Getting Schooled (2017)

In 1983, a group of stereotypical teens are in detention on the weekend with a wheelchair-bound teacher.  Soon, they start getting picked-off one by one in varying levels of violence and blood.

The writing team of Chuck Norfolk, Steven Scott Norfolk, and Tim Norfolk have written a film that wants to be an 80s movie and gets some of the true 80s feelings and vibes, but they also use a lot of more current way for characters to act.  Directed by Chuck Norfolk, the film feels like what a full-grown filmmaker thinks the general public wants to see about the 80s.  It’s less John Hughes homage and more caricature of the 80s through a 2010s teen’s eyes.  The film has some things that work, but the attempt at rendering the 80s feels force and like something without much thought put into it.  The film uses a lot of clichés from other films without thinking if they fit in here, thinking if it looks like what we think the 80s were like, it will work.  However, the 80s represented here do not feel right; they don’t feel like the 80s of many other films, or even the 80s this reviewer remembers.  The characters in this setting feel mostly like caricatures with one feeling a bit less like so, but looking more like she would belong in this decade or the 2000s.

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Cinema Crazed Covers The 2016 Oscar Contenders

It’s that time of year again, where Hollywood either guides us in to celebrating actual works of cinematic art, or will likely arouse the ire of cineastes for years to come by playing it safe with the obvious crowd pleasers once again. In either case, “Oscar” night 2017 promises to be an interesting and controversial one. With the political landscape, racial landscape, and current crop of movies nominated at this years’ ceremony, a lot of us are hoping the Academy celebrates films that hold a miror to society rather than simply celebrate the safe, and light hearted fare that pass itself at “escapism.” That said, while we are a bit of cynics, we have a good time every year with the pageantry, the fun, and celebration of film.

To remind you of who is nominated this year, we covered a lot of Oscar nominees. If you want to a refresher course of what we thought of a lot of the films up for an award this year, we’ve compiled a list of movies reviewed by the Cinema Crazed contributors. Feel free to voice your own opinions on these films and many others in the comments!

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The Werewolf Reborn! (1998)

It’s another episode of “Filmonsters!” and while I appreciate the inherent idea behind Full Moon composing hour long movies with broadly written monsters that vaguely resembled Universal’s staples, this second movie isn’t good. In fact it’s almost the exact same movie as “Frankenstein Reborn!” To evoke emotions in the vein of RL Stine’s “Goosebumps” the producers make a young girl the star of their story. I think if it took off, every “Filmonsters!” would have had young teenagers who realize something about themselves or their families while fighting monsters. I wonder if there would have been a “Gillman Reborn!” with a young girl realizing she’s from a family of ancient lizard people or something.

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The Bootleg Files: Une Femme Coquette

BOOTLEG FILES 578: “Une Femme Coquette” (1955 short directed by Jean-Luc Godard).

LAST SEEN:
A possible unauthorized video dupe is on YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: The filmmaker never made it available for home entertainment release.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely at this time.

Over the past week, cinephiles on the Internet were in a lather over the news that a long-unseen Jean-Luc Godard film mysteriously turned up on YouTube. Since I am not a Godard fan, my initial reaction was one of mild indifference. But because the film’s arrival online came through what appears to be a bootleg copy, and since it only runs a mere nine minutes, I felt duty bound to give it a viewing.

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An Interview with Staci Layne Wilson [WiHM 2017]

Staci Layne Wilson is well known for her film reviews, interviews (on camera and in writing), her writing, and now producing and directing.  Her interests are varied, but she clearly has a preference for horror as seen in her films such as the trippy triptych The Key to Annabel Lee, the sexy Fetish Factory, etc.  Her knowledge of the genre and Hollywood’s inner workings is wide and she uses it well in her creations.

Her trivia on IMDB is rather telling: “Has worn Freddy Krueger’s hero claw, George Romero’s glasses, and the original Hannibal Lecter mask.”

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Joe’s Violin (2016)

Kahane Cooperman’s Academy Award-nominated documentary short offers a simultaneous pull on the heartstrings and a classical meditation on violin strings. The eponymous instrument is a violin donated by Joseph Feingold, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, to an instrument donation drive conducted by a radio station to help music students in cash-strapped schools in New York. The violin went to an all-girls academy in the Bronx, where it was presented to 12-year-old Brianna Perez, a gifted student from a broken home who aspires to become a music teacher.

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