On June 6, 1982, exactly 38 years after D-Day, roughly 60,000 Israeli troops and more than 800 tanks, heavily supported by aircraft, attack helicopters, artillery, and missile boats invaded Southern Lebanon, a country already involved in a decades-long civil war. Israel’s publicly-stated objective was to push PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) forces back 40 kilometers (25…
Simon West’s Skyfire is equal parts “Jurassic Park,” “Armageddon,” and, well, “Volcano”: A tireless, heart-pounding leap beyond such niceties as logic and character development into the well-trod terrain of super-duper action movie. And by that purple prose, I mean that it’s a damn fine movie to veg out to and just enjoy for what it…
In the early 19th century, John Bell arrived in Western Tennessee to settle at the Red River Settlement, accompanied by his wife Lucy and their children. Within a decade, their family became leaders of the community and well-respected in their church. Strangely, however, the family starts hearing strange noises in the night — scratches on…
On what appears to be just an average evening, a grinning pizza delivery man (David Harper, “The Clean Bones Gone”) walks through an alleyway carrying a pizza box, heading towards his next address. He’s dressed in a red polo shirt and a red visor, and we quickly discover he’s carrying a plastic bag — a…
Point Pleasant is a sleepy little town straight out of a Steven King novel. Set within the sprawling forests of West Virginia and with a population of just 4,000, not much goes on around these parts. Except, that is, for repeated sightings of a terrifying demon — a seven-foot tall, half-man, half-bird creature with red…
The Funeral Home, “La Funeraria” in its native tongue, is a gloomy and moody Argentinian haunted house tale. Written and directed by Mauro Iván Ojeda, the film pervades both its atmosphere and characters with gloom and moodiness. The titular domicile is the home and business of undertaker Bernardo (Luis Machín, “The Moneychanger”), a man crushed…
When looking at Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler’s Radium Girls, it’s easy to be stuck at a cinematic fork in the road. The film features a cast of delightful up and comers (including Joey King of “The Act”) and is inspired by a true story filled with relevant energy. Yet when examining the final…
