A listing of cutting-edge film critic portfolio examples by award-winning film critic voices.

Film Critic Portfolio Examples

They did it. Best Picture winner — which, despite its maximalist name, isn’t a “big” movie, like some of its fellow Best Picture nominees — won the big prize. It’s not the sort of film directors make assuming it will win them Best Picture. Weird,…

Everything Everywhere All at Once

It’s important for the purposes of this article that you know my age: I am on the verge of turning 40. Having been raised in that brief interregnum between the Cold War and the war on terror, I, like many of my peers, assumed that I would live my…

Party Down’s new season says hustle culture is a scam

What even is the point of the Oscars? Every year, I find myself asking that question, and every year I have a different answer. They’re a cultural barometer. They’re a way to spotlight movies that got lost in the mega-blockbuster vortex. They’re…

The surprising lesson from a century of Oscar scandals

It’s a familiar trope, so familiar it has been skewered over time: In Hollywood horror movies, “the Black guy” usually dies first. The token minority character in the film will be the first to go, a casualty of horror’s need to up the ante and make…

What’s the future of Black horror?

In a recent Saturday Night Live sketch, Bowen Yang hosts a cheesy game show called “The Big Hollywood Quiz.” Tonight’s contestants are a film professor (Pedro Pascal), an entertainment writer (Ego Nwodim), and a Hollywood history podcaster (Chloe…

Maybe we’ve just forgotten how to find out about movies

Sometimes a great movie gets buried, for whatever reason, in the end-of-year awards rush. But if you talk to those who experienced its magic before the rush began, you’ll get an effusive collar grab, a gentle shake, and a declaration that “you must…

The best movie you didn’t see last year is finally out

, from the directing duo known as the “Daniels” (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), has turned out to be one of 2022’s biggest success stories. It’s a quirky, non-franchise film with a wholly original plot about a Chinese immigrant mother who owns a…

Bright and early on the morning of January 24, 2023, as Riz Ahmed and Alison Williams named the Oscar nominees for Best Actress, the results were, more or less, as expected. Cate Blanchett for Tar. Michelle Williams for The Fabelmans. Ana de Armas…

What Andrea Riseborough’s controversial nomination reveals about the Oscars

In January, while Oscars discourse roils and people are still catching up on last year’s best movies, a new crop arrives via the Sundance Film Festival. This year, after two years online, the festival returned to Park City, Utah, where stars,…

17 movies to watch out for in 2023

There’s a liminal space just adjacent to grief. It’s where you live when anticipating loss that hasn’t yet arrived — the loved one with a terminal diagnosis, the crisis looming on the horizon. It’s the space you occupy when standing beside someone…

We can’t grieve what we can’t remember

James Cameron's smash hit film "Titanic" is being re-released in theaters with a new, 25th anniversary edition. The tragic love story between Jack and Rose launched the careers of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet into the stratosphere, and sparked…

Celebrating 'Titanic' 25 Years Later

Near the beginning of Celine Song’s brilliant debut film Past Lives, two little Korean girls are choosing their English names as part of the family preparation for immigration to Canada. Na Young, age 12, can’t quite settle on one; they all sound…

Past Lives is already one of the year’s best films

Cat Person — the movie adaptation of the New Yorker short story that took over your Twitter feed in December 2017 — starts with a now-familiar paraphrase of a Margaret Atwood quotation: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them,” says the…

Cat Person, Brett Kavanaugh, Fair Play, and the anger of entitled men

At a recent family gathering, the conversation turned to dining, and from there to a common practice of mine: eating alone in restaurants. My grandmother, who’s in her 80s and grew up in the upstate town where they all live, said she’d never do it,…

The glories of dining out alone

Here’s something you probably didn’t know: The Golden Globes are this week. Wait, the Golden Globes are back? They sure are. The Golden Globes will air on NBC and stream on Peacock, beginning at 8 pm ET on Tuesday, January 10, live from the Beverly…

