It can be a tricky thing to review horror films. The red-headed stepchild of the movie business, horror is an incredibly subjective genre for fans. Despite repeatedly being let down by film after film, we return to the theater with each new offering, hoping for a gem — a new classic. Remakes are especially daunting…
It is not often that one has reservations about a movie adaptation of an epic Stephen King novel series. Sure, there have been a few misses along the way (bound to happen considering how large King’s bibliography is), but it has been quite some time that a movie-going mishap has registered so profoundly as it…
How to know if a tattered contraption is the harbinger of horror? Sense the way it affects reel people on real people. Commendable then is the Chinese musical wish box at the center of veteran genre cinematographer John R. Leonetti’s latest film where, after each of the lead’s wish is realized, a swath of our…
For a film franchise that began in 1931 (with Boris Karloff in the original title role) and includes literally dozens of pictures, there are still some new things I learned from this latest edition (directed by Alex Kurtzman, “People Like Us”) of The Mummy. For instance, mummies and other otherworldly entities — even though buried…
Beth and Kate (Jocelin Donahue, “Knight of Cups”) are twins, and each is experiencing her late 20s in quite a different way. Kate is stable, confident and popular; Beth, living with her parents, is nervous and reclusive, and fearful of relapse. Beth is afflicted by “sleep paralysis,” a condition whereby the mind is awake but…
Has Luke Skywalker come to the conclusion that the woes of the galaxy are in part caused by the Jedi? In this first teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi it seems he has. That doesn’t, however, stop him from training Rey (Daisy Ridley) in the fine art of wielding a lightsaber or tapping…
Everyone loves a clown. Or do they? The residents of Derry, Maine most certainly don’t (or at least they shouldn’t). At the hands of a clown known as Pennywise, adults there go missing 6-times more than the national average and children disappear at an even higher rate. It’s this evil entity, and the seven kids…
