At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

In my review for Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers I described my overall attitude towards it as a love/hate relationship.   I really liked the relationship between Rachel and Jamie, and I enjoyed Donald Pleasence’s over the top performance as the half crazed Dr. Loomis. Unfortunately, it is the horror aspect of the movie that fell completely flat for me.   When it comes to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers , I am not nearly as conflicted – I don’t care for it.   I wouldn’t go so far to say I hate Halloween 5 , and it is by no means the worst movie in the franchise, but it is quite possibly the most difficult to watch.    The most curious part of Halloween 5 is how it shrugs off the ending to the previous movie – Michael Myers has been defeated but the evil has been passed on from him to his niece, Jamie.   When Jamie gets home, she (donned in a similar clown costume and mask that Michael wore in the first movie) apparently kills her foster mother with a pa

It is common to compare Fred Dekker’s The Monster Squad to The Goonies ; and with good reason, both of them feature a group of misfit preteens battling evil to save their town. The parallels between the two are certainly there: Phoebe befriending the Frankenstein Monster is reminiscent of Chunk befriending   the deformed Sloth; Mary Ellen Trainor plays the protagonist’s mother in both movies; and the chubby Horace is a dead ringer for Chunk (they sport similar tacky Hawaiian shirts).   However, the stakes are a lot higher in The Monster Squad;     Goonies are merely trying to save their homes, while the fate of the entire world rests in the hands of the Monster Squad. The Goonies is a self contained adventure, while The Monster Squad is much more epic in scope (despite being made on a smaller budget).     If The Goonies is the superior movie out of the two, that’s because its protagonist’s goals are more relatable – we all, inevitably, have to face the reality of moving an