I do love a prologue that perfectly sets up the film it introduces, and one of the nicest ones I’ve seen lately is to be found in Osgood Perkins’ THE MONKEY, based on a short story by Stephen King and turned into an impudent horror film that is scary as hell and twice as funny.… Read More »
WOLF MAN
WOLF MAN starts out promisingly enough establishing a theme of generational trauma and the eeriness of the wild wood while neatly exploring the hunter-becoming-the-hunted idiom. Full points to the excellent cinematography that captures the opalescent otherworldliness of the mist-shrouded Oregon wilderness, and a cast that takes the story seriously, it’s just a shame that said… Read More »
PRESENCE
Steven Soderbergh’s signature style is one of cool detachment to his characters. His films tackle people in crisis, but the tone is always one of an ersatz cinema verité witness to what is happening to them. In PRESENCE, he has channeled that aesthetic into a ghost story told from the spirit’s point of view. Literally.… Read More »
NOSFERATU
David Eggers, who has a vision of such specific originality and clarity that it might well become a horror subgenre at some point, has taken on not just one iconic film in NOSFERATU, but two, both of whose imagery have become part of the cultural landscape even for those who have never seen NOSFERATU (1922)… Read More »
HERETIC
HERETIC manages to be terrifying because of the very civility each of the characters shows during the slow build-up to the, ahem, crux of the film. This fable for our times is a cleverly disguised dialectic not just on faith, but on the very human need to believe in something in the face of proof,… Read More »
JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX
And so with JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX, we return to the tragedy that is Arthur Fleck and his abuse at the hands of a social safety net that failed him. As refracted through the prism of Arthur’s fractured psyche, and that of his alter ego, Joker, the world of Gotham City is a violent place… Read More »
SPEAK NO EVIL
First, we must speak of trailers that give too much away, something that dampened the exquisite terror of SPEAK NO EVIL for me. Its trailer deprives those who see it of the joy in discovering the twists and turns the story uses in order to turn the film into something other than what we expect… Read More »
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is a ramshackle effort trading on goodwill and nostalgia. What made the original so disarming and anarchic 36 years ago burbles to the surface from time to time, but as a whole, it is a mawkish thing following formulas that that original eschewed with raucous glee. We find Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) older… Read More »
BLINK TWICE
With BLINK TWICE we traverse the sticky territories of toxic masculinity, cultural power structures, and the apology industry that has grown out those first two phenomena. While it’s script by E.T. Feigenbaum and director Zoë Kravitz sometimes hangs together with spit and baling wire, there is no denying the gut punch it delivers with suspense… Read More »
THE CROW
The word that best describes THE CROW is moribund. Even during the ecstatic orgy of bloodletting that caps this reboot of Alex Proyas’ 1994 film, it is somnambulant as it goes through its paces charting the lengths to which true love can push a young man when faced with the devil. Or his charming associate… Read More »
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