The resiliency of the human spirit is pummeled by a squall of sentimentality in Baltasar Kormákur’s based-on-a-true-story survival drama Adrift, which long vacillates between prettily photographed seafaring and soggy backstory. The movie opens thrillingly in the chaotic aftermath of a storm that has left a luxurious sailboat in ruins and protagonist Tami (Shailene Woodley, “Allegiant”)…
Writer/director/co-producer Deon Taylor (“Meet the Blacks”) oversees Traffik, a disposable mystery-suspense project with all the anticipation and edginess of sitting in traffic on the inner loop of I-495 West outside Washington D.C. His pseudo-tense thriller incorporates all the clichéd conventions imaginable: Pretty people in peril, normally smart people doing dumb things, remote romantic getaway shot…
“Oh, God, make small the old star-eaten blanket of the sky, that I may fold it round me and in comfort lie” — T.E. Hulme, “The Embankment” When I first heard about British director Andrew Haigh’s (“45 Years”) Lean on Pete, it sounded like a warm, cuddly drama about horses, perhaps an updated version of…
“Who are we if we can’t protect them?” Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt, “The Girl on the Train”) asks her husband Lee (John Krasinski, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi”) in one of the only scenes in A Quiet Place in which dialogue can even be heard. The “them” Evelyn is referring to are her…
The Strangers: Prey at Night opens in the late afternoon with two parents preparing the minivan for a trip to take their daughter to boarding school. As Mike (Martin Henderson, “Everest”) loads suitcases into the back, Cindy (Christina Hendricks, “The Neon Demon”) knocks softly on the door frame and tells her daughter, Kinsey (Bailee Madison,…
“When sky and sea came together like two lips touching, for that’s no small thing, no. To have lived through one solitude to arrive at another, to feel oneself many things and recover wholeness.” — Pablo Neruda As Americans we love the idea of ordinary people rising from obscurity to become heroes celebrated for their…
Christopher Lawrence Chapman’s debut feature, Inoperable, is a horror film about a 30-year-old woman struggling to escape from a half-deserted hospital while “the T-rex of hurricanes” sweeps overhead. The opening titles are like a scratchy throwback to David Fincher’s “Se7en,” and the end credits splash the screen with comic book text. Neither bookend is relevant…
