Between Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, 20th Century Studios’ classic survival thriller franchise has been on a tear with stories that get at the heart of what makes this world of alien big game hunters great. In both films, director Dan Trachtenberg stuck to the Predator series’ narrative basics and focused on crafting clever […]
We live in an age where it has become infinitely easier for people to lead lives that are wholly divorced from any semblance of reality. Conspiracy theories run rampant, science denial is en vogue, and there is a vast media ecosystem filled with charlatans encouraging others to “do their own research” instead of believing well-educated […]
Guillermo del Toro has been thinking about Mary Shelley’s novel for a lifetime. He has described Frankenstein as “the quintessential teenage book,” and his famous Bleak House in Los Angeles is filled with versions of the creature from various film and stage adaptations. Naturally, the director has also imagined turning it into a movie himself. […]
Though Tron: Legacy was not a sterling piece of cinema, its gorgeous visuals and a banging score from Daft Punk made it an enjoyable update to the original 1982 cult classic. The movie tried to strike a healthy balance between nostalgic fan service and novel riffs on the source material to make itself feel like […]
There is a certain degree of body horror baked into American football that becomes readily apparent whenever players sustain gruesome, career-ending injuries on camera. For some, football’s overt violence is part of its appeal, and players are seen as people who have chosen to risk their safety in pursuit of fame and glory. Over the […]
It’s been almost exactly a year since I first saw Megalopolis, and the last 12 months haven’t been kind to Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating epic. It mostly bewildered critics and audiences, earned back just a fraction of its $120 million budget, and still isn’t easily accessible via streaming or a Blu-ray release. Megalopolis is a […]
When Stephen King’s The Long Walk was first published in 1979, dystopian young adult fiction had not yet become a wildly popular genre. With all of its gore and brutality, King’s novel wasn’t really meant for children. But in the book’s story about disillusioned youths being made to march through wastelands as a form of […]
Frankenstein is one of those stories that’s been retold countless times. And yet, Guillermo del Toro has managed to make a version that not only feels true to Mary Shelley’s original, but is also imbued with the trademarks the director is known for. Maybe that shouldn’t be too surprising – when presenting the film at […]
The best part of going to a film festival is finding something new. Sure, it’s great to find out that movies you’re excited about are in fact good – I’ve had luck so far with Exit 8, No Other Choice, and Wake Up Dead Man – but it’s so much more exciting to be surprised […]
When director Rian Johnson introduced the new Knives Out film on the third day of TIFF 2025, he exclaimed: “we’re going back to church.” By that he meant that Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, would harken back to the origins of the whodunit, and in particular the gothic vibes of Edgar […]