Original Source Matthewrozsa.com

"Scary Movie 2" is indefensible on every artistic and comedic level... yet I will still stand up for its fans. Okay, I guess I should have written "on most artistic and comedic levels." My disdain for the film caused some hyperbole there, because there is a lot wrong with this film. Yet I am still allowed to state my fan loyalty as a literal fact, because I was once in a position where "Scary...

I'd like to focus on two elements of "Leprechaun Returns," the only installment in the "Leprechaun" horror series to directly continue the narrative of the original 1993 film. To explore the first, I must mention that Mark Holton returns as the mentally disabled then-handyman Ozzie, who here is a lonely cab driver dismissed by his small North Dakota town as a "weirdo." Jennifer Aniston's teenage...

There are two tragedies to "ParaNorman." First, it is a travesty that this film flopped at the box office and has faded into obscurity. Second, the film itself is a tragedy because it tells a story about the various ways that fear, mob mentality and prejudice create cycles of suffering for everyone caught up in them. That — and the fact that it is a well-written, visually creative movie — is why...

"Superman III" does not work as a movie about the character known as Superman. It works incredibly well, however, as two things that one would not normally find in a "Superman" film: One is a sweet Richard Pryor comedy about an archetype that will always have resonance in our world, the lonely and hapless (but clever) ordinary man.The other is a light satire — nothing particularly controversial,...

A word on Japanese director Takashi Shimizu, who directed the classic 2004 American horror movie "The Grudge." I have seen five of Shimizu's movies and loved every one of them. Four of those films are from his "Ju-On" franchise, including "Ju-On: The Grudge" in 2002, "Ju-On: The Grudge 2" in 2003, this installment and the seriously underrated "The Grudge 2" in 2006. The fifth is an unrelated...

"The Grudge," a 2004 American film directed by Takashi Shimizu as an adaptation of his own 2002 masterpiece "Ju-On: The Grudge" (which is Japanese), is a very good horror movie. It has scary and iconic villains, a genuinely disturbing backstory, fine performances and a consistently creepy atmosphere. I highly recommend it... but, unlike many other fans of the American version of "The Grudge"...

I had an hour-and-a-half to kill before New Year's Day 2021 officially came to a close. That was just enough time to watch "The Grudge 3," a movie I once described as the worst in the American version of "The Grudge" series, and see if my initial impression was wrong. It wasn't. That said, watching "The Grudge 3" helped me appreciate the value of comparing bad movies with good ones. Watched on...