Category Archives: Genres

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

F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972)

This is a new series centering on films which have received “F” scores from CinemaScore. CinemaScore polls theater-goers during a film’s opening weekend, gauging the average consumer’s thoughts on new releases. An F CinemaScore is potentially a PR nightmare for a film, as it indicates that, on the main, the people most excited to see a film on its opening weekend hated it.

We’ve covered F CinemaScore films on this site before, including Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (which I think is fairly great) and the subject of this article, mother! With this series, we pair an ill-fated F CinemaScore movie with a second, thematically similar film and make a double feature out of it. Today’s double feature pairs Darren Aronofsky’s mother! with Alan Gadney’s New Age, surreal spiritual journey film Moonchild.

This is Part 1 of an ongoing series. However, future installments will be published on a new Substack newsletter called Bleeding Eye Cinema. Part 2 of the CinemaScore Double Feature series is already live at that site. On Bleeding Eye Cinema, we take a look at weird, WTF, underseen, cult, psychotronic, B- and Z-grade, and all other manner of headache-inducing movies. Come join us and let the CRT electron beams melt the jelly off your eyeballs!

Moonchild (Alan Gadney, 1972)

Moonchild begins with a quote from clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, an influential figure in what would come to be known as the New Age movement: “You may not even have to come back at all if you become perfectly developed in this life…”

One of Cayce’s trance-induced contributions to culture were his proclamations to the existence of fictional locations like Atlantis. Cayce may be the most fitting place to enter into Continue reading F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972) →

Psychotronic

Introducing: Bleeding Eye Cinema on Substack

Happy New Year, dear reader! 2025 is a special year at CineFiles Reviews, as the arbitrary markings of time that we have chosen to organize our lives around dictate that it is this site’s 10th anniversary.

To celebrate, I have ventured to begin a new outlet for film criticism: Bleeding Eye Cinema. There is a category of odd media that I would like to cover but which does not necessarily fit nicely within this site’s coverage of mainly new releases. I have dabbled in it here before, with a short series on psychotronic movies and occasional one-off analysis pieces about wacky misfires like Foodfight!. By and large, though, the style of writing here generally hews closer to the stuffy, boring film criticism voice, where I snidely look down my nose at contemporary cinema and pretend to have what they call “expertise” on the subject.

This is all to say that the writing style at Bleeding Eye Cinema is slightly different, and I think it is best to Continue reading Introducing: Bleeding Eye Cinema on Substack →

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

A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review

No matter how you want to trace the lineage of the music biopic, we don’t arrive at a formula-to-an-absolute-fault film like Bohemian Rhapsody without first traveling through James Mangold’s Walk the Line. To see Johnny Cash resurface in Mangold’s return to the genre (now played by a perpetually suave Boyd Holbrook) is like witnessing a poltergeist haunting another film. Or a demon that somehow escaped total exorcism from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a superior take down of the music biopic and a film that remains culturally relevant so long as Hollywood continues churning out mediocre celebrations of celebrity.

Walk the Line was a crossover success, breaking $100 million at the box office, garnering generally positive reviews, and earning a number of accolades including an Oscar for Reese Witherspoon. A Complete Unknown is angling to do the same. The problem (perhaps) is that Continue reading A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review →

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

Carry-On (2024) Movie Review

Carry-On is the dumb-as-rocks holiday crowd pleaser of the year, and many involved in its execution are game for embracing the buffoonery.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra had graduated from low-budget horror and slick low-budget action films to the Hollywood studio big leagues. To be clear, this graduation implies only an elevation in budgetary cushion, as his films for Disney and Warners — Jungle Cruise and Black Adam respectively — gave up propulsive energy for glossy studio sheen. Jungle Cruise is mildly entertaining and pleasant enough, for what it’s worth. But it feels like a lazy river compared to even the lowliest of Liam Neeson thriller. And Black Adam…well, we saw how that turned out.

In returning to the high concept action-thriller in the vein of the airport novel, but doing so under the Netflix banner, Collet-Serra scales back from the Continue reading Carry-On (2024) Movie Review →

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

Screamfest 2024 Movie Reviews

The Screamfest Horror Film Festival recently wrapped up its 24th annual edition at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Here are reviews of a selection of the program’s films.

