Richard Stanley, welcome back. Ever since the debacle which was The Island of Dr. Moreau — and brief visitations which gave us the Stanley-written Replace and the documentary The Otherworld — this genius was mostly silent. Just watch Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau to find out why.

That time is over. Now, the first of three proposed H.P Lovecraft films by Stanley has arrived and it’s everything I ever wanted it to be.

Nathan Gardner’s (Nicolas Cage, Mandy; of course, nature made for a movie with Stanley) life is in transition. His wife Theresa (Joely Richardson, sister of Natasha, daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and stepdaughter of Franco Nero; she’s astounding in this) feels mutilated after her recent mastectomy and is losing clients because their internet is so fragile out in the country. His daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur, Big Eyes) has turned to Wicca to heal her mother and escape her life. His son Jack is withdrawn and only takes to the dog. Another son, Benny, years to escape with the drugs he smokes with a hermit named Ezra (Tommy Chong). And he keeps failing as he attempts to raise alpacas and tomatoes.

That’s when a meteor crashes and changes everything for the worse.

Ward, a scientist, tries to warn them not to drink the water that the meteor has contaminated. But it’s too late. Too late for the alpacas, which have become hairless monsters. Too late for the wife and young son, who are fused into one being. Too late for his other son. Too late for Nathan, who is driven insane by the color itself. Too late for even the young hero, Ward, to save the girl who has scarred symbols all over herself as she collapses into ash in his hands, but not before sharing a vision of the world that this color has come from, a place that destroys minds.

This was obviously a personal film for the director. His mother as a huge Lovecraft fan and read the story to Stanley when he was 12 or 13. He claims that the story has “always been a part of [his] psychological makeup.” As his mother died from cancer, he would often read the author’s stories to her. And if rumors are to be believed, Stanley and Swedish filmmaker Henrik Möller performed a ritual to the Lovecraftian god Yog-Sothoth to get the film made.

Every frame of this film shows that Stanley is a master. In a world of people creating content for the machine, he remains a unique artist. Whenever I am worried about our place in this universe, I remember that it still creates artists like him — and Cage — unafraid to howl in the dark, unworried and uncaring what others may think.

UPDATE: “Nic Cage Bitch” is our Nicolas Cage blowout written by Paul Andolina of Wrestling with Film. It’s a must read for all fans of the Cage, so check it out and learn about some Cage films you may have missed, such as A Score to Settle, Between Worlds, Kill Chain, Outcast, Rage, and Seeking Justice.

I wanted in my heart of hearts to love this movie. I mean, it starts with a Spanish-language version of “Rock You Like a Hurricane” while the titular Hellboy battles a lucha libre vampire. That bloodsucker turns out to be Esteban Ruiz, an agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. His last words are a prophecy of the end of the world, as related to the Blood Queen Vivienne Nimue (Milla Jovovich), the mother of all monsters, who was once destroyed and vivisected all over England by King Arthur.

So why did I feel like I ate dollar store candy — a lot of dollar store candy — and now feel kind of woozy?

Because this movie follows the two Guillermo del Toro Hellboy films. And those movies? The finest chocolate you’ve ever tasted. And I’ll admit it. I was prejudiced against this movie the moment that del Toro’s role was diminished and then he walked away.

After that mission, Hellboy’s father — B.P.R.D. leader Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane) — asks his adopted son to assist the Osiris Club as they hunt three giants. This is when we learn that Hellboy came to our world as the result of a Nazi experiment, but instead of killing him, Bruttenholm decided to raise him.

Meanwhile, a pig fairy named Gruagach and the witch Baba Yaga — no relation to the Italian bonkers 1970’s film outside of name and cultural origin — are gathering the pieces of Nimue. And oh yeah — those hunters decided to kill Hellboy because they also feel like he’s going to cause the end of the world.

