Abominable Christmas (2012)

Despite the fact that I've given this Christmas animation a low score, I can honestly say that I still think I've been quite generous. I can also honestly say that the few other comments I've seen on the film are even more generous. This piece of rubbish currently has a rating of 6/10 on IMDb, for goodness sake. People seem to forgive a lot when something is aimed at kids, but that's no excuse for the minimal effort put on display here.

The story revolved around two little snow creatures, Abby (Ariel Winter) and Adam (Nolan Gould). They are warned by their father, listed as Abominable Dad (Ray Liotta) to avoid humans, and to especially avoid being spotted by a scientist named Margaret Knowhow (Jane Lynch), so they play around for a while and end up being spotted, dashing off to hide in the house of Mr. Winterbottom (Emilio Estevez) and his son (Drake Bell) and daughter (Isabella Acres). Abominable Dad searches for his kids, while also trying to avoid the attention of a local dog catcher (Matthew Lillard).

The best thing I can say about Abominable Christmas is that it's brief. It runs for just over 40 minutes, which makes it slightly easier to bear. Being aimed at very young viewers, it has nothing complicated in the mix. In fact, most of the little lessons throughout the script, written by Michael and Samantha Shear, are just fine for little ones to learn.

The cast all do okay, but they're not exactly stretched in any of the roles.

Director Chad Van De Keere does the least amount possible, providing viewers with visuals that I can honestly say look worse than the Monsters, Inc. game that I used to play on the Playstation One. It makes for a frustrating experience. Yes, children may be more easily entertained, and may actually prefer the simpler designs, but I suspect that a fair few of them will be just as disappointed as any adults having to watch the thing.

It's unfair to expect Pixar levels of quality from every animated movie, but it's also unfair to fob viewers off with something that looks like it could have been made on a Commodore 64.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Abominable-Christmas-Emilio-Estevez/dp/B00CSW0706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387282530&sr=8-1&keywords=abominable+christmas

Nightmares (1983)

Ahhhhh the 1980s. A decade that gave us the coolness of Judd Nelson and then balanced things out by forcing us to endure performances from Emilio Estevez (who stars in this). A decade that allowed Veronica Cartwright (who also stars in this) to perfect her acting style in the manner of the most annoying female onscreen in any movie she starred in. A decade that gave us the brilliance of Creepshow and the mundanity of anthology horrors like this one.

Featuring four tales of descending quality, Nightmares is a pretty poor film that's probably more fondly remembered than it ought to be by horror fans who haven't seen it in many years.

The first story is all about an escaped killer and will be familiar to anyone who knows their urban legends (in fact, it's a horror staple that was reused in Body Bags, a poor anthology movie that still manages to be better than this one, and Urban Legend). The second story combines the best of the 1980s - "cutting-edge" computer graphics and Emilio Estevez (he plays an arcade whizz determined to beat the newest and hottest game). Did I say the best of the 1980s? I meant the worst. Story three uses Lance Henriksen very poorly, giving him an ineffective role in an ineffective rip-off of Duel. But, never fear, the very worst has been saved for the very last tale - "Night Of The Rat" is, off the top of my head, one of the worst anthology movie segments that I have ever had the displeasure of watching. It's about a big rat, in case you couldn't guess, and is the one with Veronica Cartwright being weak and whiny and generally unpleasant while Richard Masur has to play the most pig-headed husband for just long enough for viewers to start rooting for the big rat.

Written by Christopher Crowe and Jeffrey Bloom, Nightmares suffers from poor material that's not lifted up by a weak cast and then hampered further by the direction from Joseph Sargent. You may remember Joseph Sargent as the director of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three or you may remember him as the director of Jaws: The Revenge. This film is certainly closer to the latter than the former.

Sometimes laughable, but more often than not just pretty boring, this is one anthology movie that you can easily miss. Settle down and watch some old episodes of Tales From The Crypt instead. Much better.

If you really MUST give it a viewing then ignore the link below for the extortionatel priced retail copies and just go and view it on YouTube instead. It's there and if you're watching it for free then you might just feel that you got your money's worth.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Nightmares-Cristina-Raines/dp/B00000K0DZ