I like scary kid movies. Even the bad ones, if that’s not redundant. Kids should always be good, innocent, sweet, and cute. So when they turn all murderous – as all kids always do – it’s especially sickening. That’s the built-in goodness of all scary kid movies, whether it’s The Bad Seed or the The Good Son. Not to mention The Omen? That may be the scariest scary kid flick ever and that kid didn’t even talk. What’s so great about these movies is the built-in camp factor – you can’t take a scary kid movie seriously. No matter what the twist is – whether the kid is Satan or just crazy – it’s always real melodramatic.

I recently made my eyeballs watch Orphan, which I reviewed over here. Talk about campy twists. I feel like the makers really got the joke of these things and went for it. It’s not that the movie has a brilliant twist, but it’s worth a good laugh, for sure. How’s that for a recommend?

Also – a lot of adoption advocates were up in arms over this movie, though I can only assume they didn’t take the time to watch the thing (that’s pretty much par for the course for any group protesting a movie, isn’t it?). Because really – if prospective adoptive parents think that this is really something that might happen should they adopt a child, those people should never be parents. It’s the perfect parent litmus test.

I’ll say the only thing I really missed was that Daniel wasn’t in that great owl snow pod costume, flying around the arctic. Otherwise, it was what it was. Beware for spoilers, now…

1. Which was better, the book or the movie or the animated book/movie?

2. Do you think it would’ve been better if Snyder smoked as much opium as Alan Moore?

3. Did Patrick Wilson make the character of Daniel even better than it was in the book?

4. If you had cut the movie, how long would it be?

5. The ending didn’t really add up, did it?

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There seems to be little to no love in the world for the Wachowski’s take on ‘Speed Racer’. Granted, watching the commercials and the trailer, I figured it was a migraine waiting to happen. Considering how terrible the last two Matrix movies were (or, at least, how not-for-me they were), I figured I could write ‘Speed Racer’ off and concentrate on better stuff, like ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.’

Well, we all know how part of that turned out. Who would’ve guessed that ‘Indiana Jones’ would be one of my least favorite movies of the year and ‘Speed Racer’ would be right up there at the top? read more »