Posts Tagged ‘Jenna Ortega’
Thursday, September 26th, 2024
A sequel to BEETLEJUICE was first announced when part 1 was still in theaters. Director Tim Burton started developing it in earnest, went through a couple different ideas, it seemed like it was really gonna happen in the early ‘90s until he and Michael Keaton shifted their focus to BATMAN RETURNS. In my opinion that’s one of Burton’s best movies and one of the great sequels – it’s a continuation but reinvents so much of the first movie’s approach that it feels completely fresh and even more potent.
A bit of the song “Macarthur Park” echoes hauntingly over the production logos of the BEETLEJUICE sequel we finally got 36 (!) years later: “I don’t think that I can take it / ‘cause it took so long to bake it.” But after all that time in the oven, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is no BATMAN RETURNS. It’s more of a getting-the-gang-back-together type of sequel, not as much of a shift as it probly would’ve been back then, or that it would need to be to be a new classic. To me it feels less aggressive about nostalgia than most of these types of things, but I gotta admit it’s built more on “remember this?” than “hey, check THIS out!” It returns to the afterlife but mostly just the same bureaucracy/waiting room stuff as the first movie. We get another sandworm, another non-consensual lip synch, another wedding. All fun stuff, but wouldn’t all-new stuff be better? I bet younger, hungrier Burton would’ve brought us somewhere totally different. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alfred Gough, Catherine O'Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Michael Keaton, Miles Millar, Monica Bellucci, Sami Slimane, Santiago Cabrera, Seth Grahame-Smith, Tim Burton, Willem Dafoe, Winona Ryder
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 22 Comments »
Wednesday, March 15th, 2023
Nobody else seems to see it this way, but I still think SCREAM was the perfect name for the sequel to SCREAM (1996) that came out in 2022. It revived the seemingly concluded series after 11 years, and for the first time without Wes Craven, so naturally it took today’s legacy sequels – where a set of new, younger characters teams up with returning characters from the old series in a story loosely structured like the first film – as its format and subject. The movies it’s based on never have a number in their title; it only made sense to follow the naming convention of such modern horror franchise entries as HALLOWEEN (2018), HELLBOY (2019), THE GRUDGE (2020), CANDYMAN (2021), WRONG TURN (2021), TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022), HELLRAISER (2022) and the upcoming THE EXORCIST (2023).
A year later here we are with another one from the same directors (Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, READY OR NOT) and writers (Guy Busick [READY OR NOT] & James Vanderbilt [ZODIAC]) and this time it does have a number in the title – the historic first Roman numeral of the series. SCREAM VI is a good title mainly because the trailer showed the M in SCREAM get slashed and split into a bleeding VI, and secondarily because it’s admitting that yeah, we can’t lie, this is the sixth movie in the SCREAM series. It stars mostly our new set of characters introduced in the last one, but makes reference to characters and events from all five previous SCREAMs. I gotta admit, I’ve been there since the beginning, I’ve watched SCREAM many times, SCREAM 2 several times, SCREAM 3 maybe three times, the other two one each, but they drop so many names so fast I had trouble remembering what they were talking about. Not that it matters.
(Note: There were two guys behind me and one of them had apparently never seen any SCREAM movie before so the other guy tried to explain who each character was as they appeared. Not ideal.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Courteney Cox, Dermot Mulroney, Devyn Nekoda, Guy Busick, Halloween, Hayden Panettiere, Jack Champion, James Vanderbilt, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Jenna Ortega, Josh Segarra, Liana Liberato, Mason Gooding, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Melissa Barrera, meta-slashers, Roger L. Jackson, Samara Weaving, Skeet Ulrich, slashers, Tony Revolori, Tyler Gillett
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 43 Comments »
Thursday, March 31st, 2022
X is the new horror picture from writer/director Ti West, his first movie since the 2016 western IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE. The fastest way I know to describe it is “what if THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was BOOGIE NIGHTS?” It takes place in 1979 and it’s about a group of people from Houston who decide to make their first porno movie, and rent a small house on a remote farm to film it. In the process, their strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language is met with strong bloody violence and gore.
That’s from the actual MPAA rating, but it’s misleading. Though X is hardly tame, it doesn’t strike me as particularly extreme either. You gotta say this in hushed tones in these parts, but this is West’s first collaboration with A24, and I would consider him one of the pioneers of the style of 21st century slow burn horror that has become one of that company’s trademarks. I enjoyed his movies THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and THE INNKEEPERS, from 2009 and 2011, before A24 existed. This is in a similar vein, but being a slasher movie it’s a little more generous in its pay off, so I enjoyed it too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A24, Brittany Snow, Jenna Ortega, Kid Cudi, Martin Henderson, Mia Goth, Owen Campbell, slashers, Stephen Ure, Ti West
Posted in Reviews | 17 Comments »
Monday, January 17th, 2022
We interrupt this Sam Raimi series so I can have a semi-timely review of the new SCREAM movie.
I have some bad news. SCREAM – a teen horror movie that came out when I was older than a teen but I enjoyed it along with the younger people anyway – is 25 fucking years old! And you remember how it was a trilogy and we assumed that was it, but a little while back kind of out of the blue they made a way late part 4? Well, I’m sorry to say that even that happened eleven god damn years ago. How is that possible? It’s not. But it happened. We are old, my friends. Very, very old.
But some of us still like SCREAM and the i.p. gods or whoever decided that the time has come for another one in another era. Many things have changed since the last one. Obviously horror has changed, as it always does. But more importantly the director of the original four, Wes Craven, has passed away, and (in better news) the Weinstein Company has died and gone to Hell, so this is the first time the series has been continued by a new set of people. The rights were picked up by Spyglass Media Group, James Vanderbilt (THE RUNDOWN, ZODIAC) & Guy Busick (READY OR NOT, Castle Rock) wrote the script, and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (the team behind READY OR NOT) directed it, in the Craven spirit but not trying to be a throwback or anything. (There’s even a joke about overlit ‘90s movies.) Original writer Kevin Williamson did give his blessing and sign on as executive producer, and has given many interviews (such as on Mick Garris’ podcast Post-Mortem) verifying that he really was involved and is excited about the movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Dylan Minnette, Guy Busick, Jack Quaid, James Vanderbilt, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Jenna Ortega, Kevin Williamson, Marley Shelton, Mason Gooding, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Melissa Barrera, meta-slashers, Mikey Madison, Neve Campbell, Roger L. Jackson, slashers, Sonia Ben Ammar, Tyler Gillett
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Wednesday, October 21st, 2020
I had heard some not very good things about THE BABYSITTER, so I was surprised when I, a person who’s generally pretty picky about horror comedies, liked it more than my friends. And then as soon as I said that everybody told me “I liked the first one, but the sequel is terrible.”
And it’s true – the tight construction and sincere sweetness that I found so appealing in THE BABYSITTER are not as present in the sequel. It’s more scattershot, maybe in part because rather than the one original writer Brian Duffield they have a team of Dan Lagana (Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous) and Brad Morris & Jimmy Warden (co-producer of the first one) and McG. But it doesn’t feel crazy enough to say it’s McG going Full Throttle again. For the most part it stays true to the spirit of the first one, but the circumstances of sequelization corner it into being more far-fetched and having to stretch it more to keep the story going and bring back certain characters and stuff.
Luckily it’s also funny and gory enough to be a pretty good time. The returns are diminishing, but I’ll take ‘em. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bella Thorne, Chris Wylde, Emily Alyn Lind, Jenna Ortega, Judah Lewis, Ken Marino, Maximilian Acevedo, McG, Netflix, Samara Weaving
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
