The Meaning of J

 Bite (2015)      Bite  is a 90-minute vomitorium of nauseating body horror, juxtaposed with insipid, pedestrian characters and supplemented with so-so acting performances. It's a movie that is more sickening than captivating, delivering a huge dose of bug-infested, body-transformation-reliant horror, instead of giving us an equal balance of gross-out scares and well-rounded characters. Its premise reminds me of another body horror film I had seen before, only that it's not on the same level of greatness as its flying insect antecedent. Nevertheless, the film delivers on its revolting scares, able to instill a sense of repugnance even in the most proficient of horror fans.        Bite is a body horror film directed, written, and produced by Chad Archibald ( The Heretics , I'll Take Your Dead ) and starring Elma Begovic as Casey, the film's protagonist. The plot follows Casey celebrating her bachelorette party in Costa Rica, with her two frien...

 Tom & Jerry (2021)    When a movie's development process stalls for longer than anticipated, it becomes clear that the film is stuck in development hell. This concept isn't entirely new in filmmaking, with many notable Hollywood films having gone through this process, stemming from issues that may arise during the pre-production process. While some of these films manage to escape being stuck in purgatory and see the light of day, the result will always differ in various degrees of success. Some were worth the struggle ( Alita: Battle Angel , Watchmen, Mad Max: Fury Road ) while others should have been canned right from the start ( Death Note, The Postman, The Smurfs). Sadly, in the case of today's subject, all those years spent in development were utterly wasted in what became the finished product, not being worth all the trouble to lift out of its development limbo.       Tom & Jerry is a cinematic catastrophe in every conceivable way imagina...