Knife-kill disguised as social commentary. Blessed be the New Founding Fathers for letting us Purge and cleanse our souls. Blessed be America, a nation reborn. — opening titles, THE PURGE. It is 2022 in America. The country is doing well, if the opening titles are any indication: unemployment at 1%, crime at an all-time low. And there is one night … Read More
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN 2016
The Magnificent Minorities. Denzel Washington leads his black, brown, red and yellow gunslingers in cleaning up the Old West. Kinda like how black, brown, red and yellow people are still cleaning up the Modern Alt-West. In THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, director Antoine Fuqua, praying at the altar of Kurosawa, Leone and Eastwood, crafts a majestic modern take on this paean to … Read More
DAYBREAKERS
I vont tu harvest yor blud. Imagine a world where the vampires won. They’ve taken over. Everything. They have overrun every facet of “normal” society. Except they are the normals now: the corporate executives, the managers, the laborers and cubicles, the military and infrastructure; they work in supermarkets, in advertising, in agriculture; they are the cops, the criminals and the … Read More
SINISTER
Ghouls on Film. How ’bout turning on a freakin’ light?! SINISTER is a well-made and effective horror movie, so we expect a certain amount of darkness, metaphorically and literally, but has anyone heard of Thomas Alva Edison around here? Formulated the modern electric light bulb in 1879 – and I’m sure the Department of Water and Power is pumping that … Read More
BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD
Doing the business on the family business. “May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.” That old Irish saying warns that you can fool yourself into believing you’re in gravy, until Reality mops the floor with you. Walking a fine line between pulp noir and terrifying reality, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD succeeds … Read More