Author Archives
Founder: Elements of Madness | Contributing Senior Film Critic: CLTure | Past Bylines at Pretty Vacant One and FilmFed | The Cine-Men podcast co-host | NC Film Critics Association, Southeastern Film Critics Association, & Critics Choice Association member | Rotten Tomatoes approved individual critic
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Meditative drama “Montana Story” offers provocative material to chew on, even if not totally satisfying in the conclusion. [SFFILM Festival]
After a nine year break from directing, filmmaking partners Scott McGehee and David Seigel (What Maisie Knew) return with family drama Montana Story, screening during SFFILM Festival 2022 and releasing in select theaters on May 13th courtesy of Bleecker Street…. Read More ›
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“X” Blu-ray Giveaway
SXSW 2022 saw a number of A24 films premiere, including the Ti West-directed X. This horror/slasher throwback to the Seventies put a group of young filmmakers (and the audience) through a ringer, leaving everyone feeling frightful but ready for West’s upcoming X… Read More ›
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Riddle me this: What’s lime green, red, and black? The home release discs for director Matt Reeves’s “The Batman.”
I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and… Read More ›
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“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” Digital Code Giveaway
Of the Phase Four MCU films released thus far, Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings remains my favorite of the bunch. As such, when the opportunity arose to snag the physical 4K UHD release on sale,… Read More ›
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“The Bob’s Burgers Movie” is a savory self-contained story, creating no onion-tended consequences for future episodes.
After 12 seasons to the tune of 237 episodes, the Loren Bouchard-created animated family comedy Bob’s Burgers jumps from the small screen to theaters worldwide (no one tell Bob). The long-running series has already released four-albums-worth of music from its… Read More ›
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Discover the missing minutes of the Nixon tapes in historical fiction comedy/thriller “18 ½.”
18 and a half minutes. A lot can happen in that time. Depending on where you live, you can get to the store, purchase accoutrements, get home, and make a meal. Or perhaps you can work in some exercise, jogging… Read More ›
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Jimmy Wang Yu’s 50-year-old film “One-Armed Boxer” gets rejuvenated with a brand-new 2K restoration from Arrow Video.
Beginning in 1965, actor Jimmy Wang Yu worked making films for the famous Shaw Brothers Studio operated by Run Run Shaw, making films like One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and Come Drink with Me (1966) sequel Golden Swallow (1968). It wasn’t until… Read More ›
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Dead or alive, “RoboCop” can come home with you on 4K UHD from Arrow Video.
There’s a strange thing that happens when machines that are capable of destroying are set in motion but aren’t stopped — they just continue to destroy with almost unfettered access. We can try to prevent or redirect, but there’s rarely… Read More ›
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Good morning! Good morning! “Singin’ in the Rain” celebrates its 70th anniversary with a first-time 4K UHD release.
When one speaks of the Golden Age of Hollywood, there are certain names that get invariably included: Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, and Gene Kelly. Each of them left an indelible impression upon cinema history,… Read More ›
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“Sylvie of the Sunshine State” highlights how struggles are universal even in isolation.
In the late months of 2019, there were rumblings of a virus with the potential to grow catastrophic. There had been instances like this previously with outbreaks of H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola from 2014-2016, but it always been contained… Read More ›
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No case too big, no case too small: “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” return in an adult-centric adventure.
Originally introduced in 1943, animated chipmunks Chip and Dale made the jump from animated shorts to home release tales and then, in 1989, to broadcast television when the duo was remade into detectives for the series Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue… Read More ›
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Shakedown, breakdown, takedown! No need to wait in a crowded line when “Beverly Hills Cop II” is available to own on first-time 4K UHD.
After taking audiences around to the globe down the highway to the danger zone, director Tony Scott (Top Gun) helmed a second adventure for one of cinemas most emblematic detectives, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), as he returned to Beverly Hills… Read More ›
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Cue up director Antoine Fuqua’s sci-fi actioner “Infinite” without a subscription and with all the snacks you can manage.
If there’s one thing that’s been an improvement for movie fans since the start of the pandemic, it’s been the increased access to new films. With the theaters all but shut down, films whose releases weren’t moved over and over… Read More ›
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The Criterion Collection offers a lovely restoration of director Jûzô Itami’s 1984 satirical comedy “The Funeral.”
It seems fair to say that we’ve all experienced a sense of loss in some form or another since March 2020. It may be literal in the form of a loved one passing or as an extended estrangement due to… Read More ›
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Oh crap! Director Ruben Fleischer’s “Uncharted” game adaptation is out on home video.
November 2007 saw the release of game developer Naughty Dog’s action/adventure third-person perspective game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Since then, the series has developed six more titles that function as either sequels or spin-offs, tracking the adventures of Nathan Drake, Vincent… Read More ›
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The Cine-Men, Episode 65: Favorite Alt-Reality Films.
On this latest episode of The Cine-Men, myself and Darryl Mansel decide that we’re tired of what is and opt to explore what could have been or what could be in a different universe. That’s right, we’re talking about our… Read More ›
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Arrow Video released a 4K UHD restoration of the sci-fi time travel thriller “12 Monkeys.”
Given the recent news of accomplished actor Bruce Willis’s failing cognitive health, watching a film like 12 Monkeys is a tad bittersweet. On the one hand, we’ll never get a stirring performance like this again; on the other, his works,… Read More ›
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Famed director Ang Lee’s first feature-length film, “Pushing Hands,” receives a lovely 2K restoration from Film Movement.
As an adolescent, I heard about director Ang Lee’s films — Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Ice Storm (1997) — but it was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) that would be my entry point into… Read More ›
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Paranoia seeps through every frame of surrealist, absurdist sci-fi thriller “Friend of the World.”
These are wild times we’re living in. We’ve got wars for land in Ukraine and Israel bordering on genocide, racial strife and religion tied too closely with politics in the U.S. and U.K., a cult of personality seizing the good… Read More ›
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Delightfully shocking and surprisingly gruesome, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is decidedly a Sam Raimi MCU movie.
After 27 films, there exists roughly three factions of people: those who are stupid excited for any new Marvel project, those who are exhausted, and those who don’t particularly care. Some of the malaise stems from the fact that, like… Read More ›