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Showing posts with the label dark

CULT OF CHUCKY - VLOG REVIEW

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My review of late Child's Play sequel Cult Of Chucky .

SLEEPY HOLLOW - VLOG REVIEW

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I review Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow for Horror Month.

THE BIRDS - VLOG REVIEW

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I talk a bit about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds .

A BOY AND HIS DOG - VIDEO REVIEW

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L.Q. Jones' cult sci-fi film A Boy And His Dog gets its own video review.

NOTHING BUT TROUBLE - REVIEW

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The only film directed by Dan Aykroyd to date, Nothing But Trouble was a dark comedy from 1991 which starred Chevy Chase as a businessman who is arrested for speeding then put on trial in the trash and weirdo-filled little town of Valkenvania, just off the New Jersey Turnpike. With a cast that includes John Candy, Demi Moore, Taylor Negron and Dan Aykroyd himself, Nothing But Trouble looked like a safe bet and its goofy plot had lots of potential. Unfortunately, the film was a massive flop, gathering only about $8M against a healthy budget of $40M, and the critics did not go easy on it. Nothing But Trouble was panned by everyone back in the day, including Chevy Chase himself, it was nominated for several Razzie awards and Dan Aykroyd would never dare direct a film again afterwards. Looking back, the movie's failure at the box-office is hardly surprising: sinking this much money into a story this bizarre was never going to deliver. The film itself, on the other hand, isn't

BARTON FINK - REVIEW

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Directed by Joel Coen and released back in 1991, Barton Fink is a dark comedy about a playwright who gets the opportunity to write a wrestling picture for a big Hollywood studio but quickly experiences writer's block. This is perhaps one of the Coen Brothers' least well-known yet best movies. It failed at the box-office upon its release but sweeping the Cannes Film Festival, earning a few Oscar nominations and being a critical hit more than made up for that. The film follows Barton Fink (John Turturro), a passionate playwright who wants to create important work for the "common man", as he travels to Los Angeles to write a wrestling film for a Hollywood producer. He soon experiences writer's block in his dingy hotel room and befriends his neighbour Charlie (John Goodman) before slowly but surely spiralling down into confusion and despair. Part-Hollywood satire, part-surreal thriller, Barton Fink is a strange little movie that explores various big themes witho

SPLIT - REVIEW

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Ever since The Happening , every new M. Night Shyamalan movie has been met with cynicism. His last film The Visit was surprisingly well received, however, and so was  Split , a horror thriller starring James McAvoy as a man with 23 split personalities who kidnaps three teenagers. The serial killer premise sets the tone for the rest of the film, which is easily one of Shyamalan's creepiest efforts. We follow Kevin (McAvoy) as he incarcerates three innocent girls while still attending his psychiatrist's sessions. Meanwhile, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the other two teens try to figure out what's going on and look for a way to escape. Some of Kevin's personalities include a 9 year-old kid called Hedwig, the super intimidating Dennis and female mastermind Patricia. Your enjoyment of this film will depend completely on how you rate James McAvoy's performance which is both excellent but also wacky as hell. A lesser actor could have easily rendered Split either unwatc

SOUR GRAPES - REVIEW

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The only film to date to have been both written and directed by Larry David, Sour Grapes is a comedy from 1998 starring Steven Weber and Craig Bierko as two cousins whose relationship quickly goes down the drain when one of them hits the jackpot in a casino using the other's quarters. Despite the film's fun premise and the decent cast involved, Sour Grapes failed at the box-office, was hated by critics (including Roger Ebert) and even Larry David himself isn't too fond of it these days. The negative reaction after its release combined with the mean-spirited nature of the film itself is probably why Sour Grapes is as forgotten as it is. The comedy does admittedly have its share of problems. One highly unlikely plot thread, for example, sees Bierko's character scheming to scare his own mother to death by giving her home keys to a homeless man when he finds out that he might be dying because... that would save her the pain of seeing him get increasingly worse health-

MIDNIGHT SPECIAL - REVIEW

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From the director of Take Shelter and Mud comes another cult oddity starring Michael Shannon. Midnight Special is a science-fiction film about a young boy with unpredictable abilities who is being driven out of the city by his father as government agents hunt them down. Very much a nod to all those E.T. -style sci-fi films of the 1980's, Midnight Special remains a modern update rather than a straight-up homage like Stranger Things . The tone and pacing throughout is about as gloomy and slow as you'd expect from a Jeff Nichols film so if you're looking for big action sequences or tons of trippy effects then this will probably disappoint. The cool thing about Midnight Special is it really doesn't feel like a science fiction movie so when something out of the ordinary happens it has an impact. The mood is pretty depressing from start to finish which is rare for a movie of that type but appropriate as the characters all journey towards a goal that can only mean one

DOG EAT DOG - REVIEW

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Another year, another Nicolas Cage film you never knew existed but which somehow got made and was released when you weren't looking. Dog Eat Dog can now be found on Netflix, it co-stars Willem Dafoe and it is, believe it not, pretty good. The opening sequence of the film is arguably one of last year's most brutal scenes, which sets the tone for Dafoe's character, a pathetic yet psychopathic ex-con nicknamed "Mad Dog" who joins his partners in crime Troy (Nicolas Cage) and Diesel (Christopher Matthew Cook) for one last job. Directed by veteran filmmaker Paul Schrader, known for co-writing some of Martin Scorsese's very best films and for making off-beat thrillers himself, Dog Eat Dog definitely has a quirky plot that feels like something the Coen Brothers would tackle or have tackled since one of the scenes even involves Cage stealing a baby à la Raising Arizona . There is humour in the film but the several funny lines or moments you'll find are super

