It's a thousand years to Christmas, Mr. Holloway.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

(1983)

There's a good film in here somewhere, clearest in the library scenes between Jonathan Pryce and Jason Robards. And, coming from Disney's commendable - if patchy in quality and financially iffy - dark period, there's a strong element of thematically murky and even adult material running through it.

Unfortunately it's scuppered by Disney-enforced reshoots (clearest in the spider attack sequence where the kids are a good year or so older). It's mystifying how studios still go down this route of delaying the release of a film they aren't happy with while they pump in several £m of new scenes only for it to still go belly-up when it does come out. It’s also saddled with some of the most Disney-kids you could imagine in the leads.

The film has a lovely, moody, look, though, and James Horner test drives is his Aliens-attack theme 3 years early. In an alternate universe, Gilliam was thrown this after Time Bandits and so found it unnecessary to make Dr. Parnassus.

***

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She was addicted to Tums for a while.

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Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
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(SPOILERS) Black Hawk Down completed a trilogy of hits for Ridley Scott, a run of consistency he’d not seen even a glimmer of hitherto. He was now a brazenly commercial filmmaker, one who could boast big box office under his belt where previously such overt forays had seen mixed results (Black Rain, G.I. Jane). It also saw him strip away the last vestiges of artistic leanings from his persona, leaving behind, it seemed, only technical virtuosity. Scott was now given to the increasingly thick-headed soundbite (“every war movie is an anti-war movie”) in justification for whatever his latest carry-on carried in terms of controversial elements, and more than happy to bed down with the Pentagon (long-standing collaborators with producer Jerry Bruckheimer) to make a movie that, while depictinga less than auspicious intervention by the US military (“Based on an Actual Event” is a marvellous catch-all for wanton fabrication), managed to turn it into a parade of heroes pe…

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