Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (1284)

Content

LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) in Movies

Dec 22, 2019

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

1993 | Animation, Family, Sci-Fi

8.2

(75 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

A timeless classic

I can safely say that there is truly nothing I dislike about The Nightmare Before Christmas.
It's straight to the point, fantastically animated, full of unique characters, and still holds up all these years later.
Director Henry Selick obviously has a keen eye for stop-animation (he would go on to direct James & The Giant Peach, and Coraline, both great animated films in their own right), and his work with the combined animation, visual effects, and art departments create a visually striking adventure that quickly and understandably became iconic.

Tim Burton's story is easy to grasp (great for children as well as adults), and the characters he has created for this story are equal parts creepy and fun.
Jack Skellington and Sally are both tragic and sympathetic characters that are easy to care about. Oogie Boogie is suitably evil (scared the sh*t out of me when I was little), and the rest of the town of Halloween are filled but bizarre and quirky characters that create a weird but warm back drop to the leads.

Danny Elfman is at his very best here. All of the songs contained within are memorable, and pretty epic at points. The lyrics are quick and clever, and do a lot to advance our understanding of the characters.

I can't praise The Nightmare Before Christmas enough. It's simply wonderful and a film I will happily watch time and time again.

Kudos

Sarah (7798 KP) rated Anna and the Apocalypse (2018) in Movies

Nov 2, 2019

Anna and the Apocalypse (2018)

2018 | Comedy, Horror, Musical

7.4

(19 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Too many genres!

I’m a massive fan of zombie films, musicals and Christmas films, but I’m really not too sure what to make of them all thrown into one film. I feel like they’ve just picked a handful of popular genres of films that people love and decided to mash them all together. And not very successfully either.

This film isn’t bad. The songs are quite good, they just seem ridiculously out of place in a zombie film and there are some dodgy vocals at times. A Christmas zombie film is a pretty decent idea though, especially as there’s nothing more anti-festive than a load of flesh eating zombies. It has a decent cast, with Mark Benton and Paul Kaye the old hands in a younger cast. However i think Paul Kaye may have taken overacting a little too far in this. He’s beyond fun and hammy and just sheer ridiculous. It’s a shame as he’s a great actor but it feels like he’s hamming it up in a kids pantomime. In fact, a lot of the humour in this seems to be made for kids or very young teenagers. Which is strange seen as it has a 15 rating! I just found it all a little bit juvenile, which is a shame as I had little expectations about this film.

It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. Watchable, and only memorable because of how truly bizarre it is!