Monthly Movie Reviews – March, 2015

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in March.

March 31

• Dawn of the Dead (1978) – Some of the anti-consumerism stuff gets laid on pretty thick, but there’s no denying that this is a movie with a vision. The violence is over the top, but that’s not all that sticks in your mind for days after with this one.

March 28

• Monster High: Haunted (2015) – Definitely sticks to the formula (right down to the ghost powers training scene), but it’s still one of the better ones.  All that stuff with the chains might not make a whole lot of sense, but it hardly matters in a movie like this.

March 26

• Ball of Fire (1941) – Fucking classic and fucking adorable story of a hot young nerdy professor (living with 7 old, less hot, professors) who falls for a gangster’s girlfriend.  Plenty of classic scenes, and Stanwyck positively glows throughout.

March 25

• Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) – If there was ever a quintessential movie about going on holiday in Europe, this is it (and there is some stiff competition out there!)  Not exactly funny in the usual way, but undoubtedly brilliant nonetheless.
• Behind the Screen (1916) – Minor Chaplin mutual about backstage hijinx at a film shoot.  Plenty of funny jokes, though even here Chaplin’s penchant for recycling gags begins to show through.

March 19

• Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) – Kind of plays like a cross between James Bond and a superhero comic, this actually turns out better than I thought it would.  I think the key is that everyone involved (except for maybe Samuel L. Jackson) plays it straight.

March 15

• Monster High: Freaky Fusion (2014) – Toralei is up to her usual tricks, which, through a long series of mishaps, transports the monsters back in time and back again causing body mixing/new doll tie-in shenanigans in the process. The “hybrids” get a small amount of screen time, but overall there feels like a few too many things going on at the same time to really gel in this one.

March 8

• Street of Crocodiles (1986) – Classic stop motion short film that is both mesmerizing and completely incomprehensible.  Also, it is undeniably beautiful, if you find eastern bloc decay beautiful.

March 4

• Who’s That Knocking At My Door (1967) – An interesting film that is full of promise, but perhaps a bit too ambitious for its own good.  Thankfully, Scorcese reigned in his style for his subsequent films.

March 3

• The Parallax View (1974) – I came into this halfway through, and was impressed by how little it seemed to care about adhering to traditional ideas about pacing and how long to hold a shot.  Though, I have a feeling that it would have been just as opaque of a film had I seen the first half.