2015 Mini Reviews

Recently there has been a trend where writers modernise old fairy tales but screenwriter Chris Weitz stuck rather rigidly to the source material and it's rather refreshing that he did. You all know the basics of the Cinderella story, after both her parents die, Ella(Lilly James) is raised by her evil stepmother Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett) however a chance encounter with the Prince (Richard Madden) has the potential to change Ella's life forever. 

Sicario

When drug violence worsens on the US-Mexico border, the FBI sends an idealistic agent, Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) on a mission to eradicate a drug cartel responsible for a bomb that had killed members of her team during a raid. Kate, however, find herself an outsider to the the members of the team and out of the know about what is really happening. 

Legend

I recently just started a new job in London so I had to move to a new house which didn't have any internet until yesterday. That explains my absence and the abandoning of 31 Days of Horror project.

There's a cheap knock off version of the film Legend where the Kray brothers aren't even played by identical twins or even by the same actor, luckily such stupidly isn't in the Brain Helgeland film Legend as, with the help of computer wizardy, Tom Hardy plays both Kray brothers as they rise to the top of the London criminal underworld. Reginald's relationship with his wife also plays a strong factor in the story as the two brothers try to gain control of London's criminal underworld.

31 Days of Horror: Day Nine - Evilspeak

Evilspeak stars Clint Howard (Ron Howard's younger brother) as a bullied student at a strict military academy, he tormentors bully him so much so he uses a computer to raise an beast of unquestionable evil and decapitates his classmates in a gory finale.

31 Days of Horror: Day Eight - Thursday Movie Picks #65: Halloween Edition - Villainous Children (Suggested by Wendell)

Kids in horror movies are creepy at the best of times, some of these kids are literally the spawn of Satan. Here are three movies with villainous children that are selected for week's spooky offering of Thursday Movie Picks. These are the type of kids that make you cry out for that clown from I.T.

31 Days of Horror: Day Seven - Storage 24

I was rather surprised to find that on IMDB this entertaining Sci-fi horror was rated a lowly 4.4, normally a rating that low is only reserved for some true dross. That considered some pretty decent horror films have such a staggeringly low rating one wonders how many non genre fans actually watched them thus skewering the validity of such a rating for horror fans. Anywho, this fun horror/sc-fi flick is set in storage house where an alien life form is running amok following a plane crash where it was the cargo. Inside are a group of survivors trying to avoid the creature that's hell bent on killing them.

The Martian

Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is part of six manned mission to Mars that is hit by a sudden and intense storm, during this storm Mark is hit by flying debris and presumed dead. However, he is very much alive and finds himself truly alone as the only living thing on an entire planet. He must survive and to do that he must grow food on a planet where nothing grows, but as fate has it he is the best botanist on the planet, he is also the worst botanist on the planet, Mark is in fact the only botanist on the planet.

31 Days of Horror: Day Six - A Bay of Blood

John Carpenter's Halloween is often credited as the film that created the slasher genre when what it actually did was made it popular. Sometimes Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is credited for inventing the slasher genre but that's a thriller film that just happened to have a knife as a murder weapon (an often used weapon in slasher films). The blue print for all slasher films to follow was created by Mario Bava in The Bay of Blood, if it did not invent the genre, it's certainly an important film that clearly influenced the slasher genre for many years to come.

31 Days of Horror: Day Five- Wind Walkers

Note that there are potential spoilers for the PS4 game Until Dawn in the second paragraph so don't read it unless you've already completed the game or have zero interest in playing computer games and thus have no intention of playing it.

A U.S. solider returns home from captivity to find that his best friend and fellow former POW has gone AWOL. While out on an annual hunting trip with his friend's father and some extended family, their group comes under attack by an ancient Native American curse that has mysterious connections to his best friend's heritage and the prison in which they were once held captive - from IMDB.

31 Days of Horror: Day Four - The Entity

The Entity isn't one of the most popular horror films of the 80s especially among the likes of The Thing, Poltergeist and Nightmare on Elm Street which all came out within a similar time frame. However, with legendary director Martin Scorsese naming The Entity among his top 10 scariest films of all time it will bring attention to a horror film that is amongst the most deeply unsettling of the decade.

31 Days of Horror: Day Three - Rogue

Rogue is the third film to feature in this year's 31 Days of Horror and it's about a group of tourists who find their river cruise under threat from a giant crocodile.

31 Days of Horror: Day Two - Pod

Pod is another film that was screened at 2015's London Frightfest, the film is about two siblings who go to visit their brother in a secluded lake house after fearing for his personal wellbeing. This sibling, Martin (Brian Morvant), has had a history of mental illness and so his story of experimental testing and something lurking in the basement is hard to believe.

31 Days of Horror: Day One - Lovely Molly

 Like many other bloggers I will be doing a 31 Days of Horror. Over the course of these 31 Days I will watch and review a horror film. Note that all these horror films will be the first viewing so don't except to see The Exorcist, Alien, The Thing or any other classic horror movie as I've most likely already seen them. Note that I have no schedule set, I just watch whatever I want to. 

I will try to publish something everyday, but in the past week I officially lost my job, but got a new job literally the next working day, which I start on October 12th. This means I have to move to London (where the new job is based) so I might get too busy to publish something on the odd day. We'll have to see.