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…
The Transporter Refueled is more like “Transporter Rebooted,” as this is at least the fourth franchise update of the year (following “Mad Max: Fury Road” “Fantastic Four” and “Hit Man: Agent 47”). In this re-working of French producer Luc Besson’s action series, the main star is the automobile, an Audi (just like all of those…
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…
There was a time when the zombie movie was confined to a single genre, back when George Romero was terrorizing survivors in farm houses and shopping malls, but now things have gotten more complicated. The popular-as-ever undead have wandered beyond horror into the comedy, action, and drama genres. It’s great that they’ve branched out, but…
Films inspired by video games usually fall into two categories: Bad (“Doom,” “Super Mario Bros.,” “Tomb Raider”) or terrible: (“Mortal Kombat,” “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,” “Max Payne”). Hitman: Agent 47 (a remake of the 2007 picture starring Timothy Olyphant) neatly fits into that last category. There are many reasons for this, including poor…
“Someone’s not who he says he is.” I’d fathom a guess that no one is who they say they are in Quentin Tarantino’s latest foray into the West, The Hateful Eight. Motivated by a reward for a murderer (and possibly other factors), the eight hunkered down in a pass stop along the way to Red…
