Being Film #23 for Hooptober 2025 I've never been one to revel in bad movies. I know folks that do, and dedicate copious amounts of time and words to the pursuit of the bad, the cheesy, and the exploitive. I need a little more, certainly more than a shirtless Leslie Nielsen wildly fighting a bear.... Continue Reading →
Being Film #22 for Hooptober 2025 I came away from Demon Pond with a lot of questions. Not about the plot: this is a relatively straightforward folktale about forest spirits, obligations and the ramifications of not obliging them. The film is made with an abundance of care and no small amount of visual flourish. But... Continue Reading →
Being Film #21 for Hooptober 2025 As we roll into the last third of Hooptober 2025 the reviews are once again going to get slimmer. Horror is exhausting, y'all, and man can't live on blood and gore alone. Thank goodness for Mike Flanagan, who is still batting 1000 after catching up with Before I Wake,... Continue Reading →
Being Film #20 for Hooptober 2025 After seeing Luigi Bazzoni's debut film The Possessed earlier for this marathon, I was even more eager to check out The Fifth Cord, his second foray into giallo, particularly as that film straddled the line between dreamlike noir and paranoid Lynchian nightmare more than what we would come to... Continue Reading →
Being Film #19 for Hooptober 2025 It's likely I went into Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (hereafter shortened to just Humanist Vampire...) in the best way possible: with nothing but that title and the poster in my head. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't something this delicate, romantic, and...funny.... Continue Reading →
Being Film #18 for Hooptober 2025 Going 20 years into the future and changing from zombies to...reindeer? Just goes to show you that anything is ripe for horror, provided it's done with care and attention. I can't recall if I've seen any other classic films coming out of Finland (recent comedies and action, sure...), but... Continue Reading →
Being Film #17 for Hooptober 2025 Sometimes a movie is so good, it doesn't matter the condition you see it. In a world of 4K, Dolby Vision, IMAX, and other buzzwords for the highest of definitions, a picture ultimately rests on its construction and execution. That being said, I wish some of that visual pizzazz... Continue Reading →
Being Film #16 for Hooptober 2025 In the end, there's really no escaping the shadow of what Guillermo del Toro brought to Mike Mignola's Hellboy character in his two films. You can argue they're not truly what Mignola intended with the character, mixed too much with del Toro's sympathy with the monsters, but those two... Continue Reading →
Being Film #15 for Hooptober 2025 The Blackening has a lot to say about black identity, about the tropes and cliches of how black actors are handled not just in horror films, but throughout the visual medium. It also wants to be funny, and it wants to be scary. It also wants to be very... Continue Reading →
Being Film #14 for Hooptober 2025 Tone is such a fickle thing. So hard to maintain, and if you find it too late, it's nearly impossible to get back and adjust the rest to match, either in reshoots or the edit. Together is a case in point: beautifully acted, some truly gnarly effects work, an... Continue Reading →
Cinema Dual 