I never had the pleasure of riding the famous Disney attraction but I know enough about it to understand the particulars of the story and its appeal. After the somewhat awful 2003 attempt with Eddie Murphy, Disney takes another crack at adapting one of their most iconic attractions. In the end it amounts to a very entertaining and heartfelt horror comedy that I imagine will allow for a good gateway for budding horror fans. I won’t proclaim it as a masterpiece, but when all was said and done, I was so much more satisfied than I was with the 2003 first attempt.
Tag Archives: Adaptation
Five Great Haunted House Movies
With “The Haunted Mansion” reboot coming to theaters Friday it’s a great time to recommend some great haunted house movies you could watch before or after. Or if you’re not planning to see “The Haunted Mansion,” you could watch these movies instead. In either case, here are five great haunted house movies I highly recommend if you want some good chills, thrills, and scares.
Barbie (2023)
The idea of turning “Barbie” in to a feature film has been something Mattel has been grappling with for a very long time, and there was no other way to bring her to the big screen without turning her in to something of a meta comedy. Barbie is revered but also reviled for being beautiful, because with a lot of reasonable vitriol, Barbie has been considered a vapid unrealistic representation of beauty. “Barbie” seeks to confront a world that not only holds women to unrealistic standards, but also presents us with a Barbie whose own unrealistic standards are finally dawning on her. This forces her in to something of an existential crisis where she’s forced to look for the origin of her existence and how she can obtain that sense of perfection.
National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983): 40th Anniversary Edition [4K UHD/Digital]
I think one of the reasons why Clark Griswold is so famous is that he’s basically the every man. He’s the man who is tasked with giving his family a good vacation even though he’d rather be home. He’s obligated, and the further he goes forward the harder it becomes to give up and go back. “Vacation” is the prime National Lampoon’s road trip movie where it’s anything but the norm from this sub-genre. Harold Ramis depicts not just a middle lower class family’s attempts to go on vacation, but for Clark Griswold to use it as a moment to savor his family.
Bird Box: Barcelona (2023)
Netflix’s 2018 surprise hit “Birdbox” was a pretty good movie that skated on thin ice from minute one since it was accused of aping the concept for “A Quiet Place.” But the efforts of a sequel have firmly placed it as a movie better off left as a one and done horror film. “Barcelona” is considered kind of a sequel and kind of a spin off, but in reality it’s kind of a glorified pilot. I don’t know if Netflix is planning more sequels down the road, or a TV series, but “Barcelona” feels like the first of many incoming spin offs. And it never once feels like a complete movie, but only a buffer and promise of things to come. And as a follow up to the original, it fails epically assuring I won’t be back to see how they further develop this premise.
Five Great Movie Fights Set on Trains
One of the best scenes of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is the big fight scene staged in and on top of a train, and it brought to mind some of the better train fights ever staged in film. There have been many as it’s been one of the more classic tropes in fiction, so I listed five of my all time favorites.
What are some of your favorite fights on trains or public transportation?
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
It’s exciting that after seven films, “Mission Impossible” still gives audiences the good old fashioned action movies that were prominent in movie theaters. Christopher McQuarrie’s treatment of the “Mission: Impossible” has never been over stylish which amplifies the old fashioned feeling of his take on Tom Cruise’s epic movie series, and I love it. There are spies, and mysteries, and chases through streets, car chases, femme fatales, a classic macguffin, and even a massive fight staged on, in, and on top of a moving train across Europe. It’s vintage adventure movie serial cinema amplified with a huge budget and some wonderful performances all around.