“‘Blade II,’ Still Sharp”

If you want anything done right, including a “Blade 2” retrospective, you gotta do it yourself. Continue reading →

“‘Pacific Rim: The Black’: The Companion Piece To Guillermo Del Toro’s Original Film That Fans Deserve”

I guess it takes a code black (the Pacific Rim TV series) to make up for a code blah (the Pacific Rim sequel). Continue reading →

Issa López Brings Back the Darkness of Fairy Tales in “Tigers Are Not Afraid”

There’s about a 99% chance that tigers wrote the title for this film, but I’m not going to be the one to call them on it. Continue reading →

“Crimson Peak Showed Us What Unapologetic, Award-Winning Horror Looks Like”

For those of you who are not yet sick to the point of barfing from hearing Andy kvetch and piss and moan about how bad “Hereditary” is…here’s another piece where Andy kvetches and pisses and moans about how bad “Hereditary” is. Continue reading →

The Shape of a Career: Sally Hawkins

Those of you who know me have probably picked up on my enthusiasm for literally everything Sally Hawkins does, even things she does in movies that aren’t particularly good (though it’s rare she shows up in movies that aren’t particularly good, excepting Godzilla). So, because I love Hawkins so gosh-darn much, I went deep on the … Continue reading →

‘The Shape of Water’ Is Wonder and Nostalgia Done Right

For my second piece about one of my top three favorite movies of the year, being Guillermo del Toro’s brilliant The Shape of Water, I took to the pages of The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog to talk about the element of his work that I find so compelling: His unfailing sense of wonder and awe. No … Continue reading →

Review: The Shape of Water, 2017, dir. Guillermo del Toro

Well, you can probably guess how this intro blurb is going to go. I can’t help it. Guillermo del Toro’s movies speak to me. His grasp on the language of cinema is such that his movies always hit me right in my brain-spot. (Tangential truth: I pity people who don’t vibe with his work. They’re … Continue reading →

Best of Criterion’s New Releases, October 2016

October’s slate of releases on The Criterion Collection is pretty great, but maybe don’t take that from me, because I am a Guillermo del Toro partisan: Take it from all of us at Paste Magazine’s Criterion round-up team. October isn’t just about del Toro, though it mostly is. It’s also about Kenji Mizoguchi, Luis García … Continue reading →

Review: Extraordinary Tales, 2015, dir. Raul Garcia

“Extraordinary Tales, a seasonal piece of spookery by Raul Garcia, means well but haunts only half-heartedly. The film is a meta-monument to the works of Boston-born, Baltimore-dead Gothic-Romantic wunderkind Edgar Allan Poe, chiefly his short stories but with a side helping of poems: “Annabel Lee” and “A Dream Within a Dream” start us off alongside … Continue reading →

Review: Crimson Peak, 2015, dir. Guillermo del Toro

“Don’t buy a ticket to Crimson Peak expecting a horror movie. Buy a ticket expecting a Guillermo del Toro movie. Your mileage with the film will improve exponentially, sort of like if you traded in your Bentley for a Tesla. With del Toro, “horror” is a misleading label applied mostly by critics and film geeks. … Continue reading →

Review: Rise of the Guardians, 2012, dir. Peter Ramsey

Thinking about Rise of the Guardians, Dreamworks’ latest offering, I can’t say for sure whether Pete Ramsey mixed a heart-warming, energetic childrens’ film with a story of secular subversion or vice versa. Most likely, it’s the former; there’s little doubting that Rise of the Guardians exists first and foremost to entertain and dazzle theaters full … Continue reading →

2011 Rising: My Films to Watch (pt.2)

Part 2 of my 2011 preview commences…now! (Part 1 can be perused here, at your leisure.) X-Men: First Class— By happy coincidence, the first trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s period prequel to the X-Men franchise hit just last week, and guess what? It looks really good. Focusing specifically on the relationship between Erik Lehnsherr, the man … Continue reading →

The Breaking of the Fellowship: Guillermo’s Departure From “The Hobbit”

Two weeks and change have passed since TheOneRing.net’s announcement of Guillermo del Toro’s decision to relinquish director’s duties on the adaptation of The Hobbit currently brewing in pre-production. With the initial impact of the unfavorable turn of events wearing off, the time seems ripe to examine the positives and the negatives of his departure. To … Continue reading →

Review: Splice, 2010, dir. Vincenzo Natali

Bizarre genius. Those two words may best describe Vincenzo Natali’s decade-in-the-making Frankenstein  update, Splice, an imperfect movie executed with the exact amount of gusto needed to transcend its own inadequacies. Make no mistake, Splice is flawed, but those aspects that underwhelm never impede the film from being thoughtful and satisfying in all of its weird, … Continue reading →

The Cinematic Decade: My Top 25 of the 2000s (pt 5)

Coming down the home stretch of this series. For those just tuning in: Part one, part two, part three, and part four for your reading pleasure. 5. Knocked Up: Ben is a lovable stoner loser with no direction or genuine ambition; Alison is a career-oriented young woman who recently received an on-air promotion at E! … Continue reading →