Film Reviews
HBO’s Coastal Elites Feels Like a Carefully Curated Twitter Feed: Review
The Pitch: Amidst the backdrop of 2020 — the heady and often unpleasant mix of an impending presidential election and a worldwide pandemic that’s hitting the United States especially hard — five people deliver five different monologues (or, as they’re briefly dubbed, “unhinged rants”) about the Way We Live Now in the satirical HBO “special presentation” Coastal Elites. Look at the Camera: Because of the very nature of the coronavirus pandemic, Coastal Elites is a decidedly un-flashy glimpse into the lives of a quintet of Americans. From sly writer Paul Rudnick, the 90-minute special presentation (that’s what HBO is calling Coastal Elites, and although it’s movie-length, frankly, the descriptor fits) is meant as a mix of earnest sincerity and dry wit. How is this disparate handful strugglin...
Shakespeare’s Shitstorm Is Lloyd Kaufman’s Manifesto for the Age of Outrage: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Legendary purveyors of late night schlock, Troma Entertainment put their own spin on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by swapping out a tropical storm for gallons of whale feces and a deserted island for New Jersey. All of this in an attempt to skewer online culture and big pharma’s conquering of America with gross-out gags and a politically incorrect sensibility. What Is Past Is Prologue: That iconic Troma logo — you know, the one with the New York City skyline set against a blood red sky with spotlights in the air — is like a warm blanket for genre cinema lovers who were weaned by Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Sheer on USA’s Up All Night. The memorable, simplistic fan fare conjures up an instant wave of nostalgia, but...
Mulan Strays from the Disney Formula by Adopting Marvel’s Blueprint: Review
The Pitch: Disney has remade a number of its ’90s-era animated films into live-action and/or CG blockbuster epics. Now, the 1998 favorite Mulan gets the same treatment. Its story of a young Chinese woman impersonating a man in the Imperial Army has shifted from an animated classic into a live-action tale of empowerment and self-actualization. But does the translation pay off? Breaking the Mold … Somewhat: Most of the live-action remakes from Disney follow a frustrating pattern in which A-List filmmakers and actors go through the motions of replicating magical moments from the classic films of our childhood, all while trying to make something new of those fairy tales. At the box office, these films have been largely successful, with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King all makin...
The Mortuary Collection Is Halloween Horror With a Mean Streak: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: “The world is made of stories…” and they are left behind by the dead. Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) is an aging mortician tasked with not only caring for the bodies of his recently deceased clients but for the stories of their deaths. These he collects and keeps in the massive library of his sinister and dilapidated mortuary. After officiating the funeral of a child, he meets Sam (Caitlin Custer), a young woman looking for a job. Her interview takes a turn for the macabre as she asks Montgomery to scare her with his tales, setting the stage for this spooky anthology. It was a Dark and Stormy Night… Set in the vague past, The Mortuary Collection feels like Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark for twenty-somethings with a d...
The Dark and the Wicked Is 2020: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Two siblings venture out to their remote family farm, where their father is slowly dying and their mother is unraveling from grief. Something else is happening, though. There’s a darkness behind the sorrow, an evil slowly poisoning the soil… Something Wicked This Way Comes: Grief is on the mind. Thanks to our ensuing pandemic — and really, the collateral damage of our current administration — we’re a populace poisoned with misery. So much so that it’s become an appendage of our day-to-day, something we’ve had to deal with to check in and check out without losing our minds. In a timely twist of fate, grief has also informed some of this year’s most affecting films, be it Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods or Natalie Erika Jame...
Brea Grant’s Lucky Gets Blunt on the Ways We Fail Women: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: On the surface, Lucky is a quirky slasher with an intriguing premise. May (Brea Grant) is attacked night after night by a masked man and no one in her life seems willing or able to help. The elevator pitch for this film must have been relatively simple: “What if you were being attacked and no one cared.” Yet hidden in this premise is a depressing truth and an unflinching look at the experience of dealing with trauma as a woman in America. Grant, who also wrote the script, goes all in on the metaphor, following it long past its logical fallacies to deliver a message that has been coded and hidden for far too long. Lucky may be heavy-handed, but by breaking the boundaries of believability, director Natasha Kermani deliver...
