Review – God’s Own Country (2017) Edinburgh Film Festival

by Old King Clancy

God’s Own Country has been described as Yorkshire’s answer to Brokeback Mountain which I think is doing both films a disservice. Brokeback was more of a period piece, dealing with the love of two men in a society that hated them, whereas God’s Own Country tackled a much more personal story about the love between two men when one of them hates themselves. It tackles self-destruction with a deft hand that evokes Mike Leigh’s work, but with a modern sensibility towards homosexual sex and romance.

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Review-It Comes At Night (2017)

 

by Nile Fortner

This is a movie I have been looking forward to for a very long time. With a title like ‘It Comes at Night,’ the eerie trailers, the visually appealing posters, the A24 entertainment company who made The Witch and Ex Machina (two movies I love), and from all the marketing, I was expecting one of the best horror movies this year. Yay for horror movies! Who doesn’t love a good horror flick, a good spook to the spine every so often? I love horror movies, and it is actually one of my favorite genres. Unfortunately, us “horror heads” don’t get the most original or best treatment in the land of Hollywood. In my opinion, the best horror films lately have been foreign or independent. This is why I was looking forward to this somewhat “small budget under the radar” horror movie.

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Review – Raw (2016)

by Old King Clancy

I’ve mentioned before – several times in fact – that I love modern French horror, ‘Martyrs’ is an all-time favorite of mine and ‘Inside’ had messed me up more times than I care to think of. So when news of ‘Raw’ came out with people fainting in the theater, I knew I had to see it. Those fainting rumors turned out to be exaggerated, but I still had high hopes for this to deliver and it more than did so. This is easily the best French cannibal sex movie I’ve seen all year and a near definite for my ‘Top 10’ of 2017.

The film opens with protagonist Justine (Garance Marillier) starting her first year at Veterinary school, the same school her sister Alexia  (Ella Rumpf) is currently studying. Justine is a quiet, shy bookworm, and firm vegetarian who struggles with the school heavy use of hard music and harder partying. During the intense hazing rituals Justine is forced to eat raw rabbit kidney and almost immediately has a violent allergic reaction to it with a bad rash breaking out onto her body. However, something changes inside Justine and she soon finds herself with a hunger for meat.

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You’ll Float with IT in September!

by Kevin Muller

The road for Pennywise to have his day in the sun, or lurking around in the sewers, hasn’t been an easy one.   For years, the project had “floated” around with no hope of every gracing the silver screen.   After his success of the incredible 2014 “True Detective,” Cary Fukanaga soon boarded the project that he aimed for a 2016 release.   Cary and the studio constantly clashed over the tone of the Stephen King novel.   Cary wanted to do more of a slow burn film, while the studio wanted to, as Cary put it, make a typical jump scare horror film.   In a later article, I will review the screenplay that he originally wrote with Chase Palmer that was a dated 2014 script.   Soon after his departure, Andres (Andy) Muschetti, stepped into the director’s chair.   His 2013 film “Mama” wasn’t my favorite film but he seemed serious on bringing something good to this material.

Our first glimpse of Pennywise came back last summer with a facial shot of the character.  Then a few months later an official full body pose came out.  The one thing that stuck out about this interpretation of the murderous clown is that the wardrobe looked like it was from another century.  In actuality that is true of the novel’s presentation of him.   He has been here for hundreds of years and became a clown during the Victorian age.   Muschetti had already nailed the look of the character. Some people were and are still iffy about how the costume will look in motion.    Well, the poster and trailer have been released and I think we are in for one hell of a ride

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Review – Ghost in the Shell (2017)

by Taylor Lunsford

‘Ghost In The Shell’ is a remake from internationally acclaimed futuristic Japanese hit in 1995, directed by Mamoru Oshi of the same name and based on Masamune Shirow manga published in 1989. I just saw it yesterday morning and in it’s first 10 minutes, I was starting to think that this could be one of the best, visually impressive dystopian sci-fi films ever put onscreen. The film has a vibe of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece, Blade Runner, with the aura of The Wachowski Brothers’, The Matrix . It’s hard not to think of some other films we’ve seen in the past years that touch on the same subject as this movie, but Rupert Sanders was able to find ways to continuously make it seem new to us.

The year is set in 2019: Major (played terrifically by Scarlett Johansson) is a female human-android and being called the first of her kind, designed to kill world’s most dangerous criminals. Major has mind and soul, she was told that she was saved from a terrific accident and only her brain survived. She is having visions, memories from her past that led her to the truth why she was brought to Hanka, a corporation that develop state-of-the-art robotics.

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