The Golden Globes, Hollywood’s most chaotic awards, have returned

Death, supermarkets, and an airborne toxic event. If you buy something from a Vox link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. There’s a white noise machine in my bedroom. I got it to block the sounds of traffic from the busy…

What Noah Baumbach’s White Noise is really about

The real Babylon, the one from which Damien Chazelle’s Babylon draws its name, was the capital of an ancient, mighty empire. The Bible mentions it almost as soon as humanity arrives on the scene: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower…

Babylon’s debauched old Hollywood is about something much bigger

If you don’t count Minions: The Rise of Gru, and I do not, then the highest-earning comedy of 2022 is The Lost City, a genuinely funny vehicle for Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. (At one point it was titled The Lost City of D, and the last bit got…

What gets lost when comedies go straight to streaming

I hated the first Avatar movie — like, hated it. It came out in 2009, and I remember tearing off my 3D glasses at its conclusion, livid that I had paid around $18 to watch Dances With Wolves but with blue people. All blockbusters recycle a certain…

Avatar: The Way of Water

Lately, my social media feeds have been full of people strategizing about how to stretch a dollar when feeding their family in the face of inflation. For those who’ve lived in tough financial circumstances — or who remember recessions of the past —…

The enduring civil rights lessons in Edna Lewis’ cookbook

This is a collection that contains all your pieces.

AUSTIN, TX: I’ve said before that SXSW is my favorite film festival, but if we’re being honest, that has more to do with the food and drink and camaraderie than the movies themselves. I took in over a dozen during my week or so on the ground, and…

Crooked Marquee’s SXSW 2023 Diary

April Wright is our favorite kind of documentary filmmaker, because she makes movies about movies. Her latest, “Back to the Drive-In” (out now!) looks at drive-in exhibition in the COVID era - and she picked 1980, a year of great drive-in movies (and…

1980 with April Wright

Rachel Sennott is ideally cast in the leading role of Ally Pankiw’s “I Used to Be Funny” because this is a character who sort of can’t help but make you laugh, even without trying, even in tremendously difficult situations. Her name is Sam, and she’s…

‘I Used To Be Funny’ Review: Rachel Sennott Shines In A Narratively Tricky Seriocomic Drama [SXSW]

Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalogue titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This twice-monthly…

The Best Movies to Buy or Stream This Week: ‘Women Talking,’ ‘Alice, Darling,’ ‘Puss in Boots’

It’s funny to look back and remember that when they first broke out in the early 1990s, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were seen as not just contemporaries but equals, redefining genre cinema for the indie set and rewriting the rules to…

‘Hypnotic’ Review: Robert Rodriguez & Ben Affleck Team For An ‘Inception’-Ish Nolan-Like Thriller [SXSW]

It’s important to manage expectations, so let’s get this right out of the way: Emma Seligman’s “Bottoms” has little in common with their previous indie hit, “Shiva Baby,” beyond its queer-friendly attitude and the return of star Rachel Sennott. This…

‘Bottoms’ Review: Emma Seligman’s Sophomore Feature Is No ‘Shiva Baby,’ But Still Delightfully Subversive [SXSW]

Jake Johnson’s “Self Reliance” opens, as many a classy movie does, with a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” It applies, to some extent, to the…

‘Self Reliance’ Review: Jake Johnson’s Directorial Debut Is A Suitable Vehicle For His Shaggy Comic Energy [SXSW]

Film critic and author Charles Bramesco had to look at movies in a new and different way while researching and writing his new book, "Colors of Film: The Story of Cinema in 50 Palettes" (out this week) which examines filmmaking through the prism of…

1971 with Charles Bramesco

“Parachute” is the feature directorial debut of actor Brittany Snow, the blonde bombshell familiar from “Hairspray,” the “Pitch Perfect” movies, and, most recently, Ti West’s “X.” She also produced and co-wrote the script with Becca Gleason, but this…

‘Parachute’ Review: Brittany Snow Makes a Fine Directorial Debut With A Candid & Nervous Romantic Drama [SXSW]

