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‘THE MONKEY’: Oz Perkins’ B-Movie Goes Bananas

A ceramic drumming monkey (don’t call it a toy) wields the awesome power of life and death – though mostly death – in Oz Perkins’ madcap grindhouse horror movie, The Monkey. A wickedly sardonic midnighter-comedy with its tongue planted firmly in simian cheek, Perkins’ follow-up to his 2024 cult hit Longlegs sees the celebrated genre director fully embracing B-movie sensibilities—leaning into excessive gore and absurdist storytelling to deliver a shockingly barbaric yet gleefully silly fable about the dangers of wielding fate’s cruel blade. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘STRONGER’

Outside of the inclusion of a deadbeat protagonist, there’s not much to distinguish Stronger as a David Gordon Green effort. The director behind such mumblecore indie fare as Prince Avalanche and Joe (the former of which I detested, the later proved a borderline-excellent showcase for Nic Cage)  and comedy zingers the likes of Pineapple Express and the Kenny Powers-led Eastbound and Down (I’m a big enough fan of both) has decided to lens the Boston Marathon Bombing through the eyes of one of its victims and the result, though finely acted, is a mixed bag of emotional highs and lows at best and opportunistic at worst. Surely it’s not the shmuck bait of Charlie Sheen’s 9/11 but there is very little to justify its existence beyond Hollywood capitalizing on tragedy and you feel that in almost every second of Stronger.  Read More