I haven’t heard more people upset about spoilers since the Star Wars prequels, so please consider this sentence the spoiler space you very well may need if you don’t want to learn more. Then again, I’m going to discuss the idea of this film more than the actual movie itself.

Avengers: Endgame is the blockbuster of 2019. It’s a juggernaut that has the biggest cast of any superhero film ever, wrapping up almost 12 years of storyline and multiple movies, all to answer the question that came up at the end of Avengers: Infinity War:  after you kill half of everything, what happens next?

There’s been a lot of soapboxing and online hand wringing about this film. Plenty of people feel the need to show that they’re above the paltry populace, happy to proclaim their intellectual superiority and state that comic book related films demand that adults remain stuck in the days of adolescence. Much like the issues of today’s politics, I’m not going to change anyone’s mind that feels that way. All that ends up is two people shouting their talking points and refusing to learn anything from one another. But my snide comment is this: can’t you just leave well enough alone?

This is a popcorn movie that appeals to the biggest audience ever. And that’s fine. You can ignore it if you like — we’ve never lived in a time where there’s more opportunity to enjoy the media that you want. Me, I ignore mumblecore, critic beloved films and Oscar-bait movies for the most part. And that is also fine.

All that I know is that I’ve seen nearly every Marvel film with the same set of guys that I’ve seen movies with since I was 25 or so. Each movie is an event where we get the chance to grab a meal, catch up and enjoy one another’s company in the midst of our exceedingly stressful and busy lives. If a movie can do that, it’s already a success before you even watch one frame. Movies bring us together, a light on the cave wall where we can hear a fantastic tale that’s bigger than us. That’s what this movie is — modern mythology of larger than life heroes who are the best of all of us battling the worst villains possible.

Spoiler warning part two — here’s where I get into major plot points. You’ve been warned.

More than the overall tale, I enjoyed the story beats here. Hawkeye becoming Ronin, enraged that evil survived the purge while his family did not. The main sacrifice of this film isn’t Black Widow’s, but his. He was the first person who saw her as more than a killing machine and gave her a chance at life. Now, she repays the favor, taking him from killing machine back to family man. However, he must sacrifice their friendship and the knowledge that her loss will always be in the background when measured against the perceived greater loss of Iron Man.

But hey — I’ve always loved the background characters more than the heavy hitters.

There are moments here that really portray what the three main Avengers have had to give up to protect us. Iron Man must lose the stability and family he never knew he needed. Captain America’s longing for Agent Carter, trapped by a glass wall that may as well be decades and not inches thick. Thor’s descent into depression as he realizes that he couldn’t save the day. Their fates each show them finally achieving the final part of their hero’s journey save Thor, who is fated to repeat his journey over and over throughout rebirth after rebirth, even after Ragnarok, the end of all things.

Those small moments mean more than the big explosions and special effects throughout this film. Tony’s quick hug with his unsuspecting father. Thor’s moment with his mother, who sees right through his deceptions. Even Quill’s way too brief reunion with Gamora. The heart behind each charcter is why we care. There are hundreds of superpowered characters on the screen. The fact that we know the minute motivations of more than one of them is a credit to this tale.

I love that this film both wraps up and begins new stories at its close. Sam Wilson must become Captain America, finally receiving the approval and friendship of the Winter Soldier. Thor realizes that his role is to be an adventurer, not the king, and gives the ownership of Asgard to Valkyrie. Even Steve Rogers realizes that despite becoming a grief counselor and telling people to live the new life they’ve been given, when the opportunity arises to return to his life, it’s one he should embrace.

Speaking of Rogers, I haven’t heard an audience start cheering in the theater for a long time. The fact that he’s able to lift Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer, was not lost on this audience. Before, he was able to budge it. Now, his journey has made him truly worthy to lead the forces against Thanos, even if he appears alone at the seeming conclusion of the final battle.

I also like the synchronicity that the first words that kicked off the Marvel cinematic universe were Tony Stark saying, “I am Iron Man,” which are also his last words. There’s just something poetic about that.

Hey look — I was happy that Crossbones got a few seconds of screentime. I’m that kind of geek. And if that fact upsets you, I’m never going to convince you that this is a good movie.

