Tag Archives: Universal Pictures

Horror Film Review: Cape Fear (dir. by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Every man… every man has to go through hell to reach paradise.” — Max Cady

There’s nothing subtle about the way Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear gets under your skin. The music announces an approaching apocalypse, the camera seems unable to sit still, and Robert De Niro looks ready to chew through the scenery before anyone can stop him. Yet beneath all that noise is a nasty question: what happens when someone discovers the secret that makes your respectable life possible? This 1991 horror-thriller builds its terror around that vulnerability, turning a revenge story into a nightmare about being exposed. It’s wildly entertaining, even when its determination to overwhelm you becomes a little much.

A remake of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 film of the same name, itself adapted from John D. MacDonald’s novel The Executioners, Cape Fear follows convicted rapist Max Cady after his release from prison. Cady, played by De Niro, has spent fourteen years nursing a grudge against his former defense attorney, Sam Bowden. Nick Nolte’s Sam withheld evidence that might have helped his client’s case, deciding that his disgust justified compromising Cady’s defense. Now Cady has come looking for him, and he isn’t satisfied with an apology. He wants to dismantle Sam’s life slowly enough that Sam understands exactly who is doing it.

Making Sam morally compromised is the remake’s smartest move. Rather than simply asking us to root for an innocent family against an evil outsider, Scorsese gives us a man whose professional betrayal has returned to haunt him. That doesn’t make Cady’s campaign remotely justified, but it complicates Sam’s position. He wants the protection of rules he previously decided didn’t apply to him. Every attempt to present himself as the reasonable, law-abiding party becomes harder to accept without qualification. The suspense comes partly from wondering what Cady will do next and partly from watching Sam struggle to maintain his version of himself.

Casting Nolte in the role previously played by Gregory Peck makes that shift especially convincing. Where Peck’s authoritative presence suited the original’s more upright protector, Nolte brings a battered, irritable quality that makes Sam’s respectability feel less secure. You believe this man may regret living in the law’s moral gray areas without having learned to stay out of them. When protecting his family means employing criminal methods, including arranging an assault on Cady, the decision feels like an extension of his character rather than a sudden reversal. Nolte makes the contradiction work: Sam wants to be decent, but he’ll use dirty resources when he decides the circumstances demand it.

De Niro makes those circumstances as uncomfortable as possible. His Cady is all tattoos, muscle, exaggerated politeness, and a Southern drawl that turns ordinary conversation into a threat. It’s a performance built around excess, and you can practically feel De Niro enjoying how far he can push it. That might sound like a criticism, but Cady is performing, too. He wants Sam to notice him, fear him, and recognize his control over the situation. Every appearance becomes a demonstration of power, with each smile suggesting he knows something everyone else would rather leave unspoken.

The character becomes more interesting, and less believable, as the film continues. Initially, Cady is a dangerous convict with a personal grudge and a talent for exploiting legal boundaries. Eventually, he resembles a boogeyman: impossibly resilient, seemingly everywhere, and almost impossible to keep out. Here the remake embraces more recent slasher-film tropes, moving beyond intimidation toward an unstoppable-killer nightmare. Practically speaking, that transformation gets ridiculous. Psychologically, though, it fits. Cady becomes a manifestation of Sam’s guilt, something that can be denied, attacked, or temporarily escaped, but never comfortably buried again. His persistence makes emotional sense even when his physical endurance strains credibility.

That idea connects the horror to the story’s Southern Gothic roots, which Scorsese emphasizes even more heavily than the original. Religious obsession, sexual menace, family dysfunction, and corruption beneath respectable surfaces create an overheated atmosphere. Cady treats revenge as a sacred mission, dressing cruelty in scripture and self-righteous declarations. Sam has his own history of deciding that moral certainty excuses misconduct. The men aren’t equivalent, but the echoes matter. Cady doesn’t introduce darkness into an innocent household so much as drag existing darkness into the open, where nobody can politely ignore it.

The Bowdens are already miserable enough to make that process convincing. Nolte gives Sam a prickly defensiveness, while Jessica Lange, as his wife Leigh, conveys the exhaustion of someone living with unresolved resentment. Their marriage feels strained before Cady applies pressure, making his interference more destructive. Occasionally, their hostility becomes so relentless that the family scenes feel almost as punishing as the stalking. Still, the performances ground the tension. These aren’t symbolic victims waiting to be threatened; they’re people whose existing problems make the threat harder to manage.

Juliette Lewis is especially good as their teenage daughter, Danielle, whose uncertainty makes her vulnerable to Cady’s attention. Their encounter at her school is the most unsettling sequence because it trades spectacle for something horribly intimate. Cady listens, flatters, and presents himself as someone who understands her better than her parents do. Lewis captures the mixture of curiosity, discomfort, and a teenager’s desire to appear older. The scene exposes the predatory calculation beneath Cady’s theatrical behavior. He doesn’t need physical force to gain control, which makes him scarier than his muscles ever could.

Scorsese surrounds these performances with filmmaking that rarely lets anyone breathe. Working with cinematographer Freddie Francis, he uses distorted perspectives, oppressive close-ups, lurid lighting, and restless camera movements to make ordinary surroundings threatening. Bernard Herrmann’s original score, adapted by Elmer Bernstein, adds an operatic sense of disaster. Sometimes the style shouts over an already effective scene, and restraint might have made certain moments sharper. But the commitment is impressive. By the storm-battered houseboat climax, everyday realism has disappeared, and the setting feels like an extension of the characters’ psychological collapse.

What makes Cape Fear stick isn’t simply whether the Bowdens can survive Cady. It’s the uglier possibility that survival won’t restore the comfortable story they once told about themselves. Scorsese pushes that idea through a thriller so outrageous that its moral complications occasionally get swallowed by spectacle. Nevertheless, Nolte keeps Sam’s contradictions recognizable beneath the chaos: a man who regrets crossing lines but remains willing to cross them again. Cady may become too indestructible to believe in as a person, yet he’s persuasive as the reckoning Sam cannot shut out. The locks were never going to be enough.

Horror Film Review: The Frighteners (dir. by Peter Jackson)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Give it up, Frank! Death ain’t no way to make a living!” — The Judge

The best thing about The Frighteners is that its ghosts seem easier to live with than most of its people. Peter Jackson’s 1996 horror comedy builds a lively supernatural world around that idea, filling it with deadbeat spirits, suspicious neighbors, damaged investigators, and a paranormal con man who would rather make a quick buck than save anybody. It’s a funny, nasty, occasionally uneven movie that keeps finding something entertaining beneath its clutter. Even when the comedy and horror pull in different directions, Jackson’s enthusiasm makes the whole thing feel like an invitation to enjoy the chaos rather than question its manners.

At the center is Frank Bannister, played by Michael J. Fox with a mixture of nervous charm and emotional exhaustion. Following the accident that killed his wife, Frank can see and communicate with ghosts. Naturally, he turns this extraordinary ability into a questionable business opportunity. His dead associates haunt local homes, and he conveniently arrives to clear them out for a fee. It’s a wonderfully crooked arrangement because Frank really can do what he advertises; he just happens to be responsible for creating the problem. Things become considerably less manageable when unexplained deaths suggest that another supernatural presence is operating without his relatively harmless motives.

Fox gives the movie the grounding it needs. Frank has the quick wit and comic frustration associated with many of his performances, but the character feels more withdrawn and defeated. His scams aren’t simply evidence of greed. They’re part of a life that has stalled, leaving him more comfortable dealing with the dead than maintaining relationships with the living. Fox allows that grief to emerge without making every scene announce it. Consequently, Frank’s eventual willingness to risk himself for someone else feels like a genuine change rather than an obligation imposed by the screenplay. The wisecracks work because there’s somebody hurting underneath them.

His ghostly partners make the fraudulent haunting business look like a workplace comedy with unusually flexible rules about physical boundaries. Chi McBride’s Cyrus and Jim Fyfe’s Stuart bicker, complain, and carry out their assignments with personalities that death apparently did nothing to improve. John Astin’s deteriorating Judge pushes the humor into more grotesque territory, while R. Lee Ermey brings familiar drill-sergeant hostility to his cemetery patrol. These characters make the supernatural seem oddly mundane. Passing into the next world hasn’t erased anyone’s ego or annoying habits; it has merely removed some practical limitations on how those habits can bother everybody else.

