// Category Archive for: Movies

Assemblog: May 17, 2013

James Spader, from NBC’s The Blacklist

New this week on Popshifter: Chelsea thinks Xenia Rubinos’s Magic Trix is a “thrilling listen”; Metal Mayhem continues with Jeff’s take on Dangerous Toys and Judas Priest; Jeff also says that Big Country’s The Journey is the best new album he’s heard this year; Melissa B. parties traditional style with the new album from Kermit Ruffins and gets transported to the past with the reissue of Marty Robbins’s El Paso City and Adios Amigo; I recommend both the glam psychedelia of Burnt Ones’ You’ll Never Walk Alone and the party music of Dead Ghosts’ Can’t Get No, and revisit 2002′s excellent, unsettling One Hour Photo, recently released on Blu-Ray.

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Blu-Ray Review: One Hour Photo

By Less Lee Moore

I saw One Hour Photo when it was released in theaters in 2002. I’ve never forgotten it.

It was the first film I saw with Robin Williams playing against type as a truly disturbed character. Even 1991′s The Fisher King was Disney compared to One Hour Photo.

Writer and director Mark Romanek cut his filmmaking teeth on music videos for Nine Inch Nails, Madonna, Michael and Janet Jackson, and Fiona Apple. With the success of filmmakers like David Fincher, the stigma of transitioning from music videos into feature films has thankfully diminished. For a first feature, One Hour Photo is astonishing, but it would still be were Romanek a veteran.

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Assemblog: May 10, 2013

New this week on Popshifter: Jeff starts some Metal Mayhem with Night Ranger and Mötley Crüe (more installments are coming throughout the month); Luke reviews the “brilliant” cooperative game Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine; Brad gets transported back to childhood through Jason Lapeyre’s new film I Declare War; and I am impressed with ChristCORE, a new documentary on the Christian hardcore scene seen through the eyes of a nonbeliever.

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Movie Review: ChristCORE

By Less Lee Moore

In the May 1989 issue of SPIN, born-again Christian evangelist Bob Larson followed the band Slayer on tour and presented his account in an article called “Desperately Seeking Satan.” By the end, Larson determined that Slayer’s “root of evil” was “rock’n'roll stardom” and that their “act of iniquity” was not with Satan, but with the “Billboard charts and T-shirt sales.” Still, he prayed that “both their eternal and artistic souls” would be saved.

Almost 25 years later, musician and filmmaker Justin Ludwig decided to follow two bands from perhaps an even more mystifying and misunderstood genre of music: Christian hardcore. As Ludwig explains in the beginning of the documentary, hardcore music helped him to break free from the shackles of organized religion and the oppression of conformist thinking.

If ChristCORE were a fictional Hollywood story, it’s easy to imagine that by the end, Ludwig will recant and become a born-again Christian. But, this is real life, or at least the documentary film version.

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Movie Review: I Declare War

By Brad Henderson

Regardless of your gender, I Declare War will take you back to your childhood fantasies. The film opens with children playing a war game and the rules are quickly established. These two teams are deep in the woods playing Capture The Flag, but things change when some soldiers decide to take their lives in their own hands and defy their Generals.

During the film we are sucked into their world, becoming one of them, a solider. Hiding, crawling, always on the defense, and feeling like part of the squad. Waiting for the attack and watching your friends’ backs in hopes the enemy is not lurking behind you and trying to flank your troops. This is the level of realism I Declare War presents and it holds up until the end credits roll.

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Assemblog: May 3, 2013 – The Future Of Streaming And Television?

New this week on Popshifter: Jeff praises The Armoury Show’s “gorgeously slick cathedral Goth with strangely danceable grooves” in the Cherry Red reissue of Waiting For The Floods; Danny calls the new Meat Puppets album, Rat Farm, “the band’s most playful and diverse offering since 1985″; Melissa B. laments the passing of George Jones in her review of the CD reissues of George Jones Country and You’ve Still Got A Place In My Heart; I describe the “geographic grandeur” of the full-length, self-titled debut from Big Black Delta; describe how no-budget, sci-fi flick Manborg “comes from the heart”; explain the “nuanced, complicated” joys of A Royal Affair; congratulate Melvins on their excellent album of covers, Everybody Loves Sausages; and get excited and photo-happy about the upcoming Vicki Berndt art show in Los Angeles.

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Blu-Ray Review: A Royal Affair