop when all is said and done. It kinda took away from the movie because they didn't quite stick the landing. Then I read that director Nicolas Roeg cut some of the movie's more scary scenes after seeing his young son's reaction to the original cut. So that tells me that they did purposely hold back as they tried to pander to a young audience, which was disappointing as this had a whole lot of potential.

But hey, remember how I told you that there's a remake coming out next year? I read that and realize there's a real opportunity here to do something great. The director is Robert Zemeckis and we have Anne Hathaway starring as the Grand High Witch, with Stanley Tucci, Octavia Spencer, Chris Rock and Phillip Spall a part of the supporting cast. I'm not exactly sure who is playing what role, but that's a great cast there. If Zemeckis owns this idea as a PG-13 horror film rather than holding back in order to appeal to the younger crowd, I think there's a lot they can do with this remake to improve upon the 1990 film. And they have the technology to do CGI mice that won't be distracting. This is a good opportunity. If they don't make this for kids, is it possible that they'll end up leaving some money on the table? Sure. But it can't be any worse than how the original movie did. I wasn't able to figure out what the actual production budget was, but it only made $10.4 million domestically, which adjusts to just $22.1 million in 2019 ticket prices. The studio that worked on it was Lorimar Studios, which ended up shutting down in 1993. This was their last theatrical film. So yeah, I think you focus on making a good film and rather than trying to compromise the story to fit a certain audience.

Speaking of which, the final thing I have to bring up is the ending. And this is where I spoil the film, so if you haven't seen it and you are still reading this, turn away now. As it turns out, the kid and his grandma are able to come up with a plan that turns all the witches into mice while the Grand High Witch is killed by one of the cooks. But the kid doesn't turn back into a human. Instead, they get back to their home and they have a wonderful conversation about how he is just fine being a mouse. But then a random good witch comes by and transforms him back into a real boy and they live happily ever after. This made Roald Dahl really upset and he initially demanded his name be removed from the credits because in Dahl's novel, the kid never gets turned back. He lives the rest of his life as a mouse. Dahl had seen the script where they changed his ending and demanded a re-write, so the director comprised and filmed both endings. When Dahl watched the ending that was faithful to his book, he was moved to tears. But the director ultimately decided to go for the changed ending. And that's upsetting because in reading the book's premise, I think Dahl's original ending is much better, but this is another example where I feel the director wasn't willing to take the risks.

All that aside, though, ultimately this still was an enjoyable experience for me. It's not like I'm a hardcore fan of the novel and am angry at the film's final results. I didn't know either of these things existed prior to this month. But I'm grateful that I do now and the movie as is is still a creepy, unsettling movie with some great acting and solid moments. The problems with technology can be forgiven and the director's unwillingness to take risks don't make this bad. It is kinda sad, though, that this was the last film adaptation of a Roald Dahl book before Dahl passed away and it ended on a sour note. But we do have an opportunity to now do Dahl justice next year and I think Robert Zemeckis is a good enough director to get it done. As I'm looking at the schedule, it's currently set to be released on the same day as "Halloween Kills," the sequel to 2018's "Halloween" reboot that was massively successful. So that might be a problem. But maybe with "Halloween Kills" targeting the adult audience, "The Witches" can still bring in a slightly different audience with a PG-13 rating that I would like it to own up to? We'll see how that pans out. In the meantime, if you want to give the 1990 version of "The Witches" a shot, I think its a solid choice. My grade for it is a 7/10.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie Review (SPOILERS)

One of the more pleasant surprises of 2019 thus was discovering out of the blue that there was a "Breaking Bad" movie coming out this year. It was either during San Diego Comic Con or D23 when Disney was releasing all of the information about everything that Netflix just randomly threw this trailer out onto the internet. Suddenly that became the most exciting thing of the moment because a return to the "Breaking Bad" universe sounded like a great idea, especially since it seemed like they were going to resolve Jesse's arc in this movie. The only thing I had to check was to make sure Vince Gilligan was on board with this. When I learned that he was the writer and director, I was instantly sold and I wanted to know nothing more. That's the thing with TV shows. Once I'm committed to watch, even basic plot details are spoilers in my brain. So I avoided everything I could and excitedly checked this out as soon as I could this weekend. As it turns out, this came out a great time for me because, for personal reasons, I decided not to venture out to the theaters this weekend. I was going to get an extra Halloween review in because of that, but then I remembered "El Camino," so that took precedent. Then we'll get to those Halloween reviews later because I have some fun ideas.

