The Katyn Massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the Soviet secret police in April and May of 1940. Though the Soviet Union claimed that Nazi Germany had orchestrated the slaughter in 1941, it officially acknowledged responsibility for the killings in 1990, after decades of state-sponsored cover-ups. Piotr Szkopiak…
Many filmgoers became aware of the infamous power grab of Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, a radical leftist group whose legacy included the direct killing (via execution) or indirect (via universal forced labor and food shortages), of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Cambodians in the 1970s (the subject of the film “The…
The problems with Rave Party Massacre begin — but certainly do not end — with its title. For a film that purports to portray a “massacre,” the body count by the time the credits roll is alarmingly small. What makes this titular inconsistency especially strange is the fact that the film actually does deliver on…
The specter of 90s cinematic cool looms over every frame of Killing Gunther, a darkly comic mockumentary action movie about goofball criminals that kill for laughs. It’s like a lost relic from a time when everyone wanted to rip off Tarantino and when the fake documentary approach still felt fresh. It also semi-stars Arnold Schwarzenegger…
Thoroughbreds has completely reinvented the concept of a haunted mansion, having mercifully put the former out to pasture and out of its misery. This particular mansion is home to Lily, a polished upper-class teenager with a fancy boarding school on her transcript, a coveted internship on her resume, and a penchant for short shorts and…
Jigsaw starts as a man runs from police to the roof of an abandoned warehouse where he finds a detonator marked by an X behind a beam. In the standoff that follows, he shouts that five people are going to die if Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie, “Fifty Shades Freed”) isn’t brought to the scene…
There are many variables transpiring in the gritty, yet grating, urban crime flick Proud Mary that want desperately to embrace themes of unconventional motherly instincts and clichéd street-wise mayhem. Unfortunately for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Oscar-nominated star Taraji P. Henson (who also has an executive producing credit for this lopsided actioner), her labored…
