Back in April, at the beginning of a particularly sleepy 12-hour shift manning the box office of the downtown Durham theatre in which I work, I opened A.M. Shine’s The Watchers on my Kindle, having impulsively downloaded it via the… Read More ›
thriller
“1992” is less wrong-place/wrong-time crime thriller and more examination of social imbalance and unconscious bias.
“When people show you who they are, believe them.” – Oprah, quoting Maya Angelou April 29th, 1992: After a seven-day deliberation, a jury acquitted the four police officers involved in the recorded beating of Rodney King, with three out of… Read More ›
Where other mafia films keep their women in silence, filmmaker Jennifer Esposito’s “Fresh Kills” screams to devastating effect.
In the cinematic world of mob films, the go-to filmmaker for U.S. audiences is likely Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas; Casino). With tales exciting and dramatic, he’s told stories that unengaged audiences will see as uplifting the morally grey areas of the… Read More ›
Claude Schmitz’s “The Other Laurens (L’autre Laurens)” offers a stunning visual genre mashup, but sacrifices plot for tone and style.
The Other Laurens is a movie that’s all dressed up with everywhere to go. But after it gets one foot out the door, it can’t seem to go any further. With a nostalgic neo-noir/grunge visual style that’s sprinkled with touches… Read More ›
Open Dialogue with “Skincare” director Austin Peters and actor Luis Gerardo Méndez.
In this edition of Meet Me at the Movies: Open Dialogue, Thomas Manning sits down with some of the cast and crew of the new IFC Films production Skincare. Director Austin Peters and actor Luis Gerardo Méndez talk about making… Read More ›
Technically impressive, “100 Yards” pull audiences in with its thrilling conceit, but loses them with underdeveloped character investment. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Within the world of filmmakers Xu Haofeng (The Final Master) and first-time co-director Xu Junfeng’s new project, 100 Yards (门前宝地), there are many rules its characters must follow, but one acts as a guiding principle: no violence within 100 yards… Read More ›
“Sting” Blu-ray Giveaway
Wyrmwood series director Kiah Roache-Turner brought a different kind of horror show to theaters in April 2024 with the creature feature Sting, an arachnophobic’s absolute nightmare. At the end of July, Well Go USA released Roache-Turner’s mystery thriller on physical formats… Read More ›
Join the tornado wranglers from the safety of your own space with the “Twisters” digital release.
The world of Twisters swept up cineplexes barely one month ago. The latest disaster epic tells the story of Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), now working as a meteorologist, when a friend from her storm-chasing past named Javi (Anthony Ramos) comes… Read More ›
“A Quiet Place: Day One” Digital Code Giveaway
In 2018, actor/writer/director John Krasinski introduced audiences to a world gone quiet as it continues to try to survive against alien invaders who hunt by sound in A Quiet Place. This year, writer/director Michael Sarnoski (Pig) took audiences to when… Read More ›
All the leverage in action comedy “Kidnapping Inc.” is in the performances of the cast. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
I am not one for political movies as I don’t follow political landscapes in any way shape or form. I follow enough to understand North American landscapes, but anything past that and I am a deer in headlights when it… Read More ›
Crime anthology “The Killers” exudes undeniable collective charm. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Anthology stories come in all shapes and sizes. They can be horror-based, like Satanic Hispanics (2022) or Tiny Cinema (2022); offer a western twang, like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018); or they can be mission-oriented, like Give Me an… Read More ›
Sony Pictures Classics gives Tom Tykwer’s romantic thriller “Run Lola Run” its own 4K UHD release.
Before American audiences met Franka Potente as Marie, the accidental ally to amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) in 2002, she portrayed a different type of “on-the-run” character: Lola. Absent intrigue of the spy sort, Potente’s Lola is a strong… Read More ›
“The Silent Planet” tells a very human story on a very isolated space rock. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
As someone who was/is a big fan of Jeffrey St. Jules’s first feature, Bang Bang Baby (2014), I was excited, to say the least, to see that he had a new feature called The Silent Planet with a premise that… Read More ›
“The Dead Thing” is pitch-perfect horror set in the world of online dating. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
The dating scene has always been rather bleak. This is not news. With the creation of “dating” apps, the odds of meeting someone this way and it working were always slim and bleak. I haven’t had to be out there… Read More ›
Director Soi Cheang’s “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” incorporates elements of new school and old school Hong Kong cinema which rattle audiences’ bones and souls in equal measure. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Every community has its stories — tales of victories and defeats, of perilous ends and new beginnings, and of the old guard and the new. Sometimes these take the form of myths and legends born from imagination and other times… Read More ›
“Cuckoo” loudly calls its shot and still hooks its audience with mystery and plagues them with horror. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
In 2019, writer/director Tilman Singer made an enormous splash with his possession thriller Luz. It’s as much an homage to the horror films of the ‘60s and ‘70s, evoking the look via cinematography and art direction, while telling a unique… Read More ›
“The Strangers – Chapter 1” cuts … and pastes too much from the previous films to be its own entry.
When I was just a wee lad, 11 years old to be precise, I had two fears: frogs (still do to this day) and home invasion. For some reason, I figured that I was a special enough little boy to… Read More ›
A well-cultivated pairing of performances makes “Starve Acre” a worthy addition to the British folk horror genre.
MaXXXine (2024) is a tribute to giallo horror of the ‘80s, The First Omen (2024) pays homage to the psychological horror of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, In A Violent Nature (2024) adds a twist to the great American slasher film,… Read More ›
Poor CGI quells any well-developed suspense in horror thriller “The Last Breath.”
Since 1975, filmmakers have tried to capture the horror and the magic of a killer shark movie. Jaws broke all kinds of box office records and terrified millions of theater-goers enough that going to the neighborhood pool was panic-inducing. Even… Read More ›
“The Beast Within” leaves telltale tracks resulting in an immediate blood-letting of tension. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Whether textually or subtextually, horror films explore elements of society that upend or terrify. Sometimes the horror comes from the loss of bodily control from foreign invasion (Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)), other times it’s from the very natural… Read More ›