Out of all of the movies I saw at Fantastic Fest, Ali Abbasi's Border stands as my personal favorite - One Cut of the Dead and The World Is Yours were more fun, Burning was more cerebral, and Apostle was far more frightening, but out of the dozen+ films I saw, nothing ...
Jeeeeeesus. Nicolas Pesce’s new film Piercing accomplishes that rare feat of being a movie I both enjoyed and simultaneously never want to see again. The film is tight, both in terms of runtime and tension, and Pesce steers us through a dreamlike ...
Though I was slightly delayed by a round of convention crud, I am back from Fantastic Fest! We saw over a dozen movies over the back half of the convention, and almost all of them were, well...fantastic. I hope to write reviews ...
While I definitely know what genres of movies I enjoy - fantasy, sci-fi and horror - I make a point to try and watch movies outside of my usual comfort zones, and I make a special point to watch movies from outside ...
Whew! It’s been a while. In the past few months, I’ve gotten a new job, moved, done everything short of changing my identity. Suffice to say, it's been busy. I had been experiencing a sort of movie blogging malaise of late - partially because winter is a shit time to find new horror movies, and ...
I’m not dead yet - although this blog has been allowed to languish at the doorstep of death for a couple of months, to my shame. Between the vortex of the holiday season and the single worst upper respiratory virus I’ve EVER had, I can sympathize - I’ve felt like I was going to die ...
Gareth Evans’ Apostle was, after Halloween, probably the movie I was most looking forward to at Fantastic Fest. Evans first got attention for his Indonesian martial arts movies, Merantau and The Raid, in which he coincidentally debuted an Indonesian martial artist named Iko Uwais, now enjoying his own very well-deserved fame. But it was when ...
Out of all of the movies I saw at Fantastic Fest, Ali Abbasi's Border stands as my personal favorite - One Cut of the Dead and The World Is Yours were more fun, Burning was more cerebral, and Apostle was far more frightening, but out of the dozen+ films I saw, nothing else even came close to Border for sheer cinematic magic. It was one of the ...
Jeeeeeesus. Nicolas Pesce’s new film Piercing accomplishes that rare feat of being a movie I both enjoyed and simultaneously never want to see again. The film is tight, both in terms of runtime and tension, and Pesce steers us through a dreamlike world of New York highrises, hotel rooms and hallucinations towards a finale that ...
Danishka Esterhazy’s Level 16 is a fascinating movie. It operates simultaneously as a legitimately affecting thriller that carries a heavy payload of dread, and as a powerful manifesto for society’s simultaneous worship, objectification and destruction of young women. The director came at this with intent, and her intent shows. This is a feminist horror story, ...
The way Fantastic Fest was set up, there would be four or five movies screening at a time in time slots throughout the day, and we would submit ranked preferences for each time slot, which would determine for what films we would tickets. This led to much consternation for me, as a couple of time ...
Though I was slightly delayed by a round of convention crud, I am back from Fantastic Fest! We saw over a dozen movies over the back half of the convention, and almost all of them were, well...fantastic. I hope to write reviews of everything we saw over the next couple of weeks, with as few ...
I emerge from my cool, damp cave into the blinding light of day, snarling at the burning day-star above. I take in the world of the living to which I have returned, and let loose a great cry: "FANTASTIC FEEEEEEEEEEST!" Oh, hi! Didn't see you there. After a month(!) hiatus, I have found my way ...
Ask any foodie, and they can probably rattle off a handful of meals that had a profound effect on them - dishes that changed their perspective on an ingredient or culture, that inspired them to learn a new technique, that evoke a particular memory, that have a hold on them in a way that can ...
Cinemaxica 