THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE is a first-rate existential horror film, as well as a psychological thriller. Writer/director Perry Blackshear understands more than just how to create evocative, even sumptuous, visuals, he knows how to use those visuals in the service of telling a story that is as emotionally engrossing as it is suspenseful while it explores the… Read More »
YOU’RE KILLING ME
YOU’RE KILLING ME is a wry and delightful black comedy of very bad manners, of which murder may not be the most heinous. In it, a group of hip twenty-somethings on the fringes of show biz negotiate awkward game nights, the finer points of dating etiquette, and the protocols of disposing of a dead body.… Read More »
LONDON HAS FALLEN
Full disclosure, I was not a fan of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, the previous film exploring the victim/savior relationship between President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and crack Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler). Thus, I was not hoping for much when I approached LONDON HAS FALLEN. The trick to staying sane in this business is… Read More »
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT is being sold as a comedy and that shortchanges everyone. Based on the memoir by Kim Barker, “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” about her time in the early 2000s as a war correspondent in Afghanistan, it is a trenchant look at media, politics, and the separate reality that… Read More »
GODS OF EGYPT
The ancient Greeks preached moderation in all things, and while GODS OF EGYPT is set in that ancient land, not the Peloponnese, I was put in mind of that advice. This is a film of craven excess in all things except what would have helped most: a good script. For two hours or so, we… Read More »
THE WITCH
The true horror in THE WITCH does not lie in its supernatural underpinnings. Rather this dour psychological thriller plumbs the depths of madness that human nature invites upon itself with a closed mind and a conviction of righteousness. Set in a New World colony in the early 17th century, it is an incisive deconstruction of… Read More »
DEADPOOL
Exhibiting a hearty dose of irony and a mordant sense of humor, DEADPOOL exuberantly embraces the conventions of the super-hero genre while fearlessly pricking the more pretentious conventions of same. There is in this tale of a man who has super powers, but refuses to be a hero, evinces a bold and bracing willingness to… Read More »
HAIL, CAESAR!
If Douglas Sirk had directed a film noir written by Billy Wilder, it might have looked something like HAIL, CAESAR!, the latest thoughtful tangle of philosophy and whimsy from the Coen Brothers. Taking place in a 1951 Hollywood not entirely unlike the one that actually existed, it mixes Cold War paranoia, carefully managed studio PR… Read More »
THE CHOICE
After a press screening, the film’s local publicist will ask for a reaction. After seeing THE CHOICE, and not wanting to dwell on the film’s myriad faults, I chose to respond by saying that I liked the pelicans. Majestic, improbable creatures that look like something from the Upper Triassic, in one of the film’s many… Read More »
JANE GOT A GUN
JANE GOT A GUN tries to evoke Leone (check the duster Jane sports) and Ford (check the mesas that surround her), but without the intensity of the former, or the adventure of the latter. What’s left is a stereopticon of a post-modern morality tale that can’t overcome its own inertia.
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