Being Film #3 for Hooptober 2022 Mako: The Jaws of Death is the prefect example of why something like Hooptober is great, and why adhering to the rules is so necessary. There's no other way I would have watched this crazy riff on Jaws where, far from the shark being the terror, it's the man... Continue Reading →
Being Film #2 for Hooptober 2022 The PG-13 horror film is a tough nut to crack. There's an unspoken rule in films where "scary" equals lots of blood and gore, and too often what I'll lamely call YA Horror is rendered toothless. So kudos to Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark for having some... Continue Reading →
This film from 1977 starts out with a declaration that just recently it was discovered fluorocarbons created a hole in the ozone layer. This film proposes that what follows is a potential consequence of this. What is that consequence you ask? Folks, the higher exposure to ultraviolet rays will cause animals to attack mankind en... Continue Reading →
A brief confession; when I initially put together my Hooptober list, I put The Innkeepers as my choice for a Ti West film. I’d already seen X and felt no need for a revisit. I wanted to see if I was harsh in my initial viewing of that film. Then a theater near me offered... Continue Reading →
In the fall of 2019 and inspired by Chris, I decided I was finally going to do Hooptober. I picked my movies out. I was set. I was gonna start on 10/1 and write full essays! Then I didn’t finish. Word to the wise: watching a movie a day and writing a huge piece on... Continue Reading →
Being Film #1 for Hooptober 2022 "How long will I live?" asks Alan, gazing up at the Miraculous Cesare, somnambulist star of a sideshow attraction. His eyes stare dead ahead, his lithe body poised at the foot of the stage in front of the gathered crowd. "Until the break of dawn," the sleepwalker intones. That's... Continue Reading →
Watching Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth I was brought back to those weekends with my dad. He passed down to me my love for Cary Grant, watching films like Father Goose and Mr. Lucky and North By Northwest. We had nothing else in common, so I clung to those stars and movies and absorbed them... Continue Reading →
When I was deciding what film was going to kick this off, I wanted something that was familiar. Sure, I could have gone with the challenge of something like A Brighter Summer Day but in the week of recharging the batteries in the midst of work and health/life stress I needed some comfort, something that... Continue Reading →
Being Bonus Film #3 for Hooptober 2021 For the final review of Hooptober 8.0 we have a wicked little piece courtesy of Cartoon Network. On the night of Halloween 1999 the channel ran a Scooby Doo marathon, and interspersed between the episodes was The Scooby-Doo Project, a parody of The Blair Witch Project that takes... Continue Reading →
Being Bonus Film #2 for Hooptober 2021 The second bonus film for Hooptober 8.0 is an early Amicus picture called The Skull. Amicus is kind of the lower rent little brother of Hammer, which isn't to say they were bad: their speciality was really more the anthology film. The Skull feels a lot like them... Continue Reading →
Cinema Dual 