Movie talk

Filmmaker Al Adamson was one of a kind, and while his movies appeal only to a small segment of film lovers those that dig his work really and truly dig it. His life was tragically cut short by murder, but what a life it was. Severin Films has done something amazing in the world of…

Welcome to How’d They Do That? — a bi-monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off. This entry looks into the making of the impossible mirror scene in Contact. Contact takes place at the crossroads of belief, truth, and reality, which is fitting. Because this film…

Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for July 28th, 2020! This week…

This essay is part of our series Episodes, a bi-weekly column in which senior contributor Valerie Ettenhofer digs into the singular chapters of television that make the medium great. This entry looks at the brilliant series finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Payoff: it’s something pop culture lovers often take for granted. Every Hero’s Journey needs a…

Welcome to Movie DNA, a column that recognizes the direct and indirect cinematic roots of new movies. Learn some film history, become a more well-rounded viewer, and enjoy likeminded works of the past. This entry recommends movies to watch after The Assistant. There is an obvious real-life inspiration for Kitty Green‘s The Assistant. While its main…

Welcome to 4:3 & Forgotten — a weekly column in which Rob Hunter and I get to look back at TV terrors that scared adults (and the kids they let watch) across the limited airwaves of the ’70s. This time we’re going where no man has gone before and checking out one of Leonard Nimoy’s forays into the…

Welcome to The Prime Sublime, a weekly column dedicated to the underseen and underloved films buried beneath page after page of far more popular fare on Amazon’s Prime Video collection. We’re not just cherry-picking obscure titles, though, as these are movies that we find beautiful in their own, often unique ways. You might even say we…

In our new column Color Code, Luke Hicks chooses a handful of shots from a favorite film in order to draw out the meaning behind certain colors and how they play into both the scene and the film as a whole. For his first entry, he digs into Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust. Julie…

Welcome to How’d They Do That? — a bi-monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off. This entry looks into the making of the car chase in To Live and Die in L.A. William Friedkin‘s take no prisoners attitude is the stuff of legend. This is…

Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for July 21st, 2020! This week…

Ending Explained is a recurring series in which we explore the finales, secrets, and themes of interesting movies and shows, both new and old. This time, we check into the Overlook Hotel to consider The Shining ending. The Shining is a film that never stales. For forty years, Stanley Kubrick‘s adaptation of Stephen King‘s masterwork…

The gene pool of Winden, the main setting of the Netflix original series Dark, is a bit of a bog. As it turns out, when you mix time travel and a small community, you get a whole lot of incest and the most convoluted genealogies ever depicted on screen. With all this in mind, it…

We’re all feeling a little down these days, but for me, today’s specific malaise is because I’m not in Montreal enjoying the Fantasia Film Festival. I’ve spent this week up there the past several years, and it’s never been less than an absolute blast of fantastic films and great people. This year’s edition is transitioning…

The name’s Bond. Bondathon. With 24 official James Bond films to conquer before ‘No Time To Die’ hits theaters, Bond fan Anna Swanson and Bond newbie Meg Shields are diving deep on 007. Martinis shaken and beluga caviar in hand, the Double Take duo are making their way through the Bond corpus by era, so…

Welcome to 4:3 & Forgotten — a weekly column in which Kieran Fisher and I get to look back at TV terrors that scared adults (and the kids they let watch) across the limited airwaves of the ’70s. This time we take a look at a TV movie sequel to The Night Stalker called… The Night Strangler. Sequels…

Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, our weekly column where we continue the animated boob tube ritual of yesteryear. Our lives may no longer be scheduled around small screen programming, but that doesn’t mean we should forget the necessary sanctuary of Saturday ‘toons. In this entry, we spotlight the Hanna-Barbera splinter cell Ruby-Spears. By the mid-1960s,…

Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for July 14, 2020 — which…

Welcome to Carnage Classified, a monthly column where we break down the historical and social influence of all things horror then rank the films of each month’s category. Franchises, movements, filmmakers, subgenres, etc…It’s all here! This entry is about the Psycho franchise.  C’mon. We all know this is the place to start this column off…

You have a lot of streaming options in the world today, but while most aim for broad appeal some go all-in towards a niche. Shudder is one of the latter, and that niche is all things horror. The service has a growing backlog of genre favorites, and each month they add older gems along with…