Digital]

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Director Quentin Tarantino has apparently had enough of delivering fans films that are mash ups of genres he loves and instead seems to want to challenge his audience the older he gets. Any artist grows the older they become and Tarantino has grown, exploring cinema that’s gradually more polarizing and alienating as time goes on. Quentin Tarantino hasn’t lost his ability to tell a story and unfold an interesting narrative, as he’s hellbent on exploring a character piece that’s less action and call backs to past genres, and more of an implementation of certain genres to create what has been his most divisive film to date.

Continue reading →

Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986)

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

“Madonna can go to hell as far as I’m concerned! She’s a dick!”

If aliens ever came down to Earth and wanted to know what the eighties were like, they could look no further than the time capsule that is “Heavy Metal Parking Lot.” It is, as many have described it, the viral video before viral videos existed. I’d love to see a documentary about this film some day, or perhaps an actual feature made around the events that occur in the fifteen minute documentary. It’s a hilarious and often absurd look at a certain time period where everyone wore mullets, walked around without shirts, bragged about doing drugs, and women were often very proud to admit they wanted to “fuck” certain band members’ “brains out.”

Continue reading →

Hush (2016)

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Emilie Black

A deaf writer lives and works in her secluded home in the woods where she gets few visitors. Then one night, a masked man shows up and stalks her in an unnerving game of cat and mouse. Director Mike Flannagan and lead actress Kate Siegel co-wrote Hush which all takes place in and around the lead’s, Maddie’s, home. The limited settings work here as Maddie is trying to escape this mad man without help or access to the outside world. This is a movie with a total of five characters, two of which support the bulk of the story. The characters here feel real, not caricatures of real people or stereotypes.

Continue reading →

Howl (2015)

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Emilie Black

A train breaks down in the countryside only a few miles from its departure point. The few passengers on board are getting restless as the train staff attempts to figure out what is going on when all of a sudden, a beat howls outside. The train becomes under siege by a beast who wants to snack on its passengers like canned food. The setting and premise here are simple: People in one location, being attacked, needing to escape. Co-written by Nick Ostler and Mark Huckerby, both of whom mostly have children tv show credits, the script works within its limited setting. They build the characters just enough which is to say, most characters are fairly basic, but they work as beast fodder that the viewer care enough about to have a reaction to their demise.

It also means that the last survivors are easy to spot as they are the most developed characters, which is fairly par for the course with horror movies like this one.

Continue reading →

Happily Ever After (2016)

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Director Joan Carr-Wiggin’s “Happily Ever After” is like a nice slice of pound cake. It’s inoffensive, kind of bland, but still has a sweet spot every so often. Carr-Wiggin’s film is a mixture of Cameron Crowe, “Lady Bug,” and “Beautiful Girls” in where a nearing thirty year old comes back to their home town to find everything is the same as when they left it. Or perhaps maybe it isn’t. For Heather, she’s spent her life giving up looking for her happily ever after, and has found that she has come home to a town of people that are seeking their happy ending, and can’t quite admit that they’re unhappy in their current lives. When Heather goes to visit her ailing father in the hospital, she crashes in to old school mate Sarah Ann. She’s a bubbly blond classmate who is devoted to getting married and building the typical Rockwellian life of a picket fence house and comfortable marriage.

Continue reading →

The House Where Evil Dwells / Ghost Warrior: Double Feature [Blu-ray]

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Scream Factory offers movie fans a double feature on Blu-Ray with the theme of Asian culture driving the plots for both films. For folks that love Asian films, these two films offer up a helping of Asian genre entertainment with slight twists to them. The first feature is 1982’s “The House Where Evil Dwells,” a supernatural thriller that is basically “Amityville Horror” with a Japanese twist. It’s also just as goofy as the former ghost film. The Fletchers have migrated from the US to Japan in hopes of taking a long needed vacation. Writer Ted is intent on finishing his novel and is anxious to relax. The trio along with Ted’s friend Alex ends up at a small house in the woods of Kyoto where they’re told by Alex’s friend that the house’s rent is cheap due to suspected ghosts.

Continue reading →

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

The sequel to Genndy Tartakovsky’s entertaining “Hotel Transylvania” is what I’d define as blatant cash grab. It’s a follow up with a very typical and broadly written turn of events, what narrative it offers for the follow up is slim and often times nowhere to be found, all the while the sequel as a whole feels like a glorified pilot for the inevitable “Hotel Transylvania” TV show. I almost expect an announcement after the initial sales for the home video release about a TV show coming down the pipe. The movie essentially sets up characters for a TV series, and it’s barely competent as a sequel. Of course rather than focus on the dynamic between Mavis and new husband Johnny, we now view them as parents.

Continue reading →