Rabid Dogs
Of all the Mario Bava movies French producer-turned-director Éric Hannezo could have remade, 1974’s seldom-seen Rabid Dogs could be the most unlikely. Not only does the exotic, genre-smashing allure of...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys
Every now and then, a cheesy low-budget riff on a man vs. nature story worms its way into hearts. Sharknado catapulted to prominence three years ago (and spawned two lesser sequels) thanks to its...
View ArticleThe Finest Hours
In 1952 the U.S. Coast Guard pulled off the most daring and unlikely rescue in its history. Violent winds and waves from a fierce nor’easter tore two oil tankers asunder off the coast of Cape Cod, yet...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Scream
In 1996, Scream pulled off the rare feat of achieving revolutionary status while offering nearly nothing new. Though many will point to Wes Craven’s most financially successful film as the pioneer of...
View ArticleMonkey Up
Is man unable to evolve? Is the director of a talking animal franchise unable to break free from its creative shackles? Is straight-to-video auteur Robert Vince trying to tell us something? In his...
View ArticlePortrait of a Serial Monogamist
Portrait of a Serial Monogamist has a simple premise: what if the lovable schmuck from nearly every rom-com ever was a lesbian? Consider it part of the small but (encouragingly) growing catalogue of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Revisit: Limelight
Charles Chaplin’s career continued beyond the retirement of his Little Tramp persona, but the actor-director could never leave his beloved character behind, try as he may. Despite their later...
View ArticleGlassland
The path from starring in a Michael Bay explodapalooza to winning a Special Jury Award at Sundance is certainly the road less traveled. As a poverty-stricken Dubliner who cares for his alcoholic mother...
View ArticleThe Club
A shaggy-haired man stands outside a secluded home for exiled priests. He shouts about masturbation, abuse and penetration—appalling acts, presumably inflicted on him by one of the priests inside....
View ArticleHoly Hell! Crash Turns 20
The American movie theater of 1996 was a disastrous place. There were two alien invasions (Independence Day and Mars Attacks!), a fleet of tornados (Twister) and an apocalyptic threat of chemical...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Scream 2
“It’s good to be scared,” Omar Epps says in the prologue of Scream 2. “It’s primal.” He’s talking to his girlfriend (Jada Pinkett Smith) and they’re about to see “Stab,” a new movie based on the events...
View ArticleHail, Caesar!
There is a certain level of playfulness that comes with a Coen Brothers picture. Even No Country For Old Men, the most dour, serious-minded of them, is laced with black comedy and even outright...
View ArticleSouthbound
Perilous is the road to a successful horror anthology. Tying together divergent stories with a common thread is no easy task, especially when a number of directors each helm different parts of the...
View ArticleMisconduct
If you need something to distract yourself while watching Misconduct, try to reimagine it as a film noir from the early 1950s, a studio B picture the executives didn’t much care about as long as it...
View ArticleRediscover: Enemy
Enemy is a puzzle that, if viewed literally, makes little sense. It demands a second viewing. Sad-sack history teacher Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) lectures about totalitarianism and how dictators seek to...
View ArticleEisenstein in Guanajuato
“I am a boxer for the freedom of cinematic expression,” intones Sergei Eisenstein (Elmer Bäck) in an early scene in Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato, about the making of Que Viva Mexico!...
View ArticleTumbledown
Andrew (Jason Sudeikis), a professor specializing in pop culture, trucks it up to rural Maine to mine Hannah (Rebecca Hall) for information on her deceased husband, single album indie-folk musician...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
In the age of streaming media where anyone with a Netflix account can build their own personal canon, “underrated” becomes a somewhat relative concept. While Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, the...
View ArticleHow to Be Single
Joining the pantheon of mediocre “How To” movies (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, How to Deal, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People), we now have How to Be Single, the latest post-Sex and the City...
View ArticleOeuvre: Craven: Music of the Heart
Perhaps it was fright fatigue that compelled horror master Wes Craven to dramatize Allan Miller’s 1995 documentary Small Wonders, making his sole, notable departure from the genre and style that made...
View Article