REVIEW: Predator [1987]

I ain’t got time to bleed. I really hope the anecdote is true that Jim and John Thomas wrote their script for Predator based on a joke positing how the only opponent left for Rocky Balboa to fight after Ivan Drago was an alien. It’s a cheesy thought and cheesier premise, so the fact that they and director John McTiernan could craft something as severely brutal as the finished film is a testament to their craft. They decide to move beyond pure action adventure motives, utilizing horror tropes for their…

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REVIEW: Searching [2018]

Mom would be too. While it’s been done before (Unfriended and Open Windows to name two recent features), Aneesh Chaganty‘s all-on-digital-screens thriller Searching has earned a lot of buzz namely because it arrives with a genre pedigree beyond “schlock.” The vast majority of critics, filmgoers, and distributers still find it easy to dismiss horror despite it being an innovator in so many things. They can all roll their eyes at the aforementioned duo, labeling them “cult classics” without ever giving credit for their technological achievements until something “better” comes along.…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: The Dig [2018]

He’s on my land. After fifteen years in jail for murder, Ronan Callahan (Moe Dunford) returns home to find his victim’s father caught in a loop. Every day spent behind bars was a day Sean McKenna (Lorcan Cranitch) languished in the bog behind the Callahans’ property, digging holes along a carefully marked grid in search of his daughter’s body. He promised he wouldn’t stop until she was at rest and so he shoveled mud while his wife lay dying of cancer and still shovels mud now that his other daughter…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Freaks [2018]

Go away ghost. It’s weird to think about a movie like Push today—an under-appreciated, much-maligned sci-fi that I’d argue is a lot better than the legacy it’s been given. The X-Men and Spider-Man trilogies had completed by the time it was released and Iron Man just hit theaters the year before to usher in what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And yet here was a smaller-scale, original piece centering upon a group of mutants that could exist outside the realm of built-in fandoms. Perhaps that which made it special…

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VENICE18 REVIEW: Tumbbad [2018]

Wake her up and ask yourself. As the Hindu folktale at the start of Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad‘s Tumbbad states: while the Goddess of Plenty birthed 160 million deities from her womb (Earth), the one she loved most is also the one that’s been erased from memory. His name is Hastar and he was her first. As such, he saw the wealth and food she provided mankind and coveted it for himself. He reached for the gold and his brother and sisters allowed it for money was merely…

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REVIEW: Mandy [2018]

It’s all but a beautiful dream. At some point during Panos Cosmatos‘ acid trip of a phantasmagoric horror Mandy you will start to wonder if you’re the one tripping on LSD. It could be when oily ghouls on motorcycles arrive with the call of a stone horn’s whistle or perhaps when a severed jugular sprays blood all over our hero’s face as he screams in deranged delight. You’ll watch as the characters onscreen drink hallucinogens, prick others with the stinger of a giant insect, and snort cocaine—each new experience opening…

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REVIEW: Arizona [2018]

Nothing but possibility. You should know going in that Jonathan Watson‘s Arizona is a comedy. It’s billed that way. Former “30 Rock” and current “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” writer Luke Del Tredici is responsible for the script. And Danny McBride has had his face plastered on all the marketing materials. But you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking otherwise at the very start considering the lead role is played by Rosemarie DeWitt. She’s a real estate agent named Cassie who’s shown spinning her sales speak with a couple just as the housing bubble…

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REVIEW: Elizabeth Harvest [2018]

It just happened Brightly lit as though a fantasy beyond Elizabeth’s (Abbey Lee) wildest dreams, we meet her and new husband Henry (Ciarán Hinds) as they drive towards the rest of their lives. She basks in the luck she believes she possesses to find a man of his intelligence and wealth even if she’s quizzical to his having chosen to marry someone as “simple” as she by comparison. But regardless of these nagging insecurities, Elizabeth does seem legitimately happy. The age difference between them is a non-starter and the smiles…

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REVIEW: What Still Remains [2018]

People need to stick together. There are two kinds of people still watching “The Walking Dead”: those who love the gore quotient and believe zombies are the true enemy of the people and those who understand that the undead are merely a catalyst to expose the evil that has always lived within. I’m of the latter group because the drama is always more real when it builds between two very different people trying to survive via diametrically opposed ways than when it’s just the living bashing the skulls of unfeeling…

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FANTASIA18 REVIEW: Cam [2018]

I literally love you. There’s a moment in director Daniel Goldhaber‘s Cam where Alice (Madeline Brewer) is talking to her younger brother Jordan (Devin Druid) about the previous evening’s performance on web-cam site Free Live Girls. She moved past sex gimmicks towards the dark world of snuff film aesthetics and it worked to move her up more leaderboard spots in one session than she ever had before. He gives her a congratulatory fist-bump and asks whether she’s told their mother (Melora Walters‘ Lynne) what her new lucrative job actually is…

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REVIEW: Mission: Impossible – Fallout [2018]

We’re never free. The former leader of a group of rogue agents seeking to unite people against unchecked government oversight—a cause worthy of pause if not for the terrorist acts of genocide utilized to achieve this goal—speaks to the man who caught him with confidence about how he’s worked to ensure the price of that “hero’s” good intentions will soon be paid in full. We wonder how this is possible considering Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) was captured by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) two in-film years ago, spending every second since…

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