19 - Nightmares

Connection To GOIN' SOUTH - Veronica Cartwright

This was a film I wasn't that familiar too until very recently, it had never been on my radar and was honestly looking through films that where on Youtube in full and this was one so I read up about it, I'm not going to pretend I knew of it's existence before then.

With horror anthology movies I think most people can count them on one or two hands - The Creep Show movies, Twilight Zone Movie, Dead Of Night - most likely perhaps, some will say Body Bags or The Willies among others as well, and I know I'm leaving loads off but the point is I think horror anthology is more something people will associate with television.

The first thing I'll say about Nightmares, is that  the running roughly of 90 minutes just flies by - 4 stories, none of them hidden classics, at least don't wear out their welcome, I swear I thought I'd been watching less then an hour by the time the fourth one finished.

The first story up is "Terror In Topanga" (nobody better tell Cory - I've been holding that joke in since I saw the title come up), I think it's the weakest of the bunch, I was going to say the ending is stole by the movie Urban Legend but then I realized the ending is probably based off the original urban legend.

"The Bishop Of Battle" was made in the 80's don't you know - well obviously the whole film was but this just stands out with the clothing, the walkman, the arcade graphics, Emilio Estevez seems to play the typical 80's douche who's obsessed with getting to Level 13 on a arcade game, fun segment.

"The Benediction" as Lance Henriksen as a Priest who as give up on faith after a child death, it's probably the best acted since Henriksen is a talented guy, this is the one that probably felt it went by quickest to me (but I didn't sit and time each segment).

"Night Of The Rat" is goofy but is fun and features a giant rat ending up terrorising the home of Veronica Cartwright and Richard Masur. As there ever been a feature length film with the same plot, I'd be surprised if it hasn't.

Overall, even though stories verge on the silly, it's sort of fun and like I said the time just flew by, as give me a taste to maybe watch some more horror anthologies somewhere down the line, I recommend it but reviews I've read suggest it wasn't brilliantly recieved.

18 - Goin' South

Connection To CAMP NOWHERE - Christopher Lloyd

Last year I went on a Clint Eastwood binge, this mean't watching a lot of his westerns - seeing many of them for the first time - this is related to Goin' South because it re-sparked my love for the western, it reminded me what I enjoyed so much about these oaters. It's not that I'd gone off the western, it's just being a few years since I got on a roll with them, hell even one of my favourite films is a western (Once Upon A Time In The West).

Anyway this brings me to the 1978 western Goin' South, starring and directed by Jack Nicholson and with a pretty darn cool supporting cast and I think was not successful on original release because it seems somewhat forgotten as far as I know.

Henry Moon (Nicholson) is a robber who is sentenced and to be hanged in Longhorn, but due to bill from the Civil War, that allows a condemned man to be saved from the gallows if an unmarried woman would like to marry him and be responsible for him. Julie Tate (Mary Steenburgen) weds Moon, for him to work in a goldmine on her property, Moon's old gang show up and discover that they are mining gold but Julie and Moon's relationship is changing.

Like a lot of the best westerns you notice how it's shot with a lot of great use of locations, I think this was only 1 of 3 Nicholson actually directed, and none of the films really where too successful at best, his co-star Steenburgen (in her movie debut) plays naive well and has good chemistry with Nicholson and there is enjoyable supporting cast including John Belushi (also making his movie debut technically, this was shot before Animal House but released after), Danny DeVito (whose worked with Nicholson 5 times total I think), Christopher Lloyd (really enjoyed him here), Ed Begley Jr. and Tracey Walter. It's also fun seeing Lloyd lusting after Steenburgen an whole 12 years before the romance of Back To The Future 3.

Overall it deserves to be better known that actually is, Like I said Nicholson and Steenburgen have decent fun chemistry in the leads and have a great cast around them, I'd recommend this for fans of the western genre.

17 - Camp Nowhere

Connection To THE EYE - Jessica Alba

I don't recall ever seeing this before, I mean it could have been on in the school holidays and watched it, but I doubt it because I tend to have a pretty good memory of what I have actually watched, and honestly I think if I would have seen it I would have liked and possibly held even if minor some sort of affection for it.

Yeah, I liked this, the Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating of only 10% just honestly seems a tad unfair, I talked about bad child actors a little bit in the write up for Leave It To Beaver, even mentioning the 1994 Little Rascals (which just this week as had a new Direct To DVD film called Save The Day), but there is none of that problem here, all the kids are likable and none deliver bad performances.

