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Antebellum (2020) – The Horror Of The Past

Released: 1st October
Seen: 7th October

Antebellum Info

In my review of Vampires vs The Bronx I opened with a lengthy paragraph about how great Horror is when it’s used as a metaphor for some kind of social issue. Race is one that pops up a lot in horror, the genre has always been a useful way to put that issue into ways that can be understood by all. If you would like to know more about the history of race in horror cinema I suggest you go watch Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror which is easy to find, Shudder put it up for free and I’m linking you to it so go and learn. Go and learn so then you can come back here and sit with me as I try to understand why Antebellum just didn’t work for me as much as it could’ve.

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Vampires vs The Bronx (2020) – Don’t Mess With The Bronx

Released: 2nd October
Seen: 6th October

Vampires vs. The Bronx

I’ve said it before, I will probably say it again, Horror is one of the best ways to handle social commentary. It can be a subtle critique of consumerism, like in Dawn of the Dead, or it can be so gloriously blunt that the movie might as well just beat you with a hammer with the movie’s message attached, like in Get Out. It can be a great way to put an indescribable feeling into something that can be easily described and get that feeling across… or it can just take a real world scenario and have some fun with it. 

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Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020) – Long Live Dick Johnson

Released: 2nd October
Seen: 5th October

Dick Johnson, father of filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, is on his way out. The former psychiatrist and current father is in the beginning stages of dementia and is starting to have to face the reality of his own mortality. Naturally, this leads to his daughter Kirsten coming up with an idea… she’ll film him dying in multiple gruesome ways, from falling down a set of stairs to having his neck punctured and bleeding out. It’s a fun little thing to keep Dick going, ironically by killing him over and over again.

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American Murder: The Family Next Door (2020) – Won’t You Meet The Neighbours?

Released: 30th September
Seen: 3rd October

American Murder The Family Next Door Info

August 13 of 2018, Shanann Watts and her two daughters Bella and Celeste went missing. For several days police investigated it as a missing persons case until they came to a heartbreaking conclusion… Shanann and her daughters weren’t missing, they’d been murdered by Shanann’s husband Chris who had been helping the police since the start of their investigation. Chris would later confess to murdering his family (I’ll spare you the details, but it’s in this documentary) when his affair was discovered and he was sentenced to multiple life sentences. It’s truly a devastating crime and this documentary has a unique way of telling that story and it kinda works, for the most part.

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The Boys in the Band (2020) – The Band Plays On

Released: 30th September
Seen: 1st October

The Boys In The Band Info

In 1968 the groundbreaking play The Boys in The Band premiered off-Broadway. Written by the late Mart Crowley (who passed away in March of this year), the play revolves around a group of gay friends coming together for a birthday party which slowly turns into a chaotic night of revelations, bitchiness and a lot of self-loathing. It’s one of the first plays that showed gay men as actual characters with love lives and personalities, it’s so ahead of the curve that it premiered roughly a year before Stonewall putting it right at the start of the gay liberation movement. The 1968 play would later be adapted into a feature length film in 1970. 50 years after the off=Broadway play premiered, in 2018 it was revived on Broadway and now here we are, 2 years later and we have a new film adaptation and it’s just wonderful.

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The High Note (2020) – A Little Flat, But OK

Released: 24th September
Seen: 30th September

The High Note Info

So, we’re approaching the final quarter of the year. The home stretch. The time when the fat lady starts warming up so she can hit the high note. The point when everyone should have started working on the “Good Fucking Riddance 2020” banners that we will all be hanging up because this year has been, to quote Jake Tapper, a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck. This has definitely been reflected in what has been available at the cinema. 

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Enola Holmes (2020) – Elementary School, My Dear Watson

Released: 23rd September
Seen: 27th September

Enola Holmes Info

December 26, 2018. A date that will live in infamy. This is the date when Holmes & Watson was released and, despite the year being almost completely finished, made a case to be called one of the worst movies of the year (a case it won, easily, since it made it on my list with 5 days to go!). It was truly a ghastly nightmare but as since then it looks like it may have done something even more sinister… it may have killed the Sherlock Holmes brand! 

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Feel The Beat (2020) – The Beat Feels Familiar

Released: 19th June
Seen: 23rd September

Feel The Beat Info

Not long ago, I reviewed the Netflix original film Work It which was about a young girl trying to put together a dance troupe in order to get into college. Dance films are a very rare breed because they tend to require actors who can pull off the vastly different skills of acting and dancing. The problem with dance films is that it takes something kind of special to break out into the mainstream, films like Dirty Dancing, Hairspray and Step Up managed to infuse dancing with a plot that people latched onto and have kept in the cultural landscape for years… something tells me Feel the Beat isn’t going to be one of those movies, but it’s fine.

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