Expelled Grey Matter

Although technically Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was the last of the pre-James Gunn D.C. Cinematic Universe, The Flash is where things came to an end.  Both films suffered fan apathy as by this point everyone knew that the original DCCU run was finished.  The Snyderverse was dead, none of the myriad plot lines that directors were dreaming up were ever going to take shape and the nearly completed Batgirl was cancelled and used as a tax write-off.  Not to mention Ezra Miller, the star of The Flash , spent a good run up to the release of the film as a wanted fugitive that seemed to be expressing their inner Joker. With actors getting cancelled left and right there was pressure to replace them and the entire movie remade or written off.  Only a few things seemed to prevent that.  The main one is that Warner Bros. definitely didn't want to dump any more money into this project.  Another is that Miller uses "they/them" pronouns, which throws them into the ...

I guess I have been missing out on the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, who has become a bit of a popular art film director in recent years.  I remember hearing about The Lobster but never ended up seeing it although it sounds intriguing, as do many of his movies.  I almost gave Bugonia a pass as well.  I'm lukewarm on Emma Stone.  She is one of those celebrities that seems as if she was foisted upon the public by the media, not because of any inherent talent, although she has never been terrible in any role I've seen her in.  Also, I heard early on it was a remake of the Korean film Save the Green Planet! , which I also have not seen.  Hollywood doesn't have a great reputation when remaking foreign films.  Still, the rest of the cast was intriguing and, although I was sure I knew where the movie was going to go and how it was going to end - in many ways something I was quite right about - I thought it might be interesting to see how it got there. ...

In 1995 Showtime got together with b-movie maven Roger Corman to create an ongoing series called Roger Corman Presents .  Although he was finished with directing he still produced tons of movies per year, often going direct to video, and Showtime figured this was a cost-effective way to create original programming.  They were right as Corman did what he could to keep the movies below 1.5 million dollars each, and that meant a lot of cost cutting. The result was that a good number of the films were remakes of earlier Corman movies such as Not of This Earth and, in this case, the 1978 Joe Dante film Piranha .  It was Dante's feature debut as he had been working with Corman, and it featured a script by up-and-coming arthouse favorite John Sayles.  Like many of Dante's films to come it featured some great b-movie horror combined with subversive, tongue-in-cheek sequences.  It was a ripoff of Jaws , but it is remembered for its sly self-reverence as well as some neve...

  One thing Stephen King did to both help upcoming filmmakers and encourage many of his stories to be made into movies is sell the rights to a good number of them for a dollar.  For someone making a short student film this meant a starting point to adapt the story to their own needs without breaking the budget and, for King, it meant a steady stream of his movies available in the theaters and cable as well as on video and, later, DVD.  While much of that output is low budget, amateurish and sometimes outright horrid, it meant that studios with money to put behind many of the professional adaptations were more willing to do so. Dolan's Cadillac was a novella first printed in Castle Rock magazine in 1985 and later released in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 1993.  It is a crime story rather than his usual horror although it does pay homage to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado", something the film emphasizes more than the story.  It is quite...

Blue Beetle had everything going against it.  The DC Cinematic Universe was on its last legs and everyone knew it, from audiences to the Warner Bros. executives.  By the time the movie was wrapping up I'm sure even director Angel Manuel Soto knew it.  At this point movies like Batgirl , which was pretty much completed, were being scrapped and used as tax write-offs.  Blue Beetle , which had originally been meant to stream on HBO Max, somehow scampered into theaters and, except for those who revel in seeing things fail, it was largely ignored.  Though critics gave it decent reviews it didn't catch on with audiences. Part of the problem is that by this time most people only wanted to watch these movies to mock them.  So many of the DC films had been hollow spectacles with little to no entertainment value, so it was expected that the movie also wouldn't be any good.  It's a minor character, the plot is way too similar to Shazam! , and it came on the heels...

I work hard to support local artists and the community around them.  The problem is that, as a critic, it is important to be honest in an assessment.  It's a bit hard to do so when it is obvious that a person is amiable and is trying to make something for others to enjoy while calling attention to a community that they love.  Part of criticism is to help someone improve and, hopefully, reach the goals they are hoping to achieve.  I that spirit I dive into  The Inheritance.  James Mills (James Mills) inherits a property near the Arizona town of Globe from his father.  It is significantly off the beaten path and covered in trash.  However, not being in the best financial straits, he decides to see if there is anything worth doing with the property.  His uncle's attorney also wishes him to check it out and let her know if he intends on doing anything with it.  However, as he approaches, he starts getting strange vibes, including sudden...