Maker of music pieces, mood pieces, moving pieces, Xavier Dolan is a one-man filmmaking tour de force. And yet he knows that in order to tap into the meaty emotional center of his stories, he must trust his actors and allow them to run away with their roles. Somehow, this adventurous approach, of being both…
Mind games are afoot in Alex Garland’s upcoming sci-fi thriller Ex Machina. And Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) finds himself in the middle of them as he gets much more than he bargained for when he is selected to evaluate how well a newly developed artificial intelligence represents human intellect and behavior. In the form of a…
If you are thinking about engaging in some other activity after watching Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, be sure to leave some time for decompression. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, the semi-autobiographical Whiplash is a visceral, adrenaline-pumping musical drama that raises — but does not resolve —…
You know when you love the idea of something, but tend to be disappointed by the way that idea is put into practice? That’s how I feel about found-footage films. “The Blair Witch Project” perfectly exemplified the genre; since then, more or less, I believe it has gone downhill. In many such movies, I find…
On their honeymoon to Miami, Holly and Trevor Davidson (Graci Carli and Rod Luzzi) decide they’re going to try out all the touristy things they can find. After being disappointed by a shoddy palm reader (because visits to psychics is a touristy thing to do), they encounter a strange man in the street who suggests…
“For what else is the life of man but a kind of play in which men in various costumes perform until the director motions them offstage?” – Erasmus Once you add up the upcoming films from Marvel and DC studios, there are twenty-two “superhero” films being planned over the course of the next four years….
Last summer, director James Wan gave us a terrifying dramatization of a true haunting in Burrillville, Rhode Island in “The Conjuring” and scared the pants off summer moviegoers. Yet again, his quality horror moviemaking transformed into huge box office payouts and introduced the world at-large to paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Renowned in the…
