Not many sequels match the original. One of those rare gems is Happy Death Day 2U, an impressive, hilarious, amped-up horror meets sci-fi version of the original horror comedy featuring one of our favorite tropes: time loops. The first look audiences had of a sequel to the October 2017 surprise hit Happy Death Day was the trailer in front of the 40th anniversary screening of Halloween in October 2018, receiving overwhelming positive feedback. Director Christopher Landon’s 2019 sequel is so well-written, so well-acted by star Jessica Rothe, it may be better than the original, and it’s good enough to warrant an ongoing horror franchise on the scale of the Final Destination series. The movie revisits Teresa “Tree” Gelbman, a strong, quick-thinking college student who keeps waking up to the same day, learning she must save not only herself but her friends from a freakish masked killer. Yes, Happy Death Day 2U is Tru Calling meets Groundhog Day, but this time it suggests why the events of the first film happened, with the addition of some of clever sci-fi in the vein of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
When we created last year’s preview of 2018 movies we were pretty sure we were going to have some great movies this year, but we were surprised by what ended up being the best. All year we tried to keep up with what Hollywood had to offer and honed in on the genre content we thought was worth examining. We went back and looked at it all and pulled together our picks for our annual Best Movies of 2018.
Genredom. As always, we’re after the best genre content of the year–with our top categories from the Best in Movies. There are thousands of other places that cover plain vanilla dramas and the rest of the film world, but here we’re looking for movies we want to watch. What do all of this year’s selections have in common? In addition to those elements that define each part of genredom, each has a good story. Special effects without a good story is not good entertainment, and we saw plenty of films this year that missed that crucial element.
Come back later this month for our TV and print media picks, and our annual borgHall of Fame inductees. Wait no further, here are our movie picks for 2018:
Best Film, Best Drama – Bohemian Rhapsody (20th Century Fox). For the epic historical costume drama category, this biopic was something fresh and new, even among dozens of movies about bands that came before it. Gary Busey played a great Buddy Holly and Val Kilmer a perfect Jim Morrison, and we can add Rami Malek and Gwilym Lee’s work as Freddie Mercury and Brian May to the same rare league. But it wasn’t only the actors that made it work. Incredible cinematography, costume and set recreations, and an inspiring story spoke to legions of moviegoers. This wasn’t just another biopic, but an engaging drama about misfits that came out on top. Honorable mention: Black Panther (Disney/Marvel).
Best Sci-fi Movie, Best Retro Fix, Best Easter Eggs – Solo: A Star Wars Story (Disney/Lucasfilm). Put aside the noise surrounding the mid-year release of Solo before fans had recovered yet from The Last Jedi, and the resulting film was the best sequel (or prequel) in the franchise since the original trilogy (we rate it right after The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars as #3 overall). All the scenes with Han and Chewbacca were faithful to George Lucas’s original vision, and the new characters were as cool and exciting, and played by exceptional talent, as found in the originals, including sets that looked like they were created in the 1970s of the original trilogy. The Easter Eggs scattered all over provided dozens of callbacks to earlier films. This was an easy choice: no other science fiction film came close to the rip-roaring rollercoaster of this film, and special effects and space battles to match. Honorable mention for Best Sci-Fi Movie: Orbiter 9(Netflix).
Best Superhero Movie, Best Crossover, Best Re-Imagining on Film – Avengers: Infinity War (Disney/Marvel). For all its faults, and there were many, the culmination of ten years of careful planning and tens of thousands of creative inputs delivered something no fan of comics has ever seen before: multiple, fleshed out superheroes played by A-list actors with intertwined stories with a plot that wasn’t all that convoluted. Is it the best superhero move ever? To many fans, yes. But even if it isn’t the best, its scope was as great as any envisioned before it, and the movie was filled with more great sequences than can be found in several other superhero movies of the past few years combined. But teaming up Thor with Rocket? And Spider-Man with Doctor Strange and Iron Man? That beat all the prior Avengers team-ups that came before (and anything offered up from the other studios). It’s easy to brush off any given film with so many superhero movies arriving these days, but this one was the biggest, grandest, and greatest made yet and deserves all the recognition. Honorable mention: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures Animation), Black Panther (Disney/Marvel).
