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Reviews
Toys (1992)
a surreal movie with an uplifting message
When TOYS first came out, i heard nothing but bad reviews on it. However, it was on TV one day, and having nothing better to do, I watched it. I found that it was an exceptional movie if you just looked beyond the slightly silly story. The movie's story is a parallel for what is happening in our society today. Our children's youthful innocence is being lost to violence, whether in video games or in reality. We have our protagonist (Robin Williams), a man who has never really grown up, and is still a child at heart. Our antagonist, a general who struggles to regain his former glory, with the innocence of children at stake. This is a movie worth seeing.
Psycho (1998)
This remake blows goats
First of all, I have seen the original PSYCHO, so don't think I'm bashing the original movie. I loved it, with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and superb direction by Alfred Hitchcock. I even have the Movie Maniacs' Norman Bates action figure. But, Gus VanSant's remake falls short of Hitchcock's definative movie. For one thing, I'm glad he didn't change the script, nothing else could work. But, I hate the casting. You could read Perkins' face and see the struggle between Norman's split personalities. Also, PSYCHO does not work in color. A moody film like PSYCHO needs black and white to effectively work. The only part I liked was the way VanSant did the killing sequences, when he spliced in cuts to a cloudy sky in the shower sequence, and Arbogast's murder was handled exceptionally well. However, these well-done sequences do not make up for a poorly done film. I pray that no one else trys to "improve" on a Hitchcock classic. Except maybe "The Birds." That movie could use a remake IMHO.
Captain Simian & The Space Monkeys (1996)
Funny, but a few complaints
Reruns of "Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys" came on in my area recently, and I found it to be an entertaining show with witty jabs at famous sci-fi plots and characters. However, in one episode, there was a scene where a character was hit by a deadly ray and was reduced to a pool of blood and the character's rib cage. It is a good cartoon, but I would watch out for these rarely-occurring events of violence or gory detail. Also, there may be some humor that kids might not get.