Cinema Junkie

Satisfy your celluloid addiction and mainline film 24/7 with Cinema Junkie’s Beth Accomando. So if you need a film fix, want to hear what filmmakers have to say about their work, feel like taking a deep dive into a genre, or just want to know what's worth seeing this weekend, then you've come to the right place. You can also find Beth's coverage of other arts and culture events here.
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Two young filmmakers, Erick Msumanje and Gigi Saul Guererro, with wildly different films and styles talk about their work and how they define horror at the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival that took place over the weekend.
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Yes! I just found out that "Hobo With a Shotgun" has been held over, and you will have at least one more shot at this grindhouse homage.
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You may think you’ve seen bad movies but you haven’t seen anything quite as bad as “The Room." Listen to my radio feature about how a film’s badness is turning it into a cult hit on the midnight movie circuit. This is like a car crash that you cannot avoid looking at.
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Horrible Imaginings Film Festival director Miguel Rodriguez discusses his upcoming horror fest.
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Landmark’s Ken Cinema has found success with its classic film weeks and midnight movies. "They Live" pays tribute to the late Roddy Piper.
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If you found "Turbo Kid" on a VHS tape in someone's garage you'd probably swear it was a movie from the 1980s and that's just part of its charm.
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Tribute to horror master Wes Craven, who died on Sunday. I pull an archive interview from 2006 when he discussed the state of horror and how he thinks audiences arrive at his movies already in fear.
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Unearth a Geek Roundtable with fellow podcaster and Horrible Imaginings Film Festival director Miguel Rodriguez to discuss Universal monsters and the continuing film series The Universal Suspects at the Digital Gym Cinema.
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Peter Morgan's play "Frost/Nixon" premiered in London in 2006 and in what seems like a miraculously short turnaround, "Frost/Nixon" (opening December 12 in select theaters) now arrives on the big screen. The film version also turns to the original stage actors Michael Sheen and Frank Langella (who won the Tony for his performance) to reprise their roles as the British talk show host and former president. Morgan based his play and the screenplay on the series of televised interviews that former President Richard Nixon granted David Frost in 1977. The interviews famously ended with a tacit admission of guilt regarding his role in the Watergate scandal.
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Since I won't be able to review Cadillac Records this week before it opens let me at least show you the trailer. The film looks promising and I'm especially interested in seeing Jeffrey Wright play Muddy Waters. The film focuses on Chicago in the 50s, specifically looking to the rise of Chess Records and artists like Waters, Chuck Berry and Etta James. On the down side, Beyonce serves as executive producer and gives herself the role of Etta James. Beyonce may be pretty and with a pleasing voice but as an actress she's a bit vapid and bland. The rest of the cast looks good with Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess, Eric Bogosian as Alan Freed, and Mos Def as Chuck Berry. Cadillac Records opens December 5 throughout San Diego. The trailer is courtesy of Sony Pictures.
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"Four Christmases" is an amazingly funny movie. It's about this couple -- Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) -- that has been dating for three years, yet still don't know each other as well as they think they do. Every year, they go on some vacation around the world for the holidays and make up some lame excuse to tell their families as to why.
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"Hellboy II: The Golden Army," inspired by Mike Mignola's comics and graphic novels, arrives today on DVD and Blu-ray. The film is one of my favorites from this year. The fabulous Ron Perlman returns as the big-hearted and big-fisted red demon working for a secret paranormal government agency. This time out he's trying to announce himself to the world while he fights Prince Nuada (a beautifully tragic Luke Goss) from the underground elf world. Once again, filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro creates a vivid fantasy world where we feel the greatest connection to the monsters and creatures.
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"Pride and Glory" is another one of those films about good and bad cops fighting drug lords, but then joining them. This particular story is about a family of cops. The father was in the NYPD and has two sons that grow up to drive the black and whites. His daughter also married a man in a blue uniform. The son-in-law, Jimmy (Colin Farrell), is under the command of the eldest son. But Jimmy is dealing drugs and killing people behind his brother-in-law's back.
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"Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" is one of the best films I've seen this year. It features our four favorite New York zoo animals -- Alex, Marty, Gloria and Melman-- finding themselves on yet another epic adventure in a foreign land. This time our friends are stranded in Africa, which at first seems like a wasteland, but soon becomes a long lost paradise.
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"Madagascar 2; Escape 2 Africa" is a story of four animal friends -- Alex, Marty, Melvin and Gloria -- attempting to go back to New York and to their old lifestyle of living within the zoo. Unfortunately, on their way over to New York, their plane experiences some techinical difficulties and four infamous and mischievous penguins discover that the plane has run out of fuel. Their solution: Crashlanding in Africa.
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Beth Accomando is taking a short break from film reviews and arts coverage to create a six-part video podcast called Stripper Energy. Check it out!