Antropophagus Legacy

Dario Germani’s Antropophagus Legacy is, perhaps, a continuation of his 2022 film Antropophagus II, itself a sequel (if only in name) to the 1980 cult cannibal film Antropophagus.

This flesh-eating entry follows Hanna (Valentina Corti), who we meet recovering in a hospital bed after her husband’s death (which she is promptly accused of). It is revealed to Hanna by a nurse that Continue reading Screamfest 2024 Movie Reviews →

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

Terrifier 3 (2024) Movie Review

I do not own, let alone clutch at, pearls. When done right, bad taste is the best taste.

The problem with Terrifier 3, the latest in the hyper-violent splatter/slasher franchise from Damien Leone, is not the gore. Don’t get me wrong, the warning should be clear: the faint of heart ought to steer clear of this one. The squishy, bloody, extreme to the limits of extreme violence is not what makes the Terrifier films objectionable; no, that is the main draw. It is the reason why a niche audience propelled the third entry to the number one spot at the domestic box office.

The gore of it all is just fine. In fact, it seems integral to Leone’s macabre vision of the modern slasher. Some would argue that the extremes of Continue reading Terrifier 3 (2024) Movie Review →

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

Review: Queens of Drama — Fantastic Fest 2024

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

Alexis Langlois’s Queens of Drama is a riff on the A Star is Born formula, wherein the young, bright-eyed ingenue is thrust into a world of celebrity that bends and breaks them. The young star-to-be in question is Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura), a quiet 18-year-old auditioning for an American Idol-adjacent singing competition. While there, she meets Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), another competing hopeful. In some ways, their drastically different experiences with the singing audition paves the way for their diverging paths toward pop notoriety.

The film quickly establishes a dichotomy between the American Idol-ization of mainstream pop and a much more sonically potent underground music scene. In both cases, Continue reading Review: Queens of Drama — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

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

Review: Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape — Fantastic Fest 2024

Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

I have said my piece about the “compilation” film on this website before. In fact, I made some complaints about the format a few months ago when From My Cold Dead Hands played the Fantasia Festival. I’ll be brief about it here. The compilation/mixtape format is, by its design, artistically limiting. In borrowing from existing content, the artistry of the resulting film derives mostly from the edit. Why is this found footage being compiled, organized, and edited in this way? If the answer is, “I don’t know,” then the compilation has not succeeded in properly compiling.

The best of the format will create new meaning out of existing materials, or will resituate the original meaning of the materials in a way that produces new understanding. In short: the compilation film ought to Continue reading Review: Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

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

Review: Touched by Eternity — Fantastic Fest 2024

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

The opening of Touched by Eternity suggests that the secret to immortal life is yeast. In particular, yeast KC1822V, which is the subject of experimental research to test its life-sustaining properties. A man who is never given a name, but he claims everyone calls him Fatso (Andris Keišs), lives alone in a trailer, watching video podcasts on the study of this yeast and purchasing it by the box load. He eats the yeast raw, despite the plea of scientists that doing so could be dangerous. This disclaimer proves to be, at least partially, true, as when the courier delivering the latest shipment curiously tries some himself, he keels over with foam bubbling from his mouth.

None of this is of too much consequence to the plot of Touched by Eternity, the quirky vampire film from Mārcis Lācis. Fatso stumbles upon a fitting substitute for immortal yeast: Egons and Carlos (Ivars Krasts and Edgars Samītis) two pansexual vampires that show up immediately following the delivery carrier’s poisoning in search of a screwdriver. Soon, Fatso is thrust into Continue reading Review: Touched by Eternity — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

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

Review: Bookworm — Fantastic Fest 2024

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

I recall seeing Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy back in 2019 at midnight at the Alamo Drafthouse during Fantastic Fest. I also recall being dead tired and not particularly jazzed by the Ant Timpson experience. I’ve since returned to his feature debut following an adequate amount of sleep, and I can still see why I had been turned off by the experience at the time. It’s slow-build story structure and unlikable characters require a little bit of patience. However, while the film is by no means perfect, it is clever and nasty in the right moments.

Timpson’s latest, Bookworm, is a much different type of film (although, both films have a fascination with estranged dads). Far from the oddball comedy thriller of Come to Daddy, Bookworm is an oddball, mostly family-friendly comedy about dangerous predators in the New Zealand wilderness.

After her mother falls into a coma due to a Continue reading Review: Bookworm — Fantastic Fest 2024 →