One of the series, along with DMZ,  that made Brian Wood a “household name” among comic-book fans was his  Viking-era epic Northlanders, so when word got out that he was going to be returning to that same time period with his artistic collaborator from The Massive, Garry Brown, in tow, for a new book from Image called Black Road, folks — including yours truly — were pretty well stoked. Wood’s few carefully-chosen words on the (then-) forthcoming title indicated that it was going to be less a work of historically-plausible fiction and more just, well, completely made up, but no matter — if you feel the need to demand “accuracy” from your four-color “floppies” you’re about a hundred years too late, anyway.

Wood was going back to the proverbial well in terms of tone and temperament, to be sure, but the locales, personages, and even some…

Too often these days, up-and-coming directors (or those determined to convince us that they fit that description) try to reinvent the wheel by giving us something we’ve purportedly “never seen before” —and while ambition is great and all, many (hell, most) of them would be better served by honing their craft on the tried-and-true before going off the deep end in a vain attempt to knock our socks off. Besides, I hate to be the one to break it to you recent film school grads, but there really is nothing new under the sun anyway, and you can just as easily “find your voice” —and get the recognition you so desperately crave — by working within pre-established genre confines as you can blowing the whole damn thing up/throwing the baby out with the bathwater/pick your cliche.

Case in point : Mike Flanagan. He’s directed three feature films now (actually, I…

Some years back, Dave Sim conducted (via correspondence, if memory serves me correctly) a lengthy and fascinating interview with Alan Moore that he ran over the space of several issues as a backup feature in Cerebus. Moore was, at the time, in the midst of writing From Hell, and one idea that he kept coming back to as he expounded upon his creative process was something that he called “high-altitude mapping,” which is sort of a convenient shorthand term for “when you stand back far enough from the situation, there is no distinct separation between dreams and reality.”

It’s a powerful notion, when you really stop to think about it — after all, isn’t the whole point of living to “chase our dreams”? And don’t the limits imposed on those dreams by daily life’s practicalities whittle down and otherwise confine the scope of them over time? When you’re…

Let’s be honest — there’s something inherently creepy about those mini-storage places. They’re big, cavernous, concrete tombs where people store the detritus of their lives — shit that they probably could just as well get rid of, but don’t have the time or inclination to part with for whatever reason. Most of us have entirely too much stuff, it’s true, but whatever happened to having a garage sale once in awhile to shed some of our excess baggage? I’m all for sentimentality, but seriously — if things are getting to the point where your possessions are crowding out your living space, it’s time to take a good, hard look at whether or not you own your things or they own you.

Indie horror director Matt Winn takes this trope to its logical conclusion in his just-released straight-to-video number The Hoarder, and adds an entirely logical wrinkle — what…

Occasionally, a critic — even one of the strictly amateur variety such as myself — is compelled to offer an opinion that makes them feel like a bit of an asshole. Maybe there’s a flick you didn’t care too much for, but you’ve gotten to know one or more of the principles involved in its production either via social media or, in rare instances, the real, actual world, and they seem like genuinely nice folks who you’d hate to piss off. This has happened to me more than once and I take no particular joy and/or pride in it, trust me. Or maybe there’s a new film out from a director whose work you genuinely admire but his or her latest project just isn’t up to snuff. This is much more common, and you can generally let it roll like water off your back. Or perhaps there’s a movie…

On the list of things that might mark a fledgling low-budget indie horror filmmaker as being the ambitious sort, adding material to no less a societal cornerstone than The Bible itself probably ranks somewhere near the top, but how you get from dysfunctional family drama to that is — well, let’s just say “not an easy path to travel,” shall we? Because it’s not. And to be honest, why somebody would even try it in the first place is well and truly beyond my understanding. But what the heck, I’m not Ben Jehoshua.

Nor do I even know who Ben Jehoshua is, really — all I know about him  is that he directed (and co-wrote, along with one Barry Jay Stich) a movie that I watched on Netflix last night, 2015’s The Chosen. And based on the evidence offered here, I don’t think Mr. Jehoshua needs to worry about…

Isn’t it nice when a movie that you really, desperately want to be good turns out to be even better than you were hoping for?  Of course it is, and if you can’t root for an independent, low-budget Canadian horror film starring Henry fucking Rollins as an immortal cannibalistic killer, well — you, sir (or ma’am) clearly have no heart whatsoever.

Still, just in case you require any further proof of the inherent awesomeness of writer/director Jason Krawczyk’s 2015 feature He Never Died, here’s a quick rundown of the plot particulars : Jack (Rollins) is, in addition to being the most deadpan protagonist this side of Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name,” perpetually bored — albeit by choice. His life is routine in the extreme, consisting mostly of eating at the same diner every day, watching TV, and playing bingo. We slowly come to learn that he’s limiting his…

One thing about being paranoid — sometimes it can actually give you a little bit of, believe it or not, clarity.

Take, for instance, the advance reviews for Zack Snyder’s heavily-anticipated Batman V Superman : Dawn Of Justice that have been appearing online over the last few days. After literally years of hype, the movie itself is finally here and so, it would seem, is the moment of truth — not only for it, but for the entire nascent DC cinematic universe. Only truth seems to be pretty hard to come by, at least as far as this flick is concerned, among the self-appointed arbiters of public opinion working the digital plantation.

To be sure, the vast majority of critics out there seem to either mildly dislike or actively loathe it (for proof of this look no further than its current 32% score on Rotten Tomatoes), and most for…

And so — here it is. Five years on from the release of his last original graphic novel, Wilson, comes (at long last) the ironically-titled Patience, Daniel Clowes’  self-described “cosmic timewarp deathtrip to the primordial infinite of everlasting love.” Which only sounds like it doesn’t make any sense but is, in actuality, a stellar example of truth in advertising.

Confused yet? There’s really no need to be, even though Patience hails from that frequently-most-confusing-of-all genres, the time-travel story (I won’t call it  science fiction because the “science” involved in this book is clearly and plainly absolute hokum) — and that’s down to the simple fact that Clowes actually keeps things fairly straight-forward here, and is, as always, much more concerned with his characters than he is with the plot devices he employs getting them from their various “Point A”s to their “Point B”s. And frankly, those characters feel…

Real quick — what’s the sleaziest movie you’ve ever seen? Strong arguments can be made for a number of contenders, ranging from Joe D’Amato’s Emanuelle In America and Porno Holocaust to Passolini’s Salo (whoops! That’s an “art” film), but given the common national origin if those entrants, perhaps I should re-phrase the question to read : what’s the sleaziest movie not directed by an Italian that you’ve ever seen? In answer to that, may I humbly submit for your consideration Island Of Death.

Known around the world by various titles ranging from its original, Ta Paidia Tou Diavolou, to Devils In Myknonos, to Island Of Perversion, to A Craving For Lust (and it ended up on Britian’s banned list of “video nasties”no matter what they called it), Greek writer/director Nico Mastorakis freely admits that his main goal with this 1976 production was to outdo Tobe Hooper’s