Monster Seafood Wars, May be the worst movie playing at this years Fantasia Festival. I understand it may find it’s niche audience as it tries way too hard to be a meta comedy that also tries to be a mocumentary. This one for me just absolutely fell flat.

Continue reading “Monster Seafood Wars (Fantasia Review)”

I used to go here features a stellar cast with a fantastic Gillian Jacobs and a terrific Jermaine Clament. Even though I used to Go here may not be game-changing in any way shape or form it is worth watching on the effectiveness of its self-reflection. Especially with Gillian Jacobs’s character.

Continue reading “I Used To Go Here Review”

Red Penguins review

Red Penguins is a masterful documentary that plays out like a real movie. It’s so batshit you have to watch it to believe it. It does unfold like a Coen-Brothers movie and fans of the surreal will be pleasantly surprised with how great this viewing experience is!

Continue reading “Red Penguins Review”

Yes, God, Yes is a very entertaining coming-of-age story. Yes, the story feels very familiar with the audience it goes for. However, the movie succeeds in finding a niche with the audience of the adolescent irrelevant comedy crowd.

Continue reading “Yes, God, Yes Review”

The Painted Bird is a new WW2 epic as if we don’t have enough of those already. However, The Painted Bird is the best of it’s kind since Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.

Continue reading “The Painted Bird Review”

Babyteeth might be the most depressing film of the year when we really don’t need a depressing film at the time. However, the performances were all outstanding including Ben Mendelssohn who gave his strongest performance since Bloodline.

Synopsis:

BABYTEETH is Shannon Murphy’s (KILLING EVE) powerful, coming-of-age feature debut. When seriously ill teenager Milla (Eliza Scanlen) falls madly in love with small-time drug dealer Moses (Toby Wallace), it’s her parents’ (Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn) worst nightmare. But as Milla’s first brush with love brings her a renewed lust for life, traditional morals go out the window, leaving her parents wanting to hold tighter to their little girl. Milla soon teaches everyone in her orbit – her parents, Moses, a sensitive music teacher, a budding child violinist, and a disarmingly honest, pregnant neighbor – how to live like you have nothing to lose. What might have been a disaster for the Finlay family instead leads to letting go and finding grace in the glorious chaos of life. BABYTEETH joyously explores how good it is to be alive and how far we will go for love. BABYTEETH had its World Premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 where actor Toby Wallace won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor.

Toby Wallace is a revelation the performance is earth-shattering. Once again, however, this movie isn’t going to be for everybody as it deals with drugs and personality issues. It’s really bleak and tense to watch these characters develop. The pacing suffers a little for I thought this movie was over-long. Clocking in at almost two hours I would have like to see 25 minutes shaved off as there are scenes that tend to drag on a little here.

Overall grade:

2.5/5 stars

The Truth is a little bit of an uneven effort from everyone involved. It tries a little too hard to mimic the works of Richard Linklater, which is why I suppose they cast Ethan Hawke(who is always charismatic). However, in this film, he falls a little flat, especially the supporting cast around him.

I’m still not totally sure if it was the actor’s fault though. The screenplay just felt full of cliches. There was nothing ambitious or original enough in this production to really grab your attention. I really wanted to like The Truth but the pacing was dreadfully slow, making the viewing experience that much more daunting.

The scenery, however, was marvelous if there was one high light I could take away from the film. It would be the production design was amazing, everything looked stunning. Knowing most people won’t go heads over heel for production design, I don’t think a lot of my readers here will enjoy this one.

Overall grade.

1/5 stars

Synopsis:
Volume 5 of the Universal Horror Collection includes four tales of terror from the archives of Universal Pictures, the true home of classic horror. A mobster’s brain is transplanted into an ape who carries out his revenge in The Monster And The Girl. A mad scientist turns an ape into a beautiful, but deadly woman in Captive Wild Woman. Jungle Woman, the sequel to Captive Wild Woman, is an eerie thriller with all the danger of wild animals on the loose and a sexy killer on the prowl! And in Jungle Captive, a scientist has experimented on re-animating animals … but now he has decided to go one step further and re-animate a human!

Review:
All films include new 2K scans on Blu-Ray which highlight another outstanding picture transfer from Shout Factory. All of the films are under 65 minutes each. Some of the movies didn’t really do much for me even though some of the aspects inspired such films like Re-Animator, The Fly and Island of Dr. Moreau. If the films had more story to them I think I would have appreciated them more, but I understand in the 1940s weren’t necessarily long. In the end I don’t think this is a strong entry in the universal horror collection that Shout Factory has been putting out for a long time. Here’s hoping the next collection is more intriguing than this one.

Features:

THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL
1080p High Definition (1.37:1) / DTS-HD Master Audio Mono / 1941 / B&W / Not Rated / +/- 65 Minutes

CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN
1080p High Definition (1.37:1) / DTS-HD Master Audio Mono / 1943 / B&W / Not Rated / +/- 61 Minutes

JUNGLE WOMAN
1080p High Definition (1.37:1) / DTS-HD Master Audio Mono / 1944 / B&W / Not Rated / +/- 61 Minutes

JUNGLE CAPTIVE
1080p High Definition (1.37:1) / DTS-HD Master Audio Mono / 1945 / B&W / Not Rated / +/- 63 Minutes