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 »
ALIEN: ROMULUS
ALIEN: ROMULUS may be the strongest entry into the franchise since the original. Certainly, this taut thriller provides strong characters, and an even stronger sense of dread, concentrating on the horror of the unknown that turns out to be as unstoppable as it is homicidal. The high-minded philosophical musings found in PROMETHEUS, for example, are… Read More »
LONGLEGS
With LONGLEGS, writer/director Oz Perkins has created an original tale of horror set in the 1990s while staying true to familiar tropes. There’s an unhinged suspect, a series of family slaughters that don’t ring true to a murder/suicide scenario, and a neophyte FBI agent at the center of the case in ways she didn’t see… Read More »
MAXXXINE
At one point in MAXXXINE, a character says that it’s all about money. But that’s not true, at least not in this story of Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), born Miller, who has reached the top of the adult film industry, but at 33, knows that the clock is ticking on her career in porn. And… Read More »
IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS
IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS is a melancholy study of the futility of violence. Set in the war-torn Northern Ireland of 1974, it features a performance by Liam Neeson that is considered, measured, and infinitely eloquent for its silences in a story that eschews politics as it finely observes the consequences of choices,… Read More »
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS may be another proof of the universe’s entropy. You know, the rule that posits everything is slowly devolving into a state of disarray and incoherence. Or something along those lines. This effort by Ethan Coen certainly shows flashes of the oddball genius of the films he made with his brother, Joel, but the… Read More »
I.S.S.
I.S.S. is a thoughtful, disquieting consideration of loyalty and tribalism. Set in the near future aboard that symbol of cooperation, the International Space Station, it posits what would happen to the six scientists and military personnel aboard if war broke out down below. Gabriela Cowperthwaite has created a spare work that pushes aside the impressive… Read More »
THE KILLER
David Fincher’s THE KILLER is as methodical as its protagonist, the philosophizing hit man in the midst of pickle that challenges his core nihilistic belief system in which karma doesn’t figure, nor does luck. The irony may be lost on this unnamed protagonist, but not on us as we are treated to a cavalcade of… Read More »
SATURN BOWLING (Bowling Saturne)
SATURN BOWLING is a horror film as cold-blooded as the serial killer it depicts on a rampage through Calvados, France. And as cold-hearted as the father whose sins are visited in abundance upon two brothers attempting a détente after a lifetime of estrangement. Chillingly observational, and unflinching in its depiction of violence, psychological and physical,… Read More »
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