REVIEW: Poison [1991]

“I’ve just captured the sex drive” Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Todd Haynes‘ directorial debut Poison is a wild, outside-the-box ride. It reminded me of David Lynch‘s Eraserhead with a surreally experimental aesthetic and odd relationships sparked between over-the-top and perhaps parodied “freaks” standing-in as metaphors for humanity’s intolerance towards the “different”. It’s three unrelated stories about sexuality told in three different styles: “Hero” as a garish TV docu-mystery; “Homo” as a gritty thriller intercut with vibrant, warped fantasy flashbacks; and “Horror” as a B-movie sci-fi flick…

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REVIEW: Barely Lethal [2015]

“Like, totem pole” Much like director Kyle Newman‘s first theatrical release Fanboys, his sophomore effort Barely Lethal is built for a niche audience with minimal wiggle room to capture the excitement of casual viewers just stopping by. You don’t need to travel farther than the backlash-riddled comments section of its YouTube trailers to understand this. Snide remarks about its apparent quality, jokes about Samuel L. Jackson loving money, and easy comparisons to fare like Agent Cody Banks are the norm in today’s internet culture of anonymous hate and sarcasm for…

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REVIEW: Date Night [2010]

“And you brought your androgynous friend” It is amazing what a month can do to change one’s tastes. I’m a fan of Steve Carell, have been since his days on “The Daily Show”, but recently couldn’t get past how much I hated his role in “The Office”, not to mention having wrote off the show last season. And then there’s Tina Fey, a comedienne that I respect and thought did a wonderful job with Mean Girls, but whom I really had no opinion of—I stopped watching “SNL” when Farley died.…

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REVIEW: Bloodsport [1988]

“Dux is my man” I am, of course, a cinema purist. I can’t stand watching films on TV if they are going to be interrupted by commercials or edited in anyway. I won’t even start watching something I have not seen unless I started at the very beginning and went to the end. However, with a couple friends over and a little “Mystery Science Theater 3000” atmosphere, I threw all those rules out the window and experienced the last hour or so of the cult classic Bloodsport. Did I watch…

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REVIEW: Carnival of Souls [1962]

“I don’t belong in the world” **SPOILERS** This little gem from 1962 has been on my to see list for years. I’ve eyed the Criterion Collection version, almost buying it a couple of times, until finally looking away until I knew for sure it was worth purchasing. I can safely say that Carnival of Souls is well deserving of the Criterion treatment and soon a place in my film catalog. Director Herk Harvey has put together a real work of art and amazingly it was to be his only non-documentary/educational…

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