Click here to listen to the interview on PRX. Mel Eslyn has worked for Mark Duplass’s production company for many years, listening as he bounced ideas for movies off her, but when he pitched the idea that would become BIOSPHERE, something happened for Esleyn. We talked about that when we spoke via Zoom on July… Read More »
BIOSPHERE
Click here to listen to the interview with director/co-writer Mel Eslyn. At the beginning of BIOSPHERE, the world as we know it has ended, leaving only two human beings left alive. They are Billy (Mark Duplass) and Ray (Sterling K. Brown), and they have gone from being the apex species on the planet to finding… Read More »
KNOCK AT THE CABIN
Perhaps it’s having a child at the center of a film that provides M. Night Shyamalan with the added spark necessary to making a solid, thoroughly enjoyable film. I refer not just to THE SIXTH SENSE, which catapulted the director to rock star filmmaker status, but also to WIDE AWAKE, the film just before that… Read More »
TERMINATOR: DARK FATE
And so we discover with TERMINATOR: DARK FATE that time is not an endless loop where events repeat zoetrope fashion. Rather it is a curly-cue, not unlike a fusilli. So it is that in this version of the saga, the apocalypse that was/will be Skynet never happened, and John Connor is a name unknown in… Read More »
HELLBOY
There are many ways for a film to go wrong, and while HELLBOY may not have explored all of them, it has certainly come very close. Dialogue that is not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, editing that teeters between pedestrian and laughable, and a story that is merely an excuse for carnage… Read More »
THE DARK TOWER
Intermittently garrulous, yet generally somnambulant, THE DARK TOWER disappoints on almost every level. Based on the Stephen King series of the same name, the cinematic version blows a kiss to the novels, then goes its own way plot-wise for reasons that defy explanation, unless it’s a scheme similar to the one in Mel Brooks’ classic… Read More »
WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
There is something heartening in a sequel to a sequel that is as good as the original. Imagine how much more heartening it is that WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, the third in the trilogy that launched with the excellent DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and continued with the equally excellent… 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 »
A Ho-Hum TERMINATOR GENISYS
Inflated and grandiose, TERMINATOR GENISYS rethinks the Terminator mythos by coming up the novel notion that changing the past might have more than the intended repercussions. Hence, when the John Conner (Jason Clarke, near left) in this timeline sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney, far left) back to 1984 Los Angeles to save John’s mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke),… Read More »
Perry Blackshear, MacLeod Andrews & Evan Dumouchel Insist that THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE is a first-rate existential horror film, as well as a psychological thriller. I got the same vibe watching it that I had gotten watching PI and BRICK, the maiden efforts of Darren Aronofsky and Rian Johnson respectively. Writer/director Perry Blackshear understands more than just how to create evocative, even sumptuous, visuals, he knows… Read More »