Click here for the interview with writer/director/editor Damian McCarthy. CAVEAT is a small masterpiece of mood and atmosphere. A southern gothic transplanted to a remote island somewhere off the coast of Ireland without losing anything in the cultural translation, it is all about suggestion and quick cuts showing what may or may not be externalization… Read More »
A QUIET PLACE 2
There is something wonderfully cathartic about spending an hour-and-a-half or so being kept on the edge of one’s seat in a state of suspenseful terror. And thus does John Krasinski’s A QUIET PLACE 2 deliver. As excellent as it would have been as an entertainment if it had enjoyed its original, pre-pandemic release date, the… Read More »
THE COURIER
Based on a true story, THE COURIER takes us back to the Cold War and the palpable threat of nuclear annihilation. Once again, we are reminded that it was as much luck as it was diplomacy or mutually assured destruction that prevented World War III. In this case, the good luck of two people for… Read More »
THE LITTLE THINGS
THE LITTLE THINGS, or to be precise, “the little things” is a well-thought-out film, and if putting a film together with the pre-fab precision of a Lego® sculpture were all it took to make a great flick, such it would be. Alas, the overweening self-conscious sense of profundity fails to convince even the most willing… Read More »
THE NIGHT
With THE NIGHT, Kourosh Ahari has fashioned a deeply disturbing, elegantly told tale of horror that resonates not so much for its supernatural elements, as for the fear that lurks within us all that one day, or in this case, night, we will get what we deserve for our transgressions. Ahari may be using familiar… Read More »
I’M YOUR WOMAN
As we learn at the start of I’M YOUR WOMAN, Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) is living a life of comfort, security, and irritating tedium in 1970s suburbia. Ensconced in a mid-century classic in an affluent neighborhood, she is quietly smoking as she goes over where her life when wrong, as in not having children with her… Read More »
FATALE
FATALE is a densely plotted and devilishly twisted erotic fantasy of a noir. Filmed with self-conscious style, it offers a variation on FATAL ATTRACTION that is not without merit, yet with a bemused view of womanhood that gives one pause. We are firmly ensconced in the, admittedly noir Madonna/whore paradigm here, but making a woman… Read More »
ANTEBELLUM
Of the many neat twists in ANTEBELLUM, the most disturbing of all is the one that concerns the state of race relations in the modern day, and how slavery still informs it. By contrasting the subtle, and not so subtle, micro-aggressions forced upon people of color in the present with the brutality of slavery as… Read More »
WANDER DARKLY
WANDER DARKLY is the antidote to the generic rom-com. Set in the subjective viewpoint of a woman who is convinced that she is dead, it explores a relationship gone wrong using the unencumbered honesty of retrospection. The woman is Adrienne (Sienna Miller), who is always quick to point out that the father of her infant,… Read More »
7500
7500, the code used for hijackings, takes the all-too-familiar tropes of a terrorist hijacking and reframes them with a harrowing story that unfolds in real time. By removing any hint of sensationalism from the events, filmmaker Patrick Vollrath focuses on the moment-to-moment uncertainty of people ripped in an instant from the security of their familiar… Read More »