The Blu Spot

The Film: Director Tim Burton, a filmmaker who has become quite synonymous with dark & macabre tales, has delivered a number of classics over the decades, including "Batman," "Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands," "Sleepy Hollow," and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." However, despite his reputation for making somewhat dark movies, he has also given us a few lighter projects along the way like "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," "Ed Wood," and "Big Eyes." An entry in th

The Film: Writer/director Damian McCarthy, who had primarily been known for making short films up until recently, gave us his first feature in 2020 with "Caveat," an effort that received a mixed reception, but was enough to lead to his next project, "Oddity" in 2024. It received better reviews, but in all honesty, it wasn't a particularly memorable horror outing, though it continued to show that he had some potential as a filmmaker. This brings us to his latest effort, "Hokum

The Film: There are very few entertainers in the history of music that have reached the level of superstardom that the great Elvis Presley achieved. With incredibly popular hits like "Love Me Tender," "Jailhouse Rock," and "Hound Dog," his songs (and renditions of others' songs) have delighted & entertained millions around the world for the past 70 years, and as we've recently seen, have captivated the mind of filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, who gave us a biopic of The King back in 2

The Film: Back in 2015, Drew Goddard adapted Andy Weir's epic sci-fi novel "The Martian" for acclaimed director Sir Ridley Scott, resulting in a cinematic triumph praised by critics & audiences, one which was ultimately a major box office success that received an impressive seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture). Eleven years later, Goddard has turned to Weir once again to adapt another of his epic works called "Project Hail Mary," this time for directors Phil Lord

The Film: Todd Haynes is another one of those filmmakers who's not exactly a household name, at least not among more casual movie-going audiences, but over the past 35 years, he's delivered several well-received films that have included "Far from Heaven" (which earned him an Oscar nod for Best Original Screenplay), "I'm Not There," and "Carol" (for which he received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Director). One of his earliest projects, his second film in fact, w

The Film: Over the past 80 years, we've seen just about every conceivable film or TV show that could be made about World War II. From biopics of the major players involved to various missions to key battles, it seems like there couldn't possibly be anything else that hasn't already been tackled at one time or another. This brings us to Anthony Marras' "Pressure," based on the play by David Haig (who co-wrote the script), a peculiar WWII entry that delves into a rather unlikel

The Film: Back in 2023, a little game called "The Exit 8" popped up from Kotake Create with a rather simple premise that had players walking through a metro station tunnel as they try to spot inaccuracies or anomalies in order to make it to the exit. The game received mostly positive reviews, with many praising its realism & horror aspects, while others deemed it too short with little replay value. However, despite such criticisms, filmmaker Genki Kawamura decided to try his

The Film: Legendary filmmaker Milos Forman only gave us a dozen narrative feature films throughout the course of his illustrious career, but within that stunning filmography are classics such as "The Fireman's Ball," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (which earned him his first Oscar for Best Director), and "Amadeus" (one of the greatest films ever made, and one that earned him a second Oscar). At the tail end of his career, armed with a screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larr

The Film: In the pantheon of films with shocking endings, you'd no doubt find many of the usual suspects, such as "The Sixth Sense," the original "Planet of the Apes," "Psycho," and, ironically, "The Usual Suspects." Another that you'd very likely see on that list is Richard Fleischer's 1973 classic dystopian thriller "Soylent Green" (Based on the novel "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison), starring Oscar winner Charlton Heston and Honorary Oscar recipient Edward G. Rob

The Film: Five years ago, Warner Bros. attempted to reboot the "Mortal Kombat" film series with a new cast & creative team, the result of which was a rather misguided take on the material that got bogged down in training montages and seemed to forget that there was supposed to be a tournament involved. However, that only ended up being part of the film's problems as its release was delayed a few months due to COVID, eventually getting released when theaters were still struggl