Between our Bigfoot week of films, ten Bigfoot films to watch list and interview with The Weirdest Movie Ever Made author Phil Hall, we’ve really covered sasquatches, skunk apes and abominable snowmen over the last few months.

Now, we’ve been sent Seth Breedlove’s On the Trail of Bigfoot to check out.  This six-episode series was filmed in fourteen U.S. states and features over twenty different witnesses, investigators, historians, and researchers.

From the earliest known reports of apelike creatures in the 1800s to the modern day, this series takes you through a journey of all things Bigfoot. Director, writer, producer, narrator and star Breedlove was out in the woods of America seeking evidence and came away thinking that there just may be something out there in those woods. That’s because as he created this six-episode series, he experienced several incidents — even as he struggled to stay objective and not become part of the story — as he met both skeptics and believers.

This series offers some evidence, like the traditional footprint casts and hair samples. But there’s also recorded sound and video, as well as an entire museum in Portland that shows the start of the recorded incidents of wildmen, forest giants and forest devils. There’s plenty of places to look for Bigfoot: the forests of the Pacific Northwest’s Olympic Peninsula, the hills of our home state of Pennsylvania, deep southern swamps ala Arkansas’ Fouke monster as seen in The Legend of Boggy Creek, the Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma, southeastern Oklahoma, the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio.

In particular, the second episode really shines as it breaks down the four major personalities of Bigfoot tracking (Rene Dahinden, John Green, Dr. Grover Krantz, Peter Byrne), their egos and how their relationships broke down as they chased the creature over their lifetimes. Instead of finding evidence, most of their time was spent arguing, according to Peter von Puttkamer, the maker of Sasquatch Odyssey: The Hunt for Bigfoot. I also really enjoyed how the third episode showed how many of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot reports also dovetailed with UFO incidents, as well as how The Legend of Boggy Creek changed how the public viewed Bigfoot.

The running time of each episode just flies by. They’re packed with info and really tied in so many different species of Bigfoot and places they’ve been sighted, as well as how mass media has portrayed these creatures.

On the Trail of Bigfoot is available on Amazon Instant Video, Vimeo OnDemand and VIDI Space, as well as DVD. For more information, visit the official Small Town Monsters site.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this series by its PR team, but that has no impact on our review.

Can you believe that this is the sixth installment in the Conjuring series of films? This is the first one to feature a ghost that didn’t first appear in the mainline films, centering on the Mexican folklore of La Llorona, which is all about the ghost of a woman who drowned her children in a fit of jealous rage and now cries while looking for them in the river, taking other peoples’ children to assuage her grief.

300 years after the opening of the film — which shows how the legend began — this movie begins in 1973 Los Angeles, where social worker Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini, who between Freaks and Geeks and playing Velma in the Scooby-Doo films owns plenty of geek hearts) is investigating the disappearance of Patricia Alvarez’s (Patricia Velásquez, Anck-Su-Namun in The Mummy films) children. When she finds the boys, they beg for her to keep them hidden. She wrongly believes that the children are being abused, but they are really the next victims of La Llorona, who drowns them in a nearby river.

If you’ve seen these movies before, you’ll understand that the ghost moves its curse on to her and her children. You may also wonder how a social worker — even with a dead cop husband — is able to afford such a great house with an in-ground pool. Perhaps you shouldn’t think all that much.

Now, our heroine is seen as a potential abuser as the ghost woman begins attacking her children. They turn to Father Perez, who was the priest in Annabelle, taking a movie originally meant as a stand-alone called The Children and making it part of the shared Conjuring universe. He sets them up with a former priest named Rafael Olvera who helps them rid their home of the entity, but not before jump starts aplenty and the daughter being dumb enough to value her baby doll over the life of her family.

If you’re sick of these films, bad news. Annabelle Comes Home is up next. There are even five more films you may not have seen — The Nurse, The Confession, What’s Wrong With Mom?, Blund’s Lullaby and Innocent Souls — that won a My Annabelle Creation contest and are now considered part of the universe too. Then there’s The Crooked Man, which has been in production. These films are moving further away from Ed and Lorraine Warren and more into having their own characters. My wife was totally not into the last one, The Nun, and then she saw that new Annabelle trailer and BOOM. Right back in. And of course, there’s another Nun film, too.