Best Fantasy Movie, Best Comedy Movie – Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Columbia Pictures). No movie provided more laugh-out-loud moments this year than last winter’s surprise hit, a sequel that didn’t need to be a sequel, and a video game tie-in for a fake video game. A funny script and four super leads made this an easy pick in the humor category, but the Raiders of the Lost Ark-inspired adventure ride made for a great fantasy film, too. Honorable mention for Best Fantasy Movie: Black Panther (Disney/Marvel), Ready Player One (Warner Bros./Amblin).
Best Movie Borg, Best Borg Film – Josh Brolin’s Cable, Deadpool 2 (20th Century Fox). Brolin’s take on Cable ended up as one of those great borgs on par with the Terminator from the standpoint of “coolness” factor. But the trick that he wasn’t really the villain of the movie made him that much more compelling in the film’s final moments. Ryan Reynolds was back and equal to his last Deadpool film, and his Magnificent Seven/Samurai Seven round-up of a team was great fun. If not for all that unwinding of what happened in the movie in the coda, this might have made the top superhero movie spot. But Deadpool 2 was a good reminder there is something other than Disney’s MCU to make good superhero flicks.
It’s time for borg′s annual look at the Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroines in film and television. This year we selected 25 characters that rose to the top. Again the studios gave us more to cheer about than ever. We’re highlighting the very best from a slate of fantastic heroines, with characteristics to learn from and cheer on. Determined, decisive, loyal, brave, smart, fierce, strong (and, okay, sometimes evil), you’ll find no one here timid or weepy, but all rely on their individual skills to beat the odds and overcome any obstacle that comes their way. Over the years we have expanded the list to include any tough, savvy, gritty character played by a woman, so villains are welcome here, too. Some may be frazzled, put-upon, war-weary, or human, but all have fought, some against difficult circumstances, others against personal demons (literally, figuratively, or both), and some against gun and laser fire. And they all showed what a tough, kick-ass character is about.
In 2018 these characters broke new ground, and unlike last year’s great list, this year’s selections would not have worked as well had the characters been swapped for males. We had a former MI-5 agent, bounty hunters, assassins, doctors, defenders, advanced superhumans, superheroines, warriors, witches, and even a few cyborgs–with a roster evenly split between television and movie characters.
Better yet, here’s something we haven’t said before. Several of our selections this year were played by women over 50.
These are the Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroines of 2018:
Enfys Nest(Solo: A Star Wars Story). For the first half of Solo: A Star Wars Story, Enfys Nest was the leader of a band of pirates, a character as cool and ruthless as anyone Han Solo ever faced. But once she took off her mask, it became clear how important she was, how significant her mission was–even more so than Han Solo’s own pursuit of mere wealth. She foreshadowed what Han would later find with Leia, an early glimpse at a rogue and scoundrel who actually had some good in him. When they joined forces, it made their characters even better. And she became one of the best warriors in the Star Wars universe since the original trilogy. (Disney/Lucasfilm)
Okoye(Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War). Is there any woman warrior as powerful and impressive in a fantasy movie this year as Danai Gurira’s Okoye? We can’t think of any. A smart commander, a brave soldier, a loyal ally. Stalwart, devoted, steadfast, strong physically, intimidating and wise, with a keen unwavering ferocity, she represented the best of Wakanda, and fought bravely to defend the world at the last stand against Thanos. (Disney/Marvel)
Higgins(Magnum PI). Few television characters are as beloved as Jonathan Higgins in the original Magnum, p.i. So it was going to be risky having any actor step into the role John Hillerman made famous. So when the show honored the original character and late actor with such a finely tuned, updated character and actor, we took notice. Perdita Weeks’s Juliet Higgins is everything Robin Masters was–the character we all thought Higgins was in secret. We don’t know whether we’ll learn the truth this time around and what that truth will be, but as an ex-British secret service agent, she’s a James Bond for Thomas Magnum to partner with–literally running alongside the show’s star and fighting and shooting her way as an equal. And the result? Every episode of the first season was full of great action and fun. (CBS) Continue reading →
This October one of the trailers in front of the 40th anniversary screening of Halloween received some surprising positive audience responses. The trailer was for Happy Death Day 2U, the sequel to the mildly well-received horror movie ($50 million+ profits and better than average reviews), director Christopher Landon‘s October 2017 release, Happy Death Day.
