Category: Features
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Upstream Color
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Read more: Upstream ColorIt was a nine-year wait between writer-director-producer-actor-composer Shane Carruth’s first film, Primer (perhaps the most realistic, challenging, and compelling time-travel movie ever made), and his masterpiece, Upstream Color, an even more complex and challenging movie, and certainly a more visually appealing one. It has now been nine years since the latter was released, with no…
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Starring debuts #19: Joe Spinell in Maniac (1980)
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Read more: Starring debuts #19: Joe Spinell in Maniac (1980)Joe Spinell was a hemophiliac who bled to death in 1989 in his early fifties. Throughout his 17-year film career, he overwhelmingly played bit parts, but had an extraordinary knack for picking the right projects. We’re talking the first two Godfather and Rocky movies, as well as Taxi Driver, Sorcerer, and Cruising. Pretty good, huh?…
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Tina! Bring Me The Axe!
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Read more: Tina! Bring Me The Axe!Cinema is littered with ridiculous turns, most of them delivered by Nic Cage. Talented as he is at scenery chewing (as anyone who’s seen Con Air or The Wicker Man remake will attest) I still don’t think his frequent hammy excesses can ever reach the level of Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. This 1981 travesty…
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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
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Read more: The Man Who Killed Don QuixoteOn January 04, 2018 I wrote an article about Movies That Ruthless Reviews Eagerly Anticipates in 2018. Terry Gilliam worked on this film for an unbelievable 30 years before it finally came to fruition. This is after 10 attempts for this off and on film. No one but the whacky genius Terry Gilliam could have…
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Top Gun: Maverick
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Read more: Top Gun: Maverick“Top Gun: Maverick” – Shock and awe. If ever there was a movie where my expectations were set to negative one million, it’s every Fast and Furious movie. One tick higher was Top Gun: Maverick. Like every other Gen X/Millennial, I have fond memories of the original Top Gun, complete with the ability to sing…
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Fucked-Up Films #5: Wolf Creek (2005)
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Read more: Fucked-Up Films #5: Wolf Creek (2005)Film Title Wolf Creek Synopsis Australia. The outback. And you thought venomous snakes were scary. Director Greg McLean Cast John Jarratt Nathan Phillips Cassandra Magrath Kestie Morassi What are these sick bastards doing? Actually, Ben, Kristy and Liz aren’t sick bastards. They’re lovely guys partying on the Western Australian coast who are about to undertake…
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Starring debuts #17: Gene Wilder in The Producers (1967)
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Read more: Starring debuts #17: Gene Wilder in The Producers (1967)Comedians often suck when they try their luck on the big screen. They might be established stand-ups able to sell out 3,000-seater venues or a much-loved part of Saturday Night Live, but something invariably starts to stink during their feature-length stuff. To be fair, it’s very difficult for any performer to make consistently funny flicks.…
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The Shawshank Redemption
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Read more: The Shawshank RedemptionI despise Stephen King, his novella of Rita Hayworth, and The Shawshank Redemption. It was an un-readable blot of blueberry mustard smeared on a Maine tourist map from 1973. Why ’73? Well, that’s the last year of Maine’s state pride as it is the last year it WOULD NOT be associated with this human cowlick…
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Hold The Dark
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Read more: Hold The DarkWith Hold the Dark, Jeremy Saulnier’s third such endeavor and fourth feature, the director’s reputation as a state-hopping connoisseur of America’s backwoods is well and truly confirmed. A reputation not so much for achievement as inclination; mainly an infatuation with subcultures situated at the peripheries of mainstream society. His penchant for uncompromising and violent depictions…
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Imaginative Bursts of Sadism
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Read more: Imaginative Bursts of SadismDo you ever do that thing, perhaps while life hasn’t been treating you too brilliantly, when you start reading up on sicko Nazi and serial killer shit? You don’t mean to (perhaps you’ve got a spare half-hour between charity commitments) but somehow you’re disappearing into the bowels of the internet consuming blood-drenched pages about medieval…