video review : Halloween Kills

video review : Halloween Kills

Jamie Lee Curtis breaks her tradition of dressing up as Laurie Strode every ten years for Halloween Kills; a sequel to Halloween, which itself is a sequel of the original. The title is fitting; the killings have always been the best parts; but the night should’ve ended long ago.

This movie is, like the series itself, a bloody mess. It starts out decent enough; the 1978 flashback bit conjures a sense of nostalgia that suggests it would’ve been better as a pseudo-remake; but the quality drops dead once the stupid vigilante concept comes into play.

my rating : 2 of 5

2021

video review : War For The Planet Of The Apes

video review : War For The Planet Of The Apes

War doesn’t Rise to the level of the orginal, but it’s better than the Dawn. It doesn’t seem so at the start; the first third is pretentious and overdramatic; but before too long, the story starts to get interesting.

It’s an adventure of sorts as The Apes, led by Caesar, go against Alpha-Omega, a military group led by a “bad” Colonel whose purpose is to save humanity from the plague that mutes people and “turn us into beasts.”

my rating : 4 of 5

2017

video review : Halloween

video review : Halloween

This is just what the world needed; another Halloween backtrack. I say that sarcastically, of course, as it’s gotten absurd how many times previous narratives are flatly ignored in favor of new ones. They’re all based around a town in Illinois called Haddonfield and this one, the third simply titled Halloween, plays not as a remake but a direct sequel to the 1978 original. It continues the tradition of being set in real time though, so it’s forty years later.

That means Michael Myers is old. The gray hair on his balding head is shown within the first few minutes, which not only makes him less scary but stretches the believability of a plot that has him overpowering younger men and women without throwing out his back. If he’s inhuman, as the bullets he endures suggests, why does he age and breathe like one? There I go trying to apply logic to a cohort of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.

Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie Strode; she returns every twenty years; but it’s all in vain. This sequel is basically H20 2.0 as it builds to a final showdown between the gun-toting Laurie and her knife-wielding nemesis. It’s Grandpa versus Grandma, except Grandma has the help of her daughter and granddaughter. Rob Zombie’s Halloween remains the best and only good movie in a series that should’ve ended long before even that movie was made.

my rating : 2 of 5

2018

video review : Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

video review : Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Add this to the endless list of disappointing sequels. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes set the scene for what could’ve been a classic movie trilogy. Dawn, the title of which is just as clunky, kills all hope.

The apes talk too much. The storyline, stitched together by a series of unlikely coincidences, is surprisingly tame and predictable. A hero found alive, a villain on a cliff; this is War Movies 101.

my rating : 3 of 5

2014

video review : War For The Planet Of The Apes