Old is a thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, the mind that brought us The Sixth Sense. Because it is Shyamalan, Old follows his formula – a a simple story + a twist = good film. The simple story in Old – a family on vacation ends up on the secluded beach with a group of […]
”Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.” Those immortal words have been parodied to death over the years and if you haven’t seen Chinatown, you would have heard those lines spoofed in another film or TV show. Once you see what has just occurred and those five words are uttered by Joe Mantell who played Jake Gittes’s […]
It doesn’t look like much. The Harrisville, Rhode Island home might not get a lot of second or third looks on Zillow. “Needs paint” translates as “rustic” and “historic.” “Low ceilings” just means its out of date. But “historic” is right on the mark. This 300 year-old wood frame/clapboard house is where the events depicted […]
Documentary Review: The “Conjuring” house goes AirBnB — “The Sleepless Unrest”
The year is 1981 and Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, of course!) have just screwed up another exorcism. Only Ed hears as Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor) begs the demon that has possessed 8 year-old David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard) to enter him instead. Unfortunately, Ed also has a heart attack and passes […]
Film Review: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (dir by Michael Chaves)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 8 out of 10. Klute was the first of the Pakula paranoid trilogy – The Parallax View came three years later, and All The Presidents Men five. So why have I done it in this perverse order? I’ll be asking the questions, young padawan! Really, it should be called Bree (Jane Fonda), because […]
Klute: Character Study Or Detective Thriller?
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 7 out of 10. Well, this show has been all the rave recently, and in my typical fashion, I went into this one hoping that I’d be able to go against the tide and rip Mare of Easttown to pieces. Unfortunately, I won’t be doing that, but it’s not exactly a laudation either… […]
Moreish Mare of Easttown Proves You Can Have Too Much Of A Good Thing
Prisoners – MOVIE REVIEWKeller’s daughter goes missing and when he soon realises that the police are taking longer than he thought, he decides to take things into his own hands by going out to find his daughter’s kidnapper himself. However, his mental health begins to decline and so he starts doing things he will soon regret leading him […]
It’s worth remembering that the script for Groundhog Day was, like, way darker than the final movie; the idea of a day endlessly repeating, and how that might feel for those trapped within it, has got legs. Remakes and sequels haven’t followed, and that’s a good thing, but the potential mileage is obvious, and it […]
Continue reading “Palm Springs”
Needless to say my expectations for the new Christian Petzold film were through the roof. The German filmmaker’s last two movies, 2014’s “Phoenix” and 2018’s “Transit”, are both snugly among my favorites from the last decade. His latest “Undine” has finally come to the States courtesy of IFC Films. And while it might not pack […]
Director – Joe Wright (Atonement) Cast – Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Wyatt Russell, Gary Oldman, Fred Hechinger, Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Jason Leigh Plot – Agoraphobic New Yorker Anna Fox (Adams) lives a secluded life stuck in her apartment afraid to venture out into the outside world but […]
Film Review – The Woman in the Window (2021)
Not everyone remembers that “Undine” or Ondine is a name from mythology, a water nymph of “The Little Mermaid” variety — one with a great gravitas attached to her love life. With or without that knowledge, the opening “break-up” scene in Christian Petzold’s German fantasy based on that myth is dark and intense. Johannes (Jacob […]
Movie Review: A dark romantic fantasy, in and out of the water — “Undine”
It’s great seeing Eric Bana not just getting a leading role, but getting a really meaty one in a movie that lets him show why he’s such an underrated actor. “The Dry”, an Australian thriller from director Robert Connolly, marks Bana’s first feature film appearance since 2017. Written by Connolly and Harry Cripps, it’s an […]
Catherine Clare… trades life in 1980s Manhattan for a remote home in the tiny hamlet of Chosen, New York … She soon comes to sense a sinister darkness lurking both in the walls of the ramshackle property—and in her marriage (Letterboxd) In its dialogue, editing, and overall presentation it’s a bit clunky and contrived; the […]
Time: 81 Minutes Cast: James Stewart as Rupert Cadell John Dall as Brandon Shaw Joan Chandler as Janet Walker Cedric Hardwicke as Mr. Henry Kentley Farley Granger as Phillip Morgan Constance Collier as Mrs. Anita Atwater Douglas Dick as Kenneth Lawrence Edith Evanson as Mrs. Wilson Director: Alfred Hitchcock Two young men, Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan […]
“Dark Woods” is a German police procedural that is less about tracking down a serial killer than about the ripple effects of random, senseless violence and the pain of not-knowing what’s happened to a loved one who simply vanishes. There’s mystery in this account of a 30 year-long German case that only dogged persistence by […]
Time: 92 minutes Age Rating: Torture & Sadistic Violence Cast: Tobin Bell as John Kramer Costas Mandylor as Detective Mark Hoffman Scott Patterson as Agent Peter Strahm Betsy Russell as Jill Tuck Julie Benz as Brit Meagan Good as Luba Gibbs Mark Rolston as Agent Dan Erickson Carlo Rota as Charles Director: David Hackl Although Jigsaw […]
Robert Mitchum was a high-mileage/hard-miles 57 when he took on Raymond Chandler’s iconic private eye Philip Marlowe in 1975’s “Farewell, My Lovely,” a character immortalized by Bogie in “The Big Sleep” in a story of that had been filmed twice before, in the film noir-mad 1940s. He wasn’t too old to take the part, but […]
Classic Film Review: Mitchum is Marlowe in Chandler’s “Farewell, My Lovely” (1975)
“The Nun” marks the fifth film in the Conjuring ‘universe’ and the third backstory spin-off. “The Conjuring” and its direct sequel remain two of my favorite horror films of the last several years. The first spin-off was the dull mess-of-a-movie “Annabelle”. The prequel to “Annabelle” was a good step in the right direction. That brings […]
When Sea of Love was released in 1989 Al Pacino hadn’t been in a film for four years – the longest gap in his career to date. His last film, Revolution, had also been a box-office bomb, meaning the American public hadn’t seen him in a prestigious role since Scarface in 1983. That makes Sea […]
Available on DVD and digital download from 19th April, Into the Labyrinth, starring Dustin Hoffman, is a twisted psychological thriller in Italian and American English with a great international cast about a girl’s abduction and the hunt for her kidnapper. The film starts with the strange disappearance of a young girl Samantha Andretti (Valentina Bellè) […]
