“Lo,” the first message ever sent across the internet. “Lo” as in “Log” without the g, as the computer sending the message crashed before the message could be completed. This is the beautiful irony of the internet that director Werner Herzog tries to capture in his new documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. The inception of the world wide web was at one point a “revolution” that was about to irrevocably change the course of the modern world, and it is at another point an inception that is as archaic-sounding as a recovered fossil.
Video games that map molecules, cars that drive themselves, online class rosters that academically blow Stanford students out of the water. The internet is a mesmerizing world of possibilities that we all take for granted every day. The problem with this premise is that Continue reading Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) Movie Review→
John Link (Mel Gibson) is a sober ex-con who scrawls tattoos on upper thighs out of his trailer in the California desert. When his long-disappeared daughter suddenly re-enters his life with a criminal past trailing her, he must take drastic actions to protect her.
Nate Foster (Daniel Radcliffe) is an FBI new recruit working in counter-terrorism in Washington D.C. He is unassuming and isolated in his eccentric brand of intelligence. When a possible White Supremacist terrorist plot surfaces, Foster is called upon to go undercover within the group to stifle any attack plan.
There is a fury to Imperium, first evidenced in an expository montage containing still images of real-life neo-Nazism. This fury becomes more Continue reading Imperium (2016) Movie Review→
Oh, the tale of the blind date. It is always equal parts sad, desperate, and inexplicably sweet. Bernie and Rebecca may take place at the tail end of such a story, but it still maintains these identifiable tones. It begins at Rebecca’s (Brianna Barnes) front door, where Bernie (Kyle Davis) explains that he does not go by the name Bernard. It is an intriguing opening monologue, explaining the personality differences between shorthand vs. formal names.
What is the defining characteristic of humanity? What separates us from the rest? Is it compassion? Love? Pain? Fury? These are the questions many science fiction films have grappled with, from 2001 to last year’s Ex Machina. Morgan is the next in line.
Rob Zombie begins his sixth feature film by somewhat breaking the fourth wall with a monologue of almost poetic sadism. Hired killer “Doom-Head” (Richard Brake) spits acid words in closeup, to invigorating effect. This inaugural scene, with its tight closeups and deliberate cadence, is a truly engrossing intro to a horror film.
Zombie, who takes much of his horror stylings from the likes of Tobe Hooper, delves deeper into the raw maw of this inspiration’s brutal realism with 31. The backroads Americana. The rambling van of freewheelers. The promise of chainsaws. 31 wants to be Continue reading 31 (2016) Movie Review→
Game of Aces is a period piece that doesn’t suffer from that inescapable stench of the period piece. It isn’t stuffy with the air of a different time and place. Many times, a period piece drama, especially those centered around wartime, will have the distinct feel of a re-enactment: heavy-handed, taking itself too seriously, and yet still somehow superficial. Game of Aces, in spite of its clearly tight budget, gets by on its lighter tone.
David Packouz (Miles Teller) is in his 20s and tired of getting pushed around: by retirement home owners who reject his fine linen get rich quick scheme and by naked massage clients that give him money in the meantime. Enter his junior high best friend Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), a budding international arms dealer. Efraim plucks David from his mundane existence, and, as they work dirty arms dealing with governments, they quickly find themselves over their heads. And…movie.
Don’t Breathe opens on an extreme long shot pushing in on a woman being dragged down the street by her hair in broad daylight. The woman is Rocky (Jane Levy), one third of a lowly thieving group. Some time before this inaugural shot, the trio decide to pull a seemingly simple heist on the house of a blind man (Stephen Lang) whose daughter was killed in a hit and run. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it appears.
After his fiance’s (Alison Brie) untimely death, Joshy’s (Thomas Middleditch) wedding is called off, but the house reserved for his bachelor party is still available. Not able to get their deposit back on the house rental, Joshua and his friends decide to have a “boy’s weekend.” As light as they want the weekend to be, though, reality threatens to impede on the proceedings.
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