Oh boy. There’s nothing quite as middling or eyebrow-raising as a belated sequel, is there? 2003’s “Bad Santa” was a morbid, distasteful, apathetic middle-finger to more warm and fuzzy, politically correct holiday ventures and I absolutely love it. Upon hearing that a sequel was finally coming I was excited, although I knew it could fall…
Don’t Breathe opens with a floating aerial shot over a picturesque neighborhood street. Birds chirp happily as the sun warms the trees and houses with a golden glow. From behind, we approach a man walking down this quiet street, and we discover with horror that he’s dragging something behind him — the body of a…
The plot’s familiar but the execution is fresh in this neo-western with a real country soul. Two stubble-muzzled brothers, armed with a pair of pistols and the Law at their heels, tear through the southern tip of America’s Great Plains on a small-town bank-robbing spree. The script, which won 2012’s Black List, was originally titled…
Kill or be Killed (originally “Red on Yella, Kill a Fella”) is the kind of movie you want to root for: A genre bending romp across West Texas that has everything from spaghetti/western tropes like combination brothel-saloons, flasks of whiskey passed around fires, and shootouts everywhere from chain gangs to churchyards, to horror related elements…
On the third day of the Spooky Movie International Film Festival, showing at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, I caught the home-invasion thriller Crush the Skull, directed (and cowritten) by Viet Nguyen. It’s a reasonably solid movie, with agreeable performances and some slick dialog, but it begins to fall apart about halfway…
The Transporter Refueled is more like “Transporter Rebooted,” as this is at least the fourth franchise update of the year (following “Mad Max: Fury Road” “Fantastic Four” and “Hit Man: Agent 47”). In this re-working of French producer Luc Besson’s action series, the main star is the automobile, an Audi (just like all of those…
If a scathing review isn’t enough to steer a viewer away from watching tripe like Diamond Heist (or “Magic Boys,” depending on what Google search results tell you), then perhaps the very idea of Michael Madsen (“Loosies”) as a former Chippendale dancer will act as the clearest warning. Seriously. Just picture Michael Madsen. Then picture…
