There was cause for concern when Quentin Tarantino announced he was making a movie involving the Manson Family murders. It seemed likely, given QT’s usual approach, that the result would be tacky and exploitative, maybe even turn a horrific (and, historically speaking, comparatively recent) tragedy into violent entertainment. Most of his films have had killers […]
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What do you get when you cross Napoleon Dynamite with Fight Club and maybe a touch of Yorgos Lanthimos? Writer-director Riley Stearns (previously known for 2014’s Faults, along with a string of shorts) apparently knew there was no good answer to this age-old cinematic riddle, so he got to work making and mastering The Art […]
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(Editor’s Corner is where Eric talks about overlooked gems, film history, or whatever else he wants to talk about because he’s the boss and no one can stop him.) It didn’t take long for eager young filmmakers to imitate the success of Halloween (1978) by producing cheap, bloody slasher movies of their own, and it […]
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I don’t always remember specific experiences I had watching movies in the theater, but I distinctly remember seeing Open Water at a multiplex in the suburbs of Chicago in August 2004. Shot on digital video on a budget of only $120,000 and featuring no recognizable actors, the movie had nevertheless managed to secure a nationwide […]
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Think about the phrase “yacht race” and what it signifies to you. I might be an ocean-loving California girl, but I was born in (central) Texas and come from a long, long line of avowed landlubbers. Thus, going in to a screening of director Alex Holmes’ new documentary, Maiden, I was picturing the film’s subjects […]
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Growing up in rural New York where heavy snow is just a matter of course, you have an innate understanding of exactly how long a winter storm can be considered tolerable, or even fun. For most people, it’s about 72 hours. Up until then, it’s a novelty, even for people who have spent their lives […]
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For someone as obsessively Type A as me, the lead-up to a film festival as compact and curated as Fantasia can prove quite nerve-wracking. As an event that unfolds primarily in two screening rooms conveniently located across the street from each other, the choices of films to see are limited to what can be crammed […]
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Purge of Kingdoms announces itself as “a pointless parody” of Game of Thrones, which reminds me of a truism: Admitting you’re terrible doesn’t make you less terrible. Directed incompetently by Ara Paiaya from a dismal, randy script by J.J. McDowell and Damian Romay (who had not written anything before, possibly not even their names), this […]
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Road trips have long been a fixture of the comedy genre. From the Frank Capra masterwork It Happened One Night (1934) to arthouse fare like Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (2015), the formula continues to be an effective way to string together a series of comic set pieces. Perhaps no filmmakers have molded […]
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The idea behind this remake of The Lion King was to tell the same story but with real animals. That being impractical, however, they had to use computer-generated animals that merely look real and don’t do anything that real animals aren’t physically capable of. It’s the closest we’ll ever get to seeing The Lion King acted out […]
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There’s scarcely a review of Midsommar that doesn’t include a mention of The Wicker Man — and with good reason. (Ours is no exception.) Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic is the pre-eminent folk-horror film and a clear influence on Ari Aster’s modern cult-film-in-the-making, but it’s hardly the only one. The last half-century has produced its […]
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Human beings have a natural fear of animal attacks, a fear that horror movies have exploited since cinema began. At first they tended to be extinct or exaggerated animals (think King Kong); then the Atomic Age introduced the idea of real animals made huge by radiation. It was Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) that grounded the […]
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