There’s a big emotional beat, late in Lisa Steen’s “Late Bloomers,” that culminates with Karen Gillan’s protagonist Louise pleading, with tears in her eyes, “I’m trying!” That moment captures the most endearing but peculiar thing about this wildly…

‘Late Bloomers’ Review: Karen Gillan Is Hilarious And Heartbreaking In A Predictable But Enjoyable Dramedy [SXSW]

The only thing Oscar prognosticators like more than determining a front-runner for best picture is upending one, and this year’s front-runner would seem to be “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” It’s easy to consider it a shoo-in, as it nabbed…

Could ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Win Best Picture?

There are allllllll sorts of ‘80s classics that hit theaters in the year 1985, but our guest (and friend) W. Axel Foley of the DVR Podcast Network went in some WILD directions for his top five of the year, plucking out some less-discussed…

1985 with W Axel Foley

We all know the story of the beauty and the beast – it is, one might even say, a tale as old as time. But the story of that story itself, the story OF Beauty and the Beast, is one of cultural homogenization and domination, of an entire generation…

Classic Corner: La Belle et la Bête

This month’s departing titles on Netflix in the United States include two cult-favorite television shows worth your attention, a slapstick comedy with a peculiar origin story and two dramas that should have won more Oscars than they did. Stream them…

Stream These 5 TV Shows and Movies Before They Leave Netflix in March

The Best Movies to Buy or Stream This Week: The Inspection, Dazed and Confused, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and More

Filmmaker and actress Isabel Sandoval (“Señorita,” “Aparisyon,” "Lingua Franca”) went to a rather non-traditional film school: the pirated DVD stores of Philippines flea markets. It was there that she discovered the auteurs of the 1970s, the giants…

1974 with Isabel Sandoval

This month’s suggestions for the hidden gems of your subscription streaming services cut a wide swath of genres and styles, including a piercing psychological thriller, a moody marital drama and a buck-wild sex comedy, with a handful of first-rate…

‘Black Bear,’ ‘Sharp Stick’ and More Streaming Gems

Frank Conniff is best known for commenting on bad movies - via his five seasons as "TV's Frank" on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and his subsequent riffing on "Cinematic Titanic" and "The Mads are Back" - so he was delighted to talk about good…

1964 with Frank Conniff

I love Quentin Tarantino. His work as a filmmaker is obviously unimpeachable; Pulp Fiction quite literally changed my life (and I’ve written the book to prove it), and every film since – not a bad one in the bunch, I’d argue – has both moved the form…

In Defense (?!?) of François Truffaut (?!?!?)

The Best Movies to Buy or Stream This Week: The Fabelmans, Strange World, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and More

A kiss can be deadly if you mean it. – My favourite movie Batmen — Burton here and Reeves’ recent outing — are the ones that display at least a glancing affinity with subcultural figures, in contrast to hectoring enforcers of the status quo. Musical…

Annual Batman Returns Christmas Rewatch: Stray Observations

Following the annual horror binge of October, I tend to slip back into fantasy favourites during the subsequent months in an attempt to close off the year with something of a cosily immersive lilt; to both weather and take advantage for what passes…

In Defense of Escapism

As Refugee Week Malta winds down to a close, we speak to some of the artists who have contributed to Malta’s inaugural edition of the international event – which this year focused on the power of ‘healing’ through art and conversation With Refugee…

Artists put healing hands to work | World Refugee Week 2022

As they get underway with marshaling a packed World Refugee Week, we catch up with Deborah Falzon and Julienne Schembri of Dance Beyond Borders, who will be organizing the inaugural Maltese edition of the global event across various venues on the…

Healing through art, together | World Refugee Week 2022

We speak to Dursa and Livingstone of youth migrant NGO Spark 15 about the organisation’s most ambitious event so far – a one-day festival commemorating World Refugee Day, taking place at Argotti Gardens in Floriana on 19 June One of the casualties of…