You'll notice that I did put up a spoiler banner here and that's for two reasons. The first is that it's literally impossible to talk about "El Camino" without spoiling the ending of "Breaking Bad," given that this happens right after the finale. So if you haven't seen "Breaking Bad," turn tail and run right now. But second, as I said before, when I'm committed to a show, I want to know nothing about it. Even though this is a movie follow-up of the show, I put that in a same category. Given that this is free to watch if you own Netflix, I don't need to persuade you to watch this. If you're a fan of "Breaking Bad," then what are you waiting for? Go watch it. Then come back and check out my thoughts. So yeah, I'm going to treat this like I'm reviewing an episode of a TV show. I'm going to give my full thoughts with the idea in mind that everyone reading them has already watched the episode. No, this is not going to be a deep dive or a play-by-play breakdown of every moment in the movie. But it will be my unfiltered thoughts on what I just experienced without holding back when it comes to spoilers. So if you don't want to know what happens to Jesse, then turn away now. You've been warned. And yes, "Breaking Bad" is required viewing before seeing "El Camino."

Before we dive into "El Camino," I need to quickly give my thoughts on "Breaking Bad" itself, because I've not yet done so on this blog. Nor have I done that anywhere online, I don't think. I've talked to friends and roommates about it and maybe I've mentioned it in passing when talking about Rian Johnson as he directed my two favorite episodes of the show, but otherwise it's something I've not discussed. The reason for that is that I did not watch "Breaking Bad" live on TV. It was one of those shows that I always meant to watch, but just never got around to. Unlike movies, I'm not a TV aficionado. I have my rotation of shows that I watch, but given that shows are a much greater investment of time than movies, it's hard for me to get a new show added to my rotation, unless it's one of these 8-10 episode Netflix shows that I can quickly binge in a weekend. Because of this, there are a lot of great shows that I've simply never gotten around to. For the longest time, "Breaking Bad" was one of them. However, once I finally decided to commit to it, it didn't take me long at all to finish it. Given that there's only around 60 episodes, I cruised through it rather quickly. It's one of those shows that makes you continue watching and I easily submitted, finishing it in a month or so.

And, yeah, like most people on the planet who have let this show into their lives, I absolutely loved it. One of my favorite show of all-time? Well, I don't know about that. I honestly don't know what that list would look like for me. But "Breaking Bad" is a fascinating character study following two main characters whose lives spiral out of control. It's a show that doesn't sugar-coat anything as it instead decides to show the realistic consequences of making bad decisions. Like most movies or shows centered around drugs, the overall message is that drugs are bad. Don't do drugs. Don't make drugs. Don't sell drugs. Regardless of how much money you think it'll make you or how much better your life might be improved, drugs will always ruin your life. Yet people still don't get this because their carnal, human instincts get the best of them. Money and addiction speaks louder than logic. And in "Breaking Bad" it's really sad seeing characters you care about see their lives spiral downward out of control. With Walter White, you see him transform from a desperate high school teacher into a monster. Not only does he ruin his own life, but the lives of everyone he loves are also ruined, with many innocent lives being lost along the way, like Hank Schrader and Jessica Jones.

