Flames are never far from Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), starting with those lapping near, but not too near, his heels as he exits the house that he’s just set alight over the body he’s deposited beneath the floorboards. In Guillermo del Toro’s oneiric vision of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Notice, too, the… Read More »
STEP BROTHERS
Will Ferrell makes two kinds of silly comedies. There are the silly ones that are very funny, BLADES OF GLORY comes to mind, and then there are the silly ones that are wretched. KICKING AND SCREAMING comes to mind. STEP BROTHERS falls, alas, into the latter category. It is a one-joke film dreamed up by… Read More »
NOBEL SON
As with his last film, BOTTLE SHOCK, Randall Miller returns to the themes of father-son relationships in NOBEL SON. While the former was a sun-drenched idyll in the wine country of Napa Valley, arch but ultimately warm and fuzzy, the latter starts in the darker environs of human behavior and then gets seriously nasty and… Read More »