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Hailing from an era defined by kids’ cartoons designed purely to sell toys, Masters of the Universe was one of the cheesiest and most ridiculous, especially amongst the few still broadly recognizable this deep into the twenty-first century. It wielded a then-popular blend of high-fantasy and futuristic, space-based sci-fi easily at home on the side […]
How do you adapt a no-budget, avant-garde, YouTube-based anthology series like Backrooms into a mainstream feature film? You could point to Skinamarink as an experimental horror that received a theatrical release. But it was acquired out of a festival, and never reached one thousand screens. Conversely, A24 approached Kane Parsons about adapting his own series into […]
The fact that horror is the only genre left that reliably brings in a profit due to its ability to get by on tiny budgets (see: Obsession‘s second week increase on less than $1 million) means there’s just about always a new flick coming out, if you know where to look. The low stakes also […]
Forbidden Fruits starts as a riff on Mean Girls, but set in a mall (somehow still thriving in 2026) at a store halfway between Forever 21 and Nordstrom, called “Forever Eden”. The “Plastics” are replaced by the “Fruits”, Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp), twenty-somethings whose views of social dynamics and […]
Bursting onto the scene with a strong voice, a distinct style, and a fresh tale is a fantastic way to get yourself noticed. But if your follow-up repeats (or even deepens) the same beats and style, you risk pigeonholing yourself as a certain kind of director. Some are perfectly content to explore the same themes […]
It’s not particularly original to compare Crime 101 to Michael Mann’s Heat, but that’s only because of how nakedly writer/director Bart Layton is quoting it. His adaptation of Don Winslow’s 2020 novella brings a modern flare to the car chases, adds a subplot of criminal in-fighting, and dials down the moral complexity, but the story is […]
Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of the video game Iron Lung. Neither had I heard of the YouTube channel Markiplier, much less Mark Fischbach, whose name it bears. His feature film debut (which he wrote, directed, edited, and starred in) only came to my attention as it gained press for its impressive distribution […]
While the zombie movie refuses to die, it’s certainly not thriving. In the years since the onset of COVID-19, only a handful of films featuring the archetypal monster in one form or another get released every year, and vanishingly few cause a stir. It should come as no surprise that audiences cannot get excited about […]
From the very first shot, 100 Nights of Hero fits into a particular style of indie film that’s been emerging over the past few years. It’s difficult to track down those I haven’t seen, as there aren’t many and there’s no name linking them. But you know it when you see it. They utilize a vibrant, […]
Sisu has had a strange life. Made by the same team that gave us Rare Exports, it landed fairly quietly at TIFF 2022. Its reception was warm enough, however, to be picked up for distribution. Although its US release didn’t light the box office on fire, it performed quite well relative to its budget and […]