April 13, 2026 “Cold Moon” (*1/2 out of four) was a soulless supernatural suspense thriller about a young woman who is murdered in a small town which leads to a series of distrust amongst the town residents (Josh Stewart, Frank Whaley, Robbie Kay, and others) over whose guilty and who may be hiding secrets. Full of mumbo-jumbo and pretentious gothic themes that result in film drowning in its own dreary excesses. Christopher Lloyd is wasted as a wheelchair-bound elderly. Watch “Bitter Moon” again instead. Continue reading →
April 13, 2026 “Unrequited” (** out of four) was a slick but shallow, empty suspense psychodrama about a hotel maid (Zulay Henao) with a dark past who falls in love with a co-worker (Flex Alexander); they immerse themselves in a steamy and erotic affair but this soon leads to a series of consequences of duplicity and deception that makes them and everyone around them second-guess one another. Directed with some style and suave flair by Chris Stokes but is hampered by its routine script and storyline. Never rises above the mire but is better-than-most of its kind. Continue reading →
April 3, 2026 “Love At What Co$t” (*1/2 out of four) was a sordid underworld melodrama not worth the cost of a rental about a single mother (Diamond Starr) with a secret life as a stripper who meets a record producer (Kaamel Hasaun) who draws her into a world of duplicity, sex, and danger that she finds hard to turn away from. Routine enough to insult anyone’s intelligence and with ugly dialogue and violence shoved in your face in equal measure. Starr also directed, executive produced, and casted but I sure hope this clunker wasn’t a labor of “love” for her. Continue reading →
April 3, 2026 “Rockabye” (** out of four) was a gritty but limited street melodrama about a woman (Annie Ngosi Ilonzeh) whose father (Donald Brumfield, Jr.) dies by suicide but the more she investigates the more she begins to wonder if there was more than meets the eye especially as both her and his friends (Claudia Jordan, Garret Davis, and others) start dying one-by-one. Fast-paced enough to keep it watchable but covers all-too-familiar territory and thus never fully detonates. Similar to director Chris Stokes’ 2023 similarly titled “Rock The Boat.” Continue reading →
April 3, 2026 “The Final Party” (* out of four) was a grindingly ugly, unpleasant horror psychodrama about a group of elite scholarship students (Elia Berthoud, David Christian, and others) whose graduation party is crashed by a group of psychopath cultists (Arya Shahbazy and Adem Yilmaz) who want to re-enact their childhood torments. Or something like that. Viewers who make it to the end of this mess will feel tormented enough on their own. Brutal film full of in-your-face violence and made even worse by overwrought acting. Continue reading →
April 3, 2026 “Bitter Desire” (** out of four) was a lurid suspense melodrama about a policeman (Nathan Hill) who is injured in the line of duty and obtains a home health nurse (Shar Dee) but is unaware that she is the girlfriend of the criminal he recently arrested and put away for life. Promising storyline has good acting but is bungled by ineffectual direction and weak production values. Film’s final line is a real howl though, if you make it that far Continue reading →
April 3, 2026 “Aladdin’s Revenge” (*1/2 out of four) was a less-than-magical follow-up about the sole survivor (Devanny Pinn) from the original who finds the evil lamp and has to shield it from her friends (Troy Escoda, Dan Cade, Tiffany Macdonald, and others) to prevent it from granting an additional 3 fatal wishes. Clunky and silly time-waster will really rub you the wrong way. The 1992 Disney original has more scares and thrills than this does. Continue reading →
March 28, 2026 “Anaconda: Blood Coil” (*1/2 out of four) was a listless continuation of the series about a group of friends (Belle Taylor, Olivia Burley, Page Haim, and others) who go on vacation in the Amazon and are terrorized by multiple anacondas who are on the prowl and scowl their every move. Recommended ONLY for those who thought the 1997 original wasn’t that great because this makes that one look like “Halloween” by comparison. CGI snake effects aren’t bad considering film’s threadbare budget but the snakes are otherwise the best actors (and characters) in the film. Continue reading →
March 28, 2026 “Betty’s Revenge” (* out of four) was an insufferable horror dud about a group of college seniors (Samuel J. Bennett, Faith McKinstry, Emma Claire Dykes, and others) who stumble onto the title character Betty (Hannah Fierman) who is a former cabaret owner who has evolved into a sociopathic/psychopathic killer who (yawn) stalks-and-slashes all of them one by one. Full of annoying characters with even more annoying in-your-face acting but even this doesn’t keep the movie from being dull. This “revenge” is preferable to Montezuma’s- but not by much. Continue reading →
March 28, 2026 “Axes And Os” (*1/2 out of four) was an utterly generic and forgettable slasher thriller about four college friends (Jamie Bernadette, Stephanie Kirves, Cass Huckabay, and Heather Fraley) on a weekend getaway who are hunted by an axe murderer but they soon turn the tables on him and the hunter becomes the hunted. Litany and library of horror movie cliches from (off the top of my head) “Sleepaway Camp”, “Deliverance”, and “Friday The 13th.” Duds like this were much more fun in the 80’s. Continue reading →
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