With great success of a blockbuster, there’s always bound to be a mockbuster that comes up from the rear to pull from the momentum. What with the shocking success of “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” we have the UK mockbuster known unsubtly as “Freddy’s Fridays.” From director Ben J. Williams (who gave us “Supernado,” and “Spiders on a Plane”) comes a pretty dull horror movie that is a hefty mixture of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “Hellraiser.” It’s a paper thin premise that probably took a paragraph to expound on on paper, and amounts to a barely eighty minute movie that works hard to stretch the run time with a ton of filler.
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
It goes without saying that I like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and I enjoy the whole twist of implanting the formula in to a horror setting. The fact is though that “It’s a Wonderful Knife” is so much more concerned with being a dark bittersweet Christmas fantasy, rather than diving head first in to the horror framework. For a movie that advertises itself as a slasher movie and whodunit, there’s a lot of surprisingly low stakes, and not much suspense at all. The writers frame the movie as a whodunit with the killers’ identities being revealed almost immediately, all the while the slashings all take a back seat for a majority of the movie.
“Airborne” at 30: Still The Fantastic 90’s Bonanza
In the 1990’s everything was “Extreme” or “Mega.” Everything had to be what with the introduction of things like X Games, which gave way to a huge tidal wave of things that were more adrenaline fueled, faster, and often times advertised “This isn’t your daddy’s:” Insert product here. Along with the sports being more extreme, the movies were more extreme, and the 1990’s carried over the skateboard generation from the 1980’s. Where the massive influx of skateboard movies permeated cult cinema, the 1990’s were where there were even more efforts to integrate it in to mainstream cinema. While it didn’t quite succeed (we did get “Brink!”, I guess), we did manage to get great films like my childhood favorite “Airborne.”
Strays (2023): Unleashed Edition [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]
I think what ultimately hinders director Josh Greenbaum’s “Strays” is that it’s nothing that we’ve haven’t already seen before. While there is the more blunt explorations of the dog habits and a lot of gags involving humping on objects, and a ton of coarse language, “Strays” is basically just one of the many, many, many talking dog movies available to audiences. “Strays” is also hindered by the fact that there’s a deep sadness permeating under the surface of its story.
The Dirty South (2023)
When her family’s bar is overdue on payments and at risk of being sold at auction, the owner’s daughter and bartender gets help from an unexpected person and goes to unexpected lengths to keep the bar.
Open (2023)
A couple opens their marriage only to find out that it may not be for them while dealing with an obsessive former teen heartthrob.
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
Following saving her town from a slasher killer, Winnie finds herself ignored and in a bad place, leading her to make a wish which backfires on her. Continue reading