“Have you Met My Ghoulfriend?” comes off like it’s the fourth film in a movie series, when it seems to only have come after the somewhat bland “Mostly Ghostly” from 2008. Only Madison Pettis comes back for the follow-up, which involves a pair of ghostly teenagers, their human friend with a ghoul fighting ring, and an evil ghoul named Phears intent on consuming their souls, or possessing them, or–something to that effect.
Director Frank H. Woodward’s “Men in Suits” is one of the best film related documentaries ever made. It’s an insightful and entertaining look at a rarely covered corner of Hollywood that’s gone unnoticed and uncredited since the beginning of film. “Men in Suits” is a fantastic chronicle of the facet of Hollywood films revolving around men that dress up as monsters for horror, fantasy, and science fiction, and bring to life many of the most iconic and horrific monsters ever put to film. Woodward chronicles how the art form began in the golden age of filmmaking, and has become something of a rare form of performance art in the era where studios are dependent on CGI and polygons.
“The Mighty Ducks” is just one in a long line of “Bad News Bears” wannabes that pits a crotchety man with a bunch of misfit athletes to use sports as a form of self realization. Thankfully “The Mighty Ducks” is one of the best of the bunch, choosing hockey this time to help a group of smart aleck kids come of age. There’s also Emilio Estevez who is a cynical businessman with the heart of a hockey player, who finds that he still loves the game despite his regrets.
It definitely feels like someone took the original short story of the monkey’s paw, and stretched in to ninety minutes of melodrama. There’s so much padding and filler here, you could cut it down to fifty minutes without missing much. “The Monkey’s Paw” is one in dozens of variations of the dreaded monkey’s paw tale, created by W.W. Jacobs (about the perfect wish trinket with dire consequences). Except the monkey’s paw bears little to no relevance in a movie about an undead guy who just wants to take his young son fishing. He just wants to take him fishing, what’s a dead guy to do? Kill a lot of boring supporting characters to get his wish?
1995’s “Magic Island” from Moonbeam Entertainment is one of the few Charles Band backed kids films I’ve never actually seen. Which is odd, considering I loved Full Moon as a kid, and Zachary Ty Bryan was on one of my favorite TV show of the nineties “Home Improvement.” Like many of the Moonbeam films, “Magic Island” is not a perfect film by any stretch, but you have to appreciate its ambition, flaws and all. A good mixture of “The Neverending Story” and “The Princess Bride,” Sam Irvin’s adventure film is a goofy kids film with enough innocence to warrant good B grade family fare.
As a man who had absolutely no faith in the remake of William Lustig’s grindhouse classic, it’s quite telling that the opening of the film inspired a gasp out of me, followed by a “Holy crap.” Director Franck Khalfoun also wisely sidesteps the grit of New York (New York now no longer the wasteland is was in the eighties) entirely in favor of the more menacing and vast Los Angeles, all the while injecting an artistic gloss that makes the madness seem more surreal. “Maniac” is a gruesome and disturbing re-working of the classic horror film, that pays respect to the original, while also challenging its gore and violence, in the process. Elijah Wood’s performance is surprisingly unsettling and occasionally horrifying, since his character Frank Zito is a victim of his own madness.
Thankfully, time has been kind to “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” mainly because the short truncates the Charles Dickens classic, but still maintains many of its themes and heart. In the end, it never sugarcoats the potential fate of Scrooge McDuck, nor does it deny that Tiny Tim will die eventually because he couldn’t afford to eat and purchase the medicine needed for him. That said, “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” is a classic animated special with your usual Disney Easter Eggs, while also telling the classic story of the Christmas spirit.