The Incredibles (2004)

★★★★
Established nearly ten years ago [ed: This review was written in 2004] as the pinnacle of modern animation, Pixar keeps reaffirming its lofty status with every new release, and The Incredibles is no exception. This remarkably entertaining and meaty motion picture is all eye candy and goofy entertainment for children, but underneath lies a biting denunciation on a number of contemporary topics, such as frivolous lawsuits. Writer/director Brad Bird tackled Cold War fears with his amazing The Iron Giant, and he proves here that he's a sly commentator as well as animator and storyteller.

Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2018)

zero stars
I can only speculate what motived the people behind Day of the Dead: Bloodline into making this ridiculous movie, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the success of the television series The Walking Dead. The T.V. show takes the zombie apocalypse concept and stretches it out over a long period of time with recurring characters, offering viewers a unique and often tense narrative about the end of civilization. George Romero popularized this concept in 1968. His imitators are legion. Whether they are from Italy or Bulgaria, the pretenders never run out of steam. In the case of Day of the Dead (1985), there have been two remakes, neither of which captured the Romero magic while lumbering over the material in a braindead manner. This movie has no business existing. There’s nothing about it to justify its commitment to film (or digital, whatever the case may be). It’s badly acted and plotted.

House of Wax (2005)

★★★
House of Wax follows the conventions of the slasher genre so precisely that it’s almost a waste of time to criticize it on that level. Like a James Bond movie or another retelling of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, the latest slasher movie adheres to rigid guidelines with a little tweaking to differentiate it from its predecessors. House of Wax turns out to be a lot better than it might at first appear, mainly due to said tweaking, a sly sense of humor, old-fashioned movie gore and a virtuoso finale.

Angus (1995)

★★★
Angus is much more serious than it appears. This film could easily be mistaken for a high school comedy about a social misfit. The director is Patrick Read Johnson, who helmed one of the worst movies ever made: Baby's Day Out. He rebounded nicely after that failed experiment to deliver a genuinely moving comedy/drama about an outsider who has difficulty fitting in. Angus is an overweight freshman, a talented football player and a smart student, and he's hopelessly in love with a girl out of his reach.

Varsity Blues (1999)

★★★½
Varsity Blues rode a wave of predictable kiddie/teen sports movies that arrived in abundance during the ‘90s, and I think it unfairly gets lumped into that group. Reviews at the time labeled it as another entry in that genre, but look closely and you’ll see that Varsity Blues injected plenty of unorthodox and surprising plot points that not only differentiated it from the likes of Little Giants, but showed that with the right cast and crew, a movie with a traditional and derivative core can rise above them. All that is needed is to recognize that a movie can be predictable and use a little imagination to take the plot into unexpected places.