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| BITCHSLAP STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
14267 |
| Total Ratings: |
225395 |
| Total Reviews: |
28677 |
![[97281080 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?97281080)
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| CANDYMAN (2021) |
"Survivor"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Released in the fall of 1992, between the conclusion of the straightforward slasher horror cycle and the beginning of the ironic slasher horror cycle, “Candyman,” Bernard Rose’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden,” was a genre rarity for its time (and now, for that matter)—a film that not only had ambitions to be more than just a simple gross-out scare movie but actually delivered. As a straightforward genre exercise, Rose presented an elegantly made, gripping and occasionally quite scary work that didn’t resort to cheap scares or barf-bag visuals to get a rise out of viewers. However, by transplanting the story of a grad student whose investigation of an urban legend about a supernatural killer known as Candyman from England to the notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects of Chicago, Rose was able to work in the real-life tragedies of that area into a narrative that effectively tapped into themes of race and class in America as well as the ways that the horrors of our past never truly go away. The result was both spooky and socially conscious and while it may not have hit the box-office stratosphere as other genre film franchises (though it would spawn a pair of sequels, both of which I saw and of which I recall nothing else), it nevertheless went on to become a cult favorite over the years." (more)
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| WHITE AS SNOW |
"Belle Of The Balls"
Peter Sobczynski says... "If you have been longing to see a version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” in which Snow White ends up having vigorous sex with the majority of the dwarves, your prayers have been answered with “White As Snow,” an utterly bewildering import from French filmmaker Anne Fontaine with a premise so loopy that it almost has to be seen to be believed, not that I would exactly suggest anything that extreme." (more)
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| DEMONIC |
"a.k.a. District Nein"
Peter Sobczynski says... "When “District 9” came out of nowhere to become a surprise Oscar-nominated sleeper hit in 2009, I liked it well enough, though perhaps not as much as some of my colleagues, but noted that the biggest flaw in writer-director Neil Blomkamp’s debut was that while he certainly had a number of intriguing ideas, he burned through them at such a relentless pace that he more or less exhausted them all by the time he hit the hour mark and had nothing new to offer in the second half. Little did I suspect that this criticism would end up serving as a fairly keen analysis for Blomkamp’s subsequent career, which has so far failed spectacularly at living up to his early promise. “Elysium” (2013) was a tired futuristic take on the eternal clash between the haves and the have-nots that did little more than recycle bits for other and generally better films. That said, at least it was better than “Chappie” (2016) a tale of a robot designed to serve as a police droid that learns to think and feel for itself that was so insufferable that it made one long wistfully for the comparatively dignified and original likes of “Short Circuit 2.” With his latest effort, “Demonic” shifts genre gears to a sci-fi/horror hybrid but still fails to halt his downward creative slide, coming up with a mess so tedious that it almost makes one long wistfully for the likes of “Chappie.”" (more)
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| HABIT (2021) |
"The Desolation Of Smug"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Perhaps in some parallel universe, Bella Thorne is having the career that her former co-star and fellow Disney Channel alumnus Zendaya is currently experiencing with highly anticipated film and television projects, awards and the like. Alas, this is not the universe that we live in and so instead, she finds herself in things like “Habit,” a film so egregiously awful that even thought Zendaya has already appeared in two of the worst films of this year—“Malcolm & Marie” and “Space Jam,” for those of you who have successfully managed to block them out—she can still claim to have the upper hand because even those gumdrops don’t manage to plunge the depths that this one does." (more)
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| RAGING FIRE |
"Good Hong Kong action, whether you like kung fu or guns."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED AT THE 2021 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL & NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL: "Raging Fire" arrives in theaters about a year after its director's death, and it must be an odd thing to leave behind a legacy like that of Benny Chan Muk-Sing: Some romance, some comedy, a weird kids' movie, but mostly mayhem, three decades or so in the movie business of putting together a string of punches, kicks, gunshots, and explosions for maximum excitement. Some filmmakers spend their later years using the chops they've developed on such crowd-pleasers to do something more personal or "important", but Chan passed too early for that. Perhaps it's fitting that his last work is some high-quality action that still ends with a question of whether things could have turned out differently." (more)
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| FREE GUY |
"Games Without Frontiers"
Peter Sobczynski says... "“Free Guy” tells a story that revolves in part around a staggeringly unique and ambitious computer software code that has been stolen and debased to serve as the basis for just another dopey game filled with explosions, car chases and shootouts. This is ironic because that is pretty much the same thing that happens to the film itself. It has a intriguing concept at its center but, save for a couple of moments, it has no real idea of what to do with it and is instead simply content to offer up an increasingly tiresome jumble of overblown special effects and elements borrowed from other, better films that is never quite as smart or clever as it clearly believes it to be." (more)
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| SUICIDE SQUAD, THE |
"That's better. Still not really great, but better."
Jay Seaver says... ""The Suicide Squad" is better than its article-free predecessor from five years back, but that's not exactly a titanic improvement, and it suffers from the same problem: For all that there's a solid core of comic book fans that go crazy for more R-rated power fantasies and assembling various characters in a shared universe's roster - they've probably been a big part in keeping a fair number of comics shops afloat during lean years - I suspect that most people respond to superheroics as larger-than-life expressions of ideals clashing, a grand and abstracted battle rather than a detailed and bloody one. But the latter is all that something like The Suicide Squad can offer, and the fact that James Gunn is in a better position to realize an adaptation without compromise than David Ayer was can't overcome that." (more)
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| ESCAPE FROM MOGADISHU |
"(Time to Get) Out of Africa"
Jay Seaver says... "Ryoo Seung-Wan's "Escape from Mogadishu" is primarily being touted as an action movie, although it is more a film that meticulously builds up to the big action sequence at its climax. A minor distinction, perhaps, but it doesn't hurt to set one's expectations accordingly: It's not a non-stop thrill ride (and it's worth noting that the original Korean title is just "Mogadishu"), but Ryoo sure knows how to let the audience leave the theater on a high note." (more)
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'ARCHIE WAS THE BITCH AND JUGHEAD WAS THE BUTCH -- THAT'S WHY JUGHEAD WEARS THE CROWN-LOOKING HAT ALL THE TIME : HE THE KING OF QUEEN ARCHIE'S WORLD.'
- Hooper X, Chasing Amy
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