The Angriest Critic sums up Kill List, the hyped up, critically acclaimed half gritty crime tale half occult horror movie, in one word.

by Adam Rosina

Meh. That’s what I have to offer on Bill Wheatley’s Kill List. One long, sad, apathetic “meh”. The internet’s partly to blame on this. Every horror and indie movie outlet performed the written form of fellatio on this flick, and I ate it up (snowballing?). Promotional materials portrayed it as a gritty crime tale of blue collar hit men, and the media, unusually secretive on the details in reviews, pointed only to a hard right turn into the occult in the film’s third act as evidence of its horror cred. I had to know what all the damn fuss was about. But now, as the final credits have rolled and the house lights come on, I feel I understand the hype about as much as I did when I started, maybe less. Promised something genre defying, grueling, and brutal, what I got was a somewhat-edgy crime film (mostly sans the post-Tarantino humor), saddled with a domestic drama prologue that strains the viewer’s patience to the breaking point. When the film finally drops pretense and gets to the horror late into its third act, it does indeed shift dramatically… by turning into The Wicker Man. There’s some strong character work from the two leads that come dangerously close to saving this film from mediocrity, but yeah… fucking Wicker Man.

read the full review in the April/May 2012 Issue

Early this year Saltillo, a trip-hop electronic meets violin and cello project from Chicago-based artist Menton J. Matthews III (aka Menton3), released his new album Monocyte on Artoffact Records. The album is a concept album and serves as a soundtrack to a 4 part graphic novel series of the same name published by IDW Publishing. EJTower offers insight on parts 1 and 2 of the Monocyte series, with parts 3 and 4 coming out this spring.

Monocyte
written and illustrated by Menton3
reviewed by : EJTower

Reading Monocyte while listening to its soundtrack is like contemplating a Zen Koan cut-up by William S. Burroughs as Aphex Twin plays strings in the corner shouting Shakespeare. Monocyte, the graphic series created by Menton3 and released by IDW Publishing, is a beautifully illustrated dark universe set in the distant future where two cities hold the world in immortal stagnation. Our Lovecraftian hero, Monocyte, like his biological namesake (a monocyte is an aspect of the innate immune system part of the body’s first line of defense against disease) is sent forth by Death to destroy the source of immortality and end the deathless logjam that is like a plague on the natural systems of the world.

It is unfortunate that Monocyte reads like a crossword puzzle written by Sir James George Frazer. If you don’t know what I am talking about, then much of the writing in the graphic series will also be a gloss to you. Menton3 is an unquestionably talented artist whose illustrations have excellently conveyed a gray mood and alien future, but all of the enjoyment of Monocyte comes from these talents alone. A minor index of the ideas tossed about in the first two issues would include a mixture of Judeo-Christian mythology, early pagan mythos, references to immoralist transhumanism, and direct quotes from Shakespeare. The ideas contained in the text hint at a genius root for a world and story that just failed to grow. The text serves mostly to confuse the reader with an antiqued style of speech. The story contains an ever growing number of mythically named characters that advance themselves upon the reader but never advance the plot. With so many dramatically named guns introduced in the first act, it makes me skeptical that they will all be adequately fired by the conclusion of the play.

I have seen this series compared to the works of Grant Morrison, author of The Invisibles, another comic series that draws heavily from occult sources. This comparison is wildly unfair to the writing of Mr. Morrison. His text actually clarified the ideas pushed on the audience so that we could think about them. In Monocyte the ideas clog the mind with antiquated vocabulary and fail entirely to bring any level of understanding to the world that Menton3 has created in his art. Simply overlaying the design of an astrolabe and the unicursal hexagram on the images does not draw the audience any deeper into the work, though it looks very cool.

The experience of the graphic series with the addition of the soundtrack by Saltillo was still extremely enjoyable. The strange esoteric samplings merged with strings served to dramatize the presented images and draw me on where the text failed. Saltillo, a project of Menton3 himself, is a testament to the ability of the man to evoke mood and establish setting through complex reference. Those interested can enjoy it immediately on Spotify, and purchase the album at Storming the Base. My strong objections to the writing and story aside, I am watching Menton3 for future projects.

read the free prequel on Issuu

The long awaited third release in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is still months away but images of The Dark Knight Rises have emerged in a way that promises an epic climax to this most recent adaptation in the Batman franchise.

