Blue Ridge Ben

  I know that I usually start reviews with a personal anecdote of some sort, but this one is kind of a head scratcher. My only real ties in my life to the Soviet Union are just a lifelong, morbid fascination with the Cold War era and rocking a hammer and sickle pin on my backpack as middle schooler into punk rock. However, I do like a lot of Soviet era cartoons which are a special kind of surreal and I really like some film movements of Soviet states on the fringe, and what Soviet films I’ve seen often have very strong and striking visuals. So when I saw that Ivan the Terrible Parts 1 and 2 were on Max, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to do something different for this blog even if it might be a bit shorter than my typical review. Obviously, the biggest and most valid criticism of the film is how deeply unsubtle it is in most ways, but particularly when it comes to defending and propagating the ideals of Stalinism. As a member of the left, I’m well aware there are factions t...

  In my Leprechaun review, which admittedly was not among my more popular posts but here I am doing the sequel regardless preaching the gospel of...offensive Irish stereotypes?, I talked about how much I enjoyed the series growing up having the first two or three on VHS and frequently haunting the horror aisle when we’d make our regular trips to Hollywood Video where I picked up some others. Going in I remembered this sequel actually improving on the original and upon this rewatch I definitely think it does in parts. Going from a young Jennifer Aniston, who hadn’t quite found her acting comfort zone yet but was serviceable enough in the poorly written role she played, to the painfully bad Shevonne Durkin was a huge downgrade in the female lead role and I think they realized that as in the second half of the film she just disappears for huge chunks of it. The film doesn’t really do anything to explain how the Leprechaun found himself living on Houdini’s property in Los Angeles aft...

  My mom grew up among the slasher golden era of the 80s, so she adored the genre and many of the 2000+ VHS tapes she had around for a lot of my childhood were various slasher franchises and what we didn’t have by 7 or 8 I was begging my parents to rent for me from Hollywood Video or Movie Starz on a regular basis. So it goes without saying that Scream coming in and revitalizing the entire genre’s popularity for a handful of years was a big deal in our household and I was probably very young the first time I saw it which was likely not long after it came out on tape in probably ‘97, same with the sequels in later years. I then proceeded to watch it so many times across my childhood well into adulthood that practically every line and scene and even delivery are memorized at that point, which made stepping back to write as objective a review as I can somewhat difficult but I found the more of a critical eye I applied to it the more it worked out. As always starting with the negat...