The trailer for this film makes it look like an interesting twist on the “special agent on a hijacked plane” school of action movies. Specifically asking the questions “what if the special agent’s child was also on board?” and “what if the special agent was a vampire?”. Whilst I’m sure writer and director Peter Thorwarth could have done that well, I’m just happy he ended up asking enough further questions to justify gluing three movies worth of concept together.
We all know that, just as in real life, children are evil little homunculi, hellbent on destruction (at least I sure as heck remember being one). However, the Mikey in this movie is one step above by being a stone-cold killer; murdering well above his age with a variety of weapons and facial twitches. All because he just needs to feel loved but can’t be because he’s an absolutely awful little shit.
Italian cinema has brought us many marvels in its time, including a range of Mad Max, The Warriors, and Escape From New York rip-offs. The wonderfully titled “1990: The Bronx Warriors”, directed by Enzo G. Castellari, written by committee, and produced by frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator Fabrizio De Angelis, took the bold decision to try and do all three at once. The resulting film with the Italian flair that Hollywood stole for its Westerns and the cost-cutting technique of having the multinational cast all speak in their native tongues, is predictably low-budget craziness. But for all its flaws, of which there are many, it has a vibrant charm and bucket-load of ideas that will get you through to its straight-up ridiculous ending.
It’s another season of Marvel TV, so it’s time to go through the all-important mythos introductions with this first episode. In this case, the titular character is pretty straightforward as Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been with us since his Marvel cinematic debut with Thor in 2011. He’s charming, arrogant, happy to knife anyone that gets in his way, and his helmet is still both utterly ridiculous and fashionably dashing. The only minor complication is that the Loki we have here is the defeated mischievous god at the end of Avengers Assemble, rather than the emotionally evolved one we saw die in Infinity War. But don’t worry about that, as this is just Marvel Universe 199999, introducing us to the fun multiverse shenanigans that Universe 616 has been dealing with for ages.
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This is probably a redundant observation to make but Lockdown has been a total arse of a time for most people. Yes, measures had to be put in place to limit the spread and impact of Covid; but the lack of social contact has been utterly exhausting. This is addressed head-on in Growth, a 53-page comic by Jenny Allen.
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According to the blub that came in the review pack “Redshift #1 is a bleak sci-fi mini-series which can best be described as Lost In Space meets The Expanse”. By the second page, we have a dead mother, a few pages further on we have a sinister Ministry controlling Mars, and by the halfway point we have a story-within-a-story that could have been a depressing gut-kick of a comic within itself. So; yes, it’s nice to have a comic live up to its own hype.
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When Zach Snyder debuted in the feature film world, it was with his 2004 remake of Dawn of The Dead. It was a smart, exciting, and overall interesting take on George A Romero’s classic zombie story; taking the basic set-up and social themes, then working in some new flourishes to keep the audience guessing. The movie had something to say, it knew how to do that in a visually and emotionally satisfying way, and whilst it played with themes of inertia and boredom it did so without frustrating the audience. It was an explosive, captivating film, from a director with everything to prove. Continue reading
Horror movies have always traded on two key things; novelty and transgression. They’ve also always held a dark secret; the more “high concept” those two are, the more likely it is that a film will try to trade on those elements alone and not bother to actually be any good in and of itself. So, it’s with great joy and relief that I can confirm that this zombie musical coming-of-age Christmas movie is also a great movie. Well, assuming that you like the idea of multiple song-and-dance numbers mixed with blood-soaked scenes of walking dead induced slaughter.
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A regular criticism I hear about zombie movies is that “no one does anything different with them”. This annoys me for three main reasons; firstly, that there could be anything wrong with the classic plot of “people fine, zombies turn up, zombies eat people”. Secondly, because there is a massive difference between plot and story and it’s pointlessly reductive to confuse them (“pe
rson commits crime, they think they go away with it, turns out they didn’t”, I’ve saved you watching everything from Hound of the Baskervilles to Wolf of Wall Street), And thirdly because it’s so ignorant of all the amazing work that’s been done in the genre, even within the “confines” of it’s three-act framework.
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Pitching itself as “an apocalyptic fairy fail”, and featuring the praise of both Llyod Kaufman (head of Troma Studios and psychotronic cinema royalty) and Richard Elfman (brother of Danny), I had never heard of this film until my father-in-law dropped it off as one of his £1 charity shop finds. Whilst the ridiculous cover drew me in, I was also interested by it being a “Von Piglet Sisters” movie. I wanted to see what director/producer Sue Corcoran and writer Angie Louise could come up with, as female created films are still less uncommon in Bargain Bin genre flicks, so sat down in anticipation and wondered “how crazy could this be?”
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Trash or Treasure 