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In case you haven’t seen the intro from my entry dated
1/26/19 (it’s in my archives whenever you want to read it), I’m no longer going
to review every single movie I see. I’m
going to review one, with the occasional bonus, and just give ratings for the
rest from now on (unless I decide to pick it up again in the future). You can always ask me why I gave the ratings
for the films without reviews though (via comments or the e-mail addresses
under the ‘About Me’ section).
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The Crow OK
In regards to remakes, someone once said, along these lines,
“Just because the original may be great doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the
new one.” Obviously. You can like whatever the hell you want, but
it doesn’t mean they’re necessary, especially if the original needs no
improvement. All remakes are
unnecessary, this one being no exception, but,
to sort of agree with the above statement, that doesn’t mean they can’t be good
though (never expecting them to be as good
as the predecessor); I’ve liked some remakes/reimaginings (I ended up liking
the Child’s Play remake a little more
than I thought I would, and that might’ve been because they actually did
something different with it; you can read my review for it in here---https://vampireclown82.blogspot.com/2019/06/childs-playtoy-story-4.html). The original 1994 film with the late Brandon
Lee is one of my favorite movies; I just love the look of it; has one of the
best soundtracks too. This remake wasn’t
great, by any means, but I actually didn’t hate it as much as I thought I
would, hoped I would, and I pretty
much hated it before even watching (as with all remakes). It contains the same story---a man and his
woman are killed and he returns to take out all those responsible---but it does
do a few things differently, i.e. how Eric and Shelly met (it looked a little
too easy for them to escape prison) and where Eric (played by Bill Skarsgard
here) goes while not in the land of the living.
The key difference is that it’s not nearly as aesthetically gothic with
a great soundtrack (some songs here are okay though). I’ll never know if I would’ve liked this
better had the original not existed; it’s almost impossible not to compare to
what came before. As a standalone
feature, it was a semi-decent bloody revenge movie along the lines of something
akin to The Punisher (some of the
violence here is worthy). If you want to
like this one, or “appreciate” it, you have every right to, and I may not
necessarily hate you for it; I just hope this won’t be your version of The Crow. R.I.P. Brandon Lee. 2/19/2025
Bonus reviews:
Cocaine Crabs from
Outer Space EH/OK
The crabs are plastic figures, toys probably. I suppose I’d prefer that over crappy
CGI. Actually, I know I probably
would. This movie was hilarious at
times. Hilarious because of how bad it
was, yes, but still hilarious. Did it
need to be an 83-minute film? Eh. I think the human characters (whom, needless
to say, and unsurprisingly, are
generally dopey) were necessary to flesh out the short run-time, which could’ve
easily felt much longer by being repetitive (the mistake Crackcoon, also reviewed in this blog, made). The crabs, who speak “crab” to each other (yes,
there are subtitles sometimes because of that), definitely steal the show
though. They’re given some coke upon
arriving on Earth after leaving their planet Crabulon, thus end up killing
people; yes, there is violence. (Say NO
to drugs; yes, even if you’re a crab). Can
you really even recommend something like this since most (myself included) will
watch strictly out of curiosity? All I
can say is that it is pretty damn funny at times, as mentioned, the crabs
providing most, if not all, of those laughs.
I have a feeling it might be funnier if seen with others, and/or if
inebriated, or stoned…you get the idea…2/15/2025
Crackcoon EH
Yup, another animal-gone-psycho-flick due to drugs. (Say NO to drugs, even if you’re an animal). [I’m going to assume you’re all smart and not
need to tell you what kind of animal gets ahold of what type of drug here]. I didn’t think this was going to be too bad
at first; it is well-shot, and my expectations weren’t exactly high. Being roughly 88-minutes though, it wears
itself out long before the end. There
isn’t much you can do with a killer raccoon (oops, I spoiled it) and a large
cast of characters (a.k.a. fodder provided).
There is violence, no doubt, some of it worthy enough (I guess), but
most of it just becomes boring after seeing it happen so many times (the
violence isn’t always worthy either).
The creature is practical, but that’s not necessarily a compliment;
didn’t seem so bad though compared to the two scenes with a CGI coon that is
sooooooooo awful. This might have worked
had it been about an hour shorter. Might have. 2/14/2025
Other movies and TV show(s) I’ve seen and their ratings (see above):
Chasing Chasing Amy >>>G
The Dead Thing >>>EH/OK
(Shudder)
Delicate Arch >>>EH/OK
Flow (2024) >>>EH/OK
Frogman (2024) >>>OK
The Gorge >>>OK/G
(Apple+)
Iced (1988) >>>EH
Krazy House >>>EH/OK
The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine >>>OK
Off Ramp >>>OK/G
Property (2023) >>>EH/OK
(In Portuguese
with subtitles)
Sunrise (2024) >>>OK
Tales from the Void
(Season One) >>>OK
(Screambox;
6 episodes)
The Wait (2023) >>>EH/OK
(In Spanish with
subtitles)
---Sean O.
2/20/2025
