Category: Movies

A screenshot from Godzilla Minus One with close up of the big chomper's teeth and maybe even the dangling thing at the back of the throat as he roars

A Scene That Defies Belief: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

By Orrin Grey • December 5th, 2023

As with Shin Godzilla, this is an attempt to return to Godzilla’s roots as a purely destructive force. There is no way in which this Godzilla is a “good guy,” even as roundaboutly as the one from the MonsterVerse films.

Run It Back

Artwork from the poster for Apocalypse Now Final Cut shows Captain Benjamin Willard rising from the depths of a river, lit by contrasting blue and red light.

1979 2019

By Oluwatayo Adewole • December 1st, 2023

This month we turn our attention to Coppola’s 1979 epic Apocalypse Now, and more specifically to its 2019 Final Cut.

Eyeing Elsewhere

A still from Killers of the Flower Moon shows Mollie and Ernest sitting at the table. Mollie gazes at Ernest with some fondness while he wears a distant, inscrutable expression.

Boots on the Ground

By Phillip Russell • November 30th, 2023

Killers of the Flower Moon is a complicated film, less so because of the story it tells, and more so with how it’s told and by whom.

Feature Story

We Need to Talk About the Warrens

By Orrin Grey • November 21st, 2023

There is plenty of evidence that the Warrens were hucksters who exploited vulnerable people for their own profit.

Nonhuman Meditations

Where are the Giant Bats?

By Alyssa Wejebe • November 14th, 2023

The shape of vampires could stretch and be more.

This Mortal Coyle

Hammer Horror Nightgown Ranking

By Deirdre Coyle • October 27th, 2023

It’s easy to get lost in the aesthetic pleasures of Hammer’s smooching Draculas and bangin’ 1970s haircuts on 19th century characters; you might gloss over the more ethereal wardrobe choices.

Past Presence

Taking the Cullens to Uniqlo

By Emily Price • October 26th, 2023

You can wear Uniqlo anywhere. Its styling is bizarre and frequently, ugly. I don’t know of a better way to summarize Twilight’s fashion.

title card for The People You're Paying to be In Shorts, with Michael Jordan holding back some tears front and center and many images of basketball players in various stages of jump and throw behind him

The People You’re Paying To Be in Shorts: Dorktown on the 2011-2012 Charlotte Bobcats

By Van Dennis • October 17th, 2023

Dorktown’s strengths are on full display here yet again: surprisingly little footage of actual people on the court, a superb soundtrack, and a completely honest appreciation of the men in the titular shorts whose job(s) it is to go out and get their asses handed to them.

Noah's Beat Box

All the Content Warnings

By Noah Springer • October 6th, 2023

Comedy and horror truly reside next to each other in some off-kilter way, balancing the truly debauched with the truly buffoonish.

Mind Palaces

A still from The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart showing a a close-up on a blonde boy wearing a Batman Halloween mask in front of a blue summer sky.

A Secret Third Thing

By Maddi Chilton • September 27th, 2023

The Venture Bros. premiered in 2004. Seven seasons later, it finally gets its finale, or what amounts to one.

Exploits Feature

Freaks

By Dr. Dobermind • September 1st, 2023

“You laughed at them, shuddered at them. And, yet, but for the accident of birth, you might be one as they are.”

Run It Back

1982

By Oluwatayo Adewole • August 30th, 2023

This month we step on over to 1982 to discuss two films which tell the stories of a Black relationship on each side of the Atlantic.

Screenshot from the trailer for Night has A Thousand Eyes, featuring the main character in a suit walking back from an attic window looking over a city at night

The Stars Can’t Hurt You: Fighting the Future in Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

By Orrin Grey • August 24th, 2023

Even if you’re pretty sure you know going in – it is difficult, after all, to not have been spoiled at least a little bit on a movie that is three-quarters of a century old – the unspooling of the film does a good job of keeping you on your toes,

Feature Story

A still from Planet of the Dinosaurs shows two people not wearing nearly enough protective gear trying to fend of a tyrannosaurus rex with a tiny little knife.

Spacemen & Dinosaurs

By David Busboom • August 24th, 2023

Interplanetary explorers have been encountering dinosaurs or dinosaur-like creatures in fiction for more than a century.

Screenshot from the trailer for Swamp Thing, where a swamp is covered in dry ice fog as the titular Swamp Thing carries a scantily-clad Barbeau through the moist forest

A Plant for the 21st Century: Swamp Thing (1982) on 4K from MVD

By Orrin Grey • August 18th, 2023

Swamp Thing takes a lot more swings at being “crowd-pleasing” than anything Wes Craven had worked on in the past.

