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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…
In The Hallow, a couple and their infant son move into an old house that borders a mysterious Irish forest thought to be of malevolent disposition. Spoiler alert: It truly is. There are vengeful beings living in those woods, and they’re none to pleased to have the family traipsing about. Adam and Clare Hitchens (Joseph…
Opening night at the Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival, held annually in Silver Spring, Maryland, is always a treat. This year, the opener was The Final Girls, a thriller/comedy that subverts many horror-film conventions — indeed, the very notion of movies themselves. Teenager Max (Taissa Farmiga, “Anna”) happens to be the daughter of the…
Foxcatcher, based on the real-life events surrounding the relationship between billionaire John E. du Pont and Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, is a plodding, tone-deaf snoozer. The cast tries very hard to make things work, sometimes too hard. Even worse, all that made the true story so weirdly compelling in the first place is lost in…
The Theory of Everything is a powerful, sincere film about one of the twentieth century’s greatest minds. That it never becomes mired in maudlin sentiment is astounding, given the standard succeeding-despite-the-odds story of its legendary subject, the esteemed physicist Stephen Hawking. The leads are more than adequate; they own the roles of Hawking and his…
When Kylie Bucknell is sentenced to house arrest for her part in the robbery of an ATM, she thinks that living with her estranged, overbearing mother will be her biggest problems. The noncorporeal resident of the house, however, has other plans in this horror comedy from New Zealand, Housebound. Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly, “We Feel Fine”)…
In The Shower (now retitled “Killer Party”), a group of Los Angeles suburbanites gather for a baby shower, only to find themselves in the middle of a pandemic that appears to change people into roving zombies. Alex Drummond’s directorial debut is amusing, but the plot and action are stretched a little too thinly for a…
