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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“Night of the Animated Dead” offers little new in its adaptation of the zombie classic beyond blood and gore.
**Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.** Horror changed in 1968 when a small indie picture directed by George A. Romero from… Read More ›
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“Space Jam: A New Legacy” Blu-ray Giveaway
Who is ready for a slam jam?! 1996’s Space Jam saw b-baller Michael Jordan come out of retirement in order to help the Looney Tunes from extraterrestrial enslavement. 25 years later, it’s LeBron James who needs help from the Tune… Read More ›
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“a-ha: The Movie” makes it clear that it’s no better to be safe than sorry. [Nashville Film Festival]
Music is absolutely a paradox when it comes to its tether to time. It’s at once a product of when it was made, but it can feel entirely free of that period, being discovered or rediscovered over and over again…. Read More ›
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Midnight movie “The Murder Podcast” may require a specific frame of mind to appreciate fully. [Nashville Film Festival]
Podcasting is older than most think. With the birth of digital audio playback technology in the late 1990s and early 2000s, most think of podcasts as coming up with those devices, but they really started well before that in the… Read More ›
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One-woman show “Faye” finds hope in the horror. [Nashville Film Festival]
It’s confounding the lengths people will go to denigrate or dismiss the horror genre in favor of more populist genres like action, drama, or comedy. For generations, horror stories have been used as social warnings, explorations of loss, and even… Read More ›
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“Free Guy” Digital Code Giveaway
After being scheduled and rescheduled too many times, the Ryan Reynolds-led action comedy Free Guy landed in theaters August 2021 and now it’s available on digital. Were you able to take a theatrical ride into Free City? Are you ready to… Read More ›
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A road trip with the Addams Family shouldn’t be so unexpectedly disastrous.
They’re creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky, and are back for a second animated film from returning directors Greg Tiernan (Sausage Party) and Conrad Vernon (Monsters vs. Aliens). Where the first film explored assimilation versus individuality, the second outing is more interested… Read More ›
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Writer/director Jean Luc Herbulot’s “Saloum” will make you believe in legends. [Fantastic Fest]
The premise is a simple one: three hired guns extract and protect a druglord but find themselves seeking shelter in a remote village in Saloum, Senegal, when their transport malfunctions, landing them in a situation they could never predict. With… Read More ›
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Body horror/buddy comedy “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is the definition of a popcorn-flick.
The road to 2018’s Venom was a long one. First introduced as merely an alien costume in The Amazing Spider-Man #252, the symbiote known as Venom wouldn’t appear for about four years later in The Amazing Spider-Man #300 kicking off… Read More ›
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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 ›