7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
Dark Skies Is Better Than You Thought It Would Be
B
Dark Skies has everything going against it. It's directed by Scott Stewart--who's responsible for the awful duds Legion and Priest--, it's another creepy-house horror movie in an era that's littered with Paranormal Activitys and Sinisters, the trailer was...
Read more →
Tower: A New Kind of Character Study
A
A character study consisting virtually of close-up shots, Tower—the first feature-length film from Toronto director Kazik Radwanski and producer Dan Montgomery—is in one sense, a story about a classically Canadian anti-hero. However, Tower delivers its po...
Read more →
Diverging from the Path of Least Resistance in Snitch
Underneath Snitch’s B-movie action filmmaking artifice is a simplistic and universal story about the eternal bond between father and son, and the extraordinary lengths many parents will often go to in order to protect their children from the dangerous world we...
Read more →
Kai Po Che!: Love, Friendship, and Cricket
A-
Director Abhishek Kapoor's third feature, Kai Po Che!, tells the story—mostly in flashback—of three friends in the Indian city of Ahmedabad who, at the beginning of an economic boom in the early 2000s, set out to open a sports academy. The cricket-mad Is...
Read more →
A Lake: Rolling Bank of Fog Can’t Hide Transparent Flaws
D
There's a pull quote on one of the advertisements for A Lake comparing the film's director Philippe Grandrieux to the likes of Bela Tarr. In a way, this comparison makes sense. While not without some notable differences, Grandrieux's A Lake is relentlessl...
Read more →
Intruding Spaces: Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love
In the films of Abbas Kiarostami, the frame is never just a frame—the world always extends beyond it. Sometimes that means a sound just off screen—the bells on a donkey, the banging of dishes in a kitchen, the whisperings of a couple. More often than not, this...
Read more →
Beautiful Creatures: Satanic and Silly
C-
College-bound senior in high school Ethan Wate (Aiden Ehrenreich) wants to escape Gatlin, South Carolina. He’s tired of the archaic ways of the South, the ignorant people, and the lack of culture. Alas, with absence of parents (he's cared for by Viola Da...
Read more →
A Good Day To Die Hard: Russian Russian ‘Til Life’s No Fun
D
Some movie franchises flourish when the filmmakers consistently up the stakes, stunts, and villains. Take the Fast and the Furious movies, which have graduated from simple drag racing to driving a car out of the nose of an airplane. Those flicks are flexi...
Read more →
Horror Flick Gut Lacks Punch
F
I hate to pick on the little guy. Low budget indies can't compete with Hollywood for production values and the money that buys big name talent. But when a movie as bad as Gut comes around, I have to through budget out the window. No amount of money could ...
Read more →
The Fire Heats Up Cold Euro-Drama
C+
Brigitte Maria Bertele’s The Fire starts innocuously enough, with a thirtysomething physical therapist, Judith (Maja Schöne) heading out for a night at the club alone after her boyfriend (Mark Waschke) calls with an excuse for not coming. She dances inno...
Read more →