A Film Studies graduate with a very healthy obsession with all things Kubrick, here I am surfing an internet awash with opinions to add mine to the ocean.
Beth and Kate (Jocelin Donahue, “Knight of Cups”) are twins, and each is experiencing her late 20s in quite a different way. Kate is stable, confident and popular; Beth, living with her parents, is nervous and reclusive, and fearful of relapse. Beth is afflicted by “sleep paralysis,” a condition whereby the mind is awake but…
This mediocre captivity-and-ordeal thriller, Valley of Ditches, is bound up in some atmospheric visuals and moody dark ambient music, but it’s too vague and too shallow to make a real impact. Its initially bold premise soon gives way to repetition — and frankly the simple hope that none of the characters will utter any more…
1947, and Sheriff Proctor (Danny Goldring, “The Dark Knight”) and Deputy Waterhouse (Ted Levine, “Bleed for This”) are busy dumping two bodies in a lake. After the deed is done, Waterhouse fires Proctor without firing a shot. 30 years later, an elderly Waterhouse is sheriff. His granddaughter, Jacqueline “Jake” Mather (Samantha Isler, “Captain Fantastic”), visits…
Deadly Virtues: Love.Honour.Obey., the latest film from Ate De Jong — the Dutch veteran director whose career goes back to and beyond “Drop Dead Fred” — is a raw, creepy, silly, and ultimately fairly powerful captive thriller. De Jong makes good use of his deliberately bland single location and draws intense performances from his small,…
A well-balanced blend of Prohibition-era gangster thriller, western, and vampire movie, Bloodrunners is an intriguing prospect. It’s no game-changer, and it never shakes its TV pilot aesthetic, but it wears its hybrid influences well and betrays a knowing sense of its own absurdity. It’s 1933 and everyone, from mobsters to cops, are getting tired of…
It Lives in the Attic? “It Lives in the Back of the Amazon Watchlist,” more like. Here is the latest from questionable auteur Steve Hudgins, the founder of Big Biting Pig Productions, a company specializing in ultra-low budget films made by him and his partner in crime, P.J. Woodside. The plot of It Lives in…
Directed by Nick McAnulty and Brian Allan Stewart, this found footage shocker, Capture Kill Release, seems like a natural progression in the tradition of films such as “The Honeymoon Killers” and “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” Combining strong performances, a wicked script, and an appropriately dreadful atmosphere, it’s a worthwhile entry into a sub-genre…
