When actor Bob Balaban was gathering a crew for his directorial debut, Parents, a would-be applicant walked in and said, “I don’t really want to do this with you, I just came in to tell you you’re evil.” That’s great press for any horror movie, but especially for the first feature from an actor who […]
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M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable was arguably years ahead of its time. Released in 2000, five years before Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, Shyamalan’s low-key superhero/supervillain origin story was the sort of grounded comic book film that studios are still trying (and failing) to make. With his 2017 psychological thriller Split, the writer/director upped the ante considerably, […]
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The final scene in 2017’s Split revealed that the movie, thought to be a self-contained M. Night Shyamalan thriller, had been a secret sequel to the writer-director’s own Unbreakable from 17 years earlier. While that twist was a very novel one at the time, it has been recently revealed to me (thanks once again to […]
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Although it caters to a large community of retirees, the Palm Springs International Film Festival still features its share of daring selections, on a program full of awards favorites (thanks to the festival’s timing, right in the middle of awards season) and official submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (this year’s festival played […]
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It’s not fair to call Replicas the stupidest movie of 2019. The year is only two weeks old — and besides, it was supposed to be the stupidest movie of 2017, before it got shelved for reasons that become apparent upon viewing it. An affectless Keanu Reeves whisper-mumbles his way through the role of Will Foster, […]
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Everything about The Upside feels contrived and phony, like the movie version of an inspiring-but-fake anecdote your aunt shared on Facebook. Which is impressive, considering it’s a true story. Of course, it’s more directly a remake of the French film The Intouchables, which itself was inspired by a documentary about a wealthy Parisian quadriplegic who hired […]
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For most viewers, cult director John Waters’ movies are synonymous with transvestism, “bad taste” humor, and toxic American kitsch. But the Baltimore auteur has explored various political, sociological, and psychological themes in his movies over the course of his half-century career (his first feature, Mondo Trasho, was released in 1969). Perhaps the most intriguing motif […]
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If you think you would enjoy an uncomplicated, PG-rated movie about a dog traveling 400 miles to be reunited with her humans, there’s an excellent chance you will enjoy A Dog’s Way Home, which is exactly that and does exactly what you’d expect it to do (albeit with more CGI cats). Based on W. Bruce […]
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Destroyer begins with a bedraggled, hungover L.A. police detective being summoned to a crime scene: a man with a distinctive tattoo on the back of his neck shot dead, surrounded by ink-stained money. The weathered detective, Erin Bell, played by a severely de-beautified Nicole Kidman, tells her colleagues she might know who did it. When […]
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1999 is considered one of the strongest years of cinema in living memory. There will no doubt be countless articles in 2019 marking the 20th anniversaries of that year’s greatest hits and examining their impact and legacy. But this column isn’t about those movies. This column is about the overlooked gems from 1999 — the […]
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There’s something comforting about the fact that any popular new phenomenon will eventually be turned into the premise for a horror movie. For example, escape rooms are big lately. You and a few friends get locked in a room and have to solve puzzles to get out; if you don’t do it in time, you […]
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You don’t need any more than a passing familiarity with old-timey comedy duo Laurel and Hardy to enjoy Stan & Ollie, a loving biopic set primarily during a U.K. tour in 1953, years after their heyday and some time after they’d had a falling-out. You should have some L&H movies on hand, though, because Steve […]
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