Category: Movie Reviews

I Watched the Winnie-the-Pooh Horror Movie and It Was Bad

Posted March 25, 2023
Movie Reviews, Movies

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey Director: Rhys Frake-Waterfield Cast: Nikolai Leon, Maria Taylor, Craig David Dowsett, and Chris Cordell Based on: Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne Released: 10 March 2023 (UK) Run time: 84 mins (1h, 24m) Age rating: 18 / R My rating: Oh, bother. The days of adventures and merriment have come to an end, as Christopher Robin – now a young man – has left Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet to fend for themselves. As time passes, feeling angry and abandoned, the two become feral. After getting a taste of blood, Pooh and Piglet set off to find a new source of food. It’s not long before their bloody rampage begins… Well. This was indeed a set of pictures in motion with sound. Was it good? Of course not, it’s a slasher movie based on a beloved children’s character that just went into the US public domain (but is also still protected under UK copyright law, which is where the movie was made). The biggest problem with this movie, I feel, is that it takes itself too seriously. I’m usually a fan of movies with ridiculous premises that are taken seriously because they can work, but this movie is so stark and bleak that it’s not […]

The Great Godzilla Movie Marathon: Part 5 – The American Movies

Posted November 27, 2021
Movie Reviews, Movies, Sci-Fi Month

Hi crew! 👋🏻 We finally made it to the American Godzilla movies! I started this project back in September and now we’re at the end of November and I’m finally finished. Should I be proud to say that I watched all forty Godzilla movies in three months? Probably not but I sort of am. When you have an internationally famous and beloved pop culture icon like Godzilla, Hollywood is of course going to come knocking. Even though it took 44 years for Hollywood to give the world an original American Godzilla, that didn’t stop them from recutting some of the Japanese movies and Americanising them for post-war Americans whose government was occupying Japan at the time and enacted heavy censorship laws. This meant that Japanese filmmakers weren’t allowed to make movies about the military or criticise the US. Godzilla was created by working around the censorship laws and it’s somewhat ironic that Hollywood ended up clamouring to make their own version of the character, with varying results. I was introduced to the franchise by the American movies so I can’t really be too hard on them, but there will always be an exception to that. Unlike the last four posts, I didn’t have to watch […]

The Great Godzilla Movie Marathon: Part 4 – The Reiwa Series

Posted November 25, 2021
Movie Reviews, Movies, Sci-Fi Month

Hi crew! 👋🏻 We’ve reached the end of the Japanese movies with the Reiwa series! Despite technically starting in the Heisei era (1989-2019), the Reiwa series is the most recent and current Godzilla series and also the shortest with only four feature-length movies so far. We do have the Godzilla Singular Point anime on Netflix and three short films that are available on YouTube, but I’m not going to talk about those. There don’t appear to be any plans for live-action Godzilla movies, but my fingers are crossed considering that Toho could just be keeping it a secret. For the last time, I watched these movies in their original Japanese with English subtitles, but I didn’t have to go searching across the internet for them because I own Shin Godzilla on DVD and the three anime movies are Netflix exclusives. At last! The three Netflix movies are available dubbed in English and other languages, but I still went for the Japanese track because why break tradition? SHIN GODZILLA Directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi Released 2016 Run time: 120 mins (2 hrs) My Rating – Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or […]

The Great Godzilla Movie Marathon: Part 3 – The Millennium Series

Posted November 20, 2021
Movie Reviews, Movies, Sci-Fi Month

Hi crew! 👋🏻 We’re now into the Millennium series of the Godzilla franchise! The Millennium series is quite unique from the previous two series as each movie is a continuity reboot that is only connected to the original 1954 movie. In my opinion, this series is probably the easiest to get into for newcomers to the Japanese movies as they don’t necessarily require you to watch every single movie to be able to understand the next one that you watch, unlike a certain franchise these days. After the Millennium series ended in 2004, Toho took a break from producing Godzilla movies in order to let audiences get excited about his eventual return. In that time, we got the 2014 American Godzilla movie which kickstarted the MonsterVerse series but I won’t be talking about that one just yet. Once again, I watched these movies in their original Japanese with English subtitles, and I had to look for them on non-reputable websites thanks to Toho not releasing these movies in the UK at all. The BBFC really made them think that nobody wanted to watch them. GODZILLA 2000: MILLENNIUM Directed by Takao Okawara Released 1999 Run time: 107 minutes (1 hr, 47 mins) My Rating – You […]

The Great Godzilla Movie Marathon: Part 2 – The Heisei Series

Posted November 13, 2021
Movie Reviews, Movies, Sci-Fi Month

Hi crew! 👋🏻 We’re now moving on to the Heisei series of Godzilla! The Heisei series technically began in the Showa era with 1984’s The Return of Godzilla. If you’re not familiar with Japanese historical periods, the Showa period began in 1926 with the coronation of Emperor Hirohito (known as Emperor Showa) and ended when he died in 1989. This led to the Heisei period when his son Akihito was crowned Emperor Heisei and ended in 2019 when he abdicated the throne. Why Godzilla movies get put into series named after the era that they weren’t released in I don’t really know but I’m not going to argue with that. The Heisei series is pretty different from the Showa series. For starters, it’s shorter with 7 movies instead of 15 (making these posts shorter from here on out), the stories are connected to one another and the budgets are much bigger. We have new monsters being introduced as well as old monsters returning with altered designs and origins. As with the previous series of movies, I watched these all in the original Japanese with English subtitles. Unfortunately for me, these movies are not available on DVD or Blu-Ray in the UK and aren’t on […]