REVIEW: Pet Sematary [2019]

I just wanted to be a family again. Remakes are often thankless jobs because you’re stuck trying to live up to or best your predecessor while also creating something wholly different. Most attempts based on literary works are able to fall back on the clichéd notion of “returning to the source” as though the first adaptation was inexcusably unfaithful. But when you’re following a script written by the novel’s author, that excuse holds zero weight. So Jeff Buhler (Matt Greenberg‘s draft was apparently changed enough to downgrade his credit to…

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REVIEW: The Ranger [2018]

Coming here was a really bad idea. With punk rock blasting from the stage of a hole-in-the-wall venue that’s probably not actually open to the public considering an eventual police raid shutting it all down, Chelsea (Chloe Levine) is introduced looking the part if not quite one hundred percent committed to this zero consequence, wild lifestyle those around her have embraced as their core identity. Her friends consider themselves a family who do everything together whether getting wasted, stealing drugs at knifepoint, or stabbing cops to get away. They protect…

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