// Category Archive for: Movies

Movie Review: High-Rise

By Less Lee Moore

Ben Wheatley adapting a 1975 JG Ballard novel into a film starring Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, and Luke Evans? It sounded too good to be true. With three planned screenings at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival which were then reduced to two, and rumors of six hour lineups for the second screening’s rush line, it was not an exaggeration to suggest that High-Rise was one of the most hyped films of last year.

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She Will Never Say No: All Dolled Up

By Christine Makepeace

“Then again, she will never say anything at all.”
—All Dolled Up: Love Dolls and Those Who Love Them documentary narrator David Hockey

RealDolls are hyper-realistic, life-size mates used for sex and companionship. Conceptually, RealDolls don’t stoke any fires in me. I don’t find their mere existence to be offensive. I’ve always been fascinated by them, and the people they spend their time with.

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Movie Review: Ratchet And Clank

By Tyler Hodg

Beloved video game series Ratchet and Clank has made its way to the big screen, and much to fans’ delight, embodies the unique attributes that turned the franchise into something of substance in the first place. While the CGI film is bumpy at times, it never feels like a forced project developed strictly for monetary reasons, and celebrates the classic story that many have grown up with.

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The Trouble With Hawkeye

By Christine Makepeace

It’s looming on the horizon. Civil War is hanging in the distance–hovering and swollen with promise. But potential disenchantment floats beside it like flotsam skimming the waves. The last time Marvel assembled its mightiest, it wasn’t so, well, mighty.

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DVD Review: Emelie

By Tim Murr

It’s mom and dad’s anniversary and they hire a new babysitter to watch their three young children. She comes highly recommended and seems like a sweet, smart girl, but the parents aren’t gone long before she starts to strangely assert herself over the children, guiding them into the darkest night of their brief lives.

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Top Ten: Worst Moms In Pop Culture

By Laury Scarbro

There are good moms, and then there are these selfish hags. These are not the kinds of women you want looking after a houseplant, let alone being in charge of a child’s welfare. If you’re a parent, please, either don’t be like these people or do your kids a favor and put them up for adoption. If you’ve ever questioned your mom’s parenting abilities, just have a look at this list. Then go hug your mother and be grateful.
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Top Ten: Best Moms In Pop Culture

By Laury Scarbro

In gathering information for this article, I found that I had a much harder time choosing who to include than I thought I would. The last thing I wanted was to regurgitate the same lists that have been copied and pasted ad nauseum on every other site. I just cannot stomach one more list extolling the virtues of Claire Huxtable, Mrs. Brady, and June Cleaver. A mother should be able to love fiercely and unconditionally. She should know the benefits and consequences of selflessness and sacrifice (sacrifice of her wants/needs, not animals or neighborhood children—just to clarify). She does not need to be beautiful, have dinner on the table by the time dad gets home, and keep the house immaculate. She should be the kind of woman who would storm the gates of hell itself armed with nothing but a bucket of ice water, for her family.
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In Case You Missed It: April 24 – 30, 2016—Throwing Shade In The Green Room

By Less Lee Moore

Even Tommy Shelby wants to see more diversity in TV.

Did you know that April 8 is the day in Queer History that all homosexuals were cured? Hahaha, we’re just kidding. It’s actually the day that homosexuality was removed from the DSM.

And speaking of queer folks, here’s an open letter to the TV industry about why we’re so fucking sick of straight white dudes.

In other TV news, Sachin Hingoo bids farewell to Broad City until next season with the hilarious “Jews on a Plane” and Laury Scarbro reveals how all hell breaks loose on Outsiders in the appropriately titled episode, “All Hell.”

May is the month when the long-awaited Season 3 of Peaky Blinders arrives on our TV screens. Did you know David Bowie was a fan of the show? Try to keep your eyes from leaking when you read about what he sent to the show’s lead actor, Cillian Murphy. (Here’s a recent, wonderful, career-spanning interview with Mr. Murphy that includes some lovely photos.)

Everyone is talking about the talking animals in The Jungle Book movie but don’t forget about Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin, called Green Room. Brian Baker took the plunge and reviewed this ultraviolent, ultra-brilliant film. You might forget about Hardcore Henry after you see it, though, as Tyler Hodg remarks in his review.

Meanwhile, on the home video front, Jeffery X Martin tackles the “bad crazy” with Arrow’s reissue of Niko Mastorakis’s The Zero Boys, Sachin has warm fuzzies over the white foam in the Blu of ‘80s schlock horror The Stuff, and Melissa Bratcher is delighted that Bayou Maharajah, the doc about infamous New Orleans piano player James Booker, is finally available for everyone to see.

Bone Tomahawk was my favorite movie of 2015 but I’ve never seen one entry in Charles Band’s bizarrely legendary Puppet Master series, so imagine my surprise (and delight?) to learn that the director behind Bone Tomahawk is helming the Band-less Puppet Master reboot. Modern Horrors has the deets.

Oh, and if you’ve always wanted to delve into actor Sho Kosugi’s career, The ScreamCast can help with their most recent podcast, “A Show on Sho.”

It’s been just over a week and we’re still trying to come to terms with a world without Prince. Here’s a stupendous 2009 article from the L.A. Times about the side of Prince that most people in the public rarely saw. Then, lighten up with this hilarious YouTube video, a compilation of all the times that Prince threw shade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4k-d88BEsI&feature=youtu.be

We have a ton of new music for you to check out this week: Tim Murr raves over the David Lynch aura of Dark Palms’ Hoxbar Ghost Town and insists that Grindmother’s Age Of Destruction is not a novelty album; Melissa calls The Jayhawks’ Paging Mr. Proust “a record for the ages” and marvels at the depth and breadth of Cherry Red’s latest comp, Another Splash of Colour: New Psychedelia in Britain 1980 – 1985; while X comforts us with the fact that at least Rob Zombie is good at coming up with song and album titles.

Could it be that Ke$ha is finally free? Find out about this and the “boycott Beyonce” movement on Unicorn Booty’s latest installment of NOW HEAR THIS!

Since tomorrow is a Monday (groan!), here is something that might make the day go a bit faster: a list of 11 hilarious and slightly political celebrities that you must follow on Twitter.

Blu-Ray Review: The Stuff

By Sachin Hingoo

All stills courtesy of DVDBeaver

A genuine curiosity, even for B-movies, The Stuff was one of the first horrors I was ever exposed to when it randomly came up on cable one night when I was a kid. Though it may not be scary (a pretty terrible metric for the quality of a horror film anyhow, since everyone is scared by different things) to anyone but althaiophobics, it definitely had a way of getting under my skin. Its singular style and off-beat premise sucked me in almost immediately. It has a much brighter palette and tone than most horrors, and has a charming slapdash quality about it that makes it feel like it’s always just about to go off the rails. Of course, you’ll realize at some point during the film that it was never on rails to begin with.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Zero Boys

By Jeffery X Martin

The Zero Boys is a horror/action movie from 1985 that raises the bar of ineptitude stunningly high. You would have to try with all your might, and maybe someone else’s, to come up with a film this insipid nowadays. It may be a testament to the filmmaking talents of director Nico Mastorakis that a movie as totally brain-dead as The Zero Boys is as entertaining as it is.

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