Written and directed with a suitably biting edge by star Alice Lowe, PREVENGE is a droll and razor sharp black comedy of a horror film that considers the terrors of pregnancy and the maternal instinct gone askew. Very askew. Lowe, with a perfect deadpan sense of purpose, wields her kitchen knife as an instrument of… Read More »
TOWER
On August 1, 1966, a sniper took aim from the observation deck of the tower on the University of Texas campus at Austin and reigned 90 minutes of chaos and terror on the people below. TOWER, a partly animated documentary by Keith Maitland, tells that story in real time from the perspective of the eyewitnesses… Read More »
TRAIN TO BUSAN (Busanhaeng)
New zombies, new rules. If TRAIN TO BUSAN did nothing but find a new take on zombies, it would be worth your time, but this Korean gem goes the extra yardage to gift us with an engrossing story that contains only a soupçon of well-regulated sappy sentiment. It’s far more interested in observing what happens… Read More »
Rebecca Miller Explains MAGGIE’S PLAN
I love how Rebecca Miller’s mind works. With the eponymous Maggie of her film, MAGGIE’S PLAN, she has brought to life a character who manipulates other for their own good, and still seems like the great-hearted soul. And she’s made it a wickedly smart comedy. Perhaps it was only Greta Gerwig who could have pulled… 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 »
NASTY BABY
It’s a toss-up which is more unpredictable: creative impulse when given full rein, or that same impulse when it is stymied, though, perhaps one is a little that is more dangerous than the other. The struggle, be it artistic or procreative, is the theme of Sebastian Silva’s NASTY BABY, a modern fable about family, friendship,… Read More »
CHILDREN OF MEN
In a here-and-now where the primacy of children is given ample lip service by proponents of any and all social issues, it is refreshing, and not a little thought-provoking, to see in Alfonso Cuaron’s CHILDREN OF MEN, based on the P.D. James novel of the same name, a world in which this is actually the case.… Read More »