REVIEW: Judy & Punch [2019]

That’s the way to do it. They say your first violent act is the hardest. After that, however, repeating it often proves easier with each subsequent attempt. That initial struggle lies in knowing your actions are wrong. But if you do something unforgivable and never experience any consequences, those bad deeds start to normalize. You become comfortable with what you did and inevitably fall prey to a steady escalation of violence that spills out into the public. Domestic abuse leads to bar fights. Bar fights lead to run-ins with the…

Read More

REVIEW: The Nightingale [2019]

You’re my life. After giving grief and survivor’s guilt physical form by way of a violent monster known as The Babadook, writer/director Jennifer Kent turns her sights on trauma and the ways our bodies, minds, and souls react to unimaginable and unprovoked pain endured at the hands of mankind’s superiority complexes born from delusions of grandeur. To do so she went back into the dark history of her home country of Australia to recognize the hatred and malice shown on the news today along racial, gender, religious, and sexual lines…

Read More

REVIEW: Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood [2019]

Give me sexy, evil Hamlet. It was around midnight between August 8th and 9th, 1969 that Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles on a mission from their cult leader Charles Manson. They were told to go to that house (a former renter named Terry Melcher once rebuked Manson) and kill everyone inside as gruesomely as possible. By morning five people were dead including a pregnant Sharon Tate (whose husband, director Roman Polanski, was in Europe working on a new film) with…

Read More

REVIEW: The Eleven O’Clock [2017]

I’m simply waiting patiently. I love a good wordplay gag delivered at breakneck speed, the sort “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” used to deliver when Stephen Fry went rapid-fire nonsense on Hugh Laurie without a stutter, laugh, or breath. Director Derin Seale‘s short film The Eleven O’Clock is a wonderful comedic scenario in that mold thanks to Josh Lawson‘s shrewdly surreal script wherein a psychiatrist’s new patient believes he too is a psychiatrist. By setting the stage on a day when the real doctor’s secretary hires a temp (Jessica…

Read More

REVIEW: 100 Bloody Acres [2013]

“…We’ll Fertilize Ya!” There is a fine line between horror spoof and horror comedy. The former tries to make fun of the genre while the latter looks to appeal to audiences of both halves. Since most horror generally has a comedic streak anyway, accomplishing this duality above the juvenile humor of a Scary Movie shouldn’t be too hard. But while comedies with horror elements—Beetlejuice, Bubba Ho-Tep, and Ghostbusters—have been a staple through the years, it was 2004’s Shaun of the Dead that gave mainstream audiences a chance to embrace the…

Read More