The show doesn't wrap up with a pretty bow, but it wraps up in the most perfect way given how grounded it was in realism, leaving one emotionally distressed and forever impacted with its honest, human themes. While it may or may not make my personal list of favorite shows ever made, the third to last episode, Rian Johnson's "Ozymandias," is one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. Even though there was only two episodes left, after watching that episode for the first time, I was so emotionally torn to shreds that I couldn't finish the series at that point. I had to turn it off and give myself a day or two to recover. I think it's very fitting that the episode has a perfect 10.0 score on IMDb with 107,057 votes counted. Not to say that no one has ever given it less than 10, but so many thousands of people have that the average is a perfect 10, which is extremely rare on IMDb. Eventually I did finish the final two episodes and it was a fitting ending. However, there was one loose thread that remained unresolved and that was Jesse Pinkman. Yes, I did like the idea of him riding off into the sunset. I connected the dots as to what could've happened to him, thus I didn't NEED this movie to happen. But if Vince Gilligan wanted to tell it, I'm all game.

That's what makes "El Camino" a very satisfying movie. It didn't feel like a scenario where AMC, Netflix or creator Vince Gilligan was milking the show for all they could get. This wasn't some sort of bridge movie that sets up a Jesse Pinkman spin-off series. In fact, I'll say straight up that this is no "Ozymandias." This feels like a simple "Breaking Bad" epilogue that Vince Gilligan honestly wanted to tell as a means to tie up loose ends. As I envision it, he probably looked at everything he's created in this universe and had most things wrapped up like he wanted. I believe he's also having fun getting into more backstory with "Better Call Saul." But I can see the Jesse Pinkman story being the one thing nagging at him as the giant elephant in the room. And perhaps he wanted to tell this story right from the beginning, but couldn't naturally fit it in, so he settled with what he did initially with the finale. Then as time went on, the lack of closure with Jesse probably nagged at him, so he finally took the time to do a quick movie to make himself feel better. No, there's not a lot that happens in this movie. But there's just enough to give everyone some closure. With this in mind, I was a bit surprised as some narrative choices that they took, but ultimately I wound up very pleased with the final result.

The best thing here is seeing Aaron Paul so seamlessly jump back into this role of Jesse Pinkman. It's a role in which he rightfully won three Emmys for, while getting nominated for a total of five. Yet even though it's now been five years since the finale, he immediately jumps right back into character as if he never left, which is good because this picks up the second "Breaking Bad" left off. Jesse was in a very damaged and broken state at the end of "Breaking Bad," given that he was taken captive and locked up like an animal before he escaped. This is why Aaron Paul's performance here in "El Camino" is so good. He does an excellent job of recapturing the moment he was in and then gives a very emotional performance, reminding us of how broken his character was when we left off. Even though we all envisioned Jesse riding off into the sunset, we are quickly reminded that the world of "Breaking Bad" is grounded in reality. Things are not fine. Even though Jesse escaped being captured, he is most certainly not out of the woods as the rest of the city is figuring out exactly what just happened, making Jesse most wanted figure No. 1 in the eyes of the police. One wrong move and he takes the fall for everything, making this whole thing extremely stressful and intense.

And it's going down that avenue where we get a lot of classic "Breaking Bad" moments in this movie. One thing Vince Gilligan is great at is setting up tension. And it's a fairly unique tension because the protagonists in the show are people who aren't doing good things, yet for the most part we are cheering for them to get away with it. And we are cheering for them because there's an added level of humanity to their characters. Now Walter White is a completely different conversations that I'll save for another time, but in regards to Jesse Pinkman, he's the one that's always felt like the victim in all of this. It's partially his fault for allowing for himself to get involved in the first place, but at the same time, I spent the whole series hoping he can somehow get his life together and get out of this. Yet that's certainly easier said than done because the drug industry is not something you can resign from and walk away. A lot of the tension in the show came from when a lot of the higher level drug lords put themselves into the picture and confronted our protagonists. And it's the uncertainty behind what's going to happen in those situations that made things so intense, especially since most of the show is spent portraying reality wherein things do end bad with main characters meeting a bitter end.

