REVIEW: Honey Bee [2019]

You’ll like the horses then. It would be easy to dismiss Rama Rau‘s first non-documentary feature Honey Bee as another melodramatically grim look at the consequences of sex trafficking in North America because it does utilize a lot of narrative convenience as far as driving the plot towards its endgame. Doing so, however, would discount the reason why Bonnie Fairweather and Kathleen Hepburn‘s script works this way and why the resulting message is more important than the journey to get there. The whole point of portraying young Natalie’s (Julia Sarah…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: The Oak Room [2020]

Goose the truth. It starts with a bottle of beer hitting a bar before an off-screen fight gets that glass bouncing along to the impact of bodies we never see. And it finishes with a similar still life that may or may not be the exact same beverage—a question left in limbo considering bottles are hitting bars past closing time throughout the entirety of director Cody Calahan and screenwriter Peter Genoway‘s film The Oak Room. There are a lot of these almost cyclical moments during its brisk, dialogue-heavy ninety-minutes: drifters…

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REVIEW: Saw VI [2009]

“Conundrum of Carnage” From what I read, the storylines set forth in and around Saw III will culminate to a conclusion with the eighth entry in the bloody saga. After a pretty dismal opening and quick fall from the Top 5 in week number 2 for Saw VI, the question shouldn’t be when the story ends, but when the money does. I know that the films have a pretty cheap budget and so far reaped a huge profit, but you do have to wonder when enough is enough. Personally, I…

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