Andy Andersen

Most of Nolan’s movies I like more than I dislike, but I also get turned off by the fussiness and preciousness with which Nolan approaches his concepts and how his films often feel like looking at an MC Escher drawing with someone behind you demanding you see something more profound than what’s actually there. Fortunately, I mostly found Tenet to be a stylish thrill ride that wasn’t begging me to revere it more than it deserved or even care about understanding it that deeply. And I think what makes that possible is that it’s a loving, Byzantine monument to James Bond movies first, and a Chris Nolan joint second.

It’s as a good a month as any to start doing this thing ‘cause I really went all the fuck over the place with what I watched. A lot of people do “Noirvember” which I’ve never really attempted ‘cause after October I’m always in a horror hangover and feel like I need to decompress by not putting a lot of thought into what I’m watching and just sorta vibe around.

The name may or may not ring a bell, but you know the work of Ralph Bakshi even if you don’t know you know it. You’ve likely come across a Fritz the Cat poster at your local comics or record store, caught snippets of the animated Lord of the Rings on Cartoon Network as a kid, or seen memes and stills of a young, pre-fame Brad Pitt with an animated buxom blonde Jessica Rabbit-type in Cool World.

Hey hey, comin’ atcha with another double-feature plug. Today’s bill: a proto-slasher based on a true crime story and a modern true crime classic with well-placed slasher elements.

It’s hard to remember a time when Disney wasn’t the behemoth media/entertainment empire it is now. But in 1981, the company was a whole different, non-Earth crushing animal. It was on the verge of being bought off and broken up, in fact. And in this transitional period, a small band of folks at Disney Records put together a sci-fi stadium rock band called Halyx. Live from the Space Stage: A Halyx Story is a new documentary that uncovers this fascinating piece of forgotten pop history...

If this were a normal, non-pandemic summer, UNHINGED would’ve been exactly the type of B-movie I’d relish seeing at a theater on a hot afternoon – popcorn, maybe a hot dog and a soda in hand, in the company of strangers as ever-so-momentarily carefree as I. So it feels super weird to have watched this strange and scruffy Russell Crowe B-thriller from home on a screener, days before it’s supposed to be the movie that “reopens theaters” in the U.S. All this is to say, be careful out there

You ever get obsessed with a good movie year? Lately I’ve been really diggin’ 1981. I’m not sure if it’s generally thought of as iconic or important a movie year as, say, 1980 (The Shining, The Empire Strikes Back, Raging Bull — all of which are getting the big 40th anniversary treatment this year), but it should be. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Escape from New York, Scanners, Heavy Metal, The Evil Dead, Excalibur, Blow Out, The Road Warrior, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Halloween II

Today’s plug is a double feature of 2013 shorts by director Khalik Allah. A street photographer by trade, Allah combines black and white photography with video, film, and running sound to create, as his intro on The Criterion Channel suggests, “dreamlike drifts through the margins of society, gritty and sublime portraits of the disenfranchised and dispossessed that, in their infinite compassion and philosophical insight, achieve an almost spiritual transcendence.”

I’m always game for a good documentary about a movie. You Don’t Nomi, the new doc about Paul Verhoeven’s notorious NC-17 “trashterpiece” Showgirls, ranks among the best of them. Taking a similar approach as Room 237 did with the cottage industry of conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, You Don’t Nomi looks at Showgirls from every possible angle...

I recently saw a tweet that said “You know what I miss about the 90s? Dark edgy indie films with studio budgets.” You know what, same. But also not. As we (hopefully) head into an era where we rely less on Hollywood to make movies for us and start making them ourselves with technology that’s readily available to literally everyone, we should be looking back at the actual micro-budget, DIY indie films of the 90s for actionable inspiration.

I tend to be a sucker for slashers with “massacre” in the title. From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (contender for greatest horror movie ever made) to 80s camp classics like The Slumber Party Massacre and Sorority House Massacre and modern ultra-low-budget oddities like Pool Party Massacre. There’s just something about the simple pleasures of the whole ***** Massacre phenomenon that really does it for me. So I jumped at the chance to review WRESTLEMASSACRE

Robert Altman’s exceptional 1974 gambling comedy California Split has been hard to find for years. Up until now it’s largely existed as an out-of-print DVD with some missing footage due to music licensing issues. So I was thrilled to open my Twitter feed on Tuesday to see great folks like writer Kim Morgan and director Joe Dante getting the word out that the original, remastered cut of this criminally under-seen masterpiece is now available on Amazon Prime.

Performance is a psychedelic British crime film starring James Fox and Mick Jagger as a gangster and reclusive rock star brought together by fate for an existential melding of minds, egos, and personas in a kaleidoscopic haze of blood, sex, drugs, art, and music. Drug movies from the late 60s and early 70s can often be tedious, frustratingly incoherent, and just plain shitty. But Performance succeeds where so many others fail, partly because it’s bookended by another genre.

TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG is a movie about crime. It’s a modern, poppy work of historical fiction that approaches the idea of criminals and the nature of crime with a deep sense of modern concern. What are the power dynamics at play when it comes to deciding who is a criminal, who is the law, and who is more equipped to uphold justice?

Well shit! Top Gun: Maverick, the latest victim of Hollywood’s unfortunate but necessary mass-rescheduling wave in response to the pandemic, has been pushed all the way back to December. Gotta admit, I was pretty stoked to indulge in this particular title come July — though much more as a Tom Cruise Stan (not to mention, an ardent Miles Teller enthusiast) than out of any love or nostalgia for Top Gun.

We are only a couple of days into 2020 and the team here at Nightmarish Conjurings is still reeling from all of the different horror films released in 2019. There was just so much produced in terms of quality and quantity released last year that it was difficult to narrow down our selections for our top 10 picks list.

ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD is finally available to watch at home. And though it had one of the great theater runs of the year, it feels right that the chillest cinematic hang of the summer is now marinating in people’s heads from their home screens. Quentin Tarantino’s 9th and possibly penultimate film — a dark fairy tale about the mythical human beings and competing energies that occupied Hollywood in 1969 — really demands repeat viewings to fully grasp the scope and magnitude of its insatiable gravitational pull.

I’m a movie guy, and I probably always will be. No more than a few years ago, the thought of making a Top 10 list for TV wouldn’t have even occurred to me. But it’s 2019 and the age of peak television has changed my tune. And how could it not? The big-screen cinema experience has been all but overrun by one mammoth superhero franchise and the advent of streaming has turned television into an endless virtual hub of phenomenal shows — available anytime, anywhere.

What is cinema? This question has been on my mind ever since Martin Scorsese said that the Marvel movies aren’t cinema and the internet had a meltdown (which is still going on and seems like it’ll never end). It’s also why I jumped at the chance to attend a screening of IN FABRIC, writer/director Peter Strickland’s British horror-comedy about consumerism and a killer dress.

A movie can’t just be a movie in 2019. It needs a familiar angle, if not a direct relation to existing intellectual property. It needs a backstory of gossip, casting what-if’s, and production updates that can be mined for clickbait well before and after its release. And if a movie plans on surviving in the minds of the mainstream past the hours of its initial press cycle, it needs the Internet to meme the shit out of it. Director Todd Phillips’s standalone version of Joker, a pseudo-Scorsesean