Having already won an Academy Award for his short film “Helium,” director Anders Walter makes a strong feature film debut with I Kill Giants, a reasonably touching, visually captivating adaptation of Joe Kelly’s comic book series of the same name. The story centers around Barbara (Madison Wolfe, “The Conjuring 2”), a tenacious fifth grader who’s…
Thoroughbreds has completely reinvented the concept of a haunted mansion, having mercifully put the former out to pasture and out of its misery. This particular mansion is home to Lily, a polished upper-class teenager with a fancy boarding school on her transcript, a coveted internship on her resume, and a penchant for short shorts and…
With the film Tiger Girl, writer/director Jakob Lass (“Love Steaks”) deals out a sharply cut, strangely mesmerizing, buddy movie. Set in an unnamed German city, we follow a pair of streetwise Frälueins, who boisterously dispatch any and all bystanders that dare get in their way. Awkward good-girl Maggie (Maria-Victoria Dragus, “The White Ribbon”) begins training…
One would probably imagine that a creepy concoction such as writer-director Simon Verhoeven’s (“Men in the City”) bubble gum, horror/thriller Friend Request would take advantage of its exploitative ingredients to cultivate a half-way decent internet-based frightfest aimed at the under 30-something crowd. After all, where can one go wrong with a slasher featuring curvaceous collegiate…
Guatemalan Indigenous Leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum said, “We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected.” Unfortunately, however, Indigenous people have been the subject of racism and discrimination throughout history. Massacres, forced-march relocations, the “Indian wars,” death…
Michael (Jack Parry-Jones, “Our Girl” TV series) and Thor (Christy O’Donnell) are brothers. Well, as they would be the first to tell you, step-brothers. They live with Michael’s mum and Thor’s dad in a little house on Shetland. When Michael doesn’t get into university in Glasgow and his girlfriend does, he starts to get suspicious…
Filmmaker Sofia Coppola is a mixed bag in terms of her big screen artistry as both an actress and movie-making siren. Specifically, Coppola’s auteur skills can run rather cold and dismissive (penning the flat and forgettable costume saga “Marie Antoinette”) or can inspire unexpected hypnotic greatness of roguish contemplation and isolation (as demonstrated in her…
