Pluck the plumage off the bird because I’m prepared to eat some crow. For years, I doubted the fact that the long-rumored Zack Snyder director’s cut of Justice League would ever exist in a format suitable to be watched outside of a producer’s screening room. It just didn’t make one iota of sense. With WB having moved on from Snyder’s vision after the director was forced to leave the film mid-production when his daughter tragically committed suicide, the “Snyder Cut” was incomplete, with tens of millions of dollars in VFX shots never even brought into post-production. Read More
Gratuitously Fun ‘NOBODY’ a Reverse John Wick Where Bob Odenkirk Kicks All the Ass
You’ve seen it all before: a middle-aged off-the-grid specialist gets forced out of retirement when circumstances beyond their control stir up their humdrum life and curry them back onto a path of violence. Bryan Mills had a particular set of skills and hit the ground running when his daughter was kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers while John Wick’ skill with any sized caliber weapon came into sharp focus when Russian criminals killed his dog. In Nobody, no one has to kidnap his daughter or slay his pup to get Bob Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell all fired up, his pent-up rage and years of living live on his belly reaching a tipping point when some amateur home invaders break into the wrong house. Like a nobody should, he does nothing. Read More
Talking with SXSW Breakout Mallory Everton: Star, Writer, and Director of ‘RECOVERY’
Look, just about the last thing on earth that anyone is craving nowadays is more COVID-19 talk. No one wants mask jokes or commentary on toilet paper shortages nor do they want to deep dive into the horrors of having lost 550,000 Americans and counting to a pandemic that quickly became a hot-button political issue. And yet, Mallory Everton has managed to make a pandemic-set COVID comedy that feels rejuvenating and alive, maybe disproving the age-old adage that laughter is the “best” medicine (vaccines still probably have it beat) while underscoring enduring importance of comedy in a time of crisis. Read More
SXSW 2021: ‘SOUND OF VIOLENCE’ Is the Ultra-Campy ASMR Slasher You Didn’t Know You Needed
There is a scene early on in the absolutely bonkers horror camp-fest Sound of Violence where murderess-musician-mistress Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) kidnaps a homeless man and rigs him up like an electric drum set. Part-hardware, part-flesh, done up as if Kevin Mcalester and Jigsaw were there to help perfect the evil mastermind mechanics. A meat tenderizer dangles above his skull, a mallet aimed at his kneecaps, scalpels bisecting his wrists like cello bows. Alexis nervously puts on her earphones and gets to work. Read More
SXSW 2021: Urgent School Shooter Teen Drama ‘THE FALLOUT’ is the First Defining Movie of Gen-Z
We’re only minutes into The Fallout before the carefree world of 16-year old Vada (Jenna Ortega in a star-making role) is turned upside down by a school shooting. Up to that point, her biggest concerns were nagging parents, knowing the answers to an upcoming quiz, and which flavor cake-pop to get at the Starbucks drive through. When her doting little sister Amelia (Lumi Pollack) texts her “911” (she’s gotten her first period and needs to be talked off a ledge), Vada goes to the bathroom to provide some much-needed sisterly advice. She’ll remain trapped there, with popular girl Mia (Maddie Ziegler), when gunshots start ripping off in the hall outside, accompanied by piercing screams of abject terror. Read More
SXSW 2021: Goretastic ‘JAKOB’S WIFE’ Is the Most Fun Vampire Movie in Years
According to Biblical etymology, the name Jakob as found in Genesis is derived from the word for “heel”. In Jakob’s Wife, the eponymous Jakob (Larry Fessenden) is indeed a heel; an old-fashion minister who looks down his nose at his parishioners and town’s hoi polloi and treats his wife as a subservient inferior. When an old flame comes through town, obedient church mouse spouse Anne (a perfectly cast Barbara Crampton) gives into temptation…and is delivered unto the ultimate evil: a primordial vampire hiding out in the abandoned mill in their small town. Read More
SXSW 2021: Dead in the Water ‘OFFSEASON’ A Bloated, Shambling Corpse of a Seaside Haunter
A featherlight folk horror from Mickey Keating (Carnage Park), Offseason fails to conjure much of a reason for its existence, plundering the corpses of similar seaside folklore horror stories but bringing zero new ideas or visual intrigue to the table. At only 83 minutes, the barebones haunted town horror tale still majorly drags, a problem born from its dramatically inert narrative and exacerbated by numerous pacing problems. There are a couple (as in exactly two) memorable visual tableaus that shock the viewer out of a state of near-total apathy but it’s far too little too late to salvage Keating’s creation from sinking to the depths of horror movie irrelevancy. Read More
SXSW 2021: ‘THE FEAST’ Is Scrumptiously Unnerving Folk Horror
High in the Welsh hills, an elemental force awakens. This land is sacred and foreign; a far-flung neverland where verdant hills and the marble-mouthed language both prove striking and ancient. A place where helping neighbors lend a hand and whisper of mythical no-no’s. The first shot of Lee Haven Jones’ gothic folk horror juxtaposes man’s greed and his demise as a ruddy pipe in close up drills muddy oil from the ground. In the distance, a construction site worker flops over and dies. Man takes. Man dies. The cycle begins. Read More
SXSW 2021: ‘WITCH HUNT’ Explores a World Where Witches Are Real and Illegal
America never got past its Salem period in Elle Calahan’s allegorical social horror movie Witch Hunt. The only difference is, in Calahan’s world, witches actually do exist. The United States is a perilous place for those magical few; the practice of witchcraft has been banned and is punishable by death; families of convicted witches are forced into deep-cover and permanent hiding; their only hopes being smuggled south to the Mexican border where freedom from institutionalized prejudice looms. Read More
SXSW 2021: ‘HERE BEFORE’ A Tricky Psychological Thriller That Just Might Awaken the Undead
Andrea Riseborough may be our greatest under-appreciated actress working today. Delivering standout turns in indie favorites like Mandy, Possessor, and Birdman as well as leading Amazon’s excellent crime drama ZeroZeroZero, Riseborough has slowly proven herself a transfixing chameleon presence. A la the great Tilda Swinton, with whom she shares vampiric lily white skin and sharp angular features, Riseborough creeps into the skin of her roles, the real persona rarely peeking through. Read More