As a culture, we are not unfamiliar with the concept of the cinematic reboot. Consider how many iterations of Batmans, Spider-men, and the Star Trek universe have arrived at our neighborhood theaters in the last decade. Not to mention the less than stellar attempt to revive the Fantastic Four, though, to be fair, the original… Read More »
DR. SLEEP
Click here for the flashback interview with Ewan McGregor for SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN. DR. SLEEP, the sequel to THE SHINING, faced several issues in being brought to the screen, and has done so with a neat aplomb. The original film veered wildly from its source material as Stanley Kubrick adapted it to fit… Read More »
THE LIGHTHOUSE
A dark and twisted fever dream of a film, THE LIGHTHOUSE confronts the anguish of the human condition with suitable horror and an equally suitable dash of absurdity. Rendered in disturbing grades of black and white, it presents two men tending a lighthouse on a desolate rocky outcropping in the middle of nowhere. In the… Read More »
READY OR NOT
READY OR NOT has one of the great cinematic punchlines. It’s much better in context, so I won’t give it away, but suffice to say that it’s not only pithy, it’s also all too relatable. So is the film itself, in a deliciously twisted way. This very black comedy plays on the fine line between… Read More »
MIDSOMMAR
At the end of MIDSOMMAR, our much put-upon heroine, Dani (Florence Pugh) smiles. It’s her first real smile of the film, and how she got there is a tale of bucolic splendor, ecological harmony, and psychic terror. Brought to us by Ari Aster, the iconoclastic mind behind HEREDITY, it finds in parable and metaphor the… Read More »
THE DEAD DON’T DIE
THE DEAD DON’T DIE takes the tropes, idioms, and beloved foibles of low-budget zombie flicks and, with a skillful flick of its auteur’s cinematic wrist, recontextualizes them into a stylized gloss on the new normal of 2019. Certainly the “Make America White Again” ball cap sported by the most reviled citizen (Steve Buscemi) of sleepy… Read More »
US
There is much to unpack in Jordan Peele’s deeply disturbing, darkly funny horror film, US. As it twists and turns through its doppelganger premise, the scariest part of the action isn’t the fear of home invasion by strangers out for slow, painstaking revenge.
GLASS
We learn many things in M. Night Shyamalan’s GLASS. We learn that the Philadelphia police department has an abysmal response time. We learn that a fully staffed psychiatric hospital has only two orderlies its employ. And we learn that James McAvoy still cries more manfully than any other actor working today. Possibly ever. He is… Read More »
THE NUN
The decline and fall of franchises is a phenomenon that is all too common, and yet still heartbreaking in its own way. For every James Bond or Star Wars, there are countless other series that started strong, usually with a film that was a one-off, the success of which led to studio bean-counters to push… 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 »
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