There are 1,836 posts tagged Review (this is page 17 of 263).
It’s funny that I rewatched the OG Exorcist the day before I watched Beyond the Door. Funny, because I had no idea that this Italian possession film was not only an Exorcist ripoff, it was actually sued by Warner Bros. for copyright infringement and lost. Well, at least it’s a good movie–wait, it isn’t? Oh god, is there any value in watching this cheap cash-grab in the year 2023? Stick around to find out.
Did you ever see the parody short film Kung Fury? It’s an over-the-top homage to 1980s action movies that has a martial artist detective take on robots, mutants, dinosaurs, and, of course, Hitler, all in the name of revenge. It’s a lot… but also not actually as far from what was really coming out back then as you might think. Ninja III: The Domination, the third and final entry in a anthology series from the legendary low-budget production company Cannon Films, is so relentlessly Eighties you might not actually believe it. Let me tell you about it! And I promise, nothing I write will be an exaggeration, this movie doesn’t need that.
This marks my first foray into this year’s Shocktober, and as far as devil or possession-themed movies, this one has about as much as you could ask for. It’s got a creepy Satanic cult, people melting, ritual sacrifice, a shirtless William Shatner screaming, a future real-life cult member (in a young John Travolta), and a technical advisor credit for Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey. It’s absolutely the kind of batshit film you look for if you’re parsing through the weirder corners of ’70s cult films. However, if you were looking to worship at the altar of great story-telling or well-defined characters, well, you came to the wrong church. Continue reading
Welcome to another year of SHOCKTOBER on Mildly Pleased! This year’s theme is POSSESSION! You know it’s a good one because I’m using all caps! Why possession? Dude, look around you. A new Evil Dead came out this year, Talk to Me became A24’s highest-grossing horror movie, The Pope’s Exorcist is a thing, and so on. So, we got a few weeks of classics, cult classics, and a few movies that would probably be better if they were left buried. But hey, man, this is Shocktober, which means we’re digging ’em up! Because the power of Christ compels us to!
Well, the leaves are turning, things are getting spooky, and it’s thankfully no longer a million degrees outside every goddamn day. Though this summer felt like a pretty good one for music, I didn’t get around to reviewing really any new albums over the course of it. So before we turn our eyes toward Shocktober around here at Mildly Pleased, I figured I’d take a look back at some of the stand-outs from a summer that often felt like it’d never end. Continue reading
Let’s go girls.
I don’t want to jinx anything, but I am feeling a bit of a second wind on The People’s Albums. Maybe it’s the “light at the end of the tunnel” aspect of finally cracking the top ten best-selling albums of all time, but we’ll see if I can keep up the pace of two albums per season.
This entry brings things a bit full circle, since this was the first artist I ever reviewed for The People’s Albums almost exactly ten years ago. I wouldn’t say that that earlier piece is quite as poorly written as I expected, but comparing it to my response to this album, it does illuminate how much more open to frivolous pop music I’ve become in the intervening decade.
Album: Come On Over
Artist: Shania Twain
Release Date: November 4, 1997
Copies Sold in the U.S.: 17.7 million Continue reading
Why do we watch movies? Why do we care about them? Why do they matter? Cinema has been facing an existential threat ever since streaming picked up steam, and the pandemic and ongoing strikes have really pushed the medium to the brink. When I write about movies and when I talk about movies, I find that mostly I focus on story and characters. Even with documentaries, my focus is on what they’re about. And you don’t need movies to tell stories. We’ve got books, and podcasts, and shows, and miniseries, and TikTok. So why do we need movies?
