Practical Magic: Lesbian Sisters

Summary: two young women navigate the world of men and love by way of magic.

So let’s get this out of the way earlier, there are a number of scenes where it looks like the two lead sisters are going to kiss and it is weird. Throughout the history of witches in horror particularly when it is not the old crone there is implied lesbianism, and sometimes that’s okay, but other times it feels like male titillation. There is nothing wrong with titillation but when the two leads are sisters it’s weird. Kidman and Bullock’s sister characters are far too close.

The film itself feels as though someone couldn’t decide on a structural level what this was supposed to be. It is based on a novel so perhaps the issues are from that. You have essentially two competing stories you have the curse placed on the Owens women where if they find love they die and you have the fact that Kidman’s character is going out with an abusive guy who they then kill and he comes back. This doesn’t just feel like a film of two halves it feels like two different films of different genres sown together. It doesn’t work as tonally it is too mismatched.

The ending of the film wherein the town that had attacked and belittled the sisters for being witches turns around and helps them out doesn’t cut the mustard. Neither does the fact that in the final sequence of the film they jump off a roof using magic to not die and not one person goes wait what witches are real.

Overall, whilst there are some moments of cozy comfort it feels like a more icky and poorly thought through relic of yesteryear.

2.5/5

Pros.

It’s watchable

Kidman and Bullock

There is charm

Cons.

It totally doesn’t work

The creepy stuff with the sisters

The ending

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One Night Only: Remember When Men Weren’t A Joke?

Summary: for one night a year sex is legal, two people try to make it work.

Owen is told at the offset of the film that his girlfriend wants to sleep with someone else, then he goes to stay at his mother’s who wants him out so she can get down. After that he is robbed by a woman who takes his clothes, when he finally meets Allie and they are about to have sex this is then denied them. Allie’s journey is far more about her coming out of her shell, daring to sing in public, ultimately to grow as a person. Notice the difference one is about empowerment the other is about humiliation.

You might have heard that a lot of the nudity and sex scenes where cut out of this film, we did a Cinema Issues about it, because audiences don’t want to see nudity unless it’s Sydney Sweeney in Gluck’s last film. For the most part this is not a steamy affair, it is oddly clinical and depressing and maybe that is a comment on modern dating but this film is supposed to be a rom-com, yet there is nothing romantic or funny about it.

Monica Barbaro does her best to keep the film together but this is really DOA on arrival.

Overall, more modern slop to avoid.

1/5

Pros

Barbaro

Cons

It is dull

It doesn’t have anything fresh to say

The male humiliation

The ending is cheap

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Cinema Issues: American’s Fear Of Sex Scenes

Wil Gluck’s new film One Night Only is about the one night a year where sex is allowed, it is literally about sex, yet despite this the man who directed Anyone But You and had Sydney Sweeney take her top off says he has removed a lot of the nudity and sex scenes from the movie.

Why? Well because audiences don’t want to watch that according to Gluck. Anyone But You, Wuthering Heights, and any number of other erotic thrillers begs to differ with Mr Gluck. However the deeper reason seems to be America’s growing prudishness around sex, a lot of the people defending Gluck say it takes away from the story, the story is about sex, they say that you can watch porn for that, a film’s sex scene establishes character relationships and is not real hardcore pornography. Frankly, if you think there is a comparison between a film sex scene and porn then you belong about 400 years ago in the puritan past.

There is this idea of oh audiences are uncomfortable watching them, Gluck puts this forward to. Why are you uncomfortable with something as normal as sex, if you can’t handle it the issue is with you, you should stick to watching kids films rather than trying to censor sex as a whole. Does it make you uncomfortable as it shows you what you aren’t having or it shows you people whose bodies don’t look like yours? That’s a you problem. Is it because you can only go to the cinema with other people be it friends or your significant other, once again the fact you can’t go on your own is your problem.

Once again we see the strange needless prudishness coming out of America that has always been there, one of our writers said that they have seen it their whole life, however from this writers European perspective it seems both ridiculous and karenlike. When One Night Only fails hopefully so will Gluck’s career.

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The Ice Cream Man: Eli Roth Is Back On Form

Summary: an evil ice cream man is giving kids ice cream that makes them kill their parents.

