Author page: mrqe

If you’re under the age of 18 in France and you were itching to see Terrifier 3 in the cinemateques, looks like you’re shit outta luck.   The Classification Committee over in France has recommended a ban on the film for minors under 18. Well, not a ban as it’s been put out there but an age appropriate rating on the film, the equivlant of an NC-17 here in North America, the death knell for distributors.   This means, according to the film’s distributor, that tens of thousands of fans (read ticket sales) will not be able to watch the third installment of the extreme horror franchise in cinemas.   The distributor is crying foul about, deploring the decision as they put it. They’re talking…

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The Criterion Collection plays hero once again with their recent 4K UHD release of Todd Solondz’s 1998 sophomore feature, Happiness. The film had long languished on a pitiful non-anamorphic window-boxed DVD from Lionsgate and fans have been clamoring for an updated version for many, many years. The grand dame of boutique home video has finally come to the rescue, following their Blu-ray release of Solondz’s Life During Wartime, Happiness marks the filmmaker’s second release with the label, and hopefully not the last as his follow ups – the equally confronting Storytelling and the outré masterpiece Palindromes – also deserve reevaluation. Happiness is a story of small town disfunction, not unlike David Lynch’s white picket fence nightmare, Blue Velvet, but Solondz replaces the hard-boiled narrative structure…

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When a little girl vanishes straight from the playground, her parents Junyang (Wu Chien-ho) and Peiying (Anicca Panna) start a search that doesn’t provide any leads. That is, until they start getting DVDs with the footage of the family doing routine stuff together, shot in different public spots and, most disturbingly, through the windows of their apartment. After some sleuthing, they soon have a perfect suspect: their neighbor Wu (Lee Kang-sheng), a quiet loner who lives with his ailing mother and works as a manager at a supermarket, two clear strikes against him, according to the unspoken rules of the thriller genre. From then on, though, nothing in this film by Singaporean director Yeo Siew Hua really goes as the initial setup suggests. Yeo Siew…

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Dea Kulumbegashvili’s second feature is a challenging, feminist work, to say the least.

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Two Americans wake up in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, with bombs strapped to their chests. The timers on the vests tell them they have less than nine hours to find out why. Calling them #1 and #2 a mysterious voice gives them instructions via headsets, a series of tasks that when completed will result in their release. It is a race against time as temperatures rise around Dakar, in the air and throughout its people.    Congolese film director and screenwriter Jean Luc Herbulot is back with the action thriller Zero. Together with producer, co-writer and star Hus Miller (who also produced Herbulot’s international breakout hit Saloum) the pair have made a bit of a scathing attack on global powers and their influence in…

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Whether she’s loved the character since she was a child or is making a calculated attempt at winning an acting Oscar, Lady Gaga’s performance as the Joker universe’s Harley Quinn is by far the best thing to come out of the two movies. She sometimes literally brings light into the dark grays and sickly yellow greens of the second Joker film, adding much needed contrast to the miserablism of Joker/Arthur Fleck’s (Joaquin Phoenix) world. To be fair, Joker: Folie à Deux’s miserablism does look at least a bit different than the first film’s. Fleck is confined to Arkham State Hospital (get it? it’s like Arkham Asylum, but not, cool!) where he awaits trial before the film transforms into a courtroom drama once the trial begins….

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It’s no wonder that Look Back is highly anticipated by anime fans. The film is based on the manga of the same name by Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto and is directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, whose resume includes working with anime legends Miyazaki and Anno, as well as directing an episode of Devilman Crybaby. But while the creators’ past projects may pique interest, Look Back is very different from Chainsaw Man and Devilman Crybaby. The story centers on two young amateur mangaka with dreams of making it big, following the ups and downs of their careers and relationship. Amuyu Fujino (Yumi Kawai) is a “successful” mangaka at her middle school; she writes and draws the four-panel comic that appears regularly in the school paper and…

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