TALK TO ME is a supremely terrifying film mixing the horrors of the restless undead with the greater horror of emotionally absent parents. The directing debut of brothers Danny and Michael Philippou is a story of quiet despair that grows geometrically as it progresses for its teenage protagonists who learn too late that the spirit… Read More »
OPPENHEIMER
Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER demands that we consider the father of the atomic bomb’s life in context, the which he does with stunning clarity considering the paradoxes the film considers. Like the quantum world revealed by the new physics that Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) brought to the United States between the world wars, things can work even… Read More »
THE LESSON
There are murky waters, literally and figuratively, in THE LESSON, a languid tragedy of manners about family dynamics and career neuroses. At its center are Liam Somers (Daryl McCormack), a brilliant literature tutor struggling to complete his first novel, and the subject of Liam’s Oxford thesis, the revered writer, J.M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant). To… Read More »
MAGGIE MOORE(S)
MAGGIE MOORE(S) is a nifty neo-noir that deftly plumbs the seeping corruption underlying the dull quotidian of a small southwestern city, trading the usual stark contrast between light and shadow for an oppressive sort of omnipresent sunlight that shows everything but reveals nothing. Beginning with a murder in a seedy motel parking lot, it flashes… Read More »
KANDAHAR
KANDAHAR has the virtue of being more than a quotidian action tale of espionage and its attendant machinations. By taking a brooding rather than kinetic approach, it becomes a bittersweet meditation on, as one character sums up very neatly, the idea that modern wars are not meant to be won. The implications of that provide… Read More »
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4
What is most striking about JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4, and JW:C4 is a very striking film, is how emotionally engaging it is as is goes about the business of filling the screen to bursting with gloriously choreographed, ultra-violent action sequences. What in other films of this ilk would provide a paper-thin motivation for its protagonists… Read More »
INSIDE
If INSIDE were a short film, anything up to the Academy™ definition of same, which is to say, 40 minutes or less including the credits, it would be an incisive deconstruction of art as commerce rather than aesthetics driven by a powerful performance by Willem Dafoe. Instead, it runs for 1 hour and 45 minutes,… Read More »
SCREAM VI
The Scream franchise is not one that wants to be taken seriously as a straight horror film. From the first iconoclastic installment so many years ago, its aim, it’s very raison d’être, was to call out the conventions of slasher films and then serve up a gory slashfest to an audience primed to laugh at… Read More »
OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE
There is little of the old Guy Ritchie to be found in OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE. That Guy Ritchie delivered crackling editing, provocative visual impunity, and dialogue that burned with self-reflexive irony. They were films that all but defied gravity as they rushed headlong through their paces leaving audiences breathless and invigorated. I miss… Read More »
COCAINE BEAR
COCAINE BEAR is a joyously peculiar amalgam of carnage, comedy, and horror that respects few rules of cinematic storytelling aside from insuring that (spoiler alert) the dog is okay. It’s an impudent thing that thumbs its nose at convention while seeing to it that, despite broken laws and the slaughter of innocent (and not so… Read More »
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