Practical effects age better than pixels because the camera photographed something real. This tag collects reviews and essays celebrating practical effects work: puppets, prosthetics, and the craft of physical movie magic.
1970sSeptember 11, 2026
Zombie (1979) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lucio Fulci was hired to make an unauthorized sequel to Dawn of the Dead and made something older instead, closer to Caribbean voodoo horror than to Romero. It contains…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
The Return of the Living Dead (1985) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Dan O'Bannon invented the brain-eating zombie, the running zombie and the talking zombie in one film, and every one of those is now so…
1990sSeptember 11, 2026
Dead Alive (1992) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Peter Jackson made the bloodiest film ever produced, reportedly using around three hundred litres of fake blood in the last twenty minutes alone, and underneath the lawnmower it…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Day of the Dead (1985) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Romero's budget was cut in half and he rewrote it into a chamber piece about twelve people in a bunker who hate each other. The zombies…
1990sSeptember 10, 2026
Batman & Robin (1997) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Warner Bros. told Joel Schumacher to make it more toyetic, and he did exactly that. Schumacher later apologized publicly to fans, which is a rarer and more…
2000sSeptember 10, 2026
The Matrix sequels rate 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Shot back to back and released six months apart, they answer questions the first film was stronger for leaving open, and they contain two of the best action…
2020sSeptember 10, 2026
Tenet (2020) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Nolan bought a real 747 to crash because it cost less than building a model, and then mixed the film so that a substantial number of people could not…
1940sSeptember 10, 2026
Pan's Labyrinth (2006) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Del Toro built two worlds with identical rules and let a child move between them, and the fascist captain is more frightening than anything in the labyrinth. It…
1980sSeptember 10, 2026
Road House (1989) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A philosophy graduate is hired to clean up a Missouri bar and ends up fighting a monster truck. It took five Razzie nominations, underperformed in cinemas, and became…
1990sSeptember 10, 2026
The Arrival (1996) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A radio astronomer finds a signal and works out that the aliens landed decades ago and are quietly heating the planet to suit themselves. It cost twenty-five million…
2000sSeptember 10, 2026
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Roland Emmerich froze the northern hemisphere in about a week, which is roughly ten thousand times faster than any climate model permits, and produced the most…
1970sSeptember 10, 2026
Jaws (1975) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The mechanical shark did not work, the schedule ran three times over, and the failure produced the technique. Spielberg was twenty-seven and had to build suspense out of everything…
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