Hey kids! Remember Tim Allen, the star of Jungle 2 Jungle? Remember those brilliant Santa Clause movies? Well, you’re in luck because Tim Allen’s Santa is back in an exclusive new miniseries streaming exclusively on…
Chris van Dijk
Chris van Dijk
A thirty-something writer currently living in Poland. One day he dreams about writing, directing, and starring in his own movie. In order to stop it from becoming a snoozefest, he's planning to fill the screen with excessive nudity and gore. And chainsaw duels. Why not? Chris loves high-art cinema and pure unadulterated schlock. He can talk just as much about the brilliance of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries as he can about Miami Connection. When he's not writing for MovieBabble, he's working on his own stories. These stories star a host of dysfunctional characters that in no way resemble his own fractured psyche. He hopes everyone will be good to each other. He rightly believes dogs are superior to humans, and that all dogs will go to heaven.
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: The Murmuring’ – A Spooky Story About Birdwatching…
It’s the end of the road. Throughout the previous seven episodes, we’ve dealt with evil paintings, witches, extraterrestrials, and lots of rats. What’s this final episode going to treat us with? The answer: birds. No,…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: The Viewing’ – Exterminate All Rational Thought
I have seen things that will make you shit your mind, Kemosabe. Imagine Peter Weller sitting at the head of a round table with long white hair, draped in a silk Japanese robe, snorting cocaine,…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: Dreams in a Witch House’ – This Episode Has “Gnawing” Problems
Catherine Hardwicke wouldn’t be my first choice for directing an episode of an anthology horror show, especially considering the damage she wrought upon the vampire subgenre. Looking at her filmography, there’s nothing to indicate that…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: Pickman’s Model’ – Reality Is Just What We Tell Each Other…
We cannot let sympathy or altruism shield us from finding the truths of this world. Pickman’s Model is one of two H.P. Lovecraft adaptations coming this season on Cabinet of Curiosities, with Dreams in the…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Cabinet of Curiosities: The Outside’ – Do We All Just Want to Be Good-looking?
True acceptance, harmony, peace, and divinity; all that stuff is a lie. We all just wanna be good-looking. We are first introduced to Stacey (Kate Micucci), awkwardly sway dancing to some generic jazz tune, wearing…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: The Autopsy’ – Humans are Such Easy Prey…
…This is one of those nightmare specials, the kind you never get to the bottom of. In this tertiary episode of Guillermo del Toro’s anthology show, we receive a terrifying answer to the age-old question:…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats’ – A Darkly Comedic Tale of Rodent Terror
The second episode of Cabinet of Curiosities is a much sillier fare than its predecessor, and that’s not a bad thing. From its title, you can probably deduce the story’s main threats. Though naturally, the real…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘Cabinet of Curiosities: Lot 36’ – Guillermo del Toro Becomes a Horror Host
Ah yes, God. Silent, strong type that loves to see us squirm with free will and other delusions. But what about his adversary, huh? What makes Guillermo del Toro such a fun director for me…
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There’s an alternative universe where they never made a straight sequel to 1978’s Halloween. Instead, the franchise continued with John Carpenter’s original anthology concept. Every few years or so, we’d get another spooky story on…
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I will always have a soft spot for Kevin Smith. Even if you aren’t fond of his dick jokes, any cineaste will admire his ascent as a filmmaker. He’s one of the great examples of…
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Streaming HorrorStreaming Reviews
‘They/Them’: A Harmless Slasher Movie that Will Nonetheless Trigger a Large Populace
A horror film with a political, or progressive bias, isn’t anything new, though according to many manbabies, this rigorous messaging is destroying modern horror cinema. So whenever a new Jordan Peele movie comes out, you’ll…
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Streaming AnimationStreaming Reviews
‘Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe’: A Tale of Two Heroes on a Quest to Score…
There once was a day when Beavis and Butt-Head, this innocuous and delightfully stupid cartoon, was highly controversial. For the moral crusaders in the early nineties, the popularity of this MTV-produced show (back in ancient…
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ComedyReviews
Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening Make an Endearing Couple in ‘Jerry and Marge Go Large’
There is something quintessential American about the story of Jerry and Marge Selbee, two retirees who exploited a loophole in the lottery system and made themselves rich. A story like this can only become truly…
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Most musical biopics are forgettable, generic fare. They rarely resemble nothing more than a fond tribute to the artists, but as historical films or character studies, they are extremely lacking. They usually take a simplified…
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Streaming ReviewsStreaming Thriller
‘Deep Water’: Adrian Lyne Returns With This Lifeless Erotic Thriller
Star-studded erotic thrillers have long been out of fashion. Perhaps this is due to the viewer being more desensitized to sexual content. The stuff you see on your regular HBO show is often far more…
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Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is trapped in the mundane loop of online dating. Any modern woman knows the procedure, the hours that are wasted on a guy who misrepresents himself and the occasional creep. The inane…
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Don’t let its title fool you, 2022’s No Exit is not a modern adaptation of Sartre’s misanthropic play with the same name. It might open with a direct reference to the Myth of Sysiphus, but…
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I’ve been a loyal apologist to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. I’ve even been compelled to write several retrospectives on the franchise, sharing my peculiar affection for the murderous on-screen antics of the Sawyer clan.…
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I had a choice between writing a retrospective on David Lynch’s haunting Lost Highway, or this embarrassing 1992 comedy starring Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty. Every reasonable cineaste would naturally choose the former. One movie…
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I’m probably writing this article prematurely. On my reading list, I have somewhere — beneath hundreds of other books I promised myself I would read one day — Kevin Farley’s supposedly touching memoir about his…
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Ray Donovan was another product of the third revolution of television, a prime example of the “difficult man” trope. Its titular character was an unfaithful husband, a muscle for hire for either gangsters or corrupt…
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DocumentaryReviews
‘Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time’: A Moving and Deeply Personal Documentary About a Great Writer and Friend
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is not a conventional documentary, though that was the original intention. Its inception started nearly forty years ago, in 1982. Robert B. Weide had just finished a well-received PBS documentary…
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ComedyHorrorReviews
‘Black Friday’: The Good News Is It Includes Bruce Campbell, the Bad News Is That It’s Not Very Good
Adding Bruce Campbell to your cast will automatically attract any genre enthusiast. The man is a legend, possibly one of the most charismatic men on the planet. A man so charismatic, I’m seriously considering watching…
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Action/AdventureReviews
‘Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago’: Stallone’s New Director’s Cut Is Not the Superior Version, but Makes for an Interesting Companion Piece
If you want to see how far a movie franchise can change in tone, watch the original Rocky and then its third sequel, Rocky IV. You can see the evolution (or devolution, if you prefer)…
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Red Notice is an action-comedy starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot — three people whose movies I generally avoid. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson might have definite star power but he has a track…
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Thirty years ago we were treated to Wes Craven’s deliriously entertaining socially-conscious horror roller coaster, The People Under the Stairs. When we talk about Craven’s oeuvre, the usual suspects are mentioned: the exploitation classic, The…
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To state the obvious, we never needed a sequel to the 1978 original Halloween. The essence of Michael Myers’ frightening presence, the murderous void that guides him and makes him known as The Shape, had…
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Here it is. After so many delays, James Bond has finally returned to the big screen. This was going to be Daniel Craig’s swan song for the character, the man who once famously said he…
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Due to the pandemic, a lot of people have ventured into the streaming abyss, picking up on shows they’ve never finished or starting shows that have been on their radar for quite some time. One…