Thanksgiving was a good film, but it has been a while since we last heard from Eli Roth so expectations were high for this film and for the most part he delivered.

Now there is a hullabaloo about oh no the film uses AI, to that we say grow up most films do and just don’t tell you, see Supergirl. If you think the effects shots in Brand New Day didn’t have any AI involvement then you need to put the beverage down and get serious.

The thing that is perhaps the hardest to understand is what the tone is, as the film is both very dark and also very silly, you could argue it is a comedy horror perhaps. Once you adjust to it it’s okay.

The film feels both fresh but also like it is calling back to A Nightmare On Elm Street in one key way.

The best thing the film does is how it ends, it ends in a way not typical at all for horror films, as the villain basically wins, most films have the killer stopped, the demon exorcised, the ghost sent on etc, this does not.

One thing that was not so good about the film was a line of dialogue where a 12 year old girl says “I’m a 12 year old girl of course I know how to make myself sick”. Bulimia is a very serious condition and it should not be made light off particularly with teens who are often prone to eating disorders and suicidality. It’s a throwaway line it’s not like they dwell on it but it’s a clumsy line that harms an otherwise good film.

4/5

Pros.

The ending

The gore

The tone once you adjust

The Ice Cream Man

Cons.

The Bulimia line

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Cinema Issues: The Death Of Marvel’s Disney + Dreams

News has broken that other than Daredevil Born Again no other series will be returning to Disney +, despite all those fake leaker accounts promising Hawkeye season 2. There’ll be some one offs and mini series, but by and large the focus will shift to animation as it is cheaper and easier to do.

As you can imagine people are upset, why won’t we get another season of Wonder Man despite the fact it flopped. However, this move is great for Marvel, you shouldn’t have to watch a 6 hours series in order to understand a film you want to watch as such stopping it is for the best.

Moreover, a hell of a lot of the things that happened in the Disney + shows either were never referenced again or were just written out, looking at you Hulk’s son and Kingpin losing an eye. The fact is a lot of these series just weren’t good at all, and so it makes sense to cast them off. When they did mix in with the proper MCU films it was generally in so much as providing a supporting character or explaining a motive, they just weren’t needed.

There are also a lot of reasons why Disney and marvel as a brand want to remove themselves from Marvel’s Disney + offerings and a lot of this comes down to politics. Both Tatiana Maslany and Oscar Issac have publicly attacked Disney in the press and online and as such She Hulk and Moon Knight died there and then, She Hulk has been heavily ignored and vast parts of it simply seem to be non-canon now.

In many ways Disney leaving this arena whilst they still have some of their credibility left is a win, let’s hope Wonder Man, Riri Williams, She Hulk and the rest stay buried forever and don’t pop up for a jump scare in the next Avengers film.

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Paw Patrol The Dino Movie: Brain Rot For Kids

Summary: the animals find other older animals.

This is soulless if this is what constitutes animation these days then the practice should be shelved permanently. There is no depth in the characters or their bonds, or their dialogue, it is just the most obvious vapid platitudes.

This feels like a glorified advert with the animals needing to get new vehicles and have the disabled dog who was already riding a t-rex, have it upgraded to sell more toys. It was incredibly cynical.

The villain is maybe on screen for about 5 minutes and is just silly without any real motivation, they are also stopped incredibly easily showing no real stakes at all in that.

When you look at a film like Minons and Monsters and compare it to this you can see the difference, one is designed to sell toys and to rot kids brains the other goes a bit deeper, has characters and has a story to tell.

Overall, the series and films need to stop.

0.5/5

Pros.

It has a few unintentionally funny moments

Cons.

It’s shallow and vapid

It doesn’t have characters it has a tick box list of traits

The villain is weak

The pacing is awful

It is just an advert

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Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma: The Musings Of A Pervert

Summary: everything wrong with modern horror.

Where to start, one could start with the filmmaker who made this made I Thought I Saw The TV Glow one of the most unwell horror films ever made that made trans people look bad. He is not a filmmaker that should have been given a bigger budget to make another film.

You could mention how Gillan Anderson has exploited the LGBTQ+ market for years, pretending that she is Bi-Sexual when she only ever dates men, but won’t say that as then she’ll lose gigs like this.

You could also mention Hannah Einbinder and her hate filled views about Israel and the Jews and how she embodies the very worst of modern progressive values.

