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Lifeless ‘GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE’ Lacks Spirit 

There are times as a film critic that I wonder why I allocate my spare time to the watching and writing about movies. This is one such occasion. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a profoundly bad film, one that seems to be actively sucking the very lifeblood out of the movie industry with its lazy indifference, indifferent storytelling, and filmmaking incompetence. In a way, it’s actually more interesting as a cultural microcosm of the horrors of modern franchise filmmaking writ large. It exists in a world of franchise as mandated IP flexing. Strictly a means to an end. Ostensibly the opposite of a write-off but with the same underlying purpose. Done because it must be done to preserve intellectual property ownership, not because there is any purpose, vision, or passion involved. Read More

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Out in Theaters: POLTERGEIST

When a film foregoes the press screening circuit, only to play for a slim number of us amidst a general public promo screening just two hours before it opens its doors to the rest of the movie-going community, you enter with an expectation of a product hauntingly bad. Take Hercules for example, which screened under similar circumstances last year before landing at number five on my worst movies of the year segment. Just one month later, As Above/So Below (which was also largely critically derided) proved this model wrong by delivering an edgy horror throwback that I simply adored. Again at the Thursday night 6 o’clock showing. So going into Poltergeist, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and with low critical ratings – as of writing this, it stands at a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes and 48 on Metacritic – the writing was on the wall, thusly establishing the low expectations that allowed me to sit back and let this somewhat cruise-controlled remake take me on an enjoyable – if not great – horror thrill ride. Read More