Category Archives: film

Why Horror Movies Are Good For You

Posted on October 4, 2015 by | 1 comment

That’s right, boys and ghouls-

Good for you.

That’s not something you’d expect someone to say about the genre, is it?

Sure, you might hear about horror “classics”. There are plenty of fans out there who’ll talk about their personal favorites. You might even hear critics fondly contemplate how certain horror flicks were telling of their times. But morally edifying?

Well that’s the argument I’m going to be presenting to you today.

Be warned- spoilers may follow.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to champion the macabre. I don’t expect it to be the last either- not considering the reaction folks give me when I say I enjoy the stuff.

And before we really dig in here- let me get the obvious out of the way.

Yes, a lot of horror movies are garbage. The slasher/”teen-scream” subgenres use cheap gore and excessive nudity as a crutch for plot. More serious attempts still rely on the same cliches that have been around for decades. Plenty are poorly acted and have production values that could be outstripped by a middle school enactment of Romeo & Juliet.

But that’s hardly unique to horror. Continue reading →

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Posted in art, bizarreness, crime, film, media, morality

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Straight Outta Compton: A Film Review

Posted on September 1, 2015 by | Leave a comment

It can’t be easy making a biopic.

Err to much on the side of leniency and you get a sappy, self-congratulatory, and ultimately meaningless popcorn flick. Err to much on the side of harsh truth and you’ll often get a vicious hatchet job.

Now try doing that while the main character’s still alive.

Suddenly there’s the additional burden of being honest and fair and avoiding litigation at the hands of the offended and his or her legions of lawyers.

Now try doing that with eleven characters at once.

Against all odds, Straight Outta Compton does just that.

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Posted in America, art, bizarreness, business, celebrity, crime, Culture War Report, film, history, music, race, review

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The Problem with Leaks [And the People Who Want Them]

Posted on August 21, 2015 by | 3 comments

So I missed my window with last month’s Comic-Con, but there’s always something going on and thankfully the D23 Expo, a biennial Disney convention, this past weekend has given me a chance to take another stab at this topic. I’m too lazy put any effort into coming up with a pun involving plumbers, but today I’m going to be discussing leaks.

Here’s an image to kick things off:

To provide a little context, the screenshot up top is a tweet from Marvel Entertainment that was posted shortly after the trailer to Avengers: Age of Ultron leaked last October. Hours to minutes later they released the official trailer themselves, days earlier than originally intended.

The second screenshot is the text that accompanied the full trailer to Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad that was posted to the film’s Facebook page. It was penned by Sue Kroll, the President of Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution for the company. Similar to Marvel Entertainment this was done after another leak, though in this case the source was an unknown individual who had illegally recorded a trailer screened at Comic-Con.

As you might be able to tell by the way the image was put together, the internet populace in general thinks much more highly of one reaction than the others. While the context surrounding each leak is important I’m going to be discussing why at the end of they day it’s all the same, and how I think the entire attitude surrounding this sort of thing is weak and selfish and I don’t respect it. Continue reading →

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Posted in advertising, comics, film, internet, morality

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3 Reasons You Should Watch Home (According to Kat and Her Nieces)

Posted on August 19, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to steal a couple of my nieces and bring them home with me. For the last few days, they’ve been busy helping me out with the kids program I run at work, and in the evenings we’ve all been busy showing them around the bustling metropolis of Williams Lake. While I thought about skipping out on this week’s post altogether, I decided instead to write a quick post about the movie we watched last night.

Below, I’ve included 3 reasons why we think you should watch it.

1) The aliens are super cute

This was why my nieces loved this movie so much. The main group of aliens, called the Boov, change colour according to their mood and seem to be made up of a jelly-like consistency.

The main character, Oh, is considerably cuter than I thought he would be. When I first saw the commercial for Home, I assumed that Jim Parsons would play a cartoon version of his well-known character from the Big Bang Theory. It was a pleasant surprise to see him change things up a bit while playing an equally quirky character in Home. Oh, the alien played by Parsons seems considerably more fun to be around than Sheldon.

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Posted in cartoons, film, race, Youth

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5 Classic Films I’m Going to Force My Kids to Watch

Posted on July 8, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Okay, I realize I don’t have kids yet, but I probably will eventually, so bear with me. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way watching movies have changed. When I was a kid everything was on VHS. You owned a few (or a lot) of movies and you watched those over and over until you could pretty much recite them by heart. If you were lucky, on nights when a friend came for a sleepover, you might get to go to the video store, where you would get to spend hours perusing the shelves for the most interesting-looking VHS. Unfortunately, my kids probably won’t have that experience.

I’m basically being the millennial version of this right now.

Even if there are a few video stores kept alive purely on nostalgia (like the one in Victoria, B.C.), John and I aren’t the kind of people who would bother buying a VHS or DVD player when we could just hook up our computer to a TV. So my kids will probably never have to watch the same show twice (unless they want to or I make them). Between Netflix and YouTube, there is an endless world of movies available. However, rather than let them just watch the newest flashiest shows around, I’ve officially decided I’m going to make them watch the classics with me. Here are a few movies that will be at the top of my list (for this particular list, I’ve decided to leave out cartoons to focus on the live-action films that have stayed with me through the years).

The Princess Bride

When I was a kid I LOVED The Princess Bride. The only thing was, I did not pick up on any of the sarcasm. In my little kid brain it was just this magical tale full of adventure, passion, and rodents of unusual size.

As an adult, I get to go back and laugh at the dry humour peppered throughout.

Yet somehow, even though I now know it’s a comedy, and I can laugh almost the whole way through the movie, the ending still gets me. In fact, I think it’s still one of the most poignant revenge plots I’ve seen.

You all should know how this line ends.

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Jurassic World Hates Women One Woman In Particular

Posted on June 20, 2015 by | 7 comments

When I was much younger my mother taught me that “hate” is a strong word and should be used as sparingly as possible. It’s for that reason that, while it’s pretty apparent that Bryce Dallas Howard’s character was portrayed in a decidedly sexist fashion, I cannot agree that Jurassic World hates her. It doesn’t think particularly highly of her as a woman or of mothers in general, but it does not hate her.

No, if there is any one woman that Jurassic World holds in the lowest regard it is the character of Zara Young, played by Katie McGrath. While the video below is only the last twenty seconds of a trailer do be warned, the full video spoils huge chunks of the film. That said, read everything below the clip at your own risk if you have not seen it or any others in the series.

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