By - Gareth Jones For fans of children as killers/monsters movies, campy 50s performances, great Hollywood character actors Before there was The Omen, Village of the Damned, Orphan, or so many other films with children as killers, there was The Bad Seed. I had seen many of these other films, but not this one.  Based on a play that was based on a book, The Bad Seed in many ways […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, Pamela Adlon, Female Buddy comedies Bridesmaids set a very high bar for the gross-out female buddy comedies.  There have been several imitators since it came out in 2011.  There are several reasons that Babes stands out from the majority of these. First, it is directed by the great Pamela Adlon, who has moved beyond the shadow of Louis C.K. […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of challenging independent films, disability representation, Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson I first became aware of actor Adam Pearson in Jonathan Glazer’s chilling film Under the Skin in 2013.  He plays the only survivor of Scarlet Johanson’s alien. Is he spared because he is pitied by her or because is more innocent than the other lustful men?  Adam Pearson has neurofibromatosis, a condition where […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of based on true story horror, Barbara Hershey, feminist horror I remember seeing the poster for The Entity either at a video store or being advertised on HBO.  It reminded me of another film that I wanted to see called The Keep which I did end up seeing and I still enjoy to this day, although I wish that Michael Mann had been able […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of one-shot movies, creative one-shot zombie movies like One Cut of the Dead, the end of the world, French Horror films Recently, we talked about the zombie movie One Cut of the Dead on Sleep In Cinema.  It is a wonderfully entertaining film that begins with a single long shot of a low budget zombie movie that lasts for a little over 30 minutes. […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of folk horror, Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark Every time I think that we are past the peak of the wave of folk horror films that started in the 2010’s with films like Kill List and The Witch, I see a new film or two that show the wave has not peaked yet.  Starve Acre is one that has all the classic hallmarks of a […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of campy humor, Charles Busch, satires of Hollywood When I saw that Birmingham Festival Theatre was doing a stage production of Charles Busch’s play “Psycho Beach Party” it immediately took me back to the year 2000 when the filmed adaptation of that play premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was my introduction to the world of playwright, and drag icon Charles Busch.  A […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of Jewish folktales, independent Israeli filmmaking, modest horror films In preparation for the No Longer Silent/ Under the Mountain screening of the classic 1920 film, The Golem: How He Came Into the World, I have been watching many other iterations of the Golem, including the wonderful X Files episode “Kaddish” and the Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors episode where Bart creates his own golem. The […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of Jeremy Saulnier, Aaron Pierre, Rambo action films with a strong message Every once in a while you see a film with a new actor and instantly you know this person is going to be a huge star. I had that feeling when I watched Winter’s Bone with Jennifer Lawrence, and I had the same feeling the minute I finished Rebel Ridge and Aaron […]