Denis Villeneuve’s last film, 2013’s “Prisoners,” had everything: Gripping story; beautiful camerawork; and a great performance from Jake Gyllenhaal alongside Hugh Jackson. His follow-up Sicario only has the star-studded cast. Emily Blunt (“Edge of Tomorrow”) plays an FBI agent, Kate Macer, who enlists to join an escalating drug war between the U.S. and Mexico, in…
My friend once told me a story of how he was visiting Las Vegas in the mid-1990s. He said that the person he was with, John, introduced him to a rather sharply-dressed man who told him, “Whatever you want here, just ask for it,” and then walked away. John said, “Do you know who that…
The power of one man can change the world because he can change the communities around him, one by one. But the power of the community can change the man and the world much faster — for better or for worse — because there’s undeniable strength in numbers while the strength of one can sometimes…
In Listening, Caltech grad students David Thorogood (Thomas Stroppel, a series of short films and minor TV appearances) and a ridiculously bald Ryan Cates (Artie Ahr, “Immigrant”) have been developing a headgear device that facilitates mind-reading by stealing university equipment and hiding it inside David’s garage to conduct unauthorized experiments (think of a teenage Steve…
The great outdoors can be a dangerous place, especially if you’re an idiot. That seems to be the prevailing message loudly stomping around the surface of Adam MacDonald’s man-vs-nature thriller Backcountry. It’s the kind of jangly fright flick that appears to be about bad things happening to good people, but actually turns out to be…
As the title, The Curse of Downers Grove, suggests, there’s a curse on the small town of Downers Grove — each year, a senior dies in the days leading up to graduation. I incorrectly assumed the curse would be supernatural, and as soon-to-graduate high school senior Chrissie (Bella Heathcote, “Dark Shadows”) tells her friends, it’s…
Awakenings are as births: Inherently unappealing and, when looked upon closely, intrinsically unclean. Only those involved are interested in such event and only their tricky memories (and the time that there elapses) can pretty it up till the point of making a miracle out of it — a radical makeover. And so we come of…
