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Tag Archive for ‘SXSW 2023’

Mike’s Review: Satan Wants You (SXSW 2023)

Mike’s Review: Satan Wants You (SXSW 2023)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

🚫 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

If you know horror you know Satan. You might even say horror and Satan are best pals. They’ve been hanging around for a long time always pushing boundaries and always trying something cheeky and new. 

Sometimes this friendship is on the down-low and sometimes Satan gets a pinch uppity and decides to out the entire relationship. Or at least his (or her) relationship to the general public. When that happens it’s a messy and ugly affair.
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Mike’s Review: The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (SXSW 2023)

Mike’s Review: The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (SXSW 2023)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore and violence. 

A hundred years on we’ve been blessed and not-so-blessed with hundreds, or maybe thousands or Frankenstein-related films. Remakes, reboots, re-imaginations,  reworking of the Mary Shelley source material, and even re-re-working of Shelley’s book. The Frankenstein mythos has comfortable slipped into our collective horror zeitgeist.
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Mike’s Review: Late Night with the Devil (SXSW 2023)

Mike’s Review: Late Night with the Devil (SXSW 2023)

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild gore.

If you’ve even run across Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, or Dinah Shore you’ll know that they all roiled in a very specific talk show space in the 1970s. Talk shows were smarmy, boozy, and informal affairs that gave audiences time each day to let their hair down and forget about the doldrums of the Viet Nam War and the crushing presence of socio-economic injustice in America. 

These talk shows were also incredibly competitive. Johnny Carson was king, but there was a lot of room under him to vie for advertisers and Neilson ratings. Late Night with the Devil follows that exact story line, by exploring frustrated talk show host Jack Delroy played pitch perfectly by David Dastmalchian.
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Mike’s Review: Only The Good Survive (SXSW 2023)

Mike’s Review: Only The Good Survive (SXSW 2023)

★★.5 out of ★★★★★

🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for mild comedic gore.

Midway through Only the Good Survive the local sheriff and Dennis Miller impersonator (Frederick Weller) is interrogating young Brea Dunlee (Sidney Flanigan) about her involvement in a string of ritualistic murders and asks “…is this a comedy or a horror?” While the film chugs along like an Edgar Wright-inspired effort, this very sentiment is really the film’s problem. It wants to be both. Unfortunately, juggling these two juxtaposed art forms is a tricky bit of business that is almost never accomplished.

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