Doc Corner: It's Child's Play and 'Living with Chucky'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

No space within movie fandom feels more like a genuine community like the space taken up by horror. Not to get too Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious franchise, but for many, horror is a family that ties and binds people together. Even more so for queer lovers of the horror genre. Horror is particularly amenable to subtextual readings as well as straight-up camp and gay storytelling for many reasons, but that bond comes at least partly because horror (as a broad concept) and LGBTQ+ people have so much in common. Not that you need me to tell you any of that.

These narrative strands come together in Kyra Elise Gardner’s Living with Chucky. Ostensibly a documentary about the killer doll franchise that began as Child’s Play and has morphed more famously into The House of Chucky. It is also a telling of how this franchise was able to do what it did and remain relevant three decades later. Gardner is the daughter of one of the visual effects and puppeteer masters who’s brought Chucky to life over the years, so you could say she has particular insight.

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Review: "The Super Mario Bros" is a Fun, Candy-Colored Confection

By Christopher James

Is the Nintendo world the most untapped piece of IP? Mario, Luigi and the rest of the crew have dominated video game culture for over 40 years. Yet, a theatrical feature film has not been attempted since the ill-fated 1993 campfest starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper. Gone are the steampunk influences and live action hamminess. Universal’s new foray into the mushroom kingdom is a bright, glossy and impressive animated tale that bears appropriate semblance to the game, while also having the zany plushness of an Illumination tale...

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Streaming: Dark Comedy "Beef" Serves Grade-A Entertainment

By Christopher James

The littlest things can make a person snap. Minor inconveniences can pile up into a mountain of indignation, such as something being missing at the store or a garbage bag breaking when taking the trash out.

The two sides of Netflix’s pitch black comedy Beef have built quite an impressive mountain of rage, a volcano about to erupt at any second. Every business plan that Danny (Steven Yeun) comes up with has been destined for failure. He’s trying to provide for his parents but every get rich quick scheme fails and sets him further into a hole. While Danny thinks success will bring happiness, Amy (Ali Wong) proves that wealth and power doesn’t guarantee it...

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Super Mario Bros: The First Movie

by Cláudio Alves

The new Super Mario Bros. movie is upon us and some of the early reviews could hardly be more scathing. This Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy animated romp has sunk a few critics into pits of despair, with some unfortunate souls stating it's even worse than the 1993 flop. We won't know until we see it but one can envision it being a downgrade in terms of sheer lunacy.

Say what you will about the 1993 movie, but it's a fascinating piece of cinema worth revisiting, its abject failure never stemming from a lack of crazy ideas. A lack of conviction, perhaps, since you can smell the flop sweat of exhausted writers, not to mention the confusion of cast and crew and audience, too! It is one confounding mess, and to watch it is to sense one's sanity slipping away...

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Discounts to "IFFF"

BEAUTIFUL BEINGS (Iceland's Oscar Submission)For those of you who like to be completists with Oscar's Best International Feature Film race there's a new virtual film festival you should know about. Being a completist or even seeing a good chunk of the movies is a tough thing to do within any Oscar season given the amount of submissions we generally get (90+) and the unpredictable distribution of those exact same movies. Rodrigo Gutierrez created "International Feature Film Festival" to help with this. About a third of the films on last season's Oscar submission list have been available at one time or another on demand, streaming, or in theaters in the US but the others have been more difficult to find.

For the first edition of IFFF (which runs April 6th-23rd) thirteen of the submissions that haven't yet been distributed in the US or Canada are showing. The list of the films and discounted ticket codes are after the jump... 

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