I don’t remember exactly what they say about the best laid plans, but of course after finishing last night’s movie and looking at my list I realized I still needed 1) a Canadian film, and 2) a post-apocalyptic film. And I really didn’t want to watch Bird Box, so instead here we are with Die Alone, a small but well executed chamber piece about a young man with memory problems searching for his girlfriend in a world where a virus has wiped out most of humanity, leaving insatiable, plant-based zombies hungry for human flesh. Yeah, I know…there’s another really famous show and video game with a similar setting (if not premise). This is still worth it.

Reviews

Hooptober 12.0 – The Toxic Avenger (2023)

Being Film #30 for Hooptober 2025

Here’s the deal. I just realized I got all my requirements in for this year’s Hooptober by review #29. So rather than watch films I thought I needed, I picked two films I needed. As in, “my stress level is so high I just need some FUN” needed. And so I jumped in on something a lot of us who love this genre have been waiting literal years for: Macon Blair’s remake of the Troma classic The Toxic Avenger. Maybe it’s impossible for a film with such a history behind its troubled journey to the screen to live up to expectations, but you know what? I dug the hell out of it. Blair has written and directed not only a film that lives up to the original’s over-the-top squishy gooey effects and story, but it also pays beautiful homage in its style to the studio and its uniquely skewed perceptive.

ChrisOctober 31, 20251 Comment

Reviews

Hooptober 12.0 – Moloch (2022)

Being Film #25 for Hooptober 2025

Sometimes tone is everything. Have I said that before? That’s the mental state I’m inhabiting this deep into Hooptober. Six days to go, six films to watch. Hopefully they all exhibit some of the grace and then of Moloch, a Dutch film that overcomes a convoluted story with a deep, deep sense of how people think and feel. I came into it not knowing what to expect, and the combination of cults, folklore (the two always found within the vicinity of the other) and dread made for a rewarding watch.

ChrisOctober 25, 2025Leave a comment

humanist vampire header - a boy and a girl looking at each other as a record plays. the girl is a vampire

Reviews

Hooptober 12.0 – Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023)

Being Film #19 for Hooptober 2025

It’s likely I went into Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (hereafter shortened to just Humanist Vampire…) in the best way possible: with nothing but that title and the poster in my head. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t something this delicate, romantic, and…funny. Maybe the trailer or the plot summary would have given away more of the tone, but that might have lessened the impact of such a delightful film that gets at the heart of the loneliness and depression young adults feel, as well as the awkward first steps of connecting with another soul.

ChrisOctober 7, 2025October 7, 2025Leave a comment

Reviews

Hooptober 12.0 – Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)

Being Film #16 for Hooptober 2025

In the end, there’s really no escaping the shadow of what Guillermo del Toro brought to Mike Mignola’s Hellboy character in his two films. You can argue they’re not truly what Mignola intended with the character, mixed too much with del Toro’s sympathy with the monsters, but those two films stand as a monument to how to present the fantastic on film. About the only to really do (takes notes, Neil Marshall) is to scale it back, own the story, and just drive your perspective home. And the audience and critics seem to bury Hellboy: The Crooked Man in the dirt, I’m here to tell you not only is it good, it’s really good: nasty and intimate and capable of moments that get straight to the heart of what makes Mignola’s stories so indelible. Ignore the critics and take this one on its terms; you won’t regret it.

ChrisSeptember 28, 2025Leave a comment

the blackening: the cast stares at the camera, the light of a television lighting their faces

Reviews

Hooptober 12.0 – The Blackening (2022)

Being Film #15 for Hooptober 2025

The Blackening has a lot to say about black identity, about the tropes and cliches of how black actors are handled not just in horror films, but throughout the visual medium. It also wants to be funny, and it wants to be scary. It also wants to be very much for black audiences, but because this is a studio film, it has to balance that with being universal enough to draw in a wide audience. Tim Story has a lot of experience with that kind of thing to varying degrees, and I’m happy that this one lands on the same side of the fence as Barbershop: genuinely smart, funny, scary, and can balance its message without sacrificing everything else The Blackening needs to be. Yup, I really enjoyed this one.

ChrisSeptember 28, 2025Leave a comment

Cinema Dual (TEST SITE)

Examining a life through the media we consume. In other words, I’m reviewing all of my physical music media in alphabetical order, one day at at a time. Except when I don’t, as has been the case for the past few years. Still, we march onwards…Coffee essential, but not mandatory

Tag: 2020s

Hooptober 12.0 – Die Alone (2024)

Hooptober 12.0 – The Toxic Avenger (2023)

Hooptober 12.0 – Moloch (2022)

Hooptober 12.0 – Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023)

Hooptober 12.0 – Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)

Hooptober 12.0 – The Blackening (2022)