This year we were once again lucky enough to cover the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, and though we came on a bit late, we were able to catch a shorts film block from the festival as well as some features! This year the shorts block was solid, and I took on the #MeToo shorts block. This list of short films covers the topics of sexual assault, rape, toxic masculinity the like.
The gallery of genre entries was great once again and I loved the substance these directors brought to film.
It’s hard to talk about “The Lodge” without giving away too much, but it manages to be more of a haunting drama in the end, than a horror movie about the supernatural. What Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz do is examine the horrors of pure grief and how it can unravel us mentally, and keep us always on the brink of breaking and submitting to pure disturbing madness. “The Lodge” is sure to keep audiences talking, mainly for its incredibly beautiful production design, and absolutely meticulous direction that will draw parallels to “Hereditary.”
With “Black History Month” and “Women in Horror Month” dropping in February, I thought it’d be a lot of fun to post another installment of “Great Minority Movie Heroes,” a list of movie heroes that are also people of color. What started as a one shot list has become a project for me to find diverse movie heroes from various races that people of color can relate to. What are some of your favorites?
Mike Flanagan has managed to become one of the most recurring auteurs for Stephen King’s adaptations, and “Doctor Sleep” is a particularly heavy undertaking. Even for the now seasoned filmmaker, “Doctor Sleep” is a tough artistic task that has to appeal to general audiences, while also tying in to Stanley Kubrick’s original masterpiece, and appeasing King, who went through every length to ensure “Doctor Sleep” was detached from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation. It’s a shame the movie didn’t quite click with audiences and grab higher numbers, as it’s easily my favorite film of 2019, bar none.
Hollywood loves to look for new angles on public domain fairy tales and intellectual properties. They’re always looking for a platform for a brand new franchise, and they either go the horror route or the action route. If one fails, they automatically revert to the other a few years later. “Cinderella” and “Snow White” have been brought to the big and small screen as pseudo-horror movies and action bonanzas, with varying degrees of success. The one fairy tale that hasn’t dodged the massive overhaul for a new generation is “Hansel and Gretel.”
On this episode of “The Online Movie Show,” we consider the remarkable career of Boris Karloff, celebrating his iconic horror films and his diverse dramatic and comic work on screen, stage and television. Film historian Troy Howarth is our guest expert.
Yet another year, yet another series of Oscar nominations where the nominees are somewhat obvious, and the usual suspects. Despite the Oscars’ consistently low ratings, the nominations remain much discussed until the night of the big ceremony, and this year the Academy locked out some considerably great performances by minority actors. This is five great Performances by People of Color that the Academy ignored.
2019 was a surprisingly very good (and busy!) year for pop culture and film. Everything was so breakneck and speedily delivered that it was impossible to keep up. I wish I could have watched all the films I had planned for this list, That said, I did manage to see so much that I had a tough time compiling a definitive top ten. 2019 had so many surprises for movie fans of all kinds and these are ten films from 2019 that made the cut of the top ten for me.
What were some of your favorites? Let us know.