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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“IF” delights friends both real and imaginary with a home release packed with bonus features.
No one really knows when from where inspiration will strike. An innocuous action, a stray thought, a random observation — anything is ripe for seeding a new concept or approach. For writer/director/actor John Krasinski (A Quiet Place), inspiration for his… Read More ›
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Beyond Thunderdome, beyond vengeance, lies “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” on home video.
Filmmaker Dr. George Miller’s been entertaining audiences for nearly 40 years, either with tales of desperation (Mad Max (1979)), tales of greed (The Witches of Eastwick (1987)), or tales of hope (Happy Feet Two (2011)), to name a few. In… Read More ›
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Crime anthology “The Killers” exudes undeniable collective charm. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Anthology stories come in all shapes and sizes. They can be horror-based, like Satanic Hispanics (2022) or Tiny Cinema (2022); offer a western twang, like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018); or they can be mission-oriented, like Give Me an… Read More ›
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“IF” 4K UHD Blu-ray Giveaway
At some point in our lives, we lose the magic of our youth. The wide-eyed optimism is shuttered by age, experience, and, possibly, being told “no” by life too many times. Perhaps to help battle this, writer/director John Krasinski developed… Read More ›
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Witness the end of the Tomorrowverse as Warner Bros. Animation’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” concludes with “Part Three.”
Within the home release of Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One, the featurette “Crisis Prime(r)” lays out how just how long the plan for Crisis on Infinite Earths had been in the works, detailing that each film… Read More ›
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Sony Pictures Classics gives Tom Tykwer’s romantic thriller “Run Lola Run” its own 4K UHD release.
Before American audiences met Franka Potente as Marie, the accidental ally to amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) in 2002, she portrayed a different type of “on-the-run” character: Lola. Absent intrigue of the spy sort, Potente’s Lola is a strong… Read More ›
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Director Soi Cheang’s “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” incorporates elements of new school and old school Hong Kong cinema which rattle audiences’ bones and souls in equal measure. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Every community has its stories — tales of victories and defeats, of perilous ends and new beginnings, and of the old guard and the new. Sometimes these take the form of myths and legends born from imagination and other times… Read More ›
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Within the weird and zany world of “Ghost Cat Anzu” lies a bittersweet story of broken hearts searching for healing. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
In Japanese folklore, there exists what’s known as “kaibyō,” a cat that possesses supernatural properties. Of the three types within kaibyō — bakeneko, maneki-neko, and nekomata — manga creator Imashiro Takashi took inspiration from the bakeneko type for his series… Read More ›
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“Cuckoo” loudly calls its shot and still hooks its audience with mystery and plagues them with horror. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
In 2019, writer/director Tilman Singer made an enormous splash with his possession thriller Luz. It’s as much an homage to the horror films of the ‘60s and ‘70s, evoking the look via cinematography and art direction, while telling a unique… Read More ›
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Dark comedy “The Duel” is a fascinating directorial debut that misfires its exploration of class.
“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” – Proverb of unclear origin. In our lives, there are those who are family by DNA and those by relationships. When those who sired us, grew up… Read More ›
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Yûgo Sakamoto’s “Nice Days” showcases why you should never underestimate these “Baby Assassins.” [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Over the last few years, writer/director Yûgo Sakamoto’s (A Janitor) created a very specific cinematic world in which low-stakes slacker comedy meets high-stakes wet work via his Baby Assassins series. Returning for a third outing in Baby Assassins Nice Days,… Read More ›
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With a physical release, fans of Choi Dong-hoon’s “Alienoid” films can delight in the action-packed conclusion, “Return to the Future,” as often as they wish.
August 2022 saw the U.S. release of writer/director Choi Dong-hoon’s cinematic hybrid Alienoid (외계+인 1부) into theaters. A mixture of martial arts, comedy, drama, and science fiction that takes place in 2022 Korea *and* the Goryeo Dynasty, Choi’s work may… Read More ›
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Writer/director Jun’ichi Yasuda’s “A Samurai in Time” is a meta sci-fi dramedy with a thoughtful core. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
“To have never gone to war is something to be proud of.” – Seiji Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki) in Godzilla Minus One (2023) There’s this belief that the old ways are better than new. They’re tried, they’re true, and they meet… Read More ›
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Director Tatsuya Oishi composites the “Monogatari” prequel trilogy into “Kizumonogatari -Koyomi Vamp-” an interesting curio of a cinematic experience. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Shtriga, vrykolakas, strigoi, vampire — they are mythical creatures of the night who feed on human blood, exist in a perpetual outward appearance of the moment of their transformation, and can live forever under specific conditions. Stories of their existence… Read More ›
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Keep your heart on fire with the six-film “Rocky: Ultimate Knockout Collection,” available now.
Around the time of the theatrical release of actor Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut, Creed III (2023), the ninth film in the Rocky franchise, Amazon MGM Studios via Warner Bros. Pictures released a four-film 4K UHD collection of Rocky films… Read More ›
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Director Park Jin-pyo’s “Brave Citizen” delivers satisfying vigilante justice in this web comic adaptation. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
“If you do nothing, nothing will happen.” This quote is spoken by the character So Si-Min, portrayed by Shin Hye-sun (See You in My 19th Life), as part of a class on ethics. It’s one of several concepts that particular… Read More ›
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David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy” has bonus features that were made for loving you.
In filmmaking, there are original stories and there’re adaptations. While audiences clamor for original stories, the system *needs* adaptations to help fund the originals. Sure, it’s getting hard for some audiences to get excited for Super Cape 58 (not me,… Read More ›
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“Alienoid: Return to the Future” Blu-ray Giveaway
Choi Dong-hoon’s Alienoid (2022) kicked off a time-travel sci-fi adventure in which the present is saved by going to the past. However, in Return to the Future, released in U.S. theaters in January 2024, in order to keep things safe, they had… Read More ›
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“The Beast Within” leaves telltale tracks resulting in an immediate blood-letting of tension. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Whether textually or subtextually, horror films explore elements of society that upend or terrify. Sometimes the horror comes from the loss of bodily control from foreign invasion (Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)), other times it’s from the very natural… Read More ›
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Filmmaker Fábio Powers’s “The Old Man and the Demon Sword” asks its audience to consider the value of a soul. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Every day, someone picks up a camera — 8 mm, 16 mm, 35 mm, iPhone, iPad, Android, whatever they can find — and they tell a story with it. They combine image with sound to inspire, delight, terrify, or simply… Read More ›