Nathan Holic

Author: nholic

  • Kids = Scary

    Smart kids are scary. And kids with bad intentions are scary. Especially when no one wants to believe the adult’s word over the child’s. And we’ve seen this concept played out to great and frightening success with films like “Joshua” and “The Omen.” Evil children who manipulate adults and cause ridiculous mayhem, simply because the…

  • Taking Chance

    “Taking Chance” is one of only a handful of films that has attempted to document the American experience in the Iraq War, and has actually succeeded. So many of the Hollywood attempts to deal with the war have been either preachy or disjointed (or both), mainly because they were more concerned with politics than with…

  • The Problem With Epic Disaster Movies…

    I didn’t hate “2012” (and, in fact, it’s a movie that–like “Independence Day”–is so goofy that it’s tough to really hate), but I do think that it represents the absolute epitome of all that is wrong with big-budget Hollywood action/adventure epics in the post-Millennial, in-love-with-CGI world. Okay, so here’s the premise: the world is ending…

  • Creature Feature Sequel

    Though “The Descent Part II” was a nice little horror movie, a fun and sometimes-scary return to a world that…well, technically, we never really wanted to return to…it really only functions as a fun little diversion. Some of the same actors return, certainly (and so the characters are involved in an ongoing story…this isn’t one…

  • Jennifer’s Body

    I was really hoping I’d like “Jennifer’s Body.” We’ve had quite a few good-to-great horror comedies in the last few years (most of them dealing with zombies, from “Zombieland” to “Shaun of the Dead” to “Fido”), and with “Juno” scriptwriter Diablo Cody handling the script here, I thought we might see an insightful and humorous…

  • September Dawn

    So I recently watched the mini-series “Into the West,” a fairly epic look at a full century of violence and conflict and tragedy as a result of American expansionism. While the filmmakers re-created the San Francisco Gold Rush, the murder and destruction of Kansas settlers by Missouri slave-owners, and the massacre at Wounded Knee, I…

  • A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

    “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” is a pretty spectacular undertaking, a book that attempts to chart the birth, coming-of-age, and growing pains of a so-called “hip-hop generation.” It’s always readable, always interesting, and surprisingly inspiring, but it isn’t without its issues. First, I can’t help but think of the idea (and subtitle) of the “hip-hop generation”…

  • GasLand as Horror Documentary

    “GasLand” is the scariest documentary I’ve seen since “The Corporation” and “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and maybe the scariest film I’ve seen since “Paranormal Activity.” No, wait. Scratch that. It might just be the scariest film I’ve ever seen. Here’s why: first of all, Josh Fox–the director–comes across as a genuine and…

  • Away We Go: Potential Millennial Movie?

    Perhaps because Dave Eggers penned the script (and his “Heartbreaking Work” was/is the quintessential novel of Generation X), and perhaps because Sam Mendes was the director (and his “American Beauty” is one of the quintessential films of late ’90s/early 2000’s suburban malaise), I expected great things from “Away We Go.” And while it was light…

  • Predators: God Bless Creature Franchises

    Really, “Predators” is almost the same film as the original, which should tell you whether you will like it or not. Bunch of military-types out in the jungle, getting hunted, trying to figure out how to survive, trying to learn what is actually hunting them, etc. If you want a violent shoot ’em up, mixed…