REVIEW: Settlers [2021]

No one’s gonna mess with you, kid. The thing about withholding plot information is that you must generally divulge that which you’ve held back at some point. To simply ignore that your audience is in the dark as far as the big picture is concerned is a sure-fire way to lose interest. Because what’s the point then? What are we really watching if the endgame leaves its characters in the same exact place they were before? I think writer/director Wyatt Rockefeller hopes that his feature debut Settlers will succeed for…

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REVIEW: River [2021]

Live first. Her mother (Becki Hayes‘ Lois) has lived in this town her whole life and River Allen (Mary Cameron Rogers) knows she’d willing suffer the same fate unless she forces herself to leave right now. It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad fate—regrets or not, Lois seems to enjoy the life she’s carved out over the years as a single mother amongst friends that care about her—but how would River ever know if something better was out there if she simply accepted it without at least trying? So she tells…

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REVIEW: The Forever Purge [2021]

Follow the roses. There’s one key fact about the fifth and (apparently) final installment in James DeMonaco‘s Purge series that demands mentioning: it was scheduled to debut July 2020. Whereas a COVID delay doesn’t mean much for F9 or Black Widow, it’s crucial to understanding just how prescient these political horror films are. Why? Because much of what occurs in The Forever Purge is an exact parallel to January 6th, 2021. DeMonaco’s mythology leads his fictional America to the brink of insurrection not to comment on what happened five months…

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REVIEW: Black Widow [2021]

I’m not the killer little girls call their hero. Even if we take COVID-19 into consideration and say that Black Widow arrived in 2020 rather than 2021, twelve years since Iron Man and nine since the character’s debut in Iron Man 2 isn’t much better than thirteen and ten. And remember when the company line was, “Well, The Winter Soldier is pretty much a Black Widow movie?” Yeah. That went over well and didn’t shine a light on a major issue within the MCU. Paired with Captain Marvel, the only…

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REVIEW: Infinite [2021]

No one’s got time for destiny. The background of how Infinite was optioned is a fun, anecdotal tale steeped in what some might construe as fate while others simply dismiss it as dumb luck. Former software developer D. Eric Maikranz self-published his debut novel The Reincarnationist Papers in 2009—the fictional memoirs of a man with memories of past lives who seeks to join a secret society of others like him—with the promise (printed on the front page) to give anyone able to put a copy into the pipeline at a…

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REVIEW: Two Distant Strangers [2020]

I think I just had the craziest, realist dream. You can’t read the synopsis for Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe‘s short film Two Distant Strangers and not think about The Obituary of Tunde Johnson—if you’ve seen it. Both utilize a time-loop scenario wherein their lead Black character is stuck in a never-ending cycle of police brutality always ending up with him shot dead. The difference between the two ends up being the fact that Free and Roe have less time to work with and thus less room to let…

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REVIEW: Boss Level [2021]

Yesterday was months ago. Add another entry to the time loop directory with Joe Carnahan‘s Boss Level arriving as this month’s installment of what feels like a monthly ritual these days. It’s not socially relevant like The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, emotionally poignant like Before I Fall, genre-bending like Happy Death Day, or irreverently subversive like Palm Springs, but it is entertaining. This is especially true for fans (like me) of the director’s Smokin’ Aces since that’s the title this latest work most closely resembles whether by way of its…

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REVIEW: Little Fish [2021]

I was so sad the day I met you. It happens slow or fast—only those suffering alongside you know for sure. Think Alzheimer’s except without an age threshold or genetic factor. One day you’re yourself and the next finds you either forgetting certain details or everything at once. The disease is known as NIA and it’s been ravaging the world for a while now. Planes are grounded so no more pilots will forget how to fly mid-flight. Stray dogs have increased exponentially because owners don’t realize they ever had a…

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REVIEW: PG: Psycho Goreman [2021]

That is a tale bathed in the blood of a million dead memories. It opens with a gladiator-level war of attrition between two middle school-aged siblings in their backyard. The game is called “crazy ball” and the loser gets buried alive. Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) pick-up their respective dodgeballs, throw them as far behind themselves as possible, and run after the other as fast as they can to try and take advantage of the five-point bonus “butt shot” rule. Writer/director Steven Kostanski shoots it like battle with…

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REVIEW: World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime [2020]

Will you be the one to discover my dead body? After two introspective science fiction gems that took us on journeys of self-discovery within the subconscious, filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt decides to take World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime in a different direction. That’s not to say the third part of this series isn’t deep, though, as there’s a lot to be said about love and longing and jealousy. Rather than lean on dialogue via a brilliant back and forth between a child’s endearing innocence and…

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REVIEW: World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts [2017]

The closer I look at things, the less I know. While Third Generation Emily told Emily Prime (Winona Mae) that they wouldn’t see each other again due to the impending doom of her world, she said nothing about whether other subsequent versions of herself would. The assumption is that she’d have remembered when Emily 6 (Julia Pott) visited since the event would have been stored in her memory due to everything that happens to Emily Prime already having happened before Third Generation Emily was cloned. The occurrence wouldn’t have been…

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