Cheese. Beloved by Wallace and Gromit; source of comedic consternation for George Clooney in “Burn After Reading;” key ingredient for Remy in “Ratatouille.” Hardly the most disturbing food to be portrayed on screen. Nonetheless, writer-director Darren Darnborough succeeds in making his short film about cheese sinister and sexy in equal measure, as well as exquisitely…
There’s plenty to like about director Daniel Espinosa’s (“Safe House”) latest politically-driven crime thriller, Child 44. There’s a strict hierarchy of Iron Curtain power, no holds barred bloodshed, costumes that rival the best period pieces and, most importantly, a mesmerizing story (based off of Tom Rob Smith’s novel bearing the same name). There’s plenty of…
Unfriended is the kind of movie that I already can’t wait to watch again in ten years. Better yet–I’d love to watch teenagers ten years from now watch it and see if it makes any sense to them. This is to say, Unfriended is a movie that is violently in the moment, a unique and…
Judas Ghost, an indie British horror/fantasy inspired by Simon R. Green’s “Ghost Finders” series, feels more like a sequel than a standalone piece. This is to say, while watching it, one feels like what they are seeing would make far more sense — and have far higher stakes — if significantly more background information had…
In 1973’s “The Exorcist,” 1986’s “Witchboard” and 2014’s “Ouija” (among others), we learned that playing with a Ouija board can expose you to some really dangerous spirits. In countless other films (horror or otherwise), we learned that bored teenagers conjure up some pretty bad ideas to create excitement in their lives. In 2012’s new-to-DVD horror…
Realizing that she can no longer play the roles she played when she was twenty, the now forty-year-old European actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche, “Godzilla”) faces the consequences of the passage of time. Nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014, Olivier Assayas’ (“Something in the Air”) Clouds of Sils Maria explores the life…
The question wasn’t why it took so long to make Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, the unanticipated sequel to 2009’s “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” as much as why waste the time, money and effort to make one at all. The original was a mediocre comedy at best and at worst was the indirect inspiration for…
