Double Feature

Off the beaten path of early 80s slasher films. The weirdest Halloween of our lives continues with two non-traditional halloween horror films. Three robots get together for good old fashion mall-cop brutality. Their victim? No, not the Bloc in Downtown Los Angeles, but instead a mall in the valley that looks suspiciously like the Beverly Center. Bloody Birthday as an experimental slasher film that was released before there were rules for this kind of thing. What happened with the 80s slasher films no one wanted to franchise? Why did some slasher films get franchises and others did not? Continue reading →

A look at pageants, adolescence, and outrage. Cuties, the Sundance film from France, garnered needless controversy when it accidentally became a trending topic. People on Twitter who don’t know what a movie is. Originally titled Mignonnes, Cuties is a sometimes-sweet sometimes-heartbreaking story of an 11 year old girl using dance to break free from her family’s conservative religious values and find her own identity. Save-the-children-gate only seems to go after people who aren’t pedophiles and suspiciously over-targets black female storytellers. Probably just a coincidence. Drop Dead Gorgeous disappears from planet Earth. The ephemeral nature of streaming services. 90s casting and a miraculous group Continue reading →

And they say, where are the parents? Troubled kids in less-troubled times. Honey Boy has a lot to say about parenthood and what could be looked at as the grey shades of abuse. Pushing the logline further. The film as a secret insight into the mind and method of an actor. Super Dark Times, super good title. The new wave of movies about kids-on-bikes. A return to one of Double Feature’s favorite genres, something about kids and a raft. A single inciting incident creates extremely divergent paths for the two protagonists. The one person in Super Dark Times who just doesn’t get their due credit. Continue reading →

Exploitation films amidst a time of social justice. Falling in an out of love with exploitation. Chicago’s cult cinema scene in the early 2000s. Hard Ticket to Hawaii, sexploitation, and cringey stuff that’s still part of American football? The dirty feelings talking about the exploitation subgenre “blaxploitation” today. The Human Tornado is an underseen kunfu action comedy. Rap, hiphop, spoken word, jive talk, and whatever it is where you randomly break in rhyme during your action sequences. More than just Dolemite – the life and career of Rudy Ray Moore. When an artist has to die for people to learn about them. The influence of Rudy Ray Moore. Continue reading →

Fuck the law. The 2008 film Hunger, about the second hunger strike by Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands. Fassbender, not eating, and abusing the audience. After checking his car for bonds, a cop no one wants to hang out with exits the frame so audiences can hang out with Michael Fassbender. Liam Cunningham as a man with a beard sitting at a table talking and talking and talking. How context sets up a long take.The Silent Bob trick. If Beal Street Could Talk it would tell you not to make cheap obnoxious jokes about it’s title. How the non-linear narrative makes the situation even more crushing. Here’s a bunch of really specific bad things, the good time was there but yada yada yada, and then here’s some more really awful things to dwell on. Continue reading →