Jackson clearly enjoys that comic freedom, sometimes a little too much. Certain jokes linger past their natural stopping point, and the supporting cast occasionally competes to see who can make the biggest impression. Still, the early silliness establishes an important distinction between Frank’s ghostly companions and the hooded killer moving through town. One group treats haunting as a hustle; the other turns death into a terrifying certainty. When that figure begins bending surfaces and pursuing victims, the movie briefly makes its own playful supernatural rules feel dangerous. Suddenly, walking through walls isn’t a funny trick. It means there may be nowhere safe to hide.

The transition from ghost comedy to serial-killer mystery gives The Frighteners its edge, although it also creates its biggest problems. Jackson and co-writer Fran Walsh gradually connect the present-day deaths to an earlier killing spree, introducing a nastier atmosphere than the opening antics suggest. That darkness gives the stakes weight, but the shifts can be abrupt. A cartoonish gag might sit beside an ugly revelation, with neither getting enough room to establish its intended mood. Sometimes the collision is exciting because the film becomes difficult to predict. Other times, it feels as though Jackson is enjoying every possibility too much to choose between them.

The performances embrace that excess. Jeffrey Combs makes FBI agent Milton Dammers a spectacular collection of twitches, strained reactions, and barely contained dysfunction. He’s entertainingly bizarre, although his scenes sometimes seem to belong to a separate, even stranger movie. Jake Busey brings an obnoxious, grinning confidence to Johnny Bartlett that makes the character’s cruelty especially unpleasant. Dee Wallace adds a more unsettling human dimension to the darker material, helping prevent the horror from becoming nothing more than an effects demonstration. These aren’t restrained performances, but restraint would probably look out of place in a film this committed to pushing its characters toward the grotesque.

Trini Alvarado provides a useful contrast as Lucy Lynskey. Her comparatively grounded presence gives Frank someone to connect with outside his circle of supernatural accomplices and hostile acquaintances. Their developing relationship isn’t the movie’s most fully realized element, but it supports his emotional recovery without overwhelming the story. Visually, meanwhile, Jackson rarely slows down. Ghosts slide through objects, bodies distort, and ordinary rooms become unstable territory. Some digital effects show their age, particularly when translucent figures interact with physical surroundings. Yet the imagery remains expressive, using exaggeration to sell jokes and scares rather than relying entirely on realism. The effects have personality, which helps them survive their technical limitations.

That ambition also makes The Frighteners an important bridge in Jackson’s career. His mostly low-budget New Zealand splatter-comedy roots in Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Braindead remain visible in its grotesque humor and cheerful bad taste. Heavenly Creatures had already demonstrated his dramatic range, but this Robert Zemeckis-backed production gave him a larger Hollywood canvas while allowing him to keep working in New Zealand. Its extensive effects demands helped expand Wētā’s capabilities, building toward the filmmaking infrastructure that would become essential to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The scale changed, but the filmmaker’s mischievous instincts clearly came along for the ride.

For all its importance as a stepping stone, the movie works best when appreciated as its own unruly creation. The plotting gets crowded, the climax occasionally substitutes activity for suspense, and the tonal balancing act never becomes effortless. But Fox gives the spectacle a heart, and Jackson gives it enough imagination to make its imperfections forgivable. There’s genuine affection for the misfits underneath the grotesque imagery, even as the story finds ugliness among people who should know better. By the end, The Frighteners makes a convincing case that being dead is less of a character flaw than being a jerk.

Horror Film Review: The Funhouse (dir. by Tobe Hooper)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Who will dare to face the challenge of the Funhouse? Who is mad enough to enter that world of darkness?” — Funhouse Barker

There’s something wonderfully sleazy about a horror movie that makes you feel like you need a shower before anyone has even been murdered. Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse (1981) gets that feeling just right, turning a traveling carnival into a place where the entertainment seems questionable and whatever happens behind the scenes looks considerably worse. It’s not Hooper’s most relentless film, and its straightforward story sometimes struggles to justify the leisurely buildup. Still, there’s enough grime, menace, and visual imagination here to make a familiar teenagers-in-trouble premise feel like more than another ride around the slasher circuit.

The teenagers are Amy Harper, played by Elizabeth Berridge, her date Buzz, and their friends Liz and Richie. Their evening starts with the usual carnival activities: wandering around, checking out attractions, and looking for ways to entertain themselves. Eventually, they decide to hide inside the funhouse overnight. It’s the kind of bad idea that becomes irresistible when nobody wants to be the boring one who objects. After witnessing a murder involving a worker wearing a Frankenstein mask, they find themselves trapped inside with people who have a very good reason to make sure they never leave.

Before any of that, Hooper introduces a playful awareness of horror movies through Amy’s younger brother. He’s a horror fan whose enthusiasm spills into an elaborate prank, approaching Amy in the shower while wearing a mask. The sequence borrows from Halloween and Psycho, turning familiar suspense techniques into a kid’s obnoxious attempt to stage his own scary movie. It’s a neat little meta touch because horror already exists as entertainment within these characters’ lives. They recognize its costumes and enjoy its tricks. The trouble begins when that familiarity encourages them to treat danger as something they can safely play around with.

The carnival extends that idea on a larger scale. Its business depends on selling fear without consequences, and the teenagers arrive expecting every unsettling sight to be part of the experience. Hooper makes that expectation increasingly difficult to maintain. There’s a sourness underneath the attractions, a sense that the smiles and sales pitches barely cover the irritation of the people working there. The movie’s sleaze isn’t just a matter of dirty surroundings. It comes from the uneasy relationship between the customers looking for cheap thrills and the workers who seem to regard them with boredom, contempt, or something less easily identified.

Hooper spends a substantial amount of time letting us absorb that atmosphere. Depending on your patience, this either gives the movie its personality or makes the first half feel like an extended wait for something to happen. There are stretches where the teenagers’ wandering could have been tightened without losing much. On the other hand, rushing directly to the murders would sacrifice the sense that this place has an existence beyond the plot. By the time the group becomes trapped, the carnival feels less like a collection of convenient horror props than a shabby little world with its own unpleasant routines.

Once inside the funhouse, the visual design takes over. Mechanical figures, grotesque faces, and cluttered passageways make it difficult to separate an actual threat from another piece of scenery. Hooper gets suspense out of that uncertainty, giving your eyes plenty to investigate without always rewarding the effort with an immediate scare. The machinery keeps moving regardless of what happens around it, which becomes increasingly unnerving. Something designed to provide a few minutes of harmless excitement turns into an obstacle course whose mechanisms have no interest in whether anyone gets hurt. The attraction doesn’t become evil; its normal operation simply becomes dangerous.

The characters are less distinctive than their surroundings. Berridge gives Amy a believable vulnerability, and her discomfort never feels like an excuse for smugly announcing that everyone else should have known better. She’s simply a young woman whose evening gets horribly out of hand. Buzz, Liz, and Richie have enough personality to establish the group, but not enough to make their individual fates especially affecting. That’s the main limitation of the screenplay: the situation generates more investment than the people caught in it. You’re anxious about what might happen without necessarily feeling that you know these kids very well.

Kevin Conway adds a stronger dose of personality as three different carnival barkers, especially in his role as the masked killer’s father. His combination of aggression and warped protectiveness gives the horror an ugly domestic undercurrent. The creature is frightening, but his vulnerability makes the relationship more disturbing than a simple partnership between villains. The Frankenstein mask also pays off the movie’s interest in familiar horror imagery: a recognizable monster face initially offers something almost reassuring, until its removal destroys that comfort. The makeup is memorable, although the film’s use of physical difference as a source of monstrous terror remains an uncomfortable shortcut.

When the chase finally takes over, The Funhouse delivers tense, claustrophobic suspense without becoming an endless procession of elaborate kills. Its cramped spaces and unreliable hiding places make escape feel frustratingly difficult. The thin characterization and occasional sluggishness keep it from matching Hooper’s strongest work, but the setting remains potent enough to carry the film. From the brother playing horror director to the carnival packaging fear for paying customers, the movie keeps showing people enjoying pretend terror before confronting something they can’t control. It’s an effective, grimy little nightmare that makes the midway’s cheap pleasures look a lot less inviting.

