Latest on the slate from Blumhouse Productions — known for their mostly neutered horror flicks (“Unfriended: Dark Web,” “Truth or Dare,” “Happy Death Day,” to name a few of the more recent ones) — is Fantasy Island, a retooling of a campy, Aaron Spelling produced television show. And much like that late 70s to early…
A mixture of harsh industrial sounds and dreamier synth beats power into the room as neon shapes move kaleidoscope-like before our eyes. This is Daniel Isn’t Real, an immersive experience bathed in sound and visuals. We open to a shot of the cosmos which then dissolves into a present-day coffee shop; a juxtaposition of the…
“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” — Muriel Rukeyser (Poet and physicist) Liyana, directed by the Swaziland-born husband and wife team of Aaron and Amanda Kopp, is a genre bending documentary that follows a small group of Swazi children — residents of Likhaya Lemphilo Lensha, a Swaziland orphanage — as they participate…
It is fitting that there are two competing readings of François Ozon’s Double Lover. The film dually presents as a highly stylized, seductively sleek French psychosexual thriller and this “I Know Who Killed Me”-esque overtly overly symbolic camp. Not wanting to assign one dominance over the other or perhaps unable to distinguish between apparent equals,…
History is determined by whoever holds the pen, be it religious context, political misconduct, or something as simple as creative rights. Anyone who knows me personally knows I’m a huge comic book fan, for Batman especially. Much like “The Death of ‘Superman Lives’: What Happened,” Batman & Bill is something I’ve been following for a…
The sentimental struggles of the self-doubting artist are at the gooey center of Michelle Figlarz’s Paris-set short Absinthe, a viewing of which could benefit from a few shots of the green liquor to wash away the corny aftertaste. The story is concerned with wayward Simon (Larry Cech, “90 Minutes of the Fever”), whose passion for…
While this J.A. Bayona (“The Impossible”) directed effort (based on a best-selling book by Patrick Ness), A Monster Calls, is a wonderful visual and visceral experience (and currently has critics fawning all over themselves), I, for one, can only wonder for whom this film was made. It’s certainly too dark and foreboding for children —…
