Author Archives: Felix Vasquez

Departing Seniors (2024)

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In Select Theaters & VOD/Digital on February 2nd.

Director Clare Cooney’s “Departing Seniors” is an ode to the classic giallo pictures of the seventies where someone is having psychic visions of a lurking masked killer. This masked killer though is lurking inside and around a high school, while the protagonist is a young man who is grappling with his own trauma involving his sexuality. While I give big respect to Joe Nateras for writing a movie that evokes the giallo pictures of the seventies, “Departing Seniors” misses on every other front. It’s a horror comedy that completely fails to keep its eye on the ball, centering so much more around teen drama and forgetting that it’s also supposed to be a horror movie.

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Seven Great Boutique Physical Media Labels

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Most recently big chains like Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart have decided to stop distributing physical media like DVD and Blu-Rays both in store and online. This is all a part of the fallacious propaganda that Hollywood has been pushing that Digital media is so much more superior while Physical Media is a defunct media format. It’s been proven that digital titles don’t really belong to those that garner digital film libraries due to a plethora of legal and licensing issues.

But it’s a part of the movement Hollywood has had since the eighties to phase out physical media and ultimately take control of all of their content. Nevertheless while the big chains have fallen in to this mind set, there are still a wide array of various outlets online that specialize in physical media, from mainstream, cult, underground, horror, box sets and the like.

As an ardent proponent of physical media and its inherent value, I’m recommending seven great boutique movie labels that still sell physical media, while a few practice both digital and physical releases. These are only a few of the great labels you can seek out. 

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Brave (2012)

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It’s shocking how well animated “Brave” is. Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrew’s action drama is filled with an immense scale packed with Scotland terrains as far as the eye can see. “Brave is also packed with great animation featuring our hero Merida’s hair which was intricately narrated for her specific character. All of the ballyhoo about the wonderful animation is all for a narrative that’s—fine. It’s a fine movie. It’s a perfectly mediocre, often confusing movie packed with such a wonderful and brilliant animation style.

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The Warriors (1979): 2-Disc Limited Edition [4K UHD]

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Now Available from Arrow Video.

It’s no secret that I Love “The Warriors.” I’ve loved it for years, and I talk about it constantly. I own a massive poster, the vinyl soundtrack the entire funko pop wave, the PS2 video game, and most of the editions on DVD and Blu-Ray. It’s a movie that’s had an interesting genesis starting out as a novel, transformed in to a notorious feature film, which then became fodder for video stores and was played quite often in syndication on cable and network television. It then evolved in to a cult classic and now a more widely celebrated cult masterpiece. And rightly so.

It’s a movie that works on so many levels as a streamlined, sleek, gritty, and exciting gang picture that Walter Hill directs with pitch perfect efficiency, and it’s garnered another well deserved special release from Arrow Video.

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The Sacred Cave (La Grotte sacrée) (2023) [FIAF’s ‘Animation First’ Film Fest 2024]

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FIAF’s ‘Animation First’ Film Festival runs from January 23rd through January 28th.

Directors Daniel Minlo and Cyrille Masso’s “The Sacred Cave” have a lot of interesting lore to put forward for fans of animation, and with their feature film there are so much of the concepts about courage, and importance of family and culture embedded in the classic hero’s journey. The pair of directors knows exactly what kind of movie that they’re delivering, though, as they convey the classic tropes through a unique setting that we rarely see in modern mainstream animation. That should be a catch for animation buffs looking for something different.

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POV (2023)

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Currently Screening in Various Festivals.

I believe it was Veruca Salt who said, and I paraphrase: I want a feature film version of “POV.” I want one, I don’t care how, but I want it now. “POV” is probably one of the very first horror based vigilante movies I’ve ever seen and it’s teeming with so much potential to build on this world and expand it in to something dark, twisted, and just downright bad ass. From director Brian K. Rosenthal (of “Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness”), “POV” is such a great film that has a pretty excellent concept behind it.

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Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl (2022)

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Streaming on Tubi TV, and Amazon Prime Video.

It’s become almost a tradition for some filmmaker to remake Nathan Juran’s 1958 schlock monster movie. Pretty much every four or five years a new variation of the formula pops up with a studio inserting some kind of entity. Now that CamGirl’s are still a thing and much more relevant, Jim Wynorski brings us the Attack of a 50 Foot CamGirl. It’s the bare minimum in the scope of attempted cult filmmaking; your mileage may vary depending on what you’re willing to endure when it comes to seeing busty blonde fifty feet women.

I’m looking at you, Macrophiliacs.

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