Tag Archives: Magic

Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996)

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Melissa Joan Hart is really good casting as Sabrina, the young witch who discovers that she has magical powers on her sixteenth birthday. Hart was always able to convey the girl next door charm and otherworldly beauty well, and she is able to transform Sabrina in to an admirable silver screen heroine. Much like the comics that spawned her, Joan Hart plays Sabrina a transfer student from Massachusetts who goes to live with her aunts at Riverdale. She’s fairly new to her school and dreams of becoming one of the senior elite. On the day of her sixteenth birthday, she discovers that she comes from a long line of witches and that her aunts are her witch mentors.

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R.L. Stine’s Monsterville: Cabinet of Souls (2015)

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I don’t know how they keep recruiting these Disney stars to headline the RL Stine movies. Disney always seems to have such a tight grasp on them. In either case, “Cabinet of Souls” is the very definition of an RL Stine story, except with a much longer format. It surely sports the same mold and aesthetic with a small town, teen protagonists, and evil villains that seek to ruin their innocence somehow. It stumbles on occasion, and there’s a clear lack of wit that you can usually find with Stine’s yarns, but it’s a pleasing movie; especially if you’re a fan of Dove Cameron, Katherine McNamara, or Ryan McCartan.

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Northpole (2014) (DVD)

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Part one in an apparent movie series from Hallmark Entertainment, “Northpole” is a cute film about Christmas, and trying to preserve the happiness. Literally. It’s a simple and down to Earth movie that celebrates the more entertaining aspects of the holiday, while also building on a new hero in the form of elf Clementine. Bailee Madison is the definition of adorable as the rambunctious cherubic elf, desperately trying to keep the North Pole from dying what with the happiness of Christmas fading away in a sea of unfortunate cynicism. “North Pole” depends on Madison’s enthusiastic performance, and as always, she steals the movie. “North Pole” has its fair share of silliness, but it’s a fine Christmas movie with amusing quirks that I sat through with ease.

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The Mummy Returns (2001)

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Man, Evie and Rick O’Connell have to be two of the most incompetent movie heroes ever conceived. Not only do they bring the mummy to life in the first movie, but in the opening of the second film, they desecrate a tomb, and steal a sacred bracelet that their snot nosed son slips on. Even worse, their son is kidnapped, and said bracelet is going to kill him in a week if he doesn’t find a mythical oasis. There’s a big difference between being an average Joe adventurer like Indiana Jones, and a bungling nincompoop like the O’Connell’s. Seriously, is it so hard to watch one child? And if you’re handling priceless artifacts that are absolutely irreplaceable, why entrust it to an eight year old kid?

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The Mummy (1999)

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Stephen Sommers’ ridiculously successful reboot of “The Mummy” is a film that almost gets the formula correct. It’s like a cocktail of action, comedy, romance, horror, and adventure that almost becomes the perfect marriage of sub-genres, but never quite hits the mark; even when it’s at its best. “The Mummy” is incredibly uneven and tough to really respond to, because Sommers seems to want to opt for action, while Universal seems anxious to embrace the horror. Thus it’s all so unbalanced and drags down an action horror comedy hybrid with potential to be a classic.

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Legend (1985)

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I would really only suggest “Legend” to the hardcore fantasy aficionados. It might even be a little too heavy for “Lord of the Rings” fans. As a kid I loved watching what Ridley Scott gave movie fans, but I never quite understood it until years later. Scott touches on some heavy concepts both philosophical and spiritual, and he does so with a palette of monsters and unicorns. Director Ridley Scott composes a rather brilliant and dark fantasy epic about the concepts of light and dark, and good and evil. In truth, “Legend” is a twist on the tale of Adam and Eve, except with more fantasy, magic, and monsters.

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Agency of Vengeance: Dark Rising (2014)

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Surely, “Agency of Vengeance” is a silly movie, but one that’s often really indecisive about itself. Sometimes it aims for a straight forward horror actioner, and then other times it seems to mock its own premise, with goofy meta-storytelling. When a character is confronted with an evil minion asking “Why are you doing this?” he responds “Because. I’m the bad guy.” In either case, I wasn’t aware this is a sequel of a 2007 movie called “Dark Rising: Bring Your Battle Axe” which seemed more fantasy oriented. Thankfully you don’t have to track down that film, to see this one, as there are flashbacks and a lot of exposition to play catch up with.

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