We couldn’t wait to preview the trailer here at borg.com. But we waited. And waited.
At last Universal Pictures has released the October trailer online. As with the original movie, Happy Death Day 2U deals with one of our favorite sci-fi tropes, thetime loop. The sequel appears to shift from a Tru Calling type time loop story to more of a full-on Final Destination vibe, as star Jessica Rothe‘s put-upon college student Tree Gelbman must save not only herself from those freakish masked fiends, this time she must save all of her friends.
We think the trailer is hilarious and Rothe delivers a particularly funny performance. Take a look at the trailer:
This year marks the 120th anniversary of the publication of H.G. Wells’ genre defining science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. We reviewed the latest incarnation of the story earlier this year here at borg. This Halloween Eve marked the 80th anniversary of the broadcast of War of the Worlds,Orson Welles‘ theater company adaptation of Wells’ The War of the Worlds–the one that sent a minor panic across the U.S. in 1938. Smithsonian Magazine has the best historical retrospective on the event (written in 2015) at its website here. The show was just a quickly cobbled together episode of the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast on CBS–the radio network–when an attentive audience took Welles’ performance for reality. Indiana University’s Lilly Library commemorated the anniversary by publicly streaming its newly digitized version of the infamous event derived from Welles’ personal lacquer disc recordings, for free. If you’re continuing your Halloween celebration through the weekend, there’s no better time to turn off the television and take yourself and your family on a time travel trip to sci-fi entertainment, 1930s style. Stream the original radio presentation of Mercury Theatre’s War of the Worlds plus more classic presentations at the library’s website here.
Along with TheWar of the Worlds anniversaries, it’s a good time to celebrate actor and writer John Houseman, who co-founded the Mercury Theatre Players with Welles, and produced and co-wrote the script for the War of the Worlds broadcast. Decades before gaining new fame in his Academy Award-winning role as the scary and iconic Professor Kingsfield in the movie The Paper Chase opposite Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner, and later starring in the television series version, Houseman served as an uncredited co-writer to Herman J. Mankiewicz on Citizen Kane. Initially collaborators, “Jack” Houseman and Welles would have a falling out soon after that was never mended. Never escaping his early connection with Welles, Houseman died thirty years ago today, the day after the 50th anniversary of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast.
Early photograph of Mercury Theatre co-founders Orson Welles and John Houseman.
If you’re a John Carpenter fan, you may recall Houseman as the narrator at the beginning of Carpenter’s 1980 classic ghost story, The Fog. Born in Romania, as the old coastal chap Mr. Machen (a name referencing 1890s horror writer Arthur Machen), Houseman delivered that same brand of captivating storytelling in his one-of-a-kind voice, storytelling that made the War of the Worlds broadcast so famous.
New Army of Darkness! Vampirella! Red Sonja! Bettie Page! All four feature a Halloween theme plus there’s even more Vampirella and Red Sonja, a new Mars Attacks book, a new KISS book, and a James Bond hardcover. If you’re prepping for Halloween weekend, you have plenty of books to get your Halloween spirit engaged, and cosplayers could get their next year of ideas from a single new comic book day tomorrow as Dynamite Comics delivers a great selection of new books to Elite Comics and your local comic book store. We have previews for ten books below courtesy of Dynamite, and a big pile of variant cover previews.
In addition to Dynamite rolling out four one-shot stories for Halloween, James Bond: The Body is out tomorrow in its first collected edition. Bryan Hill and Rodney Buchemi begin a new series featuring your favorite costumed band with KISS: Blood and Stardust (with 12 cover variants available). A new Mars Attacks series begins, with ten variant covers. The second collected edition of Legenderry Red Sonja arrives, plus two new Vampirella issues: Vampirella: Roses for the Dead (with a Billy Tucci cover available) and the Vampirella/Dejah Thoriscrossover.
