The eponymous academy around which The Atticus Institute revolves, as we are told early on (via ominous letters on the screen, an info-dump technique frequently employed by mockumentary and found footage films), was founded by Dr. Henry West (William Mapother, “I Origins”) in order to study “psi-related phenomena,” such as clairvoyance and telekinesis, until it…
From its first scene of dialogue, older Italian men with permanent scowls etched into their world weary faces mumbling to each other in a Brooklyn bar, Zarra’s Law reads like a mob movie made by someone who wants to imitate the genre but doesn’t speak a word of English. For a significant portion of the…
The Girl on the Roof, Skeet Ulrich’s directorial debut, is perhaps better when viewed as such than as a short film overall. Telling the dark story of a young girl, Lila (Naiia Ulrich), who receives only negative attention from bullies at school and hardly any attention from her family at home, which consists of a…
“I wish.” These are the first words of Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s timeless 1987 musical production, and the last. Dangerous, familiar words that, in the real world, can strain our relationships with our dreams, our loved ones, and ourselves, and set us up for situations in which we can never truly…
In case you didn’t find that “Interstellar” pre-chewed all of its own emotions for you enough, Wild, adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” is here to spoon feed you its own derivative “cold mush.” Wild follows Reese Witherspoon (“Mud”), as Cheryl Strayed, on an ambitious and…
You know when you love the idea of something, but tend to be disappointed by the way that idea is put into practice? That’s how I feel about found-footage films. “The Blair Witch Project” perfectly exemplified the genre; since then, more or less, I believe it has gone downhill. In many such movies, I find…
The whole concept of a Ouija board is that those who use it are unable to see the entities with whom they make contact. It’s basically texting from beyond the grave (Jason Reitman, take note). Considering this fact, especially when combined (bear with me) with Edmund Burke’s 1757 treatise A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin…
