The V/H/S/ series is a fairly reliable found-footage anthology franchise that has its hits and misses, and this time out is no different. A wrap-around narrative loosely connects four other stories that show up on video throughout the main plot line. The wrap-around story I found really interesting (tracking issues and all) until its final…
Tag: reporter
TIFF ’22: The Wonder
With an opening, and an ending that reminds us that how we see stories is all perspective, The Wonder explores the line between fact and faith, science and religion. Based on the book by Emma Donoghue, The Wonder is beguiling, introspective, and moody. In the mid-19th century, an English nurse, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh) who…
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) – Anthony Hickox
Despite having his name listed as Executive Producer, I don’t think horrormeister Clive Barker had much to do with the third installment of the Hellraiser series. After the bloody and brilliantly constructed first two films, this one feels like it went right off the rails and didn’t quite understand why the first two films worked…
WNUF Halloween Special (2013) – Chris LaMartina
Reporter Frank Stewart (Paul Fahrenkopf) is about to have a bad night. It’s Halloween, 1987, and he’s on camera hosting the WNUF Halloween Special that is going to investigate the local murder house during a live broadcast. The film plays like a recorded videotape, has tolls, tracking problems, and plays more to nostalgia of the…
Scream 2 (1997) – Wes Craven
In 1996, Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson delivered the game-changing Scream, a meta horror movie that was a hit with audiences and critics alike. And it seemed before the opening weekend was over, that a second film was already being lined up for the cameras. Looking back, I think if they had made us wait…
Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire (2019) – Stephen Cognetti
Found footage can be hit or miss. To attempt a trilogy what works solely with that sub-genre is pretty ambitious, and I think, for the most part, writer/director Stephen Cognetti pulls it off. And if you watch all three films in close succession, as I have, they flow a lot better, and he wraps everything…
Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster (1964) – Ishiro Honda
UFOs, political assassinations, alien possession, the Shobijin (Emi and Yumi Ito) and alien monsters see the known kaiju on Earth, all located around Japan, unite for the first time to combat King Ghidorah, a three-headed space beast which destroyed an alien civilization on Venus centuries ago, and has now arrived on Earth via meteor. This…
The Final Conflict (1981) – Graham Baker
Sam Neill made his North American film debut with the third installment in The Omen series. This one saw Dick Donner as the film’s exectuive producer, and Jerry Goldsmith delivering hi third score for the series moves away from the chanting to deliver a bit more of a majestical piece. Damien Thorn (Neill) is now…
Die Hard 2 (1990) – Renny Harlin
Bruce Willis returns as John McClane in the follow up to the blockbuster hit, Die Hard. Two years after the first film changed the action film game, Twentieth Century Fox delivered a sequel, one with just as solid a story as the first, something that started to slip after the the third entry. In this…
Foreign Correspondent (1940) – Alfred Hitchcock
It’s not often that I come across an Alfred Hitchcock film that I haven’t seen, but Philip Kemp’s Movies book, but Foreign Correspondent was one of them. I was completely delighted with this one, and loved how the story played out as an American reporter heads to Europe and the UK to investigate the brewing…
The Mind Reels 