Posts Tagged ‘horror’
 

 

Toronto Film Festival 2024 Reviews: “Heretic” & “Emilia Perez”

  HERETIC (A24 – Nov. 15):  A nifty piece of philosophical horror from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the writers of the original A Quiet Place.  The set-up is almost fairy tale in its simplicity.  A pair of young wo...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance 2022 Reviews: “When You Finish Saving The World” & “Fresh”

  It’s the second consecutive Virtual Sundance, with safety, convenience and isolation in place of weather, shuttle buses and community.  Over the next several days, we’ll be bringing you reviews of several Su...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Forgiven,” “Dashcam” & “Montana Story”

  THE FORGIVEN (Focus/Universal – TBD):  In 1963, Pauline Kael famously wrote a piece entitled “The Sick-Soul-Of-Europe Parties,” and almost 60 years later, if you add the US to the guest list, John Mich...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “In the Earth” & “Knocking”

  IN THE EARTH (Neon):  After his foray into more commercial cinema with the Netflix remake of Rebecca that didn’t go very well, Ben Wheatley has returned to the stranger and more experimental style of his earlier f...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Strain”

  FX’s THE STRAIN is doing something that The Walking Dead and its cohorts in the undead genre won’t:  telling a (more or less) coherent story from beginning to end, and exiting when it’s over.  During ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Pilot + 1 Review: “Fear the Walking Dead”

  FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 6PM on AMC   Previously… on FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Something odd is happening in Los Angeles, years before and a continent away from Rick Grimes and his troupe of survivors. ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Strain”

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX Despite its contemporary NY setting, there’s an old-world charm to the horrors of THE STRAIN, with its silver bullets and sword-canes.  They come courtesy of series godfather and co...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Zoo”

  ZOO:  Tuesday 9PM on CBS – Change the Channel Of all the broadcast networks, CBS is the biggest fan of branding.  It has its procedural hours during the regular season, its working-class half-hours (which are eit...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Salem”

  Sometimes one piece of casting is what it takes to turn a TV series around, and for SALEM, that was the arrival, about midway through the season’s 13 episodes, of Stephen Lang as the Reverend Increase Mather, fathe...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “The Strain”

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX – Potential DVR Alert Although capable of finer things (notably his Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth), the expert filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is one of those directors–you ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Hannibal”

  Considering how defiantly unlike the rest of broadcast television HANNIBAL is, not to mention its love of metaphor, it made sense for the show’s Season 2 finale to air entirely on its own, separate from the last ep...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

NIELSENWAR 2014-15 Trailer Review: ABC’s “The Whispers”

  THE WHISPERS:  Midseason TBD on ABC THE FACTS:  Something is taking possession of American children and making them do very bad things–like “kill your parents” bad things.  They may be on their way t...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Premiere Review: “Rosemary’s Baby” (Part 1)

  No one could seriously imagine that the TV remake of ROSEMARY’S BABY would come close to Roman Polanski’s 1968 masterpiece, so let’s get the obvious over with in a single paragraph.  (The amazing thing...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Pilot Review: “Penny Dreadful”

  PENNY DREADFUL:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime starting May 11 – Potential DVR Alert Showtime’s PENNY DREADFUL is an elegant addition to TV’s horror canon.  It’s been created and its initial 8-hour se...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “American Horror Story: Coven”

  This year’s COVEN season of AMERICAN HORROR STORY was as cohesive as the proudly bizarre  series is ever likely to get.  That entailed a slight shortage of the WTF variety moments that have made the two previous ...
by Mitch Salem