Cobweb
SimilarA Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Constantine (2005), Silent Hill (2006),
Watch afterBarbie (2023) Meg 2: The Trench (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), Talk to Me (2023), The Nun II (2023),
StudioLionsgate,
As horror movies fans, we (and I’m very much including myself here) talk a good game about wanting to see something new and different in the genre, but there are plenty of old reliable tropes that still work with us. Zombies, kaiju, masked killers, all of those have a better than good chance of drawing in audiences, without trying too hard to bring a fresh new angle to anything. We also love child in peril and creepy kid movies, and Samuel Bodin’s Cobweb manages to incorporate both, to mixed results. Continue Reading →
Blue Jean
SimilarJFK (1991), Maria Full of Grace (2004),
Watch afterBarbie (2023) John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), The Whale (2022),
StudioBBC Film, BFI,
A portrait of a closeted lesbian woman living in England during Margaret Thatcher’s oppressively homophobic 1980s reign, Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean illustrates a unique paradox for a critic. How does one navigate criticizing a film’s self-imposed binaries while also accounting for the realities of a restrictive period, the gravity of the subject matter (and parallel current circumstances), and the differentiation of what is intended as cinematic affect and what constitutes clumsy filmmaking? Continue Reading →