// Category Archive for: Movie Reviews

Blu-Ray Review: The Editor

By Brendan Ross

Those crazy Astron-6 kids have done it again! This time around the Winnipeg collective have made their most ambitious film yet: both a spoof and a love letter to giallo cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. For those not familiar, the term giallo refers to a very specific genre of arthouse-meets-grindhouse thrillers from Italy, recognizable just as much for their beautifully stylized aesthetics as for their bizarrely convoluted story lines and hysterically poor overdubbed dialogue. If you are familiar with the works of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, or Mario Bava then you probably know what I’m talking about. If not, go watch Deep Red, The Beyond, and Bay Of Blood right now. I’ll wait here…

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Blu-Ray Review: The Brood

By Less Lee Moore

Let’s get this out of the way first: whenever someone asks about my favorite David Cronenberg film, my knee-jerk response is, The Brood. Having seen almost all of Cronenberg’s pre-A History Of Violence movies, it still stands out. Perhaps it doesn’t have as much of the gruesome depravity of Videodrome or Dead Ringers (both excellent films in their own right), but there’s just something about it that continues to fascinate me.

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DVD Review: The Horror Network

By Jeffery X Martin

Fans of networks, be forewarned that The Horror Network has nothing to do with networks or networking. The title is kind of mysterious. There’s no framing device for the five shorts that comprise this anthology, and no overarching theme to be used as connective tissue. It’s a scattershot approach, but if the intent is to throw a bunch of stories at the wall and see which ones stick, then well done.

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Retro Review: Here Comes The Devil

By Less Lee Moore

If you’re familiar with Mexican horror films and are expecting something Gothic, spooky, and languorous from Adrián García Bogliano, you’re in for a surprise. Here Comes The Devil is going to scorch your eyeballs and bathe them in blood.

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The Official Popshifter Podcast, Episode #03: Hallowand

The Official Popshifter Podcast, Episode #03, “Hallowand”

It’s the Halloween episode of the Official Popshifter Podcast, and we’re talking about all things Halloween with our special guest, Paul Casey. It’s a cornucopia of creepiness this month on Popshifter!

Featuring Managing Editor Less Lee Moore, Featured Contributor Jeffery X Martin, and Special Guest Paul Casey! Enjoy and thanks for listening.

Reviews:

Music Review: Wand, 1000 Days

DVD Review: A Plague So Pleasant

Blu-Ray Review: The Walking Dead, Season Five

Blu-Ray Review, Morituris: Legions Of The Dead

By Jeffery X Martin

TRIGGER WARNING: The following review contains descriptions of sexual abuse, foul language, and general post-film grumpiness.

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Blu-Ray Review: We Are Still Here

By Less Lee Moore

The Sachettis have recently lost their only son Bobby to a car accident and move from the city into an old house in the middle of nowhere, hoping to be able to get past the pain. When the grieving mother Anne tries to explain to her husband Paul that the presence she feels in the house might be the ghost of their son, he scoffs at first, but agrees to let their psychic friends May and Jacob visit in an attempt to put Ann’s mind at ease. As it turns out, the presence in the house isn’t Bobby; it’s something much darker and more malevolent.

This plot seems like it would make for a fantastic movie. Unfortunately, We Are Still Here isn’t that movie. It’s painful to watch such a promising premise go so dreadfully awry.

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Movie Review: The Inhabitants

By Jeffery X Martin

After a year of being disappointed by movies about haunted houses, witches, and/or creepy kids, it’s refreshing to find a movie that combines all three of those things and does it the proper way: lean, mean, and well, scary. You know. Like a horror movie is supposed to be.

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Blu-Ray Review: Cop Car

By Brendan Ross

Cop Car is a Colorado-set thriller about two rambunctious young boys who discover an abandoned police cruiser and, with an underdeveloped sense of right from wrong, end up taking it for a joyride. Things get sticky when it turns out sheriff Kevin Bacon was only temporarily parking his cruiser while busy disposing of a corpse in the woods. Upon returning to find that his car was highjacked, Bacon sets out to find the young boys responsible before they check the trunk. Dun dunn dunnnnnn.

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Retro Review: Pontypool

By Less Lee Moore

Let’s face it: with few exceptions, everyone is sick of zombies. That’s not to say that zombie movies and TV shows are dead in the water (with zombie sharks), but it does mean that artists are going to have to do better than the standard ripoffs of “I’m coming to get you, Barbara.”

Enter Tony Burgess and Bruce McDonald. Based on Tony Burgess’s book, Pontypool Changes Everything, the McDonald-directed film Pontypool—which screened at TIFF in 2008—is a breath of fresh air in a cemetery full of empty, stinking graves.

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