Altogether, Hostiles is both sprawling and narrow, profoundly tense and equally mellow. That might sound like a film of contradictions — a message too lost in the majestic western landscapes. That’s not quite the case, though. Scott Cooper’s western carries the same slow-burn sensibilities as his 2013 down-home thriller, “Out of the Furnace,” which also,…
The Godzilla franchise has seen its shares of ups and downs since its inception in Ishirô Honda’s 1954 effects opus “Gojira,” boasting a filmography spanning 30 features and two major Hollywood adaptations, with another four currently in development (two of which are Hollywood backed). Interestingly, none were animated. Now, along with anime juggernaut Gen Urobuchi…
The initial success of Brannon Braga and Adam Simon’s series “Salem” (2015-2017) and the staggering impact of Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” seems to have made American Puritans into high fashion for horror entertainment. Director Martin Koolhoven and producer Els Vandevorst had, for several years before the releases of the aforementioned titles, been producing their own…
From Joe Lynch, director of “Everly,” comes Mayhem, an ugly mishmash of the zombie apocalypse and tower assault subgenres. Unwisely referencing “A Clockwork Orange” in the opening, with Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie” overlaid on some stylized ultra-violence, Derek (Steven Yeun, “Okja”) explains the “IV7” virus via narration. It’s a condition which purportedly causes the sufferer…
The heated romantic passion of Charles Martin’s best-selling romance novel “The Mountain Between Us,” turns lukewarm in its cinematic version of the same name that stars Kate Winslet (“Collateral Beauty”) and Idris Elba (“The Dark Tower”) as a couple of strangers stranded in the frigid high-mountain snow of the Rocky Mountains. Alex Martin (an excellent…
Here’s the thing about travel nightmares and existential crises, we’ve all had them. Jungle, based on Israeli adventurer, author and humanitarian Yossi Ghinsberg’s memoir of the same name, puts both on display to horrifying effect. This travel diary gone awry does to hiking in the Amazon what “Brokedown Palace” did to Thailand (in my 14-year…
Released nearly two years ago, it turns out that Hell House LLC wasn’t the complete package. Some intended VFX shots for the final sequence were never completed, and investor anxiety over breaching the 100-minute mark meant eight minutes of characterization was shaved from the original release. This “director’s cut,” which I saw, reinstates some of…
