October 2022: 2nd Week
This is Top-Notch Movies' second official post. From this point on, every week we'll post a special video dedicated to something important or relevant to the cinematic industry starting today. Thanks for reading us!
MOST IMPORTANT RELEASES (OCTOBER 2nd WEEK)
1. Halloween Ends
Director: David Gordon Green
Starring: Rohan Campbell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Kyle Richards, James Jude Courtney & Nick Castle.
Plot: Four years after the events of Halloween in 2018, Laurie has decided to liberate herself from fear and rage and embrace life. But when a young man is accused of killing a boy he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that will force Laurie to finally confront the evil she can't control, once and for all.
Genre(s): Slasher, Thriller, Horror
Extra information: Halloween Ends is the end of the David Gordon Green Halloween trilogy (Halloween 2018 & Halloween Kills) which is a direct continuation of the John Carpenter's original Halloween back in 1978. Halloween is not only the biggest film releasing on October's second week, it's also the most anticipated horror film of the year and one of the most anticipated films of 2022. Although the movie is not getting very good reviews it's still a Halloween film and it is the "big finale" to the franchise, so it's almost an obligation watching this film on theaters.
2. Pearl
Director: Ti West
Starring: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright & Matthew Sunderland.
Plot: Trapped on her family's isolated farm, Pearl must tend to her ailing father under the bitter and overbearing watch of her devout mother. Lusting for a glamorous life like she's seen in the movies, Pearl's ambitions, temptations, and repressions all collide, in the stunning, technicolor-inspired origin story of X's iconic villain.
Genre(s): Slasher, Drama, Thriller
Extra information: Pearl is the prequel sequel to this years's X. It has premiered at Sitges Film Festival winning over every single admirer of X. When X came people loved that it was something original and a new take on the typical slasher genre. When it was announced that X was the middle chapter of an entire trilogy, people got excited and now that we have the early reviews of Pearl we can say that it is equally as good and original as X if not better. This is one that you don't want to miss on the theaters. Specially because of Mia Goth's spectacular portrayal of this soon-to-be iconic character.
3. Hellraiser
Director: David Bruckner
Starring: Odessa A'zion, Jamie Clayton, Brandon Flynn & Drew Starkey.
Plot: A young woman struggling with addiction comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.
Genre(s): Thriller, Horror, Fantasy, Mystery
Extra information: It is a sequel spin-off of 1997's Hellraiser (which is an absolute masterpiece within the horror community).
4. Smile
Director: Parker Finn
Starring: Sosie Bacon, Caitlin Stasey, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Rob Morgan & Kal Penn
Plot: After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can't explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.
Genre(s): Thriller, Horror, Mystery
Extra information: When the trailer released the average audience anticipated just another really bland, predictable, jumpy horror thriller like Truth or Dare, but the truth is that ever since this movie premiered everyone (both critics and average audiences) thought of this film as one of the biggest nice surprises of the whole year. Saying it's intriguing, interesting and although really heavily influenced by films such as The Ring or It Follows, it manages to be its own thing. So if you're up for a good horror film to celebrate this Halloween, this might be the one.
REVIEW OF THE WEEK - WRITTEN
HALLOWEEN ENDS
NOTE:
As this film is resulting to be extremely divisive amongst audiences I will just remind the reader that this is a personal review. I will obviously point out the positives as well as the negatives aspects of the film but what I might thing that worked you might think that didn't and vice versa.
GOOD:
I personally should say before I start with the actual review that I was surprised for how much I ended up liking the film. Everyone seems to be hating it, and if I'm being honest I sort of understand the reason behind all the hate, but I will get to that in a while. Just listen, if you're a die-hard Halloween fan, don't expect a "big finale" because that isn't what this movie is. It's not even what this movie is trying to be. So just get into this expecting nothing, because regardless of what you expect, you will probably be dissapointed by it.
Although what I just said might seem negative, it isn't for me. As I said there's certain things that for a lot of people doesn't work but for me does so let's get started with the actual review:
The first thing you have to talk about is OF COURSE Jamie Lee Curtis' amazing performance as this beloved character she's been playing for over 40 years now. This might be my favorite Laurie ever (including the original). She was emotional, heartfelt but intelligent and badass (as always) all at once. Just incredible. And if this is the actual final time we get to see her and her character on the big-screen, I must say I'm happy with the way they dicided to end her arc. It worked for me and it felt both earned and satisfying.
The other thing you have to mention is Mr. Michael Myers himself, or shall I say itself? He still is this unstoppable force of nature we all know and love. James Jude Courtney is fantastic as The Shape. Although I will say that in this film the character of Michael Myers has been treated as a concept rather than a person or a character. I can't explain more than that because I don't want to ruin the film experience to anyone, but just for you to know, THAT is the "problem" that's dividing audiences this much.
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This whole paragraph is a brackets to the review just to discuss this a little bit, it may contain very minor spoilers to explain myself more clearly.
So the reason why this film is so much hated is because, much like Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, this movie doesn't work as a Halloween sequel. At least not for the first two acts witch is about an 80% of the film. This movie takes the concept, not the character, of Michael Myers and innovates with it. It goes to this wild extremely different direction that of course massive Halloween fans aren't going to like. Halloween fans are expecting this exceptional gory epic finale to the David Gordon Green franchise, and to be fair, that is what this movie promised to be from the trailers and promotions. The problem is that this film isn't that AT ALL. Halloween Ends tells the story of this babysitter who had an awful experience a couple of years ago and since then no one has respected him. This person then falls in love with Allison, Laurie's granddaughter, and things happen… Michael Myers is not even present in the film until the first hour goes by, that's how far from a Halloween movie this film is. And then when Michael appears the movie goes with this new weird direction we have never seen before. It establishes new rules and ignores the typical formula present all throughout the Halloween franchise.