Horror Film Review: Other Mommy (dir. Rob Savage)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Sometimes I think about when you and I were one person, and it makes me so happy, I cry. Do you remember that?” — Other Mommy

Jessica Chastain is the only reason Other Mommy works at all, and even she cannot quite save a horror movie that turns a genuinely strong premise into something silly through its own adaptation. Rob Savage’s 2026 film is based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, and the source material’s central idea—a young girl discovers that the entity haunting her house looks exactly like her mother—is legitimately creepy and emotionally rich. The novel understands that a child’s fear of losing her mother, and a mother’s fear of being replaced, can carry an entire horror story. The movie takes that same foundation and rushes through it, leans into chaotic scares, and never finds a consistent tone, until the premise starts to feel ridiculous rather than frightening. What keeps it from being a total loss is Chastain’s double performance as both the struggling mother Ursula and the grotesque creature impersonating her. Without her, this would be an easy movie to forget. With her, it becomes a frustrating watch—good enough to keep you interested, bad enough to make you wish it had been better.

The story follows Bela, an eight-year-old girl played by Arabella Olivia Clark, who lives with her parents Ursula and Russ, played by Chastain and Jay Duplass. Their home is already unstable. The marriage is strained, the parents are distracted, and Bela is left to make sense of it all on her own. Into that environment comes Other Mommy, an entity that emerges from the closet wearing Ursula’s face. She does not simply attack Bela. Instead, she asks to be let into her heart, promising love and closeness while making it clear that refusal will have consequences. In Malerman’s novel, that setup works because the book takes its time exploring the psychological weight of it: a child caught between a mother who cannot fully show up for her and a monster who will happily pretend to. The film has the same ingredients but treats them more like a starting point for increasingly ridiculous scares than something it actually wants to sit with, and that is where the adaptation starts to lose the plot.

Chastain is the reason any of it works at all. Playing Ursula and Other Mommy gives her a chance to show two very different sides of the same face, and she makes the contrast convincing. As Ursula, she is tired, brittle, and emotionally unavailable in a way that feels believable even when the plot around her falls apart. She loves her daughter, but she is too overwhelmed and angry to show it consistently, and Chastain plays that failure without turning Ursula into a villain. As Other Mommy, she gets to go full nightmare fuel. The creature performs motherhood like someone who has studied it from the outside, smiling too widely, speaking in a warm but slightly off register, and moving with an unnatural confidence that makes every interaction feel wrong. Chastain understands that the scariest version of the monster is not the one that growls or lunges, but the one that almost gets the role right. She knows the words. She does not understand the feeling behind them.

That performance is what gives the film its few genuinely effective moments. When Other Mommy pleads with Bela to accept her, the scene works because the creature is both terrifying and pitiful. She wants to be loved, believed, and chosen, and she cannot comprehend why Bela would resist. There is something sad about that, and Chastain finds it without softening the character’s menace. She makes the entity feel like a desperate, needy thing wearing a mother’s face, and that is a much more interesting horror idea than the movie’s actual plot delivery system. If the film had leaned harder into that emotional contradiction and given it room to breathe, it might have come closer to capturing what makes the novel’s premise so effective. Instead, it keeps rushing past the interesting parts to get to the next loud, chaotic set piece.

That pacing is one of the movie’s biggest problems. At 93 minutes, Other Mommy moves fast, and not in a good way. It introduces the family’s problems, brings in the monster, and starts escalating the scares before the audience has had much time to connect with anyone. We understand that Ursula and Russ are unhappy, but we do not feel the specific weight of that unhappiness. We know Bela is lonely, but the film does not give her enough quiet moments to show what that loneliness looks like day to day. The result is a movie full of confrontations with the entity but very little emotional buildup between them. The family feels more like pieces in a horror machine than people whose survival actually matters, and that makes it hard to care when things go wrong. The novel earns its scares by making you care about the people first; the film skips that step and wonders why the scares do not hit as hard.

Savage’s direction does not help. He clearly likes big visual ideas, sudden movements, and scares that come out of nowhere, but the execution often feels more frantic than frightening. The creature design has some inventive moments—Other Mommy can stretch, contort, and squeeze herself into spaces no human body should fit—but the film rarely trusts quiet dread. It piles on noise, fast editing, and chaotic CGI effects until the tension flattens out. A scare that might have landed with a little patience becomes one more startle in a long line of startles. When the entity lingers at the edge of the frame, half-seen through a doorway or reflected somewhere she should not be, the movie creates real unease. Those moments are too rare. Most of the time, the film would rather show you everything immediately and hope volume substitutes for atmosphere, which is exactly the kind of choice that turns a creepy premise into a silly one.

The tonal swings make things worse. Other Mommy wants to be sad, scary, funny, and ridiculous all at once, and it does not know when to switch gears. There are sequences where the creature’s behavior becomes so exaggerated that it tips into camp, including a ball-pit scene that pushes the film into full-on absurdity. That campiness might work in a movie that fully embraces it, but this one keeps trying to have it both ways. It wants you to laugh at the monster’s physical comedy one minute and feel genuine dread the next, and the shifts are jarring rather than effective. The result is a film that never settles into a consistent identity. It is too silly to be truly scary and too serious to be fun camp, and that in-between space is where it lost me—and where it drifts furthest from the novel’s more controlled, unsettling tone.

The supporting cast does not do much to help. Duplass gives Russ a believable sense of helplessness, but the character is thinly written and mostly reactive. Karen Allen, Arian Moayed, and Dichen Lachman show up in roles that serve the plot rather than add dimension. Clark is better than the material deserves, bringing a real vulnerability to Bela that makes her more than just a screaming kid. She holds her own opposite Chastain, which is no small feat given how much the older actress is doing in every scene. But even a good child performance cannot fix a screenplay that does not know what it wants to say about the family at the center of the story.

In the end, Other Mommy is a movie with one great performance and an adaptation that takes a strong, genuinely unsettling premise and makes it feel silly through rushed pacing, chaotic direction, and tonal confusion. The idea of a mother-shaped entity trying to replace a child’s real mother is not the problem—Malerman’s novel proves it can be genuinely frightening. The problem is that Savage’s film does not know how to translate that idea to the screen without turning it into a series of loud, inconsistent set pieces. Chastain plays both sides of the dynamic with total commitment, and she is the only reason the movie stays watchable. It is not the worst horror movie of the year, but it is a disappointing one, because you can see the better version of this story trying to get out. If you watch it, watch it for her. Just do not expect the movie around her to hold up the way the book’s premise deserves.

Horror Film Review: Army of Darkness (dir. by Sam Raimi)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Well hello, Mister Fancypants. Well, I’ve got news for you, pal: you ain’t leadin’ but two things right now: Jack and shit… and Jack just left town.” — Ash Williams

Few cult movies embrace their own insanity as joyfully as Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness. Directed by Raimi and released in 1992, the third chapter in the Evil Dead series takes Ash Williams out of the isolated-cabin horror setting of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II and drops him into a sword-and-sorcery adventure full of skeleton armies, haunted forests, miniature doppelgängers, exploding Deadites, and more quotable one-liners than most action comedies manage in an entire franchise. It is still technically a horror movie, but calling it just a horror movie misses the point. This is a slapstick fantasy-action comedy with monsters, and its ridiculousness is exactly why it has endured as a cult favorite.

The story picks up almost immediately after the end of Evil Dead II, with Ash getting sucked through a portal and landing in medieval England. Rather than being welcomed as some prophesied savior, he is immediately treated like a suspicious outsider and thrown into a pit with a Deadite. That opening alone tells you what kind of movie this will be. Ash is no longer simply a terrified everyman trying to survive an impossible nightmare. He is now a chainsaw-handed loudmouth who shoots first, insults everyone around him, and somehow carries himself like the greatest warrior in history despite constantly making situations worse through his own arrogance.

