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Rebecca Billcliff (2409 KP) rated The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) in Movies

Dec 5, 2019

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

1993 | Animation, Family, Sci-Fi

8.2

(75 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Stop Motion at its Best

Jack Skelington has become dispondant with his Halloween life. He feels bored, unfulfilled, and does not love the day like he used to.
While pondering his identity crisis, we stumbles out of Halloween Town and into Christmas Town!
Becoming obsessed with this new Holliday, he convinces the town to run Christmas, and takes father Christmas hostage/ for a forced holiday, in order to put their spooky twist on the day.
With a host of creepy but lovable characters, they learn the true spirit of Christmas.
Sounds cheesy? Well, surprisingly not. It is often debated as to weather this is a Christmas or Halloween film. Considering the lessons learnt, I would say it is an Xmas film, but a bit of a spooky one.
The songs are catchy (And I recommend the 2 disc soundtrack with the cover versions), the visuals are spectacular! All done with stop motion, it is a credit to this school of animation. Stunning and fun, it's a great watch, and one of my all time favourite.

Kudos

Ducklady (1174 KP) rated Cats (2019) in Movies

Jan 15, 2020 (Updated Jan 15, 2020)

Cats (2019)

2019 | Musical

3.8

(16 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

*shudders*

I have never seen cats before in the theatre, so I thought a film would be a good gateway to knowing a bit more about it. I was so wrong. From the opening scene I was instantly confused. I had no idea what the word Jellicle meant and they just kept repeating it. The scene where they were talking about their names didn't make any sense. They kept saying they had 3 names when they only mentioned 2? Hmm..
The CGI was incredibly off-putting and a few times in the background the cats looked like creepy demons, nightmarish.
The repetition in the songs really grated. The scenes didn't flow well and I felt like I was watching 1 big scene that didn't connect.
The shunned glam cat confused me so much as I couldn't work out why everyone hated her, seemed super forced.
The Jellicle ball seemed to consist of a whole bunch of performing cats competing to...die? And possibly be reborn?
Meh
Either way, don't watch this non-sensical, plot-lacking disaster.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated I Walked with a Zombie (1943) in Movies

Jan 8, 2020 (Updated Jan 8, 2020)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

1943 | Horror, Romance

9.0

(2 Ratings)

Movie Rating

One of the granddaddies of the modern zombie movie is almost unrecognisable as such: no blood to speak of and the plot is derived from a novel by Charlotte Bronte. Nice young nurse goes off to morbid, doomy Caribbean island to care for the creepy wife of her employer (can't speak, has no will of her own following strange 'fever'); finds herself falling for her boss (though God knows why, he's so disagreeable). Perhaps the local voodoo spirits can help cure the afflicted woman?

A zombie movie in the traditional sense, and all the creepier for it. The plot is rather melodramatic, and the gentility of the film is quite amusing to the modern eye (male worshippers at a voodoo ritual all turn up in suits and ties), but it scores hugely for atmosphere, though, and there are some genuinely eerie sequences. Usual studied ambiguity and lack of overt 'horror' you often get in Lewton movies, but this just adds to the sense that this is a classy piece of work.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Break of Dark in Books

Aug 2, 2019

Break of Dark

Robert Westall | 1982 | Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy

9.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

I must have been 12 or 13 when I first read this, and back then part of the fun came from the sense that these actually felt like adult stories, for all the book is advertised as being basically YA fiction: quite apart from the substantial quantities of profanity and sex, many the characters aren't typical YA identification figures: middle-aged seaside policemen, earnest young vicars, suburban couples, and so on. These are still hugely readable and satisfying stories even now many decades later.

But what are they about? Well, there are two stories of ghosts (a haunted Wellington bomber during the second world war, and a rather stranger tale of an unwitting medium), two of very atypical alien visitations (a cautionary tale of a young hitch-hiker, and a blackly comic one concerning a spate of peculiar crimes in a small resort town), and one of an inner-city vicar who stumbles onto something very creepy in the crypt of his church. All of them are engagingly and skilfully written, and immaculately paced. Good reads for all ages.