What Men Want is officially credited as a remake of 2000’s What Women Want, but the films have little in common beyond the central premise of someone being able to hear the thoughts of the opposite sex. It seems like an arbitrary distinction. Do all body-swap comedies have to acknowledge Freaky Friday as their inspiration? Anyway, […]
Read more
There’s nothing the world needs less than another King Arthur movie (unless it’s another Robin Hood movie), and that’s why Joe Cornish didn’t make one. Instead, the man behind minor cult hit Attack the Block (whence came John Boyega) made The Kid Who Would Be King, set in the present day, about a 12-year-old boy who […]
Read more
In the horror genre, scary children have become worthy of a sub-genre all their own. From The Omen’s Damien to Gage in Pet Sematary and the slimy ghost girl in The Ring, horror films have proven that it doesn’t take much to turn an innocent youngster into a creepy little embodiment of pure evil. This […]
Read more
On the whole, movie trailers haven’t had narrators for over a decade. They’ve been replaced by overbearing musical scores, ominous cover versions of pop songs, or some combination of the two, along with snippets of dialogue from the movie’s characters. Just a few decades ago, however, the “trailer voice” was at its peak, and one […]
Read more
Ring rubber bells, beat cotton gongs, strike silken cymbals, play leathern flutes. The cats and cans and you and I and all such things with souls, We shall hear: “Walter Paisley is born.” And the souls become flesh. Walter Paisley is born! This is how Walter Paisley, the bumbling-busboy-turned-celebrated-sculptor played by the late Dick Miller […]
Read more
MOVIES: “Animals” “Before You Know It” “Corporate Animals” “Dirty God” “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” “The Farewell” “Fighting with My Family” “Greener Grass” “The Hole in the Ground” “Honey Boy” “I Am Mother” “Little Monsters” “The Lodge” “Native Son” “The Nightingale” “Relive” “Share” “Sister Aimee” “Sweetheart” “Them That Follow” “Troop Zero” Day 1: Thursday, […]
Read more
(On HBO.) Mandy, the high school basketball player at the center of Share, starts the film by waking up on her front lawn — not an auspicious way to start the day (or a movie). Played by excellent newcomer Rhianne Barreto, Mandy is hungover, and her memory of the previous night is only slightly jogged […]
Read more
(Screened at the Sundance Film Festival; U.S. release date TBD) Dirty God is in the tradition of English “kitchen sink dramas” and dreary Mike Leigh films, a blunt, bleak story about a working-class person whose already miserable life is made worse by someone else’s cruelty. Jade (Vicky Knight), about 20 years old and the mother of […]
Read more
Indie jack-of-all-trades Mark Duplass’ roots in the mumblecore film movement have given him a strong base for understanding how to capture the ups and downs of human relationships. His writing on films such as The Puffy Chair (2005), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), and Blue Jay (2016) all focus on deconstructing what keeps people […]
Read more
A young makeup artist named Gloria travels down to Mexico to help a friend win a local beauty pageant. After witnessing a shooting at a dance club, Gloria’s friend is kidnapped and she finds herself caught in the crossfire between the corrupt Mexican law enforcement and a local cartel. Gloria is forced to work with […]
Read more
Serenity is: A) an early contender for the worst movie of 2019; B) a bonkers attempt at beachy noir starring Matthew McConaughey as a fisherman named Baker Dill; C) a bizarrely perfect companion piece to The Book of Henry; D) all of the above. The answer is, of course, D – all of the above. The […]
Read more
For the second year, Turner Classic Movies’ weekly trip to Noir Alley – hosted by Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation – is taking February off for the channel’s “31 Days of Oscar,” when all it airs are films that won or were nominated for Academy Awards. But there are a […]
Read more