REVIEW: Blood Relatives [2022]

What does that make me? As a vampire without American identification, you could say Francis (Noah Segan) is an illegal immigrant regardless of the fact he’s lived in the country longer than anyone else currently alive with a legitimate birth certificate. Why he chooses to drive through red states in his vintage Barracuda while confusing Alex Jones-loving, conspiracy-theorizing yokels with Yiddish is therefore a mystery. This is the solitary bachelor life he’s chosen, though. And perhaps that part of the country is simply better suited for a nomadic lifestyle demanding…

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REVIEW: White Noise [2022]

Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. I must commend Noah Baumbach for taking on Don DeLillo‘s White Noise because it is nothing like his other films. Where they are all in some way a projection of his life and that of those around him, this satirical tale of one family’s (in)ability to cope with their impending mortality is on an entirely different tonal level. Because while Baumbach’s worlds are obviously heightened realities delivered through an affected aesthetic lens, the dialogue and interactions coming from the Gladney family have…

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REVIEW: May [2003]

I need more parts. Kids don’t like weird. They like being weird and marking those weirder than them as pariahs out of jealousy and/or entitlement. The question where it concerns May Dove Canady (Angela Bettis) is whether she was ever actually weird at all. As writer/director Lucky McKee explains via a brief prologue, the kids stayed away from her because of how she handled her lazy eye. Rather than lean into it and make it a non-issue, her mother did everything in her power to force young May to keep…

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REVIEW: Cerdita [Piggy] [2022]

The town is full of spite. There’s a reason why Carlota Pereda films Sara (Laura Galán) urinating through her clothes as an old friend (Irene Ferreiro‘s Claudia) who’s drifted away towards the clique that bullies her puts a bloody hand on the back window of a serial killer’s van while screaming for help. We need to understand her fear. Just because Sara is a teenager who’s been brutally victimized by an entire town of peers doesn’t mean she’s measuring the situation and deciding to let Claudia, Maca (Claudia Salas), and…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: The Blackening [2023]

Probably runs on racism. The original short directed by Chioke Nassor asked a group of Black friends to choose who amongst them was the “blackest” as a sacrifice to save the rest. Why? Because the killer got confused when starting his spree due to his inability to find the “Black character” his trope-fueled brain demanded as its first victim. Hilarity ensues as everyone desperately tries erasing said blackness to keep breathing, revealing embarrassing (and some unforgivable) secrets along the way. It’s an ingenious conceit for a satire that’s perfectly suited…

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REVIEW: Bodies Bodies Bodies [2022]

He’s a libra moon! The reasons for ignoring the group chat were legitimate. Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) had checked into rehab and needed time working through things while readjusting her life to sobriety. Jumping back in with her equally privileged twenty-something products of wealth would probably have been the worst choice she could have made. But things are different now. She’s in love. And while her and Bee (Maria Bakalova) have only known each other six weeks, we can guess that Sophie has never been happier. So, with the strength of…

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REVIEW: House of Darkness [2022]

Seeing things already? Hap (Justin Long) can barely believe his luck. Drunk at the bar and prone to delivering corny pick-up lines, he decides to chat up Mina (Kate Bosworth) only to discover she’s amenable to his liquor-tinged charms. While we don’t witness this meet-cute ourselves, seeing them in his car as it pulls up to her secluded woodlands estate reveals they must have hit it off. Just because Hap was brave enough to offer his services as chauffeur, however, doesn’t mean he’d go so far as to invite himself…

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REVIEW: Nope [2022]

I guess some animals ain’t fit to be trained. The scene that encapsulates what Jordan Peele‘s Nope delivers comes somewhat early as OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em Haywood (Keke Palmer) visit the owner and operator of the theme park that serves as their neighbor out in Agua Dulce, California. The purpose of the visit is to sell Ricky ‘Jupe’ Park (Steven Yeun) another of their Hollywood trained horses now that their father’s (Keith David‘s Otis) death has left them with the debts an industry shift towards digital animal effects exacerbated.…

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REVIEW: Orphan: First Kill [2022]

Nothing is ever just one thing. Screenwriters Alex Mace and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick gave their character Leena Klammer, aka Esther Albright, a complete back story at the end of Jaume Collet-Serra‘s Orphan. A victim of a rare hormone disorder known as hypopituitarism, causing proportional dwarfism, had made it so her thirty-three-year-old woman looked as though she was only nine. The condition obviously prevented her from being seen as a mature adult and so she used it to her manipulative advantage. What began as thieving, however, eventually escalated to murder once…

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REVIEW: Resurrection [2022]

Do you think you could kill someone? It starts with a hair. Both a blemish ruining an otherwise immaculate office and a remnant of someone no longer present. Then there comes a tooth implausibly found within the change pouch of a wallet, escalating those aspects while moving beyond innocuous to menacing. Because a hair isn’t a threat—not on its surface. Neither is a tooth except for it being found somewhere much less readily available to strangers than an entire room. Taken together they demand we stop and pause, though. What…

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FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Sissy [2022]

Be there or die. There’s some delicate subject matter at the heart of Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes‘ Sissy. It’s unavoidable when you’re spring-boarding off an objectively tragic event that occurred during childhood. Because, while young Sissy may have been the one who physically assaulted Alex when they were age twelve, that isolated and impulsive act of violence was ignited by months or years of psychological torment inflicted by the injured. Does the event make Sissy a monster regardless of those circumstances? Or can society look beyond the visual aftermath…

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