Review – I, Frankenstein

Just try to summarize the plot of this movie without sounding like a dim-witted seven year old. Gargoyles and demons are having a war and the demons are trying to win by bringing dead bodies back to life and filling them with demons only then Frankenstein shows up and at first the gargoyles kidnap him but then they give him magic whupping sticks and he starts killing demons until ... see what I mean? Director Stuart Beattie is known primarily for screenwriting, so I’m a bit surprised he’d go to work with a script this bad. Though the action sequences were reasonably well assembled, I found myself constantly distracted by questions such as “if all you mighty supernatural beings are trying to keep your war hidden from humanity, should you really be rampaging through the middle of a city knocking the roofs off buildings and making demons pop like Fourth of July fireworks?” See if desperate

Review – The Bell Witch Haunting

Found footage movies and Amityville Horror reheats don’t make a good combination. As if anyone was really curious about that. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Raven (2012)

My big curiosity about this picture was how they’d spin a short, grim poem into a two-hour-long movie. The answer, of course, is that they didn’t bother trying. The picture has little do to with “The Raven,” instead creating a highly fictionalized Poe helping the Baltimore PD track down a serial killer who steals his modi operandi from the author’s tales. This is a slick production; someone spent a lot of money on it and got a reasonably good return on his investment. Mildly amusing

Review – Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Wow, does this movie ever spend a lot of time tap dancing around some uncomfortable topics. Almost right from the start the production labors awkwardly to draw lines between its comic book monster hunting and the all too real evil of Europe’s infamous witch hunts. And yet the filmmakers appear not to have learned history’s lessons. The line between “good witches” and “bad witches” here separates young, athletic, conventionally attractive people from goths, loners, the elderly and the physically differently abled. In other words, it’s a lot like the real genocidal crime spree that killed tens of thousands of people. History aside, this is an acceptably entertaining entry in the [familiar figure] versus [random monster] thing. See if desperate

Review – Bingo Long’s Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings

Baseball and civil rights: what’s not to love? I wish this movie had been made just a few years later, when meandering scriptlessness wasn’t quite so in vogue. Writing aside, this is a charming tale of a barnstorming baseball team’s attempts to make a living and have some fun in the days before Jackie Robinson. Worth seeing