While 1998’s “Halloweentown” was a very cute and entertaining little Halloween movie, the sequel “Kalabar’s Revenge” is much darker and slightly more adult in tone and atmosphere this time around. What’s interesting is you can sense the seeds for “The Witches of Waverly Place” within this sequel, and it’s not a far off prospect that what with Kimberly J. Brown getting older with each movie, Disney wanted to pass the wand over with a new franchise about magic and wizards.
Tag Archives: Fantasy
Halloweentown (1998)
Sure, this is a Halloween oriented film that isn’t scary, or creepy, or violent, or even remotely menacing and sure it’s a premise we’ve seen trotted out in “Sabrina The Teenage Witch,” “Twitches,” and “Buffy,” but deep down it’s a true Halloween movie and one you can watch be you a child or an adult looking for a good time, and I manage to come back to it every year because it’s such a fun time to be had for all.
The Sky Has Fallen (2009)
For a movie about the end of the world through an Ebola-like virus that infects people and turns them in to demonic killing monsters that feast on the living, while shadowy specters wait in the darkness carrying off the innocent and the dead, I was surprised at how utterly bored I was through most of this movie. In fact “The Sky Has Fallen” literally had me watching the clock and completely apathetic to its entire premise. As someone who adores almost any movie about the end of the world, director Doug Roos really doesn’t put an argument as to why his movie stands out among a slew of better indie films about the apocalypse and the undead.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (2010)
I was a little hesitant to actually sit down and watch Jordan Galland’s horror comedy since its box describes it as being akin to a Woody Allen film as well as an homage to Shakespeare, because let’s face it, horror fans just don’t care about Shakespeare much. But what I experienced was something of a mixed bag of a horror comedy that is both very intelligent and very entertaining. Not only does the film manage to subtly breakdown famous stage plays and literature of all kinds, but it’s a horror comedy very much in the vein of the eighties comedies in which our hero is an inept schlub who is oblivious to the horror around him until it’s much too late to do anything about it.
Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)
Monty Python takes no prisoners with what is a movie based around the stupidity, hypocrisy and inherent fallacies of religion, and the entire idea of martyrdom, in which a man named Brian seeking only to gain some sense of importance is suddenly a messiah and god, and only by accident. He has the origins of a normal Biblical figure, but after encountering Romans, mindless followers, moronic praisers, violent apostles, and the like, Brian mid-way discovers that he really never wanted to be anywhere near as important as the boy born in the manger next to him named Jesus.
The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers (2009)
To say that “The Suicide Brothers” is something of a whimsical bit of surrealism is an understatement. “The Suicide Brothers” is an utter demonstration in absolute folklore that meshes urban legend, Tim Burton fantasy, and as an absolute demonstration of that classic tale of a figure seeking death and finding it when they’ve stopped searching. Rupert Friend’s “The Suicide Brothers” is a look at two brothers in the dark forest of Bavaria who take it upon themselves to engage in a ritual suicide attempt almost every single night.
The Solo Adventures (2010)
Director Daniel Smith and Co-Collaborator Jeff Sheetz took it upon themselves to create possibly one of the finest homages to the “Star Wars” universe of all time, and one of the most clever looks in to the untold story of Lucas’ most iconic characters by taking the combined talents of Dave School from Universal Studios to tell their own prequel, the prologue to Han Solo and Chewbacca.