Here's the Thing

A scene from Aliens shows Ripley shining an electric torch across a field of unhatched xenomorph eggs.

Enough With The “Alien” Comparisons

By Rob Rich • August 16th, 2023

Most modern sci-fi horror movies that involve a monster (or monsters) wind up being compared to Alien, which Rob thinks is a load of bull.

Screenshot from Talk to Me, featuring the mummified medium's hand gracefully reaching out as if to be shaken with a lone candle in the background

I Don’t Get Nightmares: Scaring Yourself with Talk to Me (2023)

By Orrin Grey • July 31st, 2023

Talk to Me may be the most credible supernatural teen horror movie ever made, simply by dint of the way that the kids in the film turn the medium-istic hand into a party game, heedless of the larger questions it raises, or the possible consequences of their actions.

a screenshot from The Primevals with a towering Yeti covered in fur in the mid shot, a tiny gaggle of humans behind, and three lizard people with medieval weapons at the front

Science and Sensation: A Blast from the Past Courtesy of The Primevals (2023)

By Orrin Grey • July 26th, 2023

The Primevals is pure pulp, hearkening back to the golden age of adventure stories.

close crop of the cover of the Arrow Video boxed set featuring a comic illustration of many characters from the movies, including adorable couple in matching robes, undead orc and his precious dolls, mullet wizard, and a whole bunch more in a video store in the background

Building Empire: Arrow Video’s Enter the Video Store – Empire of Screams Collection

By Orrin Grey • July 13th, 2023

In their latest boxed set, Arrow Video pays tribute to these days of amazing trash at your local video store, with a collection of five films spanning nearly the entirety of Empire’s short tenure.

Always Autumn

Wakanda Forever's Prince Namor wearing a regal feathered serpent headdress in his underwater domain.

A Golden Halo That Could Be the Sun Part II: The Ones Who Stay and Fight

By Autumn Wright • July 13th, 2023

What does it mean to be born of the dead?

Run It Back

A close-up of Winston Duke in Nine Days, wearing silver-rimmed spectacles and a look of concern on his face.

You’ve Gotta Stop Living Like You’re Already Dead

By Oluwatayo Adewole • June 29th, 2023

What use is it to name the knife that slides between your ribs if you can’t let yourself be helped?

a crop of the box cover for Mexico Macabre, mostly featuring the title text but you can see a little bit of what looks like a hairy mutant turkey's legs and a monstrous human's forehead

Entering the Kingdom of the Supernatural: The Mexico Macabre Collection from Indicator

By Orrin Grey • June 22nd, 2023

Mexican horror films from the ’60s feel like someone attempting to remake the classic horror films of the ‘30s and ‘40s from memory. Which, given that we were still decades ahead of the advent of home video, was probably almost literally the case.

Crop of the Japanese poster for Shin Kamen Rider 2023, featuring an illustration of the titular rider with his grasshopper helmet, high collar jacket, streaming scarf, and brooding energy

Happiness and Pain: Going Cold into Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

By Orrin Grey • June 2nd, 2023

There’s more visual punch in any 15 minutes of Shin Kamen Rider than a dozen other blockbusters.

Mind Palaces

Our World and the Others

By Maddi Chilton • May 30th, 2023

Our scientific mindset, our modern rationalism is a handicap when attempting to represent the premodern, where the boundaries that we consider so key for understanding our world have no presence.

Mind Palaces

A scene from Dune shows the silhouette of a man looking out across a vast expanse of organized troops in a desert landscape.

Honor Among Adaptations

By Maddi Chilton • May 4th, 2023

A faithful adaptation can be satisfying, but an unfaithful adaptation can be invigorating.

Run It Back

A promo image for John Waters' Serial Mom showing the title character posed in front of a white picket fence in a cheery polka-dot dress. She smiles sinisterly while holding a knife above a pristine cherry pie, though the knife seems to already have some of the red filling smeared on the blade. Unless...

1994

By Oluwatayo Adewole • April 28th, 2023

The year of John Wayne Gacy’s execution, Jeffrey Dahmer’s baptism and John Waters’ suburban comedy Serial Mom.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • April 10th, 2023

Did you hear there is a Dungeons & Dragons movie?

Screengrab for the title card of Dorktown's The History of the Seattle Mariners documentary, with the title at the top with "The supercut by Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein" below and a chart of years, baseball players, graphs, and various other data spread below

It Just Continues: Dorktown’s The History of the Seattle Mariners

By Van Dennis • April 6th, 2023

Despite going over 40 years without ever reaching the mountaintop, the Mariners have a history worth recognizing, and one that can make you reconsider what a team “means.”

