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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You won’t go wrong betting on “Lucky Grandma.”
There’s a reason the phrase “The Greatest Generation” gets tossed around when describing the grandparents of millennials. They’ve seen things we can’t imagine. For some, it begins around the First World War, and continues into Women’s Suffrage, The Great Depression,… Read More ›
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Director Dorthy Arzner’s 1940 feminist subversive comedy “Dance, Girl, Dance” is the latest to join The Criteron Collection.
Director Dorthy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance is joining the ranks of other Criterion Collection releases in May 2020 alongside The Great Escape (1963), a collection of five of Martin Scorsese’s short films titled Scorsese Shorts, Wildelife (2018), Husbands (1970), and… Read More ›
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To make heaven a place on Earth, “We Must Summon the Darkness.”
Released on VOD and digital April 2020, horror-comedy We Summon the Darkness is making its way to home video and is coming straight for your living rooms. Directed by Marc Meyers (My Friend Dahmer) from a script by Alan Trezza… Read More ›
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Mirrah Foulkes’s “Judy & Punch” is a brilliant dark meta-comedy exploring the accepted horrors of the patriarchy.
In recent memory, there are few films that have made me quite as angry as Mirrah Foulkes’s feature-length directorial debut Judy & Punch. Debuting at Sundance in 2019 before a long theatrical release, the film itself is a brilliant dark… Read More ›
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Deceptively cutting and mesmerizingly mad, director Josephine Decker loses no momentum in her second feature “Shirley.”
Director Josephine Decker’s feature debut Madeline’s Madeline (2018), a tale centered on a young woman whose grip with reality slowly weakens as she finds her imagination being made real, continues to entrap my mind. The film itself is an experimental… Read More ›
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The Cine-Men, Episode 31: The Films of Tom Cruise
Top Gun: Maverick may not been hitting theaters this summer, but that won’t stop Douglas and Darryl from digging into the entire Tom Cruise catalog to identify out favorite films. Considering he’s been making movies since 1981, narrowing the field… Read More ›
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When these “Debt Collectors” come ‘round, pay fast or get knocked down quick.
There are certain director-actor pairings that just excite audiences when they hear about them. Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder. Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell. Jesse V. Johnson and Scott Adkins. Johnson and Adkins first… Read More ›
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Nuclear Age meta-drama homage “The Vast of Night” answers questions with more questions.
Just because you’re going to tell a story people have heard, doesn’t mean you need to tell it the way people know. That seems to be the M.O. for director Andrew Patterson in his debut picture The Vast of Night…. Read More ›
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Musical dramedy hits “The High Note.”
In times of great stress like these, it’s important to remember what gets us through: art. Art, of course, can be anything from clothes, food, movies, projects, music, and more. They are the things which bring us joy and help… Read More ›
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Surprise, Leigh Whannell’s “The Invisible Man” is a masterwork of tension.
When the words “remake” or “reboot” get thrown out, the reaction online is often filled with a great deal of righteous indignation. Along these cries of “you’re destroying my childhood!” often comes a strange forgetfulness that a new version doesn’t… Read More ›
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Like a traditional fairytale, “Tigers Are Not Afraid” will lift you up and cut you down.
The 2017 supernatural-horror-drama Tigers Are Not Afraid (Vuelven) from writer/director Issa López (Casi divas) is truly an extraordinary cinematic experience. It pulls you in, charms you, enthralls you, rips you to shreds, and mends back the pieces. Thanks in part… Read More ›
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Great performances fail to breathe life into color-by-numbers dramedy “Military Wives.”
When it comes to films that are “inspired by” or “based on” an actual story, there’s a persistent battle between reviewing the film in front of me and the truth. It’s something which Darryl Mansel, The Cine-Men co-host, and I… Read More ›
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The Cine-Men, Episode 30: Period Films
Episode 30 of The Cine-Men dares to travel through time to examine films taking place outside of the time in which they were filmed. That’s right, we’re discussing our favorite period films! To make things extra special, Douglas and Darryl… Read More ›
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Breezy comedy “The Lovebirds” takes a light approach to a dark premise.
Despite things being as they are in 2020, actors Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae are having a really solid year. Rae’s The Photograph is an engrossing story focused on a mature love, while her HBO program, Insecure, is all over… Read More ›
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You’re not going to want to write home about latest home video release “The Postcard Killings.”
Newly married daughter and her husband murdered. No prints, no evidence of any sort. An NYC detective left with nothing but his wits as he tries to track down the murderer. This is the basic premise of thriller The Postcard… Read More ›
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Autumn de Wilde’s feature debut “EMMA.” is a delightful take on a classic scruples comedy.
There are some films which, upon even the briefest of beginnings, you realize are something special. Such is the case with director Autumn de Wilde’s first feature film EMMA., an adaption of the Jane Austen novel from writer Eleanor Catton… Read More ›
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If you grew up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons, don’t wait on watching the easter egg-filled “Scoob!”
Beyond telling an engaging story, animated children’s features have two goals: captivate the target audience and be clever enough so the parents don’t want to murder themselves on the 58th viewing. By all marks, Warner Brothers Animations’s Scoob! succeeds in… Read More ›
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Meet Me at the Movies, Show 381
It’s been a minute since I’ve was able to join the Meet Me at the Movies crew, but, even with social distancing going on, we found a way to make it work. Never ones to make it dull, Noel tasked… Read More ›
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Celebrate Top Gun Day 2020 with a trio of Tom Cruise films hitting 4K for the first time.
If you were alive in the late ‘80s, you’d be hard-pressed to meet someone who didn’t know Tom Cruise. He’d made some waves as greaser Steve Randle in the adaptation of S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1983), entertained as entrepreneurial… Read More ›
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Watch “The Photograph” develop anytime you like on home video.
There’s an authenticity that radiates outward from every frame of writer/director Stella Meghie’s The Photograph. One thing that keeps being repeated in each of the three brief featurettes included with the home release of The Photograph is the simplicity of… Read More ›