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…
The inter-dependable relationship between mothers and their sons has been explored throughout horror for decades. From Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” the 1960 landmark film which left an indelible mark on cinema forever, right up to the recent “Daniel Isn’t Real” which sought to explore the link between mother and son and more specifically, mental illness, it’s…
It is a reunion of sorts for those connected to the witless cop caper Spenser Confidential. First, the film’s star, Mark Wahlberg, returns home to his beloved Boston as the famed native son struts his reckless stuff around Beantown. Second, the film’s director, Peter Berg, reunites with Wahlberg, his “Mile 22,” “Patriots Games,” “Deepwater Horizon,”…
Francis Annan’s Escape from Pretoria describes the real-life adventures of political captives Tim Jenkin and Steven Lee as they attempt to leave the titular prison before their sentences are up. Set in the apartheid era of South Africa, the film spends most of its run-time within the walls of the prison itself, leaning on a…
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…
The horror genre relies, to an extent, on the utilization of familiar tropes. The use of these tropes can reward and subvert expectations, and how these tropes are used contributes to the film’s effectiveness. Audience familiarity is both an opportunity and a difficulty for filmmakers: Give the audience what they want and they welcome it,…
Trauma Center, a brutally dull alleged action movie that nominally stars Bruce Willis (“Glass”) as a world-weary cop, is not the kind of movie that anyone will remember in ten years, or, for that matter, even later this year. Its premise is flimsy, its execution is disjointed, its acting is atrocious, and its conclusion is…
