Tag Archives: Thriller

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

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Warning: Spoilery and long review by a self-admitted Star Wars fan (with Stormtrooper tattoo to prove it).

A small group of rebels sets off to go retrieve the plans to the Death Star after receiving a communication that seems to indicate that they will be the downfall of the Empire in this sequel/prequel/side story to the Star Wars prequels/original trilogy.  Touted as the first standalone Star Wars, Rogue One is heavily entrenched in the Star Wars lore and fills in gaps and what could have been considered plot holes in the past.  The story here is easily to follow for people who may have never seen a Star Wars film, but it feels like a story built for the fans of the franchise.  The story feels like a Star Wars one and the characters feel like they belong in the universe with many cameos and full presences by some very familiar faces and names.  This leads the story to feel familiar and yet the changes, the connections that could have been or the additions or who knows make it feel like something is missing to the story.  Rogue One is a hard one for this review to fully embrace while wanting to, which is an odd place to find one’s fan brain in.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

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While I wasn’t keen on Disney and Lucasfilm approaching the prequel so quick in to the rebooting of the series, “Rogue One” really serves us one of the most important chapters in the fall of the Empire beautifully. While “Rogue One” certainly isn’t a perfect film, it sure is a fantastic action adventure that attempts to break the mold. Gareth Edwards transforms his tale of the stealing of the plans of the Death Star in to a last stand mission in the vein of “Saving Private Ryan” and “Inglorious Basterds.” Though director Edwards offers up the usual nods to “Episode IV: A New Hope,” thankfully “Rogue One” also manages to stand firmly on its own. It’s a compelling tale of the rebellion, and pure evil trying to maintain its strangle hold on the galaxy.

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VIDEO Killer (2016)

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A woman receives a VHS tape one morning from an anonymous source.  After watching the video and its odd, violent animation, she is puzzled and feels like she is being haunted.  She soon decides to look for answers. Directed by Richard Mansfield (and have no verifiable writing credits online to check who did what), the film takes the premise of a found tape leading to investigations by those who have found or received it and turn it into what can be described as mostly found footage with touches of first person POV and other filming styles.  The story is fairly basic with just a few characters and works as a found footage mystery for most of the film.  It uses many story telling techniques with varied degrees of success creating a film that feels disconnected in places.

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Creepshow 2 (1987): Special Edition [Blu-Ray]

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While “Creepshow 2” has always been taken as one of pair of horror movies that pay tribute to the golden age of EC Comics, over the years the horror community has learned to appreciate “Creepshow 2” as its own entity. Surely, its cut from the same cloth as the original classic, but it also carves out its own identity and doesn’t repeat the same beats as the original film. The Michael Gornick directed sequel is a darker, grittier, and more vicious follow up to what was kind of a raucous and darkly comic celebration, and it works. As a nostalgic memento, and as a sequel carved by Stephen King and George Romero, “Creepshow 2” is a classic in its own right.

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12 Deadly Days (YouTube Red)

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From Youtube Red and Blumhouse comes, “12 Deadly Days” a limited horror comedy anthology centered on pretty much every element of traditional Christmas. The series overall isn’t perfect, but it’s a good, entertaining horror anthology that works around the format of interwoven stories in a particular universe. “12 Deadly Days” and its formula feel very similar to that of “Trick r Treat” where every story’s end is the beginning of a new tale and situation. The first episode is easily the best of the trio of episodes I was sent, as it’s a fun twist on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Set in modern times, billionaire Scrooge begins getting haunted by a ghost and calls in a pair of ghost hunters known as The Cratchit Brothers.

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Turnabout (2016)

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If Richard Linklater and Neil Labute got together to write a movie, you’d pretty much get E.B. Hughes’ stellar drama “Turnabout.” While E.B. Hughes sums up the film quite simplistically in most of the press materials, “Turnabout” will very much surprise anyone going in to it expecting a drama about a suicidal man and his long lost friend. “Turnabout” feels a lot like Linklater’s “Tape” except so much wider in scope, in the end. While director Hughes starts “Turnabout” like something of a man experiencing a revelation, he injects small doses of menace here and there to completely undercut every expectation we have when the film begins.

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Black Christmas (1974): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]

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It’s about time the world has caught up with “Black Christmas” and (thanks to Shout!) given it the proper treatment it’s always deserved. What is arguably one of the first slasher films ever made was always out of print and hard to find while “Halloween” was granted various editions of VHS, and DVD. While “Halloween” is a masterpiece, “Black Christmas” is far more superior. It works as a slasher film, a mystery, a dark comedy, and is genuinely spine tingling in a movie draped in Christmas ephemera. It’s surprising since the tone for “Black Christmas” is almost the same tone from his other Christmas classic “A Christmas Story.” Yet director Bob Clark really never misses a beat, offering up a very scary tale about an inexplicable maniac wreaking havoc on a small neighborhood during the holidays.

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