Bruce Campbell is the entire engine of Army of Darkness. Ash has become a full-blown cartoon hero by this point, halfway between a B-movie John Wayne, a professional wrestler cutting a promo, and a smug department-store employee who has somehow convinced himself he is a legendary warrior. Campbell plays the role with total commitment, which is the key to why the comedy works. He never acts embarrassed by the dialogue or tries to make Ash seem cooler than he is. The character is funny because he is deeply incompetent beneath all the bravado. Ash talks like a conquering hero, but his victories usually involve panic, luck, explosives, and a lot of property damage.

The familiar “Groovy” attitude from Evil Dead II gets pushed even further here. Ash is not meant to be a noble fantasy protagonist. He is selfish, crude, lazy, and usually more interested in returning to modern life than helping the people trapped in a medieval war. That makes him a funny fit for the genre. In a normal fantasy film, the chosen hero would humbly accept his destiny, train with a sword, and unite the kingdoms. Ash complains about the inconvenience, makes demands, insults the locals, and uses his knowledge of basic mechanics to become a magical figure in their eyes. His improvised metal hand, shotgun, chainsaw, and homemade weapons make him look like a mad scientist dropped into an old Ray Harryhausen movie.

Raimi’s direction is as energetic as ever, even if Army of Darkness is noticeably cleaner and more studio-sized than the first two films. The early Evil Dead movies had a grimy, do-it-yourself quality that made their horror feel unusually mean and immediate. This one has a broader, more polished adventure-movie look. There are castles, battlefields, elaborate costumes, large-scale miniature work, and a full army of stop-motion skeletons. It is still cheap-looking in places, but that is part of its charm. The effects do not need to be seamless because the movie’s entire personality is built around heightened artifice. When skeletons leap around in exaggerated stop-motion or a tiny Ash attacks the full-sized Ash in a windmill, the film feels like a live-action cartoon with blood, dirt, and medieval armor.

The windmill sequence is probably the purest expression of what makes the movie special. Ash enters a windmill to escape danger and ends up trapped with miniature versions of himself, eventually swallowing one by accident. It has almost nothing to do with the larger plot in any serious sense, yet it is hilarious because Raimi keeps escalating the gag. Instead of treating the tiny Ash as a brief visual joke, the movie turns him into a recurring problem that literally grows into Evil Ash, Ash’s undead double and the leader of the titular army. That progression makes perfect cartoon logic: a small annoyance becomes a full-scale apocalypse because Ash was too careless to deal with it properly.

The horror elements are lighter than they were in the first two films, and that will probably be the biggest dividing line for viewers. Anyone expecting the nasty isolation, body horror, and relentless dread of The Evil Dead may be surprised by how openly silly this installment is. The Deadites are still grotesque enough to keep the supernatural threat alive, especially in the opening pit fight and the later siege, but they are no longer as frightening as they are funny. Raimi is much more interested in visual gags, wild camera movement, and action-movie momentum than scares.

That tonal change does not make Army of Darkness a lesser movie; it just makes it a very different one. In fact, it may be the most accessible entry in the original trilogy for people who do not normally enjoy horror. You can watch it without being especially invested in the mythology, because the plot is basically a delivery system for set pieces. Ash needs the Necronomicon to get home. He says the magic words wrong. Evil Ash rises. A skeleton army attacks. Ash helps defend the castle. The movie keeps moving, rarely pauses to explain itself, and never tries to make its fantasy world feel more serious than necessary.

The final battle is a great example of Raimi getting the maximum entertainment out of a relatively limited toolbox. Ash turns medieval villagers into a makeshift modern army, complete with explosives, contraptions, and a vehicle that feels hilariously out of place in the period setting. The action is messy, noisy, and deliberately overblown, with exploding skeletons and clashing armies staged more like a rowdy theme-park spectacle than a conventional epic. Raimi understands that the point is not realism. The point is seeing Ash yell at an undead army while wielding a chainsaw and acting like he personally invented warfare.

The movie’s dialogue is another major reason it remains so beloved. “This is my boomstick” has become the obvious classic, but Army of Darkness is packed with lines that sound like they were designed to be repeated by friends after midnight screenings. Campbell’s delivery turns even the dumbest insult into something memorable. The movie knows Ash is absurd, but it also understands that he needs to be just cool enough for the audience to enjoy watching him survive. He is a lovable jerk because he is never actually in control for long. The universe keeps humiliating him, and Campbell makes every humiliation feel like another opportunity for a louder comeback.

Army of Darkness is not the scariest Evil Dead movie, the most atmospheric, or even necessarily the best constructed. It is uneven, shamelessly goofy, and occasionally held together by pure momentum. But it has a distinct personality that most franchise sequels would kill for. Raimi and Campbell take a low-budget horror premise and stretch it into a medieval monster comedy without losing the series’ manic spirit. It feels handmade even when it is big, silly even when it is violent, and weirdly triumphant despite Ash being one of the least heroic heroes in fantasy cinema. For fans of practical effects, stop-motion creatures, quotable cult movies, and Sam Raimi operating with absolutely no interest in restraint, Army of Darkness remains a blast.

Review: Dante’s Peak (dir. by Roger Donaldson)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Not extinct, just dormant… as in sleeping. And your volcano might just be waking up.” — Harry Dalton

Dante’s Peak takes a simple but reliable disaster-movie setup—a quiet town sitting beneath a volcano that is very much not as dormant as everyone hopes—and turns it into a tense, highly watchable piece of 1990s spectacle. Directed by Roger Donaldson, the 1997 film is hardly subtle, and its character work can be pretty thin, but it remains an unusually watchable entry in the genre because it takes its central threat seriously. The movie spends enough time establishing the town and its people that, once the mountain finally blows, the destruction has some weight behind it. It is a familiar formula, but Dante’s Peak executes it with enough sincerity and old-school craftsmanship to stay entertaining.

Pierce Brosnan stars as Harry Dalton, a volcanologist for the U.S. Geological Survey who is still carrying the emotional scars of a prior eruption that killed his fiancée. Harry is sent to the picturesque Pacific Northwest town of Dante’s Peak after unusual seismic and chemical activity suggests that its supposedly dormant volcano may be waking up. His assignment initially sounds routine: inspect the mountain, collect some samples, talk to local officials, and determine whether there is any reason for concern. Naturally, there is. The water supply starts showing signs of dangerous acidity, tremors grow more frequent, steam vents become harder to ignore, and the mountain begins sending increasingly blunt warnings that it is ready to erupt.

The central tension is not whether the volcano will blow. The title alone pretty much gives that away. Instead, the first half works because of the fight over how seriously the warning signs should be taken. Dante’s Peak has just received national attention as one of the best small towns in America, and Mayor Rachel Wando, played by Linda Hamilton, is understandably hesitant to cause mass panic and wreck the town’s economy over an uncertain prediction. Harry believes the danger is real, but he also knows from painful experience that hesitation can get people killed. That conflict gives the movie a decent human foundation before the large-scale effects take over.

Brosnan is a good fit for Harry Dalton. This was the same period when he was newly established as James Bond, and Dante’s Peak makes smart use of his natural screen presence without turning Harry into an outright action hero. He is calm, capable, handsome, and articulate, but he is also clearly rattled by the possibility of repeating a tragedy he could not prevent. The role is not especially demanding on paper, yet Brosnan gives Harry enough fatigue and frustration that he comes across as a real professional rather than just a disaster-movie scientist whose only job is to shout warnings at dismissive bureaucrats.

Hamilton is arguably even more important to the movie’s success. Rachel could have been written as a generic authority figure who slows down the plot by refusing to believe the expert, but Hamilton makes her more sympathetic than that. She is not ignoring Harry because she is foolish or selfish. She has a town to protect, businesses that depend on tourism, residents who do not want to abandon their homes, and two children who become central to the film’s increasingly dangerous rescue mission. Hamilton had already cemented her action credentials in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but here she plays a more grounded version of strength. Rachel is practical, stubborn, and brave without ever feeling like she has wandered in from another franchise with a shotgun and a leather jacket.

The supporting cast is more uneven. Charles Hallahan gets the familiar disaster-movie role of Paul Dreyfus, the superior whose skepticism creates a frustrating delay in the evacuation. Elizabeth Hoffman is memorable as Rachel’s grandmother, Ruth, even though the movie leans hard into the “stubborn elderly relative refuses to leave” setup. Rachel’s children, Lauren and Graham, mostly function as a way to push the adults back into danger after the eruption begins, and their choices can be maddening. Still, the cast sells the stakes well enough that the film avoids feeling completely mechanical.

