Jude Law (“Captain Marvel”) plays an “entrepreneur” who moves his American family back to his home country of England so he can work for his old company in, The Nest, a deathly slog of a movie directed by Sean Durkin. This movie is so slow moving it practically runs in reverse, with an almost phobic…
Hope Gap is one of those typical independent movies, where mood, atmosphere and setting dominates more than the narrative. There are no complaints here, because the film’s frequent dallying at these seaside locations and our watching the characters walk along the shoreline or climb up various rocky features is quite beautiful to look at. I…
“What love actually is, is the experience that someone else is all right exactly the way they are.” — Werner Erhard Noah Baumbach’s (“The Meyerowitz Stories”) Marriage Story is a penetrating look at the spiraling effect of divorce American style on those involved, one that radiates compassion for its beleaguered characters Nicole (Scarlett Johansson, “Avengers:…
When looking upon the first frame of Paradise Hills, the feature directorial debut of Spanish filmmaker Alice Waddington, your eyes are thrown into a wonderland of bizarre beauty. With a crisp sci-fi world of equal parts whimsy and despair, this feminist fairy tale has all of the looks of something remarkable, but lacks the proper…
An American couple in Singapore suffers a miscarriage and returns to the United States — but did they bring something with them? Of course they did, in Blood Child, a sublimely awful, soulless affront to respectable supernatural horror tales. I’m not trying to scare off potential viewers here, but if I did, it would be…
On paper, Changeland has several of the components to success: The movie is set in scenic Thailand, it teases the promise of an emergent bromance between estranged friends Brandon (Seth Green, “Sex Drive,” who is pulling triple duty as director, writer and actor) and Dan (Breckin Meyer, “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”), and it enjoys the…
Finally getting a release in English-language regions is Latvian director Aik Karapetian’s follow-up to his grisly “The Man in the Orange Jacket,” Firstborn. Latvia sits between Scandinavia and Russia, so it’s perhaps apt that this stylish, moody thriller evokes some of the black-comic absurdity of the former and the miserablist austereness of the latter. From…