This movie is exactly like you think it will be. If you love these films, you’ll love it. Otherwise, you’ll be moderately entertained. It’s certainly better than the last one, but that movie felt like examining a bowel movement for ninety minutes.

Remember when that Universal Dark Universe of their horror movie properties was going to happen? Ah, sadness. To fill the void of mummies, here’s Dan Allen and Scott Jeffrey (The Unhinged) with their film, The Mummy Reborn.

A group of teens in financial ruin decide that they’re going to steal an ancient amulet from an antique store that’s going out of business. However, it comes from a cursed tomb and the mummy will do anything to get it back.

Keep in mind, this is the first mummy movie I’ve seen start with a quote from Kanye West.

Tina’s mom is dead, leaving her with a mortgage and a mentally challenged brother named Max. The aforementioned antique store where she works is closing. And her boyfriend Luke has a plan: steal the mummy that for some reason is in the shop and get the jewel from it to make money.

At one point, this is a serious and sad film. And in others, it’s ripping off lines from Snakes on a Plane and having characters able to read subtitles as if they were truly there. To say that it jumps around a lot is like saying mummies are wrapped up.

I really wanted to like this. There are some fun parts once it stops being so serious and the mood breaks to even feel like an anime. But it takes so long to get there. Yet it’s still better than that Tom Cruise mummy movie, which is faint praise.

The Mummy Reborn is available on VOD and DVD from High Octane Pictures.

NOTE: We were sent this movie by its PR team and that has no bearing on our review.

Katt Shea was a director for Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater, as well as the movies Poison Ivy and The Rage: Carrie 2. As a screenwriter she penned Frank Harris’s The Patroit for Crown International Pictures. Before that, she was an actress in films such as Barbarian Queen. Here, she attempts to update Nancy Drew for today’s kids with the help of writers Nina Fiore and John Herrera (The Handmaid’s Tale).

Sophia Lillis from the new version of It and Sharp Objects plays Nancy, stuck in the town of River Heights after her mother’s death. She’s against authority and big on helping people against bullies, which leads her to having to do community service.

She meets Flora (Linda Lavin from TV’s Alive!), who needs help with a haunting in her house. The only problem is that Flora’s niece is Nancy’s rival, Helen Corning. That mystery – and a train that’s coming to town — create the main story thrust of this film.

It’s fine — but honestly, the only thing making it Nancy Drew is the name. Becca has every single hardback book and even she couldn’t make it through this whole film. It doesn’t seem like it had many fans — it was in theaters in March and available for rent by April.

Two sisters — both of whom had suffered abuse at the hands of their sadistic father in their childhood — learn that he’s dead. Seeing as how they can’t get their revenge in any normal way, they decide to use witchcraft to bring his spirit back and finally get their payback. That’s the idea behind this supernatural offering from co-writer/director James Cullen Bressack.

Exotic dancer Grace (co-writer Madeline Wade) learns of her father’s death, which forces her to return home to see her sister Serena. Together, they face the pain of their past, including the painful memories of abuse at the hands of their father, Minister Hall (Dave Sheridan, Scary Movie, Ghost World). Michael Welch (Mike Newton from Twilight) also shows up, as does Mark Rolston (The Shawshank Redemption, Aliens).

Even though Hilde (Dominique Swain, Lolita, Face/Off, The Sixth Friend), their mother, was terminally ill, she taught both girls the basics of witchcraft. That’s what they’ll try to use to escape the scars of childhood and gain their horrible revenge on their father. But first, they have to find a man to torture and use as his host.

This film depends on the abilities of its female leads, who do a good job of moving things forward, as they’re often the only two people on screen for most of the film. The level of their father’s depravity gets fully explored, trust me.

Blood Craft is available digitally on April 9.

Disclaimer: We were sent this movie by its PR team but that doesn’t impact our review.

