A crush of displaced people, determined to weather Cincinnati’s coldest night of the year indoors, put the downtown library in a lockdown situation. Another thriller entirely situated among the stacks? Alas, Quiet Please, Murder this is not. First off, just enough of the film takes place outside the repository so …
It was a supporting role in a long-since forgotten George Arliss programmer that convinced the brothers Warner that James Cagney, with but three minor pictures to his credit, had what it took to play fast-talking big city bootlegger Tom Powers. (Edward Woods, who co-stars as Tom’s henchman, Matt Doyle, was …
A pair of “crow-sont” eatin’ New York cops are sent to the City of Lights to crack a counterfeit purse operation. Luis Guzman in a lead role, you say? That’s enough to make any guilty pleasure all the more pleasurable. He’s paired opposite a fine comic foil in the guise …
Like the subject it represents, documentarian Sini Anderson’s cheerily rough-around-the-edges fanzine account of Kathleen Hanna, the punk rock visionary with the Valley girl accent, is focused, engaging, vastly profane, and paced at a lightning clip. The undisclosed reason for Hanna’s sudden departure in 2005 as lead singer of the influential …
Contrived shit doesn’t get much nuttier. In the not-so distant future, a white, upper-class family plans on spending the Purge — a ‘countrywide catharsis’ where, for one 12-hour period every year, murder is decriminalized — in the safety of their steel-plated mansion. How do you go wrong with a foolproof …
While her husband and two sons join in the festivities, Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) strings streamers, inflates balloons, bakes a birthday cake, and pauses a moment before blowing out the candles. All you need to know about Agnes’ lot in life told in one concise, wordless preface. The jigsaw puzzle she …
It’s been over a hundred years since a major earthquake hit Oslo, but it only took Fantefilm three years to crank out a seismic sequel to their tsunami hit The Wave. Kristoffer Joner returns as the jinxed geologist fond of “alternative theories” who, in this case, is the only egghead …
Good acting has seldom been more excellent than in this, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut. Dusty lives up to his nickname with a whiskered senior moment of a movie. (It’s best that Hoffman started late in the game; audiences won’t have to put up with too many more vanity projects like …
Helen (Ellen Burstyn) has been on her own since her husband passed three years earlier. She’s relatively self-sustaining and as sharp as the proverbial tack, give or take a nasty habit of locking herself out of the house. It’s one thing to make a mistake in the morning, another to …
Rather than a wedding, the departure point for this remake of Liliek Sudjio’s same-named 1981 Indonesian cult horror item is a reunion of sorts at an orphanage. Mr. Bandi (Yayu A.W. Unru), will any day now breathe his last, and a trio of acquiescent repatriates are coming to pay their …
Sitting on a shelf since 2015, this is Werner Herzog’s first narrative feature in six years. On paper, impassioned archaeologist Herzog and real-life subject Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman) — a writer, world-traveler, photographer, and all-around eloquent nomad whose heart belonged to the desert — would appear to have the makings …
A Filipino Schindler’s List?! Read on. The Nazis had Jews they wanted to dispose of, and the Filipinos were willing to take them in. Under the guise of boosting the economy, Manuel L. Quezon (Raymond Bagatsing), second President of the Philippines, posted classified ads offering Jews professional jobs in the …
Whatever promise Oren Moverman’s (The Messenger) co-screenwriting credit held is quickly dashed in another undistinguished five-characters-in-a-haunted-house spooktravaganza. Erin Richards and Rory Fleck-Byrne play Renfield(s) to Jared Harris’ mad genius, a college professor bent on ridding the world of psychosocial behavior, one possessed foster child in a white hospital gown with …
For reasons never made clear, a roving posse of sightless and sharp-eared but otherwise cookie-cutter-quality Hollywood aliens zeros in on a pleasant young couple and their three children, looking to emulsify anything that makes a sound. A note on an eraser board establishes the existence of but three of the …
The shady S&M club’s one-year, no-cancellation contract prohibits subs from initiating activity and insists that an element of surprise be maintained: members never know exactly where or when the bondage babes will appear to administer a thrashing. Within five minutes of establishing the rules, director (and one-fifth of the writing …