Where Dante’s Peak really delivers is in its escalation. The first clear sign that things have gone wrong is genuinely creepy: the town’s supposedly pristine water supply turns corrosive. That detail is one of the movie’s best touches because it makes the volcano feel dangerous before it becomes visually spectacular. Then the film starts layering hazards on top of each other. There are earthquakes, falling volcanic debris, ash clouds, mudslides, a collapsing bridge, boiling water, and eventually a full eruption. It is an impressively varied disaster package. Rather than relying on one big explosion and calling it a day, the movie treats the volcano as a chain reaction that attacks the town from every direction.

The standout sequence is the drive across the lake after volcanic material has made the water acidic. It is ridiculous in the specific, memorable way that disaster cinema often is: a family in a damaged vehicle tries to outrun a lake that is essentially eating the vehicle out from under them. The science of the scene has been criticized plenty over the years, and fairly so, but it works as suspense filmmaking. Donaldson understands how to stage the moment visually, showing the immediate effects on the vehicle while keeping the characters trapped in a situation that gets worse by the second. It is the kind of scene people remember long after forgetting much of the dialogue.

Visually, the movie has aged better than some of its late-1990s peers because it balances computer-generated imagery with practical destruction, physical sets, and real locations. The effects do not always look flawless now, especially in wider shots of the erupting mountain, but the overall physicality helps. Buildings shake, roads split open, ash hangs in the air, and characters actually look buried in the mess rather than pasted in front of it. The town itself is also nicely chosen. Dante’s Peak looks like the sort of clean, friendly, postcard-perfect place that a disaster movie needs to destroy. The contrast between its calm opening scenes and its ash-covered final act is one of the film’s strongest visual ideas.

Roger Donaldson directs efficiently, even if he never quite gives the film a distinctive personality. He keeps the geography clear during most of the action, which matters a lot in a movie built around people trying to flee shifting dangers. You usually understand where Harry and Rachel are, what obstacle is in front of them, and why they cannot simply drive away. The pacing is a little slow in the middle, particularly when the scientific warnings begin repeating themselves, but that patience pays off once the final act kicks in. The movie takes a while to get to the eruption, then makes sure the eruption earns its screen time.

The screenplay by Leslie Bohem is where Dante’s Peak shows its limitations. The dialogue is often blunt, the romance between Harry and Rachel is predictable, and several characters exist mainly to make unwise decisions at the exact moment the plot needs more danger. The film also has a habit of making Harry right about nearly everything, which can flatten the debate around whether to evacuate. Still, there is something likable about how earnestly it embraces its own premise. It never winks at the audience or tries to become ironic. It wants viewers to care about the town, fear the mountain, and cheer when people narrowly escape certain death.

That sincerity is probably why Dante’s Peak has endured better than its mixed critical reputation might suggest. It is not a great disaster movie in the way that The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno can be called great, and it does not have the full-throttle spectacle of Twister. But it is dependable comfort-viewing for anyone who enjoys this particular brand of high-stakes Hollywood nonsense. The movie’s science is questionable in spots, its family drama can get corny, and its plot follows the disaster handbook almost page for page. Yet Brosnan and Hamilton give it enough credibility, Donaldson keeps it moving, and the volcanic destruction is still satisfying.

In the end, Dante’s Peak is a solid, unpretentious disaster thriller that understands the appeal of watching ordinary people try to outrun an extraordinary catastrophe. It may not reinvent the genre, but it delivers the basics with conviction: a looming natural threat, decent leads, escalating tension, and a finale full of lava, ash, and desperate escapes. Sometimes that is more than enough.

Review: The Last Starfighter (dir. by Nick Castle)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Alex! Alex! You’re walking away from history! History! Did Chris Columbus say he wanted to stay home? No! What if the Wright Brothers thought that only birds should fly?” — Centauri

The Last Starfighter is one of the most purely enjoyable science-fiction adventures of the 1980s: earnest, inventive, occasionally corny, and driven by the kind of wide-eyed imagination that modern blockbusters too often confuse with sheer scale. Directed by Nick Castle, the 1984 film builds an entire intergalactic adventure around a premise that could have been dismissed as a gimmick: an arcade champion discovers that his favorite game is actually a recruitment test for a real war in space. Instead of treating that premise ironically, the film commits to it wholeheartedly, and that sincerity is ultimately what makes it endure.

Lance Guest stars as Alex Rogan, a teenager living in the Starlite Starbrite trailer park with his mother and younger brother, Louis. Alex is smart, resourceful, and visibly restless. He wants to get out of his small-town surroundings, attend college, and build a better future, but financial strain and family responsibility keep making those ambitions seem less realistic. His one reliable escape comes from an arcade machine outside the local store called The Last Starfighter. Alex plays constantly, eventually achieving a record score that attracts the attention of the game’s mysterious creator, Centauri.

Robert Preston’s Centauri is one of the film’s great pleasures. He is an interstellar recruiter who behaves like a flamboyant carnival salesman, arriving in Alex’s life with a strange vehicle, flashy clothes, a rapid-fire sales pitch, and a proposition that sounds completely insane. Centauri reveals that The Last Starfighter is not merely a video game; it is a test designed to identify young people with the reflexes, tactical instincts, and courage needed to become Gunstar pilots for the Rylan Star League. Alex has not just beaten a difficult arcade game. He has qualified to defend an entire civilization from the Kodan Armada.

That central idea remains the movie’s strongest asset. It transforms a familiar adolescent fantasy into something emotionally resonant. Alex is not gifted with a magical sword, superpowers, or an ancient royal lineage. He is selected because he became exceptionally skilled at something the adults around him would probably regard as a waste of time. His ability to master a video game becomes proof that he has discipline, intelligence, hand-eye coordination, and the ability to make decisions under pressure. For anyone who grew up playing arcade games, it is an irresistible fantasy: the thing you are good at for fun might one day turn out to matter more than anyone realizes.

The film understands, however, that being offered a larger life is not the same as being ready for it. Alex initially reacts to the truth with disbelief and fear rather than instant heroism. He wants to return home. He assumes there has been a mistake. That response helps ground the movie, because Alex is not a prepackaged action hero. He is a teenager who has dreamed of escaping his circumstances but has never seriously considered the sacrifices that escape might require. It is easy to want a more exciting future when it is only an idea. It is harder when that future involves leaving your family, crossing the galaxy, and possibly dying in a war you barely understand.

Lance Guest gives Alex enough insecurity and frustration to make his eventual growth satisfying. Alex can be impatient and occasionally self-centered, but he never comes across as unlikable. He feels trapped, and the film makes that frustration understandable. His conflict is not simply whether he can destroy enemy ships; it is whether he can accept that he deserves a larger destiny than the one he has assumed is available to him. By the time he decides to fight, he has moved beyond wanting adventure as an escape. He has chosen to take responsibility for something greater than himself.

Catherine Mary Stewart is also appealing as Maggie Gordon, Alex’s girlfriend. Maggie is not given an enormous amount to do, but she has more personality than the standard passive romantic interest in many 1980s adventure films. She cares deeply about Alex, yet she also has every reason to be hurt and confused when he suddenly disappears and begins acting strangely. Her scenes with Beta Alex, the android duplicate sent to take Alex’s place on Earth, provide some of the movie’s most amusing moments. Beta Alex looks exactly like him, but his behavior is just strange enough to create an entertaining mixture of comedy and unease.

The Beta Alex subplot is one of the film’s cleverest touches because it allows the story to explore Alex’s absence without simply abandoning the Earthbound characters. Beta Alex is a convincing physical duplicate, but he cannot quite replicate the nuances of being human. His overly literal responses, awkward attempts at social interaction, and bizarre behavior around Maggie make him a memorable comic creation. The device also reinforces the contrast between Alex’s old life and the extraordinary new situation he has been pulled into. While the real Alex is in space facing a galactic conflict, the people at home are left trying to make sense of a version of him that seems familiar but fundamentally wrong.

