Christmas-themed horror movies have become a thriving subgenre in recent years, providing micro-budget horror filmmakers with easy subject matter and plenty of options for pun-friendly titles. So why shouldn’t Valentine’s Day get the same holiday horror treatment? Writer-director Scott Jeffrey...

Horror filmmakers love to build stories filled with outrageous furnishings, but any lasting power their movies have is due to how hard they strike a core, internal fear. The Night House is a movie that, like the mazes referenced in the film’s plot, has a lot of dead ends and wild turns, but at...

If nothing else, the low-key Canadian drama The Rest of Us makes a surprisingly strong case for Heather Graham as a dramatic actor. Graham is affecting and understated as children’s-book author Cami, whose life is thrown into mild chaos when her ex-husband dies suddenly. Cami lives a peaceful...

Worth begins with a lighthearted, dynamic, Aaron Sorkin-esque scene that sees lawyer Ken Feinberg (Michael Keaton) introducing his class to the world of life insurance and class-action lawsuits. He assigns each student a role in a hypothetical scenario wherein a man’s life must be compensated...

I never had a TV set in my room when I was growing up, so I’d have to sneak past my parents’ bedroom door, creep down the thickly carpeted stairs, and quietly settle into the ugly plaid couch in the family room (in New Jersey) or the basement (in Nebraska) when I had trouble sleeping. There...

In 1977, NASA scientists put out the word that they'd be recording greetings from people from around the world and sending them (the recordings) into space to welcome any potential aliens who happened by. That announcement is the jumping-off point for Troop Zero, an utterly delightful family comedy...

There are no legal skirmishes in Ford v Ferrari. The battles between the automakers take place in boardrooms, racetracks, and other places where men have car-measuring contests. Directed by James Mangold, who brought similar confidence to Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, this is a smooth,...

You'd be forgiven for thinking The Lighthouse is a comedy when the first two things that happen are Robert Pattinson bumping his head and swearing and Willem Dafoe farting. But while those and a handful of other humorous moments and outlandish events do make this a nutty affair, the sophomore...

Tell Me Who I Am (on Netflix) belongs to the category of documentaries that are better enjoyed the less you know ahead of time. Netflix is a great home for these, as the 24/7 availability and near-zero cost make it easy to give it a look when a friend texts you saying, "You HAVE to watch this!"...

The attention-grabbing pitch for Jojo Rabbit — a little German boy near the end of World War II has an imaginary friend, and it’s Hitler — is ultimately secondary in importance to the film’s more serious, sentimental themes. That the film, adapted and directed by Taiki Waititi from...

In the Shadow of the Moon (on Netflix) is a reasonably OK science-fiction police procedural that begins with a flash-forward to 2024, where Philadelphia is in ashy ruins and the U.S. flag has been reconfigured to have five big stars instead of 50 little ones. With this indication that The Future...

Film is a strange medium. It requires creating images and moments that must have the semblance of reality but which are totally fictional. At least, that’s the conceit — more often than not, a little (or more) truth bleeds into the material, consciously or otherwise, and the lines between...

Crime films deal with criminals in a variety of ways, but there is a temptation (often indulged) to treat the criminal as an “other,” as “the bad guy,” allowing for a good deal of distance between the characters and the spectators. This happens so frequently that when a crime film comes...

Thorns and nails pressing into raw flesh, limbs twisting and contorting beyond the limits of nature, flames not-so-gently lapping at bare skin — religious fervor (especially that of the Catholic variety) has always made an alluring backdrop for body horror, and for good reason. As films like The...

I suppose there are multiple ways to go about having a good old-fashioned masculine midlife crisis — it just depends on your level of commitment. You know the obvious ones, of course: things like plunking down your life savings for a shiny red sports car, trading in your age-appropriate partner...