by Adam Rosina

Gather ‘round, children, and I’ll spin you a yarn. Once, a long time ago (two months on real time, a decade in internet years), the first six minutes of the most anticipated sequel of all time, The Dark Knight Rises, was released in select IMAX screenings (and leaked onto file-sharing websites approximately 12.5 seconds later), with the official trailer following shortly thereafter in a one-two marketing punch that left one floored in a way a very real fist to the flesh balloon would. And after a very brief, awe-struck silence, the twin camps of fan-dumb and Nolan-loyalists began to wage a war of words that would put Team Edward/Team Jacob feuds to shame just by virtue of sheer grating idiocy. “Bane sounds like a brain-damaged tuba soloist playing underwater!” cried the haters. “You must trust Nolan! He is not for the likes of ye mere mortals to question! HE IS THE WAY!!!”, fired back the First Church of Christopher Nolan (and Jonathan Nolan, too, we guess… kinda). And thus it went. But now, the dust has finally settled, and all parties have retreated to their respective Batcaves, to pleasure themselves with a rolled-up trade paperback of Knightfall as they await, with pathological intensity, the next bit of TDKR marketing. So I felt the time was right for me to put my two cents in. So strap in, nerds! Lemme walk you through a few thoughts, observations, and merit-less predictions I’ve come up with in the wake of the prologue/trailer two-fer!

read the full feature in the February/March 2012 Issue

While The Human Centipede (First Sequence) might not have lived up to the hype, The Angriest Critic looks at take two which delivers more shock and gore, to see if it does.

by Adam Rosina

Though Tom Six’s The Human Centipede (First Sequence) was supposed to be last year’s instant shock classic, it was a film that ultimately could not live up to the hype. It failed to deliver on the gore front, giving scant illumination to the particulars of its central medical procedure (sewing three humans together, mouth to anus) or its revolting implications (perpetual analingus and consuming shit for sustenance). Furthermore, if the film were to be saved by technical flair, Six dashed that possibility with his bland, albeit competent, direction. The only place the film did succeed was it’s comedic moments, made possible by lead Dieter Laser’s (great fucking name) drooling, scenery chewing riff on Nazi “Angel of Death” Dr. Mengele. But in the end, it wasn’t up front enough with the gory goods for horror fans, and too outlandishly weird and perverse for pretty much anyone else, and as such was only regarded as a mere cinematic curiosity. When asked about the film’s flaws, Six referred to it as a mere dry run to see if people would accept the human centipede concept, and promised that it’s follow up would take audiences to depths of depravity and on-screen bloodletting previously unseen. Little more than a year later, Six delivers on this promise with Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), which indeed takes the concept of bad taste to shocking new lows.

read the full review in the December/January 2011/2012 Issue

Femme and Fatalité : the art of Lori Earley

by Rena Finkel

Lori Earley’s haunting portraiture has been a staple of the alternative and art scenes since she first began exhibiting her works in 2004. The beautiful women in her world are ethereal creatures; fantastic mannerist figures full of secrets. Their large eyes and elongated limbs are immediately recognizable, but it is the elegant-but-fierce melancholy mood that pervades her work that has given Earley such distinction. We were fortunate enough to be able to talk to the New York City artist about her work and her recent diagnosis with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

Tell us about how you developed your style.
Lori Earley : I honestly don’t know, it’s something that just came to me naturally. However, I think I might have finally found the reason and source of the distortion which I will explain later on. In high school art class, I was assigned to draw a self-portrait for the first time. When I drew mine, I found that I had a really difficult time making the eyes look real and in proportion to the rest of the facial features. I always inherently drew them much larger than they were. I tried several times after that to make my drawing look realistic but after several attempts, I had to give up because I just couldn’t do it. Whenever I was asked this question, I would say it was something I couldn’t explain. The best way I could put it into words was that the distortion of my figures was a visual manifestation of how I felt inside. The really interesting thing now though is that I was recently diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. It’s an extremely rare, genetic syndrome in which the physical features of someone with it tend to have large eyes, a slender build and stretchy, elongated hyper-mobile limbs, as I do. The reason for this is because Ehlers-Danlos syndrome affects the collagen in your body which is essentially the “glue” that holds your ligaments, bones, tendons, etc. together so it makes you very hyper-mobile and you tend to feel very stretched and elongated. The interesting thing about having this condition is that you can contort your body into unusual positions (many contortionists have the syndrome), but otherwise, depending on which type you have, the pain can be mild to excruciating, and I think the pain has lent itself well to emotions of the figures in my painting. When I found out I had it, it was like an epiphany! I finally had an answer as to where the natural distortion from my figures came from, and a lot of my fans made the connection as well. It was a very interesting discovery! Because I have Ehlers-Danlos though, it can be very difficult to keep up with my painting along with the business aspect of it (amongst other things), so I need assistance and found an amazing assistant who helps me tremendously with my business. She has been working with me for five years now and has become my best friend as well. I feel she deserves to be mentioned because without her, I wouldn’t be able to paint because I wouldn’t be able to keep up with everything because of my condition. So thank you, Sarah Smith!

read the full article in the October/November 2011 Issue

Starting to feel like The Angriest Critic only hates movies? Sometimes “great genre cinema” comes along and deserves prase like, “easily the most entertaining film of the year.”