Custodians of a diverse society | World Refugee Day 2022

A young girl whose mother has committed suicide discovers she’s able to commune with ancient monsters, who have emerged from their slumber to wreak havoc on the over-developed, tiny planet of Mibdul. ‘Mibdul’ is a six-issue comic book mini-series…

It’s time to take a trip to MIBDUL…

Fleeing religious persecution in Algeria, young student Kenza Lina and her family found solace on the Maltese Islands. And with the help of the Verdala International School’s Refugee Scholarship Fund, Kenza is now able to pursue her academic study of…

Scholarship allows Algerian refugee student to thrive

A Teatru Salesjan production seeks to offer a form of catharsis Rehearsal photos showing actor Anton Saliba playing Żepp. Photos: Emma Micallef Devised during lockdown by writer-performer Anton Saliba and director Chris Galea, the upcoming Teatru…

Żepp: when theatre reveals systems of isolation

Having lived in Marsascala between 2015 and 2020 and seeing the sleepy-but-bustling former fishing village once again become a target for suffocating over-development, I’ve decided to look back on some of my impressions and memories of the town,…

The Village by the Sea | Marsascala Under Attack (Again)

Distance Does Not Mean Protection | Marsascala Under Attack (Again)

The seaside village of Marsascala which served as my home for roughly six years up until recently has once again become a beacon of environmental resistance in Malta, after a government-sponsored proposal to choke its bay with a vulgarly gigantic…

Resistance & Self-Compassion: The Case of (and for) Marsascala

With A Vipers’ Pit (Is-Sriep Regghu Saru Velenuzi) heading into its second weekend at Eden Cinemas, I thought I’d compile a little guide for prospective viewers before they take a chance on our political thriller-family drama-literary…

A Vipers’ Pit | Viewer Guide for the Second Weekend

Starting from this Friday (6 August), those of you based in Malta can watch a film I wrote at Eden Cinemas in St Julian’s.
This is the first feature film script of mine to be produced, and suffice it to say that I’m excited about how audiences are…

Soft Disturbances

On the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention, we spoke to Roberta Buhagiar, CEO of the International Protection Agency, on how this landmark but ever-adaptable document remains a key reference point for the…

A rallying call for protection, 70 years on

Hi, my name is Teodor Reljić, and I think I preferred the internet before social media came along. Hence the name of this blog-cum-website: incenidiary opinions and endless flamewars are tiring and useless to me, but I acknowledge disturbance to be…

About

When you spend a large chunk of your adult life going to the cinema during weird lonely hours as part of your job routine, something alters about the way in which you view that space. Working as a film critic for a national newspaper since I was 18…

Thursday Afternoons on the Sticky Seats (Or: I Miss Being a Film Reviewer But Not Really)

Facing pandemic-imposed challenges head-on, Teatru Salesjan teamed up with UNHCR and JRS Malta for a series of workshops aimed at helping asylum-seeker women from West Africa ease into Maltese society, and boost their confidence prior to braving the…

Women asylum-seekers eased into their full potential

The morning I woke up to discover that my mother had died, my first instinct was to feed the cat. I woke up later than I usually do – that is, 7am rather than around 6am – and succumbed to the dispiriting habit of checking my phone before doing…

Days of the Dead: November 2010-November 2020

Fleeing the Libyan conflict zone in 2015, gynecologist Badria El Baghawi allowed herself to make a home out of Malta as a refugee, after previous visits during calmer and happier times. Badria El Baghawi. © UNHCR/Joanna Demarco An unexpected return…

Holding fast to one’s values and the dignity of work

This is your debut collection of published poetry but of course, it hardly represents your first stab at the genre, or indeed writing itself. Which aspect of your work would you say the collected poems of this volume represent?
I have been writing…

Leanne Ellul | Stripped bare in the blue room

(Starred titles I've seen, read, or heard before.) VIEWED February 1 The Last of Us Part II - [4K/60fps HDR] (100%, Grounded, Permadeath) Part 15 - The Birthday Gift (2022, Pineapple Express)The Last of Us Part II - [4K/60fps HDR] (100%, Grounded,…

February 2023: Viewing-Reading-Listening

Click here to read Part V This installment of “Who Wants to Die for Art!?!” will be the first of the series to investigate a film that is as prescient as it is meaningful. Admittedly, describing a work of art as “prescient” can often reduce it from a…

Who Wants to Die for Art!?!: Reflections on a Meta-Film Sub-Genre: Part VI

★★★★★ Dir. Bruce Conner. 1958-2008. N/R. Program A: 75mins. Program B: 70mins. Film Forum’s two-program, 17-film survey of the work of the late, great experimental director Bruce Conner is endlessly rewarding. A San Francisco–based Beat artist,…

Bruce Conner: The Art of Montage

★★★☆☆ Dir. Jaak Kilmi. 2009. N/R. 80mins. In Estonian, Finnish, Russian and English, with subtitles. Might the heroes of the Cold War actually have been J.R. Ewing and a talking car named Kitt? In this whimsical documentary, director Jaak Kilmi…

Disco and Atomic War

★★★☆☆ Dir. Roger Spottiswoode. 2007. R. 112mins. Roy Dupuis, Owen Sejake, Odile Katesi Gakire. By now, movies about the Rwandan genocide are their own subgenre, and this conventional yet still honorable feature falls somewhere in between the…

Shake Hands with the Devil

★★★★★ Dir. Martin Scorsese. 1980. R. 129mins. Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci. It’s the big three-oh for Martin Scorsese’s bloody, beloved black-and-white biopic of middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta (De Niro), and the film’s ineffable…

Raging Bull

★★★★☆ Dir. Pedro Costa. 2009. N/R. 103mins. In French, with subtitles. Documentary. In this captivating black-and-white documentary portrait, Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa (Colossal Youth) follows the French performer Jeanne Balibar while she records…

Ne Change Rien

★★☆☆☆ Dir. Tom McGrath. 2010. PG. 96mins. Voices of Brad Pitt, Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill. Who’da thunk that DreamWorks Animation already needed to pillage its back catalog? If you missed this year’s Despicable Me, in which a supervillain learned the…

Megamind

★★★☆☆ Dir. Damien Chazelle. 2009. N/R. 82mins. Jason Palmer, Desiree Garcia, Sandha Khin. Damien Chazelle’s affectionate black-and-white musical begins at an end — with the breakup of the titular characters (Palmer and Garcia), an event we see from…

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

Of late I feel myself moving away from lists. Their ubiquity and the vapidity of so many of them are all part of the reason why. But I also now have the sense that concentrating on one work per written piece is preferable, something that comports…

My Favorites

★★★★★ Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. 1960. R. 109mins. Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh. So there’s this girl who steals $40,000. Her name’s Marion Crane (Leigh). She’s a secretary at a real-estate office who’s hungering to move in with her hunky but…

Psycho

★★★☆☆ Dir. Claude Chabrol. 2009. N/R. 110mins. In French, with subtitles. Gérard Depardieu, Clovis Cornillac, Jacques Gamblin. At the bottom of a gully, situated between a cemetery and a vast ocean, rests a corpse charred beyond recognition. There’s…

Inspector Bellamy

★★★☆☆ Dir. Gareth Edwards. 2010. R. 94mins. Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy. There’s so much right with Gareth Edwards’s low-budget alien invasion tale that you almost want to brush aside everything that’s not up to snuff. The writer-director…

Monsters

(Starred titles I've seen, read, or heard before.) VIEWED January 1 Doctor Who: The Sensorites, “Strangers in Space” (1964)Doctor Who: The Sensorites, “The Unwilling Warriors” (1964)Doctor Who: The Sensorites, “Hidden Danger” (1964)Doctor Who: The…

January 2023: Viewing-Reading-Listening

My first Cronenberg fils. And though Nepo Babies discourse is the order of the day, I’m not tempted to ding him for not being his dad. If anything, the anxieties of privilege in Infinity Pool feel pro forma, as if Cron Jr. thinks it’s expected he…

Infinity Pool

★★★★★ Dir. Frederick Wiseman. 2010. N/R. 91mins. Documentary. The great documentarian Frederick Wiseman scales down the sprawl of recent work like La Danse in this marvelous profile of Lord’s Boxing Gym in Austin. It runs a brisk, uncharacteristic…

Boxing Gym

★★★☆☆ Dir. Wes Craven. 2010. R. 107mins. Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Emily Meade. Directing his first script since 1994’s New Nightmare, Wes Craven gives us an idiosyncratic serial-killer story that’s more teen-angst drama than sanguine horror show…

My Soul to Take

★★★☆☆ Dir. Angela Christlieb. 2009. N/R. 82mins. Documentary. Inspired by the legend of a utopian metropolis called Urville (you can supposedly see it as a mirage off the Mediterranean coast), director Angela Christlieb visits three Gallic villages…

Urville

★★★☆☆ Dir. Robert Schwentke. 2010. PG-13. 111mins. Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovkich. It’s the casting, stupid! That seems to be the maxim followed by the producers of this very silly, yet frequently enjoyable, graphic-novel adaptation…

(All (Parentheses))

(Starred titles I've seen, read, or heard before.) VIEWED December 4 *The North Water, Part I, “Behold the Man” (2021)**The North Water, Part II, “We Men Are Wretched Things” (2021)**The North Water, Part III, “Homo Homini Lupus” (2021)**The North…

December 2022: Viewing-Reading-Listening

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Tetris premieres on Apple TV+ on March 31, 2023. Using every trick in the book, including stretching the limits of what can be called a “true story,” Tetris manages to make international video game rights negotiations seem interesting. This…

Tetris Review

Bishal Dutta's "It Lives Inside" is a demonic horror tale that plays recognizable genre hits with a cultural twist. The struggles of being non-white in America are carried by a high school girl who downplays her Indian heritage — only to have it come…

It Lives Inside Review: This Indian Demon Movie Proves Scary Is Scary In Any Culture [SXSW 2023]

"Molli and Max in the Future" is an out-of-this-world adorable romantic comedy that transforms the lowest lo-fi means into charms with a tractor-beam pull. Writer and director Michael Lukk Litwak shoots against a modular LED volume to create a cosmic…

Molli And Max In The Future Review: Dating Is Awkward In Any Dimension [SXSW 2023]

Evil Dead Rise opens in theaters on April 21. Writing and directing a sequel to a beloved horror franchise is no cakewalk, despite how easy Lee Cronin makes it look with Evil Dead Rise. His continuation of the iconic series about Deadites and…

Evil Dead Rise Review

Many horror tales like "Late Night with the Devil" warn against succumbing to the bright, blinding spotlights of fame, but few mirror its structure. "Ghostwatch," "WNUF Halloween Special," or the "Public Television of the Dead" episode of Shudder's…

Late Night With The Devil Review: Terror On Your Television Screen [SXSW 2023]

Ted Geoghegan's "Brooklyn 45" could be a '40s teleplay read over outdated radio sets — you can practically hear the static crackle behind line readings. The World War II era chamber piece confronts our obsession with fighting ghosts and humankind's…

Brooklyn 45 Review: The Horrors Of War Come Home [SXSW 2023]

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves opens in theaters on March 31, 2023. Even if you've never rolled a 20-sided die, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a fun-filled and wholly accessible fantasy adventure that leans into the spectacle and…

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Review

"If You Were The Last" is a fairy tale about friends with benefits, chemical attachments, and complicated relationships — in space. Kristian Mercado's feature debut shoots courtship drama into orbit, defying societal norms here on Earth. Angela…

If You Were The Last Review: A Heartfelt And Complicated Love Story ... In Space [SXSW 2023]

