Gridlock is a 20-minute tension-filled short built entirely from top to bottom on the hope that its twist ending can shock its audience. Everything filters through to that ending via a threadbare plot that sees a father lose his daughter in a traffic jam on a rural road surrounded by forest. The dad (Moe Dunford,…
As rendered in the gut-wrenching “Krisha,” director Trey Edward Shults’ debut film, those with blood ties are hornets that can sting more than their natural counterpart. The within-is-more-volatile notion is elevated in Shults’ second outing, It Comes at Night, that takes place in a world upturned by an unnamed disease. For a while now, 17-year-old…
“Lawrence of Arabia” is a respected title that conjures images of adventure, masculinity and the mystic charm of the Middle East. A film of epic proportions, it glamorized explorer T.E. Lawrence, an academic whose presumed knowledge of the culture and politics of the area impressed both English and Arabic leaders. Unbeknownst to most, however, English…
In Delusion, Frank Parrillo (David Graziano, “A Life Not to Follow”) is a middle-aged man still coming to terms with his wife’s death three years prior. After receiving a bizarre letter from her, he begins to move on and pursue a new love life. After he initiates a relationship with a mysterious woman (Jami Tennille,…
There is an idealized Wonder Woman. It’s vague and often inconsistent in description, but seemingly ethereal in public consciousness, in spite of any prior comic book knowledge, or lack thereof. I would compare the cultural assumption to Superman, and the balancing act the original Richard Donner film had to pull off. The benefit of finally…
Lady Macbeth is an exercise in contradiction. It is a costume drama, a genre long associated with restraint and composure. It is also a gothic romance, which has a long association with passion and melodrama. These generic tropes work together as the passion of the melodrama pushes against the constraints of the costume drama, often…
Here are a few things I learned from the film Baywatch: Movies adapted from television programs are almost always terrible (the few exceptions are “The Brady Bunch Movie” and the “Mission: Impossible” franchise; this also includes most films based on “Saturday Night Live” sketches); moronic writers who cannot think of clever lines or situations always…
