Edge of the Axe sports a great title and cover art (masked man has chopped a couple of fingers off a victim) and hums along with enough mood and inexplicable oddness to get you there. After a memorably badass opening slow-mo kill at a carwash (likely highlight of the film), a 20-something computer genius (and his moped) moves into a picturesque mountain town where he bunks with his not-Grandpa and befriends the local 20-something gold-digging fumigator who married a sugar…

The Exorcism with Russell Crowe flirts with a few different interesting concepts and ultimately settles for being a disappointing debacle in the last 10 minutes (and no, it has nothing to do with The Pope’s Exorcist). Here, Crowe is a struggling actor trying to make a personal and professional comeback after BACKSTORY of his wife’s death and his alcoholism demons ruined his once-thriving career and personal life; he gets another shot at redemption when his teenage daughter shows up at…

Eli Roth's Thanksgiving is a movie that succeeds almost in spite of itself at times. Spawned by the shlocky ingenuity of his own concept of a fake trailer from Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse, Roth makes a good-looking movie that effortlessly es as a slasher from almost any year of the last 30 years, and that's part of the problem as the movie seems to lack a consistent identity.

For basic plot, there's a Black Friday rush at a not-Walmart that…

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is, box office aside, the kind of towering pop cultural event that feels preordained with ready-made, shrink-wrapped takes and soundbites. It might just be my own personal bubble, but no movie or movie franchise has felt as weighed down with expectations and possibilities, given the talent involved and potential but always elusive quest for perfection. But when it ends up with Tom Cruise vs. SkyNet and the donut from EEAAO, I'm only half-way…

This movie’s reputation is worse than anything on-screen. Nudity is present but not wildly out of control or exploitative for the genre or time period. Kills are decently creatively (I’m looking at you, bolt cutters to the playmate’s eyes and belt tightening over eyes) and consistent with the rest of the franchise, blood/gore is edited down to a nibble. The prologue is awesome and stupid, only to be ripped off and outdone by the beginning in Jason Lives via Frankenstein…

Infused with equal parts of Taratino’s goon hijinx and the Safdies’ Brooklyn-centric inverse-King Midas zemblanity, Sean Baker’s Anora is a bedtime story gone wrong full of grating, unlikeable victims that is charming all the same. Mikey Madison is Anora (“I go by Ani”), a stripper/hooker who befriends Vanya, a Russian zillionaire’s latchkey 20-something son, as they have a whirlwind romance until Vanya’s parents and their heavies question their pairing.

The first act is a bit overlong but perhaps necessarily so…

Fly Me to the Moon almost crashes before it can even gets off the launching pad, but settles into a decent crowd pleaser. Anxiety over incompetent, mean-spirited government is topical, so a comedy of errors about a Kubrickian hack in a non-Hollywood basement conjuring up the moon landing is an easy sell. The same would be true of a level-headed dramatic expose of the same idea (even if Operation Lune already did it). Unfortunately, the advertising is a head fake…

The Iron Claw is a beautifully simple and grounded retelling of a true story - the rise and fall of the Von Erich wrestling family. No grandstanding or Oscar-bait theatrics here. It’s a tad too fast in the back half as it has to race to tell several years and chunks worth of tragic development, but it is masterful nonetheless.

Zac Efron is Kevin Von Erich a rising star in 1970s/80s Texas pro wrestling. He has a few brothers and…

Much like Peter Berg and S. Craig Zahler, Ric Roman Waugh is a lesser-acknowledged auteur and his specific tableaus are serious, heavy-handed morality plays where everything typically descends into an action-filled bloodlust. Since Shot Caller (far and away his best film) and for the last several years, Waugh's muse seems to be Gerard Butler as they together drift from silly-but-still-serious franchise fare (Angel Has Fallen) to ecological warfare (Greenland) to military neo-Western (Kandahar). As a former stunt man, he always…

On rewatch, Dead Reckoning is still a (mostly) furiously paced and entertaining spectacle that is also bloated and overlong. Dropping a couple of characters or subplots wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it all comes down to preference. Also, I love the take that the Entity is a shitty screenwriter who is throwing bad tropes and ret-cons at Cruise to try and break his sanity due to overexposure and mediocrity. Still, though, I want more on-the-nose commentary…

The Blackening is far more comedy than horror but is still compelling and interesting enough to keep you watching and guessing at the outcome. The titular Blackening is a board game straight out of Dixie Land with racist caricatures and questions that take effect in the real world and end with your death at the hands of the grim gamemaster. It's a bit of Jumanji mixed with Saw and ends up like the Hulu-specific Uncanny Annie. The movie is not…