Expelled Grey Matter

There are too many films that become a major sensation that I watch in hope that I get the thrill I used to get when it felt like every major blockbuster film was something new and exciting.  The problem is that unique experience of seeing something unexpected and knowing that one is getting in on the ground floor of a new popular culture sensation is now something that rarely happens.  Sequels and remakes have always been the cash cows of Hollywood, but it still seems that movies like Weapons were peppered in there more often in the past.  I may not have been on board from the beginning on this one, but I can definitely see why this caught the public's attention.  One day every child except Alex (Cary Christopher) vanishes from a fifth-grade class taught by Justine Candy (Julia Garner).  For an unexplained reason they all leave their houses at 2:17 in the morning and not return.  While grieving parents try to figure out what happened Justine is blamed for ...

Most people are aware of Ring 2 , the rather disappointing sequel to 1998's Ringu .  It was a bit of a mess, going off in numerous directions and relegating Sadako to a mere afterthought throughout the majority of the film.  Those expecting her to continue claiming victims by crawling out a television set were quite disappointed. However, Ring 2 had been made with a purpose.  When Ringu was in production it was decided to begin making the sequel, Spiral , at the same time.  Also based on a book by Kôji Suzuki, this was the movie he spent a lot of time on, cowriting the film adaptation with director Jôji Iida.  However, where Ringu became a major box office smash and, elsewhere, a cult hit, Spiral failed so badly that Ring 2 was rushed into production to make up for it.  The truth is that neither sequel does much to carry on the original story.  Mitsuo Andô (Kôichi Satô) is a pathologist on the brink of suicide who blames himself for his son's death....

Ring 2 is the official sequel to Ringu , the 1998 adaptation of Kôji Suzuki's novel of the same name.  It wasn't the first, with the original version being a Japanese television movie and, to make things even more confusing, Ring 2 isn't the first sequel to the feature film version.  That was a movie called Spiral .  Released at the same time as Ringu , it failed at the box office, resulting in writer Hiroshi Takahashi and director Hideo Nakata, who made the first film, being tapped to make a quick sequel.  Shortly after Sadako's (Rie Ino'o) body is found in the well her father Takashi (Yôichi Numata) is brought in to identify the body.  It is soon confirmed through facial reconstruction.  The only thing is that the police are baffled by the fact that it appears she had been alive in the well for 30 years.  Meanwhile, they are continuing to investigate the death of Ryûji Takamara (Hiroyuki Sanada) and disappearance of Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) ...

M is one of the most influential movies ever made.  Released in Germany in 1931 as the Nazis were slowly gaining more and more control, it is probably the one most film students know by director Fritz Lang other than Metropolis .  It was one of the transitional films from silent to sound and a milestone in German cinema, so much so that it became a cult film in the U.S., facilitating both Lang and its star, Peter Lorre, to get out of a worsening situation at home and come work in Hollywood. Of course, Hollywood wouldn't let such an intriguing story go without a remake, and an American version was made in 1951, although not directed by Lang.  Two years later a second remake was made, not in Germany or the U.S., but in another country that had a burgeoning cinema movement that unfortunately was cut short by domestic strife.  El vampiro negro, or The Black Vampire , was an adaptation of the story by renowned Uruguayan/Argentinian director Román Viñoly Barreto. ...

Unfortunately, when one mentions The Wicker Man , many think of the viral clip of Nicholas Cage yelling about bees in the remake rather than the small budget treatise on blindly following religion that the original film is.  Part police procedural, part horror film and part musical, The Wicker Man is unique in both its jarring unevenness and its ability to create a sense of unease with little going on through most of the movie, climaxing in a heart wrenching manner.  Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward) is a Scottish police officer who travels to the isolated community of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl named Rowan (Gerry Cowper).  Upon arrival he finds that no one on the island will admit to ever having seen the girl, including her mother May (Irene Sunters).  Blocked at every turn, the devoutly Catholic Sgt. Howie finds himself pursued by Willow (Britt Ekland), the daughter of the local innkeeper, and perplexed by the fact that the community app...

The City of the Dead , also known by its more lurid U.S. title Horror Hotel , was the first production for the British Studio Vulcan Pictures.  That may not sound like much but Vulcan would soon become Amicus, a low-budget but successful competitor to Hammer, the studio that produced the most famous British horror films for nearly two decades.  While Hammer had all the big names from Universal, Amicus produced a number of popular anthology series as well as feature films based on two stories from the BBC series Doctor Who .  Though made a bit over a decade earlier The City of the Dead shares some plot elements with The Wicker Man , with the main character leaving modern society to go to an isolated community ruled by ancient ways.  The two films are quite different in tone, but many of the elements are there, as is Christopher Lee.  This, however, doesn't contain the vague respect for paganism like the later film.  Professor Allan Driscoll (Lee) teaches a c...