Run It Back

A still from Querelle shows a sailor leaning against a telephone pole as a theatrical sun sets behind him.

1982

By Oluwatayo Adewole • March 24th, 2023

This month we’re taking on two grand pieces of homoeroticism, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film Querelle and Judas Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance.

Eyeing Elsewhere

Three boys skateboard down a New York street.

Behind the Camera

By Phillip Russell • March 23rd, 2023

While the subjects of Minding the Gap share a love for skateboarding, the heart of the documentary lies in the shared histories and traumas surrounding domestic abuse.

Screenshot from the trailer for The Conjuring, featuring the exorcist couple doing a little peekaboo in a spooky basement

Horror’s Path Through Christian Cosmology

By Lyana Rodriguez • March 17th, 2023

Howlikely is it that you find a monster justifying something truly dangerous and soul-crushing with a bit of Scripture? How easy is it, especially now, to discover a religious bigot justifying the shedding of blood for the sake of their own personal crusade?

A screenshot from the trailer for Black Sunday (1977), featuring a split shot with two closeups of some very tense looking agents

Bombs Bursting in Air: The Other Black Sunday (1977)

By Orrin Grey • March 15th, 2023

The movie’s producer, Robert Evans, quotes Henry Kissinger in telling him, “You can’t make it a political picture. You can’t take sides. You can’t make it anti or pro anyone.” How much they succeeded or failed at that is up for debate.

A poster for Santo contra Cerebro del Mal, with the white-masked Lucador on the left with a machine gun facing off against a black-masked wrestler and another scene of a man in a suit punching another man

For the Good of All Mankind: The Two Earliest Films Starring the Silver Masked Man

By Orrin Grey • March 2nd, 2023

The state of these pictures can be attributed to the fact that they were the first of their kind, filmed simultaneously, on a shoestring budget and in quite a hurry.

The title card for Invaders for Mars, featuring the text of the title over some planets and stars

Dreams & Nightmares: Invaders from Mars (1953) Painstakingly Restored on 4K

By Orrin Grey • January 26th, 2023

Ignite Films has planted their flag as a company to watch for what their own logline calls “classics for the future.”

Run It Back

A black-and-white photograph of a Black woman standing in front of a Senegalese mask hung on a wall. Her hands rest on the wall to either side of it, and she turns to look over her right shoulder towards something or someone behind her.

1966

By Oluwatayo Adewole • January 25th, 2023

Freedom is one of those fundamental and recurring items in how we think about the world we live in and our place in it. There are few times where this was clearer than in 1966.

A still from the trailer of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, where the three young adults are dressed in their 70s weirdo finest, in front of some wood paneled walls, caressing a corpse and laughing at their hijinks

It’s a Boneyard: Revisiting Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972) on 4K

By Orrin Grey • January 19th, 2023

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things is a fairly accurate portrait of what macabre weirdos like us got up to – or imagined ourselves getting up to – in the days before we had the internet to distract us.

Rookie of the Year

Rand Peltzer, inventor patriarch of the family featured in the film Gremlins, sits at the kitchen table with a face full of shaving cream while his son Billy looks on, laughing.

Ranking the Gremlins Gizmos

By Matt Marrone • January 6th, 2023

In honor of Rand Peltzer, we have decided to rank the unappreciated genius’ six greatest gizmos, from worst to first.

Interlinked

Greta, the female gremlin from Gremlins 2, poses in a sequined red gown and pink feather boa, a large red flower pinned to her shiny green mane of wavy tresses. Her makeup is flawless on her scaly green face.

Gremlin Girl Energy

By Phoenix Simms • January 5th, 2023

Greta is both a problem and a potential solution to that problem, but when read under a more feminist-revisionist lens, she’s charmingly camp, she’s a 90s icon and she’s absolutely that bitch.

screenshot from Nightmare at noon, with four characters hiding out in a starkly lit police office. A giant framed collection of patched leans against the wall, while the officers lean on various bits of furniture and look forlorn

Meat and Potatoes Country: Nightmare at Noon (1988) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • December 23rd, 2022

To an enormous extent, your enjoyment of (and even tolerance for) Nightmare at Noon will rely largely on how much affection you have for these actors, since they’re the beating heart of the film.

Past Presence

The title screen for the movie Gremlins. The word "Gremlins" is superimposed in red over the the snowy idyll of Kingston Falls, Pennsylvania.

Enter the Gremlins

By Emily Price • December 23rd, 2022

Emily’s (live) reactions to the movie, time stamped if you want to watch along.