The Jack in the Box
Murder clowns and demonic toys, both well-worn staples of mainstream horror, have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years thanks to two cinematic chapters of Stephen King’s It and various films set...
View ArticleOeuvre: Argento: Opera
Soon after the 1985 release of Phenomena, the Macerata Opera Festival invited Dario Argento to stage Verdi’s Rigoletto in the open-air space of its enormous Sferisterio di Macerata. But Argento’s...
View ArticleOn a Magical Night
Perhaps On a Magical Night, the new film from writer/director Christophe Honoré, begins on the wrong note to help us to sympathize with its beleaguered protagonist. The opening scene suggests this...
View ArticleCapital in the Twenty-First Century
Where the prevalence of the Occupy Movement helped foster interest in French economist Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” it’s the grotesque geopolitical reality of...
View ArticleNatalie Wood: What Remains Behind
Over the long Thanksgiving weekend in 1981, the superstar actress Natalie Wood drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Catalina Island. The last two people to see her alive were husband, actor...
View ArticleSouth Mountain
Films made on a shoestring budget have a few tell-tale signs. They feature long takes with a static camera, for instance, or a full cast of unrecognizable faces. Or, as in the case of South Mountain,...
View ArticleArkansas
In any given scene, Arkansas is at odds with itself. In one corner, we have the plot, adapted from John Brandon’s novel of the same name, which follows the rise of two junior drug dealers who learn the...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Hellbenders
There’s nothing like a good horror-comedy; sadly, Hellbenders is nothing like a good horror-comedy. Written and directed by J.T. Petty, adapting his own graphic novel, the 2012 film depicts an earthly...
View ArticleOeuvre: Argento: Two Evil Eyes
As one of the founders of the modern horror genre, it’s no surprise that Edgar Allan Poe’s work has been adapted for the screen so often, although few of these films manage to nail the precise tone of...
View Article1BR
You’re not paranoid if they’re actually out to get you. Starry-eyed Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom), freshly relocated to L.A. to pursue her dream of costume design, learns this the hard way when she is...
View ArticleCapone
After the spectacular failure of his 2015 Fantastic Four reboot, tyro filmmaker Josh Trank pledged to make his next film something personal and unique, completely divorced from the world of superheroes...
View ArticleLa Casa Lobo (The Wolf House)
“Little Red Riding Hood” gets an odd, inexplicable but undeniably haunting upheaval in La Casa Lobo (The Wolf House), an animated curio hailing from cowriters/directors Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal...
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Revisit: The Grand Budapest Hotel
The cinematic worlds that Wes Anderson has created from his 1998 breakthrough film Rushmore through to this recently released work have been so finely detailed that you had to fight the urge to attempt...
View ArticleFourteen
In Dan Sallitt’s new film Fourteen, a friendship between two young women unfolds over the course of decades in casual flits and near-imperceptible time jumps, but the cumulative effect of their...
View ArticleCastle in the Ground
Alex Wolff and Imogen Poots give affecting performances as opioid addicts on different places in their downward spirals in writer/director Joey Klein’s powerfully bleak film Castle in the Ground. Wolff...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Snatch Turns 20
Guy Ritchie had a decidedly ‘90s beginning as a film director, brashly forgoing formal training (a la Fincher) and launching straight in to his career with a loud, stylish and beloved genre film that...
View ArticleOeuvre: Argento: Trauma
This late into Dario Argento’s filmography, the hallmark stylistic signifiers of his personal aesthetic have slowly been sheared away, leaving little more than a confounding mess. 1993’s Trauma, his...
View ArticleInheritance
It’s hard to recognize Simon Pegg in Inheritance, playing a shaggy-haired wraith locked in a dungeon for 30 years. Once he cleans up a little and shows his face, it becomes even harder to understand...
View ArticleThe Lovebirds
The Lovebirds feels like an antiquated ‘80s comedy filtered through a modern lens. You can compare it to something like 48 Hrs., if you want to be generous. But, in reality, we’re talking more like...
View ArticleVillain
Villain offers nothing we haven’t seen before, but that wouldn’t be a problem if its presentation of that familiar material were more involving. Instead, this is another of those movies in which a...
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