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…
Awakenings are as births: Inherently unappealing and, when looked upon closely, intrinsically unclean. Only those involved are interested in such event and only their tricky memories (and the time that there elapses) can pretty it up till the point of making a miracle out of it — a radical makeover. And so we come of…
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…
A common criticism of modern filmmaking is a lack of originality. And in a medium of formulaic genre styles that thrive on remakes, reboots, sequels and extended cinematic universes, it’s perhaps a valid point to make. Yet there is one main advantage to movies that carry a sense of familiarity — consistency. Whether it is…
The original “Sinister” was an unnerving film that followed true crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) as he moved his family into a house where the previous occupants had been brutally murdered. While researching the crime, he discovered an old cardboard box of old 8mm home movies in the attic — horrifying depictions of multiple…
I will approach this review a little differently if you don’t mind. But allow me first to tell you a little story. I made an irrational choice. I started my review for Irrational Man before I even saw the movie. Irrational indeed. I started this review before I even knew whether this movie was going…
For the sake of full disclosure, I will say right now that I am no fan of “Gangsta Rap.” I am not an advocate of an art form that glorifies and promotes violence, profanity and the degradation of women, no matter how many of those things are an everyday part of the rappers’ lives. Using…
