Author: Cinemaniac

Prometheus (2012) Re-Appraisal

To anyone familiar with the film, one of my favorite scenes in Alien occurs right after entering the boomerang-shaped spaceship, the Derelict. Inside, the ribbed, bowel-like walls of its corridors lead to the ceiling of a massive dome. The explorers, then only responding to a distress signal, rappel down to an eggs nest surrounding the fossilized space jockey—the ship’s pilot. The group return to their ship and the rest is history more or less untold as far as subsequent titles allowed. Continue reading →

It Comes At Night

If I had one bone to pick with Trey Edward Shults it is that he delivered the almost perfect cinematic undertaking only to abruptly break pattern when it behooved sensibility not to; right near the end. How can you write about a horror film with palpable scares and an unresolved diversion without outright denouncing it, because this is precisely the feeling this chamber piece had left me with? Continue reading →

El Topo (1070)

“Credit the sixties for giving us the acid strip, jazz and now the Western,” I assume was the opening line of many an El Topo review had there been edgy online publications like Cinemaholism in 1970. Alas there wasn’t. And so it was now, in 2017, certainly overdue but not quite too late, that somebody had the opportunity to open with those precise words. And if it were up to me I’d go one further except modern time constraints prevent me from doling out more puns. Continue reading →

Thesis on a Homicide (2013)

Your reception to Thesis on a Homicide will vary depending on your appreciation for ambiguity and tolerance for redundancy. Thankfully, Thesis keeps both criteria to one instance of each. But before another word is said, it is incumbent upon your boy to point out that this is a film literal in name and intentions. There are no thematic allusions or double meanings. Thesis, you guessed it, revolves around a law school murder with the added caveat of the thesis in question being an actual fucking murder investigation! The school of applied sciences, indeed. Political sciences, that is. Granted, the story (ahem) freely plagiarizes a similarly conceived film by none other than Chile film ambassador to Spain meaning not even the colossal Andes range can stop these two nations from adhering to boundaries. Continue reading →

The Descent (2005) Re-Appraisal

It is something of an ongoing (budding) practice here at Cinemaholism to not only take a respected critic up on their recommendation via the films they review—usually favorably—but to attempt the same. And what better way to uphold tradition than by keeping a focus on films I’d seen some time back to discover whether the reception has changed? Think of it as the meta in film reviews; reviewing my own mental review. Real talk though, the viewing habits of film freaks allow for a variety of consumption patterns. You can watch them in marathons of one particular director’s films, by movement, genre, or year of release, etc. Besides it makes the site portfolio that much more dynamic and compelling in its content for the time 30 hits per day comes. Haha. Not that I do a write-up on every single film I see, but having just gotten finished watching the spelunking nightmare The Descent I’m amped to put the final word on a one-time personal favorite. Oops, guess that gave away which way the verdict is headed. But I liked The Descent very much in 2006, as it left me with a visceral after-effect. It was a gut-punch of a movie then and still is today. Depending on which ending you saw first, a picture has never spoken a thousand words so resoundingly as its last frame, and luckily for me, I believe I saw that version in both cases. Little things like this, when they tie into the whole piece, do wonders to an otherwise frugally set film. Continue reading →

Wild Coast, Eastern Cape

Given that Cinemaholism is primarily a hotbed of film coverage, well, a fledgling one albeit half-assed, logic and proven pattern dictate there are few better ways to usher in change than with some variety. I know it’s been dormant on that front sinc we last spoke, and here we are now. I’ve been to Africa. I’ve done Africa. Not only that. I’m about to show you the T-shirt, too, son. And so it was that the first of many aborted attempts at some diversions, material wise, mainly in the form of podcast and sports coverage, has become… the first travelog entry! Dum, Dum, Dum. But wait, it gets better because there’s more! We also got Dubai in a separate post to decide whether all the hype is real or overblown. But first things first, I’ll get the first leg of my trip out of the way, first. Continue reading →

Carancho (2010)

Man, Ricardo Darin is on a roll. Seems like every movie I’ve seen of his—well, all of two so far—has him pulling some major poon at some point in the plot. In impoverished Argentina, Carancho is the colloquialism for ambulance chasers, or a rubberneck on a mission (the mission being to eke out incidental living from someone else’s misfortune). It also translates to ‘vulture,’ after the local bird. Continue reading →