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

Review: Black Eyed Susan — Fantasia Festival 2024

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

Scooter McCrae could be described as an underground filmmaker. His three features have all been made on shoestring budgets and have provocatively challenged conventions. I remain a neophyte to McCrae’s work (I promise I will watch Sixteen Tongues very soon, but I didn’t have time to catch up with it ahead of this review). At the same time, I imagine I will see similar themes and moods to Black Eyed Susan present in his earlier films.

In the film, a man with a history of alcohol dependency and aggressive outbursts, Derek (Damien Maffei), is hired by an acquaintance to work at an artificial intelligence development company. The technology the company wants to push to market, and which Derek is tasked with testing, is a highly realistic Continue reading Review: Black Eyed Susan — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

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

Review: Cuckoo — Fantasia Festival 2024

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

I can’t help but feel that Cuckoo is a series of intriguing parts in search of a sum. Writer-director Tilman Singer introduces potentially fresh approaches to well-worn horror-thriller ideas, but these ideas never fully culminate in something satisfyingly original.

In the film, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), a young rebellious teenager, moves from the United States to Germany to live with her father in a secluded estate in the Alps with his new wife and her young daughter. It is a decision she quickly regrets. Feeling homesick, she calls her mother and leaves a message saying as much. More than this, she is put off by the home, the neighboring resort at which she is given a job, and the people populating the area. In particular, Mr. König (Dan Stevens), the owner of the resort and Gretchen’s father’s employer, unnerves Gretchen.

Par for the course with horror films, strange and inexplicable occurrences start bringing themselves to Gretchen’s attention. Her mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) starts convulsing in her bedroom in an apparent seizure brought on by a sound coming from the nearby woods. Women coming into the resort lobby occasionally fall suddenly ill and vomit. Mr. König insists that Gretchen not Continue reading Review: Cuckoo — 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 →

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 →