Ah, what would this time of the season be without another motion picture featuring sex, drugs, rock and roll (and loud, annoying rap, to boot), fights, prostitutes, female pimps, gun threats, corporate layoffs, drunk driving (among other idiotic things committed while intoxicated), psychological disorders, sacrilegious sequences, rampant vulgarity, sexual harassment, child abuse, serious physical and…
To Leonard Cohen, Eliezer who went just before the big wave rose. A bulldozer wanders the streets, threatening buildings in ruins through a little Polish village that little knows about its decay. It circulates through the narrow streets silently, streets that remain unwitting to its presence. A mobile bridge appears, a ferry. A lone passenger…
I suppose it’s a generational thing that a lot of younger critics seem to adore the newest film by Jonathan Levine (“50/50,” “Warm Bodies”), The Night Before. I mean when I think of harmless Christmas comedies, my mind conjures up movies like “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” or “Home Alone,” among others. So when did foul…
“So, where is this going?” Those are the five dreaded words every romantic relationship will wrestle with in order to figure out the identity and destiny between its two prospective lovers. Also, it just happens to be the central question behind writer-director Leslye Headland’s new romantic comedy-drama (her feature directorial debut was “Bachelorette” in 2012…
As the title, The Curse of Downers Grove, suggests, there’s a curse on the small town of Downers Grove — each year, a senior dies in the days leading up to graduation. I incorrectly assumed the curse would be supernatural, and as soon-to-graduate high school senior Chrissie (Bella Heathcote, “Dark Shadows”) tells her friends, it’s…
In The Shower (now retitled “Killer Party”), a group of Los Angeles suburbanites gather for a baby shower, only to find themselves in the middle of a pandemic that appears to change people into roving zombies. Alex Drummond’s directorial debut is amusing, but the plot and action are stretched a little too thinly for a…
The opening sequence of Howard Goldberg’s Jake Squared bears a striking resemblance to Paolo Sorrentino’s modern Italian classic, “The Great Beauty,” however the two films are worlds apart in style and cohesiveness. Director Jake Klein has everything a man could want. He lives in a beautiful Los Angeles home and decides to let the cameras…