The films plot sees the kids lead by Mud (Jonathan Jackson) realizing they are all facing the same thing - a boring summer camp this year (all of them different) and trick their parents into sending them to the same summer camp (with no counsellers or rules or etc.) with the help of Christopher Lloyd, who they've paid a $1000 too, they end up blackmailing him to run he camp when they soon get bored with the lack of rules.

While it's lightweight stuff - it is a kid's movie after all - it was very enjoyable to watch, Jessica Alba appears as originally an extra but gets bumped up to have a few lines and Smallville's Allison Mack is also among the cast. It dawned on me while watching as well that the red headed girl right at the front on the picture was my the show Hang Time.

I can see while the film as built a loving following. Back To The Future fans should take in that Lloyd shares screen time with Biff Tannen himself, speaking of Lloyd he's great as the "adult" lead role.

Overall fun, funny with an enjoyable cast of child actors. The only problems I really saw is the feeling at the end how the really situation would go down to how it was in this movie.

16 - The Eye

Connection To KICK-ASS 2 - Chloé Grace Moretz

Remakes of Asian horror, the whole thing started The Ring didn't it back in 2002? Maybe there was ones before that but without The Ring we probably wouldn't have got The Grudge, Dark Water or Pulse, or the sequels to any of these. I don't think I'd be out of line if I called most of them poo and to be honest The Eye never did anything to stand out from the pack.

The original version was released in 2002 and was from Hong Kong (I love Hong Kong cinema and it's never really had the US remakes like other Asian countries have), I have had the original on my shelf to watch for a while but never got around to it, so there is nothing holding me back going into viewing this movie.

I might as well start with my overall opinion and if I had to choose one word about how I felt about that movie it would be - indifferent...

Perhaps one of the words I fear most in watching films, a great film I can get excited by while a bad film I can pinpoint what's wrong but when I feel indifferent it puts me in a tricky position in what to say about it. I certainly don't think Jessica Alba deserved a Razzie nomination for this and the ending is adequately built up too, there is just not enough to keep interest - I think this will be a film I'll forget about even in the next months. I think the plot as clearly a lot of potential blind women gets eye transplant can see but is seeing terrifying visions.

The supporting cast, really don't leave much of an impression, Parker Posey don't get much too do and the male lead Alessandro Nivola is merely okay, another familiar in Chloé Grace Moretz pops up as the littlest cancer patient (and makes me assume that Moretz started acting when she was a fetus).

Overall, bad doesn't seem a fair word to describe if it becomes the end of the year and I ranked all the films it would be difficult to know where to put it, worse films are more memorable, I would probably just say don't watch it in the end, there's 90 minutes you could devote to something more memorable.

15 - Kick-Ass 2

Connection To PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED - Jim Carrey

I really enjoyed the first Kick-Ass movie, for me it was a great mix of comedy and bloody violence with some very enjoyable characters with a great performance from the often entertaining Nicolas Cage and an argument could be made for a little star being born in Chloé Grace Moretz and though the film wasn't a huge success at the box-office, the film did well enough (including things like DVD sales) to earn a sequel.

Kick-Ass 2 was a film I had been waiting to see for a while just based off of how much I enjoyed the first, sadly Cage's Big Daddy was no more we will at least have another famous over-actor in Jim Carrey - who ended up refusing to publicize the film after the Sandy Hook massacre - and we got the return of at least a few of these characters.

To be honest in this sequel, there is a lot evident that is both good and bad - it's a film of stengths and weaknesses that come together only sort of well - I wouldn't call it a bad movie nor would I call it great, the best way I would describe it for me is a film that at times can be good.

Aaron Taylor Johnson in the lead role is as good as he was in the first one as in not awful but not spectacular (there is pattern here in how I'm describing things), and it's the supporting cast who are much more fun - Christopher Mintz-Plasse who is now going by name of Motherfucker rather then Red Mist and is a wannabe supervillian who early on accidentally kills his mother in a sunbed accident making him the sole heir in the family fortune with the only loyal company of John Leguizamo (who I really enjoyed in this movie). Anyway Kick-Ass is attempting to have a normal life but convinces Mindy to train him to be a real superhero, but that becomes at odds when her guardian convinces her to be more like a normal girl, which she really does try and be

Kick Ass ends up joining up with a band of superheroes including the enjoyable Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes - whose not in it as much as you would think, speaking of not in it as much as you think Lyndsy Fonseca as the girlfriend from the last movie is little more then a cameo meanwhile Motherfucker as put together his own group of villains.