by Adam Rosina

Let’s cut the foreplay and get right down to it: Attack the Block was easily the most entertaining film of the year, and this was not a year without a great deal of exceptional genre fare. This Edgar Wright-produced film by British first-timer Joe Cornish is one of the most unexpectedly mind-blowing debut movies of the last two decades, and right up there with the first efforts of Tarantino, Smith and the rest of the 90s indie innovators. I make that comparison without the slightest hint of exaggeration. There’s just so much to love here! It’s an original film, but like many of its contemporaries, it isn’t afraid to wear its influences loud and proud, with an inspired mash-up of The Goonies and Monster Squad-type films of the eighties with Carpenter in his prime. But this is no mere homage, and Cornish is both a writer of great skill and a director with a keen eye for composition. He also manages to bring together an amazing cast of newcomers to deliver startlingly realistic (and often hilarious) performances one would never expect in the midst of a sci-fi horror flick. The creatures are perfectly terrifying and the action, while ever exhilarating, does not cross the line into violent “god-mode” parody. But the best part of this film is its revolutionary spirit, capturing the tensions of a nation and the frustrations of its marginalized youth. In short, Attack the Block is absolute punk-fucking-rock.

read the full review in the October/November 2011 Issue

The financiers of Drive must have absolutely shit themselves when they saw the finished film. Here was a project that began life as a Hugh Jackman action/adventure vehicle in the vein of the Fast and Furious series, and what it became, arguably, was an art film. A film where the first 40 minutes are filled with so little dialogue, were it not for the music (which is AMAZING, by the way) one could easily forget they were watching a “talkey”. An action film where there are only two relatively brief chase scenes with which it could justify its title, and in place of choreographed fight sequences, existed only punctuation marks of far-beyond-brutal violence. A film hanging not on the rugged Australian shoulders of bankable action star Jackman, but of a former teen heartthrob (Ryan Gosling) whose greatest commercial success was the Nicholas Sparks adaptation/120-minute yawn, The Notebook. Their only consolation must have been that they’d only sunk about $13 million into this thing (that’s peanuts in Hollywood money). What they thought was going to happen when they hired director Nicolas Refn (the Pusher trilogy, Bronson), a Danish filmmaker who had never made a mainstream American picture in his life and whose films tend to tackle subject matter of a transgressive nature, will forever be beyond me. But the distributors of Drive refused to let go of their dream of standard action fare, and marketed it as such in one of the most misleading promotional campaigns in filmmaking history. So much so, a Michigan woman is actually suing for false advertisement, which, while paint-huffingly idiotic, illustrates their folly pretty clearly. What is likely lost on this microcosm of bean counters and ad execs is that, while Drive did not turn out to be the cinematic junk food guaranteed to put mouth breathers in the seats and god-like amounts of money in studios pockets, it is, without a doubt, one of the closest this last half-decade has come to producing a flawless film.

As Drive is, at its core, an atmospheric character study, what plot there is fairly simple. It’s protagonist, simply known as, get this, the Driver (mind blown??), is a small-time mechanic and stuntman by day, getaway driver by night. The same preternatural skill and calm that makes the Driver great at evading police cruisers also makes for an excellent stockcar racer, leading his boss Shannon (Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston) to petition mobster Bernie (Albert Brooks, of Simpsons and Finding Nemo Fame) for the funds to purchase a car for a joint venture, in the hopes of turning the Driver into a NASCAR star.  Bernie acquiesces, to the amusement of his partner, the crude and vicious Nino (Ron Pearlman, who needs no introduction). Meanwhile, the Driver, a quiet recluse by nature, befriends a neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan), and her son (Kaden Leos), striking up something of romance and becoming a father figure to the boy. However, this is not to be; Irene is married, and her husband, Standard (television actor James Biberi) soon returns from a stint in prison, ready to pick up life with his family. The Driver learns that Standard owes money to a local crime figure, putting not only his life, but his wife and their son’s, in danger. Agreeing to assist his romantic rival for the sake of Irene and her child, the Driver prepares to play wheelman for a pawn shop robbery that will help Standard square his debts. Thus the stage is set for things to go from wrong to more wrong to just absolutely fucked beyond any and all repair for our hero, as anyone familiar with Refn’s filmography knew they would.

