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jprr.bsky.social
JP
@jprr.bsky.social
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jprr.bsky.social
Three end-times movies, zero end of nonsense. Apocalyptic fear dressed up as theology, pseudoscience, and “documentary” truth.
#FilmCriticism #ReligiousStudies #CriticalThinking #MediaLiteracy #Pseudoscience #Documentary #Skepticism
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/13/e...
Eschatology on Screen: A Critical Analysis of Faith, Fiction, and Financial Fear in Modern End-Times Cinema
The faith-based cinema market operates within a specific, commercially successful media ecosystem. This genre utilizes narrative and documentary formats not merely for artistic expression, but prim…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 14, 2025 at 3:30 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Deadly Target and Showdown in Little Tokyo are less buddy-cop thrillers than accidental documentaries about Hollywood’s brain on martial arts, cocaine, and vibes. Glorious, baffling nonsense.
#DeadlyTarget #ShowdownInLittleTokyo #BuddyCop #FilmCriticism
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/12/t...
The Archaeology of Action Trash: Narrative Breakdown, Ethnic Cluelessness, and Queer Subversion in Deadly Target and Showdown in Little Tokyo
Deadly Target (1994) goes out of its way to make sure all the good guys are Caucasian and all the villains are Chinese (except a redshirt uniformed cop and the hero’s romantic interest). Even Charl…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 12, 2025 at 10:57 PM
jprr.bsky.social
The Last Showing flirts with self-awareness, trips over its own logic, and wanders straight into themes it’s not prepared to handle.
#HorrorMovies #MetaHorror #RobertEnglund #FilmAnalysis #MovieCritique #WesCraven #GenreDeconstruction #HorrorCommunity
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/10/t...
The Englund Paradox: How The Last Showing Trips Over Its Own Metafiction
The Last Showing (2014) wants the self-awareness of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare without the seamless internal logic. The assessment of modern self-aware horror cinema requires a firm distinction bet…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 11, 2025 at 4:23 AM
jprr.bsky.social
The Borrowed Christmas is a surreal fever dream about renting a family for Christmas. Unintentionally creepy, weirdly earnest, and absolutely unforgettable.
#TheBorrowedChristmas #MovieReview #BadMovieNight #FaithBasedFilms #HolidayMovies #FilmCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/09/t...
The Unsettling Sincerity: Deconstructing the Unaware Horror of The Borrowed Christmas
The Borrowed Christmas (2014) feels like one big, elaborate, absurdist anti-joke, but it’s actually a deathly straight, extremely misguided, feel-good, faith-based family flick. Either way, I was m…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 9, 2025 at 9:21 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Picking apart An Aspen Christmas Conspiracy (2025) and its baffling choices, including a dog named Jimmy Stewart, a judge named Reinhold, and a “conspiracy” that barely qualifies as paperwork.
#MovieReview #AspenChristmasConspiracy #HolidayMovies
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/t...
The Architecture of Contrivance: Structural and Ethical Failures in An Aspen Christmas Conspiracy
An Aspen Christmas Conspiracy (2025) could be set in any other place during any other time of the year. It’s not much of a conspiracy, either. The film’s narrative architecture is fundamentally und…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 9, 2025 at 4:49 AM
jprr.bsky.social
DEATH VALLEY (2015) — a dusty little thriller with a strong middle act, sun-baked cinematography, and characters who make dehydration look like a lifestyle choice.
#DeathValley #MovieReview #ThrillerMovies #IndieFilm #DesertNoir #FilmCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/07/t...
The Parody Paradox and the Prosaic Epilogue: Structural Coherence and Tonal Dissonance in Death Valley
Death Valley (2015) has a pretty decent middle section that uses the unforgiving isolation of the desert as a psychological crucible to expose the moral decay festering beneath the protagonists’ ap…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 8, 2025 at 5:15 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Striking Poses: Fake identities, pointless schemes, and a conspiracy with more moving parts than motives.
#StrikingPoses #FilmDiscussion #MovieReview #90sMovies #Thriller #FilmAnalysis #FilmCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/07/t...
The Baroque Burglary: Untangling the Twists of Striking Poses
I know both paparazzi and grifters are supposed to go to overly elaborate lengths to accomplish their goals, especially in the movies. Striking Poses (1999), however, features schemes so baroque I …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 7, 2025 at 6:13 AM
jprr.bsky.social
The Trackers demonstrates the commercial and ideological limitations of a 1970s made-for-television product seeking to achieve racial relevance.
#TheTrackers #FilmCritique #WesternMovies #1970sCinema #SammyDavisJr #TheSearchers #MovieReview
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/05/o...
Outta Sight, Outta Mind: The Trackers and the Strategic Erasure of Indigenous Conflict
As you may surmise from the title, The Trackers (1971) is a watered-down, made-for-television ripoff of The Searchers with a little In the Heat of the Night thrown in. The filmmakers, however, seem…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 6, 2025 at 4:44 AM
jprr.bsky.social
The Masked Saint tries to juggle faith, kayfabe, and crimefighting, but the physics of wrestling storytelling keep body-slamming the plot.
