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FADE TO BLACK

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Julia Marchese. Released in 1980, Fade to Black is a fantastic and under seen horror film with a killer premise. Directed by Vernon Zimmerman and starring one of my favorites, Dennis Christopher, as Eric Binford. Eric is a shy young man living with his shrewish, wheel chair bound aunt in a cramped Venice apartment. She hovers over him and criticizes his every move. Things aren’t much better at work, where both his co-workers and boss love to yell at him. Eric’s only escape is film. In an era long before streaming, or even home VCR’s, Eric watches his films on his OG 16mm projector in his darkened bedroom, covered floor to ceiling with…

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STAGECOACH

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Jusef Conesa.  Stagecoach marks the birth of one of the most successful partnerships Hollywood has ever seen. John Ford had won his first Academy Award for Best Director in 1936 for his crime-drama “The Informer” and three-years later he was ready to jump back into the genre that arguably helped him shape the best films of his catalog, westerns. Ford had his eyes set on a young ex-football player turned extra/stunt-double, John Wayne. Ford saw in him what nobody else saw; a star in the making. After making fourteen films together and Wayne becoming an icon within Hollywood it’s hard to say that Ford was wrong in viewing their partnership as something worth…

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SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Anisa Khalifa.  Sorry to Bother You is a brilliant, dizzying satire which at once feels impossibly out-there and far too close for comfort. It stars Lakeith Stanfield as Cash, unemployed, broke, and living in his uncle’s garage with artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson, who is excellent as always). He gets a job at a call center to pay his bills, but his previously undiscovered talents soon embroil him in corporate corruption beyond his wildest imaginings.  The film centers around ordinary people of color struggling to get through their days with terrible jobs and unlikely dreams. Detroit is fiercely unapologetic about pursuing her provoking, thoughtful art, while Cash’s coworker Squeeze (Steven Yeun) resists the capitalist…

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LOVE, CECIL

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
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I’ve known Cecil Beaton’s name ever since I saw Gigi as a kid and enjoyed his exquisite costume and production design. I later learned that he was a celebrated artist and photographer as well as a social gadfly, but I still didn’t know much about him. That has been fully remedied by Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s absorbing new documentary Love, Cecil. Much of the story is told by Beaton himself, in a series of vintage television interviews, and while there are other notable “talking heads,” he is perhaps his own best chronicler. A precocious talent with a gift for making influential friends and losing them just as easily, Beaton’s gifts as an illustrator, designer, diarist and photographer earned him success on both sides of the Atlantic,…

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MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN—INDEED!

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
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I can’t think of another recent movie title that serves as its own review. If you say it just right, you’ll get the idea: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Mind you, I enjoyed the screen adaptation of the ABBA show Mamma Mia! It had a highly attractive cast, representing two generations, a cornucopia of infectious songs, all imaginatively staged against a backdrop of gorgeous Greek scenery. It may not have been innovative or intellectual but it certainly was fun. This one is a sequel/prequel, or more specifically a clone, with everything those words represent: repetition (both good and bad), an expanded younger cast and all the “mature” performers we saw last time around. Like so many screen follow-ups, this one coasts on the good…

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GLOW SEASON 2 REVIEW

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Jeremy Robinson. I was a bit skeptical coming into the new season of “GLOW”. When the show premiered last summer on Netflix it was a sensational crowd pleaser. Loosely based on the actual 80s wrestling program of the same name, “GLOW” used its backdrop as a clever gimmick to incorporate women’s empowerment ideas within the plotlines. I was afraid the concept wouldn’t stretch any further and the series would end up being one of those “one season wonders”. I was wrong to doubt, as I’m delighted to say this new batch of episodes is even more fun and innovative than the first. We pick up where we left off from last season, with…

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TAU

Contributors New Voices
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This post is a part of our New Voices Section. Written by Amanda Krader. Netflix doles out another sci-fi thriller, only to come up short. “Tau,” written by Noga Landau and directed by Federico D’Alessandro, attempts to foster a relationship between a smart house computer program and a kidnapped girl, but this film left this viewer wondering why this story needed to be told at all.  Julia, played by Maika Monroe in one of her weaker performances to date, plays an emotionless smalltime thief. She is quickly snatched from her home and left to rot in an underground jail. It’s only when her crafty ingenuity gets her to the surface of her captor’s house that we start moving along with the plot. Alex (Ed Skrein)…

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