Bill and Ted: Face the Music Brings an Excellent Reunion But a Bogus Story: Review
The Pitch: It’s been decades since William “Bill” S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) and Theodore “Ted” Logan (Keanu Reeves) triumphed over Hell and defeated gym-teacher-turned-terrorist Chuck De Nomolos. Sadly, the Wyld Stallyns have seen better days, and the two world renown rockers have been reduced to garage band has-beens. With their rock and roll destiny in turmoil, the entire universe begins to crumble, leaving Bill and Ted exactly 78 minutes to face the music and save the world once again. Strange Things are Afoot: The beauty of the Bill and Ted franchise has always been its brazen imagination. It’s an ’80s slacker daydream fueled by the very slushees and sugary snacks our two heroes grab at the Circle K. Creators Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon have long been self-aware of that fact...
I’m Thinking of Ending Things Will Crush You: Review
The Pitch: A young woman (Jessie Buckley) travels with her boyfriend of six weeks, Jake (Jesse Plemons), for a long snowy drive to meet his parents for the first time. She’s not sure about this guy; he’s nice, but insecure, a bit of a know-it-all. She’s thinking of ending things. But something’s off about the whole affair as soon as she arrives at the farmhouse where Jake grew up. His father (David Thewlis) and mother (Toni Collette) are giddy to see her — almost a little too giddy. She sees herself in pictures of Jake as a boy. The dog won’t stop shaking itself dry. She sees Jake’s parents as older, and older, and older, and younger. What is happening? Who is Jake? Who is she? Many a New Day: And now, dear reader, the unenviable burden of unpacking and explicating a Charlie...
Christopher Nolan’s Tenet Is a Technical Marvel But a Narrative Dud: Review
Pitch: For months, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has been promoted more as a canary in a coal mine than an actual film. With every shifted release date, the reality of the dangers surrounding COVID-19 only increased, all while the film flirted with those same hazards. Nolan had hoped his blockbuster would bring back theaters, but that dream still feels fanciful — even as the blockbuster nears its questionable release. Given his insistence for the theater experience, Nolan’s reputation has likely taken a hit, but his rank as a cinematic puzzlemaker remains intact. Mirroring the film’s perplexing route to release, Tenet is a murky globetrotting spy thriller, elevated by cinema-changing set pieces, and yet lowered by a classic case of visual ambition thwarting basic storytelling. The Past: To des...
Unearth Is a Slow Burn Metaphor for Parasitic Capitalism: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Kathryn Dolan (Adrienne Barbeau) and George Lomack (Marc Blucas) head neighboring rural families struggling to make ends meet in a crumbling economy. Tensions arise when one family signs a contract allowing fracking on their land, but their fates intertwine when this decision inadvertently releases a parasite previously locked within the earth. John C. Lyons and Dorota Swies’ tale of economic horror presents a compelling if uneven picture of the devil’s bargains working class people are often forced to make in order to survive. Parallel Parasites: Unearth is a timely metaphor in the midst of a pandemic which has crippled the US economy. We meet both families when they’re tottering on the edge of financial ruin and ...
Julia Fox Dominates Surprising and Sexy Pitch-Black Rom-Com PVT CHAT: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Jack (Peter Vack) is a lonely boy in the big city. He lives in a rundown apartment—the only kind anyone can afford in New York City–where his windows are duct-taped over and his day-to-day involves either bowls of Maruchan ramen or online poker games. But he also engages in BDSM scenes with a number of cam girls, and one in particular has caught his eye. Enter Scarlet (Julia Fox), who dominates Jack from afar, making him a human ashtray as smoke billows out from her big beautiful lips. As time ticks away and more and more money is dropped, Jack and Julia begin to connect on a deeper level, a connection that sets both parties up for twists that audiences will never see coming. I’ll Always Love You New York: With PVT CHAT...
12 Hour Shift Brilliantly Brings Hospital Horror to the Working Women Comedy: Fantasia Fest Review
This review is part of our Fantasia Festival 2020 coverage. The Pitch: Mandy (Angela Bettis) was having a bad day before her double shift at the hospital. She’s expected to provide a kidney transplant to some local gangsters. The only catch is that Mandy’s new courier Regina (Chloe Farnworth), who just so happens to be her half-cousin, has lost said kidney en route to the hospital. Frantically, they both try to get their hands on a replacement kidney as the clock keeps ticking. Fortunately for them, there’s a whole lotta fresh meat to choose from… Working 9 to 5: Angela Bettis should be familiar to horror fans, thanks to her iconic performances in a trio of Lucky McKee movies: 2002’s May, 2005’s The Woods, and 2011’s The Woman. She’s a stunning presence, who wears the stress of every one o...