Even better than seeing the original on the big screen again, writer-director David Gordon Green’s Halloween hits all the right notes to make the latest, but surely not the last, installment in the Halloween series the best sequel of the franchise. This Halloween may be the best horror sequel so far, in any series. Some may think that’s an easy task, yet for fans of the genre and nine previous sequels, including a similar effort 20 years ago with Halloween H20 and a reboot series by Rob Zombie, this weekend’s theatrical release will probably become the new go-to movie after the original, next year and the year after. Horror fans knew the film worked on paper–genre-defining scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis returning again to the role that made her famous, this time showing her extensive preparation for the inevitable return of the serial killer that she barely slipped past as a teenager, contributions from co-creator John Carpenter as executive producer and composer, and Michael Myers’s return, even performed by original actor Nick Castle and a weathered 40-year-old latex mask. The actual delivery fulfills the promise: the retro-style opening credits and Carpenter’s haunting theme prepare the audience for the suspense, thrills, and jumps over the next two hours.
Tha performances are everything: Curtis’s Laurie Strode is tough, smart, and prepared, but she’s not perfect, a bit addled by a lifetime of fear and not physically strong enough to take on Myers, so the outcome is not entirely predictable. Will Patton (The Mothman Prophecies, The Postman, Armageddon, Falling Skies) joins the cast as Sheriff Hawkins, an older version of the first young man to arrive at the original murder scene in 1978. He, along with Omar Dorsey(Castle, Chuck, Starsky & Hutch) as Sheriff Barker, bring the added gravitas and nostalgic vibe from former go-to Carpenter company cast members like Peter Jason and Keith David. Strode’s granddaughter Allyson, played by Andi Matichak (Orange is the New Black, Blue Bloods), like her grandmother, turns the horror genre upside down, as less of a victim, instead taking charge of the situation when possible. To a lesser extent the script provides some opportunity for Ant-Man’sJudy Greer to protect her family as Laurie’s daughter and Allyson’s mother. Rounding out the performances are a young Jibrail Nantambu as more than the stock kid stuck for Halloween night with his babysitter.
When a genre’s failings are part of what define it, even the film’s lesser components are consistent with the spirit of the original film. A doctor and an institution that are overly interested in a 40-year-old murder that gets mocked by a group of students, along with events that occurred in sequels that are ignored this time around and dismissed as the stuff of local legend, all somehow fit the movie and the genre. Could Carpenter himself have filled in some of the story missteps had he directed this one? Who knows. For the most part, Strode, Myers, and their new story follow the rulebook for the characters established 40 years ago.
Odds are, you’re going to find this year to be the best year yet for accessing your favorite Halloween movies in October. Particularly if you have a DVR and basic cable, you’ll be able to find many staples of the holiday season. Below we’ve provided hundreds of movies scheduled to air–hundreds to choose from with a mix of classics and brand new shows–our annual compilation of the movies you get with the typical national basic cable packages. Syfy’s 31 Days of Halloween is back, along with Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween. AMC’s Fear Fest begins October 14, this year swapping out many movies for reruns of The Walking Dead, leads up to the new season premiere of the series (AMC’s listing below will be updated once they publish their final official schedule). And TCM is back with monster classics and special theme days.
We’ve bolded some of our recommendations and other notable events in October. A new Halloween movie will be in theaters and you can watch all the past entries in the series on AMC. TCM honors the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein with several classic spin-offs. You won’t want to miss Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, too. A Stephen King movie marathon, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Bela Legosi, Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger, and lots of exorcisms. Plus lots of animated movies on Freeform, and the Disney channel will be releasing its listings for Monstober later in the month.
