So, as you all are sure aware, I am a huge fan of Transformers. The G1 series is intricate to my childhood and I still am nostalgic for it to this day. While I do love it, I do admit that just about everything that was released of Transformers after the fact… Kind of sucks. Beast Wars was solid until it went back to Cybertron. But beyond the the best I can come up with is Transformers: Prime which is… Okay… Just okay. And don’t even get me started on the fucking Michael Bay movies… Well… Almost everything. There is one other show that I do love from the Transformers line that came up after the fact and that show is Transformers: Animated.
Yet strangely enough this is a series that is not looked upon fondly for some reason. Often considered to be too “kid friendly” and a little silly, Transformers: Animated doesn’t typically get brought up when you talk about the greatness of Transformers… Which is a shame considering the show is fucking solid! So today we are going to open up the vault to make a case for Transformers: Animated being an underrated gem. Continue reading “From the Vaults: Transformers Animated”
So, I’m sitting here and thinking about what I wanted to do for the first review of 2017 that wasn’t a recap of 2016… Ultimately I came up with a blank. School got me stuck firmly in a rut and the other areas I want to cover a little later. So, I thought to myself that it was finally time to open back up the vault and have a second look at a movie from the past. In particular we will be looking at the Pierce Brosnan & Linda Hamilton disaster movie, Dante’s Peak. In particular, what I want to look at is the fact that this movie is not looked upon fondly by many people. It bombed at the box office, walked away with under a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes (though admittedly that is today. Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t what it was then), and is often forgotten compared to its competitive counterpart, Volcano starring Tommy Lee Jones. I want to challenge that slightly. While I do not think the movie is necessarily “great” I do think it is entertaining on a camp level similar to the entertainment, but batshit insanity of Twister. 
It has been a while since I have opened up the vaults and taken a look at something in the past that needs a new eye to its legacy, so why not spin the giant steel wheel and see what we have today. Well if it isn’t one of John Hughes most popular movies of all time. I will state this right away, I think that John Hughes is one of the best filmmakers of all time. He truly revolutionized the 80’s and became a true coming of age icon. However, I do feel that a lot of his movies are looked at through a certain “rose tinted glasses” and some of his bad movies tend to get looked at with the same wave of nostalgia and love. While Sixteen Candles has had a few problems as it has aged over the years, it can still be looked at as a product of its time. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, on the other hand, is a movie that I feel does not hold up in the time that it was created and the time that we find ourselves in today. It is because of this that this movie finds itself being pulled out of the vault and evaluated for the failings that need to be addressed. 
It has been a while since I have opened up the vaults. So why the hell not open it now and take a look at one of the more underrated horror movies of the late 90’s. Horror movies of the 1990’s kind of sucked, let’s just be honest. Everyone was going through their cynical rebellious phase which worked well for a lot of stuff like music… But it didn’t exactly do any favors for the horror film industry that made every movie look like they couldn’t be bothered to make anything of value. But there were a few hidden gems out there. I have already mentioned Event Horizon in the past and now I am going to mention another fan favorite of mine, The Cube. I will say this right now, The Cube 2: Hypercube and The Cube: Zero are absolute trash and besmirch what the original movie set out to do. However, the first movie is an excellent film with a unique message of what happens when bureaucracy runs wild.
It is time again to open up the vaults! It is that lovely time when I go back and look at movies and video games of old that may have not received a fair review in its first run or they could be seen differently as they have aged over time. The movie on today’s menu: Thirteen Ghosts. Oh yes, the movie starring Tony Shahloub and Matthew Lilliard. For those of you following my site will know that I had some rather chipper things to say about it when I discussed redeemable horror movies of the 2000’s. Well, strangely enough, I notice that this is a movie that is typically panned by critics with a solid score of 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. So I am going to make a more formal statement of how underrated this movie was at the time of its release.
It is that time of the week again and I am still feeling that 2016 new year hangover. Fear not, I will be going to the movies soon so I can waste my time with some of October and the Oscar’s dumping ground that is January. But for now, I will dig something out of the vaults to give it a little bit of nostalgic talk. Whenever I came up with the ‘From the Vault’ reviews, I always wanted this to not just be my filler reviews where I just talk about some random ass movies. Whenever I brought something out of the vault, I did want a legitimate reason to discuss it. Whether or not this was to take a second look at a movie that received criticism it did not deserve or a look at a bygone age and the movies that represented it. So today, I want to bring up the 1990’s and more importantly, 1990’s horror movies. The 90’s were a weird time. After the cocaine comedown of the 80’s, the 90’s became a time of rampant cynicism. It was seen in movies, television, culture. The idea of flaunting the establishment and horrific nihilism was the mainstay of our culture. This was reflected in our cinema as well. You see this, ‘fuck the past, they didn’t understand how the world works’ type of attitude popped up a lot when it came to movies. Particularly one that had a pro 90’s grunge look to it.
