Five best films in the 'Halloween' series
With this weekend's new "Halloween" movie in mind, let's count down the five best entries in the franchise. (There are actually 11 movies, but these are the ones worth talking about.)
5. "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers" (1988): After sitting out a season (of the witch), Michael returns to kill the rest of his family, specifically Jamie, the daughter of Laurie Strode (who died between films). Taken on its own, "Halloween 4" is one of the best and scariest films in the series. It sticks to the fundamentals of the franchise and reaps all the rewards.
4. "Halloween II" (2009): Rob Zombie played with fire by remaking John Carpenter's "Halloween," one of the most celebrated horror movies ever made. But the "Halloween" sequels were always a hodgepodge of disjointed ideas, and Zombie's effort to condense all those weird elements into a single film is a major improvement.
3. "Halloween" (2018): David Gordon Green's new film isn't the first film to ignore the majority of the franchise's continuity, and it's not the best, either. But it's an impeccably stylish slasher thriller, in which Myers returns to Haddonfield 40 years after the massacre, where Laurie Strode is waiting for him along with her estranged daughter and her loving granddaughter (Andi Matichak).
2. "Halloween: H2O" (1998): The first "Halloween" film to completely reset the franchise continuity (and to depict Laurie Strode as a traumatized woman living in fear of Michael's return) is a slick and emotionally satisfying finale to the franchise — even though it turned out not to be the finale. Myers finally tracks down Laurie, living under a new name and working at a private school, where her son (Josh Hartnett) and his girlfriend (Michelle Williams) are hiding out for Halloween when they should be on a field trip. The slasher elements are above average, but it's Curtis who brings "H2O" to life by delivering one of the finest performances of her career.
1. "Halloween" (1978): Turn off the background noise of the sequels, reboots and retcons, and just watch John Carpenter's original for what it always was: a terrifying urban legend come to life. It's a smart, earnest, believable horror movie that has always been terrifying. It probably always will be.
'The Real World' wants to be friends
"The Real World" is headed to Facebook. The groundbreaking reality series will be revived at the social media company with three new seasons in the U.S., Mexico and Thailand. The "re-imagined" version of the show, now titled "MTV's The Real World," is set to debut in spring 2019.
A pioneer in the reality TV genre back when it first premiered in 1992, "The Real World" ran for 32 seasons with the same basic premise — the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real — and was hailed for its groundbreaking portrayals of such issues as alcohol and drug abuse, race, religion, sexuality and homophobia.
