The best way to describe actor Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut is a black comedy or, more to the point, a bleak comedy. Emma Thompson costars as an epically self-centered harridan: loud, vulgar, frequently drunk, and with a complete lack of social inhibition.
This is a sly, well-made little horror/comedy that puts a unique spin on the demonic possession genre while providing just enough chills and laughs along the way.
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. […]