Category: Review

Raging Loop

By Gingy Gibson • March 27th, 2020

Raging Loop is a horror visual novel that makes you care more about the ‘how’ than ‘who’ behind its mystery.

A skull on its side with text that reads "Cold Case Files"

True Crime for Beginners

By Amanda Hudgins • March 23rd, 2020

I’ve got a reputation. Let me put it to work for you. There’s a lot to true crime, and if you’re truly interested there’s some good stuff out there. ACAB, let’s watch some true crime!

No Faith Without Blood: The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • March 20th, 2020

It’s barely a spoiler to say that this all ends, as it inevitably must, with a literally burning bed and a homicidally crazed Brendan Fraser, painted red and wearing a barbed wire shirt.

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It’s Just a Game

By Harry Rabinowitz • March 11th, 2020

DIE Volume 1 asks: if your game becomes real, can you still treat it like a game?

Gingy's Corner

Magical Diary: Wolf Hall

By Gingy Gibson • March 6th, 2020

Let’s go back to school! Again. And again. And again!

Dolittle Makes You Think About Rectal Surgery

By Amanda Hudgins • February 24th, 2020

The most interesting thing about Dolittle is probably that I spent a half hour trying to find the right words to describe emptying a dragons colon of armor before settling on “transanal extraction.”

The Smell of the Rooms Terrifies Me – and Lures Me On: The House by the Cemetery on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • February 24th, 2020

If you don’t like horror movies, House by the Cemetery isn’t the flick that’s going to change your mind.

Gingy's Corner

Occult Crime Police

By Gingy Gibson • February 21st, 2020

The truth is out there, and sometimes it’s absolutely insane. Good thing this perpetually exasperated detective is on the case.

Harley Quinn with a caution tape jacket raising her arms

The Emancipation of Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad

By Amanda Hudgins • February 17th, 2020

Birds of Prey is the equivalent of an exorcism of Suicide Squad, the bloated carcass of FYE excess that DC had pulled into a back alley to die.

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Middlewest and the Scars of Parental Abuse

By Harry Rabinowitz • February 12th, 2020

When you peel back its fantasy veneer, Middlewest Book One is a story of parental abuse and the scars, both literal and figurative, it leaves.

a jubilant singing african american woman with long blue braids and a tricorner hat

A Review of the Three Descendants Movies That No One Asked For

By Amanda Hudgins • February 10th, 2020

Maleficent’s daughter looks to camera and announces, through song of course, that she is “rotten to the core.”

The Tide Pulls at My Heart: Night Tide (1961) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • February 3rd, 2020

Dreamy, desolate and drunk on its particular place in both space and time, Night Tide is a film like no other.

Here Be Dragons: Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters (2005)

By Orrin Grey • January 28th, 2020

Fans of people yelling, bad CGI, and characters repeating themselves – and one another – your proverbial ship has come in.

Gingy's Corner

XOXO Blood Droplets

By Gingy Gibson • January 24th, 2020

A follow-up that cannot quite escape the shadow its predecessor casts.

We Drilled Too Deep: Underwater (2020)

By Orrin Grey • January 13th, 2020

If Underwater is cosmic horror, it’s from the point of view of someone who gets swept up in the devastation but never really knows the greater implications.

A Very Special Human Being: Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • November 27th, 2019

Despite an elder James Cagney being miscast, latex masks and plenty of melodrama, the Lon Chaney biopic still has some of that old Hollywood magic.

Consumed in the Fire of His Own Making: Apprentice to Murder (1988) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • November 27th, 2019

“Apprentice to Murder isn’t an undiscovered classic…but it’s better than its two-and-a-half-star average on Letterboxd would suggest.”

Because Bigger is Better: RoboCop (1987) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • November 26th, 2019

“Our modern morass fits right in with the RoboCop…”

A Beautiful Pattern: Knives Out and What’s Wrong with America

By Orrin Grey • November 25th, 2019

“The people who were hitting Rian Johnson with death threats on Twitter over making The Last Jedi “too political” are going to love this one, is what I’m saying.”

Lake of Voices

By Gingy Gibson • November 22nd, 2019

Loss is inevitable. How do you get through it, then?

October Spookfest: Trick and Treat

By Gingy Gibson • October 18th, 2019

A simple, though no less spooky, take on a night in the woods.

I Want to Tell You a Curious Story: The Prey (1984) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • October 15th, 2019

Despite ample opportunity, The Prey is a slasher that features neither Bigfoot nor Smokey Bear as the villain.

October Spookfest: Misadventures of Laura Silver

By Gingy Gibson • October 11th, 2019

This one’s for all you less than stellar detectives out there.

October Spookfest: Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa

By Gingy Gibson • October 4th, 2019

It’s that wonderful time of year where I get to focus on visual novels centered on the creepy, the terrifying, and the downright spooky. Ghosts, demons, mysterious happenings and the like all take center stage this month; sadly, however, our first VN was less horrific because it presented a dark story well, and more because it represents a colossal and exhausting waste of hours that I’m never getting back. Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa is a middling mystery utterly dragged down by the tools you must use to solve it. The premise of Kotodama is pretty standard anime fare:

That’s a Recipe for Romance: The Norman J. Warren Collection

By Orrin Grey • September 23rd, 2019

Non-existent budgets, full frontal nudity, cash-in plots and five cult movies that are more interesting than they have any right to be.

Carole & Tuesday & Bad Representation

By Gingy Gibson • September 20th, 2019

Bad representation does not count as representation and why are we still having this conversation in 2019?

New England Detective: Breakfast in Boston

By Gingy Gibson • August 30th, 2019

A tired work that brings nothing original to a well-trod genre.

One Day This City’s Gonna Explode: Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • August 19th, 2019

“I hope this is the wrong kind of crowd.”

Documentary Sunday

Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much

By Megan Condis • August 5th, 2019

Not unlike the game show that it chronicles, watching The Perfect Bid is comforting. So long as you don’t think about it hard.

Amplitude

By Gingy Gibson • August 2nd, 2019

One step forward and a dozen back for this series.

Craig Finn’s Love for Scoundrels

By Levi Rubeck • July 26th, 2019

I Need a New War makes its way with people that are difficult and neigh impossible to love, but demands that we do so anyways with a kind of firm tenderness.