Let’s be honest. The deep bench cast list of Nicholas Jarecki’s Crisis is both the main reason many will want to see it and–in at least one case–the main reason others will stay away. Gary Oldman–not without baggage–is a big...
Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian opens in cinemas this weekend. None of us should be going to movie theaters any time soon but, while watching a screener copy in the safety of my living room, I found myself wondering if that’s...
To answer the question on the minds of all the irony hounds, who speak in memes and love nothing, yes, Sion Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland is that kind of Nicolas Cage movie. With died black hair, he wields an...
Nearly everything about writer/director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s Wild Indian appears intended to be taken more metaphorically than literally. The characters and events are symbols (well drawn and well acted ones). The fact that the Native American children in the...
Pascual Sisto’s John and the Hole belongs to a longstanding cinematic tradition, from Rope to Thoroughbreds and with idiosyncratic stops along the way like Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video (one scene of which is almost specifically paid homage to here) of...
It’s hard to say for certain why writer/director John Lee Hancock set The Little Things in the early 1990s. Maybe he wanted to recapture the scuzz of pre-gentrification downtown Los Angeles (which he abandons after the first act anyway in...
From the first growled syllables of Michael Ealy’s voiceover–accompanied by aerial shots of the Los Angeles skyline–it’s apparent exactly what kind of seedy pop-thriller Deon Taylor’s Fatale is going to be. And there are plot developments you’ll spot on the...
It’s unclear exactly why Shawn Linden’s visceral and harrowing new film Hunter Hunter is a period piece, taking place sometime in the mid- to late-1980s, based on the technology on display. Maybe the remoteness of its setting is deepened by...
Usually, when movies start out by showing us the peaceful, happy lives of their characters, it’s a major clue that something is either about to go wrong or is already very wrong just beneath the surface. Aneesh Chaganty’s Run is...
If there was ever a time when merely being self-aware was enough to make a horror movie seem cool or smart (like, say, the 90s), that time has long passed. For an entire generation of horror fans raised on Scream...
