If you’re still reeling from the sudden death of music icon Prince at the age of 57, Warner has made three of his banner vanity films available for collectors. While the discs are compiled together in a very slim and deluxe boxed set, Warner also makes a lot of bells and whistles available to Prince fans, including a treasury of his music videos from “Purple Rain” and his other films. Even if you’re a Prince fan you have to admit that collecting his trio of films is purely approached from a fan standpoint. Critics and fans alike consider “Purple Rain” is absolute master work that fueled his popularity even more, while “Graffiti Bridge” and “Under the Cherry Moon” were critically derided flops that didn’t make an impact at all. Regardless you have to appreciate the inherent ambition behind Prince’s cinematic efforts.
Tag Archives: Romance
The Fiancé (2016)
It’s rough around the edges here and there, but “The Fiancé” manages to be a unique idea that allows for some interesting moments of horror and drama altogether. I like how director Mark Allen Michaels turns transforming in to a monster in to something of a metaphor for how the relationship between our main characters is doomed to fail. Dallas Valdez plays Michael, a wealthy man who is on the verge of losing all of his money after criminal dealings with the Russian mafia. Convinced his beautiful wife Sara, as played by Carrie Keagan, will leave him, he invites her up to a cabin in the woods to propose to her. Meanwhile a Sasquatch is on the loose, murdering people and hunting down whoever gets in its way. We follow a documentary crew and a small group of hikers as they’re all injected in to the movie to transform the mythical beast in to a valid threat.
The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) (2016)
Park chan-wook is no stranger to delivering some of the best character studies that also pack a sense of sexual perversity, and pain within its seams. “The Handmaiden” is one of his most epic in scope dramas that also manages to be one of the most erotic romances I’ve seen in a while. “The Handmaiden” is pure ambition that succeeds in delivering something of a labyrinthian narrative of crime, salvation, and romance that begins as a simplistic drama. It takes a brilliant artist like chan-wook to handle a film that morphs in to various themes and experience various tonal changes without it completely falling apart, but Park chan-wook handles it by making each new turn around the corner absolutely suspenseful.
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005)
I respect Tim Burton’s legacy a lot and I admire what he was going for with “The Corpse Bride.” Not a lot of mainstream directors aspire to deliver movies that are more bent toward the Gothic sensibility with homages to folks like Edward Gory. Burton is a man who clearly has a love for the style, and I love it as well. Sadly, “The Corpse Bride” is a weaker approach toward the stop motion animation that Burton was mostly known for with “The Nightmare Before Christmas” for a long time. The aforementioned film is so much more charismatic and entertaining than “The Corpse Bride” in the end. Granted it’s not an awful movie, but it just feels like Burton is trying to recapture the brilliance of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
The Book of Life (2014)
“The Day of the Dead” is such a fascinating holiday filled with so much interesting lore, that there’s a lot more material left for five more animated films of this ilk. Jorge Gutierrez has spent a long time trying to expose audiences to Latin and Hispanic heroes and complex characters, and with “The Book of Life” he succeeds yet again. “The Book of Life” is a wonderful animated romance in the vein of the classic Disney films, but it’s also a respectful tale set amidst the backdrop of the Day of the Dead. A group of rowdy grade schoolers are in for a unique field trip when they’re taken in to a museum by a mysterious tour guide who relays to them an epic story of love, life, and death. Set in the Mexican town of San Angel, we meet three childhood friends Manolo, Maria, and Joaquin, all of whom have spent enormous amounts of time together and are facing adulthood with pressures to grow up and realize their potential.
Trick ‘r Treat: Days of the Dead (Paperback)
For folks that didn’t know if “Trick r Treat” would end up as a one and done horror classic, or end up becoming a full fledged dynasty, creator Michael Dougherty is nice enough to team up with Legendary Pictures to deliver “Days of the Dead.” Michael Dougherty pens the introduction to “Days of the Dead,” where still uncertain if a sequel would ever blossom back in 2015, helped build this anthology to keep Sam alive in our hearts. “Days of the Dead” is a mid-quel ripped directly out of the “Trick r Treat” universe, the graphic novel unfolds five stories involving Halloween and Autumn that tries to recapture the spirit of the original film. With the mid-quel being a graphic novel, Dougherty side steps the interconnected story format from the film and bonds the tales mainly through our beloved Sam.
Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura) (1963)
Boris Karloff is deliciously spooky as the narrator who unfolds a trio of stories in Mario Bava’s immortal “Black Sabbath*.” Each tale involves people whose demons come back to haunt them in one way or another. Mario Bava is excellent in depicting various shades of terror, devoting bold and stark palettes of colors to each segment that add to the EC Comics vibe that Bava inadvertently conveys. “The Drop of Water” is the best and arguably most iconic of segment in horror movie anthologies, involving the classic comeuppance of a grave robber. In the early 1900’s, nurse Chester is called to a large house once owned by an elderly woman who was also a medium. After the elderly woman dies while seemingly in a trance, Nurse Chester arrives to discover the gruesome visage of the woman and helps to dress up her corpse alongside her incredibly terrified house maid.