#TheMaskedSaint #WrestlingMovies #Kayfabe #MovieReview #WrestlingNerd #IndieFilm #Cinema #ProWrestling #FilmCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/05/t...
The Masked Saint: The Pastor, the Promoter, and the Physics of Nonsense
The Masked Saint (2016) follows professional wrestler-turned-pastor Chris Samuels (Brett Granstaff). We meet Chris as a boy watching a televised wrestling match. “Kids, don’t try this at home!” the…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 5, 2025 at 6:33 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Thomasina Sawyer trades invention for imitation, swapping Tom’s name and gender but leaving his story glued in place.
#FilmReview #Adaptation #ThomasinaSawyer #Cinema #Representation #GenderSwap #Storytelling #LitToScreen #CulturalCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/04/d...
Derivative Adventures and Fragmented Authorship: A Critical Analysis of The Adventures of Thomasina Sawyer
As its title suggests, The Adventures of Thomasina Sawyer (2018) is a gender-flipped adaptation of Mark Twain’s beloved literary classic. It also suggests that the filmmakers should have come up wi…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 4, 2025 at 9:55 PM
jprr.bsky.social
The Big Gift (2022) is a dreadfully cheap knockoff of Jingle All the Way. It’s also a lot fucking dumber.
#TheBigGift #MovieReview #BadMovies #ChristmasMovies #HolidayFails #FilmCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/03/t...
The Trivial Pursuit of Materialism: The Big Gift Jingles All the Way to Nowhere
The Big Gift (2022) is a dreadfully cheap knockoff of Jingle All the Way. That’s understandable and almost forgivable. It’s also a lot fucking dumber, which might have seemed impossible but is now …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:16 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Jean (2016) blends Southwest mythology, gentle caregiving, and quietly eccentric fantasy into something tender and surprisingly wise.
#FilmReview #IndieFilm #Jean2016 #Sedona #Cinematography #FantasyDrama #CaregivingStories #IndependentCinema
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/j...
Jean: A Deconstruction of the Malick-Ozu Synthesis in Independent Auteur Cinema
Jean (2016) is a counterintuitive marriage of post-hiatus Terrence Malick and latter-day Yasujirō Ozu. These seemingly antithetical tendencies actually balance each other out. The economical, ellip…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 3, 2025 at 3:22 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Eve’s Christmas functions not merely as light holiday fare, but as a robust cultural apparatus designed to enforce ideological compliance.
#FilmCriticism #HolidayMovies #TimeTravel #MovieAnalysis #CulturalCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/12/01/t...
The Machine of Ideological Correction: Compulsory Heterosexuality, Time Travel, and the Erasure of Female Autonomy in Eve’s Christmas
Eve’s Christmas (2004) is clearly a case of someone who found the title oh so clever (it isn’t), they didn’t care that the plot perpetuates the myth that a woman can’t be single, successful, and ha…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 1, 2025 at 9:51 PM
jprr.bsky.social
Grounded in Love serves as a textbook example of how ideological requirements dictate narrative structure, often at the expense of plausibility.
#GroundedInLove #MovieReview #RomCom #FaithBasedFilm #FilmCritique #Cinema2025 #DanicaMcKellar #TrevorDonovan
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/p...
Plausibility, Purity, and Sentimental Determinism in Grounded in Love
Grounded in Love (2025) is, as romantic comedies tend to be, top-heavy with as-you-know information: “You’ve been dating almost seven months;” “You were with us ten years;” “You’re the director of …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
December 1, 2025 at 3:17 AM
jprr.bsky.social
A look at how the Book of Esther grew everything from extra prayers to love triangles to cloven-hoofed devils once Hollywood got involved.
#Esther #BibleHistory #FilmHistory #Adaptations #Cinema #OldHollywood #Purim #CulturalHistory #Storytelling
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/29/a...
And the Golden Rooster goes to… Esther and the King
According to the opening narration of Esther and the King (1960), “The time is 2,500 years ago. The place is Persia.” And the language is English. While the film establishes a historically plausibl…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 30, 2025 at 3:17 AM
jprr.bsky.social
The Nature of the Beast has sharp performances, a twist that thinks it’s smarter than it is, and a shadow it can’t escape: its creator’s real-world monstrosity.
#FilmCriticism #ThrillerMovies #90sCinema #VictorSalva #TheNatureOfTheBeast #EricRoberts
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/28/w...
When the Monster Holds the Camera: Revisiting The Nature of the Beast
The Nature of the Beast (1995) is an above-average direct-to-video psychological thriller that, under more auspicious circumstances, could have easily been released theatrically. It is by no means …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 29, 2025 at 5:46 AM
jprr.bsky.social
A Christmas movie where the soup kitchen can’t pay rent, the heiress won’t get a job, and a seven-year-old thinks Santa runs a mail-order bride service. Holiday magic, or just narrative frostbite?
#DearSanta #HallmarkLogic #ChristmasMovies #HolidayRomCom
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/27/d...