Luckily, Hellboy gets back on his feet and fights the giants until he’s saved by Alice Monaghan, a witch who he saved from fairies — including the pig man, which is why he hates our hero — when she was a child. There’s a flashback and at this point, if you’ve read the Hellboy comics, you’re either up to speed, upset with deviances in the movie or you haven’t read them and are utterly lost. Or perhaps you’re drunk and just enjoying the gore, as I enjoyed this film with a huge buffet of cheladas at 7 AM.

There’s also M11 agent Ben Daimio, who has a special bullet that can kill Hellboy, just in case he’s taken in by Nimue, who comes back to life and starts a plague that spreads throughout England.

Oh yeah — somehow Hellboy is the Anung un Rama, the literal heir of Arthur through his mother, who is now trapped in Hell by his father. He can carry Excaibur but refuses to, assured that it will lead to the end of the world.

So — the good: I liked David Harbour in this. He seems like a decent guy and goes all in on his roles. He was frustrated by the failure of this movie, saying, “We did our best, but there’s so many voices that go into these things and they’re not always going to work out. I did what I could do and I feel proud of what I did, but ultimately I’m not in control of a lot of those things.” 

Speaking of all those voices, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola bowed out early, missing the behind the scenes feuding between director Neil Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers) and producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin, who went so far as to interrupt the director in front of the cast and crew during rehearsals to give his own direction to them. The production team also fired Sam McCurdy, Marhsall’s cinematographer. This was to send a message — note the word allegedly should be that, as Levin’s lawyer has decried these claims — to the director that he was not really in charge.

I also loved seeing Thomas Haden Church as Lobster Johnson and the Abe Sapian cameo at the end. It’s not a perfect movie — far from it, it has a very inconsistent tone — but I wasn’t bored. And hey — the actors, particularly Jovovich, seemed to be having a blast. Maybe it didn’t make back its $50 million dollar budget, but it got close.

For her part, Jovovich would say that her “raddest films have been slammed by critics” and argued that this would become a cult classic. I mean, who are we to deny the star of Ultraviolet?

Luke is a Buzzstory producer whose crazy uncle taught him to never fall in love. One night after work, his new co-worker Aimee hooks up with him and he instantly begins to worry abot commitment. He loves his job, so he comes up with a new plan — he’s going to pose as a recovering sex addict. However, his boss is a real sex addict and brings him to group therapy. And that’s when he meets Kara, who just might be the love of his life.

Carol of the Bells won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the San Diego International Film Festival. It was created by Joey Travolta — yes, one of the five siblings of John — who has made it his mission to help students “develop self-esteem, confidence, and creativity through acting and digital film making.”

So what’s it all about? Well, a troubled young man has been looking for his mother and is amazed to find out that she’s developmentally disabled.

Me, I was astounded to learn that Geri Jewell was in this movie. She was a big deal when I was a kid, showing up and making every episode of The Facts of Life into a very special episode.

Lee Purcell (Valley Girl), Donna Pescow (yes, from that other Travolta movie Saturday Night Fever) and a cast and crew that is made up of 70% individuals with developmental disabilities makes this pretty interesting.

This is the kind of movie with a message that we rarely review on this site. Mainly, we’re just about people exploding and leather gloved hands choking people. But hey — we can recognize a sweet movie when it comes our way.

Carol of the Bells is available on demaond and on DVD March 3 from High Octane Pictures.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team.

You know, this feels like fish in a barrel. And I debated this review literally being three words: Fuck this movie.

But then Rowhouse Theater — the single screen claustrophobic hipster cesspool that infamously had a strange PC moment before screening El Topo that still upsets me every time I think about it — decided to start showing this movie with live riffing from local hackster comedians and I said, “I owe it to this movie to give it more effort than a bunch of millennial profiteers of mass culture and overpriced beer ever could.

Yet at the end, as the lyrics reminded me that cats are not dogs, I wondered, was it all worth it? Of course it wasn’t.

