The Blu Spot

The Film: Nate Bargatze is a comedian whose name you probably haven't heard of, but for more than two decades, his career has seen him doing stand-up in clubs and on a few different talk shows, appearances that eventually gave him the chance to make a few specials for various networks (one of which earned him a pair of Emmy nominations). This success even led him to release a movie earlier this year entitled "The Breadwinner," which he co-wrote, co-produced, and stars in. Sad

The Film: As we've seen over the last several decades of cinema, single-location films are one of the hardest feats to pull off in regards to having strong enough characters & engaging enough writing to keep the story compelling enough for its entire duration. For some films, it can get even more complicated, especially when you have a plethora of characters in that one location, which brings us to Richard Sale's somewhat obscure survival picture "Abandon Ship!" (aka "Seven D

The Film: Back in late 1994, a little animated film called "The Swan Princess," loosely based on Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" ballet, was released to mixed reviews and very little fanfare. Indeed, word of mouth at the time was not great, with the film doing rather poorly at the box office with a take of just under $10 million. However, most seem to believe that the reason for its under-performance was due to the overcrowding of big, popular films that season, including "The Sant

The Film: Over the course of nearly 80 years, there have been several dozen films dedicated to the popular adventurer Sinbad the Sailor, as originally featured in "One Thousand and One Nights," but it's probably more than fair to say that none have been quite as popular as the trilogy of pictures from Columbia that featured the incredible stop motion animation ("Dynamation") of the great Ray Harryhausen. The first of these films, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad," is considered one

The Film: Over the last several decades, there have been many films that have explored the dark period of American history involving The Blacklist, HUAC, and the desperate investigation into Communist activities of the 1950s, but it's rather interesting to note that they didn't really start appearing until the '70s, with "The Way We Were" from 1973 being credited as the first major film to use it as a central plot point. However, the first one to focus on it in a satirical fa

The Film: Keeping with the trend of anthropomorphizing animals in animation, a little flick called "GOAT" popped up earlier this year looking to capitalize on the popularity of such hits as the "Zootopia" and "The Bad Guys" films. You'd be forgiven for possibly not having heard of it, for it sort of came and went without making too much of a splash, receiving rather middling reviews from critics & audiences, and, despite what looks like a pretty impressive box office, coming

The Film: Last year, screenwriter Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle made a bold attempt to resurrect a long-dormant franchise, giving us the next logical entry with "28 Years Later," an attempt to expand the story of where humanity stands after the mass breakout of the "Rage" virus. Critics thought the film was decent, but audiences were not nearly as impressed, giving it rather mixed ratings and a somewhat disappointing box office return that had the film barely breaking

The Film: Nearly 30 years ago, a little horror flick called "Anaconda" was unleashed in theaters. It was a rather silly concept that involved hunting down a large snake in the Amazon, one which naturally ends up killing several people, that wasn't exactly embraced by critics, but which audiences surprisingly did end up taking to. The film would ultimately gross about three times its decently-sized budget and go on to spawn four more films (only the first of which was in theat

The Film: Back in 2022, a bizarre little action flicked called "Sisu" was unleashed, telling the simple tale of a former Finnish soldier trying to reclaim his stolen gold from Nazis near the end of World War II. It was a film that was big on gratuitous bloodshed & absurdity, but sadly very light on story, which ended up hindering it quite heavily, and yet, it still managed to garner decent reviews from those that praised its over-the-top action sequences. It wasn't exactly wh

The Film: You've probably heard me mention a few dozen times at this point how filmmakers nowadays find it immensely difficult to break away from the oh-so-familiar formula when it comes to romances of any kind. The sad part is that they don't even seem to be willing to try doing something a little different to give the audience a surprise or two, basically causing them to be ahead of it every step of the way. That said, there are some that at least try to dress it up a bit b