Solid scares, likable cast, but Conjuring 2 is nothing new

Posted on June 11, 2016 by reelentropy

Generically Creepy Woman in Black (Bonnie Aarons) makes her return from the Insidious series/her own eponymous Woman in Black franchise. This is probably her least scary outing, but it’s good to see she’s finally taken her vows and cleaned up her act a bit. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Rhiannon Saegert
@missmusetta

If Insidious 4 The Conjuring 2 really is scarier than the original, it’s because by now, the people making these films have abandoned storytelling in favor of doing what they do best — decent scares.

The film begins with paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farminga) investigating the Amityville haunting. In-universe, the haunting was legitimate, and Lorraine Warren is particularly traumatized by a vision of her husband’s death and wants to call it quits for a while, but when a family in England is being terrorized by a violent ghost, they end up right in the center of another controversial haunting.

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Warcraft is one of the worst movies I have ever seen

Posted on June 9, 2016 by reelentropy

Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.

It starts with the first scene.

On an empty desert battlefield, an armored man retrieves his fallen shield and bashes his sword against it to taunt his opponent. An orc, a green-skinned, red-eyed monster with a hammer the size of the entire human, roars back. The duo, exhausted, long after the battle has been decided, circle each other, hatred gleaming in their eyes. This is the viewers’ cue — this won’t be a movie about lore. This is going to be a movie about action, blood, carnage and terror. It’s going to be about mass battle scenes, noble sacrifices and thinly veiled allegories for addiction and racism, a desperate, hate-fueled romp across Azeroth, a barrage of brutal, hard-R action.

Then it cuts away before they meet, and you realize this movie will actually be about lore.

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Kevin Smith, Weasley twins highlight Dallas fan expo

Posted on June 7, 2016 by reelentropy

Kevin Smith tells the crowd of Jay and Silent Bob Get Old he loves Denton. Thanks to Jason Lee, he will be returning to Texas in September and will be doing a show in Denton. Photo by Christina Ulsh.

Alex Kelly
@Alexfkelly

Over a three day event at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Downtown Dallas, the Dallas Fan Expo granted attendees and exhibitors the rare chance to interact with one another and some of the biggest names in the industry, such as Stan Lee and Kevin Smith.

The Expo took over most of the convention center’s one million square feet of exhibit space. There were world renowned cosplayers such as Jennifer Van Damsel and Cecil Grimes, TV stars like Jon Bernthal and Elden Henson, and movie icons James and Oliver Phelps, who played the Weasley twins in the Harry Potter franchise.

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The Möbius strip: TMNT carries weak weekend, Rogue One reshoots steal headlines

Posted on June 7, 2016 by reelentropy

Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures.

As expected, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows carried the week with a limp $35 million. X-Men: Apocalypse came in second, while Me Before You more than doubled its expected opening- Box Office Mojo

With Ninja Turtles disappointing, just like Apocalypse a week before, Variety asks whether or not Hollywood’s sequel-fueled rampage is running out of steam- Variety

Despite what executives seem to think, underperforming sequels is hardly a new problem- The Playlist

Me Before You should have been the story of the weekend, pulling $18.7 million when it was only expected to draw $7.7 million, but nobody seems to be talking about it. When they do talk about it, it’s about controversy — with a paraplegic main character who’s lost his lease on life, the disabilities community is up in arms over the message the film presents- Washington Post

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Out of the Shadows could have been good, isn’t

Posted on June 4, 2016 by reelentropy

For as long as CG has been in movies, no one right method for putting real elements and fake elements in the same shot has ever coalesced. A lot of the better movies from the past 25 years are the ones that get it right — Jurassic Park springs to mind. Out of the Shadows gets it very, very wrong. Photos courtesy Paramount Pictures.

At the end of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, after saving New York once again, the turtles are honored by the NYPD for their outstanding valor and uncompromising cooperation.

Their uncompromising cooperation.

Uncompromising

Cooperation

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