Tag: Frankenstein

Cinema Dispatch: Victor Frankenstein

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Victor Frankenstein and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Fox

Directed by Paul McGuigan

Does anyone even remember when the last good Frankenstein movie was?  Can Reanimator REALLY be the last one of these movies to get the formula right!?  Well at least this movie isn’t trying so hard to make a faithful adaptation of the Mary Shelly story like Kenneth Branagh did, but is instead going after Young Frankenstein’s crown by practically making a spoof out of the whole thing.  Geez, if making a good Frankenstein movie was a herculean task, then making a good Young Frankenstein movie must be a Sisyphean one.  Still, the trailers really sold this as a fun throwback to old school horror schlock and it has two really talented actors who aren’t afraid to ham it up when appropriate.  Will this be a fun re-imaging of one of cinema’s oldest stories, or is this yet another terrible interpretation of this story right up there with the abysmal I, Frankenstein?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy) and Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), both working together to solve the mysteries of life and to hopefully reanimate a corpse for reasons of SCIENCE.  After breaking Igor out of the circus and fixing his back, they become close friends and Igor’s intelligence about humanity anatomy and medicine (self-taught which makes it more impressive) becomes instrumental to Victor finally having a breakthrough with his research.  Unfortunately, as Victor starts to escalate his experiments, an inspector at Scotland Yard (Andrew Scott) becomes more and more obsessed with stopping the mad man’s machinations before his schemes can come to fruition.  Can Igor and Victor complete they’re greatest work before being shut down by The Man, or has Victor taken things too far?  Will Igor continue to justify the mad doctor’s methods, or will he betray his best friend in hopes that he can be talked down from the brink of insanity?  These two are REALLY close, aren’t they?

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Oh I WISH they’d pull the trigger on that!

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Cinema Dispatch: Hotel Transylvania 2

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Hotel Transylvania 2 and all the images you see in this review are owned by Columbia Pictures

Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky

Does anyone else remember just how amazing it was that the first movie was in fact as good as it was?  The movie had been in production since 2006 and had five directors attached to it before finally settling on Genndy Tartakovsky who by all means is an accomplished animator but had never directed a feature film.  Not only that, but Adam Sandler was (and continues to be) a joke for a lot of people and his movie in the last decade or so have been absolutely abysmal.  Despite all that, Hotel Transylvania was not only good but one of the best animated films in a long time.  Now it’s time for Sony to start franchising this sucker with a sequel, but they seem to be doing it the right way by not only getting back the original director but the same writers as well.  Will this somehow manage to be one of the few animated sequels to be just as good if not better than the original, or will they throw out everything that was great about the first film just to milk a couple more dollars out of this series?  Let’s find out!!

After the events of the first movie, Mavis and Jonathan (Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg) start dating and eventually get married in the titular hotel.  Their whirlwind love affair eventually leads to her getting pregnant and giving birth to their son Dennis whom Dracula (Adam Sandler) starts to obsess over because now he has a new outlet for the overprotective behavior he struggled to overcome in the last film.  Unfortunately, like in the first movie, there comes a point where his paternal usefulness may be coming to an end with Mavis thinking that it may be too dangerous for them to stay at the hotel since young Dennis has yet to show any signs of being anything other than human, and in the Lore of this universe if he doesn’t show any signs by his fifth birthday (which is rapidly approaching), he’ll be a human forever.  Dracula, being the crafty bastard that is, enlists Jonathan’s help (who wants to stay at the hotel) to keep Mavis distracted while he and his friends try to force the vampirism into his grandson by taking him on the night of professional scaring.  I wouldn’t think that biology could be affected by cultural immersion but whatever.  So Jonathan and Mavis are off to visit his family in California for some marital R&R (and to see if the place would be a good fit for their family), while the old school monsters are trying their best to not only get this kid to grow his fangs but to recapture a bit of their youthful exuberance as they revisit their familiar haunts from when they were the scourge of humanity which may be a bit more difficult than they were expecting now the humans have learned about monsters and are (tentatively) accepting them.

Some seem to be adjusting better than others.
Some seem to be adjusting better than others.

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