Tag Archives: A

Assassination Classroom (2015) [Fantasia Film Festival]

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FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

It’s not often such a weird movie manages to win me over, but lo and behold “Assassination Classroom” really did. I doubt I will be back for the sequels unless I have to, but for almost two hours I was thoroughly entertained by such a richly developed and fun action movie. It avoids almost all of he clichés of an action movie, while also diving head first in to them, and sets up a bunch of storylines within its one hundred and ten minute duration. Based on the hit manga of the same name, “Assasssination Classroom” tries to fit in a bunch of threads in its run time and succeeds for the most part. The premise is so daffy and off the wall I could only gaze in sheer disbelief as two screenwriters approached this with sincerity.

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Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)

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Much like anyone that grew up in the nineties, “Alexander and the Terrible Horrible…” was a childhood favorite. It’s a really good and funny book about bad luck and how we make our own. Surely Alexander looks like a boy who is perpetually cursed, but really if he hadn’t been so careless the night before, perhaps his day would have been better. My expectations for the film adaptation were slim, considering the book is only about thirty two pages long. Much like “Liar Liar,” the film is based on a slight touch of fantasy, and unfolds like a less menacing and violent “Three O’Clock High.”

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The Alchemist’s Letter (2015)

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Director Carlos Andre Stevens’s “The Alchemist’s Letter” is quite an accomplishment. It’s a fairy tale that also works as a cautionary tale about the ills of greed, and the dangers of over ambition. Would you trade memories and family for piles of gold? That’s what the alchemist asks his son when he leaves behind a letter that gives him a stern warning on what putting aspirations over the truly important things can do to a person.

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Alien (1979)

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As its successors, carbon copies, and wannabes have shown, “Alien” is a film that easily could have taken its premise and diluted it in to exploitation or just another stock monster movie. There’s something eerie and absolutely unnerving about “Alien” from the moment it begins. Director Ridley Scott, paired with the brilliance of H.R. Giger and Dan O’Bannon, spawns a truly creepy tale of a phallic alien hatching in the belly of an old ship that begins wreaking havoc on its surrogate caretakers. It takes a powerful woman to conquer the male manifestation with a protruding orifice, one who defies all kinds of gender stereotypes and tropes.

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Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)

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In this follow up to “Meet Frankenstein,” Abbott and Costello don’t so much meet Boris Karloff, as they do a character Karloff plays named Swami Talpur. I still think the potential for Abbott and Costello meeting Karloff is potential never realized, and that’s pretty sad. Karloff only plays a side character, and appears for a few scenes, including an extended bit with character Freddie Phillips (Lou Costello) that’s still hilarious, at least. You don’t often see someone’s sheer idiocy save their lives, but you have to love how Freddie avoids all forms of vicious death by his slow wittedness.

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Amazing Stories: The Movie (1987)

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For many years, I was unaware that “Amazing Stories” was actually a Television series, albeit one that came and went like a lightning bolt. I didn’t discover “Amazing Stories” was first a TV show until the early nineties, and just wanted more fantastic tales of wonder from Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. Before then “Amazing Stories” was just a really entertaining and incredible anthology film that mixed horror, fantasy, and comedy together in one great package. “Amazing Stories: The Movie” is two segments from the TV show paired together as a movie. There are apparently various versions of “The Movie,” one of which had three segments and was only released internationally. I was lucky that “the movie” I saw played on local TV stations in New York when I was a child, and featured two great segments from the series. So my introduction to Robert Zemeckis began with “Amazing Stories: The Movie.”

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Arachnophobia (1990)

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arachnophobiaIf you’re going to name your movie “Arachnophobia,” your movie should embrace its title wholesale, and surely enough Frank Marshall‘s film does a hundred times over. “Arachnophobia” garners a creepy story, interesting characters, a very scary dilemma, but mostly it’s an endurance test on how much you can stand to watch poisonous spiders creep in and out of every nook and cranny without keeling over in fright. “Arachnophobia,” in any other decade, would be a B monster movie focusing on the frights of the lurking arachnids that are dominating this small town, and director Frank Marshall plays them up well, closing in on the predators as they steam roll through innocent individuals.

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