post

SUNDANCE 2020: Giggly Horror-Comedy ‘SCARE ME’ Finds New Ways to Tell Old Stories

A startlingly original and stripped-down madcap horror-comedy about the terrors of the creative process, Scare Me manages to find a fresh entry point to a well-trodden subgenere by asking, simply: what do we want from horror? What is the draw of scaring ourselves – be it with Joe Hill novels, Ari Aster movies, or Ryan Murphy TV shows – and how is any good horror story crafted? These are the ideas that interest Scare Me, a horror-comedy in the tradition of oral storytelling. The film, which leans more towards comedy than horror, follows two writers and new acquaintances in Fred and Fanny, both eloping from society to far-flung snowy cabins to hack out the next horror story sure to terrify the world.  Read More

post

SUNDANCE 2020: ‘COME AWAY’ Scrambles Its Fantasy Fiction, Fails to Appeal to Both Adults and Kids

Escapism is at its best when it allows audiences to step away from the troubles of their lives. To make away to a magical land where fairy dust extends the power of flight, kids stay kids forever and crocodiles do away with malevolent hook-handed nemeses. Come Away is no such escapism. Scrambling up the mythology of Sir James Matthew Barrie and Lewis Carroll, the film geared predominantly towards children attempts to tell a magical realism-inspired, wait for it, meditation on grief and losing a child…intended for children.  Read More

post

SUNDANCE 2020: Well-Intentioned Slam Poetry Misfire ‘SUMMERTIME’ Has Zero Commercial Appeal

With Blindspotting, new director Carlos López Estrada emerged onto the scene with a distinct and fiery voice, delivering a knockout primal scream of a film that laced the power of spoken word into a poignant and brilliantly-acted Oakland gentrification satire. In his sophomore feature Summertime, Estrada has bungled almost everything that worked so well in his first outing, delivering an amateurish variety show that leans much too heavily on disparate young voices within Los Angeles slam poetry community coalescing into a Crash-like ensemble of random interconnectivity.  Read More

post

Trippy ‘COLOR OUT OF SPACE’ Makes Technicolor The Bad Guy

H.P. Lovecraft has cast a long shadow over cinematic horror and the industry at large. With an entire subgenre dedicated to the unknown cosmic horrors that the late sci-fi author gained notoriety depicting, the fears of Lovecraftian horror are found in those things beyond human perception. Though Lovecraftian horror can be difficult to translate to film, since the phenomena described in his writing is often beyond human comprehension, that has not stopped filmmakers since the 1960s from borrowing from Lovecraft’s bread and butter: alien entities driving people crazy.  Read More

post

Daniel Radcliffe Has Guns Bolted to His Hands in Trailer for Action-Comedy ‘GUNS AKIMBO’

From the sick and twisted mind behind Deathgasm (the campy Evil Dead-influenced horror import from New Zealand) comes Guns Akimbo, a movie that asks: what if Harry Potter but guns? The plot revolves around a nobody played by Daniel Radcliffe who wakes to find guns surgically bolted to his hands. He has to shoot his way through a social-media-influenced killing contest if he wants to save his life and proves that maybe he is a hero after all.  Read More

post

2019 Silver Screen Riot Awards 

It’s that time of year where awards start getting slung left and right, where the same names begin to crop up over and over, and bloggers get tired of the awards dance and prognostication before it’s even really begun in earnest. As is tradition over here, we try to shed light on the best of the year, and not just those popular names on cycle wash with the Silver Screen Riot Awards, recognizing perhaps not the objective best (because there is no such thing) but my personal favorites from the year. And the award goes to… Read More

post

‘UNDERWATER’ is Peak Incoherent January Hollywood Flotsam 

The first month of every year may start with resolutions about self-improvement, working out more, sleeping more, eating better and the like, and yet the new offerings at the movie cineplexes are more reliably junky than any other time of year. Underwater is peak January movie; a bungled poof of a plot, shoddy direction, feckless characters, unimpressive production work. It’s movie empty carbs, devoid of any nutritional value or artistic takeaway. The kind of movie you can throw in the pile with the other countless shameless impressions of Alien (alongside 2017’s super lame Life) that fundamentally misunderstands what makes that movie oh-so-great. Read More

post

Latest Trailer for Long-Delayed ‘X-MEN: NEW MUTANTS’ Merges Superheroes and Horror

After five long years in development hell and a series of reshuffled release dates, including rumors that the finished product may be regelated to a streaming service dump or never even see the light of day, the latest look at X-Men: New Mutants promises not only an April 2, 2020 release date but an actual theatrical release. The capstone X-Men film has been the talk of a lot of controversy, with one big part of the discussion centering around extensive, narrative-altering reshoots and X-Men: New Mutants being caught out in the cold in the midst of the Disney-Fox merger. Despite all the goings-on behind the scenes, today we finally get a new look at X-Men: New Mutants and it looks, well, just as potential-ridden as ever. Read More

post

The Top Ten Films of 2019

One hundred and fifty. That’s the final tally for new release movies I’ve seen this year as of writing this here article. The shot clock is up. The endpoint to officially putting my selection for the top ten films of 2019 is kaput. The decision is written into stone. Out into the ether. That means I had to give the old Thanos snap to 140 movies in the process and this year’s selection sumo-wrestling was just as painstaking and awful as any other. The things I do for clicks. ‘Twas a fine year for film with a smattering of highlights, from magic rock dramas to alligator horror, anime blockbusters to feminist comedy, with critical darlings and box office hits often coming from the least expected of corners. Oh and Disney cleaning up at the bank per usual. Read More

post

Agoraphobic Amy Adams Sees Neighbor Knifed in ‘THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW’ Trailer

Initially set to release in October of this year, Joe Wright’s The Woman in the Window was pushed in the midst of the Disney-Fox merger but now we finally have a first look at the psychological thriller and it looks, as expected, like a Joe Wright-directed psychological thriller. Based on the novel of the same name from A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window stars Amy Adams as an agoraphobic developmental psychologist who witnesses the murder of her neighbor, or so she thinks. Read More