Author Archives
Founder: Elements of Madness | Past Bylines at CLTure, Pretty Vacant One, FilmFed, & Mountain Xpress | NC Film Critics Association, Southeastern Film Critics Association, & Critics Choice Association member | Rotten Tomatoes approved individual critic
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Coming to Theaters: February 2019
One month down, eleven to go and February is looking to blow January out of the water. It’s bringing heartfelt family dramas, comedies, psychological thrillers, suspense-filled dramas, and so much more to theaters (with a few hitting VOD/digital the same… Read More ›
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Hallucinogenic nightmare “Braid” warps reality in the first feature from Mitzi Peirone.
There’s a moment in writer/director Mitzi Peirone’s Braid where you’re either all in or all out. When the mayhem’s rising, the blood flowing, and the veil of reality’s so thin it’s barely perceivable, a choice has to be made: embrace… Read More ›
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“Piercing” manipulates your expectations to great satisfaction.
February is becoming a strange month. Like January, February tends to be a dumping ground for films not likely to find an audience or for films leaning into Hallmark’s notion of love. While some aspects of this remain true (markets… Read More ›
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Disney’s “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” is too dour for Christmas, too artificial to feel magical.
The Nutcracker is a famous ballet known the world over for its delicacy and grace in performance and the beauty of Tchaikovsky’s music. In fact, it’s safe to say that more people are aware of the story in connection to… Read More ›
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Like the phrase itself suggests, “In Like Flynn” is incredibly charming, but not charming enough.
When anyone mentions the name Errol Flynn, those familiar likely think of the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood, a portrayal of the infamous bandit to which every future performance has been compared. Working in Hollywood for 26 years,… Read More ›
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Listen: The Cine-Men, Episode 12
With the 2019 Oscars coming up, The Cine-Men (Darryl Mansel and Douglas Davidson) explore a department of cinema which is constantly overlooked when handing out awards: stunts. In this episode, they not only discuss their latest watches and The Cine-Men… Read More ›
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“The Hate U Give” can end with us.
There’s one phrase that runs through my head every day of every week of every year: You can’t see them all. At some point, trying to keep up with all of the films released in a year in theaters, digitally,… Read More ›
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“Don’t Come Back From the Moon” is a meditation on the complexities of growing up and parenthood.
Parenthood is an experience which changes you in ways you can’t imagine until it happens to you. You can hear about it, you can be adjacent to it, but not until you become responsible for someone else’s everything does the… Read More ›
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Documentary “Who Will Write Our History” examines the past as it cautions about the future.
On January 27th, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated those individuals the Nazis had imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration and death camp in operation. In recognition of that act, the United Nations established International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005… Read More ›
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Listen: The Cine-Men, Episode 11
2018 was a great year for cinema. So great, in fact, that narrowing down all the wonderful films to a list of five is harder than you’d imagine. But The Cine-Men took on that challenge in their first show in 2019… Read More ›
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Gather round and hear the heroic tale of “When Jeff Tried to Save the World”.
Little day-to-day triumphs often mean more in the long run than any big win. Sure, big wins are more noticeable, but the victories which come from plugging away, day after day, the ones which bring comfort when the struggles come,… Read More ›
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Coming To Theaters: January 2019
January is typically seen as a dumping ground for studios. Where the films that hit theaters aren’t viewed as attention-grabbers in any way shape or form, but they made the things, so why not release them after all the Awards-centric… Read More ›
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“Swing Kids” celebrates the promise of freedom.
Films are often more than an escape from your lives or a distraction from politics, family, friends, or whatever ails you. Even hidden within the most harmless looking story is a thematic nugget propelling everything forward, desperately asking the audience… Read More ›
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Listen: Episode 34 of Monster Mashup Marketing
EoM founder Douglas Davidson appears as a guest on the Monster Mashup Marketing podcast hosted by Matt Starnes to discuss the history of Elements of Madness. So if you’ve read the About EoM page and ever wanted to dig a little… Read More ›
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Ten Films From 2018 That Stuck With Me
2018’s over, which means it’s time for the End of Year lists to come rolling out. Just like in 2016 and 2017, you won’t be hearing about my top films, but about my sticky films, the films which, after seeing… Read More ›
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Unable to move beyond grief, we enter a “State Like Sleep”.
In times of crisis, the mind seeks a reason, an explanation, to latch onto to make sense out of the chaos, to offer something to rail against, barter with, and blame. State Like Sleep tackles this notion in a twisting… Read More ›
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Make your reservations now for some “Bad Times at the El Royale”.
Writer/director Drew Goddard is no stranger to a good mystery. Having made his bones writing for shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Alias, he went on to write 2008’s Cloverfield and co-write 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods,… Read More ›
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Film noir “The Lightest Darkness” toys with time and memory.
There’s something truly delicious about a film which toys with your expectations; a film possessing the temerity to state its own vision, even as it identifies the areas in which it knows the audience is looking. Rather than focus the… Read More ›
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If you’ve been craving a family-friendly “Deadpool”, you certainly get your wish.
For the uninitiated, Deadpool is a comic book character unlike any other. It’s not that he’s indestructible thanks to a mutant healing factor or that he’s a highly trained assassin, it’s that he knows he’s in a comic book. Having… Read More ›
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“Cold War” is a bittersweet tale of two lovers’ dogged determination to be together.
The term “love story” is often attached to stories in order to denote a tale of passion or romantic coupling. Sometimes, a love story is even one of friendship, as love is really just a term to describe a bond… Read More ›