Cinema Basement

An editorial by Azzam Abdur-Rahman It’s wild to think that Zac Efron is going to play Ted Bundy. Had someone asked me if this was possible, even after Neighbors came out, I would have called you a liar – but here we are. His newest film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, premiered at Sundance and as if Netflix could see the future, they had a documentary series in the docket ready to drop at the same time. Content about serial killers is nothing new from Criminal Minds to Dexter to Silence of the Lambs, but for the first time in my adult life I saw significant black lash. Twitter and Facebook seemed rife with takes about the fetishization of monsters and lambasting producers for continuing to make content like this. Now some criticisms are valid – but I believe we need to have open discussions about storytelling and about why this is a well storytellers return to. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile is not a movie about Ted Bundy. This is not a biography about his ...

A review by Brooks Rich Having expectations when you go into a film can sometimes ruin the experience. It is important to have an open mind when you go into any film and not let outside influences effect you. So going into the new Netflix film Polar I did not want to start off comparing it to the John Wick movies, which I think are the pinnacle for the action genre right now. It's a good thing if movies take influence from John Wick, if they put time and effort into structuring their action sequences. I have no problem with that. It's too bad that Polar is just a cheap knockoff of the John Wick films, not understanding the beauty of those films. Mads Mikkelsen plays Duncan Vizla, a contract killer about to retire at the age of fifty and collect a nice pension from the company he did jobs for. He moves to a remote cabin and befriends a young woman played by Vanessa Hudgens. When he is betrayed by his old colleagues, he sets out on a bloody path of revenge. We've been he...

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman When was the last time you saw a movie because all you heard was that it was insane? We forget in a world of franchises upon franchises that the film industry would sometimes take chances on things they had no real concept of. In 2018, we got a film like Annihilation. It was a strange brave journey but it was still based on an existing IP. Original films given a wide release and that starred actual movie stars they don’t get made anymore. If it ain’t based on something or built on something that the flick never sees the light of day. Yet somehow a film so brazenly insane not only got two OSCAR winning movie stars on board it got talent all the way across the damn call sheet was allowed to be super weird. If by some act of whatever deity you pray to you haven’t heard anything about Serenity DON’T READ ANYTHING ELSE! Most of what made this movie a bizarre modern feat of brilliance was built on me knowing so little it hurt. I remember when I first saw the...

One of my favorite genres is a giant monster eating people. That goes back to my love of Jaws and moves like Beast from 20,00 Fathoms and Them! But my favorite monster movies come from the 1990s. I love films like Tremors, Mimic, The Relic (stay tuned for that), and Deep Blue Sea, which has maybe the greatest death scene in cinema history. But my absolute favorite is 1998’s Deep Rising, directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Wes Studi, and a giant octopus like creature.  The plot is fairly standard. A team of mercenaries looking to hijack a luxury cruise liner finds the place deserted and crawling with nasty tentacle monsters. They are joined by the surviving members of the ship’s crew, basically the financier and captain and a thief who had been detained in the brig. Now they all need to get off the ship before they’re meals for these creatures. Let’s do this.  What works here is the tremendous cast and that the film takes the time to...

Video Games are a strange omnipresent part of our lives. Years ago, if you wanted zero part of gaming and gaming culture it could be ignored. Now we carry phones that can play the most popular game in the world with ease. Gaming is everywhere but for some reason I cannot figure out why we have yet to make a great video game movie. It is kind of strange actually but taking a narrative where the player is in control of the action and translating that down to fixed experience is tough at best. I am quoting one of our other writers, Chris Lee, when I say that. At the end of the day gaming has made an impression on cinema and the other way around. When I write these it isn’t alway going to be a movie I never forgot about but culture at large did. Sometimes it is going to be about a movie I straight up forgot existed.  I bring up video games because the current director of the Metal Gear Solid adaptation Jordan Vogt-Roberts did an interview with Collider. In that interview he talked...

