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| BITCHSLAP STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
32814 |
| Total Ratings: |
250034 |
| Total Reviews: |
28678 |
![[91719669 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?91719669)
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| OVER THE MOON |
"Kids may like it; adults may not be so impressed."
Jay Seaver says... "Glen Keane's job at Disney over three decades (most notably the 1990s) didn't exactly map to a specific one in live action, and you had to wait a little while to see his name in the credits but as the supervising animator and/or character designer for lead characters in "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", "Pocahontas", and "Tarzan", he was in many ways as much the star of those movies as the more easily-referenced voice actors. Maybe that's why "Over the Moon" occasionally feels like an actor's first feature film as a director - the result of someone who has absorbed a lot by watching how others do it from his front row seat but still has that same focus - even though his old job is a much more direct overlap." (more)
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| REBECCA (2020) |
"Not bad at all, but why?"
Jay Seaver says... "It's been long enough since I've seen the Alfred Hitchcock version of "Rebecca" that it's hard to compare it to Ben Wheatley's new adaptation directly, but just knowing it exists and remembering that it's brilliant makes this one feel unnecessary. Lavishly shot as it is and despite it seldom actually falling below "pretty good", the original version can't help but loom over every decision Wheatley and company make here. Kind of amusing, I guess, given that this is "Rebecca" we're talking about, and I almost wonder if that meta-narrative amused the filmmakers throughout." (more)
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| LEAP |
"Certain sports cliches are universal, but so is the excitement of it."
Jay Seaver says... "Sports movies have the same problem as sports broadcasting in a lot of ways - particularly, in how both too much desire to make the results a reflection of one's chosen narrative and too much worship of the tough-love coach. Pair that up with a story meant to get the audience waving flags, and you can wind up with something deceptive and even damaging to young athletes looking for heroes. There are moments in "Leap" when the filmmakers seem very well aware of these shackles, even if they can't quite see their way from escaping them entirely. And it's not like they have to, because most sports stories worth telling have a great final stretch built-in." (more)
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| RUN (2020) |
"Puts familiar thriller pieces into clever new places."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED VIA THE 2020 NIGHTSTREAM FESTIVAL: A couple years ago, director Aneesh Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian made what is probably the best of the recent group of movies presented entirely as what appears on various characters's screens in "Searching", and for their follow-up, they don't necessarily entirely go the opposite way, but one of the more suspenseful scenes in "Run" is built around its heroine trying to do some pre-internet-style search. It's a nifty bit in a film that's got a few of them, packed into a tight little package." (more)
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| PELICAN BLOOD |
"Impressive when indie; less so when creepy."
Jay Seaver says... "If you live in the Boston area (and maybe others), "Pelican Blood" is available for streaming via two separate routes: The Nightstream streaming film festival, a cooperative effort between local genre-oriented fests canceled by the coronavirus pandemic, and the Coolidge Corner Theatre's partnership with Goethe-Institut to present noteworthy German-language films, which is generally material perceived as classier than that. I'm curious as to which group finds it more satisfying; it is by turns exceptionally earnest and deeply weird, and does a better job of moving between the two than being both at once." (more)
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| SAVE YOURSELVES! |
"It doesn't get much more randomly silly than an alien invasion."
Jay Seaver says... ""Save Yourselves!" is an enjoyable-enough bit of sci-fi-slash-millennial self parody that starts to run out of steam well before it hits the 90-minute "real feature" mark, but makes it there because of the on-screen pair being pretty likable despite being thin and basic types. A good high concept and a good idea of where one's target audience and the targets of one's jokes intersect can get a movie fairly far." (more)
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| DEAD |
"Charming, goofy supernatural comedy mystery."
Jay Seaver says... "Not a lot of movies simultaneously get right into things and immediately establish a fun, laid-back feel the way that "Dead" does, especially among the sort of supernatural comedies that most desperately want to pull that off. That confidence lets it dive into its goofy premise quickly enough to have time to explore and expand as well as fit in a bunch of gags despite running just 90 minutes. The group doesn't always make it look easy, but they give the audience a pretty entertaining film on the main." (more)
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| DEVIL ALL THE TIME, THE |
"Lighten up, Francis."
Rob Gonsalves says... "Netflix’s synopsis line for 'The Devil All the Time' tells us the movie unfolds in a “backwoods town teeming with corruption and brutality,” and boy, ain’t that the godforsaken truth." (more)
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SCREAMFEST LA (2020 EDITION)
by Erik Childress and Jay Seaver |
| "Los Angeles' Screamfest has been taking place from Oct. 6 to Oct. 15 this year and below is a sampling of some of its offerings. Watch this space for more to come." (more) |
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'JULES, IF YOU GIVE THAT FUCKIN' NIMROD FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS, I'M GONNA SHOOT HIM ON GENERAL PRINCIPLE.'
- Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction
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