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 »
DREAM HORSE
DREAM HORSE is the heartwarming and uplifting film that is sets out to be. Unpretentious as the working class folks that this based-on-actual-events story celebrates, it tells the classic underdog story of the race horse that evokes sneers from professionals and aristocrats before he puts them all in their places. If it sounds formulaic, it… Read More »
KNIVES OUT
KNIVES OUT takes a brisk pace with its cinematic legerdemain as its cast expertly calibrate their performances so that arch never strays into the certain disaster of becoming artificial. The result is a giddily entertaining, emotionally engaging film that sets a new standard for its genre, and, if there is any justice, will launch the Benoit Blanc franchise.
HEARTS BEAT LOUD
Click here for the flashback interview with Brett Haley and Katharine Ross for THE HERO. Timing is everything, as we learn in Brett Haley’s HEARTS BEAT LOUD, an irresistible, perfectly balanced comedy-drama about love, loss, and that old truism about the only constant that we can count on is change. It’s also Nick Offerman being… Read More »
HEREDITY
The only thing wrong with HEREDITY is that is bound to spawn increasingly inferior installments in a new franchise that is as inevitable as its protagonists’ descent into madness. That aside, this deeply disturbing horror film does not need the supernatural in order to worm its way into the darkest recesses of your psyche where… Read More »
KRAMPUS
KRAMPUS begins in such a promising fashion. Taking the worst that the holiday has to offer in this, the real world of boorish relatives, rampaging hordes of shoppers, and Christmas pageants gone horribly awry, it hopes to build on that to tell an even more horrifying tale of the supernatural comeuppance for losing the holiday… Read More »
JAPANESE STORY
JAPANESE STORY is an ambitious film that does something intriguing. It plays like life itself. At times tedious, at times ridiculous, at times infuriating, at times moving almost beyond our ability to bear it, becoming in retrospect a memory to be savored and to be pondered. It reminded me of nothing so much as the… Read More »
CONNIE AND CARLA
In the good old days of Technicolor® musicals, Judy and Mickey would decide to put on a show in their parents barn. Because of everyones high spirits and some ultra professional production values, the farm or the mill or whatever was in peril of foreclosure would be saved and there would be a triumphant finale… Read More »
LAST SHOT, THE
THE LAST SHOT, a movie about making movies, cries out for the acerbic tone of THE PLAYER, or the finely observed lunacy of DAY FOR NIGHT, or even the distilled vitriol of ALL ABOUT EVE (yes, I know that film is about the stage, not the screen, but there are so few GOOD films about… Read More »
THE NIGHT LISTENER
How much of what someone thinks is reality can survive the objectivity test? That’s the question posed in THE NIGHT LISTENER, based on a real-life experience and later a novel by Armistead Maupin, which ponders how perception and raw need have a nasty habit superseding everything else. The answer is an engrossing thriller that probes… Read More »