Grant Minnick's Movie Reviews

“They’re coming to get you, Barbra!” - Johnny Night Of The Living Dead is a 1968 sci-fi horror film directed by George A. Romero, and starring Judith O’Dea, Duane Jones, Karl Hardman, and Keith Wayne.  The film starts with Barbra (O’Dea) and her brother Johnny going to a cemetery to put flowers on their late father’s grave. It is there that they have their first encounter with a zombie.  Johnny falls, hits his head on a gravestone, and dies. Barbra runs back to her car, and makes her way to a farmhouse where she meets Ben (Jones), a strong and kind black man who takes charge of beefing up the security of the house.  There, the two of them meet Harry Cooper, the antagonist of the film, his wife Helen, their sick daughter Karen, and young lovers Tom and Judy. It is then that they realize that they need to work together as a group to survive. This movie was absolutely revolutionary in that it was really unlike anything anybody had ever seen before at the time. ...

“That’s a bingo!” - Colonel Hans Landa a.k.a. The Jew Hunter Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 war film starring Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Mélanie Laurent, and Christoph Waltz, and directed by my all-time favorite director Quentin Tarantino.  Set back in WWII in Nazi-occupied France, the film tells two different stories about revenge against the Third Reich. One of these stories is about a Jewish woman who creates a new life for herself under a new name and sets up a plan to kill the Nazi colonel who killed her family.  The other story follows the journey of The Basterds, a group of Jewish-American soldiers who have one goal in mind that they intend to achieve: kill as many Nazis as possible. I shared this movie with my father the other night, and needless to say, he loved it.  My father and I have bonded over many different movies together, but Quentin Tarantino movies are usually the ones that we have the most fun watching and talking about. ...

“I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the past twenty years.  And I’m just now waking up.” - Lester Burnham American Beauty is a 1999 comedy drama film directed by Sam Mendes, and starring Annette Bening, and Kevin Spacey.  The movie is about Lester Burnham (Spacey,) a 42 year old man whose marriage and life are tearing at the seams. Throughout the film, the lives of people related to Lester in some way are explored, including his own family, people he works with, his neighbors, and his acquaintances.   I wanted to take the time to talk about this movie in depth with no restraint on spoilers, but since I recognize that there are people who have not seen the film, I will first go over my basic thoughts of it, and get into the really in-depth stuff later in this review.   I will start by saying that this film is a true masterpiece, and I believe that it’s a film that should be seen by everyone at least once before they die.  It’s a brilliant satire on ...