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 »
JOKER
It is, perhaps, a truism that every generation gets the Batman or Superman that they need/deserve. With Todd Philips’ JOKER, though, we get more than a cultural gloss of the zeitgeist. We get a funhouse mirror that lurks deep within a house of horrors that is an extrapolation of what happens when the 1% of… Read More »
THE ADDAMS FAMILY
Considering it only lasted two seasons in its initial run back in the 1960s, the television version of Charles Addam’s gruesomely enchanting New Yorker cartoon, The Addams Family, has become a powerful pop culture touchstone. It’s a favor that the current animated version amply repays, rife as it is with pop and political references. And… Read More »
GIANT LITTLE ONES
GIANT LITTLE ONES is a perceptive, intelligent examination of what happens when unexpected feelings and actions don’t have neat labels. In a time when acceptance of teenage sexuality, at least straight sexuality, has become the norm for most concerned, both parents and their sexually active kids, the question of sexual fluidity can still flummox.
THE PREDATOR
One comes to a Shane Black film with high hopes. They are not always rewarded, but when he comes through with films like KISS KISS BANG BANG, or the criminally underappreciated THE GOOD GUYS, the results are quirky, clever, and delightfully original. If you haven’t seen them, choose either, or both, instead of THE PREDATOR.… Read More »
JUSTICE LEAGUE
JUSTICE LEAGUE is a film with many problems. Some are inherent in an origin-style story that introduces several characters to what the filmmakers hope will be an audience eager to follow their further, individual, adventures. Some are just inexplicable. Take the plot device that is nothing short of asinine, and which I can’t discuss without… Read More »
THE LITTLE HOURS
Jeff Baena has taken as his inspiration Bocaccio’s Decameron for his sly gem of a film about female frustration and empowerment, THE LITTLE HOURS. That 14th-century book is full of bawdy tales of people from all stratas of society behaving badly, and so they do in this film set very specifically in 1347. Like the… Read More »
THE VOID
THE VOID is a beautifully executed horror film that pays homage to the genre’s roots while carving out its own enigmatically creepy mythos. Playing on such familiar tropes as the deserted farmhouse, the dark basement, and an axe swung with abandon, it takes place over the course of one night in a soon-to-be abandoned hospital… Read More »
THE ASSIGNMENT
The subject matter in Walter Hill’s THE ASSIGNMENT will make half the audience cringe in a way that the other half, no matter how empathetic, won’t be able to fully understand. And that’s sly. This brutal exercise in gender studies, masquerading as a biting action-noir fable, is rife with irony and with bald truths designed… Read More »
THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER
THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER is a strikingly original horror tale told with an eerie and elegant style. The polished visuals, as chilly as the winter in which they take place, though, provide an unsettling framework for the visceral suspense of an ordered world falling quietly apart. It’s augmented with a sound design that is, against all… Read More »