An updated trailer has been released for The Debt by Focus Features today. Spanning two time periods, the John Madden-directed drama revolves around three Mossad secret agents and what they did in 1966 (targeting a Nazi war criminal) and how those actions affected them today. If the embedded trailer is any indication, The Debt looks…
Over recent years, the film noir genre has largely served as a reference point for filmmakers, who dress up their movies with snappy dialogue and/or complex, violent stories but neglect the genre’s bleakness. In this modern era, the Coen Brothers are often credited as the life support system for classic noir, but the Coens appear…
Apparently in some circles (you know, the ones inhabited by “academics and brilliant minds”) there is a raging debate whether the 37 plays and 154 sonnets attributed to William Shakespeare were really written by William Shakespeare. Sounds dry, I know, but I suppose if anyone can make, what on the surface seems uninteresting interesting, Roland…
In motion pictures, it’s a widespread belief that children are the embodiment of pure evil. Perhaps not all kids are the spawn of Satan, but horror filmmakers realize that evil disguised behind the eyes of a seemingly innocent child is an effective way of amplifying the scare factor. Into this genre now steps 2009’s Orphan….
Most of those who came into contact with the 2008 Swedish masterpiece Let the Right One In were immediately captivated and hypnotized by its brilliance, especially in the wake of the insipid Twilight phenomenon. It committed an unforgivable sin, though: It was foreign and subtitle-laden, meaning the movie never existed in Hollywood’s eyes. Thus, now…
2009’s The Loved Ones is a delirious Australian mash-up of various movies, including Carrie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Prom Night. Several critics have also dubbed the film as “Pretty in Pink meets Wolf Creek“, and that’s another fairly accurate analogy of this frightening yet resonant exercise in genre dramatics — it represents an…
Why, oh why, do people move into those big Victorian-style homes; you know, the ones with too many rooms and too few lights to illuminate them? It can’t be for the coziness and charm! You’d think by now people would know that 90% of those houses, according to the Horror Convention Law, are conduits for…
