Jonathan Urankar

Author of Terrormonger. Wrote and directed some short films/theater. You gotta be who you are in this world. When the going gets rough... go full walrus!

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@BodySnatchers79 Would've liked to have seen this movie. Looks like it Would've been wild.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@KneeHighFox @therealSpider1 I just wanted to say I bought Big Baby as an early birthday present to myself (my birthday is today). Awesome movie! I've watched it multiple times already. As a horror writer myself, I related to so many things this movie has to say. Great job!

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@PatrickWMelton any movement on The Coll3cted? It's been a while since there's been any kind of update. I'm just here hoping for the best. We need to see how this story ends! The Collection has a great ending but knowing there's more... I need closure! Anyway, wishing you luck.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@ERCboxoffice 2 million domestic. I'm curious what the global box office will be. On a budget of 5.5 million he doesn't need to make much to at least break even. As long as the movie makes its money back it isn't a failure. Breaking even isn't a bad thing.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@SandyofCthulhu @Nerdcognito Clint is making a sequel called Another Ice Cream Man. He co-wrote and is directing it. He's also playing a different killer ice cream man.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@SubjectDelta95 @isaacbaranoff You'll get no argument from me. I pay a real artist, real money to hand draw the covers of my books. It's expensive and time consuming, but he's great and I love the collaboration. I'd never use AI but I see why people do. It's quick and cheap and requires no effort. I get it.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@SubjectDelta95 @isaacbaranoff I hear you, I do, but what percentage of any potential audience is actually going to boycott? Out of 100% I'm thinking maybe 10%. People who aren't chronically online don't know about all this and they don't care, they just want to watch a movie and don't care how it gets made.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@romerogamesltd @QuakeCon Absolute legends! #QuakeCon

[Romero Games Ltd. @romerogamesltd]

Thank you so much for the best weekend ever. ❤️

#QuakeCon @QuakeCon

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@SubjectDelta95 @isaacbaranoff It may not be ideal, and you may not like it, but that's the reality of the world we live in. Saying things should be different doesn't make it so. Money talks and people will always watch movies. It's as simple, and as complicated as that.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@SubjectDelta95 @isaacbaranoff It's not about what should be, it's about what is. Hollywood is using AI, and soon you'll be seeing it everywhere unless you cut yourself off from all forms of media, and boycotting wont make a difference because not enough people will do it for it to have any effect.

[Vincent Gallo Respecter @GalloRespecter]

"Ice Cream Man" Verified Purchase Review

A rare new horror movie with passion project energy, Ice Cream Man feels like a naughty gift from Eli Roth to his middle school self who would have loved to sneak into the theater screening it. The Gen Alpha characters sling F bombs aplenty, flout authority, and creatively brutalize teachers, parents, and other adults in the New England town of Bayleen Bay. I didn’t grow up with Goosebumps, but I imagine this captures the appeal of those stories in a more transgressive, boundary-pushing package. If I was an edgy 13-year-old, perhaps it would be an instant favorite.

Despite being one of the most violent movies I’ve seen in a theater, Ice Cream Man maintains a playful levity almost throughout that gives seasoned horror fans permission to laugh at the myriad kills as carnivalesque cartoon entertainment. As others have noted, the movie stands as a correction to Weapons and its pop-arthouse pretensions, reminding hype merchants that horror can be fun and efficiently paced and not lit like a modern survival horror video game.

I don’t think Roth’s story competes with Brian Taylor’s Mom and Dad as a generational warfare parable, or with his own Knock Knock and Hostel: Part 2 as satires; some idiosyncrasies of the ice cream mind virus are hard to parse, such as the paralytic effect on teenagers (punishment for marijuana indulgence or skipping school?), and the classroom settings lack specificity that would sharpen the critiques of education and/or indoctrination. Some jokes from the kids (“It’s top of the line, basically an iPhone”) crackle with Roth’s attunement to online neuroses, but at the same time they draw attention to how main character Jared’s racially diverse friends don’t have quite as much dimension.

I’m loath to comment on the very stupid moral panic that’s engulfed Ice Cream Man, as even hearing about it skewed my viewing experience. Instead of receiving the images without prejudice and looking for meaning in them, I spent the whole movie playing VFX “Where’s Waldo?” in a way no moviegoer would have prior to approximately 2025. The hissy fit from mindless “cinephiles” who haven’t seen the movie over Roth’s limited use of new technology (which, when I *think* I did pick up on it, just made a gag reference to The Birds even funnier) evinces a grave collapse in art appreciation that’s coincided with Letterboxd and YouTube criticism. Their egos inflated by likes and comments, movie consumers who’ve never made a short film now think it’s incumbent on them to subjectively measure effort in filmmaking, and assume that the worth of a director’s vision is directly tied to how much he struggled or paid to achieve it. No serious critic would apply this rubric to literature, art, or music, or cry foul about editing or color correction software, but incurious people who delight in flexing their Certified Fresh taste now feel empowered to defame and damn truly independent* movies that for some reason make them uncomfortable.

“It really is evil that SLOP is taking screens away from capital-M movies like Spider-man 9, The Odyssey, and A24.” If you think this, you are a slave.

* At the cinema I went to, arriving a bit late, the preshow appeared unique to the movie, strictly teasing upcoming The Horror Section projects. It didn’t run for the typical 20-25 minutes either, so I recommend showing up at the marquee time.

[Armond White @3xchair]

Lots to be learned about mass hysteria from the brat attack in Eli Roth's horror-satire #IceCreamMan Listen up, Washington, Hollywood. Here's why:

[Alan Ng @ Film Threat @mypalal]

I’m starting to embrace the idea that the sole reason you should make a movie is that everyone tells you you shouldn't.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@isaacbaranoff That's probably why he initially said they didn't use AI. He didn't take work away from a human. He hired humans to do a job, and they used AI. He also didn't steal from someone else using ai, he hand drew the images and had them animated. Total, it's 30 sec of a 90 min movie.

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@Paladin000Xbox Well, I just saw the movie, and if the word of a stranger means anything to you, I really enjoyed it. I don't know what movie these people watched but Ice Cream Man was a decently entertaining movie. Great effects and the kids really carried the movie. I liked it. 👍

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@Paladin000Xbox Eli admitted to using A.I. but only to animate a little cartoon which is only shown a few times. He says he hand drew the image, then apparently hired a company to animate it, and they used A.I. to bring it to life. People are acting like all the CGI is A.I. but it's not. Crazy.

[machinegames @machinegames]

We just released a brand-new free episode for @Quake (Enhanced), Dawn of the Machine, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of a game that means so much to everyone at our studio. Available now!

In it, Ranger finds himself trapped in a dimension of endless illusion and must track down the mysterious Nightmare Machine to finally break free. Along the way, players will shift between dimensions, uncover hidden secrets, and face unpredictable encounters where reality itself is constantly changing. We hope you'll have as much fun playing it as we did making it!

[Jonathan Urankar @jonthemovieguy]

@Drumdums @x_Matt_Guitar_x Eli Roth said the only use of AI is the animated cartoon. Eli says he hand drew the cartoon and apparently hired a company to animate it and they used AI to bring it to life like an old black and white, 1950s cartoon. That's it. All this fuss over a little cartoon.