For me the negative of the movie is the violence doesn't really mesh as well with the humour, at times stuff just seems mean-spirited, while at other times just a touch too dark and is just ultimately not sure what tone it is going for. The film has some memorable moments but none quite match up to Hit-Girl trying to save Big Daddy and Kick-Ass in the first movie but we do get a girl thanks to Hit Girl both vomiting and shitting at the time (makes sense in the context of the movie)

Which brings us to the ace in the hole of the movie, which was true of the first one and that is Moretz, she's so enjoyable that I wouldn't be opposed to spin-off movie sans Kick-Ass - it's possible I would have done without the Mean Girls style scenes but the pay-off (mentioned above) is memorable like I said and it sort of cool how they played up the biological aspect of her and Kick-Ass's relationship (I know there Dave and Mindy but I just didn't want to keep changing between names)

Overall an enjoyable if occasionally uneven movie. I would certainly go for a third (which there are some clues of that happening) but I would want them to study more the first one then this one.

14 - Peggy Sue Got Married

Connection To Who Framed Roger Rabbit - Kathleen Turner

THE 1980s SUCKED!!! Do you want to know why? Because it seemed like so many films and TV series had nostalgia for the 50s and the 60s - which was yeah, through rose-tinted glasses cause there was a lot of shit that happened.

Peggy Sue Got Married - you can't help but think of Back To The Future, this was released a year after and involves somebody going back to an earlier time (in the case 1960), it's really where the similarity ends and it would be unfair on this movie if I kept comparing it to that iconic movie.

Kathleen Turner plays Peggy Sue who is attending her 25th high school reunion in the present (well as in 1986), just seperated from her school sweetheart Charlie (Nicolas Cage), she is made class Queen (alongside the King who was a class geek now turned millionaire), during which she faints and when she awakes she finds herself back in 1960.

Finding herself back in 1960 she is really confused but soon finds herself being able to have the courage to address rude classmates or tell a teacher that there is no use for algebra in the real word and she knows it for a fact. This also gives her a chance (of the inevitable) to remember why she fell in love with Charlie in the first place.

I liked this, it indeed made me feel nostalgia for a time and place that I was never there for, there is cute little references about the future (like her saying she'll go to Liverpool and discover The Beatles). The film also features quite a cast of before they were famous, besides Cage, who wasn't a breakout yet (who is director Francis Ford Coppola's nephew), there is Jim Carrey (playing naturally the class clown), Joan Allen (herself later a star of the 50's sit-com set Pleasantville), a young Helen Hunt and Coppola's own daughter Sofia.

Speaking of Cage, is choice for voice is weird an odd high pitched tone that a little bit dents the enjoyment of the movie but he doesn't grate completely 100%, Kathleen Turner though carries the movie great.

The music choice is typical of the nostalgia run of movies where all songs are still well known to this day (that's all that was played on the radio and at club it was always seems, I imagine songs get forgotten along the way in reality).

Overall, it's nowhere near the Coppola classics of the 70's, but it's a nice movie - that's not a complaint - and though going back to Back to the Future (what an awkward thing to say) it's a decent watch if somebody wants something a little bit the same.

13 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Connection To Frozen - both from the House Of Mouse, get that connection out the way before I use it much later since connections are only used once.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer right at the start of any of these I do about films I really loved as a youngling, because my love for these films never goes away and it feel like I probably won't right about them too objectively - it's likely I gush about them pretty much, because the 80's films some of them have gone through 4 decades with me ---

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which doesn't have a ? right at the end) is to me an absolute classic and watching it even now in 2014 holds up still amazingly well - the animated and real life all seem like they are inhabiting the same world and Jessica Rabbit is still a sexy as hell character.

It is surprising how much of it is "grown up" with murders and an adorable animated shoe getting the dip, I think that it works in it's favour because it's a crime movie that just so happens the main suspect is a talking animated rabbit.

Going back to when I saw this as a kid I just loved the idea of all these characters being in the same world be it Dumbo or Donald and Daffy duelling it out on the pianos or Bugs and Mickey teaming up it's glorious to a kid who had seen these characters before come alive together.

For the human characters I really liked Bob Hoskins portrayal of Eddie Valiant, while it's obvious he struggles with the accent it's not really an issue as he the perfect foil to Roger. Christopher Lloyd plays Judge Doom is genuinely menacing even before his meltdown at the end.

For the animated characters Roger treads the line that I think was planned of being annoying, he's supposed to grate on Eddie and we see that but he's not supposed to grate on us and Jessica, is not surprisingly considered one of the sexiest cartoon characters of all time makes a wonderful femme fatale.

The twist of who framed RR is fairly obvious but that doesn't spoil the enjoyment of the movie one bit which is more a sign of the quality of the movie.

Overall the movie is fantastic, there is so much to enjoy - kids can love the characters while adults can enjoy that and it's story. It's not a surprise this film is so fondly remembered.