Reviews of films
So, you’re a fan of Judy Garland? You watched her suffer in Judy (2019) and you raced through her career in Me and My Shadows (2001). Now tell me… have you seen Rainbow? NBC aired the television special on November … Continue reading Movie Review: Rainbow (1978)
When the credits came up on Gerald’s Game and showed that it was based on a story by Stephen King, I went, “Oh, that makes sense.” The entire movie finally came together for me. The flashbacks to a broken childhood … Continue reading Review: Gerald’s Game (2017)
In Which We’ve Met Before, Haven’t We. David Lynch has always been an underground filmmaker. Throughout his career Lynch’s narratives have snaked around the world to find the throbbing and humming forces that crawl just beneath the surface. That the … Continue reading Millennial Malaise 37: Lost Highway
Before there was the Blair Witch, there was The Last Broadcast The Last Broadcast (1998) Found footage is hit or miss because there’s a fine line between “holy crap these amateurs are in over their heads “ and “wow this … Continue reading Month of Horror 2019 Day 10 The Last Broadcast
Uwe Boll’s name is sometimes tossed around whenever bad movie directors are mentioned. But which movie is his most emblematic? Tommy Wiseau is forever tied to The Room, and Ed Wood has Plan 9 From Outer Space. Boll is better … Continue reading Review: House of the Dead (2003)
What? Didn’t I just talk about this movie last week? Nope, this is another movie called Headshot. Available in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and maybe a few other countries. Approximately 119 minutes. A police officer, accompanied by four prison … Continue reading WTF ASIA 76: Headshot (2016)
Did you know Werner Herzhog produced a found footage horror movie that stars director Zak Penn? Well if not, you’re welcome. Incident at Loch Ness (2004) A Tale of Two Movies This movie is bit tricky to untangle because it … Continue reading Month of Horror 2019 Day 9 Incident at Loch Ness
Content warning for discussion of violence, including but not limited to sexual violence. There is no word that captures the nature and subject of Jean-luc Godard’s film, Weekend, quite like bourgeoisie in both its French and Marxist connotations, embodying the dual nature … Continue reading Succinct Cinema: Absurdism as Class Warfare in Godard’s Weekend
In Green Room, we follow a struggling punk band that includes the late Anton Yelchin and Ali Shawkat as members. Desperate for a gig, they accept one at a known White Power establishment in rural Oregon. Pickups line the dirt … Continue reading Review: Green Room (2015)
Today continues a series on found footage horror for the week. So much of life is filled with little mysteries. About a year ago when leaving work there was a red apple on the roof my car. Surely someone left … Continue reading Month of Horror 2019 Day 8 Lake Mungo
Welcome to my weekly discussion of the films of the Walt Disney Studio. I’m proceeding mostly chronologically. The title comes from a quote from Walt, “I never called my work an ‘art’ It’s part of show business, the business of … Continue reading Building Entertainment: The Animated Films of the Walt Disney Studio. Live-action Edition. The Watcher in the Woods
Say you wanted to create the most hipstery ghost story of all time. First, you put its main character (Casey Affleck) under a Halloween sheet ghost costume the entire time. Second, after a long stretch of silence, include a character … Continue reading Review: A Ghost Story (2017)
Horror is a genre where a lot of diehards have seen the majority of “the classics” and finding new features worth checking out can be a task that often leads to looking for a diamond in the rough (and boy … Continue reading Month of Horror 2019 Days 6-7 Gives you an international double feature
Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon opens with a shot of Jesse (Elle Fanning) modeling on a photoshoot as a dead corpse. Blood drips from her neck as Fanning maintains a dead-eyed stare. It’s a long shot. The camera starts … Continue reading Review: The Neon Demon (2016)
Going to try and get these up for each Saturday of the month as part of a theme of specifically gonzo, weird/fun/different horror entries I consider more to be “midnight movies”. Let’s Get Right to the Point Watch this movie. … Continue reading Month of Horror 2019 Day 5 Saturday Midnight Feature: Hausu
In Which It’s the Millennium and Motives are Incidental The 90’s were an odd duck of a decade for the horror genre. Since, oh say about the mid 50’s, horror films enjoyed an existence of being the mainline to the … Continue reading Millennial Malaise 36: Scream
Horror movies like all genres go through phases. Sometimes this yields results where a beloved subgenre is encased in amber for future generations to revisit (your screwball comedies for instance). Other times, movies just seem to get forgotten along the … Continue reading Month of Horror 2019 Day 4 Targets
At some point Kevin Smith went on tour screening Yoga Hosers. The tour posters proudly declared it “The Wurst Movie Ever Made!” This got me wondering: was that movie supposed to be an eclectic celebration of genre elements that nevertheless … Continue reading Review: Yoga Hosers (2016)
Writer’s note: I love horror movies both from a geeky fanboy stance and also as someone whose spent a fair amount of time in film academia. While the genre definitely has more lows than highs, I find it fascinating … Continue reading Month of Horror 2019: Days 1-3 Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise
To a certain extent, podcasters are the new radio morning zoo crew, only with the license to be far more crass and vulgar. At least that’s what is theorized by Tusk (the first movie in the “True North” series), where … Continue reading Review: Tusk (2014)
There’s a moment in Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem that sums up the entire movie for me. Our protagonist, Sherri Moon Zombie, is being mad by a song they played at her job as a radio show host. (On a … Continue reading Review: The Lords of Salem (2012)