But Jesse escaped all of that. I was happy that he was the one person who was able to have some sort of semblance of a happy ending. Thus there was a part of me that was hoping "El Camino" was going to be all rainbows and butterflies because it would horrifically awful if Vince Gilligan ending "Breaking Bad" in a way that gave us hope for Jesse Pinkman, then created an epilogue five years later where we learn that Jesse got gunned down by a thug five minutes after escaping or got arrested and sentenced to life in prison the next day when police started raiding things. Yet given that this is a "Breaking Bad" movie, I was very well aware that such a fate wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities, which made it really nerve-wracking when he was searching for the money in the apartment and the police walked in or when he found himself back in a room with some other thugs. It left me with an extreme feeling of dread that I'm not going to get the happy ending I want and I was ready to accept that because that's the honest reality of things here. And there were some pretty good bait-and-switches that had me convinced that Jesse Pinkman just got arrested or just walked into a room that he wasn't going to walk out of. The surprises there ending up being quite satisfying.

Now I will also say that this did have some other classic "Breaking Bad" moments, albeit moments that I don't think are quite as positive. This is the one big issue I have with the show that makes me not quite join the club of people who think it's the greatest show ever made. And that issue is that "Breaking Bad" has a lot of downtime. While there's some obvious exceptions, especially in season 5, the average episode structure was that something really intense happened at the beginning of the episode and something really intense happened at the end of the episode. But there's a lot of time in the middle that felt like filler. In the grand scheme of things, a lot of this filler adds to the reality of the fact that life is not always an ongoing drama. There's also plenty of character development in these smaller moments that make our characters more interesting in the long run. But it still doesn't excuse the fact that we have to use the "B-word" in describing "Breaking Bad" at times. Boring. And on that note, at least half of "El Camino" was quite slow. I was a bit frustrated at that. We didn't have our typical 10-episode season. We had two hours, which is essentially two episodes and change. So if we only have that much time to finish this story, why are we dragging our feet?

But as is typical, while I was bored at times in the moment, a lot of the downtime ended up justifying its existence in the long run and helped develop some actual closure. A lot of this came from flashbacks where we were able to get one final moment with a lot of characters that we loved from "Breaking Bad." And while this easily could've fallen into the realm of unnecessary fan service, each returning character ended up adding something important to the overall resolution of Jesse's arc. Conversations with Walter White, Mike and Jessica Jones (OK, fine, her name is Jane in this show) tied in directly to decisions that Jesse made at the end. We got a lot of extra time with Jesse and Todd while Jesse was in captivity that also correlated with modern events when Jesse was facing who he thought were the police that shows that Jesse is not a killer, but is a genuinely good human being who got caught in a bad situation. We also see the return of his friends Badger and Skinny Pete who help him escape from the police because of their high level of respect for him, again adding to Jesse's character. And then of course we bring back Robert Forster's Ed, the guy who helps people change their identities. Sadly Robert Forster died the day this movie debuted. May he rest in peace.


It was great seeing all of these characters back, but it was better that Vince Gilligan found ways to use them appropriately to add to Jesse's story. When all is said and done, Jesse does get a second chance at life. At first I thought it was a bit anti-climatic. I thought the movie was building towards some sort of crazy ending, but that never happens. As it turns out, the movie's biggest moment is a Western-style gun fight with this movie's main villain. I didn't think that was the finale, though. It felt like something else was going to happen afterwards. But it didn't. Jesse ended up getting all the money he needed to Ed. He successfully evaded all of the police. He got one final conversation with his Mom and Dad. Then Ed dropped him off in Alaska where he begins a new life as someone else. And maybe he'll even go back to college and get a business degree like Walter White suggested to him in their final flashback moment. It all worked. In theory, this is the type of ending I could've envisioned in my head. So perhaps this wasn't the most necessary thing, but I was still very satisfying to see it play out for real.  If I consider this a double-episode bonus of "Breaking Bad," it's not going to considered the best episode of the series. But it's still a solid one that I'll give an 8/10.