Author Archives
I’m a cinephile/tv junkie/podcaster who loves to watch films, write them and write ABOUT them. My film and TV reviews are posted on 8bitwaffles.com and blakcinpehilewrites.wordpress.com. I also write film musings and rants on Instagram and Twitter (@blakcinephile). I am also the co-creator/co-host of “Double Feature: Versus” (https://doublefeaturevs.com), a podcast where my co-host Brad and I clash heads on two competing films with a single connection or theme.
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James Sweeney carries double duty of filmmaker/actor in “Twinless”, one of the most provocatively original dramedies in recent years.
There’s something to be said of independent film that continues to carry the torch of creativity and intrigue, taking its viewers on a journey of being entertained without a huge budget or expensive special effects. With his sophomore feature Twinless,… Read More ›
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Disney & Pixar’s “Elio,” a standard but fun, visually dazzling cosmos adventure of self-esteem, comes home in digital HD.
From 2008’s WALL-E to 2022’s Lightyear (and 2020’s Soul, if you count The Great Beyond as a qualifier), Pixar started a tradition of traveling into the beautiful outer space cosmos. In 2025, they continued this tradition with Elio. The film… Read More ›
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“Lilo & Stitch” come home digitally with a talented cast delivering great family entertainment in live-action.
Live-action remakes of coveted animated films can be a pain point of mine. Most of the time (well, all of the time), it’s an opportunity to juice more money out of an existing IP and less an opportunity to tell… Read More ›
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Vittorio De Sica’s first masterpiece “Shoeshine,” a devastating tale of innocence lost in postwar Italy, comes home in excellent restoration, courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Before he directed one of the greatest films of all time, 1948’s Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica became the face of Italian Neorealism in 1946 with his first masterpiece Shoeshine. Italian Neorealism was a post-World War II film movement which… Read More ›
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Enjoy the stunning cinematography “Rust” at home thanks to DECAL Releasing.
Reputation could make or break a film. While making what is arguably one of the greatest films of all time, Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola went through a plethora of production delays including casting switches, health problems with his lead… Read More ›
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Bennett Miller’s low-fi documentary about an eccentric NY tour guide “The Cruise” comes home in a lean, well-crafted Blu-ray release from Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Before he struck critically-acclaimed gold with Capote, Moneyball, and Foxcatcher, director Bennett Miller stepped onto the scene with the 1998 lo-fi, black and white documentary The Cruise. The documentary follows the eccentric tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch, a nasally-voiced human… Read More ›
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Alex Proyas’s “Dark City” touches down in all its sci-fi noir glory in a jam-packed Blu-ray from Arrow Video.
Once a box office bomb but now a celebrated cult classic in its own right, Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998) gives its audience the best of both worlds in its genre-bending plot — dystopian science fiction mixed with detective noir…. Read More ›
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Todd Solondz’s endurance test of cringe comedy and subversive subject matter, “Palindromes”, finally comes home in Blu-ray, courtesy of Radiance Films.
Writer-director Todd Solondz’s fifth feature Palindromes (2004) — a film of taboos, hypocrisies, and uncomfortable hard truths – is an exercise in cynical, cruel comedy. Known as one of independent cinema’s favorite misanthropes, Solondz paints his twisted portrait of motherhood,… Read More ›
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Once panned and now revered, Friedkin’s highly influential masterpiece “Sorcerer” gets a much-needed upscaled restoration courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
This film is a miracle of cinema. Let me explain. After struggles making the film, including production delays, cast conflicts, and more, William Friedkin’s tense masterpiece of a thriller Sorcerer was finally released in cinemas in 1977. Another film released… Read More ›
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Twisted masterpiece “Steppenwolf” brings all of its blood and brutality home courtesy of Arrow Video
Blowing me away (as well as many audience members) at Fantasia International Film Festival in 2024, Steppenwolf is a Kazakh language thriller which follows two characters — a psychopathic, murderous former police investigator (Berik Aytzhanov) and a woman consumed by… Read More ›
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Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” and his mosaic of Black life in the ‘70s get an overdue, beautiful 4K via The Criterion Collection.
There’s a key scene in Charles Burnett’s highly influential 1977 classic Killer of Sheep that is indicative of what one would call the Black experience. A mother puts on makeup in the mirror as her young daughter plays with her… Read More ›
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Showcasing a terrific vulnerable performance from Jeffrey Wright, Julien Schnabel’s fluid and impressionistic biopic “Basquiat” comes home in a beautiful new edition, courtesy of Criterion.
It is more fitting than ironic that an impressionistic biopic about the acclaimed neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat would also be written and directed by another painter. For his directorial debut (the first in a line of acclaimed releases including Before… Read More ›
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One of the most entertaining and charming high-concept films of the past few years, “A Samurai in Time” finally comes home in beautifully upscaled 1080p, courtesy of Third Window Films.
In a landscape of recycled IPs, a never-ending torrent of superhero fever, and films that are made for adults being shoved to the wayside, original high-concept films (strong examples being Inception (2010) and The Matrix (1999)) seem to be a… Read More ›
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Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” a beautiful, harrowing epic about the elusive American Dream, comes home in beautiful HD Blu-ray.
Clocking in at a whopping 215 minutes and being filmed in VistaVision (a high-resolution format once used for classic films such as Vertigo (1958) and The Ten Commandments (1956)), it is not hard to understand why someone would be quick… Read More ›
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Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” is generic and forgettable yet gorgeous in 4K.
In a time where sequels, prequels, and legacy-quels run rampant, one hopes — even begs — for something different. A prequel to the live action The Lion King (2019) that revolves around Mufasa and his humbling, noble rise to power… Read More ›
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Short and sweet thriller “Wake Up” continues RKSS’s trend of fun subversive horror.
The key to a great slasher film, other than a great antagonist, is a situation where the stakes are high for one or both parties, an arena where both the hunter and the hunted have an equal playing field and… Read More ›
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Revisit a terrific Gene Hackman performance with The Criterion Collection’s edition of “Night Moves.”
The New Hollywood movement (or “period”, depending on who you ask) was a defining moment in cinema where the film director was the “end-all/be-all” authority rather than the film studio. It’s a movement (generally from the mid-‘60s to early ‘80s)… Read More ›
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“Deep Blue Sea” lunges home in stunning 4K from Arrow Video.
All the way up to the late 1990s, there had not yet been a satisfactory successor to Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s iconic 1975 blockbuster hit about a marine biologist and shark hunter taking down a man-eating great white shark. In walks… Read More ›
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Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivers a masterclass performance in Mike Leigh’s somber slice-of-life dramedy “Hard Truths.”
“I don’t understand you. But I love you.” These are key words said towards the climax of Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, a somber slice-of-life film about two disparate sisters in a Black British family. Mike Leigh, a veteran indie darling… Read More ›
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Ethics and morals, ambition and purpose are examined in the tense, journalism thriller “September 5,” now on home video.
When creating a film about the morality and ethics of journalism, centering a story around the Munich massacre of 1972 is an inspired choice. September 5 (2024), co-written and directed by Tim Fehlbaum (The Colony), is a film about an… Read More ›