Tag Archives: Adventure

100 Things to Do Before High School

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You really have to give it to Nickelodeon. They’re in no position to mock Disney, since their programs are superior and garner bigger ratings, but they waste no time in ridiculing the company. The TV movie for “100 Things to Do Before High School” which is supposed to open the door for a series next year, spoofs “High School Musical,” and most of the movie rips on “Star Wars” big time. That said, while it’s derivative, “100 Things to Do Before High School” is a fun tween dramedy that might be the teen oriented hit Nick has been looking for, for a while now. I got shades of “Ned’s DeClassified School Survival Guide,” but I really enjoyed the TV movie for “100 Things to Do Before High School.”

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Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)

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Seeing as I never liked the original animated shorts the movie is based on, I was very skeptical toward “Mr. Peabody and Sherman.” There hasn’t been much interesting entertainment mined from the Rocky and Bullwinkle short series. Surprising enough, “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” doesn’t just adapt the shorts, but expands on them, injecting heart, characterization, and isn’t reliant on pop culture nods and winks to keep the audience entertained. It’s that refreshing element that makes this adaptation such a stellar piece of animation.

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WolfCop (2014)

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Director Lowell Dean’s indie horror actioner “Wolfcop” is probably one of my favorite superhero movies of the year. While it’s a loving tribute to horror schlock, it’s also an unabashed superhero movie filled with mythos, a bonafide origin, and even a customized vehicle that our titular wolf cop travels around to maul bad guys in. You’d think wolf puns and a Dirty Harry-esque vigilante with claws would be a complete and utter misfire, but director Dean embraces his premise and offers up a great horror action comedy.

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Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953)

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It’s pretty crummy that Abbott and Costello don’t get to do much with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In fact you have them in a movie with Boris Karloff who doesn’t get to do much to spook them beyond his monster mask, and you have the pair of knuckleheads that almost play second banana in their own movie. In fact, they don’t really show up until twenty minutes in to the movie, and their entrance smacks of sloppiness and lack of ideas. The pair should have memorable introductions, and yet here their characters Tubby and Slim are only in the story by circumstance.

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

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msfrankensteinIt’s surprising how quickly “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” becomes a vanity project for director Kenneth Branagh. Rather than a tale of a monster wreaking havoc on his master, the film feels more like Jane Austen co-starring the monster who is kind of a nuisance and then becomes a threat to his creator. I’ve rarely seen Frankenstein movies where the creature is the third banana, but lo and behold Branagh pulls it off in what is more a film about Victor Frankenstein having a lover’s spat with his wife, who discovers her husband has committed some evil selfish acts. To his credit though, Victor Frankenstein is no hero. He’s selfish, self-centered, and has a God complex, but Branagh is very obsessed with chewing the scenery. So much so that he even manages to outdo Robert DeNiro.

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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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