Frankenweenie Movie Review

Tim Burton has spent his entire filmmaking career searching for the magic of those old science fiction and horror films of the 1950s and 1960s. That’s the stuff he grew up on and it obviously touched him on a personal level because almost everything he does pays homage in some way to them. Ed Wood is both biography and homage to the director of the cheapest “so bad it’s good” B-movies. His latest film, and first stop-motion animation as director, is Frankenweenie, which happens also to be a remake of an early short film he made in 1984, before he ever stepped behind the camera for a full-length feature. The original short film runs 25 minutes and stars Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall as the parents of a boy who loves his dog, Sparky, and directing cheap 8mm films in the back yard (like Burton did as a boy). After the dog dies in an accident, the boy uses science to reignite life in his dead beloved, much to the dismay of the townspeople, who, in the spirit of Frankenstein, burn down an old windmill in an attempt to destroy the grotesquery of resurrected death.

Best in Show Movie Review

Christopher Guest got a taste for the so-called mockumentary sub-genre when he wrote and starred in Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap, the classic comedy that pretends to be a documentary about an 80s hair metal band. Starting in the mid-90s, Guest began writing and directing his own mockumentary style films beginning with Waiting for Guffman, which focuses on a small town community theater production. My favorite of his films, however, is Best in Show, about the quirky characters involved in the fictional Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show in Philadelphia.