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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Twitter thread-turned-movie “Zola” is available on home video from Lionsgate.
“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here feel out???????? It’s kind of long but full of suspense” This is the tweet that kicked off a 148-tweet thread detailing the heart-pounding adventure A’Ziah “Zola” Wells King… Read More ›
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Music is the tether in short doc “Babylon: Ghetto, Renaissance, and Modern Oblivion,” linking two cultures across time and location.
Before Guttenberg changed how we share stories with the birth of the printing press in 1450, it was the oral tradition which kept the past in the memories of our present. Even well after the emergence of printed word, the… Read More ›
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Enjoy some wholesome tokusatsu fun in Eric McEver’s “Iké Boys.” [Fantastic Fest]
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: a group of outcasts finds themselves at the center of a prophecy that holds the fate of the world in its hands. In brief, that’s the summary for Eric McEver’s (A Utopia)… Read More ›
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“Baby Assassins” is a bubbly action crime comedy that’s not afraid to kick a lot of ass. [Fantastic Fest]
If you’ve ever sat absorbing something for the first time — a song, a book, a play, a movie — and thought to yourself, “I can’t wait to revisit this,” then you’ll have some sense of what will await you… Read More ›
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If you can get on its frequency, Bertrand Mandico’s fantasy western “After Blue (Dirty Paradise)” is a surreal ride. [Fantastic Fest]
Thanks to the recent release of James Wan’s Malignant (2021), there’s been a lot of talk within certain circles about the desire to see big swings in cinema that create vigorous division over something good but safe. Having not seen… Read More ›
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A riveting thriller from start to finish comes down to “The Execution.” [Fantastic Fest]
Between 1978 – 1990, a series of brutal murders were committed by Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, totaling more than 50 women and children before he was captured, convicted, and executed via firing-squad. This absolute horror serves as the narrative… Read More ›
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Shout! Factory’s LAIKA Studios Edition Examination, Part 4: “Kubo and the Two Strings.”
For the last 15 years, LAIKA Studios has amused, entertained, amazed, and, in some cases, downright terrified audiences with their stop-motion animation tales that continually place children at the center, offering a chance for audiences old and young to see… Read More ›
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Beloved Hong Kong director Johnnie To joins The Criterion Collection with 2004 genre-hybrid “Throw Down.”
If you’re well-versed in Hong Kong cinema, then the name Johnnie To will carry a great deal of weight. Among those who know, his films like A Hero Never Dies (1998), PTU (2003), and Election (2005) exemplify the Kong Kong… Read More ›
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The latest entry in the Fast Saga, “F9,” comes home with a director’s cut and 80 minutes of bonus materials.
After blasting into theaters June of 2021, F9 is ready to drop into your house. The nineth film in the main series and the 10th film overall, F9 not only sees the return of writer/director Justin Lin (Fast & Furious… Read More ›
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Celebrate 50 years of Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” with a first-time 4K UHD release.
Published in 1962, Anthony Burgess’s dark satire A Clockwork Orange hit the streets of England with a 21-chapter tale of a teenager’s prevalence for extreme violence and antisocial behavior. Written in a Russian-influenced language called “Nasdat,” most of what central… Read More ›
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The Cine-Men, Episode 55 – Director’s Cuts.
Sometimes what the studio/distributor releases just doesn’t live up to what the director envisioned. Because of that, we’ve seen countless tweaks, re-edits, and conversions done on films from The Shining to Star Wars. On this latest Cine-Men episode, Darryl and I discuss… Read More ›
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Go on a swashbuckling animated macabre adventure in the adaptation of “Petite Vampire.”
There are many things about cinema that The Cine-Men co-host Darryl Mansel laments, but the one that he laments the most is the lack of swashbuckler films. Disney’s recent Jungle Cruise possesses traits of these films, though mostly due to… Read More ›
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Shout! Factory’s LAIKA Studios Edition Examination, Part 3: “ParaNorman.”
For the last 15 years, LAIKA Studios has amused, entertained, amazed, and, in some cases, downright terrified audiences with their stop-motion animation tales that continually place children at the center, offering a chance for audiences old and young to see… Read More ›
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Enjoy the first and final solo mission for “Black Widow” on home video now.
After a great deal of delay, the expected final theatrical outing for Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, hit theaters and Disney+’s Premium Access tier July of 2021. Some found it arriving too late to be impactful, some found it… Read More ›
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4K restoration of Frank Perry’s “Mommie Dearest” joins the Paramount Presents label.
Actor Joan Crawford started acting in 1925 with the short The Casting Couch and worked her last job in a guest role on the television series The Sixth Sense in 1972, five years before her passing. In addition to acting,… Read More ›
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The HDR in the 4K UHD remaster of “The Shawshank Redemption” will dramatically shift how you react to the film you know.
“Get busy livin’ or get busy dying.” One of the more famous phrases in cinema history and originally uttered by Tim Robbins’s Andy Dufresne, the only innocent man in all of Shawshank Prison, is more often recalled as said by… Read More ›
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The Cine-Men, Episode 54 – Favorite Melee Scenes
After an unexpected month-long hiatus in which Douglas covered the Fantasia International Film Festival and Darryl got engaged (heck yeah!), The Cine-Men return to talk about their favorite melee scenes! Before we get to that goodness (& Douglas totally screws… Read More ›
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Arrow Video releases a fourth Yasuzô Masumura remaster, 1969’s “Blind Beast.”
As with previously reviewed films Giants and Toys (1958) and Irezumi (1966), Arrow Video is restoring and offering up to audiences outside of Japan another Yasuzô Masumura film: Blind Beast. Arrow Video provides an opportunity to expand what viewers may… Read More ›
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Inherit the dreams of Dreamers with “In the Heights.”
In so many ways, truth is stranger than fiction. According to actor Olga Merediz (The Place Beyond the Pines) in the featurette “That Music in the Air,” playwright/actor Lin-Manuel Miranda told her that he’d begun writing songs that would appear… Read More ›
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“The Shawshank Redemption” 4K UHD Giveaway
The Shawshank Redemption premiered September 1996 and, even after all this time, still manages to find a new audience. It could be the concept, the cast, the direction, or all of the above, but there’s something there which beckons audiences everywhere… Read More ›