THE FILM:

I rarely review films still in theaters, but I felt compelled to share my stark disappointment with Writer/Director Neill Blomkamp's Demonic. I have watched hundreds of films since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic but I have seen only one in theaters: Tenet. After seeing the amazing teaser trailer, I vowed to see Demonic in theaters its opening weekend. Whoever cut that preview, which ultimately uses almost every cool image and scare from the film, should be given a raise, as it absolutely hyped me up for a movie that does not exist. Blomkamp exploded onto the scene in 2009 with District 9, a compelling, post-alien invasion film with plenty of social commentary amid its action. His next two, bigger-budget efforts, Read the entire review

Watching Babyteeth, I had a thought: serious or terminal illness dramas are the movie equivalent of Schrodinger's cat. No matter what the filmmakers do, their awareness of creating a work to be observed, and the audience's awareness of the baggage that comes with that (both pop culture and real-world baggage) fundamentally alters the viewing experience. Perhaps that's because, for the most part, these movies go one of two directions: inspirational, or heart-wrenchingly sad. Director Shannon Murphy and writer Rita Kalnejais (adapting her own novel) work hard with Babyteeth to defeat both of these factors, consciously avoiding many of the cliches that come with the territory and attempting to navigate a path that finds spots of joy without pumping her story up into something symbolic for the viewer. Their efforts aren't entirely successful, but they're admirable just the same.

...Read the entire review

The rise of the wonderful and incomparable Daniel Bruhl has been well-witnessed, at least among those who have been paying attention. The German/Spanish actor has been hitting more home runs than not with his film choices, or perhaps his talent level helps lift each lucky movie he appears in. Inglourious Basterds, Rush, A Most Wanted Man, Woman in Gold, Read the entire review

The Film:

When I first saw the trailer, I thought that you'd have to love The Clash to love London Town, that it would be a sort of tribute movie that I couldn't appreciate since I don't appreciate the band. But by the end of the film, I realized that wasn't the case at all. Instead of being a music movie, it was a Hallmark original, a British version of the cheeseballs we're served far too often over here in the States. I didn't know that other countries produced such low-impact features that only a mother could love, films that you have to adore like a long-lost puppy in order to enjoy. London Town wasn't at all what I...Read the entire review

The Movie:

When we look at the relentlessly narcissistic and sociopathic qualities of any dictator, it's hard not to think about how they became who they are. Just like a lot of other defining personal qualities, their destructive tendencies are usually rooted in their childhood. That's why, especially during this period in our world when autocratic and fascist leaders have been making an oh-so-delightful comeback, Brady Corbet's The Childhood of a Leader is an important film the seek out, regardless of whether or not I think it fully succeeds in its vision (Or if its vision was the right approach for this story to begin with).

The film is a character study of Prescott (Tom Sweet), an entitled brat who the film states will grow up to be a dictator. He lives in the French countryside right after World War I with his somber mother (Berenice Bejo). His father (Liam Cunningham)...Read the entire review

A little background is needed before delving into Tale of Tales, otherwise you'll drown in the absurdity of its stories. In the 16oos, Italian poet Giambattista Basile wrote a collection of fairy tales which were published in volumes after his death. His work would inspire many timeless classics from the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, including Cinderella, Rapunzel, Puss in Boots, and Sleeping Beauty. But Basile penned many other strange & morbid tales of kings & magic, some of which are presented to us here in cinematic form. Three, to be precise, The Enchanted Doe, The Flea, and The Flayed Old Lady, each bo...Read the entire review

Coming off Before Midnight and Boyhood, Ethan Hawke is in line for some pretty premium roles. His career is in a resurgence, with prime-time parts being offered like they haven't been in years. Good Kill is a film that I could imagine would have sought out a different actor were it to have come out a few years ago, but with Hawke currently a hot ticket, he got the job. Although, it should be noted that he's worked with writer/director Andrew Niccol before: Gattaca in 1997 and Lord of War in 2005. Niccol is also responsible for S1m0ne, In Time, and The Host, while writing the stories for Th...Read the entire review

