SHELTER is not your typical Jason Statham film. Sure, he’s a one-man demolition squad when it comes to giving the bad guys their comeuppance, but the character is not a caricature nor is he a cardboard cutout spewing quips and taglines. Rather this is a Statham with a quiet presence in stark contrast to the… Read More »
MERCY
It’s a classic film noir set-up with just a dash of Hitchcock. A Los Angeles man in the near future awakens from a drunken binge to find that he’s being accused of murder. And not just any murder. No, he’s stabbed his wife a couple of years into a rough patch in their marriage. To… Read More »
PRIMATE
Filmmaker Johannes Roberts absolutely understood the assignment with PRIMATE, a film about a pet chimpanzee turned killer. In any film with that premise, the one thing we all expect is to see is the chimp tearing someone’s face off, the which Ben, the chimp in question, does in the first 5 minutes. Once that trope… Read More »
28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE
28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE picks up where last year’s 28 YEARS LATER left off. It also picks up with some characters that were peripheral to the last installment, but who will prove central to this one. That last film introduced us to the dangers inherent in a post-pandemic population thrown back to the… Read More »
THE HOUSEMAID
Paul Feig has shown an intriguing cinematic progression from BRIDESMAIDS to THE HEAT and then to A SIMPLE FAVOR. A sly penchant, if you will, for films of the noir nature, a penchant that he brings to full fruition with THE HOUSEMAID. In this perfectly executed psychological thriller nothing and no one is quite that… Read More »
NUREMBERG
In a pivotal scene in James Vanderbildt’s NUREMBERG, it is 1945 and the judge tasked with finding a legal reason to hold an international tribunal to try the defeated Nazi leaders as war criminals has his first meeting with the Army psychiatrist tasked with evaluating the first 22 putative defendants for their fitness to stand… Read More »
DEAD OF WINTER
There is much to admire about Emma Thompson in DEAD OF WINTER, not the least of which is the way she captures the cadence and the spirit of the Minnesota accent with the same effortless skill that embodies the rest of her performance. Virtually silent for most of her time on screen, she is simply… Read More »
THE LONG WALK
Stephen King started writing THE LONG WALK when the Vietnam War was still raging, and echoes of its impact on the psyche of the United States reverberate through the film version. In a near future dystopia, young men in the prime of life, struggling in a country economically ravaged by war, voluntarily sign up for… Read More »
THE CONJURING: LAST RITES
It’s as though all involved with THE CONJURING franchise know that it’s running out of steam. Rather than just end it, though, they have devised THE CONJURING: LAST RITES, using that old movie adage of show, don’t tell, in order to give us irrefutable proof of same. This entry limps through its paces in a… Read More »
LURKER
What we learn in Alex Russell’s LURKER is that Eve Harrington, while successful in her manipulations in ALL ABOUT EVE, is a mere piker compared to Matthew Morning, Russell’s protagonist in his taut thriller. Exploring themes of love, obsession, and the symbiotic relationship between fan and star, this psychological character study of desperation with a… Read More »
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