Science fiction films have a tendency to remind you of other science fiction films. This is part of the fun, and very much the case with LX 2048. Writer-director Guy Moshe’s tale of a technologically determined dystopia features a bureaucrat, Adam Bird (James D’Arcy, “Dunkirk”), who is reminiscent of “Brazil.” The high-tech setting a decaying…
The Invisible Man has been the cinematic subject of effects extravaganzas (most notably James Whale’s 1933 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel), wartime propaganda (“Invisible Agent”), deadpan comedy (“Memoirs of an Invisible Man”), and psychosexual satire (“Hollow Man”), but rarely has he ever led a straight horror film. This is the hole that filmmaker Leigh…
In the last few decades, films about workers and the labor movement in American cinema have been few and far between. Documentaries such as American Factory, however, can begin to shed light on the problems facing workers in the 21st century world of global capitalism. Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (“Making Morning Star”),…
Former marine and single mother Sam (Rebecca Rogers) is on maternity leave. Her baby needs medication, so she leaves the kid home alone and runs to the pharmacy. Sam is abducted. She wakes up in a locked-down warehouse. A mysterious voice informs her that her child will be killed unless she “plays the game.” It’s…
“Artificial Intelligence: Monster or Shangri-La?” Though the official tagline of Do You Trust This Computer? may prelude to a neutral stance on the evolution of AI, the resulting film is far more a cautionary prophecy than a wide-eyed musing about possibilities awaiting the human race. Chris Paine (“Who Killed the Electric Car?”) returns to the…
“It was too directly bound to its own anguish to be anything other than a cry of negation; carrying within itself, the seeds of its own destruction.” In August 1966, Mason Williams hurled a Royal typewriter from the open window of a Buick Le Sabre speeding down Highway 91 outside Las Vegas. Patrick Blackwell photographed…
Unpleasant without being scary, and full of style sans substance, Brian Visciglia’s feature debut, Ryde, comes off as a kind of misogynist “American Psycho.” There’s a hint of Christian Bale’s Bateman in David Wachs’ pristinely chiseled psychotic, but none of Bret Easton Ellis’ satire. Wachs (“The Last Hurrah”) plays Paul, an elusive loner who one…
