Review - Beauty and the Beast (2017)

It’s huge. It’s expensive. And it doesn’t amount to much more than a fancy, live action version of the original Disney animation. The remaking process fails to cleanse the story of its creepy kidnapping power relationship problems. No surprise there. Some of the actors playing the animated characters are entertaining in a stunt casting way. Mildly amusing

Review - The Black Room

If Tinder and 4chan had a baby, it would be this movie. A couple moves into a house only to find that the basement contains a gate to a vile parade of demonic rape. Wish I’d skipped it

Review - The Eichmann Show

Here’s a new angle on the trial of Adolph Eichmann: the difficulties broadcasters had televising the event. In the age of instant webcasts of everything in the world, the moral and logistical quandaries of 1961 seem downright quaint. Nonetheless, the challenges of accurately portraying something as rotten as Eichmann are all too relevant today. The inclusion of actual trial footage adds an extra sense of authenticity. Mildly amusing

Review - Be Afraid

If random combinations of shocks “lovingly borrowed” from other movies scare you, then follow the title’s advice. Otherwise follow mine and find something else to watch. See if desperate

Review - Ben-Hur (2016)

If you made a highlight reel out of the Charlton Heston version and then turned it into a script, this is likely what you’d end up with. It’s much shorter than its predecessor, which is an advantage because it cuts out some of the duller moments and gets more directly to the point. On the other hand, due to creative decisions and/or budget constraints, it lacks the epic spectacle that made the first one entertaining. If all you want is the basics of Lew Wallace’s novel, they’re mostly here. It just isn’t much fun to watch. Mildly amusing

Review - A Distant Thunder

Sakes. How can the end of the world be so boring? This sequel to A Thief in the Night features all the charm of the original plus additional Antichrist antics. On the other hand, it also includes long, boring lectures about scripture that are at best strained and at worst completely nonsensical. See if desperate

Review - A Thief in the Night

This viewing was prompted by an article by a woman who grew up in an evangelical Christian household in Iran back in the 70s and 80s. She recounted the terror inspired by this movie about the fabled End Times and the fates that would befall the faithful who didn’t manage to get raptured before the shit started going down. At a similar point in my life I wanted to see this because it looked scary, but it was showing in churches rather than theaters and I didn’t want to sit through the additional stuff that would no doubt have entailed. I can’t say how my tween self would have reacted to this, but my adult self found it silly and dull in approximately equal measure. See if desperate