Hypnotic
There's at once too much, and somehow not enough, of the whimsical DIY spirit of writer-director Robert Rodriguez in his latest film, the shaky B-thriller Hypnotic. The Austin native made his name in the halcyon days of '90s indie filmmaking, shooting his first feature (El Mariachi) for a mere $7,000 at the tender age of 23. Since then, he's leveraged that inventiveness into a cottage industry of his own based out of his hometown of Austin, Texas, whether it's kid-friendly fare (Spy Kids), big-budget CGI blockbusters (Alita: Battle Angel), moody noirs (Sin City) or grindhouse splatterfests (Planet Terror, From Dusk Till Dawn). Hypnotic is all and none of those things, a chintzy lo-fi Christopher Nolan riff that doesn't have nearly enough life to work. And yet, there are just enough charming elements to save it from outright dismissal. Continue Reading →
To End All War: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb
SimilarSissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress (1957),
To The End opens with activist Varshini Prakash, leader of The Sunrise Movement, as she tours the destruction left in a wildfire’s wake. A bleak landscape meets her. There are houses burned and left in ruin. A car drives into the area, flames licking at the road as smoke covers the terrain. It’s a hell of a stirring beginning to Rachel Lears’ timely and extensive climate change documentary To The End. Continue Reading →
Halloween Ends
SimilarBasic Instinct (1992), Ocean's Twelve (2004), Pi (1998), Saw (2004), Saw III (2006),
Watch afterBlack Adam (2022),
Where do we even begin? Continue Reading →
Nope
A look back at the use of chimpanzees as clowns & sidekicks for humans, & how it relates to a strange & haunting subplot of Jordan Peele's hit sci-fi horror.
Note: this article contains spoilers for Nope. Please read Jon Negroni’s spoiler-free review here.
If you haven’t seen Nope yet, you might be a little puzzled by references to a character named Gordy, especially once you learn that Gordy is a chimpanzee. It’s understandable: there’s not so much of a glimpse of a chimpanzee in any of the promotional material for Nope, and nothing that happens in its trailers seems to suggest that a chimpanzee will play any part in it. Continue Reading →
The Black Phone
SimilarMinority Report (2002), Natural Born Killers (1994), Out of the Past (1947), Saw II (2005), The Shining (1980), The Sixth Sense (1999),
Watch afterJurassic World Dominion (2022), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
Gather around, children, and let Auntie Gena tell you a story about days gone by. Long ago, up till around 1984, kids used to run free in the streets from dawn till dusk, with virtually no adult supervision. Was it a better time? Not really, just different, and it all came to an end with the collective belief that bad things happen to children who aren’t carefully watched at all times. Now it’s swung so far in the other direction that allowing your children to walk themselves to school may result in a visit from child protective services. Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone takes place in the time before, when parents didn’t worry about monsters until they were almost under their noses. Continue Reading →
The Protégé
SimilarLucky Number Slevin (2006), Minority Report (2002), North by Northwest (1959), The Interpreter (2005),
The Name of the Rose (1986) StarringSamuel L. Jackson,
StudioIngenious Media,
Hollywood is in something of a conundrum these days. Audiences have by no means lost their taste for a good action flick, but such movies are meant for a theater experience, which has become somewhat limited by necessity. Then there’s the fact that so much of our lust for violence tends to be sated by established properties such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its competitors, not to mention other franchises such as the Fast & the Furious and The Purge movies. Continue Reading →