In 2001: IT IS WHAT IS IS, Tim Lucas offers a wonderfully appreciation of Stanley Kubrick’s monumental film. Since first seeing 2001 as a teenager, it has been my favorite film, yet I have never found much within myself to say about it, so I truly appreciate it when someone like Tim comes along and says so much that I wish I could have said. Makes me feel like I’m back in grade school, learning to conjugate verbs.
I have just one tiny thing to add. Tim mentions that 2001 inspired many people to become filmmakers and special effects artists, “and no doubt many more still to become scientists, physicists, and astronauts.” This reminded me of a PBS documentary I watched several years ago, on the topic of artificial intelligence. I was amazed and gratified to see how many of the scientists interviewed for the show had first become interested in the subject because they dreamed of one day creating a computer like HAL 9000.
Moving from the futuristic vistas of outer space to ancient horrors buried in Mayan temples, we see that the Horror Movie a Day blog has good things to say about PROM NIGHT:
It’s entertaining, it’s well-made, the pace is good (we get a kill every 10 minutes, not too shabby), it has a cameo by Josh Leonard and the movie Can’t Hardly Wait, and there wasn’t a single point in the film where I was ready to throw something at the screen (except maybe the boyfriend scare. Come on!). I even went in expecting it to be decent, not listening to the reviews (most of which were seemingly written in the writers’ heads prior to seeing the film), and it was even a bit better than my expectations. […] As it stands, it’s the year’s best remake, and a reasonably decent slasher to boot. It’s kind of depressing that simply doing what it set out to do and absolutely nothing else is enough to warrant a recommendation, compared to all the abysmal shit that comes out nowadays, but that’s the reality.