Review – Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

by Armando Vanegas

For as financially and culturally successful as the Harry Potter books and movies were, the first Fantastic Beasts movie seemed to have the shelf life of a forgettable CBS procedural, which might actually be redundant. It was somehow really successful but it seems to not really have any cultural relevance. Like I remember seeing it, but in the words of one of my favorite podcasts, Blank Check with Griffin and David, it’s not a movie that exists. This theory is also supported by the fact that that no one else seems to ever talk about it enough to stand out in anyone’s memory. Aside from the beasts, Colin Farrell as the villain, and Dan Fogler as Jacob, I’m hard pressed to find anything that stood out in that previous movie.

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Review – Fantastic Beasts : The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

by Old King Clancy

I’ll be honest and say that the Harry Potter series is not ‘sacred’ to me in any way, but the books were a strong part of my childhood and the films even more so. So I’m a definite fan of the franchise and even enjoyed the first Fantastic Beasts film bringing us back into the Wizarding World. So it’s difficult for me to call The Crimes Of Grindelwald a bad movie when there’s little to say that it isn’t.

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Review – A Star is Born (2018)

by Kevin Muller

The word, remake, has become a dirty word in Hollywood. Whenever one is announced, people roll their eyes, and either totally ignore it or hand over their money in some type of curious shame. The new film, A Star is Born, is the third cinematic iteration of the popular story about a musician, in his decline, that finds both talent and hope in a young female aspiring singer. The pair this time are Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, who not only stars as the male lead, but directed, co-wrote, and produced this epic love story.

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Review – Macabre aka Rumah Dara (2009) **31 Days of Horror**

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Comes to Indonesia

by Nile Fortner

A young group of naïve kids pick up a hitchhiking stranger and their kindness will lead to suffering and gore. We’ve seen this horror formula again-and-again in films. The 2009 Indonesian horror film Macabre does follow this similar formula and the usual clichés. However, Macabre is worth sinking your teeth into and delivers on the cannibal carnage.

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Review – Slice (2018)

by Old King Clancy

Movies like Slice are part of a genre that I’m now trade-marking as “Kitchen Sink Movies,” films like Detention and Freaks Of Nature that take wildly outlandish concepts, throw the kitchen sink at the screen, and pray to god that it’s entertaining because it’s sure as hell not gonna make any sense. It’s a difficult genre to pull off since you run the risk of going too far and blurring out any attempt at story, or you don’t go far enough and your wild concept just feels flimsy and unfocused. In the case of Slice, it unfortunately suffers from the latter issue.

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Review – Today’s Special (2009)

Take a Bite Out of ‘Today’s Special’!

by Nile Fortner

The 2009 independent comedy film Today’s Special comes from fairy tale and folklore director David Kaplan and the film is an adaptation from the Off-Broadway play. Taking place mostly in an Indian restaurant, a young Manhattan chef played by Aasif Mandvi (The Internship and Spider-Man 2) rediscovers his passion for life by making Indian food. The film mostly has a Bollywood cast and has been played at the Mumbai Indian Film Festival and the Palm Springs International Film Festival where it won the “Best of the Fest” award.

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