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…)
ATHENA is an astonishing piece of filmmaking. I have no idea how they did it. I have one (1) huge issue with it, which prevents it from being one of my top movies of last year, but it’s a big ass spoiler that I will deal with separately at the end of this review. And you may disagree with me, so don’t worry about that for now. What’s important is that this is a thrilling cinematic experience and about as epic as a movie could feel while clocking in at less than 100 minutes. And it’s on Netflix – it’s one of the ones that actually wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t funded it – so it’s a very accessible way to get knocked flat on your ass by a concussion grenade of impeccable spectacle.