Robert Preston’s performance gives the entire movie energy whenever Centauri appears. He could easily have become an irritating eccentric, but Preston makes him funny, charismatic, and unexpectedly warm. Centauri sees Alex’s potential before Alex sees it himself. Beneath the fast talking and theatrical mannerisms is a real belief in the people he recruits. He does not merely need another pilot; he genuinely wants Alex to become the person he is capable of being. Preston’s presence adds an old-fashioned show-business charm to a film otherwise built around futuristic hardware and computer-generated spacecraft.

Dan O’Herlihy is equally important as Grig, the reptilian alien navigator assigned to work with Alex. Grig initially seems like the typical stern mentor figure, but he gradually becomes one of the movie’s most likable characters. He has experience, discipline, and a personal history with the war that gives the conflict some added seriousness. His partnership with Alex works because they begin from very different places. Grig is a hardened veteran who has seen the cost of battle, while Alex is an overwhelmed rookie who still wants to go home. As they learn to trust each other, their relationship becomes the heart of the space-adventure material.

The villains are broad but effective. Xur and the Kodan Armada are not psychologically complex antagonists, yet the movie does not need them to be. Their purpose is to represent a threat large enough to force Alex into a defining choice. Xur’s willingness to betray the Star League and sacrifice innocent lives for power makes him an appropriately clear villain for this kind of adventure. The conflict is straightforward: a small group of defenders must stand against an overwhelming enemy force, and Alex must decide whether he will be one of those defenders.

The visual effects are perhaps the most historically fascinating part of The Last Starfighter. The film was an early showcase for computer-generated imagery, using digital effects for its spacecraft, alien environments, and space-combat sequences. At the time, this was revolutionary. Seen today, the visual effects are obviously dated. The ships have a smooth, artificial quality, the textures are basic, and the movement lacks the weight and complexity audiences expect from modern computer animation. Yet there is still something charming about them. They represent a major transitional period in science-fiction filmmaking, when filmmakers were beginning to discover what computers could do for cinematic spectacle.

The early CGI gives the movie a distinctive visual identity rather than simply making it look obsolete. The Gunstar fighter, the Kodan fleet, and the distant alien landscapes have the clean, geometric appearance of an advanced arcade game brought to life. That is fitting for a story about a teenager whose gaming skills translate into real combat ability. The computer-generated imagery may not have the tactile realism of the practical miniature work seen in films such as Star Wars or Blade Runner, but it has an important place in the history of visual effects. The movie was imagining a future that the technology of its day could only partially create, and that ambition remains visible in every digital battle.

The Gunstar itself is a memorable piece of science-fiction design. It looks futuristic while still retaining the simplicity of a classic arcade spaceship, and the cockpit scenes effectively sell the sensation of Alex being thrown into something far beyond his experience. The climactic use of the “Death Blossom” maneuver is especially satisfying because the film treats it as a genuine last resort. It is the cinematic equivalent of unleashing a devastating power-up at the exact moment an arcade game seems impossible to win. The sequence is flashy, uncomplicated, and immensely fun.

What makes The Last Starfighter last is not its special effects alone, nor is it just nostalgia for the arcade era. The movie works because it is fundamentally optimistic. It believes that potential can emerge from unlikely places and that someone who feels ignored, trapped, or underestimated may still possess the ability to do something remarkable. Alex is not chosen because he is already fearless. He becomes heroic because he eventually chooses to act despite being afraid.

The film is not perfect. Its dialogue can be cheesy, some characters are thinly developed, and the dated effects may be difficult for viewers accustomed to modern CGI. Even so, those imperfections are part of its charm. The Last Starfighter is colorful, sincere, and unashamedly enthusiastic about its own premise. It remains a lovable science-fiction adventure because it takes the dreams of a video-game-playing teenager seriously. It asks viewers to imagine that the skill everyone dismisses, the hobby that feels like an escape from ordinary life, might actually be the first sign that they are capable of something far greater.

Review: Legend (dir. by Ridley Scott)

Posted on by Arleigh

“What is light without dark? What are you without me? I am a part of you all. You can never defeat me. We are brothers eternal!” — Darkness

Legend is one of those films that feels like it should be a masterpiece even before it begins. It has Ridley Scott behind the camera, an extravagant fantasy premise, elaborate practical effects, striking production design, and a cast that includes a young Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, and Tim Curry. Released in 1985, the film arrived as a dark fantasy event that had been heavily anticipated, especially because Scott had already earned a reputation for visually stunning films. Alien and Blade Runner had established him as a director who could make entire worlds feel tactile, mysterious, and overwhelming. The idea of Scott applying that sensibility to unicorns, goblins, forest sprites, demonic lords, and fairy-tale mythology was exciting on paper. Unfortunately, while Legend is often gorgeous to look at, it becomes an uneven mess that is only saved from becoming a major disappointment by Tim Curry’s performance as Darkness.

The setup is familiar enough to sound almost deliberately archetypal. In a magical forest, Jack, played by Cruise, is a woodland boy who lives in harmony with nature and has fallen in love with the innocent Princess Lili, played by Sara. The world’s balance is tied to a pair of unicorns, embodiments of purity and light. Darkness, a devil-like ruler who wishes to plunge the world into permanent night, sends his goblin servants to kill the unicorns and take one of their horns. Lili’s fascination with the unicorns sets the tragedy in motion, and once one of the creatures is slain, winter and darkness descend upon the land. Jack must rescue Lili, restore the horn, defeat Darkness, and return light to the world.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a simple fairy-tale plot. In fact, Scott’s strongest instinct in Legend is treating fantasy with a sense of visual seriousness. The forest does not look like a clean studio set built for children; it looks damp, overgrown, foggy, and vaguely dangerous. The trees loom like ancient creatures, shafts of light break through the branches in painterly bursts, and even the beautiful areas of the film carry an eerie quality. Scott and cinematographer Alex Thomson create images that often resemble illustrated storybooks poisoned by a nightmare. The film’s environments are its greatest achievement. Whether it is the glowing forest, the icy wasteland after the unicorn’s death, or Darkness’ fire-lit underworld, Legend makes a serious effort to create a fully realized fantasy space rather than simply dressing actors in costumes and placing them in generic medieval scenery.

That visual commitment is why the film remains so fascinating despite its flaws. You can pause almost anywhere and find something worth admiring: a strange creature in the background, smoke drifting through a cavern, an enormous set textured with roots and stone, or a costume that looks handmade rather than mass-produced. Scott’s eye for atmosphere is undeniable. The film has an unusual physicality, too. Its magic is created through prosthetics, makeup, puppetry, matte work, and elaborate sets, so even when some effects have aged, they retain a handmade charm. Modern fantasy often has the advantage of digital flexibility, but Legend has the kind of tactile design that makes its world feel like it has dirt under its fingernails.

Still, visual beauty cannot completely compensate for a story that never finds a consistent rhythm. Legend often feels less like a fully developed narrative than a collection of spectacular images and half-formed fairy-tale ideas. Characters appear with little introduction, emotional shifts happen abruptly, and major story developments can feel rushed or strangely underexplained. The theatrical cut in particular carries the sense that important connective material has been removed. There are moments when the movie seems to expect emotional investment simply because the images are grand or the music swells, but the script has not done enough to earn that reaction.

Jack is also an unusually bland hero for a film that needs a strong center. Cruise was still early in his career, and there are flashes of the screen presence that would soon make him a major star. He is physically committed and looks believable racing through forests, climbing ruins, and confronting danger. But Jack is written as a generic pure-hearted fantasy protagonist, and Cruise never gets enough material to make him feel specific. He is brave because the story says he is brave, romantic because the story says he loves Lili, and destined to save the world because that is what these stories require. He does not have much inner conflict beyond the expected guilt and determination.

Lili is similarly underwritten, although Mia Sara does bring a dreamy, otherworldly quality to the role. The film wants her to embody innocence, temptation, and romantic idealism, but it does not give her much agency until she becomes corrupted by Darkness’ influence. Her transformation into a dark bride is visually memorable, especially in the elaborate black gown and makeup, but it also highlights the film’s habit of prioritizing imagery over character. The sequence is beautiful, eerie, and loaded with gothic fantasy appeal, yet Lili’s emotional journey into that role feels more decorative than dramatically convincing.

