REVIEW: Metal Lords [2022]

Metal is … taking the wheel. There hasn’t been a “battle of the bands” since an unfortunate scrotal incident scarred many a teen not expecting nudity a few years back, but the mere mention of the possibility Dean Swanson (Sufe Bradshaw) decided to give her students another shot has Hunter Sylvester (Adrian Greensmith) salivating. The problem is the fact that he doesn’t have a band. Wanting one and having one are too different things and Dad’s (Brett Gelman) money (stolen, of course) can only get Hunter so far before a…

Read More

REVIEW: Harpoon [2019]

We need to promise not to kill each other. Writer/director Rob Grant wastes zero time getting us in the right frame of mind with Brett Gelman‘s perfectly sardonic voice narrating an auspiciously violent collision of three close friends caught in a lovers’ misunderstanding. Harpoon‘s first scene provides effect—a stranded yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with “SOS” duct taped to the deck—while the second supplies cause as Jonah (Munro Chambers) gets his face punched in by best friend Richard (Christopher Gray) with the latter’s long-term partner Sasha (Emily…

Read More

REVIEW: Wild Nights with Emily [2019]

Sue, forevermore. As evidenced by her poetry and letters, the reclusive spinster Emily Dickinson proves anything but. Through them we learn of her struggles to get published, the rejections endured, and a love shared with her sister-in-law Susan. Why then was the former thought process how we were told to consider her life? Because those lies were better suited to the mythic status one would manufacture as publicity to garner posthumous acclaim. Mabel Todd erased Sue’s name from Emily’s love correspondence (proven via spectrographic technology) and created a legend that…

Read More