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Josh Bell

Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He's the former film editor of 'Las Vegas Weekly' and has written about movies and pop culture for Syfy Wire, Polygon, CBR, Film Racket, Uproxx and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.

News archive

Reviews

Review: Force of Nature

Jun 30th, 2020 Josh Bell

There are so many troubling elements to Force of Nature that it’s tough to know where to begin. Stars Emile Hirsch and Mel Gibson have both behaved reprehensibly (and sometimes illegally) in their offscreen lives for years. The movie’s sympathetically portrayed main characters are cops who...

Looking Back

In Praise of the Long-Unavailable, Slyly Subversive 'Little Darlings'

Jun 23rd, 2020 Josh Bell

The summer camp sex comedy is a cornerstone of 1980s cinema, and at first glance 1980’s Little Darlings looks like a minor example of the genre, without the pop-culture impact of something like the Meatballs franchise. Even the plot sounds like prime material for the parody of Wet Hot American...

Reviews

VODepths: What to See (and Avoid) On Demand This Month

Jun 15th, 2020 Josh Bell

This month’s fringe VOD offerings feature unauthorized depictions of Elvis Presley and Lynyrd Skynyrd, plus a homicidal pro wrestler, a pair of perky teen detectives, and more from the far reaches of the direct-to-video release schedule. The Short History of the Long Road (select drive-in...

Reviews

VODepths: What to See (and Avoid) On Demand This Month

May 18th, 2020 Josh Bell

Bruce Willis, Scott Adkins, and a killer shark make for a direct-to-video all-star line-up in this month’s look at movies on the margins of the ever-busy VOD and streaming release schedule. Survive the Night (VOD May 22) Compared to most of the direct-to-video work he churns out every year,...

Reviews

Review: Castle in the Ground

May 14th, 2020 Josh Bell

An artsier version of what might have been a network TV movie in the 1980s, writer-director Joey Klein’s addiction drama Castle in the Ground takes on the opioid epidemic with grim-faced seriousness and occasional poignancy, but can’t keep its focus on the emotional lives of its main...

Movies

Review: The Wretched

Apr 30th, 2020 Josh Bell

The Pierce Brothers’ The Wretched opens with a 1980s-set prologue that mimics the structure of a period-accurate slasher movie: a teenage babysitter, listening to music on her chunky headphones, arrives at a remote house, makes a reassuring phone call to her mom, and then walks right into a...

Reviews

VODepths: What to See (and Avoid) On Demand This Month

Apr 13th, 2020 Josh Bell

Once again, we’re taking a look at some of the movies on the fringes of the packed VOD and streaming release schedule. This month’s offerings include a pint-sized chef, a deranged marriage counselor, and the corpse of one of America’s worst presidents. The Lost Husband (VOD April 10):...

Reviews

Review: Corona Zombies

Apr 10th, 2020 Josh Bell

Everyone responds to trauma differently. For some, joking about terrible events is the only way to cope, even if those jokes are morbid. For others, it’s about creating something new, using difficult circumstances as the springboard for artistic expression. The most generous possible reading of...

Reviews

VODepths: What to See (and Avoid) On Demand This Month

Mar 23rd, 2020 Josh Bell

Every month, there are dozens of movies released to VOD and streaming that barely make a dent in the pop-culture consciousness, but represent an entire world of cinema just outside (or sometimes far outside) the mainstream. There’s a lot of trash on the fringes - but there are also undiscovered...

Reviews

Review: Escape from Pretoria

Mar 4th, 2020 Josh Bell

The inmates who break out of Pretoria Central Prison are imprisoned for their political activities, but the context is mostly irrelevant to Francis Annan’s Escape From Pretoria, which is far more interested in generating suspense and painstakingly chronicling procedural details than in...

Reviews

Review: Carol of the Bells

Mar 3rd, 2020 Josh Bell

Although he’s still best known for being John Travolta’s brother, for a while in the ’90s and ’00s Joey Travolta carved out a surprisingly robust career as a director of direct-to-video oddities, from kids’ movies starring Ernest Borgnine and a giant turtle or Pat Morita and aliens, to...

Reviews

Review: Swift

Feb 18th, 2020 Josh Bell

There’s some sort of irony in Willem Dafoe providing the voice of a cartoon seagull just a few months after he so memorably appeared opposite a much more menacing seagull in The Lighthouse. Imagining Dafoe’s gruff bird flying out of the brightly animated Swift and into the grimy...

Reviews

Review: Camp Cold Brook

Feb 11th, 2020 Josh Bell

For a group of professional ghost hunters, the main characters in Camp Cold Brook are surprisingly unhappy to discover that the abandoned summer camp they’re investigating is genuinely haunted. At the first sign of actual paranormal activity, the stars of a second-rate cable-TV...

Reviews

Review: Come As You Are

Feb 11th, 2020 Josh Bell

It would be easy for Come as You Are to turn into a cloying, condescending lecture about how the disabled are people, too, and there are times when Richard Wong’s remake of the 2011 Belgian film Hasta La Vista comes pretty close to that. But for the most part, Wong and screenwriter Erik...

Reviews

Review: Cupid

Jan 29th, 2020 Josh Bell

Christmas-themed horror movies have become a thriving subgenre in recent years, providing micro-budget horror filmmakers with easy subject matter and plenty of options for pun-friendly titles. So why shouldn’t Valentine’s Day get the same holiday horror treatment? Writer-director Scott Jeffrey...

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