All month long on Netflix you can watch horror movies including The Sixth Sense, The Lost Boys, The Boy, Cloverfield, Coraline, Children of the Corn, Cult of Chucky, Van Helsing, plus series like Stranger Things, The Twilight Zone, Ash vs. Evil Dead, Requiem, Bates Motel, and The Frankenstein Chronicles. On Starz you can find a mix of sci-fi and horror movies including John Carpenter’s The Thing, They Live, and Ghosts of Mars, Young Frankenstein, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, Underworld: Blood Wars, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Zombieland, Life, Scream, Amityville: The Awakening, Sleepy Hollow, Hollow Man, The Craft, and many more. If all else fails, you can probably grab your favorite ghost story or other horror classic on Vudu and Amazon Prime, where you can buy or rent recommendations like The Fog (both versions), The Birds, The Shining, Orphan, Let Me In, The Others, The Woman in Black, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Ring, Grimm, and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
So take notes and put your watch list into your DVR now so you don’t miss anything. (All times listed are Central Time):
Initially we figured the new Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina would merely fill the void left between seasons of Stranger Things, but this week’s teaser preview looks like the creators of Riverdale may touch on a look and feel from one of the all-time greatest television shows. You, too, may also feel the vibe of horror similar to the greatest of all teen coming-of-age series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But you might miss the details even if you don’t blink (like levitating or hanged witches, Sabrina entering a blue portal to another world, the above image of Sabrina entering the woods, and more). Netflix has sneakily dropped in several brief scene images that look 100% Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including a Hellmouth-esque beast that could have come from the mind of Joss Whedon (and those three nasty characters seem to be from the same realm as the Gentlemen from the episode “Hush”). How many times have we seen an image of Buffy readying to face demons on her now-classic TV show just like Sabrina in the above image? At a minimum the new series may make up for the absence of another great horror series we miss, Grimm. Ten episodes of the series will be arriving just in time for Halloween. And along with the teaser, a new poster is out, echoing Sabrina’s 16th birthday as seen in the teaser, all pointing toward a decision to commit to the coven or not, which Sabrina will soon face.
If you peruse most of the entertainment websites over the past several hours you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone mentioning the comic book series the show is based on. Even comic book sites are still dwelling on comparing this to the 1990s comedy version. Sabrina was created for Archie Comics 56 years ago by writer George Gladir and artist Dan DeCarlo, and if you’ve been reading borg.com very long (like coverage here) you’re already familiar with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Robert Hack’s fantastically macabre series of the same name published under the Archie Horror imprint. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is based on the characters in the comic book series, detailing the compelling and, yes, chilling, re-imagining of Sabrina’s occult origins–not any of the several TV adaptations–mostly comedies–that have aired.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina stars The Legend of Korra’sKiernan Shipka as Sabrina, with some well-known genre actors: The Lord of the Rings and War of the Worlds’ Miranda Otto (Zelda), Shaun of the Dead and Wonder Woman’sLucy Davis (Hilda), Doctor Who and Gotham’sMichelle Gomez (Mary Wardell), Beverly Hills Cop and Perfect Strangers’Bronson Pinchot (George Hawthorne), and Prince of Persia’sRichard Coyle (Father Blackwood), with Ross Lynch (Harvey Kinkle), Chance Perdomo (Ambrose), Jaz Sinclair (Rosalind), Tati Gabrielle (Prudence), Adeline Rudolph (Agatha), Abigail Cowen (Dorcas), and Lachlan Watson (Susie). That’s Salem the cat sneaking around at the end of the teaser, and yes, we hear series star Kiernan Shipka is allergic to cats, so we’ll have fun watching how the show films them both together this season.
Check out all of these scene images that you may have missed, followed by the full teaser:
Halloween is going to be upon us before we know it. It was only three months ago that we got our first look at the new Halloween movie, and today Universal Pictures released a second trailer. I had a friend momentarily confuse Sigourney Weaver and Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis today, and I think there is a good reason for that: Curtis has been the Scream Queen for 40 years and this latest trailer seems to indicate this next movie may be what the franchise needs to give Curtis’s character full badass screen hero status.
In case you missed it, take a look here at borg.com at the prior trailers for the run of the Halloween films showing Strode’s appearances. Strode is one of those heroines audiences love to see return, as proven by her multiple appearances from a variety of writers and directors. Like Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor, Curtis has created and re-created one of genredom’s enduring characters, even if that character is usually running from a crazed killer. Like fans hope for Hamilton’s return as Connor again next year in a new Terminator movie from James Cameron, in the latest trailer for the new Halloween, Curtis looks tougher and smarter, and more badass than even shown in the first trailer.
In the real world it is public knowledge that Curtis and Weaver are close friends. Can you imagine walking into a restaurant with these two women having a normal lunch sitting across from you? You’d either feel very safe or keep looking over your soldier for something bad to happen.
Get ready for Halloween with this great trailer with Curtis’s character–40 years in the making–taking charge:
