The year of 1976 has provided my biggest challenge yet, as far as winnowing my favorites down to just five; seriously, just a cursory glance of the horror films released that year produced an easy eight, and several more that might also make the cut if I was in a particular mood that day. But … More My Favorite Horror Movies from Every Year Since I Was Born: 1976
Although I’m usually a big fan of buying and reading print books (as my groaning, overstuffed shelves can attest), I’m also perpetually broke and unable to spend the amount of money I’d like to on them. While I resisted reading ebooks for a long time, for many still-valid reasons (I already look at a screen … More Books: Man, Fuck This House by Brian Asman
Hälsningar, minions! Today we’re delving into the surreal and arty waters of the Ingmar Bergman oeuvre, and even though I’m gonna try REALLY hard to not make any Swedish Chef jokes, I’m not going to promise anything, because y’all know how I roll. Hour of the Wolf (or Vargtimmen in Swedish) was released in 1968, and is probably … More Movies: Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Ever since bursting onto the world stage with his surrealistic debut feature Pi in 1997, director Darren Aronofsky has been seen as a somewhat provocative filmmaker, but I don’t remember any of his movies drawing the controversy, and in some cases even passionate hatred, as his 2017 film mother! did. I had been hearing wildly … More Movies: mother! (2017)
This particular double feature consists of two mind-benders that utilize aspects of time displacement and multiverses to fashion some unsettling narratives that effectively creep the viewer out while also exercising the parts of our brains that like to pretend we sort of understand quantum mechanics. The first movie I want to discuss is the 2009 … More Mindf*ck Double Feature Review: Triangle (2009) and Coherence (2013)
The first movie on today’s double feature is one I heard a great deal about after its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival years back, and although reviews were somewhat mixed, most of the negative reviews I read complained only that the movie was too slow, spare, and minimalist. Well, to me, that’s like an … More Double Feature: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) and We Are Still Here (2015)
Upon reading the synopsis of Gemma Files’s 2015 novel Experimental Film, I became immediately intrigued, as the premise deals with a mystery surrounding a supposedly cursed movie, and the “cursed movie” trope is one of my favorites in all of horror. I was thinking that maybe this would be something along the lines of John … More Books: Experimental Film by Gemma Files
I decided to do something of a Middle Eastern theme for today’s double feature, consisting of two films I had heard a great deal of positive press about and had been wanting to see for ages. The first is a surreal torture-fest from Turkey, the second a more traditional metaphorical ghost story with an Iranian-born … More Middle Eastern Double Feature: Baskin (2015) and Under the Shadow (2016)
Victor LaValle was yet another author that I had been sadly remiss in hearing about it until his work was recommended on several book review channels I watch. Other than being a novelist, LaValle is also a writing professor at Columbia, as is his wife. They have a son named Geronimo, which I thought was … More Books: The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
In my previous review of the 2015 neo-giallo Francesca, I emphasized that although the film did have a fairly standard murder-mystery plot common to films of the genre, its main attractions were the visuals, the sound design, and the painstaking care that had been taken to recreate the exact look and feel of an Italian … More Movies: The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013)
The Scare Salon 