Review – IT (2017)

by Kevin Muller

Many people don’t know, but the number 27 and the release of the new film, “IT”, go hand in hand. In the novel, Pennywise, the murderous clown, emerges every 27 years. Secondly, it has been 27 years since the television adaptation of the novel where Tim Curry played Pennywise was released. Finally, the new Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgard, is 27 as the new film drops. All these are interesting and cool coincidences, but does the new adaptation of the famous Stephen King novel succeed? It has advantages that the television movie didn’t have: production value, gore, and the ability for the characters to talk like real thirteen year olds, who drop swear words like they are going out of style.

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Cinephellas Podcast – Episode 21 (Interview with Brian O’ Malley)

The Freedom of Escape: A Conversation with Brian O’ Malley

by Christopher M. Rzigalinski

On this edition of the Cinephellas Podcast I chat with director Brian O’Malley about The Lodgers, which premiers at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 8th, 2017 at 7:15PM. The film is a gothic ghost story about orphaned twins Rachel (Charlotte Vega) and Edward (Bill Milner) who share a crumbling manor in 1920’s rural Ireland. But a sinister secret threatens their residence. They share the house with unseen entities who control them with three absolute rules. As separate fates draw them apart, the twins must face the terrible truth about their family’s ghostly tormentors.

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Review – I Do…Until I Don’t (2017)

by Kevin Muller

Lake Bell’s second feature film I Do… Until I Don’t contains all the errors that she avoided with her first film, “In a World.”   The actress, writer, and director definitely has talent in those three areas, but this time she comes up short with something that lacks energy and focus.

Bell plays Alice, a meek young woman who is definitely not comfortable with her sexuality. Ed Helms plays her husband Noah. The awkward, but decent couple have been married for seven years and tried many times to have a children with no success.   Her biological clock is ticking and this has put stress on their relationship. Meanwhile, Alice’s sister, Fanny, and her partner, Zander, live a stress free life and allow different partners into their bed. They are free loving hippies who live off Zander’s trust fund.  Finally, Cybil and Harvey, an older married couple, have completely lost the spark in their thirty years together. These three couples are the subjects of a documentary being put together by a women named Vivian. It is Vivian’s belief that matrimony is a false way of life. She knows she has to spice it up and feeds off the constant confrontations these characters experience with one another, and even gets involved to play puppet master at points.

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Review – Wind River (2017)

by Old King Clancy

Taylor Sheridan has made a big name for himself as a screenwriter with only Sicario and Hell Or High Water under his belt. Now with his directorial debut, Wind River, Sheridan has proven himself as one of the more interesting voices of modern cinema and someone unafraid to touch upon darker subject of America.

Set in and around the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, Wildlife hunter Cary Lambert (Jeremy Renner) is called by his ex-wife’s father-in-law to deal with a lion that’s been killing his livestock when he comes across the body of Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Chow), an 18 year old resident on the reservation the best friend of Lambert’s deceased daughter Emily. With signs of sexual assault on the body, the police call the FBI however the only person available is rookie agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olson) in Las Vegas who is unfamiliar with the location or the cold.

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Review – Annabelle: Creation

Annabelle-2-1

by Nile Fortner

‘Annabelle’ is a Bad Bitch, Y’all!

James Wan (Furious 7, The Conjuring) is taking a backseat on this as director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) and writer Gary Dauberman (2014s Annabelle, 2017s IT) in this horror film, a horror film trying to establish the Conjuring universe.

Now I wasn’t a fan of the last Annabelle movie. I’ve told friends and family that Annabelle is the laziest horror movie villain I’ve ever seen. In the last film, all Annabelle did was sit on her flat wooden butt. The doll didn’t do anything except sit in a rocking chair, too lazy to even rock back and forth, and the evil doll just stares at you. You’re eating oatmeal for breakfast one day, you put the brown sugar on the table, the doll is across the room, and the next thing you know the brown sugar is not on the table. “Well damn, it must have been the doll! It’s (dramatic pause) evil!

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