The Host is an example of what happens if you put multiple films into the meat grinder, chop them up and compress the pieces together. Incorporating tropes across genres as well as referencing specific films, Andy Newbery’s film shows little originality or stylistic élan but does offer an enjoyable narrative and plenty of homages for…
School teacher Gemma (Imogen Poots, “I Kill Giants”) and gardener, Tom (Jesse Eisenberg, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”) are a young, contented couple looking to settle down and buy their first home. While out driving one afternoon they happen upon a showroom with a strange display of model houses, overseen by an eccentric man…
The Invisible Man has been the cinematic subject of effects extravaganzas (most notably James Whale’s 1933 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel), wartime propaganda (“Invisible Agent”), deadpan comedy (“Memoirs of an Invisible Man”), and psychosexual satire (“Hollow Man”), but rarely has he ever led a straight horror film. This is the hole that filmmaker Leigh…
Kate Mandell (Mackenzie Davis, “Terminator: Dark Fate”) leaves her teaching job and the coziness of a shared apartment with her friend Rose (Kim Adis, “Krypton” TV series) to take on the role of “personal tutor” to a young girl, Flora (Brooklyn Prince, “The Florida Project”). Her role is emphasized as that of “tutor” as opposed…
Edward Norton is an odd duck. When he burst onto the scene with 1996’s “Primal Fear,” he matched beats with more seasoned stars Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Francis McDormand, and earned an Oscar nomination for his trouble. Subsequent roles in “American History X,” “Fight Club” and “25th Hour” led to him being hailed as…
The whodunnit provides a certain kind of cinematic pleasure. The crime which is never straightforward. The host of suspects, all with motives and sometimes conflicting alibis. The elaborately twisting plot where half the fun is not knowing and the other half finding out. Through the decades and across media from literature to film to television…
Poor Nancy, life is a drudge without any hope of things ever picking up; an aspiring writer who receives endless rejection letters she is also a loner yearning for human contact who can only find company in the form of her trusty ginger cat (the ironically human named) Paul. Nancy is in a rut, both…
