DVD Collectors Online

Pet Sematary, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: Pet Sematary: Special Collector's Edition Year: 1989 Director: Mary Lambert Rating: R Length: 103 Min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1 Audio: English: Dolby Digital: 5.1, English: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround, French: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround, Commentary: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround Subtitles: English

Stars:
Dale Midkiff
Fred Gwynne
Denise Crosby
Brad Greenquist
Michael Lombard
Miko Hughes

Plot:
After moving to an idyllic home in the countryside, life seems perfect for the Creed family... but not for long. Louis and Rachel Creed and their two young children settle in to a house that sits next door to a pet cemetery - built on ancient Indian burial ground. Their mysterious new neighbor, Jud Crandall (FRED GWYNNE), hides the cemetery's darkest secret... until a family tragedy brings the secret to life. Now, an unthinkable evil is about to be resurrected.

From STEPHEN KING, the Master of the Macabre, comes a journey that leads to hell and back. Though not everyone survives the trip. For the Creeds, home is where the horror is.

Extras:
Scene Access
Audio Commentary
Feature Trailers
Featurettes
Closed Captioned

My Thoughts:
This is one of my all time favorite horror movies. As with most of the Stephen King movies... Stephen King himself has a cameo in the movie. This time as the preacher at the funeral for Mrs. Dandridge... the woman that helped the creed family in the beginning of the movie. This movie is one of the few movies that can make me cringe when watching it. actually from 2 things in the movie. First when Jud gets the back of his ankle sliced... the next when he is sliced across both cheeks when he is screaming. Both those look extremely painful to me. I couldn't even imagine. Not to mention.. this is a true horror movie for any parent. It even effected me... I had a time watching this movie when my daughter was about Gage's age... especially considering I live on a road that has a high school just down the street... you would not believe the way kids race up and down this road! There for the longest time I wouldn't even let my daughter play in the front yard at all! Anyway... This is just an awesome horror movie! So I definitely highly recommend it if by chance you never seen it before.





Count:
Movie Count: 41
TV Ep. Count: 14
Other Count: 2

(From Month Long Horror/Halloween Marathon: 2010 on October 11th, 2010)

Letter Never Sent, a review by Danae Cassandra

Letter Never Sent (Neotpravlennoye pismo)
Year of Release: 1959
Directed By: Mikhail Kalatozov
Starring: Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Tatiana Samoilova, Vasili Livanov, Yevgeni Urbansky
Genre: Drama

Overview:
The great Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov, known for his virtuosic, emotionally gripping films, perhaps never made a more visually astonishing one than Letter Never SentLetter Never Sent is a fascinating piece of cinematic history and a universal adventure of the highest order.

My Thoughts:
This is a visually striking film.  The cinematography is really, truly beautiful.  Absolutely stunning.  Each shot, each movement, is gorgeously composed, and you could hang stills in galleries next to art photography and not know they were from a film.  The camera work is very definitely the star here.

That doesn't mean that's all there is to this film.  The actors all give solid performances.  There's a real empathy you develop for the characters.  The story is straightforward, yes, but it's well told.  In one view the film reads as propaganda: the characters are very patriotic, cooperative, willing to make sacrifices for the good of their group and their country.  They're hopeful of freeing Russia from dependence upon imported diamonds with a discovery of their own.  Yet, there's also a subtle criticism I read in the film.  These people give up everything for the state, they believe in it with all their hearts, but all it brings them is loss and death.  The voice on the radio tells them that they are eagerly awaited back home (for their discovery) and later that rescue has been sent out,  ... yet it never arrives.  

Excellent film, beautiful cinematography, recommended for film aficionados.  A typically bleak Russian ending makes this probably not a good choice for the more general viewer, though.

Bechdel Test: Fail  

Overall: 4/5

(From Within My (Mom's) Lifetime Marathon on September 19th, 2015)

Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews, a review by Tom

I just noticed that I forgot to view the last Q episode ever: "Q2"
Probably the reason that I forgot to watch it is, that I have recently watched sfdebris' review of it, and I got the feeling that I watched the whole episode now.




(From Tom's Random Star Trek Reviews on December 3rd, 2009)