In Demons (aka Demoni), the 1985 B-movie horror film from Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento, a mysterious film screening is suddenly infested with infectious demons, with the helpless audience trapped inside the theater.
The ’80s horror movie uses dated B-movie effects work. This said, a lot of the practical effects are well-staged, on top of being Continue reading Demons (1985) Movie Review
Sound is a vital part of any horror film. Perhaps the most vital. What happens, then, when you insert a protagonist into a horror-thriller narrative who is deaf. This is exactly the case with Hush, which pits novelist Maddie Young (Kate Siegal), who lives conveniently in the middle of the woods with few people within screaming distance (if she could scream, that is, as she is also mute), against a masked intruder (John Gallagher Jr.).
This premise, in its early stages of execution, makes for a very Continue reading Hush (2016) Movie Review
Two couples move in to a quaint duplex and, coincidentally, both are expecting. Kate and Justin (Clemence Poesy and Stephen Campbell Moore) are unassuming and innocently critical. Theresa and Jon (Laura Birn and David Morrissey) are welcoming and intolerably tidy. Their lives initially appear like mirrors with only the slightest light refracted, but the light starts to bend more and more when they sit down for dinner together. And this light can only hope to continue bending away from center as the film progresses.
The first act, culminating in this dinner scene, is structured with precision. The editing may be standard shot-reverse shots, but the compositions are Continue reading The Ones Below (2016) Movie Review
The premise of Captain America: Civil War is exactly what it sounds like: a legislation called the Sokovia Accords will put restrictions on the power of superheroes, and it threatens to tear the Avengers in two. Divided, faction leaders Cap (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) face off in a heated battle for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
Narratively, the film juggles many balls, but few of them get dropped. Sure, they are Continue reading Captain America: Civil War (2016) Movie Review
The opening shots of Entertainment are largely static. The Comedian (Gregg Turkington, essentially playing in this film a fictionalized version of himself and his comedic alter-ego Neil Hamburger), stands in an airplane fuselage, looking down. He watches as a clown, Eddie the Opener (Tye Sheridan), prepares for a set at a prison. He looks on dour-faced as the clown “wows” the crowd of prisoners by simply bouncing a ball and clapping his hands.
The first spoken dialogue in the film comes from a tour operator who encourages The Comedian and others to “by all means, go ahead and wander.” Yet the film does the opposite. Continue reading Entertainment (2015) Movie Review
Rick Alverson’s The Comedy is not a comedy. It is an anti-comedy. A satire of a self-destructive generation gazing on their own broken world. The film opens on a group of people, mostly slightly overweight men, drinking and dancing, spitting beer and stripping nude. This is a commonplace setting for this group of “friends.”
The film stars Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric fame. Comedy partner Eric Wareheim co-stars, and their presence in the film in one instance is Continue reading The Comedy (2012) Movie Review
A father (Robert Nolan) takes his son to spend a day with an old college friend (Bill Oberst Jr.), but the activities they engage in are far more insidious than simply “gone fishing.” The father, on top of the strange goings-on in his friend’s home, experiences a stigmata-like wound that oozes a sticky pus.
The short quickly deviates from reality, surreal imagery and special effects work becoming Continue reading Heir (2015) Short Film Review
After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Rell (Jordan Peele, also co-writer) comes across cute kitten Keanu, who proves to be the saving grace from his post-breakup blues.
Rell gets unnaturally attached to Keanu, to the point that when the cat is kidnapped (dare I say cat-napped?) by gangster outfit the 17th St. Blips, he and cousin Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) must infiltrate the gang and literally save the cat.
The lion’s share of comedy in Keanu derives from Continue reading Keanu (2016) Movie Review
In Green Room, a group of young and conceited punk rockers travel to one last unscheduled gig after their tour bottoms out. The White Supremacist punk scene of the club proves to be more shady than it first appears. The mosh pit is slowed to a balletic chaos as they perform. The atmosphere of the audience is unforgiving. And the green room backstage is an environment of violent undoing.
The film, like the music it portrays, is unrefined, but it is a purposefully stylized unrefined. The low key lighting and grimy aesthetic is what has become “torture porn chic.”
What writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, whose 2013 microbudget indie thriller Blue Ruin received critical success, does differently than torture porn is deliver a Continue reading Green Room (2016) Movie Review
In The Jungle Book, the live action adaptation of the famous Disney retelling, a boy (Neel Sethi) raised by wolves is put in danger by his own humanity, as the bloodthirsty Bengal tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) vows to kill the child.
CG burdens many films, which become over-dependent on them for spectacle’s sake. In the case of this film, the Continue reading The Jungle Book (2016) Movie Review
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