Popcorn Perspective with Danny Minton
Week of September 30, 2019
Crawl
Rated R for bloody creature violence, and brief language
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%
Available on Disc and Streaming
What seems like a simple plot of Jaws with Alligators turns out to be a fun and rather scary adventure when a young girl (Kaya Scodelario) attempts to rescue her father (Barry Pepper) during a hurricane in rural Florida, only to find that they are trapped by giant Alligators with a taste for humans. At just less than 90 minutes, its like a roller coaster of a film, filmed with plenty of claustrophobia, a decent script, great creature effects and surprisingly good acting by the girl and her father, who share the majority of the screen time with the gators. My chief complaint is that they made it just gory enough to hit an R rating and this would have been so much better, and would have picked up a much larger audience, at PG-13. B
Yesterday
Rated PG-13 for suggestive content and language
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 63%
Available on Disc and Streaming
This great little feel-good pic combines one of my favorite directors (Danny Boyle) with one of my favorite screenwriters (Richard Curtis) and the music of the greatest band in rock history – the Beatles. After a struggling singer-songwriter gets hit by a bus during a blackout, he awakens to discover that the Beatles never existed – and it is now his job to introduce the world to their music. The movie turns out to not just be a love letter to the Fab Four, but also a smart romantic comedy with an incredibly creative plot. I’m not sure why the lower Rotten Tomatoes score exists, but after three viewings now, I am still a great big fan. A
Child’s Play
Rated R for bloody horror violence, and language throughout
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 63%
Available on Disc and Streaming
This reboot of the famous 80’s horror franchise follows the escapades of a possessed, murderous doll, powered by modern, interactive technology. Sharing similarities with the plot of AI, the doll is there to take care of its owner, even if that means to destroy all threats, and here Chucky does so in horrific and violent ways. While not as fun or funny as the 1988 original film, the movie does something interesting in that it tries to be relevant, and to a degree it succeeds. It’s not terrifically scary, but it turns out to be better than I thought it could be thanks to this novel approach. Overall, it should make for a good Halloween sleepover flick. B-