6 Best Movies To Watch After The Cell (2000)
Knox Goes Away
Michael Keaton gives a subtle & empathetic performance as a hitman in his waning days. The minute the mournful saxophone music swells in Knox Goes Away (which is minute one), you think to yourself oh boy, here we go. A car driving in the Los Angeles night, two hitmen, one cool, cultured, and precise, the other seemingly more casual and good-humored about the whole thing, meet in a diner to banter and discuss their next job; none of this fills the viewer with confidence that they’re about to see something they haven’t seen a million times before. And then the first hitman asks the diner waitress for a cup of coffee, seemingly having forgotten he already has one in front of him, and maybe something different is happening here. Continue Reading →
Dolls
Ethan Coen goes solo for a raunchy, silly comedy-thriller. When the Coen brothers announced back in 2021 that they were taking a temporary break from working together, the anguished wails of film nerds could be heard around the world. It wasn’t anything personal – indeed, they've reportedly reunited to work on a horror movie – but rather just a desire to do their own thing separately for a little while. Their time apart resulted in two very different projects: Joel’s critically acclaimed The Tragedy of Macbeth, and now, Ethan’s Drive-Away Dolls, a good-naturedly raunchy crime caper that occasionally flounders under the weight of stale, fetishy stereotypes. The film opens with a gruesome death and a briefcase that needs to make its way from Philadelphia to Tallahassee. Also about to hit the road south are a pair of friends, brash, free-spirited Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and buttoned-up, bookish Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan). Marian wants to pay her aunt a visit, while Jamie, kicked out of her apartment by her fed-up girlfriend (Beanie Feldstein), has nothing better to do and goes along for the ride, hoping to loosen up Marian along the way.. Continue Reading →
Malignant
While we spent a lot of time debating whether or not “elevated horror” is a real thing or just something film snobs made up so they didn’t have to be embarrassed about liking a scary movie, gore fell to the wayside. There was a period when we weren’t getting an acceptable amount of blood and guts, in favor of understated chills and psychological trauma. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but it’s left something lacking in the genre. With Nia DaCosta’s take on Candyman and the upcoming Halloween Kills, however, it looks like old-fashioned look-between-the-fingers horror is back in all its splattery glory. Add to that list James Wan’s Malignant, often very silly, but always with a self-aware wink at the audience, with a body count that will satisfy even the most jaded horror fans. Continue Reading →
Skull: A Máscara de Anhangá
In theory, Kapel Furman and Armando Fonseca’s second feature, Skull: The Mask, should satisfy the fans of the traditional horror and slasher genre. After all, it’s a movie drenched in lots of blood, filled with guts and body parts, and shot in a manner that evokes the phantasmagoric insanity found in Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy. But its convoluted narrative and sloppy execution, unfortunately, take away all the gory fun, resulting in the movie ending up playing itself too safely instead of embracing the gonzo nature of the genre. Continue Reading →
The Empty Man
Two-hours and sixteen minutes. There is a version of The Empty Man that’s a solid, efficient horror flick, and then there’s the version that’s two-hours and sixteen minutes. Unfortunately, we got the latter. Adapted from an independent comic book of the same name, this poorly paced, occasionally engaging exercise staggers along like its titular demon. If only there was a way to stop it, before it’s too late. Continue Reading →
Hunted
With occasional exceptions, there’s something of an unspoken agreement with an audience when they watch a slasher or survival horror film that they’ll receive some form of catharsis. It could be the voyeuristic pleasure of the kills, victims/survivors overturning their attackers, or more bluntly – just a reason to watch. Vincent Paronnaud’s Hunted doesn’t ignore this precept as much as revel in the unsatisfying imbalance between relief and lack thereof to the point of rendering it meaningless. Continue Reading →