Click here to listen to the interview with filmmaker Jenna Ricker. Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel isn’t the most dangerous thing Charlie Paczynski (co-writer Greg Stuhr) faces in THE AMERICAN SIDE. Pasczynski is a low-rent private eye working the seamier side of Buffalo, New York, where Niagra falls and both honeymooners and suicides… Read More »
THE ONES BELOW
There is definitely someone going crazy in THE ONES BELOW, and the wonderful thing about this astringent tale of mystery and suspense is that we have few doubts about who it is. The key word is few. Two couples who have layers, which may or may not be camouflage, experience tragedy, resentment, joy, and childbirth,… Read More »
THE NICE GUYS
Shane Black has the gift of making films that are nail-bitingly suspenseful and wickedly funny at the same time. He did it with KISS KISS BANG BANG, and he’s done it again with THE NICE GUYS, a stylishly acerbic and decidedly hard-boiled neo-Noir pitting nihilism against idealism during the candy-colored decadence of 1977 Los Angeles.… Read More »
TOO LATE
Kierkegaard, noted Existentialist and proto-Absurdist, once opined that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. As a cinematic exploration of the tragic and comedic implications of that, there is Dennis Hauck’s wistful neo-Noir, TOO LATE, a film that employs a strategic insouciance as it nimbly plays with the time/space continuum… Read More »
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE
The world of JJ Abrams is rife with Easter Eggs and red herrings. He has such a penchant for them that one can be forgiven for finding them even when they may or may not be intentional. Take, for example, a conversation in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, a film he produced, but did not write or… Read More »
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE
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 »
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 »
REGRESSION
Alejandro Amenábar directed Nicole Kidman to one of her best performances in THE OTHERS, a horror film that was both haunting and clever. The full review of that fine film is here, and I recommend watching that instead of REGRESSION, a film that is equally atmospheric, but diffused in its mounting terror, rather than sharply… Read More »
STRANGER BY THE LAKE
There is no getting around the prurient interest that STRANGER BY THE LAKE evokes. Set entirely on the rocky shore of the titular lake, it teems with beautiful young men madly in lust both with each other and with being in a state of nature. It is the stuff of porn flicks and of classical… Read More »
BRIDGE OF SPIES
Clad, metaphorically, in a shining armor of truth, and wielding an equally luminous sword of righteousness, Tom Hanks as attorney James Donovan is the embodiment of American virtue, right down to the meat loaf he has for dinner, the which is not touched until he has said grace with his wife and three kids. There was, no… Read More »
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