Category Archives: Like It

Movies I liked but likely won’t watch again. Something was off that I wish had been done differently.

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

Faces of Death (2026) Movie Review

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Have you watched Faces of Death, the cult VHS tape from the late-1970s that purported to show real-life deaths?

This is what I want to ask all of gen Z. I imagine my follow-up question would inevitably be: Have you heard of Faces of Death? We surveyed 100 people, and the top answer on the board is:”Huh?” Survey says, at number two, “I guess, kinda.”

The notion of invoking the IP of Faces of Death in the 2020s immediately intrigued and confused me (I say “invoke,” because this isn’t a remake). As a millennial, the tape existed for me only ever as a curious object from the past, not a scandalous object but a thing to check off the “what’s the most fucked up movie I can watch in my teens” list. Trying to reinvigorate the mythic, video nasty allure of it for the internet generation feels odd, because Faces of Death (1978) feels tame by today’s standards of exposure to violence.

Luckily, this is the exact angle that director Daniel Goldhaber and his scripting collaborator Isa Mazzei take when re-contextualizing the film for the present day. In the world of Faces of Death (2026), Continue reading Faces of Death (2026) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Project Hail Mary (2026) Movie Review

We’ve heard it all before. The isolated, industrious, possibly roguish single man left to his own devices in the depths of space. It’s a familiar tale. Author Andy Weir himself has already strung a similar yarn before this one, with the potato farming celestial castaway of The Martian (who would later be portrayed by Matt Damon in Ridley Scott’s 2015 adaptation). Project Hail Mary has a premise that shares a resemblance, but the end results are far different (and, I would argue, more compelling).

In this iteration, our stranded hero is Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a loner middle school science teacher whose controversial PhD dissertation and academic antics got him blacklisted from the scientific community. Luckily for Grace, his theory that water is not necessary for life lands him a spot on the global team that is working desperately to stop a mysterious molecular life form, dubbed Astrophage, from Continue reading Project Hail Mary (2026) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Like It, Drama, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Lurker — Fantasia Festival 2025

Lurker had its Canadian premiere on Aug 1 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Alex Russell’s debut film Lurker is about obsession. It is in one sense about the parasocial relationships fostered by celebrity, but more accurately it is about the mind of a person who manipulates the world around him in order to embed himself within one celebrity’s orbit. It is a film about a sociopath, essentially.

Matthew (Theodore Pellerin), this sociopathic personality, works at a clothing store occasionally patroned by an up-and-coming musician named Oliver (Archie Madekwe). Matthew plays a song over the speaker that is calculated to get Oliver’s attention. When he gets it, he pretends to have never heard of Oliver’s music. He, of course, has heard it. In fact, he relentlessly stalks Oliver’s social media to gain Continue reading Review: Lurker — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: OBEX — Fantasia Festival 2025

OBEX had its Canadian premiere on July 29 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

It’s 1987. “Computer” Conor (Albert Birney, who also directs) spends his morning talking lovingly to his dog Sandy and watching the news on one of the three television sets stacked in a row in the middle of his living room. He works from home, rapidly typing out on his Macintosh computer digital recreations of photographs that people send to him. His neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) arrives weekly to check up on him and bring him groceries, but he never opens the door.

While thumbing through a computer hobbyist catalogue, Conor stumbles upon a mysterious ad for a video game called “OBEX.” Not only is it a game, but it is Continue reading Review: OBEX — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Fantasia Festival 2025 Reviews — Lucid and Every Heavy Thing

Lucid and Every Heavy Thing had their world premieres on July 21 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Lucid

Mia (Caitlin Taylor) is an art student without inspiration. When she screws up her self-portrait, she nails a dead fish to it at the last minute and hurries to the studio. Her instructor and most of her classmates are unimpressed. Desperate for Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2025 Reviews — Lucid and Every Heavy Thing →

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

Review: Hellcat — Fantasia Festival 2025

Hellcat had its world premiere on July 25 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Brock Bodell’s Hellcat is immediately intense. A rickety mobile home tearing down the highway is our setting. Inside is Lena (Dakota Gorman), who wakes to the jolting movements of the vehicle the home is hitched to. Assessing her situation, she finds herself padlocked inside with nothing in her pockets. A voice over an intercom (Todd Terry) tells her that she is “infected” (in a nice touch, the voice comes through the mouth of a taxidermy wolf head). This driver, Clive, claims to have found her injured, and that he is driving her to a doctor. But the red flags quickly start to mount as Lena investigates the trailer.

My immediate thought on being presented the premise is that the title of the film was likely giving the twist away, or that the title was a red herring. In either case, I would have preferred the lack of clarity that the film dropped me into. There is enough ambiguity to what is going on—until Continue reading Review: Hellcat — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Review: I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn — Fantasia Festival 2025

I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn had its world premiere on July 23 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Shina Mizuhara (Ui Mihara) is a bored actress. Promoting her new film, she lazily answers softball press questions. When she doesn’t get anything satisfying out of the interview, she turns to the camera and starts drooling. Completely unmotivated, Shina strives for a change of pace by vacationing in New York City.

Jack (Estevan Munoz) is an imaginative and passionate wannabe filmmaker. Growing up on Nirvana, George Romero, and Takashi Miike, Jack wants nothing more than to bring a punk rock ethos to film. Instead, he is a lowly intern for a New York studio, slaving away while only getting slightly closer to his dream.

When Shina and Jack get drunk at the same dive bar (and Jack finds Shina outside lying in someone else’s puke), an unlikely Continue reading Review: I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Animation, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Dog of God — Fantasia Festival 2025

Dog of God had its world premiere on July 21 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Dog of God is the type of film that begins with the triumphant, heavy metal castration of a giant demon. You’re probably familiar with the type. Those Latvian rotoscope animations with heightened folkloric subject matter and a bawdy, crass sense of humor. There’s got to be hundreds of them out there.

In all sincerity, Lauris and Raitis Ābele’s Dog of God is quite unlike any other animated feature out there. It has the grimy ambitions of a Heavy Metal, a Ralph Bakshi film, or, more recently, a Mad God. But its mix of period fantasy and visual psychedelia (and its oddly high sex drive) make for Continue reading Review: Dog of God — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Friendship (2025) Movie Review

It has become increasingly common since the COVID-19 pandemic for stories, think pieces, podcast episodes, TikTok clips, studies, surveys, and all manner of media detritus to be made on the current state of adult friendship and an apparent “loneliness epidemic.” Why are people feeling so lonely, more so now than ever before?

Despite how it’s been characterized, this “epidemic” is not a novel phenomenon unique to one generation or isolated to a “post-pandemic” moment in time. It’s a decades old trend in declining social connection, according to former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Still, the discourse surrounding this supposed epidemic comes with the usual nervy energy of Internet-brained discussion: if this is a crisis, then it must have a solution, and its causes must be easily condensed into digestible bullet points.

This reduction of the complexities of human relationships into basic cause-effect bullet points (we are more lonely…because technology!) is a useful entry point into Continue reading Friendship (2025) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) Movie Review

After spending time revisiting all of the Final Destination films, I found the long wet cement of my opinions on the franchise finally hardening. Until now, I wasn’t quite certain on the merits of the horror series in which the unseen force of Death gleefully slaughters special individuals who at first escape Death’s grasp. There is something fun about the premise, and in discrete moments this sense of fun comes to the fore. But often, these films are fairly mild in terms of horror and fail to nail the comedy tone that I think is necessary for these film to work at all.

Final Destination: Bloodlines, thankfully, fully understands the assignment. There are moments that lean towards serious drama, but in the main this film makes Continue reading Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) Movie Review →