Where 2020's "Becky" is an underage child's fight for survival based on primal instincts, Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote's sequel "The Wrath of Becky" plays more like a comic book panel massacre. That's not a bad thing if you're into watching a Girl…

The Wrath Of Becky Review: A Reverse Slasher Comic Book Panel Massacre [SXSW 2023]

Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou make a statement about the horrors of living online lifestyles with their feature debut. Pros +Proper social media commentary+Horror visuals stun+When shocking, holy crap it's shocking Cons -Third act loses…

Talk to Me review: a scary possession flick for the TikTok generation

Remember 2011’s Cowboys & Aliens? 65 is a movie that dares to take that same simple idea of a kid smashing two of his favorite toys together and give us Space Dad & Dinosaurs, a breezy sci-fi survival mission that delivers what's on the tin and…

65 Review

What you're about to read has no factual reveals about the plot of Scream 6 (review). There isn't some hidden exclusive in these mockups. If there is, it's purely by chance (and expert prediction skills). I have the same knowledge as everyone who's…

We Watched the Most Ridiculous Horror Sequels to Predict Scream 6's Twists

Pros +Kills don't skimp+The core survivors from Scream (2022) strengthen their roles+Uses NYC's landscape well+Love the opening kill Cons -A bit too winky at the audience-Less to say about horror tropes than all other entries-Not as shocking as usual…

Scream VI review: Ghostface takes a juicy bite out of the Big Apple

Kurt Wimmer’s newfangled Children of the Corn is a rotten husk of a Stephen King adaptation. It’s hardly a remake of Fritz Kiersch’s 1984 supernatural slasher, as Wimmer’s screenplay drops the former’s theological flavors for an ecological commentary…

Children of the Corn Is a Rotten Husk of a Stephen King Adaptation

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre gives us what we want from another Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham collaboration, even if they fall into formulaic espionage-comedy rhythms. Pros +Aubrey Plaza is a pleasant Statham counterbalance+Dependable spy games…

Operation Fortune review: Jason Statham, Guy Ritchie action movie is old hat

It’s not every day you get to unbox a Scream-themed Happy Meal for adults. Pop-up dinner party brand Chain is celebrating Spyglass and Paramount’s newest slasher entry with a drive-thru classic and swankified fast-food restaurant vibes. All the…

‘Scream VI’ – We Sliced into the Stabby Meal and Walked Through the Film’s Immersive Experience

Did you know that Vincent D'Onofrio directed a low-budget indie horror musical in the mid-2010s? The Matts are joined by Don't Go in the Woods superfan Sezin Koehler to discuss this bloody assessment of creative endeavors, which she already wrote…

CF63: Don’t Go in the Woods (w/ Sezin Koehler)

(Welcome to Scariest Scene Ever, a column dedicated to the most pulse-pounding moments in horror with your tour guides, horror experts Chris Evangelista and Matt Donato. In this edition, Matt says hell naw to nature thanks to "Backcountry.") In honor…

One Of The Scariest Scenes In Backcountry Is A Wild Bear Attack

Director Elizabeth Banks delivers what’s on the Cocaine Bear tin. There’s a bear, it does cocaine. People die, and you will laugh. Writer Jimmy Warden does his darndest with an absurd “When Coked-Out Animals Attack” scenario sorta based on a true…

Cocaine Bear Is a Good Time, Cut with Weak Comedy

Nathaniel Martello-White’s feature debut The Strays is a social thriller that lacks bite, discipline, and a third act. When the film abruptly ended, I waited for Ashton Kutcher to pop from behind my sofa to announce a film critic Punk’d spin-off,…

‘The Strays’ Review – Netflix’s Social Thriller Feels Like an Incomplete Experience

For all the headlines written about Ben Affleck’s mid-career return to superhero movies, one still must wonder what movies we missed from Director Affleck while Actor Affleck was otherwise preoccupied. Even accounting for the commercial hiccup that…