Movie Reviews
I’m going to put this right up front: I’m a fan of the V/H/S anthologies, the same way I’m a massive fan of horror stories told around campfires and short horror collections, like Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew. Quick doses of horror that build to an […]
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Five years separate us from Todd Phillips’ startling Joker and a return to Gotham City in Joker: Folie à Deux. In the film’s world, only two years have passed since Arthur Fleck’s (Joaquin Phoenix) first and only appearance on Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro) late-night show, a night that ended in Arthur’s imprisonment and full […]
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Now playing on YouTube. The prospect of watching fan-made media can be a double-edged sword. You never know what the story, script, production values, or acting are going to be like, as a lot of fan films are cobbled together with little more than a lot of love – and nonexistent budgets – for whatever […]
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There’s something fiendish about the way Jason Yu’s film Sleep (original Korean title: 잠 [Jam]) operates. A strong case is built for untoward and spooky goings-on, but the staggering amount of ambiguity Yu builds into his script and visuals asks a little more of us than expecting easily resolved conflict. The meat of Sleep is […]
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Starting with The Transformers: The Movie, the toy line and cartoon series has evolved a dubious cinematic life. The 1986 animated film was a childhood classic that still holds up, thanks to its outstanding voice cast (which includes Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles, for cryin’ out loud!) and the hand-drawn visuals that endeared us to […]
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1988’s Beetlejuice saw filmmaker Tim Burton – then with only Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure under his belt and one year away from the release of Batman – dazzle audiences with his wild visions of the afterlife, pitting the titular character against the recently-deceased and the still-living. The film is the definition of “gallows humor,” sporting a […]
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For 45 years, two cinematic creatures have brought terror to movie theaters and TV screens all over the world. First seen in Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien, the ovomorph (known generally as the facehugger) and the xenomorph were nightmares brought to hellish life. To quote one of that film’s characters, the xenomorph is “the perfect organism. […]
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God, I loved this movie. There’s nothing like being in the splash zone of this perfect storm. Let’s see: We’ve got Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), James “Logan” Howlett/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), and, finally, the first R-rated under-the-official-Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-umbrella release. Trust me: They understand the assignment and know how to make every second of it count… all the […]
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In 1996, Jan De Bont – fresh off his wildly successful summer action film Speed two years prior – battered theatergoers senseless with the disaster epic Twister. While filled with arch characters and packed with stale action movie moments (if I ever see another “Grab my hand!” scene again… ugh), the finished film ratcheted up […]
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There’s nothing in the world like a movie full of single-minded intent and purpose. It’s the way that writers and directors push us down a one-lane path toward an unwieldy, dangerous truth that reveals a film’s entire existence. And no film genre in the world encapsulates this portentous feeling – emoted in the film by […]
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