You know who loves Cats? Warren Beatty, probably. After all, once his film Ishtar was the dictionary definition of a movie failing. Now — maybe not so much.

The budget for this movie was around a hundred million and it made back around $73.5 million of that and it hasn’t hit streaming and video yet. So perhaps the man who made his own Dick Tracy documentary — locking up the rights because he refuses to allow anyone else to play the role — shouldn’t feel so good about himself just yet. This movie could, as yet, make money.

Much like Exorcist II: The Heretic, this movie was continually re-edited while it was still in theaters. Now, today that’s simple and doesn’t require physical prints to be shipped to theaters. But that movie didn’t have a cat with human hands and a wedding ring that needed to be fixed via CGI. The funny thing is, this movie is more horrifying than anything in that movie and no one screams, “TELL ME YOUR DREAM NAME!”

Seriously, the animation houses and SFX guys made a mint on this movie, probably working triple overtime and getting holiday pay.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s play was a big deal in the late 1970’s. And sure, some plays are timeless. But this story — where numerous cats attend the Jellicle Ball, an annual ceremony where they compete for basically the chance to go to Heaven — isn’t all that special to begin with. But see, I wonder when I make fun of it, I mean, I’m never going to write a play that stays on Broadway all these decades or convinces great actors to throw away any shred of dignity that they may have left. I’m just a man writing about Cats on my laptop in the early morning hours of a Sunday and trying to figure out why this film upset me so much.

Have you ever got really drunk and party hopped and then ended up at a house you probably shouldn’t have gone to? You might worry about the drinks or food that you’ve been handed, that you’re going to dosed. And it might appear that the other guests are either going to batter or fuck one another into submission — all while not caring that you’re in attendance. You might end up dead. Or worse.

That’s the feeling that I had while watching this movie. Existential ennui, which is way worse than not just liking a movie. The feeling that yes, everything is wrong.

James Corden and Rebel Wilson made fun of this movie at the Oscars, while at the same time having no issue cashing the paychecks they made from it. Corden reminds me of the 70’s celebrities that SCTV would skewer with The Sammy Maudlin Show, but he has none of the charm or nostalgia value of the glad-handing celebs that once held court on Carson and game shows. Wilson deserves better and I worry with this role that she may not realize it.

I do have to confess that I laughed like an absolute maniac during this movie, perhaps more than I have at any comedy I’ve watched this year. I usually stick to the old school Saturday Night Live rule that funny names are the lowest form of comedy, but there’s a cat named Macavity the Mystery Cat. And a theater cat named Asparagus. And that role is played by Ian McKellen, making this his new career nadir — and that dude was in a bunch of boring movies where shrunken furry-footed men walked and walked and are still walking, somewhere still in the shire. Assuredly, the man would rather have his role of Death in The Last Action Hero on his resume than this.

The cast got to attend a cat school to prepare themselves for this movie. One assumes that they learned how to defecate in boxes, lick themselves, randomly fall asleep and break everything important to everyone. That joke was written by one of my cats, who said that he’s allowed to say that, seeing as how, you know, he’s a cat. Also: I may be writing this review on a variety of substances over the counter, on the bar and under the radar.

Here’s some Cats trivia to see if you’re paying attention: The story is based on T. S. Eliot’s book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which is also where most of Sir Peter Ustinov’s dialogue as Old Man in Logan’s Run comes from.

I was doing just fine until the CGI people roaches and mice showed up. Now, I’m losing my marbles.

After The King’s Speech, director Tom Hooper was flying pretty high. Who knows where he goes from here? Does this movie have a second life of ironic jerks loving it in spite of itself? Probably. The same people who never watched a Korean movie in their lives but now are falling all over themselves to tell you about Parasite never miss a trick, you know.

