After a night of nookie and a passive-aggressive argument, Adam (Alex Breaux, “Bushwick”) leaves his girlfriend’s apartment and heads into the night. He is promptly stabbed to death. The end. Just kidding. Adam awakens on an operating table, in a theater belonging to a young, rogue surgeon. Dr. Henry (David Call, “Dark Was the Night”)…
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…
Those dastardly backwoods are calling again. Based on the well-received 2011 novel by Adam Nevill, David Bruckner’s film, The Ritual, is a competent British-made horror which, after a so-so opening act, gradually mutates into something quite watchable and intense. It starts as a group of old college buddies meet up to plan a reunion trip…
The title, GoatSucker, may sound like a disturbingly niche adult movie, but it actually refers to the Puerto Rican myth of El Chupacabra, a bear-like carnivore believed to feed on livestock and humans. Made in 2009, this seminal monster movie is brought to the small screen by Steve Hudgins, who most recently authored the woeful…
While we know that some monsters are decidedly not lovable, the creature in Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, like many humans who roam the planet, is more of a lonely outcast seeking connection than a life-threatening presence. Performed by Doug Jones (“The Bye Bye Man”) underneath all the prosthetics, this monster…
For a film franchise that began in 1931 (with Boris Karloff in the original title role) and includes literally dozens of pictures, there are still some new things I learned from this latest edition (directed by Alex Kurtzman, “People Like Us”) of The Mummy. For instance, mummies and other otherworldly entities — even though buried…
This latest Disney picture, Beauty and the Beast, joins a growing list of live-action movies which traces its origins to animated films, including “The Jungle Book,” “Pete’s Dragon,” “Cinderella” and “Maleficent,” among others. The bar here, however, is just a bit higher, considering the 1991 edition became the first animated feature to earn a Best…
