// Category Archive for: Movies

SXSW Movie Review: Breaking A Monster

By Brad Henderson

A couple of years ago while perusing YouTube, I came across an amatuer video of three young black kids playing metal music near a subway station in New York City. Months after that I saw a couple more videos pop up here and there and then they showed up on national TV with even more exposure. They are called Unlocking The Truth and they are fucking amazing.

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SXSW Movie Review: Roar (1981)

By Brad Henderson

The idea that Roar was even made blows my mind because of the fact that there was a surplus of dangerous animals among the cast and crew while it was being filmed.

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SXSW Movie Review: Lamb

By Brad Henderson

I’m a sucker for awkward, low-key relationship dramas. Lamb is one of those films that is easy to fall in love with. It is beautiful, heart-breaking, and just brutally uncomfortable at times.

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SXSW Movie Review: We Are Still Here

By Brad Henderson

I’ve been obsessed with horror films all my life. Early on I had a fascination with 1970s and British horror films. This was mainly because our local video store stocked a lot of the Hammer titles and those caught my eye first before I discovered the nitty gritty SOV horror films from the ’80s.

That is one of the main reasons why I absolutely loved We Are Still Here. It feels like it was pulled right out of 1976 and thrown into our laps with modern gore and special effects. Virtually everything shown in the film uses practical effects and there is minimal CGI. This made it much more enjoyable and gave it that old school feel.

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SXSW Movie Review: The Invitation

By Brad Henderson

Dinner party movies are becoming a favorite of mine. I love the premise of a dinner party because most of time we are dealing with a group of friends and usually the characters are relatively close to one another. These past few years I’ve seen films like Would You Rather, The Perfect Host, Coherence, and now, The Invitation. Each time I’m surprised at the routes the films take and how different each film is in its own way.

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SXSW Movie Review: Deathgasm

By Brad Henderson

At the beginning of the Deathgasm screening Sam Zimmerman from Shock Till You Drop asked the audience, “Have you ever seen a movie and thought, ‘Yes, that film was made for me’?” I truly feel that the filmmakers of Deathgasm somehow knew that I love and cherish heavy metal horror and decided to bring me their movie. Heavy metal and horror movies are similar in many ways and they work even better when they are blended together.

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SXSW Movie Review: The Final Girls

By Brad Henderson

Most horror parodies aren’t smart and in recent years they have gotten really tedious and boring. Towards the beginning we had films like Pandemonium, Student Bodies, and Saturday The 14th. Then the craze died down but came back with a huge bang due to the success of Scary Movie. Ever since then we’ve had a few films pop up here and there (Cabin In The Woods, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, and Scream) and more serious filmmakers even started making these kinds of movies. With the newer flicks, parody was thrown out of the window and they turned into horror comedy throwbacks. The Final Girls will give a new meaning to these kinds of comical throwback flicks.

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DVD Review: Wolfcop

By Less Lee Moore

As any regular reader of this site knows, especially if you follow Brad Henderson’s reviews, ’80s throwback horror and action films are a hot commodity right now. Sometimes they work; sometimes they don’t. The ones that do have two things in common: enthusiasm and commitment. Even when these films aren’t total successes, there are usually enough enjoyable elements to make them well worth watching. Which brings me to Wolfcop.

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DVD Review: Motivational Growth

By Jeffery X Martin

One of my favorite movies is a film from 1968 called Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. It is the cinematic definition of “meta.” A film crew is making a film in Central Park. They are being filmed by another film crew. Somewhere across town, a film class is critiquing the film as it plays out. Meanwhile, a flamboyant group of Central Park weirdos interrupts the filming of the original film. If it sounds like madness, it’s not. Sure, it’s experimental as Dr. Jekyll, but it’s an utterly fascinating watch.

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Blu-Ray Review: Poker Night

By Brad Henderson

Who the hell approves artwork for DVDs and Blu-rays for XLrator Media? I will slap the shit out of them for slapping together this bullshit for Poker Night.

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