Emelie preys on our nightmares and so has more in common with thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby than current pulpy horror flicks. Its scares are strongest when they’re coming from what’s hidden, and from what’s left unsaid.
There is room for big, loud, dumb expensive movies in the world, but Michael Bay, you just got schooled on how to make a disaster flick by the Norwegian upstarts behind The Wave, which is a hell of a fun ride.
Before I settled down in my seat to watch the new horror/comedy Nina Forever, my friend and I were discussing a particular film that I liked and he didn’t. He did admire its audacity, though. He said it was a film you had to go “all in for.” Fortuitously, Nina Forever is an absolutely “all […]
Southbound comes from the makers of the popular “V/H/S” series, and they are doing their darndest to bring back the horror compilation, a long dormant venture that most recently peaked in the 1980s with Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt. Southbound ditches the campy humor of those examples and tries for a more gritty, grungy […]
As in the recent documentary Amy, questions of who has the right to tell a deceased musician’s story come into stark question. (Fans? The family?) Tumbledown, from first-time feature director Sean Mewshaw, brings up a lot of arresting issues. A talented musician dies after releasing only one brilliant album, and as his widow struggles to […]
Let’s get the premise out of the way first, shall we? John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell) is gonna take Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh, sporting a big black eye that is never explained but doesn’t has to be, to Red Rock, Wyoming, circa early 1870’s (give or take a few years). There she’s set […]
It would be a gross understatement to say that I Smile Back is a bit of a downer. The film covers depression, drug use, and childhood trauma, among other things. The story itself is fairly straightforward, but it’s the main performance that makes the experience worthwhile: Sarah Silverman commits completely to an extremely challenging character. […]
Don’t be fooled by the European poster for Paolo Sorrentino’s latest amorphous film. It may be hard to pin down what type of movie this is, but it’s definitely not the spry sex comedy hinted at in the ad campaign, where stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel sit in a swimming pool staring gob-smacked at […]
(The writer of this review in no way intends to injure relations between the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.) In recent years, natural disasters, violent atrocities, and political turmoil have been wrestling for headlines and the public’s attention. Any one instance of bad news becomes painfully easy to forget in a world of trending stories scrolled […]