Popcorn Zombies

  By Michael Momper " You're the nice guy! And that's a fine thing to be!" Banshees of Inisherin is the latest movie to be both written and directed by much-acclaimed filmmker Martin Mcdonagh. If you haven't seen any of his work, it is well worth checking out- he has had a tremendous working relationship with Colin Farrell for most of his career, and has created some absolutely incredible laugh-out-loud dramas in the past couple decades, many of which have fared very well at the Oscars. Though his 2017 drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri took home the most Oscar hardware, his films In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths are arguably even better, and are among my favorite films. Mcdonagh is a master of dialogue, blending gut-busting insults, witticisms and jokes with tense confrontation deftly and seamlessly. He is a master of world-building and character development. Mcdonagh's films are imbued with scenery and mysticism from his homeland of Ireland, rich...

  By Michael Momper "When you're lost, people take advantage."     So says Elvis Presley, and his tragic end seems to confirm the statement. In Baz Luhrmann's cinematic retelling of Elvis' life story we find a scapegoat for the death of the King of Rock and Roll, but we also relive the magnetism that made him one of American music's immortal voices and copied-but-never-duplicated performers.     Baz Luhrmann's directing style makes this story come alive with frenetic modern energy. It is clear from the beginning that part of his intent for the period piece is to capture Elvis' style, his glamor and sex appeal, and translate it for a modern audience so that those of us who didn't live during the man's heyday can experience why he was such a cultural phenomenon and why his music was so important. From the early frames of the movie, we begin to see why Elvis' passionate stage persona and firecracker energy were such a watershed moment for many...

 By Graham Craycraft Men is the newest film by writer/director Alex Garland. Garland is best known for his two movies Annihilation and Ex Machina . Both previous films are excellent additions into the modern sci-fi genre. This newest one, Men , is more in line with what I have dubbed as the New Age Horror that leaves cheap jump scares and thin plot lines behind for more psychological and often folk based stories. Think Midsommar , Hereditary , The Witch , and even Lamb . The New Age Horror bring terrifying to a new level, and it is a very exciting time to be in genre. Men is also through A24 production company which if you have read many of our pieces here you know we love A24. I do not love this movie. Men is about a woman, played by Jessie Buckley, who retreats to the English countryside after the suicide of her husband. She wants to treat herself and try to work through the pain of his death. What she finds is not that, however. The men of the town begin to terrorize her s...

By Graham Craycraft The   Northman  is a 2022 Action-adventure movie set in the Viking world around the year 900 AD. From director of  The Witch  and  The Lighthouse , Robert Eggers, we get this brutal, beautiful, and complex action movie. This is not a typical all war with a straightforward plot and a clear protagonist/antagonist. Eggers pulls you in different directions and shows that there is no heart all pure or all corrupt. We all carry in us the power and reality to do good and evil. Alexander Skarsgard, the main character Amleth, had been hunting for a Viking role for some years now and Eggers fit the bill. Eggers cowrote this film with Sjón who recently also helped write  Lamb  with Valdimar Johannsson. This movie is a beast of an epic that has takes the audience on a journey with Amleth as he grows from a boy to a berserker Viking set to avenge his father’s death and save his mother. If you are familiar with Eggers work at all you will kno...

Graham Craycraft Jack White is a household name when it comes to garage rock. He had many years of success with the White Stripes while also working with his two other groups The Dead Weather and his ongoing group The Raconteurs. The Raconteurs’ most recent album Help Us Stranger released in 2019 was the best thing White has released since his 2014 solo release Lazaretto . Both Help Us Stranger and Lazaretto rocked. They felt like a solid continuation of his style that also added in some funk and utilization of sound mixing.  Fear of the Dawn is White’s fourth solo release. His first two ( Blunderbuss and Lazaretto ) were fantastic. Stuff that can go toe to toe with the best of his White Stripes’ stuff. His third release Boarding House Reach was truly awful. Hands down his worst project. Check out my thoughts on that album here . White said that he tries to do something new every time he releases a project, that he doesn’t want to feel like he is doing the same thing on repeat. ...

By Michael Momper I don’t know if  The Outfit  is flashy, snazzy or star-studded enough to be a huge Oscar contender come  awards season, but  suffice it to say that the understated and old-school nature of the film are a strength in every way imaginable.   In Graham Moore’s directorial debut, we return to the gangster film in a subtler, less bombastic manner than most films would dare to do nowadays, at the risk of boring the audience. Moore’s delightfully mysterious story, however, is incredibly involving and claustrophobic. Like Tarantino’s  Reservoir Dogs,  or Lumet’s  12 Angry Men,  this movie could easily be a delightful production on Broadway, as it is very character and dialogue driven with basically one location as the centerpiece for the entire story. The tense direction from Moore brings us intimacy with the  characters, and  fools us with red herrings.  The movie oozes class and panache without being pretentious. It...

  By Michael Momper     Paolo Sorrentino is a modern cinema mastermind. His eye for beauty and grandeur is perhaps unmatched in the film world today, as most clearly evidenced in his movie The Great Beauty and his television series The Young Pope . Every frame is a work of art, full of rich color and sumptuous textures. His work is styled from the template of his idol, Federico Fellini, and the quality of his films are not far off. Dare I say, I enjoyed The Great Beauty even more than any of Fellini's films, many of which are masterpieces. Even from a glance at the trailer of his latest film, The Hand of God , you will get a taste of the striking beauty we are talking about here.     Sorrentino's latest film is a passion project, a semi-autobiographical tale. It tells the story of a young boy, Fabietto, who comes of age through tragedy and myriad shifts in life direction to begin pursuing the art of filmmaking. As the title suggests, throughout the film we get a...