A waterlogged Miami (“the sunken coast”) provides a sensational special effects backdrop for this otherwise routine noir merger of Altered States and Strange Days. Stock fatalistic narration leads the way: “We don’t haunt the past, the past haunts us.” Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is a tour guide of the mind, …
Produced under the banner of Paul W. S. Anderson’s Constantine Films, Johannes Roberts’s reboot is less interested in Anderson’s surprisingly seductive horror franchise than it is exploring the beginnings of the video game that spawned it. We passively observe the action from the various characters’ points-of-view. With guns drawn, the …
C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker) regularly awakened his daughter Aretha (Skye Dakota Turner) to wow the partygoers gathered in the spacious living room below with the young girl’s remarkable vocal reach. What’s rape got to do with it? Everything. It was during one of these late night at-homes that an unidentified …
Throughout history, rivers have shaped our landscapes and our journeys; flowed through our cultures and dreams. River takes its audience on a journey through space and time; spanning six continents, and drawing on extraordinary contemporary cinematography, including satellite filming, the film shows rivers on scales and from perspectives never seen …
Psychopaths are incapable of love, so says William Lewis (Tom Wilkison), madman and father to a pair of likewise pernicious offspring: Grace (Ruby Rose, achieving cool clarity as daddy’s little two-legged slaughterhouse) and her unpolished, but nonetheless inhuman brother Oliver (Owain Yeoman). Together they’re the Black Swans, a family owned …
Roberto (Marco D’Amore), owner of the security company that has rigged Forte dei Marmi with enough cameras to power a studio, likens the raked sand on the private beaches and overly-orchestrated facade to a picture postcard. Paradise is hardly a setting conducive to crime, but this is a winter tale …
Victor Martin (Shatner) plans to live out his golden years with the love of his life, a vintage silver Porsche. The retired, never married NASA test pilot calls Palm Springs home, and as submitted, it’s a sleepy desert resort community where everybody knows everybody. (Even if it’s not true, in …
Clint (Willem Dafoe!) operates a bar in the remotest corner of Siberia, where he lives a life of self-imposed exile, barely capable of communicating with most of his patrons. Lusting after a pregnant flasher as her nana chatters away unintelligibly is one of the film’s kinder moments. Even after the …
It was only a matter of time before the human billboard, the bloke on the corner opposite the strip mall blatantly whirling a sign, became the subject of a film. If the goal of this locally produced endeavor is to catch one’s attention, consider rookie filmmakers Reuben Guberek and Luc …
While the rest of the world faces impending doom, a group of old friends reunite to celebrate Christmas in the comfort of an idyllic country home. Burdened with the inconvenience of mankind’s imminent destruction, they adopt a stiff upper lip, crack open another bottle of prosecco and continue with their …
An adaptation of writer/director/star John Pollono’s 2013 play about friends enabling friends that spans 30 years. A trio of highly engaging reprobates — Frank (Pollono), Packie (Shea Whigham), and Swaino (Jon Bernthal) — spend the first half of the picture showing the world what a fine breeding ground Manchester, New …
When asked why he didn’t direct Space Jam, a look akin to vaping rancid butter crossed Joe Dante’s (Looney Tunes Back in Action) face. Then he answered my question with a question of his own: “Have you seen it?” It’s with more than a little outrage that I report that …
An instant addition to any quality top ten list of favorite Christmas movies, the latest familial Grand Guignol to hatch from the superior mind of Pablo Larrain follows Jackie in the director’s “tortured royalty” trilogy. (A capper is in the works, the subject as yet unnamed. How ‘bout Dolores Hope?) …
I waited until the last day it played the big Grossmont. My only regret over seeing it with a polite audience of four was missing out on a packed crowd’s catcalls at the mention of Marvel-denier Scorsese’s Goodfellas. The same pull that draws us to weekend binges of episodic TV …