I'm not alone in my dislike of "true story" horror. Noting at the beginning of your film that the events we are about to see are based on actual happenings is neither believable nor funny. It's pathetic really, and dishonest, an unlikable combination. No, this didn't actually happen. No, your movie doesn't get credit for investigatory journalism. No, I'm not extra intrigued because you think ghosts are real. Filmmakers of this genre need to understand their subject matter and their audience. Sure, I might love horror, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid. I'd rather see tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, gore-fest slashers any day over fake documentaries or...Read the entire review

There's a joke in The Trip to Italy where Steve Coogan teases his friend Rob Brydon about being an acquired taste. Rob has just had an extramarital dalliance on the Italian coast, the sort of thing Steve is usually the one to engage in, and so Steve zings Rob by telling him it was only a matter of time, someone would develop the craving eventually. Though not intended as a meta joke about the Trip series, it could just as easily nestle next to the Godfather comparisons or the thinly veiled jibes about the reality of true-life fiction. If you liked the original The Trip, then you know what the f...Read the entire review

Talk about a life's work. Richard Linklater spent 12 years creating this film. Now, that's not 12 years keeping an idea alive, waiting for a technology to come along, or hassling producers. That's 12 years making the movie. He started filming a seven-year-old in 2002, kept filming him as he grew up, and just released the final product. Now, again just to clarify, that's the same boy over a 12 year span, the same side characters, the same area of the country. It's an amazing concept, a brand-new way of producing a story, a feat that's almost difficult to wrap your mind around. And in no way is this a biography, unless you consider it Li...Read the entire review

When we left the screening of Boyhood, one of my friends mentioned that he was sort of prepared to be impressed by Richard Linklater's twelve-year experiment regardless of whether it was good or bad, just because he took it to completion. I hadn't really considered that. I know I was pretty excited by the idea myself and was somewhat predisposed to like Boyhood, but even accepting that, I feel pretty confident the film wasn't something I was automatically prepared to give an A for effort, it would have mattered if it sucked. When you consider say, an entire TV season like the recent runs of True Detective or Fargo, they are just as much work, there is an equal amount of inves...Read the entire review

Jim Mickle has been cutting his teeth on horror movies over the past couple of years, including the scrappy vampire flick Stake Land and the atmospheric family chiller We Are What We Are. (And if you've seen either or both, I apologize for the unintentional "cutting your teeth" pun.) At first glance, his new movie, Cold in July, seems like a departure from the standard, but this revenge thriller has the same indie aesthetics and family dynamics, all applied with a suspenseful touch not that far afield from the director's roots.

Cold in July is taken from a novel by Joe R. Lansdale, a horror master himself, as...Read the entire review

Actor John Slattery, perhaps best know for playing playboy Roger Sterling on Mad Men, makes his full transition to working behind the camera. Though he's directed episodes of the AMC series, God's Pocket is his first feature-length film. He serves as both director and co-writer, collaborating on the screenplay with Alex Metcalf (An American Affair), adapting a decades-old novel by Peter Dexter (Rush, The Paperboy). Slattery also produces. What he does not do in God's P...Read the entire review

An artist's life is often one of solitude, and so it should generally be of no surprise when one spends much of their time locked away honing his or her craft. It's also not odd if one hides the work, never sharing it with others. That's more tragic. What is odd is when that person leads an otherwise social life, capturing her art in public places, never disguising the fact that she's making it. Why then hide one's light under a bushel?

Or in the case of Vivian Maier, in musty garages and abandoned storage units. It's a question that is at the heart of Finding Vivian Maier, a documentary about discovering the woman's work and the difficult task of tracking down the artist responsible for thousands of unseen photographs.

The story begins not with Maier, but with John...Read the entire review

"Somebody said, 'What do you want on a desert island for the rest of your life?' No contest. A bar. An open bar. Are you kidding?"

Elaine Stritch is an Emmy and Tony-winning actress who has had a long and varied career on Broadway, in movies, and on television. Current audiences will know her for playing the mother of Alec Baldwin's character on 30 Rock, though her resume dates all the way back to the 1940s. She has had fruitful working relationships with both Noël Coward and Stephen Sondheim, and has also had successful runs with her own one-woman shows.

One such show is part of the narrative in Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, a new documentary by Chiemi Karasawa. The movie zeroes in on 2010,...Read the entire review