Dear Santa (2011): Yuletide Economics for the Terminally Confused
Like many holiday romances, Dear Santa treats grief, poverty, maturity, and financial solvency the way one treats snow in a snow globe: shake it vigorously, admire the temporary spectacle of swirli…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 28, 2025 at 5:54 AM
jprr.bsky.social
The Unforgiven is a fascinating misfire—Huston’s attempt to interrogate the Western while still playing by its most stubborn rules.
#JohnHuston #AudreyHepburn #BurtLancaster #TheUnforgiven1960 #WesternFilms #ClassicCinema #FilmHistory #CinemaAnalysis
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/27/t...
The Unforgiven: Even John Huston Nods
John Huston’s The Unforgiven (1960) can be said to pick up where John Ford’s The Searchers left off four years prior (both westerns are based on Alan Le May novels). The fundamental tension shifts …
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:08 AM
jprr.bsky.social
If there is such a thing as a thinking man’s kickboxing movie, Final Impact (1992) isn’t it — quite the contrary, as it turns out.
#FinalImpact #LorenzoLamas #90sAction #KickboxingMovies #MovieReview #ActionCinema #BMovieGold #FilmCriticism #CultCinema
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/26/f...
Final Impact: Everything Zen? I Don’t Think So
If there is such a thing as a thinking man’s kickboxing movie, Final Impact (1992) isn’t it — quite the contrary, as it turns out. That’s not merely a critique of its screenplay; it is a precise de…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 26, 2025 at 9:38 PM
jprr.bsky.social
A sharp, low-budget queer drama that proves intimacy doesn’t need spectacle. The Sleepover turns one long night into a surprisingly rich study of trust, projection, and honesty.
#TheSleepover #QueerCinema #IndieFilm #LGBTQFilm #FilmReview #LesbianCinema
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/25/t...
The Sleepover: A Microbudget Masterclass in Indie Queer Anti-Melodrama
The Sleepover (2021) proves that lez is more. God, that was tacky, but I just couldn’t help myself. I swear this film is better than that joke makes it sound. For one thing, it is indeed minimalist…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:21 PM
jprr.bsky.social
A look at the strange paradox of films that try to tell the story of Muhammad and Fatima without ever showing them — epics built around a void.
#FilmCriticism #CinemaHistory #ReligiousCinema #TheMessage1976 #TheLadyOfHeaven #MovieAnalysis
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/24/r...
Reverence as Cinematic Self-Sabotage: The Message and The Lady of Heaven
The cinematic representations of the early figures of Islam, specifically Moustapha Akkad’s 1976 epic The Message and Eli King’s contentious 2021 drama The Lady of Heaven, present a profound and of…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:36 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Kevin Hart’s Die Hart sets out to spoof action movies but somehow forgets how action movies work.
#DieHart #KevinHart #MovieReview #ActionComedy #ParodyFail #FilmCriticism #JohnTravolta #JeanReno #StreamingMovies #HollywoodSatire
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/23/d...
Die Hart: Action Star Aspirations and Comedic Inertia
The plot of Die Hart (2023) is predicated on the question, why can’t Kevin Hart be an action star? A better question might be, why would he want to? And the answer is, he doesn’t. If he did, Die Ha…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 23, 2025 at 9:00 PM
jprr.bsky.social
An important story told with baffling inconsistency. Greenwood Rising gestures at history but never quite grasps it.
#GreenwoodRising #BlackWallStreet #TulsaHistory #FilmReview #HistoricalCinema #TulsaRaceMassacre #BlackHistory #CinemaCritique #IndieFilm
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/22/g...
Greenwood Rising: The Rise of Black Wall Street (2024)
Greenwood Rising: The Rise of Black Wall Street is a thought-provoking piece, though perhaps not in the way the filmmakers intended. When I first saw O.W. Gurley’s (Darius McCrary) wife, Emma (Fati…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 22, 2025 at 6:27 PM
jprr.bsky.social
A look at Gang of Roses and how its wild mix of mythology, consequence-free violence, and borrowed Western tropes leaves its big ideas stranded in the dust.
#FilmReview #GangOfRoses #Westerns #MovieAnalysis #CinemaCritique #PopCulture #FilmHistory
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/20/g...
Gang of Roses (2003)
According to Gang of Roses, “Between 1887 and 1892, Billy the Kid was responsible for the armed robbery of 19 banks.” Meanwhile, “The Rose Gang robbed 26,” and “No one ever got hurt.” Big deal. Nob…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:23 AM
jprr.bsky.social
Aesthetically, Wishmaster is worthy of bearing the name of executive producer Wes Craven. I just wish he had written it too, because the script makes exactly zero fucking sense.
#Wishmaster #HorrorMovies #90sHorror #MovieAnalysis #FilmCritique
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com/2025/11/20/w...
Wishmaster and the Case of the Contradictory Cosmology
Wishmaster (1997) is a neat-looking horror film. It has neat practical, mechanical special effects, neat prosthetic makeup, and neat props (including a Pazuzu statue). This commitment to tangible g…
pablohoneyfish.wordpress.com
November 20, 2025 at 9:37 PM