ENEMY - REVIEW

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Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Enemy , a strange little movie from Denis Villeneuve, the director of Prisoners and Arrival , about a teacher who discovers that a small-time actor looks exactly like him for some reason and tries to figure out why. The trailers suggested a thriller but this is really more of a low-key character study with a surreal edge. Enemy keeps you guessing from start to finish and it's likely that, even after the end credits have rolled, you'll still be thinking about it, piecing it all together. After playing a wild-eyed creep in Nightcrawler , Jake Gyllenhaal is back with yet another unique, off-beat performance (or two) as both the nervous teacher and his suspicious doppelgänger. Toronto is shot beautifully through a gold filter and Villeneuve proves himself once again capable of merging gritty and strange perfectly, much like Christopher Nolan does, as this one-man-show is framed by nightmarish visions of giant spiders. As to what the film itself mea

SCROOGED - REVIEW

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Released in 1988 and directed by Richard Donner, Scrooged was a modern retelling of Dickens' classic story  A Christmas Carol with Bill Murray as a particularly grouchy TV producer who is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. This marked a mini-comeback for Bill Murray after The Razor's Edge failed to make a dent at the box-office and despite Scrooged not sitting well with the likes of Roger Ebert, it's enjoyed something of a cult status since its release. This was certainly not the Scrooge re-imagining anyone was expecting as it's far stranger and more mean-spirited than you'd think, which might explain some reviewers' reservations. The tone throughout yo-yos between creepy and goofy so when the inevitable uplifting climax happens, you might find yourself too weirded out to really buy it. Perhaps part of the problem is that Murray sells his character's meanness too well so his 360 switch to "happy mode" needed more work to be convincin

BERNIE - VIDEO REVIEW

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Here's the video version of my Bernie review.

VULGAR - VIDEO REVIEW

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Here's the video version of my Vulgar review.

TUSK - VIDEO REVIEW

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Here's the video version of my Tusk review.

THE PERFECT HOST - REVIEW

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If you thought that going to a dinner party hosted by Niles from Frasier would be a lot of fun then think again as David Hyde Pierce proves he's not all there in The Perfect Host , a thriller from 2010 in which a criminal unexpectedly meets his match. Bank robber John (Clayne Crawford) is on the run, he somehow talks his way into a mild-mannered man's house in order to hide somewhere overnight. His host, Warwick (Hyde Pierce), mentions he's having a dinner party but, soon enough, John realises that he's stumbled onto one sick individual as he is drugged and shown graphic pictures of a man being gradually murdered. On top of that, Warwick's friends are all imaginary and John is forced to spend one crazy night indeed. This scenario feels very much like a rather tame version of The Human Centipede , Tusk or Texas Chainsaw Massacre in that someone stumbles onto a harmless setting that turns out to be quite the opposite. The Perfect Host definitely has its cree

BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE - REVIEW

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Review available on the new website .

BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM - REVIEW

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Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm was the only film based on Batman: The Animated Series to be shown in theatres and, despite receiving critical appraise back in 1993, its rushed release meant it was a flop. It would eventually gain a cult following on home video, though. The film sees Batman (Kevin Conroy, as ever) encounter a mysterious new vigilante called The Phantasm who has been settling scores with various mobsters around Gotham City. It's also something of a prequel as we learn more about how Bruce Wayne became Batman, his relationship with old flame Andrea Beaumont (voiced by Dana Delany) and The Joker's (Mark Hamill) involvement in The Phantasm's revenge mission. This is a tense, melodramatic, layered Batman story every bit as dark and stylish as the best episodes of The Animated Series. The look of Gotham keeps that retro, Tim Burton-esque feel and the whole thing is like a 1940's film noir romance with lots of action and a fascinating mystery thrown in.

SPHERE - REVIEW

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Based on a Michael Crichton novel, Sphere was a 1998 sci-fi film about a team of experts in various fields exploring some crashed underwater spaceship. Directed by Barry Levinson, the film boasts an all-star cast with Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote and Liev Schreiber all being part of the main team. Sphere is a psychological thriller that's a bit like a cross between The Abyss , Event Horizon , The Thing and Alien as the more the selected experts investigate the spaceship, the creepier the tone of the film becomes. Eventually, characters start dropping like flies as various unexpected threats start popping up randomly from killer jellyfish to giant squids. The discovery of a gold alien sphere in the middle of the spaceship leads to growing paranoia among the crew and various twists and turns. There are references here and there to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and, indeed, the film attempts to capture the book's sense of adventure and cla

SPAWN - REVIEW

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1997 was not a great year for superhero movies: not only did we get Batman & Robin but we also got Spawn and, although the latter was much more interesting and original than the former, it received some pretty rough feedback from critics and audiences alike. Based on the dark supernatural comic-books, Spawn sees special forces soldier Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) get double-crossed by Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen), the head of the agency who sent him on his latest mission. Simmons is burned alive and left for dead leaving him not only horribly disfigured but undead as a short trip down to Hell dooms him to eventually lead the Devil's army. In retrospect, attempting to tell this story on a $40M budget was somewhat over-ambitious seeing as the film was not only packed with special effects but builds up to a climax set in Hell with Spawn fighting a demon. Michael Jai White does a solid job as Spawn and it's pretty refreshing to see a film with an African-American superh