The supporting characters are more colorful but not always more useful. The dwarfs, elves, and forest companions give the story occasional energy, particularly the sarcastic fairy Oona and the armored dwarf Gump. Yet their presence can make the film feel tonally scattered. Sometimes Legend wants to be haunting and mythic; sometimes it wants broad comic relief; sometimes it drifts toward romantic melodrama. Those modes do not always blend. The result is a movie that can move from an ominous demonic ritual to a goofy side-character exchange without establishing a stable tone.

Then there is Tim Curry, who walks into the movie and immediately makes every other problem less important. His Darkness is one of the most iconic fantasy villains ever put on screen, and it is not difficult to understand why. The makeup design alone is astounding: massive horns, red skin, cloven hooves, muscular proportions, and a towering silhouette that makes him look like a medieval illustration of Satan brought to life. But the design would be nothing without Curry’s performance. He does not merely hide beneath the prosthetics; he gives Darkness a voice, posture, and seductive intelligence.

Curry plays Darkness as both monstrous and theatrical. His deep, measured delivery turns lines about night, desire, and evil into something genuinely alluring. He understands that the character should not simply roar or sneer. Darkness is persuasive. He offers Lili beauty, power, and escape from innocence, which makes him more interesting than a villain who only threatens destruction. His scenes with Sara have a strange, almost operatic energy, mixing horror, seduction, and camp in a way that fits the film’s most ambitious visual impulses. Curry makes Darkness feel ancient, vain, cruel, romantic, and weirdly funny all at once. He gives Legend its pulse.

The famous confrontation between Jack and Darkness should be the film’s crowning achievement, and visually it almost is. Darkness’ lair, lit by flames and surrounded by infernal architecture, gives Scott room to indulge his talent for monumental images. Curry’s villain towers over Cruise, making the hero look small and vulnerable. Yet even here, the fight is more memorable for its atmosphere than its dramatic construction. It is a good example of the whole film: rich in aesthetic invention, less persuasive as storytelling.

The music also reflects the movie’s fractured identity. Different versions of Legend are associated with different scores, most notably the Jerry Goldsmith score and the Tangerine Dream soundtrack used in the American theatrical release. The Goldsmith material feels more classically mythic and orchestral, while Tangerine Dream’s electronic music gives the film a distinctly 1980s dream-pop atmosphere. Both have their supporters, and both alter the experience considerably. That split feels appropriate for a movie that has always existed in multiple forms and competing moods. Legend is never quite one thing.

In the end, Legend is a flawed cult fantasy rather than a lost masterpiece. Its reputation rests largely on its imagery, its practical craftsmanship, and Curry’s towering performance, not on the strength of its plot or its emotional depth. Ridley Scott clearly wanted to make a dark fairy tale that felt ancient and sensual, but the finished film too often gets trapped between mythic grandeur, children’s fantasy, gothic romance, and broad adventure comedy. It is an uneven mess, but it is a beautiful one. And every time Tim Curry’s Darkness enters the frame, Legend briefly becomes the extraordinary film it was always trying to be.

Review: Rollercoaster (dir. by James Goldstone)

Posted on by Arleigh

“If they pay me and if they do what I say, I’ll never bother them again.” — Young Man

James Goldstone’s 1977 film Rollercoaster exists in a fascinating, albeit deeply flawed, space within the history of seventies disaster cinema. If you are a fan of retro 70s movies, specifically the whole Sensurround era where Hollywood was desperately trying to get people out of their living rooms and into theaters with seat-rumbling audio gimmicks, you have probably heard of this one. It has a genuinely neat, gritty vibe because it was actually shot on location at real amusement parks like Kings Island and Magic Mountain. You get this awesome, vintage, mid-century theme park atmosphere that you just cannot fake on a studio backlot. You can almost smell the cotton candy, the hot asphalt, and the stale beer. But once that initial wave of nostalgia wears off, you are left looking at what is actually on the screen, and honestly, Rollercoaster is not a great film. In fact, one could very easily say it is not even a good film. At its absolute best of times, it is a thoroughly average, middle-of-the-road thriller that feels more like a slightly elevated, padded-out television movie of the week than a major theatrical release.

The plot is about as standard as it gets for this era of disaster-adjacent cinema. A mysterious, young terrorist starts blowing up rollercoasters, not for any grand political manifesto, but simply to extort amusement park owners for millions of dollars. Enter our protagonist, Harry Calder, played by George Segal, who is a cynical safety inspector that just happens to survive the first derailment. Segal is basically just playing George Segal here—exasperated, a bit snarky, wearing a rumpled suit, and teaming up with an FBI agent played by Richard Widmark. The villain is played by a very young Timothy Bottoms, who is effectively creepy but given virtually zero backstory or motivation. He is just a blank-eyed psycho doing psycho things because the script needs an antagonist. The movie essentially just bounces from one park to another, with Segal walking around looking stressed while the FBI tries to figure out where the next bomb is hidden.

The pacing is arguably the film’s biggest sin. For a movie literally named Rollercoaster, it is shockingly lacking in momentum. Goldstone’s direction completely lacks the tight, pulse-pounding beats you would expect from a high-stakes thriller. There is so much filler here, so many scenes of Segal drinking coffee and staring at blueprints, and so much tedious FBI bureaucratic nonsense that it completely kills any tension. The romantic subplot feels entirely tacked on, and the climax fails to deliver the massive, explosive payoff you have been waiting for. If you judge Rollercoaster purely on its cinematic merits—the acting, the script, the direction—it is undeniably average, the kind of movie you leave on in the background while you fold laundry.

However, despite all of these glaring, undeniable flaws, Rollercoaster has a fascinating, almost prophetic legacy when you look back at the history of the thriller genre. It may not be remembered as a great movie, but it essentially built the exact template for an entire subgenre of cat-and-mouse thrillers that dominated the 90s. It practically invented the “specific-professional-against-a-psychopathic-mastermind” formula. Before Rollercoaster, thrillers were usually about spies, cops, or generic everymen. But this film introduced the idea of a highly specific, niche expert being forced into a one-on-one intellectual duel with a terrorist who targets them specifically because of their expertise. Think about how that exact template was endlessly copied and refined in the decades that followed. Look at In the Line of Fire, where Clint Eastwood plays a Secret Service agent hunted by a psycho played by John Malkovich. Or look at Blown Away, where Jeff Bridges is a bomb-defusing expert tormented by an Irish terrorist played by Tommy Lee Jones. Even The Bone Collector fits this mold perfectly, with Denzel Washington’s bedridden forensics expert being targeted by a serial killer who uses specific crime scenes just to test Washington’s intellect. All of these films drew direct DNA from Rollercoaster, using that exact same dynamic of a reluctant protagonist with a very particular set of skills being singled out by a psychopath who treats mass murder like a twisted, personalized game of chess. And if you want the absolute pinnacle of the “expert vs. bomb” trope, you have to look at Speed, which polished the cat-and-mouse dynamic perfected right here in Rollercoaster.

Because the original film was so hampered by 1970s filmmaking technology, it really makes you realize how easily this movie could be remade in this day and age. Back then, the actual destruction of the rides was limited by practical effects, clunky models, and standard camera angles that made the crashes feel somewhat static and safe. Today, technology in filmmaking has advanced to the point that the sheer scale, speed, and physical danger of the rides themselves really does become the focus of real danger. With modern CGI, drone cameras, and advanced practical rigging, you could put the audience right inside the front car of a 300-foot hyper-coaster as the tracks buckle and twist in slow motion. You could make the metal fatigue, the snapping cables, and the horrific physics of a derailment feel genuinely terrifying, turning the amusement park rides into massive, mechanical monsters rather than just static backdrop props for guys in suits to talk around.

Naturally, if Hollywood were to actually remake Rollercoaster today, you know exactly how it would look and who would star in it. It would undoubtedly star someone like Dwayne Johnson or Chris Pratt, a guy who can deliver a quip while looking concerned and holding a blueprint. They would inevitably give the safety inspector a tragic backstory, probably a dead wife or a kid they are estranged from, just to artificially raise the emotional stakes. And because it is a high-concept thriller that does not quite have the cultural weight of a massive comic book franchise, the remake would almost certainly be relegated to a streaming release. It would drop on a Friday on Netflix or Amazon Prime with a generic, algorithmically tested poster and a slick, forgettable title. It would be exactly the kind of mid-budget, mildly entertaining action flick you watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon before completely forgetting about it by Monday morning.

