With the new version of Black Christmas, directed and co-written (with April Wolfe) by Sophia Takal, I believe we have crossed an exciting new threshhold: the first classic slasher movie to receive a second remake. The first Black Christmas, from 1974, is one of the most unassailable classics of ’70s horror, beating both The Texas […]
A shorter version of this review was previously published at The Film Experience There are two different, and perhaps irreconcilable ways to watch Klaus. First, we could look at it as the directorial debut of Sergio Pablos, an animator who rose through Disney in the 1990s, ending up getting his first supervising animator credits on […]
It’s all kind of right there in the concept of Last Christmas. No, no, not the plot, which is muddy and overdone but basically the standard holiday season romantic boilerplate: she’s a Scrooge, he’s guileless and charming, and he eventually forces her to open up to the spirit of loving and giving and so on […]
A review requested by Benjamin Ross Johnson, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! The foremost skill of the great writer-director Billy Wilder, I think, is his ability to take […]
When one of the greatest working directors of actors and one of the greatest working actors collaborate on their first film together, it is extremely easy to get one’s expectations all riled up. And this much at least can’t be denied about Where’d You Go, Bernadette: Cate Blanchett (for she is the actor) is splendid, […]
There’s a movie hiding not very deep at all into Shazam! that is exactly what the superhero genre needs right about now: something stripped down and intimate, a bright little character comedy about how kids love superheroes and fantasise about being them and then one gets a chance to be one in actuality. But using […]
It’s certainly more common knowledge 25 years later than it was at the time of the film’s premiere in October 1993 (when Disney did everything in its power to hide the information), but it still bears mentioning that the film which has been marketed since Day 1 as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is […]
If you have to watch one of 2018’s two dramas about the parent of a teen drug addict played by one of the young hot It Boys who co-starred in Lady Bird – and I assure you that you don’t, but let’s say that you have to – I guess the least you can say […]
The question of whether Green Book is worse on race or worse on class is a tough one. It’s at least more spectacularly bad on race; but I, for one, was unprepared for it to touch on class at all, so that came as the far uglier surprise. Either way, it’s the kind of modestly […]
There are times when it makes sense to bury the lede, and times when it makes sense to just have out with the thing that needs to be said. So let me have out with it: the reason to see The Christmas Chronicles is Kurt Russell’s performance as Santa Claus. This cuts two ways. First, […]
The most surprising thing about the new animated adaptation of Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel’s 1957 picture book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! – which, in keeping with the 21st Century’s refusal to even pretend like any of us still has an attention span, has shortened the title to just The Grinch – is that it’s […]
Much of the pre-release promotion for the 2000 version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas focused on the extraordinary (and, eventually, Oscar-winning) make-up work it took to get Jim Carrey entombed in the flexible latex mask that allowed him to play Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel’s beloved Christmas-hating misanthrope. And, in particular, on how it was […]
