Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

Hailing as she does from Stockholm, Sweden, Moa Romanova’s name isn’t one that is particularly well-known here in the US — but I have a distinct feeling that her Fantagraphics-published debut graphic novel, Goblin Girl, is going to change all that in a hurry. Toeing a tightrope-line between pure autobio…

  The horror genre exists in ebbs and flows, putting away certain concepts like the slasher flick or the haunted house movie until something comes along and reinvigorates it for a new generation, similar to how SCREAM revived the slasher in the mid-‘90s and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY resurrected both the haunted…

    July 4th in the United States usually means awkward parades, far too many tiny flags, and an evening of explosions in the sky. Due to the ongoing pandemic, most fireworks displays have been canceled this year (except the ones going on late at night in most major cities…

My love for horror was forged in my childhood. In many of the horror reviews I’ve written over the years, whether for home video reissues of cult classics or retrospectives to honor an anniversary, a good portion of them had a habit of going back in time to loop in…

    I think I speak for everyone when I say that few things are more tired than the inevitable “debate” about DIE HARD’s status as a Christmas movie. Believe me when I say the debate was settled long ago, when boneheads in freshman dorms thought they were being edgy…

  Science fiction often comes with thoughts of flashy spaceships, evil aliens, and dazzling metropolises full of technology beyond our wildest dreams. But, what if science fiction was quiet, subtle, and breathtaking? What if it made tears roll down your cheeks with its beauty and portrayal of love? Director Nicholas…

    If there’s one comic that’s taken me a damn long time to wrap my head around, it’s Greg Stump’s singularly bizarre Disillusioned Illusions, originally self-published by the cartoonist in 2009 and later re-issued by Fantagraphics Underground in 2015. Folks are fond of saying that Seinfeld was a show about nothing,…

This is it!  The last batch of our fascinating gender-benders, with the cream of the crop of transgender performances.  If you need to catch up, go to part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 to experience the full fabulousness of it all!  As before, there are spoilers here…

If you’ve missed our first two entries in our countdown to the most fascinating gender-bending characters of psychotronic film, check out part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here! Today we’ve got another ten plus bodies that won’t be boxed in by binary boyhood, with anarchists, space explorers,…

If you’ve missed our first two entries in our countdown to the most fascinating gender-bending characters of psychotronic film, check out part 1 here and part 2 here! Today we’ve got another ten androgy-rific personas, with rock stars, prostitutes and, of course, murderers! As before, there are spoilers here for…

  It’s been nearly seven years since I wrote this piece, and I was asked to revisit it this year, so I was honestly prepared for the worst to look at it with eyes that have been opened a little bit more in the time since I put this together….

    Do you like sex, violence, and exorcisms? Close this tab if you don’t, because Murder Vibes From the Monster Dimension! goes all-in with all three. After making the fantastic and fun video for Metallica’s Spit Out the Bone, Phil Mucci’s moving from short-form to really long-form with a…

    Joel Schumacher passed away earlier this week, leaving behind such a varied filmography that it’s tough to summarize him into any specific niche. Breaking into Hollywood most prominently as a screenwriter, Schumacher moved into the director’s chair and soon was equally at home making comedies (D.C. CAB, THE…

      Similar to a good horror film, a well-made comedy will do more than its intended purpose. During a scary movie, people should be frightened, and during a funny one, they should be brought to tears from laughing so hard. Besides the base-level response, both genres of film…

  If there’s one thing you can say for the work of Seattle-based cartoonist Jason T. Miles, it’s that his art is consistently challenging. And surprising. And pretty near indescribable. At times even indecipherable. And, yeah, I realize that’s more than the promised “one thing.” Still, in my own defense, if…

    It’s been nearly seven years since I wrote this piece, and I was asked to revisit it this year, so I was honestly prepared for the worst to look at it with eyes that have been opened a little bit more in the time since I put this…

None of the strips in cartoonist Harry Nordlinger’s 2019 self-published “solo creator” horror anthology comic Softer Than Sunshine run more than four pages — hell, a good many of them are only a single page long — but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth contemplating. Absorbing. Soaking in. Examining your reactions…

One of my favorite sub-sub-genres in film has to be “splatter films.” If you are not familiar with what constitutes a “splatter film,” let me break it down for you really quick: These movies usually have a ridiculous story, not much plot, and are so far outside of the mainstream…

  Anyone who is familiar with any aspects of the service industry understands the stress of dealing with people and their constant needs. With the rise of the smartphone also came the emerging new transportational aspects of the service industry, in the form of ridesharing apps. New jobs, new services,…

    The FRIDAY THE 13th series will always hold a special place in my heart, regardless of how dumb it became once Paramount Pictures’ eight-film reign ended and the franchise ended up with New Line Cinema. (JASON GOES TO HELL is enough to cement my point). As a kid,…

    When the positioning of the great sequels are debated – FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE; THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY; DAWN OF THE DEAD; THE GODFATHER PART II; ALIENS; THE COLOR OF MONEY; HELLBOY 2; INDIANA JONES & THE LAST CRUSADE; T2: JUDGMENT DAY; EVIL DEAD…

  Trends and filmmaking shifts don’t exactly happen overnight; rather, they come into focus in hindsight, with certain major signposts serving as helpful demarcation points. For example, PSYCHO is largely recognized as a seismic shift in horror filmmaking that highlighted the psychological terror lurking among us, standing in stark contrast…

  One of those books that take all of fifteen minutes to read, hours to look at, and days to fully absorb, it’s almost easier to catalogue what Niv Bavarsky and Michael Olivo’s handsomely-produced new Fantagraphics Underground hardback, Old Growth, isn’t about rather than what it is — but if we were…

  The Fantasia International Film Festival is officially on the way. This line-up is really something special. Particularly excited about the films from Brea Grant and Natasha Kermani, but really it all looks incredible. I’m going to just copy-and-paste the press release because it’s so thorough and really needs no…