Everyone's a Critic - Including Hannah

      This movie has certainly been a long time coming. I remember seeing the play on Broadway when I was in high school. Based on the book by the same name by Gregory  Maguire, the film "Wicked" is an American musical fantasy film directed by Jon M. Chu. This is only Part 1 of 2 so we have another installment of "Wicked" on the big screen in the future. Overall I would say, in general, that the film was lovely. It ended up being in the top 10 movies of 2024 and I'd say that's well-deserved. Honestly I was surprised it wasn't ranked in the top 5.      The "Wicked" story holds a special place in my heart, seeing as it permeated my whole experience in my local theatre program back home circa 2008. I went to New York with my Mom and Sister to see some sort of Tribute show on Broadway and it was wonderful. We knew all the songs and would sing them in the car on the way to school. It was a whole thing. Making not one but TWO feature-length films so ...

       The original "Suspiria" is a 1977 Italian supernatural horror film directed by Dario Argento. It is the story of an American ballerina who comes to a prestigious German ballet studio and soon realizes that things are far more sinister than she bargained for. The remake of "Suspiria" is a 2018 supernatural horror film directed by Luca Guadagnino with the same basic plot of the 1977 version.     I watched both of them in the same day and that choice really put their stark contrasts into perspective. Honestly they were so different from each other, it almost felt like watching two different films instead of an original and a remake. They were basically polar opposites in appearance and cinematography.     The original seems to be more highly-rated than the remake, though I'm not sure how much of that is nostalgia and how much is honest preference. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the difference is 4.5 vs 3.5 respecti...

      "The Color out of Space" is a cosmic horror film released in 2019 that tells the same tale as the H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name. It stars Nic Cage, which is one of the best parts, and overall is a fantastic film for being a smaller indie film that was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.      The acting and casting is great and Nic Cage especially shines in weird niche films like he always has.      I -LOVE- that the titular "Color" out of Space is a vibrant magenta. I -LOVE- the thought of Lovecraft's eldritch impossibilities being represented in a garish pink. That's just so wonderful to me. I know eerie green and ominous red are used much more often so this pink is particularly genius in my opinion and stands out among all the surreal imagery.      The soundtrack is also fantastic and it's obvious that a lot of love and care went into this film, which really warms my heart. I'm a fan of Lovecraft'...

      "Event Horizon" is a 1997 sci-fi horror film directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne obviously shine as the two main leads, but the entirety of Fishburne's crew on the Lewis and Clark spaceship is a solid cast. The plot is essentially focused around the characters heading out to investigate a different spaceship - the titular Event Horizon - that disappeared without a trace 7 years earlier and suddenly hopped back into existence that day. Sam Neill plays Doctor Weir, the engineer who designed the Event Horizon  and wants to know more than anyone what happened to his project.      It sounds like this film wasn't well received at the time of its theatrical release and has now become more of a cult classic. Overall I thought it was very well-done. It is certainly a film that "isn't for everyone" so I can lend that credence to some of the lower reviews I've seen around the internet - but 34% on Rotten Tomatoes feels lik...

      So "The Ruins" is a 2008 American horror movie about some folks who are on a fun trip to Mexico and they decide it would be fun to see an ancient temple that's a super cool secret, way off the beaten path. It's difficult for me to empathize with this premise because there's no way I would go near an ancient temple in the middle of the Meso-American wilderness without WAYYY more prep, if at all. Maybe I've seen too many horror movies. XD But still, it's very disrespectful to those historical sites to go walking up to them and start climbing, like people getting too close to the Pyramids. I just - wouldn't do that, so it seems to be a rather inconsiderate group of main characters to begin with.     Even if I could humor them enough to want to just SEE such a cool place, that's one thing, but they literally cross a MASSIVE MOAT OF SALTED EARTH and walk right up to the damn thing. They are immediately blocked in by a small group of Mayan locals w...

    " Humanoids from the Deep" is an American science fiction horror film from 1980.   Another one that is probably very niche and obscure to folks - I had certainly never heard of it at the age of 31. I went digging for some Lovecraftian horror films for the month of October and this was in the depths of Amazon Prime. (Get it? Depths? Haha!)  *** Immediate Trigger Warning: This film has two or three separate scenes of disturbing sexual assault / teratophilia. It's kind of - the main horror component. The fishmen come on land and slaughter the men and use the women as unwilling breeders for their young - which I would argue is worse than dying. If that is triggering to you, just a heads up. I could have done without it myself, but I still clicked the film despite it's crystal clear description of what to expect so that is on me. Also a dog dies. ***      Overall it was a decent enough film. Worth the watch if you're a fan of H. P. Lovecraft's stor...

    "Drag Me to Hell" is a 2009 American horror film directed by Sam and Ivan Raimi. When you Google it, the header of the search engine calls it "Horror/Mystery." Wikipedia just calls it a "horror" film. But apparently it's supposed to be a bit more of a horror comedy ? I only heard that as I was looking up more info for this review. Apparently the comedic aspect is on brand, as supported by the director's other works like "Evil Dead" (which is clearly listed as a horror comedy in more than one headline, unlike "Drag Me to Hell.")      So this whole review might be a little off because I watched it through the lens of "horror" and ONLY "horror." I didn't know I was supposed to watch it as anything else. But looking back, that could be the reason I just hated this movie so much. XD I stopped watching part of the middle because it was so ridiculous, I was rolling my eyes. I watched the final few scenes lat...