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Spectrum Culture Goes to Fantastic Fest Part 3
Austin’s best-known film festival may be SXSW, but Fantastic Fest might be its best. Created by the Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, it offers the best in genre filmmaking: horror, sci-fi, fantasy,...
View ArticleDeliver Us
It’s pretty hard to make a movie that’s absolutely disastrous, but that’s exactly what directors Lee Roy Kunz and Cru Ennis have done in their latest film Deliver Us. The movie starts off with a...
View ArticleRediscover: Rock and Rule
As we languish in our post-Pixar heyday lull of animated films, finding respite in serial adventures and mature content imported for our pixelated enjoyment, this is the time to revisit and rejoice the...
View Article57 Seconds
The premise of 57 Seconds is ripe for exploration of the various ethical and moral issues that arise alongside the concept of time travel. Here, the travel within question is only the eponymous amount...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Dark Night of the Scarecrow
Vengeance makes for gripping storytelling, especially when the story is a first of its kind. The 1981 TV movie Dark Night of the Scarecrow spearheaded the killer scarecrow horror movie trope while...
View ArticleHead Count
Sometimes a neat hook can compensate for a lot, and Head Count hinges on a good one. The film’s in-media-res start jumps into the worst possible moment for outlaw Kat: on his knees, a gun to his head,...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean will stand out in your mind for a few reasons: its excessively long title, its cast that features three Academy Award-winning actresses – Cher,...
View ArticleDicks: The Musical
Imagine if you will, an adaptation of The Parent Trap with the queer filth of Pink Flamingos and a script so shocking it could only be directed by Borat’s Larry Charles, and you might begin to...
View ArticleThe Exorcist: Believer
Maybe we’ve all been tricked. As Roger Ebert wrote in his scathing review of 2011’s stoner comedy The Sitter, “It causes me a real pang to report that ‘The Sitter’ was directed by David Gordon Green,...
View ArticleMy Love Affair with Marriage
Writer-director Signe Baumane’s My Love Affair with Marriage is an incredible piece of work that seems to have incorporated all the bells and whistles of 21st century cinema. It’s presented in stylized...
View ArticleStrange Way of Life
Many filmmakers who experience outsized success in a non-American country try their hand at a Hollywood production or two — to decidedly mixed results. Across 22 features, Spanish icon of melodrama and...
View ArticleDesperation Road
Desperation Road is a mournful film about people sobered and haunted by their traumatic past, searching for a way out of their misery. On the surface, director Nadine Crocker’s film is a thriller, in...
View ArticleWhen Evil Lurks
Why must so many horror films also serve as origin stories? There are countless examples of stories about ghosts or monsters where we, along with the characters, learn the “rules” for a particular...
View ArticleRevisit: Soapdish
As far as camp is concerned, there are few things outdoing the concept for 1991’s Soapdish in which the cast of a popular daytime soap opera compete for screen time and the critical recognition that...
View ArticlePlan C
America’s heavily divided stance on abortion is no secret, but last year’s overturning of Roe v. Wade came as a horrible shock to many. In an instant, many Americans lost access to essential healthcare...
View ArticleJoan Baez I Am a Noise
Most biographical documentaries are fawning to a fault. They do not interrogate their subjects, leading more toward hagiographic infotainment, rather than a thoughtful pursuit of someone’s life. The...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Happy Here and Now
The early days of the internet and Y2K panic are far enough in the rearview mirror that the techno(phobic) thrillers of those times have morphed into relics of a bygone era. For older viewers, there...
View ArticleV/H/S/85
After six films over 11 years, the V/H/S series has become something of an exciting playground for established and rising horror names. Ti West, Adam Wingard, Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto, Aaron...
View ArticleFoe
The next time you’re in a movie theater – just as the credits start to roll – close your eyes and try to imagine the various emotions generated by your fellow audience members. Do you feel any...
View ArticleOeuvre: Altman: Streamers
A year after director Robert Altman’s Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean – which followed a group of women reuniting after nearly 20 years and tracing the ways society, marriage,...
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