Tagged survival

Movie Review: Playground (2021)

There was a popular book written in the late 1980s by Robert Fulghum named “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” It is filled with tried and true lessons about growing up: “Hold hands and stick together,” “play fair,” “look at yourself,” and other snippets of suggestions we learn about early in…

Movie Review: The Rescue (2021)

Successfully following up on an Oscar-winning documentary is not an easy task, but directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (“Free Solo”) more than accomplish that with The Rescue, the tension-filled story of the rescue of 12 young soccer players, ages 10-16, and their coach trapped in the Tham Luang Nag Non cave in Northern…

Movie Review: The Stairs (2021)

Some genres are easily identified by tropes. Science fiction can be identified by spacecraft, time travel, extra-terrestrial life, artificial intelligence. Horror can be identified by an initial journey, a focus on victimhood and suffering, unsafe environments, a loss of control. While reductive and far from the whole story of these genres, tropes such as these…

Movie Review: A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

2018’s “A Quiet Place” is a terrifically focused and tightly wound horror film, which uses silence interspersed with jump scares to create a thoroughly thrilling experience. How then to follow it up with a “Part II?” Writer-director John Krasinski does so by expanding the world of the first film while also maintaining the focus on…

Movie Review: Till Death (2021)

Megan Fox gets knocked down but gets up again (and again) in Till Death, a hyperactive thriller that eschews the slow-burn approach of the similarly themed “Gerald’s Game” for higher-octane action. The plot is a perhaps a little too telegraphic, with the outcome never really in doubt and multiple predictable scenes, but it’s anchored by…

Movie Review: Making Monsters (2019)

Ever since the first genre films established rules, filmmakers have used them as a safety net. For better or worse, this ensured audience familiarity, while also simplifying the production process. Of the genres, horror films are probably the most reliant on these standardized tropes (1996’s “Scream” lampoons this), so much so that there is stagnation…

Movie Review: Wrong Turn (2021)

2003’s “Wrong Turn” spawned a surprising franchise. Five sequels and this 2021 reboot demonstrate that screenwriter Alan B. McElroy’s premise has (deformed) legs that have continued to provide bloody scares for audiences. After six films in the original continuity, a reboot seems timely and could continue to capitalize on the potential of city people encountering…

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