Horror

Film Review: The Plumber (dir by Peter Weir)

Peter Weir’s 1979 film, The Plumber, is essentially a battle of wills between two very different characters. Jill Cowper (Judy Morris) is a masters student in anthropology. She’s educated, articulate, liberal-minded, and upper middle class. She’s married to Dr. Brian Cowper (Robert Coleby), a highly respected academic who is on the verge of being offered […]

Film Review: The Plumber (dir by Peter Weir)

Crime

Rope (1948) Review

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 […]

Rope (1948) Review

Adventure

John’s Horror Corner: The Ruins (2008)

MY CALL:  I love this flick! There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s still a solid movie. We have an awesome cast giving good performances in a well-directed, deliciously gory killer plant movie. What more did you want?  MORE MOVIES LIKE The Ruins:  Well, for more killer plant movies I’d aim for Splinter (2008), Invasion of […]

John’s Horror Corner: The Ruins (2008), this “botanical horror” is a fun, gory, infection-based killer plant movie worth your time.

Crime

Dark Woods (Das Geheimnis des Totenwaldes) 2020

“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 […]

Series Review: German cops hunt a serial killer, and a kidnap victim, in the “Dark Forest (Das Geheimnis des Totenwaldes)”

Drama

Movie Review: Divorce, as personal as it gets — “The Killing of Two Lovers”

“The Killing of Two Lovers” is a break-up story as stark as its Utah-in-winter setting, as brutal as its title. The debut feature of writer-director Robert Machoian throws us into the seemingly quiet aftermath of a split, the calm after what appears to have been a just-as-calm “we need to work through some things” parting. […]

Movie Review: Divorce, as personal as it gets — “The Killing of Two Lovers”