Original Cinemaniac

Movie Reviews by Dennis Dermody

No Man of God

            In the new film No Man of God, Elijah Wood plays real-life FBI Special Agent Bill Hagmaier, who was a former guidance counselor recruited into the elite Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI. He is given the unenviable task of…
Read more

Annette & The Anti-Musical

            Annette, the dazzling new film by Leos Carax (Holy Motors), now streaming on Amazon Prime, is about the tumultuous love affair between an edgy, stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and a renowned opera singer (Marion Cotillard).              It’s done as a crackpot…
Read more

Black Box Film Festival

            There are many news stories about post-Covid air travel. Particularly about unruly passengers punching the flight crew for having the temerity to tell them to buckle their seat belt or wear a face mask. Jean-Paul Sartre was right: “Hell is other…
Read more

Guyana, Cult of the Damned

            Out now in a gorgeous-looking Blu-ray from Code Red/Kino Lorber is Guyana, Cult of the Damned, a wonderfully sleazy 1979 film by Rene Cardona Jr. chronicling the Reverend Jim Jones and the mass suicide in South America.             But hold on…
Read more

A Child’s J-Horror Primer

            There was a period beginning in the late 90s when Asian “J-Horror” was all the rage. Director Hideo Nakata’s Ringu became an international horror sensation and made us afraid of video cassettes and televisions. Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge made…
Read more

Hollywood’s Hard-Luck Ladies

            I just finished a fascinating, heartbreaking book by Laura Wagner– Hollywood’s Hard-Luck Ladies, another one of those offbeat, great, movie books published by McFarland & Company. It chronicles 23 Hollywood actresses whose careers and lives sometimes careened off cliffs. They…
Read more