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, 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 →

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

Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024

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

FAQ is an interesting little creature. It has an infectious personality, driven by the child actor at its center. For a small-scale story about childhood and parenting, it is doing quite a lot (perhaps too much). Even as it is unclear exactly where it is going, what its odd plot points are progressing toward, the film gets by on heart and charm and liveliness.

At its core, FAQ is a film about a daughter and a mother. Dong-chun (Park Na-eun) is a quiet, curious, and restless child who, despite an excelling mind, struggles to make sense of her studies. Her mother (Park Hyo-ju) is worried about Continue reading Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

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

Review: Animalia Paradoxa — Fantasia Festival 2024

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

I spent a good majority of Animalia Paradoxa trying to simultaneously parse the text and subtext of the film. The two must share some sort of relationship, I thought, yet mentally circling one made the other seem more obscured.

The text of the film involves, among other unexplainable practices that flirt with avant-garde, a post-apocalyptic world in which Continue reading Review: Animalia Paradoxa — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

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

Review: Vulcanizadora — Fantasia Festival 2024

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

Joel Potrykus has made a career out of making independent films about ostracized, lonely, deadbeat men in their thirties with no direction and no motivation. His Relaxer, for example, chooses as its focus an unemployed man who allows his brother to torture him with “challenges” which begin with him vomiting a gallon of milk and culminate in him sitting on a couch playing Pac-Man in his own filth for (seemingly) months.

What happens when Potrykus turns his attention on those types of men as they pass into middle age? Vulcanizadora, his latest, sees Potrykus and his frequent collaborator Joshua Burge reprise roles they played in Continue reading Review: Vulcanizadora — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

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

Kill (2024) Movie Review

Kill lives up to its title, and then some. In many regards, the hyperviolent “vengeance is a dish best served ice cold” action film sells itself short by not calling itself Overkill.

This said, it takes a while to get to this level of breathless brutality. With great intentionality, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s film takes 45 minutes or so to establish a Continue reading Kill (2024) Movie Review →

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

In a Violent Nature (2024) Movie Review

You could describe In a Violent Nature in many ways. It’s like a modern reboot of Friday the 13th that tells the majority of the story from Jason Voorhees’s point of view. In spurts, it’s like Terrifier 2 for A24 nerds. It is, perhaps, an anti-slasher post-horror anti-post-horror slasher. It is like a parody of the slasher film inside a parody of so-called “elevated horror.”

In the woods of Ontario, a group of young people on holiday stumble upon an abandoned fire tower. One of them picks up a curious locket and takes it with him. This locket, like a mythic totem, was the only thing allowing an undead killer named Johnny to rest peacefully in the ground. Given to him by his mother, the locket means a lot to Johnny (presumably; Johnny never speaks). The balance disturbed, Johnny is unearthed and begins stalking the woods in search of this family heirloom.

Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature employs the conventions of post-horror as a deadpan delivery mechanism for 1980s-style slasher schlock. Moments of brutality in this film feel like Continue reading In a Violent Nature (2024) Movie Review →

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

Abigail (2024) Movie Review

The team of directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and screenwriter Guy Busick have been well-discussed on this site. I have, in general, enjoyed their recent output – Scream VI notwithstanding. Their latest, Abigail (based on a story by Stephen Shields, who also gets a shared writing credit), has a similar generic blend to 2019’s Ready or Not. The latter film, a violent and comedic Most Dangerous Game send-up taking place almost entirely at one lavish estate, was a good bit of morbid fun. Abigail, an even more violent comedy horror film taking place almost entirely at one lavish estate, is similarly good for a light bit of morbid fun.

The film has two distinct halves. In the first, a group of criminals hired to Continue reading Abigail (2024) Movie Review →

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

The Fall Guy (2024) Movie Review

David Leitch’s The Fall Guy is, in many respects, a love letter to the stunt performers that have allowed cinema to function properly for many a decade. At this level, the film definitely excels. Stuntman Colt Seavers’ (Ryan Gosling) opening voiceover monologue keys us in to the philosophy of the stunt performer: they keep everything looking exciting and propulsive, but their job is to be invisible by design. The best stunt performer disappears. Remember this; it will be important later.

Leitch’s comedy-action-romance benefits from the residual effects of the dump-truck of charisma that was Ryan Gosling in Barbie. Fittingly, the film opens the 2024 Summer movie season and promises an Continue reading The Fall Guy (2024) Movie Review →

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

Late Night with the Devil (2024) Movie Review

Since I was a preteen, I have been insomniac off and on. Thus, I spent a good number of nights in my formative years in my parent’s basement flipping through television channels, broadcast and cable. I suppose late night TV, as a result, has something of a hold on me. Not late night in the Jay Leno sense, but in that sense of discovering weird programming that no self-respecting network/station exec would allow to be aired in the daylight. Footage of Anton LaVey on PBS, things of that nature.

Films like Ghostwatch, WNUF Halloween Special, VHYes and the like play into the odd draw of analog media, asking the question of what happens when Continue reading Late Night with the Devil (2024) Movie Review →

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

Challengers (2024) Movie Review

One could describe great dialogue as like a tennis volley. In the case of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers (dialogue provided by writer Justin Kuritzkes), the simile is essentially literalized. For three tennis players of differing star power, tennis is a contentious conversation, and contentious conversation is rarely far removed from talk of tennis. That is to say, as the relationships between Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) grow more knotty, melodramatic, and complex, the thin line that separates on-court competition from romantic interests is hopelessly blurred.

Frankly, describing this central premise which conflates sports competition and competitive romantic endeavors makes the film sound Continue reading Challengers (2024) Movie Review →