Reviews

The late '90s and '00s were a weird forgotten golden age for crocodile and alligator horror flicks. The best were in two series: You had Steve Miner's "Lake Placid" in 1999, Tobe Hooper's "Crocodile" in 2000, Gary Johnson's follow up "Crocodile 2" in 2002 and the Todd Hurvitz/Howie Miller collaboration "Lake Placid 2" in 2007. Those movies used varying degrees of camp, jump scares, gore and...

There is a lot of controversy surrounding "Smiley," a 2012 horror film written and directed by a man named Michael Gallagher. I don't know much about Gallagher and don't want to know anything. The same goes for the various online groups who allegedly took offense over the content of his film, although some say the accusations against them are exaggerated. Either way, no one deserves to be...

It's a shame that "Leprechaun 2" wasn't the first film in the series. People tend to assume that the first movie in a horror franchise should be considered the "main" one, with all of the sequels being lesser by default. Yet while I am a big fan of one of the "Leprechaun" sequels (namely, "Leprechaun 4: In Space"), I readily acknowledge that it feels like a cheap, gimmicky follow up rather than...

Watching "Pilgrim" is a bit like reading a great scary short story... but one in which a few key pages are missing near the end. To be clear, there is much more about "Pilgrim" that I liked than not. It is masterful in its use of suspense to build tension and, when it does rely on gore and other horrifying imagery, it works within the narrative. Nothing here feel gratuitous. There is also a deep...

As I ranked the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies near the end of 2019, I had no trouble figuring out that "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" is the best of the lot. In my own words: "It is a perfect MCU movie because every element works just right: The special effects look real instead of like CGI, the action scenes are breathtakingly well-choreographed, the story is intelligently...