Sometime in the very near future, prisons have become online portals where paying subscribers vote on what felons eat, watch, wear and who they fight. This is Panopticon TV and it’s so successful that it’s about to become a franchise. However, the most downloaded felon — pretty much a rock star — has escaped and the authorities want to bring him back in. And they’re willing to do anything it takes, even arrest his little brother.

Director S.A. Halewood is determined to get the most out of her low budget, but so much of this movie feels like another I’ve seen before, whether those movies are The Running Man, Gamer or District 9. There’s also a moment where someone is smoking and a drone says, “Smoking is not permitted in the street. You have ten seconds…” and I was waiting for it to end with “to comply” to finish this riff on Demolition Man. 

Nielsen (Alison Doody from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) leads Panopticon and she’s aided and abetted by Premier Lyndon, the COO of Central Control and pretty much the world leader. He’s played by Linus Roache who was such a great bad guy in Mandy. Clarke Peters is also pretty decent as a tech guru who removes our hero’s double neck implants, showing off his acting chops from Treme and The Wire.

They got to battle with hackers and influencers and people spouting all manner of technobabble through the streets of Detroit, which obviously RoboCop will forever be right about, even if so much of it was shot in Pittsburgh.

There are some big ideas here. The story may suffer and it may feel like movies that came before, but it certainly looks nice in parts. It’s a great start, really. Hopefully, things get better from this crew of filmmakers from here.

Starting April 5, you can see Division 19 On Demand and also on the big screen in the following cities:

LA: Laemmle Music Hall
Chicago: AMC South Barrington 24
Atlanta: AMC Southlake Pavilion 24
Dallas: AMC Grapevine Mills 30
Houston: AMC Gulf Pointe 30
Cleveland: Tower City Cinemas
San Francisco: AMC Deer Valley Stadium 16
Philadelphia: PFS Roxy Theater
Phoenix: AMC Arizona Center 24
Detroit: AMC Fairlane 21

Or you can see if it’s playing near you here.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR firm, but that doesn’t impact our review.

Honestly, if all Pet Graveyard had going for it were its name and poster, I would love it in the same unconditional way that I love all animals. But this movie does something so audacious, even I’m kind of shocked. It isn’t content to ripoff just Pet Sematary. No, it also decides to double up and absorb parts of Flatliners into its narrative. Bravo!

A group of friends decides to do an experiment where they all die for just long enough that they can see the dead. That means that in the universe of this film, neither the 1990 or 2017 versions of Flatliners exist. However, Death doesn’t like them playing with the afterlife, so he dons his cape and brings along his red-eyed sphinx cat who is so adorable that I couldn’t be frightened by him. I kept wishing he were watching the movie with me so I could pet and cuddle him.

Pet Graveyard is the directorial debut of Rebecca J. Matthews, who produced Mandy the Doll and several other direct to video efforts. The results aren’t bad — there’s a story here after all, but I was kind of hoping that the actual movie would be beyond crazy to live up to the riffing on past films and the impressive title.

I was expecting animals rising from the dead and killing clones of Julia Roberts in her dreams, but British people dealing with family issues. But hey — the box art and title more than did their job, right?

But just look at how cute this little fellow is!

Pet Graveyard is scheduled for release on DVD and digital on April 2.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR firm, but that doesn’t impact our review.

Seeing as how we’re in the middle of giallo week here at the site, there’s no better blu ray available now than this set from Severin if you either want to learn all about the genre or already are a fan and want to see some of the people behind your favorite films. There’s so much on all three discs to love, no matter whether you know that giallo means yellow, you’ve never seen an Argento movie before or that you can name these films or if you worship Edwige Fenech and can name every movie’s alternative titles off the top of your head.

Disc one contains the documentary All the Colors of Giallo by Federico Caddeo, which features interviews with writers like Dardano Sacchetti and Ernesto Gastaldi as well as George Hilton, Daria Nicolodi, Barbara Bouchet, Nieves Navarro and the still lovely Ms. Fenech, plus Argento, Umberto Lenzi, Lamberto Bava, Sergio Martino and even audio from the past from Lucio Fulci!

This is a treat, hearing from the actual people what it was like to be part of these films as well as the legacy that they’ve created. It’s a perfect companion to the All the Colors of the Dark rerelease that Severin put out alongside this. Plus, there’s an interview with John Martin from The Giallo Pages and audio commentary by Kat Ellinger, who wrote the book All the Colors of Sergio Martino.

