Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment Arizona based character actor turned indie writer-director Michael Worth had the most unlikely luck when he was making what turned out to be elderly acting family patriarch Rance Howard’s final film Apple Seed, a kind of The Straight Story or Lucky bit of soul searching involving an old man nearing death on a quest for some measure of redemption for his past sins as a criminal.  Released two years after his death, this warm heartstrings-tugging dramedy as unlikely buddy road movie won’t break the mold or redeem the writer-director-actor’s ..read more

  Monster (2023) is a film that ebbs and flows, slowly morphing from a mystery to a touching story about two young boys discovering love and pain. Initially, it focuses on Minato (Sōya Kurokawa), a melancholy and troubled child who seems to be slipping into a depression. Saori (Sakura Ando), his slightly overwhelmed single mother, is extremely worried about him and goes to his school in person to speak with his teachers. She discovers that Minato's teacher, Michitoshi Hori (Eita Nagayama), has had some altercations with her son. However, as the movie progresses, it shifts to ..read more

  Image courtesy FX Noah Hawley's Alien series for FX just leveled up its cast of stars. Timothy Olyphant has officially boarded the project alongside Sydney Chandler. Deadline just broke the news a little bit ago that Olyphant has signed on to a starring role on the upcoming show that will expand the Alien saga beyond the scope of the films.  Olyphant will star as a synth who is a mentor and trainer for lead star Chandler. The series is said to take place 70 years in the future and will apparently continue to break the boundaries of the movies by building on the known mythology. So ..read more

Image courtesy of Bac Films Long-take shots have become gimmicky these days, with many artsy films or even blockbusters claiming long takes that are actually smaller scenes edited together with clever cuts hidden behind the camera going through a dark room or moving up against a character’s back, thus causing the screen to go black. Action films, like John Wick Chapter 4, use long takes to immerse the viewer in the grittiness of the action and the exhaustion characters may feel from unbroken sequences.    Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) is ..read more

  Images Courtesy of Good Dead Entertainment Small town secrets are an entire cinematic genre.  Travis Burgess' latest feature film, Hayseed filters black comedy and mayhem through a whodunnit lens that brims with larger-than-life characters, genuine emotional resonance, and some truly hilarious dialogue to present a Michigan flavored murder mystery as a slice of life affair.   Comparisons to Fargo and the more recent Knives Out films are unavoidable, but the brilliance of this film is in how it leans into its own shortcomings and embraces humor over nihilistic sa ..read more

Images courtesy of Radiance Films Decades before Bong Joon-ho took home the Best Picture Academy Award for his searing surreal dark South Korean satire Parasite which depicted class warfare and underhanded conniving shared between a poor materialistic family, Japanese comedy director Yuzo Kawashima and then-screenwriter Kaneto Shindo (director of Onibaba) joined forces on this 1962 crime satire The Graceful Brute or as it is known in other territories and on this new 4K restored Radiance Films release Elegant Beast making its stateside premiere.  In what is surely the snarkie ..read more

Images courtesy of Arrow Films Most cinephiles regard the first instances of auto-critique within the moviemaking machine known as Hollywood to be 1950s films like All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard, shining a spotlight on a darker underbelly of Tinseltown’s inner workings.  But in actuality the vision of the Golden Age of Hollywood as a kind of apocalyptic Hellscape of sin and avarice, forgotten fame and broken dreams began much sooner with Nathanael West’s 1939 nightmarish novel The Day of the Locust.  Newly restored in 2K by Arrow Films and presented in a new deluxe l ..read more

  All Images Courtesy: Universal/Arrow Video Three years ago, Arrow Video gave us the definitive special edition of Tremors: the beloved, tongue-in-cheek creature-feature about giant sandworms laying siege to a one-street Nevada town. Now, in a very unexpected but very welcome move, they are giving an equally lavish limited edition treatment to its 1996 sequel, Tremors 2: Aftershocks. Tremors 2 has always had a cult fanbase (myself included) who champion it as a worthy sequel which, while not as great as the first film, comes impressively close. And it unquestionably was a lab ..read more

Images courtesy of Neon Eagle Video Emerging from Cauldron Films in conjunction with Mondo Macabro founder Jared Auner, the two formed a new boutique label imprint entitled Neon Eagle Video which will predominantly cover sleazier Asian grindhouse fare and other cult-oriented items that remain overlooked if not neglected outright in today’s ever growing home video marketplace.  True to their moniker, the company has started out by purging through the Hong Kong based IFD Film Arts & Services company including but not limited to Bruce Lee knockoffs, ninja movies and insane m ..read more

Images courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios Writer-director Emerald Fennell really doesn’t like Greg Mottola’s 2007 nerd sex comedy Superbad.  From taking down McLovin’(Christopher Mintz-Plasse) in her divisive and searing debut film Promising Young Woman to pitting a scene of the hedonistic spoiled brats of her new movie Saltburn half-boredly watching Superbad, the gal has a bone to pick with that movie.  Though by the end of her transgressive, wallowing, debauched new look at the gradual ingratiation and assimilation of a wealthy family estate by a cunning and conniving youn ..read more