Movie Reviews

          Crazy Samurai Musashi looks at a battle of legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi (Tak Sakaguchi) as he takes on 588 soldiers and defeats every single one.  Director Yûji Shimomura made the decision to shoot this battle in one, 77-minute-long uncut take, a bold and ambitious decision, yet one that if executed right, could have been an incredible feat and made for a great film.  Unfortunately, it isn’t as incredible as it could…

          As an artist, you can never predict who your work is going affect.  You might have an intention of who your target audience might be or who you expect to like your work, but there is really no way of knowing who will connect with your work. For illustrator Matt Furie, one of his pieces connected with a group he never would have expected and a group he wanted nothing…

            Project Power is the latest Netflix original movie and it is a movie I would classify as a “start-and-stop” movie.  It is a movie that you can start watching, pause or stop the film whenever you want, and pick it back up again whenever you want and won’t miss a thing.  You can do this multiple times and take however long of a break you want and you’ll be able…

          Lake Michigan Monster is a delirious midnight madness movie.  A micro-budget horror comedy that is unlike any movie I have seen in 2020.  What starts off as a monster chase turns into a trippy journey I did not expect.  I laughed, I was startled, I was confused, and yet I could never look away. Lake Michigan Monster starts with a simple premise: Seafield (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) and his crew are on…

        The opening scene of actor Dave Franco’s directorial debut, The Rental, is very telling of the movie you are about to watch.  We open on Charlie (Dan Stevens) looking at a luxurious AirBnB in his office with Mina (Shelia Vand) hanging over his shoulder.  You can immediately tell there is a chemistry between Charlie and Mina as Charlie says, “this is just what I need right now” while Mina is ogling…

            Harold Ramis’ 1993 comedy masterpiece Groundhog Day is one of the few films that I can think of, if not the only film I can think of, that became a genre of its own.  The romantic comedy spawned a number of films and television shows about a person being stuck in a time loop where they relive the same day over and over again.  Films like 50 First Dates, The Edge…

        Natalie Erika James’ Relic plays like the younger sibling of Ari Aster’s 2018 masterpiece Hereditary.  On paper, this is a slow-burning horror film that pits our characters against a force beyond this world.  But at its core, it is a deeply moving family drama about a tragic family event.  Relic is one of the best horror movies of 2020. When elderly Edna (Robyn Neven) inexplicably vanishes, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote)…

        It is safe to say that 2020 has been kind of a bummer in the cinematic world.  With Covid-19 closing down all movie theaters and delaying a lot of the hotly anticipated movies to later in the year or even next year, there hasn’t been to really look forward to.  Though we have gotten some gems throughout the year, the only movies that we have been able to view since March…

          Throughout the 2020 Chattanooga Film Festival I saw a number of good films that were unique in their styling and what they were about.  However, I had been missing that one movie that really blew me away.  The kind of movie that I would remember for the rest of 2020 and the movie I would humbly brag to friends and fellow critics that I saw it. Luckily, after nearly a…

            Attack of the Demons is like The Evil Dead by way of South Park.  An absurd, funny, violent animated horror film made out of what looks like stop-motion construction paper.  It’s an absolute blast and one of the best films I saw at the 2020 Chattanooga Film Festival. The year is 1994 and in the small town of Barrington, Colorado it is the 10th annual Halloween Festival, a night where the entire town…