Glass A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman I probably was the wrong person to review this film. It’s not that I dislike M. Night or his filmography but I do wonder if this was the right choice. Split succeeded for being a film that had limited scope and direct focus. Glass on paper seemed to me like a brave choice but arguably a foolish one. Unbreakable has had a cult classic status for a decade. If there is anything I have learned in this lifetime, things like that create expectations which leaves artists working against the film fans have imagined in their minds. A thankless task. Glass is what happens when a director decides to not only ignore what fans want but make a film that no one exactly asked for. Instead of an interesting thriller building off of that very grounded world of the previous films, we got a strange dramatic deconstruction of the superhero film and its effect on culture.  First let me shout out what is good about this movie. The acting is sold but Jackson is re...

           The 1950s' is an interesting time for film. It is the first full decade where film faced a major competitor in television. Studios were looking for ways to attract audiences back to the cinema, which led to the rise of 3D and other methods to heighten the film experience. Yeah 3D always dies out then comes back. Studios began to go bigger with their scope, leading to the rise of the classic American western and the film epic, with films like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. The '50s is also the decade that cemented Alfred Hitchcock as possibly the greatest director of all time. A good majority of his most classic films come from the '50s, North by Northwest, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, Dial M for Murder.            The B-movie was also brought to prominence in the '50s, especially the science fiction ones. Japan's Toho would produce monster movies like Godzilla and Gamera and Britain's Hammer Film Produ...

A film review by Brooks Rich        Netflix is going to be a destination for some interesting films. Last year we had major directors, the Coen Brothers and Alfonzo Cuaron, release films through Netflix. Martin Scorsese will release The Irishman on the platform this year. So it's becoming a destination for significant films. But we're also getting some smaller releases too. That brings us to IO, a quiet science fiction film from director Jonathan Helpert.        IO is about a woman living along on Earth after humans have fled to Jupiter's moon, Io, as the Earth slowly dies, it's air nearly unbreathable. Sam, played by Margaret Qually, is working to save the planet when Micah, played by the always fantastic Anthony Mackie, shows up in a hot air balloon. That's all I'll say so as not to spoil anything. Just know though that IO ultimately doesn't live up to it's premise and becomes bogged down by unnecessary dialogue scenes that don't move the plo...

Forgotten Film Fridays: Kiss of The Dragon A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman  Trying to get out of depression can take you down funny paths. I need to start here as my perspective is painted by my current feelings of failure, being unwanted, and wondering if every choice I have made has mattered. Times like that make you think back to childhood. They remind you of the moments that brought you the greatest joy. This past Sunday I was at a very low point as I lay staring off at my TV Screen, I hunted through my HBO Now account looking for a film that could bring me out of this feeling. That’s when I saw Kiss of The Dragon. As a child my father would take me to the movies every weekend he could. You see my parents got divorced when I was young and my dad, even if he didn’t know it, turned me to the movie lover I am. My dad showed me kung fu films in subtitles at a young age. I grew up on a diet of Shaw Brothers film learning the language of the wuxia films from that produc...

Rockaway A review by Brooks Rich About a year ago a friend of mine saw this film at a festival, I can’t remember which one, I want to say it was in Tampa or around there, and said I should keep an eye out for it. So I instantly rented it when I saw it available on iTunes this weekend. Before watching I did some research. Writer director John J. Budion funded this film himself. He is a commercial director and handy with visual effects. This film is inspired by true events, the characters based on his brother and himself and the group of friends they grew up with. I did some research on this and listened to a few interviews with Budion and the cast. He has stated he pushed the drama to entertain the audiences. Fair enough.  I admire John Budion. This is a guy who wrote his own movie, found a way to fund it, got a better than usual cast for an independently funded indie, and went and made a movie. Good for him. Always support the indie guys who are o...

A Quiet Place (2018, Directed by John Krasinski and starring John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe) A review by Chris Lee A Quiet Place (2018, Directed by John Krasinski) is the kind of film that comes along, like the antagonist during the run-time of most creature features, every once in a while to thrill, scare, and zap our imaginations with fright. The second film from John Krasinski, also acting alongside his wife, Emily Blunt is a horror classic I can recommend to anyone, even if you aren’t a fan of the genre. Krasinski tackles the proceedings with the kind of steady, knowing hand you would expect from auteurs 5-10 years into their game. It’s impressive. The premise revolves around the global appearance of an otherworldly threat that tracks its prey via sound, and how survivors of this invasive threat survive in a world where making noise is fatal. Apparently the things stalking the film’s characters can hear the heartbeat of a mouse from a mile ...

