// Category Archive for: Reviews

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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Blu-Ray Review: The Walking Dead, Season Five

By Less Lee Moore

I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people are sick of zombies. And yet, The Walking Dead continues to be one of the most popular shows on television, even producing a spinoff (Fear The Walking Dead) that’s gotten some good buzz. There are those who might be tempted to just give up on the show—and zombies—altogether. Yet The Walking Dead remains one of the most compelling and innovative dramas on television.

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Music Review: The Warden, The Warden

By Melissa Bratcher

You know those nights? The kind where someone ends up in jail, someone goes to the ER, and maybe you wake up the next morning with a whole bunch of bruises and a suspicious tattoo and why are your shoes so muddy and exactly what is that smell? The self-titled debut album from The Warden is the aural equivalent of that.

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Music Review: Raging Fire, Everything Is Roses 1985-1989

By Melissa Bratcher

There’s a line in Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo in which Pipefitter, drummer savant says, (and I’m paraphrasing wildly here) “No one ever writes checks to the bands who influenced them.” Upon listening to Everything Is Roses 1985-1989, an anthology of Nashville’s Raging Fire, it seems like a whole lot of bands should have written some checks. The music of Raging Fire sounds familiar (though I’d not heard them) because so many bands aped their style. Strong front women with their own eclectic voices owe a debt to Melora Zaner. She doesn’t have a bombastic voice, but she makes you listen because of her nuance and passion. Without Raging Fire, a whole slew of bands wouldn’t exist.

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New Music for Halloween Parties

By Jeffery X Martin

Are you a discerning celebrator of Samhain, looking for some different music to terrify and delight your friends with at your next public ritual? Or perhaps, you’re just a happy Halloweener, looking for some bombtracks for the next party. No worries, Fellow Traveler… we’ve got you sussed.

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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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Music Review: The Chapin Sisters, Today’s Not Yesterday

By Tyler Hodg

The Chapin Sisters harness the sounds and feelings of folk music of the past, all while staying current with their latest release, Today’s Not Yesterday. It’s the follow-up to the duo’s 2013 Everly Brothers cover album (review), and their first album of original material in five years. While their style has remained fairly intact as the years have passed, the production now sounds more crisp than ever before.

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Retro Review: Tony

By Less Lee Moore

If the name Gerard Johnson doesn’t ring any bells, it should. Perhaps you will recall a grubby, claustrophobic film from a few years back called Tony. (I can see you nodding at your computer as you read this blog post. But I swear I’m not creepy.)

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