Caught between action flick thrills and hefty existential drama, Timothy Woodward Jr.’s film, Silencer, ends up in an unconvincing purgatory which neither excites or provokes. We open with a squad of US Marines in Iraq. It’s all radio banter and “Copy that!” and it looks like it’s been filmed with sunglasses over the lens, so…
By virtue of shared history and experiences, siblings are pack animals, asking blind loyalty in return for fierce protection. They inspire imitation and a sort of “in it together”-ness. In Jeremiah Zagar’s first narrative feature, We the Animals, brothers Manny (Isaiah Kristian), Joel (Josiah Gabriel, “Night Comes On”), and Jonah (Evan Rosado) are likewise. They…
Chris Weitz, director of “American Pie” and co-writer on last year’s “The Mountain Between Us,” delivers a watchable and important effort in Operation Finale, depicting the capture and extradition of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann. It’s a well-intentioned take on one of the ugliest personalities of the 20th century. Yet, its middling characterization and preference for…
Lives online, lives offline. Activities that only happen because web cameras connect us to an anonymous multitude. What happens online may stay online, or overlap with the “real world.” What happens when a person is one thing on the Internet and another in the outside world? The questions around such alternative lives are pressing concerns…
Tackling topics as trendy as gentrification, police brutality, and the post-prison life of convicted felons, there may not be a film more timely than Carlos López Estrada’s Blindspotting. Written by and starring Rafael Casal and “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs, the film is as much a social observation of the aforementioned themes as it is a…
German Angst is a movie for the “V/H/S,” “Zombieworld,” “The ABCs of Death” crowd in that it is technically a collection of three shorter films — “Final Girl,” “Make a Wish,” and “Alraune,” respectively — full of extreme violence and horrific fun. With “Final Girl” as a quiet, graphic, and personal revenge fantasy, “Make a…
All I remember from eighth grade was being shunted from the Glee Club to the Stamp Club because, as my music teacher said, “it would be a better fit for you.” Better fit or not, it interfered with my plan to be a show biz star in the mold of Al Jolson. Unlike awkward pre-teen…
