Zombie Fight Club (2014) [Blu-ray]

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While I’d say “Zombie Fight Club” is not the worst zombie movie ever made, it’s definitely up there in the top five. Joe Chien’s zombie, comedy, action… horror movie (?) is so painfully written and poorly directed, it watches like an amateur production from a failed film student. The script watches like it was put together in five minutes with a bunch of concepts that never ever mix together in to a coherent or remotely entertaining movie. Explaining the premise would be like listening to a child with ADD talk as if they’re trying to cram a whole hour’s worth of nonsense in to two minutes. There’s Singapore, and a high rise where a gang of drug abusers are living. The leader of the gang gets a bag of bath salts; said bath salts mysteriously turn the users in to flesh eating zombies.

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Bear Story (Historia de un oso) (2015)

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Gabriel Osorio and Pato Escala’s “Bear Story” is a soul crushing tale of loss and yet a pretty remarkable short about overcoming grief and finding a reason to keep going on. Lacking dialogue and told through excellent computer animation, “Bear Story” is a short and hear breaking tale of an old bear that spends most of his time fixing an old nickelodeon. Featuring a trio of bear dolls that stand in for his wife and son, he takes to the street one morning. Unfortunately, his is a tale of sadness, suffering, and the willingness to endure, as he opens up his theater for a young cub.

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Emilie Black’s Best and Worst of 2015

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Each year I tell myself I’ll make an end of year list of the Best and Worst movies I’ve seen during that year, but usually fail to make said list.  This year, I’ve actually done it.  Ok, I did it about a week late, but it still counts.  In 2015, I saw a little over 200 movies, not all 2015 releases, but still a “respectable” number considering I was mostly out of the reviewing business until July when the bug caught me again.  This means I’ve missed a ton of movies and am doing this list out of what I’ve seen.  2015 was as solid year for me with a lot of good to great films and very few bad ones which means this will not be a Top 10 Best and Bottom 10 Worst, but more of a collection of titles to check out or avoid.

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La Belle et La Bête (2014)

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In this telling of the tale as old as time, Belle lives with her salesman father, three troublemaker brothers, and two greedy sisters. Belle prefers to lead a calmer, simpler life than her siblings. As her father’s business goes badly and her brother loses a lot of money gambling, the father becomes indebted to the Beast and so in a trade, Belle agrees to live with the Beast. Once at the castle, she is cared for by a group of tadums, fairy tale animals who look a bit like dogs. She is given all that she could need and more, she however, has to have dinner with the Beast every single night, which does not go well at first. With time and patience, Belle and the Beast become closer and closer.

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Another Me (2014)

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The Delusseys’ family life is disturbed after the father falls ill. As the family adapts to this, Fay, the teenage daughter, begins to think she has a stalker hellbent on taking over her life and stealing her place and her identity. As things escalate, others start to think they have seen Fay where she was not and she starts thinking it’s someone who looks just like, her doppelganger, attempting to assume her identity. What Fay doesn’t know yet is that her family hides a secret that could possibly explain what is happening to her.

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Nina Forever (2015)

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After his girlfriend Nina dies in a car crash, Rob attempts suicide he is so grief stricken. Following his failed attempt, as he’s working at a grocery store, Rob meets Holly and falls for her. As their love blossoms, Nina comes back to life to mess with their minds and taunt them.

The film was written and directed by Ben Blaine and Chris Blaine who create characters the audience cares about even through the mounting stress and non-sense of the dead coming back to life while they have sex. The characters feel human; their emotions being appropriate to their situation if one can believe that they would not simply run far from each other as soon as Nina shows up.

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Celebrating Neil Marshall’s “The Descent”

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I don’t consider it a far off notion to call Neil Marshall this generation’s John Carpenter. The man has delivered his own twisted and original visions of various genres that have ended in some of the most riveting movie experiences I’ve ever had. I first discovered Marshall with “Dog Soldiers,” which successfully combines the werewolf sub-genre with a war movie, resulting in a quite obvious homage to “Assault on Precinct 13.” I’m also a humongous fan of his post apocalyptic tale “Doomsday,” which is his loving ode to the post apocalypse sub-genre and zeroing in on a heroine that’s basically Snake Plissken, even missing one eye, to boot.

Marshall at his best is a raw and relentlessly brilliant filmmaker who can muster up some unique emotions and arouse hot debates among the horror and science fiction community. Marshall’s masterpiece is his odd form of “The Thing,” in where he casts a predominantly female cast, all of whom are confined to one location, forced to fight off delirium, and mistrust, and becoming victim to their landscape, which is harrowing and dangerous no matter where one turns.

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