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: The Novice [2021]

Why are you here? There’s a difference between being the best and being the hardest worker. If you’re the best, you don’t always need to work. It’s natural. Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman) describes the phenomenon perfectly about midway through Lauren Hadaway‘s feature debut The Novice while shooting pool with potential love interest Dani (Dilone). She explains how she’s driven to beat the best rather than be the best. How she’s accepted the idea that she’ll always have to struggle and that she’ll never achieve the pinnacle of whatever career, hobby,…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: The Last Thing Mary Saw [2022]

God creates enemies in order to perform His good. The line between God and Satan is almost non-existent when you really think about it considering they are two sides of the same coin. The former might be worse in the long run too since He not only created the latter, but also sits by while His followers use the Devil as their excuse to commit heinous crimes. God-fearing men and women have spent millennia declaring Satan’s influence as the reason they must cleanse the world of evil without ever having…

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REVIEW: Orphan [2009]

“Look at the snow orphan—snorphan?” Surprise, surprise, Orphan actually isn’t that bad. Who would have thought something that appeared to be a bad rehash of The Omen could truly entertain? I guess the ability to acquire the services of a couple on the cusp of A-list status actors in Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga should have raised an eyebrow, but honestly I still had many reservations. In fact, I knew the “twist” before sitting down in the theatre—something that I believe enhanced my enjoyment rather than lessened it. Perhaps this…

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