The phrase ‘You can’t go home again,’ apparently came from a Thomas Wolfe novel of the same name – which is news to me and while I suspect that it was never intended to apply to movies, it works because who hasn’t recalled seeing something at an earlier point in their lives that they don’t […]
The first movie I saw – or thought I saw – from Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson was Resolution (2012). I enjoyed it but thought of it as a one-off and thought no more of it, which is somewhat unusual for me because I’ve always had more of a fascination with the people behind the […]
I’ve been listening to a lot of Chapo Trap House the past few months – and while to this day I have no idea what a ‘Chapo Trap House’ is beyond the name of their troupe, I find their commentary oftentimes really insightful and entertaining. Listening to them reminds me of what’s it like to […]
When people talk about Marvel movies, what they tend to talk about is the ‘Marvel Formula,’ which is a way of saying that they’re very consistent in terms of their plots, story beats and visual presentation. And on one level that’s fair, and on another it’s really lazy because ANY series of movies – or […]
If you’ve seen Eternals – currently the No. 1 movie in the United States – you’ve likely seen the kiss that was banned in three countries (a commendable stand by Disney, as long as one understands if any of those countries had the economic weight of, let’s say China, then that kiss would have been […]
Jacob Chase’s Come Play is a surprisingly good horror movie; ‘surprisingly’ because there’s a lot of really mediocre horror out there so movies that manage to work are worth drawing attention to. What make it such a joy for me is that any movie that makes me feel something – as long as it isn’t […]
Just like every movie isn’t Art, not every movie has resonance beyond the moment you’re sitting and watching it – whatever the intentions of the filmmakers. And that’s okay because not everything needs or should possess canyon-deep layers of subtext (and besides, there’s an argument to be made for the difficulty creating something fairly light […]
Peter ‘Drago’ Tienmann’s The Stairs starts out pretty promisingly, with Kate Martin (Trin Miller) and her son, Jesse (Thomas Wethington), on the way to visit her grandparents, Bernice and Gene (Kathleen Quinlan and John Schneider, who’s aging particularly well). Gene is taking Jesse hunting and if this were a typical movie this would be the […]
Having just watched There’s Someone Inside Your House made me realize how clever John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985) was because it managed to create a realistic scenario revolving around a group of people interacting with each other that under virtually any other circumstances would have nothing to do with each other. Someone ought to […]
Recently I watched Chad Ferrin’s H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones and it made me realize something, namely the better adaptations – or maybe those with the most notoriety – were directed by Stuart Gordon (Herbert West: Reanimator, From Beyond, Dagon, Castle Freak), none of which were particularly faithful to the material they were based on. […]
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