The toys in the Toy Story franchise have an unhealthy codependent relationship with children. They portray getting included in pretend scenarios as the pinnacle of their existence and to be deprived o...

When Worlds Collide truly and earnestly tried to be hard sci-fi. When astronomers discover an errant solar system on a collision course with our own, they use their slide rules and abacuses to suss ou...

The problem with Tim Burton’s “weird kid who sits alone in the cafeteria, shunned by the other kids” schtick is that after a few blockbuster mega-hits it doesn’t fit. Mainstream success at the level B...

The secret to horror comedies is that the horror has to be scary. This is why Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Ghostbusters (1984), and Shawn of the Dead (2004) are great and dreck like D...

While Bernice Stegers is having an affair in an upstairs apartment above a blind man, her daughter drowns her little brother. When the daughter calls the mom with the news, her lover agrees to take he...

Oh boy, do I love a horror anthology. Recently I made a list of all the pictures I’ve seen that fit that sub-subgenre and it turns out I’ve seen 23 of various quality. None will ever be considered amo...

Depending on which movies you include, there are 25 to 27 James Bond movies released over a 60-year span. Goldfinger was the third Sean Connery Bond movie and according to both Rotten Tomatoes and Met...

The copy of this movie I saw on Tubi had the title "Phobia" which is a better title than The Nesting. I watched the whole movie and I have no idea what that means. I kinda expected to see killer bugs ...

What an absolute fumble of a stellar concept. Dakota Fanning is alone in her house when there’s a knock at the door. She lets an old woman who appears confused inside and she gives her a box and decla...

Barbara Stanwyck plays a gangster moll who gets nabbed during a bank heist. A reformist radio personality/revivalist understandably falls in love with her but she tries to rebuke him. The bulk of Ladi...

Kara Young and Mallori Johnson play orphaned twins with burn scars on their left arm and face respectively. When they meet their mother Vivica A. Fox, a woman whom they equate to God since she essenti...

It was 1999-2000 that Western audiences became aware of “Wire Fu” which is a blended slang of wire work and Kung Fu. Both have long traditions in film, wire work mostly used for flying or making it lo...

Southbound is sold as a horror anthology but I argue that it is not. They’re interwoven stories told out of chronological order very much like Pulp Fiction (1994). That isn’t to say that there aren’t ...

The Hole became very popular when the actual worldwide pandemic hit. People called this Taiwanese film prescient which it is, to an extent. Naming the virus “The Taiwan Flu” is eerily familiar to some...

Star Wars is quite the polarized IP. Fans tend to love some entries into the franchise or loathe them and usually depending on what they want Star Wars to be. Is it a space fantasy aimed at children? Is it a space opera with melodramatic familial conflict? Is it a space rebellion against space fascism allegory with space dogfights and space espionage? I mean, yeah. It’s all of those. And there’s room for all of those. As a casual fan, I’ve seen all the films but only about half the shows. I tend to like my Star Wars to be

In the early 90s, a purple anthropomorphic dinosaur in a sports mascot outfit named Barney became very popular. He lived on a set with artificial turf and sang songs and learned lessons with child act...

John Huston’s penultimate film made during the height of Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner’s fame. He’s mafia since birth and she’s a contract killer who may or may not have actually fallen in love b...

Challenge the Devil reads like a movie made from discarded subplots of several other movies. Two hitmen seek out a man who claims his dossier was stolen. They chase him through some Italian streets an...

Two art dealer friends, one Jewish, one gentile celebrate their children's potential engagement. The wedding is postponed while the Jewish daughter returns to Germany with the Gentile dad, her goal to...

Part The Lady Vanishes (1938), part Diabolique (1955), the pulpy-titled Scream of Fear is a picture where even whether what we’re seeing is unreliable narration is in question. Susan Strasberg is a wo...

Not a film I would watch without coercion, Jack and Jill looks like what it is: Adam Sandler trying to get in on playing multiple characters in a film, with one in drag like a Johnny-come-lately Eddie...

