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Black Sabbath (1963): A-
Mario Bava pays respect to his influential horror forefathers by having Boris Karloff act as host for – and star in one segment of – Black Sabbath (aka The Three Faces of Fear), a triptych of terrifying tales that reportedly was the Italian director’s favorite work. It’s certainly his most well known, and with good…
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Diary of the Dead (2007): B+
Less a fourth installment in his illustrious zombie series than a parallel-universe reboot, George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead depicts a modern-day outbreak of hungry undead through the prism of film student Jason Creed’s (Joshua Close) video camera. Comparisons to the 9/11-exploiting Cloverfield are inevitable but the more cogent analogy is with Brian DePalma’s…
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Black Sunday (1960): A-
A crossbreed of Universal’s 1930s scarefests and Hammer Films’ then-contemporary monster mashes, 1960’s Black Sunday (aka The Mask of Satan) introduced the world to Italian maestro Mario Bava and screen siren Barbara Steele, and remains one of the cinema’s preeminent examples of gothic horror. Bava’s first directorial effort after years working as cinematographer to, among…
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Super! Super! Super!
It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and just about time for the nation to begin getting its collective drink on. Thus, I’ll keep this short and sweet: five new reviews, two of them positive, three of them not-so-much. Enjoy. In Theaters: The Eye (2008) (Slant magazine) Over Her Dead Body (Slant magazine) Praying with Lior (Cinematical) Coming…
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Knightriders (1981): B-
The idea of having a troupe of performers stage King Arthur-style Renaissance Fair dramas on motorcycles is a lot less cool now than it must have seemed – to writer/director George A. Romero, at least – in 1981. Nonetheless, if one can get past the somewhat silly premise, as well as a lot of filler…
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To survive war, you gotta become war
Because Sylvester Stallone just can’t let his ’80s icons rest in peace, this week sees the release of Rambo, a largely unnecessary new adventure for one-man army John Rambo that’s mostly notable for showing off Sly’s veiny HGH-enhanced forearms and for delivering more extreme violence than any film in recent memory. If only some of…
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The Monster is Coming! The Monster is Coming!
Actually, Cloverfield is finally here. And as is usually the case with such highly anticipated event pictures, it doesn’t live up to its hype. Still, it’s more tolerable than most of the other films I’ve recently seen – and light years better than The Air I Breathe, the early front-runner for 2008’s worst of the…
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The Stepfather (1987): B+
The Stepfather is, in one respect, simply another 1980s horror film, albeit one buoyed by a strong lead performance by Terry O’Quinn as a stepdad who likes to murder his adopted family once they cease living up to his expectations. And yet Joseph Ruben’s surprisingly resonant and durable tale also cannily reflects, in a larger…
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Into Great Silence (2007): B+
Demanding intense submission, Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence charts the daily rituals and lives of Carthusian monks at France’s mountainside Grande Chartreuse monastery with a rigorous patience, tranquility and – per its title – silence that’s something to behold. Gröning’s film is non-fictional, but it’s less a documentary in any traditional sense than simply a…
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Breaking in 2008
After the insanity that is the awards season, the start of a new year is always pretty blah, both in terms of quality and quantity of new releases. Nonetheless, I’ve been slowly getting my critical brain back in working order by slamming a few duds, as the below links confirm. Coming Soon: 27 Dresses (Slant…
