Tag: Robert Bobroczkyi

Cinema Dispatch: Backrooms

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Backrooms and all the images you see in this review are owned by A24

Directed by Kane Parsons

William Goldman said that nobody knows anything in Hollywood, and the best can you hope for, if you’re lucky, is that you’re making educated guesses. I’d like to expand upon that idea and say that anyone who says they know anything about Hollywood knows less than most or are trying to sell you on a different story entirely. The release of this movie and other high profile, and highly profitable, films from the YouTube scene has certainly got people talking about the future of cinema; Never mind that the biggest hit of last year was a studio adaptation of Minecraft by a well-known director or that the biggest movie of this year is an animated kids movie based on a licensed property. I’m certainly happy whenever young talent gets a chance to break into Hollywood, especially if they come from unconventional backgrounds, but the hype around this movie after its strong box office opening was quite a thing to behold. I guess the quality of the movie is immaterial at this point given how much money it made and how much press it garnered, but is there a good movie to be found once you cut through all the noise, or is the hype surrounding it a far more interesting than the film itself? Let’s find out!!

Down on his luck furniture salesman Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is having a tough time dealing with his failing furniture store and his much more quickly failing marriage. His therapist Dr. Kline (Renate Reinsve) is doing her best to help him through his issues, but Clark seems to be far beyond the reach of anyone around him and is more intent on managing his store and maintaining his little world. Perhaps that’s what drew The Backrooms to his shop, or perhaps it was just a coincidence. Either way, he finds a mysterious doorway in the basement that leads to a series of yellow rooms with disquieting furniture and illogical architecture. His obsession with exploring this place is so great that others get dragged into this strange world and potentially to danger as something seems to be down there with them. What does Clark hope to find in these mysterious hallways, and will he regret his decision to seek it out? Can Dr. Kline save him from his own obsessions, or have The Backrooms claimed his as a victim? I mean if he’ hurting that badly for money, he could just sell tickets to the thing! Either they come back with a cool story, or the body is never found! Win-win!

“Mr. Game and Watch! I knew you were real!!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Alien: Romulus

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Alien: Romulus and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Studios

Directed by Fede Álvarez

The Alien franchise is unique because it’s a series that descended into utter shlock, but never truly lost its prestige. Heck, the first sequel to it was blatantly an attempt to turn an atmospheric horror movie into a wild shoot-em-up, and yet it’s considered nearly as good, if not the equal of, the original film. No matter how many times it gets screwed up by the studio or has terrible crossovers with The Predator, a new Alien film always comes with a certain amount of clout because we all remember just how good that original film is. This latest attempt is the most direct attempt yet at recapturing that magic, but is it simply too big a task for any filmmaker to recapture the magic of that first film? Let’s find out!!

Taking place a number of years after the Nostromo event, we follow a group of rag tag street toughs with dreams of escaping their Weyland-Yutani owned mining planet for the blue skies and green pastures of another planet. To get there, they need to salvage cryostasis chambers from a wrecked space station just outside their home planet’s atmosphere, and with the help of Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her adopted android brother Andy (David Jonsson), they might just have a shot of pulling it off. Unfortunately for them, the space station was conducting experiments on the Xenomorphs which naturally begin to escape as soon as these kids start mucking up the place and mess with the thermostat. In order to escape the vessel with the cryo-pods and their fleshy innards intact, Andy installs a data chip that fills him with knowledge of the alien threat as well as the darkest secrets that Weyland-Yutani are hiding. Will our crew of at risk youths make it out alive with the help of Andy 2.0? What else is Weyland-Yutani up to, and is there more to all this than Andy us letting in on? Do you think the Xenomorphs ever get tired of screeching all the time, or is that part of the fun for them?

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Álvarez.”
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