I mean, make no mistake. This is one of the worst — if not the worst — movies that you’ll ever suffer through. I’m not going to romanticize this or tell you it’s so bad it’s good or say that people just don’t understand. Seeing Taylor Swift warble on about “Beautiful Ghosts” or Dame Judi Dench dead staring into your eyes like some kidnap victim forced to beg for her life is like crawling on your knees across concrete on your bloody pilgrimage to a Mexican holy place, except that there’s no chance that God is going to hear your prayers or answer your pleas.

You’re the one who decided to watch this. And there’s no whiff of the divine on the Thames tonight.

100,000 people have been poisoned by lead, which leads to lifelong health problems, yet this has been swept under the rug in the U.S. Flint: The Poisoning of an American City was made to show the environmental history of the river and how the continued abuse and neglect of city infrastructure and environmental regulations have led to the poisoning of a city.

Director Dave Barnhart also made Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence and several short films about environmental issues.

Get this — the drinking water in Pittsburgh — in many places — is even worse than Flint, which has received the lion’s share of media coverage. In a recent report, 5,300 American cities were found to be in violation of federal lead rules and excessive lead was discovered in nearly 2,000 public water systems across all 50 states.

How can this happen here? This film explains it all. It’s not an easy watch, but trust me, it may be the most horrific movie we’ve written about on this site.

You can learn more at the official site.

I feel like I finally have made it as a movie reviewer. That’s because I was just sent a Steven Seagal film to review. Seriously, I have been clawing for this pinnacle and here I stand on it. And let me tell you, this sensation is pretty sweet.

First off, two bits of sad news. This is not an Exit Wounds reunion. Second, DMX and Seagal share no screen time.

Seagal plays the villain here, an older mobster whose son Desmond murders a man who he thinks is just a worthless junkie. It turns out that he’s the son of a cop who is now out for revenge.

It’s directed by James Cullen Bressack, who also was behind the movie Blood Craft. I will say, I can’t get enough for DMX swearing, so this movie delivers on that skillset for him.

I have a new goal in life: raise enough money to make a movie with Seagal in it. I’ll just have him sit around and tell stories about when he was a special ops agent, then stand up and break a man’s hand for no reason. Trust me. It’s going to be awesome.

Beyond the Law is now available from Cinedigm.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR team.

There used to be a time when Joe Stryker was the best damn cop in the business. Then his wife got killed by a bunch of drug pushers and he spiraled out of control, just as the city he served fell apart. Now, Joe’s on the comeback, ready to make the people who made his life hell on Earth pay. And that receipt? Yeah, it’s gonna be paid in blood, baby.

The brainchild of Ryan Cadaver and Kevin Slayfield, Joe Stryker is what happens when you let a bunch of maniacs loose with movie-making equipment and what can only be several nights worth of intoxicants.

You ever drive through a small town that only has bars, four Dollar Generals and a run-down convenience store and wonder what kind of shenanigans go down once the sun fades away and the lower tier booze starts flowing? Well, I grew up in a place exactly like that and can tell you that Joe Stryker would have fit right in.

Training montages? Glowing green drugs? Drug-dealing devil dudes? A band called The Casket Creatures? Gratuitous nudity of both the breast and ball variety? Montages of the neon city at night? Dudes wearing Zubaz with face tattoos carrying bazookas? Plenty of scenes set in bars? Faces getting smashed into a mucky paste? Rusted out storage units? Lots of swearing? Car trunks full of semi-automatic weapons? Yeah, this movie has all that and then some, including dialogue like, “We’re just here to party. You know, do drugs? Fuck goats?”

It’s shot on video and has the budget of my last big date with my wife, but don’t let that hold you back. If you love the kind of movies that I do — and if you’re on this site, I think that you do — then this is the kind of movie that I think you’re going to love.

I’ve had nights like this at the bars of my hometown, except, you know, I never had to hide someone’s ripped off leg in the back of my toilet tank. Yeah, I’m no Joe Stryker. Not many people can be.

You can learn more at the official Facebook page and order the movie right here.

