THE INFERNAL MACHINE begins as a spare and tense film driven by Guy Pearce’s measured performance as tormented author Bruce Cogburn. Alas, not even Pearce’s fine work as Cogburn slowly unravels from years of guilt can make up for a script whose third act becomes cryptically obtuse, rather than dynamically charged, before it just goes… Read More »
CAVEAT
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 »
PAPER SPIDERS
Husband and wife writing team Inon Shampanier and Natalie Shampanier wrote PAPER SPIDERS from personal experience, which gives it that extra gloss of authenticity. While it does not reflect the factual truth of the struggles they had with Natalie’s mother and her diagnosis of persecutory delusional disorder, it does convey the emotional truth of seeing… 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 »
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS — Tim Wardle Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. Click here for the KMR review of THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS. Almost the first thing I said to Tim Wardle when we spoke on April 8, 2018, was that my greatest hope for the interview was that we wouldn’t give too much away. I hope we succeeded. His documentary, THREE IDENTICAL… Read More »
TWENTY TWENTY-FOUR
You could, if so inclined, sit back and enjoy Richard Mundy’s counterintuitively dynamic film, TWENTY TWENTY- FOUR, merely as an engrossing study of a loner going slowly mad in isolation. As the difference between reality and madness builds to a fever pitch, the mystery of what exactly is happening in Roy’s underground bunker matches the… Read More »
LONDON ROAD
LONDON ROAD brilliantly uses the unreality of ordinary people breaking into song to evoke the unreality of a serial killer on the loose on the otherwise unremarkable eponymous street in the otherwise unremarkable small town of Ipswich, England. Based on the Royal National Theatre production, original cast intact, that was, in turn, based on the… Read More »
Jenna Ricker on THE AMERICAN SIDE
Star and co-writer Greg Stuhr sat in on my interview with co-writer and director Jenna Ricker. You can almost hear him off mic adding a word or two, but he chose to remain a suitably enigmatic, though thoroughly affable, presence rather than a participant as Ricker and I discussed their intriguing film noir, THE AMERICAN SIDE.… Read More »
THE ONES BELOW — David Farr Interview
I didn’t have the best phone connection when I spoke with David Farr on May 6, 2016, but that didn’t diminish the perceptive, and even provocative things that the filmmaker had to say about his bone-chilling film, THE ONES BELOW. This tale of enforced intimacy and primal bonding between couples who are both expecting babies… Read More »
PAWN SACRIFICE
Chess has never been more compelling cinematically than in PAWN SACRIFICE. Whether you know nothing about the game, or you are a grand master, the story of Bobby Fischer’s rise to the world championship, and the toll it took on his already fragile psyche, has all the suspense and intrigue of an espionage thriller. That… Read More »