Category Archives: Leave it

Movies I wish I had skipped. This could be for any number of reasons: the film was made sloppily, the narrative didn’t engage me, or I simply could not connect with the film in any way for whatever reason.

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Steppenwolf — Fantastic Fest 2024

Steppenwolf is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

Steppenwolf is a formally striking piece of grand existential absurdism. Within the confines of a brutal civil war, the characters in the film (in particular, the sociopathic Brajyuk) face death with an ironic distance that would make Camus’ Meursault proud.

The film opens with the violent takeover of a remote police compound where political prisoners are being tortured. When staring down the barrel of a gun, Brajyuk (Berik Aitzhanov), a corrupt police interrogator, tells his rebel captors that Continue reading Review: Steppenwolf — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Apartment 7A — Fantastic Fest 2024

Apartment 7A is screening as part of the 2024 Fantastic Fest, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

I’d be lying if I said I’ve read Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby. Although, it sits on my dining room table (because the one bookcase I own overflows). It is a burnt orange hardcover volume, slim, with similarly orange-y paper, as the book is from the original Random House printing. I found it on the side of the road when I was 16, in a box of other very old books ready to be tossed into the back of a garbage truck.

So I haven’t read it. But I thumbed through it after watching Natalie Erika James’ Apartment 7A, because it Continue reading Review: Apartment 7A — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Parvulos — Fantasia Festival 2024

Parvulos is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

I’m going to give Parvulos the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its politics, in that I’m assuming it isn’t trying to have a politics at all. I begin by saying that, because the premise of the film is that a raging, deadly virus out-paced the rollout of vaccine boosters, so the government put out an untested vaccine whose unintended side effect was zombie-ism. The film first poses the question: What if society crumbled because of a deadly virus. Then, as an end-of-first-act twist, it posits instead: What if society crumbled because of that virus’s vaccine?

This first act is a slow-developing world building section in which three brothers, living alone in a home in the country, struggle to Continue reading Review: Parvulos — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Me and My Victim — Fantasia Festival 2024

Me and My Victim is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Me and My Victim begins with co-director Maurane reciting a poem at a party. The poem is about the disparity between pornographic depictions of yoga and massaging and their real-life counterparts. There is a tension felt in the voice of the poem’s speaker, in that she both desires the perversity of the pornographic contexts and is violently averse to the notion of being touched by the men giving the massage and running the yoga class. Within the context of the poem, it is an intriguing tension, and this dichotomy between attraction and disgust (kind of, sort of) defines the narrative of the film.

The bulk of the documentary is a series of recreations of Maurane’s early dates with a romantic partner (the other co-director, Billy Pedlow), dates which are inflected with strange sexual tension. The intent is to expose Continue reading Review: Me and My Victim — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Soul Eater — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Soul Eater is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

In the rural town of Roquenoir, France, a series of murders and kidnappings have taken place. One survivor, a young boy, says it is the work of the “Soul Eater,” a creature of urban legend that steals children away into the woods.

Two investigators working under different jurisdictions are tasked with investigating the case. Elisabeth (Virginie Ledoyen) works for the National Police and is focused on the murders. Franck (Paul Hamy), the captain of the National Gendarmerie, is focused on the missing children. The two butt heads as they seek answers about this mysterious series of crimes.

Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, best known for their bloody 2007 film Inside, bring glimpses of the gruesome to this otherwise Continue reading Review: The Soul Eater — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Western

Review: Mash Ville — Fantasia Festival 2024

Mash Ville is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Mash Ville is the type of ensemble crime film that is so jam-packed with plotty incident and odd characters that it feels as though the film is doing a lot and thus must be doing something interesting and new. The film aspires to be something like an acid western, and it may also draw comparisons to Tarantino or the Coens, in that the film attempts to blend slick humor with farce with black comedy.

The problem with an overly plotted black comedy about death and crime is that, if you do too much, it becomes Continue reading Review: Mash Ville — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Beast Within is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

The Beast Within is the least fun werewolf movie I’ve seen.

Alexander J. Farrell, who is normally a documentary filmmaker, brings us this horror-lite werewolf picture starring Kit Harington. Harington, top billed, is more accurately the third lead in a film with only four characters. He doesn’t say a line of dialogue until the 23-minute mark, for one. While his character Noah is the one inflicted with the titular “beast within,” the film is centered around his young daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall) as she comes to learn about the affliction that plagues her family.

The Beast Within is, ostensibly, a film about a werewolf. But the truer explanation of its premise is that it is a film about lycanthropy as a thin metaphor for Continue reading Review: The Beast Within — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Horror, Leave it, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

2024 Fantasia Festival Movie Reviews — Carnage for Christmas, From My Cold Dead Hands

Carnage for Christmas and From My Cold Dead Hands are screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Carnage for Christmas

Alice Maio Mackay is a fascinating case. A super-low-budget filmmaker, Mackay has made, by my count, five feature films, among other projects. Given that she’s only 19 years old, that’s quite a prolific start to a career. Carnage for Christmas is the first Continue reading 2024 Fantasia Festival Movie Reviews — Carnage for Christmas, From My Cold Dead Hands →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Old Man and the Demon Sword — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Old Man and the Demon Sword is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Despite being extremely talky with heavily expository dialogue, the plot of Fábio Powers’ The Old Man and the Demon Sword is immediately confusing. Something meant to resemble a force field is cut through by a swordsman and his demon-possessed sword, initiating a battle against skeletal shadow people that no one else can see (save for the random older man of the title, who pops out of the bushes with a knife). The sword wants the barrier to be breached, for reasons I could not quite identify. And some sort of grand council is pulling the strings of the skeleton army, it seems.

The hooded hero has what is meant to be witty banter with the demon sword (João Loy), a trait carried over to the old man Tonho (Antonio da Luz) once he acquires the sword. The film, ostensibly, is an Continue reading Review: The Old Man and the Demon Sword — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Watchers (2024) Movie Review

For a first-time filmmaker, Ishana Night Shyamalan shows promise with The Watchers. Her debut, a folklore-infused horror mystery based on a novel by A.M. Shine, suffers more from its source material than from the creator behind the camera. On her way to deliver a bird to a zoo in Belfast, Mina (Dakota Fanning) finds herself stranded in a forest. She abandons her broken-down car and searches for help, only to find herself trapped in the labyrinthine rows of trees.

This forest is home to a mysterious presence, creatures that come out at night. Mina is told of this by a woman named Madeline (Olwen Fouere), who brings her to a strange, Continue reading The Watchers (2024) Movie Review →