Drew Goddard wrote for TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost before he started making movies, and it shows. His first film as writer/director, The Cabin in the Woods, had a Buffy-like self-awareness and deconstructionist attitude, and his second — the pulpy neo-noir Bad Times at the El Royale — puts a group of strangers in an isolated […]
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Los Angeles’s biggest genre festival, Beyond Fest, just wrapped its sixth and most ambitious program. Fifty films played at Hollywood’s historic Egyptian Theater, with ancillary showings in Downtown L.A. and Santa Monica, with a range of cinematic madness on display — from the West Coast premieres of forthcoming major releases (Halloween, Widows, Bad Times at the […]
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As a very funny gay person who never has enough money, I am the target audience for an Oscar Wilde biopic. But despite Rupert Everett’s passion as writer, director, and star — this is clearly the movie he was born to make — The Happy Prince is a lugubrious slog. It begins after Wilde has spent […]
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(Streaming on Shudder.) Buenos Aires is rife with supernatural activity in Demian Rugna’s Terrified (Aterrados), much of it centralized to a particular street (perhaps because of zoning?). The manifestations are frequently chilling, as when a man who hears a recurring “thump” sound investigates and finds his wife being flung repeatedly by an unseen force against the […]
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In 2018, social media fragility and the internalization of fears keep people trapped, much like the subjects of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) are trapped as they sift through media information while the unthinkable threatens their safety. Even though Night of the Living Dead’s characters can’t fully understand why they’re being […]
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An interest in sex is common ground for most people, but not for me. There’s no onscreen depiction of sex that arouses me. It’s foreign at best and horrifying at worst. Why? Because I’m asexual. Let’s clear a few things up first. No, being asexual is not the same thing as being celibate, and no, […]
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A Star Is Born has changed from the story of an actress (1937) to the story of a musical actress (1954), then a rock star (1976), and now a pop diva. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the casting of a gay icon and a hot leading man in the central roles. Since that […]
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A Star Is Born, the story of a romance between a fading male celebrity and a rising female artist so good it’s been told four times already, is in theaters now. Based on the incredible buzz the film has been getting from critics on the festival circuit, Warner Bros. smells Oscar gold as well as […]
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Because of her outlandish costumery and made-up name, it’s easy to dismiss Lady Gaga as a gimmicky pop star. What we discover in the sturdy, old-fashioned A Star Is Born (if we hadn’t already) is that she has a strong, beautiful singing voice and a natural presence as an actor. Her co-star, Bradley Cooper, making his […]
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The title of Private Life, starring Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn as an upscale Manhattan couple trying to have a baby, is ironic. There are fertility issues for both of them — he’s 47; she’s 41 (they’re both four years older than that in real life) — so they’re trying IVF, adoption, surrogates, the whole […]
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Iron Man, Captain America, and the others in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would probably like to make it clear that Venom isn’t part of their program (though it’s better than at least one of the Thor movies). The Spider-Man villain, seen briefly in Spider-Man 3 played by Topher Grace, gets a messy spinoff, directed by Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”), […]
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The Horror Corner took a week off to enjoy the amazing Fantastic Fest, where there were lots of horrors afoot, and I don’t just mean Eric D. Snider wearing a wacky wrestling singlet for three days. (He lost a bet!) Several of these horror films will be hitting VOD services and/or Netflix some time soon, […]
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