Review - Cherry Pop

This amateur production plays like a video adaptation of the final project from someone’s undergrad playwriting class. Performers at a drag show cope with their personal dramas. There’s a funny moment here and there, and fans of Ru Paul’s Drag Race will find some familiar faces. Otherwise there isn’t much to it. Mildly amusing

Review - Dracula (1974)

Jack Palance place the titular count in this faithful-yet-mediocre adaptation. This obviously isn’t a western, and Palance seems out of place amid the British cast and Victorian settings. The movie also suffers from woes typical of low budget productions from the UK in the mid 70s. Mildly amusing

Review - Arrival

Imagine Close Encounters of the Third Kind (with just a pinch of Contact) if you sucked all the mystery and wonder out of it and replaced it with linguistics. And then made scrambled eggs out of the flow of time. The studio spent a lot of money on this, but the only solid plus it got in return was some cool-looking aliens. See if desperate

Review - Remember the Titans

 10/9 - I suppose if one undertakes to watch a movie about high school football and race relations, one has no right to complain cliche-ridden, heavy-handed storytelling. The actors – several of whom would later go on to bigger and better things – do their best with the script. The result is an acceptable example of the genre. Mildly amusing

Review - Cult of Chucky

After the previous entry in the series returned to the scariness of the original, I had high hopes for this round. I guess they decided scary wasn’t working out after all, because they went straight back to stupid. See if desperate

Review - It (2017)

I’m fond of the Stephen King novel upon which this movie is based, so I was a little nervous going in. The 1990 miniseries had some serious pluses (Tim Curry) and minuses (pretty much everything else). This time around they managed to avoid screwing it up too badly. The script was a little hit-and-miss, but the production quality was equal to the task of keeping the scares from turning cheesy. The actors did a good job with their roles, which can be a real risk when working with kids. Now we’re left waiting for part two, which for some reason the studio opted to not go ahead and make. Mildly amusing

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