I personally found it to be really original and unique idea that added some freshness to this franchise. It established totally different rules and it presented a new concept that has never been explored before and is not afraid to go for it.
That decision might annoy, understandingly so, Halloween fans. For me, I really bought it. And I thought they very well developed that completely new idea of what Michael Myers is or might be and what he is capable of. I think this movie would have been one of the best horror pictures in a long long time if it wasn't titled Halloween and had a different masked killer with a different name. OR WASN'T THE END OF A TRILOGY THAT HAS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT THEY DO IN THIS NEW ONE, but I will talk about that in the negatives.
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Leaving aside the plot of the film, I think this movie was and improvement over the past David Gordon Green Halloween films for various reasons:
First of all, the writing. Halloween 2018 was really good except for the writing which got to a second level of quirkiness and over-the-topness dialogue in Halloween Kills till the point were the characters didn't feel like real people. They rather felt as if they were being forced to say this "really cool" one liners so that they could then include them in the trailers. In this film, people actually feel like real people and the unnecessary one liners aren't all over the place.
Secondly, the film is by far the better looking film out of any Halloween film ever (except for the two first ones and maybe 2018). It captures the atmosphere and the tension that you're supposed to feel while watching a Halloween film. Plus is beautifully shot with gorgeous cinematography.
Also, as always with this franchise, the score is I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E. Just amazing, one of the best scores of the year and of this whole franchise.
Also the real lead regardless of what the trailers have been selling, is Rohan Campbell which is excellent in this film. Although his storyline was the conflicting one, and the main one, I still really enjoyed his work in here as well as Andi Matichak's.
Finally, this movie does deliver a satisfying finale to the franchise that I personally was happy with. I still prefer Halloween 2018's ending, but this one wasn't bad at all.
As I can't really get into the plot, which is the divisive aspect of the film, I will at least say that the reason it worked for me is because I accepted the new rules the movie established. But that doesn't outdo the fact that this movie still was supposed to be the end of a trilogy. From there let's move on to the bad aspects of the film.
BAD:
As cool, and refreshing and original as this movie is, this film feels completely out of place. Whereas Halloween Kills did feel like a direct continuation of Halloween 2018, Halloween Ends doesn't. Much of that has to do with the fact that, as I've said four times now, this movie is a total different thing. But it's still the ending of a trilogy. As much as I loved the new storylines, the new ideas, the different viewpoint of the character of Michael Myers and the new concept explored; whenever I go to see a Halloween film what I want to see is Michael Myers killing people and Laurie beating him at the end, specially when you're telling me this is the las time I'll spend with these two iconic characters. And this movies doesn't do that. This movie focuses on a different character and Laurie is a little bit sideline for a good portion of the runtime. Again, I'm one of the few people who actually seems to have enjoyed what the movie went for but it still felt completely out of place, out of tone, out of style and incoherent when compared to either Halloween 2018 or Halloween Kills.
Although it's better than in the previous films, the writing is still not as good as it could be. Certain pieces of dialogue felt really forced just to reach for a moment that would pay-off a certain sequence. That is basically cheating for the sake of a thrilling moment. Sometimes I don't mind it, but others is way too forced not to mind it.
Also, even though I did appreciate the fact that it was different, this wasn't the time to be creative, that's why this film doesn't feel in tone with it's prequels.
Finally, the film did something in the third act that I really didn't like, because it felt like throwing away the whole film to that point just to have Michael Myers and Laurie's final fight. It felt as if they didn't know what to do with a certain character and they just went for the easiest option, rather than a logical or an earned one. Or maybe they knew the movie was going to be different to the rest and that that would piss fans off, so they decided to at the very end go back to the typical Halloween film formula. Either one or the other, it didn't work and it felt like a waste of time and lazy writing, because there were like 5 or 6 other different ways of executing that but making it earned and logical and not like if the whole first and second acts were useless.
CONCLUSION:
I can't really tell whether you're going to like this film or not to be honest. Just go to the theater with modest expectations, don't expect a typical Halloween story and go in knowing that this film takes really bald risks to bring some freshness to the franchise.
Overall I really enjoyed myself while watching it and although it does have some elements that could be improved, the film worked perfectly for me. I liked the final conclusion and I really loved Laurie's final appearance (maybe).
I will give this film 3 and a half out of 5 stars.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK - HALLOWEEN SPECIAL
In honor of the Halloween franchise and of this last new entry, my friend (who next week will start uploading content to the blog due to a problem we've had) and I will share our own independent rankings to show you guys how different our opinions are regarding this franchise.
ALEJANDRO:
EVERY FILM REVIEWED + RANKING
SHORT RANKING
DANIEL:
SHORT RANKING
TOP 3 DISCUSSION
UPCOMING FILMS (Next Week)
- Black Adams: a "new beginning" to the DC Extended Universe starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
- The Banshees Of Inisherin: the new film from acclaimed filmmaker Martin McDonagh, director of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges.
- Triangle Of Sadness: the winner of 2022's Palme d'Or.
- Ticket To Paradise: a romantic-comedy with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Hope you found useful all of this information.
top-notch movies are always out there you just gotta find em.
Alejandro Gómez, Top-Notch Movies
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