The best of 2018: The Wife A review by Brooks Rich This is an Oscar bait film to be fair. These kinds of films come late in the year or at the very tail end of summer. We don't hear about them in lists of the most anticipated films of the year. No one in 2017 was excited to see The Wife like they were excited to see Infinity War. This isn't that type of movie. There aren't any action set pieces in this film. This is a movie driven by performances, especially Glenn Close. Close plays the titular wife to an author who has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Their trip to Stockholm for the ceremony unleashes pent up frustration and anger between the two. That's really all I can say without getting into spoilers. Just know this is not a happy marriage. The wife is a play as much as it is movie and that usually bothers me. But here it works and I credit that exclusively to Glenn Close. Oh my God what a performance from this woman.  This is one of those performan...

The Predator (2018, Directed by Shane Black and Starring Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, and......Tom Jane and Keegan-Michael Key for some reason.) A review by Chris Lee Predator (1987, Directed by John McTiernan) is not a smart movie. It’s a dumb movie made in a smart way. It was just another action vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger to use to flex his god-tier action cred that turned out to be one of the best action films of all time. It even featured Jean-Claude Van Damme running around in a rubber mantis suit for some reason at one point, and then they smartly made the decision to drop his whiny ass and replace him with the much more professional and physically imposing Kevin Peter Hall.  Essentially, this dumb movie made in a smart way was about a group of U.S. commandos go into the Central American wilderness to do something , yadda yadda yadda, an alien hunter from space comes down to throw a wrench into the gears, yadda yadda yadda, Arnold and co. get t...

The best of 2018: A Simple Favor A review by Brooks Rich I love films that show the dark side of suburbia. If one looks behind the manicured lawns, the mom vans, the perfect families, they'll find some of the worst depths of human depravity. A Simple Favor plays with that idea. What's behind the gorgeous perfect family that lives down the street? This is essentially a Neo-noir set in suburbia. Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie, a "mommy blogger" who strikes up a strange friendship with the mysterious Emily, a fellow mom, played by the always fantastic Blake Lively. When Emily goes missing after asking Stephanie to pick up her son, Stephanie begins to question who her friend really is. The main thing I can praise here without spoiling anything is the two main performances. Lively steals the show here but Kendrick keeps up with her and is perfectly cast as Stephanie. I adore Anna Kendrick and I hope this kickstarts a new phase to her career. Stephanie is at times...

The best of 2018: Mary Poppins Returns A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman It’s hard to quantify why Mary Poppins Returns is so good. It’s rare you watch a film and wonder if you are witnessing a rare moment in cinema’s history where what could have easily been a bad idea turns out good or a movie that was bred out of the bizarre culture of nostalgia we are currently living within. No matter the reason Mary Poppins Returns is fantastic and a return to form to the traditional movie musical. When I say traditional, I mean it. The movie opens with a mood setting song which sounds like it was ripped straight out of a film from decades ago. Lin Manuel Miranda has a look of joyful shock throughout the opening number as if he is wondering when Disney is gonna rip him out of the picture. Which leads to the performances, Lin’s accent is awful but considering the one Dick Van Dyke did in the original is equally as bad he gets a pass. I wanna make clear that is the worst acting in the whole film a...

The worst of 2018: I Feel Pretty  A review by Azzam  Abdur-Rahman If you read my views on romantic comedies on this blog you know I love them. In these dark times I feel like these films speak to the pure escapism we need but even a genre with a low bar can have a low shot. I Feel Pretty is that film for me. Now, I am not an Amy Schumer hater. I actually think she is a really great choice for these films. She is charming, funny and can command attention even surrounded by scenery chewing actors i.e Trainwreck. But I Feel Pretty wasted her and this premise about a woman who suddenly sees herself as the most stunningly beautiful woman in the world.  The idea of a film saying “self confidence is hot” is awesome. Pretty much every gender and sexual orientation can agree on that fact but the lead up to her shows the worst parts about our culture. Her turn toward the start 3rd act takes those same qualities Schumer has and weaponizes her to be disliked.  It wa...