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Is The Ward, John Carpenter’s first foray into straight horror since Halloween, a triumphant return to the big screen or simply horror mediocrity?

by Adam Rosina

Since we’ve been over this before, I’ll make it quick: I love John Carpenter. You know it. I know it. God, the Devil and Siddhartha fucking Gautama know it. Easily one of the most respected, influential, re-imagined (there’s been no less than three remakes of his work, with at least two new ones in the pipeline right now) and imitated fantasists in filmmaking, In his prime (the late 70s to the early-to-mid 80s), Carpenter was a financial cash cow, though not exactly immune to critical scorn over his films‘ violent content. Sadly, the tides began to turn with the release of The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China, films that were panned by critics (viciously) and moviegoers. Carpenter, undeterred, unleashed a string of films (Prince of Darkness, They Live, In the Mouth of Madness) that further discarded traditional notions of horror and took on such intellectually robust themes as social control, quantum physics, and consensus reality, all to the detriment of his box office grosses and the confidence of his financial backers. It didn’t help that the man had a habit of losing focus and letting his films get away from him, turning them into confused messes. Thought-provokingly watchable messes, but confounding enough to convince viewers to cease drinking the Kool-Aid by the late 90s. By 2001, the director had so much trouble securing funding for his films that he was forced into unofficial semi-retirement. But after some long overdue critical re-evaluation and the explosion of his cult fan base, Carpenter was again able to muster the funds necessary to mount a theatrical release. Thus we come to The Ward, Carpenter’s first foray into straight horror since Halloween. In watching it, I was possessed of an emotion no other Carpenter film had provoked in me: Boredom.

read the full review in the August/September 2011 Issue

If you haven’t had the chance to read my review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1, allow me to briefly summarize my feelings on that film, all Harry Potter-related media and all Harry Potter fans: DIE. Why all the hate? Hard to say. Maybe I’m just a contrarian. Maybe there’s no reason to it at all, and, like a bull seeing red or a southerner seeing someone darker than antique off-white, I just loose my shit. But perhaps it’s the ubiquitousness of it all. As is the case with spiders, you are never more than 3 feet from a Potter fan, and if you don’t happen to be one, this is just so utterly taxing on one’s patience and sanity. For me, it likely has a lot to do with the fact that I grew up geek. Comic book geek, sci-fi geek, gaming geek (tabletop, not the socially acceptable kind), horror geek; I’ve been all of these things at one point or another (I got better; PROTIP: Drugs help). Point is, I learned at a very young age that if I didn’t shut the fuck up when not in the company of my own kind, I was going to earn a beating. You people, on the other hand, assume everyone is living in Harry Potter Land, and as such never keep it to yourself, whether or not any innocent bystanders give a shit. Bottom line: don’t assume that everyone, even people vaguely familiar with the series, give a shit about you creepy, sad fetishization of a franchise (or your Snape/Draco rape fan-fiction, you sick fuck). And here we come to the central problem with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2. It doesn’t just assume you’re a fan; it downright hates you if you aren’t. It throws up every roadblock the last film did towards understanding what is going on, and then it doubles down. Because it wants you to fail. Director David Yates actually wants you, the presumably novice Potter viewer, to approach this movie like you would a marathon game of Monopoly: rage, followed by defeat. But my will is strong, Yates. I made it out the other end, and have now come to expose you crimes to the people!

…as Harry, Ron, and Hermione attempt to break into the vault in pretty much the same fashion they broke into the Ministry of Magic in the last film, they… wait, what’s that? You’re lost? I’ve just dropped you in halfway into the paragraph, and I’ve falsely assumed you could follow where I’m going with all this?? Wow, I must be David-fucking-Yates. Look, I have no problem with splitting a massive film up into smaller, more easily digestible parts, but you gotta play a little catch up. Tarantino takes two minutes of the Bride delivering a monologue to get ya where you need to be in Kill Bill Vol. 2. TWO MINUTES. Fuck, in A New Hope, you had zero familiarity with the universe or characters, but that opening crawl tells you all you need to know before pressing “PLAY”. Deathly Hollows Part 2 can’t even bother to throw me a lazy montage of the last film’s plot points. Yates seems to forget that this is no longer a universally understood series the way it was in early instalments, which were pretty formulaic. Now we have a series so entrenched in its own continuity that it demands a primer just to halfway understand it. Part 1 suffered from not giving novice viewers much of a gateway into the world, but Part 2 is downright unforgiving about it. Because, again, it hates you.

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A twisted and disturbing superhero film, instantly in the shadow of Kick-Ass and wrongly billed as a black comedy, is it a commercial flop or future cult classic?

by Adam Rosina

Super could not have gotten a more raw deal had it set out to be a commercial flop. Firstly, it came out almost a full year after Kick-Ass, a film that played with the same general premise, that of a normal guy assuming a super heroic identity to fight crime (although here, the protagonist is far less normal than one is initially led to believe). Kick-Ass itself wasn’t a huge financial success, so a film that was seen by many (myself included, initially) to be a two-bit knock off didn’t really stand a chance. Secondly, IFC Films had no idea how to market the film, and ended up billing it as a black comedy. Are there comedic moments in Super? Yes, and when director James Gunn (Slither) feels like playing this up, he has you rolling in the aisles. But the vast majority of the film is conducted with a heavy emphasis on “black”. Indeed, Super is one of the most spectacularly twisted and disturbing superhero films ever released.

read the full review in the June/July 2011 Issue