Spread director David Mackenzie’s movie imagines a new disease in which victims inexplicably become overwhelmed with grief, then lose their sense of smell entirely. While not thought to be contagious, the threat is so unfamiliar that the public overreacts, anyway. Meeting in the midst of this madness are epidemiologist Susan (Eva Green, Dark Shadows, Cracks, […]
Sci-Fi
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Mimic 3 Film Set
I’ve always found del Toro’s Mimic to be a pretty decent, if disposable, film. But now, with a few extra minutes in his director’s cut, I find Mimic to be a pretty decent, if disposable, film that’s a little bit longer. As Dr. Susan Tyler, Mira Sorvino (remember her?) battles giant cockroaches in the subway […]
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The Avengers
During its two hours and 22 minutes, plenty of time existed for it to grab my attention. That moment never arrived. The major problems, as I see them: • It’s clearly overstuffed. Everyone complained when Batman and Spider-Man sequels stacked three villains against a single superhero. The Avengers gives us one main bad guy (albeit […]
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12 Creature Features
For me, only two of the titles stood out as new, or potentially just overlooked: 1974’s Horror High and 1968’s Kong Island. Both were novel enough that I could see paying $10 for it and not feeling short-changed, as long as you know upfront that the prints are less than pristine. As with such bargain […]
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The Darkest Hour
Amid a citywide power outage, aliens fall from the sky in the form of orange fireballs that then turn more or less invisible, but immediately incinerate all humans they can get their “hands” on. As luck would have it, our heroes manage to survive by holing up, along with the aforementioned babes (Transformers‘ Rachael Taylor […]
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Wizards
Spanning 3,000 years, give or take, the DayGlo colorful tale of warring wizards — siblings at that — doesn’t even attempt to disguise its political leanings, but kids today can appreciate it just for the pointy-eared fairies and various beasts, especially the low-IQ goons armed with laser guns. Splendidly drawn on cels, the fantasy epic […]
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Camel Spiders
The giant spider invasion begins after U.S. military forces fight a Middle Eastern enemy in an unspecified desert, and not everyone survives the gunfire or, in case of the enemy, the spiders who pull their bodies into caves for feasting. One spider clandestinely crawls into the coffin of a dead American soldier, and upon return […]
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Zaat
About all it takes is a big ol’ syringe full of Re-Animator fluid, a dunk tank with electric cables, and a room full of primitive equipment resembling the games no one plays at Chuck E. Cheese. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Zaat, a 1971 regional Z movie that no one was calling to be restored […]
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The Deadly Spawn: Millennium Edition
In this New Jersey-lensed low-budgeter, a meteor (or something like it) crashing into the woods unleashes an alien menace in the single most hideously decorated house in film history, where the tables, walls and chairs are painted Pepto-Bismol pink. Among the seemingly infinite family members inside the multistory home are a monster-obsessed kid (Charles George […]