We are gathered here in consideration of the notorious matter of the Disney animated sequel; and yet it is difficult to say exact what the nature of Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin is, as far as sequeldom goes. For our purposes, it makes the most sense to consider it the continuation of […]

I’m going to lead off with something that’s kind of small and petty, but it bothers me too much to wait: Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the second direct-to-video Disney sequel ever, and the second sequel to the 1992 blockbuster Aladdin, was released in 1996 on home video, in a 4:3 aspect ratio. This […]

Let us begin our long, strange tour of the run of direct-to-video sequels to its legitimate, theatrical motion pictures that the Walt Disney Company released over a decade and a half in the ’90s and ’00s, with a straightforward observation: The Return of Jafar is 69 minutes long. A significant number for all sorts of […]

I was all set to open up with a little historical primer about how in the mid-’90s, director Richard Linklater, and actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke had various things to prove, that they could be more than Gen X chroniclers in the men’s case, and Euroart sexpots in Delpy’s. But movies like Before Sunrise […]

A guide to this blog’s James Bond marathon can be found right here. A VIEW TO A KILLDirected by John GlenWritten by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. WilsonPremiered 22 May, 1985 PRE-TITLE SEQUENCEAfter an uncharacteristic disclaimer announcing that there is no real-world figure that the movie is basing its villainous plot upon, we jump into: […]

Strictly speaking, the title of 1995’s A Goofy Movie is accurate. It is a movie; the iconic Disney character Goofy is in it. But it is an incomplete title: A Goof Troop Movie would be far more precise and cause fewer broken hearts: for while it is A Goofy movie, it is surely not The […]

In the wake of the management crisis at the Walt Disney Company in the early and mid 1980s – a story of some detail and great interest to those with a love of Hollywood dealmaking and animated entertainment alike, that has been told fully elsewhere – one of the many new ventures the company’s new […]

There’s only one surprise involved with The Possession, the latest in the undying genre of exorcism movies, but it’s a doozy. As it turns out, shockingly, The Possession is almost a good movie, which for this particular subgenre is a real achievement. Not that I say “almost” a good movie, and not a good movie […]

It’s been a long time since the week after Labor Day was the customary beginning of the school year in most districts, but it still seemed like the best time for a “Back to School” horror film. Of which, shockingly, there are virtually none, despite it seeming like a patently obvious setting for a slasher […]

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: as happens so often, the summer movie season wraps up with a dodgy horror picture, The Possession, a rare […]

A guide to all things Bond at Alternate Ending. Directed by Irvin Kershner Written by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. Premiered 6 October, 1983 PRE-TITLE SEQUENCE There isn’t one. We should not takes this as a break with tradition, though; for reasons to be explained shortly, this isn’t an “official” Bond movie. TITLE SONG Michel Legrand is […]

It’s probably better not to presume that one is smarter than David Cronenberg. This has been my constant thought ever since walking out of Cosmopolis, which is in keeping with that director’s career insofar as it is bizarre as all hell, and part of what makes it bizarre is that I’m pretty much definitely certain […]