The best part of this collection are the trailers, which include The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Blood and Black Lace, Libido, The Embalmer, The Murder Clinic, Deadly Sweet, Death Laid an Egg, Naked You Die, The Sweet Body of Deborah, A Black Veil for Lisa, Deadly Inheritance, Paranoia, Perversion Story, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Five Dolls for an August Moon, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Death Occurred Last Night, The Weekend Murders, The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Cat O’ Nine Tails, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Cold Eyes of Fear, The Designated Victim, In the Eye of the Hurricane, Slaughter Hotel, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, The Fifth Cord, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, The Black Belly of the Tarantula, The Bloodstained Butterfly, Short Night of Glass Dolls, Death Walks on High Heels, The Devil with Seven Faces, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Dead Are Alive, My Dear Killer, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, All the Colors of the Dark, What Have You Done to Solange?, Amuck!, Who Saw Her Die?, The French Sex Murders, The Case of the Bloody Iris, The Crimes of the Black Cat, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, Knife of Ice, Don’t Torture a Duckling, Tropic of Cancer, The Killer is on the Phone, A White Dress for Mariale, Torso, Death Carries a Cane, Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye, Spasmo, The Killer Reserved Nine Seats, The Girl in Room 2A, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Puzzle, Death Will Have Your Eyes, The Killer Must Kill Again, Autopsy, Eyeball, Deep Red, Strip Nude for Your Killer, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance, Strange Shadows in an Empty Room, The House of the Laughing Windows, Nine Guests for a Crime, Watch Me When I Kill, The Psychic, The Pyjama Girl Case, Hotel Fear, Enigma Rosso, The Sister of Ursula, The Bloodstained Shadow, Killer Nun, Giallo in Venice, The New York Ripper, Tenebre and A Blade in the Dark.

Plus, you get an entire disc filled with kriminal trailers and The Case Of The Krimi, an interview with film historian Marcus Stiglegger and a third disc (!) with music from the films curated by Alfonso Carillo of Rendezvous! From The Archives Of Beat Records and remastered By Claudio Fuiano. It contains music from The Young, the Evil and the Savage, Killer Nun, Perversion Story, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk, Amuck!, Smile Before Death, The Case of the Bloody Iris, All the Colors of the Dark, The Cat In Heat, Strange Shadows In an Empty Room, The Bloodstained Shadow, The New York Ripper and The Great Swingle.

This is literally THE giallo package that I’ve turned to time and again since I’ve purchased it. You’d do well to do the same. It’s available from Severin.

How many of the giallo movies advertised by trailers on this set have you seen? Check out this Letterboxd list!

Todd Strauss-Schulson directed A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas and The Final Girls before taking on this comedy, which both pokes fun and celebrates the romantic comedies that we either love, hate or love to hate. There’s a great crew along for the ride, so I didn’t put up much of a fight with this choice by my wife.

When Natalie (Rebel Wilson) was a young girl growing up in Australia, her mother (Jennifer Saunders!) told her that movies like Pretty Woman were BS and that girls like her don’t get happy endings. She’s kept that message in her mind as she grows up and moves to NYC to become an architect. It’s also given her low self-esteem, making her take guff from everyone in her office and unable to see that her friend Josh (Adam DeVine) wants to be way more than a best friend.

That’s life until she’s knocked out fighting a mugger and wakes up to an alternate world where every single cliche of romcoms becomes true. Her best friend has now become her office enemy. Her client is now in love with her. And even Josh has found who he thinks is his soulmate, a combination swimsuit model/yoga ambassador.

Schulson has said that the idea of this film came from how romcoms really do lie to their viewers. “Are they helpful or hurtful? Does it lead to more isolation? This idea that you aren’t whole until someone comes to save you.” In truth, this movie is about falling in love with yourself before you can give love to anyone else, which is about the best message I’ve seen in a movie in forever.

Look, this isn’t going to blow your mind or replace any of your favorite movies. That said, it is a fun little movie and has some nice production values, particularly in how it separates the real world from the romantic one.