Much like with many modern progressives the director of this film has to make his personal identity central to it. The film heavily features trans messages, the Jason stand in, is claimed to be both a boy and a girl, you can only be one or the other, and dies due to the camp councillors being bigots. The eye roll is real.

At times the film would almost be funny if viewed as a parody but it just inst that. Einbinder’s character is brought in to update his horror franchise and make it less transphobic, again it borders on parody.

Anderson’s character is in a polygamous relationship she doesn’t like, but no doubt it is still better than monogamy as God forbid you conform. Anderson can only climax if she thinks she’s being watched by the killer from her old slasher franchise and then has age inappropriate sex with a much younger Einbinder.

Einbinder character creates a new version of the slasher franchise wherein the killer kills her parents, agent and superiors, one wonders what the incredibly on the nose message the director/writer wants us to see here. She then later dies in the film within a film by being stabbed with a spear as she orgasms during sex. There is something deeply sick and perverse about this film.

Overall, this film shouldn’t be made and the director should not work again.

The film is flopping even on a tiny budget

0/5

Cons.

The age inappropriate relationship

It makes lesbians and the broader LGBTQ+community look bad, as they only seem to have dark fetish sex

It is badly paced

It borders on parody

It is entirely disconnected from reality of any kind

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Cinema Issues Spider-Man Brand New Day And Superhero Fatigue

Just like the success of the Odyssey doesn’t prove that woke films are back in vogue, Spider-Man Brand New Day’s success doesn’t change the fact Superheroes are on the way out.

One only needs to look at recent Superhero box office failures such as Captain America Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four or Supergirl or consider the bad viewing numbers of many of the streaming shows.

Folks will always watch Spider-Man he’s a popular character just like folks will watch the Avengers films but just wait for the next B level character and see how few people turn out for it. The fatigue hasn’t gone away it just never applied to the big characters people care about.

Nolan could pull off woke as he’s is Christopher Nolan and sold the experience of seeing his film, another director couldn’t do that, likewise the Marvels 2 wouldn’t be able to be profitable simply because Brand New Day was as no one cares about those characters.

Some say it is bad movie fatigue we say it is bad character fatigue.

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Batman Caped Crusader Season 2 Overview: They Continue To Ruin The Batman Mythos

Why not have the Riddler as just another thug, it destroys his character but why not, why not gender flip more classic Batman villains like The Mad Hatter rather than bringing in actual female villains like Lady Shiva.

They make Harley Quinn a girlboss, she breaks from the Joker far too early and easily and it really damages the overall relationship there in terms of dynamics and how that plays out. As well as this they introduce The Dark Knight Returns Robin rather than you know any of the other more well known ones. Again all of this is a choice.

When you look at something like Invincible and yes it does make changes from the comics but it also replicates things as well pretty 1:1 at times, this just seems like vandalism.

Overall: lots of people already aren’t watching this but you shouldn’t either.

1/5

Pros.

There are a couple of cool fights

Cons.

The gender swaps

The lore ruining moments

The girlbosses

The animation itself

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Cinema Issues: The Recovery Of The Box Office?

So we were originally going to write a post about the slaughter that has been the summer box office with some films doing really well and everything else flopping. However, we decided to retool that into a conversation on the fact that we are in July 2026 and have already had 3 billion dollar films, with more likely to come meaning that from a box office perspective we have had a much better year than we have had in post-pandemic history. However, within that there is a caveat.

As of right now Michael, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Toy Story 4 are all sitting at 1 billion, with the Odyssey, and likely Spider-Man Brand New Day set to join it. Whilst on paper this is great news for the box office it is also painting a picture of instability, as whilst there are more high profile hits there are also a lot more high profile misses.

As the summer season has shown films like Minions 3 have struggled to connect and films like Supergirl and Moana have outright flopped, this is showing that cinema is becoming an all or nothing bloodsport. There are far fewer films that do middling, and the remaining strength of the box office is being channeled into a few specific types of film, directors, or franchises this makes the box office lob sided and reduces chances taken on projects.

This seems to be the new reality people either come out in force and a film makes lots of money or no one goes and it dies on the vine. People may say it has always been this way but that is not true there were often middling cases and a middle ground between hits and flops but increasingly that has withered away.

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