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 »
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
There are many things to laud to the high heavens about Edgar Wright’s LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, an ingenious take on the ghost story set in the present and in 1960s London that endlessly surprises and delights. Let’s start, though, with the genius of casting three icons of that era: Rita Tushingham, Diana Rigg, and Terrence Stamp in significant roles. It’s emblematic of just how brilliantly thought out this homage to the Swinging 60s is.
ANTLERS
I don’t know that I subscribe to the idea that there are some works of prose that are “unfilmable.” This is not to say that a successsful translation from one art form to another doesn’t require a certain amount of compromise around the source material. Prose, while relying on the eyes in order to absorb… Read More »
HALLOWEEN KILLS
We learn many things in HALLOWEEN KILLS, few of them surprises. One is that Jamie Lee Curtis is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to chewing up scenery with satisfying aplomb. Another is that the franchise is every bit as unkillable as its bogyman, Michael Myers, because it recognizes a formula that… Read More »
TITANE
What to make of TITANE. a sprawling study of female rage meeting toxic masculinity? Certainly filmmaker Julia Ducournau presents it in all visceral glory, eschewing the depiction of few bodily functions as she explores gender identity and the overwhelming need for affection in a world where making the wrong choice about either can be fatal.… Read More »
COPSHOP
Click here for the flashback interview with Joe Carnahan and Frank Grillo for THE GREY. There has rarely been such an effusive, even whimsical, satire on violence as that which is found in Joe Carnahan’s COPSHOP. This blackest of black comedies adroitly combines tension and goofiness with an insouciance that is nothing short of breathtaking.… Read More »
MALIGNANT
What is it that we want from a horror film? To be scared, of course. A good suspense film can do that, though. Hitchcock’s camera zooming in on a potentially fatal glass of milk, or the look on a man’s face as he dangles precariously from a national monument. Horror, once we move beyond mere… Read More »
TOGETHER
Click here for the flashback interview with James McAvoy and Joe Wright for ATONEMENT. Years from now, Dennis Kelly’s TOGETHER will be an integral part of future generations understanding the zeitgeist of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be an excellent reminder, too, for those of us who lived through that pandemic, after time and subsequent… Read More »
THE NIGHT HOUSE
In THE NIGHT HOUSE, star/producer Rebecca Hall dares to give us a female protagonist who does not ask us to like her. In fact, she all but dares us not to. Yet, in a brilliant performance that combines pain and vitriol, she makes us empathize with a new widow who may or may not be… Read More »
JOHN AND THE HOLE
JOHN AND THE HOLE is a film that demands that its audience draw its own conclusions rather than spell out what has driven a 13-year-old boy to trap his family in an abandoned bunker. Dancing adroitly between reality and metaphor, this psychologically disturbing story is told in muted colors and hushed tones, the better to… Read More »
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