Review: Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn

DC Comics’ Gotham City has not traditionally been a kind place for women. Bruce Wayne’s mother Martha was assassinated in the street for her pearls alongside her husband Thomas, but she barely registers as an influence on Batman in either Christopher Nolan’s or Todd Phillips’s films about the Dark Knight or the Joker, respectively. Catwoman, […]

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Review: Come to Daddy

Knowing a little about Come to Daddy’s creative pedigree is probably the biggest indicator of your potential reaction to this wild and bizarre horror thriller. It’s the directing debut of Ant Timpson, best known before now for producing films like the Kiwi haunted house film Housebound, the retro-styled post-apocalyptic Turbo Kid and The Greasy Strangler, […]

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Review: Cane River

Horace B. Jenkins’s Cane River (opening in Brooklyn this Friday) is one of those stories of cinematic archaeology where the backstory threatens to overtake the film itself. Written, produced, and directed by Mr. Jenkins, shot on location in Louisiana with an all-African-American cast and crew in 1981, it never saw a proper theatrical release; Jenkins […]

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Crooked Marquee’s Sundance 2020 Wrap-Up

After approximately 77 days of hyperventilating Twitter reaction reviews and 76 days of people complaining about hyperventilating Twitter reaction reviews, the 2020 Sundance Film Festival has drawn to a close. You, the Crooked Marquee reader, are of course well-versed in the festival’s offerings, thanks to Eric D. Snider’s exhaustive festival diary and Bill Bria’s insightful reviews, so it will come […]

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Eric D. Snider’s 2020 Sundance Diary

MOVIES:Black BearBoys StateDream HorseEmaThe FatherThe GloriasHerselfHis HouseJumboKajillionaireMinariMiss AmericanaNever Rarely Sometimes AlwaysNine DaysPossessorRelicSpreeSummertimeTeslaTimeUncle FrankWendyZola Day 1: Thursday, Jan. 23 Gird your loins (if you have them; I do not presume to know about your loins)! It’s time for another edition of the Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford’s intimate movie shindig held each year in the desolate […]

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Review: Cupid

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 uses a lot of the familiar techniques of quickie Christmas horror movies in Cupid, a […]

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Review: The Rest of Us

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 life outside Toronto in a massive house […]

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Sundance Review: Worth

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 due to a tragic accident. “You haven’t stumbled into a […]

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