31 Days of Halloween

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is 100% a movie that I didn't need to see in theaters but would like to watch at some point. I'll check it out when it drops.

Wasn't a fan of The Dark Half either. Doesn't make a lick of sense and isn't as fun as it could've been.

1980's nostalgia is played out. Hollywood should move on to the 90's and 2000's. That said, Lisa Frankenstein is charming enough to overcome its tired premise. Hopefully Doomsday will give it a shot this spooky season.

Thought Abigail was a snoozer for the first hour then turned into something semi interesting. But still a whimper.

Big fan of ready or not though. Samara is a star though and they had very little star power outside legion in this one.

The Ballad of the Witches' Road (Sacred Chant) enters the charts at number 22.


www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/agatha-all-along-cast-song-ballad-of-the-witches-road-chart-debut-1235790737/

This sequel suffers from the same stage-like approach of its predecessor, although it is a lot more technically proficient. Thematically, it is a victim of its time. The movie would have benefited greatly if it had been allowed to delve into its lesbian story. Not for titillating reasons. I just feel the cast is really strong and would have done wonders with the material. And that’s really the saving grace. It has good actors and they elevate what’s mostly a forgettable film.

Because this script really is pretty terrible. For one thing, it spends about half (maybe more) of its 105-minute running time setting up what the actual plot of the movie is, which would be one thing if that setup were any good, but it's not. Instead, it feels so belabored, forced, strained, trying-too-hard, with characterizations that ring hollow and/or too cartoonish, performances that simply feel off and worst of all, comedy that largely lands with a thud. And when one of the main genres here is comedy, that's a problem. Because, again, apart from Keaton and O'Hara, pretty much the rest of the humor here failed to get any true laughs out of me. It's not for lack of trying, but there are few things worse than a comedy going for laughs and missing the mark more often than not, and that's the case here. It's not just that, though. One of the things that made the first Beelejuice work so well is how it hung all its creativity around a charmingly simple story. This sequel, by contrast, simply feels too busy. There are so many threads going on here at the same time, that the movie hardly ever feels like it has time to breathe, being driven more solely by plot machinations rather than letting the charm of the characters help keep things steady, i.e. having its equivalent of The Maitlands to keep everything relatively grounded. And on the subject of the characters...a lot of this movie is centered around a strained relationship between Lydia and her daughter Astrid, but Winona Ryder's performance feels like she's almost overly medicated and Jenna Ortega's comes across like reheated leftovers of the Wednesday show. Lydia also feels kind of dumbed down in this. The movie offers an explanation as to why she could possibly be like this, but the intended emotion of it simply doesn't come across. I think that's due to a combination of lackluster writing and Tim Burton perhaps having lost his touch a bit in terms of directing his actors. Another thing that lands with a deafening thud, by the way? This movie's try at creating its own "Day-Oh!" possessed dance sequence. I had already conceded defeat in regards to this movie by then, but that sequence wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back -- more like the straw that caved the bones in. And I haven't even mentioned Justin Thereoux's painfully bad performance, nor the complete pointlessness of Monica Bellucci's character, but -- they're there.

Coop has told me repeatedly that he won't watch any movie with Hornswoggle.