Renfield (2023) - Movie Review

I reckon we’re in somewhat safe hands here because, no matter how this turns out, there’s little chance of this being the worst Dracula fanfic I’ve reviewed on here. We also have director Chris McKay, who has a healthy pedigree for legitimising the fanfic mentality in mainstream storytelling, from his ambitious work on Robot Chicken to the IP free-for-all of The LEGO Batman Movie (before Warner Bros. went way the hell too far with that idea for films like Space Jam: A New Legacy), and of course, Nic Cage as Dracula. Honestly, I could have just left it at “Nic Cage as Dracula” and that would’ve been enough to sell why this deserves to be watched… but that would still be leaving out a lot of the surprising delights of this feature.

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) - Movie Review

Even though it’s only a little over three years old now, it is quite possible to understate the impact that The LEGO Movie had when it first came out. Aside from being one of the two biggest surprises of 2014, the other being Guardians Of The Galaxy, it also latched directly onto the audience mindset like very few films before it have managed. Starting out as a project where audiences had no real idea what the film would even be like, it resulted in an incredibly astute satire of the Hollywood blockbuster formula as well as being a very entertaining action-adventure in its own right, complete with an acknowledgement of the creativity that made LEGO the household name that it is.

 

Me personally, while I did enjoy it immensely, I was somewhat off-put by the quite literal and jarringly realistic turn it took during the final reel which ended up souring it a bit for me overall. Naturally, when news hit of a spin-off film coming out, this time helmed by LEGO Movie head animator and Adult Swim legend Chris McKay, all the petty misgivings in the world couldn’t stop me from watching it. Computer batteries to power, keyboard to speed.

Wait A Minute!: The LEGO Movie

Time to shake things up a bit around here as I introduce a new segment to the blog: Wait A Minute! So, even though my penchant for listing every film I review may have provided evidence to the contrary, my opinions on films aren’t necessarily set in stone. In fact, the mental background processing that I do for every film I’ve covered here doesn’t stop once I put my thoughts in writing; sometimes, random thoughts concerning some films do crop up from time to time. With this in mind, in the cases of thoughts that are particularly interesting (to me, at least), I figure I’d make it a new feature on here where I re-discuss films I’ve already talked about once before. Only if something particularly noteworthy comes to mind though, so I don’t end up just repeating myself over and over and over again; I do that enough anyway. And so, to kick off this new segment, let’s get into something that I’m sure most of us have heard of before.