Movies

[Guest Posts]

52 Random Things I Learnt About Ed Wood

“Wood’s art is a cultural mutation. He defies comparison — there is no one remotely like him. Dispatched from time, his legend and reputation grows.“ — Rudolph Grey, author of Nightmare of Ecstasy — The Life & Art of Edward D. Wood Jr., 1991. In the world of cinema when you really think about it,

[Something More]

The Debate Continues: Is Physical Media Going Away?

The short answer is of course “No,” physical media will never go away entirely. However, as with most things, the truth is more nuanced and it’s definitely naive to ignore the way things have been trending over the past decade. You can’t stop progress. New technology always has and always will change the landscape of

[Reviews]

M3GAN Review

Gerard Johnstone’s dancing M3GAN took over social media this winter. As a horror movie, it’s not exceptional in the jump scares category, but as a dark comedy mashup of RoboCop, Terminator, The Twilight Zone‘s Talking Tina, and Child’s Play, it pretty much rules. Central to the movie’s charm is an emotional story that also serves

[Reviews]

The Pale Blue Eye Review

Netflix’s The Pale Blue Eye is really trying as a self-serious mix of thriller, murder mystery, and period piece drama. Following in the blood trail left by Christopher Hatton’s artful, but mediocre Raven’s Hollow, Scott Cooper’s The Pale Blue Eye follows a shadowy story of mutilation and murder at the famous military academy Westpoint where

[Reviews]

Resurrection Review

From the producers of Midsommar, Hereditary, and The Witch, comes Resurrection, an afflicted psychological thriller that wrestles with the theme of motherhood and past traumas in chilling ways. It’s an A24-style movie through and through and a return to directing by Andrew Semans (Nancy, Please). Semans wrote the script while he was battling with himself

[Reviews]

SMILE Review

SMILE recently passed the $200 million milestone worldwide to become the highest-grossing horror film of 2022 so far. Beyond its solid opening weekend, SMILE‘s week two drop was only 22%, the best second-week retention for a horror film since Jordan Peele’s Get Out way back in 2017. SMILE‘s surprising box office run sets it up

[Reviews]

Mad Love Review

Mad Love (1935) originally opened on a black screen with an audience warning very similar to Edward van Sloan’s Frankenstein (1931) opening (also written by John L. Balderston). But it was edited out prior to release. The released intro for the film is far better as the opening credits appear over a window before a

[Movies]

A Cold Breeze in the Dark Wood: Three Folk Horror Flicks for Autumn

Once the air starts to chill and the leaves change color, there’s only one sub-genre of scary movies on my mind: folk horror. Few film genres are more autumnal than those dedicated to the natural world’s dark side, full of woods with supernatural secrets and nearby towns trying to hide them. While the genre became

[Reviews]

Halloween Ends Review

It’s been all pumpkin mush after the fairly competent 2018 reboot of Halloween that set up a new premise and narrative framework for the long-running horror franchise with “The Shape” standing at its center. The overstuffed Halloween Kills expanded to examine the rotting effects Michael Myers has inflicted on the citizens of Haddonfield, Illinois. Halloween

[Something More]

The Tragedy of Westworld

I was a fan of Westworld years before it was ever even conceived as a TV show, that’s because, and some of you may not know this, it was first a movie (released in 1973). The movie itself was well-made, but the concept was what made it special. It’s such a fun concept, the kind