Made shortly after the end of WWII, Step by Step operates under the assumption that Germany will repeat its history after the first World War and attempt another world takeover. Lawrence Tierney is an...

The Western genre is a uniquely American creation and always reflects American’s self-image. Filled with independent, principled hardworking paragons who might not talk too good but they got smarts wh...

Starsky in full hair helmet is a psychiatrist trying to cure people suffering from extreme cases of phobias with a “radical” treatment that is just exposure therapy in a projection booth except for th...

Hammer’s version of Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an interesting one, I’ll give it that. In the original novella and in most adaptations, Jekyll is an upstanding ...

When the trailer for Andy Serkis’s wrongheaded adaptation came out last year it seemed like a joke. George Orwell’s novella isn’t a children’s story, it’s an allegory for the Russian revolution and ho...

What a strange little movie! These Are the Damned opens with Oliver Reed and his gang acting out a The Wild One (1953)/Rebel Without a Cause (1955) recreation using Reed’s sister Shirley Anne Field to...

A family of the idle rich pull up on the city dump to collect a homeless man to win a scavenger hunt and the man turns out to be William Powell. They eventually hire him as a butler and he teaches the...

I rewatched this last night with someone who had never seen it before. I've been hearing this film mentioned a lot lately as a way to denigrate Nolan's The Odyssey (2026) saying it's a better adaptati...

Val Lewton produced horror pictures are dark and ambiguous. They usually have a horrific element but the story leaves it up to interpretation whether something supernatural is going on. Isle of the De...

Pop horror likes its supernatural antagonists with clear rules. Hellraiser (1987), Jeepers Creepers (2001), and Candyman (1992) were all successful versions of this trope. Leprechaun (1988), Wishmaste...

Italian Giallo that is a riff off of Psycho (1960). Future Django Franco Nero plays the Norman Bates pastiche who has a mommy fixation and is a taxidermy hobbyist. When his fiancée and mother die on t...

The Drama opens like a modern romance film with high definition cinematography, insanely attractive Robert Pattinson (doing his best Hugh Grant) and Zendaya meeting cute, planning for their marriage a...

Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor are a couple on the rocks in an idyllic neighborhood in 1982 with two lovely children Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. One night their neighborhood at a two mile rad...

The first of two collaborations between director Fritz Lang and starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea. The second one, Scarlet Street, released a year later in 1945 is undeniably be...

There are a lot of reasons to love Hammer horror. To differentiate themselves from the old black and white horror films, they went full on bright garish color. Especially the blood. The sets are gorge...

The secret to great make-up effects is to put them on great actors. The flat-headed, bolt-necked Frankenstein (1931) had Boris Karloff to bring it to life. John Hurt gave The Elephant Man (1980) digni...

I’m a much bigger fan of Billy Wilder’s dramas than his comedies. Double Indemnity (1944) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) are easily top 20 of all time Noirs. His Marilyn Monroe pics The Seven Year Itch (...

Kubrick's sword and sandal epic based on a real guy who led a revolt against his slave owners. People remember two things about this movie: the gladiator stuff that only comprises half of the first ac...

Fritz Lang was known for epic films in Germany before emigrating to the US to escape the Nazis. Movies like The Spiders (1919), Die Nibelungen (1924) and Metropolis (1927). Once he hit Hollywood his f...

John Boorman choice to film the Arthurian legend with hyper realistic sets that are naturalistic yet lit like a stage is brilliant. Camelot is a castle made of shiny silver blocks, its chapel has wind...

The Last Horror film is your typical low budget Troma Entertainment film. The dialogue is amateurish, the camerawork is rudimentary and the plot refuses to flow. There is some glimmers of brilliance, ...

As a hardcore William Castle fan, I can't help but to judge any remakes harshly. Not that his films are peak examples of horror. They have an old timey, endearingly family friendly quality; especially...