REVIEW: Predator [1987]

I ain’t got time to bleed. I really hope the anecdote is true that Jim and John Thomas wrote their script for Predator based on a joke positing how the only opponent left for Rocky Balboa to fight after Ivan Drago was an alien. It’s a cheesy thought and cheesier premise, so the fact that they and director John McTiernan could craft something as severely brutal as the finished film is a testament to their craft. They decide to move beyond pure action adventure motives, utilizing horror tropes for their…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: Hölmö nuori sydän [Stupid Young Heart] [2018]

Nobody knows. It was fun to laugh back in January when Donald Trump spoke to the media about how he wanted fewer immigrants from “shithole” countries and more from the likes of Norway. We laughed because it was obvious what the difference between the two was for him—my ignorance towards Scandinavian politics stopping at the color of their respective skin. But apparently there’s a growing trend towards radical right populism and nationalism over there too. Just as Nazis have come out of the woodwork in America under their rebranded moniker…

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TIFF18 REVIEW: The Truth About Killer Robots [2018]

We will not consider the question of the robot’s guilt. The title to Maxim Pozdorovkin‘s documentary The Truth About Killer Robots is intentionally sensationalized for the same reasons a real newspaper article about the death by machine of a Volkswagen factory worker would be accompanied by a photograph of a terminator. James Cameron put a face to the concern humanity has about artificial intelligence and technology—that some type of uprising will occur once we either wrong our creations or prove the catalyst of our own extinction and thus the “disease”…

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