Inside the Box (2013)

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Matt is literally running on borrowed time. After a morning spent completely dismissing his wife who craves intimacy, he’s confronted by a local internal affairs worker Stephanie Miles (Regina King). Said worker is insistent on interviewing Matt about an incident he had with a perpetrator at a bar one night. Matt is very cryptic about what went down that night, despite eyewitness reports, and that’s when things begin to unravel. Ms. Miles has pictures and concrete reports of what occurred between Matt and the drunk, and this resulted in a violent confrontation that may have involved an exchange of bodily fluids. The problem is the suspect is infected with HIV and it may have been transmitted to Matt.

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Run, Hide, Die (2015) (DVD)

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I’m a little exhausted with indie filmmakers setting every horror film in the eighties based on some hope that if it’s set in a nostalgic decade, the film will in effect be a gem. It’s not enough to show characters playing classic Nintendo, and walking around with neon colors. “Run, Hide, Die” garners a lot of inexplicable elements, from the eighties setting that adds nothing to the overall narrative, right down to the title that in no way reflects the film at al. It adds up to a pretty miserable dramatic thriller that poses as a horror film, and fails to deliver on every aspect. It spends too much time on characterization, offers no interesting villain, and just delights in being melodramatic when it should be terrifying.

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Some Kind of Hate (2015)

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Adam Egypt Mortimer‘s “Some Kind of Hate” may be polarizing to some viewers, because much like its contemporaries like “Carrie,” and “The Final,” there simply are no winners or heroes in this narrative. It’s a tragic tale about people losing left and right, and the vicious cycle of bullying. Being the victim of bullying can be a stain on your persona forever, and it resonates as a horrific echo for eternity. “Some Kind of Hate” is a grim and brutally bleak horror film about bullying and how it musters up something really bad from beyond the grave. Mortimer keeps “Some Kind of Hate” consistently torturous by closing off any avenues of hope for his characters.

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Some Kind of Hate (2015) [Film4 FrightFest 2015]

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Film4 FrightFest 2015

Lincoln Taggert is a loner metal head who is regularly bullied at school. After a particularly brutal event, Lincoln loses his cool and hurts one of his tormentors badly. Following this incident, Lincoln is sent to a meditation based reform school where he encounters a new group of bullies and eventually wishes they would all be dead. This awakens the vengeful spirit of Moira who attacks his tormentors one by one as she herself being highly disturbed by past bullying she was a victim of before her death.

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Gotham: The Complete First Season [Blu-Ray/Digital]

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What do you do when you want a Batman series but can’t actually feature the character? Sometimes the networks get creative and give us “Arrow.” Other times, they belly flop disastrously and hand us “Gotham.” Essentially “Gotham” is a crime drama set in Gotham City that’s basically either an Elseworlds tale, or a prequel. The series never can decide. It’s a lot like “Smallville” in that it features a world before the superhero came to fight for justice. And much like “Smallville,” the series pretty much stinks from the word “go.” Granted, “Gotham” is a good idea for a series. Who wouldn’t want to see what Gotham was like before the Batman came along? The problem is “Gotham” is so concerned with lip service to Batman rogues, and paying tribute to the fans that it never actually comes together to form an entertaining series.

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Hostile (2015) [Fantasia Film Festival]

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FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

Two orphan sisters, Emilie and Anna, are taken in by Meredith who only wants to give them as good a life as she possibly can. Not long after the girls move in, odd and scary phenomena starts happening. The girls act out and Meredith calls a reality show, SOS Adoption, for help. Their host Chloe and her cameraman Chris come to stay with the girls while they send their new mom away. The odd events and the scare factor kick up a notch after she leaves. This is only exacerbated by the fact that Chloe thinks they might be facing a case of possession as she has seen one before.

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Cash Only (2015) [Fantasia Film Festival]

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FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

Elvis Martini owes money, a lot of money, to a dog-fighting ring running psychopath Dino who has kidnapped his daughter for ransom. Elvis does everything he can to save her as she is all he has following the loss of his wife, her mother. He must find an insanely high amount of money to pay Dino back for stealing the money the madman sees as his that was stashed in one of the tenants’ place in Elvis’ building. The father will stop at absolutely nothing to save his child.

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