So, ultimately, how do you rate a movie like Rollercoaster? You just have to accept its extreme averageness and respect its ripple effect. It is clunky, the performances are uneven, and it is rarely as thrilling as its title promises. But it absolutely should not be written off entirely. It was the exact moment Hollywood realized that pitting highly specialized professionals against high-concept villains made for compelling, relatable drama. Without George Segal boredly walking around Magic Mountain, we probably do not get the overly dramatic, incredibly ridiculous, yet thoroughly entertaining 90s thriller boom, nor the slick, CGI-heavy streaming thrillers of today. Rollercoaster might just be a mediocre hill, but it is undeniably the hill that started the entire ride.

The Odyssey (dir. by Christopher Nolan)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

(Editor’s Note – With Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey being an Event Level film, this probably won’t be the only post/opinion on it. Expect multiple viewpoints to come over time and enjoy!)

It’s been a long time since I read anything on Homer’s The Odyssey. Perhaps sometime in Junior High or High School. I only remember bits and pieces, but earlier this year, I watched the 1997 2-Part Miniseries with Armand Assante(who can do no wrong, despite how some may feel about 1993’s Fatal Instinct) to refresh my memory. That is also a great miniseries, which I recommend. Theoretically, there’s nothing to spoil here, but I’ll try to say little. 

2026 has been somewhat amazing when it comes to film. We’ve seen fresh young filmmakers like Mark Fischbach and Kane Parsons take what little resources they had and make some magic in Iron Lung and Backrooms, respectively. Of course, Corey Barker’s little indie/Inde film, Obsession, continues to amaze and break records thanks to Navarette’s and the rest of the cast’s unforgettable performances. It’s a great sight to behold. On the other end of the filmmaking spectrum, we have big pitch films like Project Hail Mary and Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey, showcasing what we can pull off with the advancments in film technology or just great writing.

Most IMAX movies have that label stating “Filmed with IMAX cameras”, which usually means that key scenes were recorded in the format. My first IMAX experience was back in 2003 with The Matrix Revolutions in the AMC Lincoln Center IMAX (which is still by far the best NYC hotspot for a classic big screen experience), but that was remastered to fit the screen. Most of Nolan’s works were filmed with IMAX cameras for key scenes as of 2008’s The Dark Knight. It’s commonplace now to see a film shift from the old square 4:3 (1.33:1) ratio to a 2:35:1 letterboxed widescreen. The intro to Richard Donner’s Superman is one of my favorite examples of it. 2001’s Moulin Rouge! did something similar, though the boarders weren’t exactly visible. If you watch a movie on Disney Plus or HBO Max filmed with IMAX cameras, you can often see the change in aspect ratio, either abrupt or with a smooth transition. Large Format Screenings aren’t anything extremely new. My Dad once drove the family out to Long Island to see a 70 MM showing of The Empire Strikes Back.

What makes The Odyssey so amazing is that Nolan filmed it entirely with IMAX cameras. There are tons of documentaries shot this way, but it’s rare for a feature film to do so. According to an interview with ABC News, Nolan and the crew went through 2 million feet of IMAX film, shot in 3 minute intervals because the cameras would use up the roll in that amount of time. Imagine setting up a shot, getting everyone on their marks and then letting them know you’ve 3 minutes for the actors to get to where they need to be in the scene and nail it. Academy Award Winning Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, who worked with Nolan since Dunkirk, captures some beautiful vistas and landscape shots that are just majestic regardless of the format you choose to watch the film in. If you can catch the film in the IMAX 70MM, you’re getting the best possible picture, though the Regal RPX I watched wasn’t a slouch by any means. I’m hoping I can catch it in IMAX before the run ends. 

The film acknowledges that that the setting is in an age of magic, and as such, some things may be a little beyond the pale. I have to wonder how Ray Harryhausen and Stan Winston would feel about some of the visual effect choices in The Odyssey. There are some pretty wild elements of horror here, which is surprising coming from Nolan. They’re still practical, everyday things, but I had a few whispered “Wow” or “Oh crap!” moments. 

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus (Matt Damon, Interstellar, Oppenheimer), King of Ithaca and loyal servant to King Agememnon (Benny Safdie, Oppenheimer, The Smashing Machine). set on a quest to claim the city of Troy. The film jumps between Odysseus in various phases of his journey. Through his actions, he defies the gods and is sent (along with his men) far from Ithaca. Back home, his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar) observes Zeus Law of hospitality to strangers. This, however, has brought many suitors who overstay their welcome and wish the claim both her hand and the throne in Odysseus’ absence, among them being the scheming Antinous (Robert Pattinson, Tenet, The Drama) and Polybus (Corey Hawkins, The Last Voyage of the Demeter). Her son, Telemachus (Tom Holland, the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day) believes his father is still out there, but knows little of him. Can Odysseus find redemption? Can he and his men make their way back to Ithaca?

The casting for The Odyssey is really good, but for as stacked as it is both with friends and new talent, not everyone gets to shine as much as one would think. They all have a role to play in this and surprisingly, the strongest performances are more from the supporting cast than the main ones. Damon is just fine here. He’s reliable when I’ve watched him in films like The Martian and The Bourne Films. He fits Odysseus okay, there’s really nothing wrong with him at all in this. The character is mentally tortured in some ways and he just wants to get home. I’m just not entirely sure I felt the whole weight of the character with Damon’s performance. This isn’t to say he dials it in, far from it. Again, that’s more me coming off of watching Assante do his thing in the 90s and then uncontrollably comparing. Hathaway, on the other hand, I suppose anyone who watched Troy (a film I don’t really remember, other than for Brian Cox’s screaming) may make similar comparisons to different elements of this film. 

Hathaway and Holland do more in their roles to carry the story along. Penelope pines for her love and Telemachus knowledge of his father, and that both showcase the emotions that go with that well. I’m used to Holland playing younger characters. This may be one of the first few times where he seemed more like an adult, which he handles well. On the supporting cast side, both John Leguizamo (John Wick) as the family’s servant and Himesh Patel (Tenet) as one of Odysseus’ main soldiers really stood out with their roles. For the smaller parts, Elliot Page’s (Inception) Sinon, Samantha Morton’s (Minority Report) Circe make the best of their scenes. Safdie’s Agamemnon in particular doesn’t have to say a word. His mere presence was enough. Pattinson could have been a bit stronger or darker in nature, but I felt he carried his character well. Jon Bernthal (The Accountant 2) and Lupita Nyong’o(A Quiet Place: Day One) don’t have particularly large roles, but are important to the tale. Zendaya and Charlize Theron are kind of regulated to just a little expositional assistance here and there. They, along with Mia Goth (Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein) could have easily received a “guest starring” credit and no one would have known the difference. 

I only have 2 issues with the movie. The first is that there are some elements in the overall story that never come into play(such as the Adverse Winds). Granted, you’re condensing a major text down to just 3 hours, so they had to pick and choose what they were going to work with. Still, I would have like to have seen some of those elements. For a film about gods and monsters, The Odyssey felt like it really veered more towards the monsters than anything else. Again, that’s just me coming off classic films like Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans. The gods here feel mostly like advisors, if nothing else. Again, not terrible, just different from my expectation. The other problem (or tic, nitpick, maybe) is that you may or may not find yourself chuckling a little and thinking of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail during some sequences that involve running. Maybe it was just me, but seeing everyone go from one adventure to the next just had me expecting a killer rabbit to be somewhere on the list of enemies. no matter how serious the film was. 

Musically, Ludwig Goransson hasn’t slowed down since winning an Oscar for Sinners last year. His score for Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu was easily the best part of that film. For The Odyssey, Gorannson was asked to use Peter Gabriel’s Passion (the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and one of my favorite sources for background writing music) as inspiration for his own score. Working with classic instruments, he did very well here. I’m listening to it now as I’m working on this piece. While I’m still trying to recall what sound went where, it’s a solid score overall. 

Overall, I absolutely enjoyed The Odyssey. I’m not sure how it’ll fare come Awards Season, but I do hope it finds itself in the mix, at least from a Cinematography standpoint.