When I saw the first trailer for this movie, I thought, “No one but me is going to go see this movie.” But you know, it’s the most successful movie Robert Rodriguez ever released. And I guess it was a success — the film grossed $85.7 million domestically and $319.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $404.9 million.

That’s good, right?

Well, to break even against marketing costs, the movie had to make around $500 million, so it either lost $53 million or barely broke even. Dude, I’m sweating making my minimum payments on my credit cards and these dudes are farting around with figures where $53 million — the amount of money that Mario Bava could have made Danger: Diabolik thirteen times.

PS: I had to do the math for what that movie cost in Italian lira versus U.S. dollars, then do the inflation calculation from 1968 to today. I laugh, because I once said that I would never use math.

So yeah — how did a movie based on Japanese manga artist Yukito Kishiro’s 1990s series Gunnm and the 1993 original video animation adaptation Battle Angel ever make it to U.S. screens?

Guillermo del Toro told James Cameron about it — way back before Avatar. The film sat for years before Cameron asked Robert Rodriguez to condense and combine his 186-page screenplay as well as 600 pages of notes into a shooting script. That work led to Rodriguez getting the directing job and hey — we have a movie.

2563 and we’re already three hundred years after the Great War nearly killed everyone on Earth. That’s when cyborg scientist and part-time bounty hunter Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) finds a disembodied female cyborg in the scrapyard of Iron City. He names her Alita after his dead daughter and saves her human brain.

Alita is in love with the city and meets all manner of people, from Ido’s ex-wife Dr. Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) and a kid named Hugo who introduces her to the sport of this new world, Motorball.

However, Hugo has a big secret: he really works for Vector (Mahershala Ali, who was astounding in the third season of True Detective), the man who runs Iron City and Motorball.

Alita also learns her father figure’s secret — he’s a bounty hunter — and when she trails him one night, she saves him from a gang of cyborg killers. One of them, Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley), hounds our heroine for the rest of the movie.  Alita dreams of bigger things and her past life where she was a Berserker, one of the soldiers of the enemy United Republics of Mars.

You know, maybe reading the manga would have made this all much easier.

Alita goes off and registers herself as a Hunter-Warrior, but is unable to rally any of the other hunters to help her stop Grewishka, who is working for Nova (Ed Norton). Alita’s body is nearly destroyed by the killing machine before Ido, Hogo and dogmaster McTeague (Jeff Fahey!) save her.

Now in a new Berserker body, Alita soon takes over the Motorball league, but loses the love of her life due to the machinations of Nova and his soldiers. The film ends with Alita as a Motorball star, promising that she will someday get her revenge.

You know all that money I mentioned at the top? It didn’t really matter in the long run. That’s because this ended up being the last Fox movie ever made, as Disney purchased the studio, moving us closer to the corporate-controlled world that this movie portrays.

I enjoyed this, but I have no idea how anyone else would react to a movie based on a manga from the 90’s made for a worldwide audience. It’s one of those movies where it cost so much that there’s no way that anyone would see any money from it. But man, it looks really cool, right?

Legendary Detroit Red Wings goalie Terry Sawchuk played in the days where protective masks were considered unmanly. At the time of his death, he was the all-time leader among NHL goalies with 447 wins and with 103 shutouts. These records have only been surpassed by five players and his shutouts by only one person, but he will forever be the best goalie of the Original Six NHL era.

However, every save Terry makes adds one more gash to his face and means that he needs one more drink to numb the pain. Even with a wife and seven children at home, he can’t escape the depression he’s suffered since his childhood.

Kevin Pollak plays Red Wings coach Jack Adams, adding some star power to this film. Sadly, it was made with no NHL endorsement, so there are no actual jerseys or arenas in the film.

Much like Tough Guy: The Bob Probert Story, this movie proves the difference between being a hard man and one that must deal with the scars of the past by any means necessary. It’s a sobering watch. And I liked the documentary style that was used to film it.

Goalie is out in theaters now and will be released on demand and DVD February 25 from Dark Star Pictures.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR team.