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THE VVITCH - VLOG REVIEW

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Vvatch this review of The VVitch and stay tuned for another horror review tomorrow!

MARY AND THE WITCH'S FLOWER - REVIEW

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Review available on the new website .

WILLOW - REVIEW

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Two years after the failure of Howard The Duck , Executive Producer George Lucas redeemed himself with Willow , a fantasy film from 1988 directed by Ron Howard. It starred Warwick Davis in the title role with a young Val Kilmer supporting. After sorceress Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh) orders the death of children in the kingdom due to a prophecy stating that a female child will, one day, orchestrate her downfall, a chain of events is set into motion when a midwife decides to save one baby. The latter ends up in the hands of kindhearted Nelwyn farmer Willow but, when it becomes apparent that keeping the baby poses a threat to his village, he is sent to bring the child back to where she came from, but in safe hands. He first encounters disgraced warrior Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) and soon entrusts the child to him but that backfires almost instantly. What follows is an epic yet relatively intimate adventure involving fairies, "brownies" (tiny people), magic, trolls and monster

47 RONIN - REVIEW

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Some movie concepts are just too good to pass up. Nicolas Cage as a weatherman, John Travolta as an overweight woman, Keanu Reeves as a samurai... Thank goodness for 47 Ronin for suggesting the latter! Unfortunately, the film ended up costing nearly $200M and it's looking like 10 people went to actually see it, and that's including me. Problems between the studio and the director causing the budget to inflate ridiculously due to endless reshoots and stuff like that. Unlike flops like, say, John Carter or The Lone Ranger , you really can't tell where the money went with 47 Ronin, a film which looks like a $10M flick with some decent effects and some really awful ones not exactly helping justify the huge budget. The film doesn't look that great and is more akin to a B-movie like Season Of The Witch visually, which is not a good thing. Another issue is the ridiculous marketing which accompanied this movie: Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays the real main character in t

WICKED - REVIEW

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The Wizard Of Oz is great, and I LOVE Return To Oz . I even enjoy The Wiz , as strange as it is. So Wicked , as teen-friendly as it seemed, I was expecting to enjoy at least as a diagonal look into the darker side of that world. The result was pretty much what I expected with the odd surprise here and there. Some good, some not so good. The musical plays out like a Harry Potter / Legally Blonde crossover with green-skinned Elphaba taking her sister to Shiz University where she is soon ridiculed and cast-aside because of her peculiar looks. On the other end of the spectrum is the crazy-popular Glinda, a typical dumb blonde stereotype you've seen in every single US high-school teen comedy. The musical follows both characters as they clash, become the best of friends and come apart again when life in Oz gets a tad too complicated. You've got a basic love triangle going on in which some dude called Fiyero goes out with Glinda at first only to later fall in love with Elpha

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY - REVIEW

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As rubbish as  The Blair Witch Project  was on the whole, at least it opened up new avenues and possibilities for the horror genre. The Blair Witch's ending at least proving, albeit very briefly, that the "handheld" style could indeed bring fresh scares. It took 10 years but finally a film lives up to that premise. Paranormal Activity's clever use of repetition and convincing performances finally captures the inexplicable eerieness of a big empty house in the middle of the night making this the best haunted house movie in a long time. The story may be unlikely but it works and doesn't detract from the film's atmosphere at all. Is it scary? Yes. But not in an obvious, in your face, loud musical sting kind of way. Turn the lights off, pay attention, get into it and you won't sleep a wink.

SALEM'S REMARK - SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH

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SALEM'S REGRETS - SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH

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PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 - REVIEW

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Concept movies never really live up to their clever premises. And neither did the "classic" of the reality-horror subgenre The Blair Witch Project . A good start and a good end did not make a great film and the dire sequel failed on all accounts. Since then, countless films have attempted to do it right ( My Little Eye , The Fourth Kind ) but only the first Paranormal Activity managed to be consistent and sneaky enough to pull it off. A sequel with a different director was always going to be a gamble and Paranormal Activity 2 thankfully doesn't tank completely. More is at stake here: a baby, a girl, a couple, a maid, a dog... But somehow you never feel the danger you felt in the original film. Perhaps too many cooks spoil the broth and it feels a bit too crowded to truly isolate the audience accordingly. An attempt is made at linking the story of this instalment with the first film but that also doesn't really work as the back-and-forth through the timeline tend

SEASON OF THE WITCH - REVIEW

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Oddball genius Nic Cage returns with yet another supernatural effort and although we're not getting the delightfully madcap Cage of Bad Lieutenant or Vampire's Kiss , this is restrained but silly NC. Always entertaining. He stars alongside Ron Perlman in this adventure which sees both knights/crusaders escort a witch to some castle. From the offset we get bad hair, silly helmets, dumb one-liners, American accents and epic slo-mo: all the ingredients of a true epic fail. And yet, from the genuinely very good opening sequence, this is a really fun ride from start to finish.  In what other film can you see Ron Perlman headbutting a demon repeatedly in the face? Well, perhaps Hellboy... But still, it's awesome! The whole thing feels very Hammer from the start and this feeling is confirmed when Christopher Lee himself shows up for a creepy but effective cameo. Everyone seems to be having a ball and although the ending relies way too much on CGI, it's well wor