4 Best Movies To Watch After Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Tsuzumi Mansion Arc (2022)

In addition to new releases, Fantastic Fest also presented a selection of largely forgotten oddities from the past. This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn't exist. Although Fantastic Fest is the place to see the latest in genre films running the gamut from expensive blockbusters like The Creator to any number of micro-budget oddities, it also allows attendees the chance to see revivals of older films that also range from the famous (or at least notorious) to titles so obscure that many viewers may not have even heard of them before. Continue Reading →

“Just brang ma baby girl back alive!” Continue Reading →

Even after the umpteenth re-watch, I feel I’m only starting to scratch the surface of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. Initial reviews and reactions gravitated towards the film’s relationship with Scientology and its co-founder L. Ron Hubbard. In the decade since, this fixation has dissipated, depriving confused viewers of an easy handhold while scaling this towering cinematic achievement. Make no mistake: Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd is a character clearly inspired by Hubbard. But labeling The Master “a movie about Scientology” is about as silly as thinking you can cure leukemia by accessing past lives.  Continue Reading →

Leigh Whannell's follow-up to Upgrade is a chilling, Hitchcockian thriller about the ways trauma follows us around. Six months after I moved in with my girlfriend's parents after college, I packed up my things and left one day while she was at work. Scratch that -- escaped. Her parents even helped me load my car. They knew I wasn't happy, and they hated seeing what was happening to me. I was trapped, emotionally (and in one or two cases, physically) abused; she literally would not let me leave if I tried to break things off in person. The prospect of escape was freeing, but also terrifying; Would she come to get me? And worse, would I still have the tools to exist as myself? There would always be something of her, the way she made me feel powerless and isolated, that would linger on for years afterward. Sometimes, I still feel her lingering stare behind me, even when I know she's not there. While Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man channels the specifics of the way abusive men wield their power over women, the way it channels the dynamics of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence into a crackerjack sci-fi thriller shell resonated with me in ways I didn't expect. As the film opens, we see Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) hatching a long-gestating escape plan from her boyfriend of three years, wealthy "optics" scientist Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Sneaking out of his mannered, Silicon Valley-ornate villa in the dead of night, she barely makes it out alive with the help of her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer) and childhood friend James (Aldis Hodge), the latter of whom lets her lay low at his house with young daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). Weeks later, they hear some shocking news: Adrian has committed suicide, and in one final power move, he bequeaths a $5 million inheritance to her, contingent on her avoiding criminal prosecution or mental distress. At long last, her nightmare can finally end. Continue Reading →