REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast [1991]

“There may be something there that wasn’t there before” The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is so perfectly suited for the Disney princess treatment that it’s shocking they didn’t do one until 1991. Crafted to provide young girls a metaphor for the arranged marriages many of them would inevitably be a part of in 18th century France (Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve wrote the first version with Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont soon streamlining it into what we know today), its trajectory became one of the idyllic fantasy of raising one’s…

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REVIEW: Better Off Dead… [1985]

“Aww. Buck up little cowboy” I’m not quite sure what I expected from Better Off Dead, but its complete disregard for any sense of authentic reality was a surprisingly welcome concept. Films from the 80s are notorious for their off-kilter presentation, breaking of the fourth wall, and change of pace hyper-real situations bordering on or actually portraying scenes of fantasy, yet few embrace actual cartoon aesthetic like Savage Steve Holland‘s feature debut. He injects daydreams into the action, quirky side characters popping up for no other reason than a laugh,…

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